Good stuff. I believe that the key will be that everyone in the community adopt an attitude of minimalism and safety. Alot of these procedures mentioned(smithing, gardening etc) though they sound trivial can cause injury that may halt progress. Keeping everyone healthy, strong and rested will be paramount. The commodity in abundance will be time, and it should be used gratuitously.(for thought and action)I think of all these things, medical knowledge and supply is most important. We can minimize on everything else, but not our babies and old folks. Natural remedies and medicine knowledge, EMT training. For me survival is embedded and even entertaining, but throw dependants in the mix, things get complicated and frightening.

this is one of the best things ive ever read. especially helpful for the incoming zombie invasion.

On the subject of leather working: Remember to save the brain matter from the animals you hunt. Enzymes in the brain when boiled with recently skinned leather allow the leather material to remain soft and pliable.

Comment withdrawn-
(the zombies have been mentioned)


Thanks for your posts, the thread and ATS!




[edit on 16-2-2009 by dodadoom]

Good topic, lots of ideas, but the one that i'm not seeing, what about links to places where you can get this stuff? lists of books that might be a good idea to pick up and read, places to pick up parts for ham radios and generators. just a thought

d

Thank you all for making this thread so popular. I believe that this is an important topic to consider. It was my intention to start a topic for debate on how to prepare for any contingency that may lead to having to not only survive situation X, but also thrive and rebuild. Survival is merely the first part of the equation but not the end result. The end results in the systematic rebuilding of society to a place similar to that we know and love today.

Surviving situation X is important but one has to prepare for the aftermath. One must not simply think of survival but the rest of their lives to contend with. This is something that the people after the fall of the Roman Empire had to consider and I think it is vital that we consider these contingencies in the likelihood that a new dark age happens upon us once again.

In my original post I suggested many questions for one to consider, I thought ahead and answered and gave you the answers to those questions through some research on the Internet. A tool such as the Internet in the event of global catastrophe or the collapse of civilization wont be readily available as such I thought I would give you the reader as many links as I could research in hopes that some of you who know history and know how times like we face today may end would be more prepared.

Some of you suggested and contend that specialists will be needed in the aftermath of the apocalypse. It is true it would be helpful for people to come along that know everything about a certain aspect of life that would make it easier on the whole. The problem is that specialists only work in their area of expertise and otherwise cannot contribute to the community as a whole. Yes an expert in an area of expertise would be beneficial, the problem is the loss of someone who only does one job in the community and the reliance on that person for that task would cause great harm to the community as a whole. It takes a village to raise a child and it takes a village to raise a civilization. One as a member of a post apocalyptic civilization must know more than one specialized skill.

Lets say Joe the Plumber knows how to maintain drainage systems. Great! Now does Joe know how to treat waste, dig a well, create a rudimentary pump, and create an aqueduct? Most importantly does Joe know how to teach an apprentice these skills? Limited knowledge of a specialized skill in a post apocalyptic world is a liability not an attribute. One must be multi faceted in order to be a benefit to the community.

A butcher is a handy skill set, a skilled butcher can also double as a field surgeon, having the knowledge and ability to amputate limbs in quick order as to minimize pain and trauma to the victim. In civil war times it was necessary to amputate a limb in less than 15 minutes in order to save a person’s life. A butcher could do this where a layperson could not. A butcher understands the relationship of joints to one another and can sever the affected limb in quick order without causing undue trauma to the patient. The patient in the care of a skilled butcher would not bleed out but be able to be saved due to the knowledge of the butcher.

Compartmentalization is in my opinion a detriment not an asset; limiting knowledge to one person within a collective community heightens the ability of that community to suffer when that specialist is lost. The problem with someone with a limited skill set versus the jack-of-all-trades is when the specialist is lost; the knowledge of that skill is lost with them. A jack-of-all-trades however knows enough about a variety of different areas to be effective in numerous fields, if a community has a lot of jacks-of-all-trades then that community benefits not only from the knowledge of those persons, but if a member of that community is lost then the loss is lessened because others in the community can pick up the slack.

Jacks of all trades, in opposition to the specialist has a unique skill, that skill is the ability to learn and adapt other skill sets to the requisite task at hand and thus enabling them to trade knowledge with each other, collaborate and equate a solution to a problem while not knowing fully well the entire solution singularly. Together, a set of jacks-of-all-trades can come up with solutions, learn required assets and skill sets of other trades and use that knowledge in concert towards the solution to future problems.


[edit on 2/16/2009 by whatukno]

If the world comes to this, I'd rather die. I don't like the world now and I definitely won't like it if it comes to look like the situation described by the OP.

first of all i really don't believe in a complete collapse of the human kind. mostly because there are many more around today than in the times of the roman empire. also because back then they were mostly illiterate while today the literacy rate is much higher and many people have several skills and have read multiple books which they can use as general knowledge that they can pool together.

secondly i think it's not survival that we need to learn but rather we need to learn to focus on the community, take care of our people on a local level. sounds somewhat like obama's community organizing doesn't it? but that's what i think we need to do. learn to grow food locally, make energy locally, be more independent and waste less fuel. this should help in most local emergency situations because most people will be prepared to help themselves or others. this will also help with the economic times ahead when many more will be out of work and will need help. would you rather have them gang up against each other or help each other?

and finally, if society does collapse don't expect your skills to be too useful. those with the bigger guns will kill everybody, there will be tribe/gang wars pretty much like in mad max and only very few will actually be able to use any skills while most others will be used as slaves. that means most of us will not survive. life expectancy will again drop to 30-35 years and we'll take a few thousands of years to come back.

