Mad Max IV: New Orleans

Wow. This is big time. I don't even know where to begin, or what to write about on this. It doesn't look like anywhere in America I've ever seen. I'm watching TV, and they have civilian vehicles driving around full of AK-47 wielding thugs. People are being beaten, raped, shot. I saw a report that some guy shot his own sister in the head, over a bag of ice. My friend Jason told me something yesterday that really hit home. He said that people tend to take for granted just how deep the social fabric runs.

Crazy. People are just stuck there, with nowhere to go, and no way to get any communications. People are arming themselves with anything they can. Guns, knives, clubs. Crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy. Bodies lying in the open, people just sitting in filth, with no food or water for days. Walking around in feet of water, that's full of gasoline, sewage, dead bodies, and alligators.

Everyone has been talking about the looting, but man, I can't blame them. I'd be getting food, WATER, and medicine. That's what I'd be doing, and I wouldn't feel bad about it either. You gotta survive, and you gotta make sure your family survives. But you can't hoard the stuff, and you can't take it from people. The stuff is going to be ruined anyway. On the other hand, what kind of moron would steal TV's and electronics in these conditions? Any TV is almost certainly ruined anyway, and even if it's perfectly fine, where is he going to put it? Carry it around above his head for 6 months until the water goes away? I bet a pallette of water is worth more than any plasma TV in New Orleans anyway, at this point.

The medical problem is what blows my mind. You've got thousands of people that are healthy as long as they have their medication, but that might quickly become terminal without it. Diabetics, heart patients, epileptics. I don't know if I'd survive in this type of situation. I'm pretty normal with my medication, but if I miss a couple doses, my Tourette's kicks in pretty hard, and I don't think I'd make it in that type of situation with a loss of motor control. I can't even concentrate without it. I can't imagine if I needed insulin or something.

The Superdome was so bad that workers there were walking around in gas masks because of the smell days ago. It hasn't gotten any better, I'm sure. There's a Civic Center somewhere I guess where chaos had taken over. People inside were being raped, tourists were getting beaten, people shot. 80 some ARMED cops came to try and restore order there, and couldn't even force their way inside. They were repelled by the people holed up in there, who apparently thought they were better off without the cops.

I guess the military is starting to show up in force, but man, it just seems like the response was way too slow. I know the Federal Government is an unwieldy thing to move into action by design, but it's been days, and they're just now getting enough soldiers in there to start to establish order. I mean, maybe they really couldn't do much more, but it's hard to believe that in America, today, this kind of thing is still possible. I can't imagine what it would have been like if there was a nuclear disaster in the 60's or something. Every urban center in the US would be like New Orleans is now. Scary thought for sure.