8 ms·

Disasters

24 points by luu 7y ago

skrebbel 7y ago
My big beef with disaster prepping is the rabbit hole aspect of it. The prepper community is nuts, but also remarkably intelligent. Perfectly good articles like this one are going to keep convincing me that I'm not doing enough. Ignorance truly is bliss.
CalRobert 7y ago
A discussion of natural disasters and people's preparedness (or lack thereof), and reasons for this.
divbyzer0 7y ago
For those behind a corporate firewall like myself: https://outline.com/r8KtMw https://outline.com/r8KtMw (I'm not sure this give the entire article)
- jefftk 7y ago
  (author) Your corporate firewall blocks jefftk.com? Does it say why?
  - divbyzer0 7y ago
    URL: www.jefftk.com/p/disasters Category: Personal Websites and Blogs Powered by FortiGuard.
    - skrebbel 7y ago
      Your IT department decided that "blogs" are forbidden? Any clue why?
franciscop 7y ago
Something I learned while living in Tokyo is that the two major risks here are not the disasters themselves, but the "side effects" of those: - Earthquakes, yes some houses fall down and people die, but in general the bigger risks is the fires that spread from broken gas pipes and broken water pipes. Oh, and tsunamis. - Typhoons, some people die from a direct hit from flying debris, but it's normally the floods and earth slides that are the issue and kill most people. I'm from a quiet calm part of the Mediterranean so I'm not used to this at all. Many of the cities around there even moved the rivers away from the cities to avoid floods in heavy rains. As for prep, I can live 1 week easily in my home (lots of water, enough food). Which I hope not, but might need those if the coronavirus hits Tokyo as strongly as China. And I'm thinking of buying some more just in case since some companies are sending their workers to work from home for 2 weeks.
userium 7y ago
Why don't people plan for potential disasters? It's not a high enough priority for them. People might occasionally think about low likelihood, high impact events. But they rarely make a detailed plan for how to reduce the risk. "Risk management" is not just for projects and organizations. If you're a parent you probably do risk assessments (https://teamsuccess.io/risk https://teamsuccess.io/risk) every day, without realizing it. And ultimately, just like managers, you too as a parent, are ultimately responsible for managing risks. :)
- jefftk 7y ago
  (author) "It's not a high enough priority for them" doesn't get us very far. Why isn't it a high priority? The post has several guesses ("They don't think disasters are likely", "It's weird") and I'd be curious what you think?
  - userium 7y ago
    In companies, the biggest problem is their "risk culture". Some of these aspects apply also to individuals and families. In short, a company "Risk culture" is the sum of the company's "shared values, beliefs, knowledge, attitudes and understanding about risk, shared by a group of people with a common intended purpose..." (as described by the Institute of Risk Management).
DoreenMichele 7y ago
I don't know. It seems to me like we keep getting better at making the system more resilient. Disasters seem to be less problematic now than when I was a child. Even regional disasters get aid brought in on a scale that simply wasn't possible when I was a child. As an adult, I've witnessed disasters routinely get remedied quicker, better etc than predicted. And we are incredibly meh about it. Y2K was supposed to be a global financial disaster. It gets remembered like "Ha! Can you imagine those dummies stocked their basements with 5 years of flour like this was supposed to be a disaster?!" When Iraq set Kuwaiti oil wells on fire, it was predicted that they would burn for years and be a global environmental disaster. Instead, crack teams from around the world converged on the country and invented new techniques to resolve it. They were all out in six months, with essentially no fanfare for this miracle. Afterwards, the desert bloomed from the combination of fertilizer (soot from the fires) and water (from putting them out) like no one had seen in twenty years. That was also given no fanfare. I'm in no position to do disaster prep. My life is an ongoing disaster and crisis management is all I can arrange for myself currently. But I also mostly just don't really see unmitigated disasters in the news of the sort that were the norm in my childhood. Instead, I often see "Disaster In The News! Prediction: 200k Will Die!!!" Follow up: "200 people died. Meh. On to more exciting News."
- pjc50 7y ago
  Many of the Arab countries are now in a state of permanent disaster. Something like three million refugees are now spread across Turkey and Europe. 200k dead there won't even make the news. Not something that stockpiling food in the basement would have helped with. Across the Atlantic, Puerto Rico is in a disaster state again, and the flow of refugees is from Honduras and Guatemala. Part of the news response is complaining that not enough of them are dying on the way.