y2k/gary north delusions
From that day forward, U.S. residents will not be able to buy a shotgun or a rifle without registering and paying a fee. Their names will be placed in an FBI computer, even
I've been reading gary north for quite awhile and think he is quite brilliant on some issues. for example he was quoting statistics about amt of time it takes to fix code, cost per line, govt agencies etc. a long, long time ago. he really zeroed in on the govt bureacrat "ostrichism" early on.. anyway I hate to say that I think he is really losing his mind lately.. no there are going to be some serious y2k problems, but imho the bottom approaches "garbage".. any talk of riots, mobs, martial law, stockpiling weaponry, roving bandits etc. seems to me to be really way off base to say the least. now people have been talking about this, but I've never seen gary north go quite that crazy. all the quoting of obscure, fictitious b-grade movies in this article makes me think he is really living in a fantasy world. now this is a shame because some of his research is some of the most solid and ahead-of-time than anyone on the entire net, by far. his site is a work of art in tedious archival, compilation, indexing. gary, take it easy. take a vacation. take a deep breath. well posted for your own opinion ------- Forwarded Message Gary North's REALITY CHECK Issue #33 November 17, 1998 CLOCKS TICK, BUT MOST PEOPLE IGNORE THE SOUND Tonight we will go through the Leonid meteor shower. Scientists tell us that this one will not match the 1966 shower, nor will it match the one a year and a day from now. But we will probably lose a few major satellites. Any company that has insured satellites has just entered a higher-risk period. Astronomy is a precise science. It can predict events such as this one with remarkable accuracy. The astronomers do not know how intense this shower will be, but they know for certain that tonight will be the highest density night. Some think it will be a bump in the highway, but others think it could be worse for our satellites. This reminds me of y2k forecasts. I shall go out tonight to see the shooting stars. I was on top of a hill in a desert area in 1966, lying on the trunk of a car, looking up. I did not know about the Leonids. I just happened to be in the right place to see them. The shooting stars came every few minutes. Never in history had there been so many -- and records of the Leonids go back to the tenth century. I'll never forget it. I'll never forget y2k, either. IGNORING THE OBVIOUS There are millions of people who know that y2k is coming. They will put this out of their minds until the last minute. They will pay no attention until events force themselves on men's perception. Then they will say, "Why didn't anyone tell me?" There are several answers: (1) the watchmen did not believe the evidence; (2) risks to the reputations of watchmen are high and rewards are few; (3) almost no one would have listened anyway. Let me give another example. I have mentioned in "Remnant Review," but not on my Web site, since it is not a y2k issue. But it is surely an ignored deadline issue. Brady II goes into effect in just a few days: December 1. though this is illegal and the authorities know it's illegal. Where is the ACLU? If this law applied only to Blacks, the ACLU would be fighting it. But since it applies to everyone, we hear nothing. There is a scene in "The Trigger Effect" where the two male characters go into a gun store a few days after the power has been off. So do a lot of others. They are told that they cannot buy handguns. There is a waiting period. But they can buy rifles and shotguns. They buy a shotgun with what little cash they can scrape together. As of December 1, this scene will be inaccurate. There will be an extra fee and the loss of privacy. The next step: a prohibition on private gun sales. To sell your gun to your next door neighbor, you will have to take your gun to a gun dealer, who will register the transaction and impose the 5-day waiting period. The President has said that it is his goal to shut down gun shows. I think he will be successful. Now, I'm not too worried about being in any computer. They will all be dead on 1/1/2000. But what is obvious is that those who dilly-dally now will find themselves competing with people who have cash in 2000. The collapse of the banks over the next 16 months will transfer wealth to the drug dealers on a massive scale. They will have cash, and they will be dealing in consumer goods that will function as money. Drugs are divisible, recognizable to users, have a very high value-to-volume ratio, and are durable. There is no doubt in my mind that in those geographical areas where addiction is high, the drug lords will take over the functions of government. They will be armed. They will have money. They are ruthless. And the police will be absent. The inner cities of the United States will become warlord societies within two years. Do not live anywhere near one of these areas. The criminals and addicts will fan out to extract wealth from contiguous areas. The police will be hard-pressed to respond. It will take time for martial law to be imposed, and in most places, there will not be any military presence. Neighborhood defense will be based increasingly on what local residents can muster. If the locals are disarmed, then they will be sitting ducks. Neighborhoods will set up roadblocks with cars. The two-car family will become a one-car family. The number- one defensive measure a neighborhood can take is a roadblock. Criminals will have to get into a neighborhood on foot. They will have to get out the same way. Easy transportation will disappear in 2000. Urban life will move to a crawl. On that day, you had better have your water, your food, your non-hybrid seeds, and your ammunition. Nobody else talks like this. The watchmen are in the "peace, peace" mode. That's easy talk in the days before the shooting starts. The function of the watchman in the Old Testament was military. He warned of an invading army. That's what I'm doing. The army has already invaded the central cities. It is well armed, well organized, and ruthless. It will move outward in 2000. Rent "The Friendly Persuasion." It's a great movie. Pay close attention to the pacifism of the Quaker men in the weeks before the Confederates invaded and the militarism on the day before. Talk of peace is cheap before the shooting starts. What I am saying is obvious, but it is not politically correct. Today's watchmen are afraid of politically liberal media reporters who might say, "These people recommend buying guns! Oh, woe! Oh, horrors!" I pay no attention. When I think of any reporter, I think: "Dead man typing." He will have no job, no career, no pension, and no readers in 15 months. He will be at the mercy of those around him. The mentality of the typical reporter is that of the wife on "the Trigger Effect." A liberal to the core, she wanted no part of a shotgun. The movie centers around her ideology and the costs that it imposed. It was not a good movie, but it surely did portray her in a bad light, which was well deserved. The clock is ticking. Brady II is coming. And millions of people will walk into a Wal-Mart SuperCenter next month and through all of next year and wonder: "Why didn't someone tell me I would have to register this transaction?" (See the three reasons, above.) ACROSS THE BOARD The shock of recognition that rifle-buyers will have in the next few months will be paralleled in 1999 on an international scale. "What do you mean, I can't get cash out of this bank?" "What do you mean, you're out of solar panels?" (http://www.solarextreme.com) "What do you mean, I can't buy an inverter?" "What do you mean, I can't get delivery of a diesel generator?" "What do you mean, you don't have any deep cycle golf cart batteries?" "What do you mean I can't get delivery of a wood burning stove?" In 2000, it will be food, water, and electricity. But there will be no seller to complain to. To complain, you have to be able to speak to someone. You won't be able to. Let's start with the basics: water. An urban adult uses 75 to 100 gallons of water a day. This doesn't count watering the lawn. In 2000, how many people will be under your roof? Remember, your children may show up on your doorstep, with wives and children. Families will pull together for survival in 2000. Estimate the number of people under your roof in 2000. Now, how much water will you need per day? What if the municipal water authority shuts down? It's goodbye showers. Goodbye flushing toilets. Hello