Melbourne didn't have gas for a while here, and while it's probably not as pervasive as electricity they got by just fine for about a month. People are confusing the temporary increase in crime due to opportunistic vandals (who exist anyway, but are deterred by oh say, street lighting) with actual breakdown of social cohesion.
Survival training should be mandatory. I know how to start a fire (to boil water and cook), I know where all the local water sources are, and I know which local plants are and aren't edible.
I would just chill out in the woods until things blew over.
Melbourne didn't have gas for a while here, and while it's probably not as pervasive as electricity they got by just fine for about a month. People are confusing the temporary increase in crime due to opportunistic vandals (who exist anyway, but are deterred by oh say, street lighting) with actual breakdown of social cohesion.
I can't speak for others, but I'm not. No electricity for an extended period of time means that your economy is fucked. A fucked economy means imbalance, nationally and globally. And that instigates chaos. I'm not sure what effect one week of no power would have. Maybe a large effect, maybe not as bad as I think. But, say, a month? The effect would be severe and yes I think it would trigger the breakdown of social cohesion, as you put it. We're far too reliant on power, and if it permanently goes away, we're not going to just automatically shuffle back to the Bronze Age; we're just not that adaptive and especially not when it involved losing things that we've come to know and love. We CAN adapt, sure, but it's a very slow process.
This is unlikely to ever happen, so this is all theoretical anyway.
The nature of the crisis matters alot too. Katrina was a disaster becasue the message was the government and country doesn't give a fuck and we're leaving you to die. People are going to act much less rationally in a case like that. Comapre that to 9/11 where the outpouring of support locally and nationally became a rallying point for the city. Looting and stuff was virtually non existant and if it did happen it's more likely the mob would have turned on the looters than joined in.
In Halifax, Nova Scotia, there was a hurricane (Juan) a few years back that knocked power out for most areas for hte better part of a week. There was no wide spread riots or insanity. Halifax isnt a huge 8 or 9 million population city, but still fairly large population. Id argue the greater the level of social inequality, the higher chance of civil unrest during times of duress. Also, the smaller the population, the more people know you and the less anonymity of the people and less likelihood you will act in non civil manner. Few will beat their neighbour with a shovel to get a can of beans in a crisis compared to the random person they never knew.
During the Ice Storm in Quebec, the power was out for over two weeks and it really brought everyone together, even bridging the french/english gap. Strangers were bonding and living together in high school classrooms and everyone was trying to help each other out. (example: this guy who owned a car wash and a generator set things up so that groups of people could get showers, weird but nice) From my experience, situations will only make people dicks if they already are.
The vibe I'm getting from this thread so far is people will not crumble and kill their neighbors for food in the span of a week. So why is it all natural disaster movies, zombie massacres, and alien invasions have people acting at their worst? Remember the recent War of the Worlds movie, where that mob of people almost killed that family for a working car? Remember that Twilight Zone episode where friends turn on each other in paranoia?
The vibe I'm getting from this thread so far is people will not crumble and kill their neighbors for food in the span of a week. So why is it all natural disaster movies, zombie massacres, and alien invasions have people acting at their worst? Remember the recent War of the Worlds movie, where that mob of people almost killed that family for a working car? Remember that Twilight Zone episode where friends turn on each other in paranoia?
The vibe I'm getting from this thread so far is people will not crumble and kill their neighbors for food in the span of a week. So why is it all natural disaster movies, zombie massacres, and alien invasions have people acting at their worst? Remember the recent War of the Worlds movie, where that mob of people almost killed that family for a working car? Remember that Twilight Zone episode where friends turn on each other in paranoia?
Well, the Monsters are due on Maple Street wasn't a naturally occurring phenomenon. People were being toyed with to play up their darkest fears as well as to pose a societal critique of the red scare and McCarthyism going on at the time. It would be the equivalent of the power going out in a major metropolitan area, even affecting hospitals and such, with the sole exception of the Mayor's house and some of his friends. You could expect a torchlit mob within a week there. If for no other reason than to throw the bum out.
The vibe I'm getting from this thread so far is people will not crumble and kill their neighbors for food in the span of a week. So why is it all natural disaster movies, zombie massacres, and alien invasions have people acting at their worst? Remember the recent War of the Worlds movie, where that mob of people almost killed that family for a working car? Remember that Twilight Zone episode where friends turn on each other in paranoia?
A week isn't a terribly long time. A week I think most people could handle. You probably wouldn't have too many infrastructure problems without power. The food and water would probably be okay for that period depending on where you lived.
When Katrina first happened, things weren't so bad were they (I mean crime wise)? For the first week? Wasn't it all about the shock of what's happened and trying to save yourself, your friends and your family?
