I just watched one of the BBC History Cold Case programs and it got me thinking about the situation in the world at the moment. A common saying is “History repeats itself” and this time I hope history doesn’t repeat itself. I love this program mainly because after Western civilization collapses we could very well go back and live the way our ancestors lived. And the way we live now is a lot better, I mean a hell of a lot better. After the Roman Empire collapsed it took mankind over a thousand years to pass the technology of the Romans. So when our civilization comes unglued we will go backwards and now civilization could come unglued at any time.
The program I was watching was called “The Bodies in the Well” and here the team analyzed a bunch of 17 skeletons that had been buried in a well. Men, women and 11 children and a few cats had been thrown in the well. They searched historical records as well as doing a detailed analysis on some of the skeletons. And the results were not good and anyone working in finance should take note.
In the 12th and 13th Century, when these skeletons were carbon dated too, the Jews who had been brought to England by the King in the 11th century were being prosecuted and expelled. The Jews were the money-lenders because the religion at the time forbid the lending of money with interest. But the religion of the Jews allowed it that is why they were in England at that time.
But as they say all good things come to an end. There was a lot of discontent among the populous because the Jews were doing very little and making lots of money. So the masses rebelled and killed the Jews. Now did they kill them because they were Jews or because they were successful business people. This happened across Europe as well as in England where the skeletons were. Even though the Jews were protected by the crown, when they needed the protection it was not there.
It is believed the Jews died by suicide as there were no visible signs of trauma on the skeletons. And they were dropped down the well just to get rid of them. They never explained why there were a couple of cat skeletons in the well also. Maybe the discontented masses through the Jews cats down the well after the bodies were thrown in.
Now can you see the correlation between then and now? The same situation is arising where the bankers are making tons of money doing very little. And the masses are getting foreclosed out of their homes.
Is history going to repeat itself again in the near future. Bankers are totally oblivious to the effects fraud has on their customers. They must get their kicks from seeing how many customers they can lie too and deceive. But the bankers are forgetting that the world we all live in now is coming to an end. And when it does history might repeat itself.
Similar incidents have already happened in the very recent past. When Indonesia collapsed the Chinese were targeted. Now were they targeted because they were Chinese or because they were successful shop keepers and businessmen. Chinese have been targeted in other countries. When there were riots in Tonga, Chinese shops were looted. In other countries the Chinese huge Dragon Malls have caught fire. Most say they were accidental but is that really what happened.
Fast forward to now, right now we have Ebola set to march around the globe. Now if it does, how many disgruntled customers, who have been lied to and deceived by bank managers and bank staff will walk into a bank as their last act of getting even, after they realize they might have Ebola. And help spread it round to the people they think need it the most. The banks free reign over the economy might suddenly change.
At the moment banks are an evil necessity whereby we can't function without them. And there is not really an alternative. We have to use them. But in the future, hopefully very soon, true global companies should be able to start up a bank as a side line business. Why can't we go to the McBank, or the KFCB or the PizzaBank to do our banking while having lunch. We can even add WalBank to the list. These companies are true global companies and their bottom lines are a lot healthier than most banks.
This way when there is another catastrophic global financial meltdown the common everyday person who lives from day to day will still have some money left. For these companies the real estate is already in place, they just have to add the ATM outside, or as a number are 24 hour they can have the ATM inside. And in some of the bigger establishments they could have a teller window. Here multitasking would take on a new meaning, one minute you are serving burgers and the next you are a bank teller. Welcome to the workforce of the future.
For more gloomy stories about what we could expect very soon check out.
http://www.animalsdinosaursandbugs.com/Weakest-Link2.htm
Thank you for your time
Peter Legrove
The suburban survivalist
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
SARS and Ebola
I was there during sars and nobody seemed to worry too much. But the hospitals were very crowded especially the children's hospitals. When you have a one child policy kids mean a lot so they are well looked after. I went to a trade fair there and it was nearly deserted. I did wear a cloth mask but that was mainly for show. Not many people wore them.
They would survive, all the food is brought into the city twice a day from the surrounding farms, so they would get food. Water is another story, in places parts of the city run out of water quiet regularly and they bring in water in water tankers. So they are used to moving water. They had infrared heat cameras on the main roads plus going into the trade fair and train stations. Churches were all closed. Schools were still open.
