The big Galveston hurricane. Erik Larson (the Devil in the White City guy) wrote a book about it called Isaac's Storm. Pretty interesting read.
Lot of the houses survived the wind, but the storm surge lifted big rafts of debris that plowed across the island. I was in Biloxi for Katrina, and even though the building was more than tough enough to survive the wind you could hear shit banging around out in the darkness. I can't imagine what that would have been like in wooden buildings.
He was a pioneer in establishing what we know now as the NWS so you aren’t far off. One of the best books I’ve ever read is called <em>Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History</em> by Erik Larson(Devil in the White City) that reads like a firsthand account recreated with what’s known from the actual history.
It’s a relatively quick read and it really dives into interesting things like how poor communication(among other socio-political issues) between the US and Cuba prevented the news of the 1900 storm getting out in enough time to do much about it. The book was gifted to me when I lived in Houston, and interestingly enough also explains how Houston became the dominant port city as a latent effect of the 1900 storm’s effect on Galveston and any future it may have had as the big-dog port city.
Just went over this with out group.
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Nuclear War Survival Skills book. Look up the author. He has seen and done some shit. If I remember he was also there for some testing of nukes. Was working with congress on civil defense before M.A.D. and eventually started petitioning them to start civil defense up again after the US stopped it. This book has a lot of what civilians can do in case of an attack. There are some parts of the book that describe what you can do in 30 minutes (basically what you can do before the fallout starts landing outside blast radius) to survive. Amazing book.
Pressed send too soon. Do yourself a favor and read about this storm in Isaacs Storm by Erik Larson. This storm and this man are why we now have a national weather service.
https://www.amazon.com/Isaacs-Storm-Deadliest-Hurricane-History/dp/0375708278
Have you read Isaac’s Storm by Peter Larson*? It’s about the 1900 Hurricane and is written by the same guy who wrote The Devil in the White City that’s being made into a movie. It’s a fantastic read and really gave me perspective on the region after moving to Houston years back. I highly recommend it if you haven’t already.
edit- fixed speeling
If there's an EMP, you can count on two things: you won't be reading any of the books you've saved on your electronic devices, and you'll be trying to survive in a post-nuclear nightmare. For this reason get a hard copy of Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson H. Kearny. It is the single best book written on the subject for the average citizen.
In addition I would get a hard copy of the LDS Preparedness Manual. You can skip past the first couple of dozen pages if you aren't interested in the religious stuff. After that is an encyclopedic resource for survival.
You can get both books on Amazon right now for about $40 total, and if you do it will vastly improve your survival library.
Tereko source chahiye ? Itna British raj ke liye simp na kar.
In the commentary for the game they talk mention the book "Fire Season" by Philip Connors (Amazon link) as a big inspiration. Sounds like a perfect fit.
They already do have genocidal manics! Queen Victoria did oversee the largest deliberate campaigns of starvation in human history: Late Victorian Holocausts
yes. https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Season-Field-Wilderness-Lookout/dp/0061859370
I just saw that it's won some strong awards, too.
Definitely. For example, British imperialism, a precursor to modern capitalism, led to tens of millions of deaths in their colonies, namely India, in the 19th century due to famines that were needlessly exacerbated by the forceful reconstruction of their agricultural society for export of cash crops rather than food that would have saved millions. Times of famine historically affected India but their society had built ways to manage it until British rule destroyed that for the sole purpose of exploitation of resources for profit. And things happened around the colonial world. For those curious, check out Mike Davis's Late Victorian Holocausts
{King Leopald's Ghost}, about Belgium's atrocities in the Congo
The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin, a pioneering era horror story in which a schoolhouse gets trapped in a snap cold freeze and blizzard with no firewood, no warm clothes, a young teacher with no experience, and about 20 kids who can't go home.
These first-person slave accounts collected by the US Gov in the 30s. During the depression, the gov created jobs by sending people out into rural areas to record culture, like appalacian music, and they also captured these slave narratives.
Really great non-fiction read on this and how one man screwed over a whole lotta people by denying what the Cuban meteorological office kept telling him was going to happen: Isaac's Storm.
OP, this is a very interesting way to spend your time!
I recently read Fire Season by Philip Connors and although it wasn't a particularly well written book, I appreciated the aspects of the job being performed.
The author discusses many of the same things you've mentioned here. E.g. being "on the clock" 24/7, triangulating fires, staying in contact with control, etc.
A nuclear exchange isn't going to be as bad as you're thinking.
If Russia dropped all of its 6000 bombs on the US all at once, they'd probably kill a third of the population, maybe half, pretty much the big cities. There's still going to be a lot of people around rebuilding.
"Mutually assured destruction" was a US doctrine that the rest of the world, rightly, didn't subscribe to. "Nuclear Winter" was mostly soviet propaganda disproved in the early 1980s.
I'd highly recommend reading https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1634502973/; it's not the normal prepper fiction, it was actually written by a guy working for the US government on what it would take to keep the civilian population alive during a nuclear war. A lot of that book (like the food storage information and improvised cooking methods) has value for other disasters too.