If you extended that period to a month, or more, THEN you would start seeing problems. I would guess by that time you would revert to a more kill or be killed mentality, trying to keep yourself and your family alive, safe and as comfortable as possible. With the absence of any enforcement, it wouldn't be a difficult decision after too long a period to start breaking the law to survive and accumulate more "things", be it food or something else.
Katrina is a little bit unique because it was simply a single city in a country filled with cities. It was just one area. Help and assistance POURED into New Orleans and that helped to keep things relatively stable. Now imagine that no one ever came or ever knew that Katrina had hit and everyone there had been left to do what they could to survive. I think it would've been MUCH MUCH worse.
Just last week, the evening news was reporting on mismanaged relief during Katrina. All the ice melting, mobile homes unused, bottled water sitting around for a week after the fact, etc. Say, whatever happened to Michael Brown?
I know things were managed horribly and the plans and everything encountered so many problems and hang ups, but the help was physically there in some capacity.
What I'm saying is, imagine there was nothing at all. Then what would happen?
The nature of the crisis matters alot too. Katrina was a disaster becasue the message was the government and country doesn't give a fuck and we're leaving you to die. People are going to act much less rationally in a case like that. Comapre that to 9/11 where the outpouring of support locally and nationally became a rallying point for the city. Looting and stuff was virtually non existant and if it did happen it's more likely the mob would have turned on the looters than joined in.
There was looting occuring during 9/11. They would set up a command center in a restaraunt and the place would be stripped to the walls when it was done. Burglaries went up 1,900 percent in the area where the public was prohibited. People came back to what was supposed to be a secure area to find their stores stripped and looted. They made 54 arrests for looting within a month after september 11th. I guess you can consider that small in such a large city. But there was still looting, that cant be denied.
The nature of the crisis matters alot too. Katrina was a disaster becasue the message was the government and country doesn't give a fuck and we're leaving you to die. People are going to act much less rationally in a case like that. Comapre that to 9/11 where the outpouring of support locally and nationally became a rallying point for the city. Looting and stuff was virtually non existant and if it did happen it's more likely the mob would have turned on the looters than joined in.
There was looting occuring during 9/11. They would set up a command center in a restaraunt and the place would be stripped to the walls when it was done. Burglaries went up 1,900 percent in the area where the public was prohibited. People came back to what was supposed to be a secure area to find their stores stripped and looted. They made 54 arrests for looting within a month after september 11th. I guess you can consider that small in such a large city. But there was still looting, that cant be denied.
It wasn't all that bad and the city itself was largely under control. It wasn't, say, LA after the Rodney King verdict.
I think that the probability of recovery is the most important thing. I'm pretty sure that, if everyone knew that power would be restored after the week that most people would stay calm, band together, and make it through. However, if prospects appeared bleak and the situation looked like it would continue for a significant period, then i think order would break down a lot more.
All pretty speculative, though. 28 Days Later was a fantastic zombie movie (even though there weren't traditional zombies) because it really focused on how different people responded to the apparently permanent collapse of society. The news told them that the zombies had spread across the entire world so all shelter was gone. So you got a wide variety of responses, to the soldiers holed up in the estate to the father and daughter in their apartment.
The vibe I'm getting from this thread so far is people will not crumble and kill their neighbors for food in the span of a week. So why is it all natural disaster movies, zombie massacres, and alien invasions have people acting at their worst? Remember the recent War of the Worlds movie, where that mob of people almost killed that family for a working car? Remember that Twilight Zone episode where friends turn on each other in paranoia?
There's kind of a big difference between not being able to turn on a light or heat a burrito for a week, and an end of the world apocalypse scenario.
The vibe I'm getting from this thread so far is people will not crumble and kill their neighbors for food in the span of a week. So why is it all natural disaster movies, zombie massacres, and alien invasions have people acting at their worst? Remember the recent War of the Worlds movie, where that mob of people almost killed that family for a working car? Remember that Twilight Zone episode where friends turn on each other in paranoia?
There's kind of a big difference between not being able to turn on a light or heat a burrito for a week, and an end of the world apocalypse scenario.
To stoners, not being able to heat a tasty burrito is the end of the world.
The nature of the crisis matters alot too. Katrina was a disaster becasue the message was the government and country doesn't give a fuck and we're leaving you to die. People are going to act much less rationally in a case like that. Comapre that to 9/11 where the outpouring of support locally and nationally became a rallying point for the city. Looting and stuff was virtually non existant and if it did happen it's more likely the mob would have turned on the looters than joined in.
There was looting occuring during 9/11. They would set up a command center in a restaraunt and the place would be stripped to the walls when it was done. Burglaries went up 1,900 percent in the area where the public was prohibited. People came back to what was supposed to be a secure area to find their stores stripped and looted. They made 54 arrests for looting within a month after september 11th. I guess you can consider that small in such a large city. But there was still looting, that cant be denied.
