Poor Country Disaster Profile

As you may have read somewhere before, I hail from Brazil, a poor underdeveloped country. The stuff I'm listing below always happens here and I believe it is typical for this type of place.

• Power outages Usually happen at least once a month. If it rains, no matter how strong or how weak the rain might be, it's already enough to knock out the energy for several hours. The power also goes out if it's windy, or if temperatures get hotter than 40°C or colder than 15°C. I have no idea of what any of this could possibly have anything to do with the power, but they clearly affect it directly.

• Internet/telecommunications shut down Every time there are lightning storms (it never rains in these storms, just lightning, and some slightly dark clouds) or if some lightning happens to occur both the internet servers and the telephones/cellphones will stop working for several hours. Considering that this is a tropical country, these happen pretty often, usually once every two months. If it gets too hot it also stops working

• Floods Happen every single time it rains, usually once every two or three months and several times in the summer. All of the main roads that connect everything in the city get flooded by contaminated water that covers houses up to the roof. A lot of people die on these, they usually get dragged on with the strong water flow and sucked into the sewers (they either have no lids or are opened right before floods to prevent the water from going up more than it already does)

• Disease outbreaks This I believe it is the worst of all things that happen here. It usually goes down once every year. Lack of public hygiene, bad habits and other shit usually lead to more than 90% of all town or state population getting contaminated by common diseases. It then becomes an unstoppable nightmare, hospitals can't deal with it because of the lack of preparation of the staff and investment on the facilities and a ton of people die. Sometimes the capital uses mass graves to burn the beggars and the people that can't afford a cemetery (almost everyone). The outbreaks usually last for months and it only ends when the government actually decides to do something about it, which is after the country economy starts to break down, public services shutting down, small and mdium business going bankrupt, etc.

• Public staff on strike This is constantly happening, every day, 365 days of the year, all years since the '60s. Because wages for workers of public organs are craptastic, they go on strike for at least a whole month until the syndicate works something out with them. This means that nothing is ever running at full power here. The most important services are the ones that go out the most, police, army, doctors and hospital staff, firefighters, these facilities are all shut down and closed most of the time, which leads to an immense amount of disasters and economy breaks, buildings burning down to the ground, sick people dying at the hospital's front doors, rise in criminal violence because there is no one to arrest the bandits, etc.

• Violent manifestos These are usually just excuses to raid stores and supermarkets with large amounts of people together. Every time it happens either the army or the military police gets called in and they shoot people endlessly with rubbers bullets, attack 'em with flashbangs, pepper sprays and beat everyone up with metal batons. A lot of people usually die, especially when the manifesto brings in molotovs, because then the army/police scale up the situation and start shooting with real ammo.

• Extreme heatwaves Extreme heatwaves are very common, when the temperature gets past 40°C everything starts going wrong. Electrical shortages causing fires are abundant, young and old people dying from the heat, ACs breaking down or not working, vehicles breaking down, everybody panicking and stressing out lead to a lot of violent assaults and major loss of human lives, hospitals cramped, it becomes Hell on Earth.

• Lack of raining Happens rarely, but sometimes it just stops raining for a long time. Then the water supply gets cut down or severely limited and there's nothing that can be done about it. This is pretty hard to deal with too, having to on on a day using only 5 liters of water in the bucket isn't easy.

Sometimes all of this is happening at the same time. I suppose the members of the forum from poor countries will feel at home after reading through this. How do you guys deal with it?

 

You certainly put things in a whole new perspective for me. I never thought that Brazil was that poor, or that underdeveloped. Maybe the first thing to do is prioritize. Of the things you mentioned which are the most likely to occur? When they do occur how do they affect your life, and what can you do to mitigate its effect on you? You won't be able to stop them from occurring. That is far beyond your control. When they do occur how can you prepare to make your life easier?

I don't think you can do much about the weather. Are there things you can afford, maybe a generator, or some small solar panels that would maintain your power during bad weather?

I feel you pain on floods. I am in a flood prone area. What are the chances of being able to move to higher ground? Is that a priority? For me it has only happened three times in the last 25 years, and only once did it significantly impact our house. Even with that we did not have to leave. We had a flooded basement. Moldy, smelly, inconvenient, expensive, but not life threatening.

We have had our share of Violent Manifestos. What most people do is stay away from the area. There may be times when that is not an option, but usually the violence is localized; not widespread. Even the most beautiful cities and countries have bad areas. Don't go there. Not so easy if it happens close to where you work or live. Then you might want to consider some Gray Man techniques. Blend in and disappear. Get away from the violence as quickly as you can.

