I got hired at a Bangladesh sweatshop. Meet my 9-year-old boss [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/10/11/i_got_hired_at_a_bangladesh_sweatshop_meet_my_9yearold_boss.html <comment><USER2> As someone who's spent his life roughly equally split across Bangladesh and America, I thought I'd provide some perspective.

The questions I ask myself about this situation are:

1\. Are the lives of the people who work in these factories better or worse as a result of these jobs existing?

The answer I end up arriving at repeatedly is that it is a resounding improvement in the lives of almost everyone. RMG factories empower women to provide for themselves in a way that nothing else in the country can. There simply aren't any other jobs for women in low-income brackets in Bangladesh and I personally know individuals who found the courage to break themselves out of abusive marriages and the ability to say no to marriages they didn't want because of the income they have from these jobs.

2\. Could the factories be better?

Yes, absolutely. Most of the owners could obviously afford to pay employees better given the incredible amounts of wealth that the factory owners have accumulated and having gone to school with some of their children, I know quite a few factory owners personally. The reason they don't pay more comes down to simply business principles. The objective of a labor intensive business is to drive costs down the lowest possible amount legally. That is what they do.

3\. What is the government's role?

This is pretty simple. They should raise the minimum wage for factory workers, create more stringent regulation and make great effort to ensure those regulations are followed. This is where invalidOrTaken's point about corruption comes in. Many of the factory owners are themselves members of parliament, or have spent a great deal of money getting one of their lackeys elected. On top of that, virtually everyone in a regulatory agency will take massive bribes to look the other way.

When the article talks about that girl's dream being a sewing operator, and you cringe because that sounds so depressing, realize that 10 years ago this girls only option would have been to get married to a rickshaw puller or shopkeeper and hope he wasn't abusive. Today, she can dream of a job, of moving up a ladder and maybe even becoming a manager some day. That's progress even if it comes with a whole host of issues.

<comment><USER3> The way I answer people that say this is: It's not good enough.

Yes, you can come up with all the explanation whatsoever you want to how this is a ~local maxima~ of happiness, but the fact is that we live on a much higher one with tons of disposable income and _benefit_ from their work... so it s not a ~global maxima~ (not even close) so we should do better.

What can I say? I'm definitely more to the left than most people in this website but any quietly upvoted defense of child labor sounds like "the slaves had it better than in _x_" or "women were spared _y_" jobs to me when it comes to defending poor social policy.  Grown-ass white men getting paid to develop digital toys justifying to themselves why the situation for 9 year old sweatshop workers is good enough. JFC.

edit: in fact, _every single reply_ amongst the first 20 in some ways works to justify the completely bubbled-in mentality of the startup crowd. just running down the topic I see (caricaturized for effect) "social justice types don't understand how rough it is out there, this is good for her!", "ugh, this journalist is endangering the girl!", and "this really puts in perspective all those pesky _cultural issues_ that women, gay people, and minorities keep complaining about".

what the hell is wrong with you all, seriously.

<comment><USER4> No, this is just your angry knee-jerk reaction so you can feel good about taking the moral high-ground, and you're scrambling to find the negative in every comment.

The comment you're replying is a detailed comment that also states that there should be more done to improve working conditions and wages. Your comment is a rant about how we're a bunch of "grown-ass white men" (thanks for assuming things about me) who bask in our privilege and wealth.

 _Meta:_ Is there a label for this kind of derailing, angry comment? I feel like it could be a variant of concern trolling, where the writer pretends to care about the issue at hand but actually tries to redirect the conversation towards ad hominem attacks.

<comment><USER5> Have you ever worked in a factory? I used to. They squeeze you as hard as they can, constantly. Most of the people have no leverage to push back. While having money is better than having none, that doesn't mean everything is ok and you can just ignore the way the workers get abused.

In the US, you can push back at things like unsafe conditions with threats of OSHA. I doubt there's any such thing in Bangladesh, but it would be a good start.

Having a job is great, but they should be required to provide reasonable working conditions. And even in the USA, they will do the absolute minimum unless pushed.

Source: I have worked 16-hour shifts in a US factory that was over 100F, sometimes unable to get lunch or bathroom breaks. I now work a normal office job and laugh at the very notion of comparing even a 100-hour week doing this to a 70-hour week doing that.

<comment><USER6> The #1 way to fight back is to quit which increases costs to the factory owner, if you don't then it's better than the alternatives.

<comment><USER7> I am unexperienced when it comes to such matters, but:

1\. Quitting means you are no longer making money, and if that was an acceptable endgame then you likely wouldn't be employed in such conditions in the first place;

2\. I find it extremely unlikely that such factory owners would have a dearth of prospective (eager, even) employees.

<comment><USER6> #1 Quitting does not mean you never look for another job or quit on the first day etc. It means _when_ you perceive working for said factory is not worth it you do something else.

#2 Having a large labor supply suggests the job is competitive. However, even if that's the case having people constantly quit increases training costs.

The point of all of this is industrialization tends to follow a path where people move from terrible low wage jobs to more well paid work. Even China has moved past the first rung of the ladder with market forces forcing factory's to increase pay and or improve conditions. Presumably where going to run out of 3rd world countries at some point, though there is some concern robots / AI is going to end up filling that nitch possibly stranding a few countries.

<comment><USER8> You are begging the question. The reason factory workers in poor rural countries put up with no windows, ventilation, or air conditioning is that the alternative is subsistence farming. Suggesting that they quit in protest is almost cruel.

China has absolutely not moved past the first rung of this ladder. The majority of the Chinese population lives in abject rural poverty.

<comment><USER9> It's actually about a 50/50 split between rural and urban [0]. This means that the Chinese urban population nowadays is 150% of the total Chinese population in 1950[1]. So now that the facts are on the table, what is your point?

[0] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-17/china-urban- populat...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-17/china-urban-population- exceeds-rural.html)

[1][http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=chinese+population](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=chinese+population)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sometimes I think westerners just can't wrap their heads around just how poor Bangladesh is.

Their GDP per capita: $2000, adjusted for living costs (PPP). Please, everyone, try to wrap your head around that number.

That means a totally equal distribution of resources would give everyone $2000 a year. GDP counts all money spent on everything, so factory safety compliance costs would come out of that $2000. Consider Mexican migrant workers in the states scraping by on $10k are earning 5x as much as that number, and no, it is not made up for by cost of living, this is taking that into account.

Yeah the stuff that goes on is really messed up. And no, nobody deserves to live like that. But unlike in America, where GDP is at $50k/capita PPP, redistribution actually cannot solve the problem. $2k/year is unacceptably close to subsistence. It's just as important in this case to grow the economy larger as it is to redistribute more fairly.

<comment> alive-or-not Measuring economic potential in PPP is like measuring software functionality in lines of code. The basic question is does a country produce enough food to feed itself. If that's the case it can grow an industry slowly with respect to human lives, etc. If not IMHO there are still better solutions than building sweatshops.

<comment><USER11> Most countries don't wish to grow an industry "slowly with respect to human lives" even if they have enough food to feed themselves.

As it shows in practice all over the world, if people are given the chance to go from subsistence agriculture to sweatshops, they do so eagerly, intentionally migrating a thousand miles away from their families if needed so. You'd need to apply a lot of force and bloodshed to move them back away from those jobs to the farming; and when given a fair vote, those workers press for many things but not on slowing down industry growth, rather the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Poverty is a such a large and difficult problem. Someone's knee jerk reaction may be to "ZOMG, shut down the factory!" But the factory is providing a _relatively_ better environment than what may other alternatives may provide, such as prostitution.

<comment><USER13> It's extra hard because the poor have less information available to them. When Clojure was released, I saw it as my opportunity to become a real-life Lisp ninja, on a platform in wide deployment. How did Meem see it? Oh, that's right, she didn't. Because she was sewing shirts instead of reading "Beating the Averages."

<comment><USER14> It's not just information that inhibits the poor.

The poor struggle. Daily.

In that struggle a truth emerges: Struggle is all you've known, it's what you knew yesterday and it is what you will know tomorrow.

For the poor struggle, hardship and despair dull the senses and the reality of the present stretches out before them. There is no future, there is just more of the present forever and ever.

What I feel those with privilege cannot comprehend is that words like aspiration, phrases like social mobility, are so alien that they are meaningless. If you're aware enough to have been angry, you're probably also aware enough to realise the stupidity of throwing yourself against the tide of the world. And so you accept and endure.

