[extropy-chat] Any city is three days away from barbarism?

[Dan Clemmensen]

BillK wrote:

>On 9/2/05, Dan Clemmensen wrote:
>  
>
>>I cannot find the exact quote or attribution. I remember the quote as:
>>  "Any city is three days away from barbarism."
>>Does anyone know the actual quote?
>>    
>>
>
>
>I could only find one reference, a comment piece about the New Orleans flood.
><http://thetinear.com/>
>
>Friday, September 02, 2005
>Hurricane Katrina: Granting a Grim Insight into the American Society of Excuses
>
>It's not pretty, it's pretty grim. American society is only three days
>from barbarism.
>  
>
Sorry. I initially started asking my co-workers about this quote on 
Wednesday. I remember it form a decade or more ago.

I do not think american society is 3 days away from barbarism, Th effect 
results from a cutoff of essential inputs from an ares hat cannot 
produce the inputs itself. That can happen to a city, but not to the US 
as a whole. A catastrophe affecting the US as a whole would have a 
different dynamic. Depending on the catastrophe, the effect might be 
even more horrific, but would likely take more than three days.

Essentially any group of people will revert to barbarism when truly 
essential supplies are suddenly completely unavailable. The "three days" 
is approximately the reserve for potable water in a city. Note that a 
barbaric society will still contain  majority of individuals that 
exhibit heroism, altruism, and all the other laudable human qualities, 
but when your baby or your grandparent need water to live and there is 
not enough water to go around, you are likely to act decisively to 
secure water. This is true whether you are rich or poor, educated or 
uneducated, smart or stupid, black or white, homo or hetero, religious 
or atheist.