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'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

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Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#91

Post by nickff »

hanniabu wrote: post #81
phobosanomaly wrote: post #51

In many parts of the United States when you call 911, you're lucky if anyone shows up within an hour. It's a couple hours to get to a Wal-Mart or a store. It's difficult to get anyone to drive 40 minutes outside the nearest town and navigate unmarked dirt roads to do basic plumbing or home repairs. As a result, people have to learn to repair things, make things, use a gun, do first aid, lay shingles, hang drywall, po…

There's a town in Alaska where you need to have your appendix removed in order to live there because the nearest hospital is 625 miles away. https://www.bbc.com/future/gallery/20180810-villas-las-estre...

>" There's a town in Alaska where you need to have your appendix removed in order to live there because the nearest hospital is 625 miles away."

Your link talks about Antarctica, not Alaska.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#92

Post by nickpinkston »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #57
XaspR8d wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I try to avoid "midwest" at all, except when being vague is a goal. The distinction between "Great Lakes" & "Great Plains" seems quite useful both geographically and culturally and "midwest" seems to just splotch right over that boundary. I agree with your western boundary, though I'd probably just call it "The Rockies" myself, and let Nevadans and Utahns get absorbed either into "West Coast" or "Southwest" as t…

Utah is not West Coast. As rosseloh said, it's the West. (And I agree - I draw the line at Denver.) I don't agree with "Midwest" where people place it on the east side, though. Take Pittsburgh, for instance. Look at a map , people. It's not "west", and it's not even "mid". It's East. "Mid" starts at Chicago. (Pittsburgh was once midwest, but it's not 1870 any more.)

Culturally though, The Pittsburgh area (as resident of 10+ years) is caught between the East / Midwest, but the rural areas North and West feel solidly in the Midwest culture to me. Very different from all parts East.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#93

Post by pnw_hazor »

pnathan wrote: post #66
phobosanomaly wrote: post #51

In many parts of the United States when you call 911, you're lucky if anyone shows up within an hour. It's a couple hours to get to a Wal-Mart or a store. It's difficult to get anyone to drive 40 minutes outside the nearest town and navigate unmarked dirt roads to do basic plumbing or home repairs. As a result, people have to learn to repair things, make things, use a gun, do first aid, lay shingles, hang drywall, po…

> In many parts of the United States when you call 911, you're lucky if anyone shows up within an hour. It's a couple hours to get to a Wal-Mart or a store. It's difficult to get anyone to drive 40 minutes outside the nearest town and navigate unmarked dirt roads to do basic plumbing or home repairs. That's pretty far out; I think that's pretty extreme. At least in Idaho/WA IMO (different geography and settlement pat…

We have a homestead in NE WA we are developing, a few weeks ago, for the first time ever, I called 911 because of a potentially dangerous laceration. We have a full first aid kit with plenty of "stop the bleed" stuff but I didn't want to take any chances. So because the bleeding was controlled we waited for the EMTs.

It took 25 minutes for the EMTs to arrive. But that is because the nearest EMT team was not on another call. Otherwise, it could have take 45-60 minutes to get a team from the next nearest town/county.

Later that day on the way home to Seattle we stopped at an urgent care to get stitches for $175.

Though, I am seriously thinking about getting an AED to keep out there.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#94

Post by abstrakraft »

hanniabu wrote: post #81
phobosanomaly wrote: post #51

In many parts of the United States when you call 911, you're lucky if anyone shows up within an hour. It's a couple hours to get to a Wal-Mart or a store. It's difficult to get anyone to drive 40 minutes outside the nearest town and navigate unmarked dirt roads to do basic plumbing or home repairs. As a result, people have to learn to repair things, make things, use a gun, do first aid, lay shingles, hang drywall, po…

There's a town in Alaska where you need to have your appendix removed in order to live there because the nearest hospital is 625 miles away. https://www.bbc.com/future/gallery/20180810-villas-las-estre...

The linked article is about a town in Antarctica, not Alaska.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#95

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

phobosanomaly wrote: post #51

In many parts of the United States when you call 911, you're lucky if anyone shows up within an hour. It's a couple hours to get to a Wal-Mart or a store. It's difficult to get anyone to drive 40 minutes outside the nearest town and navigate unmarked dirt roads to do basic plumbing or home repairs. As a result, people have to learn to repair things, make things, use a gun, do first aid, lay shingles, hang drywall, po…

The funny thing is that I grew up in London, then lived in Cambridge, Heidelberg, Seattle and Philadelphia - 55+ years of thoroughly urban living. 18 months ago I moved to a place where your opening sentence applies broadly.

Yet somehow, I still learned how to do most of the things you list in your second paragraph before I got here.

And I have neighbors here who are completely clueless about most of those things. They survive, in some cases, by cultivating long term relationships with the right people.

