[extropy-chat] Worldwide SOS system

Mike Lorrey mlorrey at yahoo.com
Thu Oct 6 19:25:29 UTC 2005



--- "kevinfreels.com" <kevin at kevinfreels.com> wrote:

> This is a nice, productive thread, but one thing in missing -
> infrastructure. What use is a worldwide SOS system if you are lost in
> the Andes and no one can get to you? 

If you are lost in the Andes, someone can get to you if they know where
you are. In the case of the airline crash cannibals in the Andes, their
plane was buried under snow and an avalanche for the winter, so even
ariel surveys could not find them. I believe they even tried to make a
big SOS but were not seen.

> How many people at any given
> moment are in a state of emergency that would require such a system?

I can't find nationwide 911 rates, but the St Petersburg FL police
department says regarding their own call center, "In 2001, the center
received 730,941 calls, of which 335,345 were non-emergency calls and
91,221 were emergency 911 calls."

The NFPA reports that only 35% of fire departments in the US can arrive
90% of the time at the site of a fire within 6 minutes of a call. This
six minute rule is considered by the NFPA as a standard of performance.

>From an article in the Portsmouth Herald:
"Though the number of fires nationwide has declined with fire
prevention efforts, the number of calls to departments has doubled over
the last 20 years, in part because fire departments began handling
ambulance calls in the 1970s and 1980s, but also because people
routinely call over perceived emergencies, such as bats in the attic,
flooding, and strange noises. 

And fire department budgets are shrinking. The Globe calculated, using
U.S. Census data, that fire spending went from an average of 6.1
percent of municipal spending in 1987 to 5.7 percent in 2003. "

911 is also a terrible choice to call in even of crimes of home
invasion: robbery, rape, kidnapping, etc because police generally take
too long to respond, even when 911 answers the call on time or at all.
10-18 percent of 911 calls are never answered, and people have reported
as many as 20 rings before dispatchers answered. There are numerous
cases of crime victims found dead after police took as long as an hour
to respond to a 911 call.

Despite the attraction the liberal media has for 911 and "panic rooms"
in enduring slow police respons times, most families can barely afford
enough rooms for the kids they have, never mind a spare safe room for
emergencies.

> What constitutues an emergency? 

Threat to life or major property.

> Surely "lost at sea" but what about
> people who have houses burning down? Floods? War?

Sure, but each requires its own response. You going to send a fire
truck to a war, or the National Guard to put out my chimney fire?

> In the US, we dial 911 and get a cop, ambulance, or fire truck, but
> what if local resources are overwhelmed? 

911 calls are generally not answered by local dispatchers, they use
regional or national call centers that patch in your local emergency
services. There is also a system for bringing in neighboring community
resources. For example, fires are described by firemen as a "three
alarm" fire (using numbers one to five) which denote the degree of
resources needed. Typically the number applies to the number of fire
engines or fire companies required, where most suburban and rural fire
departments may have one or two engines, a "five alarm fire" will call
in engines from neighboring communities to deal with the worst.

> Would 100000 people suddenly be dialing
> into a worldwide SOS system? How do calls get routed to the proper
> authorities? 

The 911 dispatcher typically does a caller ID on your location if you
are calling from a fixed land phone. If you are on a cellphone, you
typically have to give your location, although the new 3G phones
purposely have GPS chips in them so 911 dispatchers can get your
location and even track you (such as if you've been kidnapped and are
in someone's car trunk).

> How is a disaster such as the Tsunami handled differently from
> a mountain climber that broker his leg? Consider the following:
> A skier is buried under the snow from an avalanche. The SOS goes out,
> is received and transmitted to the nearest authority - which also
> happens to be under 30 ft of snow.

I've rarely seen avalanches so large. Typically mountains large enough
to have such avalanches have their ski patrol assets distributed around
the mountain so that an avalanch in one area won't wipe out all their
capability. Resorts with high risk of large avalanches hitting the base
lodge typically design their facilities to withstand such an event.

Tsunamis, like Katrina, tend to wipe out so much of entire communities
that there really isn't any viable emergency response capacity to
provide crisis level rescue and care with any sort of immediacy. This
is generally unavoidable due to the nature of the disaster.

> The technology seems to be there for some kind of relatively simple
> SOS device built into other devices. I especially like the idea of
> generating power from the flip of the cell phone. It's one of
> those "Gee, why didn't I think of that?" moments. It seems to me that
> there are countless issues that are much more complicated than the
> device itself. I'd like to see some of your thoughts on this.

Another power possibility is a gravity generator: i.e. a linear
generator with a coil that goes back and forth based on your walking
movement, as used in pedometers and by some wrist watches. If you are
out in the wilderness, you are likely going to be walking around a lot.

Watching the new show "E Ring" last night, I saw the Major captured and
taken into Iran, where he escaped. When reinforcements were arriving,
and before he ran to evade recapture, he broke off the rear view mirror
of the vehicle he was in to use in signalling to aircraft. This is
smart improvisational skills that people intent on surviving should get
in the habit of. Products don't need to be built for what you use them
for. The improvisational habit can take work to develop. I guess I got
mine in childhood, when my parents and grandmonsters seemed to think
that cheesy clothing were legitimate christmas and birthday presents,
and studiously avoided all the fun combat toys. Making my own from
found objects and materials became a hobby.

Two of the key skills people should have to survive emergencies are
preparedness and improvisational skills. Being able to faint in front
of a TV camera on cue and whining for the federal government to save
you isn't one of them.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
Founder, Constitution Park Foundation:
http://constitutionpark.blogspot.com
Personal/political blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
__________________________________ 
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 
http://mail.yahoo.com



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list