Change, Adapt Or Die

One of the things that most people are going to struggle with if we have a collapse is changing their ways. So many things that people think of as being natural and just the way they have to do things are no only NOT they may be hazardous to your life in different circumstances or at least hinder your efforts to survive and thrive.

The idea of having three must eat times to eat may work when food is plentiful and you live in a culture that allows you to stop everything for a set in stone meal time. The fact is that if food is hard to get and not plentiful you need to eat little snacks scattered out through the day instead of big meals. The reason for this is that if you eat in small quantities your digestive system wrings it out for everything it has. When you eat a bigger meal a lot of the nutrients don't get removed. Also small meals don't use up a lot of water like bigger meals do. The way people eat now days is a reflection of our state of plenty and not natural.

People seem to think that the correct way to sleep is to go to bed and sleep for at least 7 or 8 hours during the night. This is actually a modern idea that is based on working in factories and such. In the middle ages and even into the 20th century in some places sleep is a much less regulated thing. People actually evolved to sleep in shorter spurts with active periods in the middle. This is a better way in a post apocalyptic world. You go to sleep pretty soon after dark and then get up about 4 hours later for what was your night say. There are lots of things that are better done at night and not sleeping for 8 hours in a stretch reduces your vulnerability to predators.

After your “night-day” you go back to sleep and basically sleep until dawn. You then have a long activity period followed by a midday nap. In a lot of places the evening meal doesn't happen until 8 to 10 at night. My point is that you need to turn lose of your set ideas of how you must do things. If the bugs are eating you up at night then maybe that isn't the best time to sleep. In general mosquitoes are worst in the early night and thin out in the early morning hours.

This sort of thinking outside of the box is going to be a very valuable skill in a world that has been turned upside down. There is a lot to be said for not conforming to everyone elses' idea of how to do things. The night is a better time to tend to close crafts and tending to the small things. This frees you up for the big projects that you might better do in the day.

If you study ancient civilizations one thing that you will find is that they were amazingly well versed in the placement of the stars and the movement of the planets. This is what happens when you are not laying in bed all night or have bright lights shining everywhere. The night was the time for a lot of tribal social life. The days were busy. Even if you wanted to you can't sleep from sunset to sunrise all the time unless you are on the equator.

Not only when and how often you eat is open for change, WHAT you eat is going to have to change drastically. What we consider a meal now is basically a feast. Primitive people didn't cook a bunch of different things for each mean. Their meals were very simple and eaten communally. This was done so that those that couldn't hunt and gather would be fed and that meal was more a cultural thing than a necessity. Basically people ate things that were cooked in a pot and nothing went to waste. Most of the time eating was just a fuel stop rather than an “Event”. That is why when they had a special ocassion the feast was such a big deal. If you try to feast every day you are going to have problems.

Charity starts with those you care about. In a collapse you will have this belief tested. If you give into your charitable impulses you may be killing your family. You need to look at every encounter with other people through very narrow lines. What can they do FOR you and what will that COST you? Survival is a business and if you put our more than you receive you will go broke. In a survival situation that means some or all of the people you care about will starve and die.

Conversely if you run a business and refuse to part with any of your stuff you will also go broke. If you want to thrive beyond just living for one more day you will need to have some peaceful associations with other people.

How fast you can throw out the influence of the dead culture you were raised in will have a lot todo with how well you thrive in the new reality.

 

People tend to believe that the way that they do things is the right and sometimes the only way to do things. We have an entire generation growing up now that seem to be unable to not only not think outside the box, they don't even seem to look around inside the box. I stood in a check out line one day waiting because the guy in front of me had paid with cash. She was owed him a dollar and ten cents in change. She had to call to the back to get someone to bring her some change because she was out. Rather than wait I gave the guy ten cents and told her that when she got the change she could drop a dime in the charity bucket. I was writing a check so it wasn't a problem. When she totalled my purchases up and opened the drawer to put my check in I looked and she was right she didn't have any dimes...but she did have nickels and pennies. The computer register told her that she owed $1.10 and to her that could only men a dime! I SWEAR this is true.

