[FireJack]

I imagine that there will be a lot of abandon suburbs in the near future that could provide a lot of good if you know where to look.
I can think of obvious things like 2x4's, copper piping, sinks bathtubs etc. Has anyone ever thought of a good and productive way of stipping a suburb.

[Daculling]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FireJack', 'I') imagine that there will be a lot of abandon suburbs in the near future that could provide a lot of good if you know where to look.
I can think of obvious things like 2x4's, copper piping, sinks bathtubs etc. Has anyone ever thought of a good and productive way of stipping a suburb.

[dub_scratch]

Boy FireJack, are you ever to pick through the ruins of collapse. What? have you already figured out how your going to ride out the dieoff already and are ready to scavenge the suburban tracks for all that good stuff? Perhaps you got some idea how to get to that point in the first place. Please clue me in if you do.

One twisted dieoff survival idea I have is this: with all of the corpses around some enterprising survivalist can use all that dieoff flesh to raise fly maggots. From that he or she can feed those maggots directly to chickens or other poultry. From that there are chicken eggs as source protean for human consumption. The chicken droppings can be used for fertilizer for the garden. Of course if that seams too complex there is canibalism......mmmmmm

Given this seemingly ridiculous dieoff survival strategy and the sheer difficulty of even contemplating such, picking through the suburban ruins for copper and 2X4s doesn't seam like anything too outside of what we may consider as thinkable.

[parainwater]

I plan on cleaning out all of the pharmacies first.

[boilingleadbath]

Unfortunatly for you, pvc pipe is rather useless without the fittings. I challenge you to remove a fitting - DWV, PW, sch 80... any at all - without makeing it compleatly unuseable. Like having to chip it off bit by bit with a chisle. If you'r serious about trying it, I would recomend a hydrostatic test type device: fill the pipe in question with water, add pressure until it fails. The most common mode of failure for solvent welded tubing is fitting seperation, or so I have noticed. Idiots who don't know how to solvent weld are funny, unless they are also idiots intent on filling their PVC plumbing systems with air compressed to 70% plus of the pressure rating.

[strider3700]

Stripping houses is easy. Same tools you build with as was pointed out above.

Now the question is what is worth stripping from a house if things are ugly enough to be stripping houses.

Woodstoves are useful little devices, and the pipe associated with them are nice and not easy to locate.

12V motors from dishwashers, washing machines and dryers may come in useful. I hear that there are magnets and magnet wire in microwaves that makes them worth collecting this is all assuming you're wanting to try generating your own power.

I'm not sure how useful copper wire from the walls will be, it's worth something on a global market but locally? I can't see a lot of new places being built that will require it.

older houses have copper pipe and it's good stuff, I'm looking for some to make a solar water heater. A hot water tank to go with that would be nice.

Around here we have tons of wood, and most of the new houses don't have much good wood in them anyways.

old shingles have no use in construction but maybe can be turned into something else? Metal roofing on the other hand can be reused and is worth collecting

Insulation can be collected easily but I'm not sure how useful it will be, strip one attic and put it in yours and you're usually good to go. The insualtion boards, styrofoam and so on are quite useful and never really fail so I'd collect them.

glass sheets for greenhouses is what i'd grab first.

Of course I expect most people to burn their houses behind them being bitter and all.

[Dezakin]

The future isn't madmax you dorks.

[FireJack]

It doesn't have to be a madmax future. I expect the suburbs will be abondoned rather quickly after the economic collapse. I imagine there will be all kinds of useful things that people will leave behind.

[Caoimhan]

Has anyone considered that the suburbs may just adapt? Commercial and light industrial business can move out of the city, too.

[strider3700]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dezakin', 'T')he future isn't madmax you dorks.

[emersonbiggins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Caoimhan', 'H')as anyone considered that the suburbs may just adapt? Commercial and light industrial business can move out of the city, too.

[eric_b]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FireJack', 'I') imagine that there will be a lot of abandon suburbs in the near future that could provide a lot of good if you know where to look.
I can think of obvious things like 2x4's, copper piping, sinks bathtubs etc. Has anyone ever thought of a good and productive way of stipping a suburb.

[BLove]

First of all, when I get depressed about the disease, death, and catastrophe that await so many ignorant suburban Americans, I can get out of it by fantasizing about the hundreds of years supply of plywood that will be available from McMansions across America.

