Forum: A Current Threat Assessment VIII

Continued from here

Anon_22 --- You may have to recreate your last post from the old thread on this new thread. Sorry ‘bout that.

Some news that helps us understand just how quickly a disease can be spread, beyond H2H body-fluid exchange:

From the Jordan Times:
762 food poisoning cases test positive for salmonella
AMMAN — The number of food poisoning cases caused by the consumption of spoilt sandwiches from a restaurant in Ruseifa on Sunday rose from 170 to 762. Lab tests revealed that the cause was the salmonella bacteria, usually found in poultry.
…in a press conference yesterday, Darwazeh said the patients’ symptoms included diarrhoea, vomiting, high temperatures and stomach pains. He said they had consumed chicken that was not well cooked by the restaurant, noting that thorough cooking kills salmonella.
The restaurant was shut down on the spot and its contents were seized, Darwazeh said, adding that the ministry does not impose penalties on restaurant owners, it only refers them to the authorities.
COMMENT:
762 cases of Salmonellosis from one bad batch of chicken salad. Wow.

Hmm, perhaps a new thread on current NSF food safety practices for disasters would be appropriate ?

On the subject of High Impact, Moderate Probability.

Here is a table from the World Economic Forum Global Risk Report 2006 on a scale of 0 to 4.

The last item “several recombinations appear” refers to the risk of multiple lineages, as in multiple pandemic strains appearing repeatedly over a number of years, as discussed in this paper Establishment of multiple subleages of H5N1: implications for pandemic control

anon_22 The last item “several recombinations appear” refers to the risk of multiple lineages, as in multiple pandemic strains appearing repeatedly over a number of years,

This is the worst of worst-case scenarios I can fathom, and a distinct possibility given the multiple clades appearing in southeast asia.

The third line, Long-Term Base scenario gets, a 2:2 only if there are radical advances in vaccine development.

The chance of which is not good.

So that makes it another 2:4 in my book.

Actually, it should be 3:4 for Long-Base, Pathogenic virus spreads, without vaccine.

Its a 3 for likelihood, I think.

A few weeks ago my PPF was 3 (high impact, low probability this year). My wife and I prep for many of the reasons others do; prudence and responsibilities. But since Goju’s post of his experience at the NYC conference, I have gone to a 4.

Six months ago I quietly sounded out a few people in my company about any preparations we may have underway. Zero. In fact, they suggested raising the issue would harm my career - it was so outlandish. (As many middle aged employees of large companies know, there is nothing like maintaining a cordial, professional relationship with witless boobs).

Anyway, I am going to approach my boss to send me to the next conference in Philadelphia. I’ll use one or two of the ppt’s from Goju’s site to see if he’ll react to those threat assessments.

Interesting to notice that they give a 4 for severity even for short term pandemic, low human mortality.

Which is what I’ve been saying for a while. Even a low CFR today will be catastrophic.

ie A pandemic in any shape or form in the present day, is likely to be catastrophic.

unless there are (miraculously) radical advances in vaccine development PLUS production, distribution, funding, etc…

anon_22 – at 17:42 “A pandemic in any shape or form in the present day, is likely to be catastrophic.”

Please clarify your terms for me. I understand seasonal flu is not within bounds, but weren’t 1957 and 1968 ‘flu pandemics’, albeit mild? If not, what term would distinguish them from a 1918-like experience and seasonal flu.

Also, I read this report when it came out and wondered at the value of these estimates. How well informed are the participants? Are they attuned to the demands of a report like this or is it more of a survey?

ssoll,

To answer your last question first, I don’t know how well informed they are, but they are the power brokers for the whole world, so I would imagine they get told the most accurate numbers.

I think TPTB, government and corporate, are taking this seriously at the very top. They probably just have lots of conflicts of interest as to what to tell the public. You know, stockmarket crashes and so on.

1957 and 1968 were different because the world was a whole lot less globlaized and interdependent than now. I’m going to borrow a chart from the Economist which shows the rise in trade agreements over the years, and see how steeply it has climbed since the 1970s. This gives you an approximate idea of the growth of goods crossing borders since then.

That is an amazing chart!

It is not just the amount of trade but also the amount of specialization. To put together a car or clothing takes inputs from all over the world and it is not easy to second source if normal trade patterns are disturbed or disrupted. In addition, inventories are very lean, so there is only a limited amount of flexibility. This will cause a lot of economic damage (as the recent World Bank report suggests - see today’s news thread) but will it cause food supplies to collapse or electricity to stop? That is the question. It is one thing to lose output, and another to lose lives. My concern is that a higher CFR, even if well short of 50%, is likely to have a huge impact. I do not see that the current virus will fall to single digits unless the current ratios are missing “mild”cases, of which there is very little evidence.

We cannot think of flu in isolation. We no longer have locally sustainable societies.

I will give the same example that I give all the time.

SARS killed 300 people in Hong Kong, a world class city with 7 million people. It closed schools, restaurants, cinemas, airports were deserted.

A flu virus with a clinical attack rate of 25% and a CFR of 2% would kill 35,000 people within the same space of time as the SARS outbreak. What’s more, every other country/city on the planet is also experiencing the same problems.

That’s why, according to an official of a country that I will not name, even their best case scenario includes picking dead people up from the streets, ie failure of mortuary services and abandonment by families.

Everywhere I look I see charts with a ‘right half of an omega’ curve. On Zillow.com where I checked California housing cost. When I watched Gore’s Inconvenient truth, the population curves, the carbon dioxide curves were the same. Flat, slightly increasing, and then a sudden almost straight up ending from 1995 through 2006.

A whole lot of financial charts are showing this curve. World immigration rates. Pollution of Ocean water rates. Use of fresh water rates.

I really really think that something is going to happen to just about everything we are charting these days — with acceleration of this kind in every trend we are mapping, it seems to me that ‘things cannot go on like this forever’ and by golly, the truth is going to be right, things can’t go on like this.

Anybody else feel like this frenzy is about to hit a solid wall of some kind? We are due in so many ways ---- if not flu, something bigger?

INFOMASS,

You are right, but you are mixing several arguments here. We need to consider both the direct result of the virus infections, and the indirect results. The higher the CFR, the more severe both will be.

There is another chart from the world bank which shows the relative impacts of

1. mortality
2. illness/absenteeism
3. efforts to avoid infection.

Even though they use economic impact, these also translate into real-life impacts and secondary mortalities due to lack of care, hunger and exposure, violence, etc.

