Fear Mongers

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I have a lot of old-timey crafting skills that could be useful in a bartering society. And if that fails, well, there's always hand jobs.

Alas, Babylon and The Earth Abides are interesting reading on this topic.

[Jason]

The Earth Abides.. I think I heard an Old Timey Radio version of that.

[hadespussercats]

Is that like The Dude Abides?

[rasetsu]

Jared Diamond wrote a book and made a documentary, Collapse, about previous collapses of civil order in history, and potential sources for new ones. Unfortunately, I got bored and didn't watch it, but that may be a place to start.

[Seth]

The idea that millions of people will suddenly become murderous monsters is plausible only to the handful of racists and losers who would themselves become murderous monsters if only given the chance during an emergency.

In a high concentration of people once the food runs out and there is no immediate chance of relief its going to get extremely nasty. People are hardly going to start rationing out food and dividing it up fairly so everyone survives. That takes a government to do

No it doesn't. The food delivery system is profit-based. That alone will keep things rolling along just nicely. Or are you suggesting that every employee of Con-Agra (for example) are suddenly going to go insane? Every truck driver too? The local grocery store as well?

Actually, the food delivery system is diesel-based. Any disruption in the (relatively cheap) supply of diesel fuel lasting longer than three days will begin to affect food deliveries. Unlike the past, where grocery store chains had large local warehouses and bulk-shipped to the warehouse and distributed from there, almost all grocery stores rely on "just in time" delivery of goods and particularly produce. Rather than leaving about a 30 day supply of food in any given area, this leaves about a three-day supply of food.

If the diesel fuel delivery network is disrupted, by terrorists, natural disaster or societal collapse that shuts down refineries, things will go downhill very quickly in the urban areas, where people have no other options for food. With food delivery disrupted, after a week or so of hunger, urban residents will begin to fan out to rural areas in search of food. How violent things get depends on how effectively FEMA can get emergency rations to the affected areas. Just look at New Orleans, where FEMA had great difficulty getting rations (or anything else) to the tens of thousands of people at the Superdome, and that was a natural disaster that affected a tiny part of the nation.

If the whole system collapses, food riots will be routine within perhaps three weeks to a month, and roving bands of urban dwellers will be "foraging" in the suburban and rural areas, where the inhabitants will take defensive action to protect their food sources.

A very interesting and fairly well done book on the subject is "One Second After," which postulates several high-altitude EMP explosions over the US that wipes out virtually all electronic technology, from computers to gas pumps to the electrical grid.

It's got some issues with verisimilitude and accuracy, but by and large it's an excellent look at what happens if the system collapses.

I strongly recommend it.

[cronus]

The collapse of the dollar will be like a EMP in the way it effects the entire global human social system. Almost as if the earth had been attacked by real aliens in ways unknown but essentially to do with the fiscal system as it stood before the collapse.

[Jason]

Unlike the past, where grocery store chains had large local warehouses and bulk-shipped to the warehouse and distributed from there, almost all grocery stores rely on "just in time" delivery of goods and particularly produce. Rather than leaving about a 30 day supply of food in any given area, this leaves about a three-day supply of food.

That's true. It's also not just common practice with grocery stores, but almost every type of retailer, manufacturer, and service provider. It has something to do with liquidity of resources - no one wants to tie up resources in stock.

[cronus]

Unlike the past, where grocery store chains had large local warehouses and bulk-shipped to the warehouse and distributed from there, almost all grocery stores rely on "just in time" delivery of goods and particularly produce. Rather than leaving about a 30 day supply of food in any given area, this leaves about a three-day supply of food.

That's true. It's also not just common practice with grocery stores, but almost every type of retailer, manufacturer, and service provider. It has something to do with liquidity of resources - no one wants to tie up resources in stock.

That is why I live more or less in the countryside and have a range of hills between me and the nearest large city. Beware zombies...if you live too close to the big lights right now.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Unlike the past, where grocery store chains had large local warehouses and bulk-shipped to the warehouse and distributed from there, almost all grocery stores rely on "just in time" delivery of goods and particularly produce. Rather than leaving about a 30 day supply of food in any given area, this leaves about a three-day supply of food.

That's true. It's also not just common practice with grocery stores, but almost every type of retailer, manufacturer, and service provider. It has something to do with liquidity of resources - no one wants to tie up resources in stock.

That is why I live more or less in the countryside and have a range of hills between me and the nearest large city. Beware zombies...if you live too close to the big lights right now.

When I was stocking shelves in 1969 we got deliveries of canned goods once a week. We had very little in the back. "We're not a warehouse, we order what we need to keep the items on the shelf." Carl Buehler, Kroger's, Alexandria, Indiana.

[hadespussercats]

Jared Diamond wrote a book and made a documentary, Collapse, about previous collapses of civil order in history, and potential sources for new ones. Unfortunately, I got bored and didn't watch it, but that may be a place to start.

I read it, and enjoyed it quite a bit.

When I finally got around to reading Guns, Germs, and Steel, I realized he'd essentially written the same book twice.

[hadespussercats]

Unlike the past, where grocery store chains had large local warehouses and bulk-shipped to the warehouse and distributed from there, almost all grocery stores rely on "just in time" delivery of goods and particularly produce. Rather than leaving about a 30 day supply of food in any given area, this leaves about a three-day supply of food.

That's true. It's also not just common practice with grocery stores, but almost every type of retailer, manufacturer, and service provider. It has something to do with liquidity of resources - no one wants to tie up resources in stock.

That is why I live more or less in the countryside and have a range of hills between me and the nearest large city. Beware zombies...if you live too close to the big lights right now.

Oh fer Chrissakes. Then why is practically every scary movie set at a lovely rural farmhouse, or at a camp in the woods, or in the bucolic end of the burbs?

[hadespussercats]

You all keep talking about supplies of food to urban areas, as though everyone who lives in rural or suburban areas is at all prepared to survive off the land. Ridiculous.

There are various varieties of apocalypse-ready folks in every walk of life. I'm sure there are secret hordes here ready to become the next mole people.

[Warren Dew]

Type II, and it's getting much better as I continue to lose weight and get in shape. I can survive quite nicely on a high-protein diet such as that eaten by those who forage in the back-country for wild game, thanks. Medication is just a convenience.

You take medicine just for the convenience of eating bread and candy?

[Jason]

You all keep talking about supplies of food to urban areas, as though everyone who lives in rural or suburban areas is at all prepared to survive off the land. Ridiculous.

There are various varieties of apocalypse-ready folks in every walk of life. I'm sure there are secret hordes here ready to become the next mole people.

Yes, and we bumfuckers will come and trade food goods for sexual favours.

(not bumfucking though, we'd already got that covered)

[rasetsu]

Jared Diamond wrote a book and made a documentary, Collapse, about previous collapses of civil order in history, and potential sources for new ones. Unfortunately, I got bored and didn't watch it, but that may be a place to start.

I read it, and enjoyed it quite a bit.

When I finally got around to reading Guns, Germs, and Steel, I realized he'd essentially written the same book twice.

That's useful information, as I've already read Guns, Germs, and Steel, and seen the documentary. My impression of Diamond is that he's pretty much played all his cards.