[PA Engineer]

The problem is indeed not unique to the US. A good investigation is the Auckland CBD power failure. Human behavior was shocking, but not surprising. What stood out was the behavior of peoples in their homes and particularly apartments.

Water was lost when power stopped to the pump stations and apartment lift pumps. People continued to defecate in their toilets until they were full. They proceeded to fill their bathtubs and then the sinks. Finally, they started to defecate in the hallways until the buildings were no longer habitable.

Something worth investigating.

Great read and I appreciated the utopian arrogance described.

I don't think we are going to get out of this. In every engineering failure there are numerous points along the way that the problem can be avoided. There is never one failure, but an accumulation of errors.

There is one consistency in all my professional investigations, and that was what I like to call the culture of failure. In a macro sense that is western civilization today.

[Travis McGee]

What you wrote reminded me of “Outlook Express” email. It is really nice, works very well, until it’s full and then it just stops dead and you can’t do much about it.

Apartments and high rises have a lot of advantages during times of peace and plenty. Look at pictures of the fighting in Syria and imagine what “apartment living” is like in the Damascus suburbs now. Hell on earth doesn’t come close. Water and “sanitation” are just two of their many problems. They also become sniper roosts and artillery shell magnets.