Hoof Glue

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about hide glue, an adhesive made from animal hides that has been in use for thousands of years. Very simple to make and use, hide glue is not the only “animal glue” that humans have developed over the years.

Hoof glue is exactly what the name says: a glue made from the hooves of animals. For most of human history people have not had the luxury of “too much”, and we figured out uses for every part of any animal used for food. “Use every part of the pig except the squeal” was the philosophy before everything became disposable.

Whereas hide glue is made from the collagen in hides and bones, hoof glue is made from the keratin in hair and hooves. Animal hooves are nothing more than very thick versions of fingernails and are mostly keratin, the same protein that is a major component of hair. Animal horns (but not antlers) are also made of keratin. 

Both collagen and keratin are proteins (chains of amino acids) that have binding or adhesive qualities. When hydrolyzed (dissolved in water), they become “plastic” in the material sense -- soft, workable, and easily molded -- and when the water is removed they revert to their hardened state. Hoof glue retains more flexibility when dry than hide glue, making it a better choice for binding things that need to move or flex in use.

One of hoof glue's many uses was for sealing and bonding the sinew or fiber cordage used to hold arrowheads on the shafts of arrows. While not waterproof, the hoof glue was flexible enough to stay in place though the shocks of being launched from a bow and hitting a target. Binding layers of wood together to form a laminate which is stronger than solid wood was another use.

Like hide glue, hoof glue has a very long shelf-life. When stored in a dried form, there is a slight chance of fungal growth, but periodic heating and using it will keep it fresh and clean.

Making hoof glue is as simple as making hide glue but can be done on a smaller scale.

1. Collect hooves or pieces of hooves (if you trim your livestock's hooves you have a good source).
2. Break them into small enough pieces to fit into a small pot. Smaller pieces create more surface area and speed up the process.
3. Add enough water to cover the pieces.
4. Gently heat the mixture until dissolved, skimming off any debris that floats to the surface.
5. An acid can be added at this time to form a gel if you have one available.*
6. Add water or continue to heat (to remove water) until you get the desired consistency of glue.
7. Apply while hot and allow to dry.

I remember first seeing hoof glue in a museum of natural history, it was in a display of some of the methods native Americans used to make arrows and bows. The hoof glue was a blob of dark material on a stick; it looked like a grotesque lollipop more than anything else, and it had a small clay jar with it. Since most of the tribes in the center of the US were nomadic, anything they carried from place to place was carefully thought out and size and weight were minimized. The “glue stick” was used by placing hot water in the clay jar and then stirring the water with the “glue stick” until enough had dissolved to make the consistency of glue needed. Any leftovers in the jar were warmed near a fire to drive off the excess water and then scraped back onto the stick for transport. Efficient, conservative of materials, and simple to use, this was a good way to have a multi-purpose adhesive on hand without taking up space or weighing too much.

* I'll see if I can put together a post about naturally occurring acids and bases for addition to the “chemistry for preppers” category.

Rewriting History

Many of you who have read this blog for a while may have noticed that I am a fan of history. I see no good reason to “reinvent the wheel” when I run into a problem or foresee a possible hardship; humans have been dealing with such things for thousands of years, and they've tried a lot of different ways of getting around them. Even before we invented writing, we had oral history passed down from one generation to the next in the forms of songs and poems that were easier to remember than prose. Not everything they tried has worked out well (there has been a lot of trial and error over the years), but we should be able to learn from the mistakes of others and move ahead to make our own, new, mistakes. 

The last few generations of “important” people have been working hard to rewrite or erase history. I don't care what their reasons are; they all think that they are wiser than our predecessors and that by ignoring the lessons of the past they can make the world a better place (for them). Time passes and their immodesty eventually bites them in the ass, but they do a lot of damage and ruin a lot of lives before they are exposed as just another flawed human being who should have never been given any power over others. I'm not talking about politics -- this goes much deeper than the elected idiots -- I'm trying to point out that leaders at all levels can be guilty of this. Have you ever had a new boss “clean house” and get rid of every sign that there was a former boss?

Carlos Santayana was right when he said“Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it”. Winston Churchill paraphrased that as, “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it”, which shifts the action from passive “cannot remember” to the more active “fail to learn”. This idea, the rewriting of history to make it match the current events, was one of the main parts of Orwell's 1984. The push to eliminate parts of history is a way to keep future generations from being able to learn from the mistakes of others in order to provide a path for those mistakes to be repeated.

If you dig into history deep enough, you'll find that this, too, is nothing new. Erasing the acts (good, bad, or indifferent) of preceding leaders or generations is a way to make oneself seem better or more intelligent when you trot out the same, often failed, solution to a recurring problem. Ancient leaders would deface or destroy statues of previous leaders (sound familiar?), scribes would be instructed to remove all mention of predecessors when they copied texts (compare textbooks from today with those written 20 years ago), and religions have been especially atrocious in destroying anything that contradicts the “new” faith.

Do what you can to preserve history. I collect old books and pass on the knowledge that I have gained as a way to keep some part of the past alive. The old man and his “back in my day...” stories may be funny, but if you find yourself in a situation that resembles life when he was younger, those stories may give you some hints about how to get through it. Read more history, and pass along the lessons that we have learned over the years. Resist the idiots that are trying to “remake” our world into their version of paradise. Remember that the people who are willing to burn books usually end up burning people, and treat them accordingly.

Water, food, shelter, companionship: these are all basic necessities to human life and that hasn't changed. Learning how your ancestors provided those things and then applying a dose of modern technology and common sense is a good way to grow as a prepper. There truly is very little new under the sun; it's just new to us and we need to find a way to deal with those new things. Our ancestors may have a clue or two for us.

Adding Some Spice to Your Life

When talking about Prepper Pantries, there are a few things that most of us tend to either ignore or forget. The most important thing that everyone in the Western world tends to take for granted is something that's so common in our grocery store and regular pantry, and so easy to come by these days, that we forget that its more than simply a kitchen convenience: SALT.

We don't generally stop to consider that salt does more than just make our food taste good. It provides certain critically necessary minerals in our daily diet, as well. Without it, we will die. With too much of it, we do ourselves damage as well -- especially with our increasingly sedimentary lifestyles here in the U.S. -- but a complete lack of salt will kill us in particularly unpleasant manners.

History
Salt is so important to maintaining our health that entire economies rose and fell based on salt trade routes throughout the ages. It was worth its weight in gold: spice caravans were raided not simply for the riches that were represented by exotic, rare spices grown only in certain climates, but more commonly to steal the very necessary salt that was always part of trade.

