I understand your point completely Paul but Robustus wasn't one of our direct ancestors, it was one of the Hominid species that co-existed with our direct ancestor Homo Habilis. Well that seems to be the current scientific consensus anyway (when I was younger it was believed that Australopithecus Africanus and Robustus co-existed). It is fairly certain that we and Robustus both descended from the more gracile lines of Australopithecus but our line didn't have the big sagittal crests that Robustus and Australopithecus Boisei had (needed to attach those big herbivore jaw muscles to the top of the skull).

I agree with you on the brain development point. Even though Robustus probably had a very basic level of tool use they almost certainly never developed the use of fire or spoken language before they died out leaving no descendants.

I have a real fascination with the idea of cuisine ala TW2K.

Personally I never much cared for the drought that's supposed to show up and knock the whole country back to Ethiopian/Somali levels of famine. I think the country will have problems enough being knocked back to 19th century levels of industrialization, transport, farming and medicine. Throw in political chaos and there's plenty of chaos and starvation for everyone.

Anyways, two things stand out for me concerning post TW2K food. The first is the return to "Regional Cuisine." With no transport net, and no refrigeration, most places are going to revert to regional cuisine. All food will be whatever can be grown and prepared locally. No more olive oil unless you've got olive trees in the neighborhood. No more orange juice in Indiana. No more lobster in Kansas.

The second thing that stands out is technology of food preservation. With electrical supplies non-existent or critically rationed, food can't simply be preserved by refrigeration. Your going to have to keep your meat fresh by keeping it alive until the day you plan to eat it. Otherwise you are going to have to become adept at smoking and preserving meat. Then there are preserved fruits... and lost arts like canning suddenly come into play.

Grain can be stored long-term... but that means you need cats to keep your rats at bay. Not sure how long flour last... but you've got to keep the bugs out of it. Any cereal or grains can be preserved indefinitely if it's turned into alcohol.

Alcohol is perhaps the greatest preserver of labor in the post TW2K world. Lots of labor went into creating that grain. But it might not last if it's not consumed or if it gets moldy, or attacked by vermin. Once it's been distilled into alcohol it can be preserved indefinitely. You've also turned an agricultural product into something that can be used as an antiseptic, a pain killer and a fuel... not to mention a great way to forget about how sucky the Post TW2K world is. Marvelous trade good that ethanol.

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing

Some good points about regional cuisine, et al.

Pottery was developed specifically in response to the threat rodents pose to stored grain. This is not to say that cats don't have their place. (I hear them's good eatin') However, any dry container impervious to the teeth of mice and rats should do. Keeping the bugs out is a bit more of a trick, though far from impossible.

On a different subject, jalapeno peppers have more vitamin C than oranges and more vitamin A than carrots. A diet with lots of jalapenos is a) less bland and b) a good substitute for the fruits than cannot be obtained from Yuma because the Mexicans own the orchards. I'm definitely adding jalapenos to the list for Thunder Empire. Perhaps with some chipotles thrown in, the survivors in southeastern Arizona will hardly notice that civilization is on its knees.

Webstral

The reason I used A. Robustus as an example is that Robustus is the sort of thing you get when you have a pre-human creature that subsists primarily on vegetable matter. You don't evolve a big brain that way. Considering what we did to this planet, maybe it would have been for the better if pre-humans decided not to eat meat...

Nibbling on pieces of Egyptian mummies was once considered good for you, though an expensive indulgence.

Suddenly all that Tupperware that's just laying around doesn't seem all that useless anymore. Containers like that would be critical for keeping the vermin out of your food. And they won't be making any new ones for quite a while, what with any petroleum products likely being used to create engine lubricants rather than fuel. You can't lube an engine with ethanol...

Interesting how things players would normally step over (i.e. anything that isn't ammo, fuel or weapons) would be critical for another groups survival. It would be a really interesting TW2K campaign focused on a group of professional scavangers/salvagers... going from place to place either recovering or trading for the materials that communities need to survive. One community's garbage would be another communities gold, and the difference between the two could be as little as ten or twenty miles.

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing

Scott,

I totally agree about regional cuisine. But it is a plan for trade in the future eh?

Food preservation is NOT as difficult as many think it would be. The 'easiest' is drying, provided you have weather that cooperates. All meat, vegetable, and fruits can be dried. It has been done for milleniums with success. Yes, there will be a learning curve involved, but it's doable. Salt for curing will be come worth more than gold, bullets, or what ever... it could become a 'currency' as in the days of the Romans. Smoking is not a way of preservation per se, rather a means to keep vermin from what you are drying, plus with good wood ads greatly to the palatability.. same with salt.. salt is used to draw out moisture to speed the drying.

