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Apr. 4th, 2020 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nebris"I don't think 'intended.' I think a result of the very poor attention we've paid to national stockpiles of emergency supplies since the end of the Cold War.
Back in the day we had stocked fallout shelters even in back yards. Of course now they're gathering rats and snakes (an ecosystem) but the warehouses still exist---and f' gosh sakes, don't eat the crackers or believe the supplies are immune to time. TIME passes. We haven't paid attention to this sort of thing since we expected the imminent fall of nukes.
Well, the Bomb has dropped, fellow citizens, and it's about time we took stock, and updated. Here is the very, very sad reality of how ready to deal we are NOT.
And don't be so dim as to tell me 'this admin' or 'that party' is responsible for it all: not in this case, and I'm going to get real testy if ANYBODY tries to go there. This neglect has been going on since Detente and SALT. And if you don't know what those were, say 'way back' and believe it. We stopped being ready. This was a mistake.
These supplies are way, way, way past their sell-by date. We now have computers. Keeping a watch over expiration of supplies, real expiration, not the dates mfgrs put on products to avoid lawsuit---is by comparison, easy; and there should be a rolling resupply in a very long list of things stockpiled, which should become a 'sacred cow' of the annual budget: no admin or Congress gets to question that expenditure unless it has been technologically outmoded and needs a redo. [We don't need a national supply of buggywhips, eg.]
We should also have a 'service' dedicated to inspecting the integrity of warehouses and storage, finding water leaks, integrity-compromises, vermin intrusion, and other things that could shorten the life of things stored. The military is very well suited to this kind of duty. Having the assurance that we're not going to open a box and find THIS ^ is peace of mind for the country. When we need it most, we're not going to open the box and find decay and dust." ~Cj Cherryh
Back in the day we had stocked fallout shelters even in back yards. Of course now they're gathering rats and snakes (an ecosystem) but the warehouses still exist---and f' gosh sakes, don't eat the crackers or believe the supplies are immune to time. TIME passes. We haven't paid attention to this sort of thing since we expected the imminent fall of nukes.
Well, the Bomb has dropped, fellow citizens, and it's about time we took stock, and updated. Here is the very, very sad reality of how ready to deal we are NOT.
And don't be so dim as to tell me 'this admin' or 'that party' is responsible for it all: not in this case, and I'm going to get real testy if ANYBODY tries to go there. This neglect has been going on since Detente and SALT. And if you don't know what those were, say 'way back' and believe it. We stopped being ready. This was a mistake.
These supplies are way, way, way past their sell-by date. We now have computers. Keeping a watch over expiration of supplies, real expiration, not the dates mfgrs put on products to avoid lawsuit---is by comparison, easy; and there should be a rolling resupply in a very long list of things stockpiled, which should become a 'sacred cow' of the annual budget: no admin or Congress gets to question that expenditure unless it has been technologically outmoded and needs a redo. [We don't need a national supply of buggywhips, eg.]
We should also have a 'service' dedicated to inspecting the integrity of warehouses and storage, finding water leaks, integrity-compromises, vermin intrusion, and other things that could shorten the life of things stored. The military is very well suited to this kind of duty. Having the assurance that we're not going to open a box and find THIS ^ is peace of mind for the country. When we need it most, we're not going to open the box and find decay and dust." ~Cj Cherryh