Bird is done. Cup is done too, so I have something to eat it out of. Like I thought its hard to identify most things inside it but I can pick out the heart and liver at least. Taste is...just kinda bland. Big step up from worms but could use some salt. Texture is kinda leathery and tough but that is on me since I cooked it too long just to be super safe. Not a lot of meat on it but I feel energized after eating it. Headed to the creak to wash up a bit and get some water before the sun sets.
You don't as they aren't needed, people lived for thousands of years without them so that means you can live a few without them as well!
That's not how this works, also you have an Iphone and would need special things to even get the battery out.
Fine. I'll continue being barefoot. Still I'll freeze my feet off if I don't get some by winter.
To be fair all tools are special at this point, and I just opened a bird and they're not even made to do that!
Yeah, birds are usually small and even the large ones are super fragile. It took centuries of breeding to make modern chickens. Look out for signs of large birds, though: grouse and turkeys are both plausible finds given the flora around where you are. Wild turkeys are quite large and pretty much unmistakeable; you might be able to take one down by main force if they lack fear of humans wherever you are. Grouse are smaller, but still a decent meal, and very noisy: if you hear something that sounds like some kind of angry feather-muffled drummer riffing wildly in the trees, it's probably a grouse trying to get some. This sound can be heard from a great distance, so there's a good chance you will hear it if they are around, but you may need to do some searching once you do. Both species are regularly found on the ground, so you should be able to spear them, and, while they're big enough that it'll be hard to pin them down with glue like you could a pigeon or something, the glue traps will still help make their escape more difficult.
Ah turkey sounds delicious right now! Its good even when you arn't starving! I'll be sure to introduce my pointy stick to either if I see/hear them. Hopefully I won't be lured to my doom by a feather-muffled siren.
Try setting snares. To make a snare, tie a noose knot by making a loop in your rope - called a 'bight' - and then looping the rope from one side of the bight around the other side and pulling that same free end through the second loop from 'below' (ie, the side of the bight) to make a knot that will slip tighter when pulled on. See below:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
You can then tie the other end of this rope to something and lay the bight on the ground, where animals may step in it and pull it closed on themselves. You wouldn't think this would work very well, but it's actually quite effective, because animals are stupid. So stupid.
Knot was easy enough! I'll leave the snares near my path back to camp so I can check them in the morning while going to get water. I don't see any obvious trails to lay them on but that might just be because I'm still a n00b at this. Fingers crossed on breakfast!
You're going to have a serious problem come winter. We need to work on that. That's the main reason I want you to be able to get skins. The area you might be in is too wide to say anything about specific resources but you've got a good chance of finding minerals, at least. There are also many edible fruits (and many inedible ones).
Actually, this lends itself to an interesting experiment. Look around and see if you see any relatively short broadleaf trees with grey bark, often with multiple trunks, with short (approximately thumb length) oval leaves with a point opposite the branch end and slightly serrated edges, and which, depending on the time of year, may have white to pink flowers that look a little like a rose, or may have round green to red fruit a couple of inches across. If you find this, you're looking at some kind of apple. There are crabapples native to the Americas, but the domestic apple was only introduced by European settlers, so if you should find one, we might narrow down your time period. To tell the difference I'd need you to describe what you see, though, and we might not be able to tell until we see flowers or fruit, so it's low priority.
The only broad leafs I've seen around camp are the ones on vines and bushes. I see what look like broadleaf trees down the mountain, and some shrubland beyond that. If I end up exploring down the mountain I'll try to get a look at them. I guess if its low priority I'll just make that mental note for now.
Bricks are a lot of effort. The best way to make bricks in your situation is probably going to be to make what's called a clamp, a kind of primitive kiln. You'd have to make as many brick forms as you can, then take bundles of wood laid on the ground and stack the bricks around and over them into a kind of large brick pile. Insulate the pile by packing dirt and mud around the outside and most of the top, leaving space for airflow and to ignite the wood... then, well, ignite the wood with a torch. You will probably get uneven results at first, but you'll get better at it over time - it's all in how you build it. I'm not sure I have any good starting tips I can functionally convey with words, though, so you'll have to get the practice.
You can also make charcoal in a clamp, using a similar principle but with wood and making the mud covering more airtight to limit burning, and smelt small quantities of tin or copper if you're lucky enough to find any. I'll circle back to copper in a bit.