Canning comes in second IMO to drying as you need more materials to do it and the real drawback is the lids for canning jars.. you can reuse the jars, but the lids are not safe for second use.. not to say it can't or hasn't been done, but botulism is a problem.

Grains and legumes (beans) can be stored for a period of time, best in sealed containers, such as the METAL garbage cans with lids fastened down. Rodents WILL gnaw through plastics!!! They have taken wheat from Egyptian tombs 3000 yrs old and they were still edible.. but not sure of viability. In reguards to flour/meal, it is best to keep levels to a minimum and grind what you need from the whole grain. Whole ground flour goes rancid due to the oils from the germ..

IMO alcohol is greatly overrated. You would NOT distill grains needed for human consumption to make alcohol. If the grain is not fit for human/animal consumption, then yes.. but generally no... Food growing will be done by hand for some period after fuel runs out. And unless stored in tight containers it will become hydrated over time (take in moisture from the air) which could be taken care of by redistillation, but...

What can a human eat:
wheat, rye, tritacale (cross of wheat and rye), corn, oats, millet, sorgum, barley, rice -- rice, oats and barley take more preperations than the loose hulled.

dry beans, lentils, peas, peanuts, soybeans, sunflowers, canola-- if you have a crusher, use it on the oilseed to extract the oil, and use the meal to supplement your diet for high protien, as well as your livestock.. The oil does NOT have to be sopanified as they claim. I have witnessed straight run oil used in diesels from 1974 on. Not good in cold, but none the less it can be used with care.

Vegetables..
potatoes will probably become scarce unless well managed since it take the eye of the tuber to get a new crop. Also storage for the roots is trickier than for preserved foods.

Seed saving.. while hybrids are a 'problem' since they don't breed true, it does not mean they can not produce.. just not like the previous generation. They regress, but you still have some crop. The days of 200 bushel corn will be gone. If you can average 30-50 bushels/acre consider youself lucky after year one. Utilizing the offspring of hybrid's will be a trial and error. Just select the BEST for the next and eat the rest.

Grae
long-time Twilighter, and logistician.
ag is my bag, especially pre-WW2, since that is where we would be if not further back.
how to survive the aftermath is my avocation, Twilight is the training field for scenarios.

Long time ,old timer !
 

I havent seen you around for a long time ,Grae - good to hear from you again ! ( It might just be that I havent been paying attention- nevertheless -good.)

I wanted to ask - smoking meats etc -will it not add to shelf life quite a lot ? I was under the impression that it would dry out the meat / fish considerably thus increasing shelf live by a lot -compared to fresh product of course.

Please advise - on mutton,pork,beef, dog (! well it is a post apoc game after all )

As for potatoes - in days past ,most houses here had a dark cellar were the temperature was cooler than the rest of the house with a big wooden container that could hold a couple of hundred pounds of potatoes or ther abouts .Apparently these dark and relatively cool conditions ( probably around +8 degrees Celsius )would keep the majority of the spuds edible for many months .

Some people state that potatoes can easily be grown if you leave a small batch in a cardboard container on your window sill ( inside ) and then replant after app 14 days of light ,in outside containers like flowerbeds,pails,tubs,drums or even discarded car tires filled with soil.

I would like an opinion on the feasability of such a garden -and any major tips on what to do and what to not - if thats alright .

As for T2K cuisine on a more specialized note : can anyone give me a ballpark figure for how long you have to wait to eat meat from animals that have been exposed to fallout ? I know there are a myriad variables,so to start off I would say that dosage is below lethal dose for the animal ( dog or sheep/cow/venison etc ) and that exposure has ended .

In other words -if you come across a deer /cow after the kaboom,you know it comes recently from the next county over were dangerous fallout has been registered -what would the recommended wait ? I am of course talking a situation were you have to eat or perish sooner rather than later .

***Darn it! I accidentally deleted Grae's post with my new-found moderator privileges! I meant to quote instead of edit! Kato, can Grae's post be retrieved? Please! It was really good!

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!***



Edit Add from Kato13

Sorry My last backup was at midnight and I missed catching this one by about an hour.

My apologies Grea. This was not Targan's fault I kinda threw him into moderation mode without training.

yup.
 

cheers.

good info.

