Doomsday planning for less crazy folk • Hacker News Board

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#271

Post by brightball » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 12:58 PM UTC

ckinnan wrote: post #250

yourapostasy wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Literally right now, my good friends are being rescued from a rooftop in Houston. No number of bottles of water in their basement or generators are going to help them. Some of this outcome is a direct result of conforming to commercially-fabricated social pressure. In this particular case, floodplain maps are publicly and freely available, so anyone can build structures that rise well above the highest-projected fl…

Developers are just responding to market signals. The underlying problem in the U.S. is that the federal government backstops 98% of flood insurance policies and does not charge the actuarial risk price. This government subsidy gives people incentives to overbuild and underprotect property in flood-prone areas.

Exactly. To this day I don't understand how building on a slab is even considered insurable unless you're basically on a hilltop.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#272

Post by aedron » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 1:12 PM UTC

The 'prepping' phenomenon is an expression of the extreme individualism (or less graciously, ego-centrism) of our time and society. Rather than assuming that society will come together in a crisis and help each other out, we need to become an army-of-one, stocked up for every scenario and armed to the teeth against dangerous others who are undoubtedly coming to take our shit. It's sad.

I honestly think this another example of the huge class divide in America causing such a negative outlook on other people, similar to how slave owners lived in comfort, but also constant paranoia. Perhaps we should work on improving conditions for the bottom of society, so we can have an expectation of helping each other when the shit goes down.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#273

Post by agarden » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 1:14 PM UTC

fapjacks wrote: post #185

uabstraction wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solid advice. As a recently licensed ham, I could tell you without a doubt that if I pulled my radio out of the box and tried to figure out what the hell to do with it in the midst of an emergency, the only thing I would accomplish is wasting LOTS of valuable time. It took me weeks to get my radio set up exactly how I like it, but now I can tune into emergency services, GMRS/FRS, Marine VHF, and hundreds of ham repea…

All of the test questions are available online, too [0]. They are literally the questions on the test, and you can rote-memory them if you don't care to understand them. But the questions cover important topics in ham radio: They serve a purpose. If you learn the theory behind the questions, you'll be a lot better off anyway. Also, don't trust airsoft to give you tactical skills you can apply in actual combat. Those…

> Also, don't trust airsoft to give you tactical skills you can apply in actual combat. Those are two games that progress completely differently.

That depends on how you do it. I have a friend in the AirSoft industry. He has described to me events that simulate urban combat. They are held on military bases using military training equipment -- realistic smells (gunpowder, sewage, gangrene), sounds, and scenery. I believe the term for such things is MilSim. They attract both retired and active military personnel. The tactics they use at such events are the tactics that work in the real world.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#274

Post by jemfinch » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 1:14 PM UTC

aedron wrote: post #272

The 'prepping' phenomenon is an expression of the extreme individualism (or less graciously, ego-centrism) of our time and society. Rather than assuming that society will come together in a crisis and help each other out, we need to become an army-of-one, stocked up for every scenario and armed to the teeth against dangerous others who are undoubtedly coming to take our shit. It's sad. I honestly think this another e…

What you call "extreme individualism" or "ego-centrism", we used to call "self-reliance".

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#275

Post by honestoHeminway » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 1:22 PM UTC

k_sh wrote: post #226

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dayton tops the list for least natural disaster prone. Similar with Southern Maryland. Denver is pretty high on the list and Seattle seems pretty safe too. There are plenty of places to go. For some reason we seem to love to build massive cities on disaster areas. I'm looking at you SF, LA and NYC. But hey fuck it, lets just continue being bad at statistics and assume that because a natural disaster happened recently…

Seattle is safe? Aren't they under impending doom from the Cascade fault[1]? [1] http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/11/us/cascadia-subduction-zone-ea...

Seattle has valve nearby. If anyone ever buys some expensive gem and jams it into exotic machinery.. my bet is on these guys. So very dangerous place to live in..

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#276

Post by emodendroket » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 1:35 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #104

f- wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Author here] The mindset is actually a large component of this guide, and it intentionally delays any discussion of "prepper gear" until it gets through a long laundry list of lifestyle tips and discussing the need to plan ahead, figure out what is likely, what can go wrong, what the decisions points may be, etc. In contrast to most other prepping docs, weapons are literally the last thing discussed, and only in a p…

I dunno, I re-read the beginning and I didn't see anything about the points I raised. I think your point that overzealous people who as you put it: begin by shopping for ballistic vests and night vision goggles; they would be better served by grabbing a fire extinguisher, some bottled water, and then putting the rest of their money in a rainy-day fund. is right on point, but IMO that just says - hey don't be insane.…

Depending on how long the rescue, takes having food and clean water could be important.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#277

Post by honestoHeminway » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 1:35 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #180

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I re-read the beginning and I didn't see anything about the points I raised. I think your point that overzealous people who as you put it: begin by shopping for ballistic vests and night vision goggles; they would be better served by grabbing a fire extinguisher, some bottled water, and then putting the rest of their money in a rainy-day fund. is right on point, but IMO that just says - hey don't be insane.…

> What they should have done is learned when to move or when to stay by: 1. Not buying a house in Houston and then 2. Gotten out well before it was imminent. The reports I've seen are describing the Houston situation as a 1 in a 1000 year flood. Does it really make sense to avoid a place based on the possibility of such rare events?

It makes sense to rationalize a disaster as somebodys own fault, to get out of the guilt anyone should feel who is so anti-social he can abandon his community on a whime.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#278

Post by fallingfrog » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 1:43 PM UTC

I think placing thermonuclear war in the "Zombie Apocalypse" category is probably wrong; it should go into category #2. JFK estimated after the cuban missile crisis that the chances that could have developed into a full-blown nuclear exchange were about 1 in 3. Not terribly long odds. Given the current political situation the probability is much lower- but political situations change, and the weapons are still here. The real risk is impossible to know, but unlike zombies, nuclear weapons are real, and they have been used on civilians once already.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#279

Post by dsr_ » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 2:17 PM UTC

JshWright wrote: post #263

giardini wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they really didn't "redo the entire bayou system". They considered alternatives and chose the most politically correct one for the parties involved. They knew it wasn't enough for something like Harvey but they didn't think there would be a Harvey( a supposed "500-year event") anytime soon. Black Swan anyone? AndrewKemendo says: "People's aversion to moving, especially after a major disaster, boggles my mind."…

> etc. You can't just name three places in a very large country and then say 'etc'. There are plenty of places with much lower risks of natural disasters. That's a big part of the reason my family lives in central New York.

Big snowstorms every year. Tornadoes many years.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#280

Post by JshWright » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 2:22 PM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #279

JshWright wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> etc. You can't just name three places in a very large country and then say 'etc'. There are plenty of places with much lower risks of natural disasters. That's a big part of the reason my family lives in central New York.

Big snowstorms every year. Tornadoes many years.

Tiny tornadoes... nowhere even close to the scale and frequency of midwestern twisters.

Snow? A minor inconvenience, at worst. It's a frequent enough occurrence that municipalities are we set up to deal with it. If you don't have snow tires, there will be maybe 24-48 hours per year that you won't want to go driving (with snow tires, that timeframe is an order of magnitude less).