Friday, September 5, 2014

PODA weapons devolution 13


PODA WEAPONS DEVOLUTION 13

ARMOR AND AIR FORCE

In short, fagittaboutit.  Yes, come the die-off there will be salvage.  No matter how much we ship over to China or substitute for lesser quality materials ( even sheetrock can be used in black powder )  there will always be salvage just because we’ve been busy little beavers for 150 years stripping the earth of material and turning them into consumer items, throwing them away and then rinsing and repeating.  But whereas in an instant human wipeout disaster the lazy bastard fiction writers love to portray when you are left with unused material meant for billions, reality says you are going to be left in an ocean of trash.  And the stuff still useful ( I defy anyone to come up with a re-use for a Pretty Pony Plastic Action Doll Village ) like, say, armor plating and drones and two seat glider-aircraft ( the type you used to make with a VW Bug engine-I might be dating myself a bit )?  They are all wonderfully enticing, but alas a mere Siren call to the wonderful military gear of yesteryear.  How much gas for welding are you really going to be able to come up?  How long until after one rough landing your high tech drone craps a part you can’t replace ( the higher the tech, the less McGuiver work-around the more plug and replace only )?  How long will ALL gasoline laced with crap ethanol actually last?  Let’s say, just for craps and grins, you are able to come up with the gas for an aerial balloon.  How long before the surplus ambiguous cotton cloth ( actually, I think you need silk or something- so let’s say “ambiguous mass produced clothing” ) runs out because you’ve yet to establish a post-modern fiber producing system ( today, cotton competes for water and soil with food crops.  Same with most fibers )? 

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After living in an era of surplus, after generations of living in an era of abundance, no one including your grandfathers teachers had any idea of how you can view the world any other way.  The only hindrance was knowledge and political management or will- never a lack of material.  We are so busy patting ourselves on the back on how well we are living that we forget our infrastructure was built up over five hundred years ( and THAT infrastructure was started by the accomplishments of the previous 500 ) and that no ONE critical piece of the puzzle could be excluded.  That would be much too convoluted to go into now, but just do a little thought exercise of geography and politics and cultural forces, the wars and bankers who financed wars and how all that needed to be in place just for the first adequate metal to be produced to get the first coal to even start the Industrial Revolution.  All it takes to foil any plans to reproduce modern weapons is the absence of ONE critical component.  Then a chain reaction renders everything impossible.

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12 comments:

  1. Another good article. How would you utilize gypsum (sheetrock) in making black powder? My first answer to a re-use for a Pretty Pony Plastic Action Doll Village would be to burn it for heat like any plastic. One more point, the gas in a balloon is called air and if that starts coming in short supply......well, that IS the end game now isn't it?

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    1. I think he is referring to floating observation balloon. Heating the air of a hot air balloon is usually done with propane. Helium and Hydrogen are used in dirigibles and zeppelins. All of which will be hard to come by PODA. (MAYBE if you can get enough concentrated - it takes energy to concentrate it- you can use Methane in the place of Propane for the hot air balloon).

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    2. Does methane have enough BTU's for compact storage? Or are you stuck with a floppy bladder hanging down? Any long term bladders, or just tire tubes?

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    3. It is a little less BTU for storage size- but if it is just an observation balloon no reason you have to have the storage on board, just run up a long hose. A couple hundred feet up is easy enough and gives excellent observation potential. I don't know the stats on an independent mobile platform.
      I think flight will continue to exist in some minor form for large organizations for a long time to come- nothing as energy and infrastructure dependent as we have now of course, but just the advantage of a high point of view is huge.

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    4. That's embarrassingly obvious, with the hose.

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  2. With knowledge, combined with energy all is within the realm of possibility.
    Add time to the equation...
    Infrastructure takes tons of all the above.
    Time is limitless
    Knowledge can be discovered once more
    Energy is the stuff everything consists of

    The cycle will repeat, though not likely for us....

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  3. This is probably the most important quote I have read from you. And among the most important I have ever read.
    " After living in an era of surplus, after generations of living in an era of abundance, no one including your grandfathers teachers had any idea of how you can view the world any other way. "

    Abundance is over. It ended a while ago- exactly when can be an issue for historians. And no one really knows how to live without abundance in society (even if not for themselves). Sure a lot of evidence of previous abundance remains, especially here in the USA. But it is fading fast.
    How to live in a place/time when if you are lucky to earn enough to feed and house you family- but only in squalor. Where third world type existence is better than you can hope for - after all cardboard and steel sheeting for a shanty shack is more than you can afford.

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    1. Perhaps we could slip across the border and steal their cardboard and sheet metal?

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    2. Rate of population decline variance could make it a no brainer or a really bad idea. (if mexico keeps growing faster than they die off= bad idea, if the reverse happens, faster decline in pop than the US then of course).

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  4. "and two seat glider-aircraft ( the type you used to make with a VW Bug engine"

    Your comment reminded me of the Gyro-Captain from The Road Warrior James.

    "It's safer up there" as the good Captain made note of to the young village hottie.

    Convert it to use alcohol, and use it to fly fast and far out of Dodge when TSHTF. Post collapse and stabilization phase, it will get you quickly into the local village for supplies from that remote retreat. Keep plenty of spare parts on hand. Should be plenty of VW parts in the junkyards?

    Yeah, I know, you think it's a crappy idea, but a fella can dream right?

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    1. What I've found, and YMMV, is that most surplus VW's were in California. Haven't found much since I left there in the early 90's. Parts might be problematic.

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