Journal zogger's Journal: Water, food, shelter, security 16
note: cross posted at my site as well:
Long time readers will know my big four survivalist needs, what to get independent on, are, in order of importance:
water, food, shelter, security
Now look at this BBC article about floods in Pakistan and what they determined to be the basic needs for all these displaced people
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-10901896
"The government said the most pressing needs would be for clean drinking water, food, shelter and healthcare."
Pretty dang close!
And that is why I picked those out years and years ago, because I have "been there, done that" in emergency and "you are completely on your own" type situations. This is *my* tech expertise, threat analysis and mitigation.
People who "invest" in $1,000 TVs or the rigged crooked "stock" market, etc and such like and don't even have a good gravity water filter..eventually, this chronic dumbness is gonna bite them hard. EVERYONE will go through at least one-if not several- serious emergency situations in their lives, and it might last for a long time, weeks or months, who knows. If you ain't prepared..you are gonna lose it, bad. And you can NOT rely on government or "why don't *they* do something"?, you know this "they" guy over there someplace people always refer to when they mean anyone other then themselves. And this can be beyond some natural disaster, look at the economic situation, you could lose your job tomorrow, or the dingbats could decide we need a much larger war in the middle east and the price of crude could jump to 300 bucks a barrel..whatever, black swan events outside your control.
Sorry, reality doesn't work that way with this "they" guy "saving you" or "doing something"!!
Any medium to large scale emergency, there ain't a government out there, including all the rich nations, that has enough resources to do this. We don't have entire backup cities and regions just sitting around with all the infrastructure intact in warehouses or whatever, which is what it would take to come up with a huge numbers of refugees in need of aid situation, a large scale one. It is not possible, it doesn't exist, it isn't going to happen, so you will be on your own, so you need to get it in gear BEFORE any bad stuff happens, well before, that is acquire gear/supplies plus the needed skills to use that gear and supplies.
Just like with computer data, if you have no backups, and if something weird happens, you got nothing and will be in a world of hurt.
You are right... (Score:1)
However, I think you can only prepare for such events given the correct geographical location. If I want to stay in Europe, there is simply nothing I can do to become self-sufficient. The land simply isn't there.
As long as the economy is partially standing, you can prepare by having spare cash as a cushion. If the economy collapses and we get a Mad-Max-Style world, then expect 98% of the people in Europe to die. Well, that's positive for you guys... More land to colonize when (if...) everything recovers
Re: (Score:2)
Which has set me to musing...
If I thought the world was set for an ecological collapse, what would I do? One quickly walks through your exact train of thought, and you come right down to isolated volcanic islands. Global warming makes more normal coral islands unlikely to survive, so you're left with volcanic islands. Preferably not tropical, because warm-temperate will be the new tropical, and you'd like living seas near as a source of food and other resources.
Next you need a secure supply of fresh wate
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Small Mountains in the Pacific Coast Range in Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Alaska are a good bet in Global Warming Scenarios to become temperate-zone islands; AND you can get to them with roads right now.
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That's why I ruled them out. If you can get to them with roads, so can hungry hordes.
If there is a real civilization crash, the big problem will be scared, hungry people with cars, guns, and ammo. If you can get to those places, so can they.
I'm also trying to think about other ecological collapse scenarios - slow crumble, and the like.
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Well, they could get to those places if they have a 4x4 or a logging truck, and a chainsaw. And maybe a Bulldozer- every winter places in the Coast Range in Oregon become unaccessible without the use of heavy machinery. Port of Tilamook Bay Railroad has been shut down since 2007 because of it- that winter over $27 million in damage was done to the 80 mile railroad, and still today only about 20 miles of it on each end are accessible.
