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How the Apocalypse Will Bring Out the Best in People

85 points by pmcpinto 11y ago

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Of course most people will be civil. Its not 'most people' that would be at issue in an apocalypse. In the examples given, the 20,000 soldiers had 'little to do'. In part because the presence of 20,000 soldiers is a calming influence? Initial looting isn't the only public order issue. Its desperate people when supplies run low, taking what they need to survive from other desperate people.
grecy 11y ago
Living in the Yukon we sometimes talk about what would happen to most "city folk" if their world fell apart with no supermarket and electricity. Most of us hunt our own meat, grow our own vegetables, build our own cabins and get our own firewood. Tons of people up here are already living entirely off-grid. We all agree, our biggest problem would be lack of gasoline to run chainsaws, and none of us really has a solution to that. Cutting firewood by hand would be doable, though it would be a full time job to get enough for the winter. A decent size house will burn through roughly 10 cords in a single winter.
- partisan 11y ago
  Do you think that in a situation like that, people would live together in communal buildings to minimize the amount of wood needed during the winter?
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Would it be important to make the house more fuel-efficient? Super-insulating might return 10X the sweat investment. Also living in tight quarters - heat half the houses. But I don't see independent Yukonites doing that. (Yukonians? Yukonoids?)
  - grecy 11y ago
    Insulation is already big up here. Keep in mind when I say winter, I mean November->March where the high for the day won't be more than -35C, and the low is -40C. Many Yukoners would have to band together. Newer homes in downtown are electric heat only, they always start to really worry when the power is out for more than a couple of hours in winter (happens all the time)
    - mac01021 11y ago
      With that kind of growing season, what do you eat through the winter? Do you keep a giant pantry full of pickled vegetables? Is it meat and bread only?
      - grecy 11y ago
        Lots of meat and salmon in the winter, and any vegetables you canned. Also stuff like potatoes, onions, carrots keep great if you just keep them dry. Of course, there are supermarkets too :)
    - m_mueller 11y ago
      There is a German housing technology called "vacuum house" where instead of heavy insulation you build an airgap with a pump, creating low air pressure. Windows need to be shut and you need double doors (like an airlock) to avoid heat loss. Obviously it needs central airflow with heat exchanger as well. This creates a house that only needs the power for the pump and the heat exchanger instead of heating / cooling. Body warmth and cooking is enough to make up for the loss you have in winter. The little power you need can be created with Solar cells on the roof. To me it seems like the future - if there's a drawback I don't really see it. Mass produced such a house minus the solar cells shouldn't be much more expensive than your average American house with air conditioning. The whole structure can be very light, so earthquakes shouldn't be an issue either. Why arent't we all building this? Is there some problem I'm missing? Is energy simply too cheap to bother?
      - Mtinie 11y ago
- bbarn 11y ago
  City folk here. I may not fit your mold because I grew up on a dirt road in rural Maine, but I think you might find the Yukon got a whole lot more crowded. I can do all those things too, just not here. I'd make my way north. I can't imagine I'd be the only one.
  - imglorp 11y ago
    Why? You'd need less than 10 cords per winter as you moved further South.
- pyre 11y ago
  On the flip side, things like this[1] play out in severely rural areas. It always annoys me when people in rural areas paint a picture of how much "better" it is to be living there. [1]: https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/when-a-woman-is-raped-in-rural-alaska-does-anyone-care https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/when-a-woman-is-raped...
  - Amezarak 11y ago
    That story is not at all representative of the rural US in general. Rural Alaska is a very, very different place with a different population and a different culture where survival and resources are a real, daily concern. Most of the rural US has easy access to running water (parts of the West may be an exception) via a well, and real law enforcement is plentiful. Which is not to say county sheriffs aren't mostly crooked, but it's generally a genteel crookedness as opposed to "yeah rape is OK" crookedness.
  - deelowe 11y ago
    lol. Really? People really think this is common? I just don't know what to say. It's not like that at all. Look, generally speaking, people are decent and have morals. The vast majority do. Shocker I know, but it's true. Most people aren't racist, homophobe, rapist assholes. Doesn't matter where they live.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      > People really think this is common? Rape and sexual violence are pretty common. You might want to find a trustworthy source of numbers. Here's one for England and Wales: http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingdecember2015 http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandj...
      - deelowe 11y ago
        I was talking about it being significantly more common in rural areas.
    - 11y ago
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  Pro tip: don't get sick!
- mrfusion 11y ago
  Convert them to run on ethanol? Or biodiesel?
  - douche 11y ago
