Hurricane Sandy: Not Good Enough
Preppers throughout the USA played close attention to Hurricane Sandy, and how well people in New York coped with the situation. These minor disasters are a good indicator for how a country can survive when a massive disaster occurs. Apologies to New Yorkers and New Jersey folk for calling it minor, but this level of disaster disrupts life somewhere in the world several times every year. They might be rare at a specific location, but globally it is just nature and humans intersecting as they always have.
Being the richest country in the world, with plenty of natural disasters in it short history, the USA should be able to cope with a supercell storm. They even knew it was coming, and where it would hit. And yet we have sites like SHTFPlan.com detailing how poorly FEMA responded:
- Portable toilets and tents aren’t great when more storms are coming and it is almost winter.
- Being given only one blanket in unheated tents meant that people were very cold. Surely the USA can afford multiple blankets for their own citizens?
- Refugee camps had security guards and ID checks. Would anyone would choose to be there unless they had to?
- Refugee camps provided no entertainment at all. At a minimum packs of cards could have been given out. Zero understanding of the need to keep these poor people (and their children) occupied. No TVs. No radio. No newspapers. And these folk would be very keen to know the latest news.
Additionally, according to The Intel Hub, state troopers were stationed at gas stations to prevent rioting. And politicians have extraordinarily attacked the Red Cross for their poor response.
Despite FEMA supposedly being better at their job since the Katrina debacle, commonsense preparations like having stored water ready and waiting are missing:
FEMA only began to solicit bids for vendors to provide bottled water for distribution to Hurricane Sandy victims on Friday, sending out a solicitation request for 2.3 million gallons of bottled water at the FedBizOpps.gov website.
Yep, the storm is coming, so FEMA then outsources this basic task. This like when I did some deep research into how nuclear power plants will get more diesel if their power supply is down for more than a few days. The official manuals suggest phoning diesel suppliers. No other suggestions or Plan C provided.
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The other side of the coin is that people can make their own personal preparations, and look after themselves. It just takes a little bit of time and resolve.
Preppers are the new prophets
In the wake of Sandy, preppers suddenly seem like geniuses.
While being ridiculed by the rest of the population for as long as we can all remember, preppers are the ones still standing in the aftermath of the storm.
They’re the ones you don’t see on the news, begging for help and panicking over the situation, because the preppers are sitting in their homes, eating their stored food, drinking their filtered water, double-checking their shotgun loads and staying off the streets.
Preppers are the ones NOT looting, NOT complaining about the Red Cross, and NOT diving in dumpsters to find food while waiting around for the government to show up and save them.
Extrapolate the above, and mix in Hurricane Katrina experiences, and you get an idea of what it would be like when a natural disaster or terrorist attack affects more than 1% of the population.
If the power grid goes down, relying on governmental help will be a big mistake. If it takes them a week to refuel gas stations, and two weeks to restore power after a storm – what will it be like when transformers explode and to replace them could take a year?
When the next disaster arrives, don’t be rushing down to a store hoping to buy last-minute supplies. Buy them now.
