It depends how the magical scenario goes as to whether you have access to lead or copper. It's probably just worth ignoring everything here apart from the 19th century "colonists" quote above since we all have different assumptions about what we have or haven't got access to.
For instance, it's a bit of a stretch to imagine a situation where for some reason electric motors are completely unavailable but metallic copper, lead, zinc etc and acid that doesn't require a lot of work to produce are available.
Personally I think if we hit a situation where society has a massive collapse we will need as much manual labour as we can get so not only a use could be found for everyone but we'd be wishing for more people to help out.
Are we talking about a magical scenario where all technology just stops working
Looks like it. It appears to be an article for people to brag about their camping and hunting skills and about how they forged a knife out of the sort of steel I made with the help of sixteen thousand others. It's not as if they made it Hittite style from iron ore (which is really just a fire, hammer and a lot of hard work while the really difficult thing is getting the iron ore to where you are in the first place). So there you go guys - I've just handed you 90% of a skill for such a magical situation. In a magical scenario where all technology just stops working we would not be short of things for people to do whatever their skill level.
To be big enough to be called "apocalypse" it would probably need something like nukes taking out all major ports etc so that it's a global disaster. Thus the EMP assumption is no more silly than any of the others about this "apocalypse". You may prefer "death of grass", a supervolcano, meteor strike, gamma ray burst frying one hemisphere or whatever but the above poster seems to prefer nukes for his choice of unspecified nightmare. It's all very silly anyway and answered well by the guy quoting an old book about colonists.
learn to grow your own food, make your own tools, including weapons for hunting / defense, and do construction without power tools
You are describing my childhood fairly well:) However when things get very basic there are plenty of roles available for those that only know how to pick up things and carry them to other places or drive a wheelbarrow. Even Mr Superficial Bastard in Advertising can be sent out to collect firewood. If a huge disaster causes a collapse of society we won't be short of things to do.
Also, the dominant early Apocalypse survivors will be all about Max Max style scavenging of whatever is leftover
That's reminding me of a town (I think it was in France) that was built on the floor of a Roman stadium and didn't outgrow it for well over a thousand years. They had their ready built wall and plenty of dressed stone to build houses.
We shouldn't need such rubbish, however it is a good workaround. IMHO a better workaround is an IPv6 tunnel so that the GeoIP thing blocking you becomes completely useless (until some fools put lats and longs in the IPv6 packet header as had been proposed). Some parts of the world may still have a lot of IPv4 numbers to play with but we're going to have to go that way eventually. Plenty of phones (via LTE for example), set-top boxes for internet "cable TV" and others are already on IPv6 so the content is unlikely to be blocked even though the provider doesn't have a clue where you could be.
Twenty years from now, I probably will be a good fit only for 'dead'
I don't know about near you, but near me every woodcrafting, gemcutting etc group is stocked with retired people with incredible skills. There's one old guy I know that makes furniture, he has to stop every twenty minutes or so when his hands start shaking, but he still turns out better work more quickly than a young professional cabinetmaker.
The other thing is to take a look at real disasters instead of disaster movies (which is how most posts here seem to frame it). What you've written above only makes sense when you have a bunch of unconnected individuals thrown together, which is why that is a common plot point in such movies. In reality someone is going to at least try to look after old Mr Smith and hothead Jim the tough and glib is going to be told to pull his head in by a dozen less tough people if he tries to take over.
big cities will be littered with the dead and dying within a week
People are not so that stupid that large numbers are going to stay where there is no food. Once again it's the disaster movie premise - nobody can get anything done or work together until the hero tells them what to do. In reality disasters turn just about everyone into "heroes" - people find a way to help. Skills that do not seem disaster related can be critical, for instance the people that communicate between teams can have a hand in saving more lives than any one of the people in those teams. Those that do nothing but boil water to make it safe to drink save lives.
Personally I see this article as somebody making a big deal about how they can camp, hunt and maybe some craft skills. They neglect that you can't keep a society running like a camping trip.
If you guys want a skill useful for a disaster that destroys civilisation there are plenty. If you want to get incredibly basic take a look at how the Hittites made iron from iron ore, read that and it's only hard work and the skills of others to deliver that iron ore to where you have your hot fire and hammer between you and a useful metal. Meanwhile however the unskilled guy picking at scrap has also earned his bread.
analogue for US politics would be useful except under the most extreme circumstances
Take a look at some of the more extreme examples of lobbying and you'll see it is a very apt comparison. Unfortunately those "extremes circumstances" happen a lot more often than they should. Putting a prominent Republican or Democrat on a company board is often just a way to "pay for access", while promising a later position when the person is still in power is naked unquestionable bribery.