Originally posted by DarkSecret...today the literacy rate is much higher and many people have several skills and have read multiple books which they can use as general knowledge that they can pool together.
...
...we need to learn to focus on the community, take care of our people on a local level. sounds somewhat like obama's community organizing doesn't it? but that's what i think we need to do. learn to grow food locally, make energy locally, be more independent and waste less fuel. this should help in most local emergency situations because most people will be prepared to help themselves or others. this will also help with the economic times ahead when many more will be out of work and will need help. would you rather have them gang up against each other or help each other?

and finally, if society does collapse don't expect your skills to be too useful. those with the bigger guns will kill everybody, there will be tribe/gang wars pretty much like in mad max and only very few will actually be able to use any skills while most others will be used as slaves. that means most of us will not survive. life expectancy will again drop to 30-35 years and we'll take a few thousands of years to come back.

Unfortunately in an aftermath as described these books will be at a premium. All your lap-tops and flash-drives will be useless and most will have to revert to apprenticeships and the oral tradition. Any that cannot support a library of Alexandrian/Vatican proportions is likely to be thrown back to the aforementioned Dark Ages.

Your notion of community spirit is commendable however I feel that, with notable circumstantial exceptions, it would be completely unworkable. Well maybe it could work here if I had the right to shoot anyone I caught stealing my carrots. People are spoiled and yes, if the economic SHTF there are more likely to be roaming gangs OR martial law; both of which I care very little for. I have enough problems keeping a civil tongue in my head when I see people spitting in the streets or another CCTV camera over my head. If either of the two scenarios above kicked off I would also.

It has the potential to work in slightly smaller communities I wager. One where everyone knows everyone's specialty (I recall my mother was always receiving calls from the neighbours of our cul-de-sac as she was the most medically qualified). This should work both ways; if people are useful then barter along capitalistic lines will always be successful than one based on socialistic paradigms. As long as situation normal prevails however, this will never happen.

Your third statement is perhaps the most attainable goal. My only gripe is that 30-35 years of age would be a statistical average, not a realistic maximum life-span. It is this scenario that spurs me onward, making sure that if the worst does happen I will do my best to survive, and more importantly come out the other side.

[edit: Because I'm ill]

[edit on 17-2-2009 by Nirgal]

It really depends on where you live and the size of your community. I fear that cities and large urban areas would be a theoretical nightmare of death and destruction if Sit X were to occur and a global collapse of governments occurred.

Using Afghanistan as a model one can see the difficulty in continuation of control of a population once the governing body is removed. A power vacuum is left, warlords and provincial powers reign in areas, as others rot and decay.

Widespread global collapse of government would be similar. Small towns and communities would fare better than large cities. I think that one would find that large cities even though many more qualified people would be present would fare worse than a small community.

Eventually, warlords power and influence would expand as more and more people sought the comfort and stability that a governing power would provide. Thus new countries develop and new societies.

During the interim however, basic infrastructure would collapse, power, water, sewage, and other basics would decay and rot because the lack of manpower to keep these systems running. Remember that the people that operate these systems would themselves have to fight and defend themselves and procure for themselves stability. I doubt that a city employee would wish to return to work if he was not getting paid to do so, nor would they want to work when the safety and security of their family unit was jeopardized.

Originally posted by Nirgal
Unfortunately in an aftermath as described these books will be at a premium. All your lap-tops and flash-drives will be useless.

As the printed word will be so valuable, the penalties for the late return/loss of a book should be increased accordingly

For being disruptive in the library...'3 shhhhhh-es and out'

For every week of loan overdue...lose a finger/toe

Lost/Defaced book...death

Originally posted by Nirgal

Unfortunately in an aftermath as described these books will be at a premium. All your lap-tops and flash-drives will be useless and most will have to revert to apprenticeships and the oral tradition. Any that cannot support a library of Alexandrian/Vatican proportions is likely to be thrown back to the aforementioned Dark Ages.

i didn't mention flash drives. however i think there is a high chance to still keep low powered PDAs and netbooks (like the XO) working just fine for a few years or maybe decades. there will be plenty of alternators left from cars, other kind of electric generators and batteries. you can even make power from vinegar and some electrodes.

but if society falls apart and everybody leaves you do realize that we will have some major radiation and chemical leaks to deal with as well as floods from dams and other great things like that. not all the plants will shut off automatically and then there are the temporary storage units next to the nuclear reactors. these things are still so hot that they will boil all the water in a few days or weeks and then you get a meltdown. many places will be deadly for decades after that.