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Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

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Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#121

Post by notakio »

hef19898 wrote: post #78
notakio wrote: post #77

One aspect that the article does not cover enough is the importance of training. Whether that's medical training, self-defense training, survival training or general preparedness training, training is what makes gear/supplies useful. Far too many people will purchase x, y, and z in order to be "prepared", but if you can't properly apply that tourniquet you bought a dozen of, then it is useless, and so are you in the…

Why not training in stuff like gardening (the food stuff variety), repair, house building, emergency medical care? Even in pre-feudal societies there was only so much need for "warriors".

Training is training, and it's all beneficial. And a good portion of my training has been in trauma care, medical response, and techniques. It resulted in my getting my EMT license, though I never used it. It all falls under "harder to kill".

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#122

Post by notakio »

hef19898 wrote: post #88
buginabag wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even in pre-feudal societies there was only so much need for "warriors". No the user you've replied to, but it's not "either or" that you (might) imply. I would also like to emphasize, pre-Feudal society was as it was due to pre-Fedual technology. The AR-15 and Glock 19 aren't going to disappear with the COVID-23 epidemic or the nuclear flash. One can learn basic marksmanship fairly well at a local shooting range,…

This focus on combat for survival thing is so American. In Civil War combatants are quickly trained by warlords, and quite expendable. No amout of training will allow a single person to survive alone. In case of warfare, there are armies. For all other circumstances, combat skills are negligable. Repair, food "gathering" and medical skills are so much more important. Followed by organising people and stuff.

"Combat skills" include medical skills, communications skills, planning, coordination, and effective teamwork skills. None of the training I've ever been involved with has been focused on turning a single person into Rambo, but more along the lines of turning 4 or 12 people into an effective team, able to accomplish specific tasks under decent amounts of stress.

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#123

Post by ghaff »

decafninja wrote: post #73
ghaff wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how actively dangerous Times Square was but for it and 42nd Street "gritty" is a pretty good description. You see remnants of it at e.g. the Port Authority, aka one of the world's worst bus stations. Being there late at night was... interesting (as I once was). For a lot of people who knew NYC in that era, the "Disneyfication" isn't the worst thing that could have happened.

My dad commuted to his office somewhere in Midtown Manhattan in the 1980s. One day I was rummaging through his briefcase and found a steel baton. I asked him what it was for and he said it was to protect himself from the bad guys. As a kid I distinctly remember being somewhat afraid whenever my family had reason to go into NYC from our home in NJ. I know he's controversial, but that fear subsided at some point during…

I was visiting NYC a fair bit in the late 80s-00s and even worked there for a summer. But, while my friends there would roll their eyes a bit at "the proctor's" recorded messages in taxi cabs about buckling your seatbelt and things like that, in general they seemed to mostly think that Disneyfication was better than what preceded it. While I'm sure things were never as bad as they were in my younger imagination, there were a lot of places I would not have been comfortable walking, especially at night.

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#124

Post by pasquinelli »

snowwrestler wrote: post #5

The book Eternity by Greg Bear had an interesting take on this. In that book (spoiler) there is an exchange of nuclear weapons between the U.S. and Russia, which devastates the surface of the Earth. But many people survive, and a society quickly develops post-war. But it is dominated not by those who were most individually prepared, but by those who contributed the most to their neighbors and communities. There is so…

i've sometimes thought i should accumulate a small stockpile of salt. to paraphrase umberto eco in "the mysterious flame of queen loana"

> without salt nothing tastes like nothing

seems plausible i could gather enough to share without too much trouble. now i'm thinking of it, msg would be another good one.

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#125

Post by rsync »

peckrob wrote: post #21

The thing is, you don't have to be a Doomsday Prepper to just be prepared. It's about mitigating the risk of the disasters you are likely to face in your locality. I lived through the 2011 Super Outbreak [0]. Following the tornadoes, we had no actual damage (and most places didn't, tornadoes are pretty localized disasters, even in big outbreaks), but we had no power for about eight days because the tornadoes tore up…

WRT fuel, it is logistically difficult to keep gasoline fresh and rotated.