Heddie — There’s a marvelous lesson about the arithmetic of steady growth (which I think is what you are talking about) by Dr. Albert Bartlett here: Arithmetic, Population, and Energy. He discusses population and energy in particular, but the concept applies to any circumstance of steady growth.

The point is that steady growth in a finite environment cannot go on indefinitely — something has to give.

peakoil is based on those rising charts. Yes it is a dead end for the majority of the population of this world, and one we are speeding at with our cars :-(

http://www.peakoil.net

heddiecalifornia – at 19:19

Everywhere I look I see charts with a ‘right half of an omega’ curve. On Zillow.com where I checked California housing cost. When I watched Gore’s Inconvenient truth, the population curves, the carbon dioxide curves were the same. Flat, slightly increasing, and then a sudden almost straight up ending from 1995 through 2006.

I believe the phrase coined around the late 1990′s was “The Quickening”

anon_22: I agree that economic dislocation could lead to excess mortality, but that depends to some extent on the social arrangements, or lack of them, that are made as a response to the troubles. Of course, as Tom DVM has said, it also depends on how well we do things like stockpile medicines as a society, not just individually. If you are pessimistic, then economic dislocation leads directly to violence, etc. The other comments (peak oil, etc.) are somewhat longer range and might be right about oil but do not necessarily imply dislocation. Prices and technology cause adjustments that can make the shortages manageable in many cases. The question of excessive specialization and trade may be right as they have arguably reduced the robustness of our ability to cope with shocks such as the prospective pandemic. But they also raise incomes, which SHOULD allow us to respond better, if we choose to.

anon_22, when you say 1957,1968 were different because of fewer neighborhood deals, are you arguing for a higher attack-rate as in 1957,1968 then ? I cannot see, why the number of neighborhood deals would increase the mortality.

A pandemic in any shape or form in the present day, is likely to be catastrophic

that’s a strange definition of catastrophic. Would you consider normal flu as catastrophic then too ?

SSOL and Anon22-

Sensitivity of industry to supply chain or infrastructure interruptions has multiplied many-fold since the 1960s. This fragility is further exacerbated by the fact that the sensitivity is not linear. There is a very sharp knee in industrial output vs absenteeism in the present JIT lean environment at around 15% absenteeism, (it varies depending on complexity of the process) and it gets rapidly worse. Once you pass 50% absence output is minimal in many industrial processes; in a complex process output cannot happen when people are absent.

So what that all means is that it’s actually worse than you paint it, Anon-22. Don’t you feel better now?

Once the tipping point is reached and the cities are no longer viable, then most of the fatalities will be the result of exposure, starvation and violence combined with the flu. My considered opinion is that we will lose about 90% of the US population within 3 months if we lose the power grid for over a week. I expect that we may lose the grid above around 25% serious infection rate or 2% mortality rate.

anonymous – at 22:35 anon_22, when you say 1957,1968 were different because of fewer neighborhood deals, are you arguing for a higher attack-rate as in 1957,1968 then ?

That wasn’t my original intention of the post, but now that you asked, yes, the attack rate will be increased by population density as well as movement. If you read Ferguson’s papers on pandemic mitigation, he uses all that to come up with attack rates, and that’s why the current estimate is 34% not 25%.

I cannot see, why the number of neighborhood deals would increase the mortality.

I was using that data as indicators of the degree of interdependence, and therefore the likely degree of systemic breakdown. With that, there will be a higher secondary mortality, not directly by the virus, but by eg failures of treatment of other conditions, accidental deaths, other secondary disasters eg power failures in mid winter, and possible violence.

that’s a strange definition of catastrophic. Would you consider normal flu as catastrophic then too ?

No, but if you read and think carefully about my post at 19:12, an epidemic that is 100 times more severe than SARS is catastrophic.

INFOMASS – at 22:33

LMWatBullRun – at 22:42

Thanks for your comments. I don’t disagree with them. But I will add again what I just said to anon.

Go back and read my post at 19:12. Think of what SARS did, or, if you don’t know, go back on newspaper archives at the time, and read those 3 months.

Then think of a mild pandemic, 25% attack rate, 2% CFR, and find out that it is actually 100 x the impact of what SARS was. Pause and really consider what 100 x worse means.

My considered opinion is that we will lose about 90% of the US population within 3 months if we lose the power grid for over a week.


some sort of humor, I assume.

LMWatBullRun – at 22:42 “My considered opinion is that we will lose about 90% of the US population within 3 months if we lose the power grid for over a week. I expect that we may lose the grid above around 25% serious infection rate or 2% mortality rate.”

Do you mean the incidental mortality due to loss of infrastructure will begin a week after the grid collapses and stays down for 3 months? Please expand your explanation, I’m not sure I get it.

Based on your experience, can a meaningful percentage of employee functions affected by absenteeism be replaced by unskilled labor? For example, could a PFC follow orders in an industrial process you are familiar with and accomplish the task? I ask this because it would be very interesting to know if concentrating available manpower at key processes may ‘plug the dyke’ for a reasonable period of time - such as a ‘wave’.

In my field, IT, this could possibly be done with written procedures for very basic tasks as long as telecommunication could be maintained (either public or private systems).

I have close friends and family who lived through SARS, no not the Toronto versio, but the Hong Kong version. I had to air-freight N95 masks from the UK, cos hcw did not have enough. I had a house full of ‘refugee’ school children who could not go back home. Yes, so I know what happened. If you want to know what a pandemic might be like, I would suggest that you get a short subscription to South China Morning Post, their major English paper, and read the archives of that period.

Then multiply that by 100.

Then tell yourself that was the mild one.

BTW, that city has the highest number of millionaires per square mile in the world. And a top class health system. And they couldn’t cope with it.

SARS was so bad not because of the 300 victims, but because of the fear that it couldn’t be contained. When you multiply SARS by 100, you would only multiply the victims, not that pandemic fear - SARS can only trigger one pandemic, not 100 pandemics. 2% CFR worldwide would be 1/6 of 1918 or 100000 deaths in USA, as much as in 3 normal flu-seasons. So you could say we had the effect of 13 such pandemics in USA in the last 40 years. And that’s only for normal flu, not to mention all the other diseases. 25% or 33% attack rate is really not so important. The differences in the possible estimated mortality-rates is much larger. 0.2% for 1968,12% for 1918 that’s a factor of 60. So the attack-rate is not so big a concern. Most estimates are between 20% and 35%.

anon_22 – at 22:55 “Then think of a mild pandemic, 25% attack rate, 2% CFR, and find out that it is actually 100 x the impact of what SARS was. Pause and really consider what 100 x worse means.”