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    Puerto Rico crossed my mind after I posted. Also, fires in California, a state I left a bit over two years ago. So I'm aware there are terrible things that go on in the world that no one really does anything about. I was openly homeless for years. No one did any fundraisers to rescue me and I continue to see comments on HN that basically dismiss homelessness in the US as "just a bunch of junkies and crazies, not a systemic issue." I guess I'm more wondering out loud how much it matters to me personally to do this kind of prep as an American who is no longer in California. The world currently seems to divide up between disasters that do get mitigated handily and those where, as you say, some provisions in your basement wouldn't have protected you. As noted above, I'm in no position to do disaster prep currently for myself. I still live hand to mouth. Yet, I participate in community meetings and try to help make the area I'm in better in some ways. I do wish the US had more humane policies for dealing with refugees from Central and South America. I hate what little I read about that stuff. But I don't tend to comment on it because I don't really have a solution and I imagine a real solution would involve interceding at the source -- ie sending some kind of aid to the countries these refugees are coming from. I don't imagine that would go over well. I imagine that would get mocked a la "Don't piss off the US or they will bring freedom to you, too." Middle of the night half-baked thought kind of wondering how much it matters to me that I can't currently do this kind of disaster prep. Is it just one more thing I should be helplessly wringing my hands about and feeling sorry for myself over? Or is it sufficient that I do what I can to try to be a resource for my community for issues like homelessness? My mother grew up in Germany during WW2 and it's aftermath. She never say still. She was constantly doing something. She only watched TV while ironing. A lot of what she did involved helping people around her to make their lives work better. I think she understood something many Americans don't about how civilized life can come apart at the seams overnight and she invested her time and energy in saying "Not on my watch, it won't." I think that's basically where I'm at mentally as well. I participate in public meetings locally and develop homeless resources online, etc, even though I am frequently broke because those are things I can do much more effectively than I can earn an adequate living for myself. Though an adequate living is probably around the corner, so hopefully I will keep investing in fostering civility as an antidote or prophylactic to disaster without continuing to live with ongoing personal crisis myself.
killjoywashere 7y ago
Bona fides first, then my posture on this issue. So, first, here's the major disasters I've been through: * I was on a ship in 1999 that lost all engines in the middle of the Pacific. Waited 2 days hot and quiet in the sun waiting for repair parts to be airdropped. * 9/11 (and the response thereto) * Hurricane Katrina (bought a house in New Orleans 5 weeks before, evacuated; let people we still have never met live in our house because we couldn't go back for a year. They stole nothing.) Went back shortly after, SMS worked. * Hurricane Rita (no direct impact, but ran a packed-to-gills special needs shelter as a first year medical student -- mainly because ex-military and had accidentally evacuated from Katrina into Rita's path). Ran the shelter with 184 patients, 30 other medical students on shifts, a secretary, and an Open Office spreadsheet. The network worked, but the county's emergency shelter patient tracking software could only do input, no output. And it was to be sent to a central database, but they had never plugged in an ethernet cable, so I guess all the data went to /dev/null. Didn't matter, couldn't read it. When I left, I wiped their system and moved the patient database (i.e. spreadsheet) to their brand new Ubuntu desktop. * Hurricane Isabel (flooded our basement, lost power for about 48 hours - sump pump no good if no power. Oh ... someone had stolen our generator. Keep those things locked up). * The 2007 Witch Creek fire (San Diego) burned the house directly behind ours. * 2011 Southwest blackout in San Diego. In the middle of the blackout I was still able to send an editorial project back to client in Tokyo. * Fukushima Daichi. Volunteered to deploy for Operation Tomodachi because my brother lived between the reactors and Tokyo. They were happy to send me. Aftershocks for over a month. * The 2014 Bernardo fire. I watched this one from the Canyon rim before fire fighters arrived, fire planes so low they were below me. Nothing between the fire line and my house except fuel and favorable winds. * Typhoon Mangkhut (lost power for about 4 days, lots of trees down) We currently own a generator and we keep some extra bottled water and batteries on hand. We have UPS units on the router/modem cluster and a couple others around the house (network usually survives power outages, if you can connect). I have stabilized gas for the generator. Regularly check the generator. A couple of hand crank radios just in case. We probably round up a bit on paper towels and canned goods and dry pasta. We have two propane tanks for the grill (power outage = time to grill all the meat in the freezer). Basically, even on a third world island in the middle of the Pacific with the worst storm in a generation, we didn't run out of fresh water or food, and nerves were much calmed by the readily available network. I have universally found network to be more reliable than power. Could something worse happen? That never occurred to me (like the worst interpretation what (1) could have been). If it's markedly worse than what I've had to deal with so far, evacuation is generally the best viable option. If the situation is so bad that evac is not an option, my experience is that you're just going to have to deal with it. And, as it turns out, humans are reasonably good at not dying. (1) https://www.kuam.com/story/41500001/initially-thought-to-be-meteorite-mysterious-flash-was-rocket-from-china https://www.kuam.com/story/41500001/initially-thought-to-be-...
