The Locust Horde of Zombies

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

There are some paradigms you find again and again in comments on right-side blogs that make me wonder if everyone has lost their mind. I know they haven’t, of course. The thing is the paradigms sketched either rhyme roughly with a misapprehension of the current situation or the parallel being drawn, or are…. well, things that happen in movies. And being soaked in story we think they are plausible because they happen in movies.

One is the “we’re just like the Roman Empire, and we’re decadent and we’ll be all gone in fifty years” (or ten. Or one.) That one is fun because it’s part old USSR propaganda that worked, it’s part not knowing much about Rome, it’s part knowing our political system is partly based on the Roman, and it’s part well, not knowing much about us, either, but knowing all the things lefties have been putting in movies and “news” and “science” for the last several decades.

There are others, like the hard times makes strong men thing that fall apart if you poke it. (Hard times make both meek and cruel men. And sometimes yes in the same person.) People think it’s true, because we all know people who were raised with everything, and became useless nincompoops who wasted all their wealth. But that’s not true universally. It’s selection bias and cautionary tales. There are families who have been very wealthy and had easy childhoods for over ten generations. And they’re still “hard men.” (Sometimes the hardest, as in evil and cruel.)

I’m very glad people at least on this blog — I don’t read much of other blogs comments, tbf — have stopped with the bizarre “The EB cards stop working, and they’ll fan out to the suburbs.” There is a subset that assumes all welfare cases are black. (Yes, there is a large number. They were targeted early. But seriously, they expanded welfare so much since the Obama years it affects every race and demographic, but probably more the new migrants who these days are deluged with both “aid” and pap about how everyone discriminates against them. So that one can have a weird racist undertone, but most of all, honestly, it just doesn’t hold up, and we have case studies. We have when disaster hits, the welfare class doesn’t fan out to pretty much anything. Yes, it loots. But it loots its own neighborhood. It burns its own neighborhood. And then it sits around waiting for the cameras to grift. Because, like rolling left before dying allowing executives to find a better job after killing a company, the burn and destroy your own place then act pitiful has always worked in the past.

But now we’re into “When society goes bad” or “If transport stops working” the locusts of the city will fan out. And that seems superficially true, because of course it’s what happens in movies, right? And in the news? We’ve all seen “refugees” fanning out in the surrounding areas. Though, be fair, normally not as raiders, but as beggars.

It’s also for most people treating “city people” as a group of widgets. They’re all the same, and we’ve argued with them on line, and if they become pinched, all that anger is going to fan out and–

Okay, lesson one: Twitter — or blog comments — is not real life. The loudest people online are the least dangerous in real life. (Some of us admit it. Also are ready to compensate for it.)

Now, to the rest of it: I’m an urban person. Not how I was born or raised, and my predilection for living in cities is still considered bizarre by most of my family. However, there might be a deep-genetic confluence of characteristics, since the Romans were urban a long time ago. Who knows. Or I’m weird. I loved the big city the first day I went there for high school and until I was done with college, I mostly “lived” there, coming home to eat and sleep. Once I was married, we first lived in a little suburb-like area, but we found out we were driving to the next big city all the time, and just moved there. And since then we’ve lived in cities. Usually large cities, in older, Victorian neighborhoods that you could walk to coffee shops and bookstores and with a little effort to a grocery store. We don’t live in a large city or in such an area right now, and it feels kind of odd, I’ll be honest.

But most of our amusements are urban: museums, botanic gardens, zoos, lectures, that sort of thing. And most of our eating out and shopping is where poor, urban folk shop. Or at least “poor but not the poorest”: dive diners, thrift shops, used furniture stores.

So, we are urban people, and we rub elbows with all sorts of classes and strata in the city. It’s not one class, one type of people, one set of behaviors. 

First of all, I suspect cities are blue because fraud is easier there. Not only is it not uniformly left, I would be very shocked if it’s more than 50% left. And it’s only that because it tends to have a lot of young people and “trendy” people, and leftism is a positional good.

Yes, I know the cities all SOUND super lefty. The conversations you hear; the murals; the way they dress, etc. etc. etc.

I enjoin you to stop and think: positional good. That means people signal how left they are, because that’s the point. It signifies (or used to signify, and people take long to adapt) that you’re educated and smart. Also lefties tend to assume everyone else is left, so they talk really loud, while the rest of us tend to confine our talk and lower our voices in public. One of the more encouraging signs of the times is that young rightists also talk loudly and defiantly in many circumstances.

So let’s break this out by groups of people who live in the city:

First, yeah, you have a welfare class. Those usually don’t even vote. They are so indoctrinated by the establishment that they consider anyone running for office as at best not caring for them, and at worst the enemy. You don’t rouse yourself to vote in those circumstances. This is why “vote harvesting” where, let’s face it, the “harvesters” often — if not always — mark the ballot for the harvested, is a powerful hack to fraudulently win elections.

Then there is a working class. These are more and more absent from the cities, either because they can’t afford to live there, or because the areas they can afford to live in are dangerous or just plain bad. So, most working class live in remote suburbs, at least if the city is large enough.

There is usually an “immigrant” class, often illegal. This shouldn’t be a consideration in voting, but we all know what the idiot left has done with vote by mail and motor voter, so yeah, it is. However those votes are fraudulent by nature, or most of them are.

And then… well, there were professionals. Used to be, before the lockdowns initiated a great diaspora, that for certain types of well-paid jobs you had to live in a big city. I’d estimate that the majority of these professionals are actually on the right and keeping their lips zipped, because corporate is loud and left.

And there are any number of young people, professionals, students, and just people who gravitate to the city, because it’s where you have a chance to meet marriageable people you’re not related to.

The young tend to be either left or signal that way, because it’s …. social positioning, and also because a lot of young people were so poorly taught they think “socialism” is better. These by and large vote, hence the 50% easy. However, some number of them are being shocked out of the “duh socialism” position. How many? We don’t know, because of course social positioning.

Some portion of those young (meaning under forty in this case) people are the leftists you argue with on line. Who are maybe the “shock troops of the left” only…. not.

I saw most of these people on display when the DNC had their annual convention in Denver in 08. Before the convention, there was the whole bragging about how the Denver police had never seen anything like them, and they were going to f*ck up those cow-town cops.

And then… well, Denver has mounted cops. One of the most illuminating encounters was the mounted Denver police surrounding a group of would be trouble makers, and riding in tighter and tighter circles. The poor would be trouble makers had panic attacks, and couldn’t breathe, and….

Re: the dangerousness of the urban class is so exaggerated that they had to bus antifa from city to city to get up any kind of riot capacity.

So suppose we stop transporting food to the cities? Bah. Yeah, the heavy welfare neighborhoods will burn and there will be rioting. Because it’s always worked before.

And the rest? Well, most of the working people, at whatever level are still Americans — even those who are on the left. I know, I know, but they’re still Americans. They’re going to roll up sleeves and find ways around the problem.

There are plenty of animals to hunt in a city, if there’s a dire issue, raccoons, squirrels, geese, even most places deer. And once you’re past the immediate emergency … networks develop. They did this even in Portugal. When bakers were unreliable, local women started baking bread, and you had to knock a certain way to buy bread in the morning. When food distribution was iffy, there was the person on the corner who could buy meat from their friend the farmer in the country, and if you knocked a certain way…

Black and grey markets develop, and people find ways to transport and acquire food. No one sets out to walk and rob food. This hasn’t happened ANYWHERE at any of the crisis in civilization. When aqueducts vanished in Rome population fell — slowly — it didn’t just walk the countryside, like locusts.

Will there be more crime? There already is. Will there be bands of raiders? There already are. Both of these are mostly illegal and used to disarmed people, and it will be curbed by the fact that sooner or later they hit the non-disarmed ones. But yeah, it’s going to be a problem given our “elites” organized invasion and crime incentivization. Will it go all the way to roving hordes? Oh, please. This is NOT a movie. Yes, it will suck being one of the people hit by this, and yes, it could happen to any of us, but it won’t be “this will happen to all of us, or to everyone we know.

There will be no hordes of zombies headed out to the countryside. That’s movie logic, not real.

If the cities implode, which they might not, what you’re going to see is alternative means of food acquisition and distribution. Already, you’d be shocked how many city people, often against regulations are keeping chickens (or quail in apartment balconies.)

And don’t write the cities off. You hate them for the way they vote. But the thing is our system is so vitiated no one knows how anyone REALLY votes. All we know is the result of fraud.

And remember that what you see online are not the real people. Most of the people on line gloating about how the city will starve the country side are poor shut ins who will have panic attacks and reach for the asthma inhaler at the first sign of resistance.

Be not afraid, and remember you don’t live in a movie.

We’ll survive this, both urban and rural. And we’ll come out of it more ungovernable than ever.

327 thoughts on “The Locust Horde of Zombies”

  1. It’s one thing to hear platitudes about how it will “all work out.” It’s another to see reasons as to how and why it actually will. This gave me a much-needed and greatly-desired shaking by the shoulders.

  2. Back when I lived in Chicago, I lived right next to Wrigley Field.

    And I thought: if ever there’s an emergency… this big open space, which also has controlled ingress/egress, is the perfect place to distribute federal supplies.

    Not going to comment on the overall “oh no the world is burning,” it’s just that there’s so many little things that I feel aren’t considered in the calculus of disaster

      1. hahaha fair. Well, maybe I’d have been close enough to the drop of point that I could get in and out before shit well and truly hit the fan 🙂 Not that it matters any more anyway, since I no longer live there.

        Oh! And on a totally different note! I asked Richard to let you know, but I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but your hashtag-commission-earned posts on Instapundit don’t appear to be formatted correctly (it’s “/wwwviolentkicom” instead of “?tag=youraccount-20”)! I went ahead and correctly formatted the link in the post I asked him to share, off the Amazon Associate tag you use on your website!

        It also might be that I’m wrong and the /wwwviolentkicom is a legacy, grandfathered in formatting

    2. I remember the stories coming out of New Orleans when hurricane refugees were sent to the stadium there for shelter. It was horrific.

      1. I also remember it turned out most of the stories were complete fabrications of the newsies and politicians.

        From what I recall, only one person died in the Super Dome, and it was an old lady who didn’t have her medication with her.

        It was also my first real discovery that the media was full of actual racist idiots. The newsies pretty much assumed that because most of the NO refugees there were black that it would automatically devolve into an open air prison riot, and reported that as though it were actually happening.

        Which it was not, but because all the newsies were saying to was, emergency response crews had to be prepped like it was before they went in. Which delayed things a lot.

        So yes, it is in fact quite possible the only fatality of the Super Dome was due to the newsies stirring up so much fear and loathing that emergency crews couldn’t get in there to respond to the lady having her medical emergency.

        Apparently I have rather strong opinions on that cluster…

        1. One observed death, four to six bodies in addition, and some definite wiggle room because they phrase a lack of formal reports/police reports as nothing happening.

          But nothing like what they claimed and used to illegal confiscate firearms.

          1. One wonders if some scores were settled, and some summary justice dispensed by the community when called.

            “He must have fallen down the steps. Always was a klutz, or so I heard someone say over that way,” waves toward opposite side of the dome.

              1. You know with all that flooding Gators were everywhere. So there was a lot of splashing going on. TIC

            2. The problem with summary justice is that the crimes can be spurious. “He insisted on getting back the money I borrowed.”

              1. Yep. Say what you will about the sometimes questionable efficacy of the justice system, but at least it tries. Vigilante “justice” is a rough game.

                1. Well, it doesn’t always try. That’s the problem that keeps bringing vigilantism back. (And the absence of either can be even rougher.)

