Last minute tips for parents when the SHTF

My experience

It's been my experience that despite all my best efforts, probably less than 1% will actually do many things as a result of anything I say. While I can communicate in the most persuasive manner than I know how to do, and they'll agree that what I say makes sense, they won't commit to the time and effort and wealth to follow through.

10% will prepare somewhat. They see the value in doing a little since it will help some. They may but more food and put back a little (less than three days worth) of water.

20% will nod and do nothing.

20% will think I'm a kook. The remainder couldn't be bothered to read past the first sentence. They want a summation, or better they'd rather I did the work for them.

For the 1%, I applaud you for listening and then doing your own research and carrying the baton. Basically, you're one in a hundred, and the main reason I bother to write.

You can also use sheetrock, chopped up, and tilled into the soil. The process takes longer, but does the same thing.

Hmmm, interesting. I don't think that is correct. See:
[link to www.lawn-care-academy.com]

The gypsum is composed of Calcium Sulfate. Calcium is a salt and easily breaks upon mixing with water. That will liberate the sulfate which will be acidic and therefore won't help adjust the soil to acheive a pH balance of 7.0. I believe that gypsum won't help.

While it's a benign material, when you break it up, it will liberate the silica, and you should wear a mask or it has the potential to be inhaled. If you know any workers around silica mining, they sometimes get silicosis. The tiny microscopic abrasive dust get inhaled, and the lung develops scar tissue around the silica dust, so that part of the alveoli is permanently damaged.

I don't recommend using sheetrock.

The Pioneer method of soil amenities for adjusting quality

[link to www.pallensmith.com]

During pioneer days, of course a small family didn't have a means of generating lime very easily. The most common material they had was wood ashes from cooking and for heat from their wood stove. These can placed on the soil and worked in, but only after carefully testing the soil to determine the pH. They had to guess. I'm researching ways that one could determine the pH without a test kit, as I think that would be useful for people to know.

Wood ashes sweeten the soil slowly versus using lime. Sweeten means to adjust the soil pH higher. Low pH is acidic, high is more basic. We want 6.5-7.0 for most plants to grow well. Some plants prefer more acid soil.

If you mess up and spread too much of an amenity, then you could get the pH out of whack, and ruin a whole season while you're attempting to get it back where it needs to be. That could kill you. Gardening post-collapse is a serious buisness.

Pine needles were often used to lower the pH, but it's a temporary effect. Think about it, it takes a lot of them to create tannic acid, but then it leaches away with rain. Rain in some parts of the country is acidic from coal burning utility plants. The emissions get into the clouds and fall as acid rain. It's why some outside statues actually deteriorate.

Sand placed spacers in clay soil. Only use river sand. Obviously there's salt in ocean sand, and that salt will ruin the land. The sand breaks the plates that are created by clay's compactibility. Adding some each year until you make the soil as friable as you need it to be, and then it will encourage root growth.

Biochar is the process of adding true charcoal (not charcoal bricket remnants!) into your garden. See this pdf for more information:
[link to www.ctahr.hawaii.edu]

Be careful. Too much will make the soil too high in pH (too alkaline).

Composted cow and horse manure added to the soil not only adds nitrogen, but also sweetens the soil (raises pH), but of course is used up. It also adds humus. Never ever add fresh manure to a garden as it will bind up nitrogen beside also being full of dangerous parasites.

Here's a list of veggies that like acidic soil. What you can do is a add a little pine needles around the plants. Obviously NOT fresh pine needles as that will bind up the nitrogen in the soil.
[link to www.ehow.com]
It's the most common ones like potatoes, tomatoes, and squash that form the basis of the garden.

Think outside the box, and plant some things like milkweed which is a very delicious plant from shoots or pods.

Determining the texture of the soil


This very simple method will determine the clay, sand, or loam or silt quality of the soil.

Determining the pH of a soil without a pH soil kit

This is one method. Of course you use a LITTLE amount, not waste anything, especially post-collapse. You can make vinegar (see previous postings) to test if it reacts with your soil. If it bubbles, then the soil is basic. If you had some baking soda, you'd add that to some soil to see if it reacted to see if the soil was acid.


Since wood ash is basic, you could use that instead. In either case you make a very wet mud and add the material to test it.

Testing soil quality and pH by observation

I've previously discussed a very useful way to create clay by immersing soil in water and allowing the clay to settle, and removing the actual soil humus. That's naturally a way to determine the clay content besides being a way to make better pottery.

Here are two articles which discuss reading the soil and perceiving the quality of the soil based upon the species that are growing there naturally.

