First Hurricane Katrina, and now an earthquake in Pakistan. How can we handle not one but TWO horrible disasters at once?
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First Hurricane Katrina, and now an earthquake in Pakistan. How can we handle not one but TWO horrible disasters at once?
managed to fight a war in asia and in europe 60 years ago. shouldn't be a problem.
Two? Don't forget the war in Iraq and the hurricane in Guatemala.
Hey, hold on a second, that's only the stuff in the news. Not like those are the only disasters in the world. Cause the whole world is one big disaster! Those just happened to kill a lot of people in a short period of time, and seem more shocking than the fact a whole continent is agonizing.
Actually, you forgot Rita, too.
So aren't we on like 5 disasters? 6 if you count Afghanistan?
Then there are ongoing things like Sudan and African AIDS, poor kids in the third world losing fingers making gucci handbags, Lack of medicine in many countries.
How many disasters can we take?
I don't know but it is getting to the point where I say 'It is not our problem. Deal with it yourselfs'
that's right ed we should tell them that.
niger magic yourself up some food.
pakistan go find some diggers in your garage.
africa cure yourself of aids.
sudanese people stop dying for once.
zimbabweans just stop being persecuted.
those damn foreigners never listen.
When you put it that way it doesn't sound so bad any more. The immediate countries around those should be the ones to lend the most aid. Not Europe and not the United States.
yeah cos zambia, nigeria and the ivory coast should be the ones niger. cos they have loads of money to help.
and uzbekistan should be loaning afghanistan diggers.
rwanda should be stepping into sudan and uganda.
south africa should be ousting mugawbe.
Yep. They have to learn to work together in a time of disaster. They need to help each other out. If their neighboring countries don't give athen why should we...a place half way around the world with nothing to gain but critisim? If they spent any time trying to make their countries better instead of oppressing minorities with violence they would be better off. They need to get their
while were at it we should stick to isolationism and watch the world go down the drain
You forgot Rita.
To stick to something you first have to actually do it. We should give it a shot and see how the rest of the world manages again. I would hope by now that Europe would at least not smurf up and start another massive war.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gilgamesh of Legends
My friend called me the other day. I'm glad to hear he is ok. But his whole village is gone. He was the only survivor.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shadow Nexus
So yeah he came to the states to crash at my place for a few months until he can get on his feet. Yeah he lived in Guatemala.
I'm an asshole, but hey its me.
So "how can we handle two disasters at once?", I don't think we are suppose to. As the top species on the food ladder, Nature has her way of balancing out the human population (that is if we don't kill enough of each other first). Plus the way I see it, hopefully these natural disasters are weeding out the stupid people of the world. Now I understand that many of you have friends and family that were devastated by the events, and make it known that I'm not calling anyone stupid in particular cause I believe the entire human race to be composed mostly of idiots.
Here's why I don't have sympathy. These people chose to live in an area where natural disasters are common events. If you chose, once again IF YOU CHOSE, to live in one of these areas then you inexplictly accept the possibility that your life might be swept out from under you one day. Sure its a terrible thing and sure I wouldn't wish it upon anyone, but don't complain when it happens. If you didn't want your house to be blown away by 120mph winds then don't build it next to Gulf where 120mph winds are likely during hurricane season.
The same applies to people who live in Tornado alley, for you foreigners this is known as Kansas.
Once again, I'm a cold heartless bastard but hey that's me.
Tornado Ally extents further north, east and south from Kansas. While Kansas does get it hit is far from the worst which is Oklahoma and Texas.
for it's size great britain has more tornados than any other area in the world.
As long as it is really only 1 type of Natural Disaster I would take if over ALL the natural disasters that hit the US every year. Volcanoes, Tornados, Hurricanes, Thunder Storms, Avalanche, Landslides, Blizzards, Earthquakes, Floods, droughts and more.
bloody africans hogging all the sympathy.
I didn't ask for sympathy.
