Making Penicillin at Home

https://www.doomandbloom.net/making-penicillin-at-home/

by gscott • 8 years ago

178 65 8 years ago

jk27277• 8 years ago

TLDR: if, in a post apocalyptic world, your home laboratory is still running, you are able to grow penicillium or aspergillus cultures. These may, or likely may not, produce penicillin..

msla• 8 years ago

I'm curious about what, exactly, the people who take this seriously think they're preparing for.

In a scenario severe enough you're trying to make your own antibiotics, you can assume hospitals aren't functioning, which means civil society is gone.

You can't assume the government is gone, BTW: Every power vacuum will get filled, one way or the other, and there are plenty of unrecognized governments which are as governmental as they need to be to enforce their idea of order in a defined region.

Therefore... you, the prepper who was responsible enough to squirrel away tools and knowledge and supplies, are a target. If the government is trying to rebuild, it's going to be seizing supplies and, possibly, conscripting anyone capable of using those supplies who didn't have the good sense to leave when the getting was good. If the government isn't trying to rebuild... well, since when have gangs not looted anyone with stuff worth having?

It comes down to a survivalist fantasy, which amounts to one person, one family, one karass, against the world. A small, intimate group, as opposed to the granfalloon with guns which is called a military. Well... when a small group goes up against a big group, the small group is almost always fated to lose.

"Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 1813. ME 13:333

senectus12• 8 years ago

People have been playing too much Fallout.

noonespecial• 8 years ago

The funniest ones for me are the ones who focus obsessively on some things while missing glaringly obvious others: The guy with 2 AR15's, a water reclamation system and 7 years of macaroni in his basement but is so out of shape he can't run up a flight of stairs.

Want to really prepare for TEOTWAWKI? Try jogging.

jcims2• 8 years ago

What about cases like Katrina and Puerto Rico, where there are no local services but there are zero threats to the sovereignty of the federal government?

You don't need to survive Mad Max style for decades, you just need to make it a month or two until roads are open and power is back on. In this case having a stash of antibiotics could mean the difference between life and death for someone that's injured, and as the article points out there's no real good reason to grow your own when you can buy serviceable alternatives online.

arkh• 8 years ago

http://www.shtfplan.com/emergency-preparedness/a-survival-q-...

Conclusion: trust only your family.

ahje• 8 years ago

I live in the countryside. During winters (starting about this time of the year), the roads here are barely usable under normal conditions. We occasionally end up not being able to get to the store for two or three days due to heavy snowfall. We also have occasional power outages caused by heavy snowfall.

I'd say it's only a matter of time before we're hit by a severe blizzard and we need to manage on our own for a week or two. We do have antibiotics and other basic medical supplies at home, for such occasions. We also keep enough food and firewood for at least two weeks, sometimes more.

As for making one's own antibiotics, one of the most commonly repeated survivalist mantras is that one should always have and maintain a skill that will be useful in order to rebuild, in case society collapses. That way, if we do end up with zombies roaming the streets, Illuminati death squads chasing survivors, and a runaway AI trying to exterminate humanity, you will have something to offer the groups trying to rebuild.

Personally, I know how to make booze. My neighbors do, indeed, seem to appreciate that skill. :D

imhoguy• 8 years ago

In a scenario severe enough you're trying to make your own antibiotics, you can assume hospitals aren't functioning, which means civil society is gone.

The problem of the society is that more and more people count on "How to..." lookup on the Internet and can hardly imagine empty pharmacy or shop shelves.

I worry that the civil society is too much dependent on centralized services prone to interruption: specialized knowledge, production lines, banks, methods of payment, medical drugs, mobile networks, electricity, drinking water and petrol supply, government, ISPs, online services.

It comes down to a survivalist fantasy, which amounts to one person, one family, one karass, against the world.

No, it is to help a community around you to survive a crisis. Local or global - that doesn't matter. I think the take away from all prep efforts is preserving basic tools, knowledge and skills in the society. In case of crisis, the prepared community can quickly rebuild basic services and sustain itself before a help arrives. Also it can share or barter with other communities.

mirimir• 8 years ago

You can't assume the government is gone, BTW ...