coldtea 7y ago
>I'm guessing below 5%, but I think this level of preparedness would be a good goal for most people who can afford it. I never understood this attitude (very common in the US popular culture for one), or the same idea about stocking food, utilities, ammo and such, and taking of to some kind of bunker for emergency scenarios (from a storm, to "when the government comes", to the zombie apocalypse or similar). While it's prudent to be prepared as a family, it's even more prudent (and it's always missing even as a though from such descriptions, posts, etc) to push and make sure your country/city/community is prepared. It's the complacent "everyman for themselves" mentality I don't understand. And with such a mindset, most of these "everyman for themselves" won't last a day. They'd have their stuff stolen, or even be killed, by people with more guns and larger teams. That you have guns yourself wont matter much, they'll have more, or smoke you out, or kill you from afar when you're not aware they're even watching you, or any other such technique. If the prevalent idea for making it safe, is going at it alone (as a single person or family unit), then others will be all for themselves too, and if they can get ahead by screwing you, they will. Harder for them to do so when a community works together and shares their preparations.
- golergka 7y ago
  > It's the complacent "everyman for themselves" mentality I don't understand. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma game: you don't know what's the winning move is until you see what others are doing. And this kind of preparation is just getting ready in case this prep is needed. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and etcetera.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    That would make sense if efforts were made and posts were written about making the state/city/community more prepared. Of course, one could always prepare for themselves too. But most I've chanced are mostly ignoring the community/city/etc aspect, and go directly to the "how I, personally me, and my family at most, will survive, and screw the rest of them suckers". At best they don't think they can influence the community/city/etc preparedness (or think it's already great). At worst, they don't care as long as they are prepared.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jiofih 7y ago
Oh gosh, the official recommendations from FEMA are massive. I counted 25+ checklists and it includes bullshit such as “protect documents and valuables” which is great advice for getting killed. Nothing more than expected that most people will ignore that. https://www.ready.gov/ https://www.ready.gov/
- jefftk 7y ago
  Where are you seeing the advice on protecting documents and valuables that you think is dangerous? I see: "Important family documents such as copies of insurance policies, identification and bank account records saved electronically or in a waterproof, portable container" which seems very reasonable?
  - jiofih 7y ago
    Make a Plan -> Step 4 documents
    - jefftk 7y ago
      That links to: https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/133454 https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/133454 It primarily talks about documents, but does have a bit at the end about valuables: "Think about where you store valuable belongings and ways to better protect these items. If you have valuable items stored in a basement, you may want to move them to a higher location and put them in waterproof containers to avoid water damage. Or you may want to keep small items in a flood/fireproof home safe. You may also want to secure items that are displayed on shelves or walls if your home may be subject to high winds or earthquakes." This also seems pretty sensible to me, and not likely to get you killed?
  - ehnto 7y ago
    Not to mention, there's a spectrum of disaster. Wildfire and floods are often not all-destroying, so you will have a life to go back to, and it would certainly be handy if your important documents had been backed up or protected. You could probably do it in a way that meant you don't need to actually think about it or action it during the disaster.
DanAndersen 7y ago
Very good link. I think a lot of people get intimidated by the idea of emergency preparedness because it feels like such a big, overwhelming thing to deal with. One cause of this is perhaps the Hollywood/media image of "disaster" as a singular extreme event that obliterates the average person except for a few plucky heroes. In contrast, there's a full spectrum of severity, and any small amount of preparedness can help. In case anyone here hasn't seen it before, I'd like to share the article "Doomsday planning for less crazy folk" [0]. It's a good, sober-headed step-by-step guide to evaluating one's own threat model and making actionable steps toward improving one's emergency preparedness -- both small-scale and large-scale. I have a routine to-do item to re-read one section of this article every few weeks and think of ways I can make myself more resilient. [0] http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/ http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/
kerkeslager 7y ago
