Is your family doing anything to prepare for an Avian Flu Pandemic?

USA population

July 1, 1943 136,739,353
July 1, 1999 272,690,813

So that is back 50 years if the population halved... and considering the US has a relatively slow population growth if we halved the worlds population the world would not fall back to its level of 50 years ago... maybe just 30 years ago.

As for infrastructure and services... sure we lose half the people who support the infrastructure and services... but we also lose half the users... and keep all the tech gains, roads, buildings etc.

So I don't think we would fall back 50 years, or 30 years, maybe 10.

I think there is some sort of link between the black plague and the Renaissance...

That's an interesting (and convincing) bit of number-crunching there, Brother Pape - you... you... scientist, you! :laugh4:

Seriously though, bug-out kits are a good idea wherever you live, and they're not hard to assemble (just annoying to maintain). In my neck of the woods, the most likely natural disasters are brushfires & earthquakes. The only trick is in guessing what you might need on day 2 through 10, because as the Tsunami and Katrina have taught: help may not arrive for a week or more, no matter where you live.

We have declared Mormons registered here... maybe they can shed some light on their 1-year supply of survival gear, replenished yearly (I think... I confess ignorance on the details)?

Not really the place where I live is pretty much a quiet and boring neighbor (well except for some parties at night :2thumbsup: ). In general Buenos Aires is not used to natural disasters so we don't really care, this could be bad, but that's how things are down here.

Floods never happen in your neighborhood? (note: link is a .pdf file)

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/...df/freeman.pdf

Buenos Aires has indeed been blessed of late. I caution against complacency, though.

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Originally Posted by Kanamori

You should sell this as the basis of one of those disaster books!:2thumbsup: Two guys vying for power the whole way through and at the end their on brink of apocalypse!

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Actually, I am a bit of writer. I am working on a manuscript for my first book.

The plot centers around a high school teacher who is falsely accused of molestation. It closely parallels the need for african-american males to reasset themselves in the lives of their families. The plot doesn't give this away; it's more of a social reference point.

Here's a couple blurbs:

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Originally Posted by unnamed manuscript random page

And so when the school administrator and an entourage of his staff entered the room in a fluster, the stillness and paleness of it all became intensely magnified for one last moment before being ruptured.
Administrator Johnson stood before the class, looking down on their young faces and soaking in the sheer magnitude of the responsibility he was now faced with. He stood silently at first, acutely aware of his own urge to remain silent, before reaching into the lining of his jacket, where he pulled out a faded burgundy handkerchief. He dabbed his forehead and then used the material to stroke back the remaining hair of his receding widow’s peak. He replaced the handkerchief, soaked with sweat, and looked to his staff waiting in a tight group near the door. Mr. Johnson wasn’t a heavy man, and the Tennessee weather was actually quite mild. He cleared his throat.

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Originally Posted by unnamed manuscript random page

It was October. The warm summer still lingered, but the air had changed. A wind, a change of color in the trees, something. It happened every year and Daniel Nally loved it. It was as if everything natural changed form just a bit. The sense of that first change before autumn, there really was something unique in it. And this was the first day that he sensed it in this year.
His step quickened, and he lifted his face to the breeze, soaking in the first day of the change in seasons. Daniel could already imagine the Tennessee winds whisking red and yellow leaves across the sidewalk and through downtown. He felt thankful to have such senses to bring the most remote natural changes to a level that he could experience. The sun was three hours high, and puffy white cotton clouds could be seen, seemingly hugging the very stratosphere, ready to swim off beyond the atmosphere itself. He reached the steps of Addie Historical High School.

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Originally Posted by unnamed manuscript random page

The heavy oak doors slammed in the background. Abramoff Billings, the rocking chair salesman, felt pangs of shame and embarrassment rush through his blood almost instantaneously. Just an observer, he slinked to an empty seat and away from the entryway as quickly and as quietly as possible. Amazingly, the disturbance barely registered in the courtroom audience. For them, it seemed almost divine accoutrement- uniform ambiance to the proceedings.
“Let the record show…”
Outside, the first signs of autumn had begun again. Late September, and the change had come early. A light wind rustled through aging leaves and the aura of a light rain hung in the air, more a feeling than a scent.

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WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK?

Erm, probably not the best thread and WAY off topic for that.

BTW, even I see a bunch of stuff that needs to be fixed. It is a first draft- free flow mode. I just type away and I miss things like duplication of adjectives, adverbs within a paragraph. I just fix grammar and spelling at this stage. I'll go back and fix alot of it later....

