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How many of you grew up in an urban, old East Coast area?
I'm not talking about northern New York State, or the remnants of redneck South Jersey, or New Hampshire. I'm talking about those whose families emigrate from the Old Country to New York or Philadelphia, and have been there for the past 100 years. Those who have lived their entire lives interacting with only other urban and suburbanites. Those who have never known someone who killed something that they ate; those for whom it has been 200 years since they had a family member that grew crops.
Now, if you fit these requirements and can still tell me that believing in the infrastructure, and living in the highly populated cities is just the stupidest thing ever, I'll listen.
The rest of this is just folks from different background throwing stones.
I will cede that humans should have enough on the ball to be able to have a week or two worth of food, water and fuel in their homes when a major storm is forecasted. That is what we can expect from people. We cannot condemn them for not looking outside their entire world, going against their values, political stances and lifelong experience to wholly change their outlook on life.
I'm a 29 year old woman who was born in East Texas, grew up country, moved to Philadelphia and has recently realized that you can't measure someone else's yard by your homemade yardstick. Do I prepare? GD
right I do. But I get no pleasure from sitting around criticizing others who weren't lucky enough to be exposed to the skills that I was.
I don't think someone has to go frontier style, and I personally think that is stupid as it means forgoing the most profitable economic activities which real people need in the real world, but I do think many of those people in New Jersey & New York were stupid. They had 5-6 days warning, were told to evacuate but decided to ignore the warnings, and they didn't even bother to put away and food or water? Didn't even top off their gas tank? I'm not a prepper by any stretch of the imagination but my family and I could easily last a month on just the food and water we have in the house plus I have the equipment needed to outlast something like an extended power outage or water outage while still being able to do all the essentials.
I'm not trying to outlast doomsday just reasonably likely natural disasters like a major earthquake or storm. I think that is reasonable and more would just be over kill using resources which could be better used for more likely events like retirement savings, insurance, children's college funds, etc... For me it is about being prepared for the most likely stuff not some extremely unlikely mad max distopian future.
The folks who take it that far are probably mentally ill obsessive compulsive types with a penache for hoarding at the worst or just foolishly misallocating resources which could be spent better else where at the best. At least in my book.
How many of you grew up in an urban, old East Coast area?
I'm not talking about northern New York State, or the remnants of redneck South Jersey, or New Hampshire. I'm talking about those whose families emigrate from the Old Country to New York or Philadelphia, and have been there for the past 100 years. Those who have lived their entire lives interacting with only other urban and suburbanites. Those who have never known someone who killed something that they ate; those for whom it has been 200 years since they had a family member that grew crops.
Now, if you fit these requirements and can still tell me that believing in the infrastructure, and living in the highly populated cities is just the stupidest thing ever, I'll listen.
The rest of this is just folks from different background throwing stones.
I will cede that humans should have enough on the ball to be able to have a week or two worth of food, water and fuel in their homes when a major storm is forecasted. That is what we can expect from people. We cannot condemn them for not looking outside their entire world, going against their values, political stances and lifelong experience to wholly change their outlook on life.
I'm a 29 year old woman who was born in East Texas, grew up country, moved to Philadelphia and has recently realized that you can't measure someone else's yard by your homemade yardstick. Do I prepare? GD
right I do. But I get no pleasure from sitting around criticizing others who weren't lucky enough to be exposed to the skills that I was.
It isn't about skills.
I moved to Miami, FL in 2005. I didn't know what to do for a hurricane...but you know what I DID know how to do?
LISTEN!
I listened when they told us what to do, things we should get, what we should do to prepare, what to plan on and for...and guess what? I did just fine, thank you, when Wilma came ripping through town while the people who had lived there for much longer than I, were totally helpless within hours because they did NOT listen.
Guess what? We didn't have power for over a week. We survived! Heck, some parts didn't have power for over a month! It IS possible to survive without power for awhile, if you LISTEN.
So yes, I think those who failed to prepare are stupid.
On the other hand, the people who live on the East coast see hurricanes every year and all the aftermath is plastered all over the news for weeks. How hard can it be to say "Gee, look at all those people without gasoline, food, or water. Maybe the next time a hurricane is going to hit in my area, maybe I should buy a little extra gasoline, food, and water before it hits."?
There is not much you can do to be prepared if your house is one of the ones under water, blown down, or burned in one of those whole neighborhood fires. But there are sure a lot of folks who are on the news right now who could have saved themselves a lot of grief by doing a bit of shopping the week before.
