Originally Posted by
Blacksmith
Some of us already have horses and know how to work them and have many of the skills that you think are lost.
If you are the tiny % of people who know this stuff then they effectively are already lost for TEOTWAWKI. On the other hand I know thousands of people who can make new machinery or repair old if they have a lathe and welder running from a generator. I just walk down the street of my industrial area- or any such area in any city or town. And its especially easy if the raw materials are lying around. I doubt that there will be a need for mining for several decades. Materials everywhere, skills everywhere and all it needs is some temporary power to convert existing machines to coal gas or coal fired boilers.
On the other hand, one virus and your team of horses is dead. Good luck finding a vet or replacement
horses from the hordes of wild horses that no longer exist.
Seventeenth century solutions are much easier to make happen than building modern technology from leftover parts.
Oh really? Do you know how to weave rope from flax (I hope you can grow it first!) or would you rather use the million miles of rope already in existence and which will probably last a century or more?
Would you use your small team of horses or like the rest of us, take 10 of the several thousand functioning vehicles available and weld up a simple plough? And when you are tired and have to feed the horses, we refuel and the next driver takes over and also we use our generator for lights to plough at night while you and your horses rest?
I wonder how large a group we can support in the first decade and how many you can? I wonder whose will
prevails?
Will you make your own leather for harnesses or scavenge like the rest of us? I imagine you would not be forging your own steel for horsehoes for about 200 years.
You may believe that you can be totally independent but even the Amish rely on supply lines and if they disappeared I bet they would be scavenging in the cities and not mining for iron ore. Same strategy, different level of sophistication. If the GPS satellites are up, we would use them rather than going straight to 17th century maps. And the idea that people can't keep a GPS receiver running is also silly. A half decent tech can churn out a tiny board with an LED display. I have the circuit diagrams and built one. Not as if componentry will not be available. He may be the only one in 500 miles but if he turns out 3 a day and teaches his kids, who cares? Even if that didn't happen I imagine I could always find a DC power source to run one of the 3 GPS receivers I own or the thousands in those dead cities. Same for my computers if I needed them. The computer I'm using is 10 years old and I have preformatted and installed system installations ready to swap when the drive dies. And then there's
all those abandoned PCs in the dead cities.
That computer and my books has the knowledge of 2000 years of science and engineering. With that we can be
romans with running water and not saxons throwing their waste out the front door.
But you have your vision of what will happen and others have different visions, this one just happens to be mine. I don't think it will last like that forever but it will be many generations before a new normal is reached (which will be very different than today's world).
Tell me why I would not use my existing tools to turn the material around me into the infrastructure I need? If I had a knife I can make shelter and a spear because I know how and have the tool to do it. The knowledge is the hard part. If I can use a lathe and have5 gallons of generator gas then I can make up an adapter plate to bolt on a simple carburettor I find onto a vehicle I find and convert it to wood gas. That would not take up the 3 months of food and water I have. Would I not strip the roofs around me of solar panels, solder them to 12V rather than 48v configuration and run them into batteries for lighting at night? Would I not scour the cities for deep discharge batteries, charge controllers and inverters? Would I not show others how to do the same?
I know, solar panels are only guaranteed for 25 years and deep cycle batteries only last 8 years in use and those without acid in them only last forever. I'd be much better off making candles I guess.
Just remember you will be betting your life and the lives of your family on the correctness of your vision.
Given that none of us have horses, feed for them, harnesses and saddles for them, a running blacksmiths forge or
the space for all that then I think I will take my chances with my 3 generators running on a mix of fuels, my
solar array, my power tools, my powered accommodation with communications and my ability to build and fix the
things I need from the remains of a civilisation that supported 7 billion people.
Good luck with your horse powered well pump. My solar panels will keep working for 25 years and I can adapt any motor I find to power a simple piston pump to drive it. I've done it.
You seem to forget why horses were abandoned. Even the worst of internal combustion engines is more effective.
That is true even for hopelessly inefficient steam engines. The first steam engine weighed about 10 tons, had an efficiency of about 1% and developed 1/2HP. It was STILL better to feed this thing huge amounts of coal to pump out flooded coal mines than persevere with horses.
Imagine that.
You might want to try building one of those 10KW generators with locally available parts and information, with no internet for reference, and make the power source while you are at it, your choice of type of power as long as it is powered by a renewable material.
The power source is a thing called an alternator/generator. I have 3. The world is full of millions of them. There are
millions of gallons of fuel in gas stations that can be powered with them to drive the fuel pumps (and ARE in emergencies).
This fuel does not go stale as quickly as people think. Yes for a german diesel car with hyper injection or whatever it won't work but I have seen 50 year old lister/petter generators in papua New Guinea running on unbelievable garbage fuel- coconut
and peanut oil, palm oil, 30 year old diesel from rusted drums. If it was a hydrocarbon then it went bang. I have one of these engines on order now. And I can make the spares I need with my lathe and other tools.
If you want to see why the 17th century won't happen then go to India. There are 1950s cars like Humbers and Zephyrs still running and repaired on the side of the road. They make the engines new as well. Not an injector or sensor in sight. Cars there never die.
I have seen monster trucks started without a battery. In the west we'd go OMG, the battery is flat. There they jack up the rear wheel, put a wheel brace on it and spin it up and drop the clutch. I've seen such trucks jacked up with rear tyre off (just the rim) a belt made up from cut up car tubes and driving a simple alternator. Primitive, but it works and allows them to run power tools.
I know, they should all just be using candles and a hand drill because it's not as if such ingenious people couldn't
build a low pressure boiler (with rivets even!) and a steam engine to power an alternator they find lying around.
They don't because there is no market for less efficient technology but to survive they would and we would too.
I look forward to pictures and a report when you are done.
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