sponge baths and thunder mugs. I don't think the reality of the power cut-off will hit most families until someone says, "Mom, the toilet won't flush." Then the realization will dawn at last. A new, unpleasant world has arrived. Disease will begin to spread by the end of the week. Every time you take a shower, think of 2000. Every time you flush a toilet, think of 2000. Ask yourself: How will I do this in 2000? People will not do this. No, not even those who have read my warnings for two years. They will not go through the mental exercise of planning ahead for the basics -- and water is near the top of any list of basics, right below heat in the winter. There are millions of people who live in high-rise apartments today. There will be fewer in February, 2000. Let's assume that for the first three months in 2000, you will not get paid. The banks will be down. You will not be able to write a check or use a credit card. What will you do? What will your neighbors do? What if it's a year? If it's a year, it could be a decade. What will you do? What is your exit strategy? Have you and your spouse sat down with pencil and paper and written down your family's exit strategy? No? Why not? It's not that I haven't nagged you. What of your adult children? Which ones will be able to make it through three months of no paychecks? Of those that can't, how many will wind up on your doorstep in late 1999? Or will you wind up on theirs? Should you head for the hills? Wrong question. What solid evidence do you have that you shouldn't? Should you stay where you are? What items will you need in your possession in 2000 and 2001 to make your decision to stay put a wise one for you and all of your closest relatives, who will show up on your doorstep if they know that you have prepared? That is to say, have you prepared for every close family member who will be in trouble in 2000? No? Why not? The clock is ticking. Let me give a simple example. How will you wash clothes for everyone? Let's assume that you have water. (Dreamer!) You can buy a 40-lb. tub of Wind Fresh laundry detergent from Sam's Club for $10. It will do 160 loads. For one person, that's a year of washing. What if you have 10 people under your roof? You will need 10 tubs for just one year. But this product may not be readily available in 2001. You had better buy 20 tubs. I'll bet you don't have 20 tubs, even though you can afford $200. You lack the storage space. More important, 20 tubs of detergent point to all the other things you will need under conditions that would mandate 20 tubs of detergent. So, people refuse to buy enough detergent. Now, what about your neighbors? They will be dirty. Their clothes will be dirty. You will be clean. You will not have lost 30 pounds. You will be the target of envy on a scale you can barely imagine today. You will be despised. Will you be ready for this psychologically? Of course, you can warn your neighbors now. They will not prepare, but they will remember. There will be a stream of beggars at your door from 2000 onward. You may know their names. "Please, please, we're desperate." It won't be a lie. When a society loses the division of labor, it loses just about everything that the urban "good life" requires. If you keep even a fraction of these things -- clean clothes, for instance -- you will be resented. Envy is a powerful force. "He doesn't deserve it. It's not right that he should have so much. No one should have so much." Here is a piece of information you may not have. Sam's Club offers a special service. It has a 50-page notebook with all of its products listed, with order numbers. Go to the manager and ask for a copy. Take it home. Make a shopping list. You can order everything at one time. Rent a U-Haul or borrow a pick-up truck and pick up everything. The average adult consumes 1000 lbs of food for a year. Half should be vegetables. You can grow them. Buy non-hybrid seeds. (http://arkinstitute.com) Half can be grains. You can buy 200 lbs of white rice at Sam's Club for under $60. The same for pinto beans. In terms of food, $300 will feed you for a year. You'll hate the taste by mid-2000, but you'll eat. How many of you will spend a whole $300 on food? Not many. Why not? Because if they might need this much food, they'll need water, and they know they can't get enough water in 2000. They would have to move, or put in four 1,500-gallon cisterns and gutters, or buy a swimming pool. They won't do it. My suggestion: rent "The Trigger Effect." Then make up your mind about where you should live in 2000. For those who want a public presentation, which can be used to persuade people who have not read much about y2k, my Harrison, Arkansas y2k town meeting tape is effective. You can see representatives of the public utilities and a local bank deal with y2k. The question and answer session is especially useful. It sells for $39.95: call 903-839-8822. - - -------------------------------------------- Reality Check - - -------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, send a message containing "unsubscribe" to: remnant-list-request@cliffslanding.com If you have questions please contact ice@ballistic.com. - - --------------60B23B773DFEE8A7DA22A23D-- - - --------------12214D0997E9CA46C4BB380C-- - ------- End of Forwarded Message ------- End of Forwarded Message
Looks like this one didn't make it out the first time around. It's a little late. Sorry. At 10:04 PM -0500 11/28/98, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote:
anyway I hate to say that I think he is really losing his mind lately.. no there are going to be some serious y2k problems, but imho the bottom approaches "garbage".. any talk of riots, mobs, martial law, stockpiling weaponry, roving bandits etc. seems to me to be really way off base to say the least. now people have been talking about this, but I've never seen gary north go quite that crazy.
Not just crazy, flat out _wrong_ in at least one case:
Let's start with the basics: water. An urban adult uses 75 to 100 gallons of water a day. This doesn't count
Like hell. Your average adult drinks at MOST 1 gallon a day, including coffees sodas etc. It is _real_ difficult to drink over 1 gallon, and you can seriously fuck your system up (mineral balances) if you drink too much. I drink a LOT of (non-alcohol) fluid (as opposed to drinking solids) a day, and I usually top out at 3 quarts, unless I am doing a long distance ride. Let's round it up and call it one gallon for drinking. Showers: If you need more than 10-15 gallons, you are taking too long. Cooking: another gallon. Washing hands & dental hygene: 0ne more. Flushing toilets: 2-5 gallons per flush. Drinking one gallon of water a day gets you flushing a _lot_, about 10 flushes a day (we are going outer limits on this one) that is 20 to 50 gallons a day. Washing dishes shouldn't take more than 3 for pots & pans, and one for each persons utensils. Total: 40-75 (rounded up). That's for comfort. It also doesn't include watering the lawn or washing the car.
watering the lawn. In 2000, how many people will be under your roof? Remember, your children may show up on your doorstep, with wives and children. Families will pull together for survival in 2000. Estimate the number of people under your roof in 2000. Now, how much water will you need per day?
Ok, so let's cut that back to what we _need_. First off, we don't dump our dish water down the drain, it gets "recycled" to flush the toilets. So does the shower water. Then we only flush when we need to (i.e. not for every urination as when drinking 3/4 a gallon a day (we are cutting back a little) it's mostly straight water anyway). So that eliminates almost all of the 20-50 gallons. Then we only shower when necessary, rather than every day, we should be able to go 2-3 days between showers. No, it's not as pleasent, but at least it's not unsanitary. So we'll say every other day droping our daily consumption down to 5-7.5 We won't touch cooking, and we'll increase the washing hands/other hygene to 2 gallons to help make up for the lack of showers (actually, doing this you could strecth to 3 days easily). So: drinking: 3/4 gallon (note that not all of this has to be "water", fruit juice, sodas (at least until supplies run out) etc.) Showers: 5-7.5 Cooking: 1 gallon Washing hands &etc. 2 gallons. Flushing Toilets: Allocate 10 just in case. Washing dishs: 4 (we aren't skimping here for hygene reasons). Total: 22-25. One half to one quarter Mr. Norths claims, and I'd bet my numbers are still on the high side. This is also a fairly comfortable level compared to pure survival.
