zogger's Journal: Earthquakes

The devastation in Haiti should be a wakeup call to..well, people anywhere..of the necessity of not totally relying on local infrastructure and "just in time" business models and "government" to always be effective and to sustain you and to be intact and functional. I don't care where you live or how much "money" you make, your reality can change in a matter of minutes, from nice and "wealthy" and comfy to "OMG does this suck"! It doesn't matter if you live in a cradle to grave pure socialist state/region/nation, or some place that is rather loose with all aspects of society, closer to anarchy than not. Natural disasters and rapidly changing political events can and *do* happen, and guaranteed, in a lot of situations you won't be given any notice at all, just left to deal with the situation the best YOU personally can.

Take stock, run this through your head (or make a list or a spreadsheet), activate a checklist of life's necessities, and what the status of your personal backup solutions are.

What will you do if the taps stop working, where is the next water, and after that source, the next after that, and how will you deal with acquiring it and making sure it is safe to drink?

If something weird happens, and you can no longer get to a functional store..how long can you last with what food you have, and will you still be able to cook it? Where is the next source of food, and the one following that?

Your home, your shelter, what happens to it if something as simple as the power going out occurs..and this outage lasts for weeks maybe, or perhaps even longer, how functional is your abode with even that minimal disruption? Does your home instantly change into a big no utilities tent, or what? How about your heating and cooling? Suppose it is destroyed, then what, what are your backup plans for having a minimal shelter, and where will this shelter be located?

If there is a breakdown in local "civilization", how secure would you be *really*? What happens if there are no functional police or fire or emergency health services? How far are you from areas that could get REALLY bad if those governmental services were disrupted for an extended time period? What happens if normal transportation is blocked, suppose you need to relocate "someplace else" because of where you are being untenable, what are your plans, your mode of travel, what can you transport with you?

These and other similar questions are important, whether you think so or not, because planetary wild cards just don't care what you think or "believe".

You cannot possibly plan and prepare for every single possible wildcard or black swan type event, but you can chip away at the most likely or probable for your particular situation, and develop -in advance- remediation steps that can go a long way to help, and might not be all that difficult to pull off.

Here's a simple experiment I have recommended to people over the years to test your readiness, only takes one full weekend. Sort of fun in a way.

Friday night, shut civilization and just in time delivery and easy access to all of modern life down in your home/apartment. Shut it down. Turn the water off, the gas, the electricity, all of it, including your waste disposal tubes, those can become unusable and in fact back up during some times and reverse flood your pad with some disgusting stuff. Did you know they make expansion plugs to seal the john off so this doesn't happen? Stuff like that.. Make believe none of that works, make believe there is no store to go to, no "relief" efforts, no tap water, no electricity coming into the wall socket, no nuthin, just what you have handy. Make believe your money "doesn't work" anymore, your cash is worthless, your credit cards don't work, and all your neighbors and people around you are in the same situation. It still won't represent large scale physical damage to your abode, or you being injured on top of that, but it's a good approximation of what to expect should something like that happen in your area. Wargame it out, take the same amount of time doing this as you would normally blow on watching some movies or sports shows or playing some games. (note:not saying hurt yourself or chancing your water pipes freezing by turning the heat off, but it is something to contemplate. Most buildings will start freezing up solid and start to lose pipes after just a couple of days with no heat going to them. You could also lose local firefighting efforts in such a situation, now think about people lighting emergency fires in sinks and bathtubs and waste baskets to try and stay warm..and yes this has happened a lot before)

Now, do that, or a mild approximation depending on how skilled and prepped you are, and live until monday morning, see how you do. The areas you need to work on become immediately apparent.

Here is a time magazine slideshow of the 7.0 earthquake in Haiti--and I have a long ago acquaintance who went through the 9.x whatever in Alaska back in the sixties, which is 100 times stronger than this 7. His remembrances to me, huge full sized trucks thrown up into the air like king kong grabbed them.

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1953257,00.html

So we have earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, icestorms, and a LARGE variety of potential rather awkward geopolitical and economic events that could take place, and a lot of them falling into the "not very nice" category. Ever actually been inside the thick of a wide spread general riot/breakdown of social order/zero effective government situation? I have, très suckee there. It goes from medium OK civilization functioning to..well..hope you never have to go through that. All sorts of stuff can happen in this modern world, and it doesn't matter where you live or what your status is when they occur.

interesting side note, and this really is a sidenote, with the above slideshow, something I have commented on before: In slide eleven, despite time magazine being a premier professional publication, not a single six figure making editor or proofreader or reporter or copy guy in the whole shebang knows the difference between a bulldozer and a trackhoe. This goes to show the widening blue area/red area urban/rural coastal big city/flyover areas split. Any four year old kid or older in my rural area could have noted this distinction and caught that really obvious editorial mistake. This is just part of a huge list I have accumulated, call them clues, over the past several years, that I keep in me brane about this widening disconnect in our society, how people in one general group really don't have clue one about the other group, and a lot of misconceptions occur (I am sure it works both ways also). You (well, I mean me) see it all the time, I'll point out some common ones from my point of view, "why don't you all ride mass transit!" or "We support all those hicksville areas, you are lucky we fund you!" "barbed wire around your place, you must be one of them fundy tea bagger terrorist redzone losers who aren't modern hip and with it!" "guns are only for criminals, you don't need them"!..and so on.

Believe me, it is getting really weird out there with this stuff, downright scary really, *especially* when I am seeing this sentiment and mindset being promulgated by official governmental/powerful figures, which I have.

Ya, a minor picky not worth a thing point, but just shows (to me, just an opinion of course), that this really strange/odd disconnect, leading to some potentially quite harmful "beliefs", is getting worse, not better.

Kinda insulting to Haitians, don't you think?

[spun]

As if they had the resources top prepare for this. As if all the preparation in the world helps when your house lands on your head.

Wait a sec now. You say, "This goes to show the widening blue area/red area urban/rural coastal big city/flyover areas split" Puh-leaze. Now you are just making controversy for its own sake. As if nobody in blue area, urban, coastal big cities use heavy machinery. As if everyone in red area/rural/flyover areas knows everything about heavy machinery. 'Cause they are all such mach

Re:

[zogger]

I wasn't insulting the haitians at all, I think it is terrible what happened, just using this example to make points towards a preparedness posture for people. I did the same after Katrina here, it's my main deal I like, pushing personal independence, practical preparedness and survivalism. That was not clear?? I mean, shoot..

Those poor folks in Haiti had gone 200 years without an earthquake, and as such, and also being poor, from being screwed over time and again, even starting out as all sl

Re:

[spun]

Well, I beg to differ. There are more pieces of heavy equipment in the blue state. There are more people who know what they are than in the red states. There may be more per capita in the red states who know a backhoe from a hole in the ground, but even that is debatable.

You know it goes the other way, too, right? I mean, you are doing it, so there is example one. City slickers are all drug addicted, sex crazed immoral godless liberal elitist communists, right? We aren't 'real Americans,' just ask Fox News.

Re:

[spun]

Upon rereading, my first reply sounded a little harsh. The truth is, people are people. You'll find bigots anywhere you choose to kick over some rocks. You'll also find absolutely wonderful people, from West Virginia to California. And all over the world.

Also, prejudices aside, liberals often suffer from a form of egotism that leads to condescension. And the worst part is, we condescend out of kindness. We just want to help you poor benighted hicks. I mean, it's not your fault you don't have the education w