jackwilliambell: Greetings from the Dark Ages

jackwilliambell (

jackwilliambell) wrote,
@ 2006-12-16 14:01:00

Current mood:	contemplative
Entry tags:	anitarowland, futurism, meta

Greetings from the Dark Ages
A couple of days ago I posted about feeling neuva-vu because I was using the Internet from an airplane from Copenhagen to Seattle. Basically I was crowing about how the future we live in is so cool.

That night, after I got home safe and sound, Seattle (and the entire Pacific Northwest) experienced a major windstorm. As a result our house was without power on Friday morning. I was able to go to work as South Bellevue retained power, but the trip in was a nightmare; with the 520 bridge down and stoplights out everywhere traffic was a mess. Anita drove me in (because my van was still at work) and a trip that normally takes about eight minutes required over an hour.

Friday night I stopped at our storage unit and picked up camping supplies and our generator, then tried to find an open gas station and store to pick up a few things.

Bad idea! Power was out and stores were closed everywhere I looked until I returned to South Bellevue. There I found more terrible traffic (despite working stoplights), gas lines reminiscent of the 1970's energy crisis, and one open grocery store with nearly empty shelves and long lines of its own. I finally picked up a few useful things at a nearby drug store and fought my way through the traffic to home. The whole adventure took me more than three hours.

I returned in pitch dark to a house glowing softly with candles. (Anita's candle fetish finally came in handy.) I set up the camping stove and started arranging things for a night without power while Anita heated some chili. After that I played guitar for a while and then we read with flashlights. My four-year-old grandson found the whole thing quite exciting.

The house never got too cold, so sleep came easy beneath multiple covers. Then I was woken early Saturday morning as the power came back on. (In fact I nearly filled my pants as every light came on, along with the heater and a couple of appliances beeping or otherwise making their presence known.) So, although I was prepared for several days without power we only had to do without for about 24 hours.

Unfortunately the Cable didn't return as well, so finally (with Anita experiencing a major Net Jones) we went in search of an Internet connection and found an open Panera's in Redmond. They didn't have any food, but they were staying open and providing free Wifi, coffee, sodas, and a warm place to sit for anyone. So, major kudos to the guys there! A welcome port in the storm.

Now, after a day spent in the past, I am back in the future. Experiencing my own personal renaissance as I move from the dark ages into the enlightenment. This rams home several points to me:

Even in the USA we are only a power line and a net connection away from living in a third world country
The future may be around every corner, but the past is always at our back
Irony is a permanent condition in my life
Don't get between Anita and a Net connection when she needs a fix!

(Post a new comment)

	flankleft 2006-12-16 11:29 pm UTC (link)
	* Even in the USA we are only a power line and a net connection away from living in a third world country AND A PAYCHECK! (for most americans) (Reply to this) (Thread)

akirlu
2006-12-16 11:55 pm UTC (link)

No, it's not really that close to genuine third world conditions.

We were not especially well prepared for this power failure, imo, and yet even at the height of the outage we had: fuel for heating the place, plenty of candles, a working radio, plenty of clean, potable water, working flush toilets, more-than-adequate shelter, more-than-adequate clothes, multiple working phone lines, enough food to last for weeks, even discounting whatever might have been lost in the defrosting of the freezer, places to stay temporarily if the power outage went on much longer, and a goodly supply of things to read. Yeah, we missed our connectivity and our DVDs, yeah, we had to wear extra sweaters in the house, but it wasn't more than an inconvenience. That, compared to all too many people in the third world, is wealth without measure. Just the unlimited supply of potable water in the house is pretty amazing.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	iawtc jacqueline1776 2006-12-17 01:11 am UTC (link)
	Jack needs to spend some time in a typical home in a real third world country. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: iawtc flankleft 2006-12-17 02:02 am UTC (link)
	What? west side seattle doesn't count? humph. I think you are wrong on that one. :) (Reply to this) (Parent)

	nah flankleft 2006-12-17 02:01 am UTC (link)
	potable water is over-rated. you can just buy water at the corner store. Seriously though, if the power got cut for a long time it gets pretty rank. Down here in Florida I know of people that went more than a month without power after a hurricane. Just to have it happen again a few weeks later. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: nah

akirlu
2006-12-17 02:19 am UTC (link)

you can just buy water at the corner store.

