Post-apocalyptic clothing, gear, weapons etc.

[Jayngfet]

snip

This post couldn't be more perfect if it somehow included a mic drop.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and it's created one mean mother of an invention after another.

[Ravens_cry]

...you're assuming current population and levels of consumption. Fishing doesn't really deplete all that much if it's not your only means of food, provided you can get a decent boat to go a mile or too out, which isn't hard to construct. People all over the world have been doing as such for thousands of years. If fishing with lines and nets and no motors for small settlements would drive the shores to extinction, they wouldn't have made it past the stone age. Even species that are currently under watch regularly get eaten by local fishermen and they don't make a real dent.

Once you've got a boat, a line, a net, and a spear your actual range isn't just a few feet from the coastline, it can actually get pretty far and you'd be amazed how much diving people can do without an air tank.

Because seriously people, Post Apocalyptic doesn't mean people stop making things. Unless all wood stops growing forever there's going to be wooden boats and carts and other such things. It's not exactly hard to do.

I mean hell, to be blunt we've been making engines and rockets for almost a thousand years. With all the spare parts lying around someone's eventually going to try something, even if it uses hand cranks or pedal power. Given the number of engineers and technically minded people alive even a 99.99% casualty rate means that we'd probably get at least limited electricity within a decade, even if it's from local generators for a precious few done "in house".

On the contrary, it doesn't take much to put the present populations and ecosystems in serious pressure.
Even right now, people who have interest in wild foods are putting pressures on many ecosystems from over gathering, imagine what it will be like when you have a bunch of people for whom these are the only source of food. As for the rest, I don't think you are grasping how much a total societal collapse would destroy in terms of knowledge base and infrastructure. People are going to be trying too hard to survive to spend much energy on trying much, and, with time, knowledge is just going to die off. Oh, some might, but it will be scrounge and relics, and, with time, the remaining stuff is going to be too decayed to be useful.
The things you describe? Those were the work of craftspeople, experts with a long apprenticeship in a society with the infrastructure to facilitate them.
Just because tech is old does not mean it is easy.

[Jayngfet]

On the contrary, it doesn't take much to put the present populations and ecosystems in serious pressure.

I'm speaking from experience, not conjecture. While I found personally doing it distasteful, it's a big ocean. Unless the species is in immediate concern of dying off or you're hunting for that exclusively they can usually manage a small dent on the scale of individual villages looking for any meal.

Even coastal settlements would have plenty of options, so outside of a few dedicated fishermen they'd probably have enough to get by, by the time it became viable to do on a larger scale.

Even right now, people who have interest in wild foods are putting pressures on many ecosystems from over gathering, imagine what it will be like when you have a bunch of people for whom these are the only source of food. As for the rest, I don't think you are grasping how much a total societal collapse would destroy in terms of knowledge base and infrastructure. People are going to be trying too hard to survive to spend much energy on trying much, and, with time, knowledge is just going to die off. Oh, some might, but it will be scrounge and relics, and, with time, the remaining stuff is going to be too decayed to be useful.

Did you even bother reading what I posted? Not only are seeds ridiculously common, printed instructions come with most packets. Agriculture will survive. Some crops will die off and some knowledge will be lost, but farms are going to carry on.

The things you describe? Those were the work of craftspeople, experts with a long apprenticeship in a society with the infrastructure to facilitate them.
Just because tech is old does not mean it is easy.

This isn't Fallout, the OP scenario is like, twenty years past the event at most. Existing engineers aren't going to go extinct and it'd only be a month or two before they could make themselves useful. Rigging simple things like radios and lights from whatever's lying around wouldn't be too complicated, given how much wiring and how many parts you can strip from the average house. They aren't building a nuclear reactor, they're finishing the equivalent of a third grade science project. Water Wheels and windmills would take some doing and resources, but it's not outside the realm of possibility.

The people with the skills to start it off would still be alive at this point with a while to go, and a long time to train apprentices and write down the useful bits.

[Jaycemonde]

I'm speaking from experience, not conjecture. While I found personally doing it distasteful, it's a big ocean. Unless the species is in immediate concern of dying off or you're hunting for that exclusively they can usually manage a small dent on the scale of individual villages looking for any meal.

Even coastal settlements would have plenty of options, so outside of a few dedicated fishermen they'd probably have enough to get by, by the time it became viable to do on a larger scale.


Did you even bother reading what I posted? Not only are seeds ridiculously common, printed instructions come with most packets. Agriculture will survive. Some crops will die off and some knowledge will be lost, but farms are going to carry on.