Certain "weeds", really herbs grow in meadows based upon the soil conditions. The soil favors their growth, so when birds fly over and deposit a seed in a turd, then it will grow easier than others. Seeds also get dispersed by being carried by squirrels or even dogs in their coats, or by wind. In any case, the ones thta thrive will tell you a range of the pH and the general quality of texture of the soil.
[link to www.gardenswag.com]

[link to www.gardeningknowhow.com]

Of course the problem is most meadows have many herbs in them, and they grow in ranges, and sometimes these ranges can be quite wide.

Plant disease as a result of soil defficiencies

If your soil is missing adequate macronutrients or micronutrients, it will develop certain blights or other diseases as a result. Here are several pdf files which explain that.

Once a plant disease takes hold of the soil, then it can be terrible and can become persistant. It's important to carefully clean your gardening tools, especially post-collapse, for you could easily spread the plant disease from field to field, and that will be a disaster.
[link to ipm.missouri.edu]
[link to www.ces.ncsu.edu]
[link to www.public.iastate.edu]

Identifying a plant disease with pictures

Observation is the primary method of determining a plant disease. Often a pest will be a vector of the disease, or the pest will attack a plant that is under siege by a disease. Then a rust, smut, rot, mildew, mold will take over.


[link to www.gardeners.com]

Drought and its effect on animal populations
[link to columbustelegram.com]

The Great Drought has had an effect on the deer population in Nebraska. The receeding water mean two things: an increase in the density of herd populations (and therefore an easy transmission of disease) and a increase in insect vectors like the midge which is a vector for the hemorhagic disease that killed those deer.

Some deer in Kansas were also found.
[link to www.salina.com]

A lot of people have been saying that if there's a collapse or a major disaster, "No problem, there's plenty to hunt." I don't think they're taking into account many of the factors previously discussed within this topic, particularly overhunting and drought.

Watch for more animals deaths. Already there are reports that snow melt will not really help enough through the winter. It won't add to the soil wetness, but run off into the rivers. That will help the animals some, but it will be most likely be too little too late.

Last Winter was very warm. If we have another warm winter, then it's possible we'd get higher than normal rain amounts. I hope so.

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.

The goal is NOT survival for the Self

I think a lot of people haven't meditated upon the true goals of life.

The basis human need is to survive, but that is not the goal of a shaman. A shaman is attempting to transmit skills, culture, history, art, spirituality, healing, etc to the present and future generations of the tribe.

When a disaster strikes, and rescue workers enter into a burning building, if their goal was to preserve the Self i.e. their own lives, then they wouldn't go into the building. That would be the 100% means of preserving life for themselves.

When a soldier team goes in to rescue a hostage, their goal is not to stay safe and healthy. It is to put themselves in harms way to save one person. Many enter knowing that some will die but one will be saved.

A shaman is not a rescue worker or a soldier. They might be wearing many hats, but in all likelihood they are attempting every day to pass along information and wisdom in such a way as to preserve life for the tribe. It would be far easier to sit by quietly and simply be, but then if all shamans in history did that, then there wouldn't be new shamans, nor would most tribes survive.

All tribes need people who are willing to be rescue workers, soldiers, and shaman. Many cannot take on so much responsibility. They will merely be workers and artisans. Some of those two groups will also decide to fulfill other roles.

Many people who are not affiliated with tribes think only of themselves. They see things in the news and feel in their gut that things are getting worse. They often live in urban areas and feel they must do something to survive. A lot of times their choices are half-measures that are feeble attempts to survive.

In most cases, if something bad were to happen, their half-measures would doom them. It was a selfish goal anyway. It was the very least that they could do.

Do something more noble then self-preservation. If a fire is burning and you hear or know someone is inside, if you do nothing, then you will have to live with the sound of their screams for the rest of your life. If a disaster strikes, and you have knowledge that could save many, and you don't help transmit that knowledge, then you will not only doom yourself, but many. If you have the chance to defend a tribe, and you decide to run to escape and live another day, then you will doom them, most likely the young and defenseless, and then live alone.

If all you are imagining to do in a disaster is to bug-out, then I can teach you nothing. Your head is full of nonsensical ideas, and my ideas cannot penetrate them.

Having $500 in cash is a very smart way of prepping

Even though $500 is not that much money anymore, having that much in cash is a wise thing to do. In the event of a disaster when debit/credit/EBT cards might not work, if you have that amount of cash in small denominations then you'd be able to purchase things while others cannot. Having $30 in coins is also wise.

I seriously expect for an emergency to happen at some point and for there to be chaos as people make last minute preparation at retail stores, drugstores, and gas stations. Most of the people will not be able to buy anything, and the store owners will be unable to make change or even to open their cash registers, but still if you have my recommended amount of cash, then you can pay for your last minute items and get out reasonably quickly.

