Jakarta Pandemic: an update review

One of my earliest reviews, back in 2011,  was Steven Konkoly's Jakarta Pandemic. 

 

It is one of the more realistic novels we have reviewed here, more carefully thought out and thorough in its scope than a lot of "prepper-advice" style novels.  If Alex has it a little too easy money wise, and is a bit of a hot head at times, it is a nice change from the "neighbors come together in adversity" meme that you often see overplayed in collapse scenarios.  Much of the book is spent in arguments with non-prepared neighbors in their little cul de sac neighborhood.

 

In any case, in this day and age of e-book revisions, no book need ever be in its final form until the last person with the Amazon-self publishing site password dies.  The author, as is typical now, has done a considerable amount of editing to the novel.

 

Essentially it is a clean up. It is too long ago that I first read it to recall if he deleted any scenes.  None major enough that I noticed.  The year was pushed to 2013 from the original 2012, but it could just as well be "any year" in the present.

 

In my mind I had forgotten a lot of sticky details about his heavy handed employer, his neighbor interactions,  and even some of the details of the serious bad guy interactions.  It is not the guns blazing, mass combat approach of his later (and lesser) Perseid Collapse novels, which feature the same cast of characters, but it is a realistic one. I would continue to recommend it.

 

[Updated 16 Dec. 2014]

 

I came across a nice interview with the author.  He notes this in his future plans:

I plan to start a new series in 2015. The series will keep me squarely planted in the post-apocalyptic realm with a story based in southern California. I’m looking 15-20 years in the future, at a drought-ravaged southwest and Great Plains. Kind of a futuristic version of Grapes of Wrath. California will be on the verge of secession, plunged into a low-intensity political and martial conflict with the federal government. As usual, I’ll examine the impact of this world through the eyes of a family.

 

The new cover

 

Mad Max is back

Our at least the trailer for the new series is.

Alternative link if the embed is annoying.

I have been working away at some book reviews.  A number that take a little more thought and/or time than typical.  It's fun to wiggle into daylight the real life person attached to the nom de guerre, but it takes a little while.

Urban disaster plans

The general public, beyond the prepper, Glenn Beck, and sustainable crowds is slowly becoming more comfortable with the idea of local resilience.  Granted this all about preparations for local disasters, but it is far better than what has been in place: essentially nothing.

 

Disaster Plans Go Hyperlocal

Neighborhoods in Some Cities Work to Be Self-Sufficient in Case of Emergency

Jim Carlton, Wall Street Journal (hard copy) 20 November 2014

San Francisco - I f a devastating earthquake were to hit this city, local officials hope to deploy a new weapon: residents trained as emergency response teams to help neighborhoods fend for themselves until water and other services are restored.

"We need to be ready to go the distance, life five days," said Daniel Homsey, director of the city's Neighborhood Resilience program, which so far has organized volunteer teams in three communities...

San Francisco is among 10 U.S. cities that have signed onto a program called 100 Resilient Cities started last year by the Rockefeller Foundation. Other American cities include New York, Los Angeles, and Boulder Colo., while international cities include Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, and Melbourne, Australia.

Michael Berkowitz, a managing director for the foundation, said the program was created after emergency-response officials began noticing close-knit neighborhoods in places like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and New Jersey after superstorm Sandy, rebounded faster from the disaster than the ones where neighbors didn't know each other.

...ideas have included stockpiling communal food and water to holding more block parties. 

Notice that this is really disaster prepping.  But since it is big city governments, who have to appeal to the left-leaning crowd, they use buzz words like "resilience", and I am sure somewhere in there they through around "sustainability" as well.

 

I am encouraged that at least some municipalities are getting a little more serious about helping themselves.  I realized that they don't have much budget, but skimping on existential items, even low ones with a low immediate likelihood of usage, has been shown many times to be disastrous: think Dykes and New Orleans. 

 

I would also suggest that those who are of a more rightward inclination, but have family, neighbors, and friends, who they would like to get somewhat on board, main stream programs like this are a strong foot in the door, and using acceptable language (resilience, sustainability, community) also go a long way to smoothing the path.

Lots of people protesting

A guy with one of those hobbiest style four-prop helicopter drones took video of the Hong Kong protests (a little more here) (hat tip: NC). There is not sound.