X-Message-Number: 31059 From: "John de Rivaz" <> References: <> Subject: Re: emergency plans Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:28:55 +0100 As is often the case, the problem is not the disease, but the treatment. Avian flu was mentioned, and the "natural treatment" is that provided by the immune system, - the cytokine storm. http://www.fluwikie.com/index.php?n=Science.PrimerCytokineStorm It is that that kills those with strong immune systems. Those more elderly people with weaker immune systems have a better chance of survival. As happens with man-made chemotherapy, in many instances it is the treatment that kills. In the case of geophysical events such as slightly increased solar output, the reaction of government is analogous. There is no government on Mars and Titan, so the warming said to be going on there will be less dramatic :-) In the case of financial events, the real estate and banking bubble bursting is likely to cause more governmental reaction than when the dot com bubble burst, and took technology stocks with it. It is, however, worth noting that many technology companies such as Intel survived, and Google is doing well despite joining the market after the dot com bubble. Similarly many banks will survive albeit at stock quotations well below their 2008 peak. The greater difficulty is when people capable of repaying their mortgage payments are told to produce more collateral when their house price has fallen. If they can't then they run the risk of being thrown out and the house sold at a rock bottom price saddling them with no home and also a huge debt. But there is safety in numbers, and directors of mortgage companies may well go against their legal departments' advice and not ask for more collateral, because such action amongst so many people would cause further market collapse. Such problems have been predicted from as long ago as the 1980s, with books like THE DOWNWAVE: SURVIVING THE SECOND GREAT DEPRESSION. $3.60 http://www.amazon.com/DOWNWAVE-SURVIVING-SECOND-GREAT-DEPRESSION/dp/033028178X Advice given then was decades ahead of its time, and anyone reading it and taking it in 1983 when the book was published, would have lost virtually all their assets. House prices rose for nearly three more decades - if you sold you hose then and rented, you'd never have afforded another after a quarter of a century of inflation, even after the current crash. Unfortunately there is little point in reading the book now except from curiosity, as no financial advice is any use after such events. -- Sincerely, John de Rivaz: http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy, Nomad .. and more Content-Type: text/html; [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=31059