Looting of museums, Fishing with defibrillators

[Major Variola (ret)]

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