How many people can land support?

[bigpaul]

got a fiend of mine who is always looking at places like this, mainly National Trust property, but it looks a bit too large for my purposes, I would be concerned about the closeness of the river for flooding, lots of flooding in the UK the last few years, plenty of timber there for building and firewood, land is flat depends what the soil is like. I take it thats the sea at the back of the photo, organise some fishing trips see what you can catch.

[Mick]

(4 February 2021, 17:28)bigpaul Wrote: got a fiend of mine who is always looking at places like this, mainly National Trust property, but it looks a bit too large for my purposes, I would be concerned about the closeness of the river for flooding, lots of flooding in the UK the last few years, plenty of timber there for building and firewood, land is flat depends what the soil is like. I take it thats the sea at the back of the photo, organise some fishing trips see what you can catch.

1- there are enough bedrooms and various rooms to accomodate all 15 Hall members, rather than have everybody living in separate dwellings.
Having everybody under one roof will also give extra security, and we can surround the Hall wth a perimeter of coils of razor wire like this-






Because when the starving mobs (below) come out of the city we'll need all the security we can get..




2- The Hall has stood there for almost a hundred years and the area doesn't have a reputation for flooding..

[Mick]

PS- is there any way to edit our posts to correct spelling mistakes etc?
For example I forgot to say that yellow perimeter line in front of the wire is an anti-vehicle ditch.

[Mick]

And yes that's the sea at the back.
Here's an overview of the area-

[bigpaul]

without knowing the location, how far or near it is to a city, post SHTF there isnt going to be any new fuel being refined so any looters or other undesireables will be walking, maybe cycling, maybe a horse rider or two but no motor vehicles.

[Mick]

(5 February 2021, 11:22)bigpaul Wrote: without knowing the location, how far or near it is to a city, post SHTF there isnt going to be any new fuel being refined so any looters or other undesireables will be walking, maybe cycling, maybe a horse rider or two but no motor vehicles.

1- The nearest city can be any distance away and will be a cold dark place..



..so sooner or later the hungry survivors in there (a couple of hundred or so) will have exhausted the canned food they've been able to get from abandoned grocers and wiil head out into the countryside to hopefully pick up the odd brussel sprout or look for cows to slaughter, and before long they'll turn up at the Hall..




Here's a typical post-apoc scenario from 'Survivors 1975', they've got a vehicle and there's still enough petrol at deserted filling stations that can be hand-cranked up.
In the deserted adjoining grocers the rats are having a field day, but there's still plenty of canned goods the survivors can help themselves to..

[bigpaul]

first of all Mick dont base your survival on any film (or online game) its only fiction and nothing like real life will be WTSHTF.
secondly, any survivors in the city will be in a bad state and most of the masses have no idea where their food comes from or how it is reared or grown, they just expect it to be in the supermarket when they want it.
thirdly, how are they going to cook it(provided they even know how to) once the power grid goes down.
4th. forget the "golden horde" theory, thats okay for films and books, but in real life it wont happen, those areas just outside of a city will have a problem with looters but further out is the place to be.

[Tartar Horde]

(2 February 2021, 16:59)Mortblanc Wrote: If you try to sustain large stock on an acre each the Royal Society is going to come for a visit. You'll have starving animals within two months. You can only do it on an acre if you supplement with high nutrition rations, the produce of the 20-40 acres the horse or cow needs for natural subsistence.

Post apocalypse conditions, or living a 19th century existence, it takes extensive land management to starve graciously on a small plot.

The U.S. was settled in tracts based on how much land was needed to sustain a family with a nonmechanized technology. In the eastern U.S. in conditions and climate much like the GB midlands that area was 160 acres. Two plots of 40 acres were for raising two cash crops with a third 40 acre plot left fallow to graze the cow and horses needed to work the farm. The fourth 40 acre tract was to be left a perpetual woodland to coppice firewood, situate the cottage, plant the veg garden and hold the barn and small stock. Almost every farm kept extensive poultry flocks, some sheep, and raised one hog for each member of the family as annual sustenance.

In our western states that broke down due to arid conditions. Most of the land west of the Mississippi gets less than 25cm of rain annually. That is why we burn on an annual basis in the western states. In some areas of the western U.S. it requires 40 acres to sustain one cow on graze fodder.

Probably the best examples of intensive cultivation in 19th century conditions goes to the Chinese and the Irish. But that level of organization places the Chinese in such close proximity to their stock that they are the source for most of the worlds communicable diseases.

And we know what happened to the Irish and the results of their famine. Trying to sustain themselves on plots the size of an allotment on a single crop during the early 1800s resulted in there being more Irish in Birmingham and Manchester than in Ireland. We have more Irish in the U.S. than the total population of Ireland today. 1/3 of the population died and 1/3 migrated.

You wait for a full year to harvest and starve while you wait, and one bad harvest and you are done. Two bad years insures everyone is done. In many languages the word we interpret as "Spring" actually means "starving time", waiting for something to grow.

The reality is that GB has not been self sufficient since the Tudors were in power. Your land area in its natural condition can support a finite number of people and you passed that number 500 years back and had been pushing it for a few hundred more. Even with the famous "90% die off" you would still be looking for imports of food to make up the gaps.

Dial up the BBC history series called WW2 Farm. It gives some idea of the futility. Even cultivating every square inch of land available during WW2 GB still had to import 50% of their food. All large stock was killed off down to the pigs. You had to get permission to raise a hog! Almost all of the traditional heritage breeds of hogs went extinct in the course of a few weeks.

The land simply could not sustain both livestock and people. Even keeping a dog was frowned on as wasting food.

The grandads did not talk about that part much after the war, just about the beautiful allotments and rush to produce huge amounts of food. Neither did they speak of the continuation of the restrictive farm controls after the war under the Labor government, along with the continuation of rationing into the mid 1950s and the intense import restrictions on consumer goods to insure room on the boats for shipping food.

Then there is the dream that one will simply walk out into the countryside and "claim their spot of vacant land". Good luck with that!

The most accurate post you've ever written Mort. The reality of what is required, not just to sustain but thrive on a homestead is quite daunting. Even more so when considering the same operation in a SHTF scenario.

[Tartar Horde]

(5 February 2021, 21:54)Mick Wrote:

(5 February 2021, 11:22)bigpaul Wrote: without knowing the location, how far or near it is to a city, post SHTF there isnt going to be any new fuel being refined so any looters or other undesireables will be walking, maybe cycling, maybe a horse rider or two but no motor vehicles.

1- The nearest city can be any distance away and will be a cold dark place..



..so sooner or later the hungry survivors in there (a couple of hundred or so) will have exhausted the canned food they've been able to get from abandoned grocers and wiil head out into the countryside to hopefully pick up the odd brussel sprout or look for cows to slaughter, and before long they'll turn up at the Hall..




Here's a typical post-apoc scenario from 'Survivors 1975', they've got a vehicle and there's still enough petrol at deserted filling stations that can be hand-cranked up.
In the deserted adjoining grocers the rats are having a field day, but there's still plenty of canned goods the survivors can help themselves to..

I love the idea that hordes of City folks think they can just walk up to Cattle and kill them rotfl. They can hit you so hard as to propel a large Man off his feet, they can kill you just by hitting you, never mind when they stomp you into the ground. How many people have ever seen a pissed off Cow? Now imagine these same creatures after going feral.

[bigpaul]

a cow with a calf will stomp someone into the ground just to protect their calf, bullocks will do the same without the calf, ever tried to stop a running bullock?
post SHTF they will go feral.
dairy cattle wont last long without being milked but beef cattle will.