Anon_22, I don’t mean any disrespect, I greatly admire your writing skill, command of facts and especially your analysis but isn’t this an example of shifting definitions? The 1918 flu had approximately similar numbers as your ‘mild’ one, and yet it is usually described as a ‘worst case’ example. Isn’t your ‘mild’ term forward-looking, based on CFR we see today?

anonymous – at 23:13

SARS was so bad not because of the 300 victims, but because of the fear that it couldn’t be contained

SARS was not just bad because of fear.

It was bad because it was an infectious disease, which require measures in hospital settings that place severe strains on everything else. If you have 2000 cancer patients, your healthcare system would not have to shut down. But 2000 SARS patients shut down the whole of HK’s healthcare system. They had to close ALL hospitals to non-urgent cases.

If you have someone with an infectious disease, or suspected of having it, just to get an x-ray involves very complicated logistics. Do you send the patient down to x-ray? He will have to move through corridors and different floors and spread the virus.

Do you send a portable x-ray machine? How many portable machines do you have if you have all different patients in different isolation wards, some confirmed, some suspected? And the technician who has to go and take the x-ray, then come back into his department to process it, he is also a source of cross infection.

So efforts to prevent cross infection will very quickly overwhelm efforts to treat or segreggate the confirmed, suspected, or non-SARS, non-Flu patients. Pretty soon, if you are the hospital administrator, you will find that you have to shut down everything else just to service infection control needs.

Then they tried putting all SARS patients in one hospital, thought that might be a good idea.

Well, if you have something like 400 SARS patients, no matter how many precautions you take, the whole hospital is just saturated with virus, so hcw kept getting infected. Anytime a hcw gets infected, you have to trace who he/she has worked with (colleagues) and quarantine them. Pretty soon you have no staff left.

Just some examples of what infectious disease means.

Think about that. Then think about 100 x.

ssol – at 23:17

Yes, I kinda skipped a couple of steps. Sorry. I used to think of 1918 as worst case scenario. In the context of the current H5N1, I now think of 1918 (or more accurately something that has a CFR of 2–5%) as rather ‘mild’.

I thought, that while 2% mortality was certainly not “worst case” it wasn’t “mild” either. I consider mild to be .2%, similar to 68. 2% was 1918 average I believe, and I’ve never heard any one refer to it as “mild”.

Semantics maybe, but important distinction I think.

Patch,

Yes, I agree. Unfortunately, I’m very pessimistic and think we’ll have to be extremely lucky to get single digit CFR’s if H5N1 turns into a pandemic strain in the next year or so. Other than that, yes, normally, a mild pandemic would be <1% CFR.

<sigh>

anon_22 – at 23:26 Thank you for the clarification, now I am on the same page with you.

The information you have provided in this thread is outstanding. It has greatly expanded my understanding of the implications of this threat. Especially how HC settings are overwhelmed.

You should consider writing a whitepaper on your views for us. It is clear you have researched this more than most of us and your writing is top notch.

I need to turn in for the night, 4 am comes early around here.

ssol-

What I mean is that I think it likely that 9 out of 10 US inhabitants will be dead within 3 months of a nationwide collapse of the power grid that lasts over a week. I hope that’s a bit more clear.

I think that such a collapse could be triggered by a pandemic somewhat worse than 1918.

I’m hoping that a) I am wrong, b)if I’m right, that the pandemic isn’t as bad as 1918, and c) if I am right and it is worse than 1918, that we get another year’s grace before it starts. I am starting to feel, however, like a passenger on the Titanic as I watch the iceberg approaching……

Anon_22 - I understand now. And I understand your point. The HC system will collapse, if H5N1 goes public with out a dramatic drop in virulence. Unfortunately, I agree.

the precautions in hostpitals because of infectivity - that is fear. You can’t reasonably multiply that by 100. These measures won’t increase by a factor of 100 in a pandemic.


I have to correct my numbers above. CFRs in world,USA was:
1918:12,2.5
1957:0.2,0.2
1968:0.1,0.1
So a CFR of worldwide 2% should result in a CFR of about 1% in USA or as much as 20 years of normal flu.

Anonymouse- No, that was not a joke. I don’t joke about such things. BTW, would you please take a handle?

SSOL-

As regards plugging the dike for critical infrastructure, it is possible given some advance training. The critical infrastructure items are power, water, and food production, in that order. IMO, the Guard should be training with the electrical power plant people, the linesmen, the water treatment plant operators, the sewage treatment plant operators, and to some extent, the folks who run the grain elevators. (cornmeal mush and wheat porridge will keep the wolf from the door)

anonymous – at 23:56: the precautions in hostpitals because of infectivity - that is fear. You can’t reasonably multiply that by 100. These measures won’t increase by a factor of 100 in a pandemic.

There are limits to exponential growth, so things can’t get 100 times as bad in a particular hospital. But you can try and imagine hospitals all over the country and all over the world. Simultaneously. (No-one has yet challenged the “simultaneous” part. Please do if you can.)

Try getting supplies. Not just masks or antivirals or antibiotics. Try insulin, antidepressants, pain killers. And fuel. Every country watching how other countries stockpile, and not panic-buying themselves?

Also, I have one concern regarding “mildity”. 1918 gave us a not-so-bad first wave, followed by a worse wave. So if we now had a 1968 wave, would we sit waiting for an equally 1968-ish second wave? I’d guess not. To spell it out: even a very mild pandemic would mean some degree of trouble.

Fear can be as high as to make many people shift into panic buying, simultaneously all over the world. In my pesimist view (and I’d loved to be convinced otherwise), only a few freaks wipe out the shelves on day one, but on day two (as soon as the shelves are replenished) then it’s sensible people who empty them. Why? Just think of sensible parents who need nappies for their baby: “boy, there was nothing for two days, so I’ll grab everything I see today”. Ok, not “everything”, but just “half of what I see”. So it just takes two sensible people to do as much harm as one freak. But there are many sensible people.

On the other hand, if many people have soap at home, then they can use “classic” nappies and wash them by hand.

So that’s one example of resilience. Could we extend such resilience, please? A lot?

lugon, OK, 100 fold SARS damage for hospitals etc. seems possible. But not travel-industry and other secondary effects due to people panicing. The direct cost including precautions for SARS is smaller than 1 billion, agreed ? Hmm, direct cost for Toronto-area hospitals $100million, 269 cases, 20 deaths,10000 quarantined I found. Asia is cheaper. So, 100fold SARS could be as bad as 1 Katrina. When something like SARS spreads over 100 cities. I was more thinking in (severe) pandemic dimensions where, as we agreed before, you can forget about hospitals.