You claim that these countries should be left to "sort their isht" out, and that we shouldn't claim responsibility. I claim that it's our responsibility, as the first world countries, to help them, and that by inaction we would create more criticism than if we were to do something. You most likely either use public transport or drive/own a car or other motorised vehicle, obviously run on petrol. Whoops, looks like most of this oil comes from these very same countries that you're suggesting that we just leave to attempt to pull themselves out of poverty. But what about the miraculous neighbouring countries? Surely they can help.Quote:
Originally Posted by edczxcvbnmYep. They have to learn to work together in a time of disaster. They need to help each other out. If their neighboring countries don't give a
Let's consider Niger shall we?
http://land.heim.at/toskana/210137/L...ika/nigerk.jpg
Niger is bordered by Mali, Algeria, Libya, Chad, and of course Nigeria. Now, the average Gross National Income of each country is $2,506,180,000, $51,028,000,000, Below 0 Billion, $1,592,450,000 and $37,132,000,000. That's a total of $92,258,630,000. America makes $9,780,000,000,000. So let's put that into perspective. If every one of these countries were to give away EVERY SINGLE PENNY THEY MADE, it still wouldn't match even 1% of the spending power of the US. This isn't even including the likes of Japan or Germany (even the UK could cover that cost with 6% of it's Gross National Income).
So, it looks like we hold the responsibility, the power and the money to make a difference. Still, fudge 'em all ay?
You know this is just so stupid, look at the mess, rich countries could deliver a forkload of help but they leave them to do it themselves instead.
Do the job, tell them what to do then next time send lesser help again and again untill they get the message.
It is my personal opinion that there are far too many people on the planet and nature, as always, is doing her balancing act and levelling out the numbers.
Yes, it sounds cruel. Yes, it sounds nasty. But nature has to preserve the world and if it means killing off millions of people, then there's no second thought.
Why does everyone bring up Niger? Put one more g in the name and no one would speak the name...except me because I am just that cool :cool:
Seriously though THEY need to get their
ed I disagree with you and I think you're wrong in pretty much everything
you've said. Just thought I'd let you know.
.opt
The thing with telling them to organize themselves out, I disagree with on many levels, but I'll only name one and leave the rest to others. So if they don't fix themselves enough for you to want to help them, that's a small minority making that choice most of the time, they're usually not the ones most hurt, so what's in it for them. Meanwhile the people we should be helping have very little power usually and couldn't change much. And oh yeah, by what you said if they fail to reach that point we leave them, so that their kids who did nothing, they deserve to live lives with aids and poverty to, good to know they earned it (this is what it sounds like what you said would immediately lead to). And all the people with no power good to know it's their fault. If I mistook what you said sorry but this is what it sounded like.
It's only going to get worse before it gets any better.
Best comment against me yet and no, I am not being sarcastic. I do not disagree that my view on a lot of this is way out there though :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Optium
'Cause we're Humans. Even if some massive disaster struck which reduced the worldwide population to like 500,000 people we'd do our damndest to survive. We cling to life just as strongly as any other species*, but we also have the brains and tools to fix things which would crush most other species. Short answer: We screw each other merrily, but Humanity as a whole is way too damn stubborn to let a little thing like several million deaths stop us.
*Sentience has created some anomolies such as depression and suicide, but even most of us headcases are about survival when it comes right down to it.
the human race survived being reduced to 1,000. we can cope with a whole load.
Yes, I was thinking about a much smaller number but I suspect that too low would result in simply too wide a dispertion of people, and hardly anyone would find anyone else. This is persuming that people survived randomly around the planet, rather than in some haven or enclave of safety, in which case I'd happily say that the race would survive with 200 people, possibly even fewer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cloud No.9
But then I doubt there'd be anything that would randomly kill almost
eveybody and leave a few to survive throughout the entire world.
.opt
actually there was. toba. it blew up a few thousand years ago. and reduced the human race to 1,000 people. we knew this through genetics.
the toba volcano was on a size that is hard to comprehend. volcanoes on that size do still exist (insert ramble here about yellow stone).
but a few things could also reduce the human population to similar size. a meteor, nuclear war, other doomsday scenarios.
I'm not saying nothing can reduce humanity to a very small number, I'm
saying that I can't see any real scenarios where 1000 people would
live spread out all over the world. Like, 1 person in each province survives
randomly. It seems to me there'd be a couple of places where maybe 200
people would survive together, and there might be 5 places like this
spread out over the globe.
.opt
Right; the only reasonable scenario where this would happen is a virus something like the one we're talking about in the other thread. Mostly though, it'd be far more likely that a group would survive through some lucky occurance (Eg a nuclear war. But who the hell is going to nuke New Zealand?), and they're be in one place.Quote:
Originally Posted by Optium
as far as i'm aware the eruption left 1,000 people who were all together. probably in africa somewhere.