If TSHTF so hard that someone truly needs to bunker up for months on end civilization as we know it will likely be at an end. No coming back from it. Congrats, you survived to enjoy the death of everything we know. Heck knows they didn’t store a hoard of raw materials, tools, physical books full of knowledge, farm implements, seeds, and have ready access to individuals with year 1895 level skills to make it all work. They only thought of themselves and stored some food, lots of booze, and a little medicine, figuring they could jet off to some safe haven when it was convenient.
If it were even the 1950s I think there would still be enough of a reservoir of local material and knowledge, and everything was mostly manually skilled labor to create, so bunkering could have worked out. But not today. Global supply chains, relocated resource extraction and manufacturing, and everything computerized has virtually guaranteed the impossibility of bootstrapping modern civilization should it fail.
They’re just as dead, but they get to enjoy roving starving humans trying to kill them over whatever’s left.
Depends on the extinction event. There are plenty of scenarios (well not plenty, but enough) where most people die and supply chains are wiped out, but there are still libraries and warehouses full of shit (home depots, Amazon warehouses, and so on). Pharmacies would be good for raiding, too. Also farmer bob and his family died, but all of his shit is still there on his farm ready to be taken.
And you can get generators with three fuel sources, not to mention that solar panels are readily available and generally easy to put together for a janky half-assed set up, so anything that needs electricity can still be used. (Did somebody say power tools? Did somebody say well pump? Did somebody say small flow treatment system? Did somebody say refrigeration?)
And preppers (not all, but likely many) do amass survival books, encyclopedias and “medicine for dummies” books, and any of them that are serious are practicing Bushcraft enough to have a working knowledge of that.
I’m guessing the bunker is actually there to ride out the people killing other people to take their resources phase. Maybe a nuclear bomb?
Myself, I’m a half-assed homesteader, which is like being a prepper without all of the white supremacy stuff that goes with it. If there were an extinction event, and I somehow lived through it, I think I would last a couple more months than your average joe, but I doubt I would live into old age.
A generation is a lot of time to guess/check farming without power equipment. Not to mention the libraries likely with several books that outline that stuff. I have two books in my house right now that claim to be guides for similar stuff. Prepping is big business. And there are tons of john Deere’s and John Deere dealerships with service departments everywhere. I imagine you could keep it alive a long time. More than a generation, yes. 100 years? Probably not.
More than a generation, yes. 100 years? Probably not.
So much unknown. Competition with other survivors with guns, knives, the ability to poison your well when you aren’t looking or burn your house down while you sleep… assuming NONE of those kinds of things EVER happen, then, yes, the happy cooperative commune that never murders each other over scarce resources could keep a basic tractor running for 30+ years. Throw in all those other challenges… just traveling to a supply depot to get a new spark plug could be risking your life.
Even the happy cooperative commune is going to need centuries of relative peace in order to reboot the supply chain to the point of making new spark plugs compatible with the old engine blocks - or new engine blocks when the old ones are too worn to rebuild.
So much unknown. Competition with other survivors with guns, knives, the ability to poison your well when you aren’t looking or burn your house down while you sleep…
Or, everyone rallies in the first few years and the few survivors that are around work together and share resources, at least long enough that everyone gets theirs.
Movies and video games are more entertaining when there’s over-the-top conflict, and I think that shapes our predictions. We have seen, however, that in times of crisis communities and people rally together for the greater good. Even strangers help strangers. That doesn’t usually last long, but it does happen. And I have no reason to believe that wouldn’t be true if a world-killing meteor struck the earth in China. On my side of the planet, I do believe there would be a honeymoon phase before mad Max times.
I’d be naive to assume that it would be without conflict for generations. I’m not saying that at all.
Even the happy cooperative commune is going to need centuries of relative peace in order to reboot the supply chain to the point of making new spark plugs compatible with the old engine blocks - or new engine blocks when the old ones are too worn to rebuild.
