Reading the signs of the times

As a longtime New Yorker now living elsewhere, I have to say that I don't think that kind of talk is either humorous or irrational. It may seem so, since you've been away from the city for so long, but my post-9/11 sense that I was taking my life into my hands every time I boarded the subway continued until I left last year, and still comes into play when I'm back. Is it prudent? Insofar as there's little you can do to protect yourself from the threat of urban terrorism, perhaps not. But it's perhaps realistic. My fellow New Yorkers may disagree with me, however.

A tale of two cities. Two weeks after 9/11 we were with about a hundred of our most intimate friends in a cocktail lounge near O'Hare Field in Chicago and I was talking to the off-duty cop who worked part time as the bouncer explaining to him that al Queda was not a very effective terrorist organization.

He asked me why I thought that and I said that if it were, the lounge would be empty. But there we all were, and no one was particularly worried about an airplane falling on us.

I think the general rule is the chances for another 9/11 type incident varies directly with the organization and money required. There is a certain threshold which bin Laden and his martyrs reached, which has protected us against other, less organized and less endowed wannabes. I think it fair to say that organizing to fly four planes into four targets is substantially cheaper and probably requires less organization than acquiring a nuke and getting it into downtown Manhattan.

Equally obvious, governments and certain large organizations have both the necessary money and the organizational ability, both of which are being constantly monitored by our government (or at least that part of our government that hasn't been too busy monitoring us.) Those governments and certain large organizations who would harm us undoubtably know this and realize that nuking Manhattan, or Washingtion, or even Manhattan, KS, would be effective suicide for them. Call it a 21st Century MAD.

So the question remains: What is the number of wealthy people willing to spend what bin Laden spent and what are their organizational skills? I'm guessing that there aren't many of them.

So I'm going with this as a reason why there hasn't been another 9/11 instead of the notion that all the terrorists in the world were simply cowed by Dick Cheney.

The plane that crashed into the Pentagon passed over my head seconds before it hit the building (I was on the way to the Pentagon to get the subway). I travel a lot of work, and my only concession to that experience is that I always keep my cell phone in my pocket because I can still hear the phone calls of people who were about to crash at the Pentagon and in Pennyslvania.

But I decided fairly quickly that I couldn't live with too much paranoia. I didn't want to live in DC if it meant armed guards directing traffic and men with machine guns in the subway. The security checks in buildings I can live with, but not armed guards directing traffic and in the subway.

I also wasn't prepared to live in fear of my Muslim neighbors. That's just too big a cost and giving in to the paranoia.

But I still keep my cell phone near me on the plane. Just in case.

I'm unaware of any reason why discussion of how to deal with a disaster is an "insane" topic. I've considered it a lot in the last few years, and over the next few, I'm going to be prepared for one. Some fuel, some cash, heat that doesn't depend on utilities, and some way of storing water for a while.

No, I'm no "survivalist", but two years ago, our area was hit with a century class windstorm that took out the power in some places for over a week. I was fortunate. My home was dark for less than 5 hours. My employee wasn't so lucky. His house had lights, but no water or heat for 3 days in mid winter, because he had my generator. We had to drive an hour to get gasoline for it, though. And not a single ATM worked.

If I lived in a big city, that would be my first thought - how to escape what would surely become a very, very bad situation. It's not insanity, it's the epitome of saneness. Too bad they consider prudence to now be insanity again...

How can we be prudent, being neither head-for-the-hills loonies, nor complacent optimists in denial about the true danger we'd be in for staying?

The hills are pretty nice, especially compared to Houston from whence I fled to these hills where I now live.

There are more reasons to avoid living in big cities besides foreign terrorism - imagine living in an inner city neighborhood when the government can no longer afford to provide basic services.

one smart-ass answer to this questionable focus on terrorism:
annual deaths in the USA from auto accidents since 9/11 have been far far far greater than deaths by terrorism.
so, how to think about this?
how about:
drive less,
drive slower,
drive more carefully.

otherwise, there is no predicting the future,
but, how to avoid "irrationally panicking"?
just don't.
consider all your life situations as rationally as possible.
ya think?
the most rational "general formula" I see is:
many advanced societies have collapsed,
so in general, as some of the above posts have referenced,
it might be prudent to prepare for an economic collapse this Winter,
since the "signs of the times" suggest this is possible,
far more so than terrorist attacks.

how to prepare?
who knows?
can't predict the future.
but the "general formula" usually includes eliminating the frivolous,
and preparing stocks and/or sources of clean water, dried food, first aid and medicine etc.

also, it might help greatly to live where there is no need for Winter heating.
for most of us in the good ole USA, lots of luck there.

as always, hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

It isn't paranoid to back up your computer files, or teach your family several exits routes out of the house, or to keep an emergency stash of food, water, medicines and cash.

