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Post-apocalyptic drugs

Joined
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Little to no cultivable land because poison/radiation/future-ebola (it's an apocalypse after all, humanity didn't die for no reason), no chemical fertilizers or pesticides, only synthetic drugs can be produced, it's a matter only for very powerful individuals who can gather people and tools, and an army to defend the production installations.
Drugs dealing is made for currency, something very hard to come by in such a setting, or maybe even completely absent. Considering the production process, they look an extremely expensive business to me, defeating the principle of mass producing completely.
It's shaping like something only for a small circle of very rich spoiled guys, yet it's usually a very prominent theme.
What's your take?
 

lukaszek

the determinator
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meh, at one point producing new humans will be cheaper than healing them
 

Morpheus Kitami

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The radiation or poison alters some plants so they cause hallucinations or induce pleasure. Like how scorpions become massive or cows get two heads. And these plants can actually grow in the post-apocalyptic waste, so people grow them.
 
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too difficult to produce. i'm talking about REALISTIC post-apocalypse, not fantasy fallout where humanity ended but magical reactors provide energy for mazinga robots.
 

mondblut

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Ingrija
mushrooms
better idea. but they can't be grown in a cave, can them? i guess they'd still need extensive infrastructures for mass production.

What mass production? Humanity is supposed to be nearly extinct, ffs.

Drugs can be used as a means to keep population in check (addictive stuff you control the supply of), or as a survival aid (stimulants). Acid or pot won't be terribly useful, I agree.
 

Humbaba

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SADAT HQ
too difficult to produce. i'm talking about REALISTIC post-apocalypse, not fantasy fallout where humanity ended but magical reactors provide energy for mazinga robots.
Glue isn't exactly high tech. If we're talking about an apocalypse where huff-glue has become difficult to produce then you'd be stuck with natural shit like peyote.
 

spectre

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2008
Messages
5,380
Setting up some sort of alcohol production is probably the first thing people will do when they settle. It's a way to socialize and kill boredom.
Fermentation doesn't require high tech and people will often make do with local fruit and a bit of spit (see Peruvian Chicha etc., some sort of TV show featuring South American indigenous peoples show give you plenty of inspiration).
This assumes humanity devolves to tribalism. There will be places where some knowledge is retained and with easier access to some basic tech.
I mean, I haven't watched Breaking Bad in a while, but you really need two guys and a van to start cooking meth. Some will blow up until they get the OHS right,
but there's no po-pos to keep the playa down.

Still, when it comes to tech, a lot of stuff can be done without electricity, surprisingly, and even then, I would expect some infrastructure to survive. Nuclear plants are built to last,
and so are dam power plants - I would expect those to become community hubs after the apocalypse.
Not to mention, there might be wind farms and photovoltaics still standing. I think the question here is: will there still be people with the know to service these installations.
I'd expect such skills to be in high demand.

But this is about drugs.

A lot depends on the geographic location, a lot of shit like tobacco, poppy, cannabis, coca, etc. can grow naturally in certain climates, and this time round there's no gub'mint to stop your fun.
As a rule of thumb, if people cultivate a plot of land for subsistence, sooner or later someone will get the bright idea to grow something extra on a small patch.
I mean, even now there are guys who would totally grow their own if it wasn't for the law.
Nobody will probably bother or have the skills to start refining this shit, and with a lot of this stuff just chewing or making an infusion gives enough for a fix to get you throught the day.

Hallucinogens and other more "advanced" stimulants will probably be mostly of natural origin, again, in the context of tribalism, these things might be exclusive by shamen
and other dudes handling the spiritual side of things. Plenty of rites and rituals might use them.

The above assumes manufacturing drugs, but I think we shouldn't discount the fact that we probably have whole warehouses and shipping containers filled with
all kinds of shit. If the apocalyptic events wipes out 99% of people, this only means there's more for everyone.
 
Last edited:
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nuclear plants are built to go boom in a short while without constant and extremely specialized supervision, and tons of resources.
i noticed that almost everyone's conjecture is that the earth goes to shit in an instant, and the following one everyone is pulling their socks. no one considers disorders, anarchy, complete and total loss of infrastructure, full out worldwide civil war, the moment you lose communications the nations crumble to nothing, logistics disappear, transports vanish, and 99% of what we have depends on something on the other side of the world. now that we have everything, people shank each other for a chocolate bar, what do you think will happen when we'll not have anything anymore?
all your examples are very local, gas refineries are fragile complex buildings, relying on a worldwide web of transports. they're going down in an instant. gas can't be stocked, it lasts only 3-4 years, once that's gone, anything past 30 km is going to be as far as the next galaxy. horses? oxen? keeping them alive is more fantasy than teleporting. especially if something contaminated the ground or the water, which could happen for a multitude of reasons. if we're going to take into account the most classic of the nuclear winters, agricolture is mostly out of the picture.

i'm going down the mushrooms way, it seems the easiest to maintain in the most hostile environment.
 

hello friend

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Feb 26, 2012
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I'm on an actual spaceship. No joke.
mushrooms
better idea. but they can't be grown in a cave, can them? i guess they'd still need extensive infrastructures for mass production.
A lot of mushrooms handle radiation surprisingly well. As for growing them in caves, mushrooms can grow without light just fine, but apparently they need a small amount of light to start fruiting. I imagine you could get by on a very simple setup where lighting was only used to kickstart the process. Mass production of mushrooms IRL is incredibly easy - depending on the mushroom, but there are a fucking ton of them that are like the easiest thing on the planet to grow yourself, and in large quantities if you want. Grow em on shit, grow em on rice, grow em on whatever you've got.
 