One problem is petrol, the city sometimes runs out of petrol and the cars just block up the roads leading into the gas stations, so you cant get past. So they brought in the army and they moved the cars so the traffic would keep moving. All they did was put cones up so you could only enter the gas station from the side road and leave on the main road. it worked. Most people respect the army and the police so they do what they are told. Doctors and people who worked in the hospitals had to report to work or they would lose their job and pension and anything else that went with it. The support staff like cleaners all ran away.
In my view nothing seemed to change. There are usually guards everywhere, and then they could stop you if you looked sick or started coughing or brought too much fever medicine. Once one of the heat sensor light went bright red and they stopped this guy until the ambulance got there. It was quite entertaining, everybody just stopped and watched. This guy realized he wasn't going anywhere so they gave him a seat and he waited. At that time there was no fear in the air, people were just not worried. They just carried on normal.
Hong Kong came totally unglued but that is normal, there you had to wear a mask. That is the difference between controlled TV and what we have got which is --who has the worst news wins basically. In China on the news there was nothing to incite the people, the news was the same, so the people were not wound up. It might be different now with instant communication. In my humble opinion China would cope better than the western world.
There standard of hospital care is nowhere near what we have, but you will be looked after. Actually your relatives can look after you while you are in hospital. When you go into a hospital waiting room, there are people sitting in the waiting room with IV bottles stuck in their arms. I got very ill at one stage and they took me to the street clinic, they took a blood test to see if i had a virus or a bacteria then they stuck an IV in my arm hooked some bottles up and forgot about me for a couple of hours. I was OK in a couple of days.
China thinks differently and the way the people interact is very different. Family is the key so you will always help your family and that extends to distant relatives. Most people have a high opinion of the army and the police so they will have some control. If the government asks for volunteers to help in the hospitals I would say people will help. And the other thing they are used to - is moving masses of people, so they can do things.
For more gloomy stories about what we could expect very soon check out. http://www.animalsdinosaursandbugs.com/Weakest-Link2.htm Thank you for your time Peter Legrove The suburban survivalist
They would survive, all the food is brought into the city twice a day from the surrounding farms, so they would get food. Water is another story, in places parts of the city run out of water quiet regularly and they bring in water in water tankers. So they are used to moving water. They had infrared heat cameras on the main roads plus going into the trade fair and train stations. Churches were all closed. Schools were still open.
One problem is petrol, the city sometimes runs out of petrol and the cars just block up the roads leading into the gas stations, so you cant get past. So they brought in the army and they moved the cars so the traffic would keep moving. All they did was put cones up so you could only enter the gas station from the side road and leave on the main road. it worked. Most people respect the army and the police so they do what they are told. Doctors and people who worked in the hospitals had to report to work or they would lose their job and pension and anything else that went with it. The support staff like cleaners all ran away.
In my view nothing seemed to change. There are usually guards everywhere, and then they could stop you if you looked sick or started coughing or brought too much fever medicine. Once one of the heat sensor light went bright red and they stopped this guy until the ambulance got there. It was quite entertaining, everybody just stopped and watched. This guy realized he wasn't going anywhere so they gave him a seat and he waited. At that time there was no fear in the air, people were just not worried. They just carried on normal.
Hong Kong came totally unglued but that is normal, there you had to wear a mask. That is the difference between controlled TV and what we have got which is --who has the worst news wins basically. In China on the news there was nothing to incite the people, the news was the same, so the people were not wound up. It might be different now with instant communication. In my humble opinion China would cope better than the western world.
There standard of hospital care is nowhere near what we have, but you will be looked after. Actually your relatives can look after you while you are in hospital. When you go into a hospital waiting room, there are people sitting in the waiting room with IV bottles stuck in their arms. I got very ill at one stage and they took me to the street clinic, they took a blood test to see if i had a virus or a bacteria then they stuck an IV in my arm hooked some bottles up and forgot about me for a couple of hours. I was OK in a couple of days.
China thinks differently and the way the people interact is very different. Family is the key so you will always help your family and that extends to distant relatives. Most people have a high opinion of the army and the police so they will have some control. If the government asks for volunteers to help in the hospitals I would say people will help. And the other thing they are used to - is moving masses of people, so they can do things.
