With all the news coming out of Haiti, it got me thinking about a show that was on the History Channel last week. The name of the show was called After Armageddon, and it was a pretty sobering look at just how quickly civilization can fall apart. In the show, an extremly deadly pandemic hits the United States, and within weeks, 100 million are dead. The show follows a family as they first try to stay in their home and ride out the pandemic, and then as they try to escape LA. Eventually they make it to Idaho, where they settle into a small town. But the real story is how fast society breaks down.
The one phrase that really struck me, and seems to be playing out now, is that society is 9 means away from chaos. It seems the average person has 3 days worth of food stored up, so three days after a disaster hits, everyone will be out looking desperately looking for limited resources of food, water and fuel. Using past disasters as a case study, they show that in 3 days, the armed gangs are the ones in charge, and a city is not a place you want to be. It really gets bad when people stop showing up for work...at that point, there is no one to keep the electricity going, no one to run the refineries. And according to the experts, once the refineries and electrical generators go off in a pandemic situation, there is a real chance they never come back on. And with out those two things, life goes back to what it was like 100 years ago.
I'm no survivalist, but it really makes me glad I live in a small, rural farming town. According to the show, one of the first things that would happen is that the small towns would shut down entry in, to protect the citizens, and what few resources were left. I could absolutely see that happening around here. And to be honest, I would be one of the ones recommending it. I believe a small town like mine could be relatively self sufficient. It would be a tough life, but we could make it.
I have a friend of mine who is a big believer of peak oil, and went so far as to buy a farm, and set it up to go completely off the grid. He swears that he could survive no matter what. I kind of believe him. My family owns a farm in Tennessee, somewhere around 1500 acres. We own the whole holler, and if something like that ever happened, I would find my way down there and live. My father was a farmer, so was my grandfather and my great-grandfather. If I had to be, so would I.
This whole Haiti thing really makes you pause and think a bit. Like I said, I'm not a survivalist, but I may just have to do a little reading on survival. I mean, what can it hurt?
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1 comments:
Dude, it's like you're in my head!!!
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