I know that compost piles can get hot especially if they get beyond a certain size. I know they can get hot enough that self ignition is a problem. So could we crack an egg and kill two birds by using that heat to drive a generator? Think of the potential of running pipes through a pile. You could have water or super critical co2 as the working fluid. If the pile was getting out of control you could inject carbonated water into it to drive away oxygen from that area. I think this could be useful almost anywhere in the world. It is a source for energy that is almost inexhaustible. On top of that you could carefully manage the quality of the compost.

So, about to leave a 5million big city for an 8,000 people country town. I have always been a joke zombie apocalypse person... But the issue I always had with most prep for it was how incredibly short term it is. So I am thinking more medium term SHTF, all infrastructure gone, and not really going to come back, all easily hoardable foods gone, petrol all expired etc.

The town I am moving to is in a good bowl, super fertile, essentially supplies food for 5 million people already. So growing and raising food won't be a huge issue. Most of the town has solar power (enough to completely power a modern home exclusively during the day for 75% of the year) Winter is never dangerous cold... Naked outside in the depth of winter would suck, but you aren't going to die. Heat is a bigger issue, but only breaks 40C/100F 1 month of the year Western Victoria, Australia Water isn't really an issue, multiple, different, safe water supplies Less concerned with political instability or crime/defence. We aren't as inherently divided, and culturally are quite trusting of each other. Violence here is already rare. So yes, while there will obviously be more danger in that way when SHTF, honestly I don't see it getting worse than the US is now very quick. We are even the state that spent 190 days in lockdown, minimal complaints, and reelected the government with a bigger majority after.

My concern is over essentials, that we no longer make ourselves, and how to keep them.

Obvious one is soap. Animal fat is easy to get... But where do I find lye? Or make/extract lye?

Gun powder I have covered (which would be for general explosive, for clearing land mostly). You can make nitrate with urine and soil Charcoal is easy And then you heat fools gold in a pot with a tube connecting it to another pot which collects the pure sulphur.

-fools gold can be collected about 2hours walk away

Obviously that nitrate will be used to cure meats as well. And I can extract sea salt in a 6 hour by horse journey away.

I can make alcohol, and can refine it to 98% for cleaning etc

I can make chloroform out of bleach and isopropyl (would be scary without access to ice though, as that reaction gets crazy hot)

But yeah... What sorts of things along those lines do you have?

https://ardbark.com/shtf-survival-boot-camp/

PDF | 6 MB

SHTF Survival Boot Camp: A Course for Urban and Wilderness Survival during Violent, Off-Grid, & Worst Case Scenarios

Hello everyone, we would like to invite and introduce you to our new discord server called Kolaps.

A place to network with people from Czechia & Slovakia. We are searching for respectful folks looking to discuss and share skills, information, knowledge, and so on. Support one another and one day possibly materialize things of positive nature in real life. While speaking the language isn't required, our channels are language separated.

See you on the server!

Invite link: https://discord.gg/4u7eq8wSrp

The most dangerous person isn't the guy with the biggest gun. It's more often the guy who everyone trusts like family, the one who has people who will tell him what's happening, the one they ask for advice, the one who they will wake up early to help, the one who has lists, knows where everything and everyone can be found. This guy doesn't have 20 guns and exotic calibers, he has a couple that he's shot so much he replaced parts but not the gun because it feels weird to use any other.

Build a first world bubble in the collapse, because if it takes years you can't just keep your head down and when the 🎈 goes up, it's gonna be harder to build up trustworthy friendships.

GL

Been writing a guide on the yields involved in farming everything. Trying to write it for small scale farms, like what people with a few acres or a decent backyard might be able to work with.

Please let me know if you have any inputs on what I should add. Leave a comment, will update this as I go.

Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/185ce-NgnVqCBpva3R7j6XRnzknZE22mWGJIT6bNkJMg/edit?usp=sharing

I created a free course teaching how you can navigate using coordinates without a GPS. Here it is:

FREE COURSE: Land Navigation for Preppers

Order a custom MGRS map! Check me out here: hardballmaps.com

Personally I don’t think collapse is inevitable but I do think it is in the realm of possibility and I think there are many levels of possibility in the mix.

That being said I feel like in any of those situations we could lose a lot of knowledge because we lose the infrastructure necessary to act on it. Things like open source designs that require precision machine tooling.

