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THE Mutant Zombie Hordes Thread pt 2 (merged)

What's on your mind?
General interest discussions, not necessarily related to depletion.
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby mos6507 » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 12:32:57

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gnm', '
')I disagree with this statement - having lived urban,suburban, and now rural. Suburbia was the worst - most people didn't even know their neighbors - often if they did know them they disliked them. I saw no "society".


Don't assume the way things are is the way things always will be. Neighbors in the suburbs used to be closer and they can be again if they need to rely on eachother.
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby gnm » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 12:50:39

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gnm', '
')I disagree with this statement - having lived urban,suburban, and now rural. Suburbia was the worst - most people didn't even know their neighbors - often if they did know them they disliked them. I saw no "society".


Don't assume the way things are is the way things always will be. Neighbors in the suburbs used to be closer and they can be again if they need to rely on eachother.


Indeed - or they may turn on each other...

What I have noticed in my area is there are more than a few I would describe as exurbans... They will leave and go stay in a hotel in town if the power is out for more than a few hours or the water is out. These are also the ones you rarely see outside and who invariably have satellite dishes. They seem to have very few skills applicable to self sufficency and/or an unwillingness to gain them. But at least when things get bad they just leave... 8)

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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby sittinguy » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 14:39:12

OK, so for someone in a big city you will be competing with a millon other hungry people. In a food shortage what makes you think the cities will be first to get the food? The city is where the zoombies will be the most. Hell they are already in alot of cities, homeless people out the ass. And where are you storing your propane grill, 20 bottles of propane, your generator, 50 gallons of gas, thousands of rounds of ammo, and your years worth of food. Big city people are not as prepared as rural. Ive got WAY more space and privacy to prepare.
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby Ludi » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 17:44:11

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('sittinguy', ' ')And where are you storing your propane grill, 20 bottles of propane, your generator, 50 gallons of gas, thousands of rounds of ammo, and your years worth of food. Big city people are not as prepared as rural. Ive got WAY more space and privacy to prepare.


Do you think most rural people are that prepared? Some, maybe (like you), but the average rural person? I have trouble believing it personally.


<<<<<rural person, has none of that stuff
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby nobodypanic » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 18:11:52

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('biofuel13', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', ' ').....if they try to rely on game, so is everyone else which means that game will only last so long, even here in WI were we are choking on deer... everyone hunts deer... someone runs out of deer.


I'm from the northwoods of WI originally as well.....just looked at the deer census info for WI for 2007.....it was/is over 1,200,000. That's alot of meat! The estimated population of WI is about 5.5 million people. When you factor out the young, old, and inexperienced/illequiped to hunt I think it leaves more than enough deer to go around for the rest of us. I only plan on taking the occasional deer to supplement the rabbits, squirrels, beaver, porcupine, pheasant, duck and grouse etc. that will be my main staples.


I plan on feeding my young. My wife is inexperienced, I plan on feeding her too. If granny were to show up on my front stoop, i would feed her also.

Do most people who can kill a deer have the means to preserve it without a freezer? Sounds like a lot of wasted meat.

And if they run out of deer in one area (say south of Wausau) then it does the people south of Wausau little good if there are still 500k deer left.

Wild game is not a plan.

completely disagree. i think it's probably as good a plan as the one you likely have.

what happens if the deer 'run out' in one area? you follow the game, just like we used to do for 99% of human history.
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby wisconsin_cur » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 18:23:15

Except it is not a matter of following the herd on a regular and predictable migration with a tribe available to send out scouts and women to stay at home and gather as well as preserve the harvest...etc (unless you are part of a tribe then assuming everyone really knows what they are doing perhaps you could make it work).

Most of the hunters I know are not in the business of creeping through the woods like chief running deer. They sit in a stand and wait for the deer to come to them. Maybe they bait, maybe they drive around in their pick ups with spotlights, manbe they put together 20+ parties to drive the deer from one place through some natural choke point (around lakes) or where another 10 guys are waiting to mow down the running deer. In short, they are man power and petrol power intensive.

Now maybe if you work on the skills necessary to do it when all of your neighbors are doing the same thing or when you are in a human-powered moving camp. If you have you should be able to make it for a time I suppose... I'd rather have other options to fall back on (like hunting) if ag and small animal husbandry do not work. If you start with committing to wandering hunting there is nothing else to fall back on.

I for one am hard pressed to think of a aboriginal group that has done as well as a settled one. Anytime they come into conflict, it is the settled one that wins. When we have to look at the life expectancy, it is the settled one where one's odds are better of making it out of infancy. Seems like the odds are for the settled community.

Outside of those skills however, it is not a plan but a hope. If you have the skills I guess you do have a plan. Good luck with it, forgive me if I do not invest in it.
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby Ludi » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 18:28:44

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR', ' ')the chest freezer seems to me to be pretty high on the value vs cost comparison. It'd be the last thing I would choose to do without.