What if the municipal water authority shuts down? It's goodbye showers. Goodbye flushing toilets. Hello sponge
Only if you're a fucking idiot. You don't need potable water to shower with, and you sure as hell don't need it to flush a toilet.
Let's assume that for the first three months in 2000, you will not get paid. The banks will be down. You will not be able to write a check or use a credit card. What will you do?
Live off those who planned ahead, stocked up spent thousands of dollars on Food, Generators, guns & etc. but didn't spend 10 minutes making sure their bodies were prepared & died of heart attacks trying to pull start their generators to keep their computers running. (I'm mostly joking about the above)
What will your neighbors do?
Run for the suburbs.
If it's a year, it could be a decade.
If it's a decade, we're all fucked.
What will you do? What is your exit strategy?
Sit tight with several months of food (we have a largish lake nearby, Lake Michigan, maybe you've heard of it) & asst. supplies and see how things go. There are way too many variables to actually _plan_ an "exit strategy", and no where to go.
Should you head for the hills? Wrong question. What solid evidence do you have that you shouldn't?
Try this: NO WHERE TO GO. THERE ISN'T ENOUGH HILLS, AND EVERY ONE IS HEADING THERE. YOU CAN'T RAISE (large amounts) OF FOOD IN THE HILLS W/OUT TRACTORS AND SHIT, and you can't do it w/people shooting you to get your tractors, food, and desiel.
Should you stay where you are? What items will you
Yes.
need in your possession in 2000 and 2001 to make your
Adequate food, warm clothing, & assorted stuff (including a couple firearms for self protection.
Let me give a simple example. How will you wash clothes for everyone? Let's assume that you have water. (Dreamer!) You can buy a 40-lb. tub of Wind Fresh laundry detergent from Sam's Club for $10. It will do 160 loads.
Ummm. Gary, how did people wash their clothes before they could buy soap at the store? Why don't you print a recipe for Lye Soap? Because it's a lot easier being a blowhard.
Their clothes will be dirty. You will be clean. You will not have lost 30 pounds. You will be the target of envy on a scale you can barely imagine today. You will be despised. Will you be ready for this psychologically?
Been despised all my life. I'm sure you know what that is like.
local bank deal with y2k. The question and answer session is especially useful. It sells for $39.95:
So over the next 12 months banks will fail, society will collapse, and TWAWKIWE, and he is trying to get rich off it. Things that make you go Huh? -- "To sum up: The entire structure of antitrust statutes in this country is a jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance. It is a product: (a) of a gross misinterpretation of history, and (b) of rather naïve, and certainly unrealistic, economic theories." Alan Greenspan, "Anti-trust" http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/antitrust.html Petro::E-Commerce Adminstrator::Playboy Ent. Inc.::petro@playboy.com
Petro wrote:
Looks like this one didn't make it out the first time around. It's a little late. Sorry.
At 10:04 PM -0500 11/28/98, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote:
anyway I hate to say that I think he is really losing his mind lately.. no there are going to be some serious y2k problems, but imho the bottom approaches "garbage".. any talk of riots, mobs, martial law, stockpiling weaponry, roving bandits etc. seems to me to be really way off base to say the least. now people have been talking about this, but I've never seen gary north go quite that crazy.
Not just crazy, flat out _wrong_ in at least one case:
Let's start with the basics: water. An urban adult uses 75 to 100 gallons of water a day. This doesn't count
Like hell. Your average adult drinks at MOST 1 gallon a day, including coffees sodas etc. It is _real_ difficult to drink over 1 gallon, and you can seriously fuck your system up (mineral balances) if you drink too much.
I drink a LOT of (non-alcohol) fluid (as opposed to drinking solids) a day, and I usually top out at 3 quarts, unless I am doing a long distance ride.
Let's round it up and call it one gallon for drinking.
Showers: If you need more than 10-15 gallons, you are taking too long.
Come on people. We are talking SURVIVAL here. Can you ski your showers if you do not have enough water? The true answer is, if shit hits the fan and there is no water in the faucet, almost all activity except drinking and washing hands and dishes can be curtailed. Even flushing toilets is not necessary as anyone can shit outside. I am speaking out of personal experiences, living with water outages while we were in the Russian countryside. It was no big deal, period.
Cooking: another gallon.
It is included.
Washing hands & dental hygene: 0ne more.
Flushing toilets: 2-5 gallons per flush. Drinking one gallon of water a day gets you flushing a _lot_, about 10 flushes a day (we are going outer limits on this one) that is 20 to 50 gallons a day.
Washing dishes shouldn't take more than 3 for pots & pans, and one for each persons utensils.
Much less.
Total: 40-75 (rounded up).
Total: 2-3.
Ok, so let's cut that back to what we _need_. First off, we don't dump our dish water down the drain, it gets "recycled" to flush the toilets.
get them to shit outside.
What if the municipal water authority shuts down? It's goodbye showers. Goodbye flushing toilets. Hello sponge
Only if you're a fucking idiot. You don't need potable water to shower with, and you sure as hell don't need it to flush a toilet.
Correct. Gary North is not stupid. he realizes all this, as it is not rocket science. Then why he keeps telling all this? The answer is, to peddle his wares. I am not suggesting that Y2K is going to be a cakewalk. Quite possibly not. But Gary North is not worth listening to because he is biased and has a conflict of interests.
Let's assume that for the first three months in 2000, you will not get paid. The banks will be down. You will not be able to write a check or use a credit card. What will you do?
Live off those who planned ahead, stocked up spent thousands of dollars on Food, Generators, guns & etc. but didn't spend 10 minutes making sure their bodies were prepared & died of heart attacks trying to pull start their generators to keep their computers running.
(I'm mostly joking about the above)
I think that you had a good point... A long time ago I posted a "Skills vs. guns" article to misc.survivalism. its point was, that in the long run having good skills and health was more important than stocking up.
Let me give a simple example. How will you wash clothes for everyone? Let's assume that you have water. (Dreamer!) You can buy a 40-lb. tub of Wind Fresh laundry detergent from Sam's Club for $10. It will do 160 loads.
Ummm. Gary, how did people wash their clothes before they could buy soap at the store?
Why don't you print a recipe for Lye Soap?
You can make semi-good "soap" from animal fat and ash.
Because it's a lot easier being a blowhard.