Humf... see where i stand ROTFLMAO

I'll redo a synopsis if you want.. won't be the same as I've slept since then.

Smoking meat inhances drying which will significantly extend shelf life of meat. While vegetation is not generally smoked (no comments needed) drying does the same for them. Key to success is thin slicing. Salt, if available, is used to speed the drawing of moisture out of the flesh. The quicker you can get it dried the better, especially if it's fly season (when it's not too cool/cold for them). Mutton should be able to be dried, though pork is iffy. Pork probably can be if sliced thin and fat cut off. Fat should be trimmed from any meat your drying as it will go rancid, it does not dry. Exception is pemmican the Indians (PC.. Native Americans) made. It was dried and pounded flesh, usually buffalo or venison, mixed with dried and pounded berries (sand cherries and juneberries come to mind). This dried mix was blended with hot melted tallow, but not so hot as to cook the meat. The dried meat is RAW.
Pork especially should ALWAYS be cooked well before eating because of the diseases they carry.. tricinosis (sp)[worms that get into the muscles.. nasty and painful from what I understand and if they get in the heart muscle.. well...] especially, but others as well are passable to humans.

As for radiation contaminated critters.. skin carefully only animals that do not appear sick. If in doubt, do without.. Bury the hides, unless your desperate and VERY careful. Lots of variable there, discretion is needed. All animals organs, esp livers and lungs, should be inspected for lesions. IF they are suspect I do NOT advise eating the critter.. this is tame and wild guys...
I do not recommend eating brain or spinal column from animals either. Mad cow disease is said to be where that comes from more than the flesh. So word of caution.

Most fish I think are good to dry. My only experience is with trout/salmon. Again salt helps the process. Oily fish are not as good as the flakier ones. Fish have been dried for millenia, as has land flesh or their sea partners (whale, seal, etc) As I recall saying, lutefisk anyone ;)

(know I have forgotten already some of what I wrote before so this may ramble some)

Potatoes store well in 'root cellars'. cool basements, or even heaps covered with dirt and straw. Where ever they stay cool and out of light without freezing. Store only the best and eat the rest as soon as possible to prevent spoilage from bruised/scarred tubers.. This holds true for other roots as well, such as turnips, carrots, etc. We stored in burlap sacks of ca. 50 pounds in a room in our cellar. Not a true root cellar, but it worked quite well. If there is a sign of spolage, isolate the spoilage and get rid of it, and use the 'good' items from that batch as soon as possible. And it does not take long for a batch to go bad, so check often. Properly stored they can be had from harvest to the harvest of new potatoes, depending on you seasons.

Spuds can be grown well in the stacked tires or pails... tire stacks are better IMO. Place the first tire down, fill with soil and plant you spud. Peeling with enough flesh to get the plant going will work.. make sure there is at least one eye in each piece you plant. As the plant grows, add another tire, filling with dirt as the plant keeps coming up. Don't bury too deep, just keep is filling as the plant grows out of the soil.

Morer specifics, feel free to ask.

grae

Long pork on rye!! Hold the Mayo!!! :D:cool:

Chuck

I see where the 'deleted' post has reappeared, at least on my machine, so just shuffle the them because there was different side bars in each..

Given enough time, I seem to recall that rats have been observed to gnaw through sheet metal to get into things they want. In other words -- rat suppression calls for a good offense as well as a good defense, since given enough freedom of maneuver, they'll get into anything with available calories in it.

Of course, in the Twilight 2000 setting, cats would like be supplemented or replaced by 12 year old kids with slingshots and snares doing some hunting for the stew pot.

A very good point. Perhaps a bit of grain might serve as an effective lure.

Webstral

If you can get a thick, heavy rubber band and stretch it over a stick, you can actually kill a rat with it, or at least stun it enough to run over and beat it to death. My friends and I used to do that in Hawaii (teenagers can be cruel, can't they?). Sounds like another post-apoc food-gathering activity for kids.

cooking
 

I was wondering if anyone on the boards had tried to cookin a pit - a hole lined with stones that you fire with wood for a few hours ,and then place a parcel of meat etc in and cover with dirt to cook on the residual heat .

I hear some also place pots with lids secured inside and dig over with dirt .

Other ways of cooking outdoors or with archaic methods are also of interest.

Any information would be useful to me - I actually want to try it out for fun .

mmmmm...
 

rat...

