Preparing for the Aftermath--Lessons from the 1930s, by J. E.
By James Wesley, Rawles on December 24, 2010 9:44 PM

It’s one or two years after an EMP attack and you are safely tucked away in your retreat somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Your storage foods have mostly been used and your high tech electronics is useless. The really bad stuff is mostly past. Now it’s try to stay fed and alive and pray that civilization as you know it is coming back. You’re going to have to work your environment to live. Ever wonder what life might be like? What would it really be like to have no running water, electricity, sewer, newspaper or Internet? No supermarket or fire department close at hand?

I have a good imagination but I decided to talk to someone who would know first hand what it was like: my mother. She grew up on a homestead in the middle of Montana during the 1920s and 1930s. It was a two room Cottonwood cabin with the nearest neighbor three miles away. She was oldest at 9, so she was in charge of her brother and sister. This was her reality; I feel there are lessons here for the rest of us.
http://www.survivalblog.com/2010/12/pre ... th--l.html
more at link

( Some of these lessons I learned as late as 1960's, but we had cars and electricity by then )

I've heard a lot of stories from my grandmother. In winter she'd heat a brick and wrap it and out at the foot of her kids' beds to keep their feet warm.
Whenever I had a toothache she'd heat salt in a frying pan and wrap it in a handkerchief to hold against my face.
She never made cakes with frosting, she made cakes with "icing" which was powdered sugar, milk, and lemon juice or vanilla, drizzled over the cake.
My Mom only weighed 3 lbs when she was born, and my grandmother kept her alive with no incubator, she kept her warm and watched her every minute.
She could do a lot with a little.
Her best days were prohibition, she was a bootlegger. She kept from getting caught when the revenuers raided her by pouring vinegar in the alcohol, and once by pouring it all out. No CSI back then!

I've been slowly setting up the farm to be an old style homestead if and when it comes down to it. it's my eventual goal to be completely self sustained and be able to go several years without having to "trade" because of necessity. I often wonder how others will fare wshtf that are not in the position I am with the opportunities I have at hand. I intentionally make "life" harder for myself so I know for sure i can still do it(live without modern comforts) and there's millions of people out there that I think will die from shock when their safe little world ends.

MM theres going to be about 3% survival rate

read up on some of the forums about the current snow in the east

their wigging out about 6+'' that aint nutten

wen SHTF their gone with in a week [month at the most]

Doc.

i grew up without most of the modern conveniences so for me it will be like a return to childhood.

We had a outhouse 30 ft from the back door, a hand-pump well, a cold spring and a root cellar. Heated with wood all my life.

Romantic? , idyllic?, not on your life. It is going to take everything a person has and even then there is a large chance of failure and failure will mean a grave stone.

Reminds me- my Aunt told me when it was cold, Grandma (mine) used to put baked potatoes in the kids' coat pockets to keep their hands warm on the way to school.