General Chat

:)

When you look at Maslows hierarchy of needs, food, water, warmth and rest are all that is needed to actually survive, to stay alive. I think that a lot of people would manage that. What would happen after a short time when the other 'needs' started to kick in is anyone's guess. Some sort of organisation would be required if people were clumped together and the realisation that there was no entitlement to anything would hit hard.

I think that people who live in the current 'third world' areas would be the most likely to survive and ultimately flourish. I'm not sure if the western world could cope with the deprivation and lack of infrastructure. IT would certainly be Darwin in action - only the fittest would survive.

Which raises another thought - would it necessarily be a bad thing for the species in general? In many ways, it would be like rebooting the human race. Tragic for individuals but maybe good for the hive?

The New Forest is just part of a much wider area of heath and woodland which extends far into Dorset and Wiltshire. I cannot remember a year when there has not been a serious forest/heathland fire in this area.

I have seen peat fires for myself though not in the UK. No need to google!

The age of the planet is about 4.5bn years. Primitive animals only evolved 500mn years ago. Humans 2mn years at best. The beginnings of modern civilisation 10 000 years. The sun has about 2bn years before it overheats. Man and interstellar is the only way anything can be saved. There is no time for a reboot.

Over the last hundred years or so history has shown that there is a lot of resilience to large scale disaster such as volcanos (nobody has mentioned Yellowstone yet,) , earthquakes, tsunami, atomic bomb, virulent disease, drought, flooding, asteroids (Kamchatka ). A total power outage in Quebec in winter caused b solar flare caused misery but was fixed.

Disaster scenarios make good tv / movies and a decent wage for Bear Grylls and his friends but are improbable.

Judging by the complete horlicks that the govts of SEAsia inc Oz are making of their environment I would not put them very far up the survival scale.

I think you are missing the point of the thread, plus I personally am not really interested in your schoolboy science, most of which is wrong but I wont get drawn into correcting you.

If anything is schoolboy science it is usa style survivalist dreaming.
When did you get your degrees ?

Pretty sure most of the fires in the New Forest were not peat based fires but just good old dry grass and trees and stupid tourist dropping glass or fag ends.

In 1989 yes a solar flare knocked out Quebec power but an ice storm managed it just as well since then too.

The thread though wasn't about this......I agree many of us would find it hard to survive in any major situation...think back to the last power outage you "suffered" how did you manage for what may have been a few hours of inconvenience?

Yes, the all too frequent NF fires are all down to the usual reasons inc arson. The New Forest bogs are not peat seams which can and do catch fire. They are a tip top SSI.

I was at uni during the three day week. The long interruptions of power made ordinary life impossible. In 1987 great storm we were without power for two weeks. Luckily I had an Aga still running on coke but life was still v difficult. I shelled out for a small generator which helped.

There has been next to no progress in the UK to improving the resilience of our data networks and power grid. At least one major data centre is at serious risk of flooding as are many grid power hubs.

Few individuals or small biz have a viable backup or UPS even though the cost is low and the cost of data loss high.

I only have school girl science ( and not much of that :-) ) but I know how to grow things,and could certainly build some type of shelter, and a fire etc...but my main asset as a survivor would be that I am generally nice to people, you would probably survive longer living next to me than next to some :-)

I'd like to think that were the case but will being nice be taken as being a soft target so to speak?

Manchester was a 'soft target' of shear lunacy yesterday.

Maybe not on the same level, but if you have what others want and your only defence is being nice I hate to say it but we all know what will almost certainly happen.

It is May and weather ok ish

Try making a small fire in the garden starting with no implements other than a sharp knife. Collection of natural materials from nearby allowed. Very few people can do this even in the countryside. We had this as a challenge when I was in the Scouts.

I think you would find making a structure which could provide shelter from cold, rain and winds even harder. Remember no power, B&Q shut ...

Water ? Food ? Sure Bear Grylls and like minded people could manage, Navy Seals et al but ordinary people ? No way. Most people cannot even fix basic faults with their car or house or computer or repair minor damage to clothes. Without supermarkets they would not be able to tell which plants were safe to eat. How many people know how to catch, kill and butcher an animal? How to grow barley and wheat and make bread? The list of essential skills which are all but forgotten is endless.

Assuming yr local survivalist was still alive the first thing would be back to tribal living with chiefs. The chiefs would fight with nearby chiefs and so on. Women's rights would vanish nice or not.

It took mankind around 1 mn years to sort these problems. Before that h.s. was very much an endangered species.

What does Eldrick think would happen to his lovely nuclear power stations without power and personnel? Or places such as Windscale ?

