"On The Beach" blacksmith survival game.

[odblacksmith]

5 hours ago, Frosty said:

As the two of you made your ways up the stream mouth you notice some pretty deep piles of old moldering wreckage where the '64 tsunami drove things like canaries, docks, etc. It is just piles of rotting wood and such but . . .

Frosty The Lucky.

First thing i would be looking for is metal of any type,you did say how long until we would be forging?so Prevenge and I rummage through and find what we can(i assume as Dm you will let us know)we had hoped to scavenge some metal bits and generally useful junk from the piles.We headed back to join the others and get some spears made because i thought i heard someone say bears...

[Frosty]

Aferd Packer? Does this mean the first tool you make will be a hatchet, Thomas? I assume you  kept your kit on you yes? I know I always do when more than a day away from home. Diet and exercise will stretch it.

If I could choose where I were stranded with nothing but wet clothes a shingle beach in Prince William sound would be near the top of a divine gift list.

Od: You have to survive the night, it isn't raining but even in summer it's cool, low to mid 50s at night and running mid to high 50s during the day.

Have you looked at Crab Bay on Google Earth . . . well any satellite view?  The Google Earth view gives a pretty good look at the topology but its not clear enough to spot the tsunami debris, it's probably all rotted down and overgrown by now.

You and Prevenge found plenty of metal from various size pipe, household water pipe, say 1/2" up to 1" black iron. Various nails, spikes, angle iron, etc. Figure what you'd find in 1940s rural housing and one small fish cannery. You found roof tin all of it bent to some degree up to wadded up like a gum wrapper. The cannery wreckage has some large pipe fittings IF you can get them loose from the pipe. Even pieces of a boiler and steam engine.

You can take what you can carry in one trip today but the rest isn't going anywhere. The rest of the company is starting to work it's way back to the wide beach about center between the streams. Everybody's found enough material to make a basic shelter and someone got a fire going, the smoke is drawing folk in.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

 

[Frozenthunderbolt]

Having washed up on the beach a bit further along, the smoke brings me in to the others.
Lacking a cooking pot, and worried about giardia, I team up with Thomas to use a rounded cob of rock to dish one of the bits of tin he found into a large wock-like pot (armouring is armouring), it's rusty and apparently lead-paint free with no holes will it do to boil water to drink and cook shellfish if anyone can find some that looks and smells safe?
I vaguely recall ray mears boiling strips of willow bark with ashes (for the lye in them) in order to make it more pliable for cordage.

While we are sorting through the scrap iron sheet salvaged I work a triangular piece of the edge off a rusted sheet about a foot long on the hypotenuse. Using the same cobbles we used to dish the wock, and the 100+ pound boulder I fold the point of the triangle over on its-self towards the hypotenuse a few times leaving me with a trapezium of scrap metal reinforced along the top edge.

Despite having had a tetanus booster before I left on the our trip on the ill-fated boat, I am careful not to cut myself on the rusty iron as I start to work it back and forth over an abrasive looking slab of rock to remove the flaky rust, and try to establish something of a bevel on this knife/drawknife/sen, it will be useful to make a greenwood bow with.
Looking down the bay in the darkness I wonder what remains of the cannery that used to be here . . .

[Steve2md]

11 hours ago, Frosty said:

 It's not berry season but there is other green food. did they cover how to determine plant edibility? There is some darned good eats that look a LOT like some pretty fatal eats, looks like stuff in the produce section of the market too. Net fishing in Prince William Sound is largely purse seiners and they rarely lose nets and nobody would drift net here. Crab Bay just isn't good beach combing though it's not unheard of. You're pretty covered when you get a fire lit. What kind of shelter are you making?

Frosty The Lucky.

The general rule for plants is that 80% of the world's plants will either kill you or make you very uncomfortable. You are beter off with protein sources for the short term. 80% of the plants are out to get you, but 90% of the insects are safe to eat (some even taste good when roasted or fried).  Although I have done the "test a little bit and wait" method with plants, I prefer to stick to species that I can positively identify. If it comes down to it, you can get your vegetable needs from grasses at the least. Vitamin c can be the hard one, but any pine needles can be boiled to make a seriously vitamin c rich tea. Latitude is about right for fiddleheads, nettles, and a few others though...yum.

