Yep, this is why I posted about, ‘how much travel will you be doing?’ earlier. You have a few years, maybe a decade, to figure out how to live with what you have on hand.
In any non-nuclear apocalypse, my first stop is my local Lee Valley Tools. They have top-of-the-line hand tools for just about any job you can imagine - farming, carpentry, that sort of thing. I’d get at least one of every major tool, and multiples of the ones you’d likely use most often. Also all the stuff you need to maintain them. And copies of every how-to book they have on the shelves.
I’d scavenge food for as long as I could, while also working on learning small-scale farming for the long term. Add in a bit of hunting, and you could life half-decently for a long time. Tools do eventually wear out, but some will last for decades.
Yeah. But besides wear out and break down, even your spare as-yet unused tools are subject to rust, corrosion, plastic embrittlement, rubber or wood rot, etc. They’re all wasting assets on a timeline shorter than your lifespan, much less that of any subsequent generations you have or hope to have.
And I really should have slightly rephrased what I wrote. Instead of
It should’ve been
The few survivors will be living in among incredible material wealth for a couple years, and in with credible material poverty a decade or at most two later.
At first there’ll be an unusably huge pile of stuff. Much made useless by the absence of electricity, fuel, natural gas, and the rest of civilization.
But of what is small enough and local enough to be moved to where you want it, and functionally free-standing enough to be used / useful without all the support infrastructure we all now take for granted, there’s still a vast supply.
Until it all falls apart and becomes just so much scrap and detritus.
Between my woodworking and blacksmithing tool sets, the first order of business (after securing food and shelter) would be to raid a metal supplier to source tool and regular steel. My current forge is propane based, so I would need to grab as many propane tanks as possible, but the long term goal would be to utilize charcoal, unless one found a lifetime source of anthracite coal somewhere nearby.
Having the ability to make or repair any tools that wear out would go a long way to surviving long term.
While this is true to a point, I don’t think the risk is as bad as you are stating. Especially with tools with very high polish like Veritas tools from Lee Valley. I have tools from Lee Valley that are 20+ years old and with a drop or two of 3-in-1 applied once or twice per year, they are free of corrosion. Assuming that part of the scavenging process is grabbing a gallon of light oil, steel wool, and sharpening equipment, the tools will outlive anyone. Hell, most of the hand planes in my tool cabinet are WWII era or older. My #7 is from the 1930s, my anvil (Peter Wright for the flex) is from the 1920’s. These tools will outlast everyone in the apocalypse.
It isn’t difficult to preserve most tools for a lifetime. Rust can be stopped dead with various penetrating oils, and further preserved with paint assuming you can find an abandoned Sherwin-Williams store to scavenge. Wear is a bigger problem, but there are still tons of high grade steel tools out there as long as you can get to them first. The key to survival will be scavenging and hidden stockpiles. And of course, weapons and ammo.
While not a “tool” (as such) I have a cast iron skillet my grandma (born in 1898) got. I do not know its exact age but 100 years old is pretty close. No question it will outlast me.
Adding to the tool lifespan, wood handles will wear out sooner than the iron/steel tool they are fixed to, but with a decent axe, saw, and spokeshave an equipped survivor will easily be able to rehandle any tool they need to. Especially if there is a hickory or ash tree nearby.
I have a working treadle sewing machine 113 years old that will almost certainly outlive me. I have a working spinning wheel that’s over 180, same thing. Of course, various bits and pieces have been replaced over time, but most of that doesn’t require extensive technology beyond that available to the 19th Century (or 18th, for the spinning wheel).
With proper care quite a few tools will last long enough to be passed down a generation or two, by which time one hopes civilization is at least holding steady, perhaps ticking upward a bit again.
If “light oil” isn’t available there’s always the various forms of cooking oil, animal fat, etc. which is what people used before they had refined petroleum products.
Good point! I use mutton tallow on my handsaws, it’s rendered sheep fat. A little goes a very long way. Other options include beeswax, assuming the bees survive the apocalypse with us.
You know, with your breadth of knowledge and willingness to instruct, I always pegged you as The Storyteller of Fallout Youtube fame…
Back to a different point:
I want to point out this assumes facts not in evidence for much of this board, although the point is correct for the world in general. Considering the age and health of most posters on this board, grabbing enough to survive for the 10ish years of comparative material wealth (depending on type of PA we’re in) is going to be near the maximum expected lifespan anyway without a modern medical infrastructure.
And that leaves out plain stupid shit that’s incredibly likely, where I try to farm (I can split wood, but that’s another HUGE risk), break a leg, and end up dying of gangrene, starvation (because I can’t move around) or any other emergencies likely to kill me.
Not being excessively morbid, but want to make the point that even if we were all abnormally healthy 30 something cream of the crop types like out of Vault 76, there’s just so many risks that get overlooked. And, well, I at least am most certainly NOT in such an elite group of specimens.
Look around in your area, what are the most common 4 wheel drive vehicles? In my area it would be the Ford F-150. There would be endless parts available. Looking for a Range Rover would be pointless. Don’t think about what you should have, think about what is available.
Are you going to be repairing this vehicle or just dumping it and finding another? That is an important consideration. If you are going to repair the same vehicle, you probably should choose a common one with available parts.
Sealed containers of gas do not go bad quickly. Exposure to air drives off some of the volatiles and turns the top layer into something like varnish. If you find a larger container, even a gas station tank, the gasoline is not going to go bad very fast.
Diesel would be a good choice. There is very little difference between home heating fuel, farm tractor fuel, kerosene, and even jet fuel… All of the jet planes that you see flying around, and flying in, are running on what is essentially kerosene, a lighter diesel.
Enough for three years will last you for the rest of your life.
And the EMP effects, or electomagnetic pulse, are mostly Hollywood bullshit. If you have a device turned on and energized during an EMP event some curcuits may get fried, if it is not turned on is will still run later. It only works on things that are energized at the time of the event.
The common trope of all cars, all electronics being useless is pure Hollywood. Of course, you aren’t going to have a functional power grid, but if you can power it up, it should work just fine. All cars being useless everywhere is complete Hollywood.
That is not entirely true. Many sensitive electronics, and especially microelectronics attached to some kind of antenna or receiver can be damaged even if not powered on just by the voltage induced from the E1 component. However, large EMP pulses aren’t just caused by airburst or ground burst nuclear explosions; a wide EMP effect is induced from a high altitude (>200 km) burst that energizes a free electron layer in the stratosphere that in turned produces a quasi-coherent burst.
How much an high altitude EMP pulse would damage modern cars is a valid question, but commercial electronics are not hardened against it, nor does the body of the vehicle provide much in the way of protection. I suspect effects would vary across models but giving how much of modern vehicles are reliant on multiple computers to function, I wouldn’t put much faith on anything build after the 1980s to function in the case of a HEMP.