Only if you have a corner. And a store on it. Which, in the actual third world, mostly not. Which was my point.

if the power got cut for a long time it gets pretty rank

pretty rank != third world

Other stuff available at my place during the power failure: aspirin, clean bandages, alcohol and peroxide for sterilizing, various over-the-counter paliative medications, really fast access to emergency services, rental generator if we'd wanted it, basic access to public transit (if slowed by traffic snafus at some times of day), a general absence of lethal pandemic diseases...the list goes on. Until one is homeless, carless, shoeless, sleeping under cardboard and picking through other people's garbage for food, talk about how close we are to the third world seems pretty fatuous to me.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: nah

flankleft
2006-12-17 04:51 am UTC (link)

Until one is homeless, carless, shoeless, sleeping under cardboard and picking through other people's garbage for food, talk about how close we are to the third world seems pretty fatuous to me.

I've been homeless a few times in my life and one of those was as a child and we did dig through the garbage for food. I've lived in texas in 105+ heat, no AC and no refrigerator living soupcan to soupcan with nasty ramen and pbj if I was lucky. I most recently lived 5+ years without running water and my mom has lived 8+ years straight with the nearest water source a well 1/4 a mile away in a cabin she built herself. I *know* what it's like to be homeless and woken up in the middle of the night by cops asking you to move along.

Back to Jack's comments, merely mentioning that we are pretty close to a third world country in response to the power outage and massive snarl in life that this massive storm caused does not warrant your response. Last time I checked Jack William Bell is more than a little bit of a Science Fiction geek (like me) and there is a good possibility he was talking about the services being out for much more than the duration of the storm & aftermath. Like forever. What if the middle east went nuclear and got shut off from oil pretty much altogether, or what if we had severe war rationing of everything.

Pick a reason. It doesn't matter the reason but the fact remains that without power and gas america would grind to a halt. As you and I sleep and even during the day millions and millions of planes, trains and semi-trucks move massive amounts of good to where they can be altered and tran-shipped to a final selling point or consumed. Our reliance on convenience and mass produced goods makes economic sense but if the lights turned off forever and refineries shut down forever and we had to *totally* fend for ourselves, americans would be screwed.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: nah

akirlu
2006-12-17 07:52 am UTC (link)

I've been homeless a few times in my life and one of those was as a child and we did dig through the garbage for food. I've lived in texas in 105+ heat, no AC and no refrigerator living soupcan to soupcan with nasty ramen and pbj if I was lucky. I most recently lived 5+ years without running water and my mom has lived 8+ years straight with the nearest water source a well 1/4 a mile away in a cabin she built herself. I *know* what it's like to be homeless and woken up in the middle of the night by cops asking you to move along.

Yeah, and you still had it better in terms of available nutrition, and education, and proximity to basic medical care, and freedom from the diseases that come with a generalized absence of sanitation than the poor in the third world. In the Philippines, the homeless used to pay a premium for the rights to pick through American garbage, because Americans throw away so much edible food.

merely mentioning that we are pretty close to a third world country in response to the power outage and massive snarl in life that this massive storm caused does not warrant your response.

I don't know what you mean by "warrant[ing] [my] response," whatever that's supposed to mean, but it certainly did merit disagreement insofar as it falsely and arrogantly handwaved away huge portions of what the reality is on the ground in the third world. Poor us, we had to be without power and internet. Oh, woe.

there is a good possibility he was talking about the services being out for much more than the duration of the storm & aftermath.

And there is a good possibility he wasn't. Good writers don't expect their readers to compensate for their poverty of expression by forcing their readers to guess what they meant. That's true in or out of SF fandom, at least my part of SF fandom. Maybe "Science Fiction geek"-dom is different.

Yeah, the developed world would be fucked without fuel and power. Duh. Is that supposed to be an insight? Is that supposed to be an improvement on what Jack actually said? Please.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: nah jacqueline1776 2006-12-17 08:26 am UTC (link)
	1) John needs to spend some time in a real third world country too. 2) You rock! (Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: nah

flankleft
2006-12-17 06:28 pm UTC (link)

In the Philippines, the homeless used to pay a premium for the rights to pick through American garbage, because Americans throw away so much edible food.
What a coincidence! my dad paid money to dig through american trash too! Until I was 6 almost every toy I had came from the dump, as did most of our furniture, clothes and appliances. We raised rabbits, chickens and relied on venison that dad got. When I was a bit older I happily dumpster dove in supermarket dumpsters for food. They throw away a lot of edible produce and dented goods.