In a mild pandemic, I think you would not notice disruption. Just more people falling sick as in a bad local flu-season.

anonymous - at 07:31, “mild” must be defined:

Interpandemic flu affects, say, 7% of the population, killing maybe 1 in 300 (or something in that order of magnitude). So (oversimplifying) 7% absentism, and 233 deaths per million.

The lightest pandemic I can think of would mean two waves of 15% each, with the same CFR as normal flu, and affecting also the old and fragile. So twice the absentism and twice the deaths. Are we also keeping the number of “badly ill” people (those not showing up for work and demanding hospital beds) in “just twice as much as normal”?

Change any of those assumptions (CFR just twice as high, different ages affected, a higher number of severe but recoverable cases, any degree of deaths or complications in pregnant women) and the picture changes. A little or a lot. (We don’t decide any of this, of course.)

And there’s also “perception” - if there’s not much mortality but people fear a bad second wave, then there would be some degree of disruption - or maybe people would hold on to denial of that possibility?

Anyone has the numbers for 1957 and 1968?

off-topic, as this doesn’t belong in “assessment”: Maybe what we’re talking about is a version of the tragedy of the commons.

With reference to LMWatBullRun’s posting at 23:39 concerning 9 out of 10 people dying in the US:

As you are trying to wrap your mind around that number (which is not an easy nor a pleasant thing to do), keep in mind how many people in the US, and other countries, are saved every day by medical science that requires electricity. Ventilators, nebulizers, medicines that require refrigeration…. The grid going down for an extended period of time has far reaching ramifications. No electricity means water won’t be pumped. Dirty water means disease. No water means death. How many will die due to extreme weather conditions that they are simply unprepared for? Humans can easily live without electricity, they did for thousands of years, and many still do so today. But, here, in the US, we are simply not set up for life without power.

I don’t know whether LMWatBullRun’s predictions are on target or not, but I do think that IMHO, the death toll for a pandemic will reach far beyond the numbers of those who actually die from the flu, and this number will be greatly amplified if the grid goes down for a while.

I keep hoping that TPTB are reading this forum and understand how important it is to keep the grid up.

WIT

Lugon, 1957 was roughly as bad as 3 normal flu seasons in USA and 1968 as bad as 2. Fear of a 2nd wave would not result in absenteism as long as the wave isn’t there. But hopefully in increased preparations.


WiT,I don’t think deaths from “no power” would result in more than 10% of deaths from virus. That’s still a huge number in normal times but not when compared with the panflu-deaths. See historic examples, Tsunami,earthquakes,Katrina,etc. Yes, you are not prepared for powerfree life in USA, but you have better infrastructure than 3rd world, so I don’t think you would have more casualties than e.g. Pakistan earthquake victims due to power-failure.

LMWatBullRun - I think your 90% mortality within 3 months if the grid goes down after 1 week is a little over the top. I think the grid would need to be down for much longer than that to get those kinds of collateral damage numbers. I lived in NH and even if the electricity goes out in the middle of winter, I can’t see that only 10% of the population would be able to survive the cold. Most folks that live in very cold climates, the kind that you coul dpotentially freeze to death in the USA, either have fireplaces, wood stoves, camping gear(sleeping bags) or at the very least, very warm clothing! -Or they have family that has access to alternative heating sources. If the pandemic occurs outside of the coldest months, freezing to death won’t be an issue. In the coldest months, if electricity stops, there is usually snow in most of America that would be “that cold”, so fresh water (melted snow) could be readily available. -a benefit actually to having to go out and “find it” some other way as the folks in warmer climates may be faced with if no accessible water source is around.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that there could be a 90% death rate collaterally, bu tnot from freezing. The bigger concern would be lack of food (and water) if distribution of was so disrupted by either the grid going down or illness/fear of illness keeping workers away. I honestly think that it would take more like a minimum of 2 weeks of “lack of the grid” before you started seeing that sort of collateral damage starting though. -cuz many americans have at least that amount of food and water/liquids to survive on for 2 weeks, especially if they did have the slightest warnings of somethign bad coming. -Certainly not all of them…but I’m sure more than 10%.

But, if the grid goes down, and distribution is haulted for 3 months… I would not doubt a high mortality rate in america both from disease and collateral. The elderly and very young would be most effected collaterally, as well as the urban poor. The “healthy” folks are more likely to die from the disease itself. Those with Absolutely no preps and no common sense will follow. I would say more like 60% of total population.

Another point I want to make…

Everyone keeps pointng to 1918 as the “standard” for a severe pandemic. Folks, that is merely a “standard” based on our modern historical reference. But look further back in human history. “Plagues” of infectious diseases have come and gone throughout mankind’s entire history. The Black Death is a severe pandemic. -that is what we need to look to for a severe pandemic potential. A CFR of 75–80% could be possible. 1 out of 3 could be dead in some societies from the disease alone, plus then add the collateral possibilities in our “modern world” of reliance cultures. Personally, I pray this is like 1918. We will survive with our societies intact, if not slightly less populated. But if a pandemic like the ones that have hit every 300 years or so (we’re due by the way) were to hit, society, religion, politics, world economies, everything….will be radically changed forever.

Look around your community. Who seems to be the “alpha dog”, the natural leader? He or she may not take a pandemic seriously as of this moment, but that is the person that you want to “hitch your start to” after a more than mild pandemic hits. Be ready to approach that person at the right time (could be now) to set things up for the future. Ad hoc survival groups, peri and post-pandemic, will need someone who can inspire almost blind obedience in a crisis situation. Long-term this is what will get your DNA to “the other side”.

1957 was roughly as bad as 3 normal flu seasons in USA and 1968 as bad as 2.

How does this compound with increased globalisation and JIT, I don’t know.

Fear of a 2nd wave would not result in absenteism as long as the wave isn’t there.

True.

But hopefully in increased preparations.

The whole world at some speed, while the second wave fuels itself up. An interesting scenario. Hmm!

hahaha! Apparently I have filled that role in my building. I’m not on “the Board” yet by default I have apparently become the one that buildign management, as well as most of the residents, seem to turn to for adivce, opinions, etc. whenever a difficult/dangerous situation gets presented. I have always been that leader type…”Aries” -I guess I’m supposed to be anyway!

But my DNA stops right here. I more want to stick around to help others through the doorway and teach that next generation how to be humane…not just human.

WOOF!