This will probably be the last time you visit a store under normal circumstances so choose wisely. Already have in mind what you're going for. It's highly likely that people will have filled up baskets of the most essential supplies, and will be waiting in line at the checkout area, and then will be told that they can't purchase anything. That means that much of the supplies will be there and NOT on the shelves. This means if you know that, you can look around the front of the store and assess what is going on, and maybe get in and out faster by merely heading to the line and paying for some quick things and getting out.

You can imagine the open hostility when you end up being one of the sole people to buy things, especially from their baskets. You need to buy things quickly and leave. The only way to successfully do this is to have at least two strong guys with you for security. Then to wisely make your way to your vehicle and get the heck out of the store parking lot.

Hopefully you didn't purchase basic supplies. Those should already be at home. You're buying something that you were remiss in preparing for. Something that is important but not what most people are thinking of. Something like lime for the garden or seeds or a garden tool like another shovel or axe. Maybe an extra recurve bow and some arrows.

Even if you don't use that cash for a last run to the store, in the first barter day (see previous postings) people will take cash in the first initial months after a collapse. A lot of people will accept them despite the fact that cash has no intrinsic value. Cash will be a form of currency that isn't easily duplicated and hence will probably still exchanged as an interim transaction for what few goods are still being bartered. It's highly likely that prices will be very inflated or deflated based upon whatever disaster has struck. That means you can still trade some of that cash away and make some final trades. Eventually it will have zero value.

Turn off your heat and practice living with the cold

I know this will sound extreme, but most people have never experienced a power outage in Winter. They think, “I'll manage just fine...”, but then when it happens, they're shocked by how bitterly cold it is and how lethargic they feel when trying to rouse themselves from their beds.

You should have already carefully cleaned your chimneys...you did right? You have plenty of seasoned firewood? You've split some to use for kindling?

If you practice with the cold at least once, then you'll see deficits in your preparation. You'll find out just how cold your home can get in a short amount of time. You'll see issues like food left out being snapped by the cold, or potentially frozen water lines.

Now is the time to carefully inspect these areas. Put up some shrinkfilm on your windows to keep out the cold as best as you can. Locate extra blankets in your attics and basements and have them ready. Purchase space blankets to reflect as much body heat as possible. Make sure you know where all of the winter caps and gloves and balaclavas are. Make certain you have long underwear for everyone. Have at least one pair of winter coveralls for working outside. Then if you get hot, you can strip off the layer.

Think, how would you wash up in a freezing home? What would you store food in? (I've previously discussed using an attic as a temporary root cellar.) How would you cook? Do you have fuel for it? Do you have dutch ovens for cooking outside? How will you insulate your water bottles to keep them from freezing?

What about cold and flu medicines? What about vitamins? If someone had frostbite, do you know how to treat it at home? What about trenchfoot? If there's a collapse, you won't have an ER to run to.

What if you had a fire and had to live outside? Do you have a tent? Where would you put it so it's best for your family? What additional things would you need if living outside?

Have you considered what to tell your children if there's a collapse? How about your spouse or significant other? What are you going to say and do so you're a shining example for them and a rock to which they can cling to and rely upon?

Now is the time to learn how to cook

Most people don't think of cooking as a preparedness skill. That's actually pretty foolish. Cooking is one of those arts that takes mundane ingredients with a variety of flavor, texture, spice, sweetness, saltiness, sourness, bitterness, savoriness, and combining grains, vegetables, starches, meats, poultry, fish, insects, fruit, etc and creates unique meals.

When there's a collapse, much of your life will be a grind of sameness. In the midst of that, if you are blessed with ingredients and a good chef, then your food will add both calories and joy to your mundane experience.

You're going to miss all the variety that we have with rare ingredients and with foods outside of season. Today we can get anything practically anything save that which is most perishable. There's not too many fiddleheads in the midst of winter, nor succulent white flesh peaches, but we have just about everything now. In a collapse, unless you prepare well with a variety of ingredients and work with your cook, then you will be devastating morale unnecessarily.

You wait until there's no any fresh fruit at all until Autumn, and you'll be so glad you have canned and fruit preserves saved up. It will make a WORLD of difference.

The cook that can preserve food by dehydrating, canning, pickling, etc will be a godsend. No one will mess with a good cook when the only thing that's keeping harmony is mealtime. Likewise a poor cook will be completely reviled.

Most people have no idea how many steps of loving attention goes into a good meal. Because of that, it's good for anyone in leadership to understand the sacrifice. It's also good for the chef and leader to figure out how to find a middle path to make something edible and delicious by minimizing the time needed for preparation.