I don't know what you mean by "warrant[ing] [my] response," whatever that's supposed to mean,
Basically I mean that you don't have to be such a verbose prick about it. Power going out and no gas for a couple days does not turn america into the third world but weeks at a time with negligible law enforcement gets us pretty damn close. Hurricane Katrina and it's aftermath did turn a section of the US into a third-world country temporarily. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina in case you missed it.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: nah

akirlu
2006-12-17 07:56 pm UTC (link)

Until I was 6 almost every toy I had came from the dump, as did most of our furniture, clothes and appliances.

Congratulations! You grew up in a country so obscenely rich that not-especially-rich people can afford to simply throw away usable clothes, toys, furniture, and appliances. There are some parts of the world where that simply isn't the case. Those would be the parts known as the third world.

Basically I mean that you don't have to be such a verbose prick about it.

Oh, did I use too many words? Did they have too many syllables in them, too? Oh, dearie me, yes, I can see how you would object to that. Shocking! Your content is fine, my dear Mozart, you just use too many notes.

I'm sorry, but if that's the substance of your complaint, then it has no substance.

Not surprising, really, from somebody so thoroughly insulated from reality as to be able to say that drinkable water is overrated -- was that supposed to be a joke? -- as if millions of babies dying of typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery, and other entirely preventable diseases were trivia. In the third world, people regularly die of diseases that simply don't have to happen. Every year, 1.8 million people die of diorrheal diseases, including cholera. 90 percent of those are children under five years of age. Another 1.3 million people die of malaria each year, of whom 90 percent are also children under five. They're dying basically because of the lack of safe water. Pretty overrated, I agree. Can't imagine why they don't go down to the corner store to get some.

Regarding Katrina - You really just don't get it, do you? What makes the third world into the third world isn't just lack of resources at any given moment, it's the chronic nature of the lack of resources, and the lack of infrastructure to ameliorate the lack. Bad as things got in portions of the US in the aftermath of Katrina, (and in terms of lawlessness, at least in New Orleans, it was a lot less bad than some reports would have it, and could have been better still if there weren't racist crackers running some of the suburban police forces actively preventing people from walking out of NOLA), still hurricane Katrina did not cause children to be permanently brain-damaged by long term malnutrition, it did not radically shorten the long-term life-expectancy and overall lifetime health expectancy of a majority of the population, and unlike the recent tsunami in Southeast Asia, it wasn't followed by a huge die-off of the surviving populations due to waterborne diseases in the aftermath, and it didn't leave millions of people visually impaired or blind due to the lack of clean water to wash in. You only get those kinds of outcomes in the real third world countries, where the lack of resources is so chronic and so generalized that you don't have any real systemic elasticity to recover from disaster.

I could go on with more differences, but since I used so darn many words I'm sure you've tuned out already.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: nah

flankleft
2006-12-18 02:54 am UTC (link)

Oh, did I use too many words?
Yes you did actually. I was infantry when I was in the army and being a machine gunner must have dulled my mind.

drinkable water is overrated -- was that supposed to be a joke?
No not really. Oxygen is a crutch. <--Now that's a joke!

Can't imagine why they don't go down to the corner store to get some.

See I don't know either? Everyplace has a corner store. duh. Some people are just so lazy. If they applied themselves they would be better off. All they have to do is sell a kidney or eye or something to a rich person. Boom, free market economy solves all problems.

it's the chronic nature
So you're a liberal hippie that smokes huh? Next you're going to tell me you're for gun control. Well, so am I. You got to aim center mass when killing people and walking rounds into them with short bursts is optimal.

Southeast Asia reminds me of my most favorite christmas movie Full Metal Jacket. So heartwarming.

I could go on with more differences, but since I used so darn many words I'm sure you've tuned out already.

what was the first part again?

USA! USA! USA!

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Yeah, actually

akirlu
2006-12-18 04:59 am UTC (link)

I guess you're just not going to notice this on your own: <q> </q>, if it's a legitimate HTML tag at all, isn't one recognized by LJ. So your quotes are not distinguishable as such. If you mean to quote text, you can use ordinary quotation marks, or <blockquote> </blockquote> for quoting larger blocks of text, or <i> </i>for putting quotations in italics. Also handy for these situations <br> </br> to force line breaks. I mean you can keep typing <q> </q>, but you're just wasting keystrokes.

I was infantry when I was in the army and being a machine gunner must have dulled my mind.

