What is a Zombie?

[hillfarm]

I read a great book about this recently. It was based on the all to possible electric magnetic pulse. Where a nuclear bomb is released above America and the pulse wipes out all electrical services, phones etc. Without electric, no water. Cars are computer operated and would no longer viable. Our military is not equipped to handle such a disaster. Really an eye opener.

I will have to go find it and post the title. Great read, scared the bejeebus out of me.

But part of the book was a scenario where gangs of people grouped together and would pillage communities where people were trying to survive.

Think about this- Notice how few mentally ill are roamin our streets today? Because of meds, they are kept under control. Even if one had 3 months of meds, he eventually will run out. Then its all natural. Could lead to a whole world of trouble. Diabetics will be dying, no insulin, no refridgeration. It really is terrifying. It will be survival of the fittest.

 

[Icu4dzs]

I just sold 5 laying hens to some of those people who "moved to the country",....bless their hearts. They came to pick up the chickens in a VW Bug,..... I am sorry,...that is so funny,...bless their hearts! I wonder how that bug goes in snow????,.... I wish them the best.

They are actually pretty squirrelly... coming from the cat who used to run an old one... but not as bad as a Fiero.

Up-the-Creek wrote:
I just sold 5 laying hens to some of those people who "moved to the country",....bless their hearts. They came to pick up the chickens in a VW Bug,..... I am sorry,...that is so funny,...bless their hearts! I wonder how that bug goes in snow????,.... I wish them the best.

Being an old (yes, old) VW bug driver, I can tell you that I was NEVER stuck in the snow. The engine is in the back over the drive wheels. She went where no one else would go on most of the snow days I endured.

I'm still a VW driver, but I get about 50 MPG in my diesel jetta. Little known fact because the american auto makers won't even come close to that standard and don't want you to know it either.
The Ford motor company sold a Fiesta in Europe last year with a diesel engine that got 65 mpg. but won't sell it in this country...WHY?
Sorry....I got off topic...

 

[DuppyDo]

Good for Fords Fiesta's Euro diesel car...who wants to suck diesel exhaust fumes..they suck...When in Germany in 2004, everyone was driving little diesel cars.Its was gross to breath walking down the street.
They know how to make economical gas cars, they were making the Geo Metros over 20yrs agos in this country getting over 50 mile a gal. Where did they disappear to..?
Ask some big oil executive, where it disapeared to..sorry to get off topic..

 

[Boyd]

I read a great book about this recently. It was based on the all to possible electric magnetic pulse. Where a nuclear bomb is released above America and the pulse wipes out all electrical services, phones etc. Without electric, no water. Cars are computer operated and would no longer viable. Our military is not equipped to handle such a disaster. Really an eye opener.

I will have to go find it and post the title. Great read, scared the bejeebus out of me.

But part of the book was a scenario where gangs of people grouped together and would pillage communities where people were trying to survive.

Think about this- Notice how few mentally ill are roamin our streets today? Because of meds, they are kept under control. Even if one had 3 months of meds, he eventually will run out. Then its all natural. Could lead to a whole world of trouble. Diabetics will be dying, no insulin, no refridgeration. It really is terrifying. It will be survival of the fittest.

one second after

 

[GOOGLE NIKOLA TESLA]

my diabetic friend said he would try and eat me if there was a collapse lol..... it will be tough for people who are maintained by the meds. im guessing that they might have to eat the pancreas of pigs or something, but then again insulin is broken down by the GI tract, so it might not even be possible:/ . maybe a cut and rub of a pancrease to the wound to help get insulin in, but then risk infection.....

thanks boyd for the great zombie post, its funny reading posts and feeling my own words said, before i even said them lol.


never even thought about the people with psych meds wearing off!! thats wicked wicked bad!!! the person who said that made a serious point!!
st johns worth seems to be the only real psychotrophic that these people could get without the pharmaceuticals around.

now the cdc article brings up the subject again lol....
(why does the gov all of a sudden want people to prepare??hmmm)

anyone hear about the fault line that runs through the southern states, thats a scary situation if it moved, the first time it moved like 100 yrs ago, the missisippi river ran in the opposite direction from the massive quake, but no one was there, now the whole fault line is populated!!

 

[GOOGLE NIKOLA TESLA]

...well you better get out of the cities and the suburbs.A packed pantry will do you no good. That is the wrong place to be.

I don't know...I have found that the suburbs where I live and in the nearby area where I grew up promote a pretty strong sense of community. We're neighbors; we share property lines and interests; our kids have grown up and been educated together; we socialize together; we share food from our gardens and spend some holidays together; we rejoice in each others' successes and mourn each others' sorrows. We literally live together, and many of us have for more than a decade. I don't fear my neighbors if a crisis comes. I would easily go to them for help, and they would just as easily come to me. And if an outsider were to threaten our homes and families, I have no doubt that we would protect each other. I'm guessing that many other suburbs and urban areas are the same way, though I can only speak from my own experience of course.

I came across an article a while back that discussed urban versus rural in a crisis situation. Not a biblical apocalypse (in which case anything goes), but just really hard times. Here are some excerpts (which I have edited); the first part is from the author's time spent living in a rural area:

....I started to wonder whether, if a disaster came, I was really in the right place. We had the best garden for miles around, and everyone knew it. If law broke down, wasn't there more than a chance that my next door neighbor, a gun-selling meth dealer and felon, might just shoot me for all that food? How about the anti-environmentalists past him, who shot Stellar's jays for fun and clearcut their land when they suspected spotted owls lived there? Or the two feuding families beyond them: One had fired a pistol during an argument, and neither would give way when their cars met on the road. I began to sense the outlines of a pattern that replicated one in society at large. We have the technical means to feed, clothe, and house all humanity. But legions starve because we have not learned to tolerate and support one another. People's real problems are not technical, they are social and political.

