Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

[azato]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

Would you consider a world without the Internet or Kentucky Fried Chicken to be truly civilized?

 

 

 

Without the internet they can be civilized, but without KFC they will never be a world power. NEVER.

[input.jack]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

Ive been thinking about this.

 

If the civilization is as advanced as the one in Gamma World, is it not logical to assume that they might have had colonies on other planets?

 

That alone can reduce the population of Earth. Especially if, pre-apocalypse, Earth was either the primary home of (a) the rich and powerful elite, living in the paradise Earth was made into, or ( the poor and underpriviledged, living in the cesspool the rich and powerful elite left behind when they vacated for the stars. (That second seems more plausible to me).

 

If this is the case, then perhaps the apocalypse took place not only on Earth, but in the colonies as well, An invading alien armada, for example. If both the Humans and the aliens used their "doomsday weapons" on each other, then it would explain why the Humans are knocked back to the stone age (and have clawed their way -up- to the Middle Ages technologically, by the start of game), and the aliens may have all died off from a bioweapon, or mutated into something else. (I really liked the idea of renegade bands of aliens being the "Orcs" of the post-apoc campaign).

 

With this scenario in mind, the GM can craft the campaign so that ultimately, the heroes (PCs) are able to establish a network of civilized communities, explore and rediscover ancient sites and technology, and possibly find a means to leave the Earth and travel out into the stars....to find the lost colonies, and bring them back into communication with the New Earth. Perhaps they meet the aliens again who have rebuilt also, although now both sides are on a more even footing. Will the PCs seek retribution? Or will they offer the aliens the chance to join together, to benefit from each others strengths?

 

That way, what starts as a typical Gamma World Post Apoc game evolves into something more like the initial premise for Andromeda.

 

But without Tyr betraying you every game session.

[azato]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

1. Perhaps people sucked up all the resources and "left" and nobody cared about the few that were left behind. Without oil, we would be left in a world of hurt. Perhaps some petrolium eating bacteria was let loose on the world.

 

2. There is the RingWorld scenario in the "sea of worlds". The people who made ringworld put the scale representation on ringwold. The transported various life forms as well. In Larry Niven's account this took place in the distant past, but it could have taken place more currently.

 

3. The lost colony thing has possiblity as well. While I did not care for the premise behind Traveller New Era that sort of thing would fit in. Let suppose that colonies who never had books were without the support and energy to run their machines. They would be in a world of hurt. I downloaded the "skyrealms of jourune" converstion to hero. That is an interesting way of handling modern/primitive.

 

I think that to keep it on earth - oil has to go. Fuel is the major jumping point for modern civilization. Communication and Transportation.

[keithcurtis]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

Oil is increasingly harder to jump start from technological baseline zero. We are extracting oil from reserves that were unthinkably difficult thirty years ago. The biggest advantage that a rebuilding society would have (apart from a store of accumulated knowledge) would be metals. There should be more refined metal than any society could possibly need. Grnated, cars and unprotected metal should rust away pretty quickly, but there must be tons of metal inside of collapsed buildings or in the form of "stainless" steel.

 

Keith "And plastic. We'll have mountains of plastic." Curtis

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

Oil is increasingly harder to jump start from technological baseline zero. We are extracting oil from reserves that were unthinkably difficult thirty years ago. The biggest advantage that a rebuilding society would have (apart from a store of accumulated knowledge) would be metals. There should be more refined metal than any society could possibly need. Grnated, cars and unprotected metal should rust away pretty quickly, but there must be tons of metal inside of collapsed buildings or in the form of "stainless" steel.

 

Keith "And plastic. We'll have mountains of plastic." Curtis

 

We also have a LOT of accumulated knowledge about eletricity generation that we didn't have in our old preindustrial society.

