XBOX 360 2706

In the long term, the infrastructure will have to be rethought anyway. But in the short and medium term, where else would they go? Be stuck in the traffic? We don't have many cities that big.

Outside the immediate disaster area, they shouldn't be too dead or ill (on average). And as to "not having been told to show up"... no way, these are the people who have explicit orders to show up especially if there's a disaster or anything.

I have problems with the idea that they'd all just go haring off.

I don't get where that comes from. I thought the usual response was to hide in the woods. (Well, that's always worked before...)

There's this idea that the individual citizens could be trusted to do something by themselves, too. That works occasionally even better.

Enough people seem to have horses that we keep having to dodge them when hunting.

Funny, I haven't seen them in a while either.

At least they're organized. That's the key.

I don't have an astrolabe but I have instructions for building one ...

That's what they always say, isn't it?

Two-three weeks? Now that's just silly. I don't count that as having a larder yet. A month is still the govt recommendation here, or was at least last time I looked ...

It's of course been researched beforehand. Have someone translate for you if you don't have anything better locally already. (I have a couple of others too.)

Read that and be out gathering food in less than a week. And while you're at it, cut down some trees and pull the bark off. Then go read another book and build a shelter with that wood ...

It would be preferable to get a teacher, sure, but one copy of a book should be good for a small group.

There are also courses for it. Take, for example, https:--www.mpkry.fi-generation-login-checkcourseaccess.asp?id=14011 ... I don't see citizenship being required to attend for that one, BTW.

Heh. I rather thought that the Intel 8085 was one of the more, um, practically usable semiconductor processors for a scenario like this, it being not altogether uncommon in ruggedized or mil-spec versions...

BTW, more semi-related fiction, there are a couple of books by S.M.Stirling and David Drake where such a degraded society has an interesting relationship with computers...

There's the problem of when to announce, with limited-scale incidents. Emergency responses being very disruptive from normal life's point of view, I do see a couple of reasons to not spread the disruption any further than necessary ...

We have broadcast announcements for everything from small tyre shop fires up. (That was just last weekend. "keep your windows shut" - as if anyone was going to keep windows open with -25 C outside.)

We have different sound patterns for ours.

Now don't get me wrong, as a nation we very probably did benefit from that greatly, but that still doesn't necessarily make it a "good thing" in itself.

There's no "right" or "wrong" time. Fishing is seasonal too, even if there's always a way to at least try ...

-- #Not speaking for my employer. No warranty. YMMV.