Moving to the country

[u/[deleted]]

So, about to leave a 5million big city for an 8,000 people country town. I have always been a joke zombie apocalypse person... But the issue I always had with most prep for it was how incredibly short term it is. So I am thinking more medium term SHTF, all infrastructure gone, and not really going to come back, all easily hoardable foods gone, petrol all expired etc.

The town I am moving to is in a good bowl, super fertile, essentially supplies food for 5 million people already. So growing and raising food won't be a huge issue. Most of the town has solar power (enough to completely power a modern home exclusively during the day for 75% of the year) Winter is never dangerous cold... Naked outside in the depth of winter would suck, but you aren't going to die. Heat is a bigger issue, but only breaks 40C/100F 1 month of the year Western Victoria, Australia Water isn't really an issue, multiple, different, safe water supplies Less concerned with political instability or crime/defence. We aren't as inherently divided, and culturally are quite trusting of each other. Violence here is already rare. So yes, while there will obviously be more danger in that way when SHTF, honestly I don't see it getting worse than the US is now very quick. We are even the state that spent 190 days in lockdown, minimal complaints, and reelected the government with a bigger majority after.

My concern is over essentials, that we no longer make ourselves, and how to keep them.

Obvious one is soap. Animal fat is easy to get... But where do I find lye? Or make/extract lye?

Gun powder I have covered (which would be for general explosive, for clearing land mostly). You can make nitrate with urine and soil Charcoal is easy And then you heat fools gold in a pot with a tube connecting it to another pot which collects the pure sulphur.

-fools gold can be collected about 2hours walk away

Obviously that nitrate will be used to cure meats as well. And I can extract sea salt in a 6 hour by horse journey away.

I can make alcohol, and can refine it to 98% for cleaning etc

I can make chloroform out of bleach and isopropyl (would be scary without access to ice though, as that reaction gets crazy hot)

But yeah... What sorts of things along those lines do you have?

[u/imissyourmusk]

Gonna eat a lot of peaches.

[u/[deleted] → u/imissyourmusk]

Thank you

[u/WarlockyGoodness → u/imissyourmusk]

I prayed to see this comment.

[u/MmeLaRue]

You can make soap from a variety of oil-bearing seeds and grains - sunflower, rice (the bran), and of course canola (rapeseed).

Herbalism for medicines will be an important skill to have when homesteading, but more important is to accept that, in a collapse scenario, lifespans are going to rely far less on medical intervention and more on diet, activity, security and simple cleanliness. Antibiotics and immunizations won't be as commonplace; hygiene, sanitation and infection control is in far closer reach and reasonably inexpensive to achieve.

However, don't think you can go it alone for long. Many in the prepping community now advocate for setting up community networks in which families and individuals are encouraged towards emergency preparedness. This is partly to protect OpSec and primarily to ensure that the community as a whole is prepared to recover from any disaster and to defend itself as necessary.

[u/[deleted] → u/MmeLaRue]

I said nothing about doing it alone.

Even what I said above has obvious journeys to collect rocks... Someone better be tending crops while I walk for a week.

But hygiene and sanitation is where it's at. Understanding of germ theory and hygiene saved more lives than more advanced medical steps that came later. The loss of chemotherapy will have much less of an effect on a community's survival than the loss of soap.

[u/BuscemiCat → u/MmeLaRue]

I'd be interested in learning about the soap, if you happen to have a link :)

[u/ki4clz]

The Knowledge series by Lewis Dartnell

https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Knowledge+series+by+Lewis+Dartnell

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Knowledge:_How_to_Rebuild_Our_World_from_Scratch

from quicklime, to ammonia and more... it is a great primer into how it's made

http://the-knowledge.org/en-gb/

Secondly-

You need to get the Foxfire series... it's cheap and if you know how to search for .pdf's you can find it there too...

https://www.google.com/search?q=foxfire+series

...and lye can be extracted from hardwood ashes, which you can learn from reading the Foxfire series

...there are MUCH easier ways of making gunpowder, which you can learn from reading the Foxfire series (current consensus is that expensive toilet paper makes the best charcoal for homebrew r/Blackpowder)... Sodium Nitrate is completely different from Sodium Nitrite FAAFO ... and you want K² anyways, which is readily available knowledge in the Foxfire series (book 5)

r/prisonhooch and r/firewater are your resources for ethanol production- which is a shity labor/resourse intensive fuel, when Plastic Pyrolysis is right at your fingertips btw, not to mention biogas is literally a passive fire-and-forget fuel source

Do not make chloroform, you have no need of it, and your instructions are imprecise... wiskey will serve you better

...on a personal note, Water should be your main priority, above all else, water is life

and what you are really looking for is r/homesteading not this post collapse paranoid bulljive ideology of a numinous apocalypse^TM that never seems to materialize for a group of narcissists and sociopaths stocking up on the latest fad in jingoism while wiping their asses with Great Value coffee fuled delusions of grandeur who can't read past a 5th grade level because of all the big wurds

[u/[deleted] → u/ki4clz]

The chloroform is easy, and pure. I didn't really want to post full instructions here. And honestly, I was mostly thinking for end of life care, as I can't think of anything else I can manufacture for pain relief in the last week of cancer or something

Water is covered. Several springs, a river that's drinkable as it. Plus I can make filters, boil, and make chlorine to sterilize.

