How long will ........ last

[shifty]

Tinned Food

How do you determine how long a can of food will last? Actually, it's kind of hard to guess, but here are a few guidelines when trying to determine the shelf life of your canned foods:

Low-acidic foods Surprising to some, canned meats can last the longest. Most sources say they will keep for 2 to 5 years. Some sources say they will last even longer. I found a shocking story about a can of meat that was 118 years old. It was opened, analyzed, and found to still have most of the nutrients. It was still good after more than 100 years! You may not choose to eat canned meats that are this old, but likely yours will last more than the recommended five years. Other low-acid foods are soups without tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, pumpkin, and peas.

High-acidic foods For best quality, use high-acidic foods within one year or so. Foods in this category are tomatoes, fruit, and foods with a lot of vinegar in them. Still, many of these canned foods will still be edible after years worth of storage, even if they are not at the peak of quality and nutrition.

preparedness.families.com/blog/how-long-will-your-canned-foods-last

[shifty]

Fuel

How long does fuel last?

This is an important question when you’ve got a car that’s rarely driven or you have fuel stored in drums. The last thing you want is a tankful of ‘off’ fuel that can damage your fuel system or possibly even kill your engine.

According to Shell Australia’s Technical Advice Centre Manager, Warren Scott, you can generally store fuel in a sealed container for around six months before it starts to deteriorate. This assumes it’s kept relatively cool and away from direct sunlight.

“But if the container is not properly sealed or it’s repeatedly opened, [fuel] will start to evaporate and you lose some of the light components in the fuel,” Mr Warren says.

Those light components include highly important butane. As these components are lost, the fuel loses its volatility. Mr Warren says this makes the car difficult to start.

In warm conditions, fuel is especially prone to oxidisation which causes lacquer and gums to form. As a result, the fuel turns dark in colour, loses its clarity and smells like paint stripper.

Gary Whitfield, Senior Fuel Chemist at BP Australia, says that in the right conditions, fuel can last up to 12 months. But once the container is opened, the fuel will start to degrade.

“Once the seal is broken, a vapour space is formed in the container and the fuel will start to deteriorate more rapidly,” he says.

autospeed.com/cms/title_The-Life-of-Fuel/A_3051/article.html

[shifty]

Just watching "Life After People"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_After_People

thought id carry on with this thread based on that and research

[shifty]

Subway

Thousands of pumps are turned on manually everyday to pump thousands of gallons of water out of the subways. Without humans to operate these pumps the subways will be completely flooded within 36 hours.

[shifty]

London

As a low lying city. London is protected from flooding from the north sea by the Thames barrier. Without anyone to operate it. London would be flooded during the first storm.

[Matthew]

Sept 27, 2010 16:02:14 GMT shifty said:

London

As a low lying city. London is protected from flooding from the north sea by the Thames barrier. Without anyone to operate it. London would be flooded during the first storm.

To be honest I think it would take a pretty severe storm for London to really get flooded (although you can see pretty regular flooding during very high tides down towards Putney and so on almost every year ) and the Thames Barrier is there to counter that, not the sort of thing that an average year might bring although its more than reasonable to speculate that a post-apocalyptic event might lead to extreme weather conditions for all sorts of reasons.

Personally I think a bigger threat to central London would be the unchecked water table. For all sorts of reasons London has a problem with that rising as things are and lots of buildings situated near to the river have to have pumps working to stop basements getting flooded and so on.

Its become more of a problem as London became less industrialized as the factory's that used to line the Thames (primarily in the food production, canning and bottling industry's) would take much of the water for their own needs but those have all closed down now.

London's sewer system would also be very vulnerable should maintenance work come to a halt as its very old although the decrease in fat being deposited in it might give it an extended lease of life.

For me though the crucial 'How long' issue is the roads. I remember in day of the Triffids they comment on how things are pretty impassable after 5 years and I always thought that was a tad pessimistic but having seen the damage wrought at the beginning of this year by a spell of snow and I think it might be optimistic.

I think a period of say three years of bad winters and most roads would become impassable to almost anything other than 4WD vehicles. Roads would also become flooded much more easily due to the first fall of levaves and so on blocking most of the street drains and I feel that we would be reduced to using Horses within a decade as the only real means of getting around under anything other than leg power.

[shifty]

Yeah i always thought about 3 years is about right. I was thinking the other day about small road bridges and how long they would last. Wouldn't to sudden fall down a 10ft gap one day.

[Matthew]

Sept 28, 2010 6:58:08 GMT shifty said:

Yeah i always thought about 3 years is about right. I was thinking the other day about small road bridges and how long they would last. Wouldn't to sudden fall down a 10ft gap one day.

I would agree with your 3 years.

I think that things would be ok for the first 2 but then it would all start to break down pretty quickly.

As to the small road bridges, well you often here about them getting washed away due to flash flooding and so I guess that it would only take a few to go down to severely mess up the road transport system.

Makes you realise just how isolated surviving communities would become with all of the inherent problems that brings.

Perhaps the first group to rise to any sort of national prominence would be the ones who take road building seriously. It worked for the Romans

[shifty]

I live in Bristol and it wasnt until i really thought about it, i realised there are rivers everywhere. sometimes you dont even realise your going over a bridge. (doesn't say much for my driving skills)

[Matthew]

Sept 28, 2010 12:22:16 GMT shifty said:

I live in Bristol and it wasnt until i really thought about it, i realised there are rivers everywhere. sometimes you dont even realise your going over a bridge. (doesn't say much for my driving skills)

I have read that up until about 200 years ago it was actually easier for people to travel 200 miles along the coast line than it was for them to travel 200 inland which explains why the Med became so populated as communities were able to trade and expand much easier by sea than going across country.

Makes me wonder if a post-fall Britain might experience similar and all of which seems to back up my 'Isle of Wight' senario in which the most logical place in terms of a post-pandemic Britain to start all over would be there.

[cillian]

Well in fairness, the Med also became very populated because the first civilisations sprung up in the middle east. The ice age encouraged people to stay below the ice.

[Matthew]

Sept 29, 2010 21:42:44 GMT cillian said:

Well in fairness, the Med also became very populated because the first civilisations sprung up in the middle east. The ice age encouraged people to stay below the ice.

I can buy into that.

I guess that what interests me the most about post-apoc fiction is how people rebuild their lives afterwards and what might come in the place of the civilisation we have now. I just wonder if the Med might, for all sorts of reasons, become the first place again that has civilisations coming to to the fore.

I also have a personal interest in this as well due to having a second home on an Island just off the Dalamatian coast so I rather fancy myself living the good life in that part of the world should some horrible event drive us south permanently.

[cillian]

Unless it globally warms and Britain and Ireland become the new Med

[shifty]

Sept 30, 2010 9:18:43 GMT cillian said:

Unless it globally warms and Britain and Ireland become the new Med

I bet it will still be raining in Scotland though

[edwin]

On things lasting, I thought about how long things really last.
I have many things that are over 40 years old which still function: sheath knife, parachute smock, cooking utensils, bow, airgun, to name but a few. Kayak and boat are over 20 years-old.

We have tools that belonged to parents or grandparents plus how to books of the same age.

Lots of stuff has been discarded because of downsizing or fashion changes but would have still been useable so the conclusion must surely be on the domestic front that there would be no desperate necessity to be able to make "everything we use" for over 100 years, also excavation would reveal brand-new tools still wrapped in plastic in the ruins of Homebase etc.

Perhaps instead of earnest tuition of the young in the Post-fall scenario emphasis should be on interest in the techniques of the past and the encouragement of hobbies, thereby keeping the base skills available. Reading would be the key along with judicious book preservation.