It's always interesting to other people's priorities. I don't own a chest freezer - just the little freezer on top of the little fridge. I'd obviously put a chest freezer way down on the list of necessities, as we don't eat much frozen food. I prefer the solar dehydrator to a freezer, as one can store dehydrated food without a power source.
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby Homesteader » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 18:29:28

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nobodypanic', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('biofuel13', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', ' ').....if they try to rely on game, so is everyone else which means that game will only last so long, even here in WI were we are choking on deer... everyone hunts deer... someone runs out of deer.


I'm from the northwoods of WI originally as well.....just looked at the deer census info for WI for 2007.....it was/is over 1,200,000. That's alot of meat! The estimated population of WI is about 5.5 million people. When you factor out the young, old, and inexperienced/illequiped to hunt I think it leaves more than enough deer to go around for the rest of us. I only plan on taking the occasional deer to supplement the rabbits, squirrels, beaver, porcupine, pheasant, duck and grouse etc. that will be my main staples.


I plan on feeding my young. My wife is inexperienced, I plan on feeding her too. If granny were to show up on my front stoop, i would feed her also.

Do most people who can kill a deer have the means to preserve it without a freezer? Sounds like a lot of wasted meat.

And if they run out of deer in one area (say south of Wausau) then it does the people south of Wausau little good if there are still 500k deer left.

Wild game is not a plan.

completely disagree. i think it's probably as good a plan as the one you likely have.

what happens if the deer 'run out' in one area? you follow the game, just like we used to do for 99% of human history.


I'll say this as gently as I can. . .No f'ing way.

If you can't figure that out for yourself I'm sure I won't convince you and so won't waste the time.

But really ". . .you follow the game, just like we used to do for 99% of human history".

Bawhaaaaaaaa, choke, gasp, Bawhaaaaaaaa, choke, gasp etc. . .

You will be fighting the locals for road killed possums inside of two weeks of the rubber hitting the road in regards to your plan.
Last edited by Homesteader on Fri 20 Jun 2008, 18:33:31, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby wisconsin_cur » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 18:32:21

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR', ' ')the chest freezer seems to me to be pretty high on the value vs cost comparison. It'd be the last thing I would choose to do without.


It's always interesting to other people's priorities. I don't own a chest freezer - just the little freezer on top of the little fridge. I'd obviously put a chest freezer way down on the list of necessities, as we don't eat much frozen food. I prefer the solar dehydrator to a freezer, as one can store dehydrated food without a power source.


I'm in the middle. I love ours, great for storing meat, peas and so many other things.

I do not, however, know how to keep it going without being dependent upon others. I can dry with outside imputs, I can even can for a long time with out outside inputs (until the lids run out). I can smoke meat, have done it before but not on a large scale and not in a way that I was dependent on it for a long period of time. We have been learning how to use the root cellar...

Love the freezer... refuse to be dependent upon it.
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby Homesteader » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 18:38:24

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR', ' ')the chest freezer seems to me to be pretty high on the value vs cost comparison. It'd be the last thing I would choose to do without.


It's always interesting to other people's priorities. I don't own a chest freezer - just the little freezer on top of the little fridge. I'd obviously put a chest freezer way down on the list of necessities, as we don't eat much frozen food. I prefer the solar dehydrator to a freezer, as one can store dehydrated food without a power source.


I'm in the middle. I love ours, great for storing meat, peas and so many other things.

I do not, however, know how to keep it going without being dependent upon others. I can dry with outside imputs, I can even can for a long time with out outside inputs (until the lids run out). I can smoke meat, have done it before but not on a large scale and not in a way that I was dependent on it for a long period of time. We have been learning how to use the root cellar...

Love the freezer... refuse to be dependent upon it.


IMHO it is best to plan under the assumption of intermittent power outages. A two day outage is going to spoil whatever is in the freezer.

We stocked up on the materials for smoking and salt curing. Plus, sheep, goats and chickens don't present the same storage problems as beef critters. If you raise your own simply wait until you need some meat, in the meantime they take care of themselves.
"The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…"
Sir Winston Churchill

Beliefs are what people fall back on when the facts make them uncomfortable.
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby sittinguy » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 18:38:35

I agree,, alot of peeps in rural will have nothing.

BUT, there will be less of them to deal with, and they will have a little a little more dignity than your average homeless crack head that will be flocking to the drop points in the cities,,

""""where's my free cheese beeatch""""

The cities,, in my opinion are SSOOOOOOOO F'ed
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby nobodypanic » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 18:42:05

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', 'E')xcept it is not a matter of following the herd on a regular and predictable migration with a tribe available to send out scouts and women to stay at home and gather as well as preserve the harvest...etc (unless you are part of a tribe then assuming everyone really knows what they are doing perhaps you could make it work).