I shocked a young friend one day when I turned on the key but didn't start the engine. I put my truck in reverse pushed in the clutch and when the truck rolled back a little bit, I live on a hill, I popped the clutch and the truck started. He had never hears of push or pull starting a truck or car with a standard transmission. I further shocked him by running the truck through the gears without using the clutch. When I learned to drive a standard they were not synchronized and you either double clutched or learned to match the engine speed to the ground speed for the next gear.

The thing is that it seems that kids these days don't have the kind of curiosity that people used to have about how things work. Over and over I've run into people that think that it is stupid and old fashioned to actually learn and think rather than grab the phone and let it tell them what to do. Having an app on your phone is NOT the same as knowing how to do something.

The ability to adapt is fed by knowledge. It is the ability to apply knowledge in ways and places that it was not originally necessarily meant to be. Knowledge is your tool box. You don't want to have to reinvent everything from scratch. Knowledge give you a leg up. If I find a piece of steel and want a knife I could just rub it on a rock hoping that it will eventually get sharp and hope that it will be hard enough to hold and edge. Or I can aneal it to make it soft. Shape it, rough sharpen it then harden and temper it.

I carry as much as I can in my head but also have a huge paper library that will be priceless in a post apocalyptic world. Computers are great but fragile and all the knowledge that they might have will be lost when the power goes off. People don't even have encyclopedias anymore. My books will allow people to learn things that they didn't know or even imagine that they would ever need in a modern society.

 

The social welfare state has destroyed families and made citizens terminally weak.

"Isn't the government supposed to take care of that?!"

Evil aggressive people were removed from society one way or another. I had an uncle who was a combat veteran, European Theater. God only knows how many Germans his company killed (half his own company were killed). He'd call-in mortar barrages right over his own head & he'd also man the M2 .50. After the war, after sunset, he and his friends rode with the police; the term for them was "card-carrying deputies". They "took care" of any "business" that needed "taking care" of. Also, a lot of wife-beaters learned what a real beating was like.

My grandmother fed and made clothing for her nieces and nephews and neighborhood kids and kids she didn't know and and and.

When in grammar school, part of my duties surrounding taking care of my grandmother's coal furnace was to take the burnt clinkers out and repair the chuck-holes in the alleyway with them. They'd still be hot, I'd just got them out the furnace and sometimes my eyebrows were a bit melted. I'd put the clinkers in the holes and drive them down with an 8 pound hammer -- the handle was 2/3 rds my height and take the handle and drive the sledge vertically (think pile-driver) until I'd evened-out the roadway. Standing back, I see the gravel road glow and smoke. I felt pride in my work.

 

Great stories and history guys...thanks for sharing them with us.


I remember my Dad showing us how to start a car by backing it the same way down an incline and popping the clutch.
That was an olde three on the Tree...Chevy. Before that care he showed us on an olde manual transmission VW micro bus.


Then being astounded by the shifting without a clutch....matching RPMs.


When my time came...with care and what I remembered witnessing via my Dad...I too taught myself to do the same....start without a clutch...no starter and then later shift without a clutch.

I do the same on occasion and today with my 5 speed Ranger truck.

Oh..and I still have my Dad's olde 1967 Three on the tree Chevy ...a 250 CID six cylinder...in my garage. Engine rebuilt. I keep it..because it has points...no electronic ignition or computer.
Open the hood....and you can still see the ground beneath the engine compartment. Not a lot of wires and hoses under that hood.


Brings back memories guys...thanks,


Watcherchris

Not an Ishmaelite.

 

There are so many things that as a kid I was taught and learned that seem to be rapidly becoming lost "arts". I am always being asked to sharpen knives by people that see me use one of mine and they are amazed that it will slide through material like a hot knife through butter. I learned to sharpen my knives by the time I was 8 or 9 years old. A dull knife was considered dangerous. All of my pocket knives will shave. Now days between serrated knives and stainless steel most people are carrying knives that won't cut without a lot of effort. Stainless is hard and a fine edge chips. Sharpening it after this requires removing metal. Carbon steel is softer and the edge will bend. Returning it to sharp only requires you to straighten the edge.

