Re: Survival Menu

On Aug 22, 2:23 pm, eug...@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Eugene Miya) wrote:
In article <48aeaadb$0$28863$88260...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

Jon <jonm...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
They are caching food and supplies.  Are they caching information,

Yeah, they usually have a library, commonly US Army field manuals
[...] basic first aid

But can they repair the damaged infrastructure, the communications
systems, refineries, etc...

Can you?

This is the big generalist vs. specialist morass that many people get
into circular arguments.  Just like mention of Nazis on some Usenet
threads, Heinlein tends to get quoted along the way:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an
 invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write
 a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort
 the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone,
 solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program
 a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die
 gallantly.  Specialization is for insects."  Robert Heinlein

from one friend's cut and paste (is also a commercially produced poster).
It's poorly formatted for discussion except for printing and printers.  A
better discussion format would be:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper,
plan an invasion,
butcher a hog,
conn a ship,
design a building,
write a sonnet,
balance accounts,
build a wall,
set a bone,
comfort the dying,
take orders,
give orders,
cooperate,
act alone,
solve equations,
analyze a new problem,
pitch manure,
program a computer,
cook a tasty meal,
fight efficiently,
die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects."
-Lazarus Long character, Time Enough For Love  by Robert A. Heinlein

Take your pick.

Mathematically one enumerates the cases and responds.

Sure, I met my General Ed. requirements in college, but I also took a
non-credit class in car repair.  I lucked out having a friend who brought
and still owns a Brideport Milling machine which I can use and in turn my
introducing him to other "garage" people they bought milling machines,
and lathes (I had metal shop, reports from schools these days say all
that is gone).  But I think that Long and Heinlein might be wrong.
Specialization might not be just for insects.  It might be a necessary
consequence for the level of technology we have.  And the logical
successors to that might be my various friends who are and want to
experiment with electronic implants (like wearcam.org, the desireous Borg,
oh must not forget MyLifeBits) and cryonics (whole body and head freezing).
Why? Because they want to be better, live longer than the average person.

A lot is made of literacy.  Sure I read Is Google Making Us Stupid?
No google isn't making us stupid.  We're making ourselves stupid.
Many people care more about how certain words get pronounced; they glaze
over Long's/Heinlein's list and say Sure!  Few solve equations or crytograms.
The Atlantic article (and many literate) was "deep reading."  Then crack
open a calculus book (CA is having debates about algebra).  Sorry sonnets
don't cut it.

Here are some other Long quotes I added to the DB that some one sent me:

 "The Notebooks of Lazarus Long."  Other quotes include
(paraphrased from memory):

"In a duel, always get off the first shot.  This flusters your opponent
enough that you have time to make your second shot count."

"When ambushed in the wild, don't shoot at all.  Silence is your ally.
A dagger in the throat is worth a hundred rounds of ammo."
        # This is what the gun nuts forget, but you also have to be
        # trained to use a knife.  The throat is a margin place to
        # puncture or slash a person, insert into a person's kidney.
        # A pistol with a suppressor might also be useful.

"A human being should be able to build a bridge, bake a souffle,
take out an appendix, change a diaper, write a sonnet, and dig a ditch.
Specialization is for insects."

"I heard another ending to the grasshopper and ant fable.  The grasshopper
came back with a few of his buddies and drove out the smaller ants.
The ants died that winter.  The grasshoppers lived well that winter on
the ants' stores, but died the next winter just the same."

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.
At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe,
and not to make messes in the house. -- Robert Heinlein

The reality is that there is a lot of general knowledge out there.
Taking time to read during crisis might not be the way to handle a crisis..
You can't waste time.  It's one of those things you have to conserve.

When I think of digging a ditch, my friend with the Bridgeport goes out
and buys an $18K minitractor on his Visa.

Big topic.  One can go on and on.

Are they prepared to deal with loss of basic support infrastruture?

I think your simplest answer to your first question is like a high bar
(threshold) that they hope they can do.

Do they go back to the coal age, steam age?  Limited trade?

I'm playing fireman, maybe, on a steam boat in a month.
Do you have a good source for hard coal?  Another friend who owns a
Stanley appeared with Jessie James on one of his shows.
Does one of them, or both, and others, have photovoltaic arrays and aux.
power sources?  Sure.  One also owns an AR-15 and a left handed target
rifle.  Some of them are starting out to Burning Man today.

2001 was just air.  It was more problematic for those on the ground
(short term).  We all handled it in different ways.

Small disruption of one mode of transportation.

Yeah, but recall that 2003 was trains and buses at about the same time.
They, the "West's" opponents read.  They get advanced degrees like MDs
and JDs.  You have to make your social changes in the presence and not in
secret.

I'm personally a little clueless about Katrina.
 New Orleans is a city of which I have really no
interest.  It shouldn't be there.

N.O. isn't the only city in the wrong place environmentally.

More so than many.  Urban planning is a new concept.  And I have now
visited so call planned communities.  They have their problems, too.

Ask the Dutch.

We cycled through many miles within polders.

What's a polder?
(w/o looking it up).
Zees and dikes I know and would have to deduce that a polder is the
recovered land.  But that's possibly a limited view.  I'm visiting Norway
(S. won an award remember?  ;^) and Iceland.  Holland is flat.

They have 1 side of water to deal with,  New Orleans
has 3 sides.  It should be abandoned as a city.

Think North Sea, 1953.  Natural forces.  Also failure of
planning and infrastructure played a role.  1800+ people
killed.  Large areas inundated.  Dutch didn't abandon.

1953: Everest ascended.  Nanga Parbat ascended by Hermann Buhl.
The Dutch are tough people.  Think 21st centory.  What are they thinking
about climate change?  Do you think they have many sea level rise critics?
The Dutch don't have much choice.  What do you think Asia is thinking?
1953: Korea comes to a truce.  Eisenhower is sworn in.



A-ark, B-ark, or C-ark.  You didn't want to be on any of
THOSE arks.

Well, the B-ark people survived to populate another planet. The
A/C-ark designees never launched, never planned to,-- it was just
a sham to get rid of the "non-contributors".  Instead the A's and C's
were wiped out by a disease trivially preventable by the B-arker's
they banished.

No, not quite.
The B-ark people survived a short time on the proto-Earth.
That was the basis for So Long and Thanks for All the Fish.
Arthur and Ford and the others deduced that the B-arkers, barkers,
weren't the precursors to Earth's modern humans.

In which version?  

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. Vol. 4 of his Trilogy.

The first books were radio series first.
And which earth?

A fictional version of our Earth.

Adams uses the concept of a "plural zone".
And how much happened only within the virtual universe
constructued to ensnare Zaphod?

I'm rereading the books now.  In the original radio series
Ford proposes that the Golgafrinchans are human ancestors.

I was in Santa Barbara in May and went past Adams favorite restaurant
there.  Still there.

But this is fiction.

Entertaining, creative, parts of it, thought provoking...

You have to know its limits.

--

Still in fiction, but fiction which is at least as instructive as
Lazarus long - Try "Lucifer's Hammer" by Jerry Pournelle. Survivalist
writing with a different twist. Under Pournlle's scenario, much of
Lazarus Long's hedonism becomes moot if not detrimental.
.