Hello, I’m a man in an apocalyptic wasteland that before the cataclysm did nothing more strenuous than adjusting my ergonomic chair at my cubical. Now, for some reason, I am able to hunt water buffalo while fighting off hoards of zombies with hand crafted firearms.
Well, if you survive the first year that’s not totally unreasonable. You can get pretty fit in a year.
While raiding potentially Doritos filled trucks?
I don’t think so
Welp, you’ve sold me on the apocalypse.
Just get the protein ones.
One of the nice touches in The Last Of Us was Ellie finding pads when they were in a shop.
That absolutely made the game. I can’t tell you how happy I was to see a character in a post apocalyptic world address their menstrual cycle. Bravo.
I’m reading sarcasm here…
there’s no /s, so by Poe’s law it’s inconclusive
Based on their comment history, I’d lean towards them being sarcastic.
The discussion about the cup was also a good one.
See also reality TV shows like Survivor. Men all grow beards the women somehow still have a perfect bikini I line
Laser is a thing. I haven’t had to worry about bikini lines in about 15 years…
Not sure why you’re being downvoted because yeah laser and electrolysis both exist. I’m sure there is various hair styling too, both men and women to a degree because media, but like also people wanting to be on TV I feel are a demographic more likely to get their pubes zapped into shape.
Yeah I think it’s more likely that the TV studio will not allow a woman without a perfect bikini line on set.
Unrelated, but it’s been recorded that some tribes, to avoid body lice, actively plucked body hair. Some south american indigenous even used oitments and other concoctions made from plants to delay hair growth.
I live off grid in the woods. Grew a full beard because shaving in the cold and the dark sucks. Always make time to keep the lower regions well managed though.
Also knowing several women that live similarly… They don’t shave their legs but they do keep the rest of their hair very maintained.
The best thing I ever read on this subject in a zombie book:
“Why are you taking the jeans off that zombie?” “100% cotton; after boiled and washed, I can cut it up for pads.”
Can’t remember the rest of the book but this stuck.
By that logic, couldn’t you just do the same thing to the used pads?
Most sanitary are made to be single use. Cutting one and breaking it apart to understand how those are made is an interesting experience.
Reusable, washable pads exist but, to my knowledge, are not that main stream. But should.
I grew up surrounded by women recalling the time before discardable sanitary pads were a thing and every single one remembered using home made cloths made of thick and absorbent cotton, capable of being washed again and again, even for a lifetime.
Soft leather would also be an alternative, being absorbent, durable and washable.
I should have clarified, I meant the pads that she made from the jeans, therefore negating the need to harvest more.
Thanks for the info though, I didn’t know about the leather fact.
There is no such thing as too many pads, even more if we consider the setting of the story. I can even imagine being used as a barter item.
They could also double as bandages which would be in short supply
Good point
Linen (the fabric, not necessarily “bed linen”) is better, it absorbs the blood differently and leaves a cleaner surface for longer, but I am told that linen is pretty rare in the US, and cotton more common. You can put a leather or a synthetic core in to prevent soakthrough. Leather isn’t machine washable (less of an issue in a post apoc world, but I live in a pre-apoc world) so synthetic layer is better. They smell less and work well, and cost little. I recommend to all.
I’m going to remind this for when I write my own zombie book.
I’m not in the US, but linen is hard to find here as well. It’s expensive and to my knowledge the process is harder to mechanize than other fabrics. But the end product is a lot more durable. I’ve held an heirloom bed set made of linen and with years of use it was still very much new. And the feel…
I’m in Australia. Linen Teatowels are pretty common in second hand shops for cheap, and real linen bedsheets and similar are common in Aldi.
I wish they carry those here as well
Honestly, the one thing people should be disputing about post-apocalypse games is why it is people would even be scraping by to survive in the first place. We’re social animals and would band together out of necessity, and knowledge and high technology wouldn’t simply go away simply because half the population turned into zombies and started eating everybody else.
Just hike to the nearest town or something. Read a book. Build a cistern and some aqueducts or something. People have literally been doing just that for thousands of years so why would it be hard for people to do it in modern times?
