Waste moonshine in a vehicle? Are you nuts???

I didn't say that you couldn't drink it or use it in your alcohol stove. Why do you think I go by "hillbilly"? Actually, my principal here in Arkansas asked me about 2 months ago if we could develop a curriculum/project for the area to make ethanol as an alternative to regular crop products. When I told her that I could build a still to teach the kids how to make ethanol she dropped the idea quickly. However, I am going to experiment with crop residue this fall with the biology teacher to determine if you can get any usable product from wheat or rice straw. It should take more to make alcohol than say corn or grains but it might work.

Be sure to let us know how much "kick" it has...

Good topic Blast, kmat and Wildman 800. Lots of good advice from a lot of posters.

One question. Let's say the power is out and you find access to fuel in an underground tank. Is there a simple way to get the fuel out. What should I keep on hand to accomplish this.

One more thought (and maybe this should be a separate thread), what can we do to reduce the need for fuel in a SHTF scenario?

I was wondering this too. Anyone know of a good manually powered siphon pump system?

1. Bicycles along with bicycle trailers
2. Build homes that have natural cooling abilities (I've been looking at house designs from tropical areas and the 1800 for ideas there)
3. Store food that don't require refridge/freezers.
4. Cook in solar ovens (cheap stryofoam cooler and a sheet of plexiglass works amazingly well here in Texas).
5. Root cellars
6. Water cisterns to collect rain off roofs rather than hualing water from nearby lakes/rivers/pools.

-Blast

Most electric gas and diesel pumps (at stations) have a hand pump handle hiding behind the lower cover plates. Take the cover off, pull out the handle and connect it to the pump, turn away and load the gas into a vehicle or containers.

"...Take the cover off..."

Keep in mind that those covers are locked on, so you are gonna have to break something to get inside...

"...good manually powered siphon pump system..."

There are a bunch available. Black and Decker makes (or at least used to) a thing called a Jackrabbit Pump, a hand powered (crank) pump that works very well. There are also those that are powered by an electric (think battery) drill, mucho faster than hand pumping. But again, remember that the hatch to the fuel tank is going to be locked, so you have to start breaking stuff...

If you know of people who have what you may need, having some really viable trade goods could be a good idea.

For instance, remember back to Katrina when that outfit (the name is long gone) in NOLA was online and giving blow-by-blow accounts of what was going on? They had a diesel generator, fuel, food, water, etc. But they underestimated the toilet facilities, and apparently all the toilets in the area were backing up due to the high water.

I'll bet those guys would have traded some diesel fuel (at least in the beginning or near the end, when they got more) for a stack of 5-gallon plastic buckets, a load of sawdust and a cheap ($10) clip-on toilet seat.

Sometimes, when there's trouble, people need simple things that they just overlooked, like having no matches in the house during a snowstorm. Or apple pies. Or chocolate chip cookies.

Sue

As my wife, the former law enforcement dispatcher, used to say, at any "disaster," be it a monster multi-vehicle accident, train wreck, earthquake, bridge collapse, whatever, the first two things that need to be dispatched (after law enforcement/fire/ambulance) is tow trucks (you can move a lot of anything with tow trucks), and porta potties...