I took a couple of things said by a few folk out of context, and realized that one of the reasons I like hand tools is that they will still be functional after teotwawki.
The teotwawaki issue is not just for extremes. Sometimes you are away from power. After a bad storm you may need to cover a broken window, with the power still out. Don’t get me wrong, I love my lithium One Plus Ryobi Screwdriver. It is not, however, what you want in an emergency box. It may be discharged by time, and will become discharged and useless after a while. In a rolling blackout, it may not be as useful. In a flood, most of my hand tools should be dried out, but they will still work wet. Not so my power tools. They will have to be carefully cleaned and dried, and still may not work.
If we put on the foil hats, (not advised, they are hot, don’t breath well, and give you the worst hat hair ever 
) and explore the extreme end of teotwawki, there are even more issues at stake. Even if you have a boat with solar cells and a generator, an emf burst can keep you from using your power tools to repair your gun and fight off the zombie hoards created by the alien invaders.
Good teotwawki tools, I think are timeless. They have a good chance of becoming antiques or may already be antiques. Time itself will regularly cause the end of the world as we know it. You may have not noticed it, but you live in a different world than the one you were born in. My dad lived before TV and plastic, I lived before personal computers. Most of us have lived before cell phones. The world changes and many must have tools of a generation before, reach unpredicted obsolescence.
I suspect that part of the appeal of a old tool is it’s timeless dependability.
Bob
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I well remember us hiding under our desks in the ’50’s and practicing how we were going to survive the Bomb explosion. But, we were never taught what to do after surviving the Bomb. And the movies of the late ’50’s implied that no one would survive at all…..
Of course, handtools are the answer….. all kinds of handtools.
Now the movies are all about worldwide epidemics of plagues… that no one survives.
Plague is easy, you die or live really. There are much scarier end of the world as I know its.
Imagine Texas without cars and air conditioning.
Imagine having to carry water. Of course, since you can’t find clean surface water anymore, loosing power for a week may be worse than plague.
We lose power for a week every time a hurricane comes thru… The biggest problem is doing without drinking water…. all the bottled water sells out before the ‘cane hits. Some places in east Texas lost power for a month when Rita came thru… We fill all the sinks and tubs right before it hits, but that’s not real clean water…. still need to boil it…. beats the heck outta no water at all tho…
Now if the whole world looked like NO after Katrina hit, then a ‘cane would be a life-changing event….
Got a new book from the library titled “Wastelands” that is 20 or 30 stories by various authors of post-apocalyptic scenarios. One of them is titled the “End of the World as We Knew It”. About 1/2 are good stories and about 1/2 are kinda flaky. Well worth reading if you like that sort of thing.
Being raised under the threat of nuclear winter in the ’60’s, today seems rather mild by comparison. Even ‘Nam seemed preferable to that at the time. But living in the islands of the far east after the tsunami, and/or NO after Katrina is post-apocalyptic to those folks in the here and now. Rita almost got us before it turned, so I feel it in my bones as we descend into ‘cane season…
Skip
I think this is good stuff to keep in mind.
Apocalypse happens. The Grapes of Wrath is my favorite Apocalyptic book. The warning it gives is that the people exploiting the event can make it much worse than the event alone. I have not read it in 40 years and I guess I need to reread it. I am not looking forward to the read, it is a very scary book.
Bob
I have never read it or seen the movie…. Probably never will either, human exploitation is a hard one to live with. “On the Beach” was scary to me, both the book and the movie.
I have a friend in Thailand that I exchange Christmas cards with each year; so I wrote him after the tsunami whether he or any of his family had been affected by it. He wrote back that he had been vacationing on that beach with his family 5 days before it hit. Mercy!
That latest series of Mars books by John Varley has a tsunami hit the east coast US in the first book, which then affects subsequent events in several following books. One of the best recent movies is the “I am Legend” with Will Smith – I just loved it.
Skip
Well – Rita missed us, but Ike tore us up pretty bad. We on the west side – the “clean side” – came out ok, but the east/dirty side took a major hit. Boliver as we knew it is gone; will have to wait and see what comes back – if anything…. Beachfront property ain’t what she used to be!!!
I am leaning towards your handtool toolbox for “no electricity” events because some day we’re gonna get the worst case scenario and need to “build” ourselves out!
Skip