Plywood (and OSB, for that matter) are both incredibly useful products, regardless of how they are produced - if they already exist, lets recycle them. PEX pipe (flexible plumbing), electrical wire, outlet boxes, metal roofing, tar paper, sheets of plastic (used as vapor barriers), drywall screws (so valuable I can barely see straight), even nails etc. are what I consider to be valuable commodities of the future.

My business partner and I have a U-Haul box truck that we've turned into a mobile job site for our off-grid sustainble construction business. It has a huge battery charged by solar panels mounted on the roof and by a high-output alternator under the hood - we can get 1.5KW at an idle and over 2 KW driving down the road, and get up to 6KW from the inverter. Our plan it to basically drive up to abandoned houses, break out the crowbars, sledges, chainsaw, and sawzall, and go to work, loading salvaged windows, doors, plywood, lumber, and hardware into our truck as we go.

I think that as long as their are humans alive, someone who has the tools and skills to demolish buildings and salvage materials should be able to support themselves in the world of the future. Harvesting and selling the waste of civilization will be essential to any transitional survival strategy. My advice - get set up with some way to produce electricity (ethanol-powered generator, photovoltaics, etc.). Get a chainsaw, stock up on chains, and learn how to sharpen them. Buy as many sawzall blades as you can, and lots of #2 Philips drill tips (keep your broken drills for parts, obviously). Sledge hammers in every size, breaker pars, aluminum oxide cut-off wheels (metal cutting blades for circular saws), and diamond blades (for cutting concrete or block) will all be useful. Figure out how to make ethanol or biodiesel, find some abandoned one-ton pickup truck on the side of the road (an apallingly common status symbol and terribly underused resources these days), fix it up, run it on biofuel, and use it to transport materials. Learn how to recycle metal from highway guard rails, bridges, sign posts, and soda cans. Good luck.

[Starvid]

Why do you think the suburbs should collapse? Have you never heard of trams or local trains?

[strider3700]

starvid I see you're not from north america and I'll assume you're not familiar with our local public transport. What little is available is pathetic.

A bus runs by my house four times a day. 6:30am into town, 7:00am out of town, 7:00pm out of town, 7:30pm into town. The train runs by about 11:00am but I need to get to the center of town to get on it. I'm assuming it returns in the afternoon but I can't be certain.

I'm only 16 km from work so I can bike it. Others may work on the far side of town or even further.

[denverdave]

I think much of suburbia will be scavenged, the question is how will it come about?

Sooner or later the economy will implode and there will be millions of bankruptcies and foreclosures, but I think that there will be a point at which the banks themselves are struggling, and they will probably not spend a whole lot of energy and resources evicting angry homeowners from houses they cannot sell. The gov't will tacitly support this b/c it will keep people off the street. People will probably continue to occupy their mcmansions until the power/water/gas is shut off or they go to where the work is, which will be concentrated around farms and urban centers.

As the suburbs wither, there will be a demand for new, cheap housing in more practical locations. The mcmansions will be canniballized for windows, wiring, plumbing, and fixtures. Perhaps much of them could be broken down into prefab wall, floor, and roof sections and reassembled into smaller houses and apartments. Abandoned parking structures in cities could be used as superstructures.

[pup55]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') can think of obvious things like 2x4's, copper piping, sinks bathtubs etc. Has anyone ever thought of a good and productive way of stipping a suburb.

[BLove]

I expect suburban life to collapse due to
1) starvation
2) disease
3) civil war
4) collapse of electric grid, sewage systems, etc.
5) economic collapse (wherein people with debt that they can't repay [due to collapse of American dollar, stock market, etc. {just wait until Saudi Arabia starts trading oil for the Euro or China stops lending the U.S. 150million dollars a day yes you read correctly}] end up in concentration camps on U.S. soil [they are already under construction, do a web search and you'll see] doing factory work because the U.S. is at war with China). Survival and slavery with be bigger issues than survival.

[Starvid]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('strider3700', 's')tarvid I see you're not from north america and I'll assume you're not familiar with our local public transport. What little is available is pathetic.

A bus runs by my house four times a day. 6:30am into town, 7:00am out of town, 7:00pm out of town, 7:30pm into town. The train runs by about 11:00am but I need to get to the center of town to get on it. I'm assuming it returns in the afternoon but I can't be certain.

I'm only 16 km from work so I can bike it. Others may work on the far side of town or even further.