Surviving 10, 20 or more years after SHTF

[John]

I am looking for help and suggestions:
I am debating starting a small blog.
Initially I would probably only expect to post about once a week or so but hope that may increase.

There would be an email address as I would be looking for contributors to the blog.
The blog, as yet untitled, would be solely about survival or surviving a major collapse of the world in the longer term.

The reason for this collapse will not concern us as such. Yes there may be differences in surviving such an event between a major nuclear war, a pandemic, asteroid/comet impact(s), EPM or any other reason, except zombie, that you care to name. That is not my concern.

What I want to try and achieve is to consider what may happen and how the survivors may live 5, 10 or even 20 years on if civilization has gone completely to hell in its hand basket and there appears no way of ever returning to the live we have now.
I realize that there may well be lots of things left from pre-event that may be able to be used or cannibalized, but this would in all probability be fairly short term, according to the number of survivors left, as once items wear out, break etc. they would have to be replaced and could we replace them?

If you are interested in helping or contributing to this venture please send me private email and we will try to take it from there.

Please note, if you think I am loony and it will not happen then don’t bother. If you think any collapse will be only be short term then fair enough, what I want to try to achieve is to look at the what if?
Thanks
John

[Mortblanc]

Good luck with that.

[CharlesHarris]

I don't know about 10 years and out, but reading about Haiti 5 years after the 2010 quake is not at all encouraging....

http://www.theguardian.com/global-develo...ding-haiti

http://www.voanews.com/content/five-year...94607.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worl...o-recover/

http://globalnews.ca/news/1769570/five-y...arthquake/

It has taken 10+ years for a reasonable level of recovery after the 2004 tsunami hit Indonesia

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014.../?page=all

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/91803/f...hilippines

[Straight Shooter]

My first reaction John is the BP doctrine, start off with no real modern aids at all...as you mean to carry on.... lots of variables , how old are you ? okay you may get through....the best chance is a group or commune ....fraught were dangers...but doable ...back to the land ...in all forms... not impossible but hard ....so what.... if anyone thinks all others will just roll over and die ...not happening ......okay many will but not all ...even well prepared like us will falter...by the hands of others....you say 10 / 20 years fair enough but 10 to 20 months is my main concern John, ....some may think it a futile task what you want to achieve ? nothing in survival is futile whatever the task set.

[John]

Whilst I appreciate what you say, especially Charles with his links.
One or two things.
What I am looking at is where there is no outside help, we will all be in same boat.
Though as I said I appreciate what was said in the links.

Personal view, 10 -20 months is short term.
If you survive and you are at your 'retreat' and have crops and animals etc. and survive then you have a start for longer term. If not and then find out at the end of 10 -20 months that it is not going back to normal and decided to start planting crops take time to grow and you need to cover for bad yields and failures.
So you short term prep up to say 3-5 years but start on longer term after say 12/18 months.

One thing I do believe is that once we do collapse, whatever reason, then we will not get back to normal or anywhere near it, probably not even back later than 15th/17th century and may be beyond that. Other thing is that we will regress, no doubt about that, if we can regress in a planned way quickly then the sooner we reach the bottom the sooner we may start the long pull up but consider that this is a finite planet we live on and all the easily accessible raw materials, mineral, metal ore and fossil fuels will take millions if not billions of years to get back to what they where when we started to mine them and may be humans will not be around then.

But again and help appreciated even though most of you will not agree with or see where I am going
John

[Straight Shooter]

No your wrong John.....i see where you are going exactly....let me put it another way ...i am sixty three ...type 2 i will not be long about.... meds....complications ....my time scale will be short...the best use of me will be to teach my group....hope they are fast learners.....its that simple, i am not pouring cold water here John...just looking ( selflessly ) through my eyes ....go for it John i encourage you to do it !

[John]

SS I also know what you are saying.
I am 62, have a heart and back problems though reasonably fit.

MY view, never mind me, what about those still to come. This civilisation will collapse at some time and it is those survivors that concerns me.
I suppose it is a bit like Dartnells The Knowledge but not knowledge of that type.

I just want to persuade preppers that you should at least consider what if it does not get back to normal, what if it's really bad.
Don't need to prep for it, probably couldn't but at least use that brain and try to think the unthinkable. What would I do if.......

[bigpaul]

you will be looking at some kind of "subsistence farming" sort of lifestyle, depending on the size of your group you may be looking at something the size of a normal allotment, if you have animals maybe a bit more, it depends on how much you can manage and control but everything will be back to a "basic" level, no power so everything will be done by manual labour with non power tools. the "die off" will be huge, most people have made no preparations, haven't even given it a first thought never mind a second, they wont survive with what is in their houses, how many people these days even have a tool kit? no they GSI.."get someone in".... we will revert to a pre industrialised lifestyle, maybe 18th Century style. like John says, don't necessarily prep for the "collapse" but at least consider the possibility. short term prepping is all well and good but that's always assuming it'll get back to "normal", but it may never be "normal" again, at least not the normal we all new, there will be a new normal and we will all have to adapt to it.

[Tartar Horde]

The common thread running through all previous collapses has been the uniformity of technology and an understanding how to use that technology to exist in the abscence of a governing body. In the past people understood how to make Fire for instance, or probably understood how to make Yarn etc, so when for instance Rome collapsed vast amounts of people didn't die because they understood how to survive using their basic technology. The situation we find ourselves in now is a civilisation that is highly dependent on specialists to run it. This leaves the vast majority of people ignorant of the ability to be able to sustain their current lives in the event of a serious breakdown.

[bigpaul]

the vast majority of the population are "4 generations removed from the land", they neither know where their food comes from or care, they are incapable of providing any food for themselves should the commercial supply dry up. as for modern technology I think the main common denominator is electricity, it either needs power to run it or power to recharge it, when not if the power grid goes down it'll be useless, of course most people think "it'll never happen" and are therefore unprepared...for anything.