BUT, if you don’t mind paying $20 per gallon, you can buy a 5 gallon sealed can of stabilized, pre mixed, chainsaw gas.

It is 50:1 and 94 octane - and it is absolutely safe and reasonable to run in any car (or generator, etc.) - it will likely be the nicest gas that engine will ever consume.

You can store and use it for years.

Also, you can just use it for chainsaws.

EDIT: This is the brand I use:

https://vpracingfuels.com/product/501-premixed-small-engine-...

"Remains stable 2 years in the tank and 5 years in the sealed container"

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#126

Post by hef19898 »

notakio wrote: post #121
hef19898 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not training in stuff like gardening (the food stuff variety), repair, house building, emergency medical care? Even in pre-feudal societies there was only so much need for "warriors".

Training is training, and it's all beneficial. And a good portion of my training has been in trauma care, medical response, and techniques. It resulted in my getting my EMT license, though I never used it. It all falls under "harder to kill".

So you have some basic medical yraining, but no experience. Skills deteriorate when not used in real life.

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#127

Post by hef19898 »

notakio wrote: post #122
hef19898 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This focus on combat for survival thing is so American. In Civil War combatants are quickly trained by warlords, and quite expendable. No amout of training will allow a single person to survive alone. In case of warfare, there are armies. For all other circumstances, combat skills are negligable. Repair, food "gathering" and medical skills are so much more important. Followed by organising people and stuff.

"Combat skills" include medical skills, communications skills, planning, coordination, and effective teamwork skills. None of the training I've ever been involved with has been focused on turning a single person into Rambo, but more along the lines of turning 4 or 12 people into an effective team, able to accomplish specific tasks under decent amounts of stress.

Honest question, did you receive this training in a military or disaster relieve organisation? If so, good!

You forgot one, very relevant, support skill (since we include a lot of enabling skills now it seems): logistics.

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#128

Post by selfhoster11 »

stinkytaco wrote: post #104
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This assumes a rapid, catastrophic collapse, which seems unlikely. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists recently set the Doomsday clock to 100s to midnight.

OK? But I'm not sure of your point. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists doesn't know much more than the rest of us do about this. Anyone can tell you there's lots of nuclear weapons and that using them would lead to a massive social collapse. But a nuke hasn't been deployed in anger for nearly 80 years. In that time there's been countless natural disasters, pandemics, conflicts and social upheavals. I know what I'm…

We also haven't had a proper pandemic for a century, and then we had one. Nukes aren't something you can do much about, but excluding then entirely from one's disaster planning feels like a mistake.

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#129

Post by chasd00 »

seanhunter wrote: post #6

If you want to learn how to do disaster planning as an organisation, a really good example to follow is Waffle House, who take it extremely seriously. https://disasterphilanthropy.org/blog/preparedness/disaster-...

I bet a good thing to know is all the Waffle House locations within a 100 mile radius.

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#130

Post by stinkytaco »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #128
stinkytaco wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK? But I'm not sure of your point. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists doesn't know much more than the rest of us do about this. Anyone can tell you there's lots of nuclear weapons and that using them would lead to a massive social collapse. But a nuke hasn't been deployed in anger for nearly 80 years. In that time there's been countless natural disasters, pandemics, conflicts and social upheavals. I know what I'm…

We also haven't had a proper pandemic for a century, and then we had one. Nukes aren't something you can do much about, but excluding then entirely from one's disaster planning feels like a mistake.

> We also haven't had a proper pandemic for a century, and then we had one.

I disagree. COVID-19 has certainly been the widest scales pandemic, but in addition to high profile localized pandemics (Ebola and Zika), we've had several smaller serious outbreaks (H1N1 killed between 200,000 and 500,000 people worldwide, and also overwhelmingly impacted younger people).

> Nukes aren't something you can do much about, but excluding then entirely from one's disaster planning feels like a mistake.

Nor would I suggest you should exclude it. But as the parent comment stated, the real problem in such as situation is social (restarting industrial systems), which isn't really something I can prepare for.

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