Deprivation or not.

[Rich]

I was born in 1940, and due to WWII I grew up without a father for the first five years of my life. My family didn't have indoor plumbing until 1946. We didn't have showers until 1954, having to make do with bathtubs. And we didn't have a television until 1959.

Funny, I didn't feel deprived then, and don't feel as I was deprived now.

I had food and shelter. I had school and the public library. I could hunt and fish and play sports. I was actually pretty well off.

The above was a lead-in for what follows.

Lets think about what would happen if the excretement hits the rotational device. And instead of thinking at the family level, lets do it at the city/county level, because we are supposed to be a civilized people. Obviously this is most likely a "stay in place" exersize, not a bug-out one.

Will indoor plumbing go away? I don't think so. We may have to get together locally to keep the sewage plant operating, but I think flush toilets are here to stay. Frequent showers may become a thing of the past to lighten the sewage load though.

Food distribution to those areas that don't grow their own will change. Gone will be the fancy perishables, and their place will be taken by foodstuffs that can be stored. Transportation of those foodstuffs will take place, even if it's by bicycle like the Vietnamese did down the Ho Chi Minh trail. People will have to relearn how to cook with fire.

Communications will be by radio and analog television, unless the television is so fancy as to be unusable with a "primitive signal." Common battery powered and hand cranked devices will continue to be useful. By common batteries, I mean D, C, AA, AAA, 9V, and 12V car batteries. Anything more specialized, even when rechargeable should not be relied upon for planning. I figure cell phones will probably go out fairly quickly, even without EMP, however the land lines will probably do all right, although their may be some hiccups as they take the fancy junk out of the system.

Electrical power may be iffy at first unless you live near a power plant. One of the first priorities should be getting a backup plant going for when the modern one goes down and can't be repaired due to parts. In fact, that should be a good mental exercise for before things go sour. How do you power your local electrical grid if your local plant stops operating? Our local plant here in El Paso is effectively Palo Verde in Arizona and some coal fired plants in Four Corners, and our running water is the famed Rio Grande which is almost bone dry most of the year thanks to the famed chili fields of New Mexico. So, we are screwed in two ways.

Clean water is another thing that should be brainstormed. If there isn't enough water or power for your area's population, are there plans to move the excess people to area where they can be supported? Has the recipient area been contacted and a agreement put in place?

Community defense organizations? Get a map or three of your area, and start marking it up as to were to place your defenses to prepare for the ravening hordes that will be arriving. Fighting off a well prepared army isn't likely unless you are in a state of rebellion. The opposition will most likely be looters and hungry people. And, since you are the one with the plans, it is likely you will be one of the people in charge.

Commonality of weapons isn't a goal at this point. If you have to go on the offensive though that could change. As a practical matter though, having some weapons in common and easily available calibres is kind of a no brainer.

Cuss and discuss if you are a mind to.

[Jered]

Septic tank is downhill of the house.

[randy]

To get some ideas, you might want to check out Eric Flint's Ring of Fire series (scroll down the page to that section). Through a freak cosmic mishap, the town of Grantville West Virginia is picked up and dropped into Germany in 1632. A lot of the issues you brought up are dealt with in the series.

[randy]

By common batteries, I mean D, C, AA, AAA, 9V, and 12V car batteries. Anything more specialized, even when rechargeable should not be relied upon for planning.

To that I would add Sealed Lead Acid (SLA)/Gel Cells/Absorbed Glass Matt(AGM) batteries. Commonly used in UPSs, emergency lighting and alarm systems. The (now probably useless in your scenarios) cell sites will be treasure troves of the stuff.

Amateur radio operators use them quite extensively for back up communications as they are relatively easily rechargeable, and have characteristics that make them more suitable for this use than car batteries. I keep several of various ratings (mostly 7 Amp Hour (Ah) and 17Ah).

They are definitely on my planning list (along with the ones you listed. All of my amateur handhelds have battery cases that use AAs in the event I cannot charge the regular ones).

[blackeagle603]

not sure I'd discount cellular too quickly. esp during the rebuilding phase. there's good reason most of tthe developing world's first phone service is cellular. wireless is now cheaper to deploy and service than wireline. there is tremendous innate drive in man to build communication nets -- incentives are fellowship, financial, security and political.

[workinwifdakids]

Yes, continuing on what Chris said: if we decided to write down the origins of most everything we cherish in a modern industrial society, I bet we could characterize 99.9% into...
* an accident (Penicillin, Champagne)
* an unintended outcome of 'pure' science (X-Rays for Medical Use)
* unsure footsteps based on what 'ought' to work (atomic bombs)

My point is, once you know something exists and works, it's a lot easier to make your way toward it. There are a lot of people who'd never in a million years create something from whole cloth, but they can reverse engineer a working copy of broken technology. Chris says the turn of the century, and I'll say that sounds right. We'd mimic the spread of wired telephone service, and the spread of raw beef and fresh fruit via refrigerated rail car. The movement would be compressed in time, though - we'd move far faster than the first go-round, in part because we know it can be done and how to do it, in part because everyone already made all the slow, incremental, evolutionary trials and errors, and finally because the materials and components will be there to some extent.

[HTRN]

Also, I'm going to presume that anti-biotics will be a problem for at least 5 years, and that there will be at least two to four years of major plagues and general starvation following any major societal disruption.

You may be a bit off on the timeline - Chloramphenicol, which is cheap and relatively easy to make, could be up in production in 6 months. The reason why it isn't used these days, because it causes a fatal condition known as aplastic anemia(1 in 25,000 or so). There's no way to test for the reaction, except to take the drug, and if you do react, it's almost universally fatal. It's still used here for eyedrops, which have a much lower rate of reaction than when taken orally.

It's the antibiotic of choice in the aforementioned 1632verse.


HTRN

[mekender]

the electrical grids for people that are powered off of nuclear or hydroelectric will function for a while... basically until the plants are shut down or they break... estimates ive heard is that the hydroelectric ones should last 3 to 5 with zero maintenance... the nuclear plants should last a year or so, basically until the coolant levels get low enough to trigger automatic fail safes...

of course a mass exodus to one of these areas could also overload the grid and shut the plant down too...

all of this is supposing that there is no one left that knows how to fix the stuff... which is very unlikely...

[Denis]

To get some ideas, you might want to check out Eric Flint's Ring of Fire series (scroll down the page to that section). Through a freak cosmic mishap, the town of Grantville West Virginia is picked up and dropped into Germany in 1632. A lot of the issues you brought up are dealt with in the series.

Not to mention Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle (US$4 for the e-book), the grandpa of the "if civilisation were wiped out tomorrow..." genre; complete with cannibals, post-apocalypse re-industrialisation, and an unforgettable dude surfing a tidal wave.

If you're feeling flush, there's also a whole bundle of Pournelle's e-books for US$40, which includes Hammer.

[mekender]

national geographic did a great 2 hour show on what would happen if humans disappeared tomorrow... they had some pretty good research to show the first 30 years or so, they used Prypat (the town nearest to Chernobyl) to show what happens if cities are left completely abandoned...

it was a fascinating look at how well nature retakes civilization... we are starting to see some of that in Michigan cities that are being overrun with plant growth now that they are being abandoned...