As for shelter type, a lean to against a large low hanging tree is fast and easy. Shelters should be as small as possible, since your body will try to heat the area around it. If the situation drags out for more than a week or so without rescue, I'd begin making a more permanant shelter. 4 sticks stuck in the ground with branches woven in makes for some pretty solid walls. debris/duff is great insulation. Layer the roof until it doesn't leak and add a hole for smoke to escape and you can have a tiny warming fire inside (cooking should be done away from the shelter when bears exist in the area.  If I got lucky with debris (porta pot/plywood/etc) the shelter gets even better. 

[Frosty]

Okay, our kiwi makes it up the beach from the SW. passes old piling stubs where the old harbor was below the old town site. When he hooks up with the company he mentions the chance of lead paint and a brief conversation about possible toxic debris, tetanus and someone mentions seeing bear tracks near the stream.  Polishing the rust off pieces of the tin with beach sand allows reasonably safe material to make things from.

Without searching more thoroughly the cannery debris looks like the other debris. There is a LOT of debris, the bay acted like a funnel concentrating village, cannery, chandelry and the docks along about 2 miles well above the high tide line. While I'm setting the game on Evans Island for the purposes of play it was abandoned after the quake and is now uninhabited so don't take a hike for the villages on the satellite map.

Steve: You're safe from accidentally mistaking Pushka sprouts (A frankly delicious early spring green) for bog Hemlock and dying in horrible pain. Fiddle heads are almost everywhere in lower shaded ground. Squirrels and birds are eating last season's berries from bushes with thorn line branches. Sorry, no pines in Alaska let alone in the sound, you have Black Spruce and Douglas fir for evergreens both are beginning to show fresh growth. It's mid April but it's been an easy winter and things are sprouting already.

You've spotted bear sign and a couple tracks yourself, not huge but a bear doesn't need to be very big. There's enough materials to make good shelter from old roof tin to pieces of tar paper in the debris. Willow and Alder saplings make excellent withe even teepees if you can cover one and the grass is tall enough and in a shady spot it hasn't started growing much, there's about half an acre of dry bear grass laid flat by winter snows.

You might suggest to the others to keep their eyes open for edible bugs, it's good food.

With the rest of the company there hauling fire wood and stones you have a decent fire going and the folk good at foraging are thinking about doing some cooking. But boy some fish, crab or maybe one of the deer some of you have seen tracks and sign of would make this a BBQ.

You've found boulders and cobbles in the eroded shore banks the other side of the large creek but the nice ones are pretty big. How are you going to carry one or more along 3/4 mile of gravel/shingle shore line and across the stream mouth?

I'm messing up the time line here. The posts I'm replying to now happened last night a couple hours before dark. It's getting pretty dark about 10:00pm right now and getting light by 6:00am.

Day 2 begins with everybody surviving and nobody getting sick from food poisoning thanks to the expertise of a couple company members.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[ThomasPowers]

My insulin pump will run about 4 days without recharging the battery or reservoir and it is water resistant. (with lower intake it will probably go 6 days)  In general I try to arrange to have a full charge/full tank when travelling to avoid issues.   Sorry to be a trouble and it's not even proper season to set me adrift on an ice flow...

How are the waves in this inlet?  Moving heavy objects by water is rather old school; but if you don't have a bunch of people to do the hauling....

BTW  "The Art Of Travel",  Francis Galton,  is a lovely book on running expeditions in the age of Victoria; full of ways to deal with all this sort of thing and some we probably won't run into---like warlike natives.

If someone wants to take on bears with a spear I think I should review Packer's cookbook again...

Also I want to start putting a large HELP out on a clear area that can be seen from the air.

[Daswulf]

If I couldn't at least carry my trusty Boy Scout pocket knife I probably wouldn't have been on the boat that sank.  Not saying I couldn't survive without it if it did get lost but it goes where I go. Actually two pocket knives always.

Surprised SLAG was the only one that thought to make a "help" signal/ sign or more around the isle.  Ok as I'm writing this Thomas mentioned it too. 

I mean, unless you don't want to be rescued. Have to plan survival too but assess  the situation, realize that your stranded and first tool is a big help signal. Then work on the rest.

I'm afraid I'm still limited mostly to the lower states on common wild edibles so that part would be challenging. Water before food tho. 

Interesting to follow along in reading this one tho. 

