[ExI] Easter Island

[Damien Broderick]

At 08:44 PM 3/25/2009 -0700, Lee ironized:

>>>At 06:56 PM 3/24/2009 -0700, Keith wrote:
>>>>If you can propose a technical
>>>>path to get the historical Easter Islanders out of their mess, I would
>>>>be most interested.
>>>  Hunt down and kill all the rats.
>>><http://www.livescience.com/history/060309_easter_island.html>
>>Also,
>>Avoid diseases from European contact. Avoid the slave traders who took
>>thousands of slaves away.
>
>Er, Bill, I hope that you realize that this would mean
>armed resistance.

<many thigh-slapping yucks snipped>

The serious point Bill was making is that the few thousand original 
colonists of Easter Island had no plausible way to confront or repel 
disease-bearing invaders. This need not apply to the current 
situations to which Keith was applying that catastrophe as an analogy 
or perhaps a homology. (I suppose it's possible that they might have 
tried to deal with the rats, but my own kitchen has the horrible 
things scuttling in the walls, so good luck with that.)

Damien Broderick