You are the one that shifted the goalposts to Europe in some feeble attempt to hide from reality. Meanwhile in your own country and many others (including European countries) most homicide victims and perpetrators are poor. Pretending that a simple and truthful two word answer is a fabrication and a lie however really shows that this is all about pushing an agenda isn't it? Sorry about not giving you an excuse to bring out the kerosene and wooden cross.
I'm sorry you have not seen it but you don't get appointed to such high posts when you are too young to prove yourself by ability, you get there via connections. So a long list of exalted posts doesn't really mean much if there are no signs of any significant achievements in those posts. The events that happened on her watch show either that either she was not in control or should not be trusted in a position of responsibility again.
You don't put a former fox in charge of a henhouse if you want to retain the confidence of the hens. Also your false outrage and "let's see how they like their own medicine" bullshit to cheer for your team is annoying, especially since your team don't think much of this player anyway.
I really *do* wonder what value she would bring to the board of Dropbox
They have put a leading member of a political party on their board so that's the answer. Your mistake is thinking US politics is in some way special and you need to look at this as if the same thing was done in a corrupt banana republic.
You appear to have just come in to shit all over everything as some sort of game and are not even consistent in what you are writing. I suspected as such when you made such stupid statements above but thought I should give you some sort of chance. Feel free to continue your pointless wanking without my input.
No, the waste volume goes UP with reprocessing. You've been badly misled into thinking that reprocessing is a magic fix everything wand instead of a real way to recover fuel. I suggest you look out how it is done to undo the damage before you embarrass yourself more. Last I looked the web site for the facility at Harford (think that's how it's spelled) had a good description of how they make MOX fuel from old fuel rods. It helps if you think about what happens to other materials in proximity with strong neutron sources - they become radioactive themselves. So the abrasives and other materials used to grind up those rods into tiny bits also become radioactive and the tiny bits spread out to contaminate a lot of other material. So long as you actually deal with that extra waste it's no big deal, it's just a consequence of getting the active bits out of depleted fuel.
Fuel recycling and waste management are unfortunately two different issues.
It looks like the secret is to feed them vat fed plankton instead of similar or identical species of the wild plankton they normally eat - which was apparently much hard than that sounds. The big deal is it means a more reliable supply.
You can see the evidence for yourself in your own example as well as others in other places. I'm sure you've already noticed so it's amusing that you've used a pre-emptive accusation of lying. This has clearly just turned into playground name-calling, which while it demonstrates your weakness of character quite well is somewhat boring and offtopic.
Looks a lot like "You haven't proven that the girls produce code that's just as good" to me. If you had meant something else you should have written something else instead of something so incredibly stupid.
I'd forgotten that "new nukes burn up all existing waste" is the new "duck and cover". Reprocessing creates MORE waste (it's a fuel recovery process not a waste management one), just a different sort which actually lasts longer so we can't just ignore waste management. We'd be better off just managing the waste we have properly as well as building the best nukes for the job instead of pretending that it's part of a waste management system, especially since the best nukes for the job are going to be different to the ones that squeeze as much as possible out of old fuel.
India seem to be doing it on that sort of budget. Oh you mean in the US - no that would challenge established uranium interests so unlikely to happen with any budget unless the military are firmly behind it and can tell the nuclear lobby rent seekers to fuck off.
Do you think you are some how smarter then everyone else?
No. We have to hunt for news while you've got it all in "megamarts" and most see no need to go beyond Fox or whatever news source they have because it seems to provide everything. Even if I tune into one 24 hour radio station I get programs from four different partners around the world, and they announce who they are which makes me aware of where to look on the net for varied news sources. In a news "megamart" that doesn't happen - no perceived need to look elsewhere.
It's becoming harder everyday to get to the truth about anything. Media outlets with prejudicial and biased editorial lines
Yes - I saw a puff piece on Charles Manson from the History Channel FFS - they left out the chain of stupidity leading to some of his crimes to make him look like a flawless criminal mastermind. So much for it being a documentary.
It's become a competition between those supporting opposite ends of any controversial issues
Those millions spent on PR are clearly working. However it's spent locally so that's when the BBC or whatever becomes far more dependable than Fox when it's an issue where US PR money will be spent.
No need to pretend to be utterly stupid in an attempt to be sarcastic - I'm merely pointing out that some people who like to self-apply the word "libertarian" have politics that diverges wildly from what you think the word means. I've done that by pointing out one of the strangest and contradictory extremes. Take a look back to the days when Koch was running for office and there really was the weirdness of effectively going for a new feudalism with Koch as King - "strong" leaders sorting things out and none of that Supreme Court trash - off with their heads!
