Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Norfolk, VA
Posts: 4678

After much experimentation, I can make a decent loaf of whole wheat bread in about 30 minutes, not counting baking and rising time.

I can perform basic maintenance on my car.

I can do basic first aid and firefighting if need be; my car has floatation devices under the seat in case I drive off a bridge and need to escape through the sunroof.

These are a couple of examples of stuff I've picked up over the years that I think make me more "ready" for certain situations than other people. I like to think that I am somewhat self-sufficient in some areas, and that I could branch out into others.

They don't have to be of any practical utility. I'd like to know how to make beer, and make a batch (well, several, until I got it down right). I've worked a barn during foaling season but never had to help deliver a foal...something I'd like to learn.

What do you have or know which makes you self-sufficient?
(besides broadband, an adultcheck crack, and a right hand)
What do you want to learn?
besides the off hand

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Dumbfucksville!
Posts: 12164

I can peel an orange.

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Registered: Oct 2001
Location:
Posts: 17911

god, yer anal, puddin

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: library
Posts: 19581

I carry my handy little nerd knife, it hasn't failed me yet, as proved by the fact that I ain't dead.

-m

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Dumbfucksville!
Posts: 12164

Maybe we're all dead and the earth is an afterlife for another planet!

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: library
Posts: 19581

Jose Phillip style?

-m

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: is futile
Posts: 4988

I have some knowledge of pre-industrial technology that makes me less dependent on the western society's extrasomatic means of adaptation.

How to create stone tools, how to smelt iron ore, how to store perishables without electricity, how to reclaim water without rainfall.

Just basic stuff with little relevance in my daily life. But it is good to know.

Cheers

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Norfolk, VA
Posts: 4678

quote:

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Originally posted by Mugtoe
god, yer anal, puddin

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Registered: Jan 2002
Location: UK
Posts: 13002

quote:

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Originally posted by squee
my car has floatation devices under the seat in case I drive off a bridge and need to escape through the sunroof.

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Registered: Jan 2004
Location:
Posts: 2025

People are only self-sufficient because they are too stupid to make enough money to pay other people to do things for them.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Location Location
Posts: 26385

I had to long ago accept the fact that I'm pretty fucking useless. I would not survive in the wild. As much as that pains me to admit, from a macho perspective, it's the truth.

I don't know anything about how anything works, save some electronic devices here and there (I'm qualified in VCR repair, for instance, a skill I am sure will come in handy for the apocolypse). As far as I am concerned, most things work by magic. When I take my car to the mechanic, he can pretty much tell me anything and I'll just nod my head like a moron, blink a few times, and just hand him my credit card. I think I'm still certified for CPR and shit like that, but I don't really know any of it. My general solution to people having immediate health emergencies is just to hit them repeatedly in the general vicinity of the problem. Sort of like a TV. I can't create fire with anything but a lighter, and even that proves problematic for me some of the time. I can't cook, even with extensive directions (converting measurements is utterly beyond me without a For-Dummies website and a furrowed brow). I have no idea how to filter anything, much less my own urine, and to this day, the concept of "germs" is one that is difficult for me to internalize ("but you can't SEE them!"). I suck at most anything that involves hand-eye coordination. Despite being in Boy Scouts for a number of years, I can't tie a knot to save my freaking life ("something about a rabbit fucking a tree?"). And, when it comes to which plants are edible and which will kill you, I'm more the trial-and-error sort of guy. I keep telling myself that I survive on my good looks and charm, but unfortunately, I seem absent those as well.

I do have a few skills, sort of. I have delivered a foal, actually, and am pretty good around a farm in general. Horses in particular (though I'm still a complete moron about tack and all that). I broke in horses (often bareback) a summer or two. Which hurts. I know a fair amount of things, at least academically, which, though not always useful, can at least prove interesting sometimes (I can identify most birds and trees on sight, for instance). I'm a pretty quick learner (but I have to actually DO stuff to learn it), and, perhaps my saving grace if left to my own devices, is that I run real fast.

And really, that's half of survival right there, isn't it?

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: baton rouge, la
Posts: 4101

i can build a catapault. and... um.... i can name all the members of the Temptations.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: sydney
Posts: 2202

what are those 'certain situations' any way ?

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Registered: Dec 2002
Location:
Posts: 15994

Self sufficiency? There was a time when I could do lots of things. My deteriorating health puts many of them out of reach now.

