consuming to invest 29

CONSUMING TO INVEST 29

Smithing

Blacksmithing isn’t much of a "thing" anymore, as 99% of what they do was eclipsed by modern steel making and factory work. Anymore, a welder is probably much busier than a blacksmith as far as custom work. Beyond shoeing horses, it is hard to envision many smithing tasks beyond a artsy-fartsy role. Blacksmiths won’t revert back to traditional tasks anyway. Before, surface sources of ore were worked prior to any fabrication. In the years after the collapse, salvage is going to be the only source of raw material, and as such a whole new skill set will be required. Raw ore does not work/react the same way as already processed metals ( and please note very carefully that ALL the surface ores globally were played out over a hundred years ago. Sure, that lasted thousands of years, but all things too must end. ALL ores in quantity are heavy machine/heavy finance/heavy fuel use extracted and the future is salvage only and NOT traditional historic primitive muscle fueled surface mined. You MUST recognize this new reality because it changed dynamics of politics, strategy, etc. The next couple of hundred years will not be like the last five thousand. Perpetual growth was possible only because of primitive extraction techniques. Once dinosaur juice exponentially increased our capacity to strip mine the earths surface, historic growth compressed a millennia worth of mining into a century or less. Without an ever continuing source of ore, what will the future look like? Certainly not the continual process of one empire replacing another. At best, a forever Dark Ages of decentralized power. As Europe eeked out an existence from the carcass of Rome, salvaging what had already been made, so too shall out future be nothing but salvage for anything other than organic recyclables ).

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Whereas before a smith might need a hammer and forge, tomorrows smith will need the same, but also he will need the tools of dismantling the steel and other metals of the Petroleum Age prior to reshaping. It might behoove you, should you wish to be a blacksmith in the future, to experiment now with stripping junk metal ( say, junked cars ) and trying to fashion it, all without modern methods. No welding, no power tools. Learn now what to do and you are heads and shoulders above all your competition. Immediately after the Big Flush ( was that reference from "The Survivors" with Robin Williams? ), before tires rot, gasoline goes bad and body panels rust, it will be relatively easy to commandeer all available motor vehicles and spend a lot of time dismantling, protecting and sorting. This will be a warehouse for your future metals industry. Buildings won’t move as easily, but they salvage nicely in moveable parts. You want to act quick, as one too many winters starts rot ( I can envision a former Home Depot or Wal-Mart building being a storehouse for insulation, 2x4’s and plywood sheets formally part of suburbia ).

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