You can provide information but without hope and belief that change is possible to their lives, and that the struggle can be overcome, information is worthless. Food and shelter for a day are the only things you can offer of value.

<comment><USER15> which may be why terrorism is a predominately educated middle class affair.

But accepting your argument, I cannot give in to nihilism. Take the children out of the factories, put them in school, build libraries, train teachers, and wait twenty years to see a vast difference.

If you are a military dictatorship that uses your twenty years to educate the country and drag it by the bootstraps into the global upwards pastures, you may retire with your ill gotten gains on a beach somewhere with our thanks. Get rich and change nothing I want you hunted down with dogs.

<comment><USER14> It isn't nihilistic. It's just really important to understand how poverty feels, and how it is akin to a trauma that never ends, otherwise how can we in the West ever actually use what influence we have to change.

<comment><USER15> I think we are agreeing - but it's frustrating to have to wait for technical solutions to problems we could solve with pure political will.

(For example I see the biofabrication of meat as a technical solution to the awful statistic that cows in Europe recieve a daily subsidy of two dollars while around 1 billion humans globally live on 1 dollar a day)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As someone who is currently establishing a software development office in Bangladesh for a western company this is my perspective on child labor

Child labor is a long term problem for any country as it keeps kids out of school and locks them in low wage jobs for the rest of their live, meaning less tax revenue for the country. Educating the young generation is an investment in the future that brings more sophisticated work and higher wage jobs. Very Simple.

In Bangladesh underemployment among healthy adults is so widespread that child labor can only be ascribed to bad governance. Clearly the government, if it cared about future growth and wealth in the country, should create a scheme allowing children to learn and healthy adults to work.

Simply banning child labor is not enough as this story so clearly explains. The family needs the money, and doesn't have idle healthy adults who could could replace meem's income. Some fairly sophisticated scheme is required for this to work. Call it wealth distribution, social security or whatever.

Currently the government is not able to provide such a scheme and as a result the country will develop much slower than it could otherwise.

<comment><USER17> At some point, if the economy continues to grow, poor working conditions and child labor will start catch up with the country and they will be forced to curb them in order to get to the next level of growth. Hopefully corruption will not get in the way of that (something China seems to be dealing with now).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Isn't it a bit dangerous to show Meem's picture all over the internet like that? What if she become a target for retaliation for the story, or she loses her job because of the unwanted attention.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nobody mentioned family planning. The girl started to work because her mom became pregnant with her 6th (? I counted older brother and 3 younger siblings) child. Was this pregnancy planned? We will not know, but there is some possibility it was not. So, providing girl's parents with contraceptives and educating both mom and dad in their use would have had a real immediate impact on this girl's life.

<comment><USER2> There's been a huge effort from both NGO's and the government to promote birth control that has actually been quite effective. Birth rates have fallen sharply. [1]

1\. [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/172372?uid=3739704&uid...](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/172372?uid=3739704&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102741388561)

I apologize for the JSTOR link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've emailed the author asking how I can pay Meem to go to school. I think I can outbid the sweatshop. I'll let you know how it turns out.

<comment><USER21> I can't decide how I feel about this.

On the one hand, I love the initiative you're taking here and the drive you have. Reading the article, my immediate thought was "that's terrible"\--whereas yours was "What can I personally do about this right now?"

On the other hand, I remain unconvinced that directing resources simply to the people and charities that come my way through the media is the best way to distribute these resources. Yes, Meem will greatly benefit from this money. But is it good that Meem gets it simply because she happened to be written up in the paper? What about those who are never written up--and does that simply incentivize people in need to seek publicity rather than promote more sustainable macro-level solutions?

I don't have a real answer here, it's just that actions like these make me feel strongly ambivalent, if you'll forgive my oxymoron.

<comment><USER20> I probably would have felt the same way as you even a year ago. But then it started to feel like I was always waiting to be "effective" and never actually doing anything. If every human on this planet who could just adopted one other random person on this planet to look out for, wouldn't the world be a much better place?

<comment><USER21> Possibly, except my point was Meem is hardly random. If everyone took that initiative, Meem would get a ton of support because of the publicity--but no one else would.

<comment><USER20> And if everyone thought like you did, then Meem wouldn't get any support at all. So, who's position sits better with you?

Look, the best we can do is take care of the _actionable_ problems in front of us. I don't consider "get vast numbers of people out of poverty" to be an actionable problem. I don't study poverty, I don't know what statistically significant levers to pull (or try to pull). I just know that when I see a situation like Meem's, I know I can help so I can at least make the effort.

And who knows? Maybe in trying to help one person I'll have some insight (currently lacking) into the larger problems. But I find it hard to take that someone can sit back in their armchair, never having helped a single person out of poverty in their life, criticizing someone for taking concrete action because it doesn't address the larger issues.

The simple fact is that unless you have vast wealth, or you have a tremendous amount of influence on those with wealth, then you have about as much ability to address larger issues as I do, that is, nil. So if you want to let your contradictory beliefs paralyze you into inaction, that's your problem. Meanwhile, let me do what I can in peace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was wondering why, to put it bluntly, Bangladesh sucks so much. This may shed some light:

"Corruption in Bangladesh has been a continuing problem with the country being ranked as the most corrupt country for the year 2005 in the list published by Transparency International." [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Bangladesh](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Bangladesh)

<comment><USER22> Corruption causes a disproportionate wealth disparity, it's one of the methods used to detect it. Works especially well within a country to identify more or less corrupt states. One argument is corruptions leads to reduced actual investment in infrastructure, roads, schools, things which increase a regions wealth, making corrupt areas show up pretty clearly on a map.

<comment><USER23> Why would someone downvote this comment?

<comment><USER24> Because people are tired of the 'everything is about wealth disparity' claptrap?

<comment><USER25> Especially here in Nerdghanistan. It really is a nice collection of Fachidioten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How about a Watsi for children (and their families) that have to work in sweatshops to make ends meet? Anyone interested in exploring this further?

Some challenges:

\- Verifying the children that you support through the Watsi-type program already work in this environment (or will soon have to) as a necessity to economically support their families.

\- Ensuring that, once you donate money, the children are no longer working in this environment and instead are enrolled in school.

\- Other potential pitfalls?

<comment><USER23> Watsi has too much overhead per child to make a difference on this level I think.

Why not do what the entire world should be doing in the first place? Pay children to go to school.

This way you remove the overhead of a campaign for every single child, and make sure they are going to school at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why should we believe that these kids would be better served sitting idly in school for several years? Isn't it better to get actual on the job training, learning an actual trade, making money to put food on the table?

Think about opportunity costs: An American child has chance XX% of becoming a white collar professional if they go to XX years of school. A Bangladeshi child has a significantly smaller .X% chance of becoming a white collar pro with X years of school (XX not generally available, presumably?). Thus is quite likely that it is simply irrational, a poverty increasing equation, to send these children to school for too many years.

Increasing the minimum wage actually _harms_ the poorest and most vulnerable workers, by disqualifying them from gainful employment. Ditto child labor laws in extremely poor areas. All of this stuff about "educating your way out of poverty" is just magical thinking. It's as if the first world brain sees the obviousness of a situation, simply enters a "MUST NOT SEE" feedback loop, and then spits out "RAISE MINIMUM WAGE, INCREASE SCHOOLING, SEND IN THE NGOs" nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER27> Remember, 5 months ago over 1,100 people confirmed dead when a garment factory collapsed in Savar district of Dhaka, Bangladesh with over 3,000 people inside. People's survival rights should not have to wait on an economic miracle, new elections, Western people's blessings, Adam Smith's invisible hand, God, or reincarnation. Waiting for such a crisis where things go beyond the pale to punish a couple of corrupt owners is not enough. When Third World people have enough and demand change we should not sit idle and support the Western countries who then start pumping in money for weapons to suppress the people on pretext that it is economic aid or to fight terrorism. The West cannot stay so rich and have conditions improve for the World's toiling poor. Freedom to get rich and monopolize resources is not freedom or fairness for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER28> poverty is bad, poverty breeds poverty ,

the kid must be in school, I get it

Kid is working reason would be either she needs to contribute for the family to make ends meet or schooling is not accessible

lets assume she is taken out of her work by this undercover sting operation, who would take care of her

just pointing out the problem is not enough, giving a sustainable solution and follow through to get it implemented is needed as well

<comment><USER29> And the exploitation of poverty sustains it.

