Fear Mongers

[Jason]

I hold that anyone who speaks to disembodied spirits should not be in possession of a gun.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I hold that anyone who speaks to disembodied spirits should not be in possession of a gun.

Hey!

[Svartalf]

I hold that anyone who speaks to disembodied spirits should not be in possession of a gun.

Does that include talking to people on the internet?

[Jason]

Only if they're disembodied spirits, or 'ghosts on the machine'. (You have to be a spirit you see).

[Wumbologist]

Only if they're disembodied spirits, or 'ghosts on the machine'. (You have to be a spirit you see).

I'm spirited, is that close enough?

[Svartalf]

Only if they're disembodied spirits, or 'ghosts on the machine'. (You have to be a spirit you see).

Until I've met you all in the flesh, you might be ghosts.

[rasetsu]

It's a simple product of evolution. Mother nature has geared us to be overly sensitive to potential danger. It's a trade-off: the resources spent guarding against dangers that aren't real, the false positives, are more than compensated for by the false negatives that are avoided, when failure to detect could be hazardous. The less able one is at recognition and thinking tasks, in general, the wider out on the curve the person will be (whether overdetecting or underdetecting). However, on average, the centrists will outcompete those on the margins. That's the cost of overdetection, underdetection, and poor detection; lack of reproductive fitness. Where the center should be at any one time is what makes horse races. It's possible we could see a large scale collapse of civilization. It's happened before, and it might happen again. However, if the preppers are right, they will be the few left with resources at the end of that process. Facing a horde of desperate people.

[Jason]

My water comes from a capped natural spring - no electricity required for water pressure. I hunt and butcher a lot of my food already - don't need civil infrastructure for teh food. I cut mah own wood fer teh heating of muh house. So that's water, food, and shelter covered.. I just need fuel for mah truck and mah chainsaw.

I'd like to know how people living in human storage units in cities like New York expect to survive teh apocalypse when teh infrastructure breaks down and the Superdupermart has no moar food, the pumps stop delivering water, and the gas lines and electricity are out so they're cold in the dark. They're doomed.

[Svartalf]

Which is why we have a vested interest in maintaining the jnfrastructure and making sure teh market never runs out of food.

[Jason]

But it's the apocalypse! Everything breaks down. You have to bludgeon your neighbour to death with a spatula to steal his can of dehydrated cat food to survive!

[Gallstones]

But it's the apocalypse! Everything breaks down. You have to bludgeon your neighbour to death with a spatula to steal his can of dehydrated cat food to survive!

Give a man a can and he will eat for a day.
Let him bludgeon you to death and he'll eat for at least a week, longer if he makes jerky.

[hadespussercats]

My water comes from a capped natural spring - no electricity required for water pressure. I hunt and butcher a lot of my food already - don't need civil infrastructure for teh food. I cut mah own wood fer teh heating of muh house. So that's water, food, and shelter covered.. I just need fuel for mah truck and mah chainsaw.

I'd like to know how people living in human storage units in cities like New York expect to survive teh apocalypse when teh infrastructure breaks down and the Superdupermart has no moar food, the pumps stop delivering water, and the gas lines and electricity are out so they're cold in the dark. They're doomed.

Why would I want to survive the Apocalypse?

But there are thousands of people already living in New York, pre-apocalypse, in interstitial structures and tunnels, warming themselves with fires built in oil drums or the like, theoretically eating the bouteous wild or feral domestic animals that teem here-- cats, dogs, rats. In my neighborhood, there are woodchucks and skunks to be trapped, not to mention the goats we've all seen in my neighborhood, inexplicably wandering Fort Tryon Park.

There's more green space than you'd think, and supposedly young fish from the Hudson are safe to eat, so there's fishing, too (just don't eat the big, mercury and phb-laden ones.) We've got all sorts of berries to scavenge, not to mention countless community gardens throughout the boroughs.

So, I'd say our odds of surviving here, where there are hospital supplies for injuries and an incredibly wide knowledge base to draw upon for all sorts of problem solving, are at least as good, but probably quite a bit better, than yours, out in bumfuck nowhere.

[Jason]

Nah. The books will be burnt for heat, the computers won't work from the massive electromagnetic pulse, or something, the rats, squirrels, and homeless people will all be devoured within the first week. The doctors will be too busy defending their berry grottos to operate on the people they wound with surgical precision. The streets will be filled with faeces thrown from windows above which will leach into the Hudson. Disease will spread like wildfire. Starvation will be rampant. The dying will rise up against the doctor-berrygrotto-barons and there will be blood. Complete and total chaos.

[Jason]

Meanwhile, in bumfuck nowhere, we'll be kickin' back drinking some homebrew, roastin' a spit pig, and brushing up on particle physics.

[hadespussercats]

Meanwhile, in bumfuck nowhere, we'll be kickin' back drinking some homebrew, roastin' a spit pig, and brushing up on particle physics.

We? You have friends out there? Sounds like you'll be howling alone in the wilderness, after shooting the guy who was poaching your traps.