Quote from: The Traveller;687598Which works great right up until someone shoots you for waving a gun in their face.

Another good reason to have a gun: other people will, and if you don't you can't shoot them in the face first.

Good multitool.

Pro-fuckoff knife/batoning here.

Quote from: RPGPundit;688026Another good reason to have a gun: other people will, and if you don't you can't shoot them in the face first.

Solution: don't just bring a gun, bring a bunch of friends with guns.

Actually "friends" is very good "equipment" to have in this scenario...

Quote from: RPGPundit;688026Another good reason to have a gun: other people will, and if you don't you can't shoot them in the face first.

That's probably the only good reason to have a gun, along with hunting. If you were planning to pad out your inventory by simply including a gun, you'll almost certainly end up with a surplus of lead sooner rather than later.

May as well shave your hair into a purple mohawk and tie on the leather chaps while you're at it.

Quote from: Sope;686925Ravenswing: you accusing me and Traveller is quite odd. You said earlier that axe is necessary and only rookies use camp stoves. When I tried to say that there are uses for camp stoves and it's not just rookies who use those, you said that it's luxury. Then I said that no it isn't and Lord Rocket also agreed with me and even gave some examples when gas stove might be useful.

First off, I never said "only rookies use camp stoves," a point on which I've already corrected you once.  I don't know whether the language barrier is the issue or your reading comprehension is, but you can stop claiming that any time. (Then again, you're the one who gave serious advice about not eating ice or snow ... to an OP dealing with an outdoor scenario set in Florida.  Eeesh.  Nuff freaking said.)  

What I did say was that rookies very often have trouble cooking over camp fires. There's nothing at all wrong with using a camp stove; I've used a Coleman 2-burner propane stove for camping for over twenty years now, and my father owns a Coleman model he got from his father.  They're convenient and very simple to use.

They're also heavy and bulky.  Mine is about the size of a briefcase, and weighs several pounds.  The propane canisters that fuel them weigh a pound a piece, and they're good for about four, five hours worth of burn.  For me, that's fine.  For about a decade I had a permanent backwoods campsite set up that I occupied three months out of the year, and since then I've been an auto camper.  I have the ability to ferry a lot of gear.  (Hell, I use a futon for a camp bed.)  

But the OP wasn't talking about auto camping.  He was talking about what an average suburban teenage boy and teenage girl could carry on their backs for a several hundred mile trek.  Even a backpacker's stove, weighing a half-pound, still runs afoul of that canister of propane ... which gives one of them about three hours worth of burn, and still weighs that pound.

So ... perhaps you'll tackle again the question you failed to answer the first time: what in that packload do you propose dropping in order to carry several propane tanks and a camp stove?  See, I don't give a damn how much you're positive that a camp stove is essential gear: what constitutes essential gear in this scenario is what you can afford to carry.  These poor kids are already badly up against it for weight and gear, and are already going to have to depend heavily on scrounging (for one thing, it's a mortal lock that their footwear will need to be replaced during the trip).

So how about it?  Let's see your list, broken down by weight.

Ok:

Rucksack, 65-80 litres (2 kilos) x2
Sleeping bag (2 kilos) x2
Foam mattress (less than kilo) x2
Big knife, leuku (less than kilo) x2
Trangia kettle, primus boiler, 2 spoons, 2 water bottles, maybe one plate (less than 2 kilos)
2 small gas bottles (less than kilo)
Fishing gear (2 kilos)
Rope (2 kilos)
Socks, underpants, t-shirts (3 kilos) x2
Warm clothing for nights (2 kilos) x2
Repair stuff, medicine, matches, compass, maps (1 kilo)
Tarp or waterproof cloth for building a lavvu (3 kilos)

I even rounded up some stuff. That's less than 33 kilos combined. Girl can carry 16 kilos and boy 23, so they can take at least 6 kilos of food. Even more if they get rid of tarp and build a lavvu out of wood everynight or sleep in abandoned buildings.

