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In our wired society, interpersonal communication via cell phone, the Internet, email, Facebook, Twitter, texting, music players, television, radio, digital cameras, calculators, etc. has completely replaced face-to-face conversation, neighbor interaction, writing letters, reading books, telling stories to children, playing board games, singing at church, taking and passing Polaroids around, being able to do basic math with a pencil and paper, and so on. Instantaneous communication 24/7 has become as highly addictive as hard drugs.
Yes, I'm dating myself big-time, having grown up in the Sixties when technology didn't exist. (A concept young preppers have difficulty comprehending.)
In the context of a societal or electrical breakdown where such modern interpersonal technology offerings vanish, I sincerely believe a majority of wired Americans mentally could NOT make the adjustment and serious psychological issues would compromise their ability to function in order to communicate effectively in a post-apocalyptic world and to be SELF-sufficient -- as it were. The "sound of silence" and being trapped with their thoughts would deafen them.
In honor of Thanksgiving, could you, your significant other, or your kids go "cold turkey" without breaking down? Have you ever tried the preparedness experiment of going without your electronic devices?
Would you cope well? Or would being around you during the interim period of forced adjustment to life without your devices make being around a smoker with a nicotine fit seem preferable?
P.S. The catalyst for my beginning this thread was an article in 2009 about a 14-year-old who sent 35,000 texts in one month, or an average of 74 messages an hour. I can't imagine teenagers like her being able to cope without becoming suicidal.
News - The New Text Messaging Queen: 35,000 Per Month - InsideEdition.com (http://www.insideedition.com/news.aspx?storyId=2545 - broken link)
i have some basic electronic devices at the cabin but they are protected by the emp farday cage set up ..so i will have some of the basic items like tv and dvd player and laptop computer for playing the dvd i have and i figure it a cheap form of keeping one self from becomeing crazy ..
plus i have books and other games also at the cabin for that reason ..i use my computer more than tv so i figure the laptop is more of device for the playing of the dvd i have for survival info on dvd and study it as i need ..
I was born in 1951, so am dated. I know lots of Buck Skinners that still refuse tv and pc's, so my social needs would be met with ease. My pc could run but if no one else did it wouldn't get used much. Here we can run the house and the machine shop for so long as bottle gas is available, and when it isn't switch to wood only and grease fat lamps.
We store things like gasoline, diesel and K-1 as it is in rural life. Right now I am in the studio bed room heating with 3 of 4 alladin lamps, and it is well below freezing outside.
If my wife wanted, we could camp in the field under that stars tonight and be fine. We can go colder than -40 with ease.
Since Y2K we put up supplies and rotate them. I hunt in the 18th century anyway with flinters, but have moderns as well, so not much would change for us, no matter what happens to money.
Can't get matches or a lighter, no big deal I got 3 bow drills and can use all of em. With them I can make oak fire, and with that I can make oak charcoal, and with that I can work steel in my forge.
Meds which don't really need or use are my main worry everything else is easy.
i happen to be in my 20s and don't have a cell phone, TV, ipod, or any of that. i do have a computer and internet, but they are provided by my employer, otherwise i probably wouldn't have them (i'd probably have a computer, but not internet, and just use the internet when i can get free wireless).
all the gadgets these days kind of disgust me. i would love to be able to get rid of most of them...
i happen to be in my 20s and don't have a cell phone, TV, ipod, or any of that. i do have a computer and internet, but they are provided by my employer, otherwise i probably wouldn't have them (i'd probably have a computer, but not internet, and just use the internet when i can get free wireless).
all the gadgets these days kind of disgust me. i would love to be able to get rid of most of them...
Bortstc, I am totally impressed with how you are swimming upstream against the flow! If you don't mind my asking, how did you resist peer pressure and the siren call of all those gadgets themselves to resist becoming wired like most kids in your age group?
Your being from Alaska makes me think you had parents who had better things to do with their time in being self-sufficient and passed those values on to you.
We go to Mexico for a couple months every winter. Our house there has a couple of light bulbs and a fridge, and there's an internet cafe nearby, and our cellphone doesn't work there. No problem.