I hope some of this helps. Start small, and get a few things that will help you get through; then build from there. The best thing you can do is start.

 

Doraglier why has your country fell into this situation ?

 

In the wee hours of this morning, I posted a response to one of your threads (I don't think you have had a chance to see it yet), but I think it would also apply to the Violent Manifesto as well:

https://mysurvivalforum.com/threads/read-this-first.3/page-7#post-42382

Be safe, friend! I know it must be difficult without the liberty of having a robust means for self-defense in your country...

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Brazil is a just huge country and the development is rather scattered. What those of us in the Western Nations, US, Europe, Australia etc. don't see is the huge gap that is common in so many of the Central and South American nations and African nations between the haves and the haveNOTS. It have nots in the US live better than the haves in most countries. This situation is not just in the poverty and living conditions but also in the money spent on the infrastructure in the areas of the different classes. This sort of situation leads to problems and eventually revolutions. Socialism/Communism starts looking pretty good when your kids start to starve and suffer while the children of the upper class are plump and healthy.

The poor in the US whine a lot and gripe because people that will work and act in a responsible fashion BUT in the end, they don't have the real problems that people in a lot of places suffer with on a day to day basis. Nobody in the US is hungry unless they just want to be. All kids have access to decent clothes and some level of health care. The health care is poor and to me, that is a sin but they at least have some health care. In the end, they don't have the hopelessness that is what poor people in third world countries ]have to deal with.

As much as most people in the West hate the idea of socialism it is, compared to rampant capitalism a better choice for people that are below the true poverty level. The US has so far managed to avoid the out of control sort of capitalism where basically the rich own EVERYTHING and the rest have nothing. The end result of runaway capitalism is basically a two-class system with 10% ruling over 90% and the elections are a joke.

We are coming near that at times now. The rich are moving all the jobs out to places where they can pay little to nothing with no OSHA or EPA regulations. You will notice that when they do this that the price of their products never goes down. The millionaires have become billionaires and the billionaires are starting to become trillionaires. Meanwhile, the average family income for working class people has sat stagnant.

When it was established the early form of democracy and capitalism that was set up and practiced in America probably offered the best balance between the classes that was possible. Over time greed, stupidity and power-hungry politicians have slowly eroded that system to the point that it is becoming inoperable. Given time we are going to vote away our freedom and then settle into anarchy.

Democracy only works when the voters are intelligent, responsible, honest Citizens with a vested interest in its stability. We have given the vote to the convicted felons, people on welfare, people that are literally dumb as a post, and now we let people who are not even American citizens vote and a big part of our leadership wants to open the border so more can come and vote!! People that can't run their own life in a way that will support them and keep them out of jail don't need to be voters.

The way it was originally set up the American people could not have voted away their freedom. That time has passed. If the next election goes wrong and the borders are thrown open America will be a dead memory. Shortly after that, it will descend into exactly the chaos that Doraglier has described.

 

Couldn’t agree more! I believe the next big hit is making private arm sales a felony.

 

The Romans ran into the Picts. A Roman legion "went away", disappeared, vanished, poof gone, fin, tot, kaput.

The Romans built this Hadrian's Wall thingy.

The Left has yet to run into the Scots-Irish. Who today composes the U.S. military's bad boys?! Same exact thing was true back in George Washington's day. From whence came the "Over-mountain Men"?!

Heartland Americans will go Old Testament on you. Urban America has yet to get its high enema.

 

On paper it isn't, in reality, it should match Africa in general.

Well, I live in the City of the Forest Hills, just as the name suggests there are a lot of hills. My house happens to be in the hilltops, so no matter how bad the flood is it won't affect it. I, however, need to get there after work. Before there was absolutely no way to get by the flooded areas besides swimming through the contaminated water, but now you can call boat Ubers during floods too (it's called 99POP in Brazil, a national uber alternative that offers the boat service). It's all improvised and precarious, but they really do get you through the water, mostly in a small inflatable cheap boat with oars that fit two guys at once. Some people that live up uphills also have jet skis and small boats to get to work in flood days too.

You'll need to read a lot of books and come live in Brazil for a long time to be able to understand that.

Unfortunately, pepper sprays are restricted to military use only in my country, but because the law is full of holes you can buy legal half-assed ginger sprays that don't work all that well.

I'm currently working on that

Good times make bad men.
Bad men make bad times.
Bad times make good men.
Good men make good times.