How do you feed 6 million people in Baghdad when it's flooded?

Welcome back to my voice in the wilderness.

The New Yorker offers a longread on the imminent, biblically catastrophic failure of the Mosul dam:

The Iraqi government -- embattled, paralyzed, ineffectual -- seems highly unlikely to carry out meaningful evacuations or large-scale relief efforts in the event of a breach. "The sheer scale of a catastrophic outburst of the dam would overwhelm in-country capacities to respond," the U.N. report said. Adamo, the former official, scoffed at the idea that the government could save anyone. "They have no plan," he said. American officials, emphasizing the practical option of "self-evacuation," have urged the Iraqis to place early-warning sirens along the Tigris. Thus far, two have been installed. "They’re really, really loud," the senior American official told me; they can be heard for miles. Still, as people flee, the sick, disabled, and elderly would likely be left behind. With the Baghdad International Airport flooded, meaningful relief from outside the country might be days away. The U.N. predicted that most of the population affected by the flood would not receive any assistance for at least two weeks, and probably much longer. About four million Iraqis -- an eighth of the country's population -- would be left homeless.

By the time the flood wave rolled past Baghdad and exhausted itself, as many as one and a half million people could be dead. But, some experts told me, the aftermath would prove even more harrowing. "I am not really worried about the dead -- because they're dead," Alwash said. "What worries me is everyone else. How do you feed six million people in Baghdad when it's flooded? How do you give them electricity? Where do they go?"

This will be Iraq's Katrina, no exaggeration. Maybe even two Katrinas. But being in a foreign country, it's not actually our problem. Except that it will be, of course. The President-elect's Twitter responses are left as an exercise for the reader.

Hurricane season approaches and I'm not ready

Hurricane season officially starts at the beginning of June, but I don't tend to think of it as being a real problem here, so far north of the Carolinas, until we cool off a little in September. So while I feel as though I have a lot of time to spare, I've been taking some time today to look at my pantry cabinet and take stock of my emergency supplies.

And I'm low! What started as a little project to organize my pantry turned out to be a wake-up call that I don't have much at all beyond my minimum 2-week supply of nonperishable or ready-to-eat foods. That is to say, I have a good 2-week supply, but I'd be eating canned beans 3 meals per day toward end of those 2 weeks.

Off to the grocery store, but maybe not until this evening after the heatwave breaks. Among other things, I need to replace some single-serving, ready-to-eat rice packs, which I'll rotate out of storage and eat today and tomorrow since they're about at their best-by date. Single-serving, ready-to-eat, shelf-stable, fully cooked rice. We really do live in the future. I don't even want to know the carbon footprint of this stuff (though the rice is grown in the U.S., the final product is imported from Spain) but it's a brilliant addition to my emergency supplies.

Not that I truly, truly need a 2-week supply of instant or ready-to-eat food. In my section of the urban hellhole I can expect to be first in line for utilities to be restored after a storm. If they fail at all, that is. My water has never gone out; my electric goes out maybe once per year; and the only time my gas has ever gone out was when PGW shut it off deliberately for an infrastructure improvement project a few years ago.

That said, I think the derecho at the end of June put the fear of god into me. When much of West Virginia had no power for a few days, local officials and the Red Cross had to organize "mass feedings" (CNN). Evidently everyone had their power back 12 days later, but a lot of people were completely and totally unprepared for the situation. That's really uncool and I don't ever want to be in that position, unlikely as it would be for me in my location.

(3/3) Hurricane season is (nearly) dead; long live snowstorm season

The previous two posts discussed some preliminary thoughts about how to prepare for the zombie apocalypseregular, if infrequent, services outages that happen in the mid-Atlantic due to weather. I've been promising to talk about how to start preparing if you're dirt poor. Here's how.

First, decide what kind of preparation level you want your household to be at. Pick a number of days, which is mostly personal preference. My magic number is 14; maybe yours is 30 or 60, or over 700. (Maybe your state National Guard will order you to evacuate after a certain number of weeks anyway.) Or maybe your number is zero -- in which case you want cash and your important documents, on paper or scanned into a flash drive, in a ziploc bag ready to go. Consider including a map in the bag, and some important phone numbers and addresses, so you're not dependent on your phone or mobile device after the battery goes and there's no way to re-charge it.

Second, figure out how much food, water, and toiletries you need per day. There are so many guides and websites available to help with this aspect of emergency preparedness that I hesitate to link to anything. The U.S. National Hurricane Center offers a printer-friendly checklist; FEMA's instructions include suggestions for storage and maintenance. Googling "disaster supply kit" will yield all kinds of solutions, from free information to pre-packed "deluxe" backpacks.