Yes. It would take a while to figure out how to reboot factories and supply chains (if that even is the goal after the extinction event – when there’s 10,000 left alive scattered throughout the world, why would we need factories and supply chains?). But also, there are more than enough spark plugs and engine blocks packed in oil at tractor supplies and John Deere service departments to make it happen for generations. Traveling may or may not be dangerous – neither you nor I know.
My other claim is that we’d learn to use horses/cows to pull the tractor implements before the tractors are kaput for good. I stand by that claim.
Or, everyone rallies in the first few years and the few survivors that are around work together and share resources, at least long enough that everyone gets theirs.
Yeah, the problem is: we’re both right. Some will go one way, some another - and when the two types intermingle, the results would appear to be inevitably regrettable.
Movies and video games are more entertaining when there’s over-the-top conflict, and I think that shapes our predictions.
Having lived in big cities where “bad neighborhoods” means one house out of a thousand might harbor some bad kids who go out and do bad things, I’ll say: the vast majority of people in most of society are basically good, some of them truly great, but it doesn’t take very many bad actors to bring down a whole 100,000 population area into fear and chaos and over-the-top responses to threats.
You want examples of over-the-top responses in real life? They’re rare, but cops doing outrageously terrible things isn’t just in fiction… a lot of real life is more cold, callous and brutal than a lot of fiction.
we’d learn to use horses/cows to pull the tractor implements before the tractors are kaput for good.
In a lot of ways, horses and cows are much more work and expense (inputs of valuable materials) to keep operating than a tractor, it’s why the horse drawn carriages died out so quickly - not because they’re slow or smelly, but because cranking up an engine that sits in a garage and waits patiently for you for days, or months, at near zero storage cost is infinitely more efficient than protecting your livestock from disease and weather and poachers and wild predators…
And, yes, in those places where people can maintain working animals, they will go to that expense to plow the earth by mule or ox or horse power instead of planting by human labor, but it is a big step up from desperation on the run to keeping beasts of burden in working order.
The biggest danger would be illness and injury.
That is a big one, particularly while the cities are filled with unburied rotting corpses.
So, ever been to Utah? No saying they are fully prepared… But their mutant spawn may make it out to kill each other over the scraps if it’s not a total wipe of life.
There’s people that might survive, I’m thinking like the Amish. But even they depend on modern society at some level for materials. If anyone would make it it would be a group like that, someone already without modern tools as much as possible.
It will have to be those with a strong commitment to community and preparation. Which will mean people with “faith” in the future they probably won’t see.
So, that will exclude most of the narcissistic oligarchy. Though some are narcissistic enough about their own lineage to spawn a cult of personality for the continuation of their brood…
They will however continue to hoard resources enough to weather the more likely minor civil disturbances their actions are certain to cause. Wich is the real motive for some.
Maybe they’re coy about it, but the Amish I have met aren’t big into firearms. Once there’s a farm with food and no guns and roving bands of hungry men with guns and ammo situation, the farmers usually doesn’t do well in the ensuing relationship.
So you’re saying people with guns would kill the people with the knowledge needed to have a hope of survival in a hypothetical apocalyptic catastrophe in a shortsighted display of greed and strength?
Yeah, that does track, and when they don’t kill them just to show off that they can, they’ll also be doing it out of desparation, fear of starvation, and fear that the Amish women might drive knitting needles through their hearts.
Try 1695. There will be bits and bobs of modern life around, but the core skills required are going to be very much what the European settlers in the new world needed.
Most of the first European settlers didn’t have those skills and either died or were rescued by native peoples, whom they later thanked by massacring them.
The settlers were often townsfolk or recently demobilized soldiers, not experienced farmers. And it was a different ecosystem, with greater extremes of climate and different edible plants and pests, so even the agriculture needed to be adapted.
Most of the first European settlers didn’t have those skills and either died or were rescued by native peoples, whom they later thanked by massacring them.
Agreed on both points - needing to know how to grow food and not die from your own sanitation shortcomings, and how to ruthlessly kill the competition, those are the skills that get you past Thunderdome.
