What Happens If?

I guess Zeshua never heard of the Bonneville Salt Flats- 159 square miles of salt that is six feet deep in most places. Literally an "ocean of salt", there is virtually an infinite supply of salt just lying there and yes- the United States is the largest producer of salt in the world. 159 square miles is so much salt that if you looked at it, it would extend past the horizon- hence the name "salt flats".

Guess Zeshua never heard of horses either- beasts of burden that can go great distances carrying hundreds of pounds of, among other things, salt.

A human body requires 4.5 pounds of salt per year, which is .2 ounces a day. That salt shaker in your kitchen is a three month supply of salt. But don't worry- the meat in your diet contains enough salt that it will never have to come to that, just like the Eskimos and Inuit who even today get all their salt from flesh.

Now let's imagine what Zeshua said really happens- the trucking lines stop and people can't get salt. My more immediate concern would be for staple items such as citrus- which is essential to the human body and for the most part grows in more temperate zones and clothing- which us Americans have for the most part lost the ability to make.

Of course if any catastophe hit America, our most immediate need would be for electricity to keep our lights on, keep our devices working, keep like support machines on and so on. If America lost electricity, millions of people would die within weeks- the last thing on everyone's mind would be salt. Electricity-for-heat would kill millions more when the first frost hit the country and as 98% of all American homes don't have a wood burning fireplace, many more would die a slow cold death.
 
In the event of the sort of societal catastrophe Zeshua predicts, all the available horses would likely be eaten within the first year. You do the math. America's got 300 million people. Once the trucks stop bringing gasoline to the farms, the food industry grinds to a sudden halt. It's not like we are prepared to go back to plowing our fields with horses for 300 million. Perhaps a very few would, but 99% of the current land used for farming would go uncultivated. No food in the stores. No food in the fields. Any survivors left in the cities would eat any horses they could get their hands on, and you can sure bet they'd be looking for them.

Populations can exist quite nicely without citrus, as all the extreme Northern populations of the world demonstrate. The Eskimoes lived for thousands of years without any citrus. But not without salt.

Yes, the Bonneville Salt Flats exist, but that will be little consolation to people 500 miles away whose only transportation is by foot or bicycle. The average fool doesnt even realize he needs salt in his diet, and wouldnt even start worrying about it until he was too disabled to procure some with any difficulty. Without salt, a person will die in less than a month, and will weaken long before then.

Historically, the Salt Trade was the origin of all major overland trading routes around the world, including the Great Silk Road. It is the first thing people living away from the seashores discover they absolutely cannot do without.

In addition to the body's nutritional need for salt, that resource will also be necessary for preserving meat once the electricity is gone and not coming back.

Yes, meat does contain enough salt to keep a person alive, but only if that person's diet consists almost exclusively of meat, and only if it is then cooked in the proper way. Those populations whose diets consist largely of grains and vegetables will die quickly without salt supplementation.

- Peter
 
America grows so many crops that we actually pay farmers billions of dollars a year NOT to grow them. We are also the largest exporter of grains in the world. If we closed our borders and told all the farmers to grow crops, we would have five times as much food as we do now.

Additionally, it takes ten pounds of grains to produce one pound of beef. If Americans cut back their meat consumption by say 33% (one meatless meal a day), we would have enough crops for food and to fuel our cars (ethanol).

Additionally, there are at least a hundred animals in America for every person- bison, deer, bears, birds, pigs, cows, rabbits and so on and they procreate much faster than humans do.

There is also one store selling foodstuffs for every 16 people in America. If all food deliveries stopped, all told there is at least a three month supply of food sitting on shelves everywhere across America ripe for looting.