Most of the hunters I know are not in the business of creeping through the woods like chief running deer. They sit in a stand and wait for the deer to come to them. Maybe they bait, maybe they drive around in their pick ups with spotlights, manbe they put together 20+ parties to drive the deer from one place through some natural choke point (around lakes) or where another 10 guys are waiting to mow down the running deer. In short, they are man power and petrol power intensive.

Now maybe if you work on the skills necessary to do it when all of your neighbors are doing the same thing or when you are in a human-powered moving camp. If you have you should be able to make it for a time I suppose... I'd rather have other options to fall back on (like hunting) if ag and small animal husbandry do not work. If you start with committing to wandering hunting there is nothing else to fall back on.

I for one am hard pressed to think of a aboriginal group that has done as well as a settled one. Anytime they come into conflict, it is the settled one that wins. When we have to look at the life expectancy, it is the settled one where one's odds are better of making it out of infancy. Seems like the odds are for the settled community.

Outside of those skills however, it is not a plan but a hope. If you have the skills I guess you do have a plan. Good luck with it, forgive me if I do not invest in it.

i am not sure that the evidence supports all the points you make about settling and becoming an agricultural society--in fact, i am sure that it doesn't.

if i recall correctly, nomadic tribes tend to live longer, better, and be more egalitarian than settled agrarian tribes (i am sure there are exceptions though). i think it can be argued that one of man's greatest mistakes was inventing agriculture.

if you commit to hunting, there's still raiding to fall back on (as well as other things i probably haven't thought of).

honestly, there's just too many variables, too many ways things could go. i think flexibility gives you the best chance. don't assume staying put is the way to go (i think it's open to as many dangers and problems as remaining mobile); don't assume mobility is the way to go: be ready to change your strategy quickly as needed.
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby Ludi » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 18:43:21

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', '
')
I for one am hard pressed to think of a aboriginal group that has done as well as a settled one. Anytime they come into conflict, it is the settled one that wins. When we have to look at the life expectancy, it is the settled one where one's odds are better of making it out of infancy. Seems like the odds are for the settled community.




"Life expectancy at birth of 20 (which for demographic reasons is the lowest reasonable estimate of average prehistoric hunter-gatherer life expectancy), given the most probable estimates of fertility, would equal or exceed that for some European cities of the eighteenth century and for the poorer portions of other cities of Europe as late as the nineteenth century.

It would also equal life expectancy for all of India as late as 1920 (after more than a century of British colonial rule). Life expectancy at birth of 25 years (a more reasonable long-term estimate of hunter-gatherer survivorship) would approach that for much of Europe as late as the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and for many urban European communities well into the nineteenth"


"Health and the Rise of Civilization" By Mark Nathan Cohen


Hunter-gatherers are less likely to suffer from famine than agriculturalists. If you need references, I can provide them.
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby Ludi » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 18:49:41

NOTE: I am by no means saying modern people can or should become hunter-gatherers. Hunting and gathering requires an average minimum of one square mile of land per person. There are simply too many people in most areas to support that way of life.
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby nobodypanic » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 18:59:48

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Homesteader', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nobodypanic', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('biofuel13', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', ' ').....if they try to rely on game, so is everyone else which means that game will only last so long, even here in WI were we are choking on deer... everyone hunts deer... someone runs out of deer.


I'm from the northwoods of WI originally as well.....just looked at the deer census info for WI for 2007.....it was/is over 1,200,000. That's alot of meat! The estimated population of WI is about 5.5 million people. When you factor out the young, old, and inexperienced/illequiped to hunt I think it leaves more than enough deer to go around for the rest of us. I only plan on taking the occasional deer to supplement the rabbits, squirrels, beaver, porcupine, pheasant, duck and grouse etc. that will be my main staples.


I plan on feeding my young. My wife is inexperienced, I plan on feeding her too. If granny were to show up on my front stoop, i would feed her also.

Do most people who can kill a deer have the means to preserve it without a freezer? Sounds like a lot of wasted meat.

And if they run out of deer in one area (say south of Wausau) then it does the people south of Wausau little good if there are still 500k deer left.

Wild game is not a plan.

completely disagree. i think it's probably as good a plan as the one you likely have.

what happens if the deer 'run out' in one area? you follow the game, just like we used to do for 99% of human history.


I'll say this as gently as I can. . .No f'ing way.

If you can't figure that out for yourself I'm sure I won't convince you and so won't waste the time.

But really ". . .you follow the game, just like we used to do for 99% of human history".

Bawhaaaaaaaa, choke, gasp, Bawhaaaaaaaa, choke, gasp etc. . .

