Back in shop class, our teacher once said that the humble lathe is the only machine tool that can be used to reproduce itself. That comment has echoed in my head over the decades, intriguing me.
So, once the bare essentials were all taken care of, I would set myself upon a grand project to bootstrap a machine shop, using hand tools and simple rotating motion to fashion crude lathe parts, which could be used to make slightly finer parts, and so on, until a few machines later I would have a lathe that could make many useful gadgets. A milling machine would soon follow.
I’m assuming a ready supply of scrap metal and plenty of time.
I can make textiles from scratch, from taking the wool fresh off the sheep through cleaning, spinning, dying, and weaving. Ditto for cotton, flax, etc. I also know how to build several types of weaving looms. Also knitting, crocheting, felting…
I can make paper.
I can sorta make ink - I’m sure there will be time to practice, yes? In the winter, probably, when we’re all stuck inside, at least as long as it’s not so cold the ink freezes (yes, that used to be a problem in the old days)
I am not squeamish about butchering things, and can cook over an open fire.
Handy with hand tools.
I am now an apprentice cobbler - I can repair old shoes/boots and probably make new ones (see first paragraph, I can also make your socks). Leatherworking of all sorts.
I can also make woven baskets.
Have some experience building actual structures.
Extensive gardening experience.
That’s all I can think off off the top of my head.
know how to make charcoal. all you need is a shovel and sandy soil. good for cooking and filtering. making wine and beer is also useful since wells and rivers tend to freeze during winter.
Not in the slightest! Being tall will make you well-loved around a farm or construction site. Who else is going to get those last few apples off the tree?
I know a little theory about a lot of things, which will be way less useful than actual experience in this situation. It does mean I learn fast, though. If we have access to rebar and cement, I know something about concrete forming and the logistics of making earth-sheltered houses that don’t leak. We’ll need someone who has actual construction experience, though! I can start out making dog houses and work my way up if needed.
If we get to it, I know something about the industrial revolution era machines for carding and spinning. Getting fiber converted to thread is much more time consuming than weaving, so it could free up a lot of time for us. We’d need gears, drive belts, pin cloth (looks like the business end of a hairbrush, but with short metal pins, we could probably improvise), and lots and lots of scrap wood and metal. However, I suspect that we’ll have enough scavenged textiles to last for years and manufacturing our own cloth will be one of the lowest priorities.
I’ve heard of people in hot climates effectively sterilizing water by putting it in plastic liter bottles and leaving it on a metal roof to bake for a few hours. That wouldn’t work where I live, but then it’d be pretty easy to find bleach around here. A cap full of bleach (or possibly less, look this up if you’re really going to try it!) per gallon of water will kill the nasty stuff without killing you. I’d prefer to boil it once we have an oven of some sort, though. Let’s put axes and saws on the high priority scavenging list - I have a feeling we’re going to be burning an awful lot of wood.
If one of my flutes survives the wreck, I can make music. If we’re really lucky and find other instruments and sheet music, I can teach the basics. It’s not at all essential to survival, but it’s great for morale.
I vote for recruiting several large dogs in a hurry. I want the most dangerous team of predators in the area on my side, thanks.
So how does one make a still from scratch? I’d think you could just take two barrels, connect them with a coiled garden hose, put water in the higher one, and light a wood fire under it. A damp blanket (our laundry?) goes over the coil to help cool the vapor that will then collect in the lower barrel.
Do I have that right? Did I miss anything? I’m going to have to know in case this ever actually goes down.
Also, I think I can make a radio transmitter. I’d make a capacitor by rolling some sort of insulating material between two big sheets of aluminum foil. Then you attach each terminal of a car battery to one of the sheets. Each sheet is then attached to any sort of metal switch that you can use to close the circuit. You use that to discharge the capacitor into a length of wire acting as an antenna.
Count me in as another solar stove maker. I’ve been reading up on solar stoves for a while now, and probably the simplest one in this situation wouldn’t take much more than a reflective car windshield “shade” or some aluminum foil and cardboard, plus some container as a base and a few bits of wire or other things to hold them together.