You can always compile your own kit for less money, and with a more complete kit, than what you'll pay for a pre-packed kit.

Third, decide what you'll stock up on: extra prescription medicines, toiletries, water, and food for [insert chosen time period here]; plus a flashlight or two, a radio, and batteries to power them if they're not shake- or crank-powered. (Most of the lists emphasize first aid kits, but don't you have one already? Make it your household storage rule to replenish the band-aids, bactine, and antihistamines all the time, and you're set.) If you are uptight like me, the current supply of toiletries that you have on hand right now would already last you for several days, if not weeks or even months. Bar soap, for instance, is cheapest when I buy it in large packs that happen to last for six months in my household; and a single tube of toothpaste lasts longer than my "chosen time period" of two weeks. But I don't have my spare toiletries packed together in a kit; I keep them where they belong, in my bathroom drawers and linen closet -- because why bother? Why pack all this stuff into a bin that I have to dig through just because the power went out?

Storing an earthquake kit and stocking a storm cellar are different. But my emergency preparedness scenario -- regular, if infrequent, utilities and services outages, and the exceedingly low risk of a situation where I need to abandon my home -- don't contemplate severe or complete destruction of my dwelling.

As for food, you can spend a lot of money or you can spend only a little. You can stock up two weeks' worth of nutritious food for just a few dollars; you'll simply have to tolerate eating very simple food. We're not talking elegant meals here. We're talking filling your stomach cheaply. To spend a lot of money, buy military MREs. You can find them online for about $80 per dozen, and two of them will give you enough calories and nutrients for a sedentary day in clement weather. To spend only a little money, stock up on canned food (for carbohydrates and protein) and dried fruit (for vitamins and fiber). Ask at your supermarket if you can get a bulk discount for buying a case of pork and beans or canned pasta. Get some dried beans for sprouting if you like, for extra Vitamin C. I keep on hand some instant lunch products, the type of factory-made near-food in a one-use, disposable container that I don't otherwise eat, for variety, but I buy them only when they're on sale.

Dig your budget. Prioritize building up your pantry, saving up for a crank radio, and finding cheap candles (N.B., holiday candles are really cheap the day after the holiday). Add a single emergency preparedness item to your grocery list every week. Then can by can, package by package, and bottle by bottle, you'll eventually have an emergency supply of food. And when the emergency comes -- remembering that we get a good week's notice of incoming hurricanes here -- you won't have to run around the city looking for batteries.

What did I leave out? Is my privilege showing? Why isn't basic emergency preparedness realistic for some people, and are you one of those people? Please comment. Thanks!

(2/3) Hurricane season is (nearly) dead; long live snowstorm season

So there are a few issues that need unpacking from yesterday's post. The big question is how to put together your magical one week's worth of emergency supplies if you're dirt poor. But before I answer that, I have to unpack another question: what kind of emergency are we talking about here?

There are weather emergencies, there are civil unrest emergencies, and there are "PGW blew up my gas main" emergencies, all of which result in problems ranging from short-term loss of utilities, to the urgent need to leave and abandon your home. Civil unrest, while very popular on Wall Street these days, is still really unlikely in this country. Protests, demonstrations, and parades happen all the time, but they don't generally result in catastrophic situations that compel people to evacuate their homes. And when they do, really there's very little risk that the incident will happen in your neighborhood, on your block. Cities are big; a lot of people live in them; individual risk is low. So myself, I don't have a bug-out bag sitting by the front door. You need a big bag to carry the standard 72 hours' worth of food and stuff, and I have a small home. But to keep my peace of mind, I have all my important documents sealed up in a big ziploc bag in a very convenient place in case I need to skedaddle. I don't live in the wilderness, so I don't see how I would benefit myself by packing a tent and survival supplies. And anyway, if the situation is so far gone that I can't walk out of the city with a sack lunch, my documents, and cash to take care of my needs, then I think a 72-hour pack won't be sufficient -- we're talking bunker, not bug-out. Takeaway: Can you prepare for it? Yes. What should you do? Plan an escape route by foot and have cash and important documents ready to go.