Their clothes will be dirty. You will be clean. You will not have lost 30 pounds. You will be the target of envy on a scale you can barely imagine today. You will be despised. Will you be ready for this psychologically?
Been despised all my life. I'm sure you know what that is like.
No biggie. Besides, if you don't want to be despised, just don't be clean. - Igor.
Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
Petro wrote:
Ok, so let's cut that back to what we _need_. First off, we don't dump our dish water down the drain, it gets "recycled" to flush the toilets.
get them to shit outside.
Bad bad bad bad bad bad *bad* idea. This might be ok in the Russian countryside, or any other countryside, but it an *excessively* bad thing in just about any modern city. If running water fails to run in the cities, and people do as you suggest, and take their business outside, it will not be long before tremendous numbers of people get sick and die. What with the high concentrations that people live in in most cities, I expect that this'd make the Black Death look like a mild case of the flu. You cannot sustain a modern city without a working sewer system. Remember what cities were like in the middle ages? I believe some historians refer to them as "population sinks" for the surrounding countryside. Not for a lack of wealth or commerce, but for a lack of sanitation. Michael Hohensee
Michal Hohensee wrote:
Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
Petro wrote:
Ok, so let's cut that back to what we _need_. First off, we don't dump our dish water down the drain, it gets "recycled" to flush the toilets.
get them to shit outside.
Bad bad bad bad bad bad *bad* idea. This might be ok in the Russian countryside, or any other countryside, but it an *excessively* bad thing in just about any modern city. If running water fails to run in the cities, and people do as you suggest, and take their business outside, it will not be long before tremendous numbers of people get sick and die. What with the high concentrations that people live in in most cities, I expect that this'd make the Black Death look like a mild case of the flu.
Like I said, someone would need to build a latrine. That's all that's needed. - Igor.
Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
Michal Hohensee wrote:
Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
Petro wrote:
Ok, so let's cut that back to what we _need_. First off, we don't dump our dish water down the drain, it gets "recycled" to flush the toilets.
get them to shit outside.
Bad bad bad bad bad bad *bad* idea. This might be ok in the Russian countryside, or any other countryside, but it an *excessively* bad thing in just about any modern city. If running water fails to run in the cities, and people do as you suggest, and take their business outside, it will not be long before tremendous numbers of people get sick and die. What with the high concentrations that people live in in most cities, I expect that this'd make the Black Death look like a mild case of the flu.
Like I said, someone would need to build a latrine. That's all that's needed.
Latrines aren't sufficient to the task. In a city like NYC, latrines might solve the problem for perhaps a week (assuming that we tear up all the roads and sidewalks --something which we cannot do in time, even if we wanted to), but then they'll be full, and there won't be any more places the latrines can be rotated to. Then we're back to doing it in the open. Less concentrated cities might last a while longer, but not much longer. There's no getting around it, we *need* working sewer systems to have modern cities. Otherwise, the cities die. Michael Hohensee
In <36694C23.B4CB9509@nyu.edu>, on 12/05/98 at 10:07 AM, Michal Hohensee <mah248@nyu.edu> said:
Then we're back to doing it in the open. Less concentrated cities might last a while longer, but not much longer. There's no getting around it, we *need* working sewer systems to have modern cities. Otherwise, the cities die.
And you say this as if it is a bad thing. -- --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.openpgp.net Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 5.0 at: http://www.openpgp.net/pgp.html ---------------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III wrote:
In <36694C23.B4CB9509@nyu.edu>, on 12/05/98 at 10:07 AM, Michael Hohensee <mah248@nyu.edu> said:
Then we're back to doing it in the open. Less concentrated cities might last a while longer, but not much longer. There's no getting around it, we *need* working sewer systems to have modern cities. Otherwise, the cities die.
And you say this as if it is a bad thing.
Well it is, sorta. I've got the misfortune to live in NYC, as do many many many other people. People who (like me) aren't particularly interested in dying of disease and/or starvation. If the "shit hits the fan", we're in for a serious mess, in any event. :/ Michael Hohensee
Michael Hohensee wrote:
William H. Geiger III wrote:
In <36694C23.B4CB9509@nyu.edu>, on 12/05/98 at 10:07 AM, Michael Hohensee <mah248@nyu.edu> said:
Then we're back to doing it in the open. Less concentrated cities might last a while longer, but not much longer. There's no getting around it, we *need* working sewer systems to have modern cities. Otherwise, the cities die.
And you say this as if it is a bad thing.
Well it is, sorta. I've got the misfortune to live in NYC, as do many many many other people. People who (like me) aren't particularly interested in dying of disease and/or starvation. If the "shit hits the fan", we're in for a serious mess, in any event. :/
Well, you've made a conscious choice, being fully aware of ramifications. - Igor.
In <366A26C2.30D6892E@nyu.edu>, on 12/06/98 at 01:40 AM, Michael Hohensee <mah248@nyu.edu> said:
William H. Geiger III wrote:
In <36694C23.B4CB9509@nyu.edu>, on 12/05/98 at 10:07 AM, Michael Hohensee <mah248@nyu.edu> said:
Then we're back to doing it in the open. Less concentrated cities might last a while longer, but not much longer. There's no getting around it, we *need* working sewer systems to have modern cities. Otherwise, the cities die.
And you say this as if it is a bad thing.
Well it is, sorta. I've got the misfortune to live in NYC, as do many many many other people. People who (like me) aren't particularly interested in dying of disease and/or starvation. If the "shit hits the fan", we're in for a serious mess, in any event. :/
It is your choice to live in the cesspool know as NYC. I am originally from Chicago, I got the hell out of there the 1st chance I got and have never looked back. Large metropolitan complexes are obsolete and their problems greatly outweigh their benefits. I am a land owner and *like* owning land, I enjoy having grass and trees, streams to fish and swim in, not living in a cage with my neighbors on the other side of a paper thin wall. I have enough land that I could plow it up and do subsistence farming to survive if the collapse ever comes (subsidized with fishing and hunting). Why anyone would want to live like a rat is beyond me. -- --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.openpgp.net Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 5.0 at: http://www.openpgp.net/pgp.html ---------------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III wrote:
In <366A26C2.30D6892E@nyu.edu>, on 12/06/98 at 01:40 AM, Michael Hohensee <mah248@nyu.edu> said:
William H. Geiger III wrote:
In <36694C23.B4CB9509@nyu.edu>, on 12/05/98 at 10:07 AM, Michael Hohensee <mah248@nyu.edu> said:
Then we're back to doing it in the open. Less concentrated cities might last a while longer, but not much longer. There's no getting around it, we *need* working sewer systems to have modern cities. Otherwise, the cities die.
And you say this as if it is a bad thing.
Well it is, sorta. I've got the misfortune to live in NYC, as do many many many other people. People who (like me) aren't particularly interested in dying of disease and/or starvation. If the "shit hits the fan", we're in for a serious mess, in any event. :/
It is your choice to live in the cesspool know as NYC. I am originally from Chicago, I got the hell out of there the 1st chance I got and have never looked back.
