chasfm11 wrote:OldCannon wrote:
My experience during that event taught me a lot what kind of "humanity" to expect in bad situations, and I only sampled the tip of the iceberg. I even got the joy of having my water supply to my home burst from freezing about 3 days into that ordeal. I was as completely unprepared as you could be and I swore "never again." My lesson about the criminal elements, however, was akin to what Selco was saying in a link bnc offered (
http://www.tacticalintelligence.net/blo ... ccount.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). If you think you can hunker down in your home with just you and the family, you are either a) sorely underestimating the determination of criminal elements, b) sorely overestimating your ability to single-handedly defend your home, or (more likely) c) a and b. You have to think larger, communal scale and "squad up" for longer-term scenarios. I'm grateful that the power was partially restored after 5 days, but I'm even more grateful that the crime in my neighborhood didn't rise above generator theft. I imagine it would have gotten much worse had we been without power a few more days longer.
Some of us are trying to make our respective neighborhoods aware of these situations. Every account of a prolonged emergency has stories just like yours yet when you try to show those stories to most people, they just smile and give you the teen-age mentality "that cannot happen here" response. We seem to be a society of ostriches.
We're fortunate. All but one of my immediate neighbors are gun owners and avid shooters and we have routinely worked together, helping each other in non-emergency situations. When each of us needs help, all that is necessary is to ask. I can only hope in a true emergency that we could band together and work out a mutual protection arrangement. Beyond them, there doesn't seem to be much appetite for this sort of discussion. I suspect that would change rapidly if the stuff runs into the fan.
Chaz, I'm envious. Nobody in my neighborhood seems interested in this stuff. Like I mentioned earlier, a couple of my neighbors actually imagine that they'll come over and borrow some of my guns if they need one......like I would actually loan them out to people who don't know what they're doing or don't care enough to prepare for themselves.
Now, like OldCannon, I lived through a long drawn out blackout in NYC back in 1977 (
WIKI). To add insult to injury, the Son of Sam murders were going on at this time. The Wiki page incorrectly says that the blackout lasted from July 13th to July 14th. That might be true for
some neighborhoods, but my neighborhood (E. 82nd St, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues) was on the same part of the grid as the mayor's mansion, and we were the absolute last neighborhood to get power back, 4-1/2 days later, for political reasons. I was having dinner down in China Town with a couple of friends when the lights went out. The restaurant comped everyone their meals since they couldn't ring anything up, and I caught a bus to return uptown to my home. Imagine trying to take a bus from nearly the bottom of Manhattan all the way up to the east 80s without a single operating traffic light. And add to the mix the fact that the electrically driven subways were no longer functioning. It was a nightmare.....and people were actually trying to pull together. Citizens with flashlights got out into the intersections and tried to direct traffic to restore some order to the flow. Baskin Robbins stores were giving away their ice-cream. Neighbors shared candles and flashlight batteries.
In my particular neighborhood, that kind of cooperation tended to continue during the entire length of the blackout. July/August in NYC is generally pretty miserable, being pretty hot and VERY humid. My greatest inconvenience was probably the lack of airconditioning. But in other neighborhoods in other boroughs, the blackout was viewed as a license to do things that those people thought they could get away with under cover of darkness. There was fairy large scale rioting in some areas. 550 police officers were injured in rioting. Thousands of people were arrested; shops looted; buildings burned. In one case, thieves stole all 50 brand new Pontiacs on the lot at a Bronx dealership. Etc., etc., etc. I was just fortunate to live in an area where none of this was a problem, and in my youthful naiveté, I thought of it as a sort of adventure rather than something terrifying.
Society has coarsened
much more in the intervening 35 years, and I'm no longer so sanguine.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
#TINVOWOOT
