US Embassy in South Africa issues alert to stock up on food and water | Hacker News Reader

US Embassy in South Africa issues alert to stock up on food and water

mybroadband.co.za

38 pointsflojo7 comments

Link directly to the US Embassy page - https://za.usembassy.gov/security-alert-u-s-embassy-state-of...

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Who builds these systems, im on the latest chromium.

I hate when government or corporate sites go out of the way to block anything that isn't Chrome or IE. Most laziest way to ensure compatibility.

Edit:

Ah, my bad, it's cloudflare. Congrats to cloudflare for blocking anyone who won't allow you to run your scripts from accessing information. archive.is it is.

This is a good reminder to sign up for the state department’s STEP email alerts if you’re planning on spending more than a week abroad. That’s how they coordinated evacuations during Covid times, and with the world seeming increasingly not as peaceful as it was 5 years ago, the embassy is going to be one of the most important emails you’ll get if you’re stuck in a pickle while traveling. They even have the ability to forward you the cash for a ticket back if you don’t have access to funds (don’t worry, they’ll get that back from you when you return). And if needed, they’ll do their best to get you to the airport. I was in a southeastern Asian country during Covid when they were trying to run bus routes to the airport and I’m pretty sure they carried large bags of cash to get through the locked down provincial border crossings.

But be aware that their code for knowing when to stop emailing you is quite buggy, and they have a very very broad interpretation of pertinent events. I've resigned myself to getting an email every time there's a protest in Berlin for the rest of my life.

Yes. Very worth checking your nation's travel advisories (and maybe that of a few others - they don't always agree).

But it can be hard to piece together what's actually going on just from such advisories. They are often really generic. Canadians are currently advised to exercise "a high degree of caution" (same as for China, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia) for nearly all of Western Europe, at the moment. There's apparently a "high risk of terrorism". But it's a green light for Portugal and Spain - no extra precautions necessary. Go figure. How much risk am I actually at for terrorism in Germany vs. Portugal? Should this influence my travel decisions? I'm guessing no. They're pro forma notices.

Regional and other more specific advisories are sometimes more helpful.

So, kind of alert/notification fatigue.

South Africa reverting back to just Africa.

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