This isn't Fallout, the OP scenario is like, twenty years past the event at most. Existing engineers aren't going to go extinct and it'd only be a month or two before they could make themselves useful. Rigging simple things like radios and lights from whatever's lying around wouldn't be too complicated, given how much wiring and how many parts you can strip from the average house. They aren't building a nuclear reactor, they're finishing the equivalent of a third grade science project. Water Wheels and windmills would take some doing and resources, but it's not outside the realm of possibility.

The people with the skills to start it off would still be alive at this point with a while to go, and a long time to train apprentices and write down the useful bits.

You and SiuiS are the only two other people who use common sense in discussions of this type.

[Jayngfet]

You and SiuiS are the only two other people who use common sense in discussions of this type.

Generally speaking, it's quite often how you wind up looking at things.

The entire idea of post-apoc as a story is less about people getting along in the new reality and more about a narrative of one or a few super-badasses that the world must depend on, weather it's because they have magical super kung-fu or else they have the magic mcguffin that's the only thing that can get plants to grow again. For people who's only experience with the Genre is say, Bethesda's version of Fallout in particular, it gets worse since the word "messiah" gets tossed about way more than it should. Hell, when your Messiah isn't an ultra-genius by default everyone else kind of has to be really, really stupid as a result.

I mean for another example, look at Europe around the plague era. Order broke down, whole towns and cities were emptied, raiders and fiends began raping and eating across the countryside, and things generally became a great big mess everywhere. Then a while later everything calmed down and people got back to work and within a couple of generations things were better than ever. An event that kills a larger percentage would be more dramatic, but provided you steer clear of the extinction event you're basically good. That is however a really hard thing to do.

[SiuiS]

This isn't Fallout, the OP scenario is like, twenty years past the event at most.

Uh, well, we don't know that. There is no information on what kind if apocalypse, how long ago, etc. We can conjecture and spin, but there are aituations that will make survival barely feasible. Such as something that damages the ecosystem, something that makes foodstuffs toxic, something that kills off large amounts of food population.

So far we've discussed a mostly humanocentric and population-damaging event that does not by it's nature originate in human infrastructure. Reverse that; a human-agnostic disaster that comes from human infrastructure but doesn't damage them specifically, only others. Imagine a newer, better wifi signal that goes global, but somehow irrevocably damages foundational life; weeds have their DNA changed, becoming toxic, fast growing, parasitic. By the time humans get apocalypse'd, it's because they don't have food, housing, water anymore and it's too late to reverse.

Generally speaking, it's quite often how you wind up looking at things.

I mean for another example, look at Europe around the plague era. Order broke down, whole towns and cities were emptied, raiders and fiends began raping and eating across the countryside, and things generally became a great big mess everywhere. Then a while later everything calmed down and people got back to work and within a couple of generations things were better than ever. An event that kills a larger percentage would be more dramatic, but provided you steer clear of the extinction event you're basically good. That is however a really hard thing to do.

Yeah. Most people focus on the humanocentric metric. From an outside view? Like watching an animal ecosystem, it's different. Sure, the majority of the population is dead or down to animal mentality. But the remainder won't be too bad unless they're really, really stupid. And then sample wise they stop holding back the statistics because they die and the people who aren't dumb happen to shine.

Every story about a dystopian end-time scenario you get a group of people wondering how the herd will turn out this season.

[TheThan]

You've never really traveled with the middle ground, have you? By which I mean the homeless. The missig link. The people who can make clothing out of newspapers and duct tape and still program a computer. The people who can build a trailer out of rebar and plywood and spit (literal saliva, it was used with newspaper and dust to make caulk sealant) and take that down to the river and barbecue up whatever they catch.

Screw people who know the Old Ways. Those are valuable for their historical and spiritual weight. But what is really, truly impressive; what Jaycemonde has cottoned on to and few others get, is there are right now thousands of people creating New Ways. This is not a process that will get a shaky start after a certain amount of people die; it's a process that will continue as it always has. Because human beings are damn good at developing these things! At finding out snow is a good insulation. That a thin parchment makes exceptional blanketing. That layers of mesh can cocoon you well enough to retain body heat despite wind. That four old car tires can be cut in half and make an eight-tire long boat. That a plastic barrel becomes a mini tent.

No, the problem isn't surviving in that sense. The problem is surviving the social circles. The ones that develop around people who tend to value getting one over above investing in infrastructure. The ones who are unable to maintain a house in society because of mental illness and become predatory. The ones who would form cults of personality and on-the-streets prison gangs and press gangs to get things they want. Surviving being hungry and cold is easier than surviving someone else being hungry and cold and thinking offing you is better than real hard work.

