How to lock down a western City

[Aleksey_aka_al]

Surely, 99,(9)% of Americans are passive and wouldn’t do anything. And the rest are exactly the number police is used to deal with.

 

[Hrothbern]

Surely, 99,(9)% of Americans are passive and wouldn’t do anything. And the rest are exactly the number police is used to deal with.

The old trick of a teacher handling that 0.1-1.0% pupils is to give them a special (positive) task and incorporate them simply in the "system".

When my country was liberated in WW2 by the allied forces, the Resistance recruited at the end of the occupation a huge amount of people who were called de BS, the domestic armed forces, as temporary Militia under command of the Queen (and ofc as direct command first the Resistance and then the army)


The same can be done to a fair degree I think with those people in a lock down situation:
give them a formal status, a uniform, a clear command structure, an allowance,including a life insurance for their family in case they die from the higher mortality risk from that virus, and the honor when the issue has been resolved.

 

[EgonSpengler]

fwiw, there was a BBC reporter on the radio from Wuhan this morning who said he had checked out a half-dozen grocery stores, and they were all well-stocked. Quarantining a city for a disease outbreak doesn't mean preventing food shipments. There would be a risk of people needlessly hoarding, and of running out of certain things that are particular to the emergency. The BBC guy said face masks were scarce, for example. Also, the 'lockdown' of Boston did occur during a weekday; it wasn't the bombing that prompted it, it was the pursuit of the suspects days later, who had carjacked someone a killed police officer. As mentioned, though, that was only 1 day, it was a Friday, and it was the traditional "April vacation" week for schools, when a lot of families take holidays anyway. New Yorkers were also very well-behaved in the blackout of 2003, unlike in the blackout of 1977. iirc, there were some problems during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, but I think Houston during Hurricane Harvey was well-behaved (although one theory on Harvey is that the flooding actually prevented looters from getting anywhere). I think there's evidence that Americans might cooperate and behave sensibly in a big emergency, just as there's evidence that they might not.

 

[civvver]

This is kind of baffling to me - I don't make any particular effort at emergency preparedness, but I've got at least several weeks of food just based on normal stocks of stuff in my house that I regularly cycle through. A $10 bag of rice is good for over a week of Calories on its own.

Yeah we'd run out of fresh stuff pretty quick, I don't have any fresh meat on hand right now and maybe two frozen chicken breasts, but we have so much crackers and chips and cereals in our pantry, we could go weeks without starving.

I don't think there's any way in hell you could lock people into their houses or impose a curfew effectively. You could arrest everyone on the streets but eventually the jail would be full, what do you do with all of them? Just send em home to leave again? You could road block major road accesses and ground all flights and stop all buses and trains and such. That would be the extent of it. You're not going to have the manpower or organization to block every like side road that goes into the next city.

 

[Hrothbern]

I think many people will lock themselves up just out of self-preservation.
Two weeks is enough.

No trespassing

 

[Zelig]

Yeah we'd run out of fresh stuff pretty quick, I don't have any fresh meat on hand right now and maybe two frozen chicken breasts, but we have so much crackers and chips and cereals in our pantry, we could go weeks without starving.

Eating meat is what caused this this whole nCoV thing in the first place. (Along with a pile of other zoonotic diseases - E. coli, several strains of influenza, SARS, HIV, BSE causing vCJD, trichinosis, etc.) Have some beans instead.

You're not going to have the manpower or organization to block every like side road that goes into the next city.

I just counted counted up the roads in my metro area of 1.4m - blocking a couple dozen points (intersections, highways, on/off-ramps) would block every entry/exit visible on Google Maps.

 

[civvver]

Depends on the area you're trying to block though, is it one city area of a square mile then sure, but if you're talking about an entire city like Dallas, that seems impossible

 

[Hygro]

Dunno about Dallas but it would be easy to lock down San Antonio. It seems like endless sprawl until it just stops. Block the major highways south and west and put extra presence northeast where there are more roads.


But come on folks this is America. A virus breaks out, we see how makes it on the other side.

 

[civvver]

Yeah it seems like endless sprawl and just stops, so wouldn't people just load up into their 4x4s and off road the hell outta there? In an area like DC that seems impossible as you just run into more and more suburbs or trees or rivers.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

How do you define "locked down"? I know that when snow closes the grapevine (Interstate 5 connection into LA) there is a practical emergency limit that it has to reopen within 72 hours or the supermarkets will start running out of food, so this theoretical 'lockdown' can't be allowed to apply to the trucking industry if we try to apply it to LA.

They could air lift supply into the city. While the population is huge, so is the logistical capacity of the DoD. They managed to pull it off for West Berlin, though I suspect there is an order of magnitude difference in population and land size between the scenarios. But if anything, logistical capacity of the DoD has probably grown by more than an order of magnitude sine then.

I agree, but of course FEMA is our crisis management authority and we know how well they did in New Orleans when they had to evacuate the city. maybe the State of Texas could do better.

Well FEMA didn't go in and forcibly remove everyone. It's hard to force people to leave their homes when they don't want to. And a flood that will kill inhabitants is very different from a plague so they would not have been justified in performing a more heavy-handed evacuation. The levees also failed at a lower storm rating than they were designed for and I think that was on the Army Corps of Engineers and local government and not FEMA. FEMA did a crappy job of dealing with the aftermath but I don't think the immediate evacuation difficulties can be totally put on them. I could be wrong though.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Beware the law of unintended consequences!

 

[innonimatu]

So here we all are, two months later.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I don't know what I said in this thread before but I no longer think you can lock down an American city.

Good bump @innonimatu

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I could count the number of people I know who could make seven days without going to the store on one hand. So they really can't just stay home for seven days. That's one problem.

Unless you suspend rents and mortgage payments for the duration making the entire city stay home from work is going to utterly destroy every aspect of housing. That's a second problem.

The vast majority of 'Muricans believe that "minor" diseases only kill the especially vulnerable, like the elderly or those with pre-existing immune system problems, so they aren't going to cooperate with anything touted as "for your own good." They'll just take their chances with catching it and figure they'll survive if they do. That's a third problem.

I have no solutions for any of these, and I'm guessing that's just a start.

Welp, having said that two months ago I feel like I had a pretty realistic take on the situation.

 

[Zardnaar]

Damn and here we are.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Lots of folks in NM just ignoring the governor's order, but they are in the rural areas of the state (ie not Albuquerque or Santa Fe). The couple living across the street (I see their driveway from my home office window) seem to go out 3-4 times every day. I have no idea where or why.

 

[Bugfatty300]

Neighbor's son and his gaggle of moron friends are always coming and going like nothings happening.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Neighbor's son and his gaggle of moron friends are always coming and going like nothings happening.

Teenagers? I cannot imagine trying to get teenagers to cooperate in this.

 

[Zardnaar]

Teenagers? I cannot imagine trying to get teenagers to cooperate in this.

Looks like generation X is gonna be the one to step up.

The young here have been idiots along with some of the older ones.

 

[Bugfatty300]

Teenagers? I cannot imagine trying to get teenagers to cooperate in this.

Late twenties as far as I know