I've been to Chicago exactly once. I went to the Sears Tower, and with the exception of the lake, *ALL* I could see was city and smog! I will not go back.
Large metropolitan complexes are obsolete and their problems greatly outweigh their benefits. I am a land owner and *like* owning land, I enjoy having grass and trees, streams to fish and swim in, not living in a cage with my neighbors on the other side of a paper thin wall. I have enough land that I could plow it up and do subsistence farming to survive if the collapse ever comes (subsidized with fishing and hunting).
My "cage" is in the suburbs, but I have to agree, it is still a cage. I can't wait to get my own land.
Why anyone would want to live like a rat is beyond me.
Some people are born and raised that way. They don't know anything else. And what they don't know, scares them. -Doug www.TheServerFarm.net
At 3:09 PM -0500 12/6/98, William H. Geiger III wrote:
Large metropolitan complexes are obsolete and their problems greatly outweigh their benefits. I am a land owner and *like* owning land, I enjoy having grass and trees, streams to fish and swim in, not living in a cage with my neighbors on the other side of a paper thin wall. I have enough land that I could plow it up and do subsistence farming to survive if the collapse ever comes (subsidized with fishing and hunting).
Why anyone would want to live like a rat is beyond me.
All night grocery stores within walking distance. Ready access to work and entertainment. 10 different "ethnicities" of restraunts within walking distance (if you consider "all night diner" to be an "ethnicity"). Decent Mass Transit. Very little Country Music on the radio, and NO hog reports. Oh, and I haven't owned a car in 6 years. I don't really _like_ living in Chicago, but I'd like living in the middle of BFE even less. -- "To sum up: The entire structure of antitrust statutes in this country is a jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance. It is a product: (a) of a gross misinterpretation of history, and (b) of rather naïve, and certainly unrealistic, economic theories." Alan Greenspan, "Anti-trust" http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/antitrust.html Petro::E-Commerce Adminstrator::Playboy Ent. Inc.::petro@playboy.com
Michal Hohensee wrote:
Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
Michal Hohensee wrote:
Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
Petro wrote:
Ok, so let's cut that back to what we _need_. First off, we don't dump our dish water down the drain, it gets "recycled" to flush the toilets.
get them to shit outside.
Bad bad bad bad bad bad *bad* idea. This might be ok in the Russian countryside, or any other countryside, but it an *excessively* bad thing in just about any modern city. If running water fails to run in the cities, and people do as you suggest, and take their business outside, it will not be long before tremendous numbers of people get sick and die. What with the high concentrations that people live in in most cities, I expect that this'd make the Black Death look like a mild case of the flu.
Like I said, someone would need to build a latrine. That's all that's needed.
Latrines aren't sufficient to the task. In a city like NYC, latrines might solve the problem for perhaps a week (assuming that we tear up all the roads and sidewalks --something which we cannot do in time, even if we wanted to), but then they'll be full, and there won't be any more places the latrines can be rotated to.
Why, shit is actually pretty compact. usually with latrines, the liquid filtrates out, and the compressed shit does not take too much space. If you dig a deep enough hole (2-3 yards) it should last for a long, long time. I estimate that a human being produces about 1/2 to 1lb of hard waste per day, some are more full of it, some less. Let's settle on one lb per day. Let's see, a hole that is 5 yards wide, 3 yards deep, and, say, 2 yards wide, is about 30 cubic yards. It could take about 40 tons of hard compressed waste, that is, 80 thousand man-days of shitting can be compressed in it. You definitely need some heavy machinery to dig this kind of hole (and then you have to build smoe kind of frame over it to prevent people from falling into it if it collapses), but it is not hard and can even be done in a catastrophic scenario. That's a lot!!! Let's see,a high rise building with 50 floors and 10 apartments in each floor, that's about 1200 people. The latrine would last them what, about sixty days! And then they can dig another one.
Then we're back to doing it in the open. Less concentrated cities might last a while longer, but not much longer. There's no getting around it, we *need* working sewer systems to have modern cities. Otherwise, the cities die.
Not in the short run. They could survive for a while. - Igor.
Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
Michael Hohensee wrote:
Latrines aren't sufficient to the task. In a city like NYC, latrines might solve the problem for perhaps a week (assuming that we tear up all the roads and sidewalks --something which we cannot do in time, even if we wanted to), but then they'll be full, and there won't be any more places the latrines can be rotated to.
Why, shit is actually pretty compact. usually with latrines, the liquid filtrates out, and the compressed shit does not take too much space.
If you dig a deep enough hole (2-3 yards) it should last for a long, long time. I estimate that a human being produces about 1/2 to 1lb of hard waste per day, some are more full of it, some less. Let's settle on one lb per day.
Let's see, a hole that is 5 yards wide, 3 yards deep, and, say, 2 yards wide, is about 30 cubic yards. It could take about 40 tons of hard compressed waste, that is, 80 thousand man-days of shitting can be compressed in it.
You definitely need some heavy machinery to dig this kind of hole (and then you have to build smoe kind of frame over it to prevent people from falling into it if it collapses), but it is not hard and can even be done in a catastrophic scenario.
That's a lot!!! Let's see,a high rise building with 50 floors and 10 apartments in each floor, that's about 1200 people. The latrine would last them what, about sixty days! And then they can dig another one.
This assumes that we can compress it this much, which assumes that we have sufficient machinery. It further assumes that we will be able to ignore the "wet" component of human waste. You can't just pour it down the drains. Next, we should realize that these latrines are themselves not going to be particularly sanitary, and it would be most unwise to use them for any extended period of time. Hell, even *with* flush toilets, I've seen people squatting down in subway stations to take a leak not more than 5 feet from the restroom. Further, we should realize that for the above reason, people are not going to be particularly motivated to use these latrines. After all, nobody wants to hold it for a long time while they wait in line to take a leak, just for the privilege of relieving themselves in disease central. You're going to see shit in the street in any case. Finally, even if we dig these holes, (and they're *going* to be bigger than what you describe, as they must contain liquid, as well as solid waste), we're going to end up messing up the roads something fierce. Big cities *need* roads to transport life-critical items. If we dig them up, we're in even worse trouble.
Then we're back to doing it in the open. Less concentrated cities might last a while longer, but not much longer. There's no getting around it, we *need* working sewer systems to have modern cities. Otherwise, the cities die.
Not in the short run. They could survive for a while.
- Igor.
In the *very* short run. Like, say, a few weeks. That is if the food doesn't stop coming in first --then things finish up a bit sooner. Michael Hohensee
Michael Hohensee wrote:
Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
Michael Hohensee wrote:
Latrines aren't sufficient to the task. In a city like NYC, latrines might solve the problem for perhaps a week (assuming that we tear up all the roads and sidewalks --something which we cannot do in time, even if we wanted to), but then they'll be full, and there won't be any more places the latrines can be rotated to.