"PGW blew up my house" situations are similarly really unlikely. Worse, though, unlike civil unrest problems, you may not get any warning at all. And if you're not home when it happens, then oops! All those important documents you have stashed in one safe place for quick retrieval when you have to skedaddle? Confetti. So this is where a safe deposit box comes in. However! I'm not saying you should put your original documents in the box. Nope, put copies in the box. Because what if your bank is closed when the shit hits the fan and you need to motor? Keep the originals handy, then use the copies from the box if you need to replace them because your home blew up. Takeaway: Can you prepare for it? Yes. What should you do? Keep your title and insurance documents organized, and keep up-to-date copies in a safe, offsite location.

So finally, how to deal with weather emergencies. First step is to consider the likely scenario. In town, a very short-term utilities outage. In the sticks, maybe a seriously long outage. I live in town, and to be extreme I plan for a week's outage. I don't have much space, so I'm not interested in turning my house into a pantry. And services to the city are restored quickly, so the supermarkets will be re-stocked in pretty short order, even if they're cleared as if they've been attacked by a plague of hurricane-panicked locusts.

In the sticks, you have some possibilities to keep in mind. If you have space, maybe you should plan for a month or even two without power. But consider: if your neighborhood is so far gone that they can't restore your utilities after a few days or a week (slow link), maybe you'd prefer to evacuate after a period of time and live temporarily with relatives or friends. So consider keeping a supply of what you'd need for whatever that period of time is for your household. A week? Two? A month or six months? Up to you.

Which is basically what I do in the city anyway. I keep enough on hand for one easy week or two rougher weeks. If the situation is so dire that, after two weeks, my utilities aren't restored and my supermarkets and city services aren't back on line, I've got more to worry about than whether I'm running out of candles.

Next: Wait! I never answered the question about how to prepare if I'm dirt poor!

What's in your bug-out bag? How many weeks -- or days -- can you comfortably stay at home? How will you survive the zombie apocalypse? Please comment. Thanks!

Concludes Wednesday.

(1/3) Hurricane season is (nearly) dead; long live snowstorm season

One thing that just floored me during the Hurricane Irene scare -- for "scare" it was here in Philadelphia, an inland port city at the confluence of two rivers, not truly a coastal city -- I say, one thing that floored me was the fear, if not complete panic, and lack of preparedness I saw among some of my friends and neighbors. Here in the mid-Atlantic, we get a blizzard or a severe snowstorm at least once every winter. We get a hurricane or a severe rainstorm every summer. (And evidently we get earthquakes every once in a blue moon, as well.) Trees topple; creeks flood; transformers short out; houses blow up. In a word, your utilities are going to go out on a regular, if infrequent, basis. If you're in the city, you're likely to get your gas, water, and electric service back pretty quickly; the time you wait probably increases at a rate that correlates directly to how far out in the sticks you live. But since we live in the future, where severe weather events can be predicted with some amazing certainty even a week in advance; and since we have FEMA, mostly predictably; and since just about everybody has friends or family who can help them out in a pinch, you probably don't have to keep a year's supply of emergency rations, toiletries, and fuel in your dwelling.

But you should probably keep a week's worth of supplies on hand, and rotate the supplies so they don't get stale, infested with bugs, or depleted. Because, in the mid-Atlantic, your power will go out from time to time.

That said, why did so many of my friends and family go nuts in the last days leading up to Hurricane Irene, driving all over the Delaware Valley looking for batteries? Why did they not have fresh batteries -- or a hand-crank radio, even better -- on hand and ready to go? Candles, matches, blammo. Remember, in the summer the nights are short. Eat dinner early while it's still light out; keep a flashlight by the bed so you can find the toilet at 2:00 a.m. You're set, because even if your power does go out, it'll likely be back by the time you wake up.

Note that I'm not criticizing people in New England who were devastated, seriously unexpectedly, by the post-Irene flooding. I'm addressing pre-Irene, chicken-with-its-head-cut-off behavior in the mid-Atlantic.

Next time: the answer to the obvious retort, "Because I'm poor, that's why."

What's in your emergency supply kit? Do you have a bug-out bag, an evacuation plan, and so on? Do you buy the argument that climate change, anthropogenic or not, will likely lead to more frequent events of extreme weather? Please comment. Thanks!

Continues Tuesday.

(0/3) Hurricane season is (nearly) dead; long live snowstorm season

Just one month left in this year's hurricane season -- how are you doing for emergency preparedness?

I've had a few ideas percolating since Hurricane Irene hit Philadelphia in late August. On Monday I'll start with the first of three entries discussing issues around getting ready for inevitables.

Thoughts? What kinds of topics should I cover? Are you expecting the big one any day now, or are you blasé about disasters, or are you somewhere in between? Please comment.