Doomsday planning for less crazy folk • Hacker News Board

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#281

Post by 52-6F-62 » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 2:31 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #56

The major thing overlooked here is mindset. After 14 years in the military and experience with several armed conflicts and humanitarian disasters, I have seen that pretty much all your plans and preparation will go out the window, so you need to learn to move adapt and improvise. If you're going to survive any contingency scenario you need to be resilient, excruciatingly innovative and mentally tough. Think more like…

I live in Toronto and I've always said if shit hits the fan, my first stop is probably Robarts Library at U of T.

edit: photo -- http://www.blogto.com/upload/2015/04/20150415-Robarts-Side.j...

The place is a massive, brutalist compound. And the knowledge it contains would be invaluable! Especially for people like me with limited biological or medical knowledge. The practical resources they knowledge would open up would make a massive difference.

That said, I'd probably still carry a proverbial stick.

Anyway, top rate insights.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#282

Post by matthewaveryusa » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 2:36 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #56

The major thing overlooked here is mindset. After 14 years in the military and experience with several armed conflicts and humanitarian disasters, I have seen that pretty much all your plans and preparation will go out the window, so you need to learn to move adapt and improvise. If you're going to survive any contingency scenario you need to be resilient, excruciatingly innovative and mentally tough. Think more like…

It's said that the US military is so good at war because even at times of peace it runs on chaos.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#283

Post by maxerickson » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 2:36 PM UTC

52-6F-62 wrote: post #281

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #56

The major thing overlooked here is mindset. After 14 years in the military and experience with several armed conflicts and humanitarian disasters, I have seen that pretty much all your plans and preparation will go out the window, so you need to learn to move adapt and improvise. If you're going to survive any contingency scenario you need to be resilient, excruciatingly innovative and mentally tough. Think more like…

I live in Toronto and I've always said if shit hits the fan, my first stop is probably Robarts Library at U of T. edit: photo -- http://www.blogto.com/upload/2015/04/20150415-Robarts-Side.j... The place is a massive, brutalist compound. And the knowledge it contains would be invaluable! Especially for people like me with limited biological or medical knowledge. The practical resources they knowledge would open up wou…

Just get a copy of something like https://www.amazon.com/Mayo-Clinic-Family-Health-Book/dp/160...

1400 pages of small print, plenty enough information relative to the time you would have to reference it in an urgent situation.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#284

Post by cerealbad » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 2:37 PM UTC

reminds me of the back-to-the-land movement and the foxfire books. their impetus in the 60s and 70s was a retreat from the complicated, (inter)dependent, technological ecosystem of a modern metropolis; towards a simpler redundancy structured around puritan hard work, self-sufficiency and independence of the farm and barter village. james burke had an excellent tv show in 1978 called "connections" covering science and technology (episode 1 linked). the follow up series in later decades were not as good:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnwpsp

it began by unwinding civilisation should a critical failure in a complex system lead to catastrophic and cascading collapse; then later trying to understand the connective steps taken from ancient pre-history to then present day.

most well-educated people lack the physical endurance, manual dexterity, strength and mental fortitude to revert back to pre-20th century agrarian survival. as we belong to a society of atomized individual consumers who receive instant gratification from novelty products which require little skill, patience or forethought to use. we depend mostly on mental faculties and the mechanical advantage of machines, with atrophied social and physical abilities. how many jokes, poems, stories or songs do you know? how many hours can you do hard physical labour for? professional sports and fitness industries artificially fill this void.

nobody can sell the things you actually need. the simplest short-term way to survive a disaster is to introduce yourself to your neighbours. depend on each other and share resources, car pool, grow food, recycle rainwater, repair broken things. you now have a backup network to the unavailable local, state, federal and international resources otherwise marshalled to aid you in time of need.

i will conclude my boring cliched opinions with this: i don't believe a disaster you need to prepare for is coming, nor am i convinced any preparation even on a whole city scale would be sufficient. should transportation and grid networks collapse indefinitely, you will likely die. if you live in a place prone to flooding, own a boat. if you live in a place with bush or forest fires, leave you homes when instructed. if you live along earthquake fault lines, avoid old buildings. if you live in a place with high crime, legally carry a weapon to defend yourself.sense became uncommon in a world without commons. if you care for my advice, i suggest you learn play an instrument and develop your singing voice, as the oldest ongoing human activity you are guaranteed job security even during ragnarok.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#285

Post by kerbalspacepro » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 2:38 PM UTC

jemfinch wrote: post #274

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".

