What Really Happens After TSHTF

No small number of people have images in their heads of a post-crash America that look like scenes from The Road (a movie which I enjoyed, as it happens) -- you know, cannibals, Mad Max cars, vast wastelands. However, a blogger who has been living in a country where economic conditions have deteriorated markedly maintains that such a perspective is off the mark. In "What Kills You After an Economic Collapse," "FerFAL," publisher of the Surviving in Argentina blog, discusses the real threats people face when the chips are down:

Even though by definition the ultimate objective is living, when we talk about urban survival we aspire to a minimum amount of freedom and dignity in our lives. Living as a prisoner [or] slave, or in a cardboard box under a bridge and cleaning windshields for a living, is still living, but alas, its certainly not the life quality we want. Its about maintaining the minimum standard of living we need so as to not go nuts. Nonetheless, I thought it would be interesting to [note] what actually gets you killed after an economic collapse. I think it’s an interesting exercise and it also helps [us to] reevaluate our priorities from a more realistic perspective. For this I used some statistics [from] after the 2001 Argentine crisis. It's not an exact science, but it does put together an interesting picture.

Rioting and social unrest: It may come as a surprise for some, but [this is] by far the [factor] that kills the [least] amount [of] people when these things happen. In our case it was 32 to 38 people across the entire country. About the same amount dies [each] week in the Buenos Aires suburbs alone during armed robberies and other crimes.

Already in our first stop, we [have destroyed] a popular survivalist myth: When a country collapses, hordes will run wild, burning every single building to the ground in every mayor city. The idea that bugging out should be some sort of standard procedure when there’s social unrest is simply flawed. The preconceived notion that somehow made [its way] from Hollywood to the real world -- that the population can [drop] by significant amounts in a matter of days, with millions dying -- is not realistic at all. My dear friends, that only happens in fiction books and movies. It happens to be good entertainment but don’t take it any other way.

Hunger: As of March 2010, 2,920 kids starve to death in Argentina per year. (source: http://www.elmundo.es/america/2010/03/28/argentina/1269793765.html) That’s children alone; you could easily add another 50% for adults and seniors. Older people have it pretty tough here since most pensions and retirement programs (recently “nationalized”) place old folks BELOW the poverty line. This means it's not enough to classify them as poor. They can’t buy the minimum calories required per day to survive and the medicine they often [can't do without]. Lucky for the government, an old person dying of malnutrition isn’t as obvious or as unnerving as seeing a healthy little boy or girl become a bag of bones.

[On] average, at the very least 12 people die per day of hunger in Argentina. This, of course, doesn’t take into account all the illnesses that may cause death because of a poor diet. In any case, food is...of extreme importance and history keeps teaching us that storing 6-12 months of food is a lifesaver during catastrophic events such as an economic crisis, planned genocide (Irish Potato Famine)  or civil wars that have [a] long term duration (seriously consider going for 12 months)

Crime: In the Buenos Aires suburbs where I live, 4 to 8 persons are murdered every 24 hours during robberies. [As] with inflation, the government has its own twisted way of [defining] murder, so I’ll go with the private census and statistics companies, which are more realistic. (source: http://www.diegopietrafesa.com.ar/mistextos_detalle.php?id=30)

Poverty: Here's where it gets a bit more complicated to get hold of hard numbers. How does poverty kill you? [It determines] where you can afford to live, how many police officers and patrol vehicles [are] available per block, what kind of health services are available. Is [the neighborhood] close to some of the polluted dumpsters and streams full of sewer water and chemicals the factories dump in them with no control whatsoever, causing cancer, genetic disorders, malformations and respiratory illnesses? Suffice [it] to say, [the] child mortality rate [in Argentina] is twice as much...in the poor parts of town, compared to [those areas] that are better off. (source: http://edant.clarin.com/suplementos/zona/2008/02/10/z-03015.htm)

Poverty deaths due to poor healthcare: According to UNICEF, 25 children under the age of one die per day in Argentina of preventable causes such as poor treatment of illnesses that could have been cured, untreated infections, respiratory problems and low weight. If we substract the 8 kids that starve to death each day which we [noted] earlier, we realize that roughly 17 kids die per day simply because they can’t afford better than free public health care. I pay dearly for my private health plan, but do so gladly knowing fully well what public hospitals have to offer. As a side note, this should [serve as] a good example of how well government owned pubic health works.

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Comments

[roger]

The way I see it.
In the 30's there was an alternative, so the collective
brain acted with hope. The alternative "socialism' was
effectively destroyed by Stalinist Russia and by mass
propaganda from the Capitalist Elite, a philosophy of
extreme individualism coupled with great wealth completed
the feeling of isolation from the rest of society.
If the social structure break down and people see no other
alternative,what else can they envision but barbarism?

[Chuck Burgess]

Sorry, but Argentina is not the U.S. First, it has a relatively homogenous population. The U.S., by contrast, is a racial powder keg. Second, most Argentines are unarmed. Third, long before the big crash in the 1990's, Argentines had learned to live with severe economic uncertainty and stress. No so for Americans. I do not predict a Mad Max scenario, but anybody who thinks the U.S. will slowly sink into the ooze with no major outbreaks of violence is crazy.