Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: FiLtH on August 22, 2005, 09:19:32 AM
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Lets say that today, something catastophic happened. Be it nuclear war, an asteroid hit, whatever. And it ended life as we know it. No electricity, no medicines, no computers (argh).
To eat, you finished what was in your kitchen. Beyond that you had to find whatever you could to eat. Winter is coming...no fuel will be available. Do you have a woodstove? Wood? The means to get some wood? Saws, axes, can you start a fire without matches?
Your wife is pregnant. Can you deliver the baby?
Are you armed? Do you have enough ammo? Are you good with guns...firing, cleaning, repair. WHen the ammo runs out could you make weapons? Do you have tools?
Personally I think the people with the best chances would be country folk. Small communities that could rely on one another. My guess is ,in the first 6 months most of the world would starve to death. Mostly in the cities. After that disease would claim the rest. Communities would'nt allow strangers in, due to disease and distrust. Someone would be left to carry on Im sure, providing radiation wasnt involved.
Frankly...I dont think Id make it. I dont think Id want to live in that world. I depend on society. Without it Id surely perish.
It seems as technologically advanced we are..the simple things that were the lowest tech at one time, have been forgotten. Take the sword for example. Could you make one? Where do you find iron ore? How would you melt it? Form the blade? All the little things of every aspect of basic tools,farming etc. We would be worse off than the middle ages. Which in my mind was probably one of the most miserable times there was. So if it will be that bad, I think Id rather the asteroid fall on me.
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To borrow a line from Jr.......................
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A country boy can survive. :)
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Read the Dark Tower series, its is basically the above with more.
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The whole island I live on would die. We are a spoiled rotten bunch.
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I got a book on the story like you mentioned, have to find it and get the title. I can remember it, just the title I cant.
Its a story about a US/Russia nuclear war. Almost all electronics are fried from russian EMP armed warheads. It is a tale of one man as he travels across the US to view the damage (and get home to his wife). Remember clearly California has become its own military state, where californians stay on, outsiders stay out. Guards are to shoot to kill anyone trying to get into the state, kinda like crossing countries in europs in 1943. They have made their state back and running again, leaving the other 49 to rot because they dont care. (Kinda like now, eh?)
Anyways its a science fiction/suspense book. If I find the title i'll post it.
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30 days food, water and fuel (for generator, or transportation in our Truck Camper to our mountain fortress in Montana)
Wife is an RN, neighbor across the street is a doc, next door neighbor is a fireman, and I'm a good shot with a rifle (we live next to an Elk preserve)
We could actually stretch this to 45 days if we're careful.
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I'd like to think Yes, I could.
Dark Tower Series, read the series 3 times, bout to start the 4th go around having just gone through the Potter books again.
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Cites will die, survivors would flood the countryside.
Open season fer country folks. All liberals would die. Especially the anti-gun nuts.
:D
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Nothing says "ill be ok" better than Smith & Wesson..
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Originally posted by Hangtime
Cites will die, survivors would flood the countryside.
Open season fer country folks. All liberals would die. Especially the anti-gun nuts.
:D
Hmmm... there seem to be an awful lot of "liberals" living off the grid.
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posted a while aog, something similar:
http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=92308
my reply back then:
OMG I cant believe someone else thought of this :eek:
I have been mulling this over for about 5 years... it just came to me one night. What would you do?
Now when I am lying in bed and can't sleep this is what I think about. With the time I have spent on this I have found so many problems that go in circles it’s not funny.
My Plan
There are 3 basic things you need to deal with, food, shelter, and water. Of course the first few days would be having some fun, but mostly planning. My first stop would be a gun shop, then the local Hummer dealership. Read on to learn why. ;)
Food
I personally have a hard time killing and dressing an animal, not for moral reasons, I just think it’s kind of disgusting. Because of that I would get as much canned meat and Spam I could. You will need some place to store all these goods so the animals will not get into it, so you have to first secure some type of warehouse.
Once you realize you have to survive alone your first though should be location, location, location. Where are you going to live? Near the ocean? Far inland? In a climate with harsh winters? Where is the nearest nuclear power plant? Wisconsin is not too bad, but the climate makes for some unique situations. Near where I live there is a major food distributor’s warehouse; complete with a freezer you can drive a forklift into. I would first have to go there and secure the building.
Why secure the building? If there are no other people around creating garbage and other food sources for the local wildlife they starve. A starving raccoon is one mean SOB, and will get into almost anything not to mention the other animals. I figure there will be an explosion of creatures in the first year or two. There will be no cars to hit the fuzzy bunnies, basically no human blocks on their growth. Soon though they will start dying off fast. The food supply that we as humans create for them can not be replaced. They will starve in droves.