Salt has been important enough in a historical sense that it is only when we reach the late 18th to early 19th century, with the industrial revolution and rapid transportation of goods on a global scale, that salt started being more commonly used in every day cooking and kept as a matter of routine out on the dinner table.

Up until that point, spices were carefully hoarded in the kitchen, to be used with extreme parsimony during cooking. Setting it out on the table for the use of high ranking or extremely important guests was done not simply to honor those guests as an act of high hospitality, but also to show off that you had sufficient wealth that you could afford to put something as critical as salt, and as difficult to come by and expensive as pepper, out on the table for lavish use. Extravagant salt and pepper cellars set out on the table during dinner were the Renaissance equivalent of driving a Lamborghini today.

Application
Salt, pepper, and a few other commonly used spices can go a long way towards making even the most unappetizing dreck a little easier to swallow when you're out camping or en route to your bug out location. When you go out to grab a quick bite of something at a fast food place, do yourself a giant favor and grab a few extra packets of salt, pepper, ketchup, mustard, honey, or other tiny condiments. Stash them in a baggie and toss them into the bottom of your bug out bag. You'll thank yourself later for having done so.

Similarly, do yourself a favor and start stocking up on salt now, as part of your Prepper's Pantry, by spending an extra $2 a month on a couple of standard kitchen canisters full of salt that you would normally pick up only when you're about to run out. If things ever go completely haywire and society collapses, having a large stash of salt on hand serves several purposes:

1. It's critical to maintaining your own health, when used in moderation. 
2. It makes your food more appealing - you'll be amazed at how much better your outlook is if you aren't dreading fueling your body. 
3. It becomes a good way to preserve your food (those rabbits, fish, etc that you're trapping for protein) so that it doesn't spoil before you're through the winter. 
4. It's a great trade commodity, because it will be needed by everyone and they won't think of it until its critical.

If you're fortunate enough to live near an ocean, or where there are salt flats, then harvesting salt for long term survival and trade goods is easy enough to learn. If you're like myself, and live more than a day's drive from the ocean during normal times, then it becomes a matter of life and death to have it stocked up and have a plan in place of how to acquire more when it eventually runs out.

Don't wait until the SHTF to start thinking about salt!

Rock Ridge Flour Mill

To recap the idea behind the Rock Ridge series, not everyone is going to be able to go back to living off of the land after a major catastrophe. There will be those who are not suited to raising their own food, but will have other skills that they can use to make a living. I am using the fictional town of Rock Ridge (ca. 1870) as an example of the skills and services that may be in demand after TSHTF. It doesn't have to be “Mad Max in Thunderdome”; people lived comfortably in small towns and villages for centuries before the invention of electric lighting and automobiles.

Mills
First things first: any time you see the word “mill”, you're looking at a facility that takes in a raw material and produces a marketable product, with windmills being the sole exception that proves the rule. Wood (or saw) mills take in logs and put out lumber; cotton mills take raw cotton and turn it into thread; a grain mill will take grain and turn it into flour or meal suitable for use as a cooking ingredient.

If you have a reliable source of energy and grain, you might be able to make a living with a grain mill. Grain mills are simply large versions of the basic stone utensils that have been used to make flour out of grain for as long as humans have been growing grain.

Historical Mills

Credit: My photo

The most basic grain mill is a bowl-shaped stone (called a “mortar”) and a smaller rounded stone that fits inside the bowl (known as a “pestle”). Grain is placed in the mortar and the pestle is either rolled over it with downward pressure or pounded down on the grain to break it up into tiny pieces. Roughly ground grain is called meal, and finely ground grain is called flour.

Credit: My photo

Hand mills have evolved into steel and plastic kitchen appliances that vary in quality and price. The general rule that “you get what you pay for” holds true for hand mills, so get the best that you can afford. Unless you have a bullet-proof source of electricity, avoid motorized mills that don't also have a manual method of operation.

Credit:Amazon.com

Grinders like this have been used for decades to mix and grind meats, but if you get the right plates for it you can grind grain. Avoid the cheap ones since they are generally of very poor fit and finish.

While a single person can grind enough grain into flour to keep their family in bread, it is time consuming and not a very efficient use of time. A centralized grain mill will tap into a local source of power and provide the service of producing flour (or meal) for its customers in return for a percentage of the grain. The miller's percentage would be sold or traded to people who didn't grow grain, and provided a source of income for the miller.

Credit: My photo

A small commercial mill, like those found in villages, was usually made of two discs of stone (often pieces of stone held inside a metal ring). They were placed face to face and the grain was introduced through the center hole of the top stone. The grain was turned into flour as it worked its way out toward the the rim.

Power would be provided by a horse, mule, or ox yoked to the top stone. Grain straight from the field was often placed on the ground in the animal's path and their hooves would strip the husks (chaff) from the grain as they walked on it. (I will go through the process of harvesting and processing grains in a future post, in order to keep this one on topic and of readable length.)

Credit: Public Domain

A moderately-sized mill, suitable for a small town, would consist of two round stones, one placed flat and the other on edge riding on the top of it. Grain would be added to the top of the base stone as the wheel stone rolls around on top of it and the grain ground between the two.

Power sources for this size of mill would be a water wheel set on a stream or a wind mill with large sails. High torque, low speed power that can be harnessed with the use of mainly wooden gears and shafts is a good fit for this kind of mill.

A large mill, producing flour for a large bakery or a large town, would likely consist of a series of smaller mills in series, with them set to grind the grain into progressively smaller pieces. Larger mills are/were powered by steam engines, electric motors, or some form of internal combustion engine.

Modern Mills
Modern mills use metal rollers or shears, usually made of stainless steel, to grind grain into flour. Steel rollers have some advantages over stone:

• Stone grinding wears down the grinders slowly, leaving sand or grit in the flour. This is not normally hazardous to the health of the consumers, but it can lead to increased wear on their teeth. Steel rollers last a lot longer and are easier to replace with modern infrastructure. 
• Since steel wears slower than stone, it is easier to set and maintain the desired degree of grind you want. 
• Steel is less porous than stone, so it is easier to keep clean and prevent contamination of new flour from spoiled remnants of previous grindings. 
• Steel rollers can be run at higher speeds than stone mills, increasing the output for a given size of mill.
• Steel rollers generally weigh less than stone ones, so starting and stopping the machinery is easier.