Pretty much any half competent even vaguely tech oriented survivor should be able to drive a slightly converted gas generator with a wind mill or watermill... Heck, I've been talking about setting up a vertical eggbeater style windmill to power the generator at our monthly beach gatherings. So a samll amount of eletricity is likley to survive... not enough to run a society, most likely, but I'd be willing to bet most farmsteads will have at least a bit of electrical power for a few neccesities and luxuries.

I'd also go to bat guessing that bio-diesil production would become, like soapmaking, a cottage industry. Its really not much harder than soapmaking... in fact it's a very similar chemical process, just with an extra ingredient (Methanol) easlily distilled from the leftovers of the same plants that could be pressed for oil. Hemp is a likely candidate, as its a sustainable fast growing high yeild crop that is PERFECT fopr a low tech society... Fiber for clothes, rope & paper, oil for cooking,light & fuel, food for people, fodder for animals, and intoxicants for relaxation (and probably medication as well).

 

Blacksmithing & priomitive smelting would come back with a vengance, in a generation or so. A lot of the freely available metal would be badly decayed by weather, but a lot of it could be reclaimed by a half decent metalworker... and its a skill that can be learned with a smidgen of knowldge and a lot of trial and error if need be.

 

Most of my fairly realistic post apoc settings have been around "Old West" in their technology, with a few glaring anacronisims.

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

Well done evaluation.

I quoted this bit because its something I gave serious thought to during the early bits of the whole Y2K farce. I came to the conclusion that, ironically enough, those of us in the re-enactor community would probably do a lot better in a post apoc environment than most.

Not so much the ren faire nuts (like myself) expect for the odd obsessive wingnut who is REALLY interested in how things were done (once again, like myself). The SCA has inherent advantages in a huge network (the SCA is the largest "Civilian Milita" in the USA), a fairly widespread understanding of primitive weapons, and a LOT of people who compete to show how well they can do things the old fahioned way. The Civil war guys are kinda nuts, but they have black powder guns, tents and good gear... and there are a lot of them out there. The Buckskinners are probably the least numerous, but best prepared of the lot... Most Buckskinners I've met would be ready and able to shift into survival mode at almost a moments notice.

 

All of those guys would be dying of typhoid or dysentery or ebola with the rest of us.

 

I've half-seriously proposed a "pre-enactment" type of organization...devoted to post-apocalyptic survival. They meet once a week, have events once a month, etc. but their "garb" is leather and mohawks, and they spend their time talking about how to tell whether water is pure or not, where you'll be able to scrounge the best materials for weapons, etc.

 

The way I see it, overall: you'll be too busy trying to find food, water, and shelter, to teach your kids how to read science books or encyclopedias. When you've just lost your fifth child to an unknown illness with fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and bleeding from multiple orifices, you're too busy making sure the other three know how to plant and harvest crops to make sure they know how electricity works.

 

If the civilization is as advanced as the one in Gamma World, is it not logical to assume that they might have had colonies on other planets?

 

This was, if I recall correctly, explicitly stated in one of the (semi-?)official Gamma World timelines.

 

That alone can reduce the population of Earth. Especially if, pre-apocalypse, Earth was either the primary home of (a) the rich and powerful elite, living in the paradise Earth was made into, or ( the poor and underpriviledged, living in the cesspool the rich and powerful elite left behind when they vacated for the stars. (That second seems more plausible to me).

 

If this is the case, then perhaps the apocalypse took place not only on Earth, but in the colonies as well, An invading alien armada, for example. If both the Humans and the aliens used their "doomsday weapons" on each other, then it would explain why the Humans are knocked back to the stone age (and have clawed their way -up- to the Middle Ages technologically, by the start of game), and the aliens may have all died off from a bioweapon, or mutated into something else. (I really liked the idea of renegade bands of aliens being the "Orcs" of the post-apoc campaign).

 

I kinda figured the colonies interdicted all contact with old Earth and became the universe of Star Frontiers. I kinda wanted to combine all of the robot and cyborg types, standardize the weapons, etc.