You’d have to find people who knew how to do those things. Cisterns, aqueducts, and even farming didn’t just happen, they developed over time of people figuring out small things, and passing on the information generation after generation and building on the knowledge slowly. For the vast majority of human history, we didn’t do these things.
Take ten or twenty random people from modern society and see how many of them know how to grow plants in a harsh environment and good luck getting one who knows how to work with stone. Just look back into our past, even relatively modern history, how often groups of people who were experienced farmers with passed down knowledge were almost, or actually were, starved out by the environment. Surviving is hard, even for those who have practised it. Modern society has made us forget that. Nature is waiting to own us again, and when she does, it will be brutal and nowhere near as easy as you make it sound. There’s a reason we almost went extinct numerous times.
If you could hand pick a group of survivors, sure you could make a community, but you don’t get to hand pick. You get who you happen to meet out of those who happen to survive which means random, which means good luck keeping the required skill sets alive.
Because books don’t exist, amirite?
Books exist, but I don’t think most people are spending their time reading up for post-apocalyptic survival tips.
Luckily during a post-apocalypse you have nothing but time on your hands.
In between shooting the zombies and hard manual labour to ensure you can feed yourselves through winter
hello I’m a woman in an apocalyptic society who regularly fends off gunfights and who needs kevlar when I got this lingerie bust
In fairness, when is the last time youve taken a shit in a post apocalyptic videogame? Although I still think its cool if things like this are considered.
Keep in mind that pretty much ever post apocalyps character would have horrible diarrhea.
Just imagine every sneaking mission in Last of Us, Joel trying his best not to unleash a dirty bomb. Or the courier confronting Lanius atop Hoover Dam, chocolate water running down both their legs.
That would be fucking hysterical and if you defeat a boss by shitting all over them, infinitely more so.
In SCUM you definitely have to crap and pee regularly and absolutely can get diarrhoea.
I died more than once from untimely diarrhoea.
It goes back a long way.
Death Stranding
If things like this would be considered, the outcry would be huge because female characters have this disadvantage…
That actually would be a pretty cool feature to have in a game. I’m surprised they don’t. Also hunger and thirst.
Fuck. They need to do this. Bladder meter . When it gets full you start losing health. But you have to let your guard down to shit or piss and it takes at least 30s.
that would get so old lol. i would just be bored having to wait to take a shit when i already take enough during the day
Survivor games were dubbed “babysitting bars simulators” at one point when hunger, thirst, sleep and all other sorts of survivor meters were being added to all games because reasons. Unless they have some interesting ludo narrative dynamic they get annoying almost immediately. There’s a reason they don’t show up in recent games as often anymore.
Sort of reminds me of when they added laying water pipes and adding pumping stations and water towers to SimCity 2000. It was just an added grind which made it less fun.
The most vital part of city infrastructure in a city building sim is boring to you? 🤔 Why play the game then? Or do you think it’s all skyscrapers and disasters?
In the original SimCity, it wasn’t part of the game and it was more fun. I understand some people want it to be more realistic, but I don’t really care about realism in games, which is sort of the whole point of this thread.
Then SimCity is not the game for you. 🤷
Hello I’m an aging woman in a post apocalyptic wasteland that before the shit hit the fan had a changing biome and an infection once a month but now I have all these cuts all over my body from fighting off raiders that magically heal in a day if I wrap a shit stained shirt around it and can get away with not changing my underwear in over a year and can actually sleep through a full night without any issue or needing to pee. No prescriptions needed.
Women’s jackets have number sizes?
Yeah and they mean next to nothing because every brand decides what their numbers mean.
I’ve always heard other women have this problem, but I’ve personally only ever experienced it with expensive brands like designer stuff, which designers for some reason think all women are so tiny that their size 18 should only be just barely big enough to fit a middle school girl.
Cheap stuff, especially stuff I find at walmart and such, seems extrodinarily consistent, to the point where I just pick up my size or one higher if they don’t have it, and don’t even bother to check if it fits.Shoe sizes however… I’m 99% sure those are supposed to be standard, and yet I’ve found size 9s and size 12s that were the same size. Got sick of it and now I only buy men’s shoes unless I need something fancy. Even then, logger boots are fancy enough to me.
