Fire-starting and other useful skills

[helwen]

I was just reading a discussion over at The Archdruid Report blog on the direction modern civilisation is going, which of course had as many different views as there were posters. I didn't read all the posts, as it took me over an hour just to get through reading the posts for the past couple of weeks plus the comments on the May 10 post.

One person's comments slightly disgruntled me, although his follow-up comments made more sense. He was claiming that if there were a major disaster and everyone lost power for weeks, that this would be the end of civilisation. Of course it's highly unlikely that the whole country would lose power for weeks (short of an EMP, and then there would be other things to worry about...). And I have noted how long it's been taking to restore things in the states affected by Katrina and Rita (parts of New Orleans still don't have power or water), but that's another story.

His reason for claiming this was that nobody had survival skills anymore (fire, hunting, building, etc.). He did modify his comments later to state that this was primarily in reference to city people, and in that I suspect he's probably correct. But I do wonder how many city people do have survival skills of any sort. Now, asking here may not get me much of a feel for the number, since most of the people reading this LJ are in the SCA and/or are druids or other types of pagans, all of whom tend to acquire pre-computer age skills, but I am curious....

Just for fun -- How many people reading this could survive without power and water for a week? I know of a few - gwynt_y_storm and fitzw of course, and alphasarah, who had to deal with no heat just this past winter. Yes, I'll allow camp stoves (altho' what would you do if you ran out of fuel and couldn't get more?), hibachis, and fireplaces. Working with just what you have in your house and maybe any neighbors/friends within walking/biking distance, do you have all the basics of food, water, and shelter covered for a week?

Me and L
I realized that for myself, I'd have a hard time starting a fire without a match or a lighter - both of which have finite fuel. I do have magnifying glasses and a crystal ball, so I could always focus the sun with that and then keep a little fire going for when I needed it. We have a hibachi and plenty of charcoal. And wood if needed for a fire, with bricks and stones for building a place to hold a fire. And cardboard boxes and foil, so I could build a solar cooker or two. fitzw has a flint/firestarter thingy, and we have plenty of fabric, so tinder could be found.

Water's a little more difficult. We have a few gallons in the basement, plus the water filter on the pitcher. I could boil the water in the rain barrel. Or add a drop or three of iodine to a pitcher of water (yucky, but kills bacteria).

Food, no problem. Might be a little boring after a while, but we have stuff. Food from the freezer would be cooked first, of course, then the fridge. I might be inclined to move perishables to the camp cooler as that's a smaller thing and I could put it in the basement under layers of blankets/wool to keep it cool for at least a week, probably two or three weeks. We've kept food in a cooler at Pennsic with no ice for a week, just making sure the cooler's in the shade and with a heavy, lined wool cloak over it. If we lived in Ashfield, we'd have the brook to keep things cool in :) Ah, wouldn't that be nice!

Shelter, also no problem. Heck, between the house and the 4 tents, we could even shelter some other folks, and they could put their coolers in the basement too.

Of course, mere survival isn't enough. When not checking to see what's up with getting power back, or seeing if there were something we could do to help out, there would be singing, weaving, gardening, games to play and people to chat with... not the end of the world after all. Just the world as we know it, for a little while :)

Comments

[baronessmartha.livejournal.com]

it is a very interesting question.

I have nursing skills, I am pretty imaginative when it comes to finding food too. I have dry goods, some canned stuff and the tools to open the cans.
There is some drinking water.

I can start a fire and keep it going for a while. I have to learn to back and feed though and I am not good yet at controlling the amount of heat.

[kellan_the_tabby]

The only huge problem out this way would be water - and in Colorado, yeah, that's gonna be an issue. We have a fireplace and enough wood to last a bit, plenty of matches/lighters and candles to keep a fire going once the matches and lighters run out, no shortage of food a'tall, and plenty, plenty to do.

But again, we're SCAdians. Not necessarily a good sample population.

[bytchearse.livejournal.com]

I've done without electricity and hot water for a while (different times) Fortunately our apartment has a fireplace, so heat and cooking are covered. Water is the big issue, and I shall now add that to my emergency stuff stored in the closet.
Amen about it not being the end of the world!

