Tag: homesteading

shopcatsca:

spencer-shayy:

alls-well-that-ends-weird:

madgastronomer:

bahoreal:

Men like to believe theyd be great in apocalypse scenarios but they dont even know how to sew

Some male friends of mine were once talking about how useful they’d be in an apocalypse, and I pointed out that as a weaver and sewer and maker of stuff, I’d be pretty damn useful and they tried to tell me they could just loot clothes from WalMart and they’d be fine. As if WalMart has endless supplies without weekly deliveries.

So just last night a friend of mine was talking about who he’d round up in the event of a zombie apocalypse and how I’m his go-to farmer on account of I know how to keep an entire homestead up and running and we’re talking about what kind of resources I’d need to keep a colony of about 50-ish people alive and i bring up what all goes into processing wool for clothing and such and he just kind of stops me like ‘wait, wait, we don’t need to do all of that because we can scavenge for clothes we don’t need to be able to make them’ and i’m just like, ‘dude, that works in the short-term maybe but if this community is going to be sustainable you’ve gotta have people whose job it is to make clothes and blankets and shit’

also cloth rots pretty quickly when left exposed to the elements and after the first few years or so anything we manage to scavenge isn’t going to be wearable anymore and anywho we’ve got to teach the kids everything or they’re not gonna know what to do some decades down the line when everything’s too rusted or rotted out to be of any practical use anymore, etc etc, and he’s reckoning that things like woodworking and smithing and ranching are more important than say, cleaning or cooking or dairying and meanwhile i’m just smh may all the gods have mercy on this poor fool

He also balked when i brought up how to run a laundry and what all was needed to make everyday shit like soap and toothpaste – like dude, you think this is going to be all about hunting and scavenging and being neato manly-man drifters like in the walking dead let me teach you a thing about keeping a village alive and healthy for more than a week man most of it is shit you keep thinking is non-essential on account of it being “women’s work” or “simple chores” that’re actually pretty labor-intensive and take time, training, knowledge, and practice to do successfully, let alone well, and are 100% absolutely necessary work in order for you to have any reasonably good quality of life after the world ends

Men in post apocalyptic worlds: Immortan Joe

Women in post apocalyptic worlds: the Vuvalini

I remember reading an account of one of them many “tune in, turn on, drop out” communes that sprang up during the 60s. All these middle class suburban college kids, ditching society to go live in the wild in their perfect utopias. And how they all failed usually within the first year. Because they didn’t know how to do anything. Like how far away or deep you need to dig a latrine so it doesn’t pollute your water supply. So they were constantly getting sick.  And that women constantly pregnant or breast feeding is not actually a good thing for a tiny commune. Because now instead of doing the break breaking labour of sustenance farming the women are all tied up with child care or recovering. And then winter would hit, and they’d have no food because they’d grown stupid things like tomatoes or fruit instead of grains or potatoes.

I get sooooo mad at these post apocalyptic societies that grow fucking lettuce! What the fuck are you doing? That’s not food! It takes so much water to grow! Is highly perishable and cannot be preserved! Rye! Winter wheat! Any type of fucking legume! That’ll get you through a famine!! Fucking lettuce? Imorten Joe, seriously, lettuce? There’s no nutrition there!