After you secure the building and dump anything that will rot and attract scavengers, you have to bring what you want to it. That means learning to drive a semi. I don’t know how to ‘double clutch’ or have a clue what it even means. I just know I need something to transport my goods.
All this has to be done in relative days after the realization (or test day as I call it). The reason is the perishables in the grocery store are just that, perishable. Within about a week the fruits will be growing parasites. Small mammals will break into the store to get food. It will basically become overrun with disease infected animals within a few weeks. Imagine walking down an isle looking for something to eat and a crazed, rabies infected raccoon jumps out and bites you. You’d be dead in a few weeks. Don’t forget about the smell and the gasses from the rotting food. You would need a gas mask just to go in the door. Basically you want to save all the food you can early on.
Eventually you will need to learn to cultivate crops. You can’t live on preserved food forever, it will run out or go bad. Also you can’t go around killing whatever you want and eat it. You won’t be able to test for diseases in the animal. After time you will have to worry about radiation poisoning too, but we’ll get to that later. Basically no matter how repulsive it sounds, you will become a vegetarian after about 10 years I figure, and you will need to sustain yourself.
Water
Once you have gotten all your food stores set up you need to worry about water. For the first few years you could drink all the bottled water at the grocery stores. It will eventually go bad though and you will need to find a clean water source. My thought is the library will be where I spend most of my time. You will need to learn how to work a well digging machine, and where to dig. You will also need to know how to maintain the equipment. Where this well is kind of dictates where you will live too. You might want to consider learning some basic masonry skills to be able to build a foundation near the well for a house of some kind.
Shelter
Personally I would build a small 15’ by 15’ house or there about. It would be underground too, to help with insulation, and protect from weather. It would be one of those half-buried homes, like a mound. You would also need to get electricity to it. The best bet is a generator. The only thing you need electricity for is lights and entertainment. If you dig a deep enough hole it can work as a crude refrigerator.
The design of the house is for basic protection. You will not be able to predict the weather, so you need to expect a tornado every day. Eventually you might want to find a storm chaser’s van with a Doppler radar attached to it, but that’s low on my list. Anyway, I would make 2 identical buildings next to each other, one for living and 1 for storage. Why two separate ones? That would be easier to build. The smaller the roof span the better for safety from storms. The reason for burying the house is two fold, insulation and protection. The earth above and next to the house will do both. Imagine a mound about ten feet high with a door and glass block window going into it. 3 sides of the building would be a 50’ long rise to the top of the mound.
As stated above location is the key. Where you are dictates what is most important. If you are in the south there are a lot of bugs and stuff you want to keep out (though you pretty much want that everywhere). There is more rain in the south so you need to think about drainage too. If you are near the Atlantic Ocean you need to think about hurricane force winds that last days at a time. The design I talked about covers all possibilities basically.
Back to the generator. A kerosene powered one would be best, but hard to find. Propane would work also, you basically need to stay away from gasoline. The reason to stay away from gas is that I have been told it goes bad in less than a year. If that is true get all your fast car driving out of the way early (and don’t hit a deer or something… wouldn’t want to get an injury and slowly die sitting in a car on the side of the road). You will need to learn how to run and wire up the generator, so back to the library. A generator is lower on the list depending what time of year it is. If it’s close to winter it’s more pressing, but as stated in the beginning of the scenario, electricity is still working… for a while. Somewhere along the line a transformer will blow and shut down the grid. Over time more and more will go out. The biggest concern is the nuclear plants generating the electricity. They WILL melt down eventually, and you need to be at least 500 miles away when it happens to avoid dying right away. That also means you need to find a Geiger counter, and learn how to use it. Learning to set up a solar power system would be helpful too.
Medicine
Medicine is a really tricky one to take care of. Most antibiotics and stuff degrade to not being effective in a few months, due to the organic ingredients. My cousin works at the blood center and they have a freezer like the kind you keep steaks in, but it keeps nitrogen solid and stuff. I think she said it goes to about –100° Celsius. That is cold enough to keep penicillin indefinitely. I am allergic to penicillin myself, so I need to get something else. You would also want to get some other basic medicines to cover anything that might happen. Then you have to transport this freezer back to your house and wire it up.
Miscellaneous
After all your basic necessities are taken care of you can work on learning more things to help you survive longer. I would learn how to do EVERYTHING on a car and motorcycle. I would have a large diesel four wheel drive truck. I would modify it by taking off everything cosmetic. Then add very high-powered lights in all directions (driving at night with animals about without seeing everything would be a bad idea). In the back of the truck (or the roof of the Hummer) would be:- A complete set of tools
- A small generator
- At least 50 gallons of fresh water
- At least 50 gallons of gasoline
- Enough food for 3 weeks (MRE’s taken from a nearby military base)
- An off road motorcycle for scouting and getting home if the truck breaks and I can’t fix it
- Ammo (yes I’d ALWAYS carry at least 2 guns… you never know what might attack you)
- Extra clothes for all seasons
Talking about a vehicle makes you talk about gas again too. I heard there are additives that you can add to extend the shelf life. I also believe diesel gas lasts longer. Either way there are alternative fuels out there. There was that truck that drove across America on used cooking oil. Supposedly it took only minor modifications. I would defiantly look into that.