TreasureIslandGal at 9:16-But, as you said, you can pass on your “cultural” DNA. Sounds good enough to me. And those acts live on.

That’s if we presume that multiple clades are not forming their own forms of pandemic, with their own waves simultaneously… let’s hope that mutations and recombination between them doesn’t occur and recur quickly, or we will have the potential of a 5–10 year, or longer, stretch of nearly persistent disease. -progressively becoming less lethal as humans adapt to the novel viurses and survivors build immunities. Again…look how long the Black Death persisted. Now that is very difficult to visualize the real potential range of possibilities.

Makes you wonder if you are really living in the right location for extended survival huh? Could you be self sufficient if you had to be?

But hopefully we are only dealing within “modern-style” pandemic parameters and 1918 is our worst case scenario.

Let’s all be lucky and see that it never even makes it to efficient H2H! *as I adjust my rose-tinted shades* ;)

TreasureIslandGal – at 08:56. “But if a pandemic like the ones that have hit every 300 years or so (we’re due by the way) were to hit, society, religion, politics, world economies, everything….will be radically changed forever.”

We should be careful saying ‘we’re due’. That assumes terrible pandemics are scheduled every 300 years by some sort of external control mechanism. An example would be cutting the grass every week. The grass may see it has been 6 days and correctly say ‘we’re due’.

The 300 year figure is an average, not a schedule. Almost all of us think naturally ‘we’re due’, when in fact, we are not due at all. The average time period simply suggests the idea to us. This is called “gamblers fallacy”. When we flip a coin, the chance of it landing on heads is 50/50. Often, someone will flip 3 times and see heads each time. They will then say ‘aha, odds are in favor of tails much more this time!!’ When, in fact, it is still 50/50.

See http://tinyurl.com/f44oo

So the probability that we are due is not rising, unless we assume a terrible pandemic is scheduled, perhaps by God. That is another topic.

ssol at 9:41-I have heard these mathematical arguments with the same regularity as pandemics hit. I refuse to believe that recorded pandemic years, documented by historical accounts, are illusions of the mind. The “data, TIMING, and momentum” continue to work against us.

In other words, you don’t view the TIMING in isolation from the other events currently in play.

ssol, true. I agree with your probabilities regarding any pinpoint of time in human history. I’ll retract the “we’re due” statement. How’s this instead… history has shown that pandemics with CFR’s far greater than the 1918 flu have occurred with a frequency of at least 1 every 200 years.

When I went and looked at the history of high CFR pandemics and plagues, I saw that they seemed to occur even more frequently than every 300 yrs. At least every 200 years, and in fact, almost every 100 years when you combined major plagues with major flu pandemics.

thank you Anon 22 for your excellent presentation

Ten years ago I become very aware of the effects of EMP. (electromagnetic pulse). I saw how vulnerable we are. Then having worked for the biggest electric company in the U.S., I saw first hand the fragility of the grids.

About 20 years ago I subscribed to a series of Time-Life books called “Lost Civilizations”. I believe there were about a dozen books. Each one on a specific time and civilization. As I read through each one, a common characteristic appeared to emerge. Each one was at point where generally speaking everyone felt that they where living in the most ‘modern’ times ever. That they as a society could handle anything thrown at them.

Then ‘poof’. Gone.

As I closed each book I wondered what it must of been like to be alive then and witness that event.

Sadly, I think I am about to find out.

JWG. You would probably be interested in a short little book that won’t take very long to read…A SHORT HISTORY OF PROGRESS…by Ronald Wright.

Sorry, I got your name wrong JWB.

JWB-“everyone felt that they were living in the most ‘modern’ times ever”.

Excellent post (and very well written).

Things must be getting to crunch time. The same thoughts flitted through my mind the day before yesterday.

It may end very badly, but it will be an EXPERIENCE, off-the-scale as compared to previous civilizational implosions. Only the Fall of Rome could compare, but that happened by stages and was drawn out.

If it transpires in my lifetime, I, at least, want to live long enough to see the trend.

One last thought-Given a High CFR with any plague or pandemic I don’t see our current civilization ever hardening and backstopping itself enough to prevent this implosion from happening eventually. So if we don’t see it, our kids or grandkids will. That is almost a certainty. And it will be much as we envisioned it here over these many months.

MM and JWB. This may be a little off topic but according to Ronald Wright, an academic, and I have no way to tell whether he is completely right about things, I think stated that exhaustion of natural resource and particularly food supplies was the ‘civilization buster’ in each case…

…another good reason to go give a farmer in your localities a hug each and every day…and tell them how much they are appreciated…

…because I still believe that they may be the difference in the end.

Medical Maven – at 10:11 “I refuse to believe that recorded pandemic years, documented by historical accounts, are illusions of the mind.”

MM, no one has said that historical pandemics are ‘illusions of the mind’. My point was that, to predict the imminence of a future pandemic based on the average number of years between historical occurrences is a popular logical fallacy. It is clearly demonstrable, if you read the wikipedia url.

Now you may say; ‘but pigs had a serious flu 2 years prior to every pandemic in the last 600 years’ and you may be right, but that has nothing to do with the prediction based solely on the average number of years gone by.

For example, if a college man says ‘I’ve had a date every Saturday night this semester!’, but none of those girls will talk to me; I’ll just wait until Friday and I’ll have another based on my past record. And he bases his prediction on past periodicity only, he may be in for a disappointment. The periodicity and an impending date are unrelated. In fact, if the pool of women on campus is fixed, his odds are decreasing.

Tom DVM – at 11:43 Thanks for the book suggestion. I read the reviews and called a book store near me and they will have it in a few days.

Medical Maven – at 11:53 Thanks. My wife and I intend to get through this also. As well as get my nine year old through.

On the morning of 9/11 I immediately went out and bought a copy of the 6 major newspapers, before they could be pulled and replaced with the days events. I wanted to have a hard copy record of what we thought was important prior to the attacks.

I think its time to start another collection. Maybe this time weekly news magazines.

The gambler’s fallacy is a logical fallacy that mistakenly believes past events will affect future events when dealing with random activities, such as many gambling games. It can encompass any of the following misconceptions:

ssol. I know something is wrong with your quarter argument in relationship to infectious disease…I just haven’t totally put my finger on it yet…so I probably shouldn’t be posting this yet…

…but I believe one of the problems is that disease events are not “random activities” so in fact the gamblers fallacy doesn’t apply.

Accurate probabilities can only occur with large datasets and goo science predicting also requires good data sets…and unfortunately it seems that within the influenza and pandemic community, our datasets fall off the end of the earth at about Jan 1918.