Saying America can't or in the future won't grow crops or saying Americans will starve to death in some dismal future is simply nonsense. As any non-American can plainly see by looking at the waistline of any American, we are overflowing with food.
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>>Populations can exist quite nicely without citrus, as all the extreme Northern populations of the world demonstrate. The Eskimoes lived for thousands of years without any citrus. But not without salt.<<

"Vitamin C can be found in a variety of traditional Eskimo/Inuit staples, including the skin of beluga whales (known as muktuk), which is said to contain as much vitamin C as oranges. Other reported sources include the organ meats of sea mammals as well as the stomach contents of caribou."
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010119.html

As far as salt goes, eskimos live near the sea, which is 6% salt. So do the Eastern and Western seaboards of the USA, which is 35% of the population- over 100 million people.
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>>Without salt, a person will die in less than a month, and will weaken long before then.<<

Can you please cite a reference for this statement? As I wrote earlier, "the meat in your diet contains enough salt that it will never have to come to that".
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>>Yes, the Bonneville Salt Flats exist, but that will be little consolation to people 500 miles away whose only transportation is by foot or bicycle.<<

So you're saying that people will die from lack of salt even though they know an infinite supply of salt is only 500 miles away? You're saying farmers would rather kill and eat their livestock than start a "cattle salt drive"?

Do you know how much salt would be worth if everyone ran out of it? An awful lot. There'd be tons of people making trips to SALT LAKE City and distributing it throughout the country for a huge profit, not to mention the 1.2 million residents of SLC who would all go into the salt business.

And I haven't even mentioned the Federal Government stepping in to distribute salt no less the billions of tons of salt already sitting in millions of salt houses in every little town across America waiting for the snow.
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>>Those populations whose diets consist largely of grains and vegetables will die quickly without salt supplementation.<<

That's kinda funny because I am a Vegan and last time I checked, I had a pulse.

There is absolutely no validity to any claim that we will ever run out of salt, in fact it's much harder to get rid of the billions of tons of salt we already have than to imagine a saltless America.
 
Well, we should be all set for salt. At 4.5lbs a year per person, a family of 4 could get by for 10 years on 2 bags of water softner salt. Most people who own water softners keep this on hand all the time.
 
I understand Zeshua's point- if things got bad and all the stores closed, salt would become very valuable. Go into any supermarket- there's 100 or so containers on the shelf and maybe a couple hundred more in the back- they would be gone in a day. But really- there is enough salt on the planet to fill the Pacific Ocean!
 
> America grows so many crops that we actually pay farmers billions of dollars
> a year NOT to grow them. We are also the largest exporter of grains in the world.
> If we closed our borders and told all the farmers to grow crops, we would have
> five times as much food as we do now.

True. But if those farmers could not get gasoline to power their farm equipment, they wouldn’t be able to grow even 1% of their current produce.

> Additionally, it takes ten pounds of grains to produce one pound of beef. If
> Americans cut back their meat consumption by say 33% (one meatless meal
> a day), we would have enough crops for food and to fuel our cars (ethanol).

And if everyone would just be nice and fair to one another, we wouldn’t need lawyers.
But that’s not going to happen either.

> Additionally, there are at least a hundred animals in America for every
> person- bison, deer, bears, birds, pigs, cows, rabbits and so on and they
> procreate much faster than humans do.

True, but if an economic crisis shut down long-distance trucking, all such farm animals would never be processed into meat and delivered to the massive populations living in the cities. Without the farms producing crops, their would be no food for farm animals, and without the trucking industry, there would be no medicine for them either. The crops would die in the fields, and the livestock in their pens.

And as for animals living in the wild, they would prove of no value to America's teeming city masses. Most city dwellers would not have the first clue where to look for wild meat, nor would they have any transportation to such hunting areas, nor would they have the necessary skills to find and kill any wild animals even if they could get there. Most city dwellers would die in city riots long before they even had a chance to think about going off into the countryside to hunt for food. The cities would go up in flames like stacks of cordwood. Without gasoline, the fire departments would be powerless to stop fires, and a single fire would be free to spread as far as the wind allowed. Without gasoline, the police would be powerless to stop rioting, and with no law to counter them, the hungry and desperate poor, who always relied on society to provide all their needs, would be out for revenge. There would be killings. There would be fires. Armed gangs would roam unopposed, looking for food, or, lacking that, anything else they happened to find.

