Anyone like mechanics?

If all electricity gets shut off, acoustic telephones would become the next internet for relaying life-saving information. My idea is to take a diaphragm that is 1 foot in diameter, then take 1 mile or longer line wire so you can have better range. It would be a public payphone. For air conditioning, make a fan using an automaton action that's sufficiently powerful enough to provide stable enough AC to a building.

I dont think thats how things would work. electricity can't be turned off. If central generators go off it will just become much more expensive and private. also a lot of the economy will collapse as well as the state. Welcome to /prep/

>never heard or a crystal radio?

>>12619 A crystal radio receiver is easy to make. But you need a tansmitter, too, and that requires a source of electrical energy. I guess you could use a crude lead acid battery for that. But all you need is good magnets, copper wired, a rotating structure, and a source of rotation like wind or flowing water (or hand crank) to make an electricity generator. If you don't have strong magnets, you can make weak ones by pounding apropriate metal with a hammer, or rubbing it. Then use the weak ones to make weak electricty to make a little bit stronger magnets. Rinse and repeat until you have strong magnets. Another thing you can use a strong magnet for is to gather iron. You just put it on a rope and drag it down a dry river bed. Bits of natural iron and iton ore in the river bed will cling to it. You can make your own rope out of stinging nettle fibers or hemp fibers, both common weeds. You can also make yarn out of the fibers and knit clothing with the yarn. >>12617 In the past, practical acoustic communication was limited to tubes. For instance, a boat captain would have a tube to the engine room. He'd blow on the tube to get attention, then talk through it. Practical methods of cooling would include "swamp coolers" that consist of constainers of evaporating water where the warmer vapor is allowed to disperse outside while the cooler water remains inside. Food can be kept cool in or near such a container on a window sill. Another method of cooling is simple constriction of flowing air. The air in your lungs is hot, but blow on your hand and it feels cool. That's not because of evaporation of moisture on your skin. The air really is cool. The reason it's cool is because the air flow is constircted by your lips and flows fast. You can get the same effect by taking big plastic bottles, cutting off the big bottoms, mounting them all on a board with the large bottom opening facing one way and the small spout opening facing the other way. Put it in a window where a breeze blows, with the big opening facing outward. The breeze that flows into the large opening can be warm, but the air that comes out of the little opening will be quite a bit cooler. Viola, simple mechanical air conditioning.

>>12623 I love your ideas, especially the magnets stuff, but the easiest way to cool food is to dig a cellar. Deeper it is, the colder it is.

>>12617 >acoustic telephones would become the next internet for relaying life-saving information. Doubt it. If all electricity gets shut off, it's safe to assume modern life has come crashing down. Assuming we're put back to pre-industrial levels of society, the best practical means of rapid communication are: >semaphore >heliograph >signal lamps >a dude on a horse As for AC, like >>12623 said - swamp coolers or cellars. You're not going to be running a fan constantly unless you've got something like a water mill or a steam engine to power it, otherwise you could just use the wind. The arabs have been living in desert environments for thousands of years and created some very low tech but effective solutions to keeping cool using the wind, water evaporation, and just straight up painting their buildings with white lime.

>>12623 good electrical equipment is literally everywhere, including magnets, as much wire as you could want, motors clocks and oscillators, power supplies big and small. While its fun to larp as a medieval innovator, you can just salvage a huge amount of stuff even in a disaster

>>12617 >For air conditioning, There is what is called the "Einstein Fridge" which only needs heat as a source of energy. And ammonia, water, butane as working medium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator?useskin=vector

>>12623 Do you guys know about generators?

>>12773 >Assuming we're put back to pre-industrial levels of society, the best practical means of rapid communication are: yeah but you're not going to be back in a preindustrial society its basically not possible. We have miles upon miles of good electrical cable just sitting around already installed, we have soldering irons in our houses and free electric speakers all over the place a dozen in every car if not more, we have batteries and steel and its all just sitting around in this scenario. 99% of the work on things like basic telephone network is already finished all you need to do in this scenario is get some working low tech phones put together on either end of a wire thats already installed.

>>12773 >AM radio baby Also windcatchers aren't great in windless areas. If you have ever been in the aftermath of a typhoon or a hurricane, then the atmospheric conditions are also very stagnant and windless. There are laws about radio interference in cars in the USA because radios are used for contingency communications and mass broadcasts. There are whole guidelines you can find and it's part of an ongoing fight with tesla, Because "wE doN't hAve To woRry aBout inteRfEreNce iF We juSt doN't Put RadiOs iN oUr caRs" HAM radio is always one of the best options, because there are relatively agreed on standards and everyone more or less knows how to find each other. But radios have existed even since before industrial society (and its consequences). As an added bonus, you can mod certain radios and then by becoming part of your local community emergency group you can get access to government radio encryption codes to help coordinate responses, or find out about the alien pucci in area 51

We could also just build houses with the heat in mind, but nowadays we have AC so the only thought for a houses design is how cheap it can be built and how pretty it looks. Passive cooling fuarrrks so hard.

The ground temperature about 20 or 30 feet down is a fairly constant 50 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit. If you bore holes to that depth and and install pipes that circulate a water based liquid, you can use this system to cool your house in the summer and help heat it in the winter. Companies are already springing up that will do this.