It's entirely possible to find property there that would be inaccessible,
too much (Score:1)
There's a lot of range between every thing normal and mad max. Being prepared covers the bulk of those situations, and it is entirely possible to be quite well prepared even living in apartments or small homes in towns. I know this because I have done it, and know numerous other people who have as well. It's just not that hard to have some months worth of preps on hand, if you really want to, and it also isn't hard to have go-bags ready all the time, or have practice drills to see how fast you can get your
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"There are two types of people in the world, Doc, those that have a plan for when the zombies take over the Earth, and those that don't. We call those last people 'dinner'."
- Griff [youtube.cow]
A Zombie Preparation Kit is like a Hurricane or Earthquake kit except with a few more shotguns and shells.
Be sure to remind your friends and loved during National Zombie Awareness Month [zombieresearch.org].
Or we could take a lesson from Cuba (Score:2)
Urban gardens. Almost everyone has a patch, and they make a big difference to the economy. Remember, this is a country that the US has embargoed for decades, dirt poor, and they've had to find ways to "make do with less."
In actual real-life disasters, people do pull together. The ice storm that killed power to much of Québec for a month [wikipedia.org] is one example. It gets darned cold up here in January, but all the fatalities were attributed to stupidity (for example, one local guy somehow forgot that wet ice i
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Let's just say that I tend to think that everyone is prepared for at least a few weeks hardship. Must be just me then... For me that is normal. My mom always told to be that way (her fear was mostly being snowed in... which is really a very unrealistic fear around here... but she grew up in the city. )
Phosphate (Score:1)
Saw this today and thought of zog
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/08/05/2973513.htm [abc.net.au]
""Fertiliser is one of the major input costs now for farmers, so as you increase the price of the raw material, food prices could increase," explains Dr Mike McLaughlin chief research scientist in the Environmental Biogeochemistry program of CSIRO Land and Water.
McLaughlin notes that while every farmer on the planet relies on phosphorus, the world's supply of the mineral is far from evenly distributed. ...
Ninety pe
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"the world's supply of the mineral is far from evenly distributed. ..."
I'm shocked at this. Especially since, isn't bat guano a major source of phosphorus?
And I'd think the bats would be pretty evenly distributed....
guano (Score:1)
Nope, that is a source of nitrates/nitrogen. Phosphate is mined, in the US primarily in Florida. And yes, it is of global concern, we are approaching "peak phosphate" along with a lot of other things...peak clean fresh water. I have no idea whatsoever the southwest US is going to do in years to come. There really isn't enough water to keep all those tens of millions supplied.
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After what happened to my master bath- I've got renewed belief in solid state refrigerator condensers for producing fresh water. Some copper tubing, a few scrounged Peltier chips from computers, and a 5 volt photovoltaic system, and you can produce fresh water from the air.
(For the first reference, I just spent the weekend replacing the ceiling in my master bath. The fan had gone out, and the vent pipe had condensed water and leaked right over my shower- and the ceiling was caving in.)
Hey Zogger... (Score:2)
Didn't know how to send a message, but this thread's not entirely inappropriate for this digression, anyway. A friend loaned me a book, more about that later. But I got to a passage that brought you to mind. The book uses "The Dance of the Seven Veils" as a metaphor, kind of moving the plot along.
"When the fifth veil falls, and with it the illusion of financial worth, individuals might recognize themselves again, might find themselves standing, as if naked, among ancient values in a long-lost landscape."
thanks (Score:1)
Thanks, I'll check it out if you really think I would like it. I used to be a fiend on fiction but nowadays it is seldom. Once in awhile though I still like them. MY Gf eats them up, several a week. I do the net now mostly, she reads. She never "got it" on using computers much, but will ask me to look something up now and then.
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"The illusion of money" was the fifth veil, I believe. At the end of each section, they would talk on "removing a veil," though it didn't seem quite so specific to me, on the first one. Maybe I hadn't gotten into the rhythm of the book yet. But leading to removing the fifth veil, they talked quite a bit about money and what a piece of faith and fiction it was, which was when I thought of you. I know nothing of your tastes, but this segment caught me. I generally read (better quality, I'd like to think,