Stone rollers also have a few advantages:

• They can be made of locally available materials. 
• Stone rollers are not as likely to create sparks as metal ones. Dust explosions are a major hazard of any grain handling operation, so sparks are to be avoided as much as possible . 
• The weight of stone rollers provides enough pressure without requiring tensioners. 
• Running at a slower speed allows for the use of simpler bearings and shafts, often made of wood instead of metal. Lower speeds also mean less heat, which can damage the grain or contribute to dust explosions. 
• The mass of stone rollers provides inertia to the operation which will smooth out minor variations in the power source. This is helpful when using wind or some other form of variable power. 

Becoming  a Miller

Setting up a grain mill is a time-consuming process that will require a source of power, a good supply of materials, a source of grain, storage for grain and flour, and a customer base. Operating it will require a low level of daily supervision, a moderate amount of maintenance, and plenty of customer interaction.

A good miller will work with his customers as much as his machinery, and his reputation can make or break his business. Bookkeeping and an accurate set of scales will help keep both the customers and the miller honest, so plan for them as well. 

Rock Ridge Cooperage

To recap the idea behind the Rock Ridge series, not everyone is going to be able to go back to living off of the land after a major catastrophe. There will be those who are not suited to raising their own food, but will have other skills that they can use to make a living. I am using the fictional town of Rock Ridge (ca. 1870) as an example of the skills and services that may be in demand after TSHTF. It doesn't have to be “Mad Max in Thunderdome”; people lived comfortably in small towns and villages for centuries before the invention of electric lighting and automobiles.


Cooper

http://tinyurl.com/kmnfwou

The town cooper is who you would go visit to get a new barrel or bucket made. Working with wood and iron, a cooper provided a convenient way to transport and store things. The trade is still taught, mainly for wine and whiskey manufacturers, through an apprenticeship that can last up to 7 years. Here's a good explanation of the job, and here is a quick video of the birth of a wine barrel.

When moving by wagon or coach across open prairie, families would often pack anything not needed for the journey (like glassware and china) in boxes or barrels, with barrels being preferred for the heavier objects. Barrels are handy to move, since they can be laid on their side and rolled, instead of having to be picked up like a box. When rolling a barrel up (or down) a ramp, two ropes can be looped around it to provide both mechanical advantage and better control of the path of the barrel, something you just can't do with a box or crate. Commercial shippers used barrels to ship and store just about everything they moved that wasn't packed in crates or boxes.

Photo is my own work

Packing houses shipped meat packed in layers of salt in barrels. The term "pork barrel politics" refers to the practice of placing a barrel of preserved pork (a rare delicacy for slaves and share-croppers) at the far end of a field being harvested. The workers would work faster and finish the harvest quickly in order to get their reward of meat and take it home before it was claimed by the other workers.

Nails, chain, and other small pieces of iron-work were also shipped in barrels made of cheap wood, because they worked well for keeping things together and they stacked and stored well. Gunpowder (black powder) was also shipped and stored in smaller wooden kegs. Even though the wood would allow some moisture though, wood doesn't create sparks.

Parts of the Barrel
Wooden barrels are an interesting mix of art and science. How do you take straight, flat pieces of wood and fit them together to make a round, watertight barrel? I'll go through the parts of a barrel, then the assembly.
 

http://tinyurl.com/py39npg

Staves are the vertical pieces of wood that make up the body of the barrel. For water-tight barrels they are usually made of a hard wood like oak, but for lighter use just about any type of wood can be used. Starting as thin, flat strips of wood, the staves are cut with a bevel or angle on the sides, and if the barrel is smaller at the ends than in the middle, they will be tapered at the ends.

A Bung is a round, tapered plug of wood used to close the holes in the side and/or heads of the barrel. They allow the controlled filling and draining of the barrel without the need to remove the heads and are normally only used on liquid storage barrels. Bungs are also where a spigot can be "tapped" into a barrel (hence the term to "tap a keg"). Usually a wooden spigot is held in place and given a hard smack with a mallet to drive the bung into the barrel and firmly lodge the spigot into the hole.

Hoops are made of flat or round iron or mild steel stock, welded or riveted into a circle. Making the hoops is a job for a blacksmith (see: Rock Ridge Blacksmith), or at least someone who is familiar with a forge and iron, since they have to be made to fit precisely. Temporary hoops are thicker than the final hoops, since they are used during the assembly process and are reused. Being thicker also gives more contact area for the hammer and chisel used to pound them into place.

The top and the bottom of the barrel are known as the Heads. The heads are usually made of tongue-and-groove pieces fitted together to form a water-tight piece. The edge is beveled to allow them to be inserted into a groove in the body of the barrel.

Tools for shaping the staves may include saws, planes, sanders, and a drawknife depending on the skill and training of the cooper.

• Making the hoops will require metal working tools like a forge, hot chisels, rivets, punches or a drill, and a anvil with a horn or a blacksmith's cone (to make sure they are round).
• Tools for assembling the barrel are hammers, offset chisels (Z-shaped pieces of iron), temporary hoops for compressing the staves, a soaking tub and fire box (for bending thicker staves), and wood chisels or a special plane for cutting the grooves that the heads fit into.

The Art of Coopering
Watching the video will give a better idea of the assembly process, but I'll try to explain it in text.

1. Starting with the bottom temporary hoop on the ground, the staves are stood up and held in position by temporary hoops which are forced into place by using an offset chisel and hammer.
2. The bottom half of the barrel is roughed into shape and the middle permanent hoops put in place. 
3. The barrel is then flipped over and a round clamp is used to compress the top into about the right size. 
4. A temporary hoop is placed on the top and the clamp removed, so the barrel can be flipped over again and the final shaping/sizing done with temporary hoop driven down with hammer and chisel. The top and bottom permanent hoops are left off until after the heads are installed.
5. After the body is done and the ends squared up, a groove is cut on the inside surface of the staves on both ends. While this can be done with a wood chisel, a specially-built plane that rides along the top of the staves and has a blade set to cut a constant depth does a better job.
6. Once the body of the barrel is formed, the bottom head is inserted into the groove cut into the staves and the permanent hoop is put on to hold it tightly in place. 
7. The barrel is flipped over and the top head is installed in the same manner, then the barrel is water tested if necessary. Some leakage is normal, but as long as the barrel is being used for storing water or water-based liquids the wood will absorb some of the moisture and swell up enough to seal the seams. 

Becoming a Cooper
Who would make a good cooper? Someone familiar with wood- and metal-working, with a fair supply of metal and wood available. In order to make good barrels, it would be best if you learned how during an internship or apprenticeship, as this is not a skill that you can learn in a weekend. It is a physically demanding trade requiring a wide variety of skills but a fairly small collection of tools. One of the nice things about learning this skill is the fact that even if you make a barrel that can't hold water, it can still be used for grain or other dry goods. Even your mistakes are marketable; that's a useful thing, especially when resources are scarce.