    Pretty sure biodiesel isn't a reasonable option - the extra bulk and mass to make a safe diesel-style engine would make a chainsaw unbearably heavy. Plus you'd have wicked problems with fuel gelling in cold weather. Alcohol is possible - but it'd probably be a considerable overhaul. Most stock saws really don't want to run on gasoline that has any ethanol mixed in, although you can use E10 if you have to. And really you should be using at least 89 octane, if not the 91 high-grade stuff. Chainsaws are also all pretty much two-stroke, so you'd have to keep a stock of the mix-in oil, or you're going to destroy your crankcase and pistons. Also, unless you want to burn up your saw bar and chain, as its whirling around at thousands of RPM, you need to have a good stock of either actual bar and chain oil, or, in a pinch, regular 20/30 wt engine oil.
    - grecy 11y ago
      Also biodeiesel is unusable in the winter. It freezes (waxes) long before regular diesel, which is around -30C or -35C. Diesels up here in the winter are trouble.
- mrfusion 11y ago
  Have multiple families in each house in the winter to minimize wood cutting?
- yourapostasy 11y ago
  That's...a lot of wood. This is all hardwood, seasonsed for a year? How large a piece of property would you need to sustainably re-grow that much wood indefinitely (wood growth rates in the Yukon are slower than in more temperate regions)? What is the R-value and ACH [1] airtightness at 50 PA of such a house? I've been researching using two feet thickness of Pittsburgh Corning FOAMGLAS with an airtight building envelope that conforms to PassivHaus airtightness standards, and comparing the capital outlay of that with the anticipated opex cost savings. But I live in a far more mild climate than the Yukon, so my payoff period is measured in many decades. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_changes_per_hour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_changes_per_hour
  - grecy 11y ago
    No hardwood this far north, it's all pine. Also, trees are small and take years and years to grow. I have no idea how much land you'd need to make that sustainable, but it would be absolutely huge! I'm thinking hundreds of acres.
    - douche 11y ago
      Ten cord of pine in a winter must mean you have things buttoned up and insulated pretty well. I grew up in Maine, and it's pretty common to go through 8-12 cord of rock maple, beech and ash in a winter. A lot more BTUs in that than pine, but a lot of houses are drafty old farmhouses... We only used pine in the fall and spring when we needed a quick fire to drive out the cold in the morning and heat up the hot water.
    - Spooky23 11y ago
      Burning pine, unless chimney brushes were part of your kit, the sustainability of the forest won't be an issue -- you'll torch the house quickly.
      - grecy 11y ago
        Yep, chimney fires are a very real concern. A couple of houses burn down every year because of them. We sweep ours once a month, there usually isn't much build up.
- cylinder 11y ago
  Couldn't you keep a large fuel tank on your property? Or are you worried this would attract looters? Maybe you could bury it.
  - grecy 11y ago
    Fuel goes bad when you don't use it, and that setup sounds expensive!
  - GrumpyYoungMan 11y ago
    Gasoline is inherently unstable and turns into a gummy, plastic-like substance after only a few months. Although there are off-the-shelf fuel stabilizer additives available, the max lifetime is only around 2 years. Diesel fuel is subject to the same problems without special additives and precautions.
    - prodmerc 11y ago
      Surprising how many people don't know this. All those "everyone will be killing for gas" posts are ridiculous since gasoline will expire a few months after a global catastrophe.
    - cylinder 11y ago
      Are there viable fuels that don't degrade like this?
      - detaro 11y ago
        Ethanol (or Methanol) can be stored for a long time. (If you want to drink it, it even gets more expensive the older it is...)
      - jcranmer 11y ago
        Propane and isobutane seem to last well over 5-7 years (particularly if in unopened canisters), and anecdote suggests they will keep for over a decade. The limiting factor is how leaky the canisters and particularly valves are, given that they're gaseous and not liquid.
- optforfon 11y ago
  How about dealing with mosquitoes/flies? I've talked to people who know what it's like living on the land in Siberia (ie. like the Yukon - permafrost and swamps) and it's a life threatening issue. You can't have any skin exposed so traditional methods of dealing with it involve things like greasing your face and using natural repelants. Again.. doable but very unpleasant and it makes it very difficult to do things in the summer.
  - jlg23 11y ago
    A friend from Sweden told me that they have a family (regional?) tradition: Get out in shorts and a shirt only at a specific time of the year (not too many mosquitoes yet or when they are very young?) to get bitten as often as possible as a measure of immunization for the rest of the year.
    - optforfon 11y ago
      I think the real threat are the flies. The ones that take a chunk of flesh out of you when they bite and hurt like a bitch
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- prodmerc 11y ago
  > 10 cords in a single winter what's the interior temperature at that rate? Surely you can do with less if you can live with a lower temperature...
  - grecy 11y ago
    It depends if you have a new wood stove with a catalytic combustor and good thermostate or not. Usually we keep it around 18C (pretty low). When it's past -40C outside, I jam six of the biggest logs that will fit through the door of the woodstove in every ~6 hours. I even set my alarm for the middle of the night, otherwise it will be too cold in the morning.
    - prodmerc 11y ago
