How Can We Prepare for Social Unrest & Civil Disorder?

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Thank you. However, I'm more of a hardcore partisan, and thumbing my nose at conservatives is how I get my jollies. Besides that token aggression, though, I actually do have a great deal of confidence in my fellow Americans. We are an easy-going people, and we are not highly dependent upon social structure. Due to a bad credit problem in the US, though, we do have a large sector of the population working two, even three jobs with most of their income flowing into the pockets of some Wall Street tycoon. However, I think that it would brighten me up to see the heads of a few overpaid corporate executives rolling down Wall Street. It might teach them a lesson or two about why they shouldn't lower people's limits and hike their rates during a crippling recession.

By the way, the American economy isn't out of the woods yet. The credit card market is going to go belly-up before too long. Let 'em sink. The havoc they've been wreaking on American credit threatens to take us back to Dark Ages. The whole practice ought to be outlawed.

i'm australian - downbeat and grungey with tattoos.
just so long as you have a BIT of the vigilante in you!! ! And it is NOT ALL baseball and Gina whatshername avatar girl!

I'm still scratching around for meaningful contributions to this thread...and i just keep coming back to nature and bush skills.

You couldn't: There was a rationing system for food, clothing, heating, name-it. This system was maintained by the local authorities and there was with the end of the war no interruption of issuing the food stamps (the design changed slightly). This food was sold for state defined prices. Even with wheelbarrow of money you couldn't buy more food, even not on the black market, because here the Mark was worthless: Tobacco, coffee beans or alcohol served as parallel currency.

I don't it is still the case, but at least during cold war all local authorities in Germany had a full set of food stamps in stock for the whole population. The German Federal Reserve Bank (Bundesbank) had also a full set of banknotes for a new currency in stock. All prepared for a "day X".

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The difference is perhaps deeper: European are used to a bureaucratic system since the 15th or 16th century. It survived all wars and revolutions since. In some respect it is the backbone of society.

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=319944
Collapse Underway

It most definitely is really happening.

The above link is to a Forum, just like this one, only on vBulletin, the best forum software available. There's no malware whatsoever. That thread contains daily mainstream news articles which are chronicling the very real collapse of global civilization which is now underway.

If anybody needs an impetus to prepare, the facts speak urgently for themselves.

Haven't done anything to prepare per se. I dunno, I could go either way on this one. I think like the economy, it largely depends on where you live, some places will do better than others. But I also like to think that when the s**t hits the fan, it often brings out the best in people instead of the worst. People helping each other out because its in their best interests to do so.

sweet millie

Each time had his prophets of doomsday. It would be very surprising if our time would be an exception. Civilization survived such harder test. Look at picture of Europe 1945 or of 1648. If the stock markets collapse or even the currency - this all happened previous more than ones and did not lead to a collapse of civilisation.

New Orleans is still in ruins.

They were the largest plasma screens, flown in at FEMA expense, and some few billion was spent on FEMA credit cards for needed lap dances in the French Quarter.

As for the police, about 300 of them left with a stolen new car loaded with everything they could loot. After the flood waters were pumped out there was no one here but first responders, and every house and business got looted.

Government just wants first pick on the looting. After all, it is what they get paid to do.

The flooding of New Orleans was caused by Government theft. The main canal under the supervision of the Corp of Engineers, was nine foot deep, and emptied into a six foot lake, through a narrow bridge.

They got paid to dredge it to eighteen foot, taking out nine foot of good clay, down to a layer of peat moss. They got paid to haul it away, and then it vanished, fill clay sells good around here. No one knows what happened to it?

An eighteen foot deep canal to improve drainage into a six foot deep lake? I asked if they dug the underwater canal out into the lake. THE NEW GOVERNMENT SCIENCE OF UNDERWATER CANALS!

The levee was made to hold back seventeen foot of surge, it failed at ten.

The reason was found, besides the clay, the forty foot sheet pilings the Corp of Engineers signed off on were only twenty foot long.

Another levee they signed off on at seventeen foot above sea level, was measured by a local with a pole, it was thirteen foot above sea level, they had finished the contract, and were rather mad at us for having to come back and add four foot. Corp of Engineers, Civil Engineers, the Contracters, State Inspectors, Local Governments, Sewer and Water Board, Levee Board, had all signed off that the work was done to contract specs.

If the clay had remained in place we would not have flooded, but it went into National Government pockets.

Those good and long serving the people government worker lying scumbags killed 1570 people.

Very interesting book. I want a sequel.

Why the US-Government just did not ask the Government of Netherlands what they did in 1953 in a even worst situation:

http://www.thehollandring.com/1953-ramp.shtml

http://www.deltawerken.com/The-flood-of-1953/89.html

or the Hamburg City Government in 1962

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1962

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Perhaps European administrations are just better prepared for catastrophes - at end we had enough in our history.

Even during the Great Depression, there was little civil unrest in the US. Even ruined Germany did not descend into Mad Max-style postapocalyptic anarchy; they voted for a dictatorship instead. The current crisis isn't even in the same ballpark as the Great Depression; I'm not saying people aren't suffering or times aren't hard, but that if the Great Depression didn't bring down civilisation, this crisis isn't likely to, at least in developed countries (talk of European governments 'collapsing' really means orderly transitions of power from one administration to another - bear in mind that in parliamentary systems, a Prime Minister resigning is a far less serious affair than a President resigning in a Presidential system). Get a grip, people.

In any case, in the event of a true descent into anarchy, it wouldn't be loners with guns and farming skills that would do well, it would be those with thousands of armed, well-disciplined men at their command. Rich warlords and starving peasants, and brutally suppressed peasant and slave rebellions, have been the norm for most of human history.

So we have screens AND lapdancers, cop-looters and contract specs that were not adhered to.
i can't help but feel similarly cynical about the world and the kind of spin we are fed, the kind of crappola we are handed.

And I really do feel Bill Hicks is the most accurate social commentator and historian you Americans have ever had.

And whole countries were by ministerial bureaucracy without real governement for months: Most recenty Belgium:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Belgi ... _formation

Almost no one noticed!

Most people who come to this thread don't live in countries which face social instability. I think that this question is absolutely crazy.

The country which faces the greatest chance of instability of which there are WP members is South Africa and even that is a long shot.

I think that someone has been seeing too many soothsayers, no offense.

A bit like that Les Hiddins chap? Must be nice living in a large country with a small population.

Hey, I bet you guys are forgetting that even if the Federal Gov't collapses, we still have the state and local governments, and we can just pay out taxes to them.