 

(Apropos of nothing, am I wack that I came up with a Cryptic Alliance called, variously, the League of the Just, Xavier's Men, the Seekers of Vengeance, etc., whose purpose was to gather mutants to fight crime, and whose "holy writings" were old comic books? Am I the only one who did this?)

 

I once wrote up a longish Gamma World Hero text file, if anyone's interested. It wasn't anywhere near a direct (or even indirect) translation of Gamma World; it was mostly a disjointed collection of notes for when I might someday want to run a totally wacked out Gamma World style post-apocalyptic Hero game.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

All of those guys would be dying of typhoid or dysentery or ebola with the rest of us.

 

Most of that stuff is at its worst in large concentrations of people with poor hygiene. Those guys with the equipment and the know-how would be heading for the hills as soon the cities start going to pot, so they won't have the epidemics among their (much smaller) settlements. Sure, there will be some nasty crap that gets up into the hills, but it won't spread nearly as much there.

 

The way I see it, overall: you'll be too busy trying to find food, water, and shelter, to teach your kids how to read science books or encyclopedias. When you've just lost your fifth child to an unknown illness with fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and bleeding from multiple orifices, you're too busy making sure the other three know how to plant and harvest crops to make sure they know how electricity works.

 

Reading is a pretty easy skill to teach and to learn. Many people on the American frontier were literate, even as they lost their children to nasty diseases and taught the surviving ones how to plant and harvest crops. Assuming that at least some people are left with a lifestyle better than an animal's, reading won't die out. Worrying about electricity will probably not be a useful way to spend time unless you have access to a power supply of some sort (windmill, waterwheel, solar panels, etc), and so direct experience with it will largely die out, but if reading doesn't die out completely, as long as any texts remain, the knowledge contained in them will be available, even if no one has any way to act on it any time soon.

[azato]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

It seems that with all the concrete buildings around there would be an abundance of "castles" for the folk to inhabit. Does anybody know the effective life of a concrete structures that receives no maintance? I image that in a desert they would last forever, but what about Illinois or Florida?

[keithcurtis]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

I remember a Smithsonian(?) article about that a while back. Basically, unprotected (outdoor) concrete will fail in not too many years without maintenance (less than a hundred, certainly. It fails much, much more quickly anyplace where temperatures get to freezing, since moisture in microscopic cracks freezes and expands again and again. Protected concrete in a warm climate that has no vegetation is effectively permanent.

 

Keith "FWIW" Curtis

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

Great discussion! My personal, completely-unprovable belief is that it wouldn’t take too long for civilization to recover to at least pre-industrial levels, and not too many generations after that to return to something resembling modern levels. I’m not a carpenter, but I’m confident I could build a livable house if I had to – it wouldn’t be pretty, and it wouldn’t be maintenance-free, but it would beat sleeping in the rain. Gimme a decent toolbox and the complete “Idiot's Guide†series, and I’m willing to bet I could do okay.

 

War story: I was at an Emergency Management conference a few years ago where a vendor was trying to sell people on his cyber-doomsday scenario, and said “How many people here could program their own computers?†Since the room was mostly cops, firefighters and paramedics, very few hands went up. Several people seemed to think the guy had a point, until I pointed out that while *I* can’t program in Cobol or C++ or whatever, I could walk to the Middle School across the street and in five minutes or less find easily a dozen kids that can.

 

OTOH, after Rome fell, people forgot how to take baths, let alone build roads, for nearly 1000 years. The books were still there, not nearly as common as today of course, but available for those who wanted to go looking for them. But no one wanted to. So perhaps it all depends on whether societal forces make people to want to learn, or whether we all decide to hide from the scary technology again, ala Canticle for Liebowitz.

 

- After a nuclear war, perhaps the Earth is encompassed by a large EMP field that makes most electronics over-sized paper weights.

...

