Could Ireland survive without importing anything?

If we couldn't import energy, society would more or less break down. How would we generate electricity? We couldn't farm on a large scale so our food production would probably be down 90%. Food would be very limited. We are only 3 meals away from people getting desperate. No tractors or other agricultural machinery. No transport. No medicine. No food processing or manufacturing. No water treatment etc.

I can fish, have guns and lots of ammo so I could hunt. I don't think I'd starve or be an easy target for someone trying to take my stuff.

As for most other people, it's hard to see how they'd survive a couple of winters.

Here on planet Earth, guns are quite often taken off those who have them. They are among the most-stolen items in the US. I would expect something similar in the Brave New World we are contemplating here. Both guns and ammunition (which, as time went on, would in increasingly short supply, since it couldn't be replaced once used) would be prime targets for theft.

US is awash with gunsso no wonder. I'd imagin ein such a scenario they would be prized and carefully hoarded?

Likewise, being able to produce bullets will soon become very important. It is something one can do at home in small quantities, with some training and specialized equipment, but all of that would become super high value as well.

Yes. Lead is still pretty commonly available. Copper is sufficient for jackets.

Black powder is doable with potassium nitrate (here, horsey horsey), charcoal and sulfur. Nitroglycerin would be much harder and dangerous to make, but hey, https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+to+make+nitroglycerin

If you want to make smokeless powder, you need nitroglycerin and clay. Nitroglycerin is used mixed with clay for smokeless powder which is what is used in most bullets. Dynamite, too.

I am far from current on the techniques, having left the USA a fair few years ago, but that's the gist of it. Mucking about with this stuff is nasty business, too, lead fumes, ughh.

As for specialized equipment, if one is content to slowly produce one cartridge at a time, I don't think it's particularly hard, you basically pour gun powder into the brass and crimp a bullet onto it.

One other thing is you'd need primers, hmm, no doubt there's a youtube video for that. Likewise, you can make cartridges from used copper pipe.

Copper was used prior to brass in the old days, it doesn't work nearly as well tends to deform badly, but when it's all you have….

Hmm…youtube keeps giving: how to make home-made primers:

Not any more there aren't.

How do you make biofuels with no imported energy? Hydrothermal requires electric pumps. How do you transport peat and coal? Horse and cart is all we'll have without importing fuels.

Mining coal and harvesting peat would have to be done by hand.

Solar/wind equipment wouldn't last long without spare parts lubricants etc, 99%+ of which we would be able to make.

We'd be back in the 1700's if we couldn't import anything.

Somewhere along the line the infrastructure would break down. It could be at the electricity generation end or the supply end or at house/business end. It could be something big or even as small as a fuse or a lack of hydraulic oils/lubricants etc. and I'd guess we wouldn't have the capacity to make fuses or much else really without importing materials, machines etc.

I doubt that in most cases we could after some redirection of existing industry.

The op hasn't logged in for a few weeks so I assume they're land logged on one of the nations we can no longer deal with in the scenario they concocted for the thread.

This thread is comedy gold.

All these “solutions” on how Ireland could survive based off what we have…brilliant. I needed the laugh today.

Well this might be a start and there must be other substitutes too.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DGT7xVtcoBnY&ved=2ahUKEwjNzKrr_OyGAxWAUUEAHfWXBKYQtwJ6BAgpEAI&usg=AOvVaw0z1xIimIjs8eSCi-vBZ9Bw

'survive' must have taken on a new meaning of course you would not saying that the withdrawal would be easy.

People were able to boil kettles long before there was electricity.

Our way of life would be changed totally but not pre industrial completely. All that technology would still be there and redirected to the new norm.