<comment><USER30> When companies outsource to countries like Bangladesh because of their cheap labor, it also provides jobs to millions of people there. They are not good jobs by our (western) standards, but they are better jobs than they could've had otherwise. Getting the kids out of the factories wouldn't do much unless their families had the means to sustain themselves.

Bringing such stories in the public eye is a good thing though because it might help bring about better oversight of these operations, and an improvement in working conditions. The companies that outsource to Bangladesh might now have an incentive to keep an eye on the working conditions (surely it's possible to have decent working conditions while still having a relatively cheap operation?)

<comment><USER29> I understand the situation with providing jobs to people who may otherwise have to turn to much more terrible means of providing for themselves, but this is where there is exploitation of their situation by companies and as the end user of much of the products, us as westerners (although we may do little to change it).

Factory workers are paid the minimum that the company can get away with, even though we could afford to pay them much more, they could get an education for their children or move their family out of the slums. I'm OK with children working in factories if that is the reality of their situation but we can afford and should pay them more than the paltry amount that just keeps them ticking over.

<comment><USER31> All companies, in every nation, pay the minimum they can get away with. In nations with no social structure, very little wealth, and no jobs the choice is not government hand out vs minimum wage, but a very low paying job or starvation. It would appear you would rather these children starve then to allow them to work for enough money to feed themsleves, possibly working up and out of poverty over generations.

America did not just magically start out as a wealthy nation, for generations children labored on family farms, in business, and even in sweatshops. Generations ago a person had to work form dawn to dusk just to feed themselves, Today in America "poverty" is not having and iPhone or Broadband internet.

The idea that we can magically transform these 3rd world nation into 1st world nations is naive at best, The same path America took, is the same path these nations must take. Over time wages will increase, conditions will improve, etc, this is a natural order of things. The good news is, this will happen MUCH MUST faster than it did in America.

Check out these Videos

[http://www.learnliberty.org/videos/top-3-ways-sweatshops- hel...](http://www.learnliberty.org/videos/top-3-ways-sweatshops-help-poor- escape-poverty)

[http://www.learnliberty.org/content/unbelievable-truth- about...](http://www.learnliberty.org/content/unbelievable-truth-about- sweatshops)

[http://www.learnliberty.org/content/sweatshop-wages-and- thir...](http://www.learnliberty.org/content/sweatshop-wages-and-third-world- workers-are-wages-worth-sweat)

<comment><USER32> You seem to be okay with children being crushed to death or burning up in fires from substandard building construction. Construction that is known to be unsafe. It's accepted because it is _convenient_ , not because it's necessary. These factories aren't turning out bare essential materials that are sold for small profit margins. They create luxury items that often have the markings of vapid pop culture and are sold with huge margins. First world countries _know_ these conditions are abhorrent, because we _do not_ allow them, but first would countries do allow the thirst for high profit margins to come at the cost of human lives overseas.

Your inability to understand the depth with which poverty strikes those in the U.S. is astounding. Poverty in the U.S. means that you don't have clothes to wear to school, that the school you go to is underperforming, that you live in a neighborhood where you could get shot, abducted, propositioned for drugs. It means going hungry on a day-to-day basis. It means the power being shutoff. It means probably not having a parent in the home because they are either absent or working two or three jobs. It often means the environment you grow up in is likely to be rife with psychological, physical or substance abuse. It means taking two hour bus rides both ways to get to a minimum wage job. It means no or substandard healthcare. It could mean living in a car, on the street or being under threat of such outcomes.

The videos linked are pretty disgusting and make libertarians sound like horrible people. Maybe you should also put some videos up about how libertarians justify slavery or indentured servitude because the slave or servant would have died if they weren't being exploited. Maybe an article could be written about the exploited workers in Dubai, and how it's still mutually beneficial to have their rights stripped of them, pay held for months, because the alternative is possible starvation in their home country.

Raising awareness and demanding better standards can improve conditions. If you are coming from the point of view that there is no problem with sweatshops and things don't need to change, then it's likely workers will continue to be exploited. How long have China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Malaysia had sweatshops? Why haven't sweatshops brought supposed prosperity to these countries yet? How many generations more will have to endure sweatshops and possible death? No one should have to put up with a sudden and horrible death so "Keep Calm Carry On" shirts can make it on to Target store shelves.

<comment><USER31>
      libertarians justify slavery or indentured servitude

libertarians first and foremost believe in non-aggression, voluntary trade. so slavery, in so far as it was forced upon someone via violence or the threat of violence would not be justified.

      If you are coming from the point of view that there is no problem with sweatshops and things don't need to change

None of the video's I linked to, nor it is my position that things do not need to change, your emotional response is the problem, you lack the ability to react with logic, to understand how the world actually works, instead you lash out with emotion about how the world "should" work in your opinion

      How long have China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Malaysia had sweatshops?

They are in reality, why do you think in recent year companies have been flocking back to the US, telecom and tech industries are the most widely known, but many business are coming back. It is the increased in wages in those nations brought about by economic development via sweatshops coupled with the reducing wages in the US brought about by the failed economic policies of the US government

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Are these monthly salaries quite typical across the board for the majority of people in Bangladesh? I employ a JS developer in Dhaka as a contractor who's hourly rate is $22.00 USD. I would have crossed his palm with about $4000 in the past month alone. Yet he still tells me he's only on the slightly higher side of 'average' when it comes to lifestyle/income over there. Earning 90% of a sweat shop workers monthly salary per hour kinda makes me second guess this. Anyone here have any direct experience of what the cost of living in Bangladesh really is?

<comment><USER33> Thanks a lot for the replies guys. I had a feeling I might be paying too much. As since I hired my contractor he's suddenly been able to afford to set up and office and hire other developers that are charged at the same rate. Don't get me wrong, he's a really skilled developer and puts my JS skills to shame. But I'm feeling like the price per project seems to be creeping up exponentially. I'll try giving some smaller jobs to other devs in Bangladesh & India to see what the quality of work is like in comparison. Cheers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> These comments...they are completely awful. I don't want to be associated with this place anymore. How do I delete my account?

<comment><USER35> Farewell... we wont miss you or notice that you are no longer here :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Will 3D printers be able to make nice clothes some day?

<comment><USER37> Probably. Then what will happen to these workers?

<comment><USER38> They will throw their sabots into the machine and cry 'liberté, egalité, fraternité!'

I don't claim to have any answers, but looking at western history you start to see some similarities.

<comment><USER11> There's a big difference from western history - in western history, the machines were right next to them; however, if for example a Bangladesh worker is replaced by a sewing robot located in Taiwan, then there's nothing the working class can do about that, and there's no chance that any benefits will trickle down to them as the new profits and rich class are located elsewhere and won't even hire them as servants.

The future will not be evenly distributed, that's for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Gee, sure makes America's lame first world problems look, well, lame.

<comment><USER40> Don't worry, we're on well on our way to a society with haves an don't have. Surprisingly enough, the wealth is much more evenly spread in Bangladesh now compared to before. Mainly thanks to the garments industry. When I first heard the principles of, lower taxes and fuck the poor by removing safety nets(aka "entitlements"), I thought to myself, sounds like Bangladesh. Taxes are unheard of there, as long as you can put out a little bribe to the tax collector. Over the years, America is starting to look more and more like Bangladesh (yes, I know, it's a bit hyperbolic). If you don't believe me, you should see some of the homeless families that I've come across.

I recall watching people starve to death in Bangladesh when I was very young. Those memories haunt me till this day. It is a form of despair that this 4-day journalist knows nothing about. Aspirations go out the window when faced with hunger. The alternative view is that it's pretty freekin' awesome that this little girl has aspirations at all, beyond being fed (as was the case not very long ago in Bangladesh) Our "first world problems" aren't lame. We have more and more people falling into poverty and a society where social mobility is fast disappearing. Well worth paying attention to if we indeed are a beacon for the world to aspire to.</comment></comment>


Doomsday planning for less crazy folk - f- http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/ <comment><USER5> I've done three things for emergency preparedness that are actually quite fun and I'd recommend to anyone:

1) Become a certified emergency medical responder. It's a one semester course you can take at your local community college. It's the first step to becoming an EMT if you want to keep going. You learn things including CPR, wound management, dealing with broken bones, heart attacks, car accidents, transporting patients, even emergency childbirth. I enjoyed the class immensely. Now I'm a lot less afraid of medical disasters because I have a plan and an impressive first aid kit, and I know how to use it.

