Can City Folk EVER be Prepared?

No.

And Houston proves it. They had two days to evacuate, five north bound lanes, and for the most part personal transportation. Phucked is what these people were. I submit they were as prepared and organized as any metropolis can be and didn't stand a chance of dealing with a pending natural disaster.

Take the current scenario, unplug the hurricane and plug in a slowly spreading biological attack with no warning. There would be as many casualties from the panic as from the attack.

Look at your nearest city or, God forbid, your city; what method of egress would you use? Is it the same one everyone would use? I'm thinkin' private aircaft of some sort would be one's only sure hope. Maybe an two-seat ultralight in the garage?

Where it's happenin'

So you wanna live in a big city, eh?! I see five lanes of northbound traffic at a standstill running? from a Cat4 hurricane. Unimpressive.
You live in a city, you give up a lot of freedom just from being there and you are forced to rely on politicians to organise services and in emergencies.

No thanks.

Update:*****

Skinner, accompanied by her 6-year-old grandson, Dageneral Bellard, would settle for a bus.
"They got them for the outlying areas, for the Gulf and Galveston, but they ain't made no preparations for us in the city, for the poor people here. There ain't no (evacuation) buses here. I got nowhere to go."

What you are seeing in and around Houston and formerly in New Orleans are lessons that intelligent people learn. Those that don't, well, I guess there may be something to natural selection after all.

From Dog Turds to Pissing on Electric Fences in Five Comments or Less

Bill gets down to brass tacks; exactly how hard will a predator rated electric fence shock you if you piss on it?

How do they measure fences? Volts, amps, joules? What sort of typical voltages do they run? It felt like anywhere from about 100 VAC for the garden variety fences up to maybe 150-200 VAC for the really hot fences. But if you're talking a 2" spark, that's gotta be up in the kilo-volt range, so I guess the current is in the micro-amps.
Bill | Email | Homepage | 09.20.05 - 8:59 am | #


They are capacitor discharge about once per second. They go 'thunk' every time the fence is charged in a short pulse.
The output is measured in joules.
JACIII | Email | Homepage | 09.20.05 - 5:56 pm | #

9000 volts at 1.4 joules, Bill.
JACIII | Email | Homepage | 09.20.05 - 6:33 pm | #

1.4 joules is 1.4 watt-seconds, or enough energy to lift an apple about 4 feet. But since at 9Kv it's easily enough to overcome your bodies resistance, it's gonna feel like it could lift YOU up about four feet. Fortunately, the amperage is almost too small to measure, so it's not gonna kill you unless you happen to have a heart attack from the jolt.

9000 volts, that WILL get your attention!
Bill | Email | Homepage | 09.20.05 - 7:52 pm | #

Of Beer and Dog Turds

From Vox's:

I like some dark and amber beers, but not in the yard, and not when the juice from the dog turd I'm picking up resembles the beer.
-Bane

This got me to thinkin'; some folks do actually go around picking up dog turds. Really. No shit! That's a singularly disturbing concept. Some humans, top of the food chain, serve as poopy police for canines.

Pretty silly when you look at it objectively. The entire world functions to provide food for the beasts and plants that are on it and reuse the wastes they produce to nourish those things which, again, provide food. And here some folks are runnin' around poop in hand interruptin' this cycle of life we all depend upon. Cityfolk.

Fer cryin' out loud....