I might be the grandaddy of y'all. I can still remember as a kid we didn't have electricity in our home until around 1944. We used kerosene lamps at night at the dinner table. We had friends and family visits often and shared meals on the weekends with family's in our neighborhood. We used a wood stove to heat the house, and had a wood fired cookstove in the kitchen. We used a drag saw to cut logs into rounds to be split for firewood. Ha, two large galvanised washtubs hung on the side of our back porch. They were used for Saturday night bathing. Times sure have changed, and I think most of it started after the TV was invented. As far as my prepping, I'm probably behind most of you. We have quite a large stock of food and are buying more, but I haven't started storing fuel yet. I do have a 250 Gallon diesel tank for 'stove oil' and I just recently bought an '87 Ford F250 diesel pickup (no electronics) We have all kinds of camping gear but most of the lanterns use Coleman fuel, so I recently bought a kerosene lantern like the ones my folks used years ago. I have just purchased a new wood heating stove and lots of firewood. I have a good supply of ammo, but this winter I'm going to start casting slugs to be used in a 12 gauge shotgun. I reload my own shotshells, and I also reload some with slugs. I would miss listening to music from my iPod or computer, but I wouldn't miss TV, and we can get by without electric lights. We have already used this kerosene lantern.
Last edited by Nite Ryder; 11-27-2010 at 04:49 PM..
I might be the grandaddy of y'all. I can still remember as a kid we didn't have electricity in our home until around 1944. We used kerosene lamps at night at the dinner table. We had friends and family visits often and shared meals on the weekends with family's in our neighborhood. We used a wood stove to heat the house, and had a wood fired cookstove in the kitchen. We used a drag saw to cut logs into rounds to be split for firewood. Ha, two large galvanised washtubs hung on the side of our back porch. They were used for Saturday night bathing. Times sure have changed, and I think most of it started after the TV was invented. As far as my prepping, I'm probably behind most of you. We have quite a large stock of food and are buying more, but I haven't started storing fuel yet. I do have a 250 Gallon diesel tank for 'stove oil' and I just recently bought an '87 Ford F250 diesel pickup (no electronics) We have all kinds of camping gear but most of the lanterns use Coleman fuel, so I recently bought a kerosene lantern like the ones my folks used years ago. I have just purchased a new wood heating stove and lots of firewood. I have a good supply of ammo, but this winter I'm going to start casting slugs to be used in a 12 gauge shotgun. I reload my own shotshells, and I also reload some with slugs. I would miss listening to music from my iPod or computer, but I wouldn't miss TV, and we can get by without electric lights. We have already used this kerosene lantern.
I wish we lived closer. Right now I heat the bed room with 4 alladin lamps that burn every night. It's a tad chilly in the morning, but my wife looks pretty perky if you know what I mean.
In the tee pee years we had no wash tubs, but I made a canvass bag to hold around 5 gallons of water, and I made a gambrell to hang it. I made the black carbon paint with linseed oil to water proof it too.
We heated up some hot water on a wood stove inside the tee pee, that was also the back reflector to the open fire. Then we added cold mountain stream water to that, and took showers naked before God in the woods. We did that sometimes with over 5 feet of snow on the ground, taking turns and calling how much water was left.
In the winter my father used a kerosene lantern in our pump house to keep the water from freezing. The pump house was uphill from the house, so we had gravity feed to the house from a concrete thousand gallon tank in the pump house. He also kept a lit kerosene lamp in our cellar. It was a large building for a cellar about 15'X25' with ten inch walls filled with saw dust. It stayed cool in the summer, but got too cold in the winter without the heat from a lamp. My folks always had a large garden in the summer (guess that goes with ranching). My nephew and my son ended up with all the lanterns when my mother passed away several years ago. This new lantern I just bought is sold by Kirkland Company, they sell quite a variety of lanterns and lamps. Kerosene is expensive, but ten gallons in these lamps and lanterns would last awhile, and I wouldn't be staying up late at night anyway.
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I can't imagine teenagers like her being able to cope without becoming suicidal.