You’re asking me If I’ve been homeless? No I haven’t fortunately.

We have some sort of disconnect here.

I’ve said that people who can improvise are going to survive and flourish.
You are saying that the people who can improvise are going to survive and flourish.

We’re saying the same thing.

However I’m saying there are people in this world that cannot improvise, and build things from nothing. They can’t cope with a change of this magnitude, they don’t have the capacity to be able to adapt to their surroundings. I’ve known people who didn’t know that the vegetables they buy at the grocery store were grown on a farm . I’ve known people who didn’t know that French fries are made from potatoes. I’ve known people who didn’t know that ham, pork, sausage and bacon all come from the same animal. These are the sorts of people I’m talking about, the sort that can’t function once you take away their smart phone or navigate the very town they grew up in without a GPS system in their car. They are not ret--- mentally handicapped, they just don’t have a clue and may not be able to adapt quickly enough to the change to survive.

Then there are those that break under pressure. There are those that crumble when they get in trouble with their boss at the office or explode for the same reason. Imagine these people trying to cope with the pressure of starvation, thirst and exposure.

People of all types will survive the initial apocalypse, those that can adapt and improvise and learn are going to be the ones to become successful in the aftermath. People who already can already are going to have a huge edge.

Heck I even agree about the social implications you mentioned, in the USA we have a gang problem already, what happens when there’s not law enforcement to handle them?

I was being a bit flippant about the “old ways”, what I should have said is “getting along without modern conveniences”. people love to visit the wilderness but few are capable of staying for more than a few days. What happens to them when their house is now part of the wilderness?

Generally speaking, it's quite often how you wind up looking at things.

The entire idea of post-apoc as a story is less about people getting along in the new reality and more about a narrative of one or a few super-badasses that the world must depend on, weather it's because they have magical super kung-fu or else they have the magic mcguffin that's the only thing that can get plants to grow again. For people who's only experience with the Genre is say, Bethesda's version of Fallout in particular, it gets worse since the word "messiah" gets tossed about way more than it should. Hell, when your Messiah isn't an ultra-genius by default everyone else kind of has to be really, really stupid as a result.

The idea of following a group of people’s “struggle for survival” has tons of merit for stories. Isn’t that the very idea behind most zombie shows?
It doesn’t matter how tough you think you are, going it alone is probably the dumbest thing you can do.

[Jayngfet]

The idea of following a group of people’s “struggle for survival” has tons of merit for stories. Isn’t that the very idea behind most zombie shows?
It doesn’t matter how tough you think you are, going it alone is probably the dumbest thing you can do.

I'm not saying go it alone, I'm saying the opposite. In fact, the more people you have the faster and more effectivley you can divy up labor and specialize, which is key to survival.

It's just that survival won't be hard unless the event specifically targets every single useful asset and leaves only junk. If even one surviving bookstore in the area has even one book on any relevant subjects, it's an asset. Likewise if any stores selling garden seeds have survived, you can basically pick up and start agriculture of your own within weeks, since you now have hundreds of seeds and hundreds of copies of the instructions, all sealed to prevent contamination.

Heck, if we assume that zombies are an issue, it's still not a terribly large one. Any motorcycle or sporting store will have lightweight body armor and easy transportation that can outrun a light shamble. It's just that it usually takes years of story time for someone to remember this for whatever reason(in the walking dead in particular, dressing up in body armor and having dedicated warriors got taken as a sign of weirdness that took forever, nevermind things like bicycles). Heck, zombies are a temporary concern unless they're outright magic, since humans with no protection from the elements or survival instinct won't last longer than a couple of weeks at the outside, and certainly not through first winter.

This is all short term, of course. Zombies will die off naturally as fast as they begin and restarting civilization isn't going to be a huge issue considering we leave all the supplies just lying around any settlement as is. Unless every single store in every single town and city across the world died along with specifically targeting among the masses of people that died the millions that know how to handle themselves that could teach or help, it's not a real issue in a broader scheme. You may mention people who don't know where food comes from, but unless they just roll over and die right then they'll probably have to learn really quickly.

[SiuiS]

You’re asking me If I’ve been homeless? No I haven’t fortunately.

We have some sort of disconnect here.

I’ve said that people who can improvise are going to survive and flourish.
You are saying that the people who can improvise are going to survive and flourish.

We’re saying the same thing.

Well, no, because...

However I’m saying there are people in this world that cannot improvise, and build things from nothing.

No. Impossible. There are not enough people in the world who are A) old enough to count, B) unable to adapt, to be anything but statistical outliers. Sure, people will die before they achieve anything in a disaster, but being human automatically qualifies you for the potential to improvise. It's part of your hardware.

