A real life example:
Flooding, Mudlsides Loom As Threats After Wildfire
Erica E. Phillips, Wall Street Journal, 2 September 2014 (from p. A2 of physical copy)
Glendora, Calif. - David Fredendall owns a single-family home here, on a quarter-mile long residential street that goes straight up into the San Gabriel Mountains, with sweeping views.
"We've been in town for about 27 year," said the 59-year old Mr. Fredendall, who lives here with his wife and son, "and we don't aspire to leave."
Well, I know people will pay a lot for a view, but usually they are talking about money.That is despite the real possibility that the hillside above..., which burned hot and heavy in a February fire, could become an unstable wall of mud and debris during the coming rainy season. Their street, Rainbow Drive, was the site of a notoriously destructive mudslide in 1969, and it is at a better than 80% risk for debris flows in the event of a heavy rainstorms...
This reminds me of the situation in the prepper-preachy novel, Event Horizon, that I reviewed recently. In this case, the plot is set up to where a small grouping of four families are sitting in a house, and know that a militia is coming after them for blood-revenge. In a novel, with all sorts of bug-out bag advise, and military hardware discussions, et cetera. The family of course decides to stick it out! And since it is a novel, they are able to devastate the militia with very light casualties. In gaming terms, it's like the rolled boxcars (1 in 36 chance) for the win.
I hope the Fredenall's wind up o.k., they don't appear to need boxcars for the win, but even on much easier odds, if you roll often enough, a fail is inevitable. Over attachment to your stuff is not a good survival strategy.
4 comments:
I've pretty much made up my mind I'm not leaving my place, unless there's a forest fire. In that case, it would be suicidal to stay. The ferrets, dogs and I will get out of here. The cats and chickens will have to get across the creek but it's only 300 feet or so from the house, and even they should have brains enough to save themselves. I couldn't catch all the cats, most are feral. The chickens can fly.
Harry: You could always go with that rig that one of the prepper-coven folks had on his home. An exterior sprinkler system to wet the roof.
They actually exist in real life. They are a specialized fire sprinkler system called a water curtain. They are usually used to make large glass walls on commercial buildings sufficiently fireproof for building codes. The sprinkler heads are a half the normal distance apart, the pipe is kept pressurized by air, and when the pressure drops a valve releases water into the system.
Of course the system would cost a large percentage of your house, particularly when you factored in the cost of keeping a sufficient supply of pressurized water on hand.
Not much that could force me and mine off our place that I can think of. An earthquake might destroy the house or something, that would suck.
If I had to retreat for other reasons I could fall back into the parent's property and hide for a while.
Maybe an invasion but that's a whole different thing.
Pioneer: I am with you on that. In my case, I just think that I am getting a little to old to be running around the countryside with an AR-10 and my family.
But I am not going to fight an invasion, or large biker gang, or whatever, over my place either. Defending a stick-built structure is a non-starter in any case. Although if you really feel the need, at least do it from the basement/crawl space if you have one. And if you have time to build armored plated shutters, you have time to dig an escape tunnel.
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