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What if I had the entirety of human knowledge and experience at my fingertips and were suddenly plunged into the Dark Ages?
nothing pisses off a historian more than seeing context thrown out the window because people were too lazy to ask questions.
Hurricanes are rated on a scale from 1 to 5, 5 being the most severe. A level 5 hurricane hits you with 150- to 180-mile-per-hour winds if you are in its path. With Sadie, we saw winds that high seventy-five miles inland, which is rare. What 150-mile-per-hour winds do, effectively, is blow small buildings off their foundations and rip off the roofs of larger buildings. You would expect to see tons of roof damage for a storm like this, and what we were seeing was less roof damage and more roof removal. If someone was out in something like that, they would certainly be lifted off their feet and
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Anyone who’s had to respond to a hurricane will tell you the absolute worst moment isn’t huddling in a bathtub hoping your siding isn’t in Louisiana. It’s the moment after the storm dies and you walk outside and realize you need help.
Most Americans aren’t too happy asking for help, to be honest with you. It’s part o...
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As it turns out, there is no point opening shelters after a tornado. The folks who lost their homes, they are too proud to sleep in a gym or a church. They’ll come in for a drink and a meal and to cool off or warm up, but they will not stay in a shelter. It’s not part of the character there.
It’s not uncommon for people to focus on one thing they can control amid a sea of chaos and hyperfocus on that one thing.
I know folks like that, who have no sense of the greater good, you know? Whose agenda is the only thing that matters.
it’s that a person gets stupid when they become people. They are easily convinced of things.
we were going to keep killing and killing and killing each other until there was just one person left on a mountain of bodies. The tribes would kill each other, and when there was no one left to kill, they would kill their ranks,
How did we get sick like this? Would we ever get better?
but do you know what “first aid” refers to? It’s the first line of medical care, with the implicit understanding that one will then proceed to the next level, where a trained medical professional can deal with them if that is what is called for. At no point is first aid supposed to solve “every medical problem anyone has ever had ever,”
Those who were stranded for some time would most often respond in one of two ways. Either they would bond or they would separate. Bonding led to joint efforts at survival, and hard-to-execute programs like food and water rationing and emotional support were able to be delivered within the community, oftentimes to a masterful degree. When people bonded they tended to stay alive longer.
Those who separated did not benefit from the pooling of resources or talent and would often become desperate.
Yes, I was able to convince most of my subjects to tell their stories, but in the end, what have we learned? That violence lurks in all of us? That we are easily led by those with less than the purest of intentions?
