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Comment by Symbiote | Hacker News Reader

I don't have anything prepared. It doesn't seem necessary, either when I lived in the UK or now in Denmark. About the only natural disaster in either country is flooding, and that's usually a slow affair.

Does anyone in boring-no-disasters Europe make any emergency preparations?

I get the impression half the Americans here can't wait for some disaster; a chance to prove their mettle and lead their family into the mountains to survive for a week on army rations and purified water, while shooting wild bears and anyone who approaches.

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I don't do any prepping myself, but I do not dismiss those who do. All of our systems are unbelievably complex and interconnected that I do not think it would take that much for things to go sour quickly.

Seems like the cause would be something that initially appears trivial. Less Zombie apocalypse or rogue government, more like infrastructure hack, big and sudden recession or drastic oil shortage. In the oil example, much of the systems of society would be put under sever stress. Perhaps we could endure it without any societal breakdown, but it would be tough keeping society running with mass food, transport and power shortages. Our governments make extensive plans to deal with these situations.

The stability of even first world countries is not so high as we might assume. "Every nation is about nine meals from anarchy"

Look at Gloucestershire UK a few years ago. They had flooding. That overcame flood defences at a water treatment plant, and that caused havoc for weeks.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/gloucestershire/floods/

some places went without water for some time. 135,000 homes went without water for upto 17 days. Each person requires 10 litres of clean water per day.

http://www.floodprobe.eu/partner/assets/documents/Floodprobe...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_Kingdom_floods

Some bits of the planning failed - the water treatment plant should not have flooded, for example. But some did work - vulnerable people who needed medication mostly got it; and people did get 10 litres of clean water each day.

But it's that event that made me keep some bottles of water, and to keep some stocks of tinned food.

  Our governments make extensive plans to deal with these situations

Really? Look how long it's taken multiple layers of government (especially the Federal government) to deal with the Flint water crisis or the Animas river disaster... despite having no disaster-introduced transportation or resource barriers.

I certainly think they make plans thinking it will help. Whether or not their plans are any good, especially in regard to supreme complexity, is my point. I have serious reservations.

> Our governments make extensive plans to deal with these situations.

I have a decent trust that these plans are appropriate and sufficient, and that if I needed to make my own preparations, I'd be aware of it.

"In the European Union, according to Council Directive 68/414/EEC of 20 December 1968, all 28 member states are required to have a strategic petroleum reserve within the territory of the E.U. equal to at least 90 days of average domestic consumption"

Some government sites in Britain suggest an emergency "grab bag", but the contents is minimal compared to the American versions -- some cereal and chocolate bars, for example [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_strategic_petroleum_res...

[2] https://www.barnet.gov.uk/citizen-home/environmental-health/...

Thanks for the links, was not aware of either.

> I have a decent trust that these plans are appropriate and sufficient

I am not so trusting. I think the failure of western financial regulations in 2008 is a decent example of how sheer complexity shatters existing safeguards. I am sure they have done their best to account for these sort of scenarios, but the real world is far more complex than a model. I do see where you are coming from though.

I do. As a European you should be aware that when we go into meltdown, it is all the way.

My people were starved to death twice in the 1800s, depopulating the island to half of its original size. It still hasn't recovered to its original size.

Then in the 1900s we had two of the largest wars in human history.

I have no reason to be confident that the 2000s won't suffer similar deprivations.

Certainly depends on what you count as "disaster", but depending on where you are flooding, multi-day power outages, multi-day interruptions of fresh-water supply, ... all can happen. I yearly get flyers on what to do if the closest nuclear plant goes wrong. Italy just had a major earthquake.

Even if we assume the support infrastructure works properly (=just one localized disaster), having your own supplies could mean a lot of difference in how you get through the crisis:

Can you take care of an injury if medical help is going to take many hours to get to you (or if you are unable to even notify anybody who could help)?

Do you have to get to somewhere in the hope of getting some minimal supplies (water, some emergency food) or can you stay somewhere relatively comfortable and safe? Large cities might turn dangerous relatively quickly.

Can you have warm food despite the power being out the last few days?

Are you going to have a full set of warm clothes/medication/documents for everybody if you have to leave in a hurry?

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