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Thursday, March 26, 2015

It looks like I'm reasonably well prepared for the end of civilization as we know it

So I got this list from a reader, who asked, "You've got most of these covered--right?" Well, let's check it out. The list included the following 10 skills:
1. Gardening for Food
2. Animal Husbandry
3. Butchering an Animal
4. Food Preservation
5. Blacksmithing
6. Basic Carpentry
7. Basic Mechanical Repair
8. Herbal Medicine
9. Horseback Riding
10. Hunting
As anyone who has been reading this blog for a while knows, I am pretty good at gardening and food preservation. As it happens, I can ride a horse like a boss, I am down with basic carpentry, I hunt, I know how to butcher an animal, and I am fair at animal husbandry, as long as they don't get real sick. But I've tended farmed animals, so I feel like I could pull that off.

What does that leave us? Blacksmithing, basic mechanical repair, and herbal medicine. I know very little about any of these, alas. I've never worked a forge, but I understand the concept and could probably pull it off, although my shit would be ugly. Engines? Forget it? Other, more basic mechanical shit -- OK, but not great. Unfortunately, I think they're talking about engines here. To me, that makes no sense. No engine works without fuel, and unless we're talking about a steam engine, if I need to know these skills, fuel is going to be in mighty short supply. So this one doesn't  bother me.

Herbal medicine, though, is a weak point for me that I feel like I should brush up on. Assuming these skills ever become important again, that is going to be a big one. So look forward to posts in which I learn about herbal medicine and blacksmithing. Fuck a bunch of mechanical repair.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Blacksmithing would be an awesome hobby. The manliness points alone would be worth the expense, noise, heat and dirt in the garage/ shed/ whatever small place the wife would allow one to use.

/RAF