Oh please. Blaming your personal problems on the infantry is just maligning the reputation of intelligent grunts. Obviously military service isn't any kind of hindrance to verbal mastery. Why, just look at Jerry Pournelle.

Oxygen is a crutch. <--Now that's a joke!

Ah. Good thing you told me. I keep expecting jokes to be in some way funny. My mistake.

So you're a liberal hippie that smokes huh? *titter* *titter* *GUFFAW* Oh, thank you. And there I was thinking you didn't know how to be funny.

Next you're going to tell me you're for gun control. Well, so am I. You got to aim center mass when killing people and walking rounds into them with short bursts is optimal.

I prefer a double-tap head-shot, myself. Less chance of fouling on body armor. And, being a widdy little girlie, I get to empty the clip and still qualify for "panic fire". Oopsie. I panicked. In a shot distribution pattern smaller than my fist.

Southeast Asia reminds me of my most favorite christmas movie Full Metal Jacket. So heartwarming.

I liked it myself. Particularly funny is the DI singing the praises of Lee Harvey Oswald as an example of Marine marksmanship.

Geez, you're not even good at trolling, boy. I know you're completely out of ammo on the actual subject when you make these deeply lame attempts at pushing my buttons. Maybe if you didn't treat oxygen as a luxury, and gave some to your brain now and again, you'd have better luck.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Yeah, actually

flankleft
2006-12-19 10:04 pm UTC (link)

I was infantry when I was in the army and being a machine gunner must have dulled my mind.

Oh please. Blaming your personal problems on the infantry is just maligning the reputation of intelligent grunts. Obviously military service isn't any kind of hindrance to verbal mastery. Why, just look at Jerry Pournelle.

You really are a humourless git upon whom the slightest bit of irony is completely lost when your panties are in a bunch, which seems to be all the time.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Yeah, actually

akirlu
2006-12-20 12:32 am UTC (link)

Ah, Linux zealots. *Yawn* If you don't give a shit what your text looks like to a significant part of your audience, just say so.

You really are a humourless git upon whom the slightest bit of irony is completely lost

It's particularly sad that this is the juncture at which you accuse me of missing irony. You're a little anemic there yourself, son. You also seem to be confusing irony with sarcasm. What you were slathering on with a trowel, there, that wasn't irony.

As a friend of mine observed, the problem with calling someone humorless just because they don't laugh at your jokes is that it can look a lot like the guy who calls girls frigid when they won't sleep with him. Unattractively like sour grapes, in other words. Keep working on teh funny, maybe someone will laugh.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Yeah, actually

flankleft
2006-12-20 08:36 pm UTC (link)

Ah, Linux zealots. *Yawn* If you don't give a shit what your text looks like to a significant part of your audience, just say so.

How does it feel to keep on being arrogantly wrong? I catch you in your incompetency and you duck it. I run 3 computers currently, all windows XP with no dual boot linux or linux livecd's anywhere to be found. I develop primarily on windows machines for windows and 2003 server applications and webpages.

The only people around here who are Linux zealots are the livejournal coders who developed LJ for linux. I'm not going to conform to your sense of what is right when it comes to LJ formatting just because you can't keep track of which lies you have said.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Two things

mcjulie
2006-12-17 07:28 pm UTC (link)

1. John, I didn't know that your situation had ever been quite that dire, and I'm interested.

2. Re: "Yeah, and you still had it better in terms of available nutrition, and education, and proximity to basic medical care" I have to take a bit of exception -- nutrition is only available if you can buy it, or somebody gives it to you, or you steal it, and that's true in the US just like anywhere else. And medical care? A lot of basic medical care is financially out of reach for large segments of the middle class in this country, forget those living in real poverty. Sure, education is free, but very poor children often don't get a chance to take advantage of it -- because their families move around too much, or because they end up having to stay home and take care of other family members, or a host of other reasons.

Basically, I think you're being far too dismissive of the "third world" that does exist right here in the middle of this country. We see it when things like the Katrina disaster happen, but it's always there.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Two things

akirlu
2006-12-17 08:26 pm UTC (link)

I think you're being far too dismissive of the "third world" that does exist right here in the middle of this country.

That's one possibility, but I think it's more my bar for what constitutes third world conditions is higher than yours.