I can also bake, cook, brew beer, hand-sew or mend clothing to some extent, knit, pickle, can, perform first aid including CPR, and know some minor butchering-type skills like with fish and poultry.
I know you can cook vegetables in a solar stove, but can you actually boil water? Can a pail of, say, 6 gallons really collect and hold enough heat to get up to 212 degrees? IME, it takes three or four hours just to get a potato hot enough to cook. I can’t imagine you can boil water with only 10 hours of direct sunlight a day.
Vast quantities, no, but if you put in a cup-full at a time in a good heat-retaining container (pyrex works well, especially if we can coat the outside in scavened black paint) you can boil the snot out of a little bit of water at a time.
Bolan is right tho - there is really no way to support a whole shiteload of people if you HAVE to sterilize all the water for every use. What will probably happen is that we’ll find a sort-of clean source, filter and bleach that for every-day drinking water, and use the boiled water for the real important stuff - baby food, cleaning wounds, injured/sick commune-members.
Also, remember that alcohol is sterile. There’s a reason people back in the day drank so much beer and hard liquor - they realized they got much less sick drinking it than they did when they drank plain water.
Stills are fairly easy in theory, fairly complex if you want efficiency. I can make both types easily from scavenged materials, and have, on occasion. With wrecked automobiles everywhere, we will have a surplus of tubing to use for the condenser coils. If we are making alcohol for use other than human consumption, the average car has everything we need in one place. For booze we will require a few more parts, but they aren’t hard to find. We can be drinking vodka in no time!
I’m going to befriend Lasciel and use his/her animal scraps for making musical instruments. I’m going to put together a band. I’ll entertain everyone while they work and in exchange for that I’ll get free beer and food. And sex too.
I can make two kinds of improvised food coolers- one out of a clay pot, and another using burlap. I can also make improved food drying racks. For illness, I know how to mix oral rehydration solution. I know that basics of making sanitary pit latrines that produce usable fertilizer. I can make a makeshift ditto machine using gelatin.
There is a great old Peace Corps manual from the 1960s that was apparently written for the odd volunteer who found himself in some bizarre village with no tools. It starts with a nail and a stick, and using this you fashion a slightly more complicated tool, until you end up with a fairly complete tool shop.
I’m gonna get the Hell out of the city and far away to a relatively temperate climate. I don’t want to spend all my time fighting–either other people for limited resources, or the weather.
Scrounging the is the best way to come up with materials. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, if the wheel is already available. There are plenty of refined metals in existence today, in some type of use. So basic tools can be formed from scavenged goods.
Away from the city, water, shelter and food can be more basic. And the land can provide food.
Actually, I’m gonna stay right where I am at my place out in the middle of nowhere. We’ve got solar electricity, a well, and 36 acres.
I know the secret of how to catch bee swarms relatively safely, and how to keep them- at least in theory (practice is waiting for next spring, so this had better not happen before then )- and the basics of building a hive, if there’s appropriate wood and basic tools around. Who wanted mead? And candles, for that matter.
I’m also reasonably well up on which wild plants are edible, and which will poison you- at least in Europe.
Before I retired, I was a museum specialist in pioneer technologies.
Leather Tanning - check
Rope making - check
Food preservation and storage - check
Basic log home construction - check
Primitive medical practices - check
Soap making - check
Primitive agricutural / land clearing - check
Basic Metal working and smithing - check
Coal Mining basics.
Finding amd digging water wells (NOT Dowsing)
Anyone know how to make a good chimney? Thats a pioneer skill that O never did aquire. Poor chimneys waste a lot of heat, are smokey, or draw too quickly, wasting fuel.
There’s a reason people back in the day drank so much beer and hard liquor - they realized they got much less sick drinking it than they did when they drank plain water.
)- and the basics of building a hive, if there’s appropriate wood and basic tools around. Who wanted mead? And candles, for that matter.