Anyway, from the fragmentary data that we do have…I have learned quite a few things over time.

1) H1N1 (1918) was not an outlier but probably an average pandemic.

2) 1968 was definitely an outlier on CFR etc.

3) pandemics are randomly not random…sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it…but it isn’t. There are consistently an average of three per century. In the twentieth century there was one bad one (1918) and two mild ones. In the nineteenth century, there were two bad ones 1830 and 1889 and one mild one 1870′s?. The 1830 one was equivalent to 1918 and the 1889 by all accounts was many factors worse than 1918…and was reported as the worse pandemic in three hundred years which would take us to those of the 1600′s.

Okay, so if we have an earthquake every three hundred years on average measured back 2–3000 years and we are on the year three hundred…the odds are not the same as they would have been the year after the last major earthquake…

…I am sure you know this already but nature and all its nuances is a little more complicated then a quarter and me fliping it…

Thanks again for initiating such an interesting discussion…maybe it will need its own thread at some point. /:0)

Sorry, I forgot to put quotes around that first line…it is from ssol’s url. Thanks.

Cycles have a rythum and coin flipping does not.

Tom DVM – at 12:59 “…but I believe one of the problems is that disease events are not “random activities” so in fact the gamblers fallacy doesn’t apply.”

My point about the gambler’s fallacy has nothing to do with epidemiology, biology, virology or any other physical science, it is isolated to formal logic. You and others have often said that we do not understand influenza properly. As a result, the wiki addresses the physical science questions extensively. You have made signal contributions to that angle, among others.

If we say: 1. H5NI has rising CAR and very high CFR. 2. B-H transmission is becoming more efficient. 3. Pig-H is occurring. 4. Pigs will likely lead to increased H-H transmission. Then we can reasonably believe (but would not be required to) we are on the verge of a pandemic - from a physical sciences perspective.

However, if we then say ‘and we are coming up on the 100 year anniversary too - so we are due’, then we have expressed the gambler’s fallacy. We have done so because there is no known logical link between periodicity and pandemic outbreaks (logically speaking) and more to the point, there is no scientific link between pandemic periodicity and our understanding of the physical science surrounding pandemic influenza.

Now perhaps in the future we will discover that there actually IS a physical process in nature that occurs over 100 year periods and we will be able to document it and demonstrate it. But that is conjecture only at this point.

Say what you will with the past cycles should not effect future events. I still believe that the flu comes in cycles and that there are more flu cases in the fall/winter than spring summer. to wit, cycles and expected periods.

This is also true about longer periods and cycles since there is a generational timing of events due to natural immunities.

Re: Watching in Texas @0822: “As you are trying to wrap your mind around that number (which is not an easy nor a pleasant thing to do), keep in mind how many people in the US, and other countries, are saved every day by medical science that requires electricity. Ventilators, nebulizers, medicines that require refrigeration….”

One of the things I noticed during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita was that those who depended on medical technology for their continued existence were among the first to die. Drugs, treatments, what have you, once those were unavailable, Nature quickly reasserted itself.

I suspect that if the grid went down for any length of time due to pandemic, we would see the same effect above and beyond any pandemic-caused fatalities.

Earthquakes may appear to be random but there is a “period” to those as well. It is because it takes time for the strain to build up within a fault line. Once there is a release of the strain it begins to build again.

Hurricanes also can have build in time between them at a set location. This is due to the fact that a hurricane must “feed” off the warm water and once one goes through an area it cools the water and the next hurricane in the area that season is normally weaker.

It is conceivable that there are cycles within biological system due to their natural immunities, average interaction times, environmental stresses, and so on. I think you can find studies on the seasonal cycles on flu and the generational cycles of flu within human populations. The point is that it is not totally random and there is at least some periodicity.

Texas Rose… I agree. The “survival of the fittest” will truly show itself. There will be people that, left to nature, will die… just as they would have already passed had it been determined by nature. Those with diabetes that require insulin, people that need radiation treatments or currently take a lot of medications that won’t be available. Those on forced oxygen. Mothers giving birth the natural way will have higher mortality rates -just as in the past. -so will their children. Folks that have heart attacks, infections, etc. and can’t get rapid medical intervention…numerous things like that, will be naturally “culled” from our ranks. It sounds raw, but that is nature. Without intervention from others, many humans would perish if on their own.

In this day and age, because of our reliance on JIT delivery systems and choosing to live in environments were human habitation would not be natural, we have stacked the odds of survival against even healthy humans.

In order to “even that playing field”, we need to prep to make the environments and the environmental conditions survivable. -at least through the duration of the pandemic and its collateral effects.

(I wish I knew how to prepare seeds for planting the next season’s crop. I think I will gather up potatoes and let them sprout and start planting them around in with some of my potted plants. I need to learn how to prepare (squash/zuchini/& cucumber seeds)

There will be a factor, ‘Z’ if you will, in the number of days the electrical grids are down during the curve up the first(?) wave of a pandemic in which the probability of the grids staying down increase dramatically.

This might sound obvious: The longer the grids are down the more likely they won’t be coming back online anytime soon. I guess what I’m trying to say is this ‘Z’ factor is a point of almost no return. What Z is no one knows. I think that LMWatBullRun – at 22:42 thinks it’s a week. I hate to say it, but I agree. This ain’t no ice storm.

DennisC - I agree. There is a reason that there is the saying “history repeats itself”.

JWB – at 14:47

There will be a factor, ‘Z’ if you will, in the number of days the electrical grids are down during the curve up the first(?) wave of a pandemic in which the probability of the grids staying down increase dramatically.

This might sound obvious: The longer the grids are down the more likely they won’t be coming back online anytime soon. I guess what I’m trying to say is this ‘Z’ factor is a point of almost no return. What Z is no one knows. I think that LMWatBullRun – at 22:42 thinks it’s a week. I hate to say it, but I agree. This ain’t no ice storm.

This assumes that regions won’t assert some form of thinking outside the box and maintain their grids disconnected from the whole.

I believe a recovery from one week of outage may be possible, but it won’t be a full recovery (ie: nuke plants may be unsalvageable).

Anything outside of three weeks of a complete grid collapse is unrecoverable for many many MONTHS after the event.

Bird Guano – at 16:20

“This assumes that regions won’t assert some form of thinking outside the box and maintain their grids disconnected from the whole.”

I don’t think disconnecting into smaller regions will do much if anything. ALL regions will be experiencing the same multiple problems, staff shortages, fuel shortages, etc. etc. etc.

And all sectors of our civilization will be going through the same multiple problems too.