 

[Steve2md]

All critters have patterns. We can get by on foraged goods and a lucky hit on a deer, but the bear seems interesting. Large figure 4 deadfall would probably just injure it and make it change its pattern. Spear vs bear is too high risk as far as a hunt goes. I'm thinking pitfall with spikes or leg hold (hole in the ground, down facing spikes).  tires in the debris maybe? if so, light one up andfeed it a new tire every so often. Plenty of black smoke during the day, visible fire at night

[Prevenge]

Having survived the first day I think It is time for a basic upgrade from my stone hand tool into the iron age. I choose a decent sized spike (or any other suitable chunk of metal) and , still using my stone chopper, cut a hefty piece of Alder about two feet long and 1.5 at the thickest end. If it is the same or similar to the red alder found near my home to the south then I know it to be fairly dense and sturdy if the rot hasn't gotten to it. Now to the fire.

Using the fire , augmented by dry fir bark , I heat my metal. Assuming I have a large spike , I flatten the middle into a blade about 1" or more in width but leaving about an inch on either end of it round for lashing to the alder handle. Basically I want something shaped like " _[[[[]]]]]_ " ......I flatten and groove the mating side of the alder for the blade to fit and secure it with whatever is on hand .....preferably some wire , thin long nails and twine/cordage. After thrusting my crude axe into the air and grunting like a neanderthal I put it to work.

Crab traps could made using willows. Weaving side and bottom panels together to form an "uncapped pyramid /_\ " would make it easy for the crustaceans to enter but doubly hard for them to escape. Due to lack of a boat and float I would place these at low tide and anchor them using a stone at the bottom. There is usually plenty of rotting flesh to be found on any beach which would serve well as bait. I try and convince someone to find a sow with cubs and persuade her to let them milk her so we could make some butter.

[Frozenthunderbolt]

Having finished my hand blade last night, I've got and stripped some long bits of willow bark off of a few sapplings and boiled them with handfuls of ash from last nights fire to make them more pliable.

I'l fish them out and twist, then countertwist them into cordage to improve prevenges crab traps, I'm hoping that in return he'll knock over a 6inch, 6 foot straight willow sapling for me that I can split with wedged made from the gathered angle iron to work down to make a greenwood survival bow.

I'll ask everyone to keep an eye out for any white Birch or service berry saplings too, multiflora rose would be good for arrow shafts if anyone spots some too..

[ThomasPowers]

I'm asking the group to keep an eye on Prevenge as hist "milk the Momma Bear" suggestion seems to indicate a disassociation from reality.

[odblacksmith]

I saw him last he had eaten some berries after he grunted like a neanderthal...

[Prevenge]

The reason for my strange actions is that I am familiar with some of the mushrooms that are found in the Pacific northwest. Speaking of which...are there morels in Alaska? Finding a straight willow or anything that size that isn't evergreen might be challenging but I will take a look.

[Frozenthunderbolt]

1 hour ago, Prevenge said:

Finding a straight willow or anything that size that isn't evergreen might be challenging but I will take a look.

Some cedar and spruce varieties will work as a board bow, but generally only effective if backed with sinew - think we might get a deer in a figure 4 if we make it big enough? Not much to bait it with though and I don't think my willow cordage is up to the demands of a spring snare that will take a deer! Have the others gotten up to go beach combing again yet? We could really use some polly or nylon of any thickness they can find washed up.

[MrDarkNebulah]

Is it too late for me to join in? I stumble up the beach after somehow being lost and hit on the head in the wreck. I have no idea where I am, and confused as to why there are a bunch of guys with beards and weird weapons on a island. One of them sits me down and tells me what happened, and it is all coming back to me. I set to helping wherever I can, and recommend an addition to the crab traps of shaping them more like this

   /\  /\

/_____\

Ignore the space in the middle, it's essentially adding a funnel to the open pyramid design to make it easier to get crabs in and keep them in.

I also create a fishing spear from a long stick form the woods. The tip is splayed into multiple points and hardened in the fire. (It's wood, no fancy metal stuff yet). I try my luck at spear fishing. Do i catch anything?

[Frosty]

You guys using stone axes discovered early there weren't any decent flaking stone so you ground hand axes from thick graywakie a medasedimentary stone that breaks in flat bedding and fracture planes allowing good starting pieces and isn't so hard it doesn't grind reasonably easily on one of the granite cobbles you broke. It's not nearly as sharp as flakes stone but it's a LOT more durable.