The flipside of this is: how effective is preparing actually going to be? If you look at what most preppers are doing, not very. As an avid hiker and rock climber, when I watch a lot of prepper videos on YouTube, I find a lot of laughable ideas. * About 50% of the preppers I see have seemingly no concern for cross-contamination of their water system, and no anti-diarrheals in their med kits to deal with the giardia they aren't preventing. * Paracord is popular among preppers, but it's pretty unclear why. I've literally never seen a prepper demonstrate hanging a bear bag, which is literally the only reason I've ever used paracord in the wild. Lashing together structures boy-scout-style requires a lot more cord than they are carrying, and having hiked a few thousand miles in my hiking career, I don't think I've ever felt that lashing together a structure was necessary or even worth the effort, despite that being a skill I'm proficient at. The fanciest paracords out there have metal wire (for electricity) and fishing line inside the paracord--maybe it's just me, but I would rather just carry the fishing line separately, and I can't imagine a situation where I have access to electricity and not wire. It's also unclear to me whether any of these preppers actually have any skills as electricians. * Knives: the number one item I find left behind on trails are these giant Bowie knives. People buy them at an army surplus or sporting goods store, and then a few miles onto the trail they realize their pack is really heavy, and the item that stands out as the most weight with the least usefulness is the 3 pound knife. I carry a CRKT NIAD[1] when rock climbing, and a Snow Peak knife (part of a cutlery set--I think an older version of this[2]). What these knives have in common is that they are extremely light. But what do preppers have? In some cases, the Bowie knives aren't even close to the largest things. * Guns: while preppers seem unconcerned with the weight of their knives, when it comes to guns, weight suddenly seems to be a concern. To achieve low weight, it seems most preppers are willing to settle for the idea that they're never going to hunt for, or defend themselves from, anything larger than a jackrabbit. Almost all the popular "prepper guns", i.e. this Henry AR7[3] are in caliber .22LR, which beyond being a tiny round, has reliability issues. Of course, there are also preppers who go to the other extreme[4]; if you've got your 9mm handgun, .22LR rifle, 12 gauge shotgun, .308 bolt action, and .223 AR15, I hope you're in your gun bunker when the apocalypse happens, because you're not moving anywhere with a quarter of of a ton of firearms and ammo. Personally, I think fishing would be far more consistent for food, and I don't have the stomach for violence even in self-defense (maybe once, but on a consistent basis?) so I'd probably rather use the weight for carrying a light fishing kit and more food. I don't mean all of this to come across as super harsh on the prepper community. If you enjoy collecting this stuff, do it. I'm not criticizing what anyone does for fun, and it's pretty unlikely that you'll ever have to rely on this stuff, so there's no real harm. I'm just saying that if my experience in the outdoors is any indication, a lot of attempts to prepare for life that doesn't rely on civilization are pretty ineffective. [1] https://www.crkt.com/niad.html https://www.crkt.com/niad.html [2] https://snowpeak.com/collections/cutlery/products/titanium-fork-and-spoon-set-sct-002 https://snowpeak.com/collections/cutlery/products/titanium-f... [3] https://www.henryusa.com/rifles/u-s-survival-ar-7/ https://www.henryusa.com/rifles/u-s-survival-ar-7/ [4] https://prepperswill.com/5-guns-every-prepper-should-own/ https://prepperswill.com/5-guns-every-prepper-should-own/
michaelt 7y ago
> Why don't people plan for potential disasters? [...] even people who do have more time and money also haven't generally thought through simpler preparations. I can't speak for everyone, but despite having money and discretionary time, my list of priorities has an event horizon entry called "relax and recharge ready for tomorrow" and very few things below that make much progress. Should I plan for potential disasters? Sure, it's on my list of priorities, just after 'do a proper cut to increase my abs definition' and 'get to know my neighbours well' and just before 'finish that online Spanish course I started' and 'write down the serial numbers of all my electronic gadgets' (Of course, I live in the UK. So to me it seems extremely unlikely I'd ever face the kind of disaster where I'd, for example, need 15 litres of drinking water.)
dividedbyzero 7y ago
There is relatively compact pamphlet by the German government on disaster preparedness that is aimed at ordinary people with no prepper ambitions and mostly limits itself to practical advice like a minimal food stockpile and stocking up on candles. It doesn't try to shame the reader into becoming a whole different (much more paranoid, completely no-fun) person, which is a nice change from the usual prepper reading lists. Some parts only apply to Germany (e.g. how to call for help in an emergency), but most of it should be relatively widely applicable. They refresh it periodically, the current revision from fall 2018 is vailable in German[1] and in an English translation[2] that seems to capture the extremely arid dryness of German government language even better than the German version, but is still quite readable. [1] https://www.bbk.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/BBK/DE/Publikationen/Broschueren_Flyer/Buergerinformationen_A4/Ratgeber_Brosch.pdf?__blob=publicationFile https://www.bbk.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/BBK/DE/Publikat... [2] https://www.bbk.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/BBK/DE/Publikationen/Broschueren_Flyer/Fremdsprach_Publikationen/disasters_alarm_en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile https://www.bbk.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/BBK/DE/Publikat...