> There is also one store selling foodstuffs for every 16 people in America.
> If all food deliveries stopped, all told there is at least a three month supply
> of food sitting on shelves everywhere across America ripe for looting.

Not nowadays. Modern business has embraced JIT marketing (Just-In-Time. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_In_Time_%28business%29). It is estimated that most cities contain just a three or four-day supply of food at any given moment. If all the semis stopped coming in over those expressways, in less than a week most people would be starving.

> Saying America can't or in the future won't grow crops or saying Americans
> will starve to death in some dismal future is simply nonsense. As any non-American
> can plainly see by looking at the waistline of any American, we are overflowing with food.

Sure, we’re fat now. The system is working now. But if the system stops working?

> So you're saying that people will die from lack of salt even though they know an
> infinite supply of salt is only 500 miles away? You're saying farmers would rather
> kill and eat their livestock than start a "cattle salt drive"?

I’m saying that no one can successfully walk 500 miles without salt, especially through hostile terrain filled with hoards of starving and desperate people.

> Do you know how much salt would be worth if everyone ran out of it?
> An awful lot.

Yes. In fact, some of the earliest forms of money were cakes of salt. When you don’t have any, it becomes priceless.

> There'd be tons of people making trips to SALT LAKE City and distributing
it throughout the country for a huge profit, not to mention the 1.2 million
> residents of SLC who would all go into the salt business.

There would be people who would try. Salt Lake City is in the middle of some pretty desolate countryside, isn’t it?. How long could you walk out there? I believe you’d have to be carrying your own water a good portion of the trip, and your own guns, and your own food. And everyone you met along the way would covet your treasure enough to be at risk of killing you for it..

It’s not easy to engage in mass distribution on foot. You could try to ride a horse, but you’d only keep it until you met someone hungry enough to kill you for it. You could try to ride a bicycle, but how much salt could you transport on a bike, and would it be worth risking your life to attempt it?

> And I haven't even mentioned the Federal Government stepping in to distribute salt
> no less the billions of tons of salt already sitting in millions of salt houses in every
> little town across America waiting for the snow.

The scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. We saw how helpful and efficient and reliable the government was with Katrina last year, didn’t we? You think the government would know better than you how to mass-distribute salt via foot or bicycle or horseback? [censored], they have all the tools in the world now and they still can’t find their asses with both hands. Without gasoline, the government would be even more crippled than the individual.

> There is absolutely no validity to any claim that we will ever run out of salt,
> in fact it's much harder to get rid of the billions of tons of salt we already have
> than to imagine a saltless America.

Of course we will not run out. The problem is not one of availability but distribution.

But in a city full of empty gas tanks, supplies 500 miles away might as well be five million. Did you know that before the advent of cars and trains and suchlike, the average person never traveled more than 20 miles from his home in his entire life?

- Peter
 
I still don't know what you are talking about. I never ever use salt, and I eat vegetables now, since I had a heart attack. I have not used salt in years. Salt is bad for you. I do use pepper now.
Perhaps it is all the salt in the food, my container of salt is still up there in the cupboard, and I just don't see why it is even needed.

Oh well.
 
Fruits and veggies do contain their fair amount of salt and if you're a vegetarian, ultimately you need never worry about salt intake again.

I am extremely impressed with you having a heart attack and understanding what you body is trying to tell you: that at no time in the whole of human history have humans eaten so much meat as they do now- that never before have people woken up to eggs and bacon, chowed down on a double hamburger and supped a nice juicy steak. 90% of the planet doesn't eat as good as we do which unfortunately puts us in the same mindset as the roaring 20's which unfortunately ended in The Great Depression.

My father was diagnosed with Conjective Heart Failure from his 60+ years of steaks and chicken wings, unfortunately he is not listening to his body. His birthday was a few months ago and know what they did to celebrate? They went out for prime rib. Wonderful.
 
