Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Here is a video on radio and emergency communications as it pertains to Ukraine. Pretty interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ0KxUXK_wI

I've noticed that the competition for broken electronics and televisions at the swap meet has increased in the past few months. Maybe a useful skill?

https://www.logupdateafrica.com/amp/shi ... gh-1344953

Communication skills for when the grid fails

Know how to build antennas for radio communication. Know how to build dipoles and end fed half wave antennas.

Know how to use an antenna analyzer and SWR meter to build an antenna for a desired resonant frequency.

Know how to use an antenna tuner to tune an antenna to a desired frequency.

Know how to build a homemade power station with solar panels, solar charge controller and deep cycle lead or lithium batteries.

The most useful voice radios to help people in your neighborhood are:

Short distance: CB, Marine VHF

Regional: 80 meter HF ham radio.

Long range: HF ham radio, using whichever ham band works best for the desired distance and time of day.

I like the idea of using JS8call for text communication, it will get through bad condition when reception is too weak for voice communication.

The skills I value for the future have definitely been touched on in other posts and threads but here goes:
1) Foraging and identification - plants and fungi, for food, basic home remedies and general bushcraft items (it is fun to learn how to make dyes etc as well but those uses seem less necessary)
2) From scratch cookery - preserving, sour dough bread baking, pickling, home brewing (alcohol and kombucha), making stocks from scraps. I also think it’s worth cultivating an interest in “no waste” recipes using every part of what you have - I dabbled in turning banana peel into a faux bacon the other day and it was interesting to say the least!
3) Gardening - with a focus on high calorie fruit and vegetables
4) First aid - including use of a tourniquet, snake bite kit and the basics

And one not strictly necessary but that I have enjoyed starting to learn and would like to master: sign language. Been incredibly useful having my partner and I knowing the basics when out somewhere noisy!

The most critical soft skill to learn, in my opinion, is conflict resolution.

Resurrecting this thread because the war has dragged on and now Ukrainians are looking at a winter with even less infrastructure intact than last year. I'm curious if anyone has come across lessons learned or things of that sort for those who have stayed put through the whole conflict.

The most affected people will be the ones living in large apartment buildings in big cities. I don't see what exactly they could do in their situation. The best preparation is probably to have a valid passport and easily accesible and movable money, and just go abroad as a refugee for the duration. Staying in apartment building with no electricity, no heating and no water is much worse than living in a medieval peasant hut.

East Palestine, Ohio has me thinking about this again.

Ego wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 25, 2020 6:42 pm

Also, after the back-to-back Bonhomme Richard & Beirut explosion I decided it wouldn't hurt to have gas masks for each of us. Turns out they are very profitable. After finding these two M40s with new C2A1 NBC canisters for $15 each I began buying and reselling them.

Health concerns grow in East Palestine, Ohio, after train derailment for context.

Definitely another unexpected event that gas masks are good for.

Wondering if the april/may sea temperature anomaly changes anyone's plans or prescriptions for skills. To me it just looks like the timeline is running faster than expected.

I don't know what kind of skills are useful for overheated world. Food production can fail on you, maybe sooner than industrial one. Dealing with heat is a skill. Sauna can help, but human body limits are real.
Else I feel like this is world we can't really prepare for.

shadow wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 09, 2023 11:56 am

Wondering if the april/may sea temperature anomaly changes anyone's plans or prescriptions for skills. To me it just looks like the timeline is running faster than expected.

Last week I ran on the beach four times and saw three sea lions and a dolphin washed up dead. I assumed it was the cross-border pollution but it looks like it is a toxic algae bloom. Plenty of people are still surf fishing despite both the pollution and the algae. I am not sure I would be eating fish caught in SoCal right now.

@CzechRetireeWannabe

One skill useful for overheated world is the acquisition of money so that you can move to part of world that was previously cooler. Climate migration tourism. Yes - there is a point where nothing can be done. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature

There are really no safe places to run to. We used to hear Canada as northern state that will benefit from higher temperatures, yet wild fires and occasional heatwave causes trouble there too.

CzechRetireeWannabe wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 26, 2023 1:02 am

There are really no safe places to run to. We used to hear Canada as northern state that will benefit from higher temperatures, yet wild fires and occasional heatwave causes trouble there too.

I think its more of a case of been able to relocate to the least worse location.

I've seen prediction that, come 2070-2090, we'll have large cities on Antarctic coast. Pity you can't buy land there in anticipation.

i don't think anyone would stop you if you settled there.

Australia is going to decamp en masse there.

Interestingly its the only landmass which is not part of any sovereign territory (though some countries have made unrecognised territorial claims on certain sections)

Nobody will grow food at scale in Antarctic for millennia, so I don't think that is solution.
We are doing changes at human time scale that will take geological time scale to stabilize.

It will also catalyze conflicts, so preparation for war may be on the list. For us bit eastern in Europe, it should already be reality, but I'm outlier in even thinking about it.

But until it becomes unbearable, general resilience is very useful.
Being able to live happily with diminished services, ability to repair, grow food, cook tasty food with little.
Maybe even some protection/shooting.

I don't know, I'm not sure there really is recipe.

One more point to raise is that being immigrant generally sucks. It may suck less if you come from first world country as people don't look down on you that much, but my experience as slav living in Switzerland for few years just makes me want to dig my heals in my home country.
I expect this sentiment to only grow to level when I expect internal migration within country will be also frowned upon.

Jean wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 27, 2023 12:42 pm

i don't think anyone would stop you if you settled there.

What I had in mind is long-term land speculation rather than settling there. Although, the continent is huge and it's hard to tell where the cities would be.