24 points by luu 7y ago

My big beef with disaster prepping is the rabbit hole aspect of it. The prepper community is nuts, but also remarkably intelligent. Perfectly good articles like this one are going to keep convincing me that I'm not doing enough. Ignorance truly is bliss.

CalRobert 7y ago

A discussion of natural disasters and people's preparedness (or lack thereof), and reasons for this.

divbyzer0 7y ago

For those behind a corporate firewall like myself: https://outline.com/r8KtMw https://outline.com/r8KtMw (I'm not sure this give the entire article)

jefftk 7y ago
(author) Your corporate firewall blocks jefftk.com? Does it say why?
- divbyzer0 7y ago
  URL: www.jefftk.com/p/disasters Category: Personal Websites and Blogs Powered by FortiGuard.
  - skrebbel 7y ago
    Your IT department decided that "blogs" are forbidden? Any clue why?

franciscop 7y ago

Something I learned while living in Tokyo is that the two major risks here are not the disasters themselves, but the "side effects" of those: - Earthquakes, yes some houses fall down and people die, but in general the bigger risks is the fires that spread from broken gas pipes and broken water pipes. Oh, and tsunamis. - Typhoons, some people die from a direct hit from flying debris, but it's normally the floods and earth slides that are the issue and kill most people. I'm from a quiet calm part of the Mediterranean so I'm not used to this at all. Many of the cities around there even moved the rivers away from the cities to avoid floods in heavy rains. As for prep, I can live 1 week easily in my home (lots of water, enough food). Which I hope not, but might need those if the coronavirus hits Tokyo as strongly as China. And I'm thinking of buying some more just in case since some companies are sending their workers to work from home for 2 weeks.

userium 7y ago

Why don't people plan for potential disasters? It's not a high enough priority for them. People might occasionally think about low likelihood, high impact events. But they rarely make a detailed plan for how to reduce the risk. "Risk management" is not just for projects and organizations. If you're a parent you probably do risk assessments (https://teamsuccess.io/risk https://teamsuccess.io/risk) every day, without realizing it. And ultimately, just like managers, you too as a parent, are ultimately responsible for managing risks. :)

jefftk 7y ago
(author) "It's not a high enough priority for them" doesn't get us very far. Why isn't it a high priority? The post has several guesses ("They don't think disasters are likely", "It's weird") and I'd be curious what you think?
- userium 7y ago
  In companies, the biggest problem is their "risk culture". Some of these aspects apply also to individuals and families. In short, a company "Risk culture" is the sum of the company's "shared values, beliefs, knowledge, attitudes and understanding about risk, shared by a group of people with a common intended purpose..." (as described by the Institute of Risk Management).

DoreenMichele 7y ago

I don't know. It seems to me like we keep getting better at making the system more resilient. Disasters seem to be less problematic now than when I was a child. Even regional disasters get aid brought in on a scale that simply wasn't possible when I was a child. As an adult, I've witnessed disasters routinely get remedied quicker, better etc than predicted. And we are incredibly meh about it. Y2K was supposed to be a global financial disaster. It gets remembered like "Ha! Can you imagine those dummies stocked their basements with 5 years of flour like this was supposed to be a disaster?!" When Iraq set Kuwaiti oil wells on fire, it was predicted that they would burn for years and be a global environmental disaster. Instead, crack teams from around the world converged on the country and invented new techniques to resolve it. They were all out in six months, with essentially no fanfare for this miracle. Afterwards, the desert bloomed from the combination of fertilizer (soot from the fires) and water (from putting them out) like no one had seen in twenty years. That was also given no fanfare. I'm in no position to do disaster prep. My life is an ongoing disaster and crisis management is all I can arrange for myself currently. But I also mostly just don't really see unmitigated disasters in the news of the sort that were the norm in my childhood. Instead, I often see "Disaster In The News! Prediction: 200k Will Die!!!" Follow up: "200 people died. Meh. On to more exciting News."

