Theres two thoughts about ‘survival’ that used to be dominant, although one has mostly fallen from favor.
One idea was that it was best to be highly mobile, not being tied down to any one location. Without a static supply depot you’d be less likely to die defending it. You could evade the hordes. Think ‘Mad Max’.
The contrary idea was hunker in your bunker. Heavily fortified and ready to repel looters at a moments notice. Think ‘Dawn of the Dead’.
The first lifestyle has generally given way to the idea of low-profile, well-stocked, heavily-fortified, savagely-defended homes/retreats. Im in that particular camp. ‘Never, ever become a refugee’ is the cry of several authoers in the field (Benson, Long, etc, etc.) To this, I agree… once you become a refugee you have dropped to the bottom of the totem pole. You are vulnerable, lost and at the mercy of all, good (the people giving you handouts) and the bad (those wanting to take them away). To wit:
These are not ‘victims’, these are not ‘innocents’, these are not ‘unfortunates’ – these are refugees. At the Superdome, if you want to enter the facility and try to weather the weather you are searched for weapons, drugs, etc. and you are told to bring your own food/water/bedding. Lets think about this….
Theres a hurricane bearing down on your position. For some unfathomable reason you ignored the three days or so of notice to get the hell out of dodge and then, at the 11th hour, decide ‘eh, I’ll go to the Dome’. Unless you feel youre capable of carry a 5-gallon jug of water, a sleeping bag, clothes, toiletries, food and entertainment for each person in your party on your back, youre probably going to show up with nothing….and then the National Guardsmen are going to toss all your gear looking for drugs. Good luck convincing them that prescription heart medicine isnt ecstasy. Once inside the facility youre now at the mercy of any group larger than yours…much like prison. The toilets? They’ll be out of commission in a few days…toilet paper will be gone in a few hours. Potable water? Maybe…get in line at the drinking fountains intil the water pressure dies due to pump failures. Food? Im sure the Red Cross will be handing out cookies, juice boxes and the like. Sleep? If you can sleep in a chair with all your belongings that you brought safeguarded from your strange neighbors. Im curious to know if theyre letting people OUT of the Superdome. “Uhm, I’ll just be heading home thanks…make myself some dinner and chang clothes. Thanks for everything.” “Sir, we cant let you leave. For your own safety, we are not allowing anyone to leave the Superdome until [insert local government authority here] says we can. Please return to your seat.”
Ever been stuck on a runway in a plane that couldnt take off and had to sit on the tarmac for a few hours? Well, thats what this is going to be like.
These people had a choice….they had days of warning. They ignored it. Dont say ‘they couldnt leave because theyre poor/black/didnt have cars/were misinformed/etc’. Any person with a television, radio or a freakin’ newspaper could have learned that it was going to be a killer hurricane three days ago and either called Cousin Billy to come get them, paid $40 for a bus ticket, gotten on a freakin’ bicycle and gotten out of the impact areas.
My sympathies, such as they are, are going to be with those who stayed with their homes or left town and came back later… at least by doing one of those things they made a decision and did something.
As I understand it, and I could well be wrong, most of those people were without cars or means of evacuating, or were sick or otherwise physically incapable of direct action. Still, I’d have to be pretty out of it to entrust my fate in the hands of petty bureaucrats.
Any person with a television, radio or a freakin’ newspaper could have learned that it was going to be a killer hurricane three days ago and either called Cousin Billy to come get them, paid $40 for a bus ticket, gotten on a freakin’ bicycle and gotten out of the impact areas.
I dunno, man….if youre healthy enough to stand in line for hours and be searched, youre healthy enough to get on a bus and leave.
survival rule #1 dont become a refugee. ever.
http://waronguns.blogspot.com/2005/08/everyone-certainly-is-appreciative.html
Geraldo Rivera weighs in.
I think probably a few of the refugees had no other choice. Like old people who need constant care and have been dumped by their families. (Which is shameful in itself, but that’s where we are.)
But if you had to live in a bowl below sea level protected by dikes in the first place, I would think you would take hurricane warnings very seriously, unless you didn’t care about your life.
Good one man. I keep getting called a heartless son-of-a-bitch because I don’t really sympathize with the people down there. A large majority of them live there by *choice*.
I used to be one of them. When I was old enough to leave (graudated from high school, above 18 years old) I left because I lived IN HURRICANE ZONE, among other things.
When you build your house on the railroad tracks, you have to expect the train is going to show up every now and again.
a bowl below sea level protected by dikes
“Dude, ‘dikes’ is not the prefered nomenclature. ‘Women in comfortable shoes,’ please.”
My favorite hurricane quote from today:
“As a geologist I’ve known for some time that NOLA lived by the grace of the Army Corps of Engineers and nothing natural.”
That would be “wymyn.”
Same could be said of Amsterdam, Venice, and most of Bangladesh.
Greyhound bus.
Of course, if you wait for the evacuation to be declared, you deserve what you get in New Orleans. It was patently obvious that it was going to at least sideswipe New Orleans on Thursday night/Friday morning, so take a Greyhound bus out Friday night…to Texas.
The most interesting part of the Commanders post and replies following is that were referring to displaced Americans as refugees. We have refugees preceding a calamitous event. The observation of this fact is, by itself, disturbing in country with a high cost of living and wide market for almost anything desired.
