Quick Fire Questions (A Place to Ask and Answer)

[Esfires]

I believe people used to use processed animal hide for window coverings too, at least on the frontier. It was scraped thin and stretched so that it became hard and slightly translucent.

[chrispenycate]

From what I have read (no experimental evidence), greasy foods like corned beef or sardines can go over a century in cans without important degradation. Acid foods, like anything that contains vitamin C, slowly leach heavy metals from the walls, and are better stored in glass jars as our grandparents did (sorry, my grandparents, your great greats). Better not to eat canned pineapple more than six or eight years old. Heavy metal poisoning is long term cumulative, and causes hallucinations and delusions.

If you have light you can get vitamins from sprouting seeds - assuming they knew this was possible. Otherwise they're going to have to rely on vitamin supplement pills, and I don't know how well those are packaged for long term storage.

Grapes? The best way of keeping their essence is in bottles - and we know some of them are still good after well over a century.

believe people used to use processed animal hide for window coverings too, at least on the frontier. It was scraped thin and stretched so that it became hard and slightly translucent.

Scraped interior hide is parchment. Oiled silk has been used, too, but while they keep the wind out neither is particularly good for thermal insulation - and double glazing gets quite gloomy.

[springs]

Glass would be tricky to make from scratch, simply because of the temperatures required to produce it. Post apocalyptic, though, would scavenging of already produced glass be more likely?
In terms of the food, it does come down to how it's stored/prepared. Curing meat and fish extends that (next to an old smokery would be a good postapocalytic positioning, memo to self), canned stuff should keep well past its useby/bb (although Chrispy is right about citrus fruits, and preserves keep easily a year or two if they're not opened.)

[Abernovo]

Cans of corned beef from the First World War have been often found to be fit for consumption. Considering that's nearly a century ago, twenty years should be fine.

Some of the stocks in old air raid shelters and nuclear bunkers from the 50s and 60s have also been examined with similar results. The key factors are dry, stable environments and undamaged tins. If they get wet, they will eventually corrode. If there's anydamage, it again provides an entry for corrosion. Not sure how far back it goes, but 'tin' cans are anodised on the inside aren't they, separating the contents from the metal with a thin inactive layer. If they're dented, this layer gets damaged and any acids, alkalis, etc. in the contents causes corrosion on the inside, thus contaminating the food. Not a problem if they're consumed soon after the dent, but any length of time, the food would probaby spoil.

Glass is made out of sand. Cleaner, finer, purer sand makes better, clearer glass, but basic glass can be produced in makeshift kilns. It might not give you a clear view, but it would let light through and stop the wind. For making drinking vessels out of glass, you'd want someone who knew what they were doing and they would need to make a more specialised oven, but it's far from impossible. I saw some very nice 14thC Venetian glass goblets a couple of years back. Definitely require a craftsperson, though.

Oh, and Chris? I still preserve fruit and veg in glass jars here. It's a good way of keeping it for the winter without freezing it.

[David Evil Overlord]

Thanks guys.

I thought about glass as a character examines a building with windows that are apparently made of dirt. He discovers all the windows are intact, if dirty, glass. That alone could make his fortune as a scavenger, if he could just get the glass out of the frames and back to the frontier town without breaking it.

Then he discovers the building is an unlooted supermarket. Full of all the treasures of a lost world. Some of them even (hopefully) fit to eat.

Then he discovers why no one ever looted this particular supermarket...

[The Judge]

Making glass isn't difficult. Making sheet glass for windows is. Glass for bottles etc pre-dates the Romans, but it was only at the Renaissance that the necessary techniques were developed to make large flat sheets --before that you had small panes which looked like the bottoms of bottles, but stretched a bit (bulls eye glass). Utilising scraps of recovered plate glass might be easier -- cutting the glass itself needs to be done carefully, but using lead to join pieces is a skill which is easily picked up, albeit the joins would be rough at first.

As Chris says, oiled cloth was used, particularly silk in the absence of glass. Easier by far, though, is to revert to old fashioned ways -- wooden shutters which can be opened to let in air and light and shut to keep out the weather and animals.

[Gumboot]

Originally Posted by springs1971

Glass would be tricky to make from scratch, simply because of the temperatures required to produce it. Post apocalyptic, though, would scavenging of already produced glass be more likely?

Humans have been making glass for over 5,000 years so I can't see why a post apocalyptic society would be incapable of making it. While modern glass furnaces operate at around 1,500 degrees, the glass-transition temperature for soda-lime glass is less than 600 degrees which is well within the range of even a primitive furnace.

[David Evil Overlord]

That's what I was thinking, Your Honour. There would still be plenty of empty bottles lying around, too. Just loot a recycling centre. But windows? I'm assuming the easiest way for the first looters to access a building was to break a window.

I'm assuming the survivors were the ones who moved out of the cities (all those dead bodies rotting in the streets mean all sorts of diseases and the apocalypse means no functioning hospitals) and into the countryside. Farming communities where the oldest homes might still have glass windows, but the new homes would have what could be produced or scavenged.

I'm considering whether the character might dream of one day owning a home made from them fancy new-fangled mud-bricks.

Edit: @ Gumboot -- I'm wondering more about their ability to make glass windows. Which would make an intact scavenged window quite valuable, and our hero reluctant to break a window just to gain access to what might well be an empty building.

[Warren_Paul]

If a land is ruled over by a queen, should it be called a Queendom, even if her son will be the one to inherit the throne? Before the queen it was a king that ruled.

If so, should I be calling the land in my book: the Queendom of Westland, instead of Kingdom?




P.S. Why is Queendom not recognised as a word in spell check?

Google it, the term exists!

[RJM Corbet]

Originally Posted by Gumboot

Humans have been making glass for over 5,000 years so I can't see why a post apocalyptic society would be incapable of making it. While modern glass furnaces operate at around 1,500 degrees, the glass-transition temperature for soda-lime glass is less than 600 degrees which is well within the range of even a primitive furnace.

It's quite a tricky process, especially plate glass for windows. I think they'd be more likely to scavenge it ...

[chrispenycate]

I was assuming that the source of the canned goods was a supermarket or warehouse, rather than an individual having made more than a few months of provisions. And what do industrial distributors put in glass nowadays? Coke, jam and peanut butter; and even that's not properly pasturised (mind you, we can melt the jars down later, for window glass for the previous question. And, if the supermarket had wine, even stained glass windows are within consideration.

Glass is easy, if you only want to get light through it, not see. It melts before iron, so you can prepare it in a cast iron saucepan over a gas flame, broken window glass, soda bottles, broken tumblers (not plate glass), then pour it into a baking tray - nasty, bubbly translucent slabs but functional. If you don't have the lead float method, adequate. Blowing it's a bit more difficult (although window glass was long blown in cylinders, and flattened out to make windows).

[The Judge]

Most societies are patriarchal, Warren, so it's kingdom, which is defined as a country or state ruled by a king or queen. If yours is matriarchal and only women ascend the throne, or men are only allowed if no women available, by all means call it a queendom, but you'll get funny looks -- and it can't become a kingdom when her son inherits, it has to stay queendom. And yes, it's a noun, but not one in common use.

[Warren_Paul]

Thanks, TJ. I'm going to leave it Kingdom then, since the queen only inherits if there is no male heir.

[fishii]

I just have a quick grammar question. What is a comma splice and how do I get rid of one?

[Abernovo]

I think it's the joining together of two sentences with a comma, you get rid of it by separating the sentences properly with a period or semi-colon. Comma splice above was intentional, by the way. Alternatively, you could join the sentences with and/or/but etc., as applicable.

I must admit, it's a term I'd never heard of before coming to this site.