TOTM 2016- Long Term Recovery

Discussion in 'General Survival and Preparedness' started by Motomom34, Mar 1, 2016.


  1. T. Riley

    T. Riley Monkey+++

    image.
    This is a real FEMA camp. Setup in Beaumont in 2008 to house first responders to Hurricane Ike. It was there for months.
     
    Motomom34 and Ganado like this.
  2. Tikka

    Tikka Monkey+++

    If it has protein, when folks get hungry enough, they'll eat it.

    Can you see the ew crowd enjoying rat? :)
     
    GrayGhost likes this.
  3. AxesAreBetter

    AxesAreBetter Monkey+++

    I've eaten some questionable chinese "chicken on a stick" that had these strand appendage looking things on all four corners...

    And it is FAT people get interested in. Protein is good, but fat is what people go after.
     
  4. Kingfish

    Kingfish Self Reliant

    @ Ganado,, you said.

    I can relate to that . I am working towards surviving a slow slide. W e have been ramping up a little at a time for quite a while now. There could be a major event coming , Yellowstone, comet, asteroid or emp. All of those would be huge problems. I keep asking myself why the powers that be have been parting out the U.S.A.. Moving everything off shore, corporations, money, even buying land in places like Paraguay. Is something coming that we the average people dont know? I dont have a clue anymore. One time I thought I had a handle on it. Not anymore.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 10, 2016
    Ganado and Motomom34 like this.
  5. Kingfish

    Kingfish Self Reliant

     
    Ganado likes this.
  6. Kingfish

    Kingfish Self Reliant

    Asphalt roads are melting around the area. You have to wonder , does the government have any advantage over the rest of us as in a timeline or are they just guessing?
     
    Ganado likes this.
  7. duane

    duane Monkey+++

    There is one level of technology for large scale farming, a second level for preparing land for sustained agriculture and a third level for farming land that is developed for continued production. Our present large scale agriculture, with its dependence on chemicals, can not be farmed on a small scale without some natural inputs. If you wish to do it after some event, you had better start doing it now. You have to plant crops that kill off the weeds and put nutrients into the soil and increase the hummus and water holding capacity of the soil. The plants that do that best, with deep tap roots to bring up fresh minerals and trace elements, are mostly grasses with a few beans and pulses also usable. That makes it real handy to have some other source of food while this process is going on. Most of the land here in NH has been abandoned for generations and it has taken me on an average 3 to 4 years with chain saws, lime, fertilizers, trace elements, etc to get a good crop and that is with chain saws, tractors, rototillers, and such. You could girdle the tree and kill it, plant between the trees, and work at it for years, which is what our ancestor's did, but it wasn't easy or pleasant. The old hand tools, brush hook, grub hoe, stone boat, spades, spading forks, scythe, corn knife, husking pegs, hay rakes, hay forks etc, can be seen in museums and some poorly made modern imported ones can be purchased at high prices. The modern horse drawn equipment can be bought in Amish country, but it is expensive and designed to be used on excellent land by skilled operators. Our ancestors used oxen for most of their farm power and with a simple wood plow a team of oxen and a hard working man could plow about 1 acre a day. The plow often wasn't a moldboard plow and didn't turn the soil over to allow the grass etc to breakdown. It then had to be harrowed, with a simple toothed harrow, not a disk harrow, dragged and pulverized into a smooth softened surface. Then you could use a push seeder to plant it, a push plow to make furrows, a push harrow to weed it, carry water to it if needed, weed it as necessary, pick off the bugs, drive off the birds and wild animals and pray that a fungus or blight didn't make you join your Irish friends looking for a new home.
    If you wish to prosper five years after the event, I believe you have to start preparing five years before the event. I have most of the tools, use them, have land and a green house ready and several years worth of fertilizers etc stockpiled. If my strong point and interest were metal working, I would suggest a good hand forge, several tons of smithing coal, the tools and metal to at least get started and practice on car leaf springs, fence posts,etc for after the event. If it were horse drawn wagons and transportation, then have one for "parades" or a good scow type, think pontoon boat for the river. My hope is that if things do go bad, i will enough value and knowledge that no matter who comes out on top, I will be worth leaving alone. My favorite SHTF author is Jerry Young, no matter what happens, his heros take a step back and use their resources, hard work and brains to prosper. While luck may be involved in his stories, he stresses morality, hard work and preparing and a faith in God and gives some very good lessons and a faith that we could survive and prosper 10 years down the line.
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2016
    Kingfish, T. Riley and BTPost like this.
  8. AxesAreBetter

    AxesAreBetter Monkey+++

    Just to note, the acre is a standard unit of measurement, because it was the average that an ox could plow in a day. Same as 3 barley corns being an inch. Universal math, no book learning needed.
     
