Survival: Skills and links

[fightingquaker13]

The sad thing is, Tom is right. Its not sad that Tom is right, as he is more often than I like to admit. What is sad is that if gas and electricity were to vanish tommorrow and stay gone, tens of millions would die. Yet our ancestors did just fine and produced a prosperous society without them. The key is infra-structure and the intellectual capital to run it. We have lost than knowledge. Most engineers would be helpless without CAD and unable to use, much less build a slide rule, yet those got us to the moon. How many farmers could make a go of it with no pesticides, herbicides, irrigation, much less trucks to get their crops to market? The grid is fragile because we have become too dependant on stuff that can break. I'm not a survivalist or a Luddite. I like my GPS, depth sounder and eotech. I just know that they are disposable. We need to look at survival in terms of communities, not just individuals, or what the heck is the point? Those basic bits of knowledge and skills should not be allowed to die.
FQ13 Who now officially feels like an old fart

[Ping]

Not sure if this one was mentioned yet?  http://www.americansurvivalstore.com/

[tombogan03884]

The sad thing is, Tom is right. Its not sad that Tom is right, as he is more often than I like to admit. What is sad is that if gas and electricity were to vanish tommorrow and stay gone, tens of millions would die. Yet our ancestors did just fine and produced a prosperous society without them. The key is infra-structure and the intellectual capital to run it. We have lost than knowledge. Most engineers would be helpless without CAD and unable to use, much less build a slide rule, yet those got us to the moon. How many farmers could make a go of it with no pesticides, herbicides, irrigation, much less trucks to get their crops to market? The grid is fragile because we have become too dependant on stuff that can break. I'm not a survivalist or a Luddite. I like my GPS, depth sounder and eotech. I just know that they are disposable. We need to look at survival in terms of communities, not just individuals, or what the heck is the point? Those basic bits of knowledge and skills should not be allowed to die.
FQ13 Who now officially feels like an old fart

You are being to pessimistic FQ. If we learn, remember and practice the ways our fore fathers did things we can modify them to let us keep our fancy modern toys, if we generate our own power there is no line loss, so it it more efficient, the wind mills of today started out hundreds of years ago grinding grain, irrigation is one of mans oldest technologies and the did it with out pumps. What I'm talking about is combining the technologies of yesterday with the knowledge of today and establishing a style of living that doesn't mark each community with a brown haze and frees us from worrying about a squirrel in upstate NY blacking out the North East AGAIN.
You are right about SURVIVING in communities but that doesn't mean you have to be living in each others hip pockets
It is interesting to note that while they are held in low esteem by many here, it was the Hippies, thinking along these same lines that saved many of the old crafts from extinction like basket making, pottery, and weaving.

[blackwolfe]

Here's a tip that might help someone raising there own their own trees for fruits, nut, or timber.  A friend of mine with a few acres put in some fruit trees a few years back.  There ended up being a long hot dry spell and the young trees weren't doing to well.  He had a tractor and a water tank to water them, but most of the water ran off unless applied slowly witch took a lot of time.  He had access to a lot of the white 5 gallon buckets often used for food items in restuants.  He drilled small holes in the bottom and placed several around each tree.  The water slowly drained from the buckets saturating the ground with out running off.  He used the tractor hauled water tank to quickly fill the buckets and cut the time to water his trees significantly and didn't need to water as much as the water use was more effecient.   He lost a few trees that were probably already stressed but the rest of his "orchard" is doing very well and producing fruit.   Obviously you could use the method to water other plants.

[Badgersmilk]

+1 on Quakers comments.  One family on their own stands little chance.  Dont forget medical emergencies!  Chopping firewood, dropping timber, working the land is a bit more hazardous in practice than many have thought.  In particular to the unpracticed.

A great source of food that requires little, to no maitenance.  Even provides a great source of entertainment...  FISH.  When looking for a homestead, one with an existing pond would be ideal.  But man made ponds can be very good to, and not as expensive as you may think to have built and stocked.  It takes research on having proper structure for bigger fish to survive, but once in place its hard to beat as a renuable resource of food and water.

Something else to consider when choosing a power supply.  Solar panels break very easily in high winds!  Even if you only get one storm a year it may do thousands of dollars of damage (if replacement parts are available).  The weight of ice can crack them before your even out of bed in the morning.    Wind generators are rarely sufficient by themselves, and can be seen from great distances.  Also require dangerous maintenance.  Priority number one to me when considering a homestead is a strong creek that runs cleanly all year.  NOT hard to find in most parts of the country either.  Just stay away from rivers!  To many reasons to list.

I know I posted it before, but its a reeaaallllly good read!  

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/gentleman0711.html?en

[Sponsor]

[Pathfinder]

For plantings in general, there is a lot of discussion on various boards about permaculture.

For heirloom seeds, checkout the following - note: "heirloom" sometimes describes hybrids, so check carefully:

http://www.seedsavers.org/
http://www.territorialseed.com/
http://everlastingseeds.com/
http://www.tomatoseeds.net/
http://www.heirloomseeds.com/tomatoes.htm
http://thetomatolady.com/

[Big Frank]

One of my uncles had solar heat. It was like hoses zig-zagging up and down on the roof. The water went in at ambient temperature and came out HOT. I'm not sure what the rest of the system was. It survived several years of storms in Michigan's U.P.

[warhawke]

http://www.survivalblog.com/

is a good one, I wrote several articles for it myself.

[tombogan03884]

Just found this one
http://www.ki4u.com/