Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl
Modern firearms will become non-functional after a few decades of neglect, even under perfect storage conditions,
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No, not really. When my grandfather died my family had to distribute all the old guns he'd had in a closet for 25 or 30 years. No problem beyond a few flakes of rust that was easily scoured off. And regarding "perfect storage conditions", well, I went through a period where I was into old bolt-action military rifles. I have scraped the cosmoline off of quite a lot of them and they were well preserved and fully functional, even sitting in some non-climate-controlled warehouse for half a century.
Then there's stuff like
this, so you don't even need the cosmoline.
And even guns that you'd think were hopeless can usually be restored easily. The most advanced tool
this guy uses to get the gun functional by the 3:00-mark (except for the bullet stuck in the barrel) is a car battery.
I have shot hundred-year-old
ammunition for Pete's sake.
A lot of AtE players and GMs sort of emotionally
want there to be no guns around so that they can fight with spiked bats and crowbars and guitar-swords and whatnot. Which, awesome, do what you want. But don't be silly and try to say that it is "realistic". Khyber pass gunsmiths make AKMs
by hand.
A gun laying in a roofless abandoned building, or out in the open on some old battlefield, is obviously another matter.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Black Leviathan
Drugs don't last long but they're all religiously marked with expiration dates. Insulin is dead a day or two after the fridge warms up, same with withdraw medications, injected inoculations.
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The FDA says that Regular insulin lasts 28 days un-refrigerated (not more than 86*F). Still too short for an AtE setting, obviously.
But otherwise folks are correct that most medications are fine MUCH longer than the listed expiration date. The US military had a program called SLEP (service-life extension program) that listed more realistic expiration dates for many medications, because they had to stockpile them for use and it was too expensive to replace 100% of stocks over and over when they expired.
Most medications just get less effective over time, but a
very few get actually dangerous to use.
All of that being said, I'm a doctor not a pharmacist. Take it with a grain of salt.
For medications that might get stockpiled by FEMA or aid agencies see the
WHO Essential Medications List. It's worth noting that the list tried to have meds with good un-refrigerated shelf-lives
when possible.