I guess it would be a staple meat in some cases.

Yes, there are several ways. One can use a "dutch over" or similiar cast iron vessels, this is also done with hot coals. Some scout masters with a troop i work with can even bake with this method.

A person can also use crockery for cooking.

And of course using tin foil which is common, wet burlap or banana leaves.

And then of course you calso use flat stones to cook on as well.

I have had pig, fish, clams, oysters, chicken, potatoes, onions, carrots and corn cooked in this manner.

My grandfather also had a method of cooking birds, wrap them in mud/clay and cook until it drys and wait then serve. I think he picked it up durring his travels in China in the 30s.

Really alot of it is like cooking in a slow cooker, long slow low heat.

Another way to cook is to make a hobo stove out of a #10 or similar size can.

http://blog.outdoorzy.com/wp-content...hobo-stove.jpg

The hobo stove is the can on the bottom. Campfires are great as they provide heat and you can cook over them, but they are a big waste of fuel. Small homemade stoves like this are much more efficient for cooking. Of course, in a fantasy world lack of firewood might not be a problem, but depending on where your game takes place, it could be.

When I was a Scout Master I did a lot of cooking of various items packed in clay. There really is not much that you cannot cook in this way. It is especially great for baked potatoes.

Look for a book called "Jack-knife Cookery" by James Austin Wilder, written by a "white kanaka" who grew up in Hawaii, was a Sea Scout, travelled the world on merchant ships, learned umpteen different ways to cook with little or no cookware--often just a knife, the food and whatever else nature had provided--leaves, sticks, seaweed, hot stones, tree bark, whatever.

My wife and I used several of the concepts cooking during various time periods of reenactments we've attended. Our favorite method was a "keyhole firepit". This is a rectangular shallow trench for the crossbar/spit, with an extension of the pit from one end where a cylindrical hole, just a bit larger than the diameter of our 6-quart cast iron 3-legged kettle. Make a good bed of coals while you're cooking on the spit or hanging pots from the bar, then scrape some coals into the hole, insert the covered kettle (filled with whatever you were going to cook), scrape some more coals on top, reinsert sod plug over the kettle. My wife made some killer potatoes (with onions and turmeric) overnight that were perfect for breakfast the next morning. You'll always find new "friends" on hand when your food starts perfuming the campsite.

We've cooked bread on sticks, baked potatoes in hot ashes, made apple cobbler out of dry stores and dehydrated apples. I've made impromptu cookpots out of coffee cans and heavy iron wire for bails. I love cooking over a campfire! It's a great way to teach kids about responsibility and economy--when you're hauling and cutting your own firewood that has to last for your entire stay, you learn not to waste it with huge conflagrations, and you learn that the fire gets taken care of before anyone goes off to play.

Absolutely I have! I'm a New Zealander. The Maori people of New Zealand cook using a method known as the Hangi. Rather than try to describe how it is done I'll direct you to this site: http://www.wikihow.com/Put-Down-a-Hangi . It has a pretty good description of how it is done. Take it from me, food cooked this way tastes great!

great info !
 

thanks guys - I am going to try some of these out when we go up north in September for our "week of manly living outdoors and acting like we dont sit in front of computers for a living -week".

Cant wait to go .

You could check the various Bushcrafting web sites and web forums. Most of them have information about various forms of low tech/low equipment demand sorts of cooking.

Check out Wood Gasification Stoves. They are wood burning backpacking stoves. You can buy commercial ones like the Bush Buddy or make your own. I have the Bush Buddy and it is an absolutely fantastic little stove, and at 6 oz. in weight it is certainly something I can see a Twilight 2000 soldier carrying around in their pack.

Actually 'field rats' are not any worse than squirrel or rabbit. Hey, once the meat is in the stew pot and falls off the bone, well.........

Have had the rat on several occassions. ;)

When I was in the Philippines in 1977-78, they used to have rat drives in the fields. They would line up on all four sides of a field with sticks and clubs. One side would walk through the field making noise and drive the rats toward the edged of the field where the other people would club them. Field rat was considered a delicacy.

Great kit
 

Love the look and tech of this one - I have like 7 stoves already , but not one that runs on plain wood .

Come pay day I am going to get one I think .

I have also ben considering a " Kelly Kettle"

http://www.kellykettle.com/

But my budget is already blown on boots,ventile smocks etc etc ( bit of a gear head ).

Cheers for the god tip.

