From one of my Marine Corps buddies on this article:
"He acknowledged the small sample size but “37% chance” fails to account for a lot of other variables, or is at least subject to abuse as a statistic cited in support of prepping, given that the most recent qualifying event ended 157 years ago and the majority of Americans have lived a…
From one of my Marine Corps buddies on this article:
"He acknowledged the small sample size but “37% chance” fails to account for a lot of other variables, or is at least subject to abuse as a statistic cited in support of prepping, given that the most recent qualifying event ended 157 years ago and the majority of Americans have lived and died after that happened. Also his comparison with other failed nation states would benefit from discussion of the fact that even if the US federal government fell, every citizen is still subject to the sovereign jurisdiction of a state which -maybe- would help us mitigate complete doomsday-style collapse of society of the sort that warrants building a bunker and stockpiling food and guns."
Me: You should post this on the Substack.
"I dunno, that feels like I’d be inviting discourse that would require me to do a lot of math and that’s precisely the sort of thing I became an attorney to avoid."
"1. 37% is not an accounting or precision number - rather the intent is to hypothesize that the number is probably greater than 1% and less than 90%.
2. The fact that many Americans have lived and died since the last even is exactly the point. By his math, they all had a 63% of NOT experiencing a civil war.
3. You would THINK that the gubmint at some level would step in, but as evident by Portland and Seattle and Kenosha, it clearly would require something extreme since those didn’t seem to move the needle."
To point 3, it would take a government that either doesn't see Portland and Seattle and Kenosha as a feature or stops seeing Portland and Seattle and Kenosha as a feature: "the worse, the better." I'm starting to feel like some kind of Mirror-universe Objectivist ("Read _Atlas Shrugged_: It explains all"), repeating over and over, "Read _The State and Revolution_: it explains all."
From one of my Marine Corps buddies on this article:
"He acknowledged the small sample size but “37% chance” fails to account for a lot of other variables, or is at least subject to abuse as a statistic cited in support of prepping, given that the most recent qualifying event ended 157 years ago and the majority of Americans have lived and died after that happened. Also his comparison with other failed nation states would benefit from discussion of the fact that even if the US federal government fell, every citizen is still subject to the sovereign jurisdiction of a state which -maybe- would help us mitigate complete doomsday-style collapse of society of the sort that warrants building a bunker and stockpiling food and guns."
Me: You should post this on the Substack.
"I dunno, that feels like I’d be inviting discourse that would require me to do a lot of math and that’s precisely the sort of thing I became an attorney to avoid."
37% is less than a coin flip, but enough to prevent you from getting a mortgage for a home in a floodplain.
I replied to him with this:
"1. 37% is not an accounting or precision number - rather the intent is to hypothesize that the number is probably greater than 1% and less than 90%.
2. The fact that many Americans have lived and died since the last even is exactly the point. By his math, they all had a 63% of NOT experiencing a civil war.
3. You would THINK that the gubmint at some level would step in, but as evident by Portland and Seattle and Kenosha, it clearly would require something extreme since those didn’t seem to move the needle."
To point 3, it would take a government that either doesn't see Portland and Seattle and Kenosha as a feature or stops seeing Portland and Seattle and Kenosha as a feature: "the worse, the better." I'm starting to feel like some kind of Mirror-universe Objectivist ("Read _Atlas Shrugged_: It explains all"), repeating over and over, "Read _The State and Revolution_: it explains all."
Way too much from historical fiction is happening as we watch.