pjc50 7y ago
Many of the Arab countries are now in a state of permanent disaster. Something like three million refugees are now spread across Turkey and Europe. 200k dead there won't even make the news. Not something that stockpiling food in the basement would have helped with. Across the Atlantic, Puerto Rico is in a disaster state again, and the flow of refugees is from Honduras and Guatemala. Part of the news response is complaining that not enough of them are dying on the way.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  Puerto Rico crossed my mind after I posted. Also, fires in California, a state I left a bit over two years ago. So I'm aware there are terrible things that go on in the world that no one really does anything about. I was openly homeless for years. No one did any fundraisers to rescue me and I continue to see comments on HN that basically dismiss homelessness in the US as "just a bunch of junkies and crazies, not a systemic issue." I guess I'm more wondering out loud how much it matters to me personally to do this kind of prep as an American who is no longer in California. The world currently seems to divide up between disasters that do get mitigated handily and those where, as you say, some provisions in your basement wouldn't have protected you. As noted above, I'm in no position to do disaster prep currently for myself. I still live hand to mouth. Yet, I participate in community meetings and try to help make the area I'm in better in some ways. I do wish the US had more humane policies for dealing with refugees from Central and South America. I hate what little I read about that stuff. But I don't tend to comment on it because I don't really have a solution and I imagine a real solution would involve interceding at the source -- ie sending some kind of aid to the countries these refugees are coming from. I don't imagine that would go over well. I imagine that would get mocked a la "Don't piss off the US or they will bring freedom to you, too." Middle of the night half-baked thought kind of wondering how much it matters to me that I can't currently do this kind of disaster prep. Is it just one more thing I should be helplessly wringing my hands about and feeling sorry for myself over? Or is it sufficient that I do what I can to try to be a resource for my community for issues like homelessness? My mother grew up in Germany during WW2 and it's aftermath. She never say still. She was constantly doing something. She only watched TV while ironing. A lot of what she did involved helping people around her to make their lives work better. I think she understood something many Americans don't about how civilized life can come apart at the seams overnight and she invested her time and energy in saying "Not on my watch, it won't." I think that's basically where I'm at mentally as well. I participate in public meetings locally and develop homeless resources online, etc, even though I am frequently broke because those are things I can do much more effectively than I can earn an adequate living for myself. Though an adequate living is probably around the corner, so hopefully I will keep investing in fostering civility as an antidote or prophylactic to disaster without continuing to live with ongoing personal crisis myself.

killjoywashere 7y ago

Bona fides first, then my posture on this issue. So, first, here's the major disasters I've been through: * I was on a ship in 1999 that lost all engines in the middle of the Pacific. Waited 2 days hot and quiet in the sun waiting for repair parts to be airdropped. * 9/11 (and the response thereto) * Hurricane Katrina (bought a house in New Orleans 5 weeks before, evacuated; let people we still have never met live in our house because we couldn't go back for a year. They stole nothing.) Went back shortly after, SMS worked. * Hurricane Rita (no direct impact, but ran a packed-to-gills special needs shelter as a first year medical student -- mainly because ex-military and had accidentally evacuated from Katrina into Rita's path). Ran the shelter with 184 patients, 30 other medical students on shifts, a secretary, and an Open Office spreadsheet. The network worked, but the county's emergency shelter patient tracking software could only do input, no output. And it was to be sent to a central database, but they had never plugged in an ethernet cable, so I guess all the data went to /dev/null. Didn't matter, couldn't read it. When I left, I wiped their system and moved the patient database (i.e. spreadsheet) to their brand new Ubuntu desktop. * Hurricane Isabel (flooded our basement, lost power for about 48 hours - sump pump no good if no power. Oh ... someone had stolen our generator. Keep those things locked up). * The 2007 Witch Creek fire (San Diego) burned the house directly behind ours. * 2011 Southwest blackout in San Diego. In the middle of the blackout I was still able to send an editorial project back to client in Tokyo. * Fukushima Daichi. Volunteered to deploy for Operation Tomodachi because my brother lived between the reactors and Tokyo. They were happy to send me. Aftershocks for over a month. * The 2014 Bernardo fire. I watched this one from the Canyon rim before fire fighters arrived, fire planes so low they were below me. Nothing between the fire line and my house except fuel and favorable winds. * Typhoon Mangkhut (lost power for about 4 days, lots of trees down) We currently own a generator and we keep some extra bottled water and batteries on hand. We have UPS units on the router/modem cluster and a couple others around the house (network usually survives power outages, if you can connect). I have stabilized gas for the generator. Regularly check the generator. A couple of hand crank radios just in case. We probably round up a bit on paper towels and canned goods and dry pasta. We have two propane tanks for the grill (power outage = time to grill all the meat in the freezer). Basically, even on a third world island in the middle of the Pacific with the worst storm in a generation, we didn't run out of fresh water or food, and nerves were much calmed by the readily available network. I have universally found network to be more reliable than power. Could something worse happen? That never occurred to me (like the worst interpretation what (1) could have been). If it's markedly worse than what I've had to deal with so far, evacuation is generally the best viable option. If the situation is so bad that evac is not an option, my experience is that you're just going to have to deal with it. And, as it turns out, humans are reasonably good at not dying. (1) https://www.kuam.com/story/41500001/initially-thought-to-be-meteorite-mysterious-flash-was-rocket-from-china https://www.kuam.com/story/41500001/initially-thought-to-be-...

