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Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

lcamtuf.coredump.cx

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Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#91

Post by 1970-01-01 »

The author seems to be missing some important developments:

     Written by lcamtuf@coredump.cx, Dec 2015, minor updates Jul 2021.
...

     Pandemic. It's been a while since the highly developed world experienced a devastating outbreak, but it may be premature to flat out dismiss the risk. In 1918, an unusual strain of flu managed to kill 75 million people. Few years later, a mysterious sleeping sickness - probably also of viral origin - swept the globe, crippling millions, some for life. We aren't necessarily better prepared for similar events today.

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#92

Post by jcims »

Friday_ wrote: post #25

I liked the book from lcamtuf "Silence on the Wire" , I used to read what this guy writes. But then as i recall he started to work for google. Probably helped there with browser security and user tracking. He wrote some good open source tools thou.

Pretty weak rationale to dismiss (?) someone who's contributed quite a lot to the world over the past ~20 years.

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#93

Post by jcims »

verisimi wrote: post #14
playpause wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Do you think that society is more coherent now, after the past 2 years? Are things improving or are the wheels coming off? The Canadian government was freezing people's bank accounts like they are North Korea, and most cheer this on? With Russia going to war? Etc etc. If you had bought gold 7 years ago, you would have doubled its value.

Re-read the first four words. This is a description of the public perception, and it was spot on then and is largely still true now. (Add in some racist/white nationalist overtones, they seem to have been layered into the persona as well)

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#94

Post by stinkytaco »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #76
throw0101a wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cash on hand, a gun with ammunition, canned food, and bottled water. Contrary to popular opinion, people generally pull together in disasters rather than society falling apart. Good book on what happened in various situations ( 1917 explosion that tore up Halifax, Nova Scotia, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans) * http://rebeccasolnit.net/book/a-paradise-built-in-hell/ * htt…

Ever seen Threads (1984) though? Or for something less outright depressing, perhaps the first few episodes of James Burke's Connections ? Both make it clear that should something cataclysmic befall us all we'd be faced with the near-impossible problem of restarting agriculture. Modern, surplus-generating, agriculture isn't possible without modern society, starting with the basics like fuel and fertilizers (and everyt…

This assumes a rapid, catastrophic collapse, which seems unlikely. Possible, but unlikely. More likely are localized disasters and gradual, sometimes imperceptible decline. These things have trickle-down impacts (migration, food shortages, etc) but are generally unlikely to trigger full on survival scenarios for most people. This isn't to say our industrialized food chain isn't problematic, it certainly is, but a gun is less likely to aid most people in day to day survival.

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#95

Post by michaelt »

germinalphrase wrote: post #87
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…

re: communications - in the events that cellphone and internet infrastructure fails, what are the viable alternatives? Are landlines intrinsically more robust (or they share the internet fiber)? Shortwave seems obvious, but there’s an obvious education/investment/network barrier (no one I would want to communicate with is a HAM).

Well, the plan could be as simple as telling loved ones that you'll aim to get a message to them within 3 days, and they shouldn't panic if they haven't heard from you after 2 days.

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#96

Post by giantg2 »

ghaff wrote: post #64
giantg2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you keep the pipes running, they might not freeze. It's also usually not too difficult to drain the majority of the pipes depending on the plumbing design.

If you have forced hot water heating, it's more difficult.

Not really. It's more difficult to refill them and get all the air out than to drain them.

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#97

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

stinkytaco wrote: post #94
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever seen Threads (1984) though? Or for something less outright depressing, perhaps the first few episodes of James Burke's Connections ? Both make it clear that should something cataclysmic befall us all we'd be faced with the near-impossible problem of restarting agriculture. Modern, surplus-generating, agriculture isn't possible without modern society, starting with the basics like fuel and fertilizers (and everyt…

This assumes a rapid, catastrophic collapse, which seems unlikely. Possible, but unlikely. More likely are localized disasters and gradual, sometimes imperceptible decline. These things have trickle-down impacts (migration, food shortages, etc) but are generally unlikely to trigger full on survival scenarios for most people. This isn't to say our industrialized food chain isn't problematic, it certainly is, but a gun…

> This assumes a rapid, catastrophic collapse, which seems unlikely.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists recently set the Doomsday clock to 100s to midnight.

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#98

Post by homonculus1 »

skylanh wrote: post #68
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how the Japanese do it. If you have noticed, they do a really good job of responding to disasters. In fact, one of the funniest aspects, is that the Yakuza (Japanese mobsters) often are the first ones on the scene, and seem to take pleasure at beating the government response. I suspect that part of the reason is that organized crime tends to have an incredibly robust infrastructure, hardened against unpredicta…

(Speaking totally out of turn and without any sort of knowledge of the situation) The rapid response of the Yakuza may simply be opportunistic and predatory. Food, clothes, shelter, help to save precious heirlooms, those are all inflexible needs. Borrowing on "social credit" on inflexible needs can be exploitatively steep later. In the Yakuza-as-"helpers" model, they're taking advantage of chaos and economics theorie…

And you think the government is doing it out of transcendant charity?

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#100

Post by ghaff »

faeyanpiraat wrote: post #90
ghaff wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have forced hot water heating, it's more difficult.

Isn't there a way to have some antifreeze additives in pipes where a pipe freeze is actually a realistic scenario?

You can absolutely winterize a house. My dad did it in Maine for a number of years when he was leaving the house for the winter. But as I recall it was something of an operation to both winterize it and dewinterize it--which he called a plumber in for.

One of the problems with winter power outages is that even if you're prepared to winterize everything by yourself, you probably don't know that it's going to be an extended outage (which is generally rare) so it doesn't make sense to immediately take drastic steps.

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