Like I said I have given this a TON of thought, and I can expound on any part of it if you’d like. (I usually end up talking in circles about it so please forgive the randomness of this LOL ;) )
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I would think for the first year or so you will need to spend most of your time protecting yourself from others that want what you have.
Inner cities will be a free for all of burglary and murder.
Outside of the cities you will have neighborhoods that become fortified. Any house with smoke coming out of a chimney or a light at night will be a target.
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I dont believe there would be enough survivors in the generation that this happened to..that know enough across the spectrum of basic needs...farming, horse care, plumbing, mechanical, medical etc to pass it on successfully to the next generations.
Survivors would likely group up for mutual defense, and farming/hunting needs. Local wars would rage. It would take centuries to get back to even Middle Aged standards of living.
And all the while, dead satallites and space junk orbit the earth...a reminder of what we once were.
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Fully stocked camp with well, 5 hours north of Montreal......just hafta get there,lol. Be fine if it aint no surprise attack, hehe.
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Only garenteed safe place would be on a sub for a few months. Then who knows what when you run out of supplies. Hardest thing to deal with on land would be other people.
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It is inevitable that something disasterous will indeed happen in our lifetime. Better to be prepared, than not.
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You might wish to move water up on the list of priorities.
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The thing Im ok with, is I have no real desire to pass my genes on the further the species. So Im ok with getting snuffed out. We all gotta die sometime.
I just dont want to die in some basement shivering and starving.
This just in...its a bright sunny day outside. No sign of Doom in the air. Have a nice day :)
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Originally posted by BlueJ1
Read the Dark Tower series, its is basically the above with more.
Do you mean Dark Tower by Stephen King? I looked it up and it talks about vampires and crap. Is this the series you are talking about?
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"It is inevitable that something disasterous will indeed happen in our lifetime. "
You know this how? End of the world prophesies are nothing new.
Take away Gasoline or electricity? Big deal. People got along just fine without either for thousands of years. 18th/19th century levels of living can be maintained without such modern technology. People would figure out how to live like that again.
I'd wager the Amish communities would barely even notice such a disaster.
I agree that the ones who would suffer the most are those inside the big cities.
J_A_B
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Originally posted by Mickey1992
Do you mean Dark Tower by Stephen King? I looked it up and it talks about vampires and crap. Is this the series you are talking about?
Yes, and there is a amount of fantasy such as moving through time and demons, but for the most part it takes place in the future of earth that was wrecked by war and now few people exist except mutated groups of humans which fight eachother, and those who simply try to survive.
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Originally posted by J_A_B
"It is inevitable that something disasterous will indeed happen in our lifetime. "
You know this how? End of the world prophesies are nothing new.
J_A_B
I didn't mean the end of the world. My intentions were to state that something that affects everyone globally will happen in our lifetime. One nuke set off in any major city could cause 1929 to occur all over again. 9/11 was a wake up call.
One meteorite the size of a car hitting anywhere near a coastal or land-locked city would have the same effect.
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i would crash and die within hours.....
there is a ferrari dealership 5 mins from here ;) :D
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Another good book is 'Dies the Fire' by S.M. Stirling.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0451459792/ref=pd_sim_b_3/103-8933131-0767031?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance
Instead of a nuclear war or whatnot with its own casualties, the only thing that happens is that all technology above basic gears stops working. Presumably, aliens or something make a 'change' to our local space that makes it so gunpowder does barely more than fizzle, electricity doesn't act the way it should, and so on.
The first die-offs begin in the cities...
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Originally posted by Chairboy
Another good book is 'Dies the Fire' by S.M. Stirling.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0451459792/ref=pd_sim_b_3/103-8933131-0767031?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance
Instead of a nuclear war or whatnot with its own casualties, the only thing that happens is that all technology above basic gears stops working. Presumably, aliens or something make a 'change' to our local space that makes it so gunpowder does barely more than fizzle, electricity doesn't act the way it should, and so on.
The first die-offs begin in the cities...
"Dude...I cannot LIVE without my I-POD!!!!"
:rofl
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Best "end of the world" book I ever read was "Lucifer's Hammer" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The original planet-killer-comet story. IMO a fairly realistic look at what could happen.
