Unfortunately, you are comparing apples to oranges. Hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, Sandy storms don't disrupt the underground infrastructure as an earthquake can do. It's usually pretty much surface damage, which is bad enough.
As I said above, and been proven from large scale earthquakes, our water, natural gas, under ground electrical grid, and food distribution has been interrupted by broken freeways, overpasses, surface roads for an extended time.
It always take longer for services to come back on line because of all the digging they have to do, no matter how much FEMA can do. BTW, they did really great with Katrina, didn't they? sarcasm. There are still entire neighborhoods that are ghost towns. They still haven't recovered fully.
"The problem with hardcore preppers like you is that you’re way out on the irrelevent end of the probability curve. Your approach is based on the .001% case rather than the 1% case. The latter is what you would focus on if you really were interested in doing the most good for the greatest number of people."
What does my interest in "doing the most good for the greatest number of people" have anything to do with disaster preparedness for me and mine in case of a massive earthquake? Your hypothesis is pecurliar, and I'm not a hard core "prepper" - I'm a realist about mother nature. I even laugh at many on the Prepper Show (History channel?).
Really? You think I'm some apocalyptic doom sayer? I'm just prepared to last more than it takes to get the broken water mains, gas lines, food supplies (after the rioters loot), and freeway truck routes repaired. Apparently, you missed or forget about the Northridge, CA earthquake that destroy many of the above. People were living in parks for weeks, while the different city services were trying to repair all the underground lines. People were fighting for FEMA water and food and others were looting, as they did in Katrina.
Think what you will. Hope you're in a safe place, but there is no safe place on this rock. This planet is a dangerous place. Think Indonesia/Japan's tsumanis. Japan has yet to recover from that and thousands are living in temporary housing. Indonesia lost 10's of thousands of lives. Shit happens on this planet, and people make it worse as they try to survive. Japan, with their cultural ethics came together - Indonesia not so much. Our inner-city welfare types and lowlifes would be rioting for the first handout from FEMA.
Last thought: In 1991 after the Rodney King verdict, the inner-city went ballistic. It got so bad that the police pulled out and after a while the fireman wouldn't show up because of gunfire on them. It lasted around 2 weeks as the area went up in flames. Now extrapolate that to a massive earthquake or dirty bomb disaster and how would those same people deal with it? Hopefully, the Koreans will stand there ground with rifles in hand as they did then.
Starting to get the picture why some of us want to be prepared? I'm not talking about end of the world - so shut the f*ck up and don't try to lecture this 63 year old man about humanity. I've seen the best and worse. In massive times of trouble, the bad surfaces. Got my shotgun. Deal with it.
People haven’t learned yet from what Hurricane Sandy did to parts of NYC, have they?
Two weeks didn’t even begin to touch some areas. That’s when the magnitude of what happened was really beginning to sink in.
And compared to the big one hitting CA, that was child’s play.
The Ike hurricane polluted the water in Galveston and north to Houston and it took weeks to do repairs and get good water back. In my area, the newspaper put out an edition every day which was delivered to every household in Conroe free of charge. That paper told us every day if the water was safe and the condition of repairs that had to be made to utilities. One of our water stations was flooded out so all that machinery had to be replaced.
Farther north it was worse than that. The town of Cleveland had no water for weeks - it had to be trucked in and their power was out for weeks. A county that encompasses the San Houston National Forest didn't have power for weeks. Trees in that forest fell and took down lines. States north of us didn't escape, either. Power and water up into those states were out.
Some people here were killed by falling trees and many houses here had trees in them. Some had to leave their houses.
Your earthquake possibility would kill many and you won't be able to get a regular life back for months.
This shows no one knows how bad an event could be until it happens. It is folly to “guess” one won't have such an emergency, that the percentage of the possibility is low, so one does nothing. Depending on FEMA to save one, is double folly.
I don't know if I will get a hurricane this year, so maybe I shouldn't be ready for one. That makes no sense at all, because they do come through here. Maybe our water won't be contaminated or power won't be off long enough for water to stop flowing. I don't know the percentage of the possibility of that, but if it is anything above 0, which it is, then I'm prepared already if it happens.
One more example: Hospitals have backup power so don't worry that they won't be operational. Except when Ike came through, the hospital's main generator did not work. The hospital was in the dark. Critical patients had to be taken to San Antonio, 5 hr. drive away. No operations could be done at our hospital. The non-critical patients were still there in dark, hot rooms.
If you had an accident or illness happen at home then, you better be ready to deal with it because the hospital was out of commission. Who would have thought the generator wouldn't work? What was the percentage the generator would go down? No point in having medical supplies at your house since you could just go the hospital.
When preparing for an emergency, assume NOTHING works that you depend on right now.
I had no power but I had lights that worked, a phone that worked, a TV that worked, fans that worked, radio with TV verbal stations on it that worked, several ways to cook, good fast food needing no cooking and food to cook. My standard of living was pretty much the way it was before power went out. If a hurricane comes this year, I have nothing to fear as long as my house keeps standing.
Or, you can always go back to DU and spout your feel-good crap there. Nanny state will take care of you, no matter how bad the disaster. Oh wait, FEMA didn't do so well in New Orleans. But then that was Bush's fault wasn't it? Even though he tried to convince the Governor to give him FEMA authorization. You should read up on those regs.
Of course, you liberals will always re-write history. However, it is Federal law (look it up) that the Fedgov can not intervene in State emergencies without a direct request from the State. Blanco DID NOT request assistance as Katrina was bearing down on her.
So to seque, you think that there would only be (2) weeks of service disruption if Cali gets hit by the big one? You are so naive that I have to wonder how you get out of bed and find your shoes. You're a fool to not prepare with some simple food, water, communication, supplies, et al.