No one ever dies from a global disaster, death is always very local, one person at a time.
The city I work in exclusively drinks groundwater, which will be undrinkable after the electrically powered sewer system shuts down and there is no electrically produced chlorine to sanitize the water. So a guaranteed million dead people after a couple days without electricity.
Its comforting to the species that the death of everyone in the city represents only 0.01% of worldwide population. Its not very comforting to me that 0.01% of the population being dead represents a large fraction of my family, everyone I know in day to day living, all my coworkers and local customers. That might be a slightly bigger problem for me, than for mankind as a whole.
Of course we're not the only city on the planet that drinks groundwater and dumps treated sewage into the same groundwater source. Some cities in "hurricane land" are used to this problem and have plans and stockpiles. Not our city, of course.
And where I live (as opposed to work) we have deep well water pumps... 1000 ft down. Works well electrically, but once we run out of diesel, we're stuck with the same contaminated groundwater.
Doomsday looks a lot more like the great depression combined with the 1917 flu epidemic at the same time, than like alas babylon or lucifers hammer.
No one ever dies from a global disaster, death is always very local, one person at a time.
The city I work in exclusively drinks groundwater, which will be undrinkable after the electrically powered sewer system shuts down and there is no electrically produced chlorine to sanitize the water. So a guaranteed million dead people after a couple days without electricity.
Its comforting to the species that the death of everyone in the city represents only 0.01% of worldwide population. Its not very comforting to me that 0.01% of the population being dead represents a large fraction of my family, everyone I know in day to day living, all my coworkers and local customers. That might be a slightly bigger problem for me, than for mankind as a whole.
Of course we're not the only city on the planet that drinks groundwater and dumps treated sewage into the same groundwater source. Some cities in "hurricane land" are used to this problem and have plans and stockpiles. Not our city, of course.
And where I live (as opposed to work) we have deep well water pumps... 1000 ft down. Works well electrically, but once we run out of diesel, we're stuck with the same contaminated groundwater.
Doomsday looks a lot more like the great depression combined with the 1917 flu epidemic at the same time, than like alas babylon or lucifers hammer.