By His Bootstraps...

Going through the last of my father's effects has made me realise something important - although I was never a great student of Chemistry, my father's insistence that I study it, along with various aspects of Engineering (at which I was much better) now makes a lot more sense.

The problem is - how do you prepare? How do you rebuild? How do you know what materials to use? How do you get what you need once all that you can scavenge has been taken? How do you avoid the mistakes of the past, and get to what you need without several centuries of rediscovery of technologies?

As a scenario: A star close enough becomes a supernova. It is far enough away that we avoid the more serious types of damage, yet we suffer an extended or frequent electromagnetic pulse. 99.99999% of electronics are destroyed very quickly. Infrastructure breaks down, computers are useless, the world stops - or at least the parts of the world dependent on electricity, computers, and all mod-cons. Third world countries are alright - people don't have what they would classify as luxuries, and what we would as essentials. Valves, now nearly obselete, become needed again. Could you make a valve based radio? Could you make a valve?

Would you, in short, know where to start? Do you actually have paper copies of such things? Having them saved on your computer is no good - your computer is little more than a large brick.

Could you make aluminium from clay? It's relatively easy if you know how and have some knowledge of chemistry, but an impossible task if you regard ignorance as better than learning.

Could you even make iron tools? Could you, given the need, find a patch of iron ore, smelt it, build a forge, make the simple tools needed to make the more complex tools?
The vikings were able to get iron from 1% ore - incredibly low yields, but it is there for the taking.

Not necessary, you might scoff... But once you've run out of things to scavenge, once no more spare parts can be found, once you've used something like petrol up, what then?

Stills are easy enough to make, but do you know how to modify an engine properly? What about gaskets and pistons that will corrode because they were designed for hydrocarbons rather than ethanol?

Do you have anything to trade for the bits that you need?

My library acquistion continues, as does my gardening, my acquisition of skills.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

My father's cremation was not well attended. A very modest turn out, the few people there wanting to remain anonymous. A few cursory nods in my direction, bowed heads and dark suits. He had requested no eulogies, no hymns; his only nod to tradition being one song - and contrary to tradition, it was Tom Lehrer's "We Will All Go Together When We Go". I didn't turn around to see, but I did feel the wry smiles of the few gathered.

The lyrics are interesting, to say the least, primarily reminding the listener that the feelings that they voice at a funeral won't be voiced for them -
"For when the bombs that drop on you
get your friends and neighbours too,
there'll be nobody left behind to grieve."

After the minimal service, I walked in the gardens, relishing the grass beneath my feet - not an unfamiliar feeling, but brought into sharp focus by the few minutes of song. I gazed upon the distant city, my mind wandered to a future memory - buildings half demolished, the giant glass monoliths having been blown on a harsh wind; the remnants of fires, their thin black threads rising to a sky drawn dark with a deadly shroud, most of the fuel having long since burnt; decaying monuments to a shortsighted people, soon to return to the earth from which their raw materials were mined.

We are just dust - all the atoms in each molecule in each cell come from the soil, and in the end that is where we will return.

I didn't take note of how long I spent there, all I remember is that I looked back to the crematorium as I opened my car door, and saw the thin black thread slowly rising up.

Economies of Scale, continued.

How do you get half a chicken? Or half a sheep?

Half a tree is easy - many food tries come in dwarf varieties, although these aren't necessarily the best way to have a lot of whatever you are growing. It may sound like a good idea, but if you are planning for the long haul, might as well get full size trees and be done with it. Dwarf trees are good for suburbia, or the inner city - but would you want to get stuck in either before, during, or after a cataclysm?

The easiest way is getting someone else to look after the animals, and set up a local trading scheme. Anyone experienced in breeding animals knows that there are certain population requirements - it is not enough to get a rooster and a couple of hens, and expect your grandchildren to be using the descendents of those few chickens for meat and eggs. Not just that you need to balance eating and breeding, but because genetics becomes a severe limitation. So, it is better to have a reasonably large collection of animals, or a few collections of animals, and have some monitoring of breeding. You get one person (or a couple of people) to look after the animals, compensate them for the time and care that is needed.