2\. Become an amature radio operator. As a technologist, it's fun to get in touch with my roots using older technology. I've been working on being able to operate using battery and solar panels, which has been a blast to learn about and experiment with. I can also operate portably while camping, bouncing waves off the atmosphere and back either towards the horizon to talk thousands of miles away, or straight up towards space and reflecting off the atmosphere back down to talk within a 300 mile range (this is called NVIS). Learning and practicing these skills is awesome fun.

3\. Camping, and having the food water and equipment in hand to camp for several days. We have a few 7 gallon water tanks we use for camping which we keep full, in addition to our always evolving camping supplies. We take frequent camping trips.

Doing these things is educational, challenging, enriching and fun! I encourage everyone to do it.

It's also worth noting that you can get a ham radio for $40 that's higher power and will work at longer range than the FRS/GMRS radios. The FCC limits FRS radios to half a watt, and ham radios don't have that limit.

<comment><USER6> Do you have any specific suggestions for a radio like you describe?

<comment><USER7> BaoFeng UV-5R and its newer variants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _Since the amount_ needed _is directly proportional to how much you > currently make, it makes relatively little difference if your household > brings in $70k or $140k a year._

I have to take issue with this. If your salary doubles, your needs do _not_ double along with it. $100K is right around the 80th percentile of US household income. That means 80% of households (~250 million people) in the US are living on less than that. Maybe you can too, despite your paycheck being higher. And if your household's take-home pay suddenly increases from $70k to $140k, see if you can fight the urge to follow that increase with your spending habits. Keep the old car, pay off your debts, and save for a rainy day (layoff, medical emergency, etc).

It absolutely baffles me that prevailing financial habits in the US seem to include spending as much money as possible.

<comment><USER9> The term is "Lifestyle Inflation". It's seductive.

Now you don't _have_ to slum it in an economy class seat. You're now able to afford a _real_ laptop. You can _treat yourself_ to...

Near enough everyone does it. If you've ever thought "I'm going to buy the brand-name [pasta|batteries|phone|insurance]" you're susceptible too.

The thing is, it's not much fun living as though you were poor - <AUTHOR> coupons, spending time working out which vegetable gives you the most nutrition per Kg, scrimping and saving. So for every extra $£€ you make, you can give yourself a short-term dopamine hit at the expense of long-term planning.

It's one of the reasons why, in the UK, we're moving to mandatory pension provision. Unless you take action, a fixed percentage of your wage will be placed into a pension scheme. As your wage rises, so will your long term savings.

<comment><USER10> > If you've ever thought "I'm going to buy the brand-name > [pasta|batteries|phone|insurance]"

I think that's the key. You stop needing to think about lots of things. There's a real cognitive cost of being poor.

<comment><USER11> One could argue that is the point of currencies, to exchange labour for comfort. You exchange your work to spend cognitive power as you'd prefer instead as what you'd concretely need

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why didn't any of the planning include participation in emergency preparedness organizations, or funding watchdog organizations to make sure that services are mismanaging their resources (e.g, Pro Publica and NPR's exposes on the American Red Cross, at [http://www.propublica.org/article/the-red-cross- secret-disas...](http://www.propublica.org/article/the-red-cross-secret- disaster) and [https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross- raised-...](https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-half- a-billion-dollars-for-haiti-and-built-6-homes) ).

The closest it gets is "Make friends with neighbors", but plenty more is possible. I did see the comment that many will "pray for the government to bail us out", but that leaves out the people who will volunteer to be part of the NGOs to help others, and suggests that we, the people, have nothing to do with the actions of the government.

It's very detailed on what you can buy, but doesn't give any advice on figuring out which are real worries, and which are movie scenarios. Consider "Respiratory and environmental protection", where "If you worry about releases from chemical plants or overturned ammonia tankers, 3M multi gas cartridges ($17) and half facepieces ($12) offer robust protection when sized and fitted properly. In such an event, it would be also important to develop a plan for sealing your home".

Why not recommend visiting the Local Emergency Planning Committee to learn about any dangerous chemicals in your area? That would give an idea of which chemical plants are nearby, and a better idea of how to respond. It may be more likely that there's a fertilizer plant nearby (as residents in Waco discovered in 2013) or gas pipeline (as residents in Adair County, KY discovered in 2105, and residents near Carlsbad, N.M. discovered in 2000) and you need to worry about explosion more than gas problems.

In any case, I've now looked through a few dozen news reports of chemical plant problems, and found no example where gas masks, etc. would be useful.

On the other hand, and using the recent news report about Flint as an example, it seems that occasional water and air testing for long-term, low-grade poisons would more useful and cost effective than worrying about short-term, acute events.

Personally, I would prefer to see things structured around known problems - what does one need should there be a heavy metals spill upstream of you, like what happened at the Animas River? How much money would you need in order to be able to move, and no one wants to buy your property because the well water on the land is now toxic? How should you prepare for an oil pipeline spill in your backyard, as the residents of Mayflower, AR (and many others) have had?

When would it be better to put the money into applying more pressure on the EPA and FEMA, for more oversight and more funding for oversight, than to assume that individual preparedness is the right solution?

BTW, as it stands, its discussion about what to do in case of hurricanes is nearly non-existent, mostly saying "If you own a house, especially in a region prone to earthquakes or tropical storms, you should probably have a sledgehammer, a chainsaw (with a charged battery or some fuel at hand), bolt cutters, and a pry bar." Chainsaws after Hurricane Andrew were worth their weight in gold - as part of the cleanup process. But if we're talking planning, then window storm shutters are also important, as is tree trimming before the season starts.

What it should really do is point to more complete resources, like [http://www.ready.gov/hurricanes](http://www.ready.gov/hurricanes) or [http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/prepare/ready.php](http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/prepare/ready.php) . Viewing the latter, I see it includes things like "Make sure schools and daycares have School Emergency Plans" and "Pet owners should have plans to care for their animals" which should also be part of any plan.

<comment> f- Hm, I sort of suspect that you skipped much of the first part of the guide, which talks about identifying the relevant risks, including - say - <USER2> flood maps, identifying nearby industries, walking around the home to spot fire hazards, etc? And talks a lot about not obsessing about unlikely issues, when your greatest worries may be your own financial security or a house fire. It specifically instructs people to map out plausible risks and write response plans before they buy a single thing listed in part II.

The whole purpose of part II is to go over some cost-effective purchases _iff_ you have a robust basis to prioritize a particular threat and a rough idea of how you want to solve it. So yeah, for example, the mention of respirators has to be interpreted in that context; very few people can meaningfully benefit from a respirator.

There are also mentions of being able to board up windows in locations prone to severe weather, etc. I would really like to address your concerns and improve the doc, but as it is, I'm sort of struggling to pinpoint the nature of the complaint :-(

<comment><USER12> I double-checked, and I still see nothing about the _process_ of how to identify the risk level.

For example, it says 'For example, do you live in a 100-year flood zone?' but does not describe how to find that out. It doesn't mention the term 'flood map', or where one finds a flood map. Do you go to the library? Is it easy to find online?

I tried now for Santa Fe, NM. [http://www.newfloodmap.com/mountain/](http://www.newfloodmap.com/mountain/) doesn't list Santa Fe county, and in any case I can't tell if it's a legit site or a value added site trying to scam money out of me by looking official and packing together resources that are freely available. I gave up trying to find it online - I think I can get it from City Hall.

Regarding chemical risks, as I pointed out, it doesn't mention the Local Emergency Planning Committee. Quoting Wikipedia:

> Under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), Local > Emergency Planning Committees (LEPCs) must develop an emergency response > plan, review the plan at least annually, and provide information about > chemicals in the community to citizens.

Someone who is looking for a guide to help with preparation, and doesn't know to keep extra water around, is likely also someone who needs help to map out plausible risks, and could use a pointer to legally mandated resources that are supposed to be available to help with those risks.

Then again, if I don't believe the government is going to bail me out of problems, why should I believe that those government maps and government information is worthwhile for my planning? Are they reliable? What is the experience of others with that information?

As a case in point, regarding 'relevant risks', the text says "Although we are entering the realm of very unlikely events, if you worry about encountering an overturned chemical tanker.."

This would be an excellent example of how to do a cost-benefit analysis. A first approximation is easy - how many people have been killed or injured by a chemical tanker where a mask would have helped? What's the probability of that happening to the reader? What does a mask cost, including the need to recharge or replace it? If it's a 1:1 billion chance per year, and it costs $10/year, then that's saying that your life is worth about $200 million to you.