Nuclear War Survival Skills:... https://www.amazon.com/dp/1634502973?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
There's a pdf of the earlier edition (public domain) available if you do some searching.
Really good book.
I ran into the guy who wrote this book on a hike in New Mexico. He told me he left NYC after 9/11 and the USFS hired him with no experience.
His job was basically going up into the tower once an hour and radioing in the conditions. You get food and supplies airlifted in and they still paid you, in money that was impossible to spend because there was nothing around to buy.
It's a six-month stint and in the winter he takes odd jobs in the nearest town, Silver City.
Interesting meeting him, but I think I'd get bored in about a week.
How exactly do you think British settlers turned the US & Canada and Australia into British settler colonies?
Genocides against native peoples in those countries, India, Ireland, Kenya, Iraq, the Caribbean, the list goes on and on.
You can also educate yourself and read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Late-Victorian-Holocausts-Famines-Making/dp/1784786624?nodl=1
Try these.
Specifically, check out The Anthropocene is a Joke and then What Made Me Reconsider the Anthropocene.
If you like the style, his book The Ends of the World is an amazing read, and helps put into perspective humanity’s little CO2 experiment.
Good to hear, yea I really liked it as well.
If you ever get the chance, I would recommend Isaac's Storm which tells the story of the 1900 Galveston Hurricane which effectively wiped the city off the face of the map.
It’s got that same gripping account storytelling of the Circus fire.
Know where it's in stock? I was hoping to get a second copy shipped to some family members on the other side of the country.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1634502973/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_5A8EGFS3ZC0NF1BHHCTH
I just printed this one.
There is a 2016 version, but probably not surprisingly, it is temporarily out of stock to purchase.
Anyone know if the 2016 version can be found for free like this one?
Highly recommend: Nuclear War Survival Skills: Lifesaving Nuclear Facts and Self-Help Instructions https://www.amazon.com/dp/1634502973/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_6NJHV4NY0TAPH7GXKMWC
You can also find it online as a free, legal, PDF. It's old, but the way nuclear bombs affect human bodies hasn't changed since 1987, and the author spent a few decades working in .gov labs on this stuff, so it isn't just generic prepper porn...the dude actually knows what he's talking about.
Short answer is "no", but 6" of dirt would. Maybe stage a few large (from the garden store) bags of soil near each window, then when needed cover the windows with dirt.
Key thing is you want dense mass.
Think about "up" too. A ground based detonation is going to throw irradiated dust way up into the atmosphere, which will settle on the roof of your house. Even if you're not getting radiation horizontally in the basement, you could be getting it vertically through the roof/floor.
I'd highly recommend this book: Nuclear War Survival Skills https://www.amazon.com/dp/1634502973/
It's also available as a free PDF, but after reading the first few pages of the PDF I concluded it was worth 15 bucks for a hard copy.
It was written in 1987 during the cold war, but the author was studying nuclear physics since before the first nuclear weapons were dropped on Japan, and spent several decades working in government labs doing research around what civilians need to do to survive Warsaw vs NATO went nuclear It's not just standard prepper fear porn...the dude has serious credentials and knows what he's talking about.
If you're at ground zero when a 5 megaton bomb falls on you, you're dead no matter what you do; vaporized instantly. If you're 2000 miles away from a 5 megaton detonation, you'll probably survive no matter what you do. Between those extremes, there's actually a lot of things you can do to greatly increase your chances of survival.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1634502973/
Free PDF: https://www.nukepills.com/wp-content/uploads/woocommerce_uploads/nuclear_war_survival_skills.pdf
I just started reading that. It's a bit dated, but 1987 was the cold war with Russia and radiation hasn't changed much since then.
Assuming you mean finger lakes of upstate NY, I'd imagine you're in a good place. That's mostly farmland that's not likely to take a direct hit.
(By comparison, I'm in a city ten miles north of a large national guard base, and 20 miles south of a huge army base...I'm probably in a bad place)
>This edition of Cresson H. Kearny’s iconic Nuclear War Survival Skills (originally published in 1979 and updated by Kearny himself in 1987 and again in 2001)
Good book on existential threats by Toby Ord called the Precipice . It explores different threats, probability of occurrence, and how to mitigate risk of said threats.
Nukes
Climate change
Bioweapon/pandemic
AI
Natural disaster
It also triggered a 'nuclear' (without the radiation) winter and led to crop failures and mass starvation. The resultant social upheaval in Indonesia led to a Muslim take over. Simon Winchester wrote an extremely readable account of this in 'Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded.' I highly recommend the book and the author.
You've got that right. This is an awesome book by an awesome author about the 1900 Category 4 hurricane that almost scraped Galveston off the map.
Started reading this book about Karkatoa and I LOVE IT!
Absolutely fascinating and I love the way it’s written. Exactly the style of writing I love. If I wrote a book, i’d write it like this.