Slashdot Mirror
A Year After Sandy, Do You Approach Disaster Differently?
A year ago today, Superstorm Sandy struck the northeastern U.S.
The storm destroyed homes — in some cases entire
neighborhoods — and brought unprecedented disruptions to the New York City area's infrastructure, interrupting
transportation, communications, and power delivery. It even
damaged
a Space Shuttle. In the time since, the U.S. hasn't faced a storm with Sandy's
combination of power and placement, but businesses have had some time to rethink how much trust they can put in even
seemingly impregnable data centers and other bulwarks of modernity: a big enough storm can knock down nearly anything.
Today, parts of western Europe are recovering from a major storm as well: more than a dozen people were killed as the
predicted "storm of the century"
hit London, Amsterdam,
and other cities on Sunday and Monday. In Amsterdam, the city's
transportation system took a major hit; some passengers had to shelter in place in stopped subway cars while the storm passed. Are you (or your employer) doing anything
different in the post-Sandy era, when it comes to preparedness to keep people, data, and equipment safe?
Actually, as much as you personally are intellectually lazy, has elaborate plans in case of drought. and severe floods aren't unheard of either.
According to various shows and friends, being prepared for the next major storm/earthquake/tsunami/fire/drought/etc. is to have a large gun and ammo cache, an underground bunker, food and water for a year, off-grid energy generation and the willingness to shoot the roaming hoardes of looters, bandits and otherwise famished and unprepared bleeding-heart hippies that will try kill your dog, rape your mother and steal your food.
In the meantime, past experience indicates that 5 days of food and water is plenty of supplies to wait out the rebuilding effort, along with a house that matches the local building codes. Society is not going to collapse, Mad Max will not come to pass, and I'll be most worried about paranoid neighbors shooting me as I come to check in on them.
So my plan: backup important data across the network, have food and water for a few days and hunker down while the roads are cleared and energy access is restored. If I get bored, I can always hunt turkeys in the backyard.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Two quick things:
Actually, as much as you personally are intellectually lazy,
You're a dick.
has elaborate plans in case of drought. and severe floods aren't unheard of either.
These "disasters" aren't. We regularly have flooding (localized, due to rains, not rivers or levees), excessive heat (110+ for weeks straight), and drought. That's normal here, benign, and we're not doing anything differently because of disasters elsewhere, because we're mostly immune from anything other than what passes for a curiosity story on CNN/Fox when we hit 118 in the summer.
Oh come on, you're a dick too, patronizing people who suffered extraordinary disasters with your post.
You must not have been in New Orleans after Katrina...