what do you think is the probability that rule of law remains strong, conditional on there being severe food shortages for a few weeks? this is relevant in two ways: first, you may also need to stock items for personal defense; second, it may be important to store things in your residence specifically, as opposed to a storage container, which would be more convenient for apartment dwellers.
Ostensibly, if only the police are well fed then they’ll go to work and enforce the rules. But I worry that a critical mass of people will get hungry and angry. My worry is that when the brain gets too hungry it turns off the smart parts and reverts to its insincts. The cortex take a lot of energy to run at full speed. The brain is setup so that if the cortext fails -for whatever reason- then the insincts keep working on their own. Even if hangry ppl dont burn it all down in the first two weeks, I think hangry ppl suck to be around in ways we are not accustomed to?
It looks like anger and force are generally targeted at governments and stores, not individuals. Violence was typically around stores and in the streets; staying home and out of the way was often much safer. I do think keeping food in your house instead of an easily-robbed shed is good, though.
presumably people would not think to attack the random storage unit place though? like usually those are filled with random shit like furniture that’s useless in a famine. presumably very few people are putting food in their storage units. and the units are usually individually locked with pretty strong padlocks and made of pretty solid steel sheets, so a prospective robber would have to bring an angle grinder in and spend days slowly working their way through all of the units.
I guess the bigger concern is it might be hard to get safely from your apartment to the storage unit and back, if there’s violence in the streets?
what do you think is the probability that rule of law remains strong, conditional on there being severe food shortages for a few weeks? this is relevant in two ways: first, you may also need to stock items for personal defense; second, it may be important to store things in your residence specifically, as opposed to a storage container, which would be more convenient for apartment dwellers.
Ostensibly, if only the police are well fed then they’ll go to work and enforce the rules. But I worry that a critical mass of people will get hungry and angry. My worry is that when the brain gets too hungry it turns off the smart parts and reverts to its insincts. The cortex take a lot of energy to run at full speed. The brain is setup so that if the cortext fails -for whatever reason- then the insincts keep working on their own. Even if hangry ppl dont burn it all down in the first two weeks, I think hangry ppl suck to be around in ways we are not accustomed to?
This is a place where we can look at how things have gone in real situations, and not try reasoning through from first principles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_riot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007–2008_world_food_price_crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_in_Venezuela
It looks like anger and force are generally targeted at governments and stores, not individuals. Violence was typically around stores and in the streets; staying home and out of the way was often much safer. I do think keeping food in your house instead of an easily-robbed shed is good, though.
presumably people would not think to attack the random storage unit place though? like usually those are filled with random shit like furniture that’s useless in a famine. presumably very few people are putting food in their storage units. and the units are usually individually locked with pretty strong padlocks and made of pretty solid steel sheets, so a prospective robber would have to bring an angle grinder in and spend days slowly working their way through all of the units.
I guess the bigger concern is it might be hard to get safely from your apartment to the storage unit and back, if there’s violence in the streets?
Expanded this into a post: Your Supplies Probably Won’t Be Stolen in a Disaster