Disaster/Doomsday Scenarios?

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I ended up watching a show on the History channel with a couple buddies that outlined, if there was a pandemic flu bad enough literally shut down society, what would happen, what the survivors would have to deal with etc. Some of you may seen it - they had an example family from Los Angeles trying to stick it out at their house, first the obvious of TV and internet go, then electricity, then water, after which the looting really commences. They indicated the idea that in most major cities, referring to the thin veil of society, that we're about 9 meals away from anarchy at any time - that if the food distribution shut down you'd have terrible things happening rather quickly, not too surprising. It of course outlined all their dealings with trying to disguised their house as already ransacked, the show also dealt heavily with the essentials a person would need to carry, all the water they would need, what kind of ordeal they'd have just trying to flee town and get to the country side - indicating as well that most of the commercial farms would be destroyed due to the fact that they rely on all kinds of technology to keep water running that, when lost, would leave them largely infertile (and on short notice the ability of people to start growing for themselves would be questionable). In the end you have a post-apocalyptic picture where people are living in small gated/barbed wire community under martial law (by Sheriff) to where trespasser or thieves would be executed as soon as caught.

The thing in watching that which really made me think; with all this intel available, if the government, the military, etc. has been well aware of this as well as most people who are in the know on survivalism - its kind of strange that we haven't figured out ways to make our energy, food, and water needs more modular? Doomsday scenarios based on pandemic flu or natural disaster illustrate that we've been building society on sand and, much like economics with the stock market and how banks can start folding like dominoes, the interdependence is almost a little silly if you don't have some type of auxilliary backup. The funny thing is, I don't think that large losses of life would need to end our way of life as we knew it *if* we took the right precautionary steps (and of course vital in that - making those precautionary steps inexpensive enough to where its realistically within the means of most people to obtain a fair amount of self-sufficiency).

My question I think in this thread is - what practical measure could we take in the coming decades to help immunize societal infrastructure against significant loss of human life and the 'specialists' needed to run everything? Would building solar powered steam turbines as part of housing make a big difference? Enhancing home hydroponic capability for growing food? It seems like for all the technology we have it's a little amazing that self-sufficiency related technology is either obscure or, on the other hand, going back to pre 1900 means and methods. Over all it seemed like the biggest problem and cause of death for people seemed to be either violence over food sources or needing to cross large stretches of land on foot which, if such a voyage wasn't necessary, a large part of the problem would be resolved.

Any thoughts?

I'm okay with dying. I've been through the psychosis of doomsday.

Listen to the guitar.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i1r5A3o5dM[/youtube]

This show was called "After Apocalypse", if anybody's interested.

I see the problem as being that 1) too many people live in inhospitable desert parts of the country that need water piped hundreds of miles to be habitable and 2) few people know how to grow their own food. America is actually lucky in that much of our suburban infrastructure is built with large yards (except the places constructed during the last boom). This could readily be adapted to growing food, and raising animals that are adaptable to small spaces, like chickens, ducks, and rabbits.

Indeed, there's a "living lawn" movement that aims to replace bluegrass lawns with veggie gardens. Activists find that 1950s laws meant to ensure a harmonious suburban landscape stand in their way, laws that MANDATE bluegrass lawns and ornamental shrubs, and forbid raising animals and growing crops. These laws were sponsored by developers, and functioned along the same lines as housing deeds that forbade selling to certain groups of people. The "master planners" of the suburbs had something very specific in mind, and wanted to preserve it, only it was unsustainable. That's only part of the problem.

A law can be changed, changing migration patterns is another thing entirely. With the advent of whole house (and commercial) air conditioning, people moved to the deserts where they didn't have to deal with snow all the time. They didn't realize that snow = water= habitability. Metropolitan Minneapolis has a number of small lakes in its boundaries, even Detroit does. Phoenix doesn't even have a single river. Los Angeles has a few pathetic creeks. The sun may always shine in Arizona, but that means that there's no water, which means that it must be piped. This creates a fragile artificial environment.

I think that eventually people will return to the eastern part of the country. A little cold is in the end analysis a small price to pay for having water. I recommend reading Cadillac Desert, which described how the western US relies on dwindling water supplies. The book was written about 25 years ago. There is a small sliver of land out west that has natural water supplies-basically, north of the California Delta and the Bay Area and west of the Sierra Nevadas and the Cascades. Everything else is uninhabitable. When the US breaks up, I expect everything between the Sierras and the Mississippi to empty really fast.

In that show's concept, Los Angeles is a long way from anywhere, and there are only a few mountain passes that let you out. There is essentially only a single road-Interstate 5-between LA and the wetter north. (US 101 also leads north, but not necessarily to wetter climes-it hugs the coast, where there is little fresh water.) If everybody tried to leave at once, I-5 would quickly shut down, and people would be trapped. Eventually such places will be abandoned, but will it happen in time to save lives?

