[Sprintey]

PG2 agreed.

Let's get back to a post-apocalyptic society.

I'd design one with as simple, durable infrastructure as possible. Apocalypse suggests all we know around us, is gone. So what works?

**

Heaps of solar panels! Oh, hang on, I can't do the complexity of making a solar panel plant, and don't have the material. Lithium batteries - umm, they all ran out and we can't make or mine anything like that. I can make simple stuff like solar hot water in black plastic pipe tubing, or a solar oven using glass though. Simple windmill, yep. Good 'ol fireplace, fireplace stove tops work too for cooking a meal after the gas ran out.

I can do brewing and distilling, so I can do ethanol. I can take a simple motor, and use my PC to program it to run on that (if PC's are not EMP'd). If the PCs are gone, I can put in larger jets to the carby, harden the valves and advance the timing. Thus I have motive transport.

Easier still, my mate in Gippsland found all this coal. We can fischer-tropsch it and there's diesel. We can whack the coal into a plant, and there's some electricity.

Glad we kept all those seeds, but growing gardens is hard work! We've got heaps of beans, so we swapped for our neighbours pumpkins.

People have to work harder to make food, and they're getting fitter. Less asthma too.

We do need some forms of weapons to protect us from Franco and his roving hordes out of the city. So we put a big wall around our town. I'm up for sentry duty on Friday.

We're really suss on people from out of our area. Last time a group came through, all the water fittings got flogged.

We've nearly finished machining parts for a steam power plant, boiler, reciprocating engine too. A heap of mirrors pointing at a central water boiler keeps it moving after dark too, so we don't have to add coal or wood to heat it most of the time.

There's not enough fuel for big ships, so we're sailing again to offshore islands and trading with the people there. The town has a couple of nice ketches, and they brought back some great abalone, which the islanders said was recovering and covered all the reefs, they're pretty much giving it away.