The point of this as it applies to the topic is that adapting is where you take knowledge that you have in one area and apply it into another area. You can't really adapt if you don't have a store of knowledge available to apply.

People today think that it is our intelligence that separates us from animals or maybe our opposable thumbs. The truth is that intelligence is useless if you don't have a desire to learn and grow. Curiosity is the tool that feeds our intelligence. More and more I see that dying in our young. I think in part it is because kids in daycare don't get that encouraged and fes. When I was a kid and had parents I was a walking constant question. My parents took the time to explain things to me. In my Dad's case often in excruciating detail. I asked one time what a hominy plant looked like and so we made hominy. We did the same thing with cheese and a multitude of other things. Back then it was considered a parents job to teach their kids. Now that is just sort of skipped out on. It is funny. We have fewer kids but offer less to them than in the past.

Regardless, as an adult you need to learn as many things as possible while you can. There is actually no such thing as useless knowledge. People that can adapt are not always the norm. Tribes existed because it worked. Everyone is different. Now everyone has the same skill set and by gathering together tribes survived where smaller family groups died. A tribe had people that were fast, strong, had good eyes, good hearing, active minds and special abilities. The strong man might be dumb as a box of rocks and the genius a dried up little wimp but together they made a tough team.

Adapting on a post apocalyptic world may have to be a team effort. Old farts like me might not be the fastest or strongest but still worthwhile for the things that I know. Curiosity might have killed a cat but that same curiosity is what gave it nine lives.

 

People will be the same, selfish, greedy, lazy, mean, nasty and about half of half will be horny as hell.
Nothing new there but without law and order thoughts will become actions and trouble will ensue.

 

Do not under estimate the mass's as it only takes a few to direct the horde and then the horde can be truly lethal if you are in there path. Even the well tooled up will loose against several thousands of desperate people flooding ones place as desperate dieing people have little fear of death.

 

Admittedly, though I try, I think people like me, who are chronically ill, will face things the hardest, prepared or not.

What I'm looking forward to most, though is no technology. I absolutely hate technology. It seems, every minute or so, literally, it's malfunctioning, and I have to try to figure out what's wrong.

That's the one thing I'm not going to miss about the new lifestyle.

 

Some technology is nice to have but a lot who have prepared will die. Relying strictly on high tech gear will not work long term. For every piece of technology in a survival bag I try to find equipment or skills that doesn’t require the luxury of technology to operate.

Navigation- even though a compass doesn’t require electricity what happens when it is broken. Learning to use stars at night or using the sun is important to learn before hand or even learning to magnetize a needle and using a thread and needle to get a rough idea of direction.

Health- having all the medications needed stocked up is beneficial but everything can be stolen or used up quicker then expected. Learning to use medicinal plants for different conditions is a good backup to your supply. Learn to make a pain reliever from willow bark or a burn salve from aloe.

These are just a few examples to get you thinking about types of skills you can learn as a backup to the gear or supply’s you have acquired.

 

I like my tech toys. I own three kindle fires just for my use. I also miss the old days and the old ways a lot. I was raised playing cards and such with familly and friends. We used to sit around and have BBQs and freeze homemade ice cream. We had picnics and camp fires where we just sat and swapped stories. I can't find that now. Most people are too busy. They don't like to be outside and when they get together they are mostly there to get drunk or stones. TV didn't amount to much back then. We only got two channels and just didn't live in front of the TV. I raised my Daughter much the same in the country. Now she and her family and me and my wife are about the only porch monkeys I know.

 

Life is about change and how you deal with it. Nobody ever has a life without starts and stops and chug holes in the road. Over time you learn that most of those chug holes can be opportunities. Or you can let them slap you down and make you quit trying. People tend to resist change. When things fall apart on you it is an opportunity to start off in a new direction. Been there done that several times. Adapt to change or it will beat you down.