I know part of FEMA was to plan for scenarios as such and I would imagine that one flaw in that show is this: they would have encouraged people to leave the cities much sooner than at their own volition after a few months progressed. I think in that scenario its a raw case of no central disaster planning whatsoever, I would imagine that the national guard would be forced to show up for roll call, sick members sent home, and everyone else vaccinated or forced to where bio suites and go through decontamination - so they they could keep their rank and file and be effective. Transporting people would be difficult, likely it would involved the country being segmented into checkpoints with cars backed up for possibly 100 miles or more, all passengers having to undergo some kind of screening before passing through. On the other hand though I could see FEMA facilities also being set up in as many greater metropolitan areas as possible. This whole scenario of course would mean complete governmental control but - would be far better a scenario that what the show provided.

On the edible lawn and crop farming in a suburban area, it would mean more than just having vegetables for lawns. You would need high fences almost as code to keep raccoons, deer, skunks, or whatever else out of your garden. I could see some starchy foods being grown there, some other things like tomatoes are conservative on space, as far as live stock though I think chickens would be about the extent of it - anything much larger and you simply don't have adequate room for the animals let alone grazing. The other part of course is what would you do to insure that other people in the area didn't come onto your property at night and snag your stuff? Local watch up and down streets would be a must, likely in numbers larger than one or two and paired together to make them tougher targets.

The only problem you end up with though - that scenario in its end math ends up looking like a warzone science fiction short story and aesthetically it may simply not be worth it. My friend was showing me something that came out of Arizona which is a solar dish with a built in steam turbine that supposedly can power up to four homes, rain or shine. Food grow operations though - to me I'd think would be best left to having something like having homes fitted with sub-basements for hydroponic farming, which would cut the need for tearing up the lawn or big fences with razor wire. As for water though, I wonder if we'll ever get to the point of being able to do something pretty close to a closed system if our filtration techniques get better? While I don't think most people find the notion of drinking the remnants of their own sewage linked back to them so intimately as desirable - if its effectively like drinking something similar to zero water its not quite as big a deal.

Something else I'm thinking as well though, if the idea of home hydroponics on that scale may seem to be a big deal, the least they could do at least is fit the large corporate farms with disaster measures or implements that can solve some of the issues that would occur if such a thing happened? True, distribution could be a pain but I would think as well the a lot of industries - again with advancing practicality in cost - could come up with good backup systems or at least something to help at keeping their operations ready to go.

The need for fossil fuels is probably the nastiest and most obvious part of this, Victor Mordecai highlighted - if war with Iran, either U.S. or Israel, which would result in Iran sinking its own infrastructure in the strait of Hormuz, how fast many economies in the world would grind to a halt (Japan having it the worst, the U.S. being lucky enough to have the most diversity). I think that goes to show that our reliance on oil also - while its politically caustic, its also a huge problem in such a scenario, seems like hydrogen would be the wisest idea but it also presents a lot of engineering challenges as well as knowing how far a vehicle could get on its liquefied hydrogen supply and would that distance be practical (we'd need something a bit better than green Sylvias).

The key question is, of course, is that the direction reality is taking? You can scare yourself in all sorts of ways and this is one of the nastier ones.

In that sense its kind of like the thought of killer asteroids - we haven't been hit by one for quite a while, we can think of many reasons to think that a deadly collision would be relevant although, in probabilistic measurements its very unlikely to happen in our times. I think its all the more reason though why, in the short run FEMA (in the U.S., other disaster controls in other countries) needs well built plans and ways of keeping society organized. Over decades and perhaps centuries, we could work on making society more modular, less easy to knock out, and perhaps by the time we have an actual asteroid concern the guns we'll use to knock them down will be a somewhat stronger version of what we use to open envelopes.

Why was it played on the History channel?

No I meant that it would perhaps be more suited to the Future channel!

Anyhow, I just heard that there's a place in Australia where the residents have been warned that the conditions today are potentially catastrophic for bush fire and it is recommended that they all evacuate. So I was thinking the same thing - for the next probably 6 or 7 weeks there is most likely going to be fire danger. So what do these people do - stay evacuated from their homes for the duration of that time? It's really not a realistic option for people who have nowhere else to go, or they don't have a car, or conditions like autism makes that kind of chaos unmanageable, or they work in the area and have to keep making a living. It's really a crazy situation.

So I was thinking something like all homes should have some sort of underground area that protects from these sorts of disasters, yeah and the self-sufficiency thing - water, solar power, crops, waste management.

Otherwise - just pray I guess!!