I visualise this:

Each sector of our civilization is a domino. Each domino has its own unique attributes. Some take longer to fall then others. Some are studier and can withstand the collapse of another to a certain point in time.

They are arranged in a circle.

When one falls, (it doesn’t matter which one, or why, or in what direction), they all fall. To set any one of them back up, you need to do something with the one that is partially laying on it, which in turn has one laying on it, and so on. The amount of coordination just to keep them all standing is mankind’s world wonder of the day. The amount of coordination to get them back UP after they fall is going to require miracles. IMHO. All said, without a doubt, electrical power is key.

Hurricanes and earthquakes can be predicated in broad general timelines because there is a link between the physical sciences and the phenomenon. The link can be tenuous but recognizable.

Building pressure along tectonic plates is a well understood concept and it can be measured over many years. The confluence of physical conditions necessary for hurricanes can also be measured although it does not seem climatologists predicted the current El Nino in the Pacific - but they do understand it’s affect of weakening hurricanes in the Atlantic.

There is no similar understanding of influenza over long time periods, except anecdotal. This anecdotal stuff cannot be explained in a causal sense and so it must be viewed as coincidental or unrelated until a rigorous link is found.

I’ll use a ludicrous example to make my point. In early May 2006 I suffered food poisoning. In the first week of September I also suffered food poisoning. As a result, I am preparing to enter a strict fast during Christmas week, because I’ll ‘be due’ to have food poisoning the first week of January.

The phrase “history repeats itself” refers to the social sciences. We don’t look at a pride of lions and think ‘history repeats itself’.

“Building pressure along tectonic plates is a well understood concept and it can be measured over many years.”

ssol. I respect your opinion but I beg to differ. I agree with your sentence above and I believe that, having worked with nature all my life, that is exactly what goes on beyond our narrow human perceptions…in the same way that dogs can sense a lot of things we can’t.

My basic assumption with respect to collateral casualties is pretty basic.

-Assumption- 90% of the US population lives in major metro areas;

-Assumption- If the grid is down for an extended period, the metro areas will succumb to panicked starving thirsty people, and will die.

Many will flee; few will survive. There will be some losses in the countryside, as well, but my basic evaluation is that in the event of the loss of power, the cities are history- no power means no food , no water, no police, no military. No civilization. Sauve qui Peut! That’s how I came up with the 90% figure. The data are so convoluted and the variables are so many that it’s extremely difficult to model any more closely than this, and even the most complex model I can conceive of may be more precise but probably won’t be more accurate.

It may take longer than a week to reach the tipping point, and I certainly hope that my hypothesis is never tested, but better to err on the side of caution. I do recall how quickly things can degenerate when people have no news and thus no hope….

I think the correct way to think of H5N1 is regularly irregular…there is a very consistent pattern if you look at 100 year segments…it is just that it can’t be predicted in one year, five year or ten year segments.

The virus has a certin randomness and probability to it but humans have little randomness in their behavoir. In other words mathamatical randomness is more random than human randomness and it’s the second half of the equation that scares me. I think I can deal with the virus but the human response, though known, will be difficult for me.

I refer all to Nassim Talebs’ masterpiece,”Fooled by Randomnss”, considered by some as one of the 10 best books ever written. http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/

Bird Guano-

I am afraid I agree with JWB. THere was a time when there was regional economy independence, but the present centralized and streamlined economy is truly global, not local. A power outage in one part of the coutry will have devastating effects elsewhere.

econ101.

Sounds interesting but went right over my head…could you explain…

…”The virus has a certin randomness and probability to it but humans have little randomness in their behavoir. In other words mathamatical randomness is more random than human randomness and it’s the second half of the equation that scares me.”…

…a little bit more.

There have been studies done with people filling in squares with X’ and O’s and then have a computer randomly do the same and propability experts’s such as Tabib being able to accruratly guess each time which was done by a human and which was done by the computer……..In a thousand squares ppl don’t expect to see 9 x’s in a row but that is often the case.As to the lack of randomness in humans I could say, ‘I use to be different and now I’m the same’. Human nature is a constant and predictable.

econ 101 Thanks. I can understand now what you were getting at.

What is your opinion of ssol’s conclusions about H5N1 and random probabilities?

Thanxs Tom DVM

I understans ssol’s distiction between the two but I don’t feel it’s that strong. Yes maybe you can predict a earthquake better than a pandemic but their is not a large enough sample to be conclusive. I wish we could get Nassim Taleb to comment on the possible pandemic. I know he will respond to all emails at lest once. he is truly the master when it comes to randomness. It’s only a casual study for me.

Don’t forget, God created economists to make weathermen look good.

Just the fact that the power could be gone for a week is in and of itself, devastating. With nothing else going on, if you shut off the power to the country (not to mention the world),for a week, think of the ramifications. The list would require a new thread.

I agree JWB……..Murphys Law would be too optomistic during a long grid failure.

One need only look at Yugoslavia and Argentina for some of the documented ramifications.

And those were highly localized events.

I beg to differ with Treasureislandgirl. I live in a northern state if we lose electricity for more than a couple of days I believe were looking at a huge fatality rate. Out in rural areas its true many have alternate forms of heat. In the cities not true most are dependant on furnaces that require juice for the blowers. In the past when we have lost electricity in the winter shelters were set up, and I might add used. I dont see shelters being a viable alternative during a pandemic. January often provides below zero temps for days at a time, we consider it a heat wave if we climb into the teens in Jan. sleeping bags and warm cloths arent going to cut it in those kinda temps. Especially for the elderly and the very young.

in WW2 more than 50% of the 2.5 million inhabitants of Leningrad survived for 900 days although there was no electricity, almost no food from outside, no heating, a winter as cold as −40°

plus they were getting bombed, shot at, abused, etc etc,,, The move The Enemy At The Gate shows what they went thru

People in WW2 tolerated things most people today probably cannot. They had lived through the Depression, and Russians had survived Stalin, which means they had perfected the art of hiding food from everyone and scrounging, too. They ate rats and cockroaches and supposedly each other, too. Plus, the actual casualties of Leningrad and Stalingrad were higher than the Soviets admitted. They lied, fancy that!

One of Jeff Cooper’s books relates the story of a Nazi who escaped from the Soviet death camps near the White Sea after the German collapse and made his way across Russia. Interesting stuff.

People in WW2 tolerated things most people today probably cannot. They had lived through the Depression, and Russians had survived Stalin, which means they had perfected the art of hiding food from everyone and scrounging, too. They ate rats and cockroaches and supposedly each other, too. Plus, the actual casualties of Leningrad and Stalingrad were higher than the Soviets admitted. They lied, fancy that!