>>Most city dwellers would not have the first clue where to look for wild meat, nor would they have any transportation to such hunting areas, nor would they have the necessary skills to find and kill any wild animals even if they could get there...Armed gangs would roam unopposed, looking for food, or, lacking that, anything else they happened to find. <<

I hate to be this blunt but it's the simple truth: too bad for them. If you live in a major city, you are foregoing your capacity to live independantly in exchange for the pretty city lights. Even Titor said when the crap hits the fan, everyone will know where the hell to get away from and where the hell the targets will be.

The simple truth is that if you put eight million people in 30 acres like Manhattan, those people will ultimately live or die by their bridge system. Don't know how else to put it, this hits the matter at hand. If the lights went out in Times Square, would Times Square still be there three months later? Ask Tyler Durden.

So yeah, you're right- if there is no gas, there will be no truck deliveries... there will be mass chaos in the cities. As a 9/11 survivor now living independantly in the last place on Earth Russia or the terrorists would look for me I can safely say that.

As far as farmers go, it's very simple. If we were knocked back to the 15th century overnight, a farm would still have the capacity to generate food for a thousand people. The problem is not farming but Big Farming- when you have 2.3 million pigs on one God-awful farm. That is when the viruses spread and suddenly everyone can't eat at Taco Bell or Chili's anymore. You're just not seeing the big picture.

>>Sure, we’re fat now. The system is working now. But if the system stops working?<<

Then as John Titor put it, you pick up your bicycle, learn how to shoot a shotgun and learn how to do more than sit back waiting for Freeto Lays new Wild Zesty Crispshits to come out.

>>I’m saying that no one can successfully walk 500 miles without salt, especially through hostile terrain filled with hoards of starving and desperate people...The problem is not one of availability but distribution.<<

And I am saying that if tomorrow you realized you could sell the dirt in your backyard for $500 a pound but you had to deliver it 500 miles away, would you do it?

>>If an economic crisis shut down long-distance trucking, all such farm animals would never be processed into meat and delivered to the massive populations living in the cities.<<

This is where the above-written "salt cattle drive" comes into play. 1000 cows hike to SLC, the remaining 100 carry back the well-salted jerky of 900 cows for sale as a commodity for those 500+ miles from SLC.

And finally, I find it amazing that you will take even the most ludicrous assertion by Zeshua and twist and distort it to fit your version of reality. And I say this with no offense intended- clearly the intelligence of Zeshua is vague at best and is clearly defined, reinforced and supported by someone who simply believes. In what, I do not know.

"This conversation is over." -Tyler Durden


PS- I am still waiting for you to cite a reference for >>Without salt, a person will die in less than a month, and will weaken long before then.<<
 
> As far as farmers go, it's very simple. If we were knocked back to the 15th century overnight,
> a farm would still have the capacity to generate food for a thousand people. The problem is not
> farming but Big Farming- when you have 2.3 million pigs on one God-awful farm.

I don’t think so. How many farmers, big or small, would be able to keep their production levels up if their access to commercial fertilizers, pesticides, seed, and feed was blocked? Most farms today use those newfangled genetically modified “Monsanto” style seeds that grow fine crops but don’t produce seed for the next year’s crops. A few do use the old-style seed, called “heritage” or heirloom” seeds, but those sort of farmers are few and far between. Between their dependence on mechanized machinery fuel, artificial seeds, fertilizer, and pesticides, the idea that the modern farmer is independent of and immune to societal disruptions is ludicrous. How many farmers even possess work horses and old-style plows that could work a field anymore? In the sort of societal breakdown that Titor envisioned, most farmers would be forced to work their fields with nothing more sophisticated than hand-held hoes. For farmers who have grown accustomed to having mechanized machinery do all the hard work, going back to such intense manual labor would likely be a recipe for an epidemic of strokes and heart attacks.