      My grandparents' old house (~100 years old) has two rooms - an entrance/storage with a stove for cooking and a living room. The living room has the heater - a very interesting contraption, it's basically a stove that heats up the whole wall and a small bed, no smoke/heat is wasted. Well in -20 degrees winters, water freezes near the windows (single glass) and entrance door. Inside it's about 15 degrees tops, but since you can sit on the heated bed, it's pretty livable (tho not by modern standards I guess). My grandmother still prefers it over the bigger new house. My main point is that in a catastrophic scenario, you can definitely do with a lower interior temp, even 10 degrees...
bbarn 11y ago
When I think of "Apocalypse" I'm thinking something a little more permanent than an earthquake. As long as there's an end in sight (i.e., it will eventually be going back to normal) people are going to act a lot differently. It's when it truly looks hopeless that I'd expect to see the movie style looting and violence.
- jrcii 11y ago
  One summer in the early 2000s there was a blackout along the whole west coast, I was in Palm Springs where the temperatures that time of year regularly exceed 110F. The water filtration shut off so all the city's water was declared possibly contaminated and the gas pumps were off so if you needed gas to get to water there was none. People realized the last clean source of water was bagged ice and started forming mobs banging on the locked doors of convenience stores. I saw people siphoning other people's gas. Basically all hell broke loose. The kicker? The power was only out for 6 hours. When people are scared it doesn't take long.
- themartorana 11y ago
  Looting, assault, rape, and wanton destruction happen when a city's sports teams win championships. I think your looting-bar is way too high.
rrggrr 11y ago
There is a book, Einstein's Dreams, by Alan Lightman that describes this phenomena beautifully. It's a short and wonderful book.
splitrocket 11y ago
There's a user on Metafilter.com, Dee Xtrovert,( https://www.metafilter.com/user/45778 https://www.metafilter.com/user/45778 ) who lived through the siege in Sarajevo. Their stories of what it's like are so vastly different than what you would expect. Do yourself a favor: dig in and read. "Well, unlike the majority of you (I assume), I actually lived several years in a period of savagery and killing, during which nothing - food, water, electricity, phone, clothing, sense of safety, school, the ability to go out in public, etc - was available, except during totally unpredictable, brief and sporadic occasions. " A collection: https://www.metafilter.com/137458/In-war-not-everyone-is-a-soldier#5461243 https://www.metafilter.com/137458/In-war-not-everyone-is-a-s... My Favorite: https://www.metafilter.com/78669/What-if-things-just-keep-getting-worse#2430771 https://www.metafilter.com/78669/What-if-things-just-keep-ge...
- mooreds 11y ago
  Always good to read first hand accounts. Thanks for linking.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  I think people react differently to man made disasters compared to how they react to natural disasters, people seem to band together when facing a natural disaster.
  - ksml 11y ago
    The accounts are worth reading. It sounds like people band together when facing a man-made disaster as well. He notes that prepping was useless since the preparation didn't last and everyone depended on each other anyways
    - ZenoArrow 11y ago
      Thanks, you're right, I took a look on your recommendation, found the accounts were worth reading.
- slv77 11y ago
facepalm 11y ago
What about situations like the last plane out of a war zone with a limited number of seats? I think people tend to become less charitable then? Or if scarcity really hits?
- prodmerc 11y ago
  I think there's a fundamental difference between man made catastrophes and natural disasters in people's minds. If it's man made, they will want to blame someone, so people will be more aggressive towards anyone else. If it's a natural disaster, everyone accepts that everyone else around is in the same situation and will help as much as they can right away...
  - facepalm 11y ago
    I remember specifically an issue in Europe a couple of years back where a series of snow avalanches was destroying hotels and killing people (in the alpes, I think - hotels had been built in illegal places). Roads were blocked and the only way out were helicopters. Supposedly there were some ugly displays of selfishness around getting on the helicopter first.
aethertap 11y ago
I live in a rural area in tornado alley. We also live on a major fault line, so there are a few potential "big ones" that could affect my area. I spent quite a bit of time thinking about that, trying to figure out what to do in order to be prepared for a realistic disaster. What I ended up deciding was that I can afford to help my neighbors (and whoever else may show up). I have an extensive first-aid setup, stuff to purify water, tons of trash bags, and some easy-to-prepare food. If we have a major disaster in my area, I plan to distribute as much of that as I can. For a fairly small investment I have enough stuff to keep everyone on my street healthy and fed for about a month even if their pantries are empty. No Mad Max necessary. As an interesting side note, as part of that process I did some calculating on relative costs and discovered that you can buy enough storable basic calories (white flour, stabilized cooking oil, and sugar - no health food here) to feed about 100 people for a month for less than it costs to get a single mid-grade rifle with no ammunition (about $1000). To me, that's the best answer to the idea that being prepared means getting armed to the teeth and fighting off the ravening hordes. I may be wrong, but I agree with the thesis of this article that people tend to band together and try to help each other in a disaster, so I built a plan around that assumption.
- hga 11y ago