Bummer, Tag Alder makes really poor bows as does the local Willow. Experimenting you discover you can get good draw weight from thick pieces but it's rebound is pretty dead. Willow saplings are reasonably springy and make good darts. Maybe if you find a baleen whale washed up on a beach you can winkle out a composite bow.

While there isn't a lot of drift washing up in Crab or Sawmill Bays you can see drift on the S and SE facing beaches of some of the Islands in the channel between Evans Island and Latouche Island. Maybe time to think about searching farther on the beaches. You can see bright orange floats scattered around. And the sort of cube looking thing is floating lower in the water and drifting South East off shore but that might speed up when the tides get running good.

One of the guys collecting steel brought back a 3/8" dia. piece of spring(?) maybe 20" long from some old time machine, not a vehicle so it wasn't obvious. It's sound and the way it makes the boulder anvil (pretty small at this point) jump when being forged cues the guys it's NOT mild steel.

At least two of you have seen clear bear tracks and sign. What did you do with last nights dinner scraps?

One of the missing party makes his way into camp pretty early in the morning seeming lost and confused. You recognize him as one of the people on the boat and start bringing him up to speed. During his walk following the smell of smoke he noticed a fresh major slide on the mountainside across the Channel and points it out. One of the party theorizes a BIG land slide might be what caused the wave that capsized the Minnow. If you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Lituya_Bay_megatsunami

Everybody's seen a low and a high tide by now, it's going out and pretty low now.  A couple of you are working the exposed bottom picking up shell fish and kelp, you find a Tide and Fishing Regulation book between a couple rocks. Towards the East the little creek looking thing, about 100' wide max x 200' long is empty and has a mud bottom. There is some exposed wreckage.

Somebody starts talking about how good wild mushrooms are and the rest of the group looks at him like he's out of his mind. Nobody recognizes the few types visible except for general type, cap vs. puff ball for instance. Sample at your own risk.

Seeing the reach of the tides has talk about fish and crab traps going strong. Is the pyramid structure trap being discussed the trap overall or the opening in the trap? While talking about baiting crab pots you realize that even with tides like these you don't see dead fish on the shore, just the occasional fin or bit of skin.

The fire hardened, sharpened willow fish spear nabs a small halibut sleeping in a shallow pool. Under 15lbs. REALLY small halibut. Good thing he thought to make a fish bonker to carry while spear fishing.

Thomas and Slag have a large SOS laid out in the large meadow behind the scrub above the shore about finished. They're using leafy branches broken off and jabbed into the ground. It's a couple clear acres and the letters are a good 25' high. That sound about right?

Our Kiwi friend is showing folk cordage twisting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Lituya_Bay_megatsunami

Frosty The Lucky.

[Steve2md]

Reality bleeds into the game...:  I slept terribly last night due to my spinal injury and woke up in extreme pain this morning... Hoping prevenge shares some of those mushrooms to help ease the pain and get me functional

 

[John in Oly, WA]

I guess, after Google mapping Evans Island, I'd wander over to the ATM at the Wells Fargo Bank in Chenega Bay, withdraw some cash and head to the Northern Delights café for breakfast. LOL But, that would probably be cheating.

[Frosty]

To everyone's relief Prevenge was joking he knows enough about mushrooms to not take chances but your expressions had him chuckling to himself all night. He did make up a large batch of willow bark, leaf tea and offers Steve a large cup full. Steve isn't the only one who is stiff and sore from sleeping rough. Everybody is finding things to use as a cup and drinking tea. There was a good cache of glass net floats and one of you knows how to use a hot wire to break bottles and floats without shattering them so everybody has a glass cup to drink from. He's doing nicely trading for breakfast nibbles and bits of salvage that catch his eye.

There's one cordweiner in the group, anybody know how to thatch?

A guy nobody recognizes wanders into camp waving a debit card looking for an ATM. Seems you weren't on the only boat to be capsized in the landslide generated tsunami. He's also carrying a couple plastic floats and a  pot, about 2qts. he found on the beach around the NE cape. He says there's a lot of flotsam and jetsam washed up around the cape where the shore is directly on Latouche Passage.

During the night Steve was awake often enough to see a campfire on Bettles island out in Latouche passage. There's no way to tell but maybe the Skipper and Gilligan didn't go down with the Minnow.

--------------

A little GM background on this reality and ours.

