321–330 of 405 posts
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If someone doesn’t have the money to stock pile some food and fuel do you think they can afford to move?
Bus fare, then a homeless shelter until you find work in your new city?
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Snow drifts can go 20 feet or higher with no place to shovel the snow to
Could they dig or melt a tunnel to the wood? If the snow were melted and then refroze as ice at the bottom of the tunnel, one could then slid the wood back to the tunnel entrance... Hardship breeds creativity. Necessity is the mother of invention (except under excessive government intervention, which may be at the root of reservation problems). Maybe if we could calculate the present day market value of all the land…
The real story here seems to me to be not that people burned their clothes to stay warm but that people in a place with fragile connections to the outside world had so little in the way of supplies to weather a relatively short period without food deliveries. I'm not blaming them, I assume that many of the affected people don't have the resources to keep a buffer stock.
They cannot afford to stockpile fuel. I listen to a podcast by a man who grew up on that reservation. While he was back visiting his grandmother, a propane truck was filling her tank. He told the driver, "Whoa! Stop! We can't afford that much!" The driver told him, "Don't worry, it's free. Venezuela is paying to fill everyone's tank." Those propane tanks are mostly empty unless Venezuela is paying (before Venezuelan…
I couldn't find anything in English, but this wikipedia page also mentions that propane gas has been in shortage since 2014 domestically for Venezuelans (years before the first sanctions were established): https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escasez_de_combustible_en_Ve....
PDVSA (government company responsible for gas and fuel extraction and processing) has been mismanaged for more than 20 years, the "free" propane was never going to last, and it was extensively used to gain political allies while it was given away.
For those interested, there was a national strike in PDVSA against Hugo Chavez in 2003 that IMHO started the company demise, they fired pretty much anyone who knew how to run it: https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paro_general_en_Venezuela_de...
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I come from eastern Europe and 150 years ago most of my ancestors were serfs, only a rung or two above chattel slaves on the ladder of human condition. 50 years ago a lot of their descendants in the Eastern Bloc countries were probably still in that condition or in the USSR factory worker equivalent.
Lol you should learn a bit about the history of these countries. 50 years ago was the seventies. While not as confortable as in the west, its was far to be at the level of serfs.
I think that many just don't know how widespread, deeply ingrained and recent much of this was - they think there was slavery, a bit of racism hanging around and then (in the USA at least) the civil rights act sorted things out and made everything equal. And that's really similar in nature to the comment you replied to - people have picked up a simplified and wrong version of history of Warsaw Pact countries and they're just a bit ignorant of the truth.
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There were studies 10-20 years ago predicting that global warming will bring with it completely unpredictable weather and harsher extremes in both directions.
Do any governments or institutions have a live(ish) updating model of "what would happen" if trends continue? People reference studies all the time but what's the currently accepted model/outcome in the scientific community? I remember hearing that melting of the ice caps will stop current flows in the ocean and bring about an ice age. Is that actually a thing or just fake news?
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For some context from someone who's been on that Res, its population is highly vulnerable with no margin for mishaps. It's a place of generational, crushing poverty, crime, illness, genetic-exacerbated substance abuse, broad lack of economic opportunity, cultural isolation, and federal disinvestment. Free federal healthcare is available, but only at an IHS hospital in Rapid City 1.5 hours away in good weather: it's a…
> genetic-exacerbated substance abuse Could you expand on this a bit? Not a concept I am familiar with
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The evo-bio story of alcohol is confusing though, since fermentation has been present in East Asia as long as anywhere, and there's a large part of the population there that has the alcohol flush reaction. You could tell the story as like, alcohol puts pressure on a population to evolve better responses, and with enough time the flush evolves and that helps limit drinking. But that's pretty just-so.
Yeah, I'm not saying that this is actually true, only that it's not absurd on its face. As I understand it (and I am absolutely not an expert here) North American indigenous populations separated from Asians at the end of the ice age, i.e. ~10,000 years ago, and since then had no exposure to alcohol. That seems like plenty of time for genetic predisposition to alcohol tolerance to be reduced. So it's possible and wor…
Arguably what has changed is the ABV of such beverages. Post-industrial alcohol percentages are way higher than what precolonial mesoamericans, ancient Greeks, and vikings we're drinking
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From the article, the community has stockpiled resources, but their plows and skidsteers are all out of commission. They literally cannot get to the firewood, and every time they clear some snow out more blows in. Some people have been completely isolated in their homes for 8 days. I'd say most people, even in rural areas, don't have a supply that'll last longer than that, except for some hardcore preppers.
I grew up in North Dakota, and the place in this news story is in South Dakota. I knew plenty of folks in rural areas with enough resources for weeks, not days. Running water might be the exception, but many farmers I know had well water.
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Snow drifts can go 20 feet or higher with no place to shovel the snow to
Could they dig or melt a tunnel to the wood? If the snow were melted and then refroze as ice at the bottom of the tunnel, one could then slid the wood back to the tunnel entrance... Hardship breeds creativity. Necessity is the mother of invention (except under excessive government intervention, which may be at the root of reservation problems). Maybe if we could calculate the present day market value of all the land…