TOTM 2016- Long Term Recovery

This topic has been on my mind for years, after years of no where to get goods one has to improvise. Like knowing how to garden with what you make for fertilizer, how to plow a mule if you can find one and mabie how to train one to plow not to mention the asseries like collar plowlines single tree and plows. Knowledge of tractors and implements and keeping it going as parts won't be available. Spices would be great for barter. Knowledge of how to teach and use-make tools for anything from cooking to farming. I am lucky to have grown up around a lot of people who were still using mules and wagons, I remember helping get firewood up with a mule pulling a groundslide. A community life would evolve as it always has after life settled in, hopefully sooner than later. I personally would welcome it. Old technical books would be a great asset for the new community.I tend to ramble on when writing as my mind outruns my writing. So many young people never had to do anything for themselves as far as growing food fixing or building things, there will be a lot to teach. But I believe like others here America needs to start over.

 

@chimo
I'm not too sure about PMs. In a post-SHTF world what good are PMs? Would I exchange PMs for food or ammunition, I doubt it. Plus unless I purchase testing agents, how do I know they are really PMs??

Perhaps you are correct; however, if and when SHTF happens, I'd prefer a full belly or magazine to PMs. One would do better with us trading what we for what we lack than what we have for PMs.

 

@Aeason you can ramble all you want. You have important knowledge that many of us really appreciate when you chose to share. In my mind I think many people have trouble making the transition from that materialist life, the life where we have easy access to acquiring what we want, to a life where you have to look at what you have and improvise.

When you say America needs to start over, I often wonder what exactly people mean by that. I firmly believe we cannot go back.

 

I have been looking at where I live. I imagine no job, my food stores are dwindling, I ask myself now what. I have to step it up. Recently I have been formulating ideas with the assumption that we will not be bothered. I have been rolling over in my mind the way to provide/ grow enough food to be able to feed my family for the winter. I am thinking 6-9 months of food needs to put away by October every year. I have scoped out a place to dig a root cellar.

I have been thinking about meat and how to provide and have some post-SHTF. I am assuming that the wildlife will be thinned out real fast. The only thought I can come up with is capturing wildlife and raising it. Wild turkey chicks, I see them- could I capture and raise them for future food? What about fawns, bunnies and other little critters that scamper around. I am trying to think out of the box.

 

Quick note MM, wild turkeys are much much more aggressive than domesticated breeds and they really know how to use their spurs and will use them on those that feed them.

 

The grown wild turkeys beat up a very large dog. But I am trying to think and look around at my surrounding and what could feed us. I saw many little turkeys this year and they grow up nice and big. It would be hard to get some chicks without getting attacked but it is something to consider.

 

Traps. And raise them from young ones.

 

I think it could work. Since starting this topic, I have really looked at my surroundings. I know that one can grow a lot of food in a little space especially if you go vertical. But then I thought about the opening post. People will be hunting within months of a collapse so I cannot depend on hunting. Wildlife will be real scarce, real fast.

 

And (at least locally) it is illegal to trap and keep game animals. They must be reduced to "taking" ( dead and reduced to parts). Wild pigs, on the other hand are NOT game animals, and may be exempt from that rule. (Worth checking)

 

Lucky! We don't get any turkeys here on the plains. I'll trade ya for some prarie dogs!

 

@GrayGhost
Wild turkeys are good eating and you offer prairie dogs??

Nah....

 

I've raised wild turkeys from day old chicks. hens aren't bad. It's the males .. all full of piss and vinegar trying to figure out who is the toughest. Most of the males found out that I am. Unfortunately for them, they only got to learn the lesson one time. Bad thing is, they were pretty small.

I'm sticking with heritage breeds from now on.

 

History shows that there is always someone willing to trade for shiny baubles. I think gold and silver will be especially useful in the early stages of SHTF, after the currency collapses, when you'll either be able to make direct purchases...or will be able to trade your PMs for boatloads of the hyper-inflated currency du jour. PMs will also be useful in the early stages of "recovery", as people struggle to overcome the limitations of bartering and look for some type of common currency. That's why I always keep some junk silver coins, 1 ounce silver eagles and some 1/10 ounce gold eagles are part of my stacks. It's also why I reload ammo...which I think will also always be a popular trade item.

But don't take my word for it...we've had plenty of economic and societal collapses throughout history to reference.

 

@chimo
That is if there is anything to buy, correct?
I've read how refugees (real ones) used PMs or money to buy their way out of war zones or being shipped to one of Hitler's death camps. Or to buy passage to where it is safe or safer by leaving the famine, war, etc for safer areas.

IMO, post-SHTF will be closer to the Hollywood versions (Mad Max Book of Eli) where barter is for goods. As I love history, so point me at your references.

 

Well if you love history so much, then you should be able to cite one, just one, case of a SHTF event that sent human civilization back to the stone age...or a global "Mad Max Book of Eli result" where trade in things like gold or silver ceased to exist? Bout the only one I can really think of off the top of my head would be the immediate aftermath of the Great Flood of Noah's time.

While it's possible that some catastrophic event like another great flood, global nuclear war, large asteroid collision, global EMP/CME event or global pandemic wipes out the majority of the world and results in the few who survive going "Mad Max Book of Eli", it's much more likely that any SHTF event we're going to see in our lifetimes will be similar to those we have already had...localized/regionalized societal/economic collapses caused by war, disease, famine or natural disasters ...and in the recovery of each and every one of those events people still acquired things they needed using shiny baubles like gold and silver because there was always someone from the outside who wasn't affected by the disaster to trade with.

Sooo, let's say the US is devastated by an EMP event. Unless it is a global event that pretty much sends the entire world back to the 19th century, do you really think we're not going to have folks from other countries in here...wanted or unwanted...who are willing to trade their wares for gold and silver?

Bottom line, Mad Max Book of Eli is fiction, actual history was real...which do you think is more prudent to prepare for?

 

@chimo
I gave a few examples in the second paragraph. I could add the Russian revolution where nobility used PMs and jewelry. I've read in WWII, indigs were promised a $$ reward for aiding a pilot/air crew to escape from behind enemy lines. How many did you want??? Then added I thought Hollywood got it right.
If and when the SHTF, all your PMs would buy here is the excess we might have no use for.

Personally, I believe the barter system would be more prevalent based on what my mother told me about the Great Depression. Her family had chickens and traded chickens or eggs for what they didn't have and traded some vegetable excess for what they didn't grow.

Basically, PMs are something I don't have a use for as I'd prefer a few cases of Mountain House etc, ammunition, heirloom seeds or tools. At this point we can agree to disagree.

 

I can tell you, historically, that people who RELY on money, then go through a SHTF event, have always had a "humanitarian" or "argumentative" neighbor that stepped in and saw everything put back in place.

Should a general or total collapse happen, you will be forced to rely on what skills you have, and most of those historical SHTF events have occurred in a time and location where traditional skills and non-elctronic apparatus are the norn.

 

What would you consider Argentina circa 1999-2002 or the collapse of the Soviet Union?

 

Not far enough back in history to meet my radar. Being honest about it, not being a dick. My info caps off around Vietnam, and gets spotty after WW1.

 

SHTF events I agree have happened when the population wasn't reliant upon electronics, that is why I try to stress the importance of learning the old technical methods of farming and repairs to equipment. So many now have never seen a mule drawn plow, maby in front of an antique shop, but never really looked at it to see just how it works. Really how many people have even held a hoe. PMs would most benefit them for buying the basics to survive and that would only be after the prepared had established a stable life (after the zombies and such were dealt with). This goround will be different from any before because of technical advancements where everything has electronics involved to make it work. I miss the days.