For more gloomy stories about what we could expect very soon check out. http://www.animalsdinosaursandbugs.com/Weakest-Link2.htm Thank you for your time Peter Legrove The suburban survivalist
Will we survive Ebola
I think we are at a slight disadvantage with ebola. When the Spanish went to the new world they took their diseases and they devastated the local population. Now with ebola we in the west have no built in immunity so we could be hit harder than they are in Africa. Africa has had ebola for a long time so the people their will have more immunity than we have. Anyway they way it looks their might be a vaccine out soon. It does not look like the inoculation method, first used with smallpox, will be any good for ebola. There is no mild strain of ebola that we could use for inoculation. There is one serious glaring problem with vaccines and ebola. And that is ebola evolves very fast and would probably evolve ahead of a vaccine. With ebola it is fast, not slow moving like syphilis and not disfiguring like smallpox or syphilis for that matter. More like the black death and the 1918 flu or even a hantavirus.
If the hantavirus ever decided to go human to human transmission, or the cocoliztli decided to stage a comeback, we would think ebola was something like a walk in the park. It is estimated the cocoliztle killed 16 out of every 20 people, ebola is only 50%. It has been suggested that the cocoliztle could have been airborne hantavirus. But we wont know until it comes back.. The cocoliztle surfaced after a time of prolonged drought. So at that time there might have been a plague of mice. Rodents carry the hantavirus, and at that time since there was more to eat the mice could have reached plague proportions causing the horrific death rate. Rodents tend to over populate depending on the food supply.
Ebola and cocoliztle are both VHF or Viral hemorrhagic, but the hantavirus is a Hemorrhagic fever with a twist, it also has renal failure syndrome (HFRS). Slightly different and I have no idea what the difference is. The hantavirus comes under the friendly fire virus regime and all that is, is your body's response to the virus is what kills you, so you do not develop immunity. Therefore vaccines will not be effective.
There are a number of cases throughout history where diseases do not confer immunity. The sweating sickness was a plague that hit England at the time of Henry the 8th and there was no immunity. The Justinian Plague that brought the Roman Empire to its knees did not give you immunity. Emperor Justin had it three times before he finally succumbed to the disease. DNA tests on skeletons have revealed that that disease was the Black Death. Before that it was suggested it could have been Ebola.
The plague is still with us and I don't know if we still do not develop immunity. Does Ebola confer immunity, if so why aren't the people who have survived not working in the hospitals. They wont need Hazmat suits. Has anybody had ebola twice. Did anyone get the 1918 flu twice. What about SARS. SARS was the ideal wolf of mankind, it usually only took out the old and the infirm. Healthy people did not seem to be overly affected and usually survived. Now we also have to look at the economic effect of a very contagious disease in our neighborhood.
Our society is so entwined that if we have one breakdown in the supply chain the whole chain breaks. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. For example bread, in the days of the black death, bread was the farmer--miller--baker--yeast man--wood for fire man—horse and cart man--and probably a few others I don't know about. Compared to today I wouldn't have a clue how many links there are in the bread chain. So when ebola gets here we run out of bread and everything else. We got problems, serious problems. If the electric grid goes down we got huge problems, and if the water stops running we are in a society collapse situation. But throughout history massive pandemics did not collapse society, they caused severe problems but cities and society continued.
Except after Columbus got to the New World. Between the Old World diseases and the cocoliztle the peoples of central America were wiped out. Even today the population in Central America is less than before Columbus arrived..The Aztec and the Maya are a people clinging onto their culture. Yet before the clash of the Old World they were the empire of the Americas. They had the biggest cities and the biggest pyramids, and they were wiped out by “Guns Germs and Steel” Look on the bright side. It will definitely cure the unemployment problem and the obesity problem all in one.
After the black death there was competition for labor as there was a lot less working age people left alive and the price of labor went up. To get workers you had to pay more. Emperor Justin had the same problem, there were not enough workers for the harvest, so he forbid workers to leave their place of employment. But there w ere not enough people left alive to enforce the decree. And with not enough workers for the harvest then the invariable famine would follow. At the moment in the Ebola ridden lands everyday services and food distribution is already breaking down.
Now what will happen if and when Ebola hits a city near you. After the 1918 pandemic cities and countries didn't collapse, they carried on, small towns and villages collapsed as people moved away. Life went on, food kept coming in, people didn't starve they might have gone hungry, basic services kept going Now with Ebola we hope the same will happen, no major collapse of civilization. Mother Nature can wipe us out with droughts, famines, floods, earthquakes, tidal waves and whatever but with pandemics the infrastructure is still in place. There are just a few less people around to run the place.