And then of course, there would be all the displaced hungry masses who would swarm like locusts over any crops that farmer had successfully planted, robbing him of his crop before it could be harvested.

> And I am saying that if tomorrow you realized you could sell the dirt in your backyard
> for $500 a pound but you had to deliver it 500 miles away, would you do it?

Obviously the motivation would exist. I merely question the logistics of such an operation. Driving 1000 cows through 500 miles of desolation filled with nothing but thousands and thousands of starving, desperate, and probably well-armed people seems unlikely to succeed. You’d need a sizable army to provide security for such an operation, and that army would itself likely be suffering from salt deficiency for the first leg of that journey. Most folks probably wouldn’t even realize that they needed to go get salt until the symptoms of salt deprivation already started to appear (and were recognized as such) in the general population, and by then your army’s strength and health would already be compromised. It would be a matter of “the spirit is willing, but the body is weak”. In the middle of such societal chaos, when you’re out trying to recruit folks to join your army for this mission, how many of the people you approach are going to think to themselves that it might be a better idea to just steal one of your cows now and feed their own families with it, instead of risking their lives going off on some seemingly hair-brained idea while their families sicken and starve and remain in unprotected danger from all the societal unrest? I think you’d lose your cows, and possibly your life, before you got your ambitious cattle drive even a mile out of town.

> I am still waiting for you to cite a reference for >>Without salt, a person will die in less than a month, and will weaken long before then.<<

"Archaeologists believe that salt eating developed as humans learned how to keep animals and grow crops in the years after 10,000 BC. As the proportion of meat in their diet fell, people had to find salt for themselves and for their domesticated animals."
( http://www.salt.gov.uk/history_of_salt.shtml )

"Salt is an essential element. Life itself would be impossible without it, since the human body requires salt in order to function properly. The concentration of sodium ions in the blood is directly related to the regulation of safe body fluid levels. [...] The effects of salt deficiency are highlighted in times of war, when human bodies and national economies are strained to their limits. Thousands of Napoleon's troops died during the French retreat from Moscow due to inadequate wound healing and lowered resistance to disease - the results of salt deficiency. Salt production facilities in Saltville, Va., Virginia's Kanawha Valley and Avery Island, Louisiana, were early targets of the Union Army. The North fought for 36 hours to capture Saltville, Va., where the salt works were considered crucial to the Rebel army - so crucial that Confederate President Jefferson Davis offered to waive military service to anyone willing to tend coastal salt kettles to supply the South's war effort." (http://www.cargillsalt.com/dc_salt_about_hist_salt.htm )

"An eight-year study of a New York City hypertensive population stratified for sodium intake levels found those on low-salt diets had more than four times as many heart attacks as those on normal-sodium diets." ( http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/salt.htm )

"Hyponatremia {salt deficiency) is a condition known as "water intoxication." It is the opposite of dehydration, and is often associated with long distance events like running and cycling. Moreover, it’s not an unusual problem, and you can develop it in a few hours. As you consume large amounts of water over the course of a day, blood plasma (the liquid part of blood) increases thereby diluting the salt content of the blood. At the same time, your body also loses salt by sweating. Consequently, the amount of electrolytes available to your body tissues decreases over time to a point where that loss interferes with brain, heart, and muscle function!"
( http://geo-outdoors.info/hyponatremia.htm)

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_deficiency
http://www.dmt123.com/diseases-conditions/377-dmt123.html
http://www.siftocanada.com/saltbook/yourbody.htm

The following document reports that the symptoms of salt deficiency can appear in just a few days of strenuous physical exertion if no salt has been consumed : http://www.scotclimb.org.uk/safety/heat.shtml

Also here, where it says “Salt deficiency heat prostration generally occurs in the case of inexperienced newcomers after several days of strenuous, sweat-producing activity, balanced out with plenty of liquid but not enough salt. Gastrointestinal infections with diarrhea and vomiting accelerate the outbreak. The body's salt reserves are exhausted, which results in functional disorders in those organs that require salt. The symptoms begin with increased exhaustion, headache and severe muscle cramps. Absolutely typical signs include a deep paleness in the face and sweat-moistened skin when the patient faints.” At http://www.fit-for-travel.de/en/empfehlungen/sun.htm

