The Non-Dudebro's Guide to the Apocalypse

I tend to deal with my (relatively mild unmedicated) ADHD by having several projects on the go at one time, and switching between them whenever I feel my focus/will to work on one thing at a time going. We can be spergy distracted assholes together <3

(Which might actually be a good thing in a post-apocalyptic community - instead of hyperfocussing on one task, we can do a bunch of smaller long-term ones, like drying/preserving food and growing plants and leaving things to soak in dye and stuff :) )

 

Yes! And it's not like I can't do multiple knitting projects, and a lot of long-term stuff for survival really does involve setting thing to do its stuff and then wandering off to do something else. (And...then remembering about Thing, which may be tricky. Someone'll prompt us on that, right? Or we'll remember eventually, hopefully.)

Oh! I also know how to make bread. I know how to make bread using honey, even, and brain is convinced it's the Best Food.

 

Another apocalypse dream last night. Dreamt I was determined to do a food run and got myself to a supermarket where I zipped around grabbing stuff. People started breaking in and it all got a bit tense. I knew I had to get out. But at the last moment I thought, 'No. I must find some egg custard tarts first because the bf likes them'. So I fought my way through to the pastry cabinet and I got my goddamn egg custard tarts. Then ran like the clappers.

Moral of the story being: In the case of the apocalypse, if there is a particular snack food you require I will go through hell and high water to get it for you. That is literally my only useful physical contribution.

 

Well, shit would probably go a bit sideways when I ran out of my antidepressants, but at least I'm more motivated to do things when other people are involved instead of it being just me! So being part of a group would help me.

Anyways, skills to contribute... I can cook decently, I know some basic sewing and knitting so I could make/mend clothes, I know a couple other languages so I could help communication if we ran into another group that spoke one of those languages... I'm good at coming up with stories so I could entertain people? And I went to a panel on bondage and learned a couple of knots, so I could teach people in our group some knots to figure out how to make that useful later. And I'll eat just about anything once, so at least I wouldn't be a picky post-apocalypse eater >.<

 

I found this little bit neat; tl;dr it may be our superior socialization skillz that let us dominated over the larger, stronger neanderthals.

 

One possibility: much of our depression and chronic health issues may be due to eating glyphosate in all our food: https://s3.amazonaws.com/media.food...s/FDN_Glyphosate_FoodTesting_Report_p2016.pdf
If civilization collapses and we grow clean crops many of us might get a lot healthier.

 

tiny angry biology major screaming

 

Depends on the type of collapse what sort of lifestyles arise out of it. A tech collapse with much of the environment intact will probably see a rise in more local, small scale farming and a return to agriculture as a primary work source. An environmental collapse will probably see a nomadic lifestyle emerge, similar to what even many modern desert dwelling communities still practice as was pointed out up thread.

Something I wonder: feline domestication stemmed from the shift of hunter/gatherer to farmer as they hunted the pest population that came with it. Would we keep on the fuzzy meows as a sort of exotic but useless pet in a nomadic society?

 

I suspect the fuzzy meows would remain pretty useful! They're still good for keeping pests down, after all, and I feel like they probably could be pretty useful for hunting. Dogs you have to take out hunting with you. Cats will bring food in, unprompted.

 

Yeah but it's roulette odds of the thing they bring you actually being something you want to eat lmao.

 

True. And a half-eaten mouse doesn't really have a lot of meat on it, either.

 

We'll breed better cats. Bigger cats! And then those cats can hunt for us.
*sighs dreamily, thinking of Norwegian forest cats*

 

What are some good resources to learn skills like these? It's something I've been curious about lately but I don't really know where to start.

 

A good place to start is your local library system or community center, if you have one, at least in the US. I know my library holds canning and gardening classes, though sometimes it depends on the season, and they're often free there. If you've got a community college or university near you with an agricultural program, they may offer classes as well. And a lot of good info can be found on youtube - I spent an hour yesterday watching different fish-cleaning methods.

edit: I just checked the two libraries near me and in the next three weeks there's a gardening class, two sewing classes, and three knitting classes. It depends on your area, obviously, but the library is where I would start.

 

In a similar vein to Sir Sparklepants' comment, most craft stores do have workshops on "how to do a crafty thing". Depending on the store, it may be hit-or-miss on if it's something you want to learn; somewhere like Fabricville / Fabricland is more likely to have something directly oriented towards working with yarn or fabric, while a big-box store is going to be a bit more all over the map about what lessons they're offering. And I have seen grocery stores offer lessons on how to make a specific easy-to-learn dish that's relevant to the season and the ingredients available.

Also, seconding youtube. That's where I learned how to knit. And I know that there's a lot of info on there about "how to learn how to cook", and a lot of how-to survivalist stuff.

 

Youtube can also show you how to make a gun out of $20 of parts from the hardware store.

 

... Wait, what? I know it's possible and legal in the US but I didn't think it was on Youtube. And that cheap.

 

I haven't seen the video in question, but I'm assuming the gun falls apart fairly quickly. When I bought my revolver, it was something like $450, and that's on the lower end for a handgun.

 

It's a simple one shot 12 gauge, at least that's the one I've seen on Youtube. It's durable, just not very accurate or quick to reload. And yes, in the US it is fully legal to make your own firearm from scratch, so long as the resulting firearm is of a type and specifications that are legal for you to own, and you aren't making them in quantity. You can make I think three per year, and you have to hold onto them for at least two years before selling them or giving them away.

In a large number of countries where civilian possession of firearms is prohibited there are thriving black market gun manufacturers who make crude-but-functional weapons. Most of them are single shot or fully automatic since those are both easier than semi-automatics.

https://homemadeguns.wordpress.com/

 

(That's not the site linked above, I made a Google search.)
... Unsurprisingly, gun nuts seem to love the idea.