Post-SHTF
In a post-crisis situation, there may not be a need for an actual cooper to provide new barrels for people in the area, but there may be a need for someone who knows how to clean and refurbish plastic and metal barrels. Most large cities have a small company in the industrial area of town that recycles barrels; look in the yellow pages or do an online search for their services. They will usually have a variety of barrels in different grades of plastic and steel for sale (and cheaper than buying them new), and they can often recommend one made of the proper material for your use. Knowing what was originally in the barrel is vitally important, as some things just can't be cleaned out of plastic and unlined metal: pesticides, herbicides, industrial solvents, and anything else that is poisonous should be avoided. Pickles, olives, fruit concentrates, and other food ingredients are often shipped in buckets and barrels, and they are fairly easy to clean with hot water (or steam) and baking soda. Look for a tight-fitting head with a rubber or plastic gasket to ensure a good seal.

If you get really lucky, you'll be able to find a "spill recovery" drum. These are over-sized, double walled barrels designed to fit over a damaged/leaking barrel and contain the contents. They will have a large threaded lid and a water-tight seal, and are designed to be used by people working in Haz-Mat suits so everything is simplified and over-sized.

Some helpful terms and definitions to help in your search:

• Open head: the top of the barrel is removable to allow loading/unloading. There is some sort of locking ring that goes around the top of the barrel that clamps the lid in place. Be aware that the locking ring will probably interfere with the ability to roll the barrel if it is placed on its side.
  
• Closed head: the barrel is sealed on both ends and must be loaded/unloaded through the bung-holes. Normally used for liquid storage. Harder to clean than open head barrels. Bung holes are standardized at 3/4 inch and 2 inch (pipe thread) diameters with spigots, pumps, and fittings available at any farm or industrial supply store.
  
• DOT/UN specifications: you may see a series of numbers stamped of printed onto the side or top of the barrel. They can be deciphered by using the chart found here.
  
• Food grade: the materials and construction meet the requirements for use in storing food products. Food grade does not mean sterile, so use care when storing food in any bucket or barrel to prevent contamination. Steam, hot water, and bleach will kill anything that may be growing on the inside and baking soda will help remove any lingering odors.
  

The First Thanksgiving: Prepping Lessons from the Pilgrims

The first Thanksgiving was a three-day celebration of a successful harvest after a rough year for the the settlers at Plymouth, in 1621. How well prepared were they for what they faced when they left England?

A Brief History Lesson

The settlers called themselves "Saints", not "Puritans"- a name reserved for those who chose to stay in England - nor "Pilgrims", a name that wasn't applied to the Separatists until later. The Saints were a small religious group that rejected the teachings of both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England. They tried moving to Holland, looking for a place to practice their religion in peace but ran into problems with the 17th Century version of labor unions not allowing them to work.(1) They applied for and received permission to emigrate to the British colonies in the New World and starting making preparations to move to a place with no state religion and very limited government.

They took off from Plymouth, England in two older cargo ships, the Mayflower and the Speedwell, but the Speedwell started leaking shortly after they left port. This required that they return to port and cram 102 of the 120 colonists into the Mayflower for the trip, finally setting out in September 1620.(2) There was speculation that the crew of the Speedwell caused the leaks as a way of getting out of the year-long contract.(3)

It took them two months to make the journey from England to America, but the return journey only took a month. A baby was born during the voyage, proving that life goes on. Anyone who has been on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean in the fall or winter will tell you stories about the storms that occur. The Mayflower lost a crewman after he was swept overboard by a wave in a storm and one passenger died during the trip.(4) 

Once they found America, they landed at an area in what is now Massachusetts. Their permission only extended to the area that is now Virginia, so they were just a bit off course. Maps of the time were crude and hand-drawn, there was no GPS system, and nautical navigation was done by compass and sextant - taking readings from the sun and stars which were then compared to an ephemeris to determine the latitude and longitude of their location. Time was measured by hourglass and ship's speed was measured by log-and-line.(5)

The weather prevented them from sailing down the coast and winter was setting in. A group of the men wrote and ratified the “Mayflower Compact", a declaration of the founding of Plymouth (named after the port they sailed from in England) establishing the colony.(6)

The colonists and crew spent the winter of 1620-21 living aboard the Mayflower (where another child was born in November), anchored just off-shore while working on building a village on the site of an abandoned native village. Of the 102 colonists and about 30 crew, 49 passengers and about half of the crew died during that first winter from a combination of scurvy, pneumonia, and tuberculosis. Proper medical supplies and a balanced diet, both of which were not well understood at the time, would have helped with survival.(7) They did the best they could with what they had, which is all anyone can ask for.

Aside: Living conditions aboard the Mayflower
From the information that I have been able to find, the Mayflower had about 1250 square feet of passenger space on the "gun deck", which is where the passengers would have lived. Shove 100+ bodies into something the size of an small suburban house with no good way to get out, no central heating, no bathroom, no insulation, limited fresh water, limited fresh food, and you'll get an idea of the living conditions. Floor space per passenger would have been about the size of a twin bed or a couch, with a five-foot high ceiling. Compared to that, your average root cellar/storm shelter is spacious.(8)

Once spring arrived, the colonists were able to move ashore and finish building their village. With the help of the indigenous peoples (Native Americans) they were able to get some crops planted and learned how to hunt some of the game in the area. There were disagreements with some of the natives due to the initial lack of respect that the settlers showed for burial grounds and stored food that they found during scouting missions.(9)

The Mayflower left the colony to return to England in April 1621, after waiting for the crew members that were still alive to recover from the hardships of the winter, making it back to London by mid-May. There is no evidence that the Mayflower ever sailed again; her owner died shortly after her arrival back in England and she was probably broken up for scrap shortly afterwards.(10)

Life for the settlers that first year was busy with building, planting, hunting, and learning about their new home. They established a viable village (something that was not guaranteed) that became the basis of the longest continually-occupied community in America.