Nutrition. In the United States there's such a thing as the National School Lunch program, providing free or reduced price meals to poorer kids every single school day. Those kids are guaranteed five nutritious meals a week no matter what else happens. There has been a school milk program in operation since the 1940s, now incorporated into the school lunch program. That means those kids are guaranteed at least one serving of protein over and above lunch, five days a week. Then there are food stamps -- and yes, I freely admit there are problems with the nutritional choices available through food stamps. It's still food, though. And in any but the most rural neighborhoods, various food providing charities. Do I really have to point out that there are places where that quantity of food all by itself would be an amazing improvement over expectations?

Also, you missed a couple of means of getting food -- raise or grow it, or forage it. As did some of my neighbors in the front yards of their ordinary walk up apartments in Costa Mesa, grow beans and corn and tomatoes, and various other supplements. One of the ways you can see how absurdly rich we are is the way Americans habitually turn arable land into ornamental gardens or parking lots. There are places in the world where drought is so severe that growing supplemental food, or foraging it, isn't an option. And unlike here, they don't have dumpsters full of edible food to get it out of. Is dumpster diving humiliating? You bet it is. Not least because poverty is so stigmatized in the US. There are places where accepting the humiliation to get the food isn't an option.

Basic medical care - For me, the ambient availability of sanitation and safe drinking water counts. It's a cornerstone of any system of public health. Beyond that, there's the fact that the general population is overall free from pandemic communicable diseases -- meaning the chances of exposure to same are much lower. (The resurgence of tuberculosis is worrying, I agree.) Beyond that the National Immunization Program of the CDC includes an Vaccinations for Children program to provide vaccines *free* for eligible children. And for low income families, there is medicaid. And nationwide, if you're near an emergency room, you have a medical resource that cannot deny you service based on ability to pay. Is this cluster of generally available medical services crappy compared to what it should be? Hell, yes. Is it comparable to the availability of care in the third world? Not remotely.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: Two things

akirlu
2006-12-18 12:03 am UTC (link)

I'm sure there are lots of medical resources in the US I forgot to mention, but this is a big one: Planned Parenthood. Women's health services, including pelvic exams, screening and treatment for venereal diseases, birth control, and pre-natal care and referals, all provided without regard to ability to pay; you pay if you can, on a sliding scale. Access to women's health care, especially pre-natal care and condoms, is huge. Control of fertility is a gigantic factor in long-term outcomes for women.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: Two things

flankleft
2006-12-19 10:14 pm UTC (link)

on 1. Yeah, I am no stranger to the dumpster diving of food and more than one christmas dinner/thanksgiving dinner was brought to us by strangers leaving a gift basket of food. Food banks I relied on a lot when I absolutely had to.

On #2 I agree with you on this. akirlu is comparing apples to oranges here. The homeless in America are largely functionally mentally ill or make bad life choices repeatedly. easily half the homeless population needs to be on meds of some sort to really get by and non can afford the meds or remember to take them if given. They need a controlled living situation that would help them. Comparing the functionally mentally ill in America to the average third worlder is stupid because the average third worlder has it much better off. Mentally they are ok and can deal with their situation even if it sucks terribly. Railing on and on about how homeless people here have it so good is not only insensitive but naive and reckless as well. The homeless in america don't *know* about all the things available to them and are just trying to survive on an hour to hour day to day basis.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	mareklamo 2006-12-18 05:08 am UTC (link)
	"Until one is homeless, carless, shoeless, sleeping under cardboard and picking through other people's garbage for food, talk about how close we are to the third world seems pretty fatuous to me." Just wanted to point out that not every third-worlder is homeless or carless or shoeless. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

akirlu
2006-12-18 05:23 am UTC (link)

Just wanted to point out that not every third-worlder is homeless or carless or shoeless.

Perfectly true, but I don't see what bearing that has on my point. Comparing a power outage to day to day existence in the third world is still a very silly piece of hyperbole, and most of the interlocutors in this thread seem to have only the vaguest sense of the depth and scale of what makes the third world disadvantaged in the first place.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

That depends on which point

mcjulie
2006-12-18 04:28 pm UTC (link)

Just wanted to point out that not every third-worlder is homeless or carless or shoeless.

Perfectly true, but I don't see what bearing that has on my point.

Your point that three days without power doesn't really put Americans in the third world is valid. But your other point seems to be that "all Americans, no matter how poor, are better off than everyone who lives in what we call third world countries" and I remain unconvinced.

Maybe that wasn't quite the point you were trying to make -- maybe your point was that the poorest of our poor are better off than the poorest of their poor, and in that you are almost certainly correct.

But I also feel like we need a little specification here -- what do you consider the third world, exactly? And what criteria are you using?

