On This Day Pre-Y2K
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January 31, 1999 Permalink
It’s a tough thing to take at the beginning, but you have very little time to sit and contemplate your navel. There’s very little time left to prepare. I am expecting food shortages and shortages of other goods relevant to survival to begin quickly as word and panic start to spread like wild fire. And, I am seeing it in our community now. Went to WalMart today and still no wicks for oil lamps, 2 bottles of oil, no Diamond wooden matches, 10 cans of camp stove fuel, low supply of batteries. Then I went down the canned food isle and noted that SPAM, Dinty Moore Beef Stew, chili were low in stock. I asked the stock person if they’ve been experiencing more people buying this type of stuff and he said everytime there’s a church Y2K meeting, they get bombarded with people coming in emptying the shelves and it takes a couple weeks to get new stock in. It’s time for all newbies to act and act now.
—bardou, Time Bomb 2000 Forum (LUSENET), 01/31/99
Its hard to contemplate something in which you have no experience and cannot identify. Its like asking a kid to invision a world without TV or computer games. He just can’t do it. And if he can, he is thinking about it in short term, “until things get back to normal”. If we as a nation, people, go down the tube, the cities will have to die. There is no way they can be supported or sustained. The only possible way of surviving would be in the small community, some of which are in existence and some of which are yet to be formed. A community starts because of like interests. Like interests of existing small self sufficient communities will be that of protecting and enhancing what they already have. The new communities will form from the survivors banding together to provide protection, shelter, food, etc. Hoovervilles! They in turn will have to depend upon their collective skills and the leadership abilities of those that rise to the top. They will also be dependent upon the regional towns and will have to contribute in order to draw sustanance from them. Be it barter, labor, etc. There will be a lot who die from lack of shelter, food and water. But there will be a lot that die from a bullet while trying to raid someone’s hen house. My main thought here is that things will never be normal again in the present context. My biggest regret is that I won’t live long enuff to see it all come out the other side. It will take years, but what a challenge. But I know from experience that the kid that spends his day on the end of a hoe isn’t out car jacking!! Don;t be too hard on those who cannot get beyond the preparation and stocking of food, etc. They have staqes to go through to get “over the wall” and one has to have the immediate needs of food, water and shelter taken care of before one can think beyond that.
—Taz Richardson, Time Bomb 2000 Forum (LUSENET), 01/31/99