Once the first harvest was in, the remaining settlers held a three-day celebration of their accomplishments. They had a bit to be proud of and I'm sure most of them were glad to know they didn't have to spend another winter aboard a ship.(11)

Footnotes

1. Even if you have skills, you may run into situations where you may not be able to use them, so have a back-up plan. 
2. This is a good example of the axiom “Two is one, and one is none” that you'll hear preppers repeat. 
3. A prime example of the risks associated with contracting out any part of your preps. 
4. Travel can be dangerous, so plan your bug-out carefully. 
5. Get the best information that you can, and be prepared for some of it to be wrong or no longer relevant.
6. Proof that paperwork will follow you everywhere, even when SHTF. 
7. There is a reason that the holy trinity of prepping is referred to as "Beans, Bullets, and Band-aids."
8. Be grateful for what you have, and realize that people have lived in much worse. 
9. Be aware of the cultures around you, have some idea of how to negotiate, and be capable of admitting if/when you make a mistake. 
10. Nothing lasts forever.
11. Celebrations are important for morale, which is vital to the survival of any group after a crisis, so look for reasons to celebrate and remember the wins as well as the losses.

Summary
The colonists made preparations for a difficult journey to a location that they'd never visited and ran into serious problems along the way. Their plans started coming undone from the very start, with the loss of half of their transportation, yet they continued on. They arrived at a location about 500 miles from their original destination, but decided to stay there and start a colony. Even though almost half of the colonists died before the ship left, the survivors decided to stay the course and stayed. They found an abandoned village and built on the cleared land that was available, making use of the resources they found. Without the aid of the locals, the colonists would have fared much worse. Through pure stubbornness or religious faith, the colonists had the determination to persist through disease, deaths, and weather unlike anything they were used to. They prepared as best they could and then dealt with things as they came.

Rock Ridge Saloon

Welcome to Rock Ridge.

To recap the idea behind the Rock Ridge series, not everyone is going to be able to live off of the land after a major catastrophe. There will be those who are not suited to raising their own food, but will have other skills that they can use to make a living. I am using the fictional town of Rock Ridge (ca. 1870) as an example of the skills and services that may be in demand after TSHTF. It doesn't have to be “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome”; people lived comfortably in small towns and villages for centuries before the invention of electric lighting and automobiles.

Saloon

The basic idea behind the operation of a bar, saloon, public house, or tavern is that people like to get out and socialize. When living quarters are tight and entertainment options are few, going to the bar is a proven way to “get out”. This usually involves alcohol as a social lubricant. People like to drink, gossip, listen to music, and gamble despite all of the experiments to convince them that these are bad things. With luck, after TSHTF people will be willing to leave each other alone in their choices of entertainment and the neighborhood bar or pub will make a comeback. Having a place where people can exchange ideas, relax after a long day trying to stay alive, or just get drunk enough to dull the pain of living would be a good step towards establishing a town.

Layout/ Services

Depending on the size of the town, the saloon would offer a variety of services, each of which would influence the floor plan.The saloon in Rock Ridge is a building by itself, but many small taverns and pubs are in the cellars or basements of other businesses.

Of course, you'll need a bar:  the raised counter that the bartender stands behind and the customers come to to order their drinks. The bar provides a separation between the employees and the customers, making it easier to keep the customers from helping themselves to the stock. It also provides a surface on which to serve the drinks, and stools give the customers a place to park while enjoying their libations.

The main room would be filled with tables and chairs of whatever design fits best. Most saloons and bars will work best with round tables big enough for four to six people to sit around so they can play cards or converse without having to raise their voices, whereas a public house or tavern may work better with long tables and benches to allow larger groups a comfortable place to gather.

Rock Ridge is big enough to attract traveling entertainers, so the bar has a stage and the backstage fittings (curtains, scenery, and simple props) needed for the shows. The changing rooms would be big enough to provide a place for the stars to sleep while they are in town. The crew would have to find accommodations in a local hotel or boarding house.

If the saloon is doing well, the owner may hire a musician to provide background music. The Wild West stereotype is that of a piano sitting in one corner, but in other times and places they might have any assortment of stringed or woodwind instruments:  wandering violin players working for tips, mariachi bands with guitars and mandolins, or even just a storyteller/singer. The phrase “singing for your supper” has a historical basis to it.

“Pub food” might be available. Rough fare, simple food, this is not a restaurant so the menu is going to be limited and cheap. Stews, bread and cheese, and other food that is easy to prepare and serve would be the staples.

Drinks

Most small-town bars would brew their own beer if the ingredients were available from local farmers. Water, barley, hops, and yeast are all it takes to make beer, and since there was typically only one bar in town, the patrons would drink whatever was on tap. Rice and corn (maize) are often used to increase the sugar available to the yeast if barley is scarce.

Whiskey was usually shipped in from a larger town, since the distillation of liquor takes a bit more equipment and training to get right. Forget the aged single malt Scotch; most of the whiskey found in a bar 200 years ago was watered-down moonshine. Ice wasn't available, so whiskey was served neat, at room temperature.

Regional drinks

• Rum is fermented and distilled from sugar cane and ships well, so it might be available in your area. 
• Hard cider is fermented apple juice, so if apples will grow in your area you'll be able to have hard cider. 
• Vodka was originally made from potatoes, but can be made from any source of starch. 
• In Europe, wine is a part of life and is served with meals. Grapes are a pain to grow in most areas, but wine can be made from any fruit that will grow in your area.

In America the Temperance movement of the late 1800's and early 1900's conducted a crusade against alcohol in all forms, eventually leading to Prohibition and all of the taxes and laws that survived it. After TSHTF, most of those laws will probably be ignored, since there will be no shortage of other things to worry about.

Other services

Many bars were co-located with brothels. Deadwood and Lead, both in South Dakota, have preserved some of the old architecture of the frontier days and incorporated it into the casinos that took over the town a couple of decades ago, and there was plenty of evidence of brothels in those mining towns. In an area where the men outnumber the women due to the industry that the town supports, brothels will pop up. Human nature almost guarantees that men will pay for sex and that some women will oblige them by offering it for sale.

Gambling was a popular pastime (and still is in the states that allow it), and the offerings could vary from a friendly game of poker among friends to a full casino with roulette tables and professional gamblers. Cards, dice, and games of chance are timeless ways to wager small sums and waste time.

Information: if you've ever tended bar you know how much private information people will pass on once they've had a few drinks. Add in the opportunities to observe other townspeople on a regular basis and the bartender can quickly be one of the main sources of gossip.

Who should look into opening or running a saloon?

If you don't mind putting up with drunks and can find a source of alcohol to stock a bar, you might be able to keep food on the table by running a saloon. You'll probably have to manage a few employees and keep a good set of books to track your “cash” flow, and the hours can be long. Depending on the customers you have coming in, a bouncer may be a good idea to have on hand, and a couple of servers tending the tables will keep the customers from having to go to the bar for another round.

Rock Ridge School

Welcome to Rock Ridge.

