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If we have a SHTF situation that lasts for more than just a few days there will be groups wanting to form a community. Many of the skills that most of us have in our current professions will be absolutely useless in the new society. Knowledge in the form of BOOKS and Magazines will be worth their weight in GOLD (actually I would rather have a good Eagle Scout handbook than a pound of GOLD if the SHTF). One person might be proficient in several areas but unless we want to go back to living conditions similar to that in the dark ages a variety of skills will be needed to have a thriving community. Having a number of people with all these different skills would be almost impossible. However a collection of just a few dozen"how To" books could insure the long term success of a community.
List five books on subjects that you feel would be needed to teach the next generation basic skills needed to survive and thrive in a civilized way.
My five would be:
1. A book on identifying various types of Clays and techniques to make pottery.
2. How to make primitive weapons.
3. How to make shelter out of available materials.
4. Animal husbandry including food storage and butchering.
5. A book on basic Chemistry and identifying.
A skill that may be just as important as my five would be the ability to meet water demands and waste disposal in a safe way.
A community with fifty or sixty different people and a wide variety of of skills will guarantee a thriving community that allows everyone to find their own niche. Some of the jobs of today will be totally useless. For instance I was an Owner Operator in the trucking business for many years. I doubt that there will be much demand for drivers of big trucks after a SHTF situation has wiped out fuel supplies.
If we have a SHTF situation that lasts for more than just a few days there will be groups wanting to form a community. Many of the skills that most of us have in our current professions will be absolutely useless in the new society. Knowledge in the form of BOOKS and Magazines will be worth their weight in GOLD (actually I would rather have a good Eagle Scout handbook than a pound of GOLD if the SHTF). One person might be proficient in several areas but unless we want to go back to living conditions similar to that in the dark ages a variety of skills will be needed to have a thriving community. Having a number of people with all these different skills would be almost impossible. However a collection of just a few dozen"how To" books could insure the long term success of a community.
List five books on subjects that you feel would be needed to teach the next generation basic skills needed to survive and thrive in a civilized way.
My five would be:
1. A book on identifying various types of Clays and techniques to make pottery.
2. How to make primitive weapons.
3. How to make shelter out of available materials.
4. Animal husbandry including food storage and butchering.
5. A book on basic Chemistry and identifying.
A skill that may be just as important as my five would be the ability to meet water demands and waste disposal in a safe way.
A community with fifty or sixty different people and a wide variety of of skills will guarantee a thriving community that allows everyone to find their own niche. Some of the jobs of today will be totally useless. For instance I was an Owner Operator in the trucking business for many years. I doubt that there will be much demand for drivers of big trucks after a SHTF situation has wiped out fuel supplies.
GL2
I'd replace number 4 with books about plant identification and herbal medicine. If the TRUTH be told, you can live very healthfully on very little fruit and vegetables or herbs once you are detoxed and cleaned out from the toxins your body has stored from decades of over-eating too much of dead cooked food BIG food has brainwashed us in to believing is good for us or should be part of our diet.
As it turns out complex sugars and complex carbohydrates as well as meats and dairy,only create an acidic environment from hardened mucus which is the true underlying cause of all of our so called "disease". Actually there is no such thing.
Did you know you can stop a wound from bleeding in 10 seconds drinking a teaspoon of cayenne pepper in water? Also the same will stop a stroke or a heart attack in progress.
Our digestive tracts are 98 percent identical to primates and to restore our health, all we need to do is give our bodies what it needs. "Robert Morse N.D." on YouTube is a great place to learn what your body actually needs. Look up "No such thing as diseases" "Robert Morse ND on YouTube. (We aren't omnivores afterall. We are frugivores and we have been killing ourselves trying to eat like omnivores.)
Basically, life begets life. So you don't want to eat dead, cooked food as your main source of nutrition. You also don't have to worry about calories or "protein". In fact too much protein ruins your kidneys which you need to filter the wastes from 100 trillion cells that make up your body.Your digestive tract does the best eating raw live fruit and vegetables and herbs and if you are cleaned out and able to absorb the nutrients from your food, you need very little. Most of us have caked on mucoid plaque lining our digestive tract preventing nutrients from being assimilated into the body which we need to dislodge and get rid of. So the last thing any prepper needs is to store a whole bunch of food that only helps to further cement and add to the mucoid plaque that is already there. That should be good news. It is one less thing to have to worry about and it cuts down on the grocery shopping.
Not just plant identification, but propagation, the growing of, and the storage of seeds.
Too many people are expecting an abundance of animal life to live on. When the infrastructure has fallen apart, and organised farming has collapsed, those free critters are not going to last long.
I say this over and over the best books to have in any library are the Foxfire series of life in Appalachia area of the U.S. They go into detail of many ways the people lived for over 150 years.
If we have a SHTF situation that lasts for more than just a few days there will be groups wanting to form a community. Many of the skills that most of us have in our current professions will be absolutely useless in the new society. Knowledge in the form of BOOKS and Magazines will be worth their weight in GOLD (actually I would rather have a good Eagle Scout handbook than a pound of GOLD if the SHTF). One person might be proficient in several areas but unless we want to go back to living conditions similar to that in the dark ages a variety of skills will be needed to have a thriving community. Having a number of people with all these different skills would be almost impossible. However a collection of just a few dozen"how To" books could insure the long term success of a community.
List five books on subjects that you feel would be needed to teach the next generation basic skills needed to survive and thrive in a civilized way.
My five would be:
1. A book on identifying various types of Clays and techniques to make pottery.
2. How to make primitive weapons.
3. How to make shelter out of available materials.
4. Animal husbandry including food storage and butchering.
5. A book on basic Chemistry and identifying.
A skill that may be just as important as my five would be the ability to meet water demands and waste disposal in a safe way.
A community with fifty or sixty different people and a wide variety of of skills will guarantee a thriving community that allows everyone to find their own niche. Some of the jobs of today will be totally useless. For instance I was an Owner Operator in the trucking business for many years. I doubt that there will be much demand for drivers of big trucks after a SHTF situation has wiped out fuel supplies.
GL2
What are your favorite books on these subjects? Without knowing that, it's impossible to make a useful response. You've only mentioned one, a book devoted to primarily backcountry information. I'll make another point: books contain information, not knowledge. The individual needs to read the material and comprehend it, then use it. That applies whether a person is learning flintknapping or Russian grammar.
Here's one that everyone needs for self-reliant living: an older copy of the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics that contains the math section. A realistic list will have far more than a few dozen.
Well, one book one might need down the line.........How to use a slide rule.
Otherwise, When Duct Tape is not enough.
These are excellent suggestions. Slide rules are very accurate, the larger the better. There are several websites discussing them. There have been a number of books written about using and collecting them that pop up on Amazon and ebay.
Here's the actual title for the duct tapeless book. I hadn't heard of it so I looked it up. It has good reviews and the preview looks good so I bought it. It's a book likely to be far more useful than doomsday books.
What are your favorite books on these subjects? Without knowing that, it's impossible to make a useful response. You've only mentioned one, a book devoted to primarily backcountry information. I'll make another point: books contain information, not knowledge. The individual needs to read the material and comprehend it, then use it. That applies whether a person is learning flintknapping or Russian grammar.
Here's one that everyone needs for self-reliant living: an older copy of the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics that contains the math section. A realistic list will have far more than a few dozen.
Good choice. Probably almost as necessary as THE PHYSICIANS DESK REFERENCE. One thing these two books have in common is that they need a reader with a high level of comprehension to understand them. A division of labor would be possible in a larger community because basic subsistence is the first priority in a smaller community.
GL2
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