Now, some years later after the EMP field has finally died down

Someone with better tech-fu correct me if I'm wrong. But my understanding is that EMP is a one-time event, not something that lingers around for hours, let alone years. Also as I understand it EMP only affects electronics that are actually turned on when the pulse hits. So the car you're driving might fry, but you should be able to hot-wire that parked car over there. Lastly, a lot of work has been done in the last few decades on EMP-hardening. Not for consumer electronics (not cost-effective), but a lot of critical infrastructure-type stuff might very well survive. (Barring other disasters, of course.)

 

Of course, for gaming purposes, EMP works however the GM wants it to. But if we're talking realistic here...

 

I think that that the gaining of manufacturing resources would largely be through recycling. I believe that most of the mining done today is not of rich veins' date=' but rather the extraction of element from the ore. Often the ratio is very small. A large volume of ore in needed to extract a small amount of copper. In the post Apocolyptic world they would get most of their stuff from reclaiming the material from cities. Rebar and iron from buildings and roads. Copper from wires. etc. Thus for the frontier economy may be about bringing back such materials to the living cities. Those who control the 'dead' cities have the rescources but those who own the 'living' cities have the means of manufacture and limited technology.[/quote']

Great point. That’s true even today in some third-world countries – I’ve seen building with all the wiring and other metal fixtures stripped out of them by looters.

 

Also, it seems that surface sailors would pretty much be at the mercy of an aquatic race. Assuming they can get the metal, what's to stop them from swimming under ships with a brace and auger and sending them to Davy Jones? Any seafaring race would probably need to pay tribute to the underwater folk.

 

Anyone who has ideas on this matter, please feel free to share. I'd be happy to steal-- eh borrow-- eh, be inspired by anything the brilliant minds here come up with.

Unless the sailors had the ability to generate electricity, and dropped a couple live wires into the water whenever the aquatics came a-knockin…

 

Pretty much any half competent even vaguely tech oriented survivor should be able to drive a slightly converted gas generator with a wind mill or watermill... Heck' date=' I've been talking about setting up a vertical eggbeater style windmill to power the generator at our monthly beach gatherings. [/quote']

How difficult are those to make if you don’t have modern materials? If you’re trying to make one out of lumber and home-forged steel, how difficult will it be to make anything efficient enough to provide a reliable power source? Better than nothing, of course, but I’m curious.

 

 

Sorry for the long post – that’s what I get for showing up late to the party.

[keithcurtis]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

Also, it seems that surface sailors would pretty much be at the mercy of an aquatic race. Assuming they can get the metal, what's to stop them from swimming under ships with a brace and auger and sending them to Davy Jones? Any seafaring race would probably need to pay tribute to the underwater folk.

Unless the sailors had the ability to generate electricity, and dropped a couple live wires into the water whenever the aquatics came a-knockin…

They'd have to be able to generate an awful lot of electricity. The ocean is pretty durn big and disperses electricity very quickly. Primitive generators won't even give them a tingle.

 

Keith "I liked your Rome analogy" Curtis

[azato]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

What makes the underwater races so formitable, is that you can't see them. They could follow and plan for quite awhile before striking. You would have no warning.

 

I imagine the problem with the aquatic races is they they would not be much of a threat once ashore, or at least farther than the shoreline.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

They'd have to be able to generate an awful lot of electricity. The ocean is pretty durn big and disperses electricity very quickly. Primitive generators won't even give them a tingle.

I assumed it would only affect the immediate area around the ship. But yeah, I really have no idea how much juice it would take. Oh well, sounded great in theory.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

Great discussion! My personal' date=' completely-unprovable belief is that it wouldn’t take too long for civilization to recover to at least pre-industrial levels, and not too many generations after that to return to something resembling modern levels. I’m not a carpenter, but I’m confident I could build a livable house if I had to – it wouldn’t be pretty, and it wouldn’t be maintenance-free, but it would beat sleeping in the rain. Gimme a decent toolbox and the complete [i']“Idiot's Guide”[/i] series, and I’m willing to bet I could do okay.