  That's a thesis that noted survivialist Bruce Clayton developed in the early '80s or so, although he went with whole wheat, and add some salt and powdered milk for the Mormon Four plus the oil, which is needed by children for them to thrive (see more details in Nuclear War Survival Skills if interested, which Clayton recommended before any of his books). In my world view, you're better off with "A kind word and a gun", food etc. plus the ability to restrain bad actors, should any turn up. Some just might, as seen when an EF-5 tornado roared through my home town of Joplin, MO, but tornadoes, at least, have very limited effects, you don't have to walk far to get out of the areas of destruction. If the New Madrid fault goes you've very much want such preparations already in place.
  - aethertap 11y ago
    Thanks for the pointer to Bruce Clayton, I'll have to look him up. I don't mean to come across as being against having the gun - I actually agree with your "kind word and gun" idea. I just wanted to get the point out about how much relief can be accomplished with that money because I think it gets missed in a lot of discussions, and of the two it seems a lot more likely to be relevant in a real disaster to me.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
The one thing this article misses, I think, is that all of these scenarios are temporary and local. If an area is devastated by an earthquake, there's still a food supply chain in the outside world, aid supplies and workers will eventually start trickling in, and generally you will have some support (if limited and fragmentary) to help you pull yourself back up to a "modern" living standard over weeks and months. If a complete societal breakdown should occur--the traditional global-nuclear-war apocalypse, a major governmental/infrastructural collapse in a large, developed nation, etc.--things get rougher. People may start off being civil and helpful, but modern urban society is utterly dependent on food grown on farms spread across thousands of miles and distributed via high-tech infrastructure. If that stops for long enough, in a large enough area, then people start to get hungry, and things start to get really bad. I still find the article heartening in general. Disasters on that scale are not terribly likely in the modern world. Still, it's worth considering.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Alarmingly, one of the biggest breakdowns in ancient times, at the end of the Bronze age, now seems to have given rise to the 'sea people', a band of refugees that roamed and pillaged. There was a chain reaction of famine, revolution, refugees spilling over to neighbors who also had a poor crop, more famine, more revolution. In an expanding circle of fire, most known civilizations fell in just a few years and produced an enormous army of armed refugees. They only stopped when Egypt armed everybody and killed them all. Even then Egyptian society was so disrupted (by arming civilians, seeing their god-kings bleed, fragmentation and slow rebuilding) that it took a century to have a unified government again. I see some parallels in our modern world. We have a slash-and-burn air-assault style of war that leaves millions homeless and infrastructure in ruins. Refugees are mounting alarmingly. At some point, they'll become 'sea people' and we'll all have a hard decision to make.
jonathankoren 11y ago
Having to redo my 72 hour bag recently I ended up on a bunch of survivalist websites. (Mostly http://offgridsurvival.com/ http://offgridsurvival.com/ ) They all have this tendency to start reasonable, and then go off the rails into crazy town. You'll have some good reviews of legitimate things you'd want like flashlights solar power radios, cooking stoves, knives, multitools, stableized food and the like, and then it goes into gasmasks, trauma kits for your "everyday carry" and of course guns. Lots and lots of guns, oh and bullets in common calibers for "ballistic wampum". The subculture paints a world of black helicopters, and roving gangs of George Soros funded Black Lives Matter cannibals, ISIS EMP attacks, Supervolcanos, and so we're going to have to secretly leave cities by shooting our way out to our hidden mountain cabin ("Never tell anyone where your redoubt is. That's basic opsec.") Oh and along the way you'll may want to hand over boxes of ammunition to strangers for needed supplies. The thing is though, I totally get it. It's a problem. How long can you hold out with resupplies? How can you pack this better? How can you reduce weight? It's an engineering problem. The right wing conspiracy theories and and that up it neighbor is just waiting for the right moment to kill, eat you, and your skin into a jaunty hat is just absurd wish fulfillment fantasy.
- bcook 11y ago
  Yeah, it's unfortunate that the (clinically) paranoid survivalists, that honestly have good information to share from a survival perspective, often have paranoid political beliefs. Just like anything in life, you need to separate the good information from the bad... thank god for people that are "different". :)
protomyth 11y ago
I think an apocalypse[1] will bring out what's in people not their best or worst just what they really are. I think of the apocalypse as being the big dark[2] that allows you to see people's true character. As to survival kits, I tend to think that combining the standard survival kit for winter in the northland with the basics a person would take deer hunting and fishing would probably go a long way. 1) short term disasters are a bit different but a lot of madness tends to hit - see all the rioting in mini-disaster scenarios 2) Character is what you are in the dark. - Dwight L. Moody
rk06 11y ago
in "attack on titan" (fiction), apocalypse happens and humanity is hit the hardest. but no, it does not bring any good. instead people do atrocious and horrible deeds in the name of greater good. So, I would say, "No, apocalypse can destroy humans but not change them."