Best thing about the disaster in the book, Europe was totally gone. USSR (hey it was written in the 80s lol) and the US, although crippled, combined what was left of their nuclear arsenal and pounded the heck out of China. They formed raiding parties to clear grocery stores and libraries (I remember one scene where a guy saved a copy of "The Way Things Work" in a plastic ziploc bag). I'm going to have to dig that out again.
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Originally posted by Chairboy
Another good book is 'Dies the Fire' by S.M. Stirling.
...so gunpowder does barely more than fizzle...
OMG: NRA members wouldn't even be able to commit a proper suicide!!!
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I think the 20-something kids would die off first. These are known as the Entitlement Generation.
"We're seeing an epidemic of people who are having a hard time making the transition to work kids who had too much success early in life and who've become accustomed to instant gratification," says Dr. Mel Levine, a pediatrics professor at the University of North Carolina Medical School and author of a book on the topic called "Ready or Not, Here Life Comes."
While Levine also notes that today's twentysomethings are long on idealism and altruism, "many of the individuals we see are heavily committed to something we call 'fun.'"
He partly faults coddling parents and colleges for doing little to prepare students for the realities of adulthood and setting the course for what many disillusioned twentysomethings are increasingly calling their "quarter-life crisis."
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Originally posted by deSelys
OMG: NRA members wouldn't even be able to commit a proper suicide!!!
We could mutually beat each other with the rifle butts!
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I also agree that people living in the countryside would be better off at the beginning.
However, things wouldn't be rosy for them neither. For instance:
Originally posted by FiltH
Your wife is pregnant. Can you deliver the baby?
Well, unless you're a trained nurse or doc with the adequate gear, there aren't much things you can do if things go wrong... You would have to rely almost exclusively on Mother Nature.
The only help you can bring is garotting twice the ombilical cord after the delivery then cutting between the ties (wait for too long and all the baby's blood will flow back into the mother's body)...
Then you'd have to deal with the child diseases. Youth mortality would go back to pre 1900 years.
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Originally posted by StarOfAfrica2
Best "end of the world" book I ever read was "Lucifer's Hammer" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The original planet-killer-comet story. IMO a fairly realistic look at what could happen.
Best thing about the disaster in the book, Europe was totally gone. USSR (hey it was written in the 80s lol) and the US, although crippled, combined what was left of their nuclear arsenal and pounded the heck out of China. They formed raiding parties to clear grocery stores and libraries (I remember one scene where a guy saved a copy of "The Way Things Work" in a plastic ziploc bag). I'm going to have to dig that out again.
I have everything those two ever wrote. My kids first SF Book was 'Mote', second was Lucifers Hammer. She's working her way thru my Heinlein collection now. ;)
Also, check out Heinlein's 'Farnhams Freehold' and his 'If This Goes On' outta 'Expanded Universe'. Old.. oh, so very very old, but entertaining.
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Mustaine I like your ideas but there are many flaws with them. To understand what I mean you need to come to Florida after a major hurricane. We are talking just days of normal life stopping. When this happens, there is no water or food to be found on the shelves. The gasoline stocks run out within hours of the storm approaching. There would be no trucks on the road to drive. Your Humvee would be sitting where its first tank of gasoline ran out. Cars and trucks will litter the roadways. You will need a bulldozer to get around.
Also you would probably be dead after your first trip to the gun store. The owner knows your coming and he is armed, and I will bet he is armed much better than you.
I have played this scenario out many times in my head. My belief is what I would consider somewhat safe. Always keep your canned goods well stocked at home. Plywood for the windows and doors (Hurricanes prepair you). Have a contingency to store and capture water. There will be no way to cook or boil water unless you have a good stock of wood or lumber of some type. So living in the country sure does help.
The biggest factor for staying alive In my opinion is GUNS . I have a safe with over 30 long guns and over 40k rounds of ammo to feed them. This will be your new currency. You want food, you want medicine, you want water. Well better have something useful to trade. All the cash you have might as well be used to boil water because thats all the good it will be.
And if your going to go somewhere to steal something, goto the library, grab medical books, and anything on survival you can find. Maybe throw some good reads in the bag for entertainment. Just remember stay away from gun stores this will get you dead.
My mindset is that a great majority of people will be dead within days. And if you can survive for a month I think you are ahead of the game. After 6-12 months or so It may be safe enough to move your family to a different community, but just remember it will more than likely be on foot and you wont be traveling any major highways.
Another way I feel I am fully prepaired is in size. I figure at 285lbs I can outlast most without eating very much if at all...:rofl
BTW for a very interesting look into what this thread is about, read THE STAND, by Stephen King. Minus all the supernatural stuff I think its a very realistic stab to what would happen with the temporary end of modern technologies.
