Enough rubble FFS!

[kalos72]

I just realized that they will have to clear roughly 50 square miles of rubble in order for my PC's to plant crops on Staten Island.

How many things can you build from concrete/brick rubble? A rubble perimeter wall, around everything what 10-12 feet high? Perhaps some really crappy one story buildings( anyone have images to suggest)?

Land fill to make the island bigger? Build a huge ass sea wall to make another port? Dump it out to sea? A wall around the whole friggin island?

Suggestions?

[Legbreaker]

Dump most in the river if possible, but be aware of how that will change the river channel. A flood/sea wall could be useful and of course it also doubles as a defensive wall.

One good thing is that the nukes that hit the city should have caused much of the flamable materials to ignite. There'd be a lot of ash, but that should prove easier to dispose of.

[headquarters]

getting bricks and some building materials for new projects should be possible.Not many brick factories running in T2k..

Originally Posted by kalos72

I just realized that they will have to clear roughly 50 square miles of rubble in order for my PC's to plant crops on Staten Island.

How many things can you build from concrete/brick rubble? A rubble perimeter wall, around everything what 10-12 feet high? Perhaps some really crappy one story buildings( anyone have images to suggest)?

Land fill to make the island bigger? Build a huge ass sea wall to make another port? Dump it out to sea? A wall around the whole friggin island?

Suggestions?

[jester]

Build a comcrete pier and breakwater so you have your own little protected harbor, add build an artificial reef too, so that only you know the route, or if its know so that anyone entering needs to go slow thus allowing you control and initiative.

One storey structures! Why one storey? You could probably make up to 3 and 4 storey structures. Remember alot of the temples and other great buildings of antiquity were damaged and looted for their stone as building material for other structures.

A protected coral, figure enclosures 12 feet tall to hold sturdy animals like bison or elephants, imagine the steaks you'd get from those critters?

A series of trebuches to use the ruble as a long range defensive weapon. Remember, siege in the Lord of the Rings "Return of the King? Big ol stone throwers like those/

Make some raiser platforms like zigarots just for the hell of it and let the archeologists figure out their meaning 1000 yeaers down trhe line.

Use them as a matrix making hollow squares out into the river and then using them to collect the silt, this growing the island, and of course filling in the hollow squares with waste from your community and industry thus having a square garden plot of river silt which makes good farm land.

[kato13]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

There'd be a lot of ash, but that should prove easier to dispose of.

Ash + Urine = Fertilizer

Yeah there would be problems with contaminants but that would be the least of most people's worries.

[Jason]

Reinforced concrete rubble is just a dangerous tangled mess, and not good for much until to use a torch to cut it apart. You will need a crane and some heavy haulers, unless you have enough fuel for several dozen torches running non-stop to parse it into pieces small enough for a crew of civilian workers to manhandle.

http://www.indygov.org/eGov/City/DPS...e-obstacle.jpg

Talking about all that ash has got me to thinking about serious respiratory illness as well as the inevitable blood poisoning from the innumerable cuts and scrapes. You might need to 'recruit' some more 'civilian workers'.

[kalos72]

I doubt there would be much reinforced concrete since the Island seems to be mostly, not completely, residential.

But that does raise a question...welding or cutting metals. Those supplies arent easily recreated...oxyacetylene are all manufactured products no? Or the sticks they use for welding...

[kato13]

Originally Posted by kalos72

Or the sticks they use for welding...

An odd source for these might be School Auditoriums. I know both my elementary and high school used arc lights for their spotlights. We had boxes of them (maybe 400 total) up in the projectors booth.

[kalos72]

Just thinking about this further, rebar wouldnt be a problem as a simple charcoal forge can melt that down to ingots for use later. It would be labor intensive yeah but with half a million people in the surrounding country side I am sure I can find some slave labor.

I am thinking forges and blacksmiths will see a steady increase...

[headquarters]

Ever seen those Pakistani guys dismantle a scrapped supertanker ?

They do it mostly by hand tools-in months the whole hull is gone - incredible.

Yeah ,these guys make any firearm in the soviet army inventory too-by hand .Probably some of the metal in those ships end up as guns in the tribal areas.

I am sure you could get stuff done by hand and the willingnss to accept horrible safety for the work force

Originally Posted by kalos72

Just thinking about this further, rebar wouldnt be a problem as a simple charcoal forge can melt that down to ingots for use later. It would be labor intensive yeah but with half a million people in the surrounding country side I am sure I can find some slave labor.

I am thinking forges and blacksmiths will see a steady increase...

[fightingflamingo]

My father-in-law grew up in Post-War Warsaw. in the old city, they rebuilt as much of the historic buildings to close to there prewar condition. The amazing part of this is that is was done from photographs, and recycled brick & stone used in the orginal construction. Although some of the bricks may have gone into different buildings than they originally came from.

So bricks can be recycled from ruble. Mortar, Cement, and Concrete can be recycled but the process to grind it up is pretty extensive, and you'd need other stuff too, probably not available in the Post TDM Staten Island on the scale you'd need, but rubble walls & berms would be a good use.
All steel could be recycled, and could be used if it could be resmelted in a mini-mill. It's already refined, so even if it's irradiated, might still be useful as structual steel, but would likely have to be refabricated in a mill do to twisting as a result of shockwave damage. There are a lot of mini-mills which specialize in recycling steel throughout the US.

Once thing you also could use on Staten Island to build rubble walls which you should have excess of are abandoned vehicles (private auto's, trucks, and buses). these might be salvaged for wiring, rubber, spare engine parts (to be rebuilt or utilized immediately), and the vehicle bodies could be used to construct core of a rubble wall, with concrete and other aggregates piled on top of them...

[kalos72]

Concrete/Cement/Mortar recycled? As in grind up a slab of concrete to dust add water and presto new concrete? Are we sure bout that? Cant be THAT easy...

