Calamities and Disasters

... scene from "Grapes of Wrath." The Jode family. Gotta love 'em.

by murph

Ras is a hard act to follow. After that incredible first hand account of the tornadoes in Alabama, I’m not all that sure what should follow.

All of the recent disasters will have some first person accounts of what they experienced. One thing that bothers me is the strictly human-interest side that permeates the mass media. You know, the inane questions like; What’s it feel like with your home being leveled behind you? Well duh Mr. TV interviewer, it isn’t something that feels good for sure”. Or; “Think you will be able to salvage anything from your house being torn to pieces? Well Duh Mr. TV interviewer, I sure as hell don’t know, you see anything left I should take to the school gymnasium we’re staying in? Hell, our place was being foreclosed on anyway, guess it’ll save bulldozing it down now won’t it. By the way, what is your salary for coming out and asking me these stupid question?”

My opinion of course, but it sure seems silly to be living in an area that has tornadoes every year and having an above ground stick built house. Same idea for moving to a flood plain area. For cripes sake, at least put the house up on stilts or have pontoon footings or something. But I guess it’s a game of statistics. What is your chance of getting flooded out or hit by a 200 mph wind in a tornado? Is there ever a sufficient amount of insurance for these chances? At least that is affordable?

Where we live, we are surrounded by over 40 cinder cones. The second largest caldera (Newberry caldera) in the country (next to Yellowstone) is just 20 miles away. We joke that we have our place volcano insured. At least it’s quite inexpensive. Of course if one of them really gets active, it wouldn’t make much difference because we live so close to them. The 35+ feet of volcanic ash we live on top of didn’t get there by someone hauling it in and dumping it over the whole area.

When we look closely, just where in the country could you choose to live where natural disasters are near zero probability? Humans have to live with that possibility no matter where they live. Flood plains along major rivers would be very high risk. Mudslides in mountainous areas are also high risk. So are major forest fires in forested areas. That real nifty mountain retreat or second home in a national forest has a lot of built in risk to it. Just ask the folks in S. California. One really intense drought year and you better have your bug out bag by the door.

Then we have the man made disasters like in Japan. Miss-designed and short of sufficient emergency preparedness just might be the death of the Japanese society. We’ve got a bunch of the same age and same designed reactors here in the US. There are 25 of them and 5 sit on or by the New Madrid fault line. The reactors in CA are a newer design but some of them have very inadequate tsunami barricades and quite a few sit on or near fault lines. And, of course, we still haven’t figured out what to do with spent radioactive fuel rods. Obviously the Japanese plants didn’t either, posing a real danger to the rest of the world.

And speaking of Japan and the radioactive particulates falling out of the sky, I’ve been looking at some of the data and forecasts. Please notice that the MSN hasn’t mentioned it for a couple of weeks now. At least at this time, having a lethal dose of radiation from that disaster appears to be pretty long odds. But, continued exposure to low dose (non lethal in the short term) radiation for long periods of time has even worse effects on living things, at least according to what I have dug up. We have got to face up to the fact that nuclear reactors are dangerous pieces of technology. Just how much of the future are we willing to expose to this danger to keep the lights on? At this time nuclear reactors supply only about 20% of our electrical production. Dams, coal fired plants and natural gas plants supply most of the rest. Wind farms and panels supply only about 2%. And even those present hazards, just not as immediate and extreme. The coal fired plants are very hazardous too, but are not quite as lethal as the nuclear stuff. We sure haven’t solved the emission problems from them and probably never will. Meanwhile the world is playing economic games with the carbon credit scam.

The May 4 posting by the Archdruid is in my opinion one of his best. In this post he points out that the energy and resource depletion forces some choices on us. One choice involves, on a personal level, the voluntary reduction of energy and resources so that the personal impact won’t be so severe. Things like learning to produce your own food to a large extent, learning new skills that will provided real and needed inputs to the folks around you and by various means, reducing your energy consumption, so that you can survive at a reduced level of convenience and consumption. While that kind of choice will not reduce significantly the overall consumption by society, it does give one a leg up on survival as the empire continues to collapse. One argument against that position that I have seen more than once over the last several years is that; since personal reduction won’t change anything for the broader society, might as well enjoy it while you can, after all, everyone else is gorging themselves and you might as well do so too. That is; why put up with inconvenience and hardship now when nothing will change the outcome. Besides, some magical technology just might come on line and it won’t be necessary after all.

One of the things that the Archdruid leaves out in this post is an ethical/moral consideration. How can you justify, morally or ethically, the excessive and unnecessary use of resources and energy when so many people have very little of it? Or, while it won’t change the overall situation, can you justify contributing to it? Somehow, the argument that; “because everyone else is doing it I can do so also with no moral consequence”, seems a bit wanting in my view.

There is a huge amount of essays, books, and interviews posted on the web concerning what is going to happen, what the consequences are going to be, and what this will all end up looking like. It’s all speculation of course; the more thoughtful ones at least try and connect the endless dots out there that indicate their favorite scenario. The problem that I see is that there is no political will or social movement of consequence that will lessen the effects of any kind of collapse or disaster scene. Where we are living, there is a mixed bag going on. A good local friend recently told me that it appears that folks living around here are going to be cut off (by state approved means) from heating their homes with wood. Now of course if the situation deteriorates far enough, the state will not be able to enforce this. But in the meantime, it will be one more burden on the populace that will have pretty heavy impacts. They are also now considering legislation that forces those that insist on heating with wood heaters that they buy the hideously expensive approved heaters and then you must have it installed by a licensed and approved installer at another huge cost. From my own experience a number of years ago, just the cost for the approved and least expensive installation parts ran around $1000 and the cheapest wood stove that is approved runs around $2500-$3000. I had talked to an installer about putting a unit in my garage and he wanted in the neighborhood of another $1000 to do it. Maintenance of these approved wood stoves is high also. While they are much more efficient and give off a lot less CO2 etc. the flue will not get hot enough to keep it clear of creosote. So that means cleaning the chimney several times during the winter, or hiring someone to do that. It also turns out that pellet stoves are not all they were promoted for; pellets are expensive and vary in quality and availability.

The last entry for this post is indeed a calamity. We were told by an acquaintance just lately that there is an herbicide that is being used for growing grass hay, principally for horses, that has a base of a chemical called pyralids and is sold under a bunch of brand names, and was developed by Dow chemical co. (Damn, I don’t get to swear at Monsanto over this one.) This herbicide passes through the animals into the manure. If used as a compost or soil amendment, it poisons the ground and will kill off a vegetable garden and it lasts for years. And low and behold, the April-May issue of Mother Earth News has an article on the stuff. This chemical also kills off legumes so you probably won’t find it in Alfalfa hay. It’s not a rumor, it is true. Our local feed store related that there was a salt block that had pyralids in it that was used as a salt lick for beef cattle because it kept away flies and other parasites off the animals. It also became a part of the muscle tissue. Of course the questions comes up about how long a meat animal that eats this chemical has to be in quarantine until the chemical leaves the body, if ever. The FDA finally banned them. Talk about a supper efficient mosquito repellent for humans? One of the local feed stores called his distributor for fertilizers and herbicides while I was there. The guy he talked to said that as described, this was an impossibility, no such chemical exists. So, all you gardeners out there be very careful where you get your compost and manure. If you can’t get verification of the source, don’t use it.

I tell ya folks; these companies are trying to poison us all. And here I was naïve enough to think there were laws against doing things like that. Getting rid of many of the regulatory parts of government accelerated with the Ronnie Ray-gun years and really accelerated during the last Bush administration and even Obama is continuing it. Government at your service don’t ya know.