A lot of foods are especially prepared: sauteed, braised, baked, cooked in a double-boiler, steamed, roasted, grilled, fried, boiled, etc. It will be difficult to do many of those, but clever people will eventually discover ways to vary their diet...it's that or being terribly bored.

Spices are vital to your sanity. For me personally, fresh baked bread and fresh well cooked rice and beef curry are essential to my composure. I have eaten things that “would make a billy-goat puke” [see First Blood] but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy eating a fine meal as much as the most discerning epicurean. You'll note that I've tried to include what things taste like that might be unusual fare to you like wood lice or snails or whatever. That's because I've eaten a lot of unusual things. Believe me, if you're sick of eating noodles, and you miss some seafood, and you come across some wood lice, then you'll be glad that since they're crustaceans that they make a shrimp-like flavor.

A good cook not only makes something delicious, they also study what components are in the food and determine the number of calories and vitamins and minerals. That's important in a collapse to ensure people are not vitamin deficient nor getting low blood sugar. They also can take a handful of ingredients that most people would scratch their head about, and make something delicious and novel.

A good cook is not a miracle worker. In a collapse, the easiest thing to do is eat everything you have, and if you do that, you'll eat one boring meal after another of sameness. If you can rotate and save and have surplus, then you can mix and match up ingredients. You'll make time even when weary to catch a fish, find a rabbit, knock down some hazelnuts, etc. All of that time drying food and keeping it safe from the elements and from critters will be worth it.

Please don't delay in learning this skill that is as important as making a fire.

Caffeine Tablets

For about $6 (US) you can purchase 100 tablets of caffeine at a dose of 200 milligrams. That's equivalent to 2-3 cups of coffee. It would be extremely wise to have this on hand as making coffee may not be an option but you badly need to stay away or keep going. Taking it on a regular basis has a diminishing effect. Don't take it unless you need it. It's one of those preps that people don't think about. It would be extremely valuable post-collapse.

Small town and "rural" people are some of the biggest lowlifes in the world.

Well since you didn't bother to put up any evidence, describe why in depth that you believe that to be the case, tried to be persuasive, or anything, made a ridiculous sterotype, then I have to guess that you just wanted to vent. Feel better?



Watch this very practical video from the PatriotNurse on the inside scoop of Hurricane Sandy and modify your preps accordingly.

Herbs are NOT a replacement for your medications

Let's understand this up front...herbs, food products, and wishful thinking are not going to replace your medications. Those medications are among the greatest life-savers that modern technology has to offer. If they're important now and sustaining you, then when you don't have them, there's a very good chance that not only will your symptoms return, but they may come in such a force as to overwhelm you.

All along this last year and a half, I've been asking people to get at least a three month supply of their medications if possible. Some people actually order theirs from foreign countries in order to get more than this.

During a collapse, you're going to have to deal with bad health. You'll be like people prior to 1920 and trying to use herbal medicines to alleviate your symptoms. I've mentioned some things that were historically used. They may help, but they will not specifically treat your condition better than what you have now.

Herbs vary based upon the plant and the amount of sunlight, nutrients, water, method of harvesting, timing of the harvest, and preservation involved in saving it. That's a lot of unknowns.

Most of us have mistreated our bodies since we were children. There's a price to pay for that neglect. Of course, some things just happen by accident, but usually that high blood pressure happened because we ate too much, exercised too little, and mistreated our bodies all along with substances we shouldn't have taken, or were exposed to toxins that affected our health.

The consequences are that we will have shortened lifespans with out medicines.

Realize this: when the collapse comes, you won't be sleeping as much or as well, you won't be drinking as pure water as you are now, you won't be eating as varied a diet as you are now, and you'll be doing bone grinding labor. You'll have all of your current health issues PLUS have issues because of the these things. Your health will likely be worse unless you're young and you have skills, supplies, and seed and the hard work and exercise and new diet agrees with you. That's a small percentage of the population of survivors.

There isn't an alternative to herbs other than prayer. You'll be trying a lot of things to make yourself feel a little better and using whatever methods you can muster to improve your health. When the medicine runs out in a collapse, there's a 99% chance that you'll never be able to take your routine medicines again.

LAMB is an "alternative meat"?!

Seriously? If things get that bad why would you want your kids to live in a world like that?

If my daughter was still young (she is 20 now) and we had to "survive" and fight for our lives I would seriously just kill her and then myself. That would be more humane than to subject her to the crazy unknown savages that deem themselves "human".

And I would hope she wouldn't get reincarnated until the world sets itself right again.

For that matter, you consider deer and rabbit to be alternative meats? Where the hell do you live...inside a Wal-Mart?

