Preparedness for when

[Deleted User]

Thirded! We'd mount an expedition and come and get you both back, cos we need your long headed common sense!!! also your whacky sense of humour!!!

nuatha

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

Thirded! We'd mount an expedition and come and get you both back, cos we need your long headed common sense!!! also your whacky sense of humour!!!

I'm fairly sure no needs my sense of humour, tolerates it possibly

[Deleted User]

Oh ye of little faith.....you fit right in here with all the rest of us my friend. I can never work out whether we as a group are enlightened and sensible ahead of the game or an anachronism in an otherwise technological world? I like to think we're the former and have a real use, even if it's only being the brakes and keeping knowledge going and remembered and used or whether we're all completely barking......howsomever whatever we are we all share that ready sense of the ridiculous that keeps you going on very dark days!

Frugalsod

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

Oh ye of little faith.....you fit right in here with all the rest of us my friend. I can never work out whether we as a group are enlightened and sensible ahead of the game or an anachronism in an otherwise technological world? I like to think we're the former and have a real use, even if it's only being the brakes and keeping knowledge going and remembered and used or whether we're all completely barking......howsomever whatever we are we all share that ready sense of the ridiculous that keeps you going on very dark days!

I would say it is a bit of both. Being ahead of the crowd is the ultimate prepping solution no matter what the direction is. The fact that we are using technology to keep old skills alive and in use is contradictory but practical.

As for us being barking it has been used to describe my attitude to energy conservation but considering my energy bill have been constant for 18 years is a sign of the impact of conservation.

armyknife

GreyQueen wrote: »

Interesting debates.

I wouldn't be alive without my medication, I would have died nearly 20 years ago, so my existance is reliant on living in an advanced society with the ability to manufacture my meds and to distribute them affordably. I have about 2 years' supply on in-date meds at any time, including a cache at the family home and in the BOB and a considerable amount at all times in the daily carry. All are carefully rotated and none of them have ever been allowed to go OOD - they have about 20 months date on them at point of issue. Once they're gone, so am I, and by gone, I mean comatose in hours and dead in days. What a p***er.

I've lost the scrap of paper I did the sums on, but I was running the numbers on population, as in what would happen if the death rate exceeded the birth rate by 4% per annum. I think that in about a decade your population is down 20% or so. That's a lot of people to lose.:( It is also entirely possible, as I sit in the pharmacy, looking at a wall of bagged medications, that there are many people like me, who would be goners without meds. Or like SuperGran with her strong artritus drugs; would be severely disabled without them and in a lot of pain, as opposed to able to walk and in moderate pain.

Nothing is set in stone in terms of how society being organised now being how society will be organised in the future. The platform of our present way of life is oil. There may be another, equally versatile energy source as a platform in the future. There may not be anything of the like, and we're hairless apes who managed to get lucky and have squandered the distilled sunlight and biomass of millennias, and we'll lead much shorter, grubbier lives in the future.

The blogger FerFal is interesting to read as he comes from Argentina, presently living in N. Ireland with his missus and kids. He's very real about what happens to a once-prosperous society when the economy goes rotten, even down to the little things such as people looking shabbier, more faded, less trimmed. If you haven't read his stuff, you're missing out, IMO.

The piece of ground which contains my allotment (and many others) is a known site of Early Neolithic farmsteads. Circa 4,000 BC. Every time I'm up there, I turn up their 6,000 year old tools. I expect they couldn't comprehend the cars on the nearby road, the planes above, my steel gardening tools, the bright colours of the plastic trugs. My rectangular garden shed would look very strange to them. They'd recognise the broad beans (and the bliddy fat hen), but just about everything else grown up there arrived long after their era.

The thing is, their 6,000 year old flint tools are still here. You can still cut things with them, and the one I think was a bradawl still serves the purpose. The New Stone Age didn't end because we ran outta stones, it was superceded by metals. The Petroleum Age will end when we run out of accessible oil and gas. But we'll still be here as a species, in far fewer numbers than we are now, and with greatly different lives.

Gawdelp the generation(s) which have to manage the transition period, though, because it will be bitterly hard.

Interesting perspective GQ.

Though I think Chickens only took-off here , so to speak, with the Romans. Might have come over a bit earlier, but not neolithic.

Karmacat

Originally Posted by Frugalsod
I still do not think that we should deport you. Please stay.:beer:

ivyleaf wrote: »

Seconded :j:j:)

I consider myself as being the first to request nuatha stay, but I was a little obscure :D:D

I'm resigned to the failure of my cleavers idea, I've checked it out elsewhere, and people hate it

[Deleted User]

For anyone using Candle bulbs, £land have some 3W (20W equivalent) LED, SES, Candle bulbs.

daz378

most environmental changes , may take decades or even centuries to fundamentally effect our lives, unless a lotterry style super event occurs , like canary island dropping in sea or yellowstone caldera , but say a medium event of icelandic volcanoe stopping airtravel for months , combined with grexit, a year of hardship could provide excuses to bar all benefits except the most disabled ........just had a couple of days in blackpool , but because i arrived on spec got hammered on single supplement..... 55 pound a night , but my kneee was hurting , it was warm and wanted somewhere to stay ... not a bad hotel though........you all take care

GreyQueen

armyknife wrote: »

Interesting perspective GQ.

Though I think Chickens only took-off here , so to speak, with the Romans. Might have come over a bit earlier, but not neolithic.

You baffled me there for a moment, as I hadn't written anything about chickens.... then the penny dropped.

'Fat hen' is the English country name for this;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenopodium_album

It's a fast growing and extremely prolific weed. Its leaves are edible, as is the mealy-type grains. Back in the day, they were gathered, parched and ground into meal.

If anyone would like to experiment with Chenopodium aka lambs quarters, melde, goosefoot, go into the fields or veggie patches of this septic isle and you're sure to find some.

RAS

Generally turns up in the manured ground, which says something about its capacity to survive the bovine digestive system!

The thing that most concerns me is fat/oil. Energy dense, very good at turning a few wild greens into a salad or side dish and also useful as a source of light, combined with alkali to make soap.

I loathe those yellow spring fields but as long as we can process it, rapeseed may be our best source. And presumably the oil cake can be fed to livestock after.