***
Over the last two decades, millions of people have moved out of cities. Many of them are people of modest means, driven out by the high costs of urban life. Unfortunately, they have brought their city ways with them. Our neighbors in the country all clearcut their land and planted acres of grass. Many built enormous houses, since low interest rates made more square footage affordable.... Unlike earlier self-reliant country folk, these are simply city people with really big yards. And there are millions of them.

Sociologists Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford have each noted that during the Depression and other hard times, urban residents have generally fared better than ruralites. The causes mainly boil down to market forces and simple physics. Since most of the population lives in or near cities, when goods are scarce the greater demand, density, and economic power in the cities directs resources to them. Shipping hubs are mostly in cities, so trucks are emptied before they get out of town.

In the Depression, farmers initially had the advantage of being able to feed themselves. But they soon ran out of other supplies: coal to run forges to fix machinery, fertilizer, medicine, clothing, and almost every other non-food item. Without those, they couldn't grow food. Farmers who could still do business with cities survived. Those too remote or obstinate blew away with the Kansas dust.
***
The main lack of cities compared to farms is food-growing, but farms lack nearly everything elseand most of that comes from cities. Setting aside for the moment the all-important issue of social and political cohesion, for cities to survive a disaster, the critical necessity is for them to learn to grow food. For country people to survive, inhabitants will need to provide nearly every single other essential good for themselves. And since many country people are simply transplanted urbanites lacking gardening or other land skills, but having the isolation that makes social cohesion unnecessary to learn (for now), their survival is even more doubtful. If catastrophe comes, the cities may be unpleasant, but I fear the countryside may be far worse off.

Thoughts?

maybe rural where there is nothing, but semi rural like where i live, we are way better off, the place we lived before was so small, the land so small, the neighboors crooked, yes our new neighboors are terrible, but we got land to have food, and we are from the city, but we really have started really getting a food system and sustainable practices going. the major point that these articles dont say is the bargaining part(in the city, if u dont have a job or money how u gonna get the food), if a depression went 20 yrs with the shut down of the fuel infrastructure, the rural areas would be the place to be, able to grow and have bargaining chips, gold is not gonna save you, food will.

 

[Neko-chan]

That "fault line" in the Mississippi area technically isn't really a fault line. It's more of a wrinkle zone, caused by the North American Plate being warped by it's neighboring plates. Probably less dangerous than living on an actual fault zone (like the San Andreas, or Japan).

I can't think of any potential zombies around us, unless I really want to think unpleasant thoughts of the nice elderly people, or the (albeit thick) neighbors. The neighbors child has been known to chase their cats into our backyard, and supposedly some tools have gone "missing", so there is suspected sticky fingers around. However, the elderly people I'm pretty sure are sensible enough to just start growing their own food if it got that bad.

 

[noobiechickenlady]

That "fault line" in the Mississippi area technically isn't really a fault line. It's more of a wrinkle zone, caused by the North American Plate being warped by it's neighboring plates. Probably less dangerous than living on an actual fault zone (like the San Andreas, or Japan).

That doesn't really cover the threat appropriately. The new madrid is nothing to sneer at, sorry. 4 of the largest north american quakes recorded are from the New Madrid. The last set of quakes rang church bells in Virginia and shook windows as far as Washington D.C. It was felt that far away, Boston, New York as well. And the thing is, this region doesn't move or shift along the fault, unlike the San Andreas. The ground just shakes. I think that is why it doesn't get as much coverage as other faults, where you can actually see the ground split & shift in 2 directions.
And like GNT said, the area is way more populated now, with more & taller buildings. The bad part about that is that only the area right around the center (New Madrid, MO) has adopted earthquake building codes. Now when you talk about the earth shaking thousands of miles away, building coming down thousands of miles away, why wouldn't you at least be concerned if you lived near it?
http://www.hsv.com/genlintr/newmadrd/accnt1.htm
http://www.ceri.memphis.edu/compendium/enigma.pdf

What really sets it apart in my mind is that it seems to have very brief spurts of furious activity, but goes quiet for long periods of time.
Well, it hasn't been quiet for a while now. There have been over 4000 quakes in the region since 1974. None terribly large, yes, but still, there they are.
Maybe the stress is being relieved by the relatively small quakes over the past few decades, but still, not something you'd want to dismiss.

And you have to take into account that yes, in 1812 the MS river did contraflow and flooding was terrible. As we've seen from the recent flooding, the area along the MS river is not exactly safe. I've never been so glad to live in the hills in my life.
Sorry, that got long winded, but I've studied a bit about the new madrid and IMO, waaaaay too many people brush it off.

 

[Neko-chan]

*shrugs*

I wasn't brushing it off, I was merely stating that it's not a fault zone. Like I said, it's a wrinkle zone. And like any other place wheres there's tension in the crust yeah, sh!t is gonna fall down and generally become screwed up.

4,000 earthquakes over that time span isn't much, really, even if they're small. In the time between 1974-2003 California had 4,895. Hell, Alaska had 12,053 in that time. That in itself was earthquakes 3.5 and greater, which are more easily felt (in comparison, Mississippi had 2). The numbers are even higher now, but I'd still be more cautious of other areas more prone. Still, it can't help living near the river, especially if there's regular floods there already.

 

[KevsFarm]

Well . some wise judges decided yesterday or today that the state of Calif. must release over 30,000 potential zombies from over crowded prisons.Know why...? So those remaining will have access to better health care..! Now don't tha bet all...!?
Criminals released for no other reason than over crowding are good zombie material, right...? Now would not be a good time for TSTHTF in Calif..!!! Of course their isn't much stopping them from roaming across the state line to other happy hunting grounds..!