    Ganado and Kingfish like this.
  9. GrayGhost

    GrayGhost Monkey+++

    Hey, if it's made of meat...
     
    Kingfish likes this.
  10. Tikka

    Tikka Monkey+++

    @GrayGhost
    Protein keeps the machine running.

    Admittedly dried fish and rice sucked.
     
    Kingfish likes this.
  11. Motomom34

    Motomom34 Monkey+++

    I agree. And I think people need to become more and more self-sufficient. People need to plan to stay where they are because I think fuel will be so expensive that travel will be only for the elite.
     
    Kingfish likes this.
  12. Kingfish

    Kingfish Self Reliant

    Yes we have zero plans to drive around the countryside. We have what we need and its all here in a 5 mile radius.
     
    Aeason and Ganado like this.
  13. Bandit99

    Bandit99 Monkey+++ Site Supporter+

    Well, I think we are all goners if Yellowstone blows... I certainly am. The ash alone in the atmosphere will cause a major temperature change plus we do not know what else this would trip like the Cascadian Subduction Zone or some rogue nations or even known enemies would say, "Now is the time!"
     
    Aeason and Ganado like this.
  14. VHestin

    VHestin Farm Chick

    If Yellowstone blows, we're in the border area(based on past eruptions) of having too much ash. So we could go either way on that score. The downside is that any 'livestock' will be SOL, unless you can have them in a sealed area with filtered air, because if they breathe that ash, they're done for. Or so the experts in the disaster vid about Yellowstone say.
     
  15. arleigh

    arleigh Goophy monkey

    A lot of farming has gone indoors now so the idea of running a plough is superfluous .
    Every where yo look there are green houses and they eliminate several problems .
    Water is conserved ,
    beds are elevated to make it easy to deal with the plants .
    birds and insects can't get in and the environment can be controlled better . no pesticides .
    In the event of acid rain or some other contaminant in the rain, the green house covers the problem.
    If you google earth over farm land you will see this trend growing more and more .
    It also avoids the problem of cross pollination from unwanted crops even GMO poisoned crops.
    If the green house is built sturdy even snow can be shed off the structure or in the case of volcanic ash as well.
    truth be told the ideal living space is in green house because the plants need carbon dioxide .Some folk actually put CO2 in the green house and boost the yield .
    some day soon I am going to cover mine in white shrink wrap 9mill .
    It will last more than 20 years even in bad weather.
    If you livestock is in similar containment as well it eliminates predators and decease transference form wild animals that are contaminated. bird flu,rabies and other viruses .
     
    Aeason, Rocky Road Lerp and Motomom34 like this.
  16. Motomom34

    Motomom34 Monkey+++

    @arleigh that is a really interesting post. I hadn't thought of greenhouses in that way. I had just always wanted on to putter in and get things started early but never for all the reasons you listed.
     
    Aeason likes this.
  17. shaman

    shaman Monkey++

    Greenhouses are probably a good idea to consider.

    Cincinnati's food pipeline is inundated with stuff grown half-way across the world. However, it would not take much for all that imported stuff to disappear. I can still remember a time when things were much more local and much more seasonal. One thing that really sticks out in my mind is the intense agriculture that was going on just a few miles north of the center of town in a place called Wooden Shoe Hollow.

    Wooden Shoe Hollow and a few other places like it were scattered in a band between the heavy industrial section just north of town and the sprawling crop farms. These were little truck gardens. Wooden Shoe Hollow was all Dutch, but there were Germans and Dutch doing similar things just outside the city limits as they stood in 1900 or so. Most noticeable were the sprawling greenhouses.

    I can still remember my Mom and Grandma making regular visits to these greenhouses to pick up fresh produce in the spring and early summer, before the outdoor crops started to come in. This was where they got their tomatoes and lettuce and such. This was also where the greengrocers got a good part of their local supply. By the mid 1960's these farms were in decline. Some are still around, selling houseplants and such, but the vast majority of them were removed by 1970 as the big food distribution people starting turning to California, Florida and elsewhere for produce.

    My point is that post-SHTF, there is going to be a need for produce, and a need for it much the way it was back in 1900-- close to town and grown inside to extend the season on both ends.
     
    Aeason and Motomom34 like this.
  18. shaman

    shaman Monkey++

    Another thing to consider regarding post-post-SHTF:

    As you've probably guessed, I read a lot of history. There's a lot of it that is relevant in a post-post-SHTF world. For instance, at one point one of the biggest crops in the Greater Ohio Valley was grapes for wine. There were huge vineyards in the Ohio Country. The soil was ideal for it. The only problem was that every 15 years or so there would be an ice storm that would take out all the vines. Eventually folks stopped doing it. However, in a post-post-SHTF, if you're hunkering down on one side or the other of the Ohio River between Portsmouth and Lousiville, it might make sense to consider growing grapes.

