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 Frazzled wrote:
Canned food does have a shelf life, and its a lot less than you think.

100+ year old canned items from riverboat wrecks have been recovered from under a layer of mud, opened and found to be perfectly safe. The flavor will deteriorate over time, but as long as the can is in good shape and the food itself was properly canned, can goods will last longer than you will.

The 3 issues with canned goods are improper processing (i.e., tomato cans swollen from botulism), improper handling (dents can breach the can) and improper storage (rust can breach the can).




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 welshhoppo wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Nah, ships out at sea stay at sea. Even if they bump into stuff, nobody is going to notice.

how so?

Also, your average ship will last about twenty years before the hull starts to rot, although it would be practically immobile long before then without someway to clean the hull.

The ships in port, yes.

With nobody and no fuel to manuever them, the ships out to sea will eventually ground on reefs or get sunk in storms.

Herzlos wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Looking at hardware, a modern car will run down its battery in a few months because of the burglar alarm.

You may be able to get a bit more life out of modern cars by disconnecting the battery and removing/covering the wheels (to prevent UV and weight aging the tires) and leaving the handbrake on. I'm of course assuming you'd be able to prepare a dozen or so cars and treat them as essentially disposable. As the fuel goes off, and roads deteriorate they aren't going to last very long. You'd probably be better off long term preparing bicycle parts and power tool batteries.

Food wise, the first thing I'd be doing is driving to anywhere I can get vegetable seeds (supermarkets here, DIY places, garden stores) and get planting. Then when all the vegetables are gone in ~6-12 weeks you'll at least get a source of fresh veg. In fact, I'd probably just try and move to a local farm and set up there.

Dont forget the guns when the raving band of bandits start popping up again.

though no idea how long that would last if all ammunition manufacturing goes down.

also depending on what kind of apocalypse, it might not be viable to go for the vegi root. (pun intended)

but collecting them would be a good idea. as would be books on farming and the likes.

On that note, guns last pretty much forever, as does ammunition. You could always reload spent cases as long as you have components, but most people hoarding components would probably be better off hoarding ammunition.

 Desubot wrote:
Dont forget the guns when the raving band of bandits start popping up again. though no idea how long that would last if all ammunition manufacturing goes down.

Cased ammunition will stay good for a very long time if properly stored, at least ten years as long as it's kept dry. Some bulk boxes will also be sealed - for example the military bulk box for our 7.62x39 assault rifle ammo is a sealed metal canister within a wooden box. The ammo inside will be perfectly happy so long as the sealed metal canister stays whole. But as survival nuts say, if it's not life-and-death always use the oldest ammo first.

Also (re)loading your own ammo is a simple enough thing. Many hunters and sport shooters do so and a basic reloading set doesn't even require electricity.

I remember those spam cans.

heavy as feth.

I would figure the components needed for reloading would be an issue. there would be plenty of ammo around (at least in the us (Feth ya?)) but just how easy would it be to find and or make your own caps and powder.

Blackpowder is fairly easy to make, and can definitely be done in a pre-industrial setting. It's not as clean or efficient as modern gunpowder, but it can get the job done.

 Psienesis wrote:
Blackpowder is fairly easy to make, and can definitely be done in a pre-industrial setting. It's not as clean or efficient as modern gunpowder, but it can get the job done.

True.

iv always been curious about how they make the primers though.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The classic example is the HB lead pencil with rubber. It requires skills in forestry, mining, chemistry, metallurgy, machine tooling, etc, that could not possibly be gained by one person, yet it can be bought anywhere for a few pence.

I think your objective would be in five to 10 years to put together a functioning economy on a late Victorian/early Edwardian technical base, while there is still enough operable modern equipment to gather the people, machines and materials including paper based education and history.

From that point further development would depend on how fast you could build up a working population and educate them, because you have the advantages of looking up designs and large stockpiles of raw materials such as the steel in car bodies.

Whilst it took only 100 years to get from the Victorian technology to where we are today, they had the advantage of a huge population. Taking the lead pencil example, if you want to develop the skills to make one, first you need at least half a dozen people to learn them.

I think the main area that you'd need to focus on would be metallurgy and lathe operation. With those, you can shape the parts you need to make further tools, or machinery. It might be time consuming, but once you have those, you have the ability to make more or less anything you need, from engine parts for simple aeroplanes (out come the Sopwith Camel designs) to measuring tools.

jwr wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Canned food does have a shelf life, and its a lot less than you think.

100+ year old canned items from riverboat wrecks have been recovered from under a layer of mud, opened and found to be perfectly safe. The flavor will deteriorate over time, but as long as the can is in good shape and the food itself was properly canned, can goods will last longer than you will.