        2. It doesn’t surprise me that the news media fabricated the Superdome-as-anarchic-horror scenario; I’m only surprised at myself for not suspecting it. We don’t hate them nearly enough (and trust me, I do hate them).

          That said, I’m still keeping Do Not Go to the Superdome as an article of faith, if only because that kind of thing would be hell for me personally. (Realistically, though, if my backup medications at home are unavailable or run out, I’d have to go there or be one of those “died of an untreated medical problem” people. I really hate that.)

          1. Over the decade+ that I’ve been on medications (maybe 5 years on one), I’ve been able to build up a backup supply by refilling as early as possible. For me, that’s 7 days early on a 90 day prescription. That makes for a largish stash over the years. I’ve heard that it’s possible to talk a doctor into making a one-time prescription for backup, though I can see issues with medications that are hard to store (like insulin in a to-be-refrigerated form) or have legal restraints (forex some painkillers). Mercifully, mine are storage-friendly.

            What I need to do is a) complete the (more hypothetical than real) bug-in bag, and b) include several day’s supply. If I’m in Flyover Falls when things went sideways, I should be able to get home in a reasonable time (for values of), even though my hiking days were mumble decades ago. If I’m over the Cascades in such an event, it would be a challenge to make the 100 mile trek at my age and condition. OTOH, I’d probably give it a shot; odds of surviving on the road would be better than in a post-disaster metro area. Maybe. Depends on the problem.

            1. “hurricane kit” etc. Areas:

              Water
              Food
              Clothing
              Shelter
              Hygene
              Weapons/tools
              etc

              Think of a minimum of three days, preferably 7 days.
              More as circumstances/reason suggest.

              People often forget basics of “Two gallons of water per adult per day, -minimum”. Each gallon is 8-1/3 pounds. So if you fill that 7 gallon jumbo-jug, can you move it? Transport it? 58-1/3 pounds. Maybe three 2.5 gallon jugs work better.

              You may plan to walk somewhere, but best if you can wagon/cart the heavy stuff to save your body. Plenty of decent off-sidewalk/off-pavement options.

              “Ounces are pounds and pounds are pain”.

              Avid walking any significant distance carrying more than 1/4 your weight, and preferably 1/5 long-trekking.

              1. Avid walking any significant distance carrying more than 1/4 your weight, and preferably 1/5 long-trekking.
                ……………………………………..

                That is “ideal” weight. Not actual weight. I carried average 35#’s ten day backpacking trips. That is 2 litters of water, filling up daily (water filter). I haven’t weighed 35×4#’s in years decades. No way am I capable of carrying 25% of my current weight. Not a chance.

                1. Sigh. Swore got that right. Anyway.

                  years decades. No way am I capable of carrying 25% of my current weight. Not a chance.

                  1. And my plan is to cheat ruthlessly. I will be using a cart if at all possible, with just a few pounds of essential emergency on-body. The proper packed ruck is in the cart most of the time. Teh wagon has additional non-ruck gear I am wiling to abandon if the cart dies. (or as a distraction for escape)

                    I keep a small but very sturdy luggage cart in my vehicle, same principle. Wheel it prefered to ruck it.

                2. Well, I might be a bit heavier than my active-duty prime. (grin)

                  But I can manage 20%-25% bodyweight rucksack. Just slower than I remember….

                  Any significant trek, you have to be able to -make- pure water from available resources. “Water purification” is a whole prepper topic on its own. And, absolutely essential.

                  1. And maybe not even for people making treks. As Instapundit noted, while California refuses to permit the construction of new desalinization plants (I’m guessing the fault of the obnoxious coastal commission), LA County has approved a process to turn waste water into drinking water.

                    I mean, I know in theory it should be doable. But when something goes wrong…

                  2. Any significant trek, you have to be able to -make- pure water from available resources. “Water purification” is a whole prepper topic on its own. And, absolutely essential.
                    ………………………

                    Easier said than done in significant sections in the west (not where we backpacked, PCT between 58, Willamette Hwy, and 26, Mt Hood Hwy). Not purifying water. Availability of water. For many (All?) of the water refill stops at Philmont, per hubby, water had been bulk packed in, for the contingents on the various treks.

                    1. There are also places where there is lots of “water”, and it it mostly impossible to purify properly short of distillation.

                      Better wagon, manageable size jugs. Rig a tow harness for people. If accosted by goblins, spare one and use as a draft beast. (grin)

        3. The Superdome stories were the tipping point for my husband on “I won’t believe the news.” (Mind you, both he and I still have a bit of belief, but it’s things like “oh wow, there’s a volcano erupting in Iceland” rather than anything that has even a hint of a story to it.)

          Mine came a bit earlier, with the seal on the deal coming when I got my degree in broadcast studies. Nothing like seeing how easy it is to get everything dead wrong with the best of intentions and no ill will to make you realize that an agenda can screw things up quickly.

          1. Mine was “white Christian males are responsible for the Orlando gay nightclub shooting”. From then on I have believed that CNN needs to go to hell.

          2. The breaking point for me was early Gulf War I when I was watching a news report portraying a Naval air strike launching from a carrier (planes in full AB), and the reporterette voice-overing (voicing over?) a description of “American aircraft returning from a night-time patrol.”

        4. Having been part of the federal response to that particular Charlie Foxtrot (National Guard), I can assure you that however much you think the media were lying about the Katrina situation, you are only scratching the surface of the malfeasance. That was when I stopped believing anything that came out of the press, particularly if a situation could be spun to someone’s political gain.

          Also got to have a firsthand look at the utter corruption of local government as well as the major pissing contest between FEMA and any other government agency activated, which was actively obstructionist and slowed down actual relief efforts so the FEMA could take the credit for ‘saving’ everyone.

          Opinions? Yeah, I got some myself, they mostly involve much cussing.

          1. I recall during a Florida hurricane a local reporter on “live!” was “canoeing in the flooded street”. Oddly, the canoe neither moved nor rocked despite the talking-head moving. Then two good-ol-boys strolled by in front of the boat in the -ankle deep- water. Canoe was clearly bottomed out.

            Oh my, was she -annoyed- before they cut away.

            1. Heard on the news yesterday that Emergency Services! would have free sandbags available because… There might be up to 3 inches of rain in parts of the county over the next 3 days!

              Where I come from, 3 inches of rain is known as an afternoon thunderstorm. They’re acting like it’s Noah’s Flood.

                1. As much as it rains in western Oregon, 3″ of rain right now means a lot of running water. Everything is saturated. There would be flooding in outlying areas with uncontrolled creeks and smaller rivers (Long Tom Willamette valley west side).

                  Places in the west where 3″ of rain in the mountains means death in the far away valleys and deep gully’s, without a cloud in the sky in the areas that get flooded. Flash flooding is no joke.

                  I don’t know where the 3″ of rain dump is being predicted. But comes under “it depends”.

                  Also compare “48-inches of snow predicted. Armageddon!” In the Cascades, Rockies, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, etc.?”Are you kidding? and “Yeah, Yes!!!!”. In the Willamette Valley? If it happens? “Oh crap!” is the mildest adult response. Because there are not enough Any snow plows. TPTB can’t keep I-5 open which they are legally required to do for national safety, let alone anything else. Everything comes to a halt until the snow can be busted through, which will take days, if the snow stops. Infrastructure isn’t setup to handle snow either. Which means no power. (1969 – my response was “YEA!” I was 12.)

                  1. I had the rare opportunity to witness a heavy downpour in the Mojave Desert at Fort Irwin. Seeing boulders the size of a small car displaced 100m or more along a waadii was … impressive.

                    And then the desert bloomed.

                    1. And then the desert bloomed.
                      ………………………….

                      It does.

                      But … You do not want to be on that bridge over the waadii (if there is a bridge), when that gully washer comes down that once dry ditch.

                    2. About the time that I was in junior high, the Big Tujunga Wash flooded in a big way – it took out the bridge that cut across the Wash. Normally, the watercourse was a knee-deep trickle meandering through a gravelly plain going down to Hansen Dam … but on that morning, it was raging forty feet deep and the color of chocolate milk. We walked with Dad to the top of the hill near where we lived then, and knew it was that deep because the water was overtopping the raised roadway and the bridge. Dad had left that morning to go to work, driving over that very bridge, didn’t like the look of it, turned around and came home. And in days, it was all back to normal, save for the broken bridge.

                  2. June and July of this year. We got 9 inches of moisture in six weeks. I could see a lake almost from RedQuarters. It got very, very close to Day Job, and almost cut the road. It was very welcome, but would have been even more welcome if it had spread out more. People lost houses, and livestock.

                    1. Before they realigned the roads to the same levels (because finally had sewers and water drainage), road where I grew up always had a “shallow lake” where it t-d into the main throughway. Best avoided by lowered vehicles. The route along Territorial highway and north 99, there are sections that it doesn’t take much before the wetlands merge with the pastures over the road. Usually can tell how deep the water is, but if is running at all (and you can see it), “Stop. Don’t Go.” The road is raised. Ditches either side are well over most sedans, and as high as most small SUV’s. Pickups and large SUV’s, as long as they stay upright, will keep heads above the water.

                      Our house is raised well above the 100 year flood plain. We can even get all our cars high out of the water, should it happen. Shouldn’t happen. We are far enough away from the Willamette and the smaller rivers west of us, that at worse an inconvenience. Now if they force the draw down, and the elimination of all the flood control dams, all bets are off (and class action against those who forced it and gave in).

                    1. I don’t know how to drive in snow (other than very, very, carefully). We don’t see snow enough. I don’t have the confidence. Hubby knows how to drive in snow. Son was taken out to learn how to drive on snow every chance we got.

      2. And I heard years later that most of those stories were made up–but I cannot find a link to the analysis and proof at this time.

            1. Yes, though you might trigger the three-letter agencies by using it. (It’s a Russian search engine.) I ran afoul of their Captcha on Pale Moon, but it works nicely on Firefox.

              I normally use Qwant, though it has issues with images on my setup.

              1. “you might trigger the three-letter agencies”

                Oh noes!!! That meme last Saturday with Santa telling the kid what lists he’s on? I am that kid and have been probably since the Clinton administration.

            3. Oh, and it sucks for normal searches. Only thing to recommend it is that when you look for specific phrases and/or websites, it will usually actually bring them back, instead of 45 things that are only related through a thesaurus.

  3. Currently I am a suburban person, mainly because I bought my house in 1987. I can’t be a rural person and I can’t continue living the suburban life for the simple reason I’m getting to the point where I should not be driving. Go visit Florida if you want to see what people are like who shouldn’t be driving.

      2. Based on experience with my grandmother who passed away in 2000, people who shouldn’t be driving don’t realize it, and won’t stop until their kids or grandkids tell them to. In my grandmother’s case, it was her children saying “Mom, your reaction times aren’t good enough to be safe driving anymore” that got her to listen.

        Retirees in Florida often moved to Florida, rather than living in Florida their whole careers, so their children usually aren’t around them to see how they drive. So they don’t realize they drive badly, and nobody whom they’ll listen to is around to tell them. That’s my theory, at least.

        1. It is indeed a good theory, and given my experience with my own relatives… I’ll spare you the horror stories, but I can assure you that people who OUGHT to be observing a co-worker drive and SHOULD have noticed something…. do not tell younger relatives.

        2. We’ve been telling mom to not make the drives she does on I-5 because her reaction times have slowed. Not at freeway speeds. She finally made the decision on her own. We still don’t know what close call scared her into making the decision. We, all 6 of us, and all 8 grandchildren know something has to have happened.