Public elementary schools are  a staple of every small town in America, and have been since the 1600's. Compulsory education (for boys -- girls were at a huge disadvantage back then) replaced in-home education by the early 1700s in an attempt to standardize the basic elements of the "three R's" -readin', 'riting, and 'rythmatics- as they were to be taught (some things never change -- we're still fighting that battle).

So, what was it like in a small-town school before the invention of electric lighting and teacher's unions?

The school year was scheduled around the local economy and when harvest and planting times came, the older students stayed home to help their families rather than sit on a bench learning their numbers and letters. Most schools consisted of one room, with all students of all ages being taught at the same time. The older students were expected to assist the younger ones (usually a relative anyway) in their studies, and there was only one teacher to cover all of the subjects. No provisions were made for meals; the students were expected to bring their own.

Photo credit: my original work

The photo above is of a one-room school house that was moved to the site of a local museum. If you look closely you'll notice that the only source of heat is a wood/coal burning stove in the front of the classroom. Light is provided by the tall windows on the south side of the building. There is a music stand at the front of the classroom so students who learned to play an instrument could perform for the class. The "library" is next to the teacher's desk, where she can keep control of the books. The chalkboard stretches the length of the wall behind the teacher's desk and there is a flip-board easel for using prepared lessons.The desks have a storage compartment under the writing surface and a hole for an ink well in the upper right-hand corner. Left-handed people were generally forced to learn how to write right-handed due to cultural baggage that associated the left hand with evil things.

Photo credit: my original work

School buses were horse-drawn in larger towns, but where I grew up (rural Iowa) the schools were placed so that no child had to travel more than a few miles to get to school every day. I used to put up hay in the school house that I would have gone to if I had been born 20 years earlier -- some of the old buildings are still out there. For many years the old school houses were not taxed because they were public buildings and were not entered into the tax rolls when they were built. Unless a farmer asked to have the extra building added (not very likely since it would increase his yearly property taxes), they just got ignored.

Paper was a luxury, expensive and not to be wasted, so most of the daily work was done on small chalkboards made of slate and sticks of compressed chalk. The "library" was usually the teacher's private collection of books that she might loan out to a student who wanted to research a  subject. Books were rare and valuable, since they had to be shipped in from far away places like New York or Boston. Textbooks became more common after 1850, with the "McGuffy's Readers" being used as a staple for education for almost two centuries (and still available today).

Since books can be (there's a lot of dreck in print) portable collections of knowledge, and knowledge is power, a well stocked library would be a huge benefit to a small town. Andrew Carnegie realized that a hundred years ago, and spent a lot of his personal fortune building public libraries in small towns. He may have been a robber-baron and "filthy capitalist", but the man did the world a huge favor by making books more available to people who couldn't afford to buy them.

Teachers lived and worked under different rules back then. Most teachers were women, since teaching was one of the few professions that a woman could enter. You need to remember that women of that era couldn't vote, and in many places couldn't even own property. While not quite chattel, they were working under a different set of rules than we'll find in any civilized country today. They usually boarded (lived) with a family in the area or had a room in a boarding house (think of it as a long-term hotel or temporary condominium). They didn't get paid much-- certainly not enough to raise a family on by any means. If a teacher got married, it usually ended her teaching career.

http://www.neatorama.com/2008/02/01/rules-for-teachers/

The list in the picture is a bit hard to read, but it is from 1901 and tells teachers that they can't marry, date, wear bright colors, dye their hair, or be out of the house after dark. Traveling with men who are not family, "loitering" in downtown ice cream parlors, and tobacco were also on the forbidden list, but she was required to keep the schoolhouse clean and have it warm and ready for the students by 8:00 AM.

(Any comments about "the good old days" will be forwarded to the women on our staff here, and I should warn that they are armed and know how to shoot quite well.)


If a community is to grow, there needs to be some form of education for the young. Home schooling is an option for families, but once you start building or rebuilding a town it may be better to look into hiring someone to teach the fundamentals. Basic reading skills should be required for the sake of safety if nothing else -- warning signs aren't all pictographs.

Basic math skills are also a fundamental. I know many people don't realize how much math is used in their day-to-day lives, but for many trades the ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide is a necessity. Art and music are part of being human and they need to be passed on to future generations to keep them human.

Teaching is a useful trade. I have a few teachers in my extended family and they don't do it for the money. The ones I know actually care about their students and see their job as a way to improve the lives of others. Being a teacher requires patience in large quantities and the ability to work with children and parents;  not everyone is cut out to be a teacher.

Rock Ridge Bank, Telegraph, and Post Office

Welcome to Rock Ridge.


The Bank building in Rock Ridge houses the only bank in  town as well as the Telegraph office and the Post Office. I'll cover them in three different sections in today's post.

The Bank

Banks that operated more than a century ago had a different set of rules than we are used to in today's world. There was no FDIC (created 1933) to insure them against loss, no Federal Reserve (created 1913) to set interest rates, and no competition from Credit Unions (first one in the USA opened ca. 1908). Regulation from the State and Federal governments was minimal, mainly due to the lack of rapid communication and travel -- it is hard to audit a bank that is hundreds of miles away when it could take a week to get there and another week to get back to your office to file paperwork. Competition is now fierce, but back in  the 1800s most towns only had one bank and it was enough.

Most of us know how banks are supposed to work -- they safely store money for depositors, and loan that money out against collateral to borrowers who repay the loan with interest. Some of the interest on the loan goes to the depositors and the rest is used to operate the bank. The invention of fractional reserve lending (allowing the lending of multiples of the money the bank actually has on hand) and ETF (Electronic Transfer of Funds) drastically changed the way banks are run, as did the ever-widening ability for just about anyone to open a bank. Since we're apolitical here at Blue Collar Prepping, I will let you go about your business without having to hear my opinions concerning the banking industry as it operates today.

Banks of the 1800's had a few problems. Since they were the main collection point of money in a town, they were the target of armed robbers (who weren't always successful). The vault or safe that they stored money in was large and heavy, making it expensive to ship in from a manufacturer. They generally relied on the vault door or safe for security after hours, although a large bank may have hired a night watchman and maybe a guard for the lobby during the day. Money in the forms that most people use for daily transactions was/is bulky, and shipping it was an invitation to robbery.

They also had advantages over the banks of today. Without the regulations and rules, they were able to run with fewer staff and could pass the savings on to their customers. Most of the smaller banks were family run or operated and were part of their community, so they actually knew their customers.

If you want to set up a local bank after the "big one" (whichever "big one" you think may happen) happens, you'd better have a few basics:

•  Secure storage. 
• The trust of your community. 
• Book-keeping skills and a way to record transactions.
• Customer service skills.
• The skills to appraise collateral (or an appraiser on payroll). 

