4 ms·

It was just yesterday that I was discussing this question with some friends, ie, what do you do if shit hits the fan? Most said 'get out of the city' first so t

It was just yesterday that I was discussing this question with some friends, ie, what do you do if shit hits the fan? Most said 'get out of the city' first so that's reassuring. But the scary part is I don't know how to build a house, cultivate food, nor do I have the property to do so.

pavel_lishin 12y ago
Same here. I live in New York; if shit hit the fan in an hour, I'm not sure how much there is to be gained by leaving. At least here, I know the area, I can expect to stay reasonably warm in the current weather inside my building, I can work together with the neighbors that I know. We have enough food in our kitchen to last us a week, and we could immediately begin to stockpile water. We even have some medical supplies. Hell, there are always rats I could trap and eat if I were willing to risk bioaccumulating some poison. If I set out for New Jersey, or Connecticut, or even Long Island, I immediately lose shelter, I am limited to the food I can carry on my person, I don't know where the nearest stores or houses are, and I don't know anyone there at all. The only immediate advantage I can think of is that there would be less people around willing to kill me for my stuff.
- hga 12y ago
  The textbook "survivalist" (the term prior to prepper, see the literature going back to the 1970s) answer to this is to have one or more "retreats", places you can flee to. Such as relatives living in less populated places, where you can offer skills and manual labor to help out. Or a "vacation home" that's a bit more than that. Sheltering in place can have its advantages, but if you're living in NYC, it's game over, you're not even allowed to effectively defend yourself (less than 60K each licenses to own handguns and long guns, numbers personally counted by myself after the lists were leaked). In any big city it sounds marginal (in sizing ammo required, one of the best survivalist, Bruce Clayton, asked "How many firefights do you expect to survive?"), then again, it actually takes much less than you might think to keep people alive. Not very many tractor trailers filled with wheat and corn (e.g. "downshift" and feed people what we've been feeding animals), so of course all this depends on the shape of the disaster.
  - pavel_lishin 12y ago
    Sure, but this presumes that you've already done the prepwork - my comment was based on my current status, now. I don't have anyplace nearby I could retreat to. I'm also not sure how much of a game-over New York is - sure, I don't have a gun to defend myself, but statistically, how many of us own guns anyway? If I were still living in Dallas, or Austin, the number of guns I have at hand would be the same as now - zero. And one small advantage of NYC is that my neighbors probably won't be coming at me with rifles and shotguns, either. I think that all these equations change very rapidly based on how much preparation you've done. I've done zero.
    - hga 12y ago
      Presumably some of those neighbors you know, if you were in Dallas or Austin, would legally own guns. Statistically, at least half the country owns guns (add survey results to reasonable estimates of "none of your business" non-responses, double check with NICS sales plus new firearms production and imports, which are closely tracked for tax reasons, vs. the New Math of gun grabbers which would have the average gun owner's armory at around $100K per my estimate). It's estimated there are at least 2 million illegally owned guns in NYC, and while plenty are not in the hands of true "bad guys", plenty obviously are, and unless your group can stay off the radar while everyone else around you is starving, which will get hard as people get thinner ... someone better armed will come knocking sooner or later. And agreed to the preparation. But do you truly know no one in "flyover country" who might take you in?
      - pavel_lishin 12y ago
        The problem with flyover country is that you typically have to fly into it - in case of a great disaster, my odds of walking to Indiana aren't great.
        hga 12y ago
        It's been my personal observation that "flyover country" includes upstate NY, which doesn't feel materially different from my corner of SW Missouri. But of course what really counts is where those relatives or friends are in comparison to you, and if you're alert and decisive enough to not miss "the last train out", assuming that's a possibility.
Nzen 12y ago
James Burke's 1978 TV series, Connections, starts with just that quandry. He starts with the question [what do we do if all the electricity goes out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKELMR6wACw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKELMR6wACw) and uses that zombie escape as a path to our bedrock tool: the plow. The article reminds me a lot of Randall Monroe's What If? site when he answers questions like, [What if all the water disappeared](http://what-if.xkcd.com/103/ http://what-if.xkcd.com/103/). And finally, I have lots of sympathy for the bug eating movement. I would totes eat cricket mcnuggets. But, when I went to buy some insects to make some, all I found was fish bait (unless I rear my own). I felt a bit dizzy and questioned my motives a while, before I remembered that those suppliers are targeting their predominant market.

