Saturday, October 11, 2014

EBOLA: Surfing USA

Via WRSA


One fine sunny morning in California, the San Andres Fault finally rips loose, there's an 8.5 earthquake, followed by a couple of 6.4 aftershocks just a few miles off the coast. Within minutes, the Santa Monica Pier is sitting 40 feet above the waterline, with a few fish flopping around on the glistening sand and kelp puddles that were in twenty to thirty feet of water just a few minutes earlier. Standing on the beach, you look offshore, and see a slight bulge in the waterline, not very high, but it seems to be moving fast inbound. It's 200 yards to the parking lot, and there's a downed streetlight sitting across the hood of your car anyways.
 
So how do catch the incoming tsunami and ride it safely home?

You and the family are enjoying a nice vacation to Hawaii at Volcano National Park. Your only son, ignoring repeated stern warnings, climbs up on top of the boundary fence near an open crater, and before your horror-stricken eyes, slips and tumbles into a pool of glowing red lava. How do you dive in and save him?

You're an hour out of Miami headed for London, the plane is humming along, the co-pilot's doing everything like a pro, you're at 35,000' in clear skies, when suddenly there's a loud thump, all the alarms and lights in the cockpit go off at once, and as you're struggling to assess your problems and options, you can hear the fight attendant screaming through the cockpit door that apparently the tail and both wings, including all your engines, just fell off. How do you glide in for a landing?

The answer to all three questions is the exact same:

Don't be there. Be someplace else, far, far away. Period.

In comments to recent posts, several times, I've been asked to please tell folks what medical supplies to stock to care for family members if they become infected with Ebola. It's a serious subject, a serious question, and to all appearances, asked by serious people. So let me give you a serious answer to "How do I care for family/friends with Ebola?"

DON'T. 

6 comments:

  1. Isnt Texas one of the drought striken states that recycles toilet water into potable . CA is too.
    Pleasant thought. Unless the UV trratment and bleach will kill it

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have a fair amount of experience with sewer treatment plants from 30 + years experience in industrial maintenance construction. I've never been in or heard of a
    sewer plant that did not use chlorine in the secondary treatment phase of the plant.
    Most plants now days also use UV as well. I may be wrong but I think the only real risk from sewage would be as it flows from toilets through the sewer to the plant and to the plant workers who might be exposed in the primary treatment phase in the plant.

    That is assuming, as the "experts" are saying that chlorine will kill it. CH

    ReplyDelete
  3. Speaking of sewer systems, I read that the CDC had built a specialized sewer
    system at Emory for the disposal of waste such as Ebola. Dekalb Cnty
    threatened to shut off the sewer system to Emory if they use it for Ebola
    waste. Dekalb Cnty does not trust CDC. I don't either.

    ReplyDelete