The Telegraph Office

As the railroads marched west, they cleared a path for companies to set poles and string wires alongside the tracks. The railroads themselves installed many telegraph lines in order to be able to manage their schedules and fleets on the longer routes. Western Union (WU) is the name most people associate with the telegraph, but there were many smaller companies before 1851 when WU was founded and started buying up all of its competition. By 1861 the East Coast of the USA was connected to the West Coast by telegraph wires, only 11 years after London was connected to Paris by telegraph wires (1950). In 1871, WU started offering money transfers by way of telegraph, making it easier  for people to travel without having to carry large amounts of cash (not a new idea, since the Knights Templar provided a "note" system for pilgrims traveling to the Holy Lands in the Middle Ages that filled the same purpose) as well as sending money to family in distant locations securely.

The work of Robert Morse and his assistants gave us the Morse code, a simple method of rapidly transmitting information one letter at a time over long distances. Morse code used a simple switch, called a key, to send pulses of electricity through a wire to a relay. The original Morse design used a strip of paper fed through the contacts of the relay and when the relay closed, it would mark the paper. Operators quickly learned that they could understand the "clicks" of the relay better than the marks on the paper so they stopped using the paper strips. A beginner can send and receive Morse code at a rate of 5 words per minute (wpm), and there are still competitions where experts can push the rate up to 60 wpm. That's faster than a lot of us can type on a keyboard. Morse code is still used by ham radio operators, and still gets the job of transmitting information over long distances done. Morse code is taught as a language to be heard instead of as a method of sending individual letters. Users of Morse code don't hear the dots and dashes, they hear words and phrases- just like you don't see the individual letters I'm putting down here, you see the words that they form.

Telegraph messages were not cheap. The sender usually paid to have his message sent, paying by the word, and the average message in the mid-1800s cost about a dollar. Remember, this was when gold cost $35 per ounce. Compare that to your cell phone bill! Many businesses and families worked out "codes" of their own to be able to send a message using as few words as possible in order to cut the cost of communicating. Most telegraph offices would have "runners", young boys who would deliver a (normally sealed) telegraph to locations in town for the tips they would get from the recipients.

Setting up a more modern version of a telegraph office would be easy if you already have a ham radio set and have made contact with others in the area. Sending and receiving messages for others for a fee is frowned upon in the aftermath of a natural disaster (ham radio operators are usually the first to get information out after a tornado/hurricane/earthquake), but in a scenario where society has collapsed it might be a viable form of work. There should be no shortage of potential "runners" if the electricity is out for a long enough time.

The Post Office

I know everyone has a story about the local Post Office, and rightly so. The US Postal Service has been carrying our mail since 1775. They were a federal agency up until 1971, when they were spun off as a private corporation, and are legally required to serve everyone equally regardless of location and at the same price. Being a government-run monopoly for almost 200 years kept the prices low and allowed them to set up a distribution network that dwarfs any of the current competition (except for e-mail). Slow, But Dependable has been the unofficial motto of the USPS for decades.

There is a little-known service offered by the USPS called General Delivery: If you know someone is going to be in a town, but don't know when or where they'll be staying, you can send a letter to them marked "General Delivery" and the Postmaster will hold it until they come in and ask for it.

Being able to sort and deliver a letter or small parcel across town is a job for a delivery man, but once you scale it up to the"territory" level it gets to be more complicated. Handing a kid a letter and a coin to have him deliver the letter to someone on the other side of town is simple. Once the letter has to change hands to get delivered, the problem of who pays whom arises. This is one of the few instances where having the government run a service can actually work, since the operation of a small-town Post Office can be subsidized by the income from the Post Offices in larger towns.

Mail was carried from town to town in locked boxes on the stage coaches as they ran their routes, with the postmaster in each town holding the keys to the locks. This provided a basic level of security for the mail and avoided having dedicated mail coaches. Since the volume of mail grows with population, cities were served by rail cars custom-built for the USPS and attached to the regular trains going between cities.

Setting up a delivery service after TEOTWAWKI would require knowledge of the people and places in your area, perhaps a form of transportation, and above all the trust of your customers. Networking with other delivery services would allow you to help serve a larger area, once you worked out how everyone involved split the fees. Those of us who served in the military before the invention of Skype know the feeling of hearing "Mail Call!" when physical mail was your only real link to family and friends far away.

Rock Ridge General Store

Welcome to Rock Ridge.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that my grandparents ran a general store in rural Iowa in the 1930's and 1940's. They didn't get rich off of it. World War 2 killed the store by limiting the amount of stock on hand (rationing) and by sending Grandpa to a factory 150 miles away, six days a week, to make bombs and shells for the Navy. They ended up going back to farming for a living while raising eight kids and doing a fair job of both.)


Dry goods shipped in from other towns and bulk purchases of daily needs were to be found at the general store. Since electricity wasn't common outside of large towns and cities, the general stores usually had tall ceilings with shelves all of the way up in order to pack as much as possible into a small footprint (easier to heat and light). Ladders on tracks were commonly used to let the shopkeeper get to any stock stored on those high shelves -- keeping expensive and fragile things off the floor made sense in the often-crowded aisles in order to minimize theft and accidents. Tall windows were needed to let in as much daylight as possible, and also served as a way to display the store's selection of goods. However, glass was expensive to have shipped in, so most of the counters were wood with perhaps a glass front.

Image credit : author'soriginal work

The variety of goods to be found in an old-school general store varied by what was available and what was desired by the customers. If a town was situated in an area with abundant supplies of fruit, you probably wouldn't find fruit in the general store (although you might find preserves and jams/jellies, as well as jars and lids, for storing fruit over the winter). No refrigeration meant no fresh milk, but cheeses and salted butter were there. Flour, baking powder, spices, salt, and other kitchen supplies that were shipped in filled the shelves. Coffee beans and tea were a staple, as was tobacco in various forms for smoking, chewing, and other uses. Processed or preserved food was available after the invention of tin-lined steel cans (ca. 1812), since metal cans stood up to the rigors of shipping better than glass jars.

Image credit:  Public domain through Wikimedia Commons

If there was no "Chemist" or Pharmacist in town, the general store would sell a wide variety of medicines like Heroin (a trademarked name for Bayer's form of morphine),  Aspirin (another trademarked name), various "patent" medicines of dubious formulation and effects, and a selection of chemicals that would allow people the ability to make their own concoctions at home. Since medical facilities were rare and many diseases not well understood, treatment of most maladies consisted of numbing the pain until you either healed up or died. Life was tougher back then... and may be again.

