[Steven Lake]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I hang out with a number of renaissance faire & SCA people... shoemaking is not a dead art.

Ah, see, I didn't know that. Then again, I'm not a Ren guy, so I'm not around stuff like that. So that's good to know. I can definitely use that in my books.

Those are "antiques?" I know people who use all those things. (I don't use a darning ball because I can't knit.)

Yeah, the Amish use them still too, but the vast majority don't, thus they're seen as antiques. But either way I get your point.

More crucial than odds-and-ends with obvious uses is ability to cook on an open fire; while my family & friends know how to do real cooking in a dutch oven on coals, we're aware that most of the public is very, very lost if they're away from a stove with LOW-MEDIUM-HIGH knobs.

Well, given the whole "Microwave" and "Instant/Fast Food" culture we have these days, if TSHTF, a LOT of people are gonna starve. Oddly enough, guys like me with culinary training (I'm a certified chef, although I don't work in culinary anymore) would be in very high demand in that kind of new culture. In a colony type survival scenario, I'd probably get put to work as the chief cook for everyone. It's not something I'd enjoy, but it's something I'm good at which is what counts.

Refrigeration gets difficult quickly. Those who know how to preserve food by pickling have an advantage.

Originally Posted by ScalyFreak

Drying, salting, smoking... and if you live where it gets really cold in the winter, dig a deep hole in the ground and stack it with ice.

Oh, absolutely! You'd see a LOT of root cellars and ice houses popping back up again. Believe it or not, they're surprisingly easy to build and maintain. I did some research on them a while back for something else I was doing and it surprised me how simple, yet effective they are. The other forms of preserving, including pressure canning, would be huge as well. The only downside to home canning would be the limited supply (assuming they survived at all) of canning jars, lids, the canners themselves, etc. There would also be the issue of finding a viable source of salt. Yeah, there's some big salt mines floating around the world, one of the biggest being over in Detroit, MI, believe it or not. So for the early part of things, until some degree of trade resumed, drying and smoking, along with the root cellar and the ice houses would be all you'd have. Of course, if you had some way to make your own vinegar, you could pickle stuff too. Once trade resumed, then you could add salt to the list, along with canning supplies, assuming someone began manufacturing those again.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Unless I force myself to think about it, I forget that ice exists in nature. We get frost a few mornings a year, and a flurry of snowflakes about one year in seven. (Something about having a multi-billion-gallon temperature regulator a few miles away. The air has trouble maintaining more than a few dozen degrees difference from ocean temperature.)

Well, actually, at first you wouldn't have ice or any form of refrigeration out there. But since the mountains are only a few hundred miles away, you could ultimately do the same thing the Romans did and have the ice shipped in. Believe it or not, even during the hottest summers, the Romans had fresh ice available to them 365 days a year. They'd send some big hulking guys up into the Alps, they'd hack some big chunks off the nearest glacier, cover it in straw, wool, and some other insulating materials, toss it on a wagon, and then huff it all the way down to Rome via the nearest road. In fact, that's how the early Californian pioneers got their ice, so for you guys that would be one way to get ice again for refrigeration. It'd work the same for anyone else within easy distance of a mountain with a permanent glacier on it, such as the center US.

Now for those in the south would be pretty much screwed. With no reasonable freeze (assuming the disaster didn't turn the south, or the entire world, into a gigantic ice chest, ala nuclear/volcanic winter) and no easy access to ice from the mountains (the Appalachians thaw during the summer) they'd have to get their ice shipped in from the north. Oddly though, given that anyone north of the Mason/Dixon line (ie, Kentucky and all states north) tends to get at least a decent freeze each winter (save for this last one which was uncharacteristically warm) they could probably produce enough ice to not only meet their own needs, but also enough excess to trade with those in the south once some kind of commerce was reestablished somewhere around Stage 3 during the initial recovery period. Of course, that's all speculation. But considering that ice trade during the early days of this nation was quite vibrant, I can't see where it wouldn't resume again should the situation require it. Of course, that's assuming that we lose all ability or access to modern refrigeration and freezing methods.

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Now capitalized! ACK!

Don
(Moderator)

haha. No problem. It happens to the best of us.