Remember the HUGE Eastern seaboard power outage, and how we at Pennsic found out 2 days after it happened? :-D

[alphasarah.livejournal.com]

Yup, we were electricity-less for 7 1/2 days in October. We didn't lose water service, but there were conflicting reports about whether or not the water in our area was potable.

We have probably 10 gallons or so of frozen water (taking up space in the freezers). And 2 cases of fruit2O in the basement (another 7.5 gallons of potable water there). Probably we should have more.

During our power outage we moved all of the perishables we cared about to coolers stocked with snow. We did cooler maintenance the same way you do when camping - draining the melt, adding new ice (snow) every day. We ate through a lot of what we had in the freezer, and then started in on the dried/canned/jarred stuff. We never lost gas service, so we still had hot water and we had our regular stove. We could have done all of the cooking that we did on the stove on a camp stove and heated water there, too, had that become necessary.

The thing that amazed me, though, was the number of people who didn't think to fill coolers with snow for their food. Even SCAdians who go to Pennsic every year!

[druidharper.livejournal.com]

It makes more sense if you look at it as a percentage of the population. If you do it this way, he's right; very few people can. Many of these skills are all but lost. I can tell you right off that making fire from scratch takes much practice; and if you don't do it every so often in adverse conditions you can lose the touch.

*shrugs* I wouldn't be annoyed by it, but rather use it to push yourself into being able to take care of things. You know, prepare for the absolute worst, be happy when it doesn't (most of the time) happen. To my mind the problem wouldn't be so much not having the power, but dealing with the people who suddenly think they aren't accountable; our own urban guerrillas.

I can live indefinitely without modern conveniences, unless I get myself into trouble I can't fix in such a setting, and I can support my family too. Huzzah all those obscure schools and places I've been to. ;)

As to the likelihood, I agree, its not probable. But it is possible, no matter how faint that might be. Probably not in our lifetime. Quite possibly in our children's or grandchildren's. And the EMP isn't at all far-fetched. Like the man said, "Everything on the table." or "Nothing is excluded." means exactly that...including nukes.

Note, we haven't rebuilt NO yet. We probably never will. We don't have the resources anymore. That's arguable, but not convincingly. Not that long ago it would have been rebuilt in jig time. And NO is a majorly strategic city; the US *must* have a port there, and not for oil either. From there the huge majority of our food is shipped out. We have it operating. That's all the government needs.

I suspect it'll get harder and harder to rebuild after disasters. Could take a while to get things going again if things went down. Might be more than a few days. Some people were out of power during the winter for weeks after storms. One never knows. That's what makes contingency planning so much *fun*! LOL Yeesh.

[baronessmartha.livejournal.com]

actually I knew when it happened. A guy came into Royal and demanded to tell the King. He was clearly panicking. I asked him if he would leave pennsic to go home and deal with it and he said "oh, no" so I sent him away. I did let folks know just in case I was wrong, but really, what can you do from PA? It's not like the folks at home don't know.

Interesting converstation here

[medievalbooks.livejournal.com]

I hope that I would be able to survive...have a little bit of training and read a bit. However, I really do need to get on top of getting my survival kit together.

On the Cape, I was without electicity for a month because of a hurricane. Luckily, it was summer. I also had a gas stove so I could cook and did cook up all the food so it wouldn't go bad....strange this is, I had folks give me food to cook up whose electric was up sooner than mine was. Had batteries for the radio so I could entertain myself. After the first or second week, I had a cable go down to the house in back of mine. I was able to power the frig and one other machine on that, so felt good and not as deprived.

Kept things on ice - it was an adventure for about three weeks but started to get old after the 4th week.

However, if I didn't have shelter or water, I wouldn't have been a happy camper.

Gwyneth

[helwen.livejournal.com]

LOL Yes, I do remember that! Always an adventure, coming back from Pennsic to see what's happened in the rest of the world.

We don't have cells and don't use the internet service there, so Pennsic is still nearly the same for us as it ever was (no cell means people from work can't call L). Although I confess it was nice to borrow mizpagan's cell last summer to call home and check on the cats.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

The thing that amazed me, though, was the number of people who didn't think to fill coolers with snow for their food. Even SCAdians who go to Pennsic every year!

