. . Subject: If Chileans had kept stores of food & water in their homes ... . . . . . If Chileans had kept stores of food & water in their homes, some of those stores would have been destroyed in the Earth-quake, but much would have survived. On the TV someone from Chile said: the catastrophe has hit, but now the disaster starts ... people will go hungry ... there is no work ... Basic survival, costing 0,-. If you use about 20 kg potatoes per half year and they remain good for a half year, if you constantly eat the oldest potatoes you have and fill your buffer up to 20 kg again, then at any time you will have 20 kg of potatoes but it will cost you nothing (some space). You can do this much better with dried foods like rice or flour, which lasts a year, two years ... you can buffer almost as much as you want. You can buffer water also (in bottles on a rotating caroussel). http://www.socialism.nl/~joshb/basic-survival.html If 50% of the people buffered 50% of their food needs for the next 1 months, 100% of the people could be fed for about 1 week. They could eat and work too. If those 50% do not share any food with others, they could feed themselves for 1.5 months (6 weeks). They could work in that time. The stores that exist in shops or elsewhere would only need to reach the remaining 50%, meaning these supplies would last twice as long. If people worked together to do emergency repairs and set up emergency infrastructure, the benefit of the food can help a lot (otherwise it would be mere 'delay of execution'.) Big Earth-quake is but one disaster that can strike a nation, others include besides man-made disasters: implementing a police-state by the authorities causing an immediate need for mass revolution and Government overthrow, and war (which can include nuclear attacks, causing chaos and a potential need to stay under ground for weeks - what will you eat/drink then ? If walking 10 minutes outside would get you killed ?). Food is power, food is a weapon. Lack of food causes desperation and violence. It is a big mistake to trust Government with emergency response, for starters after a disaster the Government themselves are cut down. I said these things years ago, and they where alway true and everyone with a sane mind would know this is true. But the Chileans didn't listen either, or think of it themselves. Imagine the amounts of food laying around the Chilean streets all over the country if they all had done what I said was a good idea. Only a part of the country was hit, so that means there is tons of excess food in the other parts of the country, in addition to what survived the natural disaster. The people would be swimming in food, they would have so much food they didn't know what to do with it. Say an average food buffer totals 25 kg per person. At 10.000.000 persons you get 250.000 tons of food. A quarter of a million tons high quality food, also including sauces and what not, oil, all kinds. In addition to that nearby countries would have millions of tons of food that they could spare without any trouble. The buffers can be emptied without causing any damage to anyone whatsoever, except that their security is temperorily gone (meaning next years food demand will go up, to rebuild the buffers, but only to rebuild buffers and not the panic you get when people need food immediately or they'll die.) People all over history bussied themselves with making stores of food, to survive the winter. By storing food humanity survived. You can even look in the Torah (books of the jews): there where 7 good years, but they stored grain in Egypt, then they where able to survive the 7 lean years. Can your nation survive 7 lean years, zero crops ? What makes you think you'll get some of the emergency food someone might have ? If you don't prepare, maybe we'll end up with a world full of only criminals, because they do think about their own security, and they do have the ruthlessness to steal, and for some reason they do combine themselves quickly into moderately effective organizations. -- ,,,,,,, ,,, http://www.socialism.nl ___/_/////////_//////,. \\\\ \\\\\\\\\ \\\` The Good Feather ASCII Ribbon campaign for ```````` ` decent Usenet discourse & etiquette.