At least, you do if your neighbours are at all interested. Or you gather a few people, and assign tasks; again, finding people who will take a suggestion to join you early enough is difficult. You can always make sure that there is room for people to join you, but you're stuck with being the one to spend the time, money, and energy to get everything prepared.

But... it is either prepare or find yourself on the back foot.

Economies of Scale

It is a sad but true fact that it's difficult to do anything by yourself. You first need the motivation to not just slump down with the sheer weight of everything that needs to be done; a friend, a lover, or a dependent start to make you realise that there is something more beyond yourself. As I have mentioned before, it doesn't take much extra to do things for two than for one - particularly if that other is doing plenty of other things, too. Add a third, a fourth, and things become much easier still - everyone can start to pay attention to only a few things, because others are doing the rest.

Take, for example, what I am trying to do.

It is simple in and of itself - a hobby farm with some extra survival features. A small number of growing food trees that need to be watered every few days; the accumulation of resources and knowledge; working towards getting a bug-out shelter for emergency use; then, the bits required to keep a hobby farm going, the additional work beyond just watering - mowing, weeding, fertilising. Other options also become necessary once one thinks about longer term survival - a forge, a workshop, a chemistry workshop, some form of amateur radio set-up. Chickens, maybe geese, perhaps goats - hard to get and keep, but harder to get once things have degenerated and you are limited to what you have at hand. Wood has to be gotten, chopped for the stove (if you have a wood stove). Repairs have to be made on equipment.

A moment here for a few asides, though. Some might question the need for a chemistry laboratory; there are far, far too many useful things that we have grown to expect that may not be easily obtained - especially if everyone wants them, and no-one is producing. Expect general anaethestic? It is difficult, but possible for someone with a reasonable amount of training to produce ether from ethanol (purified grain alcohol) and sulfuric acid (of a reasonable quality). How do you produce alcohol? A still is easy enough. How do you get sulfuric acid? Car batteries have many nasty things in them, and are barely suitable - but a chemist (as in chemistry, not pharmacy) would be able to create it - and with some geology know how to get the raw materials. Likewise, nitric acid is a very useful thing, difficult enough to get in some places, but important for some industrial applications. Let us not even start to talk about more... combustible applications.

The important thing is - there are far too many useful (in a necessary, survival sense) things that we take for granted, and only a limited supply. You simply can't depend on "finding" (finding, trading, or otherwise) essential supplies when you need them most, you need to have the ability to make it, or trade something else for it - and essential supplies are difficult to trade for when using them means using them up.

I write this after seeing my father's notes scribbled along the margins of "The Earth Abides" - notes about chemistry, geology, hobby farming. I flick through the book, find my father's writing growing more strained, obviously written over a long time, the last page the only with a date - a few days before he went into hospital.

The upshot of which is the fact that a lot would need to be done, and the more hands that can help, the better. But they'd better be working to a common goal.

Remembrance of Things Lost

The last of my father's few remaining possessions arrived today. A few old handtools, some rusted beyond use, some only showing their age a little; a few geegaws, the last things that he held much for; and a few books, an eclectic mix of fiction and non.

He was not an educated man, but he was smart, and taught me a great many things; he had learnt the lesson to learn - learn from someone else's mistakes, and made sure that I learnt it well. He taught himself much, learnt what he can, and gave back more than he was ever given. He also had a great knack for not accumulating more than he needed. Visiting him was akin to moving to a monastery - a lack of the unnecessary, a spartan lifestyle born in poverty, but matured in enlightenment.

He could give me little except a dry roof over a stable house, a few books, warm home-cooked meals, a love of learning, independence, health, and his loving care. He also gave to me a generous sense of humour, and a cynical view of people.

And now, the few possessions he had.

A melancholy washes over me as I look through them; I remember him in health, and in sickness. He and a both felt a revulsion for what was eating him to oblivion, destroying him from the inside out.

His attitude had always been that a person should be self-sufficient; his dream was to buy acreage, build a hobby farm where he could grow plenty of food, let society go to waste whilst lying back in a hammock, eating on a fresh mango. Many people would laugh at it, or criticise him for his lack of ambition. I simply criticised his choice of mango - a fruit I could never stand.

Even in the few times I last saw him, I saw in his eyes a sorrow that he never managed to achieve that dream, but a happiness that I had, even if I had sworn to never allow a mango tree to grow on my land.