Here is a study of salt deficiency in cows : “The following are the symptoms of salt deficiency reported in Cornell studies (28). The first symptom was a craving for salt that was noticed within two weeks and by four weeks was a consistent observation. After two months, the cows showed a depraved appetite. It was manifested by licking the hands and clothing of barn personnel, consuming quantities of soil soaked with urine or the run-off from the manure pile, licking the barn walls and drinking the urine from other cows during urination. This was followed by a loss of appetite and body weight. In some cows feed intake was reduced to near zero. Milk production decreased as appetite decreased. The cows then assumed an emaciated appearance, developed a dry, rough skin (particularly on the neck), the hair coat became unkempt and the cattle became listless. In terminal cases, there was shivering, a staggered gait (most noticeable in the hind legs), weakness, abnormal heart activity, low body temperature (as low as 96.3°F) and then death. In two cases, where cattle had arrived at this terminal condition, they were given 200 grams of salt and made complete recoveries.” at http://www.saltinstitute.org/47g.html

And this study reports that an exercising person can lose up to 20 grams of salt per day : “ The warning from the Salt Manufacturers’ Association echoes growing independent concern from bodies such as Help the Aged that the elderly are being urged to drink water but not to maintain the sodium without which they can be vulnerable to heart attacks and strokes. A new Department of Health “Heatwave Guide” to looking after yourself in hot weather makes no mention of the importance of maintaining sodium and other electrolyte levels. And NHS Direct similarly offers no advice on salt intake in a heatwave. “This is an issue where urgent, authoritative advice is needed,” says SMA general secretary Peter Sherratt. “Many older people have cut back on salt as a result of the Government’s blanket advice and they could now be highly at risk.” Amongst the experts who have raised the issue is leading physiologist Professor Bill Keatinge. He recommends that elderly people maintain their intake of both water and salt during heatwaves, when heat-related deaths typically increase by 50 per cent. In just one week of the hot summer of 2003, over 2,000 deaths in Britain were linked to the weather. “Heat stress causes loss of salt and water in sweat, which thickens the blood and can lead to an increased risk of heart attack and stroke,” says Professor Keatinge. Older people – especially those who are not acclimatised to the heat – are far more vulnerable, particularly during the early summer when temperatures begin to rise. Hot weather may lessen appetite, but not eating regularly can lead to a salt deficiency. The sodium in salt is important for muscle function and helps to maintain the fluid balance within the body. Professor Keatinge advises that older people should maintain their salt levels by continuing to eat the balanced diet that they normally would. To avoid dehydration, they should drink plenty of water when thirsty. Meanwhile, Help the Aged has mounted a campaign urging the public to look out for older relatives and neighbours in the hot weather. A key recommendation is to maintain salt intake and drink lots of water. Also at risk from government blanket advice to cut salt are those who exercise. Any energetic activity that causes us to sweat also depletes the vital sodium levels in our body. Poor performance and cramps can follow, but a greater threat comes from hyponatraemia – abnormally low concentration of sodium in the blood – which can result in coma or even death.
Research by Professor Ron Maughan of Loughborough University has undertaken research which that professional footballers can lose up to 20 grammes of salt in a typical day’s training. His warning to maintain salt levels applies to anyone who exercises, especially during heatwaves.” at http://www.saltsense.co.uk/releases/rel017.htm

- Peter
 
If things got really bad, can you think of a valid reason for not instituting martial law? It would certainly happen.

The government already has plans for a massive calamity. An ex-serviceman told me that the U.S. has already printed Scrip notes stored at Fort Knox which would replace currency in the worst scenario.