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Rgr that Rhino. I have a light/travel setup; about 70 pounds total. Will keep two alive for about 10 days if I can find water. Since I'm on Long Island and gettin off this Island means one of 5 bridges (all thru NYC) gettin off the island won't happen by vehicle. Hope to swipe a light plane or a boat.. can handle either. If by plane, north to the Hudson river valley, if by sailboat, south to the Carolinas or North to the Canadian Maritimes... depends on disaster type, local conditions, season, prevailing winds, etc.
The trick is to stay flexible and set up a 'get outta town NOW pack' so it's a grab 'n go deal. Once you decide, no lookin back.. just get moving.
Either way.. expect to have to fight my way out; I won't be the only one bailing from this messed up island.
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Within a couple minutes of seeing the second plane hit the WTC, I walked to the bathroom and filled my tub, just in case something happened to infrastructure/water. Just in case.
My neighbor and I did a quick inventory of weapons and ammo, just in case, and my wife verified our foodstuff and figured out how long it would last.
I went to work, of course, but my wife was at home with a rifle in easy reach and I had a shotgun in my trunk.
Again, all 'just in case'. We didn't know how bad things might get, and in hindsight it might 'seem' silly, but we figured there were a few things we could do to reduce risk without running around like chickens with their heads cut off, so we did 'em.
We've got a book that details how to make soap, skin food, grow stuff, and basically how to fill in the gaps in a public education about how to survive off the grid. Just in case.
Are we nuts? No. Do we live in a compound? Nope. Do we pray for the armageddon so we can go and slay Satan's army for Jesus with our Mossbergs? (Only effective gun against zombies is a shotgun, you know). Nope.
Are we a family that does little things to survive? Sure.
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Same day.. when the second tower got hit I bolted from work for the bank.. cleaned out my accounts. cell phone calls to the Ex and the kid, told 'em both to get to my place and start fillin water jugs. Next stop was the gas station.. fueled; topped off the jerry cans. Next stop was the boat, topped off the water tanks, quick MRE inventory (all spare food materials and the 'go pack' was on the boat).
Cell phones went out during this.. stopped by a friends (he's got guns & ammo), touched base, picked up a carry piece, set rondevous for midnight at the boat pending no futher contact and a deterioration of situation.
by 3:00 pm all was a ready as it could be, Ex mentioned a family friend who's a firefighter. Stopped by his station, walked into mayhem.. food, water, boots, socks, coats, everything in the med cabniets and all that they could aquire from the med supply house was going onto any kand of vehicle to be driven into the city. Started loading.. took a break at 10:00pm cancled the midnight meet and rodero'd the first loads into the city. Worked out drop point and route and established a shortwave radio link for supply coordination.
Spent the next 10 days workin 20 hour shifts at the station with the resta the neighborhood. Mountains of food and water was piling up.. coming in a bit quicker than we could get it out.. organized drop area and sorting.. kinda a parking lot based warehouse.. boots, clothing over here, canned food over there, water, drinks, there; medical supplies over there.. got ahead of the logistics pretty quick. Man we moved a LOT of stuff in for the rescue crews.
Was humbly impressed with the community here. Most did what I did, took care of personal busniess and then turned their attention to the emergency services people.. literally hundreds of folks brought stuff, stayed for hours or days to provide arms, legs and backs to get stuff onto rigs; others drove that run to the city half a dozen times a day. Local business opened their inventories, 'just take it. whatever you need.' Awsome.
Whoda thunk it. Folks just came together and got it done. Amazing and impressive. After it was over I remarked to a friend "I pity the SOB's that think Americans are soft panzie pushovers.. we rock."
And we do. ;)
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Blimey you pessimistic buggers!
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If anything happened, we would load up in my truck and the caprice (both carborated, no electronics aside from distributer n blinkers n stuff) hitch up the trailers, and convoy on down to mississippi. my aunt has sum properta. then we could live off the land until someone (i feel sorry for whoever that may be) takes us off the land.
BUT thats not likely to happen so ha!:aok geeze yall dont be so negative.
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Short answer is yes. We already are fully mobile and can be totally self contained for days as is. Moving is no problems but the last place I figure to get close to is any major city. Those places will be a death trap for the residents who have no clue about how to live without a store, electricity and prepared foods. Best to be away and in a place where you can take care of yourself. That means water first then food supplies.
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I have a 1917 Cold Steel US Navy replica cutlass. I never do much more than take it out of its sheath on occasion. I really am quite proud of it, although I don't really understand why? My other weapons all cost more, but don't have the same basic functionality. Being made of 1050 carbon steel, other than rusting, it is the pinnacle of sword materials and is a very effective short range weapon combined with a revolver.
Oh, wait, this is not the "are you really a pirate" thread. My bad.
Regards,
Malta
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Originally posted by Skydancer
Blimey you pessimistic buggers!
I`d say more realistic.
