How do you remember everything?

I think about the current state of the country, with the economy being one of the biggest things to be watching.
With all the survival shows out there, and all the survival forums at so many different internet sites and wonder...how will you keep your information, to be able to look up or read about..so you can do it if you have never done it before? The cold hard facts are that electronic break and in a SHTF, you would be harder on it than you ever had been before...with wear and tear, plus abuse. A computer, kindle, i phone or whatever will get broken, its not hard to do...then what? how do you know what to do or not to do?
I am curious, because I have been out camping, hiking, and can do most anything I set my mind to...pretty easily.
What do you do when you need to know how to do these things? And there is no store or shop to go to or take your broken item to for repair. Several things I thought of, but there are hundreds more not listed below...

Can you...
Tan a hide
make cloths from hide using nothing man made because you have no sewing kit
process an animal
Know what plants to eat
know when to plant each type crop
know when to harvest your crops
preserve your food/crops
build a fire without lighters, matches...using only what mother nature supplies
what plants to use for aches and pains
what plants not to use
woodworking skills
repair shoes, make shoes
know how to read moon dogs and sun dogs for things with changes in the weather
how to make line for snares and fishing
how to make snares
make soap to stay healthy and semi clean
maintain tools or machines without a parts store
fix anything without a tool set..because it broke, got traded or you just don't have it any more
prevent rust on metal without oil
construction without nails and screws
building a stove to cook on once your stove needs replaced
navigation once your gps batteries die and you cannot recharge them...ever again
your generator brakes down
making fuel, cuz you ran out
solar panel breaks or needs repaired but you have no parts to fix it
making a bow and arrows
gun repair...ammo resupply..a simple spring can make your weapon nothing more than a club.

I am just curious with all the possible things to happen, and the things we have grown use to having at our fingertips...how will you personally be able to adapt to the situation? How much useless stuff do we all have that will be junk?
How much knowledge do you have for fixing your things or being able to adapt.

I know for myself that I can do a lot of things but it requires tools and modern luxeries, like stores to buy parts for whatever breaks. I have been camping and can stay in the woods for extended periods of time, but everyone needs resupplied sooner or later. What do you do when you run out of something or need it fixed?

reply to post by saltdog


Pretty much wondered the same thing myself, I suppose it's not everything you need to remember just the basics. Basic survival skills to help you, well, survive. If you need to remember everything I'm sure it's possible by reading solidly about survival until, god forbid, the worst should happen, heres hoping it doesn't

Solar powered wrist cell phone . Like a watch




Load it up with pdf's lol

You'll always have your handy phone on , and can access it with solar power , or some external batteries.


You know whats weird , the things you prepare for never seem to go wrong, , its usually the outta the blue's .

But atleast you have your full pdf , files on your wrist watch .:up.

When you hit the SHTF situation squre a safe place for that watch lol , then take from there .

:

reply to post by saltdog


You'd be suprised at what you know but don't know you know. It wasn't all that long ago that we were hunter gatherers. In that situation you might find that you've managed to do something you would naver have thought yourself capable of and as a result think you're a clever little camper when infact you'd most likely just be remembering something that you're born with but had been buried deep.

Have you never heard of: "Necessity is the mother of invention"?
In hard times, trial and error method would be in most cases a necessary thing.

reply to post by yourboycal2


watches break and in a survival situation, I do not want electronics..they break, require batteries, have screens that break and a watch has a band...I have lost more than my fair share of watches while enjoying the outdoors...yeah I lost 1 scuba diving, and several hiking, camping, fishing and hunting...your idea might be ok for you but it won't work for me..thanks though.

Originally posted by steveknows
reply to post by saltdog

 

You'd be suprised at what you know but don't know you know. It wasn't all that long ago that we were hunter gatherers. In that situation you might find that you've managed to do something you would naver have thought yourself capable of and as a result think you're a clever little camper when infact you'd most likely just be remembering something that you're born with but had been buried deep.

edit on 3-1-2012 by steveknows because: Typo

I agree with you...using your head and being creative, or inventive will be a great tool to have.
While camping I have came up with some good ideas...that work for me. Camping has helped me a lot with knowledge and ideas. I like camping in all four seasons...you need different skills for different times of the year...people will be suprised at what they can do if they actually put there mind to doing it.