coldtea 7y ago

>I'm guessing below 5%, but I think this level of preparedness would be a good goal for most people who can afford it. I never understood this attitude (very common in the US popular culture for one), or the same idea about stocking food, utilities, ammo and such, and taking of to some kind of bunker for emergency scenarios (from a storm, to "when the government comes", to the zombie apocalypse or similar). While it's prudent to be prepared as a family, it's even more prudent (and it's always missing even as a though from such descriptions, posts, etc) to push and make sure your country/city/community is prepared. It's the complacent "everyman for themselves" mentality I don't understand. And with such a mindset, most of these "everyman for themselves" won't last a day. They'd have their stuff stolen, or even be killed, by people with more guns and larger teams. That you have guns yourself wont matter much, they'll have more, or smoke you out, or kill you from afar when you're not aware they're even watching you, or any other such technique. If the prevalent idea for making it safe, is going at it alone (as a single person or family unit), then others will be all for themselves too, and if they can get ahead by screwing you, they will. Harder for them to do so when a community works together and shares their preparations.

golergka 7y ago
> It's the complacent "everyman for themselves" mentality I don't understand. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma game: you don't know what's the winning move is until you see what others are doing. And this kind of preparation is just getting ready in case this prep is needed. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and etcetera.
- coldtea 7y ago
  That would make sense if efforts were made and posts were written about making the state/city/community more prepared. Of course, one could always prepare for themselves too. But most I've chanced are mostly ignoring the community/city/etc aspect, and go directly to the "how I, personally me, and my family at most, will survive, and screw the rest of them suckers". At best they don't think they can influence the community/city/etc preparedness (or think it's already great). At worst, they don't care as long as they are prepared.

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jiofih 7y ago

Oh gosh, the official recommendations from FEMA are massive. I counted 25+ checklists and it includes bullshit such as “protect documents and valuables” which is great advice for getting killed. Nothing more than expected that most people will ignore that. https://www.ready.gov/ https://www.ready.gov/

jefftk 7y ago
Where are you seeing the advice on protecting documents and valuables that you think is dangerous? I see: "Important family documents such as copies of insurance policies, identification and bank account records saved electronically or in a waterproof, portable container" which seems very reasonable?
- jiofih 7y ago
  Make a Plan -> Step 4 documents
  - jefftk 7y ago
    That links to: https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/133454 https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/133454 It primarily talks about documents, but does have a bit at the end about valuables: "Think about where you store valuable belongings and ways to better protect these items. If you have valuable items stored in a basement, you may want to move them to a higher location and put them in waterproof containers to avoid water damage. Or you may want to keep small items in a flood/fireproof home safe. You may also want to secure items that are displayed on shelves or walls if your home may be subject to high winds or earthquakes." This also seems pretty sensible to me, and not likely to get you killed?
- ehnto 7y ago
  Not to mention, there's a spectrum of disaster. Wildfire and floods are often not all-destroying, so you will have a life to go back to, and it would certainly be handy if your important documents had been backed up or protected. You could probably do it in a way that meant you don't need to actually think about it or action it during the disaster.

DanAndersen 7y ago

Very good link. I think a lot of people get intimidated by the idea of emergency preparedness because it feels like such a big, overwhelming thing to deal with. One cause of this is perhaps the Hollywood/media image of "disaster" as a singular extreme event that obliterates the average person except for a few plucky heroes. In contrast, there's a full spectrum of severity, and any small amount of preparedness can help. In case anyone here hasn't seen it before, I'd like to share the article "Doomsday planning for less crazy folk" [0]. It's a good, sober-headed step-by-step guide to evaluating one's own threat model and making actionable steps toward improving one's emergency preparedness -- both small-scale and large-scale. I have a routine to-do item to re-read one section of this article every few weeks and think of ways I can make myself more resilient. [0] http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/ http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/