Self-reliance is a myth made by conservatives to justify cutbacks to the poor. Nobody in history has been entirely "self-reliant". Even the pioneers of the Americas had an entire support network in the east and for those that lived around them.

If they didn't, they died.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#286

Post by criddell » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 2:44 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #56

The major thing overlooked here is mindset. After 14 years in the military and experience with several armed conflicts and humanitarian disasters, I have seen that pretty much all your plans and preparation will go out the window, so you need to learn to move adapt and improvise. If you're going to survive any contingency scenario you need to be resilient, excruciatingly innovative and mentally tough. Think more like…

> In reality you need to find or create a small community of survival minded people that can work together successfully over a long period with a variety of skills.

Neil Strauss (the Rolling Stone writer) wrote Emergency where he documents his tour through prepper-dom. Slight spoiler here, but he ends up coming to the same conclusion you do in your last sentence. He took CERT (community emergency response team) training and that is what he ultimately found to be most satisfying.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#287

Post by dsr_ » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 2:57 PM UTC

JshWright wrote: post #280

dsr_ wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The difference between a tiny tornado and a big tornado is immaterial when your house is in the path.

There were at least four times in the twenty years that I lived in upstate NY that snowstorms caused power outages and impassable roads at the same time.

You can't just name one place as safe from natural disasters and then explain that the two natural disasters that they get there don't count.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#288

Post by norea-armozel » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 3:23 PM UTC

I always feel that part of the reason why disasters hit us so hard is the fact that despite having some built in resilience in the current system we have it's not resilient on the small scale (i.e. the individual). If SHTF as an individual you're boned, but if you're a corporation or some other kind of organization you can weather it. It just seems to me that a whole new way of handling shocks to society needs to account for this fact more so than ever. The attempt by some to abolish the social safety net is just one of many things that our species is doing wrong. We need less efficiency and more redundancy. We need less profitability and more sustainability. Basically, we need to add resilience to the system down to the individual level where it's practical.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#289

Post by chiph » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 3:30 PM UTC

yourapostasy wrote: post #214

quickthrower2 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The classic Queenslander house is built up high so it can stay cool and probably also good for a flooding scenario.

That's fascinating, thanks for the info; the Texas coast has some houses with a similar design [1]. While some use wood stilts, some are going into full fortified designs [2]. Even further afield, using principles established with invisibility cloaking research might offer even more protection in the future [3]. If plasma gasification-produced slag-based pozzolanic concrete can be proven safe and efficacious, then th…

Those are common along the Carolina coast (which gets hit with Atlantic hurricanes). They're supposed to be built with strapping that connects the roof to the walls, the walls to the floor joists, and then to the posts. Building up like this gets you above the storm surge and gives you a place to park the car (you'll lose the car and the lawnmower, but that's minor compared to losing the house).

They're also supposed to have hurricane-rated glazing. One thing that destroys homes is when an opening gets made, allowing the wind inside. So having strong glass (or boarding-up) is a big deal.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#290

Post by QAkICoU7IDNkpFu » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 3:30 PM UTC

kerbalspacepro wrote: post #285

jemfinch wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Self-reliance is a myth made by conservatives to justify cutbacks to the poor. Nobody in history has been entirely "self-reliant". Even the pioneers of the Americas had an entire support network in the east and for those that lived around them. If they didn't, they died.

A conspiracy, if you will... :'D

But seriously, you seem to imply it's bad that people plan ahead, for when shit hits the fan, and somehow those people are the bad guys? Maybe that's not what you intended, but it's what you seem to imply.