Some of the things that you would want to remember, and by that I mean most, could be found in books. I personally would suggest having a book on local edible and poisonous plants, one on trap making, one on shelter building and one on gardening or farming. These books could be stored in sealed zip lock bags and would take some of the guess work out of the equation. I would also recommend having topographical maps of your area. Beyond that all that I can think of is to go out into the woods in your area and try to survive without most modern conveniences for a few days. You will learn a lot about how prepared you are, and will find out what you can and can't do.

They make guide books and such or an easy one you can pick up is these survival playing cards
www.ebay.com...

I bought $200 worth of books on EVERYTHING i could think of. Its in my stash of "stuff" for when the time comes i know how to do it all

reply to post by saltdog


You couldn't take care of a watch for 6 months minimum ? to be able to learn all the pdf's ? lol. The watch is small , compact , and you can get solar chargers for it + batteries as back up . You can view all your surivial books thats saved on the it .


You read , train , and practice them everyday and learn as much of the skills as possible before it "breaks"


This beats anything else you can say about having that informaiton . Books are to heavy , laptops to bulky . Cell phone or wrist watch time smartphone. filled with your files :p


Imagine how many things you can barter with if you have the skills and knowledge to make them.

Everyone else going off memory , while your going off digital files creating bartering , they won't know how u did it lol

reply to post by yourboycal2


That might be, but like I said I don't want electronic things...that I have to rely on. In a survival situation...I have broken more watches, and electronics while serving in the military...there is a reason I do not want electronic things....like I said earlier, it might work for you, but I don't want to use that...it fails to easily...thanks for your thoughts on it.

I have made notes and put them in a binder for me to use.

reply to post by saltdog


no.1 - Waterproof Notepad
no.2 - Waterproof Pencil
no.3 - Waterproof Brain

go back to the basics and start training / practicing now.
then you know it when need..
practice grasshopper.. lots of practice...

Originally posted by Expat888
go back to the basics and start training / practicing now.
then you know it when need..
practice grasshopper.. lots of practice...

I am, I have, and I do.
How many here do?

Electrics may well be stuffed. I've thought about making laminated info sheets on a few things. In fact it would be pretty difficult to learn everything about everything. While we are re-learning skills there will be a terrible death rate - probably for the first generation. But people would most likely have to start living in communities again and part of that is sharing knowledge and skills. So it might be better to learn a couple of things really well than try to learn everything. That way, you will have a use and you will stand a better chance of being accepted and therefore staying alive.

reply to post by saltdog


How bad do you think things will be to need the knowledge to do all those things. If everything got really bad we would probably all die early any way from the failure of the nuclear reactors.

reply to post by saltdog


Excellent questions, and very timely, I believe. For myself and my Bride, we've been survivalists for a while, although we called ourselves "preppers", because it sounded less 'dug-into-the-mountainside-with-a-truckfulla-guns'. I grew up in the mountains of Idaho, and gained certain skills as a consequence of regular life. When we moved to the Caribbean, we set out to keep learning about our environment, how to catch fish and other food, what plants were useful as food or medicinally and other bushcraft.

Those things that I don't have committed to memory (like making a Kearny fallout meter, or various chemical formula (gunpowder, soap, etc.) or details of snares I've made, I store in my Darlin's Blackberry Playbook, and I also keep a printed copy, which is stored in a waterproof Pelican case (except mine is yellow and pretty much me-proof.) She has several spare batteries, and we have a bunch of solar chargers.

I think it's important to become proficient with these ideas, right now, before you need them. I believe that many people thing they can do things simply because they've seen them or become aware of them. Ask your friends or family if they can make fire without a match, lighter, firestick, battery/steel wool, magnifying glass etc. within an hour. Many will say, yes they can. Challenge them to do so. Even for those who have done so successfully before, it's still a push to find the right materials, and implement them. We don't necessarily have to go back to the stone age........ but........... it's not a bad thing to KNOW how to about flint (chert, volcanic glass) knapping. It's not a bad thing to know that you can use duct tape for fletching on an arrow.

There are a few books I keep stored away also. I don't trust my ability to remember which wild fungus are safe to eat, and which as poisonous or toxic.