The argument that technically a non-zero amount of people out of seven billion plus will exist who may temporarily meet the criteria so it's true isn't an actual argument. It's quibbles and obfuscation.

They can’t cope with a change of this magnitude, they don’t have the capacity to be able to adapt to their surroundings. I’ve known people who didn’t know that the vegetables they buy at the grocery store were grown on a farm . I’ve known people who didn’t know that French fries are made from potatoes. I’ve known people who didn’t know that ham, pork, sausage and bacon all come from the same animal. These are the sorts of people I’m talking about, the sort that can’t function once you take away their smart phone or navigate the very town they grew up in without a GPS system in their car. They are not ret--- mentally handicapped, they just don’t have a clue and may not be able to adapt quickly enough to the change to survive.

I've known those people too. They lack one skill. They have other useful skills.

[TheThan]

I certainly hope so, I hate to think that people like this are as useless as they seem.

The further down the post-apoc timeline you slide, the more adaptable people will become, but the less pre apoc tech and materials will be available as they get used up.

[Jayngfet]

The further down the post-apoc timeline you slide, the more adaptable people will become, but the less pre apoc tech and materials will be available as they get used up.

...which is where improvising comes into play. If you run out of batteries, potato and lemon batteries may be able to keep the lights on, at least for a little bit, and those fall under the "available in pure form and widely available as seeds", so by the time it becomes an issue you'll at least have some of them to set aside. If your gun jams and you can't fix it, a ranged weapon can be cobbled from basically anything. By the time you run out of clothes that can be patched up generations have passed and you can use hides and wool and whatever else comes up naturally. If your house collapses and the others are taken, you'll either repair it with wood or busted up ones, or else just resort to mud bricks and rammed earth(and after a bit longer wood would be plentiful enough to make a decent cabin anyway). You'll be able to make explosives the old fashioned way out of dung and scraps.

The further along a post-apoc timeline things go, the less materials are widely available. But the further along you go, the more alternatives get found and catch on, so it's less turning to ruin and more that the setting just resembles our own less and less year over year. By the time you get to the 2030's as the OP wanted odds are things are going to have stabilized into something that doesn't much resemble what we know, except in outward appearance.

[Slipperychicken]

So what's stopping people from just (re)building factories to crank out all the things we need? Or from re-establishing global communication and transportation networks? And what's to stop us from simply carrying our technical knowledge and artifacts through the apocalypse?


I would also be willing to bet real money that if the apocalypse happens, some government people, survivalists, and paranoid plutocrats would be sitting it out in bunkers full of nutritious nonperishable food and other necessities, plus trained military professionals with survival skills, all manner of tools both complex and simplistic, documentation and instructions (to help do things like maintain tools, build new ones, survive in the wilderness, and to help society recover from the event), plus large quantities of ammunition and weapons to hold them over until production gets up and running again. At the very least, I'd expect a few projects like this to still exist as holdovers from the cold war, and I'd expect the inhabitants to survive for some time.

[TheThan]

Since we don’t know what sort of apocalypse scenario the OP had in mind, the only conclusions we can come to is the apocalypse blindsided us and that we didn’t have the time to get to any prebuilt shelters or prepare for such a disaster.

But anyway the reason why we may not be able to rebuild is that it’s a matter of infrastructure.
Our capacity to build and make the stuff we have now will be greatly decreased, knowledge of how to make stuff will be lost, and the tech we use to make stuff will be lost or made mostly useless.

If power plants go down, or the people that run them die then there won’t be any electricity available for survivors to utilize. How many people know how to operate a Nuclear power plant, or a coal power plant? Not that many pre-apocalypse, probably fewer if any post-apocalypse. I wouldn’t trust just anyone with the responsibility of running and maintaining a nuclear power plant, no I want someone that actually knows how to do that.
Without electricity, mass producing anything is a much harder possess because the machines we rely upon won’t work without electricity. We could build a lot of different types of mechanical devices, water wheels, wind mills, steam engines etc, it’s actually a step backwards in the tech department, but it might be our only options for a while.

Some places may escape the apocalypse altogether or be able to rebuild fairly quickly afterwards, but it will be some time before we reach the sort of capacity we had before the apocalypse.

[Slipperychicken]

Another thought occurred to me: Aren't there still plenty of peoples and cultures who already live mostly without modern conveniences? We have a few hunter-gatherer nomad groups left, and also loads of poor folk in third world developing economies who still don't have access to things like electricity, sanitation, or running water. Beyond a number of initial deaths, it's hard to imagine their lives being significantly effected if the meagre aid stops coming in and generators and factories go down. You also have people, even in the West, who live more or less independently of the broader society and would have a relatively easy time adapting to its disappearance.