kerkeslager 7y ago

The flipside of this is: how effective is preparing actually going to be? If you look at what most preppers are doing, not very. As an avid hiker and rock climber, when I watch a lot of prepper videos on YouTube, I find a lot of laughable ideas. * About 50% of the preppers I see have seemingly no concern for cross-contamination of their water system, and no anti-diarrheals in their med kits to deal with the giardia they aren't preventing. * Paracord is popular among preppers, but it's pretty unclear why. I've literally never seen a prepper demonstrate hanging a bear bag, which is literally the only reason I've ever used paracord in the wild. Lashing together structures boy-scout-style requires a lot more cord than they are carrying, and having hiked a few thousand miles in my hiking career, I don't think I've ever felt that lashing together a structure was necessary or even worth the effort, despite that being a skill I'm proficient at. The fanciest paracords out there have metal wire (for electricity) and fishing line inside the paracord--maybe it's just me, but I would rather just carry the fishing line separately, and I can't imagine a situation where I have access to electricity and not wire. It's also unclear to me whether any of these preppers actually have any skills as electricians. * Knives: the number one item I find left behind on trails are these giant Bowie knives. People buy them at an army surplus or sporting goods store, and then a few miles onto the trail they realize their pack is really heavy, and the item that stands out as the most weight with the least usefulness is the 3 pound knife. I carry a CRKT NIAD[1] when rock climbing, and a Snow Peak knife (part of a cutlery set--I think an older version of this[2]). What these knives have in common is that they are extremely light. But what do preppers have? In some cases, the Bowie knives aren't even close to the largest things. * Guns: while preppers seem unconcerned with the weight of their knives, when it comes to guns, weight suddenly seems to be a concern. To achieve low weight, it seems most preppers are willing to settle for the idea that they're never going to hunt for, or defend themselves from, anything larger than a jackrabbit. Almost all the popular "prepper guns", i.e. this Henry AR7[3] are in caliber .22LR, which beyond being a tiny round, has reliability issues. Of course, there are also preppers who go to the other extreme[4]; if you've got your 9mm handgun, .22LR rifle, 12 gauge shotgun, .308 bolt action, and .223 AR15, I hope you're in your gun bunker when the apocalypse happens, because you're not moving anywhere with a quarter of of a ton of firearms and ammo. Personally, I think fishing would be far more consistent for food, and I don't have the stomach for violence even in self-defense (maybe once, but on a consistent basis?) so I'd probably rather use the weight for carrying a light fishing kit and more food. I don't mean all of this to come across as super harsh on the prepper community. If you enjoy collecting this stuff, do it. I'm not criticizing what anyone does for fun, and it's pretty unlikely that you'll ever have to rely on this stuff, so there's no real harm. I'm just saying that if my experience in the outdoors is any indication, a lot of attempts to prepare for life that doesn't rely on civilization are pretty ineffective. [1] https://www.crkt.com/niad.html https://www.crkt.com/niad.html [2] https://snowpeak.com/collections/cutlery/products/titanium-fork-and-spoon-set-sct-002 https://snowpeak.com/collections/cutlery/products/titanium-f... [3] https://www.henryusa.com/rifles/u-s-survival-ar-7/ https://www.henryusa.com/rifles/u-s-survival-ar-7/ [4] https://prepperswill.com/5-guns-every-prepper-should-own/ https://prepperswill.com/5-guns-every-prepper-should-own/

michaelt 7y ago

> Why don't people plan for potential disasters? [...] even people who do have more time and money also haven't generally thought through simpler preparations. I can't speak for everyone, but despite having money and discretionary time, my list of priorities has an event horizon entry called "relax and recharge ready for tomorrow" and very few things below that make much progress. Should I plan for potential disasters? Sure, it's on my list of priorities, just after 'do a proper cut to increase my abs definition' and 'get to know my neighbours well' and just before 'finish that online Spanish course I started' and 'write down the serial numbers of all my electronic gadgets' (Of course, I live in the UK. So to me it seems extremely unlikely I'd ever face the kind of disaster where I'd, for example, need 15 litres of drinking water.)

dividedbyzero 7y ago

There is relatively compact pamphlet by the German government on disaster preparedness that is aimed at ordinary people with no prepper ambitions and mostly limits itself to practical advice like a minimal food stockpile and stocking up on candles. It doesn't try to shame the reader into becoming a whole different (much more paranoid, completely no-fun) person, which is a nice change from the usual prepper reading lists. Some parts only apply to Germany (e.g. how to call for help in an emergency), but most of it should be relatively widely applicable. They refresh it periodically, the current revision from fall 2018 is vailable in German[1] and in an English translation[2] that seems to capture the extremely arid dryness of German government language even better than the German version, but is still quite readable. [1] https://www.bbk.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/BBK/DE/Publikationen/Broschueren_Flyer/Buergerinformationen_A4/Ratgeber_Brosch.pdf?__blob=publicationFile https://www.bbk.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/BBK/DE/Publikat... [2] https://www.bbk.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/BBK/DE/Publikationen/Broschueren_Flyer/Fremdsprach_Publikationen/disasters_alarm_en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile https://www.bbk.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/BBK/DE/Publikat...