pavel_lishin 12y ago

Same here. I live in New York; if shit hit the fan in an hour, I'm not sure how much there is to be gained by leaving. At least here, I know the area, I can expect to stay reasonably warm in the current weather inside my building, I can work together with the neighbors that I know. We have enough food in our kitchen to last us a week, and we could immediately begin to stockpile water. We even have some medical supplies. Hell, there are always rats I could trap and eat if I were willing to risk bioaccumulating some poison. If I set out for New Jersey, or Connecticut, or even Long Island, I immediately lose shelter, I am limited to the food I can carry on my person, I don't know where the nearest stores or houses are, and I don't know anyone there at all. The only immediate advantage I can think of is that there would be less people around willing to kill me for my stuff.

hga 12y ago
The textbook "survivalist" (the term prior to prepper, see the literature going back to the 1970s) answer to this is to have one or more "retreats", places you can flee to. Such as relatives living in less populated places, where you can offer skills and manual labor to help out. Or a "vacation home" that's a bit more than that. Sheltering in place can have its advantages, but if you're living in NYC, it's game over, you're not even allowed to effectively defend yourself (less than 60K each licenses to own handguns and long guns, numbers personally counted by myself after the lists were leaked). In any big city it sounds marginal (in sizing ammo required, one of the best survivalist, Bruce Clayton, asked "How many firefights do you expect to survive?"), then again, it actually takes much less than you might think to keep people alive. Not very many tractor trailers filled with wheat and corn (e.g. "downshift" and feed people what we've been feeding animals), so of course all this depends on the shape of the disaster.
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  Sure, but this presumes that you've already done the prepwork - my comment was based on my current status, now. I don't have anyplace nearby I could retreat to. I'm also not sure how much of a game-over New York is - sure, I don't have a gun to defend myself, but statistically, how many of us own guns anyway? If I were still living in Dallas, or Austin, the number of guns I have at hand would be the same as now - zero. And one small advantage of NYC is that my neighbors probably won't be coming at me with rifles and shotguns, either. I think that all these equations change very rapidly based on how much preparation you've done. I've done zero.
  - hga 12y ago
    Presumably some of those neighbors you know, if you were in Dallas or Austin, would legally own guns. Statistically, at least half the country owns guns (add survey results to reasonable estimates of "none of your business" non-responses, double check with NICS sales plus new firearms production and imports, which are closely tracked for tax reasons, vs. the New Math of gun grabbers which would have the average gun owner's armory at around $100K per my estimate). It's estimated there are at least 2 million illegally owned guns in NYC, and while plenty are not in the hands of true "bad guys", plenty obviously are, and unless your group can stay off the radar while everyone else around you is starving, which will get hard as people get thinner ... someone better armed will come knocking sooner or later. And agreed to the preparation. But do you truly know no one in "flyover country" who might take you in?
    - pavel_lishin 12y ago
      The problem with flyover country is that you typically have to fly into it - in case of a great disaster, my odds of walking to Indiana aren't great.
      - hga 12y ago
        It's been my personal observation that "flyover country" includes upstate NY, which doesn't feel materially different from my corner of SW Missouri. But of course what really counts is where those relatives or friends are in comparison to you, and if you're alert and decisive enough to not miss "the last train out", assuming that's a possibility.

Nzen 12y ago

James Burke's 1978 TV series, Connections, starts with just that quandry. He starts with the question [what do we do if all the electricity goes out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKELMR6wACw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKELMR6wACw) and uses that zombie escape as a path to our bedrock tool: the plow. The article reminds me a lot of Randall Monroe's What If? site when he answers questions like, [What if all the water disappeared](http://what-if.xkcd.com/103/ http://what-if.xkcd.com/103/). And finally, I have lots of sympathy for the bug eating movement. I would totes eat cricket mcnuggets. But, when I went to buy some insects to make some, all I found was fish bait (unless I rear my own). I felt a bit dizzy and questioned my motives a while, before I remembered that those suppliers are targeting their predominant market.