For you guys looking at Sat pics and the rest. The Chenega didn't have a permanent village in Sawmill Bay only fishing camps, their main village was and is on Chenega Island. Sawmill Bay is good fishing when the salmon run. The main spawning stream is at Port San Juan in the real world. There's a large stream with a couple hundred feet of fall, running over several water falls. It has a wide rocky mouth into the bay and salmon span on the beach. It's an unusual spawning stream. Port San Juan is a Prince William Sound Aquaculture hatchery. (PWSAC, prounounced pizwak) If this game looked to last a few years it'd be THE place to set up a permanent settlement. Water power is right there and the good land is on a bluff about 50' above the tide line in sheltered waters.

Unfortunately there are no permanent settlements, air strips, ATMs cafes or much of anything but tsunami debris and long abandoned fishing industry stuff. You'd need a good boat to safely make the new village of Chenega on Chenega Island about 20 miles North and inland.

--------------------------------------  Back to game land.

You've come to the realization this bay is too sheltered to catch much drift so your resources are in the tsunami debris, the Alder and Willow thickets. There isn't much chance of finding things like nets, tarps, beached boats, etc. in Sawmill and Crab Bays. It is however about as good a place to set up camp as I know of.

Oh, everybody survived the night. You're stiff and sore but nobody ate or drank anything poisonous so other than a little cold nobody's sick. The Tide and Fishing reg booklet says it's safe to eat shell fish this month.(I'm just saying that for game's sake, I don't know and didn't look it up) Better still everybody has a fishing license.

Amongst the rule breaker's pocket knives one of you has a Leatherman and has been industriously snipping spring wire out of an old rotted mattress.

You're still looking for something to make a bellows from. One of you finds a BIG bolt over by the little bay that runs dry at low tide to your East, it's 1 1/4" Dia. x about 6' long. 

And to answer Thomas' earlier question Sawmill and Crab Bays quite are well sheltered, chop rarely runs 1' even when Latouche Passage has storm waves running to 5-6'.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

 

 

[ThomasPowers]

Aha---I hide my fishing license and wait for Fish&Game to haul me off!

[Frosty]

31 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

Aha---I hide my fishing license and wait for Fish&Game to haul me off!

Good plan now if you'll just poach something they'll probably be right along. Faster than AST if you start applying the Alferd Packer banquet technique.

Your glucometer readings are marvelously mid range, your pump has hardly twitched..

Frosty The Lucky.

[Steve2md]

A few of us cobble together a raft large enough for five of us (2 rowers and a navigator, who can rotate duties, with room for 2 rescues if needed) and begin rowing out near the end of high tide toward the fires we saw last night. As the tide withdraws, it pulls us farther out, saving valuable energy. It is our intent to see who these other people are and what their resources are. We can also determine if better living conditions or rescue visibility are available. We will signal the rest of the group that evening. 2 bonfires=Stay, we will start back in the morning, 3 fires=Come to us. 

[Frosty]

32 minutes ago, Steve2md said:

A few of us cobble together a raft large enough for five of us (2 rowers and a navigator, who can rotate duties, with room for 2 rescues if needed) and begin rowing out near the end of high tide toward the fires we saw last night. As the tide withdraws, it pulls us farther out, saving valuable energy. It is our intent to see who these other people are and what their resources are. We can also determine if better living conditions or rescue visibility are available. We will signal the rest of the group that evening. 2 bonfires=Stay, we will start back in the morning, 3 fires=Come to us. 

Out of what? I was serious, there isn't much decent sized wood on this side of the island nor flotsam in Sawmill or Crab bay. I hear there was logging on the other side and on other islands but there isn't much here. Maybe you should walk around the cape where the newest member says there are lots of floats and other flotsom washed ashore.

I'll tell what being on an unsheltered shore along Latouche Passage is like when you get back to camp.

Frosty The Lucky.

[MrDarkNebulah]

Well now that we have the fish, we atleast have some food for bait and to give people going on a journey around the island. 

[Frosty]

1 hour ago, MrDarkNebulah said:

Well now that we have the fish, we atleast have some food for bait and to give people going on a journey around the island. 

An action proposal. Takers? Discussion?

Who's making the crab trap/pots and how are they coming? Hooks, how about line or do you know a different way to fish with hooks?

I see you're not from bear country, good thing someone else in the group knows it's a bad idea to carry fish, especially RAW FISH around bears.

Frosty The Lucky.