Morpheus Kitami

Liturgist
Joined
May 14, 2020
Messages
2,476
too difficult to produce. i'm talking about REALISTIC post-apocalypse, not fantasy fallout where humanity ended but magical reactors provide energy for mazinga robots.
Like what are you imagining then? Realistic nuclear fallout isn't going to cause all the fields and farms to become barren, all that's going to happen is that radioactive isotopes are going to seep into the ground from the fallout. Plants will still grow like normal, but whenever a human or animal eats it, the radioactive isotopes that went into the plants go through them, with unpleasant consequences. In such a situation, the problem is finding left over seeds for pre-war drugs and removing the layer of dirt that the radiation is in.
 

Modron

Arcane
Joined
May 5, 2012
Messages
9,933
Little to no cultivable land because poison/radiation/future-ebola (it's an apocalypse after all, humanity didn't die for no reason), no chemical fertilizers or pesticides, only synthetic drugs can be produced, it's a matter only for very powerful individuals who can gather people and tools, and an army to defend the production installations.
Drugs dealing is made for currency, something very hard to come by in such a setting, or maybe even completely absent. Considering the production process, they look an extremely expensive business to me, defeating the principle of mass producing completely.
It's shaping like something only for a small circle of very rich spoiled guys, yet it's usually a very prominent theme.
What's your take?
Jenkem will become the drug of choice because it can be made anywhere by anyone.
 

spectre

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2008
Messages
5,380
i noticed that almost everyone's conjecture is that the earth goes to shit in an instant, and the following one everyone is pulling their socks. no one considers disorders, anarchy, complete and total loss of infrastructure, full out worldwide civil war, the moment you lose communications the nations crumble to nothing, logistics disappear, transports vanish, and 99% of what we have depends on something on the other side of the world.

Those 99% of things you're referring to are mostly high tech and luxury items (and batches upon batches of Chinese-made T-shirts).

Not sure why you think communications and logistics will collapse that easily and irrevocably. The majority of beneficiaries take these things for granted,
but there are folks devoted to keep this shit running with the know-how and contingencies.
Sure, there is going to be some chaos initially until everyone figures out what's what, but there are ham radios and older trucks and vehicles which don't rely on electronics (if stuff was hit by EMP along the way).
If there's an upside to most of the population buying the farm, it's that the rest won't need as many supplies, so setting up some rudimentary network will be this much easier.
Say you've got two tractors running on biofuel in a barn, hitch-em up and they might run a few supply runs. You'd have to think really hard to justify why such resources are unavailable.

I get what you're saying, and a lot depends on the exact post-apocalyptic scenario and different places wil be affected differently. City dwellers will probably resort to looting because more often than not
they don't possess any suitable skills for this situation. How it plays out eventually depends on the ability of local governments to keep their resources and structure intact
(it's funny how everyone assumes that once you hit the capital, the rest of the country will become headless chickens - a lot of places would actually welcome such a turn of events).
Rural areas already tend to have quite a lot of essential survival gear already on hand together with the know-how, so things will be different in the country.
There are villages where every other house is riddled with photovoltaics, there are biofuel installations, etc. I think a more serious threat to such communities would be the lack of
medical supplies and healthcare.

The tl;dr here is this: big cities will probably be the first to go - the intricate networks to sustain them might collapse, or they will be the prime targets for nuking.
Let's not forget the global urbanization rate is 50% - ish, which means we still have the other half of global population to work with.

What I'm also getting at is: you'll probably see a wholly different flavor of the apocalypse of you compare, say, California, Switzerland, Australia and subsaharan Africa.
Some places will go to hell immediately, others might barely notice the end times.

I think a lot depends on the type of apocalypse we're dealing with.
Even in the event of nucler war there will be places nobody thought were worth hitting.
We toyed with a global pandemic quite recently, turned out a bit unspectacular.
I have a sneaking suspiction climate change might not live up to the hype either.
Not sure what happens exactly if we're getting hit by another celestial body. Depends on size and point of impact, I guess.

You should give more credit to mankind's survivability, considering the genre we're discussing is basically an apotheosis of the theme.
Even with 99% of global population gone, that leaves us with 80 million souls which, according to some online guesstimate, would be almost 1,5x the earth's population in 1000BC.
Yeah, we're fucking roaches.

Jenkem will become the drug of choice because it can be made anywhere by anyone.
Hey man, at least do it properly:
Jenkem will become the drug of choice.
 

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