I don't condemn. But i do question things I see about this storm. Last night a woman was out in the marsh grass finding pictures of her family, and oddly finding some. To find anything in the marsh grass is somewhat special i think, but then i wonder where any canned foods might also be in the same grasses...
I see no foods any where, nothing to suggest anyone has any food in the home at all and no sign of any one the ground somewhere.
And more directly to the OP. i must wonder what NYC was in 1812. I have the feeling the killing for food was still common in and around NYC in 1812 pre refers... When foods that could be stored were smoked, sugar glazed or salted.
I would tend to say something like in the last 60 years most city dwellers have become a people with no living skills what so ever that money can't buy, and weak for it.
They have a mind set of if money can't fix it nothing can. never once do they think to roll up their sleeves and try.
How many of you grew up in an urban, old East Coast area?
I'm not talking about northern New York State, or the remnants of redneck South Jersey, or New Hampshire. I'm talking about those whose families emigrate from the Old Country to New York or Philadelphia, and have been there for the past 100 years. Those who have lived their entire lives interacting with only other urban and suburbanites. Those who have never known someone who killed something that they ate; those for whom it has been 200 years since they had a family member that grew crops.
Now, if you fit these requirements and can still tell me that believing in the infrastructure, and living in the highly populated cities is just the stupidest thing ever, I'll listen.
The rest of this is just folks from different background throwing stones.
I will cede that humans should have enough on the ball to be able to have a week or two worth of food, water and fuel in their homes when a major storm is forecasted. That is what we can expect from people. We cannot condemn them for not looking outside their entire world, going against their values, political stances and lifelong experience to wholly change their outlook on life.
I'm a 29 year old woman who was born in East Texas, grew up country, moved to Philadelphia and has recently realized that you can't measure someone else's yard by your homemade yardstick. Do I prepare? GD
right I do. But I get no pleasure from sitting around criticizing others who weren't lucky enough to be exposed to the skills that I was.
Jersey City NJ here.
Living 7 houses away from my 93 year old uncle who still lives in the house he was born in.
We both made it through the storm without any problems.
I have absolutely NO sympathy for people that ignore warnings, and depend on others to save their ass.
The problem is those people have been so detached from reality for so long they don't seemingly know the real world, they may not be idiots but they don't know any better. They're living in a fantasy world. Money, finance, etc., is not the real world. Money is only worth something in people's minds who are deluded by that notion. You can't eat it, breathe it or drink it, yet it's what life in the city revolves around. The natural world is the real world. Every civilization has failed, and those who can't provide for their own basic needs, will not survive that. Darwin at work really. I tend to think of civilization as a failed experiment. After just 10,000 years (a blip in the radar really, both for the time humans have existed and for the world as a whole), civilization has poisoned, overpopulated and generally destroyed the world. At this point I only want to see the destruction of the world stopped so some of us survive when civilization goes the way of the dodo bird (a victim of civilization). I don't see cities surviving peak oil. I don't want to see the Arctic ruined in a vain attempt to get a few more years out of a dead end lifestyle, nor do I want to see mountains blown up to get some coal. If you think Sandy was bad it's only going to get worse for those in the big cities and not because of hurricanes either.
Are there any forums for Sandy victims who would like advice from or just to talk to Katrina victims? I lost everything in Katrina on the Mississippi coast and would be happy to help if I can, whether it is through answering questions or just talking about it. I know that is is overwhelming for many right now, but it will get better sooner than you think. I know that this is off-topic and apologize, I would just like to help if I can and I'm just not really sure how to go about doing that.
I'm reading through this thread, and wondering how people over here in the UK would deal with such a catastrophe.
We have so many that have no idea how to get anything without buying, borrowing, or stealing. (Yes, I did say stealing)!
I was talking to my Wife about this hurricane, (she's from an estate background) and she said that back in 1987 when we had a hurricane here, and the estate she live on got a bit flooded, the people went crazy, after just a day. Their main concern was where go for a drink, not water, Alcohol!
I've still got a long way to go to retrain my Wife to think in a prepper way, but slowly, I'm getting there!
NJ hasn't had a hurricane since 1903. Sure, we see them around the south eastern coast of the nation, they don't make it up here. So to say that we get them every year is wrong.
That being said, I followed the storm closely and I prepared with food, water, and backup power. I expected worst case to be having to deal without electricity and water for a week or two. I was not prepared for a total washout of my home. But then again, I don't live near the shore or a major body of water, and we've never had flooding in this area while I've lived here and for the past 30 years that my parents have lived here.
The result is me having to deal with less than 24 hours of electricity loss.
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