Gasoline and diesel fuel (which modern agribusiness largely uses) can be supplied from the strategic oil reserves maintained for emergency shortfalls. Beyond that the government would run oil production.Severe rationing--get a motorcycle or walk. Where are you going anyway--to work?

The army could see to it that salt was distributed--but where do we get it? Out of mines? That would be an interesting datum to know.

We can easily produce enough field corn to feed the population. So you don't like cormeal mush--so what? Eat paper. /ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Of course the point about the cities is well taken. Their populations would be hungry monsters, but what could they do that was of economic value to the rest of the country? This could be a basis for setting country against city as J.T. suggested.
 
Oh, ya, the heat and the salt. Guess I am still getting it from the food then.

Oh, the gas. Well, there is a trillion and a half barrels underneath the shale rock in this Country. Just harder to get at, and would cost more. It is under I think guessing Wyoming, Colorado, somewhere about there.

It just ain't drilled for as of yet. Offshore is probably still cheaper than drilling for that oil.

The people would pick the food at the farm to have food, and that would become the chore necessary to have food from the farmer and the farm. The people would help who wanted to eat and all of that stuff. Then there is grain in the silo bins that sits there because the price may not be quite high enough to sell it.

I live here in the Midwest, and I just can not see where all those people would die. Other places yes, but not here. I sure steps would be taken, unless all the wind farms take over, and crops are not planted for awhile. But then, crops could be, although one may need a few months supply of food to begin with. Further thinking required and exercise more needed.
 
>>Wind Power Farms which won't be enough power.<<

Oh, I don't think Zeshua is playing with us all that much really though.

Have a nice day there, young lady, if you can.

I know, I live here, ya, well, so far that is.

Attitudes!
(They think they have everything figured out already, and I doubt if the stubborness out of them ought to really be considered anymore, and I have my reasons for that, but it is personal.)
 
Excuse us, young lady, but I think we now have to talk riddles here as foreigners tend to come here sometimes. We will see about that perhaps. They are entitled to an opinion, but who are some of the people?

A Note.
 
Ah, we have a lot of deer out here but then, there are cougars around also. A deer was found up in a tree about 8 feet up and the hind-end eaten off. A cougar can travel up to 70 miles in a day, because they know that since radio tags were put on some out West. So, several cougars have been seen off and on lately, and have crossed over into Illinois. Up more north in Wisconsin there are of course the bears and other deer and perhaps other animals running around also. This is dangerous for the kids. Not so much for adults perhaps but still can be. Some cougars have been hit by cars on the roads and all of that also sometimes but usually a greater area maybe more out West (Colorado) perhaps and all of that also.

Usually the deer are hunted when the population gets too big, but then there also are the other animals making their way more south.

This also has something to do with politics. Perhaps a few are needed in a large city to make their day.
 
I am in total agreement with jmpet on this issue, and his application of logic. Now, I also intend to offer my opinions on Mr. Novak. Note that these are not "attacks". They are my opinions of his character based on his own writings.

It is quite clear, and would be hard to deny, that Mr. Novak is a fatalist. Despite all the solid points that jmpet made to Mr. Novak about how running out of salt is not as big a disaster as Mr. Novak paints in his picture, Mr. Novak continues to hammer away at just how bad things "will" (?) be if certain "terrible" things happen. Mr. Novak acting as a fatalist also fully explains why he can only look for fatalistic "messages" in the alleged anagrams of Zeshua. Additionally, in Mr. Novaks continued tellings of doom, he gives the American people absolutely no credit for resilience. Mr. Novak seems to forget the stock of people who settled the frontier of the United States, and he apparantly thinks that this kind of resiliency and ingenuity is completely gone from the American people. Of course, he couldn't be more wrong. His fatalist attitude certainly reflects things he says on his website, especially how he constantly comes back to his belief that we are a "broken" species. And the fact that Mr. Novak comes from a background in psychology is interesting. Perhaps it might be time for him to consult his own, personal, psychologist to help him deal with his fatalistic tendencies. But littered throughout Mr. Novak's arguments we also see a lot of logical fallacy. And jmpet has challenged Mr. Novak on his logical fallacies, but Mr. Novak continues to ignore these points. For example here is a clear logical fallacy from one of Mr. Novak's recent posts.

