I Spy Resources From My Perch...

Having made a comment to Blast about being windbound for 3 days has got me thinking about McGyvering and resources that are useful and right under my nose, like the following:

Legal to pick-up:
A 5gal plastic bucket,
A 24" plastic fan screen,
A large piece of styrofoam,
cane growing on the canal bank (good for fishing poles, shelter building, etc)
Several boards (2x4's, 2x6's, 4x4's),
An orange lifejacket,
A plethora of driftwood for shelter making & firewood,

Illegal to take/make use of:
4 signboards that are approx 4'x5' ea,
2 heavily damaged camps (temp shelter)(perhaps some overlooked useful items inside of ea),
A sand & gravel yard w/a dragline & a dumptruck (temp shelters and perhaps some useful items inside of ea),
A petroleum production dock with solar panel arrays (and other useful items),
A bridge with accessible Navigation Lights,


When you have time to stop & smell the roses, take a look around and notice what useful items you see laying around,,,let me know.

Ignoring the three floors of fully stocked chemical laboratories ( ), I spend a lot of time prowling around the facility where I work. Two particularly useful finds were the refreshments stockroom and the equipment "graveyard". The refreshment stockroom is where they keep all the soft drinks, bottled water, and snacks for the executive meeting rooms. It's filled with two pallets of bottled water, and a pallet each of Coke, Diet Coke, Dr. Pepper, Diet Dr. Pepper, and Sprite along with several tubs of hard candies.

The equipment graveyard is where people can dump equipment they no longer want. It's a scavenger's dream, but I have to fight three other people over the contents. Wednesday I scored a complete, high-quality microscope with all sorts of accesories. The thing has to be thirty years old or more. It's in perfect shape, the owner just dumped it because she can't easily hook it to her computer!

Oh, the other useful find was the location of the fuel tanks for the emergency generator, but that's pretty much off limits. Completely open and unprotected, but off limits.

And if things really get bad, there's a herd of cattle across the street from me. I love Texas!

-Blast

Additional observations while cruising the GICW (Gulf Intracostal Waterways) and the Western Rivers:

1) Rope: 1/4", 3/8", & 1/2"
2) Line: 1 1/2", 2", & 3"
3) Milk Crates
4) Life jackets
5) 55gal Drums (mostly new ones)
6) Steel & plastic buoys
7) Destroyed Light structures & associated equipment (woden platforms, solar panels, batteries & boxes, lights, steel light stands, plywood dayboards)
8) Old tires
9) Fishing gear (yo-yo's, fishing line/quipment in tree limbs)

This is what comes off the top of my RAM.

I already take advantage of my neighbors littering up their place. My apartment building and our surrounding yard is kept nice and tidy, but the crazy neighbors in the next apartment building over have totally trashed their area. It's mostly single moms that don't watch their kids and let them run wild, and they left the following and more just lying around in the yard and in the street. Forgive me as I like to be descriptive...

Several tires, some in pretty good condition, which I take to either the scrap yards or the tire places down the road and sell for some pocket money. I know that the neighbors don't want them anymore because they leave them lying by the side of the road next to the garbage cans, for weeks at a time, assuming the trashmen will come pick them up. They never do.

A large dry-erase board, I dunno, about 4x5 feet, classroom sized? - tossed out because the kids had drawn on it over and over so much it was stained. Obviously they didn't know about the simple household item used to get rid of that, Windex, and now I put it to my personal use. I have all my phone numbers on there, with tons of room to spare and it works better than a Rolodex.

A broken pellet gun, and a half-full canister of pellets, tossed to the side of the road and left for naught. My multitool, and the trigger, release spring, and sight stick from an old BB gun I have fixed all that. I bought another small box of pellets to supplement my target practice on pop cans. If worse comes to worst, I like to think, at least, that Mr. Squirrel or Mr. Bunny wouldn't stand a chance.

Several VCR's, stereos, flashlights, and electronics - all broken to some degree, but some have been repairable. The things I can't fix I scrap out for parts and put those in my junk drawer. I once fixed a VCR that looked like new and gave it to my aunt, and she couldn't tell the difference (just don't tell her that!)

A good Nalgene bottle! This made me very sad to no end, as I knew those rotten kids probably didn't take care of it. A few good deep cleanings later, one of them in a bleach mix (God knows where it had been before), and it has a happy home with me.

Glass jars, which held I think small amounts of instant coffee. They were left there when the kids couldn't smash them in the street. I use them to hold spare change, a different kind of coin in each one. I've also got one that holds penny nails, and another for matches for my candle motifs.