Why, shit is actually pretty compact. usually with latrines, the liquid filtrates out, and the compressed shit does not take too much space.
If you dig a deep enough hole (2-3 yards) it should last for a long, long time. I estimate that a human being produces about 1/2 to 1lb of hard waste per day, some are more full of it, some less. Let's settle on one lb per day.
Let's see, a hole that is 5 yards wide, 3 yards deep, and, say, 2 yards wide, is about 30 cubic yards. It could take about 40 tons of hard compressed waste, that is, 80 thousand man-days of shitting can be compressed in it.
You definitely need some heavy machinery to dig this kind of hole (and then you have to build smoe kind of frame over it to prevent people from falling into it if it collapses), but it is not hard and can even be done in a catastrophic scenario.
That's a lot!!! Let's see,a high rise building with 50 floors and 10 apartments in each floor, that's about 1200 people. The latrine would last them what, about sixty days! And then they can dig another one.
This assumes that we can compress it this much, which assumes that we have sufficient machinery. It further assumes that we will be able to ignore the "wet" component of human waste. You can't just pour it down the drains.
No, the wet component filtrates out of the hole, into the soil. Compression happens automaitcally.
Next, we should realize that these latrines are themselves not going to be particularly sanitary, and it would be most unwise to use them for any extended period of time. Hell, even *with* flush toilets, I've seen people squatting down in subway stations to take a leak not more than 5 feet from the restroom.
Yeah, they are not too sanitary, but it is livable. I refer you to the book "Where there is no doctor" that talks about it. (a great book, all in all)
Further, we should realize that for the above reason, people are not going to be particularly motivated to use these latrines. After all, nobody wants to hold it for a long time while they wait in line to take a leak, just for the privilege of relieving themselves in disease central. You're going to see shit in the street in any case.
I suspect that this will not be happening a lot in the cleaner parts of the city.
Finally, even if we dig these holes, (and they're *going* to be bigger than what you describe, as they must contain liquid, as well as solid
liquid disspiates.
waste), we're going to end up messing up the roads something fierce. Big cities *need* roads to transport life-critical items. If we dig them up, we're in even worse trouble.
Then we're back to doing it in the open. Less concentrated cities might last a while longer, but not much longer. There's no getting around it, we *need* working sewer systems to have modern cities. Otherwise, the cities die.
Not in the short run. They could survive for a while.
- Igor.
In the *very* short run. Like, say, a few weeks. That is if the food doesn't stop coming in first --then things finish up a bit sooner.
Well, if you have no food, you make no shit. - Igor.
At 10:10 AM -0500 12/5/98, William H. Geiger III wrote:
In <36694C23.B4CB9509@nyu.edu>, on 12/05/98 at 10:07 AM, Michal Hohensee <mah248@nyu.edu> said:
Then we're back to doing it in the open. Less concentrated cities might last a while longer, but not much longer. There's no getting around it, we *need* working sewer systems to have modern cities. Otherwise, the cities die.
And you say this as if it is a bad thing.
When the cities start dying, their population--hungry and diseased--is heading your way. Some of them armed. Some ex-soldiers, some ex-cops. You may be badder than most of them, but are you good enough to kill them all? -- "To sum up: The entire structure of antitrust statutes in this country is a jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance. It is a product: (a) of a gross misinterpretation of history, and (b) of rather naïve, and certainly unrealistic, economic theories." Alan Greenspan, "Anti-trust" http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/antitrust.html Petro::E-Commerce Adminstrator::Playboy Ent. Inc.::petro@playboy.com
Michal Hohensee wrote:
Latrines aren't sufficient to the task. In a city like NYC, latrines might solve the problem for perhaps a week (assuming that we tear up all the roads and sidewalks --something which we cannot do in time, even if we wanted to), but then they'll be full, and there won't be any more places the latrines can be rotated to.
One obvious advantage to living in the penthouse of a highrise. Of course, the elevators may not be working. The elevator shaft may make an effective latrine though. City people may be up to their eyeballs in sh*t. This requires the availability of raw materiel to produce however, which is predicated on gas pumps working to fuel transportation of foodstuffs into the hive. I suppose horses could make a come-back, but then we're back to piles of sh*t again. Current waste disposal conventions such as sewers and trash removal don't actually magically make this stuff disappear. In NYC it all ends up in the Atlantic latrine, where it gets picked up by the gulf stream and ends up being deposited on Florida beaches after a long sea journey. There are so many plastic bags bearing logos in the sargasso sea, it looks like it has been sold off to corporate interests for advertizing purposes. I went out fishing in this vicinity a few weeks ago and caught 3 sea birds (released alive) and only one fish. On thinking it over, it was obvious why we caught the birds -- there aren't any fish to catch, so the birds were hungry enough to go for a lure. Colloform counts in the mid-Atlantic approach that of an unwashed WC. Its no better on the other coast, in San Francisco there is an annual paragraph in the Chron, usually buried near the last page, about (yet) another *accidental* release of 12 million gallons of raw untreated sewage, into the bay. Funny how these accidents happen in december every year. We really are the society that believes in *out of sight, out of mind* solutions. There is an opportunity in this I suppose, corner the market on chemical toilets and reverse osmosis water makers in a big city next year, and you're laughing. Of course your exit strategy should take into account the possibility of being taken over in the *public good*. Hong Kong has a good system for dealing with the flush problem. When the sewer system was put in (Japanese occupied, WWII period), all buildings were double plumbed with fresh water for drinking, cooking and washing, and sea water for flushing. With the way most city water tastes now, maybe the existing plumbing could be turned over to non-potable water distribution for washing + flushing. Distribution of drinking water would be as it is in LA today. That's the fun part, figuring out how it could all be made to work. Unfortunately it's more likely that the sheeple will cry out for guvmint intervention to continue the flow of goodies, to which the western world has become addicted. IMHO, the military will be brought in to dig the latrines. Hoarders will be strung up for not redistributing their wealth in approved socialist style. Rewards will be posted for informing on a neighbor who is (may be) a hoarder (5% of the take?). Gas will be reclassified as a public resource for the duration of the emergency. The military will bring in the K rations, until it becomes obvious that relocating the citizen-units to resettlement camps on the outskirts is easier to manage. Those who control the sources of food production will also be drafted into this new(er) deal. Anyone left over from this redistribution, will be classified as a public enemy and fair game. This is the perfect opportunity for the state to offer more security in exchange for reduced liberty. Was it on this list that I saw the posting about the 300 trucks of army rations a day being stashed in some Oklahoma(?) caves?