I agree. I think industrial society would take quite a while to recover, but I'm fairly certain we could get back to a late pre-industrial/early steam age pretty quickly, with a little bit of eletricity available to most communities for special uses.

War story: I was at an Emergency Management conference a few years ago where a vendor was trying to sell people on his cyber-doomsday scenario' date=' and said [i']“How many people here could program their own computers?”[/i] Since the room was mostly cops, firefighters and paramedics, very few hands went up. Several people seemed to think the guy had a point, until I pointed out that while *I* can’t program in Cobol or C++ or whatever, I could walk to the Middle School across the street and in five minutes or less find easily a dozen kids that can.

 

OTOH, after Rome fell, people forgot how to take baths, let alone build roads, for nearly 1000 years. The books were still there, not nearly as common as today of course, but available for those who wanted to go looking for them. But no one wanted to. So perhaps it all depends on whether societal forces make people to want to learn, or whether we all decide to hide from the scary technology again, ala Canticle for Liebowitz.

Great points, and when I was thinking of the knowlegde of tech how to surviving, I had The Canticle of Leibowitz i the back of my head... pehaps not under wraps they way it was in the book, but I'd be rather unsupriased to see a scholastic/monastic class arise to preserve literacy and the basics of technology... its one of the bits of accumulated lore that would have enough value to support a small class of people in a barter economy

 

Someone with better tech-fu correct me if I'm wrong. But my understanding is that EMP is a one-time event, not something that lingers around for hours, let alone years. Also as I understand it EMP only affects electronics that are actually turned on when the pulse hits. So the car you're driving might fry, but you should be able to hot-wire that parked car over there. Lastly, a lot of work has been done in the last few decades on EMP-hardening. Not for consumer electronics (not cost-effective), but a lot of critical infrastructure-type stuff might very well survive. (Barring other disasters, of course.)

 

Of course, for gaming purposes, EMP works however the GM wants it to. But if we're talking realistic here...

Yeah, AFAIK, EMP's fry anything with active current in them, as well as anything with fragile eletronics like microcircutry. Most modern cars would never run again. Older and simpler designed machines that were inactive at the time of the pulse should be restorable (perhaps with a bit of work)

 

Great point. That’s true even today in some third-world countries – I’ve seen building with all the wiring and other metal fixtures stripped out of them by looters.

Which is why we won't NEED modern materials production capability for a while.

 

 

Unless the sailors had the ability to generate electricity' date=' and dropped a couple live wires into the water whenever the aquatics came a-knockin… [/quote']

nahh, Keith is right.

That big ole tub o' saltwater is a wonderful ground

 

How difficult are those to make if you don’t have modern materials? If you’re trying to make one out of lumber and home-forged steel' date=' how difficult will it be to make anything efficient enough to provide a reliable power source? Better than nothing, of course, but I’m curious. [/quote']

For me, pretty easy.

For others like me, probably also not too hard.

For most folk, not so easy.

I'm a bit of a survivialist, and a bit of a fanatic as well. I LIKE hand tools, and have a rather full suite of them, and know how to use them. My reference books include things like the 13 volume Foxfire series... a collection of pre industrial Appalacian living techniques including nifty diagrams and instructions (want to make a windmill, hand pump, still, bed, wagon or hand forged musket? They have chapters), Back to Basics (learning and enjoying early American skills), Highland Folkways (same concept, but aimed 150 years earlier

and from the perspective of a Scotland), as well as a bunch of others. When I add in my fathers books.... He still has every book he's ever bought on electrical and mechanical engineering, from when he started teaching himself about the subject back in the 30's till he retired in the early 90's. I have a complete set of carpenters hand tools inherited from my grandfather, smithing tools collected while I was doing faire (most are gold rush era hand forged antiques, because I found they work better than most of the ones I could find for sale) and a full suite of leather working hand tools.