Right. It'll be some mix of police, ex-military and professional criminals.

Edit: Reminds me of Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog. The film adaptation was OK too.

pjc50• 8 years ago

Sadly it's easily possible to get into situations where the hospitals and society are "functioning", but civil society has decided not to give you any medicine. It seems to be an occasional problem in the US, but also happened during e.g. the Greek financial crisis.

Antibiotics are one thing, but I know several people who are dependent on insulin, and more who are dependent on more complex cutting-edge medication. This is why we need to keep the supply lines open, civil society civil, and international trade operating.

The fact that the UK is now seemingly going into "state prepper" mode for an avoidable self-inflicted disaster is starting to frighten me. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/brexit-no-deal-ins...

ginko• 8 years ago

Might not work so well if the apocalypse was caused by an antibiotic-resistant plague outbreak.

arnsholt• 8 years ago

Also, I think this most likely produces Penicillin G, which has to be given intravenously because it's broken down by stomach acid...

Angostura• 8 years ago

Or could useful be spread on open infected wounds.

AdmiralAsshat• 8 years ago

Only if the post-apocalyptic world still has sliced bread.

oxide• 8 years ago

Site is 503'd, unfortunately.

Odenwaelder• 8 years ago

*How to kill yourself with fungal toxins because you fail to grow the correct species.

setquk3• 8 years ago

Not sure I’d risk this myself. However when I did chemistry at A level at school, with the intention of going into pharma for a bit, I did extract aspirin from willow bark. This is something you can do relatively easily and safely yourself. Disclaimer: if you kill yourself it wasn’t my fault.

Thanks to my wonderful chemistry teacher I got a couple of hours at Glaxo and run NMR on it to validate it. Was an amazing experience even if it was a bit worrying getting the train there with vials of white crystalline substance on me.

ian0• 8 years ago

Quick-link for those wondering how to do this (as I was):

https://home-remedies.wonderhowto.com/how-to/make-aspirin-fr...

setquk3• 8 years ago

To add, this wasn't the method I used. It was more "industrial". I don't want to describe it here as there are a number of problems with it.

Firstly, the output is near pure which brings dosage problems.

Secondly, the output isn't 100% pure and brings storage problems.

Thirdly, you don't have an NMR spec handy. If you do I am impressed :)

onetimemanytime• 8 years ago

Heard about tea, and used boiled willow ends as rooting hormone (not sure if it worked any better or...) HOWEVER, one needs to be careful as dosage is not know when you mix stuff in your kitchen for human consumption. That scares me.

entity3453• 8 years ago

Just to be clear: There is no aspirin in willow bark. Willow bark contains salicin which metabolizes into salicylic acid (which is still different from aspirin, ie. acetylsalicylic acid).

ChristianBundy• 8 years ago

salicylic acid

I could be wrong, but isn't that the main ingredient in Stridex? I used to have oily skin (before changing my diet) and I could've sworn that I used salicylic acid as a chemical exfoliant.

dawnerd• 8 years ago

Actually found it more interesting that you can buy aquarium antibiotics without a prescription. But doesn’t antibiotics have a fairly short shelf life? Wouldn’t that be kinda difficult to stockpile?

jjeaff• 8 years ago

Dry pill form antibiotics will easily last 10 years without losing too much potency.

sneak• 8 years ago

They used to sell them on Amazon until they got wind of it. An old homeless friend taught me that trick, and as someone who was uninsured in the US for a long time (my health plan for most of the last decade was “worldwide, excluding USA”) I used it a number of times when treating minor infections (versus giving the urgent care $200).

Make sure you take a full course, in any event, and recall that many bacteria these days are resistant to Penicillin.

These days, I stock my prepper kit of antibiotics from https://www.alldaychemist.com, and they take bitcoin now too.

