What happens when there is no restoration?

[River Song]

Many preppers like myself believe that there will some some form of restoration albeit limited. Others believe once it goes it goes.

I saw a film somewhee, someone remind me, of what happens to our buildings etc once they are left to rot and nature reclaims to ground.

I've come across some pictures on the BBC from an east-german photographer of his own land left to rack and ruin. Interesting and at times quite strangely beautiful

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34575019

[NorthernRaider]

I'm personally of the believe that there WILL be a MAJOR restoration, but because the costs of a collapse are likely to be so high the recovery will see lets say SHEFFIELD as an example off the top of my head will end up more like perhaps a Chilean city or perhaps an Eastern European city. IE the essentials will be there, schools, hospitals, shops, internet, cops, local government etc but much of the very expensive social welfare systems will not come back. Any taxes that get levied, collected etc will be going on maintaining basic essentials for a very long time. So few if any youth clubs, sure starts, drop in centres, oap homes, social services etc. Its the bit between the collapse and the recovery that scares me more now than ever, one example if we have a much greater percentage of society made up of migrants and minorities, I think tensions that exist NOW will explode into trouble if TSHTF, I can see ethnic and religious tribalism becoming established for the long term, and with what is left of an army now numbering only 55,000 there is very little anyone can do anything about it. Clashes between haves, have nots, the various races, the various faiths, the core traditional political outlook of areas etc, rural versus urban will happen and it will be a while before conflict morphs into trade and barter.

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FYI I think those who will be the fastest off the start block are those communities who can quickly generate electricity for local or smart grids, So villages with geothermal, wind farms, solar arrays, gas platforms, open cast coal etc will have the upper hand.

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I think when I look at Eastern Europe today with its intact family groups, every home near as dammit has its own veg plot, chooks, pigs , well etc, a basic but reliable vehicle without frills, locally traded foods etc, much lower living costs and taxes etc. I think THEY won the Cold War. We have a high tech, interweb connected, everything is disposable, high tax, high state expenditure society and its sucking the life out of the Western countries

[Steve]

Perhaps our Eastern European migrants will fare best, they already have the knowledge and experience of surviving on less.

[River Song]

Take a look at Cuba since the embargo - mend and make do

[Devonian]

(11 November 2015, 17:27)River Song Wrote: I saw a film somewhee, someone remind me, of what happens to our buildings etc once they are left to rot and nature reclaims to ground.

Have a look at the photo's of the city of Pripyat (Chernolbyl), yes plants and trees etc start to encroach on areas, but overall the buildings and roads etc are pretty much intact. The biggest factor causing deterioration is actually water, so if windows and doors can be kept intact, there would be far far less deterioration.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pictureg...me=2161229

[MaryN]

I can perfectly understand survivors making the best use of any remaining and intact structures. What I can't get my head round is, if there is a major incident that reduces civilisation to such a state, what would happen to the millions of people existing now, I mean in terms of actual bodies. Can you imagine disposing of possibly millions of bodiers? What would you do with them? Who would dispose of them? How could millions of people be displaced without someone noticing? If you shunted everyone in, say, Sheffield, out of the city, where could they go? It would be the same everywhere. Doesn't bear thinking about.

[NorthernRaider]

Mary mother nature will deal with it, EG as listed in some books those who die at home will often become mummified if the seasons are warm and / or the heating is on. those who die outdoors will feed plagues of scavengers and vermin including rats, mice, crows, magpies, dogs, cats, foxes, badgers, this is superbly addressed in George R Stewarts classic EARTH ABIDES

The stink will be dreadful in places for months, plagues of maggots and flies, but eventually natures balance will restore itself. the knack is to live upwind of all the corpses.

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It is neither prudent, wise, practical or a good use of time for preppers to try and bury anyone except those close to themselves.

[MaryN]

That is one hell of a lot of bonemeal! (great for rspberries).

[CharlesHarris]

If any government public health or engineering functions remain, there will be an effort to gather and mass incinerate the corpses, probably using air curtain destructors. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers originally developed these for mass cremation after a nuclear war, but today they are very idely used in the forestry industry, as well as for debris cleanups after hurricanes and tsunamis.

A refractory-lined firebox about the size of a railroad car is inserted into a long trench. Combustion of the waste material is initiated with diesel fuel as an accelerant, being poured onto the waste material and the pile ignited. Once the fire has reached suitable strength as to not be blown out by the air curtain, usually 15 to 20 minutes, the blowers are engaged which run steadily throughout the burn operation and the wood is loaded continuously at a rate consistent with the rate of burn and the box towed along the trench as it becomes filled with ash, and the trench backfilled with a large dozer. The machines we used in Mississippi after hurricanes Katrina and Rita would each burn at a rate of over 10 tons per hour and we ran ten such machines simultaneously with a service roadway between each trench row for the dozer, knuckleboom cranes and walking floor transfer trailers bringing in the debris. In the post Katrina and Rita cleanup the site I worked on processed over a million tons of demolition waste and woody materials.

The purpose of the air curtain is to maintain air quality by delaying exit of smoke particles by recirculating them with forced air back into the fire so that smoke particles are subjected to the highest possible burn temperatures, for more complete combustion, reducing particle size to acceptable opacity limits of under 10% per EPA Method 9 Testing (as compared to open burning which typically can run at 80% to 100% opacity).

After Hurricane Floyd in Virginia in 1995 USACE contractors incinerated more than 100,000 drowned hogs in this manner. The ash generated from the most typical wood waste is a useful soil additive. Ash resulting from demolition debris and mixed waste is subject to testing under the toxicity characteristic leeching procedure method to determine if it can be recycled safely, or if it must be disposed of as hazardous material in a composite lined Subtitle D ash fill. Solid waste landfills are diminishing rapidly, and permits are difficult to secure for new sites. Air curtain destruction provides an affordable and environmentally sound alternative to grinding and indiscriminate depositing of debris into landfills.

[NorthernRaider]

We don't have any of that gear Charles, we have a stockpile of plastic body bags, but as seen during the terrible foot & mouth outbreak here a few years ago when we wiped out much of our cattle and sheep we had to dig holes and fill them with carcasses some were simply sprayed, limed and back filled, others were burnt on timber and fuel pyres. Much of our countryside looked like the gates of hades for weeks.

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Thinking about it I doubt if the UK even has the fuel reserves to do what you system does, I did read in one paper or book that if some towns were totally devastated they would try and create a firestorm to burn the whole town down.