It`s not being pessimistic to be prepared for what there is a high possibility of something happening such as this.
Not to be prepared or have any plan what so ever for an event such as this is...............well...just plain stupid.
Considering events in the last few years I would say that the odds of something such as this happening have drasticaly increased. To ignore and not have a plan for such events as this is sticking your head in the sand and trying to wish it away.
After having been around through the cold war and events such as the Cuban missile crisis it sort of wakes you up to reality. It didn`t come down then and we all hope it never does, but there have been recent events that should open the eyes of the general population to the fact that there are people out there that , if given the opportunity, will stop at nothing to do exactly what is being discussed here.
I have seen what even something such as a major power outage for a relatively short time can do to people. It`s really amazing.
The will and human instinct to survive, at any costs, is a very strong force. People just don`t roll over and die of their own free will for the most part. Animal instincts kick in when threatened to a certain degree.
The people who say they had just as soon die if something like a nuclear attack occurs are smoochin the pooch and BS`n themselves and everyone else.
You see, in a situation like this, there would be no incense and peppermint trucks rolling. It would be dog eat dog in it`s most primitive state.
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you people are over elaborating the end of the world type stuff...if anything that big happened, we'd all be to dead to care within the first few hours, anything smaller and more localized would cause people to go visit relatives in the country four a couple weeks...
if your ridiculous scenario did manage to find a way to play out, this is the most likely result
there would be at least 3-5 days of everyone sitting around assessing the situation, when they realize its not getting better, they start orginizing with there friends and families, and move off to live with whoever happens to own a few acres... until midwinter when food starts running thin, then things might get a little bad. the people who cant do this, if there smart, find a mennonite/amish community and work with them, if there lazy they quickly find themselves starved or shot.
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Originally posted by kevykev56
Mustaine I like your ideas but there are many flaws with them....
you have to understand though, my original post was about a "similar" situation but not the specific example.
the original thread i replied to was about waking up one day and everyone else just "vanished" and you were the only person alive.
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Wow if that was the case, Id make 3 stops. One to Johnson&Johnson, one to Hustler Inc., and one to the beer store.
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I'd raid a library for all the survival/tool crafting/metallurgy/how to deliver babies/etc. books.
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Originally posted by Mustaine
the original thread i replied to was about waking up one day and everyone else just "vanished" and you were the only person alive.
Well if your the only person around I guess you have a point, no problems or flaws with your ideas. People in the mix are what would throw things out of control. Death by starvation or thirst will make people do krazy stuff. If your gona die anyway why not try to take your neighbors food/water/guns. Ambush in the night, trick him. Thats what I would be trying to prevent.
To all those who think the prepaired bunch are pessimistic...
Im pretty sure that if the lights went out, without a realistic timeframe on returing. The world would be in a serious mess. Not the end of the world type stuff but certainly the end of the world as it is now. No fuel, no way to repair the lines, no repairmen to repair them after a few months. This isnt paranoia this is realism.
Be prepaired or at least have a plan. Its just stupid not to, unless you think you could just sit in your house and die of thirst and starvation without going outside and trying to acquire the goods you need to survive. Not likely you will sit and wait.
The option of driving anywhere unless you have fuel stocks today are just about Nil. If you live in a big city and want to live. Get out ASAP, take a walk/hike/swim/climb to the country.
I will survive, or die trying :aok
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the only thing that freaks me out is what will happen to my supply of lipitor.....lol
I have enough firepower to project my interests across the block at least, perhaps even as far as east main street.
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you guys are making too big a deal of it... if I have any gun and amount of ammo I will be ok.... with a gun and a few rounds I can get a better gun and more ammo and from their.... the world is my shopping mall...
If one of my wives gets pregnant then her husband can deliver the thing.
lazs
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"This isnt paranoia this is realism"
no, it isnt realism. the only thing that could come close to causing more than a temporary (less than 5 years to get back to some semblance of modern living) is good old nuclear holocaust...
"Im pretty sure that if the lights went out, without a realistic timeframe on returing. "
for that to happen, the minimum that would have to happen is several miles worth of power lines would have to go down all across the country, at once. and all the power plants would simultaniously explode...even then within a couple years you could have new plants and lines set up within 2 years, until then its just putting up with rationing, martial law, and only very essential services provided by the hospitals...
"The world would be in a serious mess. No fuel, no way to repair the lines, no repairmen to repair them after a few months. ."
no fuel? you have coal.
no way to repair them? bull****, you can set up temp. wooden towers to hold the lines (you have forests man.) you can import new lines from across the ponds
no repairman? even if they all happened to be in one spot at one time, and some psycho killed them all, again you can import some from across the ponds.
a much more likely survival scenario is the cliche plane/boat accident dumping say 100 people onto a uncharted island.