[Abbott Shaull]

Originally Posted by kalos72

I doubt there would be much reinforced concrete since the Island seems to be mostly, not completely, residential.

But that does raise a question...welding or cutting metals. Those supplies arent easily recreated...oxyacetylene are all manufactured products no? Or the sticks they use for welding...

One would be surprise what one would find in the world. Especially when you think it wouldn't be much of it there to begin with.

[Abbott Shaull]

I like the direction this is going...

[jester]

Well, if you are talking Long Island, then you are talking ALOT of prefab homes, what were those preplaned homes and communities they made post WWII? That was where they all started. And prior to that, alot of the ilsand was farming and swamp and march, I hear it was a haven for water fowl hunters as well.

Remember, most homes in the US are made with wood, some stone or concrete as the foundation maybe a few hqave brick walls but for the most part its wood. Some may have stucco as well which is kinda like concrete, but that is mostly a thin layer of no more than a 1/8 of an inch. And inside we have plaster or drywall/sheetrock, which again is pretty easy to deal with.

[WallShadow]

Originally Posted by kalos72

Concrete/Cement/Mortar recycled? As in grind up a slab of concrete to dust add water and presto new concrete? Are we sure bout that? Cant be THAT easy...

IIRC you'd have to roast the concrete to get the limestone reactivated (quicklime), and that creates some very toxic fumes (old Medieval siege chemical warfare). Anyone with a better grasp of the chemistry, please chime in.

And just what is the hardness of rebar? Could it be forged into useful tools without resmelting? I envision rebar drills (as in "John Henry" sledgehammer-type chisel drills) that could be used to perforate concrete slabs so that they could be more easily split. Drill a hole/holes, wash out the rock dust, insert explosives, tamp, detonate. Shazam--split rock/concrete.

Sheetrock/wallboard is gypsum, right? Would this be a viable additive to supplement garden soil? Or are there reasons that it would be contraindicated?

[Matt W]

Are you sure you need to clear that much land? There are gardens, parks, cemeteries, lawns, football fields, verges and so on. If you need more soil, you have a river full of silt (need to do some dredging and then some composting). It's probably contaminated. But where are you going to find soil that isn't?

As to recycled concrete you need some crushing machines and a way to make wire baskets. Then you can make your own gabions (nowadays called HESCO containers)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_recycling

You want to do welding? Cannibalise some microwave ovens
http://www.instructables.com/id/Buil...memade-Welder/

As for farming, there is now a real-world farm on Staten Island
http://mcorreia.wordpress.com/2009/1...rming-project/

[Legbreaker]

Why Staten island in the first place? Surely there must be better, more open islands available in the region?

[kalos72]

I wont need that much for myself no, but to use as barter/incentive for the local population I might...

As for recycled concrete, I thought he meant as in recycled back to new usable concrete to make new formations and such with. The gabions are seriously cool, we have them all over by where I work.

As for the rubble, I found another use, to fill in all the marsh lands on the island, as long as I am keeping the springs clear and secured.

And for the walls, would you say twice as wide as it is tall should suffice?

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by kalos72

And for the walls, would you say twice as wide as it is tall should suffice?

Depends on how well made they are, but as a rule of thumb that should be more than sufficient.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by headquarters

Ever seen those Pakistani guys dismantle a scrapped supertanker ?

They do it mostly by hand tools-in months the whole hull is gone - incredible.

I've seen a documentary on the places where they do it in Bangladesh (ie "East Pakistan") and it is amazing. High rates of worker deaths though.

[fightingflamingo]

Concrete/Cement/Mortar recycled? As in grind up a slab of concrete to dust add water and presto new concrete? Are we sure bout that? Cant be THAT easy...

sorry, I didn't mean to imply that it would be easy, just possible...

easier would be the recycling of brinks, by scraping, chipping mortar of unbroken bricks... I believe that currently in both the US and the UK, there is a business (or was before the recent economic woes) in recycled "vintage" brick.

[Legbreaker]

I'm sure I've seen a machine specifically designed to chew through bricks, stone, steel and pretty much any other type of building rubble. Although not exactly common, and a little on the large side, it could be something for your occupants to seek out.
I believe the rotary teeth wear out fairly quickly though, so finding spares could be a mission all of it's own.

There are similar machines I'm sure most of us have seen designed to deal with road suface as well, stripping off the top inch or so.

The end result is peices about half the size of a golf ball and relatively easy to shift with a shovel and barrow.

[fightingflamingo]

Originally posted by Legbreaker "I'm sure I've seen a machine specifically designed to chew through bricks, stone, steel and pretty much any other type of building rubble. Although not exactly common, and a little on the large side, it could be something for your occupants to seek out. "

very true, and useful for recycling concrete as agregate for rubble walls or fill, but there are some chemical processes which go beyond what is likely possible (or practical) for some time to turn it back into a usable concrete mix which would follow. still it's all very good information.

In my campaigns, I often have convicted looters, in work gangs breaking this stuff up with sledge hammers, and pics, and using to fill stripped out vehicles to form the core of rubble walls, and them built up with salvaged brick, block, or whatever is locally available to use. I just try to stay away from wooden stockade fencing because I see wood as to important as a cooking and heating fuel, although that too might be found in enclave's located in more heavily forested area's than the US East coast.

[kalos72]

Do you have any links to information about the concept of reheating concrete to recycle it? I am interested in that scenario...

I wouldnt use wood for the fences and such, but telephone poles on the other hand...

[Matt W]

Not sure how this would affect your growing food on Staten Island?

http://motherjones.com/politics/2007...-staten-island

It might be a really weird encounter for some PCs.
"Yes as a matter of fact, I do know how to grow food. Yes, as a matter of fact I can use an AK47"