I think I get it, it seems simple enough. I already have a stack of firewood I've been keeping up for...well fires so it sounds like all I'll need resource wise is more clay. I'll try to bring some back with me whenever I go to the creek so I can make whatever it is I need to make with clay. I've been on lookout for green copper rocks since day one but haven't found any yet.
Oh uh since you brought it up should I have some kind of torch made? I've mostly just huddled around my and in my leanto when it gets dark.
Well now you know better.
I'll be sure that everyone in my new civilization never goes without a pocket knife. Starting whenever I invent the knife.
I have no idea how you're going to do this. Make sandals out of rocks? You can't even cut down a tree yet so I can't recommend wooden sandals. Definitely focus on breaking those rocks you hoped were chert, see if you can get something sharp enough to make an axe, I guess.
I have grass! Sticks! Feathers! Clay! Vines! Maybe chert! I'm sure at least one of those things could be a shoe. But fine I get it. I'll keep being barefoot like a hippy.
Is there any specific way I should try breaking the rocks?
Trying to directly power the device, such as with a water wheel - which we totally could build if you can get the right minerals - would probably fry it, unfortunately, since it's expecting a specific amount of voltage and current. If you can open the phone and find the battery without breaking it, and lord knows the manufacturers all make it difficult these days, we *might* be able to charge it without setting it on fire, and I'm willing to try that. I still need to know what the power input is expecting, though, so I need the connector type.
Well I got clay to explode so I guess my chances arn't
that high without practice.
Wait you said to be optimistic earlier. So I'm sure I won't set everything on fire and we'll be fine.
Goddamnit, Apple. All right, that should be the Lightning connector, cord looks like this:
Please confirm.
Confirming it looks like that. If I knew I would need to recharge it in the wild I would have gotten an Android! ...Or maybe some off-brand survivalist phone that can be hand charged or something. Point is I didn't see this coming and forgive me for the Apple product.
It looks like our second controversy is over the fate of my immortal soul. New pole up. The old one was close but I think we reached some kind of compromise in the end?
So, when you get to the point when you can explore for minerals, you're going to want to look out for blue or green rocks, very colourful ones. You might also see some orangey-gold metallic rocks. Any of those could be copper-bearing! Copper-bearing rocks are usually very colourful. Copper is easy to smelt, which is why the copper age is one of the early ones, so if you can find some you won't have problems. What MIGHT be a problem is that you will also need a magnetic mineral like lodestone. If you have anything iron on you, keep an eye out for anything that attracts it, I guess. Lodestone is a fairly dark grey stone that has a slight sheen that looks, to me, almost oily. It's going to be more rough and dully gleaming than shiny, in my experience. Of course you could find a perfect crystal face which would look different. Unfortunately, lodestone is somewhat rare, although it has been found in the continental US, so it's not impossible. Lodestone is almost always found on the surface, too (a theory goes that it is magnetized by lightning), so you don't need to dig for it or anything.
I've been looking out for green rocks since I was told to on the first day, but haven't actually found any yet. My phone should have some steel in it. Actually it might have a magnet for its compass thing too. I don't have any piercings or zippers or braces or implants or any other metal aside from the stuff in my phone.
So green or blue rocks for copper, orangey-gold metallic for also copper, and dark grey stone that likes iron. And luckily no digging! I think I'm ready to explore a bit. Should I head up/down the mountain in the morning looking for rocks along the creek?
Hey, glad you haven't died yet.
In terms of electricity, I mean, you got running water. Waterwheel and then a dam will be your eventual electricity source.
Long way to get there though. Critically, you'll need to find some magnets if you want to generate an electric current. Magnetic lodestone is relatively common. Look for grey metallic rocks that have little bits of iron shavings stuck to them.
Again, it's a long term project, so you probably should prioritize some more survival oriented stuff. But, yeah, magnets. (How do they work?)
Speaking of fancy rocks, any luck finding malachite? It's a spectacularly gorgeous mineral.
Exactly, can't miss it...
Even better, if you throw it into your camp fire, it'll turn the fire green. Pretty neat party trick, eh? But it gets better. The rock will melt into puddles of pure copper. (This exact process is how historians think every primitive culture accidentally discovered copper refining.)
Thanks! You too!
Its a lot more obvious than I thought it'd be, but I haven't found any yet. Being covered in iron shavings would probably make it easy to tell where it is. I can probably use the fire thing to convince the locals that you guys are gods I guess. Assuming there are locals. Thanks for the picture! It sounds like my priority tomorrow is mineral discovery!
the people on the bay12 forums are the gods of the world and toady is king of the gods. also attempt to make female squirrels using squirrel ribs.
