Who ever said a three year old could carry a Coleman cooler. First, a Coleman is not standard survival gear, second a kid of say 30 lbs should only carry five or six lbs. That would be his sleeping bag and some chow.

My kids are in their 30's, and they live pretty far away, so they were not on the boat with us.

Think rationally, I was a kid in NY during the hurricane seasons of the 40's. I remember going out and not being able to stand up. I used to hike across the swamps to what is now Kennedy Airport. Required swimming a lot of drainage canals. I am old, but I will still survive if it requires travelling overland for a lot of miles. I will have a lightweight tent and my sleeping bag, and enough emergency rations for a few days. And, very important, a can of bear mace to dissuade those who think their lives are more important than mine.

There is no question that the Feds and others will arrive at some point with some sort of aid. The real question is how to get out of the most dangerous areas on foot, since the roads will be jammed with unmoving cars. I used the 25 mile example because that is probably far enough to be beyond the areas of worst flooding.

I live in the Intermountain West, and there are plenty of people out here with who are wimps, just like on the East Coast. I am not a survivalist, but I believe in being somewhat ready for disaster. We all have a responsibility to be in decent physical shape and to make sure our kids are. It would also cut our national medical bill significantly.

My daughters are happy and capable adults. They are very thankful that they were brought up to be strong and physically competent. It also made them very capable at their jobs, which were sedentary.

The nice thing about national parks is that the well to do cannot build houses on the shores of the beautiful lakes, although Bush would like to make them available for that. You would love that, wouldn't you?

"A life that is not a daring adventure is no life at all."

Reminds me of a Robert Frost poem. Since the Yellowstone Caldera, among others, has exploded about evry 600,000 years, it will go off again. There will be a little warning, and those of us who live west of it will have to hurry further west to escape the immediate fallout. Luckily the population density is pretty low so the roads will not be choked with cars. The next gas station to our west is 65 miles from here, so keeping a fairly full tank is important. The local Mormon population will have the highest survival potential, since their religion requires them to keep a years supply of food on hand.

One of the major problems with hurricanes and floods is that a couple of hundred years ago people could rebuild their houses with locally available materials, on their own. Of course after the destruction in NO there was plenty of wrecked houses to scavenge, but self-reliance and ingenuity were probably discouraged. Probably would have violated all kinds of health, sanitation, and building codes. In our neighborhood of 50 or so houses, 10% of them were built by the owners, with their own hands. That included carpentry, wiring, and plumbing. Most of you collectivitsts on the coasts wouldn't have a clue about how to build your own house, and in your wisdom would have enacted ordinances preventing those who could from doing it. I recall a TV news program after a hurricane about a displaced family living in a government provided house with a leaky roof. Three strapping young men sat among the buckets watching TV and complaining about how the governnment would not fix the roof. They should have gotten their lazy butts onto the roof and fixed it, instead of waiting for Mexican immigrants to do it for them.

Those what can do, the rest complain about the government.

Reminds me of the old joke about the (unnamed ethnic minority) who noticed how the girls oohed and aahed over the Speedo wearers and their bulge. A friend suggested that a potato strategically placed would enhance his appeal. His friend had to correct his placement when the girls started laughing. He pointed our that the potato went in front, not in back.

You wouldn't want to live here. We are 40 miles downwind of over 50 decommissioned nuclear reactors, and the Three Mile Island wreckage is stored there too. We are also downstream of several earthfill dams, and they are located in an earthquake zone. It can hit forty below in the winter, we have gone for weeks with the thermometer not rising above zero.

Actually, many coasters are in much better shape than the inhabitants of the intermountain west. Nothing is within walking distance, so driving is a way of life. No public transportation either. Californians tend to move here because the summers are perfect. 90-100 F, with humidity always less than 25%. And no bugs, it is a desert after all.

We attended my wifes Wellesley reunion a few years ago (she went to Harvard grad school too), and I loved seeing all the hot and slender high class Eastern women.

So I really don't hate the coasters. There are just roo damn many of them. If we could cut the poputlation by 2/3 or so, it would be perfect.