          As for stopping her from driving altogether, lets just say we know what happens if we try to officially get her license revoked. Won’t happen. Got grandparents license revoked because they were blind. One glaucoma and cataracts. The other macular degeneration and cataracts. Grandma was given her driver’s license back because her doctor certified she could see well enough during day light hours to drive local area. Trust me you did not want to be in the Drain area when grandma was driving. This was back before there were any methods of something constantly monitoring driving. That is the only thing mom has going for her. That and her vision is better than it ever was, without glasses (eye correction options have expanded exponentially since early 2000’s. Reaction time may be down, but any accidents aren’t going to be her fault. (She keeps showing me her insurance driving statistics, which are rated excellent.)

        3. Being an old man who has spent a lot of time considering this issue, I know why I would be driving. There really aren’t any other practical means of getting around. Taxis/Uber/Lyft get scary expensive, just going somewhere a few times per week can cost hundreds of dollars per month. I know going from my house in North Austin to downtown runs $50 each way. So, with a choice of becoming a shut in because I can’t afford to pay for rides or continuing to drive, I would probably continue to drive and I know I should not.

          Before the war in Ukraine and the scamdemic, I was in Kyiv. I was staying half a block from the Tolstoy Metro stop where taking the subway anywhere in the system was about 30 cents. It was also the entrance to a huge underground mall that was climate controlled. I was often eating breakfast 2.5 blocks away at Xeltoc. Compare that to where I live currently, the local coffee shop is over 2 miles away, which is impractical to walk during several months of the year.

          America is very badly structured for old folks, particularly those of us with no family.

          1. Eugene doesn’t have a subway. All we have is county buses. Other than buses make me sick (motion sickness), I have no excuse. Paternal grandmother never drove. Her older children, brothers, and mom (DIL) tried to teach her after grandpa died (’59). Unsuccessfully tried. The family car was put up on blocks until the “little boys” (two youngest, ages 9 and 12) legally could drive. Grandma used the county bus system very successfully from inception until her death in ’87, no matter how long the ride or how many buses she had to switch, or how far she had to walk. She went every single day she was home in town to have lunch with the 3rd youngest son after he went into a group home, and later when he was in a nursing home (he died just a few months after she did. Severe cognitive and physical disabilities from grand mal seizures starting at age 3.)

            Do not remember how she got around before 1970. Some of it were the two younger boys before they left home, after they started driving. Some would have been mom & dad, or dad’s younger sister and husband (when they lived in town). Grandma (and the 3 youngest) moved to Eugene just after mom and dad did, in 1960. First buying a house on 4th street (force sell eminent domain, I think because of the Washington/Jefferson Willamette bridge, but IDK, might have been further north), then the house on 24 & Harris.

            Point is, I know, and mom knows, it is 100% possible. Just have to plan.

            Right now mom is utilizing the I-5 corridor by using friends and family. Thanksgiving she went up with us for her birthday dinner the Sunday before. Then stayed through Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving, one of her friends who actually lives south of Eugene was coming south from her own weekend dinner. Sister met her with mom and mom caught a ride south. This Christmas, the same friend is headed for north of Seattle, so she is picking up mom to drop her off at sisters (probably will meet at the 205 exit). Coming home, sister will take mom to Salem where she’ll spend New Years, then her brother will bring her on south (or I’ll go up and get her). The friends she is relying on are 15 or so years younger (then mom is 89, so …). They’ve also been using her home as the airport parking (she has room for 6 vehicles, parking on pavement, besides her own, not counting street parking, rarely that full at one time, but possible), and her (or me) as the airport shuttle, since before dad died (that will be 15 years this next March). January she’ll go up with me to the niece’s baby shower. And so it goes. Plus there is always Amtrak.

            1. All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door. Practical is another matter. I live in a large spread out city with brutal summer weather where the majority of roads were laid out post 1970 with the new and trendy curvilinear layout, aka one way in, one way out neighborhoods. It’s a half mile walk to the nearest bus stop on streets where half of them do not have sidewalks. I’ve been in older neighborhoods in various cities, modern neighborhoods are completely different.

      3. I have previously related my travails with Publick Transportation, which turned a 40-minute commute into a 3-hour ordeal. Each way. Partially due to the stupidest train scheduling I can imagine.
        ———————————
        If you always expect the government to do the stupidest things you can imagine, you will rarely be disappointed. Indeed, from time to time the government will exceed your expectations and do unimaginably stupid things.

  4. I wonder who organizes those “locust hordes” (zombies or otherwise). [Crazy Grin]

    Especially when those hordes are walking not driving. [Big Crazy Grin]

    1. The good news about leftist hordes driving around causing problems is the fact the power will go out before they start to horde and they can’t charge their electric vehicles to get anywhere.

    2. The full story is too long here; but the story of Shaka Zulu includes tens of millions of displaced people/refugees fleeing violence, carrying pestilence, bringing starvation… Much like the aftermath of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe confiscating the formerly white-owned farms to use as estates for his followers. “Suddenly” famine and disease in Central Africa. All the Moscow and Beijing funded revolutionaries could do was watch, coldly, as the people died from violence, pestilence, and starvation. Roughly 30 Million in the 20th Century. We don’t blame communism enough.

      HOWEVER! The American education system has been recreating, in a larger, much more diverse population, the conditions necessary to bring that suffering here. Especially to the TikTok whiners who cannot handle choosing from a menu.

      1. Shaka Zulu has nothing to do with Communism. And Robert Mugabe…. not like that.
        And yes, the hordes are ALWAYS communist organized. I’m worried about the invaders, not welfare recipients.

          1. They were also not hordes. well, the ones at the time of Innocent (I THINK) the whatever, sure. They were Spanish soldiers, though, so close enough. The ones in ancient Rome? That’s under extreme dispute.

            1. I think the folks who sacked Rome could accurately be described as a horde.

              “Sacked” isn’t usually graffiti and flaming poo-bags.

              “Vandals, sir!”

              1. Amusingly, there’s two different definitions– they’d fit under the nomadic tribesmen one, but not the disorganized spontaneous mob one…. even thought the former is what gave us the word for the latter!

                1. Typical “sack” even by the highly disciplined Legions, was to let the individual men run amok to do as they would. Apparently this is more effective in both terrorizing and looting, than a more organized approach.

                  Gold can sometimes find good soldiers, but good soldiers can almost always find gold.

                  1. Which kind of misses the entire point about the difference between BIG GROUP TAKING ORDERS WHICH IS ALREADY IN A LOCATION vs spontaneous formation of an invasion force…..

                    1. Nah. That wasnt the point of the “Rome” subthread.

                      Any mob of aggressive averous assholes can wreck a place. its the lack of applied order/discipline that allows the “amok” to run. That order can be due to respect of LEOs capability to smite, or fear of bubba and his blaster buddies saying “anarchy works for us, too”.

                      Do I expect mob/hordes in my AO? Not here, no. But some asshole might finance/logistics/inspire a rent-a-mob/spontaneous-FAFO and stuff happens. Oy vey.

                    2. I am quite aware of your conclusion.

                      I am pointing out why it is wrong, and why there was disagreement on the point, as well as why it does not apply, due to the different meanings of the term “horde.”

        2. It’s just that, like the Zulus, the Nazis, and the fallout from the commie revolutions in Africa and Asia, the refugees tend to overwhelm the good guys and mask the infiltrators scattered among them.

      2. HOWEVER! The American education system has been recreating, in a larger, much more diverse population, the conditions necessary to bring that suffering here.

        Not even close.

        And the elaborately helpless performance art is… well, as much as my mom mocks the town kids she runs into, she is one of the first that will point out that if they don’t know how to deal with a flat tire, they DO know how to look it up on youtube and then get to it.

        She knows where that falls, at the end of the day, even if they do then go flail and faint about how zomga they’re so helpless and have no idea yadda yadda yadda.

        1. My opinions are my own. Probably jaundiced by nearly 30 years of living in the Emerald Triangle of California.

          Exhibit A: BLM/Antifa response to the martyrdom of Saint George (Floyd).

          Exhibit B: The current defense of terrorists who brutally murdered 30+ Americans while brutally murdering 1360+ others.

          Exhibit C: The 10-20,000 single males of military age illegally entering the country and being welcomed (as long as they stay out of “Sanctuary Cities”) as document-challenged guest-workers and cultural-enrichers.

          Not ALL schools teach that kinda carp; but many do. Even in Texas. Even in so-called “Deep Red” counties.

          Not all zombies need to possess martial arts. There is a peculiar quality in quantity.

          Bullets run out, dead zombies stink up the area, and subsequently pollute the ground water, so we need something to attract them somewhere else where they will ostensibly bother no one.

          2. And… none of that sets the stage for what was being discussed prior, and in fact is a lot of buying into narrative that’s been pushed, in the face of all evidence, for at least 30 years. They were pushing the “there’s too many to do anything about” for EVERYTHING for ages…
            and the schooling?

            Heh.

            I got informed of the same blanking thing when I WAS one of those dang kids.

            Even if they had to ignore stuff and scream over me to do so, generally by folks far less conservative than myself.

            Still sometimes am, even though these days it’s as likely to be because female and they’re usually burnt liberals who self declare as the new face of conservatism. (Via…excommunicating everyone else….)

        2. they do then go flail and faint about how zomga they’re so helpless and have no idea yadda yadda yadda

          so… it’s not cool to admit you know how to do things…? Is that the takea

          1. Basically, yes.

            Being helpless is fine.

            Being competent means you’re a target.

            If you admit you are not completely useless, you are inviting attack.

            Which I noticed when I actually stopped and said “wait, WHY do I say that I’m not ‘really’ a cook? I’ve been cooking meals for family gatherings since I was like twelve. Oh! Because any time that I say that I can cook, I get twits deciding that’s a challenge and acting like I should be doing high cuisine for every meal and heaven forbid it be less than fancy. So I at most say that I am a good plain cook.”

            You can’t do ANYTHING that suggests you might be somewhat proud of a thing, or even fond of it, without inviting people to loudly and longly prove you WRONG!!!!1!!1 and probably evil.

            At best, they’ll take it as an invitation to critique what you did. “Well, that’s alright, but if I had done it–”
            (and never mind that they have never, in their lives, actually gotten off of their rumps to DO it)

            1. headdesk

              Wow. Just wow.

              It explains a lot.

              But it is such an alien mindset to someone who fears being regarded as incompetent.

              1. It’s the same motivation, just a little more defensive, and yes it is frustrating to try to figure out “is this a polite avoidance, or do they actually…..?”

              2. Basically, if you admit to being capable, you have to be PERFECT or you’re incompetent.

                It’s very destructive, if you live by it.

            2. No kidding. There are venues where “Computers? Mystery to me!” innocence. At best “I didn’t write the software in question. Don’t ask me.” Latter is even true. Took me awhile but there is a reason why certain times it does not pay to admit competence. I’ll get volunteered. If I wanted to volunteer, it’d be already done. Dang it.

  5. Finally started playing Cyberpunk 2077, and have been struck by just how much raw Russian propaganda is in it. And by how much of a garbage dump Night City is.

    It’s just strange realizing there is no way a system like that could operate, especially after it being such a common vision of the near future. And how what most people are taking as curses upon Night City’s head, are also, in-universe, most likely also completely propaganda, despite the original authors likely being superdipped maxist red diapers.

    I guess it just feels weird getting a peek behind the curtain and realizing not only is the a man behind it, but he’s also senile, demented and not wearing pants. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry or both.