I've told the landlord about my neighbors (which he appreciates) but he says there's not much he can do, besides defer from their security deposits. And he also told me whatever they throw out I can have, so whatever I take is gravy. Nobody's said anything to me about it for over a year.

Hmm... I'll play along.

Problem with being rural, not as many dumps as there used to be, but I won't complain.

Other than the obvious bits of grass and tree based debris, a bunch of beverage containers. If I haven't been cleaning up, there should also be about a half dozen plastic bags, the random CD. There is a 20' length of 12" culvert pipe that the town took out as part of the last drainage modification, it's rusty but it might be useful.

Yeah, I don't have much in the way of scrounging without annoying people.

Where do you take tires and get money back? Around here, you need to pay them to take tires away. Nobody wants them.

Nobody buys tires anymore. They're a liability. I used to work at a tire recycling plant which paid for tires. In 3 months they had so many tires sitting around (the machine can only chew them up so fast) the fire department shut them down because the tires were a fire hazard.

That was going to be my question.

Re the "...good Nalgene bottle!...", I would be very carefuly using that, bleach or no bleach. There are some really nasty chemicals being used by drug manufacturers, I would hate to injest some of that from a free bottle I found on the street. Same reason I passed on a jillion ice chests I found on the side of I-5 over the years...

"from the parings of man's fingernails, devils make little caps for themselves."

I'd guess they're about like a log home. Hard to start but once its started difficult to put out.

Additional note #2:

I am pushed into a bank waiting to lock, from my perch, I see the following:

Legal to pick up:
1) Cut pieces of lumber from a collapsed barn (enough to build a very nice, roomy shelter)
2) Electrical wiring (to lash a shelter together)
3) An abandoned refrigerator (instant comfortable latrine)
4) An undetermined length of 3" line
5) Grove of young trees (good for making a puptent style, wickiup, or lean to shelters)
6) Plenty of ground insulating material

Illegal to take/use: nothing to list.

Cool thread. I like the idea of using your brain and whatever one may find laying around. There may come a time when you are separated from your usual gear. So this is a good exercise.

When ever I go fly fishing I find tons of line and flies in the trees from others casting errors. I usually find this while looking for my own errant fly stuck in a bush.

I always see cans, buckets, plastic bottles and glass bottles when in the woods. Sad but true and useful in a pinch.

On many occasion at a local climbing crag that is used at night by kids to party at I have found very serviceable lighters and matches.

Thats just a few examples but if you factor in what trash is lying around here in Oakland the possibilities are endless.
Bill

Besides the vast tracts of wilderness surrounding the small coastal city (most call it a town) I live in and all that entails, there is of course the everpresent assemblage of minions, street urchins, and other idjit's just waiting to have their fears placated by receiving orders from a task master such as myself, or by way of cooperative-minded conversation...Maybe what I'm trying to say is that all those neat objects you'd like to think of as available are not going to come easily considering everybody else has their eyes on them as well. And that's assuming that either laws dissappear altogether or nobody is intent on upholding them. Both unlikely, in fact highly improbable. But it is nice every now and then to fantasize about inheriting the kingdom of the disinherited.

I didn't know we were talking about a wtshtf scenario,at least not according to the original post, correct me if I'm wrong. I think what he was talking about is things laying around on a day to day basis, things you can pick up and use. If their laying around and you see them then obviously no one has the same idea and your free to pick them up. Even if its a wtshtf scenario I really think the unprepared outnumber the prepared, so that might still leave a 2x4 , plastic bottle or maybe even a wally world bag for us to scrounge.

"receiving orders from a task master such as myself" LMAO why doesn't that surprise me.

Congratulations Shadow, you've figured out where I am going.

I'm looking at items that could be useful in the event that I got lost in the woods, had a small boat capsize, or any other event that could temporarily strand me in the middle of nowhere.

No, I'm not thinking of a TEOTWAWKI event.

Exactly, some people here see things the way they want to see them, not how they really are. I would hate to see them in an actual disaster/ survival scenario. Running around talking about everything but what they need to concentrate on. I might have to edit this post, I don't think I went off subject or used clever sayings and nursery rhyme's......lol Has anyone seen my fiddle or my faddle or paddle???