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(http://furballunderground.com/blueknights_pictures/userfiles/Furball/sas.jpg)
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Can Zombies swim? :(
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Originally posted by AWMac
Can Zombies swim? :(
Can swimming zombies dodge depth charges?
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Originally posted by vorticon
"This isnt paranoia this is realism"
no, it isnt realism. the only thing that could come close to causing more than a temporary (less than 5 years to get back to some semblance of modern living) is good old nuclear holocaust...
"Im pretty sure that if the lights went out, without a realistic timeframe on returing. "
for that to happen, the minimum that would have to happen is several miles worth of power lines would have to go down all across the country, at once. and all the power plants would simultaniously explode...even then within a couple years you could have new plants and lines set up within 2 years, until then its just putting up with rationing, martial law, and only very essential services provided by the hospitals...
"The world would be in a serious mess. No fuel, no way to repair the lines, no repairmen to repair them after a few months. ."
no fuel? you have coal.
no way to repair them? bull****, you can set up temp. wooden towers to hold the lines (you have forests man.) you can import new lines from across the ponds
no repairman? even if they all happened to be in one spot at one time, and some psycho killed them all, again you can import some from across the ponds.
a much more likely survival scenario is the cliche plane/boat accident dumping say 100 people onto a uncharted island.
Vorticon,
You really have no idea how fragile our system is. Seriously come to Florida after any major hurricane. See what you think of the impact it has on normal life.
Lets look at a realistic hypothetical scenario not involving nuclear holocost. Big in todays life is terrorism. Now suppose that terrorists got a nuke, where could they hurt us the most? a city? a major landmark?.....how about somewhere more easily attainable. The oilfields of kuwait? then destroy simultaneously as many fields in Saudia Arabia as possible. With the U.S. the most dependant on oil in the world this would be a likely target.
Ok far fetched but surely possible. Now with the little oil coming in there would be a huge surge to the pumps. again hurricane experience tells us when this happens, WE RUN OUT OF GAS. Im talking within hours. The trucks on the road cant fill the stocks fast enough...
Remember what happend in the north east a few years back when the grid started to COLLAPSE (http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/8-14-2003-44218.asp) . A single power station that went offline caused the largest blackout in decades. Now imangine hundreds going offline when the lack of fuel coming into our states runs out. Remember coal is supplied by trains, no fuel to run trains. Our system is not capable of supplying the country on hydroelectric and nuclear power alone.
When I say nobody to repair the lines, people will be in panic. and seriously the roads will be cluttered with cars that have no gas. No way for transportation of fuel and goods because of this. Life as you know it halts. Information would be scarce, emergency broadcast would be about all you would get and quickly start to distrust. The power crews will be worried about more than just elecricity, they will be worried about their families and lives. Remember they are starving also. This scenario would play out across the globe, there would be no repairmen to import in.
Chaos, panic, worsening fear....yeah you think not possible. I however think it is. If you wish to hide your head in the sand without a plan, thats OK by me. All I am saying is it doesnt hurt to be prepaired. I dont walk around everyday waiting for something like this to happen. I just know that if it does I will survive, my family will survive and the USA will survive.
Remember that this is just a hypothetical scenario and worse case at that. You can poke holes in it all day long. But just dont underestimate/overestimate people. We are just all too unpredictable.
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I got plastic water bottles, 5000 rounds of .22 caliber long rifle hollow-points, 200 rounds of 6.5x55 Swedish rifle ammunition, 100 rounds of .260 caliber ammunition, 100 rounds of .280 Remington caliber ammunition, 100 rounds of .44 Special ammunition, Lee reloading press with 20 pounds of rifle powder of various types, Nosler partition and ballistic tip rifle bullets, two cases of #6 shot 16 gauge shotgun shells, all the guns required to get maximum use of the above ammunition horde, a butt-load of Foxfire books, knives galore, firewood just across my fence in the woods, fireplace, 100 canning jars, salt, lime, medical kit, tons of insulated cold-weather gear, two sons and a wife who all know how to shoot, two dogs, and a host of hand tools including double-bitted axe, a maul, and cross-cut saw (actually my father in law's.)
Do ya think I'm ready?
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Assuming we are talking about a global incident of a permanent nature, that is, society as we know it is finished and no one is coming to fix it, there are two essential 'items' on my survival checklist .
That being : my dog and a horse, prefferably two or three horses, but at least one....a couple more dogs couldnt hurt either.
Eyes, ears, nose and feet...all way better than mine, all very usefull in the given situation.
With those, a weapon (a knife or even a razorblade will do just fine for starters) , and the clothes on my back, I am confident I could adapt to any situation which arose, and provide myself with the essentials for basic survival...food, water, clothing and shelter.
