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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Might be a gnostic thing, equating Jesus to a serpent (which could be taken as praise or insult).

[redwallzyl]

Today I saw a symbol of a crucified serpent with a crown and wings above the cross,  I tried looking it up, but I handed up getting vacant confusing information about alchemy or something, appearently having to do with Nicholas Flammel.

But what on earth does it really mean? Also the person had an  ouroborus symbol as well so I guess they like alechemic nonsense, but otherwise I'm still confused.

funnily enough apparently Nicholas Flammel was in fact just some random guy that people equate with alchemy but he wasn't one at all. Somethhing to do with someone publish a book in his name or something. http://historyofalchemy.com/list-of-alchemists/nicolas-flamel/

[Egan_BW]

There aren't too many fruits that are A. stapel foods and B. grow readily in Newcastle.

I think our best option might be potatoes. Grows anywhere and is easy to maintain. However, to properly grow them, you need to dump new soil on top of them every 1-2 weeks.

I'm imagining a scene where six people clad in HAZMAT suits and guns head out through the dead city, cutting down zombies by the dozen. You think they're gonna go on a scavenging run, like a traditional apocalypse... When they rush to a tilled field and start desperately shoveling soil over the potato rows, while two guards pick off the approaching zombie hordes with shotguns.

These guys are the biggest badasses in the settlement. They are respected as the lynchpin of the last city on earth.

They are...
The Association of Concerned Farmers.

They use guns? I thought you said they live in a mall. Whatever ammo they happen to HAVE is probably going to run out in like a month if they use them on zombies. Makes much more sense to just run up to the dumb slow brittle corpse and whack it with a pipe. ^{_{But then I'm just a melee enthusiast.}}

[EnigmaticHat]

In some parts of the US, in times of pessimism and fear people go out and buy a shitton of ammo.  As in, the gun shop will have a gun but be out of stock of the ammo that gun fires.  So like, if you're in Texas it doesn't really matter where you hole up, it should be trivial to have a huge stockpile.

[Trekkin]

excess food

There's your mistake.

Thanks for the snappy dialog exchange, totally stealing that for this project...

Snappy, perhaps, but not accurate. The thing about excess food is that it rapidly stops being food, because it goes moldy or otherwise rotten if not correctly preserved. As much as it's a nicely thematic image to have your survivors willing to eat anything, people with modern immune systems regularly eating rotten food will stop being healthy and useful in short order. Nor do you want to till vegetables infected with fungus back into your fields, as you might do with the inedible by-products of the crop.

Now consider that your potatoes (or anything else you might be growing) will come in waves; potatoes are frost-tolerant enough to handle two crops a year, but most things aren't, so there will be times when your survivors are awash with vegetables and long stretches where their ability to eat is largely a function of their ability to preserve food. Fermentation is merely one of many options, but has the advantage of requiring relatively little machinery. Once you've got alcohol, you want to distill it to save space, but you can only drink the hearts; the heads and tails are toxic, but they do burn.

So there will be excess food, yes, even when people are generally starving. There will also be inedible biomatter, and the one will become the other unless some use is made of it. One of the easier ways to make use of it makes liquid fuel as a byproduct.

This is, by the way, mostly ignoring the large amounts of mostly secure, naturally climate-controlled growing space at their disposal.

[Arx]

An interesting note on the same topic that many post apoc authors don't know or handwave is that some of the compounds in petrol denature over time (about three years), rendering it unusable for engines.

[wierd]

This is due to the addition of an "octane booster" known as dimethyl-ether (or DME). The DME breaks down, resulting in the fuel being of the previously shitty quality it was before the addition of the DME. This is because high quality alkane formulations favoring actually high octane percentage (ideal for ICEs) are just too expensive to manufacture, and the addition to DME and MTBE (Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether) to lower quality fuel populations to increase volatility and combustion profile is simply put-- just plain cheaper. This is DESPITE THE ESTABLISHED SCIENCE THAT IT CAUSES ALL KINDS OF HEALTH AN ENVIRONMENTAL HARM.

Basically, ethers in general like to degrade. They will slowly but surely degrade inside the fuel preparation over time, turning into "this and that" depending on the ether in question. When that happens, it stops being a useful octane booster, and the fuel burns like shit.

Properly prepared, clean, pure gasoline without such cost saving additives and extenders will endure geological timescales of storage in an appropriately durable container, by comparison.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Not only that, but while the underground tanks might last long enough to denature anything on the surface is going to evaporate within a few months.

[scriver]

Are you guys saying Mad Max is unrealistic

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Well, two of the films have them continuing to refine new fuel, so...no, it is realistic. Except having air-filled tires, that's a bit of a stretch.

[GiglameshDespair]

First Mad Max wasn't even post-apocalypse, I don't think. Still had police and courts of law, 2 and Fury road had working oil refineries, and 3 ran off both biogas and had a lot of beasts of burden.

[Helgoland]

-snip-

There's many ways of conserving food: Pickling, drying, salting, fermenting into Sauerkraut and the like, etc etc. If you're starving half the time, you're going to be very ingenious in keeping around any temporary surplus. Plus any alcohol that is produced would presumably be used as a primitive hypnotic rather than as a low-quality fuel...
Rotten stuff is no good to ferment by the way. Molds have a knack for outcompeting yeasts once they're established. Putting the stuff on the compost pile or feeding it to the pigs is a much better bet.

[scriver]

First Mad Max wasn't even post-apocalypse, I don't think. Still had police and courts of law, 2 and Fury road had working oil refineries, and 3 ran off both biogas and had a lot of beasts of burden.

That's because Mad Max apocalypse didn't start with nuclear fire, it ended with nuclear fire. Mad Max one takes place during the apocalypse. It's just a slow, creeping one, that dissolves the stability and safety of society and everyday life piece by piece until one day you wake up and don't think there isn't anything not everyday about pseudo-cultish marauder bike gangs reaving their way across the land as the police are unable to to to much more than inconvenience them, let alone pose a threat to them.

[Greiger]

Probably a stupid question, but as of yet google and amazon have failed me.

I am looking to buy a watch.  A watch that I can look at to tell the time, but also functions as a mp3 player (I plan to use headphones or plug it via usb into my car radio, a speaker is not required).  The problem is that whenever I search online for this I seem to only find super expensive things with a zillion features I don't need, watches that basically just function as an extension of your cellphone (which I don't have) and can't actually function on it's own, or shady seeming dealers with no reviews that say I'll get it months from now if I buy it.

That can't be that crazy of an idea can it?  Surely someone has bought something like this before they can recommend?

[Frumple]

Probably not

Less flippantly, I imagine folks have thought of it before, and then thought a little harder about what having a set of headphones plugged into something you have attached to your wrist entails. Looks like it'd actually be easier to find something with speakers than without, if you're aiming for feature slim. It's pretty trivial to find an mp3 player with a clock, though, it just wouldn't be much of a wrist-y thing (I guess you could clip one to a wristband?).

... your best bet cost wise looks to be biting the bullet and either at least having it include a pedometer function, or be bluetooth enabled. Can't personally recommend anything save buying a cheap watch and a cheap mp3 player, though. That's about the closest I've got to it (and I basically loath wrist watches, so the watch part never really happened much). Search wise, doing the watch mp3 player thing and then sorting cost low to high (and then adding -foos to narrow) is the way to go.

Alternately, consider swinging by whatever your nearest brick and mortar electronics shop is, particularly if it's low end/pawn shop style stuff, and asking if they've got something in stock or know of specific brands or whatnot that offer what you're looking for. Hitting up online customer service from similar stuff might work, too.