Despite my fear that our government might be overly interested in someone who has a bit of chemistry background wondering about homemade chemicals, I think this is a fair question and concern for this forum.

I am, of course, talking about replacing many of our routinely consumed chemicals for modern living in a LTS situation. I'm looking to collect a set of recipes for these things in one place. Most primitive living skills type documentation doesn't even scratch the surface.

I know some fairly basic stuff like creating lye and soap, and maybe a few other things that would be useful. Here are a few things I'm thinking would run out quickly in such a situation, and this could include problems presented such as a Katrina-style disaster where supplies are impossible to find. I'm not going to include actual food/water needs. In no particular order:

1) Soap
2) Gunpowder
3) Toothpaste
4) Deodorant/antiperspirant
5) Leavening agents (not a sourdough yeast mother - chemical only)
6) Bleach/Chlorine
7) Cleansers
8) Lubricants
9) Simple Medicines
10) Fertilizer

I'm curious if anyone has found a guidebook that gives recipes for backyard generation of these things using common or easily attained materials, I'd love to hear of it. I'm also curious what you would add to this list. Although I know of recipes for explosives, and that they could be very useful (clearing boulders and trees for farmland) - I'd like to keep that out of the conversation. If you want to discuss anything of that nature, PM is more appropriate and should keep this from moving into any questionable territory. Gunpowder is probably controversial enough. :-)

If you have recipes that require any raw resources, please identify how you could obtain them or refine them as appropriate. Maybe even discussions of where/how to obtain any raw product is just as key as the recipes.

Looking forward to the insights...