[Travis McGee]

Imagine any city if the power went out and stayed out for more than a week.

[american spirit]

.....and what if those cities were full people who have no skills, can't speak English, could care less about this country and are almost totally dependent on gov't benefits to survive. In the event of a national economic disruption and the $ stop flowing to these people wonder what kind of mood they'll be in?.......ordo ab chao?

[Nowhere Man]

Imagine any city if the power went out and stayed out for more than a week.

I was watching part of "How the West Was Won" yesterday and marvelled that in the last 50 years or so, what it took them months to do, it only takes days by car or hours by plane to cross that distance. The traeoff is that you have to have faith in the infrastructure and the people/engineers behind it as well as the same folks that designed your car or the plane you're flying in. Adding to that, you need the same people to keep the power grid going, keeping the roads cleaned and patched and paved, the oil companies and the refineries, auto/aircraft mechanics, tire companies, and so on. We all depend on each other to a great degree to keep things going, if al ink or two should break, until we fix them or come up with a workaround, it will be harder but things will keep going relatively well but if more links break after that such as a cascading effect, it will be "Whoa Nellie and Katy bar the door" time.