Also, every so often you hear about individuals or small groups of people who have been stranded in the wilderness for decades and get along just fine, so that gives me hope that at a number of people would be able to make it. The first examples I can think of are some Russian family which moved out into the woods for a few decades (their son learned to run down wild animals, much like early humans were theorized to do), and the many holdouts from World War 2 (who lived in the wilderness for decades after the war was over, and thought it was still going on when they were found).

[TheThan]

That’s the weird thing, the less modern technology you depend on, the easier survival will be because you have already been developing the skills and knowledge needed to survive an apocalypse. It makes perfect sense really. It’s just a reversal from what people have come to know and feel is necessary to survive in the modern world.

In an episode of Ray Mears bushcraft, he shows a local African that had been building coal braziers out of old oil tins. It’s clever and shows how adaptable people in developing countries are.

[SiuiS]

So what's stopping people from just (re)building factories to crank out all the things we need? Or from re-establishing global communication and transportation networks? And what's to stop us from simply carrying our technical knowledge and artifacts through the apocalypse?


I would also be willing to bet real money that if the apocalypse happens, some government people, survivalists, and paranoid plutocrats would be sitting it out in bunkers full of nutritious nonperishable food and other necessities, plus trained military professionals with survival skills, all manner of tools both complex and simplistic, documentation and instructions (to help do things like maintain tools, build new ones, survive in the wilderness, and to help society recover from the event), plus large quantities of ammunition and weapons to hold them over until production gets up and running again. At the very least, I'd expect a few projects like this to still exist as holdovers from the cold war, and I'd expect the inhabitants to survive for some time.

Survivalists tend to be the enemy. For real. There's an entire movement of people dedicated to preemptive success in the "it's them or is!" Game, going so far as to create the Them Or Us game just to win it. The whole slavery, murder, rape thing is real. People actually advocate that stuff and train in paramilitary format to be good at it.

Modern tech has planned obsolescence. It's designed to break down sooner so you'll buy more. You could restart factories in a zombie apocalypse set up, but not in a nuclear blast one.

Another thought occurred to me: Aren't there still plenty of peoples and cultures who already live mostly without modern conveniences? We have a few hunter-gatherer nomad groups left, and also loads of poor folk in third world developing economies who still don't have access to things like electricity, sanitation, or running water. Beyond a number of initial deaths, it's hard to imagine their lives being significantly effected if the meagre aid stops coming in and generators and factories go down. You also have people, even in the West, who live more or less independently of the broader society and would have a relatively easy time adapting to its disappearance.


Also, every so often you hear about individuals or small groups of people who have been stranded in the wilderness for decades and get along just fine, so that gives me hope that at a number of people would be able to make it. The first examples I can think of are some Russian family which moved out into the woods for a few decades (their son learned to run down wild animals, much like early humans were theorized to do), and the many holdouts from World War 2 (who lived in the wilderness for decades after the war was over, and thought it was still going on when they were found).

These people A) may have died out themselves, and B) do not help the implicit "not blasted back to Stone Age" that everyone fears. They are considered to have lost before the game started because they exist now in the lose condition state.

[Slipperychicken]

Survivalists tend to be the enemy. For real. There's an entire movement of people dedicated to preemptive success in the "it's them or is!" Game, going so far as to create the Them Or Us game just to win it. The whole slavery, murder, rape thing is real. People actually advocate that stuff and train in paramilitary format to be good at it.

Modern tech has planned obsolescence. It's designed to break down sooner so you'll buy more. You could restart factories in a zombie apocalypse set up, but not in a nuclear blast one.



These people A) may have died out themselves, and B) do not help the implicit "not blasted back to Stone Age" that everyone fears. They are considered to have lost before the game started because they exist now in the lose condition state.

The points I'm trying to make are these:

• Technology and the knowledge to rebuild civilization could potentially survive a number of apocalyptic scenarios. This goes double for nuclear blasts, since there have been quite a few well-funded, organized projects made for exactly that purpose. Loads of entities, from superpower governments, to billionaires, to gun-toting rednecks have all anticipated such events and prepared for them.
• People are not all completely helpless without modern conveniences. Some people never had them, some have trained to go without them, and many more can adapt to life without them. Whether you consider some of these people to be "losers" or "the enemy" isn't relevant to my point: they would survive if we lost our advanced technology.

