Redundancy

I know money is tight for all of you. Not only is the economy abysmal, but also it Christmas time. You don't want to spend extra money, not if you can help it. If you've been reading my posts for any length of time, you know that saving money is a big aspect of what I write about.

That said, redundancy is an important aspect of preparedness. Whenever possible to minimize downtime of equipment or the ability to perform an essential skill, you need to have redundant equipment.

If you're counting on hauling a lot of water and you have a wagon to perform that task, the ideal would be to have a backup method of hauling the water, or even a 2nd wagon. Of course, usually one part of it will break or need to be repaired, and using your brain, you can figure out what's the most likely aspect of its operation that could be hindered or falter as the result of a broken part.

This means storing parts and learning the skill of repairing things. Since we're not wealthy, we must learn how to repair things.

Not only this, but later as we begin salving through the old civilization, we'll come across lots of replacement parts. This means knowing how to replace things on a routine basis. Learning about how to repair things also means learning the value of a replacement part. Since you want to spend minimal amounts of time in certain zones, you have to quickly assess the value of items in some areas, have the tools to dismantle items, or have a wagon to carry away parts and then disassemble them back home.

There are often special tools which make disassembly easier. Sometimes it's worth the cost of a tool, or post-collapse looking for certain tools to speed along the recovery of your tribe.

All things break in time. Often there a duty rating on a machine. It's a guesstimate of how long a machine can reasonably be used on a continuous basis before maintenance is required. If you can lubricate parts, check for wear, and perform preventative maintenance, then the whole machine will run better. Since tribal people typically work sun-up to sun-down for 90% of activities, then preventative maintenance and pure repair work will occur at off-peak times. Eventually you'll develop a maintenance crew that will be your engineers and mechanical workers performing this essential tribal responsibility.

You can definitely overload a machine by abusing it. Since machines can't be replaced post-collapse, it's a sin to do this. For example, really humping it to create a laundry system ends up saving the tribe a lot of wasted hours. If someone abuses the machinery, then the entire tribe will suffer and will have to redeploy people to do something, which means lots of things are not getting done. This is why the maintenance crew is essential as well as trained operators. In a tribe, there will be lots of people cross-trained on machines, but there must be one main operator who is constantly and lovingly inspecting the machine for wear. If you're the operator, you have to be vigilant. If you're the maintenance person, you have to be listening to the operator. You can't afford downtime.

If you work with machines any length of time, then people will get hurt by accidents. Accidents can really be dangerous and can severely injure even maim an operator or a maintenance person. Never ever fool around on the job. It's almost always when the accident occurs from a lack of protocol and discipline. If a machine is unsafe in any way: sharp edges, no safety cover, lots of pinch points without guards, etc then the operator should work with the maintenance crew to fix those before some untrained person accidentally loses a hand.