    1. Every time I think about the world-building for CP2077 (and the Cyberpunk RED TRPG), I’m going “really. Just…really” with a painful wince and a twitching eyebrow. And this is from someone who hung out with the original R. Talsorian people and one of the fanzine creators (Interface) back in the day.

      A lot of TRPGs lately have had absolute terrible worldbuilding and I just want to wince every time something stupid happens. Not “ha ha” stupid (i.e. a lot of pre-9th WH40K lore), stupid stupid.

    2. Eh…

      Cyberpunk 2077 is heavily influenced by the old ’80s genre. People still call things “cyberpunk” now, but fact is that the more modern stuff has only a loose relationship with the genre as it existed back then 2077 harks back to the actual 80s stuff. And the stuff claimed in the ’80s didn’t happen. That tells you more or less all that you need to know about taking it seriously.

      I enjoy the game. But I intentionally don’t look too hard at what’s behind the curtain.

  6. There are possums in the cities, too. I understand they’re greasy, but….
    And all those Canada geese. And squab – I mean, pigeons.
    One of my former coworkers used to fantasize about getting a wetsuit and a scuba rig (not the air tank, just the mask and a tube to the surface), going to the officer’s club golf course, wading into the lake and pulling geese down by the feet. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum da- dum da-dum da -dum…

    1. A colleague and I were debating which gauge of shotgun to have in the car – 12 for the hundreds of Canada geese, or 20 for the hundreds of pigeons. We still haven’t decided.

      1. The Reader recommends one 12 gauge with 2 magazines loaded with different shot. You can find 12 gauge shells light enough to not mangle pigeons but taking down suburban geese with a 20 will prove challenging.

        1. One heck of a lot easier to find 12 than 20.

          Ditto finding suitable buckshot and slug.

          Winchester AA 12g “featherlights” (~7/8 Oz at about 950fps) for little things. Or “x-tra lite” (1 oz at 1180). Also fairly tame training rounds.

          Note, a 12 gage “coachgun” double 20″ barreld gun generally breaks down into two halves, that easily fit in a common 24″ gym bag, and squeeze into some 18″ bags diagonally. Very discreet urban car gun. With a little practice, they are wicked fast to load or reload from a belt or bandoleer. Recoil with buck or slug can be fierce, so consider “managed recoil” loads, such as Winchester Defender, usually 9 pellet 00 buck at 1200fps.

          Sufficient to get home, or get out of Dodge.

          1. KSG with one side 6 shells one shot size, 6 shells on the other different size; very small profile and length.

          2. Did you ever here of Cut shells? Left over from depression era I think I heard, not knowledgeable enough to do anything other than ask.

            1. Yes.

              Use very sharp pocket knife to cut through the hull just below the shot cup.

              When fired, the whole front of the shell is launched as an improvised slug.

              Works best in cylinder bore guns (no choke). Hard on the gun as is, very hard on any choke.

              Intent is bird hunter can poach a deer with a birdshot shell. Or other big and/or dangerous critter.

              1. Use a pipecutter. You are most likely going to do yourself a nasty using a knife on a plastic hulled shell.

                1. Unlikely to have a pipecutter out in the woods bird hunting.

                  I occasionally salvage shot from defective or range-found shells for re-use. Relatively easy to do so safely with a good knife.

            2. I’ve seen mini-shells at the Not-Cabelas in town. Haven’t tried any of them in my pump shotgun, but if they worked, they’d be handy.

              Memory from some 40 year old Gun Digests says that geese on the wing are best hunted with a 10 gauge. OTOH, in a survival situation, the best thing to do is to review the fish and game rules and violate as many as needed to get your food. OTOH, a punt gun (maybe a soda can’s worth of shot, used by market hunters at one time) might be overkill.

                1. Many guns struggle to feed mini-shells well. Test yours extensively before betting your life. (Generally test any gun/ammo combo extensively before life bet)

                  1. Hmm, I think that’s the case for me, too. In the early days of Covidiocy, when 12 gauge was hard to find, there was a little bit of 20 gauge, and small quantities of 16 and 28(!) gauge. Never saw 10. OTOH, it’s duck hunters around here, not geese.

                    1. I wasn’t thinking of hunting; I was thinking for the so-called “tacticool” crowd. You know, the ones that the “Dragon’s Breath” round leaves wriggling and moaning on the floor.

                      Surely someone would have marketed a “bigger gun” to them. 😎

                  3. I’ve seen a 10 gauge, though it’s been a while.
                    Grandpa and neighbor were shooting skeet, and ~10-12 year old me got a chance – the 12ga nearly bowled me over. Then, Grandpa, in his best concerned voice, offered me his 10ga, as it was ‘smaller’.

                  4. A buddy, now retired, used one for Cowboy matches, using blackpowder handloads. Stout ones. 80-100 grains of powder each shell. His -light- loads would shake loose dental work.

                    Visualize six+ feet of flame, a huge cloud of smoke, and a deep bass thunderclap.

                    (wheeze) “Most impressive…” (wheeze)

              2. I’ve mentioned, a time or two, or dozen, that growing up we didn’t eat meat unless it came from wild sources (salmon, trout, venison, elk, chicken from grandparents flock), with an occasional 4H lamb (either cousins or dentist’s children). There are more deer and elk around now. PIA to hunt in western Oregon timber, between the slopes and brush. Who says rhododendrons don’t grow under trees? They’ve never been off the road or trail in the coast or west side Cascades. That doesn’t count the other competing tall bushes or the poison oak. Best way is to plant a garden, and they will come. Notice the lack of fowl (duck, geese, or pheasant), no hunting with dogs and shotguns. Cousins still hunt. Mom still gets venison from them, occasional salmon too. Hubby goes on a couple fishing/golf trips every year and brings home half a dozen or so very large trouts (6 meals for 3 of us). Would there still be hunger, if the trucks stop for long? Yes. Will it be universal? No. Will there be sharing? Yes. Will there be universal sharing? No. Why? Because individuals/families can help some others, but if they share universally, everyone starves. If enough step up then everyone is fed. Wags hands what that percentage needs to be.

    2. Coyotes were also left off the list, which seems a bit odd given all the discussion about the stupid things running around cities these days.

      1. Turkeys left off the list too. Lots of turkey flocks running around. Illegal to take out of season. Illegal to take in urban or suburban even during seasons. Illegal to harass. Illegal to disturb nest to take eggs. Stupid things are intelligent enough to stay where they can’t be harvested. Tough stringy birds to eat. But edible.

        1. We had two toms and two jennies in our yard the other morning giving us looks like ‘what are YOU doing here?’, and the morning before that a 3-point buck and his pals. They know where they’re safe, all right, and it’s infuriating to watch. But you can bet that if there was an emergency we’d be having garden-fed venison and poultry.

          1. 3-point buck and his pals. They know where they’re safe, all right, and it’s infuriating to watch.
            ……………….

            Reminds me of the one fall season I worked for the USFS (western slopes of the Cascades). Local guys on the crew out all weekend (not after or before work, because dark) hunting. Saw nothing all weekend. Come work day, sweeping through units working, here come the bucks walking among the crew. Not a care in the world. Just browsing away. Not close enough to touch. But the bucks knew they were safe. My family didn’t have any better luck those same weekend at our traditional hunting area (same county but further north, and west, eastern slopes of the coast range). It was hilarious to listen to the guys grumble.

      3. I suspect coyotes make better coats than meals, especially if your don’t have enough spices.

        2. Food is food. Coyote might not taste the best. But it’d be available in the event of a disaster.

          Necessity is the mother of invention, after all.

    1. Ha! There’s a particular university that owes me a lot of money, in that case. If only I could get them to pay up, the moneygrubbing leftist frauds…it’s the best use all those billion-dollar endowments could be put to. (Is there any university of significant size or repute that doesn’t have at least a billion in its investment portfolio by now?)

      Actually, speaking of fraud, it really is the government that’s responsible. The whole student loan thing is a predatory lending scheme created by government fiat, with abusive lending and payment practices underwritten and overseen by the same. I’m all in favor of canceling/forgiving student loans (yes, it would personally benefit me, why do you ask?), but only if the whole program gets deep-sixed at the same time. Forgive all the currently existing student loans, and don’t give out any more. Not. A. Single. One. Never Again.

      2. I’d argue that we still need the loans, but they should be discharged by bankruptcy.
        Do that and make it difficult-to-impossible for most universities to get out-of-state students and you’ll see a lot of colleges fall apart very quickly…

        1. Able to be discharged in bankruptcy, AND the loan originator (who cannot be the federal government) must be responsible for the loan for several years into the repayment period. That should do it.

        2. “Do that and make it difficult-to-impossible for most universities to get out-of-state students and you’ll see a lot of colleges fall apart very quickly…”

          … you say that like it’s a bad thing…

  8. People who are born and bred in the city would no more think to look for food in the country in the event of catastrophe than I would think to go to the city. For one thing, they wouldn’t know what food looked like out growing in the field. They don’t have transportation once they are outside of bus and subway routes and they wouldn’t be able to navigate without street signs. They have a pretty good idea of how far they are going block to block, but get them out where there is nothing but trees and greenery as far as the eye can see and how would they know where to go?

      1. “Most cities in the US you still drive ”

        Very true. But in the zombie horde scenario there wouldn’t be access to personal transportation for the ravening hordes or the fuel for long distance travel. People like us would be able to find a way to get around if need be, however, the kind of people who have relied on various government programs for their every need might find it difficult to branch out on their own.

        That’s not to say the government might not decide to provide transportation to the countryside. I wouldn’t put it past them to load indigents onto busses or whatnot and dump them off in the middle of the night.

        They already do similar with the armies of illegals coming across the border.

    2. I’ve spent most of my life in cities. In America, in the Midwest, you’re only about 1/2 hour – and hour drive from actual country in just about any city. So, if people WANTED to get there, they could.
      But, they won’t. Their survival skills are well matched to their home territory. They’d be lost in the country.
      BTW, I live about 5 blocks from the center of town, and the people next to me raised chickens (including a rooster, for a time). We get squirrels, crows, pigeons, deer, raccoon, all running around lazily rooting for an easy meal. It wouldn’t take a lot to take them down.
      Europeans complain about the large homes/yards and vast spaces between living quarters in America, but we have room to maintain gardens, store provisions, run a full freezer filled with food, and generally keep ourselves alive. About the only people not so privileged are the elderly poor, and those in government housing. A true minority.
      TPTB WANT us to panic. They WANT us to fear starvation. They think we’ll bend down to their rule, lest we starve to death.
      Screw that.

      1. Yeah. I’m living in a city (honestly a glorified suburb, but it’s 170,000 people) where I could access a farm by bike if I needed to. Really not in shape for it right now (that would be about 20 miles one way for the one I KNOW has a farm stand), but at least I know what food there looks like through U-Pick.

      2. “Europeans complain about the large homes/yards and vast spaces between living quarters in America, ”
        Uhhh, why?
        “They WANT us to fear starvation.”
        Pfft, to quote Homer Simpson, “we are drought and famine resistant.”

        1. Because Europe is a land of extreme unmitigated poverty. The smallest detail of how even poor Americans live is a continual reminder and embarrassment to them.

            1. As I’ve said (oft) before, that the POOR are FAT would have all of History BEGGING to be here. Healthy? No. But fat beats starving. Fat beats dead. For all the truly insane things of the modern USA…. ain’t nobody starving without TRYING. Even those that TRY tend to fail.

              1. When the communist (richard)heads tell us how awful is the USA, I note the millions coming here, often from Marxist (dookie)holes, that refute the Commutwits with their footsteps.