Slashdot Mirror
It depends how the magical scenario goes as to whether you have access to lead or copper. It's probably just worth ignoring everything here apart from the 19th century "colonists" quote above since we all have different assumptions about what we have or haven't got access to.
For instance, it's a bit of a stretch to imagine a situation where for some reason electric motors are completely unavailable but metallic copper, lead, zinc etc and acid that doesn't require a lot of work to produce are available.
Personally I think if we hit a situation where society has a massive collapse we will need as much manual labour as we can get so not only a use could be found for everyone but we'd be wishing for more people to help out.
Looks like it. It appears to be an article for people to brag about their camping and hunting skills and about how they forged a knife out of the sort of steel I made with the help of sixteen thousand others. It's not as if they made it Hittite style from iron ore (which is really just a fire, hammer and a lot of hard work while the really difficult thing is getting the iron ore to where you are in the first place). So there you go guys - I've just handed you 90% of a skill for such a magical situation.
In a magical scenario where all technology just stops working we would not be short of things for people to do whatever their skill level.
To be big enough to be called "apocalypse" it would probably need something like nukes taking out all major ports etc so that it's a global disaster. Thus the EMP assumption is no more silly than any of the others about this "apocalypse". You may prefer "death of grass", a supervolcano, meteor strike, gamma ray burst frying one hemisphere or whatever but the above poster seems to prefer nukes for his choice of unspecified nightmare.
It's all very silly anyway and answered well by the guy quoting an old book about colonists.
You are describing my childhood fairly well :) However when things get very basic there are plenty of roles available for those that only know how to pick up things and carry them to other places or drive a wheelbarrow. Even Mr Superficial Bastard in Advertising can be sent out to collect firewood. If a huge disaster causes a collapse of society we won't be short of things to do.
That's reminding me of a town (I think it was in France) that was built on the floor of a Roman stadium and didn't outgrow it for well over a thousand years. They had their ready built wall and plenty of dressed stone to build houses.
We shouldn't need such rubbish, however it is a good workaround.
IMHO a better workaround is an IPv6 tunnel so that the GeoIP thing blocking you becomes completely useless (until some fools put lats and longs in the IPv6 packet header as had been proposed). Some parts of the world may still have a lot of IPv4 numbers to play with but we're going to have to go that way eventually. Plenty of phones (via LTE for example), set-top boxes for internet "cable TV" and others are already on IPv6 so the content is unlikely to be blocked even though the provider doesn't have a clue where you could be.
I don't know about near you, but near me every woodcrafting, gemcutting etc group is stocked with retired people with incredible skills. There's one old guy I know that makes furniture, he has to stop every twenty minutes or so when his hands start shaking, but he still turns out better work more quickly than a young professional cabinetmaker.
The other thing is to take a look at real disasters instead of disaster movies (which is how most posts here seem to frame it). What you've written above only makes sense when you have a bunch of unconnected individuals thrown together, which is why that is a common plot point in such movies. In reality someone is going to at least try to look after old Mr Smith and hothead Jim the tough and glib is going to be told to pull his head in by a dozen less tough people if he tries to take over.
People are not so that stupid that large numbers are going to stay where there is no food. Once again it's the disaster movie premise - nobody can get anything done or work together until the hero tells them what to do. In reality disasters turn just about everyone into "heroes" - people find a way to help. Skills that do not seem disaster related can be critical, for instance the people that communicate between teams can have a hand in saving more lives than any one of the people in those teams. Those that do nothing but boil water to make it safe to drink save lives.
Personally I see this article as somebody making a big deal about how they can camp, hunt and maybe some craft skills. They neglect that you can't keep a society running like a camping trip.
If you guys want a skill useful for a disaster that destroys civilisation there are plenty. If you want to get incredibly basic take a look at how the Hittites made iron from iron ore, read that and it's only hard work and the skills of others to deliver that iron ore to where you have your hot fire and hammer between you and a useful metal. Meanwhile however the unskilled guy picking at scrap has also earned his bread.
Take a look at some of the more extreme examples of lobbying and you'll see it is a very apt comparison. Unfortunately those "extremes circumstances" happen a lot more often than they should. Putting a prominent Republican or Democrat on a company board is often just a way to "pay for access", while promising a later position when the person is still in power is naked unquestionable bribery.
You are the one that shifted the goalposts to Europe in some feeble attempt to hide from reality. Meanwhile in your own country and many others (including European countries) most homicide victims and perpetrators are poor.