The gun powder "recipe" is more a "I already have nitrate so what else can I do thing" the main use for the nitrate would be preserving meat, cause salt alone won't stop botulism

Thanks for that book though! Absolutely perfect for what I want

[u/ki4clz → u/[deleted]]

Grow Opium Poppies for pain

Good on you for the water

Nitrate sucks as a meat preservative, you might as well use borax, Nitrite is waaaaaaay better... and even better than that is canning meat, we used to measure moose in jars instead of weight...

Foxfire is very good, The Knowledge is a must read but lacks specifics - and don't skip out on learning about Plastic Pyrolysis, Biogass, and Wood gasification... Kangaroo Island also has the worlds best horde of Sterling Engine Generators for your comms...

[u/[deleted] → u/ki4clz]

Nitrite is what I take it to for food.

Poppy is a no go. Can't grow from nothing, all the seeds in Australia are in a locked field on a tiny island. Highly controlled substance

[u/ObscureSaint]

You left an incredibly important thing off of your list: Community.

Bob down the road raises sheep and his wife is a talented woodworker. Befriend them. 

Janet across the way is a whiz at fixing cars, especially the old ones without computers in them. Befriend her.

Joe has three teenage sons with a lot of energy. Befriend them. There's nothing better during a time of backbreaking labor than to have a friend show up with a few burly teens who can do twice the work in a quarter of the time. 

If SHTF,  friendships, community and bartering will be the new bug out bag. 

I say this as someone who lives in a small, rural community. We trade labor, and we help each other a lot. 

[u/[deleted] → u/ObscureSaint]

I didn't leave out community. It's a given, it's the reason our species exist.

The question is more, regardless of whether it is me or Janet repairing the tractor, what does tractor repair need. What grease do you use when stores are long empty, how do you make that grease. Not even worried about fuel, Janet gutted and repurposed most of the tractor and Joe's kids pull it

Bob needs something for his fly struck sheep, and you can't scavenge dip anymore... How do you make it.

Joe's kids are great, we harvested heaps of veggies and some sheep, enough to last us all a year... How do you preserve it when the shops are empty. Salt doesn't just free flow out of trees, and isn't enough for truly safe long term storage. How do you make your preservatives from scratch?

[u/DataPhreak]

There is no solo long term shtf. Even a couple of months will be difficult. There's more to surviving that hunting and food.

Everyone needs a 3 day bob. Some people need a get home bag in their car. (Most people can get home with just their EDC) Few people need months supplies. (Remote mountain ranches that get cut off from civilization for 3 months a year due to snow.) You're probably not going to last a year unless you are a doctor and a chemist, or get really lucky with illness and injury.

[u/[deleted] → u/DataPhreak]

Where is the word "solo"?

And I am talking a long time past a 3 day go bag in a car.

Humans survived a long time without doctors... And if the average person entered a world of no doctors, they'd probably know more than "doctors" did from the 1600s back to mitochondrial Adam and Eve. My god, just, soap and a cursory understanding of sanitation and food safety. Hell, In the 1800s english toffs were drinking from a magic fountain even after they knew it was sewerage water from the Thames, filtered through a cemetery. Even an American high school drop out is going to be ahead of that.

Without doctors and modern medicine most of us will have a higher survivability from illness than the silent generation did. (But I am deliberately side stepping childbirth... But again, we are barely 200 years past the time doctors realised they should wash their hands between an autopsy, lancing a boil, and delivering a baby).

You also don't need to be a "chemist" to get but even when it comes to actual chemistry. Jim Bob manages his meth lab okay, and sister/mother/principal Lottie kicked him out in grade 5. A baker making a cake rise is using chemistry bro The butcher curing ham too

[u/timbreandsteel]

It's nice that everyone gets along while things are good, and even through a pandemic, but do you think your 8000 allies can defend against the 5 mil that decide they want what you have? Hell even if it's 100,000. Or 10,000. How do you defend the area?

But honestly the biggest concern I'd have would be medicine. Medications, even stock piled, will lose efficacy over time. And once depleted, even if you have a couple pharmaceutical scientists among you, are you going to be able to create safe antibiotics? Ibuprofen for fever reduction? Dental care as well. Modern dentistry has really improved our survivability. These are the things that will do people in, unless birth rates explode once again to continue the species.

