powernoodle
Flashlight Enthusiast
Anyone other than me bought some N95 or similar masks?
cheers
cheers
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raggie33 said:i just hope the end is quick id hate slow death.this is supped to be the chicken captal of the usa where i live
I thought that was Clinton's homestate of Arkansas?raggie33 said:...this is supped to be the chicken captal of the usa where i live
Oh great, then we can scarf their flashlights (after they've been decontaminated of course!)..bad joke - I know! Sorry!Mike Painter said:...If you're over 50 or so, cheer up (says this 65 year old). It tends to kill the young who have not been sick a lot.
Not taking issue with preparing for this since it's a good idea, and the preparations cover you for other emergencies (natural disasters, terrorist attacks, coups d'etat, etc.). However, in general when a virus mutates to a more readily transmissible form it loses a lot of it's lethality. Many reasons for this, but generally any contagious virus which quickly kills its host will be confined to a small area since the hosts will die before spreading it very far (and authorities will quickly isolate the area). Therefore, that particular strain will often cease to exist right in the village where it first surfaced, provided all bodies are disposed of properly. This isn't saying that a mutated form of H5N1 won't be dangerous, either, if it acquires the ability to infect people through the air. Best estimates I've heard are 2 to 3 million deaths in the US, something like 150 million world wide. Also, remember that some people will be affected more than others. The 1918 flu killed many people, including my paternal grandmother's mother and several of her siblings. However, many people also got sick and recovered, and this without the advantages of modern medicine which we have today. By the same token, the disease also killed others with frightening rapidity. There is one account of a women who boarded a subway train feeling fine, and died before she reached her stop. It'll likely be the same with H5N1. Some, probably most, of those infected will be sick for a long time but eventually recover. Others will die after being sick for several days. An unlucky few may die hours or even minutes after being infected.powernoodle said:What happens if that one in two chance happens and it does mutate to a form which humans can spread? It ends up in North America, for one thing, because you can't stop it. People stop going to work, because they don't want to die. And when people stop working, food doesn't get to your grocery store and chlorine doesn't get to your municipal water treatment facility. And thats just the good part. If you think I'm overly paranoid, consider what you will do if the flu is all over your city or town and its killing more than half of everyone it touches. You won't leave home either, unless you are starving.
If this ever hits the fan government response at all levels will be something you won't want to get in the way of. I saw what happened after Katrina first hand and the Avian flu has the potential to make Katrina look like a paper cut.Sub_Umbra said:I can't help but read the BOB (Bug Out Bag) threads that appear here from time to time. While I'll admit that there are many situations where the evac option is the best course, I'm also often amazed and mystified at some of the types of events people talk about trying to run from.
I know that the flight response is very ingrained in all of us but we need to look in a more realistic way at the situations where evacuating would probably put our loved ones in more danger than if we had just made preparations ahead of time so that we would have the option of staying put. History shows us that cities or regions that are perceived to be a contagious threat to their neighbors are often forcefully contained by roadblocks. The same would be true for trains and airplanes trying to leave the area. The motivation to enact these restrictions will come from all levels -- possibly the President or Governor of a neighboring state, but it won't stop there -- local Sheriffs will get into the act whether they have orders or not. Ordinary citizens will want to play, too. (Frankenstein's scenes of villagers with torches and pitch forks come to mind.)
Their basic urge to confine a threat is every bit as powerful as your's is to escape it, but there are many more of them and they are playing on their home turf.
I ran across a really interesting article this afternoon that addresses this and other issues. It's a little long in the tooth but human behaviour doesn't change very quickly and I thought that it may be of interest to others here.