Doomsday Chronicles, cont'd
Mike Tidwell, a journalist turned activist, has published a how-to-ride-out-the-climate apocalypse instructional in The Washington Post. Years ago, global warming had already put Tidwell on high alert. But events in the last year have elevated his personal threat level:
Now I’m changing my life again. Today, underneath the solar panels, there’s a new set of deadbolt locks on all my doors. There’s a new Honda GX390 portable power generator in my garage, ready to provide backup electricity. And last week I bought a starter kit to raise tomatoes and lettuce behind barred basement windows.
I’m not a survivalist or an “end times” enthusiast. When it comes to climate change, I’m just a realist.
Whatever you say, but it sure sounds like you’re drinking from the same punchbowl as these folks.
Keith, I saw last year a horrible ‘mockumentary’ (our British tabloids great phase making) which had something like 4 or 5 different world ending scenarios, all starting from an initial ‘normal’ day. The one that gave me nightmares (and still does) was based on the absurd idea that some ‘scienists’ had accidently ‘produced’ a ‘black hole’. What was nightmarish (and very BBC!) was how it made you feel you were in the plane as it eventually, along with all the other planes (which you could see through your window), got sucked in to the rapidly expanding disaster. And what did it mean? Absolute zilch. I still have those nightmares, though (and about ‘the five fingers’!).
I think the appropriate word is Unhinged
“there’s a new set of…”
“There’s a new Honda GX390…”
“And last week I bought a…”
Anyone else get the feeling that global warming’s a capitalist plot?
😉
Your summary of his essay is pretty woeful, especially coming from someone like you that believes that AGW means more extreme weather.
Live in Los Angeles to San Francisco and you should have a 3-5 day supply of food, water, supplies to live out the earthquake. Where Tidwell lives he has a power generator to live out the snowstorms. And yes, he plans on growing some of his own food.
What? In these days of Michael Pollan you’re upset to hear of people trying to grow their own food?
So he locks up his $1,000 generator with new locks and you think he’s gone off the deep end.
And he contemplates the need for a shotgun, even though many people, beyond just gun afficionados, will tell you that a shotgun is a basic element of self-defense.
Apart from writing letters to the editor, and dutifully signing up for more taxes, and trading in their affordable cars for a Keith Kloor approved expensive hybrid with very expensive and wasteful batteries, WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE TIDWELL DO!?
He’s not telling us to buy gold, he’s not telling us to buy seed farms, he’s not telling us about the Amero, he’s talking about how to be self-sufficient at a time when as he says, our (very conservative) insurance companies will no longer insure us from climate changes.
Your basic smug self-assured message here is that Tidwell should just trust the government and any actions he takes on his own mark him a Looney.
I wonder how many folks in New Zealand, or Haiti, or San Francisco/Oakland, or New Orleans, or after an ice storm, or a snow storm, would like to have had a power generator, stores of food, supply of solar power, and a shotgun?
LOL! Well that takes the cake for unintentionally funny article of the day in my books.
But then again when I read this passage:
“The first storm, with wind gusts of 90 mph, knocked out power to 400,000 people and generated a wave of lightning that, by a freak tragedy, killed my friend Carl Henn at a community picnic in Rockville.”
I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the guy.
He needs to see a doctor