Well said. I was wondering why not just treat the world and its people well and they can continue to have their own private land to do whatever. Seems like hell if you’re stuck in a bunker without the modern world at your fingertips. Seems foolish to me as well.
Never understood these bunkers in modern times.
If TSHTF so hard that someone truly needs to bunker up for months on end civilization as we know it will likely be at an end. No coming back from it. Congrats, you survived to enjoy the death of everything we know. Heck knows they didn’t store a hoard of raw materials, tools, physical books full of knowledge, farm implements, seeds, and have ready access to individuals with year 1895 level skills to make it all work. They only thought of themselves and stored some food, lots of booze, and a little medicine, figuring they could jet off to some safe haven when it was convenient.
If it were even the 1950s I think there would still be enough of a reservoir of local material and knowledge, and everything was mostly manually skilled labor to create, so bunkering could have worked out. But not today. Global supply chains, relocated resource extraction and manufacturing, and everything computerized has virtually guaranteed the impossibility of bootstrapping modern civilization should it fail.
They’re just as dead, but they get to enjoy roving starving humans trying to kill them over whatever’s left.
Depends on the extinction event. There are plenty of scenarios (well not plenty, but enough) where most people die and supply chains are wiped out, but there are still libraries and warehouses full of shit (home depots, Amazon warehouses, and so on). Pharmacies would be good for raiding, too. Also farmer bob and his family died, but all of his shit is still there on his farm ready to be taken.
And you can get generators with three fuel sources, not to mention that solar panels are readily available and generally easy to put together for a janky half-assed set up, so anything that needs electricity can still be used. (Did somebody say power tools? Did somebody say well pump? Did somebody say small flow treatment system? Did somebody say refrigeration?)
And preppers (not all, but likely many) do amass survival books, encyclopedias and “medicine for dummies” books, and any of them that are serious are practicing Bushcraft enough to have a working knowledge of that.
I’m guessing the bunker is actually there to ride out the people killing other people to take their resources phase. Maybe a nuclear bomb?
Myself, I’m a half-assed homesteader, which is like being a prepper without all of the white supremacy stuff that goes with it. If there were an extinction event, and I somehow lived through it, I think I would last a couple more months than your average joe, but I doubt I would live into old age.
And do you think you’re the only one who will have thought of raiding those places? There’s going to be lots of competition.
Well, if the pandemic is any indicator, they’ll all be busy raiding toilet paper from Costco while I’m raiding Harbor Freight.
In all seriousness, I don’t think this scenario will come to pass in my lifetime, but I do believe in “an ounce of prevention…”
Good luck keeping Bob’s John Deere running for more than a generation.
A generation is a lot of time to guess/check farming without power equipment. Not to mention the libraries likely with several books that outline that stuff. I have two books in my house right now that claim to be guides for similar stuff. Prepping is big business. And there are tons of john Deere’s and John Deere dealerships with service departments everywhere. I imagine you could keep it alive a long time. More than a generation, yes. 100 years? Probably not.
So much unknown. Competition with other survivors with guns, knives, the ability to poison your well when you aren’t looking or burn your house down while you sleep… assuming NONE of those kinds of things EVER happen, then, yes, the happy cooperative commune that never murders each other over scarce resources could keep a basic tractor running for 30+ years. Throw in all those other challenges… just traveling to a supply depot to get a new spark plug could be risking your life.
Even the happy cooperative commune is going to need centuries of relative peace in order to reboot the supply chain to the point of making new spark plugs compatible with the old engine blocks - or new engine blocks when the old ones are too worn to rebuild.
Or, everyone rallies in the first few years and the few survivors that are around work together and share resources, at least long enough that everyone gets theirs.
Movies and video games are more entertaining when there’s over-the-top conflict, and I think that shapes our predictions. We have seen, however, that in times of crisis communities and people rally together for the greater good. Even strangers help strangers. That doesn’t usually last long, but it does happen. And I have no reason to believe that wouldn’t be true if a world-killing meteor struck the earth in China. On my side of the planet, I do believe there would be a honeymoon phase before mad Max times.
I’d be naive to assume that it would be without conflict for generations. I’m not saying that at all.