It wasn't all that bad and the city itself was largely under control. It wasn't, say, LA after the Rodney King verdict.
I think that the probability of recovery is the most important thing. I'm pretty sure that, if everyone knew that power would be restored after the week that most people would stay calm, band together, and make it through. However, if prospects appeared bleak and the situation looked like it would continue for a significant period, then i think order would break down a lot more.
Power outages had nothing to do with the King riots. Those happened because police ceded huge portions of South Los Angeles to the mob. The Florence & Normandie intersection where Reginald Denny was famously beaten had seen police officers retreat from confronting protestors an hour earlier.
Chaos will come from a power outage as much as that power outage breaks down the central authority. When New York had a power outage there wasn't as much rioting because police were still doing their jobs. When NYPD didn't do their jobs, the electricity being on didn't stop any of the chaos of the 2000 Puerto Rican Day Parade.
The nature of the crisis matters alot too. Katrina was a disaster becasue the message was the government and country doesn't give a fuck and we're leaving you to die. People are going to act much less rationally in a case like that. Comapre that to 9/11 where the outpouring of support locally and nationally became a rallying point for the city. Looting and stuff was virtually non existant and if it did happen it's more likely the mob would have turned on the looters than joined in.
There was looting occuring during 9/11. They would set up a command center in a restaraunt and the place would be stripped to the walls when it was done. Burglaries went up 1,900 percent in the area where the public was prohibited. People came back to what was supposed to be a secure area to find their stores stripped and looted. They made 54 arrests for looting within a month after september 11th. I guess you can consider that small in such a large city. But there was still looting, that cant be denied.
It wasn't all that bad and the city itself was largely under control. It wasn't, say, LA after the Rodney King verdict.
I think that the probability of recovery is the most important thing. I'm pretty sure that, if everyone knew that power would be restored after the week that most people would stay calm, band together, and make it through. However, if prospects appeared bleak and the situation looked like it would continue for a significant period, then i think order would break down a lot more.
Power outages had nothing to do with the King riots. Those happened because police ceded huge portions of South Los Angeles to the mob. The Florence & Normandie intersection where Reginald Denny was famously beaten had seen police officers retreat from confronting protestors an hour earlier.
Chaos will come from a power outage as much as that power outage breaks down the central authority. When New York had a power outage there wasn't as much rioting because police were still doing their jobs. When NYPD didn't do their jobs, the electricity being on didn't stop any of the chaos of the 2000 Puerto Rican Day Parade.
Did I ever say that the Rodney King Riots had anything to do with a power outage? (answer: no). It was a comparison between levels of chaos.
Post 9-11 large parts of the city could have turned to chaos since the Police were very focused on securing downtown and pretty much all communications were down. People could have looted all over and probably gotten away with it but the bulk of the chaos was restricted to downtown.
Post 9-11 large parts of the city could have turned to chaos since the Police were very focused on securing downtown and pretty much all communications were down. People could have looted all over and probably gotten away with it but the bulk of the chaos was restricted to downtown.
Yeah, it was very interesting how things turned out. Most of my local PD and FD went down to NYC to help out. It would have been much easier to commit crimes in my area but there wasn't anything of note. It's interesting how it played out and the immediate response of people not only in NYC and the surrounding area but also from around the world (like the fact that family I lived with in France 6 months earlier sent me an email immediately to see that I and my family was ok) was to come together, not try to take advantage. Gave me some hope (since dashed).
Post 9-11 large parts of the city could have turned to chaos since the Police were very focused on securing downtown and pretty much all communications were down. People could have looted all over and probably gotten away with it but the bulk of the chaos was restricted to downtown.
Yeah, it was very interesting how things turned out. Most of my local PD and FD went down to NYC to help out. It would have been much easier to commit crimes in my area but there wasn't anything of note. It's interesting how it played out and the immediate response of people not only in NYC and the surrounding area but also from around the world (like the fact that family I lived with in France 6 months earlier sent me an email immediately to see that I and my family was ok) was to come together, not try to take advantage. Gave me some hope (since dashed).
I don't want to say post-Katrina NOLA wasn't all that bad - it sucked - but I will say that most of the city did not, in fact, dissolve into brainless animalism and resource-hoarding. There was no less than a surprising amount of cooperation between citizens. Especially between citizens who, under normal circumstances, wouldn't look at each other, much less help each other.
Now if "looting" was a crime, then yes, there was a problem. But it wasn't one or two dudes raping the stock of an Eckard drug store, it was an entire neighborhood handing out what was available on the shelves and making sure everyone had what they needed.