Without leaving the room I currently am typing in, I could build myself a full set of leather clothes, including water resistant outerwear (yeah, I make my own waterproofing too, though when I ran out of easily available prepackaged oils and my stock of beeswax, I'd have to acquire more to mix up more of my homewbrew waterproofing I first compounded when I was installing waterwells for a living.)

 

So, in a roundabout way, the answer is "Not very easy, but there are those among society that have the knowledge, if we survive"

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

Yeah' date=' AFAIK, EMP's fry anything with active current in them, as well as anything with fragile eletronics like microcircutry. Most modern cars would never run again. Older and simpler designed machines that were inactive at the time of the pulse should be restorable (perhaps with a bit of work)[/quote']

Thanks for the clarification. One of the players in my last game group was an engineer who did R&D on EMP hardening for a living. He used to go apoplectic over Hollywood portrayals of EMP. (Which, to be fair, are probably no more inaccurate than 90% of Hollywood portrayals of anything else.)

 

My reference books include things like the 13 volume Foxfire series...

Ah, Foxfire. Been a few years...

 

Without leaving the room I currently am typing in' date=' I could build myself a full set of leather clothes, including water resistant outerwear [/quote']

I was specifically thinking of power generation such as the windmills you mentioned, which I assume might be more dependant on having the right materials available. Poorly-made clothes are still clothes, but a poorly-made wind turbine is just lawn-art.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

Thanks for the clarification. One of the players in my last game group was an engineer who did R&D on EMP hardening for a living. He used to go apoplectic over Hollywood portrayals of EMP. (Which' date=' to be fair, are probably no more inaccurate than 90% of Hollywood portrayals of anything else.)[/quote']

Yeah, Hollyweird screws up EMP's for dramatic effect ALL the time.

I grew up with a father who was an engineer for Lockheed Aerospace (he was a part of the teams that build the tiles for the shuttle and some various bits for Hubble), so I got to hear all about various bits of neat lore like EMPs, reentry sheilding and the like.

Much to the joy of my Mad Max loving soul, the vast majority of cars that'd survive (outside of EMP hardened Mil-tech) are older cars. Older diesils are rather EMP resistant, and easy to run on homade fuel too. Older cars (with carbuerators rather than Fuel Injection, and without controlling computers and chips everywhere) should also survive if they're inactive, and wouldn't be super hard to restore even if they burned out (replace the wiring harness). Gas could be an issue, but its not a hideous task to convert the big old engines to run off methanol or another homemade alcohol fuel.

Last of the V-8 Interceptors, indeed!

 

Ah, Foxfire. Been a few years...

Bloody wonderful set of books.

I was specifically thinking of power generation such as the windmills you mentioned, which I assume might be more dependant on having the right materials available. Poorly-made clothes are still clothes, but a poorly-made wind turbine is just lawn-art.

LOL

Good point there.

There are a variety of different windmill configurations, and some would be a ot easier to build for power generation than others.

Traditional Dutch style windmills are slow and ponderous, and only work really well in high wind environments, and evewn then can be tricky. But they are pretty easy to build. They were replaced historically by "Pinwheel" style mills, which are easier to make and maintain, and which I'd expect to rise to be the most common way of harnessing wind power... these are also the kind used most often to pump water. These are the ones you'd associate with Western era towns up to, say, WW2 era rural tech levels.

Modern windmill types are all either easier or harner to build, depending on what you can scavenge.

Propeller style are easily converted from old plane props, which can also be carved (or laminated) from appropriate woods or fiberglass (a material that will, I expect, be in use for a generation or two after the apocalypse, until the supplies run out).

Bicycle-wheel rotor style windmills are also rather easy to build and use in a variety of applications, as are sailwing styles (once again, depending on available skillsets and materials).