[Jayngfet]

Modern factories require large amounts of power and complex moving parts, both of which are hard to supply, since they rely on other factories using the same or power plants that have even more weirdly specific parts. Not to mention that if any knowledge is going to get lose, stuff like high complexity schematics will probably be first on the list.

In the short term, power is going to be a local concern with local solutions. We'd probably rely on remaining batteries, small scale generators, and whatever power sources we can make from what's on hand. I don't doubt that some people in some places will get a few plants up at a time, and eventually they may cannabilise some plants to save others with the needed parts, but they'd still be relying on a dwindling pool of parts.

What's more likely, to me, is building new plants, or else just gutting the useless and broken old ones to make different ones. A new generation of post-apocalyptic engineers is going to get their understanding of electricity from very different models, since the most common practical applications they'd be dealing with are rigging generators that work building by building, or on smaller scales. Their idea of fuel that's not scavenged will most likely come from organic sources instead of the vast oil wells of the modern day, since they have no choice but to use what can be grown or processed on hand. The most consistent things they'd ever have are water wheels and perhaps a few windmills.

Ergo, they'll probably set to work repairing the stations they can have a better understanding of(windmills, dams, other such things that rely on pre existing physical forces), and abandon things like nuclear plants they can't either puzzle out on their own. Since these are location dependent and situational, odds are the majority of survivors are going to do without even into the second generation. They might get into a stock of batteries and be able to keep a few lights on, but that's the extent of it.

[TheThan]

Survivalists tend to be the enemy. For real. There's an entire movement of people dedicated to preemptive success in the "it's them or is!" Game, going so far as to create the Them Or Us game just to win it. The whole slavery, murder, rape thing is real. People actually advocate that stuff and train in paramilitary format to be good at it.

In my experience there’s basically three camps:

Camp 1: The Everyman, these survivalists are just normal folks who want to be self reliant and prepared for any sort of catastrophe that comes their way. They may be worried about their personal safety but they’re not the type to open fire on people without cause. They simply don’t want to become a statistic. This is the sort of prepper or survivalist that people should strive to be. They can help an entire community get back onto its feet by sharing their knowledge and acting as a coordinator, directing people and bringing them together as a community.

Camp 2: Tinfoil Hat Survivalists, these are the sorts that hides out in a cabin in the woods where they write their manifesto and think the gov’mnt’s after them. The sort that buy into any and every conspiracy theory they catch wind of and are hyper paranoid because of it.

Camp 3: The wannabe soldier, these are probably the most common sort of people you see, they are the sort of survivalist or prepper that collects military grade hardware, owns more guns than he’ll ever actually need (many of which are AR15s), and actually practices military (or pseudo military) combat drills, because he thinks he’s going to be some sort of badass Rambo that’s going to be waging a one man war against… somebody. These are the people that are champing at the bit, waiting for a disaster so they can unleash their “elite operator skills” upon their “enemies”. I fully expect the people like this without actual military training to collapse under pressure really fast when the going gets tough.

Modern tech has planned obsolescence. It's designed to break down sooner so you'll buy more. You could restart factories in a zombie apocalypse set up, but not in a nuclear blast one.

This is a good point, and something we haven’t quite touched on yet. The technology we have does break down and become obsolete. How often does Apple put out a new I phone? i think it's ridiculous that it's so hard to find a long lasting product nowadays, but those are the times we live in. I treat the things I buy as investments and try to take good care of them, I want long lasting things and don't want to live in a disposable world.

However, the materials those obsolete things are made of can be recycled. The hood of a car becomes a sled to haul fire wood on or part of a metal roof to keep the sun and rain out, the side of a computer case becomes a griddle over the fire for cooking food. A plastic laundry hamper with some twine attached becomes a basket to haul your possessions in that sort of stuff. Use your imagination and you will be surprised how much "junk" can be recycled into useful tools or components.

[Jayngfet]

Camp 3: The wannabe soldier, these are probably the most common sort of people you see, they are the sort of survivalist or prepper that collects military grade hardware, owns more guns than he’ll ever actually need (many of which are AR15s), and actually practices military (or pseudo military) combat drills, because he thinks he’s going to be some sort of badass Rambo that’s going to be waging a one man war against… somebody. These are the people that are champing at the bit, waiting for a disaster so they can unleash their “elite operator skills” upon their “enemies”. I fully expect the people like this without actual military training to collapse under pressure really fast when the going gets tough.

Depends, I suppose. If this hypothetical wannabe is an actual survivalist then they have a decent shot. If they're the kind of people who just do day-hikes and bring all of their own food and like 30 pounds of gear every time they go outside, then yeah, I see your point.

