[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

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.

Almost every low-tech trade is available at some level in the historical recreation groups--SCA, Civil War reenactment, regency dance societies... someone knows how to make parchment from sheepskin. Someone knows how to make dye from local plants. Someone knows how to make acorn flour. Someone knows how to put crucial and complex information into poetry with a tune so it's easily memorized. And so on.

The only downside to home canning would be the limited supply (assuming they survived at all) of canning jars, lids, the canners themselves, etc.

I tend to assume we'd have plenty of supplies... after the first three years, when there'd be a huge round of deaths, because we've packed millions of people into spaces that can't survive if truckloads of food aren't brought in daily.

There would also be the issue of finding a viable source of salt.

Heh. Another thing I don't think much about; I live a couple of miles from what's possibly the world's largest salt-water repository.

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.

There's the weird issue that we have refrigeration *devices* that run on electricity, which will no longer be piped into every home. However, wind- or water-powered electricity are widely available. (They don't work on a large scale, but they're fine for individual families and sometimes communities.) And while a low-tech society can't create good electrical wiring and whatever makes a freezer work, it *can* create enough electricity to allow a freezer to be plugged in. I tend to think even very hot and dry regions can have some refrigeration--but it'd be limited to either "the person skilled enough at tech to set it up *and* skilled enough at social to keep it" (social may include quite a bit of combat skills, in this case), or, in a more communal group, reserved for various medical uses.