          2. I used to say that, in terms of income, Western Europe was Alabama with history theme parks. This turned to be unfair – to Alabama.

  9. I don’t think things will go full-on Mad Max or The Road (pro-tip, DON’T take that book along as reading material when visiting one of The Camps in Europe).

    I do think, and maybe I’ve swallowed the black pill hook line and sinker, that we have become so vehemently polarized that The Yugoslav Wars, Writ Large, is inevitable barring a miracle. I pray that I’m wrong, but I can’t help feel that I’m not.

    1. we can’t become that polarized. There is no racial component. And you might think there isn’t in Yugoslavia but they can tell.
      The other part is that there are only 1/4th real leftists among us, truly. Hence all the cheating.

      1. “There is no racial component.”

        Sarah, I wouldn’t bet the rent on that. The whole point of the Left’s identity politics is to produce exactly that polarization, and they’ve been more successful than many want to admit.

        DEI and CRT are just the most recent and obvious incarnation. But it started with affirmative action.

      2. There’s some. For instance, the uptick in attacks on Asians over the last few years. However, there isn’t nearly as much as the narrative would have us believe. And the guilty party rarely matches up with what the narrative would have us believe.

        1. I highly doubt there was an actual uptick, the media was suddenly focusing on ANY crime where there were asian victims and blaming it on racism, even when it was screamingly obvious race was not a factor (massage parlor shooting) in order to claim it was all Trump’s fault for saying “China Virus”. This narrative was dropped the same reason “Me Too” was: too much friendly fire. Takis Mag had a good article on it.
          https://www.takimag.com/article/yellow-imperil/

    2. We don’t have grudges that go back to 1389, unlike Yugoslavia, either. With fresh reminders applied by a foreign overlord or by locals who flipped to supporting the Bad Guys, either, in a system that lasted until 1900 or so.

      I found the story of Skanderbeg illuminating. He was trained to be an Ottoman, sent back to his people as an Ottoman, and fought against the Ottomans with a notable ferocity for the rest of his life. Did he nurse a grudge that long and well from childhood, or were the “overlords” that weak? Yes?

      1. Native Americans have centuries old grudges and rivalries.

        Some of our Irish and Scottish Americans imported their millennial clan rivalries and grudges.

        Currently not nearly the ferocity of say the Balkans, but existant.

        And of course, the Fracas we shall not discuss was a mere 8ish score years ago. For some, that was last Tuesday.

        Humans.

        2. Yes, there are/were things like the Regulators in the 1740s, and the paybacks for the Regulators in the 1770s-80. And those started in the Old Country. People will be people, My point is that the macro culture doesn’t have centuries-long grudges and hatreds baked in the way it did in Yugoslavia, does in the Arab world, and in some tribal societies in the US.

          1. Most those who came from the old countries left those feuds behind. More often than not, for example, especially the Scottish clans, banned together in the US VS carry the feuds across the Atlantic, and further across the west.

            1. And several of the notable feuds, like Hatfield-McCoy, have had testing that indicates either contamination (heavy metal poisoning) or parasitical influence in the area, meaning that the existing culture was coupled to a decreased sense of responsibility and a heightened anger effect. (It’s really fascinating how someone tied a late-20th century decrease in crime to the move away from leaded gasoline, with a regional effect about 15-20 years behind the ban in each area.)

  10. Oh, and speaking of zombies, it’s gonna be like setting the bait over thataway when you live over thisaway.

    As a wise friend one told me: “Don’t piss in your own punchbowl.”

    The Darkship Prophecies (maybe a good title for a prequel or retrospective?) tell us how to be good USAains. We don’t have to all die defending every hill.

  11. On voting– there’s also the folks that lived there, once, 40 years ago, and are now in a completely different state, and have no idea they are still “voting” in that city.

    I have been highly amused when the topic of cities comes up with folks who can actually sit there and talk… an amazing number are picturing basically nothing by blocks of at least five story apartment buildings to be “real” city, rather than “suburb or rural.”

    At one point we figured out that by what a couple of folks expected of “a city,” there WAS NO CITY IN IOWA. ^.^

    Which doesn’t make it a bad definition, it is just very different from ones like mine which are closer to “is it in the city limits of a place with Walmart and at least two chain fast food places?”

    1. It happens the other way too: urbanites claim that basically everyone lives in cities and the rurals don’t matter. By using the official definition of rural/urban, which results in anything denser than Wyoming being “urban”.

      1. :laughs: Oh, yeah, the “inside of city limits”! thing, too.

        We have a spot out here where you can’t even SEE either town– and it’s Iowa, so it’s not like a mountain is hiding it– and you pass the city limits sign. 😀

        Oh, yeah, TOTALLY, the folks in the farm house that are a three minute walk from the nearest neighbor are the same as inner city stack apartments! :giggling:

        1. On our road trip this year, we passed the city limits of Flagstaff on I-40 and I think it was about five minutes driving at highway speeds before we saw any signs of the city – it was all pine forest until then.

  12. In my small outer-ring suburb, there are at least four households keeping chickens, and one who has a duck, or ducks. Next year, we’ll start again with chickens, ourselves. We had four hens last time, and between them, we had so many eggs that we were supplying eggs (two or three at a time) to neighbors. Some of whom responded with fresh fruit from their backyard trees, or home-made bread … and we really weren’t trying to set up a supply network. Oh, yes – when and if stuff really goes Kurt Schlicter on us all, we will have a very effecient barter market, within our suburb alone.

    1. I propose a continuum for fiction – because I agree with Sarah on all the above, for one thing zombie locust looter hordes looting wheat fields are just logistically impossible – but for fiction: First level is when things go Schlichter; Second is when then they go Correia; and then Third is when they go Ringo.

      And I’m not talking about “Oh, John Ringo, No” level Ringo here.

      On further consideration there may be two sublevels of Going Ringo: Going “Centurion” Ringo, and then Going “Black Tide” Ringo.

      My proposal is on the table, open to debate and amendment.

        1. I don’t want things to go even Schlichter “Lite”. But for some reason TPTB who are trying to orchestrate this CF don’t seem to care what I want. 😡

      2. This is my favorite comment of the day. And I shall use this nomenclature because it is hilarious.

        “Which Ringo? Don’t tell me it’s going Black Tide Ringo!”

      3. What about Lucifers Hammer? People ran from the impact flooding but if there wasnt any they stayed put. Denver for example.

      1. The four remaining roosters that came with our last batch of chicks this summer are due for the stew pot; they’re getting old enough to be mean, and I REALLY hate waking up at 1:00 in the morning to crowing contests. One of ’em was a meat bird, a real Fat Boi, dressing out at nearly 11 lbs. Christmas dinner!
        So far the animal control officer who lives down the street hasn’t had issues with us yet, either . . .

  13. September 11th, 2001. New York City. Myriad amazing “all pull together” stories. Over and over.

    Then the time NYC had that big blackout, and truckers turned flatbed trailers into trolleys, keeping folks moving.

    Florida in any major hurricane, or the 2004 YGBFSM-Again?!? season.

    Even during the Covidiacy, folks mostly managed to keep on keeping on.

    Astroturf-fa only managed mayhem in very select dysfunctional permissive environments. And “the end is nigh!” is as old as the Republic.

    Sometimes its amusing to wargame a what-if of epic stupid premise. It can be useful as a check on one’s plans and prep. Doesn’t mean one actually believes in The Zombies/Commies/Locusts/BootieBandits Are Coming!! 11!!

    “Mice in the rice” is more likely for preppers. Metal containers and cats. (And always bet on the lesser of two weevils.)

    1. Only in the US do people use WWII airplanes to fly supplies into places that the newer birds can’t reach yet (diapers, formula, TP, light and bulky and not “necessities provided by Red Cross/Salvation Army.”) After being alerted through HAM radio, and people here who knew people there tapping a professional grapevine.

      1. The USA is..well.. where the HACKER lives. (NOT the media version that ought be called CRACKER.. the folks who would be Scorungers, the folks who look at things and with a few tweak get them to things the designers/inventors hadn’t imagined. It’s “Get the d— job done!” culture.

        A movie scene comes to mind. Princess Bride… “That’s impossible!” “You only say that because no-one has even done it before.” E Pluribus Unum nothing. The USA’s REAL motto is: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

        1. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
          ………………

          Is that the polite version of “Hold my beverage of preference ‘beer’!”? Asking for a friend.

          1. It can be. It can also be something like when my husband’s coworker’s Korean girlfriend complained in my husband’s hearing that she could never get a hot sauce in the US that was hot enough for her.

            It contained Maruga Scorpion pepper (I think) and Scotch bonnet, ginger, horseradish, and at least one other style of heat. He made it OUTSIDE (thank you), and the end result smelled marvelous. I told him I wanted it nowhere near my face. It was called “Challenge Accepted” and the girl in question LOVED it.

            But yeah, I understand that mindset deeply. Some of my best work has come out of being challenged, whether the challenger knows it or not.

    2. Heck, in DC– the “Marines guard daycare kids” thing that Snopes declared to be a fake story, because they also got reports of Army guys being the ones that did it?

      From the “know people who know someone whose kid was one of those kids or who was a first responder who interacted with said guys,” that was because it happened multiple times onthat same day.

      It would be like saying that the 9/11 Boatlift never happened because you got a variety of different ships involved.

  14. “But now we’re into “When society goes bad” or “If transport stops working” the locusts of the city will fan out. And that seems superficially true, because of course it’s what happens in movies, right? And in the news?”

    I think part of it is… that’s what wewould do. Or it’s what we think we would do.
    If there’s no food where you are, move to where there is, right? And most of us already have “Flee to Somewhere Else” in mind as our first option for when things go really bad.

    If we fanned out into the country, we would be law-abiding and try to trade for what we need. Offer goods, offer services. Beg, if it came to that.

    But we hear about how city-dwellers are not law-abiding – wildings, and flash-mobs looting stores and such, I don’t think they’ve remembered ram-raids yet – so we think that they would act like sensible people to move to where there is food, and then fall back on the looting habits when they reached somewhere with food.

    shrug That’s my best guess, anyway.

    1. More likely scenario:

      State or Federal government “helps” by facilitating, or more likely mandating, a big reloacation/evacuation.

      “Snow Emergency”

      “Hurricane”

      Or whatever systemic SNAFU they induce. (say Katrina/NOLA style)

      -That- is what gets a semi- cohesive swarm moving, possibly with up to military-grade logistics and escorts.

      But plan versus reality is “Florida” and “Katrina/NOLA”.

    1. What’s “Funny” is that the Colorado Supreme Court issued a “Hold” on their own decision.

      The Hold lasts until January 2025. IE Long enough to Trump to remain on the Colorado Ballot.

      Officially, they are “allowing time for the US Supreme Court to rule on the matter”.

      1. Obviously this is all choreographed in advance. Prepare to be surprised by the Supreme Court Decision, which will likely happen after all the names “allowed” are released from the Epstein flight log. And those folks on it? Hmmm. And those Not Released (yet).

      4. They wanted to stir the pot, to give others an excuse, but made sure they wouldn’t draw crazy retribution.

        Rather shrewd. Assuming their assumptions play out.

        I am betting that SCOTUS grudgingly says “c’mon man….”

        Then at least one state says “no. This is our call” and defies SCOTUS by re-affirming the removal.

        The sought precedent is “Donk controlled courts get to decide who is eligible.” The Obama method imposed by judicial fiat. All subsequent contests are Donk/Rino single party affairs.

        Idiots. Not happening.

          1. Based on how they responded to the Texas lawsuit in 2020, I KNOW they won’t. And that was before they had mobs outside their houses.