    Or consider this: from the Pioneers to the Civil War, corn was THE major crop grown to the north and south of the Ohio River. The problem was how to get it to market. North of the Ohio, it was fed to hogs and the hogs were then marched down to Cincinnati, where they were processed. That's how Procter and Gamble got it's start, rendering hog fat into Ivory Soap. On the Kentucky side, everyone made corn liquor and then floated the barrels down the river to New Orleans. Bourbon? It comes from the old Bourbon County of KY. The limestone creeks made for ideal water for the distillation. The only question I have is this: Why the difference? Why hogs north of the Ohio and whiskey to the south? My guess is the quality of the water, but I'm not sure. The creeks that empty into the Ohio on the Ohio side of the river are running over clay and are notoriously muddy. The corresponding creeks on the kentucky side are touted by KYDWFR as some of the best smallmouth waters in the state.

    There was a gazetteer published in the 1840's for Europeans thinking about relocating to Ohio. It's in the Library of Congress. It had all kinds of interesting information about agriculture and industry, and I read through it ravenously when I found it. Probably there's something like that for everyone. The trick is digging it up.

    Here's another question: back when I was a kid they grew peaches in Peach Grove-- a lot of them. Peach Grove is now a sprawling housing development just inside the 275 loop. However, back in the day, there were massive peach orchards grown by several farmers and they had been there for a few several generations. So why there? If I had a place around my BOL that was called Peach Grove or Orchard Ridge or some such thing, I'd be investigating the heck out of it for what I would be trying to grow post-post-SHTF. I would want to know what sorts of apples had been grown, what kind of cows-- all that kind of stuff-- and I'd want to know why.

    Here's on more question: When I went looking up the history of my wife's county, it had very little white history up until the 1830's. There are almost no family names extent from prior to the 1820's. You got to ask yourself why. There's a bunch of complicated answers, but the bottom line is that the earliest pioneers got eaten. Whites were coming in all through the 1700's, but they'd cross the Cumberland Gap, make it as far as the Big South Fork of the Cumberland and then disappear. Part of it was indians, but a good part of it was the ground was so poor for agriculture that anyone trying to make a homestead starved. Bottom line: somebody or something ended up eating them.

    So how does this fit in with a discussion of post-post-SHTF? Look, if you have your BOL situated in a place called Verdant Valley or Happy Acres or Big Corn, you may be able to sustain yourself. On the other hand, if you're just up the road from Dog Slaughter Falls, Rockfield or Starvation Hollow, Frost Junction or Hellpit , you might want to look into local history and find out why. Sure, it might be just fun history, but it could also lead you to some pertinent discoveries.
     
  19. Ganado

    Ganado Monkey+++

    well when Mt St Helen blew the sky was cloudy for several days. and the ash wash heavy for up to 100 miles. If Yellowstone blew I don't know how long we would have ash cover. While the ash is great for plants, the lack of sunlight could be problematic even with greenhouses.
     
    Aeason and Seacowboys like this.
  20. Seacowboys

    Seacowboys Senior Member Founding Member

    New Orleans, pre-Katrina, was my favorite city in the world. It was filled with music, dancing, wonderful food, the constant aroma of spices and bougainvillea. There was always a sense of history and excitement in the air. I can't really explain it to anyone that didn't experience it, in a way that makes it real. It re-built into a FEMA version, best it could but the city no longer lives. The real community died and what grew back is a tourist version with danger lurking behind every corner. I feel like I have been in a combat zone whenever I have to walk the streets there now. Yes, New Orleans had the most corrupt police force in the world, according to many, but their rules of engagement were different and it worked to keep the city what it was. The folks that lived there didn't seem to mind for the most part, believing that if you broke the rules, you got the hell beat out of you and dropped in the river. Memphis was kind of the same way. Outside of "Who Dat?" there is no sense of community there any more, at least not that a visitor can experience. When FEMA rebuilds, you get a new and improved version of what they want you to have, and not what made you unique.
     
    T. Riley, Ganado and Aeason like this.
  1. Dunerunner
  2. Dunerunner
  3. Dunerunner
  4. Dunerunner
  5. DKR
  6. Dunerunner
  7. Dunerunner
  8. Dunerunner
  9. Dunerunner
  10. Motomom34
  11. Motomom34
  12. Motomom34
  13. Dunerunner
  14. Dunerunner
  15. Dunerunner
  16. Motomom34
  17. ghrit
  18. Motomom34
  19. Motomom34
survivalmonkey SSL seal        survivalmonkey.com warrant canary
17282WuJHksJ9798f34razfKbPATqTq9E7