Assuming my snares get a squirrel, how precisely should I perform this ritual? The Kalima thing from earlier?
But doing it to himself won’t hurt if he fails either. Like, I dunno why you think he’d punch his fingertips through his skin if this is as realistic as it’s been played up to now
We don't know how long he's been out so far, imagine how nasty his fingernails might be
If his nails are that nasty then he deserves death.
Well I've currently dug multiple holes, shifted through ashes, murdered a bird then tried to tear it apart with a moderately sharp rock, and generally made a massive mess with my bare hands. My nails have been in a various states of nastiness through this ordeal generally toward the nastier side. I try to clean off in the creek but I can't make any promises on the state of its nastiness.
Do it on a squirrel or something first, to be safe.
Speaking of violating small furry creatures, supposedly there's a way to gut a rabbit by making its' innards explode out its' asshole.
No really, it's taught in SERE. Here's illustration if you don't believe me.
The modern manual (600+ page pdf) describes this, but lacks the awesome illustration.
https://fas.org/irp/doddir/usaf/afh10-644.pdf
...How did they figure that one out? I get the logic of tin melting in a fire leading to people melting other rocks but how does someone get to swinging around a rabbit as a butchery technique? Where they swinging it around for fun when it suddenly had all its innards removed?
Hopefully I'll get to try out this technique for breakfast.
Anyway. I was thinking more about housing. You could make clay bricks for a house, but that will take quite a while to get enough, so I suggest an alternative. Wattle and daub, been in use since the Copper age, somewhere we want to get you to in the next couple of weeks.
Before you begin, you'll need some tools:
- An axe (aka, a sharp rock)
- a hammer (aka, a heavy rock)
- A basket (I'll explain how to make one below). Use it haul all your smaller materials around
You also need the following materials:
- Twenty five 4ft long stakes, 3in wide, for your wall supports
- Twelve 10ft long stakes, 3in wide, for roof supports
- A lot of shorter, but sturdy sticks for bracing your roof supports
- A large number of long & thin sticks/vines for weaving
- Vast quantities of hay/straw for thatch and bulking your daub (made by cutting wild grasses and leaving them to dry)
- Clay, to bind your daub
- Dirt or sand, as aggregate for your daub
- Lots of vines, for rope
Finally, pick a large flat area you like the look of to build your house.
As you can see this is a serious undertaking, but once you're done you shouldn't have to worry about a new home for a long time. This will keep you warm and dry, give you space to keep your stuff, and will make you feel a little less helpless.
Let's begin. Sharpen one end of each of your stakes to make it easier to ram them into the ground, evenly spaced in a circle about 16 feet diameter. Remember to leave a gap for a doorway. If I've done my math right it should be about two feet between each post. You then want to take your thinner sticks/vines and weave them between the upright posts to make a fence like the image below. See how each strand goes in and out, opposite direction to the one above/below? You can actually use this same method to weave a basket as well.
Anyway! This is your wattle. You can leave it at that for now, and it'll keep some of the weather off of you, but as you can see by all the wholes, we ain't done yet. Now you need to make your daub. Mix equal parts clay, sand/dirt and add some hay to keep it together, thrn slap that onto your wattle wall, both inside and out, until it goes from that first picture through the left hand panel below, on to the right. Leave that to dry for a bit, and it'll be almost as good as a brick wall.
Now, we build the roof. Pick a clear space to assemble the skeleton of the roof. You'll want to take your twelve sticks and array them in a circle like the spokes of a wheel, then use your rope to bind them together in the middle, so that the center of your roof rises about five feet off the ground. Thanks to Pythagoras this should make your roof wide enough to cover your house with about half a foot of overhang. Now, use all your remaining sticks and rope to bind the main spoles together like a spier web, to make the roof nice and sturdy. You should test this by climbing on top of it, cos I'd much rather it broke on you here than after you've dragged it on top of your house.
Speaking of. You're gonna have to work those muscles to set your frame on top of your walls. They should've dried out by now. Dont worry, we're on the home stretch.
Now you're going to make bundles of your hay. By which I mean, get them all lined up, and grab enough to fill both hands comfortably. Get some more rope and tie it off in the middle. Now you have one bundle of thatch. You'll need quite a few. Start tying these to the outside of your roof frame, making sure the individual strands are pointing in the same direction as the spokes, and starting at the lowest point on the roof. This way later bundles will overlap, just like roof tiles. Your thatch is not going to look at wonderful as the pic below, but then you don't have straw that has undergone millenia of artificial selection.