I have shared this thread with my tribe, and I have read through all of it once, and re-read sections to make sure I understand. I have started adapting many preps to account for your wisdom. This is the best prepping resource I have ever found, useful for both scared newbies and learned vets. Please, please keep up the great work.

Keep reading. I started out very slowly to help people process things. By the time you get to about post 15 or so, I think you'll see I was radically altering some people's thinking. Rome was built in a day, and so I gradually discussed things.

And yes, lamb is not a common meal whatsoever in America. Nor is rabbit or squirrell. These foods are not regularly eaten by chidren in the USA, nor by the parents. But then we're discussing eating wood lice recently (the roly poly bugs that are crustaceans) so that's quite a mind-shift, isn't it?

So, ummm you just admitting that you'd commit murder on an Internet forum....and you want my comments. I'll pass.

You're quite welcome. If there's a collapse of any kind in anyone's personal life (unemployment, divorce, death of the main bread winner)or a major catastrophe, and it helped someone to live to fight another day, then it would have been worth it to spend over a thousand hours in a discussion with some people on the Internet.

There's been a method to the madness. There's a lot of information to discuss and if you've read it all, you know that I have methodically discussed diverse topics. It's impossible to discuss the basics of pure water without explaining diseases. Or to understand how to drill a well unless you understand aquifers. Or the effects of erosion, nitrogen fixing bacteria, creating bearms to hold water in an area, the effects of dehydration, annual rainfall, cisterns, blah blah blah.

Most topics are not near this long, and sometimes I had to explain a whole lot through storytelling in order to accomplish some of it.

It's perfectly fine to ask me questions, or even to challenge my assertions in a normal exchange of ideas. People are not as polite as they once were, sad to say. I fully expected to be challenged, but not the lunatic fringe that GLP is famous for. There are minimal trolls here, for I doubt many of them can put together a paragraph, much less pages of material. They look for easier targets.

The most surprising responses are ones where people seem suicidal, or worse would extinguish the precious life of their children. Shocking. A collapse need not be like The Road film. Good gosh it's a movie and an extreme one. It could be relatively benign in some rural places, but with eventual starvation from broken supply chains and any authority. It could be self-limited over the course of two months from civil unrest. There's lots of times disasters range from a one all along a continuum to a ten.

There were desperate times on the frontier or even in tribal life, but generally humanity didn't kill off others merely to survive. The suffering often died of disease, hunger, paralying fear, bad water, malnutrition, ignornance, death of livestock, etc. Occasionally there were acts of violence as tribes clashed or fought over the same resources. That's possible of course.

Because a lot of people don't bother to actually read history or discover the life skills that were common to their ancestors, they're entirely ready to give up completely. It's pathetic, and I won't waste my time trying to persuade or plead with people to do anything.

If you are being tracked, then at least be smart about evading



Basic common sense information. Nothing spectacular here, just well explained. Kudos to MainePrepper. Lots of good videos over there.

Most people will think of bugging out and applying this. Actually it's important for lots of situations post-collapse where communication has not been established and you don't know the other person's intentions.

Note: it's common to step on some moss on a rock and scar the pristine covering of it. Or to accidently snap a branch while walking through some alder brush. Your party will avoid making these common mistakes, or unless deliberately leaving those signs and scars (say dirt clods from your boots going in one way in a natural manner) on purpose.

An interesting rechargeable battery using common materials

At some point in a collapse, there won't be any batteries that will work anymore. Here's a very low milliamp battery that one could trickle charge back up, and using a joule thief power up very low milliamp devices for brief periods, then recharge it. It's sort of a niche battery, something that you might be interested in if an experimenter.

It won't last long as it consumes the "stainless steel" scrubber. Truthfully, it is partially stainless steel as stainless doesn't rust.

It would be interesting to follow his channel. It seems to be a quasi-iron/air battery.

One wonders what would happen if pure nickel was used as the metal.



I know, a lot of people are saying, "So what?". Well, running a solar rechargeable LED lantern is a big deal and very helpful. The problem is the rechargeable battery eventually goes bad. If we can make something that would work at night for limited use, then it's a real big deal. We also need rechargeable batteries for things like small mp3 players as that's the most likely candidate for music post-collapse. As the rechargeable battery located inside will eventually go bad, we have to replace it.

Sure, it won't run anything significant. For that you need a serious battery or a big battery bank.

Here's the rechargeable battery powering up a tiny motor and LEDs using a joule thief.

Here's a Lead Acid battery that's been brought back to life by adding Epsom salts. It's a possible way we could extend the life of our batteries post-collapse. You'd recharge them using a solar trickle charger.