Yeah, that would seem like the natural thing to do -- but not everyone responds to emergencies as effectively as others. I thought you guys did an amazing job - definitely inspirational!

[helwen.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of when L and I went to China and Tibet. One of our cat-sitters wanted phone numbers for every place we were going to be staying -- hard to do (not all the hotels are online, eh?), and would have been pointless since some of our plans changed after we got there. I said we'd call home a few times to check in, but when she persisted, I asked why. It was for in case something major happened like the house burning down... now, I appreciated the thought, and my major concern would be if the cats had been rescued. But what would rushing back from China or Tibet do? The house would be just as burned down as if we stayed, and probably we couldn't have afforded the extra $$ to change our tickets at that point.

On the other hand, a great thing to do for sitters can be to leave a blank check for in case he or she has to take one of the cats to the vet for an emergency.

Re: Interesting converstation here

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you have all the bases covered! I agree, water and shelter (esp. in bad weather) are key.

What sorts of things will you be adding to your survival kit? Just curious. I went through putting ours together this past winter/spring, and it took a while to get some stuff. And we've used some of the bottled water so I need to re-stock...

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Re:being annoyed -- Because of the people I hang out with, I tend not to always realise how unusual it is to have the skill sets I have.

RE:urban guerrillas -- fortunately we do know quite a few of our neighbors, and we look out for each other. Riots and disasters in various cities over the years certainly are a caution though. As cities go, ours is pretty tame I have to say.

Yeah, NO is a sad place. So far, the best recovery there has been through private venues, from what I've seen.

Some parts of contingency planning is fun... at least for me. Probably because embermwe and I used to play what-if all the time... something to pass the time. The scenario she gave was what-if the Japanese invented a widget that could do such amazing things that it put a lot of the US businesses out of business... economic collapse scenario. And of course it was very dramatic and immediate - we were in our twenties and we were gamers, so we made the scenario a challenging one.

[baronessmartha.livejournal.com]

I call the vet and leave my credit card number and an upper limit per cat and as a group. It pains me, but the upper limit is important.

I know the folks who watch my house would feel terrible if a check got stolen or lost.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent idea! The check one is from ellid. I think we did it for when we were overseas, but for Pennsic our sitter hasn't been concerned about it.

Thanks :)

[dreda.livejournal.com]

Good points, all, and thank you for the reminder. One of the tricky things about living in the city is storage space - where do you put the gallons of water, for example? And we definitely had that problem when we moved in, but things have improved a little, and now we certainly have some of the space to use for important things like this. We should do that. ;)

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Hm. Colorado isn't quite as bad as Arizona, but I can see water becoming a serious problem there as well.

A friend of mine is laying in a large stock of water this summer because MA's power grid will be operating at 200+% capacity with the predicted temperatures this summer. If they lose power, the pump for the water to the apartment won't work.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

True, not everyone has a basement! I saw in one person's post that they put some in their freezer and fridge. Mine're usually full of food. But modern apartment closets are usually pretty deep. Maybe the water could go at the back? Under a sideboard table is another option. Since I'm working on downsizing stuff and trying to move us toward using less space, my thinking has been going on overdrive in that respect.

[dreda.livejournal.com]

"Modern" would be the key word in that statement. ;) We have one closet that is deeper than hanger-width in our circa-1900 apartment.

But our landlord is slooooowly moving his crap out of the basement, and we're sloooooowly being able to move stuff around, so we may well have space for water soon!

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Ah, you're in one of the older buildings... our house was built around 1900-1905, so we have little closets also. Glad your landlord is moving stuff out, however slowly :)

[kellan_the_tabby]

Good idea. :/ I should probably lay by a couple gallons as well...

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Better safe than sorry. And the gallons of water (at least here) are #2 plastic, which means they can tolerate heat better and can be re-used for water (4&5 are also good). I've always felt Holyoke was more protected and stable than some cities around here, but with the projected heat wave for later this summer, I'm thinking of doubling what we usually have in storage.

I'm also wondering if having a wall of water (in the shade) would make for a slightly cooler room? Insulation, sort of...

[kellan_the_tabby]

I can't see why it wouldn't work, honestly. Be interesting to try if nothing else.