Pretending that a simple and truthful two word answer is a fabrication and a lie however really shows that this is all about pushing an agenda isn't it? Sorry about not giving you an excuse to bring out the kerosene and wooden cross.
I'm sorry you have not seen it but you don't get appointed to such high posts when you are too young to prove yourself by ability, you get there via connections. So a long list of exalted posts doesn't really mean much if there are no signs of any significant achievements in those posts.
The events that happened on her watch show either that either she was not in control or should not be trusted in a position of responsibility again.
You don't put a former fox in charge of a henhouse if you want to retain the confidence of the hens. Also your false outrage and "let's see how they like their own medicine" bullshit to cheer for your team is annoying, especially since your team don't think much of this player anyway.
They have put a leading member of a political party on their board so that's the answer. Your mistake is thinking US politics is in some way special and you need to look at this as if the same thing was done in a corrupt banana republic.
You appear to have just come in to shit all over everything as some sort of game and are not even consistent in what you are writing. I suspected as such when you made such stupid statements above but thought I should give you some sort of chance. Feel free to continue your pointless wanking without my input.
No, the waste volume goes UP with reprocessing. You've been badly misled into thinking that reprocessing is a magic fix everything wand instead of a real way to recover fuel. I suggest you look out how it is done to undo the damage before you embarrass yourself more. Last I looked the web site for the facility at Harford (think that's how it's spelled) had a good description of how they make MOX fuel from old fuel rods.
It helps if you think about what happens to other materials in proximity with strong neutron sources - they become radioactive themselves. So the abrasives and other materials used to grind up those rods into tiny bits also become radioactive and the tiny bits spread out to contaminate a lot of other material. So long as you actually deal with that extra waste it's no big deal, it's just a consequence of getting the active bits out of depleted fuel.
Fuel recycling and waste management are unfortunately two different issues.
It looks like the secret is to feed them vat fed plankton instead of similar or identical species of the wild plankton they normally eat - which was apparently much hard than that sounds. The big deal is it means a more reliable supply.
You can see the evidence for yourself in your own example as well as others in other places. I'm sure you've already noticed so it's amusing that you've used a pre-emptive accusation of lying. This has clearly just turned into playground name-calling, which while it demonstrates your weakness of character quite well is somewhat boring and offtopic.
Looks a lot like "You haven't proven that the girls produce code that's just as good" to me.
If you had meant something else you should have written something else instead of something so incredibly stupid.
I'd forgotten that "new nukes burn up all existing waste" is the new "duck and cover". Reprocessing creates MORE waste (it's a fuel recovery process not a waste management one), just a different sort which actually lasts longer so we can't just ignore waste management.
We'd be better off just managing the waste we have properly as well as building the best nukes for the job instead of pretending that it's part of a waste management system, especially since the best nukes for the job are going to be different to the ones that squeeze as much as possible out of old fuel.
India seem to be doing it on that sort of budget.
Oh you mean in the US - no that would challenge established uranium interests so unlikely to happen with any budget unless the military are firmly behind it and can tell the nuclear lobby rent seekers to fuck off.
Getting a new pair of shoes - easy.
At the cutting edge of high energy physics, wait, you didn't think before posting did you?
That's one that created problems for me a couple of times. It's a good short range WiFi jammer and some people forget to turn it off.
24 hour news radio station
No. We have to hunt for news while you've got it all in "megamarts" and most see no need to go beyond Fox or whatever news source they have because it seems to provide everything.
Even if I tune into one 24 hour radio station I get programs from four different partners around the world, and they announce who they are which makes me aware of where to look on the net for varied news sources. In a news "megamart" that doesn't happen - no perceived need to look elsewhere.
Yes - I saw a puff piece on Charles Manson from the History Channel FFS - they left out the chain of stupidity leading to some of his crimes to make him look like a flawless criminal mastermind. So much for it being a documentary.
Those millions spent on PR are clearly working. However it's spent locally so that's when the BBC or whatever becomes far more dependable than Fox when it's an issue where US PR money will be spent.
It could be an insight into your own future.
No need to pretend to be utterly stupid in an attempt to be sarcastic - I'm merely pointing out that some people who like to self-apply the word "libertarian" have politics that diverges wildly from what you think the word means. I've done that by pointing out one of the strangest and contradictory extremes. Take a look back to the days when Koch was running for office and there really was the weirdness of effectively going for a new feudalism with Koch as King - "strong" leaders sorting things out and none of that Supreme Court trash - off with their heads!
The poor.