          2. Looks like the Colorado Republican party has decided they won’t play this game. They said they are going to a caucus system if Trump is off the ballot. An astonishing display of spine if true.

            Vivek started it by saying he’s dropping out of the primary if they pull Trump.

            1. The primary is about as “done deal” as it is going to get, absent someone printing a zillion “mickey Mouse” ballots.

              That same ruling keeps him off the general ballot in November. Then what?

    2. Yep. Democracy to the Demoncrats is only one name on the ballot to vote for. You can bet your bottom dollar they will try mightily to keep RFK Jr off the ballot too.

      For their “primaries” they’d let RFK Jr he on the ballot, but they would only count his votes as votes for Biden.

      2. Comrade Ivan patiently awaits his turn to vote. The Donk Party apparatchik hands him a sealed ballot envelope, which Comrade Ivan tears open to read.

        “Comrade Ivan! Stop! What are you doing?”

        “Opening my ballot so I can see for whom I vote, of course.”

        “Saboteur! This is a -secret- ballot!”

  18. We’ve moved twice in the past decade. We liked Riverside better than San Diego, and we like Lawrence better than Riverside. Of course those are both college towns, so they have some resources that other small cities may not (such as the university libraries that are one of my main sources of recreation). Ideologically a lot of people seem to be leftist, but the level of destructive behavior seems to be lower than in big cities like San Diego.

  19. I saw someone on a comment thread for a friend state, quite calmly, that there were things that the 90% of the populace wanted, “like gun control”, and TPTB and corporations keep it from being enacted in law.

    It’s a case of “you have never been outside your bubble, have you?” and I scrolled on by. I don’t think that one was social positioning. I honestly think that’s someone who just doesn’t understand why anyone would think differently than The Good And Right Way.

  20. And once you’re past the immediate emergency … networks develop. They did this even in Portugal. When bakers were unreliable, local women started baking bread, and you had to knock a certain way to buy bread in the morning. When food distribution was iffy, there was the person on the corner who could buy meat from their friend the farmer in the country, and if you knocked a certain way…

    And this is where people like me who don’t “grok” social stuff and learning the “knock a certain way” are in real trouble. But, well, I’m just one guy and my personal fate matters little in the grand scheme of things.

    1. Someone will tell you. i bet I know who tell you. He’s going to be related to me soonish. (Today they threatened to go to the registry tomorrow and not tell us. (rolls eyes.))
      we have our networks too. Don’t ignore them.

  21. Leftoids and Commuroids, always project their own failings on others. I would be this weak and so would everyone else. In truth we are just not that way. The most common phrase in america is not Fk You, but ‘Is there anything I can do?’ Mind you Fk You does come awfully close but not at each other but at our various forms of Government.

  22. When I first saw the title of this post I thought it was going to be about the common right wing blogosphere notion that red states are inevitably going to be ruined by blue state “locusts” who move there to get away from high taxes, crime, etc. but continue to vote Democrat and cause all the same problems they fled from. Which means the only solution is to presume that all blue state residents are America hating commies and treat them accordingly. This, of course, is not at all fair to residents of interior California, upstate New York, downstate Illinois, etc. but there are posters on certain blogs (cough Instapundit cough) who will suggest, apparently not in jest, that anyone emigrating from these states should be shot on sight.

    2. Oh, I don’t think the interlopers should be shot on sight . . . I think they need to maintain residency in the area they move to for at least five years before they can vote. Or stop moving to my no-longer-little town. I’m developing an aversion to California and New York license plates, which are appearing in larger and larger numbers in the last few years, and to the attitudes and customs that people bring with them from their blue states.
      Honestly, I don’t care where you’re from; if you act entitled and rude and condescend because I’m from a semi-rural agricultural (college) town, I’m not going to want you to stay.

      1. The question is

        Is it Red folks fleeing Blue folk, or Light Blue fleeing Dark Blue?

        As things sort out, it tends twards the latter case, as the Red folk move first, the Purples move, then things get really bad and the Light Blues get moving.

        And some very Blue folks seek early to escape the “incompetent” folk who “screwed up Blue”.

        But net trends seem to be more color sort currently, not tint.

        It’s those purples that screw nice places up. They think Red is OK but Blue is better, or just nicer.

    5. No, the source for that resentment is much closer to home.

      It’s comparatively rich out-of-staters from high cost-of-living states, moving to low-cost-of-living states, buying all the available houses with cash, which the relatively poor in-state residents can’t compete with – they have to get mortgages and deal with banks which is a pain for everyone – and inflating the values of houses beyond all reasonable levels, driving up every one else’s property taxes, so the in-state residents have to sell and move somewhere cheaper, which causes a smaller repeat of the exact same process in the even smaller, poorer towns they move to in the state.

      Add to that city councils that don’t want to issue building or development permits for the kind of places that people want to buy (usually because they are the most leftist people in town and want that super cool big city density because that would make them feel less like they are living in a small town), and the problem of builders not being able to make money on the little start homes that people actually need…

      There are a lot of problems, some of which are home-grown but most of which are made worse by a bunch of outsiders coming in.

      1. comparatively rich out-of-staters from high cost-of-living states, moving to low-cost-of-living states, buying all the available houses with cash, which the relatively poor in-state residents can’t compete with.
        ……………………

        Oregon ran into that in the ’70s and ’80s. One of the reasons the Oregon slogan was “Visit Oregon and Go Home!” for years. While inlaws didn’t build until early ’70s, they at least bought property in early 60’s. Some of that continues to happen. People who bought great-uncle’s house 80 acres paid cash for it, early ’70s. No one in the extended family could out compete what it was sold for (one of the last family owned pieces of the 1843 homestead). Now whenever it is sold, it will either be inherited, subdivided, or someone will have to win the lottery to afford the property as is.

  23. Welp, in a 4-3 vote the Colorado Supreme Court disqualified Trump from the presidential ballot in Colorado claiming the 14th Amendment allowed him to be barred (they are wrong of course). Presuming that leftist judges in other states follow-suit, it looks like things are going to get very ugly.

    1. President Trump has not even been accused of ‘insurrection’ in court, much less convicted. Only slandered in public. So now the Demokrats are punishing people for the lies their enemies tell about them.

      Demokrat SOP: punish the innocent, reward the guilty. Punish success, reward failure.
      ———————————
      The one thing we need more of from the government is LESS!!

      1. The Colorado GOP response-of course it does nothing to get Trump on the ballot for the general election:

        2. I recall when Da Parties tried to bypass the primaries in WI and do the caucus thing. Result: Everyone stayed home, twice. After all, if all primary voting did was make one more jury duty entry… and the caucus was.. limited… well, to HELL with the whole dang lot.

          The next election… NO caucus nonsense.

          Now, THIS CASE, is different and I can see it potentially working. What BETTER way to Da Shtate: FOADIAF?

      1. That is not unusual for any case that upsets the status quo when it is a big case. The issue is whether the Supreme Court continues the stay while the case is considered, and of course the ultimate decision by the Court.

        Democrats I believe feel they win either way; either they get Trump off the ballot, or they use the Supreme Court reversing decisions like Colorado’s in their campaign to deligitimize the court because they don’t like its rulings. No doubt the Democrats will declare the Court to be illegitimate and as “insurrectionists” for failing to allow Democrats to go full banana republic and outlaw their chief political opponents.

  24. “However those votes are fraudulent by nature, or most of them are.”

    And so? They are still being counted, they are still swinging elections, and in the last three years arresting / disbarring / etc. anyone who attempts to point this out has become the norm. And that means you have no way to stop it within the law.

  25. Regarding the government aid stuff –

    I’ve mentioned it here before, but it bears retelling. My sister-in-law once told me that when she and her husband (one of my brothers) were attending college, and she’d had her first kid, she repeatedly had to tell the aid people to quit bugging her, and to quit trying to sign her up for various programs. She didn’t want them, but the people in charge of the programs wouldn’t stop harassing her in an attempt to get her family enrolled.

    And on another note, I heard a news story on the radio late last week talking about the California government making a renewed effort to get hispanics signed up for aid. According to the story, the government believes that the hispanic community looks down on aid, so many hispanics that would otherwise be eligible aren’t signing up.

    YOU WILL NOT BE PERMITTED TO TURN DOWN THE GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE!!!

    And finally – immigrants and voting. I know some municipalities have started seriously talking about giving non-citizens the right to vote, and iirc at least one or two have actually gone ahead and done so. Non-citizens can’t vote for the President (the Constitution handles that), and anything higher than a city or county office is governed by state election rules, so a city can’t give its non-citizens permission to vote for a Senator.

    At least, it can’t do that legally. And we all know that no one EVER votes illegally…

  26. ““The EB cards stop working, and they’ll fan out to the suburbs.” There is a subset that assumes all welfare cases are black.”

    These are my eyeballs, and the neurotic collie is chasing them.

    The assorted socially and migratory dysfunctional do fan out to the suburbs. And yes, when the subsistence money goes away, it is even odds they’ll do so en masse. The term “wigger” is ugly, but accurate. IFF and when said horde arrives, your local dysfunctional demographic will dominate. And of course, various and sundry powerful city folk ship the migratory dysfunctional out to us,while requiring we build section 8 housing, and EBT dormitories in our small communities.

    A side note: those dysfunctionals who call themselves blacks, however, are the most likely to, when suffering, preferentially lash out at people they perceive to be white. If a yellow, white, or brown man is feeling aggrieved, he will not, unlike a black man, go looking for a white toddler to shoot in the head. Congratulations, DIE educational system! Three guesses whether this particular top-down teaching mode came from small town, country, or urban America? But I digress)

    So, given an urban black-dominated center, and a ring of white (and yellow, and brown) suburbs, the scenario described above is plausible. It’s a yuuuuge country. The above scenario could be reasonable for loads of people. It’s no good playing the “side effects are rare” with a population this large.

    So yes, to everything you write about Denver. No to Seattle and no to Portland and no to Chicago or Baltimore. Just no.

    And yes to Cityfolk never leaving countryfolk the hell alone. I spent a decade in the old home fighting your damnable laws trying to require us to get an environmental impact statement to put in a garden. Or not allowing us to dredge our rivers. Or sending busybodies out to fine us for having a noxious weed on our land because you are too bone-ignorant to recognize native vegetation.

    I used to love visiting Seattle, Bellingham, Portland. Not to live, mind. But small cities, large towns: chef’s kiss! The loathing grew because cityfolk will Not. Leave. Us. Alone.

    So do not preach appeasement to the abused. Go mend the ways of the abusers.

    1. They will not do so en masse. even with all the propaganda during the covidiocy, they weren’t the ones in BLM and antifa.
      Your eyeballs are wrong in this case. You’re a victim of propaganda.
      Most of the attacks in the suburbs, etc, right now are illegals operating as arms of the cartels.

      1. I agree it is possibly unlikely. Based on the malice of our aristos, and the observed floods of migratory dysfunctionals when the SHTF depending on where you are, you are out of luck. Unlikely in a country the large is “near certainty” somewhere.

        1. Cite actual examples? Have seen certain dysfunctional cities implode, but the folks fleeing are the functional/productive ones.

          Katrina didn’t seem to go the “major locust swarm” way, and that was about as “worst case” as I have seen in my considerable lifetime. And it had major-grade disfunctional YGBFSM-screwup government.

          Florida’s 2004 mass hurricane evacuations are more typical of how Americans react.

          1. I was thinking of the mass migrations across the southern border. And yes Katrina. Some neighborhoods in Texas will never be the same.

