At 02:26 PM 4/12/03 -0500, J.A. Terranson wrote:

In their position, I'd be looting the hospitals too: ultrawide spectrum antibiotics, atropine, a small stash of potent narcotics (a mix of a long acting prep, such as methadone for use over days or weeks, and some short actings like straight morphine for the early moments), a couple of bottles of saline, and some basic kit items (suture, sponges, etc.)... To hell with recreation: these are people worried about *survival*.

Ok, I wasn't thinking about meds that folks could figure out how to use on their own, I was thinking about med equiptment that they wouldn't fathom, nor find readily fungible. I can believe my neighbors could guess approximately how to use saline or antibios, but not equiptment. Were they going to make rice in the autoclave? Use defibrillators to go fishing? Turn an anesthetic machine into a bhong? Looting a pharmacy make sense. Looting non-consumables from places where they might be needed (for yourself) is *irrational* rampaging. Because the potential future benefit to yourself of leaving an x-ray machine intact exceeds the value in scrap metal and parts, IMHO. "It takes a child to raze a village." -Michael Fry