Here, we prepare for earthquakes extended power outages and floods. Elsewhere there are hurricanes, tornadoes and forest fires.

Preparations for those work equally well for political or social upheavals, which are looking to be more and more likely. It's dumb not to be prepared. Sharon Astyk provides lzessons.

Re: How would you prepare for the utilities being off for several days (electricity, water, gas)?

In Florida that was a realistic possibility due to hurricanes. We lived without power for a week after Hurricane Jeannie brought down a neighbor's tree on the powerlines on our block (we had city water so that was not an issue fortunately). Friends in S Florida had no lights or water for even longer after Wilma. And one of my requirements for living quarters in Florida was that it must not be in an evacuation (=flood potential) zone.
Anyone with any sense in Florida has extra food, stored water, and cash hidden in their house. The really well-prepared have generators too.

Re: Preparations for those work equally well for political or social upheavals, which are looking to be more and more likely.

Why do you think that (I assume we are talking the USA)? If you look at our history there's actually an inverse relationship between the economy and the amount of civil strife we experience. The 30s were fairly placid and crime rates went down. By contrast the prosperous 60s were our most violent decade since the Civil War.

I think you can come up with a formula for rationally preparing for possible future crises.

My math skills are rusty, but the formula would weigh the probability of a given crisis occurring within a specified time period, and the potential personal cost of such a crisis, versus the cost and effectiveness of a proposed preparation.

So: The odds that a given household will experience a sustained disruption in utilities during a given year is low but not vanishingly so. The "cost" of such a disruption will vary by household but could be high. The cost of preparing for such a disruption with food stores, a generator, etc, is low, and the effectiveness high. Thus preparing for a utility disruption is prudent and rational.

On the other hand, moving to North Dakota from New York City to escape future starvation brought on by Peak Oil or Global Climate Change does not pass the rationality test. If you like human culture, have a good job, and enjoy NYC the costs of such a move are enormous, and you start paying them immediately. The probability of a starvation crisis in the short-term is vanishingly low. The effectiveness of moving to North Dakota is extremely doubtful: any catastrophe severe enough to devastate New York will have global consequences, and it is unclear how much you will improve your life expectancy by moving to a rural locale.

Of course: The whole calculation changes if you are depressed living in NYC, despise your fellow citizens for not sharing your values, don't have a good job or one you enjoy, and feel disenfranchised. In such cases the cost of moving to North Dakota are small or nonexistent. For psychological reasons a person moving from NYC to ND may need to attribute the move to a desire to avert a looming disaster. But what really motivates the move is the low value the person assigns to living in NYC.

I was in Canada, camping on Lake Superior, when 9-11 happened. Indeed, I didn't find out about it until the next day. Because of where I was I think I missed out on a great deal of irrational hysteria that plagued the US, and was fanned by our media and perhaps by our politicians. The Canadians were certainly not unaffacted by the event: they lost people that day too, and Canadian airspace was closed for a week. But the reaction there was one of shock and horror (of course) followed not by paranoia but by a terrible sadness. As I drove across Ontario, to Sudbury and then down to Toronto, there were signs reading God Bless America in the samll towns, and here and there American flags were flying. In a strangely quiet Toronto the American consulate was under siege by mountains of flowers. It never occured to me in Canada, and I never heard anyone suggest, that more attacks might be imminent. It seemed almost staringly obvious that if Al Qaida had anything else up their sleeve they would have shot that bolt on 9-11 too. Perhaps if the US had taken the time to mourn and grieve first, our reaction would have been more rational.
One other thing too: when I came back to the US I first thought George Bush's poll numbers would be in the dumper, given his panicky flying hither and thither that day, rather than taking bold public command of the situation as one would have expected. Was his rout not reported here? I still have trouble believing that he got away with such rank cowardice. (Yes, someone will come back at me for that, but I'm calling it like I see it.)