One of Jeff Cooper’s books relates the story of a Nazi who escaped from the Soviet death camps near the White Sea after the German collapse and made his way across Russia. Interesting stuff.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn described in his books how he survived the gulags even while working outside in a light jacket at 50 below Fahrenheit. There is no accounting for DNA that encompasses extraordinary stamina and superhuman force of will.

But for us ordinary mortals, if you are getting by with passive heat systems, (sleeping bags, in-house puptents, etc.) then you are going to have to stock and consume more food than you would otherwise. Cold weather burns calories fantastically. I remember seeing some studies done with troops out in cold weather exercises. I was astounded by the amount of calories each trooper had to consume in order to maintain strength and body weight.

But, then again, I shouldn’t have been surprised. In my early adulthood just out of college I ranched for a few years. Calving season was timed to begin in late winter so the calves later could better utilize the early spring grass for greater weight gains. The downside to that strategy was that I practically lived outdoors, (being the “midwife” on call in case of complications), for two months of freezing weather, day and night. I achieved a high survival rate for the calf crop, but by the end of the season I would have dropped 15 pounds “despite eating like a horse”.

Anonymous. Keep posting. Your views are refreshing. There are too many here who really “feel” or really “believe” a pandemic is headed our way this fall/winter.

I have nothing against prepping - it’s a good idea to be prepared, but honestly, at times there seems to be a real group psychosis on these threads where people work themselves into unnecessary lathers. It’s almost as if Chicken Little needs the sky to fall just to justify all the time he has spent on Fluwikie day after day after day.

What if a pandemic doesn’t happen any time soon? What calamity will Chicken Little find to fear next?

There are some good minds working here, but needless emotion seems to hijack a lot of discuussions. It is unproductive and really makes one wonder if some of the people here have nothing better to do than to fret away their hours believing the Big Bad Wolf is at the door, when he could very well be years and years away.

Ice Storm of 1998

http://tinyurl.com/gyhfm

http://tinyurl.com/hgs82

25 died, and that’s with 15,000 soldiers and their equipment deployed. Fuel still available for transportation. No concern about infection so people could stay in close quarters to stay warm. Electricity repair crews from all across America came to help. It also brought out the best and the worst in human nature.

Imagine even a smaller one before, during or after a pandemic.

Exec202 at 23:02-To each his own.

I think virtually all of us here are following one of Montaigne’s dictums (besides really trying to survive very realistic threats)-

“A Spirited Mind’s pursuits are boundless and without form; its food is wonder, the chase, ambiguity”.

I know I’m stuck on doomsday.. I don’t want to be but it’s where the existing data leads. I appreciate most points of view.. I fervently wish someone with a brain would show me where the data is wrong.

I will go out on a limb and say there has been an uptick in the doom and gloom for reasons I can’t quite explain. In this case there is no H2H2H cluster pushing the alarm. There is this (pigs) and that (planes) and if you toss in a report of what H5N1 does in the body… maybe these things in combination support the state of alarm… I don’t know. I do know it precedes goju’s meeting and others seem be effected by it also.

here’s hoping it’s group psychosis

One week without the grid.

When a high category hurricane hits, for example, it knocks everything out in it’s path. Rushing in to help the “hit” area are “neighboring” citizens… with various leveled skills. It isn’t uncommon to go w/o electricity or water for at least a week after being “hit” by a hurricane. Then, slowly, life begins to ease back to normal. Groceries are brought back to the stores (where prior to the hurricane people wiped them clean), clean up occurs, etc. Some areas bounce back faster than others. Others bounce back “better” than others. Coastal Mississippi is just now moving some of their people out of tents & into FEMA trailers. (Have you seen those trailers?) N.O. is a long shot from recovering… a year later. It’s residents are scattered across the nation. The National Guard are “presently” being called in because of civil disruption.

And that is “a” region, in a short term scenario.

This pandemic… isn’t going to be the result of several hours of tremendous winds. In fact, we are talking loss of the “grid” due to what will happen over time in such a degree that there will not be people to keep the grid running. A week in that situation will not be a “typical” week. We will not be a society able to do what we typically do. It will not be “normal”… as we know normalcy. It will be the proverbial slippery slope/downward spiral scenario. That will be what will make a week without the grid so significantly threatening… and possibly on a very large scale, covering a LOT of surface area.

I just went through a small hurricane… I think a pandemic will be erie. You won’t have the rain and wind, you’ll have silence and blue sky.. sounds of birds (striking fear)

chides myself for sounding like such a wuss on at :13 grow a spine.. get prepped (enjoy yer last days)

I mean.. the power went, it always goes out (no big deal) yea sometimes longer than 5 days (a bit bigger deal). This time I went out and bought the solar system… I’m still waiting for the new puppy.. but I’ll be damned if I didn’t have to put down one of the dogs I do have. She was really old and had three bad spells lost most of her sight.. anyway it was tough deal because I had to give her the shot in the intestines.

I kept thinking what if this.. ah wuss stuff.. grow a spine get prepped (enjoy each day)

oh.. and I also found out my sister is a changeling and my brother can run a freezer on a dinky solar system. hmmmmm

When my new bride and I moved out into the desert in 1997, the manufactured house we had did not have any electricity for over two weeks. We made do pretty well, with water brought in 5 gallon buckets to use for various purposes. We are prepped now to withstand at least a couple of years of without electricity, grocery stores etc, but I do have a difficult time in my mind thinking that is a certainity, although I guess it could be possible. We are continuing to upgrade constantly our preps and even though we had solar power and wind generators for over the last 7 years, we have removed the storage batteries and selling off the other parts. Not that we think nothing will happen, but now with a different mindset, we do not want to be a flame for all those moths that would linger about, and having loud generators, windmills, and solar panels would indeed invite some unwanted visitors I think.

I went through Rita, well “prepped.” The howling wind… for hours tap-dancing on every last nerve. Watching people totally unprepared in every area flounder like fish out of water… before, during and afterwards. No news, no electricity, no running water, no gas, no stores, no immediate help, hot/humid heat, misquitoes… but nothing like the potential of a pandemic has ever been experienced in my lifetime.

I won’t be so pessimestic to allow myself to think I can’t or won’t survive… or help others survive. Or, even that we can’t get to a place where we are better prepared than we are presently. Likewise, I won’t be so foolhearty to shrug the seriousness of this off as some psychotic episode.

Closed for length and continued here