Let's see:

raise livestock (chickens, geese, sheep, cattle, hogs, llamas, horses, rabbits) butcher any/all of them, preserve the meat by smoking, make sausage casing from the guts.

garden - almost any vegetable/herb you could name. Hate gardening. Preserve by canning, drying, etc.

raise bees - collect and refine the honey

cultivate orchard fruits (apples, peaches, plums, pears, apricots), can or preserve same in various forms

cultivate various berries (blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries, kiwi fruit) can and/or preserve same

make beer and applejack, fruit wines, berry wines, honey mead, distill brandies, make moonshine (build a still)

cook, make soap, make various toiletries (perfumes/lotions/shampoo)

build a house, wire it, plumb it, roof it, paint it

woodworking - furniture, doors, various items; carve scupltures in wood

gas weld, arc weld, build my own arc welder, simple sheet metal work

designed and built a passive solar air/water heating system built from scrap materials that heated a house and supplied hot water needs at 3,200 feet in the Cascade mountains of Oregon

do microbiology/molecular genetics with a properly equipped lab

do applied psych in various venues

basic electronics

basic auto mechanics

write - both tech writing and creative writing

paint - acrylics and oils mostly


I have in years past taken wilderness survival courses. Can do basic trapping/fishing with improvised tools. Used to be able to knap a decent stone blade. Can build a survival shelter for almost any conditions. Know basic sailing techniques (don't like sailing much), knots as used in nautical applications. Locating and harvesting wild vegetable foods was one skill I excelled at.

Built a rope suspension bridge once with 5 others, out of rope we made ourselves on the spot. Bridge was over a 60 ft gorge.

Used to be licensed to drive anything with wheels, and have driven most types of wheeled vehicles

Not licensed, but quite capable of flying most light aircraft (single engine) or ultralights. Landing them might be another matter

I am getting sleepy. I think the list is more than long enough.

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Registered: Jan 2002
Location: US
Posts: 3533

Among my other talents...I can sew like a madwoman, I even made my elven dress I wore to the ROTK premiere

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: aggressivly happy
Posts: 9121

i can guess the sive of a womans bra withing a few microns

and i can stab things

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35572

quote:

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Originally posted by Mordecai
I carry my handy little nerd knife, it hasn't failed me yet, as proved by the fact that I ain't dead.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35572

I can fix things quite often, or at least make them work again (they might not look the same as they did in the first place, however. I don't have any specific knowledge about them, though, just try to work out how they work, so someone who is familiar with them will generally fix them much better than faster than I (with the exception of the gasboiler repair man, who expensively got it all wrong and I had to fix it myself).

Electricity I know about (although AC is still somewhat weird; I tend to check my ideas with a technical information source and pen and paper before I do anything).

I used to be able to knit, although I have basically forgotten how; I was thinking of looking into that again, for relaxation.

I can normally work out how to write a computer program to do something, but anyone can do that (at least, anyone can do it with as much reading as I have to do to make it work; I can't write a great variety of things off the cuff). I'm not bad at guessing the problems with computer programs, although I should just learn how to use the debugger instead. None of that will be terribly useful in a post-apocalypic world, probably.

Cooking I can do, although for bread I use the breadmaker (I can do it without, but the breadmaker certainly makes it easier). I haven't ever tried to make flaky pastry or puff pastry, though, that looks like something of a chore.

What I find good about physics is that it is so widely applicable; both the knowledge of basic physical processes and the practice that we get in modelling systems. The knowledge of basic processes in chemistry is useful, too (and had I much knowledge of biology, that'd also be handy, I guess), although I find it generally less so than that of physics (and a fair amount of the 'basic processes' in chemistry is physical anyhow).

The Ray Mears survival type stuff I don't know enough about; not because I expect to need it, but because it would be interesting. lifeisgood (who posts occasionally) knows a whole lot more about it than me. I'd like to try my hand at making fire without matches, etc, or flint; I should give that a go, actually.

There is a lot of satisfaction in doing things yourself rather than paying other people to do them, even if it isn't better or even cheaper (sometimes it may not be, certainly not if you put a value on your own time).

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Registered: Sep 2001
Location: ........
Posts: 14960

pervert point awarded for the knitting

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35572

Knitting is the new copraphilia.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: zanzibar
Posts: 10438

I can change oil, change a flat tire, change thermostats, etc. Basically most car maintenance that doesn't require disassembling the engine or transmission. As far as post-apocalypse skills.. I can fish. Also I have a Boy Scout handbook somewhere, I think it pretty much covers everything. I know we were once supposed to make a fire from nothing, but evenutally gave up. We ended up using flint, magnesium and a lot of lighter fluid. That worked well.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35572

Oh, I forgot being able to fish. Took up fishing when I was about 8 (I just put them back after catching them, though).

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: zanzibar
Posts: 10438

Me too, I'd have to learn to clean them. But I figure if you are hungry enough that is probably not that hard.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35572