Feces-Hit-The-Fan Mediul&Long-Term Survival Guide

Disclaimer: I’ll cover things that can be used to live off-grid for both short and long periods of time, in different kinds of environments, that I think are missing from most bug-out bags. Also, long comment…

You know those air blowing pedal pumps (with a spring)? Have one, and add to it a small system like the one on a train wheel or piston, to convert up-down movement to circular movement, and glue washer (or more) with the hole square to the recharging flashlight, connect the pedal to it and now you can pedal, on some hard surface (ground or big rock) and get your device(s) charged.

I’d add an an axe, and a shovel head with place for a stick (like 6 poles around a circle, or a circular sheet of metal), because some rope can lock it enough to dig a hole for a pond&well (in case it rains at night) or to remove weeds from the ground of your shelter, and make one side of the shovel head a bi-directional wood saw (so you won’t get stuck if you pull or push). A chain saw or two (one of them being cheaper, as an emergency reserve) would also make for great tool. Since we have wood as fuel, I’d recommend a lighter with a wheel, so one can get sparks even after the fuel runs out, and matches (cheap, weightless but voluminous), and a piece of letter-9 steel to use as a flint&steel (other types of rocks can be used, too), and maybe a ferro rod as failsafes and for durability.

Now, since we have the pedal pump&rotor&generator, we can use the pump and a cheap tube to feed the fire more oxygen, a cheap (1-dollar) tiny pliable rocket stove, because it’s cheap and helps direct the fuel, so that you don’t need to use that much fuel, I’d add to it a cheap mod for it to whirl the flames before reaching the top, that can work with conveniently placed air holes to have a better fuel efficiency and support smaller pots.

I’d add to that a cheap plastic wheel with sandpaper glued on the outside so we can sharpen the tools. I’d make some small holes (4–6 on each side) so I can use improvised concrete to make concrete sharpener, in case of prolonged survival. Something like 100g of quick cement could be included in the pack, so that one doesn’t have to make quicklime or flyash. Note that a quick-enough spinning hard surface doesn’t needs to be “that smooth” (in terms of granulation), because it can be smoothened with a rock, which allows not only to get a smooth sharpening stone, but also a smooth rock that can be made into a improvised axe/shovel/adze/knife, very useful in case one tool breaks and/or you have more than one people depending on that BOB (bug-out bag).

Now, those are pretty much a few kg, cheap and relatively small in volume. Add to that a roll of cheap tinfoil, some other cheap tape (like clear tape) and cheap garbage bags (surface area matters, not the strength), and you can improvise a temporary disposable shelter that you can afford to leave behind. Some bright colored not-too-thin rope could help you not get lost, by marking the trees you pass by, and also make for good tinder, and can be used instead of the paracord. The garbage bags can be filled with leaves and grass to form beds, pillows and blankets (slimmer or thicker), and the tape can be used to make it one piece (if you cut and tape the middle bags to form a bigger tube), as well as used for carrying stuff around. You can make a shelter wall with garbagebag-tinfoil-garbagebag to keep in the heat (2 air chambers for temperature insulation) and make sure the tinfoil doesn’t get shredded so easily. Garbage bags can also be made into clothing, so one can have a puffy straw and/or leaves winter coat, waterproof footwear, gloves and muffler.

Ok, onto more permanent survival, like 10+ days in unknown weather conditions, I’ve talked about shovel and axe, and sharpening stone. A magnifying glass, even if small, could be used for both starting a fire, and reading finer print, so one should include knowledge onto how to find the rocks needed to be fired to be made into quicklime or making another binding agent, how to make rope, and the mechanical workings of a few types of pumps and engines, tanning, knitting (for wooden supports for walls and the roof, for baskets (and basket-backpacks) and carts (some of that quick cement could be used to make wheels for that). Mud water + grass can be used for a insulated wall, like for a forge and/or rocket stove. Tar/resin glue should also be taught (as glue and firestarter), as well as how to increase the quality of the clay, and some cheap cloth rags that can be used either/both for the clay, and for filtering water (the last layer to touch the water shall be charcoal, then sand, then as many pairs of charcoal-sand/small_rocks layers as you want, and the first layer to touch the water shall be the tiny and small rocks to filter bigger impurities). The guide should also include lots of plants and how to use them (like dandelion-root coffee, dandelion tea and it’s uses, cattail, potatoes, etc.) and how to harvest and farm them efficiently, as well as animals (both small and big) and the same for them, and ores and how to detect and process them.

