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[GavJ]

People think so small about social collapse survival.  Ammo, water and food run out.  Get some light manufacturing equipment and you will have the resources to barter for whatever you need and hire guards too.

what light manufacturing tools don't use electricity that you don't expect other people to have? I'd say most home owning adults who have any amount of craftiness already have wood and hack saws and sawhorses and hand drills and planes and clamps and wire and stuff.

Are you talking about like some sort of treadle lathe or something? If so, then yes you could probably trade those services pretty well, but that's a pretty major investment for something that you would probably almost never want to use normally (not disaster time).

Also, guards notwithstanding, I can just shoot you and take your treadle lathe, making it not that much better or worse than any other trade good with most of the value in the good itself. So we have to consider the cost and complexity of obtaining some sort of manual lathes or whatever versus other basic goods alternatives.

For example, salt -- I'd guess salt is going to rise in value relative to what it costs now by at least as much if not more than lathe services. And it's a hell of a lot easier to obtain, and you can also use it during normal times more practically. It also takes up a lot less space than a machine shop.

Though of course if you already have easy access for some reason for a bunch of fancy manual tools, and the space to put them, then by all means, be a unique business.




I agree of course, by the way, that you need to consider sustainability, by things like practicing gardening as a hobby now, if you want to prepare for things. But a couple of years' worth of valuable finite trade goods is still perfectly reasonable. It buys you plenty of time to become established in whatever your new role is in your new community that will provide for you longer term. Farming, scavenging, a bit of tinkering, whatever. A role that you don't necessarily have to (and may not be able to) fully predict ahead of time, although it doesn't hurt to think about. Or if you're a doctor or something, well then obviously...

[gigaraptor487]

Holy necro batman!

[DJ]

You can find a nice creek and set up waterwheels to power most light manufacturing equipment.

[Baffler]

I would probably start brewing and distilling alcohol if shit hit the fan, honestly. I have the skills for it, and can jury-rig the equipment until I can get my hands on something better. There's gonna be people needing a strong drink, no doubt about it. The simplest drink I could possibly make only requires apples, yeast, water, and patience. It won't taste all that great made like that, but it'll get the job done. If I start new batches periodically, I could have fairly constant output going on in anywhere between 3 to 6 months after the first one's set to age, depending on how the situation develops.

[Graknorke]

If a zombie apocalypse happened and it somehow managed to spread (seriously how incompetent do you have to be to allow a bunch of braindead humans with no sense of subtlety or really sense at all escape from where you want them to be? Humans with the smarts removed are probably less threatening than, say, wolves.) I'd just hole up in a cellar with food and water for a couple of months then leave once they've all starved to ineffectuality.

[mainiac]

what light manufacturing tools don't use electricity that you don't expect other people to have? I'd say most home owning adults who have any amount of craftiness already have wood and hack saws and sawhorses and hand drills and planes and clamps and wire and stuff.

Gas powered generators, man.  That's for starters until I retrofitted the older machines to go back to mechanical belt power.  Build myself a steam engine and I'm king of the new world!

I don't own these things myself.  I'm just saying that when everyone else is out looting the grocery store I'm going to be rushing over to the community college for something more productive.

[Graknorke]

Point is: If it was bad enough to count as apocalyptic, why would you need to be mass-manufacturing anything? Once person can easily make stuff for themselves with hand tools. Manufacturing tools are only really effective when you have significantly more consumers than producers. More than you're likely to end up with after almost everyone's dead.

[Akura]

...When the hell did I post in this thread? At 100+ pages at 15ppp, I most certainly would have lost interest long before that.

I suppose the topic is appropriate for a necro.

As for how it would spread, how did it happen to Raccoon City in Resident Evil? Didn't it get into the water supply? That would be a problem.

[TheHossofMoss]

Funnily enough, I have considered what I'd do in such an event...

In our rural Arkansas "town", we're all farmers (grain and cattle/chickens). Of course, we've got guns and all that. Don't live too far from the actual town (8 miles), and I'd assume that if things were getting bad there, they'd head our way. Which of course, may lead to conflict. Some of my neighbors aren't so neighborly. I imagine they'd be even less neighborly during a time of pandemic with flesh eating maniacs walking around.