            But now that you mention it, dollars to donuts those are paid for as well .

            So there’s that.

            1. The mass migrations are paid for. And recruited from communist groups, if you search planes trains and automobiles, you’ll see.
              no none of this is “welfare recipients”

        2. Somewhere, sure, but not hordes of locusts.
          Look, even in Russia, they had to send the ARMY to confiscate food to cause Holodomor. Do you really think the urban poor even identify food in the raw as food? If so, you haven’t followed the “I can’t cook” blogs. The first effect of welfare is to make you helpless. Worse over generations.

    2. These people resent ALL figures of authority, but have also been trained that looking pitiful for the cameras is what pays.
      I’m not saying any number of them aren’t criminal — most in a petty way, mind — but they’re not functional enough for what you suggest. That image is straight out of propaganda.

      1. Ah. These people you describe. How much time do you spend with them?

        Where do you imagine the Gaza murderers came from?

        Lifelong multigenerational DIE-equivalent indoctrination. Why do you think the leftists here in America went full Juden-hasse on the drop of a hat? Who/whom is about who to hate, and what thing, determined werkly bybthe barrative, one is allowed to love. Christendom, setting aside the truth-proposition about the risen Christ (which powers it) is about multi-generational indoctrination on WHO to love and WHAT thing to hate.

        1. You really, really, need to stop interpolating the rent-a-mobs as a national trend. The whole point is to fool you into thinking there is some mass Revolutionary Movement when it is a handful of agitators that are adept at local shit-stirring, but not at producing actual Mass Movements.

          Stop buying the Con.

          Stop selling the Con.

          Its a Con, and we know it.

          And “Ham-ass” has -zip- to do with here in the USA. Different folks. Different mindsets, different beliefs, different shit-stirrers. Its the same blac-block nincompoops, and their backers, with the “cause” de-jure.

          Stop buying the Con.

          Stop selling the Con.

          Its a Con, and we know it.

          1. “determined werkly bybthe barrative”

            Weekly by the narrative.

            Sorry.

            Hamas are Hamas because they were born, raised and marinated in hate. They have a dysfunctional gibs culture of poverty and resentment. Sound familiar? The makeup of the locust horde IFF such a thing were to occur is going to depend on location’s demographics. Some demos, alas, have been taught, overwhelmingly and by this point, generationally, to hate.

            So one could get some people moving en masse and fleeing their situation, some starving in place, and some portion of which will be as above.

            Again, upon reflection, however, those migrations currently happening may be better-funded than organic, which implies they’ll grind to a halt also when the money dries up.

            1. Hamas isn’t -here-, nor would that work -here-, berceuse they are immersed in our viral culture. The transplants from that part of the world … mutate quickly here. Similar platitudes, but a notable loss of violent outbursts, especially high-energy or high-bodycount ones.

              They can get laid fairly easily, here, without getting killed. Ever consider how much of the mideast+moslem mayhem is actually a severe case of lakanookie?

              And a very large part of the “palestinian” kerfluffles here are the same folks who were shit-stirring in 2020, under yet another false flag. They have a surprising tendency to act up at “capitalist” things, for a notionally ethnic and muslim horde, eh? Its just another shade of “green” for the watermelons to wear.

              1. “Ever consider how much of the mideast+moslem mayhem is actually a severe case of lakanookie?”

                How can you possibly lack nookie when you’re allowed to rape any woman who isn’t sufficiently bagged up and her family will kill her for you after?

                1. The women -are- bagged.

                  The men of the women will cut you for looking at them wrong. Anything more is going to lead to serious violence, death, and feuding.

                  The richer/senior men have multiple wives, leaving the younger/poorer guys -bupkis- for mates.

                  Getting away with a rape one weekend isn’t going to cure lakanookie. Its just going to make the jerk more aggressive. Multiply by lots of such men.

                  The reason well-off moslem men send their kids over to the USA for “education” is so they can be young men without starting blood feuds, and maybe bag an actual wife or two, the supply back home being somewhat more constrained by polygamy.

                2. And then her relatives (including her husband, if she was married) will kill you for dishonoring her… and her family, by extension (since you’ve just implied that her family isn’t able to properly take care of its women).

              2. I was referring to what generational hatreds, stoked, funded, and fuelled by curated poverty and resentment will do to a people. I was hoping that an obvious foreign example would get past the watchful dragons of crimestop.

              1. To add, it should be noted that Arabs do horribly against any sort of organized opposition. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the Arabs haven’t won a single war against a non-Arab nation for a very long time. The closest was the Iran-Iraq War, and even that was only a draw. Remember that a while back Libya sent tanks into Chad… and got beaten by a bunch of guys driving unarmed Toyota pick-up trucks with guys carrying RPGs in the bed.

                Do a little reading on the subject (as I have), and you quickly come to the conclusion that the Arab militaries are not at all suited for modern combat. Individual troops can be very brave. But otherwise, their militaries are a complete disaster… albeit a disaster with very expensive wargear purchased from the West (particularly the US). The reason for this is stuff that’s ingrained into the cultures.

                If someone in TPTB were stupid enough to bring in a large group of Gazan Palestinians and try to turn them into shock troopers, then (assuming that the Pallies didn’t first try and murder whoever brought them in) they’d quickly learn that the Palestinians are incapable of standing up to determined opposition.

                And if anyone think I’m blowing smoke, then look at what’s going on in Gaza right now. The IDF is assaulting a heavily fortified city, quite likely one of the most heavily fortified in the world. It’s a textbook case for a slow slog with massive casualties for the attacker.

                But we’re not seeing that.

        2. Where do you imagine the Gaza murderers came from?

          Getting kicked out of multiple countries for terrorism in a region where the only place thinks what they did is horrifying and unthinkable is the one they attacked, with generations of coddled and provided for, and being accustomed to having no armed resistance.

          And even then it took a huge amount of prepwork and they had to be formed into an invasion group, it didn’t occur spontaneously. It is horrifying that there were unconnected follow-alongs who did attacks of opportunity, but the whole thing is horrific.

          1. Palestinians are apparently considered the Trailer Trash by the rest of the Arabs.

            And the Persians of Iran consider Arabs to be “goat herds”.

            So all the funnier that Ham-ass and Hez-hole-a are willing servants of Persia.

            1. When I was in Saudi in ’91, one of my co-workers who was an aspiring cartoonist produced a book of sketches of day-to-day life in the contract aircraft mechanic world in Daharan. The printers he worked with were Egyptian, and the considered the Arabs as “barbarians less than a century removed from their tents, while Egypt was civilized before even the Jews were more than hairy-backed savages.”

              1. “Look on my works ye mighty and despair…”

                LOL! Egypt and Persia, what have you done -lately-? Ahem. Those are -American- bootprints on the Moon! (hm, need to refresh those…)

                1. National myth is a big deal.

                  More recently, the Egyptians (and only the Egyptians) actually managed to scare the Israelis during the opening phases of the Yom Kippur War. There was a lot of work and preparation that went into that, and it all paid off. That should count for something.

                  Of course, the irony is that the entire reason for all that work and prep, and for scaring the Israelis, was so that Egypt could get a peace agreement with Israel and get its lost territory back. 😛

                  (which it did via the Camp David Accords)

                  1. And in return for scaring the matzo out of the IDF, the IDF had to be stopped by the combined US/USSR from taking Cairo.

                    Oops.

                    How was it put? …..”Balls of a Lion. Brains of a Hamster.”

                    1. Fortunately it all worked out in the end.

                      (very fortunately…)

                      And since I’ve mentioned elsewhere in the comments on this post just how horrible the Arab armies are, there’s a perfect story from the Yom Kippur War to illustrate this point (which I’ve mentioned here before). Nassir was well aware of just how much his army officers liked to “exaggerate” (read – make crap up out of whole cloth to boost their reputations) their results on the battlefield. He also knew that the IDF commanders had a habit of broadcasting in the clear. As a result, he built a giant radio receiver a bit back behind the border, and the sole purpose of that radio receiver was to listen in on Israeli communications.

                      So, for the first time ever during a war between Egypt and Israel, when the Yom Kippur War started, the President of Egypt was able to figure out exactly where the front line was (something that had led to a major disaster for the Arabs – particularly the Jordanians – in 1967) by ignoring what his ground commanders were telling him, and listening in on intercepted communications from the Israelis themselves. And it worked GREAT!

                      Unfortunately for Nassir, about four or five days into the war, the Israeli Air Force finally worked its way down the list of Egyptian targets and bombed that odd radio receiver out in the middle of nowhere. As a result, the Egyptian leadership lost its ability to listen in on the IDF radio chatter, and instead had to rely on the completely fabricated reports from its army commanders.

                    2. Oops…

                      It was Saddat who was running Egypt at the time, not Nasser. Nasser was the previous leader.

        3. I listen to them in public, where they talk.
          Look, indoctrination isn’t even that good in our schools.
          Hamas is in a small territory, far more concentrated, etc.

        2. When it comes to the cityfolk messing with those out in the counties, not the zombie hordes/welfare state proposition you are the one gaslighting me.

          There is NO reason city denizens need to regulate our back gardens (for just one example). None. But they do, and it is a constant uphill battle against their collectivist busy-bodying.

  27. Living in Shaky Town I am more than half convinced that the place is blue because elections are managed to predetermined azure outcomes. Put to the test even those listing to port want red rules for managing their lives and families. They are kind of like non-practicing Catholics in that way, its a cultural marker not a way to live.

    Certes, when SHTF comes around certain demographics will rampage, having been led to believe that they have no other skills. Here it is a LONG way to anyplace growing food, so they would be SOL even if they make it that far AND it is harvest time or nearly.

    I would expect that if the Gov’t were to try to supply us they would first check names and addresses against a a gun registry list and require you to turn in your firearms before you get a bite. I don’t imagine it would take long before people were turning in hot lead before turning in their boom sticks.

    ‘Course State or Fed is not the only form of government, I’d expect to see outfits like the Avenues or the 18th Street Gang setting up, wouldn’t surprise me were the homies being deputized and supported by more ahem respectable organizations.

    I gotta remember to take notes for later novelization.

  28. Well, I think you are delusional. You clearly don’t really know human nature, history, or other issues. But nice try.

    3. It’s funny, you know? You’ve been commenting here a long time if I don’t know any of that. Also, same email, lots of different names.
      As curiosity, are you a member of the Clamps Troll Office? How do they pay? Do they have dental?

    4. I particularly appreciated where you answered a guest post who did NOT live in CO (the writer being clearly identified as not me) by telling us you moved from the Springs and your first two reasons were “It’s cold and it snows all the time.”
      Which shows the closest you’ve been to the Springs is …. Moscow? I’d guess? So, is that where the office is? (And for the regulars who search and get confused, that comment was so bizarre I didn’t approve it, but it comes up on a search.) Or are you in DC, but watched South Park?

    6. And you expect us to believe that you know enough to judge? Tell me more about why I should believe you. I’m all ears. (What’s that? Drive-by troll has no answer? Shocking.)

  29. “We’ve all seen “refugees” fanning out in the surrounding areas.”
    This makes me wonder about the long line of refugees coming thru Mexico, etc that we see. How far do these people actually walk? We know there are bus caravans, but I also know the people aren’t usually the whining, lazy types. Any idea?

    1. Back in the day there was an outfit in Chicago, Pueblos Unidos, funding the invasion with direct cash payments to ‘migrants’ and their handlers. Presumably they were also paying for laying on logistics, including the bribes needed to enable Mexican cooperation. Probably still at it.