For more gloomy stories about what we could expect very soon check out. http://www.animalsdinosaursandbugs.com/Weakest-Link2.htm
Thank you for your time
Peter Legrove The suburban survivalist
If the hantavirus ever decided to go human to human transmission, or the cocoliztli decided to stage a comeback, we would think ebola was something like a walk in the park. It is estimated the cocoliztle killed 16 out of every 20 people, ebola is only 50%. It has been suggested that the cocoliztle could have been airborne hantavirus. But we wont know until it comes back.. The cocoliztle surfaced after a time of prolonged drought. So at that time there might have been a plague of mice. Rodents carry the hantavirus, and at that time since there was more to eat the mice could have reached plague proportions causing the horrific death rate. Rodents tend to over populate depending on the food supply.
Ebola and cocoliztle are both VHF or Viral hemorrhagic, but the hantavirus is a Hemorrhagic fever with a twist, it also has renal failure syndrome (HFRS). Slightly different and I have no idea what the difference is. The hantavirus comes under the friendly fire virus regime and all that is, is your body's response to the virus is what kills you, so you do not develop immunity. Therefore vaccines will not be effective.
There are a number of cases throughout history where diseases do not confer immunity. The sweating sickness was a plague that hit England at the time of Henry the 8th and there was no immunity. The Justinian Plague that brought the Roman Empire to its knees did not give you immunity. Emperor Justin had it three times before he finally succumbed to the disease. DNA tests on skeletons have revealed that that disease was the Black Death. Before that it was suggested it could have been Ebola.
The plague is still with us and I don't know if we still do not develop immunity. Does Ebola confer immunity, if so why aren't the people who have survived not working in the hospitals. They wont need Hazmat suits. Has anybody had ebola twice. Did anyone get the 1918 flu twice. What about SARS. SARS was the ideal wolf of mankind, it usually only took out the old and the infirm. Healthy people did not seem to be overly affected and usually survived. Now we also have to look at the economic effect of a very contagious disease in our neighborhood.
Our society is so entwined that if we have one breakdown in the supply chain the whole chain breaks. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. For example bread, in the days of the black death, bread was the farmer--miller--baker--yeast man--wood for fire man—horse and cart man--and probably a few others I don't know about. Compared to today I wouldn't have a clue how many links there are in the bread chain. So when ebola gets here we run out of bread and everything else. We got problems, serious problems. If the electric grid goes down we got huge problems, and if the water stops running we are in a society collapse situation. But throughout history massive pandemics did not collapse society, they caused severe problems but cities and society continued.
Except after Columbus got to the New World. Between the Old World diseases and the cocoliztle the peoples of central America were wiped out. Even today the population in Central America is less than before Columbus arrived..The Aztec and the Maya are a people clinging onto their culture. Yet before the clash of the Old World they were the empire of the Americas. They had the biggest cities and the biggest pyramids, and they were wiped out by “Guns Germs and Steel” Look on the bright side. It will definitely cure the unemployment problem and the obesity problem all in one.
After the black death there was competition for labor as there was a lot less working age people left alive and the price of labor went up. To get workers you had to pay more. Emperor Justin had the same problem, there were not enough workers for the harvest, so he forbid workers to leave their place of employment. But there w ere not enough people left alive to enforce the decree. And with not enough workers for the harvest then the invariable famine would follow. At the moment in the Ebola ridden lands everyday services and food distribution is already breaking down.
Now what will happen if and when Ebola hits a city near you. After the 1918 pandemic cities and countries didn't collapse, they carried on, small towns and villages collapsed as people moved away. Life went on, food kept coming in, people didn't starve they might have gone hungry, basic services kept going Now with Ebola we hope the same will happen, no major collapse of civilization. Mother Nature can wipe us out with droughts, famines, floods, earthquakes, tidal waves and whatever but with pandemics the infrastructure is still in place. There are just a few less people around to run the place.
For more gloomy stories about what we could expect very soon check out. http://www.animalsdinosaursandbugs.com/Weakest-Link2.htm
Thank you for your time
Peter Legrove The suburban survivalist
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