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Comment by wing-_-nuts | Hacker News Reader

People really overestimate how resilient infrastructure is to natural disasters, and such disasters will become more common as the earth warms.

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More people need to think about their emergency preparedness. We're not talking about permanent societal collapse; just a week-long collapse of electricity, food supply, water, transportation, or other critical goods.

If you live in a cold climate: go buy an indoor safe propane heater right now, with a supply of propane. Its not that expensive (maybe $100) for the value you will get out of it in the coming years. It can single-handedly be the difference between being able to hunker down in your home, and having to rely on external support that you'll pray is there for you when the time comes. A carbon monoxide detector is also good to pair with it, to be safe. Blankets as well.

Water is easy, though pretty large volume. Food also isn't as hard as it used to be; having a weeks supply of emergency rations is fine, but consider: Soylent, Huel, etc. Their powder form has a published shelf life of a year, its volumetrically dense, nutritionally complete, only requires water to make, and tastes pretty good.

CASH. Some way to start fire. Candles. A couple flashlights. Batteries (the huge ones made for camping are fantastic, though expensive). Two way radios with very long-range are also a fantastic investment; imagine its the winter, power & cell service is down, and a loved one has to try a local store for some supply you forgot.

Ice storm in Quebec made me realize I need all this.

Canada is a special case: small population, huge area to cover. The infrastructure budget in Canada per square kilometer is very low.

With BC there's a substantial geography component. When a highway washes out it's often 100s of km detour. In contrast, for substantial portions of Alberta, a highway washout often means just a jump over to the next township road . . . which are about every mile (cuz those were the units of measure at the time they were laid out).

Yes, there are quite a number of choke points that are unavoidable in BC. Alberta is pretty much flat with some mild elevation changes and lots of parallel roads. In BC it is the opposite, the z-axis dominates everything.

... there is the Rockies in Alberta, plus the badlands.

Fair enough, I had the more populated parts of Alberta in mind but there is plenty of it that is elevated. Even so, it doesn't dominate the road network to the degree that it does in BC, where you are either in Vancouver or clinging to the side of a mountain (or a glacier).

Compounded by areas with sparse infrastructure, like B.C. I've done the drive from Washington to Alaska twice, and once the road was washed out somewhere not terribly far north of Vancouver, which necessitated a near 1,100 KM detour inland!

I agree we need to deal with global warming. We also need to continue getting better at dealing with disasters. Thankfully, so far our ability to deal with natural disasters is outpacing the increased frequency.

While Frequency Of Natural Disasters Is Increasing, Related Death Tolls Are Actually Decreasing

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimfoerster/2021/10/01/while-fr...

Exactly. As people over consume and the planet's climate continues to become more erratic and destabilized infrastructure disasters will increase.

It makes me sad to see the parent comment grey (10:16 AM PST). You're absolutely correct that overconsumption is the root of the problem.

I think it's more nuanced than this. Like you're right that reducing consumption/commerce would help but it has trade-offs that lots of people don't jive with and isn't really the root of the problem which is waste. There is zero issue with goods made and distributed using renewables, or goods where non-renewables are reclaimed (i.e. metals, glass, certain plastics).

The problem is right now governments and enterprise is mostly focused on fixing supply side of the climate change and sustainability problem. Not enough is being done or discussed to reduce demand. Focusing on consumption changes is just as important as focusing on supply issue IMO.

> There is zero issue with goods made and distributed using renewables

But how much of the goods we consume fall in that category?

Zero, but that's not really the point. It's when you're looking at policy changes you need to pick a direction and set goals. And I think "make consumption sustainable" is way more achievable then "reduce consumption." Because the only scalable way to reduce consumption is to make most people poorer. It's hard to herd billions of people to do something against their interest.

Or, rampant incompetence of increasingly all-powerful government functionaries paralyzes more and more of our nation when random events occur.

The capacity to quickly repair roads exists. Call in a major structural steel engineering firm, and give them free reign and a big cheque.

You'll have a bridge over the swirling rapids in 24 hours.

Of course, government workers will be falling to the ground foaming at the mouth -- but that's just a side-benefit.

you might want to loosen that tinfoil hat.

Private sector does really well in a lot of spaces, but despite being public infrastructure, most highways and roadworks built in Canada are already built by private sector employees working under contract.

Those public sector employees foaming at the mouth? Those are the ones who are responsible for making sure that the roads, highways and infrastructure are fit for purpose, including safety. But hey, why would we want anyone providing oversight of private corporations right?

You want emergency, purpose built solutions built by a mission oriented team? May I point you in the direction of the Canadian Military Engineers (you know, government workers?).

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