      1. The other thing I wonder about is the complete lack of MSM journalistic curiosity to investigate how so many people get to the border. I recently heard about a group from Northern Africa, and it didn’t take much for me to be curious as to how they got to our southern border. But nope, no curiosity from the MSM.

        1. They hate white people, so to them it’s all good, another reason to want to hang the Liberal Media from lampposts.

    3. This makes me think that Mrs Hoyt is correct that in a TEOTWAWKI scenario the current zombie hordes won’t show up as they are a function of paid sabotage.

      However, the main objection: different parts of the country will have different potential invaders once everything breaks down (again, assuming a drastic, “very slowly, then suddenly” scenario. Which I think unlikely.

      But banks failing, cascading city bankruptcies, entire counties losing half their employers and 80% of their funding overnight… in some places? It has happened before, and will again. And yes, the lawlessness was real albeit with fewer functionally insane people.

      So even a batch of murderous black power types with an eye to revenge… ? Yep. Possible. YMM – no will – VW.

      1. I often counter our collective tendency for doomcasting scenarios with examples of real disasters and awesome “all pull together” actions.

        NYC on 11 September 2001,and the great boatlift to evacuate Manhattan.

        NYC and surroundings during a huge blackout which paralyzed the subways and traffic systems. Truckers pulled flatbeds around useful routes to provide improvised and very large Jitney service. This was essential to recovery efforts, as it kept folks going about needful tasks

        Florida during the 2004 hurricane season of four catastrophic storms. Folks just kept on keeping on. Just about every single traffic light in Melbourne/PalmBay (decent sized suburbia kind of town) was trashed. The PD said “its a four way stop. Stop and wait for the other guy. Folks stopped. There were -no- “run the light- accidents, and there are usually. several a day normally. They got them all replaced just intime for another storm to do it again. Same story. On a wider scale, there was hardly any looting. (“you loot we shoot” -might- have been part of it) But folks cooperated in turning the interstates into one-way evacuation routes. Folks fed and coffeed the cops and wiremen. Every good-ol-boy with a chainsaw or axe cleared highways. It was… magnificent.

        And on and on, where Americans pull together, and get things working again.

        The post-apocalypse USA horde are builders and fixers, not locusts. Its in our DNA.

  30. I do believe the Web is being finicky today, must be No Such Agency and the Fibees trying to see who will Boog after the Co. decision non decision. Your tax dollars at work, meanwhile the world is on fire and the economy is rushing towards catastrophic collapse. While the Democrats complain about the results of their own actions. I suggest we all set back and go do some Christmas/Holiday Season shopping and people watching. I like to set somewhere and eat while watching everyone run around trying to find that last gift. It is interesting to note there is no, must have it gift this year, I.E. Cabbage Patch Doll/Star Wars/Marvel Super Hero/Lego toy? So the interactions are going to be subdued this year. Meh.

    1. Sunday, I went to Walmart. Really hate going there, but needed a few things quickly and that’s the only place locally that has them (or so I thought) and I decided to run throuh a few other items I need as well.
      You would only know it is the week before Christmas by the decorations, and a few extra cashiers. Oh and the monitor I got was “Rolled Back” to the same price as a year and a half ago.
      They were still out of the office chair I’d like, and they had no paper punches (single or the 3-ring binder style I was looking for), and none of the bandages I was looking for, not even in an assorted pack (they did have standard ones in various skin tone colors though). What pharmacy has no knuckle or fingertip bandages? Oh, and “Bravery” colors?
      Other than that, it was typical Wally World folks. That was my quota for people watching for a while now.

      1. A lot of chain stores will pull slow selling items off of shelves during the holiday season, for extra shelf space for high moving/seasonal items. Also Walmart makes their profit from volume sales. That is why every time you go there it seems they’ve moved stuff around. Because they are constantly adding items and dropping the low volume moving items. As far as people watching, it’s an acquired taste.

        1. These were “Aint there, and won’t be anytime soon” for the bandages, which are their own section, not seasonal, though they used to be a bigger section over on the aisle now occupied by a vast selection of Depends and the like, and “Big empty space on the shelf” for the chair. under where a sample (missing bits and bobs) is ziptied to the shelf.

          1. Large person, 6′ 4″ 250 lbs, I destroy office chairs, no way I could buy one not rated well over my weight. They don’t sell those at wally world. I won’t even talk about the pistons being shit.

            1. What is the deal with the lift pistons? I mean, really? The Chinese can put a spaceplane in orbit but they can’t make a chair piston that doesn’t sink slowly to the floor after a couple years? What’s Chinese slave labor coming to?

    2. I do believe we as the creative class are not doing enough to drive the paranoid alphabet agencies crazy. I think we need to feed their paranoia’s just a wee bit more. Not by doing anything, but by incorporating certain key words in posts, words like Putz, Beer Hall, War of the Roses, Bastille Day, and such. Avoid the obvious Like War Between the States and Civil War, that’s just too easy. Ooh, Ides of March, now there is an obscure reference that should get the little wheels spinning in their heads. Don’t Step on Snek is so yesterday. But you get the drift, increase the imaginary chatter and watch their paranoia run wild. Don’t forget the religious web sites as well, you know they are following those like hawks, more like seagulls if you want the truth. That is a good metaphor for feds, Seagulls, think of the scene from the fish movie, Finding Nemo, Mine, Mine, Mine. If that doesn’t say Federal Agent nothing does. I am a bad boy.

      1. Putz=Putsch? Calling someone a D*ck in Yiddish probably wouldn’t trip any warnings.

        I understand that the term Circular Error Probable is likely to raise an eyebrow or two . . .

        1. Given how many times lately I have commented on various aspects of “earth shattering kabooms”, I may wind up in Guantanamo for Christmas….

            1. Out of key carols. Seriously. I can’t carry a tune even when I try (okay, I try to all the time, just doesn’t work). I am fine with my singing tormenting certain other prisoners. The solders and my fellow political prisoners, um, “sorry” in advance?

      2. The ship sails at midnight.
        Jean has a long mustache.
        The cat drank all the milk.
        Coke, it’s the real thing.
        It wounds my heart with monotonous languor.
        Over.

          1. Wait, do you mean the volcano ejects Penguins at high velocity, or targets Penguins with long-range projectiles? 😀

            I’m not sure which alternative would be more disturbing…

  31. I want a cross bow so I can deer hunt from my hottub. There’s only a small herd that wanders down my alley; one kill would decimate it. But there are plenty in the area.

    If I got one tomorrow, it would be easy enough to deal with (as those things go) because I have lots of freezer space. If I got one post-electricity, that would be a bit troublesome. I suppose the neighbors would appreciate the gift.

    Oh! That just inspired this year’s (coming Feb’s) Groundhog’s Day picture! I don’t have a crossbow, but a rifle will do for a picture, if not in practice. For some reason, shooting rifles in town is frowned upon, but archery in deer season is acceptable. That my hunting family members will be appalled by the picture only makes it better.

    1. Put a hole in your muffler, or find an old engine that back fires, run it for cover, then even the neighbors will say it was just a back fire for that haunch of meat when the odd boom sounds. sarc

      1. Well if one is sharing with all the neighbors “who heard anything?” I mean. Really. Of coarse there could be that odd neighbor. Like the ones when the police showed up at our reception (day after wedding) at my parents house. “Neighbors are complaining about the noise.” Dad – “What? All the neighbors are here.” (Grin) 🙂

    2. I’ve been watching a lot of outdoor/primitive survival videos lately. One had some hunters doing a long-term “eat only what you kill” challenge and their trick for preserving their kills was to put the bodies in plastic bags and bury them, letting the cold of the Earth act as a refrigerator. IIRC, they even preserved a full-grown bear this way.

      Other zero-electricity techniques are smoking the meat, slating it or turning it into pemmican. If you can get an airtight seal, turning it into a stew and canning/boiling it might also work.

      Of course, if you trust your neighbors to reciprocate then just sharing the kill also has value.

  33. “”If transport stops working” the locusts of the city will fan out” really is a kind of absurd scenario. Hard to fan out when they’re on foot. Going anywhere important requires seriously thinking about it beforehand, because unlike with a car, it takes 10 times longer to get anywhere on foot, and you’re burning your own body’s fuel to do it. Even with a well maintained and well adjusted 10-speed bicycle, it’s going to take at least 3 times longer to get anywhere.

    Seems to me the Left shows its face most strongly in our government and corporations. Get a leftist talking really loud in public, and urging things identical to Trump’s Jan 6 speech, and TPTB won’t bat an eye. Put a right-side conservative up there, saying the exact same thing, and they’ll arrest and imprison without trial for months or years. That’s a major reason a lot of us tend to confine our talk and lower our voices in public. But that doesn’t do anything to stop the simmering anger.

    Right now, nobody seems to know what will lower the boiling point for that simmering anger to explode. Although 4 Colorado Supreme Court Justices and a corrupt lawyer denying the 1st Amendment rights of at least 5000 Centennial Staters, and the due process rights of Mr. Trump, just pushed it a couple degrees closer.

    1. There are two aspects to boiling water. One is heat, the other is pressure. You can turn up the heat without boiling if you keep enough pressure on.

      They’re counting on censorship, canceling, lawfare and their other repressive antics to keep that pressure on, while they keep turning up the heat, while just assuming the lid will never blow off.

    2. Turnabout is fair play.

      “We have determined that Biden/Donks/etc are insurrectionists thus are ineligible/fired/poopyheads. Signed another black-robed minon”

      Wait… they -all- could get banned/DQ-ed/fired? Be still my heart! Go! Lemmings, GO!

  34. In other news, the Russian Federation has established a new military organization for their African operations, working to recruit ex-Wagner and others with combat experience.

    In an effort to look even more like a certain German government of three quarters of a century or so ago, they named it:

    Африканский Корпус.

    Plug that into your favorite online Russian to English translator and you get:

    Afrika Korps.

    Yep, with the k’s and everything.

    2. From ISW’s 20 December 2023 update ( https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-20-2023 ):

      The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD)-controlled Africa Corps announced a recruitment campaign targeting former and current Wagner Group personnel and people with combat experience in the war in Ukraine. The Africa Corps, a Russian MoD initiative to expand Russian military presence in the Middle East and Africa, announced that it started recruitment on December 20.[13] Africa-focused Russian media outlet African Initiative stated that Russian Deputy Defense Minister Colonel General Yunus-Bek Yevkurov is “supervising” the new unspecified leadership of the Africa Corps.[14] The Africa Corps claimed that its command staff consists of former combat commanders of elite units in the Russian military and unspecified private military companies (PMCs) – possibly referring to the Redut PMC (affiliated with the Main Directorate of the Russian General Staff [GRU]).[15] The Africa Corps advertised an unspecified “high salary,” but noted that interested applicants who are currently fighting in the war in Ukraine cannot transfer to serve in the Africa Corps, though active-duty Russian military personnel not fighting in the war can transfer to serve in the Africa Corps.[16] The Africa Corps also clarified that an individual cannot transfer from Rosgvardia to the Africa Corps before completing their Rosgvardia contract.[17] The Africa Corps’ desire to clarify eligibility for service suggests that its advertisement campaign has successfully generated interest among former Wagner personnel given that some Wagner fighters signed contracts with the Russian MoD or Rosgvardia after the death of Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin in August 2023.[18] The Africa Corps suggested that it would operate in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso – areas consistent with ISW’s previous assessment of the Africa Corps’ area of operations.[19]

    1. It already exploded further up thread. Can’t explode twice, can it? Unless there’s another one, hidden behind the first. Or maybe the penguin is a witch? Let’s see if it weighs the same as a duck…

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