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May 20, 2013, 12:47am

Post-Apocalyptic Forums :: Post-Apocalyptic Survival :: General Survival Discussion :: Foot Care

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Topic: Foot Care (Read 636 times)

badhammer
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Foot Care
« Thread Started on Jun 18, 2011, 3:32pm »

Any thoughts on Post Apocalyptic foot care? I currently in a non post apocalyptic world am experiencing some pretty nasty ... rot; this makes me seriously ponder wtf to do about foot care in a post apocalyptic world.

I recently re-watched one of my favorite movies the Six String Samurai, the whole part where the red elvises get killed for their shoes got me think about foot care. Would people kill each other for shoes? Would people wear improvised footwear (i recently noticed in the game Brink that people wear flattened 2 liter soda bottles roped to their feet as improvised shoes)?

For foot care of extreme traumas like trench foot / jungle rot there is always the "piss on it" solution...

medicated food powder could be used as a bartering tool!

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KevinTheCynic
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Re: Foot Care
« Reply #1 on Jun 19, 2011, 6:30pm »

If you spend any time at all wandering around on foot, you will definitely want to take care of your feet and your footwear. People killing each other for shoes has happened in the past and it'll happen again if the circumstances dictate (there's not many of us in the so-called civilized world who have feet tough enough to go bare foot).

While medicated foot powder would certainly be good, plain old talcum powder is good enough as long as you thoroughly clean your feet and let them dry (ideally exposing them to the sun as well).
You get talcum powder from talc rock but if you can't find any in your area you can grind down tailor's chalk or welder's chalk which are both made from talk rock. If you get really desperate for talc you could grind down blackboard chalk but the additives for colour may be potential irritants (or worse) to sensitive skin.

As for improvised shoes, anything made of plastic (such as soda bottles) should be viewed as short-term emergency use only. That type of plastic is soft and wears out way too fast. A better choice would be rubber and if you can find them, the rubber from non-steel belt tyres is a good material to work with if you don't have sufficient tools.
Although plastic wears out too quick, sometime you're left with little alternative but you could also use thick wads of bark from certain trees. If you have the time you can also carve pieces of wood to serve as sandals (assuming you have some cord or rope to secure them to your foot - better start learning how to weave grass or stalks into rope!).

Can't think of anything else at the moment...

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TintedGrey
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Re: Foot Care
« Reply #2 on Jun 19, 2011, 11:33pm »

Jun 19, 2011, 6:30pm, KevinTheCynic wrote:

A better choice would be rubber and if you can find them, the rubber from non-steel belt tyres is a good material to work with if you don't have sufficient tools.

Here's a link to an "instructable" on how to make a pair of sandals out of non-steel-belt tires that I found a few months ago while searching the interwebs.
The author says that they do have a tendency to blister the feet when doing any "significant hiking", but, that when paired with moccasins, or a few pairs of heavy socks, they had no problems.

http://www.hollowtop.com/sandals.htm

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KevinTheCynic
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Re: Foot Care
« Reply #3 on Jun 20, 2011, 12:02am »

Hey TintedGrey, that was a great find in a short amount of time, very good link!

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Morg308
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Re: Foot Care
« Reply #4 on Jun 20, 2011, 4:13pm »

Pissing on your feet in the shower definitely does get rid of Athelete's foot. I had a weird one years ago where I had tiny, painful nodules growing in my heels. You literally have to cut them out. I can't think now of what they are called, but it sucked. It's basically a fungus that spreads, forming tiny black nodules. I'm pretty sure the Aliens infected me with it when they abducted me.

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checkman
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Re: Foot Care
« Reply #5 on Jun 22, 2011, 11:40pm »

Take care of those feet. I had to take a guy into the hospital a few years back. It was a mental hold. He was what is legally known as "gravely disabled" .Among his many problems one of his feet had gangerene and was rotting. Holy god what a stench. They ended up amputating that foot shortly afterwards. I wasn't there for that. Take care of those feet.

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Blacksheep
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Re: Foot Care
« Reply #6 on Sept 10, 2011, 12:04am »

First Post!

My only advice is from personal experience with what I suspect is a hereditary case of feet that are just awful. Cracked skin, athlete's foot, and nail fungus are all something I've dealt with. The former two have been covered pretty well by posts above, but if you ever run into a case of nail fungus, do yourself a huge favor and attack it with Tea Tree Oil. It will kill it and save you some pain and the prospect of having to pull out your own nail. As odd as it sounds, you can use a condom to keep it from being bothered further.

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