85 points by pmcpinto 11y ago

Of course most people will be civil. Its not 'most people' that would be at issue in an apocalypse. In the examples given, the 20,000 soldiers had 'little to do'. In part because the presence of 20,000 soldiers is a calming influence? Initial looting isn't the only public order issue. Its desperate people when supplies run low, taking what they need to survive from other desperate people.

grecy 11y ago

Living in the Yukon we sometimes talk about what would happen to most "city folk" if their world fell apart with no supermarket and electricity. Most of us hunt our own meat, grow our own vegetables, build our own cabins and get our own firewood. Tons of people up here are already living entirely off-grid. We all agree, our biggest problem would be lack of gasoline to run chainsaws, and none of us really has a solution to that. Cutting firewood by hand would be doable, though it would be a full time job to get enough for the winter. A decent size house will burn through roughly 10 cords in a single winter.

partisan 11y ago
Do you think that in a situation like that, people would live together in communal buildings to minimize the amount of wood needed during the winter?
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Would it be important to make the house more fuel-efficient? Super-insulating might return 10X the sweat investment. Also living in tight quarters - heat half the houses. But I don't see independent Yukonites doing that. (Yukonians? Yukonoids?)
- grecy 11y ago
  Insulation is already big up here. Keep in mind when I say winter, I mean November->March where the high for the day won't be more than -35C, and the low is -40C. Many Yukoners would have to band together. Newer homes in downtown are electric heat only, they always start to really worry when the power is out for more than a couple of hours in winter (happens all the time)
  - mac01021 11y ago
    With that kind of growing season, what do you eat through the winter? Do you keep a giant pantry full of pickled vegetables? Is it meat and bread only?
    - grecy 11y ago
      Lots of meat and salmon in the winter, and any vegetables you canned. Also stuff like potatoes, onions, carrots keep great if you just keep them dry. Of course, there are supermarkets too :)
  - m_mueller 11y ago
    There is a German housing technology called "vacuum house" where instead of heavy insulation you build an airgap with a pump, creating low air pressure. Windows need to be shut and you need double doors (like an airlock) to avoid heat loss. Obviously it needs central airflow with heat exchanger as well. This creates a house that only needs the power for the pump and the heat exchanger instead of heating / cooling. Body warmth and cooking is enough to make up for the loss you have in winter. The little power you need can be created with Solar cells on the roof. To me it seems like the future - if there's a drawback I don't really see it. Mass produced such a house minus the solar cells shouldn't be much more expensive than your average American house with air conditioning. The whole structure can be very light, so earthquakes shouldn't be an issue either. Why arent't we all building this? Is there some problem I'm missing? Is energy simply too cheap to bother?
    - Mtinie 11y ago
bbarn 11y ago
City folk here. I may not fit your mold because I grew up on a dirt road in rural Maine, but I think you might find the Yukon got a whole lot more crowded. I can do all those things too, just not here. I'd make my way north. I can't imagine I'd be the only one.
- imglorp 11y ago
  Why? You'd need less than 10 cords per winter as you moved further South.
pyre 11y ago
On the flip side, things like this[1] play out in severely rural areas. It always annoys me when people in rural areas paint a picture of how much "better" it is to be living there. [1]: https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/when-a-woman-is-raped-in-rural-alaska-does-anyone-care https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/when-a-woman-is-raped...
- Amezarak 11y ago
  That story is not at all representative of the rural US in general. Rural Alaska is a very, very different place with a different population and a different culture where survival and resources are a real, daily concern. Most of the rural US has easy access to running water (parts of the West may be an exception) via a well, and real law enforcement is plentiful. Which is not to say county sheriffs aren't mostly crooked, but it's generally a genteel crookedness as opposed to "yeah rape is OK" crookedness.
- deelowe 11y ago
  lol. Really? People really think this is common? I just don't know what to say. It's not like that at all. Look, generally speaking, people are decent and have morals. The vast majority do. Shocker I know, but it's true. Most people aren't racist, homophobe, rapist assholes. Doesn't matter where they live.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    > People really think this is common? Rape and sexual violence are pretty common. You might want to find a trustworthy source of numbers. Here's one for England and Wales: http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingdecember2015 http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandj...
    - deelowe 11y ago
      I was talking about it being significantly more common in rural areas.
  - 11y ago
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
Pro tip: don't get sick!
mrfusion 11y ago
Convert them to run on ethanol? Or biodiesel?
- douche 11y ago
  Pretty sure biodiesel isn't a reasonable option - the extra bulk and mass to make a safe diesel-style engine would make a chainsaw unbearably heavy. Plus you'd have wicked problems with fuel gelling in cold weather. Alcohol is possible - but it'd probably be a considerable overhaul. Most stock saws really don't want to run on gasoline that has any ethanol mixed in, although you can use E10 if you have to. And really you should be using at least 89 octane, if not the 91 high-grade stuff. Chainsaws are also all pretty much two-stroke, so you'd have to keep a stock of the mix-in oil, or you're going to destroy your crankcase and pistons. Also, unless you want to burn up your saw bar and chain, as its whirling around at thousands of RPM, you need to have a good stock of either actual bar and chain oil, or, in a pinch, regular 20/30 wt engine oil.