But if that's so, then perhaps other things, like storing important documents, or copies of important documents, in a safety deposit box is much more worthwhile. Or driving at a more sedate speed (the first paragraph of safety tip #2 is very true!) Or remembering to not drive into flowing water, which kills many more people every year than gas from an overturned chemical tanker.

> board up windows in locations prone to severe weather ... I'm sort of > struggling to pinpoint the nature of the complaint :-(

My complaint is that the document tries to take on a lot, and yet does too little.

There are a lot of resources for many of these disasters. There's no way your document can cover all of the things to worry about with a hurricane. You _have_ to point to more complete resources elsewhere. It's not a simple matter of "boarding up windows", since that's only one of several options. I mentioned hurricane shutters; my parents had corrugated metal shutters for the window, stored under the house because when a storm is coming, everyone is trying to get boards for their windows. While on the other hand, a hurricane is more predictable. It's okay to wait until the last 24 hours to fill up the tub with water to use for flushing the toilet, which is not an option in earthquake country.

Accept that your document will be incomplete, and point people to where to go for more information.

The most common major threats (tornado, blizzard, hurricane, flooding, wildfire, sinkhole (yes, I'm from Florida), earthquake, avalanche, volcano/lahar flow, tsunami, etc.) all have official guidelines for how to prepare for them. Use them, and add to them. Don't try to be an all-in-one solution.

<comment> f- The guide doesn't go into specific instructions on how to find flood maps and doesn't do a risk analysis on _everything_ (although it provides numbers for many of the more common risks) chiefly because (a) it's difficult to provide answers that are universally applicable no matter where you are; and (b) I sort of trust the reader to be able to search / ask around; (c) it's already 60 pages of text.

The other thing I sort of learned is that when you spam people with links to hundreds of external resources, you actually lower the odds that they will stay focused and read any of them.

But yeah, maybe a catalog of links to ready.gov and the like may be useful at some point. I actually had several, but I think I lost them in subsequent edits.

For the chemical tanker bit, see section 3.7, which talks about doing a risk analysis before wasting time on such stuff; and in general, most of part I, which tries over and over again to drive across the point that there are some things you really need to worry about, and that they don't involve gas masks and night vision goggles.

<comment><USER12> Who is your target audience?

These are people who you remind - quite well, I'll add - that commonplace things are more deadly than apocalypse planning.

And you remind them that they need water.

And you humorously recommend they download an XML dump of Wikipedia.

You recommend a Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS, but while you recommend 'both a country road atlas and a more detailed map of your county or state' it's in a context where you likely mean road map, and not something where a hiking GPS would be that useful.

And you bring up gas masks in the context of local factories as well, with recommendations of masks to buy; why do you have the text unless you think it's useful?

Sure, the reader can search / ask around ... but then why have this essay in the first place?

Another thing that's missing is to train for emergency situations. The only times I found "train" or "practice" was in the context of weapons and fighting. But you also need to practice using the GPS in hiking situations, if only to learn what basic terms like "datum" mean and what the modes do, and practice making a fire (else why have the matches?), and replacing the tubes on your bike. It mentions 'dig out a latrine' using a shovel and a pickax .. now where do they go for learning how deep to dig, or even that there is such a thing as good latrine practices? (Me? I learned it from the Boy Scout manual.) It's better to practice setting up a tent instead of doing so the first time in a dark.

Sure, you can assume the reader just knows to do this .. but why don't those same people know they should 'sign up for a basic course or have someone truly competent take you to the range' to practice with a gun?

Go to back to an earlier theme of mine, one of the points is "Biking on public roads? Wear a helmet and bright-colored clothing, stay well clear of the doors of parked vehicles, move in a straight line instead of weaning in and out of the traffic, and watch for cars trying to make right turns."

Like most of the rest of the document, this is a very individualistic response. A community response would be to join cycle advocacy groups and fight for usable dedicated bike paths. These are even safer. Yes, helmets, etc. can be a short-term solution, but the long term solution should be to minimize the need for these expensive, personal solutions and reduce overall risk.

"Prepper culture", on the other hand, seems to avoid these sorts of community solutions to the same problem. This document also ignores them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are a number of 'official' resources on this as well, including a variety of publications of FEMA and ARC, e.g.:

[http://www.redcross.org/images/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m4...](http://www.redcross.org/images/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m4440181_Food_and_Water- English.revised_7-09.pdf)

It's useful to peruse publications of these agencies in depth in order to understand what the government and NGOs plan to do in the case of major disasters - when you're planning for scenarios that don't involve the government turning on you, you should understand what these organizations will and will not be able to do for you. Hint: while they will try very hard, do not count on government or NGOs coming in with plenty of supplies particularly quickly. ARC emphasizes being prepared for 72 hours without aid, and I think this is a lowest-common-denominator strategy. It will take longer when there is serious infrastructure damage, even assuming that everything goes to plan.

One of my major concerns with the prepper community though is that they frequently overemphasize your own property. The most common type of disaster to affect people, by a huge margin, is home fire. _The most likely disaster to happen to you is your house burning down._ So while stocking supplies in your house is a great idea, do not take it too far: be sure that you absolutely minimize irreplaceable items in your home. If your house burns down, have a plan for where you will go for temporary housing, make sure that you will be able to access money for food (don't keep it all under your mattress!), etc. Have a longer-term plan for smooth economic recovery. Important documents like deeds and titles are almost certainly safer in a bank vault than in your own home because of the careful fireproofing of these vaults. Anything of that sort that you keep in your home should be kept in some sort of fire safe (which should be watertight as well), but be aware that a cheap First Alert fire box will only be rated for less than one hour of exposure and probably won't last that long. You need to spend a lot of money for something with good fire durability.

<comment> f- Yup. In fact, the guide talks about home fires as one of the most significant dangers (right after going insolvent or getting hurt); and cites the 72 hour figure. It also highlights that some of the prepper ideas, such as stockpiling gasoline, actually make you less safe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I run a site that deals with alot of these people. I look at it like a risk vs reward. I think for the vast amount of calamity's that could happen, you only need to 'survive' for about 6 months before things would stabilize. If after 6 months you are still in trouble, chances are you are not going to particularly enjoy life moving forward anyways.

So with those thoughts, it almost seems prudent to just buy 1k in freeze dried food ( [http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-YEAR-MOUNTAIN-HOUSE-FOOD- ENTREES-R...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-YEAR-MOUNTAIN-HOUSE-FOOD-ENTREES- RESERVE-10-CANS-CASES-FREEZE-DRIED-SURVIVAL-/231806997821)? ) which can last you a year if needed. The only other things you really need is water (tons of purification options out there).

The next steps are protection and information. You can get a firearm for about 500$ with ample ammo and a world radio with a solar charger for 100$.

<comment> f- The page talks about it a bit, but in an attempt to differentiate itself from the usual, mildly paranoid "prepper" content, it does its best not to get hung up on more outlandish scenarios, such as fighting off zombies and surviving for months without water and food.

I basically tried to approach it from the perspective of threat modeling / risk management for real life; and by that metric, incidents such as losing a job are far more likely than a zombie apocalypse. I have seen far too many people in the Silicon Valley discover that the hard way :-(

<comment><USER15> Zombies are used in the survivalist/prepper community as a euphemism for people looking to take your stuff.

Because describing how to defend your home against humans can be legally risky, and off-putting.

With the exception of the actually crazy, people aren't actually talking about zombies.

It also injects a degree of humour.

<comment> f- Sure, and I'm using "space zombies" humorously, to broadly refer to all sorts of apocalyptic / TEOTWAWKI scenarios that many hardcore preppers are preoccupied with.

Most prepper guides devote a lot of time to societal collapse, complete self- sufficiency, urban combat, and wilderness survival topics, while dedicating much less attention to more pragmatic risks that one can prepare for without making profound lifestyle changes or buying a farm.

<comment><USER16> buying a farm is a huge huge risk tho, isn't it? in a scenario where society truly collapse, at least, it makes you a prime target.

I'd like the other approach more: secret stash, going dark for a year, wait for tribes to stabilize the territory they control, emerge with some useful skill and bargain access/protection of a well armed/established tribe.

<comment><USER17> > buying a farm is a huge huge risk tho, isn't it? in a scenario where society > truly collapse, at least, it makes you a prime target.

Not really - you can always walk away, so at worst you're no worse off than you were without it.