In a kill or be killed situation, or fight or flee, the dog and horses are invaluable, the dog for early warning/detection/tracking/hunting and the horses for running away or running down and carrying things.
Food in Australia is almost a non existant problem, there are a few thousand sheep and a couple of hundred head of cattle for every one person here at the moment, kill off a few million of those incapable of surviving and the ratio grows even more.
Then theres a few billion kangaroos and wallabies, birds, lizards, fish and all sorts of edible plants, including millions of acres of food crops like wheat, corn, sugar cane and fruit trees.
Sheep and cattle are not hard to hunt, they arent very intelligent, and they taste pretty good.They allso provide everything you need to make clothes, tents, shoes, rope, string, spear/arrow heads, bow strings, water containers, fish hooks, needles, spoons, forks, hair combs...the list is allmost endless.
Bone, meat, sinew, leather and hair or wool, all in one neat package.
A stout stick is weapon enough to bag yourself a sheep.
With a horse and a dog, cattle are easy pickings too.
Surviving would be easy, the hard part would be deciding if/whom to trust and cooperate with, or wether to just stay mobile and hidden and simply ignore them or prey on them.
Trust/cooperation being by far the more difficult and more likely to fail option of the three to my mind.
Wether to ignore other people or prey on them (ie steal food,goods and the occasional 18 year old daughter, not eat) would depend entirely on the prevailing situation and the actions of those other people.
I think that the same scenario would be vastly differant in Australia than it would be in the US or Europe, mainly because there would be infinetly less people.
Theres only about 20 million here right now, and something like 96% of those people live in the urban centres.
Of those 20 million, I reckon a good 80 to 90 percent would be dead within a year or two, either from starvation, disease or civil war on an allmost tribal scale.
That would leave us with less than four or five million humans, who would no doubt still be concentrated around the decaying urban centres, or the surrounding farm and bushland.
The crops and livestock here, left unattended would multiply, or at the least continue to exist at something fairly close to their current numbers.
Wheat would seed and fall to the ground to grow again next year, fruit would do the same, cattle and sheep would easily adapt and survive.
Dealing with the basics of staying alive here on an ongoing basis would be easy, dealing with those few people who remained, and any society that they may have rebuilt or created would be the difficult and dangerous part.
I dont have a set plan, but I have the knowledge needed to keep myself alive long enough to make one each day as the situation unfolded.
I hope it turns out to be useless knowledge.
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I have a dozen guns and thousands of rounds of ammo but you won't even be able to tote all that stuff around with you.... I would stash it and take a handgun for concealment and a long gun for... long stuff.. If I needed anything else I would just take it.
lazs
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Here is a more likely catastrophe to happen in our lifetime:
http://www.statesman.com/search/content/auto/epaper/editions/today/news_34606d11d5f6b1fe002d.html
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An even scarier catastrophe in our lifetime, possibly even apocalyptic in scope:
http://www.time.com/time/pacific/magazine/20010115/antibiotics.html
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It seems likely that continued overpopulation and crowding in cities will cause shortages and plague and war...
Those mentaly adapted to survive will.... they will survive with no tools to begin with and will most likely do it by taking from the weak who have prepared for survival.
I don't see this happening in my lifetime but don't fear it.
lazs
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I'd survive on a diet of overweight kids, why let all that stored up junk food go to waste. hehe.
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Originally posted by Ripsnort
Here is a more likely catastrophe to happen in our lifetime:
http://www.statesman.com/search/content/auto/epaper/editions/today/news_34606d11d5f6b1fe002d.html
Gas going to $8 or $10 is going to cause more of a catastrophe in the US than any natural disaster or terrorist attack.
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Bluedog,
The situation won't be that much different here in the US. The vast number of folks here are city folks who will go toes up very shortly. They have neither the skills, knowledge or tools to make it outside of going to a food mart. The real tricky part is surviving the first 6 months to wait for them to die off.
The survivors will be those who know how to fish blue water and hunters / outdoorsmen who are not stopped because there is no electricity.
As to the firearms aspect. The most likley survival weapon will be a .22 long rifle. It will take any and all small game and the ammunition is VERY compact for a significant number of rounds. Even deer can be tken with a carefully placed shot. Certainly the stocks of cattle and sheep here in the states will work out for a while but I imagine they wiull go feral soon and be as hard to hunt as deer.
After quite some time it will be back to black powder since that can be made from local components and the bullets cast from local lead. Once the stores of prepackaged "stuff" including ammunition are gone those weapons will become a fancy club.
When it comes down to it, if you can't make it eventually you'll have to do without it.
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Another point. It doesn't hurt to put a few scrapyard electonic ignitions under standard EMP protection.
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I got enough points type distributors laying around... my bike is a points type allso.
lazs
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Hunt mag. I`m set. :)