You will be fighting the locals for road killed possums inside of two weeks of the rubber hitting the road in regards to your plan.

and you won't? that's not only a very dangerous assumption on your part, but it's stupid as well.

i don't think you're immune from as much as you think you are if you stay put. there's absolutely no guarantee you wouldn't be fighting to fend off others.

flexibility is my plan. if i have to walk away from everything, then so be it; if i have to hunker down, then fine. i however don't intend to be completely tied to any single strategy.
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby Ludi » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 19:06:45

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nobodypanic', '
')flexibility is my plan. if i have to walk away from everything, then so be it; if i have to hunker down, then fine. i however don't intend to be completely tied to any single strategy.


That's a good plan, I'm for it 100%. However, not all people have that option. For some of us, leaving our homesteads would be a virtual death sentence.
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby Homesteader » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 19:08:06

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nobodypanic', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Homesteader', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nobodypanic', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('biofuel13', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', ' ').....if they try to rely on game, so is everyone else which means that game will only last so long, even here in WI were we are choking on deer... everyone hunts deer... someone runs out of deer.


I'm from the northwoods of WI originally as well.....just looked at the deer census info for WI for 2007.....it was/is over 1,200,000. That's alot of meat! The estimated population of WI is about 5.5 million people. When you factor out the young, old, and inexperienced/illequiped to hunt I think it leaves more than enough deer to go around for the rest of us. I only plan on taking the occasional deer to supplement the rabbits, squirrels, beaver, porcupine, pheasant, duck and grouse etc. that will be my main staples.


I plan on feeding my young. My wife is inexperienced, I plan on feeding her too. If granny were to show up on my front stoop, i would feed her also.

Do most people who can kill a deer have the means to preserve it without a freezer? Sounds like a lot of wasted meat.

And if they run out of deer in one area (say south of Wausau) then it does the people south of Wausau little good if there are still 500k deer left.

Wild game is not a plan.

completely disagree. i think it's probably as good a plan as the one you likely have.

what happens if the deer 'run out' in one area? you follow the game, just like we used to do for 99% of human history.


I'll say this as gently as I can. . .No f'ing way.

If you can't figure that out for yourself I'm sure I won't convince you and so won't waste the time.

But really ". . .you follow the game, just like we used to do for 99% of human history".

Bawhaaaaaaaa, choke, gasp, Bawhaaaaaaaa, choke, gasp etc. . .

You will be fighting the locals for road killed possums inside of two weeks of the rubber hitting the road in regards to your plan.

and you won't? that's not only a very dangerous assumption on your part, but it's stupid as well.

i don't think you're immune from as much as you think you are if you stay put. there's absolutely no guarantee you wouldn't be fighting to fend off others.

flexibility is my plan. if i have to walk away from everything, then so be it; if i have to hunker down, then fine. i however don't intend to be completely tied to any single strategy.

Please quote me where I stated I wouldn't be a local fighting for a road-killed possum. Please, quote me.
"The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…"
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby wisconsin_cur » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 19:37:51

I would ask why famine in settled ag? Perhaps because they were more successful at reproducing and growing to a point where there were too many of them? Famine comes in a bad year after the population has grown for decades of good and normal years.

We also have better records because most years you could employ record keepers.

Settled societies had the people to ship them off to whole other continents in the Western Hemisphere.

Famine is a problem the successful suffer when there is a bad year (or two). I would contend that we do not have records of what happen to hunter gatherers in bad years (or two) because there are no permanent records.

I was wrong to refer to average lifespans... I don't even understand statistics so I should not try to use them. I do understand history... history tells me that settled civs are more stable and prosperous... it is that stability and prosperity which is their undoing when it is absent because they cannot sustain as many people with hunter-gathering methods.

I'm planning on sustaining ~10 people, some unable to trek the northwoods looking for game or following the herd. Keeping as "many options as possible" for me means making a stand here... and if not here than at the site of "plan b" (another place to settle just a bit more agriculturally marginal than currently occupied and thus more dependent on hunting/gathering as well as ag).
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby Ludi » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 19:44:23

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', ' ')I would contend that we do not have records of what happen to hunter gatherers in bad years (or two) because there are no permanent records.


Anthropologists study remains from both hunter-gatherer and settled populations to see damage to bones caused by famine.


Hunter-gatherer populations are quite stable over time. So I'm not sure how you think settled (agricultural) populations are "more stable." They aren't typically stable, they typically continue to grow. Stability is not a feature of agricultural populations - growth and collapse are features of those populations. Horticultural and hunter-gatherer populations tend to be more stable.
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Re: Will starving masses roam or stay put?

Unread postby mos6507 » Fri 20 Jun 2008, 19:49:17

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', '
')I would contend that we do not have records of what happen to hunter gatherers in bad years (or two) because there are no permanent records.


It's academic one way or another. Hunter/gatherer is a luxury for an underpopulated world teaming with wilderness. That's not the world we live in and whatever pockets now exist where that is possible will cease to exist post peak-oil.
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