Since you feel that I have only "the vaguest sense of the depth and scale of what makes the third world disadvantaged in the first place" -- please, enlighten me.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

flankleft
2006-12-19 09:24 pm UTC (link)

Just wanted to point out that not every third-worlder is homeless or carless or shoeless.

Perfectly true, but I don't see what bearing that has on my point. Comparing a power outage to day to day existence in the third world is still a very silly piece of hyperbole, and most of the interlocutors in this thread seem to have only the vaguest sense of the depth and scale of what makes the third world disadvantaged in the first place.

Your main point here is invalid. You are taking things way too freakin seriously and acting as the only rule lawyer that matters. Maybe you have it pretty damn good in your mind compared to people in third world countries but I still argue that there are a lot of people living on or over the edge in this country that have it pretty freakin bad to the point that living in many third world countries would be an improvement. There is not a lot of day labor here compared to third world countries, most jobs require you to have a place and to be all clean and smell free and get to work on time. That my friend is incredibly hard to do when you are homeless even if you are living in a car. It costs you way, way, way more a day to live out of a car than it does a real house. It also sucks for restfullness sake. Cars are uncomfortable to sleep in, people robbing you, cops telling you to move on and worse yet, car problems are all very real issues that car people face. When you live out of your car it is very very tough to prove residence at food banks which is a requirement at like 90% plus of them. So what if you can walk into an emergency room and get major trauma care? hospitals in South central LA and other big cities that even "take" walk-ins are deathtraps that pass a lot of disease and then you are stuck with a huge ass medical bill which will follow you the rest of your life and doesn't go away with bankruptcy. The bill will also be many multiples of what could have been paid if preventative care was possible.

If you take an american family and put them in a third world environment, sans tv crews, the third worlders who are already there would easily be able to take care of themselves versus survival incompetent americanos. Americans as a country are technologically incapable of roughing it and surviving if the power turned off forever and if gas was no longer available.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Since she isn't going to say it

flankleft
2006-12-20 08:54 pm UTC (link)

I thought you should know that mareklamo is from the Phillipines and your fatuous statement has indirectly insulted all of her living relatives in the Philippines. She is the only one here who comes from a third world country and I personally disagree with that term.

There is zero definition for a third world country and it is not a politically correct statement. The correct phrasing is "lesser developed country". If we in the US have it so good how come obesity, heart attacks and autism is way higher here than in third world countries? What's wrong with not having a lot of stuff and living close to nature? The native americans took great care of america before we got here and they were very close to the land.

If you were born in a lesser-developed country you would have less choice about education and your setting but is that such a bad thing? We have this supposedly great education system here and we have at least a 20% functionally illiterate population that can't follow instructions well enough to bake a cake or add up sums on a receipt. Another 10% can't read or write at all and this is in the day when unskilled jobs are going away and everyone is supposed to magically become knowledge workers.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

52 hours from no food

farmgirl1146
2006-12-18 07:05 am UTC (link)

You should be contemplative, it might save you and your family. We will be far ahead of a third world country for many months, however, were we totally cut off, there is about 52 hours of food in the city. That's 52 hours until someone shoots the neighbor for the food in his fridge/cupboard/freezer. We have much less time where water is concerned. I suggest that one cut off the feed pipes to the hot water heater and save that water, using the municipal water until it is contaminated. With the hot water heater you have 60 to 80 gallons of fresh water. Use rain water for the toilet (asuming that works, and for washing.
The Mormon church and several survivalist groups have very good information about this sort of thing.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: 52 hours from no food

flankleft
2006-12-19 09:35 pm UTC (link)

exactly. the food on the grocery store shelves doesn't magically reappear every night. Truck loads of goods come in and people go stock the shelves from that. I was a merchandiser for years and you'd be suprised at how little food is actually available in a grocery store if supply is cut off. And if there is a panic, there would be a rush on food. Then people would remember where the food distribution warehouses are and raid those. From there on it gets rougher. There is not enough livestock available in "real" farm settings and a tremendous amount of the food such as chicken is grown in highly controlled "farms" that are nothing but warehouse with as much chicken stuffed inside before they step over dead birds. A couple week power failure at one of those places could easily kill millions of chickens.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2007-03-16 12:18 am UTC (link)
	Great post. Keep up the good work! Yeast Infection Cure (http://www.yeast-infection-remedy.info) Yeast Infection Treatment (http://www.yeast-infection-treatments.info) (Reply to this)

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