We live on a ridge, with our farms on either side of it. Have 5 dogs, a chicken coop, and a little veggie garden (wouldn't support us really unless we expanded it). We would have access to grains such as rice, corn, and soybeans. There's also a natural spring on our old cow farm, about 2 miles away. Have some knowledge of where to access (I repeat, LEGAL) explosive target powder (a.k.a. Tannerite), so we could make fun things for fun critters walking about with bloody faces.

Farm shop has 5,000 gallon diesel tank, and maybe a 500 gallon tank of gasoline? I'm not sure on that last one. We have a bunch of scrap metal and sheet metal laying around, as well as a sheet metal cutter. If a horde shows up, we have the Combine with the corn header. That'd be one hell of a mess, but it'd cut through them quite well. Tractors with rollers, could clear the roads of any severed biting heads by flattening them to a pancake-like consistency.

Our house is situated on a clearing on a hill, with fences surrounding our property, about 40 acres. We'd see them coming from afar, and could definitely take them out long before they got close. Or, you know... run up and whack-em in the head with something.

Overall, I feel like we'd survive relatively well. We have everything we need to survive, but locating a closer spring would be nice. We could also use the wells on our farms, but those require a power source and diesel. I don't think I would last long though. Simply because of my anti-depressants/anxiety medication. I'd be okay if I was with people, but I'd probably break down if I was the only one left.

Now, if I'm in Germany, where I plan on being in a few years... I'm screwed.

[Arx]

I'd either flee to Lesotho, or not worry about it because really how's it going to get here.

[GavJ]

So if I'm understanding you correctly, you are arguing that "food and ammunition will run out! You can't rely on those as trade goods" and your replacement is machines that run on gas (which will also run out, and doesn't keep nearly as long as food and ammunition or salt, etc., by the way).

Your response to that, in turn, is you are somehow going to build your own steam engine... post apocalypse. Okay, great. But how exactly do you plan to do that?  Are you gonna go smelt some scrap and make your own green sand and cast your own steam engine parts, or what? Does this sound realistic?

You don't even have the original machines yet (how are you going to transport them by the way? With the help of 4 buddies? What if they lay claim to the machines that aren't yours instead, when you tell them about it?), let alone do you know if lootable ones at the community college can even be run on gas (I doubt it), let alone have any reasonable guarantee that you could successfully fit them to steam.

That's a really poor plan to rely on. If you're just joking around, okay. Or if you're serious, then a  steam engine might actually be a viable idea, sure BUT you would need to build or buy it and have it in the bank BEFORE bad things happen if you're going to stake your life on it. As well as a proven and tested source of adequate fuel for said steam engine, and proven and tested linkages for your machines that you already own and are familiar with.

find a nice creek

Similarly, this is not a terrible idea in itself, but it is a terrible idea to rely on it blindly without testing. If you have a creek nearby, try actually making a device to turn it into useful energy. I very much expect it will take you multiple tries to get anything that sort of works, but it might work great eventually.

The nice thing about testing stuff like that is that not only are you actually making the plan viable, but these are usually really fun projects to do just for their own sake!

A lot more wholesome way to spend a weekend than watching TV, so why not go ahead and try it out, even if you don't really seriously expect a disaster? You prepare yourself in case, and don't lose anything for it

=D

[BlitzDungeoneer]

PTW yo.

[Graknorke]

Also, wouldn't making something that can generate large enough quantities of energy that uses a waterwheel be... pretty complex? I mean, not to generate electricity, but to generate the right voltage and enough of it and such?

I mean, if you know how to, then all is well and good, but if you don't, it's not as simple as 'get waterwheel, get magnet, make waterwheel rotate magnet inside copper coil, profit!'

To generate at the right pd and current and such to power industrial machinery? That would be just about impossible, yes. But for simple stuff like a heating element you'd probably be okay, assuming the wheel was spinning fast enough.