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Forges, Foundries, and Factories
February 9, 2010


"...While you are deciding what to store away, don’t forget about the needs of your grandchildren. They will need reference books. After TEOTWAWKI, any survivors in the USA will be living on capital. I am talking about capital in the form of basic commodities, like grain, legumes, clothes, fuels, and machines.

Some of this capital needs to be replaced almost immediately, like food, for instance, but some of it will take generations to wear out completely. Until we can replace everything we use up, we will not be truly recovered.

Eventually, we will need to replace our generators, tractors, firearms, cloth, etc. Within a couple of generations, we will need to replace our basic garden tools like shovels and hoes and plows. Finally, we will need to resume production of basic materials like steel. We may be able to lean on other countries during our recovery, but It’s going to be a long backward road for a long time until we can build and replace the capital we have now.

We used to be a powerful industrial nation, but today, we are not. Most manufacturing capability in the USA has been "outsourced" to China. The metal fabrication shops in the USA evolved over time into larger and more sophisticated (and more efficient) factories and were eventually defeated in the global market by cheap labor overseas. Now, a generation later, we are running out of people who even know how to cast or shape metal.

Even as late as 1960, mom and pop metal shops were fairly common in the USA. I remember back when I was a boy, my uncle needed a tractor part that was no longer produced. He simply went to the metal shop in town and handed them the broken part. They made him a new one in a few days and helped him install it on his tractor. This capability has mostly disappeared in the US..."

Source:
http://survivalblog.com/2010/02/09/forges-foundries-and-factories/