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This is generally quality control issues and it is obscenely rampant throughout most of retail clothing.
If you’re interested in buying a new pair of jeans, grab a few of the exact same size off the shelf and try them all on before making your choice or moving to a different size. It’s insane how much they differ (and while you’re at it double check that both of the legs are the same length).
The more you pay, the smaller they’ll pretend you are.
I’m told they do in America. But their sizes are weird.
Here it’s just M, L, XL…
Me? No, I’m not a raider, I have a regular job at the clothing spike and hair dye factory. We’re just down the road from the 17 garages.
Who doesn’t want to look good? Especially in a wasteland. That will get more use than it ever has in today’s world.
Menstrual cups OP.
Why yes, some men are indeed, gasp short!
That’s one thing that surprised me about The Last of Us show.
I mean, if you’re starving badly enough you can sometimes completely stop having your period. So in a post apocalyptic setting that one could be kind of believable.
The makeup is permanent. She has alopecia. And her father wore that jacket as he was wasting away in the last stages of cancer–everything else swallowed him up.
You can also be so stressed that you have multiple periods in a month! that would suck during the apocolypse.
I wanted to say ah I’ll just let my period roll down my pants who cares, but then zombies might smell the blood so
Zombies are not that much of a concern; common house flies would deal those quickly.
What should concern you should be the arise of new predators capable of smelling that blood, like feral dogs.
Aren’t old predators also a problem in that regard?
Here’s my take: we already know wolves, coyotes, bears, leopards, lions and tigers, along with everyother land carnivore will gladly add a human to the dinner menu of the chance poses itself. In the event of an apocaliptyc event, those would be already accounted for as dangers.
Dogs, I’d risk even domestic pigs, once cut off from human care, would become predatorial. Dogs, even today, can spontaneously form wild packs, capable of predatorial behaviour and aggressive towards humans. Pigs, on the other hand, have a scary capacity to regress and become feral when let loose on the wild; there are records of domestic pigs escaping from farms only to be taken down months or years later by hunters, turned into gigantic animals, covered in thick air and boasting long and sharp, tusk-like, teeth and a very mean and aggressive temper, not like the common wild boar that will actively avoid humans if possible.
These new predator would pose more of a threat than those we already account as such.
High stress levels on top of that would also have that effect.
And despite barely getting enough food to eat the men are all jacked bodybuilders with 2% body fat in perfectly fitting muscle tees. Nobody gets utis or fungal infections despite not bathing. No one has to deal either poor eyesight or healing loss (especially since they shoot guns constantly without protection) Nobody gets worms or other parasites from eating bad food. Or dies from dehydration due to diarrhea. Etc etc.
It’s almost like the point of these scenarios is fun escapism and isn’t about perfectly simulating an apocalyptic wasteland down to the most mundane and uninteresting parts.
Makes me appreciate The Road more cause everyone’s body in that movie SUUUUUCKED
Never watched the movie, but the book made me thoroughly fear a post apocalyptic society. Tlou or Twd looks like a visit to Disneyland in comparison.
That book had more mentions of the word “grey” than anything I have ever read. I couldn’t stomach watching the movie.
The movie, despite being unrelentingly bleak, actually isn’t quite as soul crushing as the book. At least it wasn’t for me.
It’s not really fun escapism when it blatantly throws out verisimilitude for the sake of presenting the same trite, cliche propagandized rehashed garbage to us over and over and over again.
I’ll take the realistic apocalypse movie that actually gets the little things right. The little things are what helps sell the big things, like, well, zombies.
Nobody gets utis or fungal infections despite not bathing.
Not bathing is not a problem for humans, skin and hair need time to adjust, but after that all good.
Edit for idiots: Yes you are going to stink to ass and sweat but you are not going to die.
Also farmers baths are a thing. A little bit of water, soap, sterilizer in the form of alcohol or vinegar, and rags or baby wipes is all you need to stay clean.
Do not mix soap and vinegar. You will just de-saponify the soap and end up with expensive oil and salt. Vinegar is an acid and soap is a base. Use them separately.
Yes, you learned a new word today:
I’ll just go ahead and keep vinegar out of my bathing process entirely thank you very much.
General Kenobi!