When was the last time America had internal refugees? The best news of this refugee movement is that it didn’t happen during flu season. Imagine the follow on misery of H5N1 taking root there—or small pox. Perhaps the legendary old guards of epidemics; typhoid and cholera?
Similarly, residents in southern West Virginia have weeks before a bad flood to prepare, but most just wait for the national guard and FEMA to show up. One would think that from the amount of NASCAR commemoratives washed up as detritis, that there was sufficient disposable income to lay in a few preparations
To be more precise: if you’re medically incapable of leaving (on home dialysis or home supplemental oxygen), there is no shelter you can survive at. The medically incapable that stayed in New Orleans, will most likely die if they can’t get to a hospital (emergency power).
If you’re more mobile than that: what I said. [Although from the news clips I caught on the Weather Channel, it seems many of the homeless didn’t have enough guts to think of that. But it would have been possible; if nothing else, urban areas have pay-you-for-recyclables stations. And surely there’s some valuable junk in the trash for the pawnshop….]
I read that over on:
NEW ORLEANS SHOWS US one more reason never to become a refugee. Yikes. There goes half the useful gear in your bug-out bag — straight into the hands of the TSA … I mean, National Guard.
Makes me sick…
I live in the Bay Area, so obviously the two big threats are terror and earthquake. Earthquake is a toughy. There’s no warning, and the level of damage varies tremendously.
The earthquake safety of the three residenses I’d most likely hunker are big unknowns. One’s an apartment built in 1903 (so it’s survived the 1906 and 1989 big ones), the second is a contemporary apartment( survived the 1989 quake), the last is a big apartment-like building, build in the 60’s, that survived the 1989 quake, but is due for a seismic retrofit, according to the city.
The big downside is I’m at work 33% of the time (roughly), meaning if a quake hits here, I’m in a bad way. I’d be about 20 miles, one wrecked city, and 5 miles of water, between myself and my posessions. having a FULLY stocked BOB at work is not an option, but i could keep the basics, such as extra food, water, and other goodies at work.
atek3
When was the last time America had internal refugees?
Hmmm…I would say that, on a such a large scale, probably the Dustbowl/Depression years 75 years ago.
I think there are some people who genuinely were unable to get out. I find it hard to believe there were that many, tbough. I imagine the ones that could have but didn’t are going to pay and pay for that choice. I understand that they’ve lost power. I can’t imagine that whatever emergency generators they have will be enough to, say, keep the air conditioning running. I also wonder how they’re going to get out of there when the streets flood…I’ve heard that some of the pumps are already under water and some of the levees are already breached.
St. Bernards Parish is where the main levee breach (Industrial) was. [Not New Orleans, but close.]
Saint Bernard must have been fed up, since his namesake parish is almost entirely under 4′ to 20′ of water.
The big downside is I’m at work 33% of the time (roughly), meaning if a quake hits here, I’m in a bad way. I’d be about 20 miles, one wrecked city, and 5 miles of water, between myself and my posessions
Get a job in the state gov’t. Specifically, at a university. My boyfriend works for UCB and his brand-new, retrofitted office building is probably the safest place in a 25-mile radius to be in case of an earthquake.
I was thinking about this a lot, this idea that there were people who were too “poor” to evacuate. The old and sick who are poor, I get it. They were pretty much stuck unless they had the cash for Greyhound.
But the able-bodied poor people, what the fuck? There were people (whose descendents live in this country today) — including young children — who walked across this continent BAREFOOT looking for a better life out west. Anybody standing around on the STREET listening to passersby would have known that the hurricane was coming, and never mind bicycles — they could have packed up a bedroll and WALKED out of there. Three days of walking 12-15 miles a day would have gotten them well out of the flood danger zone. Are people so mindless nowadays that they can’t conceive of doing something like that anymore?
work for the government, not while I hold to my principles.
atek3
Yes.
baaa!
well what can you expect of silly sheep. this is where America is heading, into a future of well trained sheep to govern over. it is truely idiotic how people have fallen for this stuff under “homeland security”, which one wonders whom are the real terrorists to be aware of? good blog, anyhow!
Back in my day, we had to walk uphill in the snow, both ways, along the Oregon Trail …
There were people (whose descendents live in this country today) — including young children — who walked across this continent BAREFOOT looking for a better life out west.
Yeah, but those people didn’t spend all day sitting at a desk, spend lunch eating fast food and then hunker down in front of the Xbox in the evening. They actually worked all day, every day (‘cept Sunday, of course) and had the energy, work ethic and determination to do something for themselves to better themselves.
Survival rules
I thought survival rule #1 was: Survive.
It’s really easy to play Monday morning quarterback and come up with hypothetical solutions that are better than what people actually did.
I don’t know how early Greyhound was sold out. I don’t know how many people thought they’d be fired if they told their bosses they were heading out of town three days ahead of a hurricane that could change directions at any moment. I don’t know how many people thought they wouldn’t be able to pay the rent without those two days of pay.
Now, should they have used those two days to pack and make a plan instead of watching television? Yeah. Should they be more involved with their community so that they know their neighbors and can help each other out? Yes. But from what the numbers are telling me, a lot of people survived. They can now have the rest of their life to be pissed of, or prepare better, or whatever they want to do with it.
Thank you.
You are my new hero, a voice of sanity in the wilderness of retardation.
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what the?