The Hudson River on the west side of Manhattan reportedly has twelve feet of shit on its bottom, and a permit from the US Corp of Engineers is needed to disturb it for pier construction and repair -- and to extend the island for yet another criminal expansion for the public good: next up is another hotshit Guggenheim satellite museum by Frank Gehry to match his Balboa big holer. Many sewage lines of the West Side still dump raw sewage into the river while plans for new sewer systems languish for lack of funding -- the most recent plant on the Hudson cost in excess of $1 billion, has a park on top, is an architectural award winner, and still stinks like Madonna in church. Though less than the surrounding nabes from which the gagging aliens flee to the shit plant deck which is a 100 feet above the river and offers Titanic like panoramas, that is, far enough above the river that the night's floaters/skin-bros are overlookable. Tis true that rivers and oceans are prosperity's sewage treatment system, as ever, the best recycling system ever confected by nature to handle the effluvia of progress, for refreshing water, air and importing cheap-labor illegals (now how to stop them fucking for recreation, their brats siphoning our hard-stole American birthright to profit by the globe's suffering, hurray we got Ks of Terrorist Nukes). Still, environmental terrorism is booming. Cleanup of the National Security Apparatus will take decades and $ trillions. Health damage remediation will take many times that. Shit in streets is a puny task in comparison to those, not even worth planning for -- well, dog shit is a big headache in Guiliani's disorderly mind. Yes, NYC as with other large cities are dumps for the rest of the country. Yes, going to the country makes me gag -- pity the poor rubes, how can they bear the lack of civilized rot and stench. Oh well, it's TCM's evolution in action: only shit-innoculated mutants will inhale the sublime Y2K halitosis of the programmers of built-in breakdown, vainglorious national planners.
At 11:01 AM 12-5-98 -0500, Soren wrote:
City people may be up to their eyeballs in sh*t. This requires the availability of raw materiel to produce however, which is predicated on gas pumps working to fuel transportation of foodstuffs into the hive. I suppose horses could make a come-back, but then we're back to piles of [y2k latrine analysis snipped]
I note for the record that this latest thread represents a serious and probably departure in tone from cypherpunkly nose-in-the-air dismissals of Y2K problems as recently as 6 or 7 months ago. -Declan
Soren wrote:
Michal Hohensee wrote:
Latrines aren't sufficient to the task. In a city like NYC, latrines might solve the problem for perhaps a week (assuming that we tear up all the roads and sidewalks --something which we cannot do in time, even if we wanted to), but then they'll be full, and there won't be any more places the latrines can be rotated to.
One obvious advantage to living in the penthouse of a highrise. Of course, the elevators may not be working. The elevator shaft may make an effective latrine though.
A temporary solution, at best. You still have to go down to the ground to shop, go to work, etc. Besides, even if you don't get infected directly from the offal on the ground, you can still be infected by other people.
Current waste disposal conventions such as sewers and trash removal don't actually magically make this stuff disappear. In NYC it all ends up in the Atlantic latrine, where it gets picked up by the gulf stream and ends up being deposited on Florida beaches after a long sea journey. There are so many plastic bags bearing logos in the sargasso sea, it looks like it has been sold off to corporate interests for advertizing purposes.
Yah, but they are pretty good at siphoning the stuff out of the city, where people live, which is the point. *Where* it's siphoned to may not be the most intelligent place, but as long as it's not next to us, we don't get sick and die nearly as often. I'm not saying that existing sewer systems are perfect, but they *are* keeping us alive. Michael Hohensee
At 3:48 PM -0500 12/4/98, Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
Not just crazy, flat out _wrong_ in at least one case:
Let's start with the basics: water. An urban adult uses 75 to 100 gallons of water a day. This doesn't count
Like hell. Your average adult drinks at MOST 1 gallon a day, including coffees sodas etc. It is _real_ difficult to drink over 1 gallon, and you can seriously fuck your system up (mineral balances) if you drink too much. I drink a LOT of (non-alcohol) fluid (as opposed to drinking solids) a day, and I usually top out at 3 quarts, unless I am doing a long distance ride. Let's round it up and call it one gallon for drinking. Showers: If you need more than 10-15 gallons, you are taking too long. Come on people. We are talking SURVIVAL here. Can you ski your showers if you do not have enough water?
In the first block he was talking about _normal_ _day_to_day_ water usage. I was attacking that point.
The true answer is, if shit hits the fan and there is no water in the faucet, almost all activity except drinking and washing hands and dishes can be curtailed.
Not for long periods of time. General cleanlyness IS VERY important in survival situations. Clean skin and clothes help prevent infections from common wounds (like barking your shin against something, or a scratch from a tree branch &etc.)
Even flushing toilets is not necessary as anyone can shit outside.
Not in a crowded enviroment, that being a mid-sized town to a large city.
I am speaking out of personal experiences, living with water outages while we were in the Russian countryside. It was no big deal, period.
Countryside.
Cooking: another gallon. It is included.
Included in what? The pasta? The rice? The beans? I am not talking about a camping trip here, I am talking about living off stored food for one to three months (anything longer (IMO) takes VERY VERY different preperations.
Much less.
Total: 40-75 (rounded up). Total: 2-3.
In a max survival do-or-die situation, yes. For long term health, no. and besides, that was a number assuming "normal" usage.
Ok, so let's cut that back to what we _need_. First off, we don't dump our dish water down the drain, it gets "recycled" to flush the toilets. get them to shit outside.
Why, so bacteria can fester, and things like dystensia (spelled wrong, bacteria that causes "the shits" and other stomach problems) and other diseases run rampant?
I am not suggesting that Y2K is going to be a cakewalk. Quite possibly not. But Gary North is not worth listening to because he is biased and has a conflict of interests.
I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the biggest problem with Y2K is not going to be technical, but the Cultists & Gun Nuts (as a distinct group from survivalists who simply wish to get on with their lives) realize that it isn't the Apocolypse, and then seek to make it so.
Live off those who planned ahead, stocked up spent thousands of dollars on Food, Generators, guns & etc. but didn't spend 10 minutes making sure their bodies were prepared & died of heart attacks trying to pull start their generators to keep their computers running. (I'm mostly joking about the above) I think that you had a good point... A long time ago I posted a "Skills
Like I said, mostly.
vs. guns" article to misc.survivalism. its point was, that in the long run having good skills and health was more important than stocking up.
Bet they tried to run you out of there, they don't want to hear that kinda stuff, they want to hear how to get the most out of their 4X4, argue over whether the AK is better than the M-16 (hint, if you have to shoot more than a clip, you're fucked) for a "survival" situation.
Let me give a simple example. How will you wash clothes for everyone? Let's assume that you have water. (Dreamer!) You can buy a 40-lb. tub of Wind Fresh laundry detergent from Sam's Club for $10. It will do 160 loads.
Ummm. Gary, how did people wash their clothes before they could buy soap at the store?
Why don't you print a recipe for Lye Soap? You can make semi-good "soap" from animal fat and ash.