  - grecy 11y ago
    Also biodeiesel is unusable in the winter. It freezes (waxes) long before regular diesel, which is around -30C or -35C. Diesels up here in the winter are trouble.
mrfusion 11y ago
Have multiple families in each house in the winter to minimize wood cutting?
yourapostasy 11y ago
That's...a lot of wood. This is all hardwood, seasonsed for a year? How large a piece of property would you need to sustainably re-grow that much wood indefinitely (wood growth rates in the Yukon are slower than in more temperate regions)? What is the R-value and ACH [1] airtightness at 50 PA of such a house? I've been researching using two feet thickness of Pittsburgh Corning FOAMGLAS with an airtight building envelope that conforms to PassivHaus airtightness standards, and comparing the capital outlay of that with the anticipated opex cost savings. But I live in a far more mild climate than the Yukon, so my payoff period is measured in many decades. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_changes_per_hour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_changes_per_hour
- grecy 11y ago
  No hardwood this far north, it's all pine. Also, trees are small and take years and years to grow. I have no idea how much land you'd need to make that sustainable, but it would be absolutely huge! I'm thinking hundreds of acres.
  - douche 11y ago
    Ten cord of pine in a winter must mean you have things buttoned up and insulated pretty well. I grew up in Maine, and it's pretty common to go through 8-12 cord of rock maple, beech and ash in a winter. A lot more BTUs in that than pine, but a lot of houses are drafty old farmhouses... We only used pine in the fall and spring when we needed a quick fire to drive out the cold in the morning and heat up the hot water.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    Burning pine, unless chimney brushes were part of your kit, the sustainability of the forest won't be an issue -- you'll torch the house quickly.
    - grecy 11y ago
      Yep, chimney fires are a very real concern. A couple of houses burn down every year because of them. We sweep ours once a month, there usually isn't much build up.
cylinder 11y ago
Couldn't you keep a large fuel tank on your property? Or are you worried this would attract looters? Maybe you could bury it.
- grecy 11y ago
  Fuel goes bad when you don't use it, and that setup sounds expensive!
- GrumpyYoungMan 11y ago
  Gasoline is inherently unstable and turns into a gummy, plastic-like substance after only a few months. Although there are off-the-shelf fuel stabilizer additives available, the max lifetime is only around 2 years. Diesel fuel is subject to the same problems without special additives and precautions.
  - prodmerc 11y ago
    Surprising how many people don't know this. All those "everyone will be killing for gas" posts are ridiculous since gasoline will expire a few months after a global catastrophe.
  - cylinder 11y ago
    Are there viable fuels that don't degrade like this?
    - detaro 11y ago
      Ethanol (or Methanol) can be stored for a long time. (If you want to drink it, it even gets more expensive the older it is...)
    - jcranmer 11y ago
      Propane and isobutane seem to last well over 5-7 years (particularly if in unopened canisters), and anecdote suggests they will keep for over a decade. The limiting factor is how leaky the canisters and particularly valves are, given that they're gaseous and not liquid.
optforfon 11y ago
How about dealing with mosquitoes/flies? I've talked to people who know what it's like living on the land in Siberia (ie. like the Yukon - permafrost and swamps) and it's a life threatening issue. You can't have any skin exposed so traditional methods of dealing with it involve things like greasing your face and using natural repelants. Again.. doable but very unpleasant and it makes it very difficult to do things in the summer.
- jlg23 11y ago
  A friend from Sweden told me that they have a family (regional?) tradition: Get out in shorts and a shirt only at a specific time of the year (not too many mosquitoes yet or when they are very young?) to get bitten as often as possible as a measure of immunization for the rest of the year.
  - optforfon 11y ago
    I think the real threat are the flies. The ones that take a chunk of flesh out of you when they bite and hurt like a bitch
- deleted 11y ago
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prodmerc 11y ago
> 10 cords in a single winter what's the interior temperature at that rate? Surely you can do with less if you can live with a lower temperature...
- grecy 11y ago
  It depends if you have a new wood stove with a catalytic combustor and good thermostate or not. Usually we keep it around 18C (pretty low). When it's past -40C outside, I jam six of the biggest logs that will fit through the door of the woodstove in every ~6 hours. I even set my alarm for the middle of the night, otherwise it will be too cold in the morning.
  - prodmerc 11y ago
    My grandparents' old house (~100 years old) has two rooms - an entrance/storage with a stove for cooking and a living room. The living room has the heater - a very interesting contraption, it's basically a stove that heats up the whole wall and a small bed, no smoke/heat is wasted. Well in -20 degrees winters, water freezes near the windows (single glass) and entrance door. Inside it's about 15 degrees tops, but since you can sit on the heated bed, it's pretty livable (tho not by modern standards I guess). My grandmother still prefers it over the bigger new house. My main point is that in a catastrophic scenario, you can definitely do with a lower interior temp, even 10 degrees...