<comment><USER16> but you would basically have wasted all the resources spent to purchase the farm pre-apocalypse

<comment><USER17> Sure, but if you instead spend them on something "normal" like videogames you've probably also wasted them in an apocalypse scenario.

<comment><USER12> Sure, but the apocalypse scenario - and there have been uncountable apocalypse scenarios even in my lifetime, starting with 'The Jupiter Effect' \- is also very unlikely to happen. Buying farmland you never use or enjoy, and which brings in no rent profit, is a waste if there is no apocalypse. While playing videogames brings a lot of enjoyment.

The premise of this piece is to be "rational". To do that you need some idea of the odds. If you think another Tunguska event is something to prepare for, then having a farm is probably no better than playing video games - I can't even guess which would be safer from a random 10+MT event, and playing games is more fun and safer than doing the extra drive back and forth to the farm or operating the farm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been following the prepping scene for a while, and in a professional capacity since I started AllOutdoor.com as a side project for some friends. We figured out really quickly that preppers were a massive audience for outdoors content, so the site skews that way.

(FWIW I keep a few weeks' supply of food for my family on-hand, but I'm not interested in prepping for anything bigger. More here: [http://www.alloutdoor.com/2015/03/11/doomsday- prepper/](http://www.alloutdoor.com/2015/03/11/doomsday-prepper/))

What is interesting to me is the degree to which collapse has gone mainstream. At this point I've seen prepping go from something that you didn't want anyone (including your spouse) to know you were into, to something that is the topic of serious, non-snarky discussion (with 165 points!) here at Hacker News.

I predict that at some point in the next 18 months or so, we'll see an article in The New Yorker about prepping that takes it seriously. Once the New York media scene is able to talk about it openly, it will have moved out of the realm of "crazypants stuff that we don't talk about here, except to snark at it" and then it will be time to go all-in on the stock market because we will have reached Peak Doom.

Anyway, I just skimmed the linked article but it seems like a very good intro. About the only thing I quibble with (so far) is the faint whiff of goldbuggery in the financial section.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'll just leave this here..

[http://www.freightfarms.com/](http://www.freightfarms.com/)

it's an example of how the startup ecosystem is attempting to disrupt some of the areas of concern that fuel the 'survival culture'.

here's another example: [http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/10/built-in-brooklyn- gotham-gr...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/10/built-in-brooklyn-gotham- greens-turns-rooftops-into-urban-farms/)

I personally can't wait to see this urban agriculture technology arrive in every city coast to coast, so that collectively we aren't so dependent on "just in time shipping" grocery store infrastructure.

I do think that this day is on the horizon, but until then I personally try not to think of people as 'crazy' when they feel the need to get their beans, bullets, and band-aids squared away.

<comment><USER20> I personally think the "crazy" label kicks in when the person has severely diminished their actual, real life in order to prepare for an unlikely future scenario. Especially when that scenario is strangely specific and seems more like fantasy where the preparer will become a vigilante hero in the new world.

Simply being prepared for emergencies is certainly not crazy. Saving money for an employment emergency seems like the most real threat to most of us. But I guess that's not as much fun as stock-piling guns and ammo for a zombie apocalypse.

<comment><USER21> There's a lot of things you can do that are even sometimes better for your well-being. Buying gold, for example, can be a relatively safe hedge against unemployment (and even science-fiction-level economic collapse).

<comment><USER22> Honest question: how does one buy currency with gold even under current circumstances? Let's even forget the doomsday for a moment.

OP mentions gold as safe non-crazy way to protect savings against long-term inflation and depressions. However, from what I understand, any outsider would be extremely lucky to sell it at a rate anything close to the market, and common sense suggests that if dollar plunges it'd become proportionately trickier.

If selling it isn't as tricky as it seems, then the reverse question comes up: how to buy it now without being ripped off?

<comment><USER19> I think your confused about gold. Any coin shop or pawn shop in America will give you close to spot price in USD for the yellow metal. You don't even need to show ID.

The hard part has been.. how do you buy or sell or pay with gold electronically while having a convenient audit trail so that it's not a time consuming process to file your taxes, but that's also solved thanks to a startup founded in part by a senior paypal exec: [https://www.bitgold.com/](https://www.bitgold.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Between Christmas and New Year a massive surprise blizzard hit the area I live in. We were on vacation and got home a few days later. We couldn't get back into town for 2 days because the roads were closed (snow in infrequent enough here the city and county don't have snow plow equipment).

The neighbors called (they are in their late 70s). Half a mile down a dirt road they hadn't been able to get out for 3 days and were getting a little scared. We picked up a few groceries (the store shelves were pretty empty as trucks hadn't been able to get into town) and parked on the highway and hiked them in. Then it was hike half a mile through deep snow to the car parked on the highway for the next two days until the county managed to get the dirt road to our houses cleared.

Very revealing experience. It's not a good idea to imagine technology or society is going to solve all problems in a timely manner. When things go bad on a massive scale, especially when it's unexpected, you are on very often on your own for a bit even in this day and age. It's a good idea to be at least mildly prepared.

</comment><comment><USER24> What's funny for a foreigner like me is that the "preparedness scene" seems to exhibit a lot of American cliches :

\- it's never reasonable : you prepare for the end of the world or a "multi generational collapse" not "just" a "little" earthquake or a flood

\- you need a Hollywood budget : a well stocked retreat that will allow you to "survive" without changing any of your habits

\- guns, lots of guns : I remember someone recommending having 10'000 (yes, ten thousand) ammo for each semi-auto carbine you had (no less than 2 per member of your family of course, not including handguns, knives, handgrenades etc)

\- fatality is never an option : end of the world, multi generational collapse ? So what ? You just need to store more food, dig deeper for your bunker, and buy more guns (of course ;-)

In fact I believe it's the first time I read something reasonable about preparedness in English !

</comment><comment><USER25> The author touches on a lot of important points, without going overboard, and the article is worth reviewing as a list of things to consider if the SHTF, for whatever reason...

Tailoring a "plan" to fit your individual circumstances is probably the key take-away...

Putting yourself in a position to provide the big four--water, food, shelter, and security--for a month for yourself and those dear to you is not incredibly expensive or time consuming....

</comment><comment><USER26> > Insolvency. If a person over the age of 40 tells you that they have never > lost a job, they are pretty lucky (or lying).

I know a lot of lucky people then. It's absolutely smart to be prepared in the case you lose your job, but is it really that rare to make it 40+ without getting fired or laid off?

<comment><USER27> For this audience? Yes. Startups have finite lifespans, and even when they succeed they are likely to go through a period of upheaval which could involve job instability. I've been laid off several times in the last 20 years, always due to either the company running out of runway, or being pivoted out of a job.

<comment><USER26> For the audience of Hacker News? Maybe. "Less crazy folk" encompasses a much wider group, though, I'd wager.

<comment><USER28> And I'd add that not everyone reading Hacker News is working at a startup either. There's a bunch of folks from large, stable companies checking HN as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Pepper spray. An excellent, temporarily incapacitating weapon - <USER3> > difficult to resist and capable of buying you just enough time to escape. > Works quickly and reliably at distances up to perhaps 10 feet; can also stop > some animal attacks. Usually not heavily regulated, making it easy to obtain > and carry even in places that frown upon other forms of armed self-defense.

This is not good advice everywhere. Here in the UK pepper spray is regulated by the same law as firearms.

<comment> mycroft-holmes Is there any right to self-defense in the UK?

<comment><USER17> IANAL, but my brief understanding is: you may only use force to defend yourself against force, and you may only use lethal force to defend yourself against lethal force. Self-defense is a valid defense against certain crimes (which I understand is not quite the same thing as being a right, though I can't say I really see the difference); there is no "castle doctrine". When the famous Tony Martin case happened (a farmer shot and killed some burglars (few people have guns in the UK, but farmers are an exception, and relatively commonly own (licensed) shotguns on the grounds of needing to shoot vermin)), I remember a local police officer's comment being "if they were shot in the front he'll get off, but if they were shot in the back he's going to jail".

<comment> f- I think this is pretty similar to the rest of the western world, and certainly to the legal frameworks in much of the US. The interpretation is probably very different, though. So is the legality of carrying weapons in anticipation of an assault...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I really don't have time to make this, but I am going to make a wish and hope either someone else runs with it, or points me to it. I'd love to have a subscription service where I put in $X/month, lets me select from a few priorities and maybe check off things I already have, and start shipping sensible supplies to me on a schedule.