Nothing under the heavens..
 

should be untried I say - I would no doubt try it if I could get it .And I do not believe that a little garbage in their diet is such a bad thing -look at hogs - some get the peelings,leftovers and whatnot every day before they grace our platters as bacon.

How did it taste ? ( like its seasoning maybe - but I gotta ask -is it like chicken ? )

So, how long do you think it would take in T2K before some people resorted to the Soylent Green option?

I'd guess cases of cannibalism start turning up during the winter of 97-98 after the nukes fly and tractor trailer loads of food stop turning up to replenish the local grocery store.

Probably more commonly its an issue of poorly armed, poorly equipped (both in terms of hardware as well as know how) civilians preying on other civilians in the Twilight game universe, where food is not wildly scarce and the population isn't falling down to the 90%+ death toll. People in military units, and even larger marauder bands, would be able to shake down somebody else for enough food to not have to resort to cannibalism.

Of course, there'd always be room for cannibal cult/armies like in Pournelle/Niven's Lucifer's Hammer as a possibly extra ugly opponent for PCs. Might not work that well in Poland/Germany, where surviving troop densities would make pretty short work of a big pack of ghouls, but back CONUS, or the uncontrolled parts of the UK, etc., they'd work.

I know not everyone here has access to the Challenge Magazine T2K mini modules but I consider them to be canon and the Rifle River mini module in Challenge issue #39 deals with events surrounding a death cult cannibal army fighting its way up the Connecticut River in October 2001 in an attempt to reach pre-war small arms factories including the Colt plant at Hartford. An excellent module IMO.

For obvious reasons, I've taken the liberty of modifying the Rifle River cannibals. My ideas for a horde in northern New England turned out to be so close to the Rifle River villains that I've pretty much incorporated them into the Blood Cross horde. Off-canon? Yes. Terribly off-canon? Probably not. I think it's entirely possible to play the mini-module as listed with a few fairly modest variations. I don't deal New England quite the hammer blow that GDW did back in the day, but more than half of the population is dead. By early 2001, marauders are finding that the surviving Yankees have fortified their towns and that almost everyone left alive who isn't a marauder has retreated inside walls somewhere. Small bands of marauders are either combining forces or being eaten up by the larger bands--in some cases, quite literally. The horde of the Blood Cross has survived the winter of 2000-2001 by eating everything left in northern Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine--including the locals. Very ugly, but at least the surviving cantonments of New England have no illusions about the price of failing to deal with these guys.

Webstral

cannibalism
 

I have seen in movies and read about people that have human flesh in their diet :
they may develop some sort of neural problem leading to shaking hands,jitters etc .

can anyone confirm this ?

( See book of Eli where this is what Denzel Washington notices about the elderly cannibal couple who have them over for tea)

Two things came to mind when I read that:

1) Mad Cow Disease -- the human flesh may be transmitting some sort of disease, enzymes, or prions that are incompatible with human digestion or metabolism.

2) Kuru, also called the Laughing Disease. In the Western Pacific (in Indonesia?) there are a group of people called the Fore. They regularly practiced cannibalism, and when the brain was eaten, there was a chance you could get Kuru, which screws up your nerve impulses and causes muscular spasms. At its worst (usually right before death), Kuru causes spasms in the diaphragm that make the person kind of sound like they're laughing.

Here's a Wiki link for Kuru
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_%28disease%29

It turns out that both are a form of spongiform encephalopathy, and are caused by prions -- which is just a fancy way of saying that nasty proteins are eating your brain.

so..
 

a rump steak or filet of breast is OK , but once you start getting into brains and marrow you can get the tell tale shaking hands ?

My players might ask themselves - "why is he harping on about this all of a sudden ??"

No particular reason ,guys

;)

Care to expand?

It's possible to get spongiform encephalopathy from the meat of an infected creature, but in a human, most prions appear to be concentrated in the brain. I did some further Googling, and it appears that if they're your own prions, you don't get spongiform encephalopathy, but prions from somewhere else can cause spongiform encephalopathy. It is hypothesized that prions from somewhere else cause an immune system reaction, causing the proteins already in your brain to fold into a shape that kills cells and neurons. But scientists don't really know for sure what the mechanism is that causes spongiform encephalopathy.

(My previous psychiatrist, Dr Aneta Schunemeyer, told me once that scientists and doctors understand less than 20% of how the brain actually works -- and most of that understanding is rough and sketchy. She told me that psychiatry and neurology are more like arts than sciences.)