Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Texas Has Always Been a Great Setting for the Apocalypse

texasmonthly.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 100 posts

Re: Texas Has Always Been a Great Setting for the Apocalypse

#61

Post by bin_bash »

Fatnino wrote: post #50
dkarl wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true in some areas of Austin, but in most cases, it's about cost and expectations. Austin straddles the border between dry, rocky west Texas and wetter, black soil east Texas, but houses have traditionally been built without basements no matter what kind of soil they were built on, in Austin and in other parts of Texas. These days, a lot of newer, more expensive houses are built with basements to maximize…

Houses used to be small, built of wood, and hardly attached to the ground at all. It was fairly common practice to pick up a house and move it to another plot nearby. I think once cities get older and more ossified in their shape is when basements start to appear. Assuming there is no other reason to avoid it like flooding, hard rock, earthquakes, etc.

> It was fairly common practice to pick up a house and move it to another plot nearby.

To me that sounded fishy but I looked it up and you seem to be right! https://www.brownstonedetectives.com/the-ancient-art-of-movi...

Re: Texas Has Always Been a Great Setting for the Apocalypse

#62

Post by oneoff786 »

walls wrote: post #21
oneoff786 wrote: post #16

Apocalypse stories don’t often make sense. The energy and fuel situations are usually bonkers. The hordes of people who turn into lunatics is silly. Cooperation is natural and good. My favorite post apocalyptic cult is the one featured in A Quiet Place 2. This world features aliens that will kill anyone who makes a sound. The protagonists are captured by this cult of like 30 people with little intro to who the hell t…

> The hordes of people who turn into lunatics is silly. The hordes of lunatics already exist, and are just waiting for something to happen.

Sure sure. But they either die or fall in line very quickly. Fiction always makes these out to seem like very powerful entities.

Re: Texas Has Always Been a Great Setting for the Apocalypse

#63

Post by jtode »

O__________O wrote: post #18
JKCalhoun wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cooperation is natural and good. I agree, but perhaps hard fought. "The Survivors", the 1975 TV series from the U.K. tried to do apocalypse more cleverly.

How so? Scanned the Wikipedia page for it and nothing popped out as notably clever: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_(1975_TV_series)

Pretty good actually, a Terry Nation show as I recall (the guy who invented the Daleks). Attempts to take the subject seriously and realistically (no zombies or daleks), with reasonable success.

Re: Texas Has Always Been a Great Setting for the Apocalypse

#64

Post by ehecatl42 »

carapace wrote: post #41
oneoff786 wrote: post #16

Apocalypse stories don’t often make sense. The energy and fuel situations are usually bonkers. The hordes of people who turn into lunatics is silly. Cooperation is natural and good. My favorite post apocalyptic cult is the one featured in A Quiet Place 2. This world features aliens that will kill anyone who makes a sound. The protagonists are captured by this cult of like 30 people with little intro to who the hell t…

Like in Waterworld, where did they get all those cigarettes? Who's growing all that tobacco?

Nick Naylor: Cigarettes in space?

Jeff Megall: It's the final frontier, Nick.

Nick Naylor: But wouldn't they blow up in an all oxygen environment?

Jeff Megall: Probably. But it's an easy fix. One line of dialogue. 'Thank God we invented the... you know, whatever device.'

Re: Texas Has Always Been a Great Setting for the Apocalypse

#65

Post by Arrath »

achenatx wrote: post #39
MS90 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the fact that there's only about six inches of dirt here, dig any deeper than that and you hit solid limestone. That's why none of the houses here have basements.

there is no one reason why we dont have basements, but it is more likely to do with the fact that up north they have to dig deep (3-4 ft) for the frost line. If you are digging that deep anyway, you might as well go an additional 4-5 ft and build a basement. Excavating limestone isnt that hard. Instead of one day to dig a basement in soil, it would take about 14 days to dig a typical basement in limestone (based on d…

Alternatively its roughly 3 days of work to drill, blast & dig out a basement excavation, but explosives are scary so such work is often blocked outright.

Re: Texas Has Always Been a Great Setting for the Apocalypse

#66

Post by achenatx »

oneoff786 wrote: post #16

Apocalypse stories don’t often make sense. The energy and fuel situations are usually bonkers. The hordes of people who turn into lunatics is silly. Cooperation is natural and good. My favorite post apocalyptic cult is the one featured in A Quiet Place 2. This world features aliens that will kill anyone who makes a sound. The protagonists are captured by this cult of like 30 people with little intro to who the hell t…

you can look at modern apocalypses to see what might happen;

in rwanda hundreds of thousands of people were murdered in ethnic violence https://www.un.org/africarenewal/web-features/i-was-tested-l...

in aleppo, blocks banded together, but there was starvation, robbery, murder, rape etc

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/21/three-years-af...

hurricane katrina superdome - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/06/hurricanekatri...

venezuela https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/17/world/america...

Re: Texas Has Always Been a Great Setting for the Apocalypse

#67

Post by bobthepanda »

bin_bash wrote: post #58
MS90 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also has a disadvantage in that it's extremely porous and allows water to seep through it, which expands and contracts with temperature changes and causes the limestone to crack. There's areas around town where roads have been cut through hills, and if you drive through these after a big rainfall you can literally see water pouring out the side of the rock face. Chunks of limestone breaking off and falling onto th…

Do you actually have any sources or are you just making assumptions based on how you see limestone behave on the surface? I don’t have sources myself but to me the porous nature of limestone seems like a benefit since water would easily flow to the water table instead of flooding in the tunnel. Erosion seems like it would be a far bigger problem for tunnels in soil or sand than it would be for limestone.

Water generally flows down. If you have a high water table building basements is usually foolish.

Limestone, because it dissolves in contact with acidic water (and rainwater is slightly acidic) is also prone to sinkholes. Best to keep the ground stable by not exposing it to more water. It happens so often in Florida there’s an FAQ page. https://floridadep.gov/fgs/sinkholes

Re: Texas Has Always Been a Great Setting for the Apocalypse

#68

Post by achenatx »

slfnflctd wrote: post #48
mmmpop wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm I'm bothered by people hauling trailers to horde toilet paper, sure. But I'd absolutely fight you for the last roll on the shelf.

I would wipe my ass with my own hand before I'd engage in any kind of violence over fucking toilet paper. It's absurdly stupid and ethically bankrupt. Violence against another human being should be a last resort for self defense only.

you say that from the comfort of your own fully stocked home. When your child is starving your perspective will likely change. Even if it doesnt, other people will be coming for you.

If a group attacks other people, someone has to band together to step up to stop them before they come for each individual.

Re: Texas Has Always Been a Great Setting for the Apocalypse

#70

Post by nyolfen »

xbar wrote: post #60
chao- wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being self-satisfied when telling others to leave you alone (get bent, get out, piss off, etc.) is quintessentially American. Texas is to America as America is to the world. It is a difference of magnitude, not direction, and Texas has this particular topic to conveniently funnel all that extra "screw you" energy into.

I see your point, but I don't agree. Don't tread on me/independence are broad American values. "Screw Federal overreach" is a common American sentiment in many US states. Texas Monthly echoed appreciation for a broadly acknowledged Texas-as-nation-state fantasy. This is different in direction than any other US state and feels troubling.

state independence or secession is routinely brought up in relation to california, idaho, and the PNW, at the very least. it has also been a constant since texas was accepted into the union. spare me the handwringing, americans are disagreeable.
Post reply on HN