[ubercrap]

First of all, when I get depressed about the disease, death, and catastrophe that await so many ignorant suburban Americans, I can get out of it by fantasizing about the hundreds of years supply of plywood that will be available from McMansions across America.

Plywood (and OSB, for that matter) are both incredibly useful products, regardless of how they are produced - if they already exist, lets recycle them. PEX pipe (flexible plumbing), electrical wire, outlet boxes, metal roofing, tar paper, sheets of plastic (used as vapor barriers), drywall screws (so valuable I can barely see straight), even nails etc. are what I consider to be valuable commodities of the future.

My business partner and I have a U-Haul box truck that we've turned into a mobile job site for our off-grid sustainble construction business. It has a huge battery charged by solar panels mounted on the roof and by a high-output alternator under the hood - we can get 1.5KW at an idle and over 2 KW driving down the road, and get up to 6KW from the inverter. Our plan it to basically drive up to abandoned houses, break out the crowbars, sledges, chainsaw, and sawzall, and go to work, loading salvaged windows, doors, plywood, lumber, and hardware into our truck as we go.

I think that as long as their are humans alive, someone who has the tools and skills to demolish buildings and salvage materials should be able to support themselves in the world of the future. Harvesting and selling the waste of civilization will be essential to any transitional survival strategy. My advice - get set up with some way to produce electricity (ethanol-powered generator, photovoltaics, etc.). Get a chainsaw, stock up on chains, and learn how to sharpen them. Buy as many sawzall blades as you can, and lots of #2 Philips drill tips (keep your broken drills for parts, obviously). Sledge hammers in every size, breaker pars, aluminum oxide cut-off wheels (metal cutting blades for circular saws), and diamond blades (for cutting concrete or block) will all be useful. Figure out how to make ethanol or biodiesel, find some abandoned one-ton pickup truck on the side of the road (an apallingly common status symbol and terribly underused resources these days), fix it up, run it on biofuel, and use it to transport materials. Learn how to recycle metal from highway guard rails, bridges, sign posts, and soda cans. Good luck.

I think that you are going to have competition in short order. The rich will continue to need materials behind their giant gated communities. They will drive a corporate multinational deconstruction industry so that Home Depot and the rest will buy up mortgages, land, building, etc. at a discount and deconstruct on a massive industrial sale. That is where my new line of DeWalt Deconstruction Tool Buddies come in handy. I would run out and buy them as soon as you can. Get on the winning side and forget that scrounging mentality.

DeWalt De-Tiler just $!1,453 (those are new New Dollars my friend)
DeWalt De-Roofer on sale today $!2,498.00

Sheetrock Stripping System
DeWalt Seismic Tracer $!4,321
DeWalt Mapper $!5,893
DeWalt Wall Rack Cutter $!5,231
(big sale entire Stripping System only $!2,934 )

So go down to you friendly Ace Hardware for the set TODAY!!

My god, it is scary that people have thought of the same things I have! Maybe you are kidding, but I'm not. The other day I was speculating with my parents that massive, corporate/banking systematic teardown of abandoned American suburbs in the future might be a realistic possibility. I was envisioning a whole class of workers- strong, poor young men riding trains and trucks in huge crews tearing down everything then loading the materials. I was supposing the materials could be used for urban apartment infill construction and possible overseas export. Unofficially scavanged materials would be used for shanty towns and homesteads.

[GoIllini]

starvid I see you're not from north america and I'll assume you're not familiar with our local public transport. What little is available is pathetic.

A bus runs by my house four times a day. 6:30am into town, 7:00am out of town, 7:00pm out of town, 7:30pm into town. The train runs by about 11:00am but I need to get to the center of town to get on it. I'm assuming it returns in the afternoon but I can't be certain.

I'm only 16 km from work so I can bike it. Others may work on the far side of town or even further.

Here in Chicago, we've got commuter trains going by every major suburb once every hour on weekdays and Saturday, and every 15-20 minutes during rush hour. In fact, it's difficult to find yourself more than 10 miles from a train line if you live within forty miles of downtown.

Here's a map of the system:
http://metrarail.com/System_map/index.html

The color coding signifies different fare zones, and the dashed lines represent borders between counties.

Some of the lines are electrified, but not all. I'd imagine it wouldn't be too hard to electrify out 50 miles on the lines if peak oil did hit. I live about 1.5 miles away from two train stations, and when I was growing up, I'd bike to the train if I wanted to go to downtown Chicago.

Then again, with the traffic we've got in Chicago, you'd kinda expect the city to make sure we've got some mass transit stuff in place.

Also, do you think your city might make the buses and trains more frequent once peak oil hits?

[aflatoxin]

In years past, nails were pretty valuable.

People used to burn buildings to the ground so the nails could be reused.

Try making one from scratch if you don't believe me.


Screws are pretty cool. Don't know what I'd do with them after the battery in my cordless screwgun went dead, tho!