Yes, the strongest, fittest and craftiest would survive and women would be constantly pregnant, by choice or more likely not, with raping and pillaging the order of the day with tribal skirmishes and fighting! With lawlessness, any shelter you made, crops you grew, animals or possessions you still had would be stolen by those who were stronger than you.

It would certainly strengthen the human race as those who have difficulty reproducing or giving birth without medical intervention or aid wouldn't be producing offspring who would inherit the same difficulties. The same with some diseases where life with medication enables maturity and reproduction to pass on the same susceptibility or genetic faults to the next generation. The severely mentally ill would be free, as would any kind of criminal that survived.

I think if I had to run and kill or trap animals I would become a vegetarian PDQ apart from eggs and fish! I imagine an existence of looking over my shoulder and being wary and suspicious of anyone I didn't know.

I wonder how much knowledge, much of which would be redundant living in those times, would survive? No computers or even glasses to read stuff if you need them.

Would recovery be quicker with knowledge we already have, than advancement was in the past, or would we really be almost starting from scratch again? Is present day man brighter than those ancestors from ancient times, or were they stronger, with better immunity and more resilient?

There will come a day when nobody carrys cash
It will be bank card payments only :-D :-D

Oh yes I'd be the first to be knocked off,not nec' because of temperament but because of age and disability, there is no way I could run lol but then I wouldn't want to be around anyway in the world as described ( I have enough trouble just being around in this one :-) )

"Most people cannot even fix basic faults with their car or house or computer or repair minor damage to clothes. Without supermarkets they would not be able to tell which plants were safe to eat. How many people know how to catch, kill and butcher an animal? How to grow barley and wheat and make bread? The list of essential skills which are all but forgotten is endless."

well of those I can't fix a car which wouldn't be a problem in the circumstances:-)

I do know fairly well what plants are safe to eat (though I might avoid fungi!) and which I could offer to those who don't know...should I wish to bump them off :-)

I assume you mean Sellafield, WIndscale is decommissioned. Not a lot would happen, depending on if they were damaged or abandoned.

If abandoned with no personnel to keep them running, the automatic procedures would just shut things down. Then that's it. Even if damaged, a nuclear plant can't explode - you need weapons grade material for that and the process in a reactor is different to a bomb. So the worst case scenario would be a runaway process releasing heat energy and causing fires. There would be an initial spread of radioactive dust from the smoke, but this would soon disperse and have little effect. There would probably be groundwater contamination and anyone in the immediate vicinity could suffer radioactive poisoning, but they would have to be relatively close. Not one person died from radiation exposure at Fukushima.

So all in all, yes, there would be an effect, but nothing like the catastrophic scenarios that most people would imagine. We live with radiation all the time - its only the high energy photons that are dangerous.

Ok the asteroid came out of nowhere in the northern spring and hit Dakota. NASA wasn't looking cos Trump had diverted all its efforts to a mini robot shuttle and Mars.
At half a mile the damage was bad but survivable.

It was dark for a week and even now in the fall sunlight is down 50 %. Although a lot of trees and plants have hung on crops failed world wide. Food wars erupted world wide. The UK, brexited, with only a few weeks stored food supply is especially hit. The EU has closed the Channel ports. Mayhem is waving her nukes about. USA discloses that they will only arm with a key under US control.

Still sure what you are going to eat?

You still haven't grasped the topic, have you. Might be worth having a read of the OP again. I tried writing it slowly.

Good politics, though. Change the question into a discussion that you are more comfortable with.

Never mind, its my last day today so I don't really care.

I did.

Do you really expect such posts to be taken seriously?
You say you are against religions but survivalism with its references such as Stephen King's "the Stand" is like a religious sect including the demand for respect.

Nobody has any real idea what an asteroid strike might do. The most risky object has a potential collusion in 800 years time. By then there will probably be technology to deal with it.

I deliberately avoided the absurd Maslow pyramid theory which has no evidence to support it. It has often been used in business and politics for truly dreadful decisions. From a high point in the 1980s sfaik it has been junked in real life but I have no idea if the shrinks still use it. Hopefully not.

'Who among us can sleep peacefully without the fear of death surprising us during the night?' (Will Durant).

Sigh.

Yes, a politician in the mould of your beloved Teresa :) Take a topic, twist it round then answer your own questions. I'd vote for you! Although...maybe not if there was another candidate wearing white rabbit outfit.

All I can say is that you haven't grasped the OP. Not much I can do about that, sadly. Everyone else seems to have managed perfectly well.

I think this thread is dead now. Not to worry, I wont be able to see it after tonight

:-D