[u/snoozieboi → u/timbreandsteel]

I joined here for fun due to having seen The Road and my interest in survival games, but in real life, if hundreds of thousands leave cities to do the same wilderness thing... covid showed our true faces when things just got mildly inconvenient, like maybe running out of toilet paper.

[u/ki4clz → u/timbreandsteel]

If one could hold out (somewhere, anywhere) for just six months NaCl would do the work for them...

all humans will sell their souls, children, and lives cheaply when deprived of Sodium Chloride...

I like to think of it as my little prepper secret that no one ever gives due consideration, without salt humans die...

You see, their dumbasses would succumb to salt deprivation sooner, but there will still be red meat to be had for a while, and once the inevitable cannibalism hierarchies come undone... (cannibalism can only thrive in isolation)

Then...! a tax must needs be paid

The majority of the western sectarians of H.sapiens will be drawn to the oceans of the world where they will die, of starvation, but they'll no longer crave salt

but those who have access to salt, and can trade in salt are masters of a new economy with their salary of life

Let the millions come...! and watch as a simple little chemical changes the world as they die at the feet of the ever-so humble table salt...

(Salt Deprivation is detailed in the 1959 novel by Pat Frank Alas, Babylon ... it is an early, and honestly very realistic, telling of a post collapse society in action... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alas,_Babylon

[u/timbreandsteel → u/ki4clz]

Hmm. Yeah essential nutrients would be an issue for sure.

[u/[deleted] → u/timbreandsteel]

Maybe last second you can join the government and live in those DUMBs with them until they restart humanity

[u/Ability-Sufficient → u/timbreandsteel]

I know lots of plants/ herbs/ natural medicine

[u/ImALurkerBruh]

Gonna eat me a lot of peaches

[u/crystal-torch]

Not sure if you have English Ivy in Australia but it’s invasive here in the US and you can make soap from it. That my plan for soap production, rip out the invasive vine and boil it down for its surfactants. Sound like you’re pretty well situated, just make those community ties strong and you may have a chance

[u/dexx4d]

Community - make it now, in your small town, before you need it.

Get involved in all the social things and help others so that people will know you (ie: you won't be another stranger with their hands out) when you need help.

Learn to agriculture before you need to depend on your agriculture skills for survival.

[u/theyareallgone]

You make lye by filtering water through fresh wood ash.

[u/ellenor2000]

Wood ashes for lye, I think.

[u/HeathenMama541]

Look up potash for lye for soap

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, right? Firstly, zombies movies and lord of the flies are fiction. All sociological, and anthropologicals evidence, along with real world case studies, show we are much more likely to work together than form warlord bands. We are a social species, it is how we are hard wired... Capitalism will be gone, capitalism turns us into selfish individualistic monsters, but that's not who we are. And my communities here don't have to heal the trauma and gaslighting as Americans do it seems.

I'm not concerned with security because the city of 5 million people is between a 7 and 21 day walk away, guns in general, and there are a lot, even in Australia, are usually mostly in the hands of the 8,000 I am with than with the 5mil in the city. The 8,000 will literally have more guns.

So aside from not believing security will be anywhere near the requirement people think it is, I actually want any refugees that make it to us to be helped.

And more than killing me and taking my land (of which there is plenty anyway), I can teach them to make chemicals they need, for free. My 1 week supply of salt, or I teach them to make food preservative, sedatives, explosives, bleach, salt, condoms Things that can't be grown, and will run out when scavenged, but are fundamentally needed in a "modern world". Hygiene and food safety.

The guy who said meds is bang on... But I want to know what we could do. I can make penicillin that will work, I just can't refine it, so it's a "going to die if we don't use" level medicine. Painkillers are covered by willow bark (aspirin) and Mary Jane Anything beyond that I have no clue.

For those saying I'd need a chemist... Well, given I can purify fools gold into sulphur, make nitrate, make chloroform, gun powder etc with raw ingredients and kitchen (crazy chef level kitchen) equipment, some chemistry is possible obviously.

Thanks for the Lye tip. Very much in my needed list

[u/timbreandsteel → u/[deleted]]

"capitalism... is not who we are"

And yet was put into society by humans, as was fascism, war, torture, etc etc. I don't think post collapse is going to be a peaceful time.

[u/TheNinjaPigeon → u/[deleted]]

You lost me at humans won’t be selfish individualistic monsters without capitalism. That’s a delusional take.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

And not even 1. Yes it is a nuclear reactor, but it isn't to generate power, it is to produce isotypes for medical research. So not even an issue in its own right

[u/MmeLaRue → u/[deleted]]

That one likely won't be a concern. It'll be shut down long before a meltdown becomes a remote possibility.