Maybe also include a small water-pump, or making the air pump also pump water, and including a few meters of some cheap tube can help one get water on elevation. Knowledge about rocket mass heaters and maybe some cheap strong pipes and corners binders can be used for making the mass part of the rocket mass stove, and if the pipes are out of metal they can be left inside the mass heater, and if they’re not they can be used as a mold for the holes and then extracted, and if they’re small enough they can be used to make a heated floor too. Actually, terracotta bricks with the straight tubes moving a bit to the side (so the air can zig-zag) can efficiently distribute the heat, effectively using the same item for multiple purposes (quick mass-heater, casting holes in brick molds, moving water and air, and if the tubes are metalic (can be square, so as to have a frame and a plate welded on it for water tightness and support), they can be used for distillation, like to separate salt and water, or to make alcohol (lamp fuel and tinder replacement).

Now, the tar/resin glue can also be used for aiproofing&waterproofing non-fired clay, cob and anything else from water (so you can have a clay roof, if you waterproof it), quicklime + water can be used to paint the walls for waterproofing. You can use a U&I interlocking sticks (maybe also glued together, or roped together) to make wheels for carts and (big) gears, a water stream or wind or pedal rotation-outputting system can be used for electricity, sharpening, circular and/or jigsaw tablesaw cutting, pumping water and air, using a mill (for grains and for making rock dust and bearing balls, with the rock dust usable for cement and terracotta), one can survive and live decently even without a piece of metal, and considering that one can get metal out of large quantities of dirt, and the green rocks usually have/are unprocessed copper ore, and sometimes one can find something like looks and smells like a small feces river or pond which is actually rust-water, and use that to make metals, and tanning and knitting thin ropes can be used to make clothing&clothes, that’s basically highly technological china before the use of electricity and steam&wood-gas engines and gunpowder for mining. And now that you have metal, make a long metal pole and wait for a thunder to make it magnetic, and you can make a bigger electricity generator, and even use that to turn water into H2 and O2 and pressurize them into metal cans, and use them for as batteries in well-ventilated cold shady places, and use them to power a steam engine, and/or just use high-pressure air for that.

Now that I think about it, high-pressure air + coal can be put into a metallic or even terracotta container with a pressure valve (with a lock, so it doesn’t leak or accidentally explodes) can be used for providing a cannon with the pressure needed, while also allowing for the mobility of rotation and movement. I wonder if an alcohol+coal (optional + crushed egg shell dust) mixture left to drain on plates and scraped while still slightly wet could make a good alternative for gunpowder, since the air holes would provide oxidation, and the charcoal and alcohol and sulphuric dust can provide the fuel for the fire. Or just use water instead of alcohol and finish drying it. So yeah, one person alone can get back to a pretty high level of civilization, all on it’s own, if it survives that long. More people would make that easier, and gardening&farming and medical knowledge can make it possible for a high level of health for from a few people to a whole city.

All this could be put into a single bug-out-bag, aside the health and hygiene products, canned and powdered foods and fishing and sewing kits. If there’s more than one person, a few kg of flour and salt could be added to the kit, and a battery kit with a current transformer so one can charge it using a small generator and recharge electronic items if&when needed. And maybe 1–2kg of quick cement, wood carving tools, a ceramic cup for smelting, a big pot, a big frying pan, more lighters and ferra rods, transparent nylon for a greenhouse, and teepee/tee-pee/tipi/ti-pi and technical survival books, and maybe some books to teach the kids to read&write, math and physics.

Since paper could not be made so easily, thin rope can be made onto textiles, and other textiles can also be used, and quicklime+oil (from fish or melted fat) can be used to write on that piece of textile sheet, and that’s how you get a page, and then a book, and then use animals for their wool and printing presses to increase the speed and decrease the costs of printing books in large quantities. If needed, cutting small branches in half or bigger branches in sheets and using rope to make them into parchment and oil+ash/quicklime to write on them can also be used to make a papyrus, and a line-press could be used to print each line of the papyrus, which can be stored as a roll, or as a book, but a lot of rope/string will be used either way.

Oh, and since one might need cars without big expensive oil rigs, one could make a wood gas engine. It was used for vehicles in WW2, when Germany feared to lose it’s sources of “black gold” (petroleum/petrol/benzine).