InclinedPlane• 8 years ago

The big breakthrough with penicillin wasn't discovery it was mass production. Many fungal species produce it, but it took an extensive search to find one that produced a lot of it and then "genetic engineering" (via mutagenesis) to produce a variant which made enough to make the whole thing feasible.

tcbawo• 8 years ago

Perhaps to combat drug resistance to human-facing bacteria, we should be promoting resistance in bacteria that infect fungi. Eventually, nature may lead us to the next step in the arms race.

kilpikaarna• 8 years ago

I thought most of the stuff you'd want antibiotics for is resistant to penicillin by now.

For the cuts and bruises mentioned, clean and bandage them and make sure your tetanus vaccination is up to date. Maybe make some calendula and/or yarrow extract, if you're into making your own remedies.

agumonkey3• 8 years ago

Reminds me that to do just about anything, you need tools, and most importantly measurement tools. Metrology is subtle. I'd love to know how to make sub milligram scale.

Something a little more stable than http://sci-toys.com/scitoys/scitoys/mathematics/microgram_ba...

ps: More like https://erowid.org/psychoactives/hardware/hardware_info1.sht...

JulianMorrison• 8 years ago

You could cheat, and make the stuff in bulk, then just use a little of it.

jcims2• 8 years ago

Saw this DIY one a few years back on youtube, looks like the Erowid one, thought it was a neat build - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n90whRO-ypE

YouTube just dug up a a real nice breakdown that Ben Krasnow did - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta7nlkI5K5g

agumonkey3• 8 years ago

I see Ben Krasnoz I click

jsjohnst• 8 years ago

I agree, it annoys me that good quality 1mg scales can be readily acquired for around $30, but dropping down one order of magnitude further to 0.1mg costs at least 15-25x more. As sibling commented, the easiest solution is to just multiply the recipe by 10x. Doesn’t work for everything, but it’s generally worth it unless you are doing a lot of chemistry work.

75dvtwin• 8 years ago

closest price for high precision scale

310 $USD

https://scaleman.com/sartorius-ay123-milligram-digital-scale...

10x more than, then the base of $30

Udik2• 8 years ago

A good way of doing without a precise scale is to do what cocaine users do: push the substance so that it's arranged in a regular linear shape, and then you can measure lengths instead of weights. Makes it easy to fraction tiny amounts of powdery substances.

amelius• 8 years ago

This would be more interesting if they provided methods for checking/controlling the quality of the result.

JoeAltmaier• 8 years ago

...with only 5 or 6 other hard-to-find substances. If you are stockpiling those items, why not stockpile penicillin itself?

logfromblammo• 8 years ago

Huh. This is basically an advertisement for aquarium antibiotics.

Why aren't preppers building phage libraries instead? Isn't that more workable with limited resources than antibiotics production? You basically just need a DIY bacterial culture medium (such as soup stock), glassware, and dirt.

seymour333• 8 years ago

This whole article seems like an offhand way to get people to stockpile aquarium antibiotics. This guy is obviously on Big Aquarium Pharma's payrol.

syntaxing• 8 years ago

Is there a book that teaches you more about this stuff? I'm getting more and more interested in this after reading the cancer drugs people in China are making. This seems like a fun experiment to do at home for a weekend.

FlyMoreRockets2• 8 years ago

You can also homebrew tetracycline beer like the ancient Nubians.

http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_REPORT/stories/2010/09/07/beer.ht...

I guess the trick is to obtain and maintain a healthy Streptomyces colony. Antibiotic laced beer should keep real well without refrigeration, too.

entwife• 8 years ago

Useful to know if you want to keep your digestion running predictably, without hidden disruptors: "One thing you might not know is that a lot of bakeries put a substance called a mold inhibitor on bread. This stuff, which is called mycoban, is going to suppress the fungus, so you should probably use bread that you baked yourself."

scythe• 8 years ago

Not quite biology, but sulfanilamide is simple enough to synthesize at home, as is dapsone and maybe isoniazid. Most antibiotics (e.g. cipro) are way out of reach, though.

pensketch• 8 years ago

So.. who just bought a bunch of Fish-Mox?

Making Penicillin at Home

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