His illness is one of the things that worries me - without modern medicines, without vaccines, without... so many things, any of the ailments that most of us laugh at become mortal dangers. What of a rusted nail without a tetanus vaccine, what of short-sightedness without spectacles, what of whooping cough, measles? I need to make good friends with a good many people, a doctor more than most; a doctor who accepts the chances of global cataclysm is rare enough - one who is willing to take steps to survive one another matter entirely.

I have started reading again "The Earth Abides" by George Stewart; although I already know the story, it provides a salutory lesson - a plague wipes out most people, the few people struggle in the aftermath. A loner tries to rebuild society, but cannot motivate the small community he builds up to learn the few things he can teach. It is depressing, as he survives randomly - a plague randomly selects its victims, and those that survives face the psychological horror of watching all around them die over days or weeks, and not being able to do anything to heal them. You cannot prepare, you can only survive. Or not, as the case may be.

My father taught me, amongst over things, that there are times when you must be prepared to walk away, no matter how painful, to all the things you hold dear.

Choosing our own misadventure.

Our situation is most precarious. We sit on the eve of a number of cataclysms that may do untold damage individually, yet refuse to acknowledge the existence of any. Many environments have started their inexorable death; nuclear sabres are being rattled, but this time the sabreurs are unlikely to sheath; a new influenza is starting to claim lives; economies are being built ever higher, even as their foundations crumble; and a few of us, amateur and professional astronomers, have been monitoring several relatively nearby stars, one in particular that although cannot destroy the world, would destroy the ozone layer for a time.

Which leaves planning a problem. It is impossible to run for the hills, to wait for the inevitable - proper preparation takes time and resources, resources take money - and money means the need to be employed. As much as some may eschew attachment to society at large, their views are isolationistic - they believe they can protect themselves and their immediately families by removing themselves. Some of their attitudes are useful - they choose to move away from cities, learn to become self sufficient; some attitudes are counterproductive.

Take the things we have gotten use to - communication, health. Ask a "regular" survivalist what preparations that they have made, they will say they have a few tools, perhaps a firearm or two (and some ammunition), perhaps a shelter, a water purifier, two years of food. Yet tools break or grow blunt, firearms wear out, ammunition gets used up, water purifiers lose effectiveness, food runs out, gets eaten, or goes rotten.

A shelter, on the other hand, does do much good, if it's constructed well. But metal corrodes, concrete falls apart. I have seen some options made of plastics or fibreglass which might be usable. Of course, a good underground shelters need to be exactly that - underground - not the work for a single man with a shovel.

Even then, you can only do so much preparation, only store so much food and equipment. There comes a time where you have to get your hands dirty.

So, I spend my spare time learning to garden, nearly all food plants. Some fruit and vegetable staples, many food trees - natives and exotics. Pawpaws, macadamias, figs, olives, black sapote, many more - or at least will be when they grow tall enough to produce fruit. Hopefully, we will have time before their produce will be needed. Well known grains - wheat, oats, barley, and rye - known fruits and vegetables - tomato, pumpkin, beans - and a few more exotic things foods.

Seed stores are another misconception. Anyone can pick up a packet of seeds from a shop; knowing how to look after the growing plants, knowing that seeds loose viability over a few years, knowing that the next generation of seed will be viable - that is another matter entirely. Too many seeds are hybrids, they will produce the food, but not the new seed to continue to produce next year's crop. People relying on a few packets of seeds to see them into the future build their house upon the sand, oblivious to the starvation that awaits them. Combine that with the risks of crop failure - particularly at the hands of a beginning gardener...

Chaotic death will not be the exclusive domain of those to fall first - those who don't learn will join them. Those that don't learn the past, those that don't take the time to learn while there still is time, and those who don't learn at least some of the things that will be needed soon, all will become dust.

Numbers

Survival, through and after any catastrophe, is a numbers game - Do I have enough food & water? Am I far enough away from the worst of things? Do I know enough to survive?

The most common mistakes most people make (in looking at the end of the world) are mathematical. The biggest one is - Do I have enough people around me to ensure that a group of us can get through most of the trouble that could be thrown at us? No one person can know everything that needs to be known, no single person could do all the tasks that are needed to be done.