(I googled around and saw [http://www.myapocabox.com/](http://www.myapocabox.com/) , but to my mind that's more parlor trick or even just something you sorta do for fun if you're in that culture. I'm talking something more like where you put in $X/month, and unless you say you already have one, it starts you off with basic first aid, moves to other basics, maybe throws some long-term food supplies in after a few months, etc. Something meant just to make you robust against reasonable disasters moreso than something to help you recarve civilization out of the nearest copse of trees.)

It's important and useful to be robust against real issues like power loss for a week (it's happened) or other such basics, but it's hard to keep a list yourself and expensive enough if you try to prep for it all at once that it inhibits doing it.

<comment><USER24> So you're not in the camp of 'the government will help me' but you're in the camp 'a private company will help me' ?

Only you can know what supplies and know-how you will need for the specific disaster scenarios that you might encounter.

I'm sure you don't need more than 2 hours to make a plan and one hour a month after that to buy the things you would need. If you care enough you should be able to find the time.

<comment><USER29> Don't recall saying anything about government or private companies. A bit strange to claim how only an individual can know what they need on an article about what people need. And I explicitly meant more prep than I can indeed do in 2 hours or with a month's discretionary income, not to mention the possibility of helping others do it.

I can see you're really chomping at the bit to attack, attack, attack somebody, but why don't you go find a better target? Or, failing that, stop jamming words in my mouth and then attacking those?

<comment><USER24> Sorry if it came as an attack it was not my intention. I apologize. English is not my native language and I'm afraid I did a poor job at explaining myself.

What I meant was : don't loose your time with a private company that will send you probably useless prep stuff since they don't know you, your needs and the scenarios you're preparing for.

I believe you will always do better than them even if you don't dedicate a whole lot of time to it.

I was comparing the government and private companies since I believe they will do both a poor job helping you get prepared.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > But the universe is a _harsh mistress_ , and there is only so much faith we > should be putting in good fortune, in benevolent governments, or in the > wonders of modern technology. So, always have a backup plan.

Has Nature been unfaithful to us?(!!) A mother must discipline her children. As far as I've seen, she does it out of love, even when it hurts. She simply wants her children to grow up, far beyond what limits and mistakes they currently make, preferably before getting burned.

\---

Thanks for this great post.. For more reliable lifestyle info, you can find a treasure trove at [http://survivalistboards.com](http://survivalistboards.com) , and if you just want to kick back and listen to some great dialogues before stepping up: [http://thesurvivalpodcast.com](http://thesurvivalpodcast.com) , James Wesley Rawles, Cody Lundin, Marjory Wildcraft, peakmoment, wildernessoutfitters, wranglerstar, ferfal, INETeconomics, ...

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if anyone's written a guide for surviving a not-too-long term emergency for residents of a large city. Everyone basically agrees that the best thing to do in case of a large-scale emergency is to leave the city - <USER4> my wife and I aren't prepared for camping, and we're definitely not prepared to walk out of Manhattan with five million other people into Jersey.

Where's the guide for what to do in case of a solar storm that knocks out the power grid for a month when you're a resident of Chicago, or New York, or Los Angeles?

<comment><USER32> This is general advice for earthquakes and other disasters:

\- As soon possible, gather fresh water. Drain the pipes in sinks and showerheads; if you don't have enough containers, fill up the bathtub.

\- Have non-perishable food on hand (cans mostly). Mind the expiration date.

\- Have a deadbolt (if you are worried about your neighbors).

\- Invest in a good first aid kit and learn how to use it. They sell larger ones designed to live in your car or home (not the portable, throw-in-backpack kind).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's interesting that the author doesn't talk about insurance in the money sections much. I find I sleep a lot better at night knowing that if we do have a fire, or crash a car, or have a major health situation, or someone slips on our sidewalk and sues us, we have adequate downside protection.

<comment><USER34> > or someone slips on our sidewalk and sues us

first world problems :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hey, can anyone point to any resources related to hyper inflation/economic crisis? Think zimbabwe or greece

</comment><comment><USER36> We come with pretty good default settings.

Keep in shape, learn basic survival skills suitable to your climate, and keep a small kit of portable tools. If anything catastrophic happens, enable hunter-gatherer mode and start migrating. Our species did this for 95% of its existence, you'll be fine.

<comment><USER37> For 95% percent of our existence, population density was waay lower than now. If shit hits the fan in a populated area, and no outside help can get in, people starve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I grew up in the rocky mountians, and even though the snows have been less so, it was the sort of place my grandpa tells stories of blizzards 8ft deep that would get people trapped in for weeks.

The number one thing you want is water or a way to get water.

Number two is food or ways to get food.

Number three is heating/shelter.

You get those three things and learn how to get them (hunting, fishing, foraging, etc) and youll be just fine.

As for food, to give us a comfortable buffer, we had an entire wall dedicated to 5 gallon buckets of freeze dried stuffs like egg, milk, beans, rice, basics such as that.

Water is best to have you own independent well, and a filtration device for us while foraging and a bigger one for local high volume water if there is no well.

These basics are what anyone preparing for almost any disaster or emergency should do.

</comment><comment><USER39> The best thing about the apocalypse that I have read is Justin Cronin's "The Passage" \- book one of a trilogy, I'm a little way into book 2 "The Twelve".

Although, if The Passage were to happen all your preparations would be for naught!

</comment><comment><USER40> I noticed some strange behaviour on that website: When I mouse-select text sometimes a word later in the same line would begin to wiggle around.

For example in the paragraph 'Gadget Upgrades'.

A short google search brought up nothing. Any clues?

</comment><comment><USER28> > Global thermonuclear war (Alas Babylon, Mad Max, Fallout),

Pretty poor choice of references here. In terms of movies, "The Day After" is the most viewed movie of all time, and certainly one of the best references for the impact of Global Thermonuclear war and what happens next on an individual level if you even make it. Mad Max is a fiction as best that has about nothing to do with thermonuclear war (it just serves as a background to start the story, but you can't see any of its consequences).

A little shocked the author did not mention it at all.

<comment><USER41> Threads was much better, and far more depressing, than The Day After.

<comment> jon-wood For reasons I still don't fully understand our science teacher showed us that film when I was about fifteen, and some of the scenes in it still haunt me. I slightly blame it for my fascination with post-apocalyptica (and if that's not a word, it should be).

This was in the late nineties, so long after the world was expecting nuclear war at any moment, so I have no idea why she showed it - parts of it she refused to watch, so I assume it wasn't just that she wasn't aware quite his brutal it is.

<comment><USER42> The calm official-sounding voiceover in Threads is the worst part of it all I reckon. It just gives it the feel of a documentary which makes it even scarier.

<comment><USER41> Appears to be on Youtube:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8197B8DEF93FC7D9](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8197B8DEF93FC7D9)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> back in the early 90s, they used to teach this stuff in schools here in california (earthquake prep). it wasn't crazy at all, it was widely accepted that you should have supplies for up to a week at home. i remember homework assignments in elementary school related to this.

SF and LA were hit hard in 80s/90s by big earthquakes - that actually happened. i grew up less than 20 miles from northridge - i remember eating granola bars and boiling water after the northridge quake. _this shit actually happened to me_ ; i ate actual fucking granola bars that we kept in actual ziploc bags because our electricity actually didn't work and the stores were actually closed. we surely wouldn't have starved, but they sure did come in handy when you're hungry right after a huge earthquake. do you want to beg your neighbors for a snack?

since that era we've had 2 genuine city-level SHTF situations (LA riots and Katrina, more if you count 9/11 and lesser storm systems) and for some reason preparedness has become _less_ of a concern. 20 years pass and people just forget. memories are short. not mine.

i know multiple people who had to defend their lives and livelihoods with guns. real, normal people who now work in tech like you and me, who had to stand on roof tops with guns, in the middle of LA. right next to downtown. imagine this happening in midtown manhattan, or market street in sf. it's sheer madness, and it actually happened. and i'm sure anyone in the other LA (louisiana) can tell the same kinds of stories. and where were the cops? that's right - nowhere to be found when the shit hits the fan.

it can, and will, happen again. i think as you get older you start to realize just how tenuous civilized society really is and how quickly it can revert to an animalistic shitstorm. i keep several jerry cans of water and canned/dried food in my place, and am capable of defending myself. people think i'm crazy when i tell them i have this stuff. i think you're crazy if you don't. i know _exactly_ what it's like to be woken up violently in the middle of the night and find that everything around you has gone straight to hell.

