Aspy Survivalists?

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My husband and I were talking about the kinds of stuff people aren't learning nowadays, old techy survival skills, like about motors and electronics. My husband's skills are more like the professor on Gilligan's Island than the shortcuts, downloads and cheaper, already built stuff people can get nowadays.

It made me wonder, if we become less able to have high tech things because of the weak dollar and the expense of dwindling fossil fuels, will it be up to the aspies to get all the old style tech skills up and running.

everyones getting dumber i think. but i think thats just what they want. you have to look no frther than the public school system, dumb people are easier to control than smarter ones

my whole life is like the professor on Gilligan's Island.
I have "recreated the wheel" several times only to be laughed at by others for my pains.
I really don't care. I would not like to be them after the deluge, sitting on their bums in the water and complaining while I am making do with what I can find and how I can figure out how to make it work. I have often thought 'if I didn't know how to make do, I wonder if I would sit around expecting other people to do it for me, and I wonder if someone WOULD do it for me if I were pitiful enough?' Alas, I shall never know, because I can fix something up before someone else even thinks to come around to see.

ya' can't depend on other people, ya' know. ya' gotta depend on yourself alone.

Merle

I'm writing this from back in the hills and can say that the old style skills are alive & well. It's amazing how often a bow saw is better than a chain saw. Not to mention safer, more theft resistant, and virtually maintenance free. My new cordless tools are actually the old standard types.

If you want to go farther back on the tech scale, check out the John C. Campbell folk school. www.folkschool.org

The economics of living in the sticks dictate a simpler, can-do attitude. For instance I needed a bracket for something or other (can't remember exactly what for), and instead of taking 2 hours round trip plus $12 bucks in gas, I spent about 15 minutes or so making one. Kinda' fun, really - scrounge a piece of metal, vise it, two cuts with the hacksaw, drill 4 holes, bend it - viola'.

Check out the Foxfire books. Neat stuff.


Peace.

I can highly recommend this publication/site:

Backwoods Home Magazine

I think I may be in love with Claire Wolfe.

Good fortune,

- Icarus built a Nintendo from coconuts...

Thanks everyone. This makes me feel like getting more active in the do it yourself projects. Welding is something we want to set up soon but I'm going to study those sites.

I loved the major power outage several years ago on the US's east coast. Everyone was like "AAAAAAAAAAAAAA What do I do"

Build a wind turbine.

Anyone remember MacGyver? Bet you wouldn't see a new show like that on TV these days...

f****n' A; I grew up on MacGyver. Admittedly, much of what was seen on MacGyver was, um, a bit of a stretch. BUT, the underlying philosophies of always being prepared, thinking carefully about what you might have at your disposal to be used as makeshift tools or weapons, and throwing in knowledge of physics, chemistry, electronics, and other applied sciences is a philosophy I hold dear.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=3w-oDZSLUrY[/youtube]Because of MacGyver, I always carry three multi-tools (a Leatherman Crunch, a Gerber Legend 800, and a Victorinox CyberTool 41), three lighters (an old copper Zippo, a disposable Bic, and some generic pocket blowtorch), and three flashlights (two Surefire Executive Defenders [these are awesome!], and a Photon Microlight III. Plus a few other things.

Good fortune,

- Icarus is a good guy to be caught with in an emergency...

I've wanted to ask so many times if anyone else was into survivalist/homesteader type interests. It's a huge interest of mine.

These are some books I used to have kicking around, all sorts of goodies in it.
An old Whole Earth Catalog is also a good to have on hand.

I didn't know you could still get these books. We used to have them back in the seventies.

My 10 year old son and I built kitchen cabinets, base and wall, from pine skids my husband brought home from work to burn in the wood stove. They turned out really well, especially considering that neither my son or I had ever built anything before and just "winged" it as we went along. It was a wonderful feeling to be able to pull out the old metal cabinets and replace them with the pine. They were a little crude, or "primitive" but they did the job and we were very proud of our accomplishment.

Steve Jobs compared The Whole Earth Catalog to Google in his June 2005 Stanford University commencement speech. "When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation.... It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions." During the commencement speech Jobs also quoted the farewell message placed in the last page of the last issue of the catalog: "Stay hungry, stay foolish." [1]