Darrieus rotors, the "Egg beater style" I mentioned before, are at a disadvantage because they aren't self starters, and could be quite tricky to fabricate. They can be build with variable pitch rotors to be self starting, and those are actually easier to fabraicate.

 

The power generation system can be pretty easy. While I haven't given it a try, I'd be willing to bet that with a little trial and error most even semi mechanically oriented types with some imagination, desperation, and ingenuity could come up with an idea such as rigging a scavenged alternator up to a windmill and a set of automotive batteries (deep cycle marine batteries would be better). I'd have to monkey with the basic idea, but it should be a workable central powersource for, say, a homestead. Enough to power a few lights, or a powertool when needed. With it might not be out of the realm of possibility to even include some refridgeration.... I'd guess each community would try and have a central power generation point that would feature a few high power draw appliances used by the whole community, including a freezer used to create block ice for farmsteads to put in blockhouses for refridgeration, an arc welder for repairing important bits, perhaps even a few shop grade tools (tablesaw, bandsaw, metal lathe, that sort of thing).

 

Skilled labor would shoot WAY the frell up in value, and something like the old guild structure (Master/Journeyman/Apprentice) would pop up around skilled trades like Electrician, Millhand, and the like.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

Those old Dutch style windmills may have been slow, but they generated a lot of power. They needed it to turn those mill stones. I'm sure you could gear it to step up the RPMs if you needed it to generate electricity, and get a lot of juice out of it....

[keithcurtis]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

Here in California, you could just run by Pacheco Pass and steal a power generating windmill. There are hundreds. Of course, depending on you apocalypse scenario, they are pretty close to Fermi Labs.

 

Keith "And they're pretty" Curtis

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

Those old Dutch style windmills may have been slow' date=' but they generated a lot of power. They needed it to turn those mill stones. I'm sure you could gear it to step up the RPMs if you needed it to generate electricity, and get a lot of juice out of it....[/quote']

No doubt, or arguements here.

They'd need a live in set of keepers, but you could even build one with a clutch that could be engaged for different "lines" operated out of wings off the main mill building. Say, a sawmill, hammermill, grainmill and turbine or generator system, probably wired to a batteryhouse closer to the main part of town (which would probably also have a line to a generator at the local watermill as well).

If you've got the wind and the infrastructure to support it, those big windmills do rock.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

Here in California, you could just run by Pacheco Pass and steal a power generating windmill. There are hundreds. Of course, depending on you apocalypse scenario, they are pretty close to Fermi Labs.

 

Keith "And they're pretty" Curtis

We've got bunches of windfarms around.

Pretty much all over the range of hills forming the western side of the San Joaquin (sp?) valley.

Yeah, they are pretty!

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

"Must spread reputation around, yadda yadda.":)

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

"Must spread reputation around' date=' yadda yadda.":)[/quote']

[JDHMorgan2003]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

One thought on the lack of hygiene after the fall of Rome.

 

It wasn't that people didn't want to bathe, at first, but that they didn't want to be accused of being Jewish or Muslim, or of belonging to any heresy of the time.

 

The church wasn't very forgiving, and being clean, was indicative of Islam or Judaism. When they were allowed to, they were very clean. Also, it usually made you look more attractive, and that wasn't always a good thing.

[azato]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

The next question is about currency. Lets suppose that we have a VERY diverse group of races (as in the BETA WORLD post) and that when "people" do congregate into groups they are not often in populations larger 1k. There may be a few major cities of 10K. The balance of power is fairly even and there are no Emperors or Kings or City States as such. Would anything beyond a barter system likely develop? Would precious metals become a universal currency (1 oz silver or 1 oz of gold)? It seems to me that *almost* all people in history have reverted to some form or currency, even the more primitive. What do you think is workable?

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Making a Post-Apoc "logical"

 

IMO it's a question of when, not if, money would come back into use. Probably depends on how quickly effective governments re-emerge; most forms of currency assume some sort of credible government issuer.