03 November 2012

When I blogged on 1 June that people in hurricane prone areas should prepare, should evacuate if requested to by the authorities, and begged readers to pray that the young surfer in St Augustine would be the only American to die in the 2012 hurricane season, I really hoped the US would get through the season without any devastation. Of course I was praying the same for ALL hurricane prone areas like Cuba, Dominican Republic, Hati, the Bahamas and Bermuda. But really what was in my mind was the Gulf Coast. Certainly not the Atlantic Seaboard, and most assuredly not NJ and NY.

As many of my readers know, I'm a climate refugee myself (Ivan and Katrina), and an outspoken 'Doomer' who believes, among other things, in Peak Oil with all of its implications for 'modern society, and climate change-although I deeply doubt it's AGW driven, frankly. Climate on this planet is cyclical and all of this has happened before. It's supreme hubris to think we are responsible for it happening. What we are responsible for is our recognition that it happens, and how well or not we prepare for the impact on our lives.

My primary higher education training is in 'aberrant human behaviour'. As a sort of side-bar to criminal behaviour, I was interested in the psychological implications of extreme stress on the average human. PTSD, once known as shell shock and later as combat fatigue, and how it might be a causative factor in aberrant human behaviour, how it might contribute to what used to be known as 'mob mentality' behaviours. From my studies I learned to be extremely wary of just what the folks not only next door but in the whole neighbourhood were capable of in periods of extreme stress. Social unrest. Civil disorder. What caused it-what gave it permission to infest a crowd and turn so-called normal people into savages, and how could it be prevented, that was what I wanted to know.

Of course, no-one else seemed to want to know. Not the law enforcement agencies I did consults for although there usually was one or more rarely two individuals who had similar interests, it wasn't encouraged to try to find out why aberrant human behaviour like mob mentality was on the uptick. In fact, statistics beginning in the early to mid-eighties were obviously being manipulated and in some cases outright denied. After a certain point I gave up trying to show my ever growing files of clippings and historic parallels to current events-no one wanted to know.

Now NYC and part of New Jersey are on the downhill slide to a very real reality check.

Transportation is insane there right now-it will be weeks if not months before the subways are all pumped out and restored to service, power is only just beginning to come back on, and of course, there are growing numbers of storm hit victims on telly begging for help. The US government is now easing restrictions on tankers to NY Port in an effort to get enough petrol to the area, and is mobilising US military deliveries of petrol to the areas hardest hit.

Growing death tolls. Residents in public housing huddling in complete terror. Looting. Muggings. Fights in petrol queues. Shortages of food and water.

Recipe for further disaster. It's everything I studied back when. Everything I and others like me tried mightily to bring to the attention of the authorities in hopes of effecting changes before things deteriorated too badly for any prevention to have an affect.

The mayor of NYC actually thought having the annual Marathon would somehow be a good thing, and is so angry that wiser heads managed to prevail that he refused to be the announcer of the cancellation, leaving it to his deputy. Apparently the mayor failed to listen to himself when he grimly advised before the storm hit that it was not a 2-3 day event.

Near a coast or river in the USA? YOU ARE A TARGET IN THE EYES OF MOTHER NATURE.

Live in a tornado prone area? YOU ARE A TARGET IN THE EYES OF MOTHER NATURE.

Live in an area with possible weather extremes of any kind-snow/ice, flooding, killing heat?

Get away now while it is still possible to relocate without the added onus of being a climate refugee. Being easily recognised as a climate refugee is not a positive factor in a relocation situation, trust me as one who has been there. If you insist on staying in a weather prone area, FFS prepare for the worst-it's coming.

Live in an area 'on the edge' (public housing, or lower income neighbourhood) YOU ARE A TARGET IN THE EYES OF YOUR NEIGHBOURS IN THE EVENT OF AN EMERGENCY OR NATURAL DISASTER.

Stay out of crowds for the foreseeable future (mobs turn on a dime, the CRAZY can get rolling in less than 60 seconds). Look less prosperous than you are-under no circumstances tell ANYONE outside of the immediate family that you have ANYTHING stored. Know your neighbours including an estimation of which ones might be your weakest ones most likely to go nuts in an emergency and turn on YOU.

It's the economy-those hopeful stats are LYING. It's not getting better, people are not better off than they were four years ago, and if you think there is a copper looking out for you then you are not paying attention to the fact that police budget cuts are being made DAILY across the world, not just in the US.

All the things I learned about and feared would happen if we didn't make changes? They're happening. NOLA wasn't a one-off and some of us knew that but no-one wanted to know. Now NJ and NY are seeing it in their front yards, and people are starting to wake up to the fact that infrastructure hasn't been maintained-when it goes down it will take longer and longer to bring back online, and we're all on our own in an emergency.

Sandy death toll in the US is at 90+ at this writing and authorities are now admitting it very likely may as much as double. Do what you can to avoid being a statistic. Please.