That is what "lye" soap is (basically)
Been despised all my life. I'm sure you know what that is like. No biggie. Besides, if you don't want to be despised, just don't be clean.
That is not an option. -- "To sum up: The entire structure of antitrust statutes in this country is a jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance. It is a product: (a) of a gross misinterpretation of history, and (b) of rather naïve, and certainly unrealistic, economic theories." Alan Greenspan, "Anti-trust" http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/antitrust.html Petro::E-Commerce Adminstrator::Playboy Ent. Inc.::petro@playboy.com
Petro wrote:
At 3:48 PM -0500 12/4/98, Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
Not just crazy, flat out _wrong_ in at least one case:
Let's start with the basics: water. An urban adult uses 75 to 100 gallons of water a day. This doesn't count
Like hell. Your average adult drinks at MOST 1 gallon a day, including coffees sodas etc. It is _real_ difficult to drink over 1 gallon, and you can seriously fuck your system up (mineral balances) if you drink too much. I drink a LOT of (non-alcohol) fluid (as opposed to drinking solids) a day, and I usually top out at 3 quarts, unless I am doing a long distance ride. Let's round it up and call it one gallon for drinking. Showers: If you need more than 10-15 gallons, you are taking too long. Come on people. We are talking SURVIVAL here. Can you ski your showers if you do not have enough water?
In the first block he was talking about _normal_ _day_to_day_ water usage. I was attacking that point.
The true answer is, if shit hits the fan and there is no water in the faucet, almost all activity except drinking and washing hands and dishes can be curtailed.
Not for long periods of time. General cleanlyness IS VERY important in survival situations. Clean skin and clothes help prevent infections from common wounds (like barking your shin against something, or a scratch from a tree branch &etc.)
Well... The answer is that there is much less washing needed for survival than it is needed for day to day civilized American life. For instance, I change my shirts every day. If shit hits the fan, you can wear a shirt for two weeks. Similar story is with other clothes.
Even flushing toilets is not necessary as anyone can shit outside.
Not in a crowded enviroment, that being a mid-sized town to a large city.
Come one, you can set up big latrines outside houses.
I am speaking out of personal experiences, living with water outages while we were in the Russian countryside. It was no big deal, period.
Countryside.
Cooking: another gallon. It is included.
Included in what? The pasta? The rice? The beans?
Well, yeah, of course. With pasta, you can make soup and eat the water, too.
I am not talking about a camping trip here, I am talking about living off stored food for one to three months (anything longer (IMO) takes VERY VERY different preperations.
Well, yes, but still you need no more than 3 gallons of water, which was my main contention.
Much less.
Total: 40-75 (rounded up). Total: 2-3.
In a max survival do-or-die situation, yes. For long term health, no. and besides, that was a number assuming "normal" usage.
It is entorely possible to live a decent life off of 3 gallons of water per day. I am speaking out of my experience.
Ok, so let's cut that back to what we _need_. First off, we don't dump our dish water down the drain, it gets "recycled" to flush the toilets. get them to shit outside.
Why, so bacteria can fester, and things like dystensia (spelled
dysenteria
wrong, bacteria that causes "the shits" and other stomach problems) and other diseases run rampant?
There is no problem with a properly set up outside toilet. There is a problem with eating unwashed food AND dirty hands. To set up a toilet, dig a hole about 3-4 feet deep, fortify it somewhat so that it would not cave in (for most soils fortification is unnecessary). Then, build something above the hole so that people would not be embarrassed to go there. That's IT. Our country house in Russia used this system, it is reasonably safe, etc. The whole neighborhood of houses used this system, as did millions of other Russians. It _is_ safe. (Our apartment in Moscow had a regular flush toilet bathroom).
I am not suggesting that Y2K is going to be a cakewalk. Quite possibly not. But Gary North is not worth listening to because he is biased and has a conflict of interests.
I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the biggest problem with Y2K is not going to be technical, but the Cultists & Gun Nuts (as a distinct group from survivalists who simply wish to get on with their lives) realize that it isn't the Apocolypse, and then seek to make it so.
A point I also made recently.
Live off those who planned ahead, stocked up spent thousands of dollars on Food, Generators, guns & etc. but didn't spend 10 minutes making sure their bodies were prepared & died of heart attacks trying to pull start their generators to keep their computers running. (I'm mostly joking about the above) I think that you had a good point... A long time ago I posted a "Skills
Like I said, mostly.
vs. guns" article to misc.survivalism. its point was, that in the long run having good skills and health was more important than stocking up.
Bet they tried to run you out of there, they don't want to hear that kinda stuff, they want to hear how to get the most out of their 4X4, argue over whether the AK is better than the M-16 (hint, if you have to shoot more than a clip, you're fucked) for a "survival" situation.
No, they were pretty nice. Not all of them agreed, but they had a sensible discussion.
Let me give a simple example. How will you wash clothes for everyone? Let's assume that you have water. (Dreamer!) You can buy a 40-lb. tub of Wind Fresh laundry detergent from Sam's Club for $10. It will do 160 loads.
Ummm. Gary, how did people wash their clothes before they could buy soap at the store?
Why don't you print a recipe for Lye Soap? You can make semi-good "soap" from animal fat and ash.
That is what "lye" soap is (basically)
Ahh, thanks. - Igor.
At 9:10 AM -0500 12/5/98, Soren wrote:
Well... The answer is that there is much less washing needed for survival than it is needed for day to day civilized American life. For instance, I change my shirts every day. If shit hits the fan, you can wear a shirt for two weeks. Similar story is with other clothes. This is a good one. What about the other half of American life (the uncivilized?). You know, the americans who live in those old refrigerator cartons? The ones that nobody sees? I think they get more
Igor Chudov @ home wrote: than 2 weeks out of their shirts. The sad fact is that city brats haven't got the faintest idea what survival is all about (you mean I have to *walk* to the supermarket?). It was in the 1890's when Queen Victoria issued an edict that forced all the english to 'bathe at least once a year'. Sit back and enjoy the carnival.
What was tbe average life expectancy in Victorian England? Those "other half" (more like other .05%) who live in refridgerator cartons regularly clog up ER's with gangrenous wounds, stinking of filth and decay. They tend not to live too long like that. Many of them also get a hot shower at least once a week from a homeless shelter. -- "To sum up: The entire structure of antitrust statutes in this country is a jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance. It is a product: (a) of a gross misinterpretation of history, and (b) of rather naïve, and certainly unrealistic, economic theories." Alan Greenspan, "Anti-trust" http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/antitrust.html Petro::E-Commerce Adminstrator::Playboy Ent. Inc.::petro@playboy.com
participants (11)
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Declan McCullagh -
Douglas L. Peterson -
ichudov＠Algebra.COM -
John Young -
Michael Hohensee -
Michael Hohensee -
Michal Hohensee
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Petro -
Soren -
Vladimir Z. Nuri -
William H. Geiger III