But things like iron smelting once you know about it it can always be useful. I often wish for some sort of hard drive that contains all the information of that sort that we have found since the age of fossil fuels.

I’m sure that there are countless discoveries that we’ve made that would be useful to any large well organized community no matter their level of infrastructure.

Does something like this exist?

I used to frequent this sub. It was vibrant, full of intellectually stimulating information...

Where did everyone go?

Just finished watching “Greenland”, and it makes me wonder- is there actually any real plan by our government for something like that? And what would it really look like? Contacting “pre-selected” families seems completely unrealistic in the modern age of the Internet. Bunkers able to withstand a nuke exist, but what about food and water, medicine, or even TOILETS? Makes me want to just go back to sleep.

Don't know if anyone has posted this yet, but it shows prevalent wind direction broken down by month and region.

Windrose

So is there a gas mask that has a filter that can block out viruses/radiation/fungus and bacteria?

People in the Donbas region of Ukraine are already deep into a SHTF environment. They aren't even allowed to leave, and go into the main body of Ukraine. The main municipal water in many areas is shut off. There are shallow wells, but many pumps are frozen.

There has been talk about some of the water there being "hot". If an individual on a farm garden property there has no meters to test with, how would you even test it?

What readily available stuff around most houses can be used to filter it from cysts?

I know that boiling will kill most living bacteria and germs, but how to purify other stuff out of it?

What would you do, to ensure clean drinking water?

Due to recent happenings here in europa and a lot of people forced to move.i made a simple,easy conversion for cars and other vehicles to be used as temporary/emergency OffGrid accommodations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4yVYViVSlQ

Itemlist:

• 12V solar charger , solar panel, small inverter, car fuses, connection cables
• 12V Cb radio + magnetic rooftop antennae
• Usb Chargers for Phones/tables
• 2nd Car Battery
• 12v Gasoline pump
• 12V water pump with 2-3m hose and water filters
• Gas bottle + stove OR a simple Hobo Stove, 1 large pot
• GPS, (in phone or as a navigation system)
• Toolkit (car repairs), axe, knife, folding Shovel, zip ties, ductape, rope
• Store able Food: noodles, Rice, Cans, Water
• Sleeping Bag/blankets
• Soap / personal hygiene stuff ,
• 2 Sets of seasonal cloth
• Medicaments for a month
• Two Copies of all important documents
• for hot areas -> a 12V cooling box
• additional Fuel, 3-4 Canisters
• Spare tire, tire plug kit and a good air compressor

- Ventilation is important , specially if it is more then one person in a vehicle. the humidity of 3-4 exhaling humans that sleep in a closed car can be enough to have condensation water run as little rivers inside on the windows. A simple vent fan can be the difference between a comfortable space and a sauna and/or humid freezer with temp shifts. Vent fans use power too- not much but some- so yet another reason to emphasize having more solar/battery capacity than you strictly need.

Bugging in should be first option, but in case you need to bug out or evac to an RP, what would be your cue with everything going on in the world?

So, I have Asperger's Syndrome and I want to know if there is anything I should take into account in post collapse society. Like my well being, certain preps, etc.

This one I've tried elsewhere, and didn't find a good home for it, but I thought it may be close enough to try here. If this doesn't fit (since it isn't necessarily after the collapse, but before civilization starts...), let me know (or the mods can remove it). I did figure there was a lot of overlap between my idea and this sub itself. Anyways, on with the prompt!

Inspired by the picture (found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/a08e0l/lets_say_youve_gone_back_in_time/) as well as a couple of other things, let's make some assumptions and put together a list.

Assumptions:

You’re thrown back in time, and are going to reinvent civilization, or thrown into a new world, with humans and similar rules of physics (though details like edible plants may be different). This could be as far back as the Stone Age, the Dark Ages, or as recently as last week (though the last one will be harder to bring back interesting information, though I suppose lottery numbers could work.)

You have a device, which can recharge (ideally through an integrated solar charger, or an associated hand crank device), and can store books, but no videos. (I’m using a kindle paperwhite for this purpose). (The main reason for this assumption is because I'm trying to put something like this together, and simpler is better IMO).

You are immortal (or at least won’t die of old age). This isn’t necessary, but makes the long term planning a bit easier. Otherwise, you have to teach someone else how to read (which you’ll likely do anyways, as literacy and writing can help advance civilization) and pass on your device.