After a lot of hard, honest graft, you'll end up with something that looks like this:
I bet you've never felt so accomplished in your whole life.
Oh yeah! I promised to tell you how to make a basket. Get a handful of thin sticks, of equal length, and make a circle, with the sticks as spokes, with the center of each stick at the center of your basket. Using the same weaving principle as for your walls, go back and forth through these to make your basket. You can adjust the angle of your spoke sticks to make various shapes in your basket, but that is basically it.
Oh that looks awesome! And relatively easy to do! I think my phone was a bit over six inches, I could probably use it as a standard unit of measurement to get something close to feet out of it. It looks like it'll take at least a few days of labor, but it will be a sweet upgrade to my little pile of sticks tied together with a vine! In just a few days I could have the best house in the world! I'm trying to make a basket right before bed out of pure excitement. Its a bit like making the rope earlier. I'll have to get more sticks and finish it in the morning. First try isn't particularly pretty and will probably shatter if I drop it but I finally have something to carry all my knickknacks too! Thanks for all the research!
Wattle and daub isn't particularly advanced. Less so than a log cabin of properly fired bricks would be, anyway. Re: roof, id be fine with switching over to a peaked roof rather than conical, although it'd be easier withq rectangular house. Definitely worth debating the merits ox though,as its a big investment and even if Stirk started now it'll take some time before he's got all the materials together anyway.
Oh yeah, Stirk: An easy task for you. Over the next few days, check what time sunrise and sunset is. This can hopefully pinpoint your location a bit better (assuming this world of yours is geologically recent Earth), and also tell us what season it is. If we're going into Summer we won't have to worry about a better shelter as quickly as we would if it it's almost Winter.
Alright. Sunset was around 9:30 tonight. I've been waking up well after sunrise, should I try to set an alarm to find it? Might have to leave my phone on all night for that.
As much as I like the idea, I have to come down very firmly against building Kashyyk's outlined structure. You are still at the hunter-gatherer stage and I do not recommend expending labour, much less several days of labour, on constructing permanent shelter. You will probably want to return to your present site at some point; you cannot expect to stay there often. This is also one of many reasons why I am prioritizing acquiring the resources to hunt something large enough to skin and then do so - a tent is a much more practical homestead for you right now.
Oh yeah, Stirk: An easy task for you. Over the next few days, check what time sunrise and sunset is. This can hopefully pinpoint your location a bit better (assuming this world of yours is geologically recent Earth), and also tell us what season it is. If we're going into Summer we won't have to worry about a better shelter as quickly as we would if it it's almost Winter.
Can he even tell time? He should certainly try to tell if the days are getting shorter or longer, and if one of you wants to design a clock - might I suggest Foucault's pendulum? - I won't say a word against it, but I was under the impression that his technological clocks are mysteriously unreliable.
I have my phone clock which -seems to- still be keeping time. I'm not sure how accurate it is given there arn't any satellites and I'm pretty sure I'm not anywhere near my original time zone. If anything it is mysteriously
reliable given it should be at least a few more hours off and still keeps time when its turned off. The mysterious part is that time is flowing differently between the forum and my world. From the timestamps its been several more days over there then it has been over here. And the lengths of my days have been completely inconsistent with the lengths of your days. Actually its been
weeks on your end hasn't it? It hasn't been nearly that long over here.
I certainly wouldn't be opposed to making a clock over here though. Since checking this clock does take a little bit of battery if I'm not also contacting you guys.
I feel like people are outright ignoring the fact that he wants/needs to have electricity very soon (within a week or two as previously stated) or else the phone dies and he dies. Taking steps through the ages is fine if you’re playing Civilization or Spore, but not when we’re on a very short very strict timeline
Magic is the best bet we have. Tear out your rib with your bear hands while chanting kalima, cover it in mud and breathe on it to create a woman.
I think I'll be trying that with a squirrel now? It was either something about safety or trying to make a squirrel girl. Does this process also work with squirrels?
Iron is magnetic, though lots of it is underground. Trace amounts of it are in blood but the amount is small, zinc is also found in blood, however I’m at a loss on how to separate out various metals from it without something like a centrifuge
Should I be collecting the blood of my kills for this or any other reason? Because that bird really didn't have much blood and, presumably, almost no metal in it. Neither did the bugs.
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Topic: Restarting Civilization from Scratch- With the Help of a Forum (SG) (Read 16157 times)