Man. The out-of-context selections really aren't done justice without the whole character development and style choices which create the necessary anticipation...

Boy. that bad? Jeeze. I'll let you guys know when I'm done and you can read it then. :no:

It was pretty good DA. Though I must admit seeing as Pamela Anderson's book became a bestseller I must know very little about what makes a book good. Wow and pretty random samples also.

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Administrator Johnson stood before the class, looking down on their young faces and soaking in the sheer magnitude of the responsibility he was now faced with. He stood silently at first, acutely aware of his own urge to remain silent, before reaching into the lining of his jacket, where he pulled out a faded burgundy handkerchief. He dabbed his forehead and then used the material to stroke back the remaining hair of his receding widow’s peak. He replaced the handkerchief, soaked with sweat, and looked to his staff waiting in a tight group near the door. Mr. Johnson wasn’t a heavy man, and the Tennessee weather was actually quite mild. He cleared his throat.

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You use "He" alot to start the sentences there, kinda gets irritating after a bit.

im afraid im no judge of literary merit (although i should be) but i will say that getting a book published for the first time is very hard and time consuming good luck with it :2thumbsup:

No emergency plan what so ever.
We did had to kill our four chickens because of the "isolation law"
Where the hell am I going to put four chickens?
Surely not in my bedroom.

So grandpa came over and chopped those poor defenceless chickens heads off.
Actually it was kind off fascinating.

Boy did those gal's turned in to a great soup!:2thumbsup:

If it spreads to a nearby location, we might kill off our cats. Not my decision though.

Btw, my great grandfather died during the previous bird flu pandemic. :hide:

And following on from Pape's figures, one has to consider who dies: the old, ill, young and poor are generally the first to go, which being very cruel has the smallest effect on the planet.

The Tsunami killed thousands, but as none of them were "important" in a helps-produce-GDP sort of way the world barely wobbled. Ditto the earthquake in pakistan. How are those guys doing? Did they survive the winter? I've seen nothing of them on the news.

It would have to be very bad very quickly to take that many years off the planet. The West has infrastructure to assist in many; after all I imagine many in the last bird flu were also killed by the secondary infections that took advantage of a weakened host.

Parts of the world with AIDS may get an unexpected boon as teh numbers who are affected decrease sharply, and may help us get a handle on that disease.

~:smoking:

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Originally Posted by rory_20_uk

And following on from Pape's figures, one has to consider who dies: the old, ill, young and poor are generally the first to go, which being very cruel has the smallest effect on the planet.

The Tsunami killed thousands, but as none of them were "important" in a helps-produce-GDP sort of way the world barely wobbled. Ditto the earthquake in pakistan. How are those guys doing? Did they survive the winter? I've seen nothing of them on the news.

It would have to be very bad very quickly to take that many years off the planet. The West has infrastructure to assist in many; after all I imagine many in the last bird flu were also killed by the secondary infections that took advantage of a weakened host.

Parts of the world with AIDS may get an unexpected boon as teh numbers who are affected decrease sharply, and may help us get a handle on that disease.

~:smoking:

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well aparently you build up resistance to viruses like bird flu through your life as you fight off similar but less harmfull bugs knocking around, so older people may have an advantage in one way if and its a damn big if, an epidemic comes

Not so. E.g. Flu "vaccines" only operate against the most common isotype that is prevalent that year; resistance is also not lifelong and is only present for a short duration of time.

Examples of this can be seen such as "fresher's Flu" where freshers at university gain flu like illnesses as they mingle from different areas of the country - and these are generally young and fit people. The elders can not mount an effective defence even if they have resistance which is merely the prior experience of the pathogen.

Also I would say that for a pandemic to take hold it must be that resistance is not present in the populace.

~:smoking:

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Originally Posted by rory_20_uk

Not so. E.g. Flu "vaccines" only operate against the most common isotype that is prevalent that year; resistance is also not lifelong and is only present for a short duration of time.

Examples of this can be seen such as "fresher's Flu" where freshers at university gain flu like illnesses as they mingle from different areas of the country - and these are generally young and fit people. The elders can not mount an effective defence even if they have resistance which is merely the prior experience of the pathogen.

Also I would say that for a pandemic to take hold it must be that resistance is not present in the populace.

~:smoking:

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Originally i thought this too, but the old spanich flu virus which could be very similar to any eventual pandemic is already though to be knocking about and the only reason its not as viralent as it was is that we have built up a natural resistance to it isn't it?