"The scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. We saw how helpful and efficient and reliable the government was with Katrina last year, didn’t we?"

As compared to what?? Clearly this is a very large logical fallacy he is trying to put over on readers if he thinks that the government aid for Katrina was somehow better than if there was NO government aid at all. See the logical fallacy here? What may be more instructive is to compare the US government's response to Katrina last year to the Indonesian government's response to the tsunami that ravaged Banda Aceh. If you did, I think there would be little argument that even though the US government's response to Katrina may have not been up-to-par to other US government relief efforts (even in Indonesia), clearly the US government (on its own) handled Katrina better than Indonesia could have ever handled its tragedy were there not help from outside the country. And why is it that no matter where in the world a disaster occurs, what country is on the front lines to help those affected? That's right, the US. The same US that Mr. Novak thinks would be so paralyzed if his fatalistic "it could happen" events come to pass. Interesting logic, that is.

My interest is in why Mr. Novak is such a fatalist. What makes him tick in this manner. Why does he exclusively focus on negative futures? Does he think it helps him sell his books and get people to believe we are "sick" and that his Binary Soul Doctrine is what can help fix fatalism? Well, if this is his ploy then certainly all his work on the BSD has not helped him get beyond his own fatalistic beliefs about mankind in general, and the USA in particular.
 
When you connect to the internet, your computer piggybacks many other computers at light speed to make these connections. When you hit a website, you are literally connected to that website' server or IP address. This means there's a really big computer sitting in some room and in its memory are hundreds of websites.

Your computer takes a journey from A (your computer) to B (your IP's server, in my case America Online) to C through Y (a series of servers that simply push the information along to its destination) to Z (that big computer sitting in that room that has the site you're looking for somewhere in its memory). These are called nodes and routers- they're big computers that do nothing but push traffic back and forth. If "you online" is a car, the nodes and routers are the traffic lights and highway signs.

I find it highly interesting that both Zeshua and Peter Novak share the first three nodes in their journey from their computer to the TTI website:

Peter Novak- 71.115.17.126
Defender Technologies - Prescient Software - nLayer Communications- Verizon Internet Services

Zeshua- 216.127.72.7
Defender Technologies - Prescient Sortware - nLayer Communications- Equinux Inc- Time Warner Telecom- Fort Bend Telephone- Everyone's Internet

I also find it interesting that some of Zeshua's nodes are hidden behind the-cloak.com

What is the-cloak.com?
HTTP and HTTPS anonymous proxy: hide your identity from the sites you visit
Encrypted connection: hide your surfing from local snooping
Remote cookies: keep cookies at our site, and delete them after each session

But perhaps the most interesting thing about Zeshua and Peter Novak alike is the route the computer takes to get from A to Z- this is where the "highway analogy" kicks in.

Driving from anywhere to anywhere else has three parts:
1. Taking local roads to a main highway
2. Taking the main highway
3. Getting off the main highway and taking local roads to the destination.

The closer all three parts are, the closer the origin is. If I live at 100 Main Street and give you directions to California, someone else at 200 Main Street will give you nearly the same directions.

Now let's look at the physical route of the nodes and routers of both Zeshua and Peter Novak's IPs:

Zeshua------ Ashburn VA, Washington DC, Dulles VA, Ashburn VA, Houston TX
Peter Novak- Ashburn VA, Washington DC, Dulles VA, Ashburn VA, Houston TX
 
How and where did you get this info from Jmpet?

I have been researching Zeshua for ages now and I have not come across this info before. Now this could be that I'm not as computer savvy as you and in fact I'm no expert at all so If you can show me how you found this info (either publicly or in PM) then I'd appreciate it greatly.
 
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