Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Clearly, if a midsummer afternoon's thunderstorm could flood manholes in New York City,
severing power to nearly a hundred thousand people for a week, then a major natural cata-
strophe, or a coordinated terrorist attack, could cause far more significant damage and disrup-
tion. The four scenarios that follow are examples of events that would cause major disruptions
in the flow of goods, services, and electricity to millions of people in the Western world. My
goal is not to spread fear, but motivation. By reading these scenarios, it is my hope that you
will become motivated to spend a modest amount of time, effort, and money to follow the ad-
vice and precautions given in this topic. Hopefully none of the following disaster scenarios will
ever occur, or if they do, perhaps we will be lucky and they will take milder forms rather than
the full-blown versions that would hopelessly overload our systems of distribution of food and
goods, communications, and emergency response. While contemplating these various scenari-
os, consider the wisdom in the old Yankee adage that says, “Hope for the best, but plan for the
worst!”
Scenario 1: Pandemic
“
The era of antibiotics is coming to a close. In just a couple of generations, what once appeared to
be miracle medicines have been beaten into ineffectiveness by the bacteria they were designed to
knock out. Once, scientists hailed the end of infectious diseases. Now, the post-antibiotic apocalypse
is within sight.
”
—Sarah Boseley, “Are You Ready for a World Without Antibiotics?”
Guardian
, August
12, 2010
Imagine a Hurricane Katrina-sized catastrophe occurring in fifty major U.S. cities at the same
time, and you have some idea of the scale of disruption that a deadly global pandemic will
cause. Medical centers, essential services, and government personnel would be overwhelmed.
If there were no viable vaccines or pharmaceutical medicines, or if they were only available in
limited quantities, most healthcare workers would desert medical facilities to care for the sick
in their own homes or simply abandon the cities to improve their chances for survival. When
things get really bad, most buses, trains, trucks, and planes will stop running, bringing food and
fuel deliveries to a grinding halt. If this sounds far-fetched, realize that this was exactly what
happened when the Spanish flu struck the United States in 1918. With a 30 percent mortality
rate in American hospitals, this flu killed more people in a few months than had died in all of
World War I. After first striking the United States, troop transport rapidly spread the Spanish
flu spread around the world, causing an estimated 50 to 100 million deaths before it subsided in