Yes. It would take a while to figure out how to reboot factories and supply chains (if that even is the goal after the extinction event – when there’s 10,000 left alive scattered throughout the world, why would we need factories and supply chains?). But also, there are more than enough spark plugs and engine blocks packed in oil at tractor supplies and John Deere service departments to make it happen for generations. Traveling may or may not be dangerous – neither you nor I know.
My other claim is that we’d learn to use horses/cows to pull the tractor implements before the tractors are kaput for good. I stand by that claim.
The biggest danger would be illness and injury.
Yeah, the problem is: we’re both right. Some will go one way, some another - and when the two types intermingle, the results would appear to be inevitably regrettable.
Having lived in big cities where “bad neighborhoods” means one house out of a thousand might harbor some bad kids who go out and do bad things, I’ll say: the vast majority of people in most of society are basically good, some of them truly great, but it doesn’t take very many bad actors to bring down a whole 100,000 population area into fear and chaos and over-the-top responses to threats.
You want examples of over-the-top responses in real life? They’re rare, but cops doing outrageously terrible things isn’t just in fiction… a lot of real life is more cold, callous and brutal than a lot of fiction.
In a lot of ways, horses and cows are much more work and expense (inputs of valuable materials) to keep operating than a tractor, it’s why the horse drawn carriages died out so quickly - not because they’re slow or smelly, but because cranking up an engine that sits in a garage and waits patiently for you for days, or months, at near zero storage cost is infinitely more efficient than protecting your livestock from disease and weather and poachers and wild predators…
And, yes, in those places where people can maintain working animals, they will go to that expense to plow the earth by mule or ox or horse power instead of planting by human labor, but it is a big step up from desperation on the run to keeping beasts of burden in working order.
That is a big one, particularly while the cities are filled with unburied rotting corpses.
So, ever been to Utah? No saying they are fully prepared… But their mutant spawn may make it out to kill each other over the scraps if it’s not a total wipe of life.
There’s people that might survive, I’m thinking like the Amish. But even they depend on modern society at some level for materials. If anyone would make it it would be a group like that, someone already without modern tools as much as possible.
Yep.
It will have to be those with a strong commitment to community and preparation. Which will mean people with “faith” in the future they probably won’t see.
So, that will exclude most of the narcissistic oligarchy. Though some are narcissistic enough about their own lineage to spawn a cult of personality for the continuation of their brood…
They will however continue to hoard resources enough to weather the more likely minor civil disturbances their actions are certain to cause. Wich is the real motive for some.
They’ll be the first to be enslaved.
The Amish are going to have a hard time with the AR15 hoarders…
Why?
Maybe they’re coy about it, but the Amish I have met aren’t big into firearms. Once there’s a farm with food and no guns and roving bands of hungry men with guns and ammo situation, the farmers usually doesn’t do well in the ensuing relationship.
So you’re saying people with guns would kill the people with the knowledge needed to have a hope of survival in a hypothetical apocalyptic catastrophe in a shortsighted display of greed and strength?
That absolutely tracks.
Yeah, that does track, and when they don’t kill them just to show off that they can, they’ll also be doing it out of desparation, fear of starvation, and fear that the Amish women might drive knitting needles through their hearts.
Try 1695. There will be bits and bobs of modern life around, but the core skills required are going to be very much what the European settlers in the new world needed.
Most of the first European settlers didn’t have those skills and either died or were rescued by native peoples, whom they later thanked by massacring them.
The settlers were often townsfolk or recently demobilized soldiers, not experienced farmers. And it was a different ecosystem, with greater extremes of climate and different edible plants and pests, so even the agriculture needed to be adapted.
Agreed on both points - needing to know how to grow food and not die from your own sanitation shortcomings, and how to ruthlessly kill the competition, those are the skills that get you past Thunderdome.
Well said. I was wondering why not just treat the world and its people well and they can continue to have their own private land to do whatever. Seems like hell if you’re stuck in a bunker without the modern world at your fingertips. Seems foolish to me as well.