bbarn 11y ago

When I think of "Apocalypse" I'm thinking something a little more permanent than an earthquake. As long as there's an end in sight (i.e., it will eventually be going back to normal) people are going to act a lot differently. It's when it truly looks hopeless that I'd expect to see the movie style looting and violence.

jrcii 11y ago
One summer in the early 2000s there was a blackout along the whole west coast, I was in Palm Springs where the temperatures that time of year regularly exceed 110F. The water filtration shut off so all the city's water was declared possibly contaminated and the gas pumps were off so if you needed gas to get to water there was none. People realized the last clean source of water was bagged ice and started forming mobs banging on the locked doors of convenience stores. I saw people siphoning other people's gas. Basically all hell broke loose. The kicker? The power was only out for 6 hours. When people are scared it doesn't take long.
themartorana 11y ago
Looting, assault, rape, and wanton destruction happen when a city's sports teams win championships. I think your looting-bar is way too high.

rrggrr 11y ago

There is a book, Einstein's Dreams, by Alan Lightman that describes this phenomena beautifully. It's a short and wonderful book.

splitrocket 11y ago

There's a user on Metafilter.com, Dee Xtrovert,( https://www.metafilter.com/user/45778 https://www.metafilter.com/user/45778 ) who lived through the siege in Sarajevo. Their stories of what it's like are so vastly different than what you would expect. Do yourself a favor: dig in and read. "Well, unlike the majority of you (I assume), I actually lived several years in a period of savagery and killing, during which nothing - food, water, electricity, phone, clothing, sense of safety, school, the ability to go out in public, etc - was available, except during totally unpredictable, brief and sporadic occasions. " A collection: https://www.metafilter.com/137458/In-war-not-everyone-is-a-soldier#5461243 https://www.metafilter.com/137458/In-war-not-everyone-is-a-s... My Favorite: https://www.metafilter.com/78669/What-if-things-just-keep-getting-worse#2430771 https://www.metafilter.com/78669/What-if-things-just-keep-ge...

mooreds 11y ago
Always good to read first hand accounts. Thanks for linking.
ZenoArrow 11y ago
I think people react differently to man made disasters compared to how they react to natural disasters, people seem to band together when facing a natural disaster.
- ksml 11y ago
  The accounts are worth reading. It sounds like people band together when facing a man-made disaster as well. He notes that prepping was useless since the preparation didn't last and everyone depended on each other anyways
  - ZenoArrow 11y ago
    Thanks, you're right, I took a look on your recommendation, found the accounts were worth reading.
slv77 11y ago

facepalm 11y ago

What about situations like the last plane out of a war zone with a limited number of seats? I think people tend to become less charitable then? Or if scarcity really hits?

prodmerc 11y ago
I think there's a fundamental difference between man made catastrophes and natural disasters in people's minds. If it's man made, they will want to blame someone, so people will be more aggressive towards anyone else. If it's a natural disaster, everyone accepts that everyone else around is in the same situation and will help as much as they can right away...
- facepalm 11y ago
  I remember specifically an issue in Europe a couple of years back where a series of snow avalanches was destroying hotels and killing people (in the alpes, I think - hotels had been built in illegal places). Roads were blocked and the only way out were helicopters. Supposedly there were some ugly displays of selfishness around getting on the helicopter first.

aethertap 11y ago

I live in a rural area in tornado alley. We also live on a major fault line, so there are a few potential "big ones" that could affect my area. I spent quite a bit of time thinking about that, trying to figure out what to do in order to be prepared for a realistic disaster. What I ended up deciding was that I can afford to help my neighbors (and whoever else may show up). I have an extensive first-aid setup, stuff to purify water, tons of trash bags, and some easy-to-prepare food. If we have a major disaster in my area, I plan to distribute as much of that as I can. For a fairly small investment I have enough stuff to keep everyone on my street healthy and fed for about a month even if their pantries are empty. No Mad Max necessary. As an interesting side note, as part of that process I did some calculating on relative costs and discovered that you can buy enough storable basic calories (white flour, stabilized cooking oil, and sugar - no health food here) to feed about 100 people for a month for less than it costs to get a single mid-grade rifle with no ammunition (about $1000). To me, that's the best answer to the idea that being prepared means getting armed to the teeth and fighting off the ravening hordes. I may be wrong, but I agree with the thesis of this article that people tend to band together and try to help each other in a disaster, so I built a plan around that assumption.