And that snow and ice thing was just an example that those are not clean water. If I were a survivor in Florida I would find abandoned white Ferrari and drive the hell out of there. Wet and hot weather and swamps are a call for diseases. Or am I wrong? My experiences of Florida come from Miami Vice and some movies.

And yes, small propane bottles are found in specialty stores but so are some of the stuff in your list. Aren't we talking about optimal gear here. Most people won't even have foam mattresses, good sleeping bags or rucksacks in their homes.

Quote from: The Ent;688063Solution: don't just bring a gun, bring a bunch of friends with guns.

Actually "friends" is very good "equipment" to have in this scenario...

Agreed.  As usual, charisma is one of the most important stats.

On the topic of stoves:

Spoiler

Weighs mere ounces. Fuel is wherever you can find dry wood.

Here's a how to: http://gear-report.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/instructions-wood-gas-stove.jpg

Quote from: mightyuncle;689063On the topic of stoves:

Weighs mere ounces. Fuel is wherever you can find dry wood.

Here's a how to: http://gear-report.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/instructions-wood-gas-stove.jpg

Yeah a gram of knowledge is worth a kilo of gear - people have died of 'rabbit sickness' in pine forests when all they needed to do was boil up a few pine needles - but in the OP's case they haven't got that unfortunately.

Just on the topic of stoves, Florida is a pretty damp and humid location as Lord Rocket mentioned, while there might be plenty to burn actually burning it is a different matter. I can see utility in a backpacker's stove, you could get two weeks use out of three hours if used wisely.

The firearms are not necessarily key. Historically, largescale disasters very rarely result in common citizens blowing each-other away or stealing from each-other, usually most of the deliberately-caused deaths are caused by those working for the government - police, Army and so on. And police make an effort (as after Katrina) to seize private citizens' firearms. You'll never outgun those guys. Other deaths are caused by jumpy fruitloops.

Common citizens tend to make an effort to help each-other out. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina lots of young black guys were killed by middle-class white guys who got a bit overexcited. One-third of the police department deserted, many of those who stayed engaged in wholesale looting (as opposed to just grabbing stuff needed for day-to-day survival), other police in nearby counties turned refugees away at gunpoint. But common citizens, in general, helped each-other out.

Of course in all historical disasters, there's been a wider world ready to come in and help - however slow and incompetent the response may be, eventually they sort their shit out and do help out. In an rpg-like apocalypse scenario things will of course be different, and people may behave differently when there's no hope.

But most people are unlikely to be running around raping and murdering for the sheer badarsedness of it. Paranoid and jumpy fruitloops - some in uniform, some in their boat shoes - would be the greatest threat of violence.

Of course, you may want the firearms for wild animals. But it's an apocalypse, there are plenty of already-dead people for the alligators to eat, they're not going to bother with the ones who struggle

Lack of clean drinking water will be a big deal, a postapocalyptic world becomes like the Third World, where ordinary diaorrhea can be lethal and does indeed kill many.

Quote from: Sope;688259And yes, small propane bottles are found in specialty stores but so are some of the stuff in your list. Aren't we talking about optimal gear here. Most people won't even have foam mattresses, good sleeping bags or rucksacks in their homes.

Missed the part where the OP was talking about having camping gear to hand, did you?

Yes, indeed; I assumed in my list that optimal gear was to hand.  If it isn't, these kids are a lot more screwed than they were in the first place.  Turn ultralight titanium cooking gear into whatever you have lying around the kitchen, the weight doubles or triples.

The issue isn't whether the specialty canisters for some of the very lightweight backpackers' stove fuel are to hand at the start; it's how readily they can be replaced.  Some of those stoves have fuel tanks about the size of a mug of tea, and they won't give you much more than a half-hour's full burn: they're intended for a weekend jaunt.  They're also only available in specialized camping stores.  (The small propane tanks I've been mentioning, by contrast, are available pretty much everywhere, in every Walmart, every department store and in many grocery stores.  If you keep insisting on responding to my posts, could you make an attempt to do so accurately?)