I think you have to be careful with the correlation/causatio n issue when making points like this.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#96

Post by phobosanomaly »

mbostleman wrote: post #73
phobosanomaly wrote: post #51

In many parts of the United States when you call 911, you're lucky if anyone shows up within an hour. It's a couple hours to get to a Wal-Mart or a store. It's difficult to get anyone to drive 40 minutes outside the nearest town and navigate unmarked dirt roads to do basic plumbing or home repairs. As a result, people have to learn to repair things, make things, use a gun, do first aid, lay shingles, hang drywall, po…

Last night I was on my way home on a relatively remote stretch in eastern Idaho that's 30 minutes from the nearest EMS and came upon a head on collision that just happened. Several others not involved surrounded the scene pretty quickly and started assessing the injured. I literally finished my Wilderness First Aid certification Saturday afternoon.

Those wilderness medicine classes are awesome. Highly recommend keeping going for Wilderness First Responder. It's really, really fun.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#97

Post by phobosanomaly »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #93
pnathan wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In many parts of the United States when you call 911, you're lucky if anyone shows up within an hour. It's a couple hours to get to a Wal-Mart or a store. It's difficult to get anyone to drive 40 minutes outside the nearest town and navigate unmarked dirt roads to do basic plumbing or home repairs. That's pretty far out; I think that's pretty extreme. At least in Idaho/WA IMO (different geography and settlement pat…

We have a homestead in NE WA we are developing, a few weeks ago, for the first time ever, I called 911 because of a potentially dangerous laceration. We have a full first aid kit with plenty of "stop the bleed" stuff but I didn't want to take any chances. So because the bleeding was controlled we waited for the EMTs. It took 25 minutes for the EMTs to arrive. But that is because the nearest EMT team was not on anothe…

One of the posters above mentioned Wilderness First Aid, which is a great course. Wilderness First Responder goes more above-and-beyond and includes things like relocating a dislocated kneecap or shoulder, splinting, bandaging, administering injections, wound care, clearing a spine, identifying brain swelling from a head injury, etc.

You can do it in a week, living on-site.

Edit: There's also a component on helicopter operations, such as laying out a landing site for when things get really spicy.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#98

Post by sandworm101 »

mbostleman wrote: post #85
sandworm101 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 30 minutes from the nearest EMS In even the most developed inner cities of the US, a 30-minute response time is not unusual. A car crash with injuries, blood on the street, would certainly be top of the 911 priority list other factors like traffic often mean delays. "In July 2019, it took the NYPD more than 20 minutes on average to respond to all of its 911 calls. This July, it was about 18 minutes." https://www.n…

Also, for what it's worth, we have really good helicopter support in this region too. Both medical transport as well as short haul / wilderness extraction. So response can be a lot faster if necessary.

Helicopters are tricky things. They move very quickly but from call to helicopter taking off can often be a long time. Even in the military/coast guard context, the process of authorizing a flight, turning a helicopter on, and actually getting the thing in the air can easily take 30+ minutes.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#99

Post by meristem »

falcolas wrote: post #6
2trill2spill wrote: post #2

> Now, well into the 21st century, researchers led by the University of Cambridge have detected remnants of the pioneer personality in US populations of once inhospitable mountainous territory, particularly in the Midwest. As a person who was born and raised in the Midwest[1], just where are these mountainous regions they speak of in the Midwest? There's the black hills[2] and that's pretty much it. I wonder what def…

As someone who lives in this "Intermountain West", I've never heard of the "Intermountain West" term before your post. It seems like a term that someone came up with, but it's never caught on. I've typically heard of us referred to as the Western US (as opposed to the West Coast).

I am most familiar with this term in the context of detailed weather forecast discussions.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#100

Post by dualboot »

arminiusreturns wrote: post #36

Can anecdotally confirm. Sometimes it quite annoys me that those personality traits are so embedded in myself though, because it seems to constantly be a headbutting of cultures that so many Americans on the coastal big cities just don't get or approve of, and love to condescendingly talk about that kind of personality as lesser or barbarous in some way. I love the mountains and freedom they offered me, the lessons t…

>"headbutting of cultures that so many Americans on the coastal big cities just don't get or approve of, and love to condescendingly talk about that kind of personality as lesser or barbarous in some way."

This cultural divide has deep roots in the power struggle that was created when the people who settled the Appalachian's figured out that converting fields of corn into distilled bottles of whisky was far more profitable since it could travel infinitely farther without spoilage along the trade routes.

They were "dirt poor" prior to this because they could generate fresh produce that had a limited scope and value on the market.

That's when the war on stills began and there was a very thorough campaign of misinformation about how "dumb hillbillies" were going to blow themselves up/make everyone blind trying to operate a simple still.

It was really about the potential shift in economic power if that region was able to leverage vast lands for growing and creating highly profitable alcohol that could be sold across the country.

That campaign/lobby was so effective that it still resonates to this day.

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