hga 11y ago
That's a thesis that noted survivialist Bruce Clayton developed in the early '80s or so, although he went with whole wheat, and add some salt and powdered milk for the Mormon Four plus the oil, which is needed by children for them to thrive (see more details in Nuclear War Survival Skills if interested, which Clayton recommended before any of his books). In my world view, you're better off with "A kind word and a gun", food etc. plus the ability to restrain bad actors, should any turn up. Some just might, as seen when an EF-5 tornado roared through my home town of Joplin, MO, but tornadoes, at least, have very limited effects, you don't have to walk far to get out of the areas of destruction. If the New Madrid fault goes you've very much want such preparations already in place.
- aethertap 11y ago
  Thanks for the pointer to Bruce Clayton, I'll have to look him up. I don't mean to come across as being against having the gun - I actually agree with your "kind word and gun" idea. I just wanted to get the point out about how much relief can be accomplished with that money because I think it gets missed in a lot of discussions, and of the two it seems a lot more likely to be relevant in a real disaster to me.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

The one thing this article misses, I think, is that all of these scenarios are temporary and local. If an area is devastated by an earthquake, there's still a food supply chain in the outside world, aid supplies and workers will eventually start trickling in, and generally you will have some support (if limited and fragmentary) to help you pull yourself back up to a "modern" living standard over weeks and months. If a complete societal breakdown should occur--the traditional global-nuclear-war apocalypse, a major governmental/infrastructural collapse in a large, developed nation, etc.--things get rougher. People may start off being civil and helpful, but modern urban society is utterly dependent on food grown on farms spread across thousands of miles and distributed via high-tech infrastructure. If that stops for long enough, in a large enough area, then people start to get hungry, and things start to get really bad. I still find the article heartening in general. Disasters on that scale are not terribly likely in the modern world. Still, it's worth considering.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Alarmingly, one of the biggest breakdowns in ancient times, at the end of the Bronze age, now seems to have given rise to the 'sea people', a band of refugees that roamed and pillaged. There was a chain reaction of famine, revolution, refugees spilling over to neighbors who also had a poor crop, more famine, more revolution. In an expanding circle of fire, most known civilizations fell in just a few years and produced an enormous army of armed refugees. They only stopped when Egypt armed everybody and killed them all. Even then Egyptian society was so disrupted (by arming civilians, seeing their god-kings bleed, fragmentation and slow rebuilding) that it took a century to have a unified government again. I see some parallels in our modern world. We have a slash-and-burn air-assault style of war that leaves millions homeless and infrastructure in ruins. Refugees are mounting alarmingly. At some point, they'll become 'sea people' and we'll all have a hard decision to make.

jonathankoren 11y ago

Having to redo my 72 hour bag recently I ended up on a bunch of survivalist websites. (Mostly http://offgridsurvival.com/ http://offgridsurvival.com/ ) They all have this tendency to start reasonable, and then go off the rails into crazy town. You'll have some good reviews of legitimate things you'd want like flashlights solar power radios, cooking stoves, knives, multitools, stableized food and the like, and then it goes into gasmasks, trauma kits for your "everyday carry" and of course guns. Lots and lots of guns, oh and bullets in common calibers for "ballistic wampum". The subculture paints a world of black helicopters, and roving gangs of George Soros funded Black Lives Matter cannibals, ISIS EMP attacks, Supervolcanos, and so we're going to have to secretly leave cities by shooting our way out to our hidden mountain cabin ("Never tell anyone where your redoubt is. That's basic opsec.") Oh and along the way you'll may want to hand over boxes of ammunition to strangers for needed supplies. The thing is though, I totally get it. It's a problem. How long can you hold out with resupplies? How can you pack this better? How can you reduce weight? It's an engineering problem. The right wing conspiracy theories and and that up it neighbor is just waiting for the right moment to kill, eat you, and your skin into a jaunty hat is just absurd wish fulfillment fantasy.

bcook 11y ago
Yeah, it's unfortunate that the (clinically) paranoid survivalists, that honestly have good information to share from a survival perspective, often have paranoid political beliefs. Just like anything in life, you need to separate the good information from the bad... thank god for people that are "different". :)

protomyth 11y ago

I think an apocalypse[1] will bring out what's in people not their best or worst just what they really are. I think of the apocalypse as being the big dark[2] that allows you to see people's true character. As to survival kits, I tend to think that combining the standard survival kit for winter in the northland with the basics a person would take deer hunting and fishing would probably go a long way. 1) short term disasters are a bit different but a lot of madness tends to hit - see all the rioting in mini-disaster scenarios 2) Character is what you are in the dark. - Dwight L. Moody

rk06 11y ago

in "attack on titan" (fiction), apocalypse happens and humanity is hit the hardest. but no, it does not bring any good. instead people do atrocious and horrible deeds in the name of greater good. So, I would say, "No, apocalypse can destroy humans but not change them."