Of course, bring up the concept of The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAEKI, hardly an acronym that rolls of the end of the tongue) with a group of people, most will think you're mad or joking, some will have their own plans, and very few (if any) will want to combine their plans with yours - and give you both a better chance.

Which brings the other problem - how can I afford all the things that will be needed? There's an adage when it comes to keeping horses - it's not much more expensive to have two than it is to have one. Apart from the fact that horses are social animals, there are a whole range of costs (veterinarians, farriers) where a sizable part of the expense is calling them out - the cost of dealing with a second animal is much less significant.
In human terms, suppose you have an axe, and a hoe. A single person could do a day's work cutting trees for fuel, another day tending a garden. But - two people don't need that much more firewood than one does, the additional time needed to tend the garden is much less significant, especially the rare times a second pair of hands would be needed. And you still need to buy an axe, and other good quality gardening equipment - no point getting cheap stuff that falls apart after the third use. Costs decrease as population increases. To a certain extent.

The other reason is that it's a pain to try to perform surgery on yourself.

Can you blame me for thinking mathematically, when most of my studies are in engineering and science? Although, I dare say that my chemistry would get the most use after The End.

But back to the problem.

Survivalists, as a group, tend to be fairly quiet, prefer operating in family groups (at largest), and somewhat paranoid (they could argue there reasons to be sensible) - hardly the people to congregate in a community. Mundanes (aka Sheeple, ie the people Survivalists look down upon, which is most others) simply don't see the need to worry - after all, It's All Right, Everything's Perfectly Fine. So convincing people of a need to make a few changes to their lifestyle is difficult, particularly when they think Unemployed, Inner City life preferable to Unemployed (but doing Farm Hand type work) Semi-Rural life.

So, the few of us who seem to occupy the middle ground do what we can. Make what we can, learn what we can. And try to make the numbers add up.

Reading

Have you ever read the short story "The Year of the Jackpot" by Robert Heinlein? If you are reading this... after everything has happened, then maybe you might be able to find a surviving copy; if not, it's basically a story about a man who notices weirdness happening worldwide, and statistically analyses it. His forecast, unfortunately, is proven right when the Sun starts to dim.

Things have been feeling a bit like that, recently.

There are always diseases, wars, phenomena; when it starts appearing like there's a pattern, no matter how marvellous you think the human mind's ability to see patterns, you do begin to worry.

I am not religious, I don't know if I believe anything anymore. Except I know that the Apocalypse comes, it will not be by the Hand of God, but by those people believing they are doing God's Work.

Not that there aren't plenty of ways for the world as we know it to end.

The Coming Storm

I sit, thinking of Winston.

Yet we do have differences. Smith started writing, knowing that it would end in him ending in becoming an unperson; I start writing, hoping that the world isn't turned one populated by unpersons - a cemetery.

Some inauspicious winds have started blowing. The storm of war once again is whipping up, one that will engulf everything.

Even writing this, I find myself falling into cliche. A thousand writers have already written the Earth a thousand deaths. What new words can one use when things are, as they say, going to Hell In A Handbasket? Economies are failing, people are getting ill, and the right-wing are rattling their sabres so loudly...

I take a breath, and wonder where to start. Like Winston, I write for the future, but am not sure if there will be anyone left to read what I can put down. Is it ironic or poetic that I work in communications? The act of passing information from one person to another, once to the essential way to allow people to learn has become the essential way to stop people from learning.

I have found myself working in the Ministry of Truth.

An amazing amount of censorship has happened in the last few weeks, our office has become an extension of the government. There's a certain skill to suddenly find that, with three minutes to spare, a news article has to be pulled from the line-up, and a more "friendly" one put in its place. Plenty of industry friends have been finding the same. All we have been hearing has led us to the same conclusions - war is on the way, and the only people who could stop it won't. Snatches of overheard conversation, unusual military preparations.

So, like a rat, I prepare to run... But to where? In this case, all the rat can do is hunker down, gather food, a few other rats prepared to do the same. Of course, with a mortgage, living expenses, preparations, this rat has to lead a double life. And that makes finding similar rodents difficult.

Just like Winston found.

I just hope that I don't find my O'Brien.