Monday, March 9, 2009

Survival Priorities

For a person there is a rule of threes for survival:

3 minutes without air
3 hours without shelter
3 days without water
3 weeks without food
3 months without hope

Is there an equivalent for a civilization? Maybe but not in the same way, many cities survived smog, even London had a smog so bad it killed hundreds if not thousands of people. A city doesn't die just because of bad air. But people are much more productive with clean air.

Good shelter helps too, right now we are living in an apartment that isn't so great it has lots of little annoyances, they are not big things but occasionally they really drive me crazy and I wonder if these annoyances are hurting us.

Clean water for a civilization is vital. New York City finally put in a real water system after a few outbreaks of typhus and cholera and no way to clean things up. Also being ankle deep in horse poo was a problem.

Most cities don't have much in the way of food reserves. Just look at what happens before a hurricane or after a blizzard, the stores are emptied of food.

This is rambling a bit but the idea is to have a prosperous civilization we need to show ways to meet these basic needs on macro level and not just the personal level.

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