I think, as is per usual, the bad stories of rape, murder, theft, and violence are simply much more interesting than the stories of pulling together. So they get told more often. I also think that NOLA pretty much sucks when it came to the rebuilding effort, but that actually had government involvement.
Someone mentioned War of the Worlds earlier - I think a decent point is that in the scene where they do get jacked for their car, how many people in that crowd are actually not trying to jack their car.
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I would just chill out in the woods until things blew over.
This is unlikely to ever happen, so this is all theoretical anyway.
To be fair, alien invasions are another game.
Well, the Monsters are due on Maple Street wasn't a naturally occurring phenomenon. People were being toyed with to play up their darkest fears as well as to pose a societal critique of the red scare and McCarthyism going on at the time. It would be the equivalent of the power going out in a major metropolitan area, even affecting hospitals and such, with the sole exception of the Mayor's house and some of his friends. You could expect a torchlit mob within a week there. If for no other reason than to throw the bum out.
Because they're movies, not real life.
When Katrina first happened, things weren't so bad were they (I mean crime wise)? For the first week? Wasn't it all about the shock of what's happened and trying to save yourself, your friends and your family?
If you extended that period to a month, or more, THEN you would start seeing problems. I would guess by that time you would revert to a more kill or be killed mentality, trying to keep yourself and your family alive, safe and as comfortable as possible. With the absence of any enforcement, it wouldn't be a difficult decision after too long a period to start breaking the law to survive and accumulate more "things", be it food or something else.
Katrina is a little bit unique because it was simply a single city in a country filled with cities. It was just one area. Help and assistance POURED into New Orleans and that helped to keep things relatively stable. Now imagine that no one ever came or ever knew that Katrina had hit and everyone there had been left to do what they could to survive. I think it would've been MUCH MUCH worse.
Just last week, the evening news was reporting on mismanaged relief during Katrina. All the ice melting, mobile homes unused, bottled water sitting around for a week after the fact, etc. Say, whatever happened to Michael Brown?
What I'm saying is, imagine there was nothing at all. Then what would happen?
There was looting occuring during 9/11. They would set up a command center in a restaraunt and the place would be stripped to the walls when it was done. Burglaries went up 1,900 percent in the area where the public was prohibited. People came back to what was supposed to be a secure area to find their stores stripped and looted. They made 54 arrests for looting within a month after september 11th. I guess you can consider that small in such a large city. But there was still looting, that cant be denied.
It wasn't all that bad and the city itself was largely under control. It wasn't, say, LA after the Rodney King verdict.
I think that the probability of recovery is the most important thing. I'm pretty sure that, if everyone knew that power would be restored after the week that most people would stay calm, band together, and make it through. However, if prospects appeared bleak and the situation looked like it would continue for a significant period, then i think order would break down a lot more.
All pretty speculative, though. 28 Days Later was a fantastic zombie movie (even though there weren't traditional zombies) because it really focused on how different people responded to the apparently permanent collapse of society. The news told them that the zombies had spread across the entire world so all shelter was gone. So you got a wide variety of responses, to the soldiers holed up in the estate to the father and daughter in their apartment.
There's kind of a big difference between not being able to turn on a light or heat a burrito for a week, and an end of the world apocalypse scenario.
To stoners, not being able to heat a tasty burrito is the end of the world.
Power outages had nothing to do with the King riots. Those happened because police ceded huge portions of South Los Angeles to the mob. The Florence & Normandie intersection where Reginald Denny was famously beaten had seen police officers retreat from confronting protestors an hour earlier.
Chaos will come from a power outage as much as that power outage breaks down the central authority. When New York had a power outage there wasn't as much rioting because police were still doing their jobs. When NYPD didn't do their jobs, the electricity being on didn't stop any of the chaos of the 2000 Puerto Rican Day Parade.
Did I ever say that the Rodney King Riots had anything to do with a power outage? (answer: no). It was a comparison between levels of chaos.
Yeah, it was very interesting how things turned out. Most of my local PD and FD went down to NYC to help out. It would have been much easier to commit crimes in my area but there wasn't anything of note. It's interesting how it played out and the immediate response of people not only in NYC and the surrounding area but also from around the world (like the fact that family I lived with in France 6 months earlier sent me an email immediately to see that I and my family was ok) was to come together, not try to take advantage. Gave me some hope (since dashed).
Fools!
Now if "looting" was a crime, then yes, there was a problem. But it wasn't one or two dudes raping the stock of an Eckard drug store, it was an entire neighborhood handing out what was available on the shelves and making sure everyone had what they needed.
I think, as is per usual, the bad stories of rape, murder, theft, and violence are simply much more interesting than the stories of pulling together. So they get told more often. I also think that NOLA pretty much sucks when it came to the rebuilding effort, but that actually had government involvement.