http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D98DCLJG0&show_article=1


I can totally see where these people are coming from...

Well I'm glad folks are spending $$$ like this b/c it's helping the economy even if they are paranoid. This is like the Y2K of 2009.

Three events in the last several years have suggested this is necessary, when a single incident shut down major utility and supply line efforts.

East Coast blackout - one small failure knocked out electricity in multiple states. In extreme weather, are you prepared for this? Don't think these types of things are limited to the East Coast either.

Hurricane Katrina - Finger pointing aside, relief efforts were far too slow in arriving in affected areas, and even if we might assume residents were warned in advance and should have left, we have the technology and equipment for a faster response. But the system broke down.

Phoenix gas crunch - A few years back a gas pipeline to southern Arizona broke, resulting in a severe gas shortage. It was never quite an emergency, but it was amazing how one pipeline killed most transportation in the city. One basic utility was gone, and businesses were closing, fights broke out at some gas stations, and life was completely disrupted. (Napalitano told us not to worry, there was no worry...while driving around in her motorcade fueled at gov gas stations.)

We really are living in a dense, high consumption world, and it doesn't take much to disrupt the flow of supplies. I don't have a survival kit or stockpile, but I've thought about it many times. Even during the swine flu nonsense we went shopping and stocked up on extra food for a bit, in case people lost their minds and closed more public areas than just schools.

My guess is that things could go either way. However, the most important thing would be OPSEC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_security). If things go sour, it would be extremely smart if people do NOT know what you have. Starving people tend to lose morals extremely quickly, and you may find yourself fighting off looters who you think are your quiet friendly neighbors. "We have no real causal understanding of the way our world works at all," said Markman, a professor at the University of Texas, Austin. "When times are good, you trust that things are working, but when times are bad you realize you don't have a clue what you would do if the supermarket didn't have goods on the shelves and that if the banks disappear, you have no idea where your money is." If I had such stuff delivered, and maybe I do, maybe I don't, I'd have it deliverered to the office. That would minimize the number of people who'd be trying to kick in my door, and if there were some sort of organized seizures of supplies (in some historical situations in some countries, "hoarding" was considered a crime, usually punishable by lynching, and as levels of materials got more scarce, the threshhold to be considered hoarding dropped to less than 1 day supply of food and TP), the shipping records would not point to my house. Mormons are strongly encouraged to have 1 year supply of food for the family. And I suspect that LDS members would quickly become endangered as more and more looters tried to steal what they wanted from from those who had foresight to prepare - and who are known to be prepared.

We in the US live at the end of a very long logistics chain. Almost everything is shipped to us. If trucks can't roll, then you're screwed.

This is one reason I keep having the Nutrisystem crap delivered to me on an occasional basis even though it's slowly filling up my cupboards - it's more or less nutritionally complete and requires neither refrigeration nor cooking - and since I've had it arriving slowly over the last year one wouldn't presume that I have piles of the stuff laying around and it doesn't scream 'survivalist nutjob' ;). I agree totally on the logistics chain issue, and am glad I live right on the river, have space for a garden (am putting peppers in this week because even I can't kill them), and my little diesel that could can use cooking oil in a pinch ;)...

Regards,
Nydia