Man I have to read up on William Shakespeare, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Bill Cosby, and of course Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor

I just have to laugh at you, ooOO, you are ever upset that someone is different than you. Frankly, what I "need to concentrate on" is unknown to you. Further, some people think of having to concentrate as being evidence of lack of experience in a time of stress. My level of expertise in survival is also unknown to you, and reading a survival forum is not in the least bit stressful for me. But that is beside the point.
I admit that I do have a tendency to come across as dry, but scoring 185 on an exponential scale does that to a guy.
And once again, I must admit, I am sooOO flattered at your ability to oh-so competently categorize my facetiousness at attempting to show disconcertion toward yet another one of your blatantly negative responses that I have no choice but to think of you as a sort of guy who is fairly immature for his age (I'm only assuming you are older than your anger, for lack of a better word "anger", presents you as being), someone who will look back on all the fairy tales he once had told to him, and perhaps even told to himself (hmmm?), and finally learn something about himself and finally ask himself how he will hope to get along in a world of "others" without learning compassion, acknowledgement of differences of opinion, and acceptance of those differences, and cooperation. Simply put, you might one day realize that your attempts at exclusionism are an embarassment to you, but then again, maybe not.
Hold as many grudges as you like, for as long as you like, but please understand for your own immaterial growth that I'll not be yoked to your emotional incontinence. Oh yes and...I do see things the way I want to see them, but that doesn't necesssarily mean that that is not how things really are. But then again, maybe you are right. Maybe I should try to be more like you, and not have so much fun with life, or in the very least keep you in mind if/when I post so as to try to stay as "on point" as I can in the hopes of not upsetting you again. NOT! I mean, lighten up ooOO. If you take a forum so seriously that you can't handle anybody else's way of doing things, how is it that you sleep at night? You and I have spent way too much time bickering, and I hope you are not repeatedly commenting about me negatively in some reverse-psychological attempt at one day meeting me, because, dude, ooOO or not, I'm straight!
I mean seriously, did I step on your eyeball in a past life or something?

If you would only put all that breath to good use you might actually be of some use. How can you be so, how do I put it politely " ignorant of the fact" and still ramble on and use such big words.

Seems to me Q your the one getting angry and taking things the wrong way. I'm not angry at anyone, especially at you, I feel sorry for you.

And you certainly are different I'll give you that.

You sure use some big fancy words, do you even know what they mean. Talking to hear yourself again are you.


Your to easy.

Of course you do, and that's very kind of you to openly say so like that.

Man, I love the "Ignore" button. It makes me a happy fellow.

-Blast

Ditto

Wow...some people need to get lives....

Where I am windbound today, I spy the following from my perch (3.5 decks = 33 ft ht of eye):

3 - 1gal milk jugs
1 scrubby tree (living)
2 small dead trees laying on the bank
Small drainage platform w/railing and a gangway up to it standing over a neary pond
1 plastic square garbage can lid
A small piece of plywood
Plenty of Ducks and Coots in a nearby pond
Plenty of cattail like plants, maybe cane

If I were stranded here with only my EDC, I would try the following:

1) Break down the dead trees/limbs to add more verticals to the drainage plaform.
2) Cut the cattails and weave them on the windward side of the platform railing.
3) Use the piece of plywood to form the windbreak wall on the platform.
4) Use the 5 sides of each plastic milk jug to form the windbrek wall on the platform.

5) Start looking for more wood to build a fire for signaling & cooking.
6) Use material from my EDC to make some snares for the Ducks and Coots.
7) search for more material to make some fish traps for the ponds.

This would be a rough place to survive in, for more than a couple days with only my EDC. Very flat ground with little natural or manmade resources to work with.

There is a small clump of trees in the distance that offers more shelter and firewood. I think it would be wise to hike there and establish a camp versus where I am at the present, if I became stranded here.

Sounds a lot like one of those prohibited personal attacks to me...

Wildman, if those are cattails, you can scrape off the pollen and make a kind of porridge with it. You can cook the roots. The fluff will help with starting your fire. You can weave mats from the leaves to make a windbreak. You can make a fish trap from the stalks.

Talk about multifunctional...

Sue

I knew about the roots but I didn't know about the pollen.

Thank you Susan!

I was thinking in terms of using the stalks for thatching material (basket weaving) to make walls around the platform (using the railings) the same way that we use them to make duck blinds with chicken wire.

Oops! And lots of the fluff can provide insulation in a debris (etc) shelter.

Sue

Just make sure it is a no smoking shelter! Cat tail fluff takes off like gasoline fumes, it burns too quickly to even be a decent tinder.