Image credit:  Public domain, courtesy US Government

Most of their stock would be what were known as "dry goods", meaning things that were shelf-stable with a very long shelf-life: bolts of cloth, buttons, and needles for making clothes; blankets and bedding; nails and bolts shipped in wooden kegs; rope and wire; and pretty much anything else that could be bought in bulk and sold in smaller parcels for a profit. Firearms and ammunition didn't require special paperwork until 1968, so there was usually a selection of them to choose from. Pots and pans, lanterns, candles, lamp oil, soap, dishes, and just about anything else that would be needed to keep a household going could be found somewhere on a shelf or ordered from a warehouse and delivered in a few weeks (or months).

Paying for purchases was a bit different in the days before credit cards. Credit existed, but at the whim of the store owner. A person's reputation determined how much credit he was eligible for, not some mysterious algorithm in a bank's computer. Personal credit was needed because very few people worked jobs that paid weekly or monthly; farmers and ranchers got paid when they sold their crops or herd, and that usually only occurred once a year. Townspeople would either pay with whatever served for money (gold, silver,or bank notes) or barter their goods and services in exchange for supplies from the store. Prices were often negotiable or variable, depending on the store owner's mood and past dealings with people. Having a virtual monopoly on the supply of some goods made it easy to charge whatever the market would allow, leading to high prices. The law of supply and demand was what determined prices in most cases.

In the case of a "company town", one that is built or  exists specifically to serve one company or industry, the general store was often a "company store". My mother-in-law grew up in a cotton mill company town in South Carolina. The mill owned everything- the houses, the roads, the schools, the stores, the police, and the barber shop. Literally everything in town. Purchases from the company stores and rent were deducted from a worker's wages, and that often led to virtual slavery since the prices could be raised to the point that a worker could never earn enough to pay his bills and therefore always owed the company and couldn't leave until his debt was settled. This practice has become history in most parts of the US, but it is possible that it could return.

Image credit:  my original work

Another option (for those living outside of town) was the traveling salesman, immortalized in limericks and jokes. With a wagon, a horse or mule, and a small inventory, a person could make a meager living trading with the farmers who didn't want to travel into town. Some of the wagons, like the one in the picture, were built specifically for the trade; others were just buckboards pressed into service. Sleeping in barns and haylofts, the traveling salesman usually ate his meals with his customers when he could. The above picture is the only one of the batch taken at a local museum that actually came out usable, but you can see that the wagon has a sloped roof (covered with tin) to shed rain and snow, doors on all sides to allow access to the supplies, and a rail around the top to hold larger or bulkier items. The bright color was to make sure people saw him coming and knew to put out an extra plate for dinner and also get their trade goods in order... and possibly lock up their daughters.



Being a shop owner is a tricky business. Being able to barter and give credit requires a well-developed ability to communicate and work with others. If you can "read" people pretty well,  know how to keep a good set of books (accounting), and have the room to set up shop, you might be able to make it as a store owner. Knowing where to find supplies to sell and having contacts in other areas that can help find what your customers need would come in handy.  Be aware, though, that other than the bank and possibly the saloon (later articles), the general store is going to have the most money/ things of value in town during the rebuilding of society. You will be the target of thieves and robbers. You will also have to build into your prices the distinct possibility that any credit you extend may not be repaid for a number of reasons: people die, crops fail, cattle are rustled.  Too much of this and you'll be left with nothing but a book full of numbers.. so plan accordingly.

Interrogation Techniques

The following is presented as a guide to interrogation techniques. Using them takes training and practice, but knowing about them may help you avoid falling for the "tricks".



The specific techniques or approaches used in an interrogation are the "role" that the interrogator will "play" while trying to "break" or get information from a source. We used to teach roughly 13 approaches (depending on how you count them), here they are in no particular order.

Good cop-Bad cop. Everyone has heard of the "good cop-bad cop" approach used in Hollywood movies. The last I heard, the US Army is no longer teaching this method because it implies a threat of violence. The military has gone PC, which is not a good thing. This method requires two interrogators, one plays the "good cop", who tries to convince the source that he is there to protect the source from the "bad cop" who is there to terrorize the source. The source will talk in order to avoid the implied or actual threat of violence.

Silence. Used on very nervous sources, or one that is agitated, the interrogator just sits and stares at the source until he starts to talk just to break the silence. This works well with children, too.

We know everything, AKA Dossier. Walk in with a thick file folder padded with anything you can put into it, and act like it is the file on the source's unit or recent activity. You'll see this one used in some of the CSI-type shows. The idea is to make the source believe that you are just looking for verification of data that you already had, and that he is not really giving up anything useful. Salting the file with actual information helps this approach work.

Fear up/Fear down. These two are related in that the interrogator will work on the fear already present in the source. Fear up is trying to instill fear of what is going to happen if the source refuses to talk. Fear down is calming the fears of a source that has (usually) just gone though a traumatic experience. The goal ios to either scare them into talking or calm them enough that they can talk.

Ego up/Ego down. Ego up is the building up of a source's ego to get him to talk about things. Braggarts tend to tell more than they intend to, so this works well on boastful people. Ego down is putting down a source in order to get him to justify his actions.

Direct approach. Simply talking and asking questions works on a large percentage of people. I talked to interrogators after they came back from the mess in Grenada in the '80s, and they said this was the most useful method and that it worked about 90% of the time.

Incentive. Another one that is commonly used in the "justice" system, usually trading information for a lighter sentence. The cardinal rule was to never promise anything you can't deliver. Once trust is broken, it is broken forever. You'll have to pass the source off to another interrogator, who will have a hard time getting more out of him. Little things like a cigarette or cup of coffee can be an "ice-breaker" and get a person to start talking. Promises of better living conditions or early release are harder to fulfill, but may get a better response.

Futility. "Your part in this is over, we got you and we're going to win, so why not talk to me? I'm going to find out what I want to know anyway, why not from you?" This one works on despair as well as the possibility that you may treat them better than their former supervisors did.

Rapid fire. Peppering a person with questions, without a chance to answer, may cause them to blurt out something they were trying to withhold. Another one that works best with more than one questioner.

Repetition. Asking the same small set of questions over and over. A good way to catch a liar, but it can cause extreme frustration.

Emotion up/emotion down AKA love/hate. Exploiting a source's love of country, friends, or cultural differences or hate of discrimination, working conditions, or commanders. This one require quite a bit of knowledge of the opposing side's culture and habits.


Here's the US Army manual on POW interrogation.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/policy/army/fm/fm34-52/