As far as you thinking you can put 40 kilos on these kids, err?  The 23 kilos you think you can put on a sixteen-year-old boy's back for a 400 mile trek is a full load for a grown man who's an experienced backpacker -- the backpacker's rule of thumb is to carry no more than 30% of your body weight.  You've overestimated that by nearly half again.

Finally, as far as "driving the Ferrari" goes ... well, sure.  Wouldn't we all.  And when the duke asks us to get the magic sword from the dungeon, why don't we just subcontract it out to those schleps over there, we split the loot as a middleman fee, elapsed adventure time 15 minutes?

"A friend of mine started watching Revolution recently, and while neither one of us are crazy about the show, we both agree that the concept has the potential for an interesting game." "The game focuses on the collapse of law and government ..."  I see those words, I presume that we've got a wild and woolly post-apoc situation, and that expecting the folks the next town over to be kind and helpful, or figuring you can just serenely bicycle all the way to Georgia, is not remotely in the cards.

In the Revolution series, the folks generally are kind and helpful, it's the government and its lackeys who are not; the first episode has uniformed militia going into a peaceful village and going all medieval despot on them. Like with the NOPD during Katrina, if you avoid anyone in uniform you'll probably be safe.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;689072The firearms are not necessarily key. Historically, largescale disasters very rarely result in common citizens blowing each-other away or stealing from each-other, usually most of the deliberately-caused deaths are caused by those working for the government - police, Army and so on. And police make an effort (as after Katrina) to seize private citizens' firearms. You'll never outgun those guys. Other deaths are caused by jumpy fruitloops.

In a postapocalyptic scenario the model to look at probably isn't so much a major US city after a hurricane, as it is, say, Afghanistan.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;689479In a postapocalyptic scenario the model to look at probably isn't so much a major US city after a hurricane, as it is, say, Afghanistan.

Kyle is right though, study after study has shown that major disasters have led to increased altruism among people, with one exception and that is areas which were rough to start out with temporarily got more dangerous as scores are settled etc. Predation is very limited and short term.

Admittedly we have no data points on something like a famine in a developed country because it simply hasn't happened, so all bets are off there, but for the most part people look after one another in times of trouble.

The media and entertainment industries love to wax lyrical on man-eats-man stuff but that's nonsense. The ten people trapped in an underground complex don't kill each other in a spiralling psychodrama of tension and edge of your seat mental collapse, they mostly just sit around playing cards.

Most post apocalyptic scenarios are a bit silly anyway though since they assume that the vast majority of people are dead and that they took all their stuff with them. If most people are dead the survivors are going to have an insane abundance of supplies to play with, and a surprising amount of it will last a very long time. Full on nuclear war would be the exception to the rule here since property and people are wiped out, as well as making large geographical areas inacessable for a while, but even there it wouldn't take long for civilisation to assert itself again.

Co-operation is written in our very genes, it's far too valuable a survival tool not to be.

Quote from: RPGPundit;689479In a postapocalyptic scenario the model to look at probably isn't so much a major US city after a hurricane, as it is, say, Afghanistan.

Sure. And the authorities in Afghanistan are the foreign forces, the Afghan police and Army, and the Taliban.

Who is more threat of violence and theft to the common Afghan goatherd: another Afghan goatherd, or the Afghan police, the Taliban, etc?

Quote from: The TravellerCo-operation is written in our very genes, it's far too valuable a survival tool not to be.

The issue is that some of the people co-operating won't be very nice. If control is contested between several groups (as in Pundit's Afghan example), things can get nasty. Or even if not nasty, at least interesting. So you co-operate, cool. But who do you co-operate with? Well, people like yourself, however wacky you are. New groups appear.

When I've run postapocalyptic scenarios, that's been the interesting thing for me: given the collapse of traditional social structures, what new structures appear? And so you have the racist slaver skinheads group, the fundamentalist Christian group, the military "benevolent" dictator group, etc. The disruption of communications with someone like a global EMP makes it easier for these smaller groups to form. They become like little island kingdoms for the PCs to visit and befriend or fuck with. And ALL of them are convinced they're building a utopia