Of course, assuming the apocalypse does happen and they somehow survive they'd still be an issue. Mainly because they have working firearms and everyone else is using cobbled together gear.

This is a good point, and something we haven’t quite touched on yet. The technology we have does break down and become obsolete. How often does Apple put out a new I phone? i think it's ridiculous that it's so hard to find a long lasting product nowadays, but those are the times we live in. I treat the things I buy as investments and try to take good care of them, I want long lasting things and don't want to live in a disposable world.

If most of your iPhone apps still function, it isn't a proper apocalypse. If internet and phone lines go down it's basically a fancy calculator/watch/camera that can do nothing that a cheaper and sturdier model can't with less power. Which is even worse, considering that with the power grid down recharging the damn thing will take time. My sisters smartphone has less than ten hours battery time, has a big, breakable screen, and she's gone through like half a dozen in the last five years. My cheap flip-phone can stay turned on for days at a time and has gone through the wash by accident unscathed many times over and taken several bad falls, without needing a single part replaced or losing any functionality whatsoever.

If it comes down to us a post apocalyptic society needing handy camera-calculators, the smartphones would have all gone dead within like a year and become useless, while the cheaper stuff would probably get a second life if they can get a generator running and find a charger. If only because the hypothetical wasteland engineer probably needs something that can take pictures and run a few calculations on the job, and a working laptop might be a bit harder to come by(Though not impossible).

Everyone else probably won't even think about their phones not working after a few weeks, or at least not consistently. It's not a necessity in the sense that a good folding knife or hatchet would be, and if you need to write something down there's probably going to be either scrap paper floating around or some other available surface.

[The Second]

So, it' the post apocalypse and I'm living in it. No electricity, no running water, no garbage collection, can't just hop down to the supermarket for a of ranch style beans, and Calvin Kline is dead and buried.

I am a loner by choice, and have a fair distrust of people at the best of times. I won't be living in a community, but perhaps nearby a community of some sort, within a half day's walk, preferably.

I live in the southern US, where temperatures can reach as high as 102°F at mid day in the summer and 23°F at night in the winter, so I'll need seasonal clothes, lightweight canvas for the summer with pelts for the winter. There are a good number of deer and wild hogs out here, so no shortage of leather, bone and sinew for constructing a portable shelter, and it would have to be portable as I'd most likely be following the animals around.

Food wouldn't be too much of a problem; along with the wildlife, which includes squirrels, rabbits, and fish, there are dewberries, wild plums, wild grapes, and acorns in great abundance in the summer and fall months. For hunting, I'd prefer not to use a firearm - too expensive and draws unwanted attention. Instead I'd resort to trapping and bowhunting.

Personal protection: first line of defense would be the dogs. If you get past the dogs, then you have to get past the traps. If you get past the traps, I'd have at least one firearm, preferably a shotgun of some variety. If that fails, I have a great deal of faith in three feet of steel pipe. And if even that fails then a good hickory stick will do the job just as well.

For tools, so long as all the scrap metal isn't being hoarded (and why would it be?), crude knives, hatches, and other implements wouldn't be much of a problem.

[D20ragon]

First off, I'd like to say that I'm really loving this discussion; just read all the way through it.
Second, how many of you now have a hankering to play a game based off of all this, perhaps starting with the apocaplypse, and time jumping onwards.
I know I do.
Lastly, has anyone here read Engine Summer, by John Crowly? If not, go do so. If so, then I actually really like his proposed post apocalypse, and find it fairly realistic.

[Slipperychicken]

Second, how many of you now have a hankering to play a game based off of all this, perhaps starting with the apocaplypse, and time jumping onwards.
I know I do.

If you ask me, I'd be interested in spending time both leading up to the apocalyptic events and trying to deal with them. That way, the PCs can build some connections to the world and you can actually have some roleplaying about it beyond the usual murderhobo apathy.

[Jayngfet]

If you ask me, I'd be interested in spending time both leading up to the apocalyptic events and trying to deal with them. That way, the PCs can build some connections to the world and you can actually have some roleplaying about it beyond the usual murderhobo apathy.

Personally I feel that a connection to the pre-apocalypse kind of kills it for me. It becomes less about survival and dealing with the matter at hand and more about pining for the world-that-was. This is also one of the reasons I prefer Fallout: New Vegas to Fallout 3.

[Coidzor]

I saw a neat video about how to use knapping techniques to convert glass into functional arrowheads, handaxes, and "stone" knives once.

That's about all that comes to mind without some more details about the nature of the disaster and how much of the populace is killed off.