[http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Timeline-The- Northri...](http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Timeline-The-Northridge- Earthquake-240665071.html)

6:50 a.m.: Hundreds of gas main and water main breaks reported. Parts of LA and Ventura counties are without running water or gas.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgCiC6qTtjs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgCiC6qTtjs)

</comment><comment><USER44> No mention of Bitcoin?

Oh right, the experiment failed.

Too bad, too bad.</comment>


Google's Python Class (Video, Notes & Exercises) - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class/ <comment><USER2> I had this idea that what if Google was involved in a project where they would make online courses of educational material available for free. Not like bits and pieces of video lecture available from stanford or short video tutorials available from <http://www.khanacademy.org/>. But actual course material, perhaps starting from 2nd grade to all the way to graduate level courses. There will be a combination of texts and videos and it could be semi wiki like where, certain qualified people can update course material to keep it relevant and up to date.

It would probably cost them less than buying a video codec company, but might have bigger and far reaching effect.

Imagine a single site will all the educational material, regularly updated. The only difference from a formal education (other than social interaction) is a certification.

Crazy (stupid?) idea?

<comment><USER3> Cool idea. But why limit it to Google (or any single company)?

Take every topic taught in formal education -- from K-12 through undergrad and graduate school. Break it up into small 2-day to 2-week modules. Categorize each module in terms of its prerequisities and teaching style (creating a giant graph through which students can travel). Provide pre- and post-tests (or simply let students self-declare their mastery of earlier subjects). Put it all online.

Others are thinking this way, too. See David Gelernter's 'Tracks and Clusters' concept from the 2009 Edge essays:

<http://edge.org/q2009/q09_9.html#gelernter>

(He adds to the online component real-life 'cluster rooms', where students working on similar materials gather for additional mutual in-person instruction.)

<comment><USER2> Great! David Gelernter wrote almost exactly the way I was thinking. Albeit, he presented it eloquently.

The reason I specifically mentioned Google because, it is the only company that is crazy enough to do something like this without expecting any direct profit in return. They also have the engineering muscle and deep pocket to make it possible.

I always felt, throughout my years in school, how inefficient our education system is. Not only in USA, everywhere in the world (AFAIK).

Imagine how much effect this will have on third world countries (with the help of cheap computers like OLPC) with course material translated to local language? Ok maybe it won't be perfect and some problems needs to be solved, but it will be better than having little to no access to high quality courses of higher education?

Hell, if I had couple of millions lying around. I would give it a shot myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This should print YayYayYay.

      Here is code that calls the above repeat() function, printing what it returns:
      print repeat('Yay', False)      ## Yay

[http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python- class/int...](http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python- class/introduction.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Even though Python is a very easy to learn language, I give this two thumbs up for google. Python is really a great amazing language, however I feel sometimes that's very underrated for most of IT people I know, it's not perfect but is powerful and beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER6> I heard the MIT OCW 6.00 python class on iTunesU is great too.

<comment><USER7> [http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and- Compute...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer- Science/6-00Fall-2008/CourseHome/index.htm)

I work through these a while ago and can attest to the validity of the above statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> On a related note, it would be great if Google allowed others to post education materials of length beyond 10 minutes in length, as well. For example, I want to post full-length videos of computer science conferences and talks but this seems to be impossible without applying to the YouTube Partner program, which requires traffic and credentials. Does anybody have such a contact at YouTube?

</comment><comment><USER9> I have been thinking of learning Python for long time after I read pg's essay about Great Hackers. This will be a good start. Thanks for the link.

<comment><AUTHOR> While these lectures are not for total programming newbies, they are very gentle if you know some other languages. He'll often contrast Python with Java, C++ and Javascript to highlight the differences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> He is wearing a Netscape shirt! :D

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcteAbMC1Ok></comment>


Sword - <AUTHOR> http://sword.mu/

<comment><USER2> With a proper Makefile,

        $ cd project
        $ inotifywait -m -e modify,close_write,move,move_self,create,delete,delete_self -r . | while read; do make; done

Every time any source is modified, renamed, created, etc, that will run 'make', rebuilding whatever output artifacts you need.

As long as you're careful about always re-fetching artifacts (like css files built from whatever css-sugar-y thing is hot this week) somehow, that should set you up nicely, and it generalizes to all kinds of workflows.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for making me aware of this. This is linux specific but something like this seems to be available on Mac OS X ([https://github.com/alandipert/fswatch](https://github.com/alandipert/fswatch)).

I don't quite understand where in your command you specify that make is executed? Could you expand on that.

<comment><USER4> while read; do make; done

<comment><USER2> that's spot on.

the command "inotifywait -m -r . -e {some events}" recursively watches all inodes in the current directory (the "-r" and "." parts) for events in the {some events} list, and every time something happens (you save a file, create a new one, open a file, etc etc), inotifywait prints a line.

The "-m" flag makes it print a line and keep watching. Without that, it's a one-shot (which can work like [0] but all the setting up and tearing down of inotify watches is expensive on a large project).

[0]

        $ while inotifywait -e some,events -r . ; do make; done

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like it.

Not being familiar with .styl, though, this line confused me: "So, it has found /assets/style.styl."

Especially because it found style.sass

<comment><USER6> .styl is the file extension for stylus. Its just another css preprocessor like less or scss

[http://learnboost.github.io/stylus/](http://learnboost.github.io/stylus/)

I think this part is just a typo

> So, it has found /assets/style.styl. Now it analyzes extension:

>

> .sass extension? Use Sass then.

<comment><USER7> Thank you, will fix it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems very similar to the Harp project: [http://harpjs.com/](http://harpjs.com/)

I may actually prefer this better because of the scss/sass support, though.

<comment><USER9> Serve is also very similar: [http://get-serve.com/](http://get-serve.com/)

<comment><USER10> Could not recommend this more – strikes _just_ the right balance between a Rails app and plain HTML/CSS for prototyping.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have no use for this, but it should really be caching compiled versions and recompile resources only when they become newer than what's cached.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think some information is missing here.

Suppose I want to look at a CSS file (zzz.css, say). But that file does not exist, since I'm using LESS to make my CSS. The LESS source exists; the CSS output does not -- yet. I'm using sword.

I have a Unix command prompt in front of me. What do I type?

<comment><USER13> How I understood it:

        $ sword &
        $ wget localhost:1111/path/to/style.css

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't really see the benefit over using something that does background compilation e.g. CodeKit.

Also it seems a little silly/wasteful to use this in a production environment, which I may be mistaken about but the last paragraph seems to be instructions for deploying a site on top of this.

<comment><USER7> It is silly and wasteful. It is just possible.

<comment><USER15> There seems to be no mention in the docs of where the compiled files end up, if anywhere; taking the docs literally it appears that this is the preferred way to use sword, which is indeed silly and wasteful.

<comment><USER7> Just use --compile flag. Here is the issue: [https://github.com/somu/sword/issues/7](https://github.com/somu/sword/issues/7)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you prefer GUI and reload the browser for you, I think livereload does very well.

[http://livereload.com](http://livereload.com)

</comment><comment><USER17> What's the advantage of using Sword over, say, compass watch?

<comment><USER7> Zero configuration (no config.rb), a lot of preprocessors besides Sass/Compass supported (like LESS, HAML, Slim, CoffeeScript and so on).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sounds neat! An easy-to-use (API) proxy would be a killer feature.

<comment><USER7> Got it! Open an issue and describe your thoughts? Will think to add it in the next release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> is this similar to yeoman?

<comment><USER7> Not really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> $ watch

</comment><comment><USER21> Like!</comment>


(2012) Obama, Facebook and the power of friendship: the 2012 data election - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-machine-facebook-election <comment><AUTHOR> Context for the significance of this article

> Barack Obama's re-election team are building a vast digital data operation > that for the first time combines a unified database on millions of Americans > with the power of Facebook to target individual voters to a degree never > achieved before.

> Digital analysts predict this will be the first election cycle in which > Facebook could become a dominant political force. The social media giant has > grown exponentially since the last presidential election, rendering it for > the first time a major campaigning tool that has the potential to transform > friendship into a political weapon.

> Facebook is also being seen as a source of invaluable data on voters. The > re-election team, Obama for America, will be inviting its supporters to log > on to the campaign website via Facebook, thus allowing the campaign to > access their personal data and add it to the central data store – the > largest, most detailed and potentially most powerful in the history of > political campaigns. If 2008 was all about social media, 2012 is destined to > become the "data election".</comment>