The end of the world

[T-Bag]

Well living in Swansea I'm fairly near (easy walking distance) from a Marina and a ferry service. I'm inclined to believe that there would be plenty of boats with a few cans of food lying around (if not the riskier option are the two big supermarkets across the road). There's also a stash of fuel, radios and other useful stuff.

If the apocalypse turns out to be the zombie kind I would find the largest ship I could feasibly manage on my own (given no sailing experience...likely fairly small), strap a row boat to the back and pull it about 100 yards away from the dock (still within sea defences in case of storms).

I'd use the radios to try and communicate with others. The benefit of some semblance of society beats the risk of robbery...considering 99% of people are dead there are far more valuable things left unattended than what I've scavenged, which would short term be water, fuel and food in that order (food should be everywhere at first). As time went on photovoltaic panels and marine batteries would move up the list (again reasonably easy to come by in a marina) with the aim of building enough capacity to run a fridge, kettle and cooker (though I'd probably put that gear in a second nearby boat for fire prevention). Then I'd have storage for fresh fish etc, clean water and cooked food.

As far as medicine goes, I imagine that would be the hardest part. Hospitals and doctors surgeries would be overrun initially, and afterwards would be looted first. I'd imagine going to a small chemist and grabbing pain killers, gauze and anything with "cilin" at the end of the name would be a safer option, but other than that I'm not sure what I'd be looking for.

If I made contact with anyone far off and the situation was not too bad I imagine my floatila would be the best method to reach them unless they're completely land locked...I'd have to make a call based on the situation.

[faust82]

These are all good suggestions, but I think I might have to go with Niel on this one. Either a prison or an airfield. Possibly a prison near an airfield?

I'd have to bust into a sporting goods store to secure a decent rifle for hunting and long-range defense. I've already got all the handguns I need, but I might be a bit short on ammo until I can resupply somewhere. I'll probably also check near the local cop shop to see if they're still alive. If they are, fine. If they're not, I'm gonna have to make sure I'm the first one there to secure their armory, both to increase my own defensive capabilities, and make sure their offensive capabilities don't fall into the wrong hands (wrong being anyone's but mine).

I'm assuming I'm going to have ample time on my hands, television and internet being out of the question. This means transportation is a temporary problem. If you find a mobile crane (preferably one with an operating manual nearby, but for lifting cars ten yards to the side you're never going to exceed the load restrictions anyway), cars can be lifted out of the way to create transport corridors. Car density around here isn't such a major problem anyway, so I think I could get my hands on a tow truck for smaller gatherings of cars, and then go looking for said mobile crane.

Having all this ample time on my hands, scavenging and general life improvement will be priorities. What sucks is that I'll probably have to learn some form of farming to be able to do long-term survival, most canned goods are only good for a decade or so. Military preserves last quite a bit longer, but taste a fair bit worse as a result. The norwegian RSP (reservestridsproviant, reserve combat rations) are tinned beef, pork, fat and peas, and lasts for a minimum of 20 years after production. As long as the tin isn't dented or rusted, the contents is most likely OK. My father uses that stuff when he's out hiking, and although he says it tastes just as bad as when he was in the army, it doesn't taste any worse. Last year he finished his stock of cans manufactured in the 60's, so now he's up to the 1974 vintage.
The army stopped buying the product in 1995, but that means if they still have the stuff in stock, it's good for another 15 years or so. A lot of supermarkets have the civillian equivalent, so even though it's not gonna be gourmet dining, you're likely to survive on it.

To hoard every scavenged bit of kit in one location makes me vulnerable to raiders. After having set up a defensible and decent primary location, I'd have to start looking into creating a fallback position. 1on1, I think I could handle things. If there's more of them than me, running is a good choice. I'll get to my secondary location while they're busy looting the primary one.

After that, I'm sure having all the time in the world will lead to some pretty interesting innovations on my part.

[Benny]

So it seems everyone's view is that society will turn feral and we'll have to start shooting and looting. That's a fairly poor thought innit!

It's the simple things that would be a pain in the ass. You break into an army base, turns out everything is locked behind secure doors. Do you rifle the bodies (100's) for keys, if it's electronic locks you're going nowhere. You won't be able to get at stuff.

I like the boat thoughts, it's something we came up with here. You could either walk through the channel tunnel (in the dark) or nick a ferry. What happens when you run it aground a mile from shore.....

[Niel]

Would be great to think it would be anything other than feral......but with essentially everything gone and no systems maintained that put food on the table then the reality would be every man for himself..........we'd be turned into rats scavenging what is left.........and it wouldn't take long for groups with guns to start to think "this would be a lot easier if we had people to do the hard work for us" and we'd be back into the dark ages and end up with daft things like Lords,Barons,whatever's calling he shots whilst the plebs did what they were told..........not too different from okay tbh but with less foreign holidays;)

[Niel]

So it seems everyone's view is that society will turn feral and we'll have to start shooting and looting. That's a fairly poor thought innit!

It's the simple things that would be a pain in the ass. You break into an army base, turns out everything is locked behind secure doors. Do you rifle the bodies (100's) for keys, if it's electronic locks you're going nowhere. You won't be able to get at stuff.

I like the boat thoughts, it's something we came up with here. You could either walk through the channel tunnel (in the dark) or nick a ferry. What happens when you run it aground a mile from shore.....

Military shelters still have metal doors .....and a cutting torch would get you in still ( in my time in the RAF I did actually break into a hardened shelter with a long screwdriver when we managed to lock ourself out .......the door/lock design was changed as a result ) . But I think it highly likely to find the aircraft shelters open........they only get locked properly when they play at war games. On a RAF base there would be lots of them to choose and you'd be sorted out fairly quickly.