I suppose one thing that has a fair chance of coming back(at least in places where it ever actually left) would be slavery, though that'd be highly dependent upon the nature of the disaster and how many survived.

[SiuiS]

For gaming: I've a zombie apocalypse style thing I've been tinkering with. I figure that since it's a given (for that scenario) to have society restore itself in a wounded fashion, the game would run in two parts, the immediate apocalypse terror set up, where everyone suddenly finds themselves beset by corpses which hunger, and after that becomes a sure thing (players either die or get fortified), and then fast forward to the end-game where people as a society have to finish off the threat. But I don't know that this applies to a game specifically exploring the apocalyptic world.

I saw a neat video about how to use knapping techniques to convert glass into functional arrowheads, handaxes, and "stone" knives once.

That's about all that comes to mind without some more details about the nature of the disaster and how much of the populace is killed off.

I suppose one thing that has a fair chance of coming back(at least in places where it ever actually left) would be slavery, though that'd be highly dependent upon the nature of the disaster and how many survived.

Man, that is a hell of a lot harder than it seems. >_<

I've got a bunch of bottles within arms reach for Knapping practice, but I have trouble breaking them effectively without making a mess so my technique is terrible.

My favorite is the flat screen tv that becomes a machete. That's boss.

[D20ragon]

Hmmmmm... What game system would you use?

[FLHerne]

I don't think you are grasping how much a total societal collapse would destroy in terms of knowledge base and infrastructure. People are going to be trying too hard to survive to spend much energy on trying much, and, with time, knowledge is just going to die off. Oh, some might, but it will be scrounge and relics, and, with time, the remaining stuff is going to be too decayed to be useful.
The things you describe? Those were the work of craftspeople, experts with a long apprenticeship in a society with the infrastructure to facilitate them.
Just because tech is old does not mean it is easy.

I think you're being overly pessimistic.

Like you say, some tech is pretty fragile and hard to reproduce. The mega-apocalypse will presumably put new-build computers out of the window for good, because you need incredibly precise, hermetically-sealed equipment to make ICs, and equipment just as precide to actually build that, and so on.
But computers will survive for decades after the apocalypse anyway. Your typical switching power supply will take an enormous range of input voltages and frequencies, and AC generators are almost trivially easy to build if you can cannibalise the windings off something else. Given a couple of days and the ruins of someone's home, I'm fairly sure the group of people I know could build you a water-wheel powered generator to charge surviving phones/tablets, and the lack of moving parts in those means they'll last almost forever if looked after.
There are DC motors and 12V lead-acid batteries in every motor vehicle out there, so electric buggies/pumps are fine. Neither of those need a tech base to build - a really simple DC motor is just a coil of wire on a stick - so electric power will be sustainable indefinitely. Refined metals won't be in production, but there are vast quantities hanging about.

^it's probably obvious that I'm an electronics student. Anyone have an idea for how to run large-scale mining/quarrying without oil/coal/explosives and limited* electricity? I can't figure it out.

*all the hydroelectric dams get blown up, I guess?

[D20ragon]

*snip*

all the hydroelectric dams get blown up, I guess?

Not if it's a disease scenario, ie: dawn of the plane of the apes.
Or a zombie scenario.
Unless the zombies hate dams for some reason, they should work, provided you can fight the zombies off.

[TheThan]

For gaming: I've a zombie apocalypse style thing I've been tinkering with. I figure that since it's a given (for that scenario) to have society restore itself in a wounded fashion, the game would run in two parts, the immediate apocalypse terror set up, where everyone suddenly finds themselves beset by corpses which hunger, and after that becomes a sure thing (players either die or get fortified), and then fast forward to the end-game where people as a society have to finish off the threat. But I don't know that this applies to a game specifically exploring the apocalyptic world.



Man, that is a hell of a lot harder than it seems. >_<

I've got a bunch of bottles within arms reach for Knapping practice, but I have trouble breaking them effectively without making a mess so my technique is terrible.

My favorite is the flat screen tv that becomes a machete. That's boss.

That does sound rather boss, maybe a bit fragile though. I’ve seen some beautiful flint knapped obsidian arrow heads and knife blades. If you can get good at it (time, energy) those things can get shaving sharp (I do not endorse trying to shave with rocks or volcanic glass).

Hmmmmm... What game system would you use?

I ran a Cadillacs and dinosaurs game once, it was post apocalyptic. I used D20 modern with the apocalypse supplement. It worked fine. Now I would go for either a converted fallout system. Or something that’s rules light like Fate. I was also working on a Left for Dead campaign but I never got around to finishing it.