I don't pretend to have all the answers, just trying to stay alive and help a few other people stay alive in the process............ and as yourboycal2 so aptly put, "the things you prepare for never seem to go wrong." Good stuff.

Originally posted by yourboycal2
reply to post by saltdog

 

You couldn't take care of a watch for 6 months minimum ? to be able to learn all the pdf's ? lol. The watch is small , compact , and you can get solar chargers for it + batteries as back up . You can view all your surivial books thats saved on the it .


You read , train , and practice them everyday and learn as much of the skills as possible before it "breaks"


This beats anything else you can say about having that informaiton . Books are to heavy , laptops to bulky . Cell phone or wrist watch time smartphone. filled with your files :p


Imagine how many things you can barter with if you have the skills and knowledge to make them.

Everyone else going off memory , while your going off digital files creating bartering , they won't know how u did it lol

I have 2, 8 inch pc tablets with extra mass storage chips, and 3 TB of portable harddrives with a million or so pdf documents on everything from entire encyclopedias of medicine to entire survival series on video from TV that were converted to AVI. I have a working copy of Wikipedia, and the entire database of math biographies from St. Andrew's University which shows every mathmatician ever born of note, a story about is life and what he discovered.
In that 3 TB of data I have the entire worlds collection of literary works, that are of note, since everything that the world found interesting in terms of literature they have uploaded to the net using the torrents system.
I have 30,000 paintings of the masters, in JPG format from some collection I found on the net.

If civilization was totally destroyed and all information lost, with what I have I coud rebuild it.

I pretty much have my own Internet.

Not just how to build something, how to find the mineral, smelt it, and build the machines you need to make ittttt.

Not only can I skin a wild animal, I have enough information to genetically alter them. Seriously I could make skinless animals and save myself the trouble.

Knowledge is power.

And lots of battery packs, and solar charger and stuff to use a car lighter to charge battery packs, and a bug out bag as big as a man full of stuff I bought for camping and survival.

I have a camcorder, that has a projector in it, so you don't need a screen, and you can hook up other things like your tablet to it, and project a hi res screen on the wall.

And of course ham radios and all of that stuff. And I am really happy that I found a new type of portable harddrive that is made for rugged hiking camping trips, is waterproof, and drop proof, and very sturdy.
750 GB that one so I have another one to fill up with things that I might think are imortant to know.

Originally posted by keldas
reply to post by saltdog

 

How bad do you think things will be to need the knowledge to do all those things. If everything got really bad we would probably all die early any way from the failure of the nuclear reactors.

Well Fukushima was a scare but people didn't die. Old people like me, 56 years old, don't have to worry about getting cancer 40 years from now because a pack of wild dogs will probably get me when I am 89 because I won't be able to run fast enough to get away.

There are plenty of thing syou can do to remove radioactivity from your system. Norwegian kelp, has iodine, and iodine protects your thyroid, and pectin will remove radioactive particles from your system, even if you live near Chernobyl when it went bad.
The idea is to try to limit your exposure and try to eat things out of a can for the first couple years or stored food. Filter water and if you go outside in the rain, wear a heavy raincoat and wash off every day if you can.

You see there are 3 types of radiation primarily. Alpha beta and gamma. So alpha comes from the actual particles that make up the fuel. If you ingest that, well thats the worst. So you need to get that out of your system. But since its heavy particles, usually its close to teh reactor. Within a few miles.
Beta same thing except its not as deadly, But if the particles are on you, you are getting irradiated.
Where alpha paricles beta radiation is just another part of that same radioactive substance.

Then you have gamma, and gamma is what is dangerous. Within 20 km of a reactor, it is the gamma rays, that can give you long term health effects. You need lead shielding for gamma, whereas a good pvc raincoat can protect you from alpha and beta. And you can wash it off.

But gamma is close to a source like a reactor, so if you are not near a reactor core, then you will not need to worry about gamma. The gamma from individual particles is minimal and not dangerous.

But that is what kills you right away, if you are in a nuclear accident. Gamma.
The rest kills you slowly.
You have a life time limit of radiation exposure, and if you watch that you don't exceed that, you should be ok.
Chances are, you will not die of radiation fallout. SOmething else will get you like a cut, and infection, and lack of anti-biotics.