The 3 issues with canned goods are improper processing (i.e., tomato cans swollen from botulism), improper handling (dents can breach the can) and improper storage (rust can breach the can).

I'm not familiar with your riverboat example, but I'd caution against using it, with its unusual storage/preservation, as support for post-apoc cans being safe effectively forever. While technically true, it can be very difficult for non-experts to tell if a food will kill you or make you sick. Yes, most of the time, bad food will smell or taste off, but it only takes a taste of something that's grown B.bot for the toxin to kill you. This is one of the reasons why messing with canned/jarred/pickled items is not necessarily a good idea, and why Frazzled statement about shelf life is a prudent assumption.

The major issue I'd see is the old rule I was taught - never buy or eat food from a dented or damaged can. Recently I've taken to buying lots of stuff off Amazon because, well, lazy. But when I buy stuff like canned cat food or beans, they are all, 100%, dented. Only one has gone sour. But still, every time I open one of those dented cans, alarm bells go off in my head. I know, modern cans have linings and stuff and these all have recent processing dates, but still, post apoc? You may not be able to see a breach in a can that is a wide open barn door for a pathogen. People are going to be dropping dead left and right, or rendered incapacitated by the mega-squirts due to eating bad food and drinking bad water.

In fact, if I were to create a post-apoc setting, I'd likely have the first great dying (caused by whatever), then the survivors live on pretty OK on the leftover foods and medicines. Maybe 2, 3 years after industrial food and pharmaceuticals have all run out, there's a second great dying as people drop dead of starvation, food poisoning, and basic infections and illnesses.

Don't even get me started on water... sigh.

 Desubot wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Blackpowder is fairly easy to make, and can definitely be done in a pre-industrial setting. It's not as clean or efficient as modern gunpowder, but it can get the job done.

True.

iv always been curious about how they make the primers though.

You'd go back to flintlocks is what would happen.

Miniballs in rifled muskets.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gymnogyps wrote:

Don't even get me started on water... sigh.

Yeah, the population of many cities would likely die of thirst. Especially modern cities in deserts that rely on pipelines. LA would just become a dusty hellhole.

 Desubot wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Blackpowder is fairly easy to make, and can definitely be done in a pre-industrial setting. It's not as clean or efficient as modern gunpowder, but it can get the job done.

True.

iv always been curious about how they make the primers though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMs3HeAo9EI

http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-33036.html

I've made gunpowder myself. It's easy if you can get the ingredients. Getting the ingredients after an apocalypse might be more of a problem. You would have to raid chemical supply warehouses for sulphur. It might be easier to raid gun shops and army bases for real modern ammunition.

My guess is the components would quickly become a tradable commodity. Areas with naturally oocuring sulpher would become exporters of it.

 Psienesis wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Blackpowder is fairly easy to make, and can definitely be done in a pre-industrial setting. It's not as clean or efficient as modern gunpowder, but it can get the job done.

True.

iv always been curious about how they make the primers though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMs3HeAo9EI

http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-33036.html

While interesting
i cant watch the tube.
and i was more talking about trying to replace modern weapons instead of flint locks and old black ball powder. while usable i dont recall them being super reliable. though im sure people will find a way to make it work.
Im sure shotguns would work ok using jeryrigged precision caps and recast lead. and be usable for quite a while.

 Desubot wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Blackpowder is fairly easy to make, and can definitely be done in a pre-industrial setting. It's not as clean or efficient as modern gunpowder, but it can get the job done.

True.

iv always been curious about how they make the primers though.

Mercury fulminate or potassium chloride for DIY. Ammo makers use more modern formulas that ignite hotter, more reliable and less corrosively. Early primers and caps would eat a bore up.

They are very easily contaminated by petroleum products, especially penetrating oil.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
You would have to raid chemical supply warehouses for sulphur.

Nah, just raid a garden supply store. Or an oil refinery. Legislation to reduce sulfur in fuel and other petrochemical products means they have sulfur-removal processes in place. Yes, you might have to add a process to change the hydrogen disulfude they extract from petrochem but the refinery might actually have that process too, or a nearby chemical plant has it. Much of the sulfur used today is from this refinery process instead of mined raw.

jwr wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Blackpowder is fairly easy to make, and can definitely be done in a pre-industrial setting. It's not as clean or efficient as modern gunpowder, but it can get the job done.

True.

iv always been curious about how they make the primers though.

Mercury fulminate or potassium chloride for DIY. Ammo makers use more modern formulas that ignite hotter, more reliable and less corrosively. Early primers and caps would eat a bore up.

They are very easily contaminated by petroleum products, especially penetrating oil.

Well i mean would it be in the power of a normal post apoc war survivor joe to figure it out off of books. then if so then i can see (edit: modern) firearms being one of those things that can last as long as humans are alive.