What would you have on your device? (And can you think of any more or better assumptions?)

The categories I have thus far are:

Immediate survival concerns (find water, food, shelter, first aid) Think SAS Survival guide, and every survival book you've ever read. Parts will be of limited value until you can start making things.

How to do stuff – how to make things, how to acquire different materials (aluminum, steel, silk, etc). Technology trees on what you need in order to build other things, all the way up to something like a computer, including things like the Difference Engine (Babbage machine), and a basic OS (smaller is better). This also includes things like blacksmithing, making concrete, how to build a bridge, or make paper, HOW TO GROW FOOD!, how to domesticate dogs, cattle, etc, and so on. This list grows longer and longer the more you think about it.

Philosophy and SCIENCE! (These include the Scientific Method, for discovering more basic physical laws, and history of moral arguments, like against slavery, freedom of speech and so on) Should also include books on the HISTORY of science, so that you can walk people through various prior experiments to show what doesn’t work, and why. Can also include popsci books like Calling Bullshit, A Brief History of Time, and the like. They won't have necessarily things you can use immediately, but you can try and prove things or disprove them (if your new universe is weird or something)

Communications – languages (English or your native language to whatever dictionaries), pidgin languages (simplified versions of other languages to communicate), Conlags (constructed languages, though these can be minimal, and only ones that have a purpose).

History – assuming you’re dropped off on Earth in the past, knowing when to get out of Dodge in a certain area can be useful. Also can get you rich (though knowing how to get salt, make aluminum, or find certain spices can do the same thing).

MATH! – this should include all forms of math you can find or think of. Discrete math helps you with the logic for computers, geometry, trig and calculus help with all sorts of other things. How to build (and use) an abacus, slide rule, etc (Include Turing’s papers)

Measurements – how to develop a system of weights and measurements, including a standard that can be replicated anywhere without previous references

Entertainment – how to make instruments, how to read sheet music, lots of sheet music from songs, rules for games (board games, card games, chess and checkers, poker, etc), books (this can change from person to person, and should be filled up last)

Politics – various political arguments throughout the years, US Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and so on. If there is another government who you prefer, get their documents in addition to/instead of.

Microhistories – this is a weird category, books that deep dive into various topics. Things like Salt and Cod (both by Mark Kurlansky), or Beans A History by Ken Albolo fall here. The “A Very Short Introduction” series by Oxford University Press goes here as well.

War/Warfare/Violence – this will include things like Sun Tzu’s Art of War, books on martial arts, whatever you can think of, as well as how to make various weapons, eventually going up to guns (along with gunpowder obviously).

Books that do the exact same thing I’m trying to do here, and still manage to do it BETTER (really, I’m not bitter) – Books like The Knowledge by Lewis Dartnell, or How to Invent Everything by Ryan North, both of which inspired this idea originally. Fiction books like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court could be included here as well.

Wikipedia – There isn’t, as far as I’m aware a good way of downloading Wikipedia to something like a kindle paperwhite. (If you use a Kindle fire, or an iPad, look into something called Kiwix), nor a good way of downloading individual articles (or groups of articles) as books. There is a plugin for Calibre to download individual pages as epubs, which you can then merge if you want into larger books, or just convert to a kindle format. While you wouldn't necessarily want the whole thing, which articles would you want?

Edit: which categories am I missing as well?

I just found this sub this morning and noticed a post from a year ago asking how insulin might be obtained without the benefit of modern medical infrastructure. It may be a bit late to reply to that post but I thought that the existence of the Open Insulin Project might be of some interest. It's a smallish group of biohackers that are attempting to create an open source protocol for producing insulin at the local level...something that your neighborhood hospital might be able to handle without depending on an outside source. They don't seem to have anything yet but it might be worth keeping an eye on them...

https://openinsulin.org/

Eventually we will forget the date. Is there any way we could keep track of the date without modern technology?

Considering getting solar for our house, partially because you can do so many useful things with electricity when the grid is down, like cooking. But in a collapse scenario, especially in an urban environment, is this asking for trouble? It seems like you're basically advertising that you have a house worth taking by force. I'm my particular case, it's a neighborhood of 600+ homes, and maybe 6-10 have solar

Related: is there any way to disguise that you have solar?