Board the bus please..or else

Discussion in 'Tin Foil Hat Lounge' started by Minuteman, Sep 22, 2007.


  1. Minuteman

    Minuteman Chaplain Moderator Founding Member

    This is dated material but I just had the time to download these pics and put this post together.

    There was a recent discussion here about forced relocation. I'm not dredging up an old argument here. Forget the what would or could precipitate it argument. The logistical possibility has been proven.

    I was leaving South Texas several weeks ago, a couple of days before hurricane Dean IIRC, was due to hit. The forecasts kept moving it farther and farther south. It eventually made landfall in central Mexico. But at one time they thought it might come directly at Brownsville, Texas.

    The Texas Governer had issued a voluntary evacuation order and President Bush had made a "pre-emptive" disaster declaration.

    When I left, the FEMA presence was well established and the radio was reporting that if it looked like the hurricane was going to hit Texas that the evacuation order would be made mandatory.

    From Zapata to Brownsville, the news stated that there were an estimated 1.5 million people that would be forced to leave.

    I wondered how they could evacuate so many people. I soon learned the answer.

    As I started heading North I saw in the South bound lanes convoy after convoy of busses. Each convoy contained between 20 to 100 buses each. Mostly school buses but quite a few tour buses also. Each convoy was followed by a convoy of National Guard troops. With 20-30 vehicles. Mostly duece and a half trucks. Every other one was empty, I assumed to haul luggage, and every other one was full of troops.

    I watched line after line of these convoys pass by for over a hundred miles. All the way to San Antonio. The San Antonio news station had a story about 3000 buses being stationed there awaiting orders to move south. The report stated that any voluntary evacuees should go to a "closed" military base on the outskirts that would be utilized to house evacuees.

    I heard similar reports when I went through Austin later that day.I stopped just outside of San Antonio to have lunch. I purposely selected a place where I could watch the interstate. I got a hamburger and parked in the parking lot where I could watch the traffic going South. In 15 minutes I counted over 300 buses that came by.

    I gave up counting. At my best guess I estimated that I personaly saw, in just a few hours of one morning, two days before the storm, at least 5000 - 7000 busses pass me by.

    When I returned to the valley I was told that every school, convention center, and fair ground parking lots were full of buses.

    A little calculation and to my best estimate. With what I saw and what the news was reporting, the government had in place the resources to evacuate at least 3/4 of a million people. And that is a conservative estimate I'm sure. But considering that a large number would have left before the order went mandatory then that number would have probably been sufficient. And they were reporting that if the order went mandatory that they would be stopping all civilian traffic to prevent gridlock.

    So the idea that a population could not be forcibly relocated on orders (for whatever reason) from the government is not viable. It is entirely possible.

    If they could, in just a few days, mobilize the resources to evacuate 1.5 million people then they could certainly evacuate nearly any city in the country if given enough time to mobilize.

    Now I am not saying that there was anything sinister going on. With the aftermath of Katrina still fresh in memory, I am sure that they were ready to err on the side of caution. But it still gave me an eerie feeling watching all the resources mobilize and the news stating that the order could be made mandatory, and NG troops being deployed to enforce it.

    What if there were folks who didn't want to go? Would they have been manhandled into the busses? Would they have been tasered into submission?

    Scary stuff folks.
    school busses.JPG tour.JPG mix.JPG horizon.JPG h2.JPG h3.JPG NG 1.JPG NG.JPG
     
  2. sheen_estevez

    sheen_estevez Monkey+++

    It's one thing to move into an area that is going to get hit with a disaster such as a hurricane, you have an idea it's coming and can move the resources in to help. Katrina was bad and showed big holes in our .gov ability to react to a disaster, more reason to be prepared on your own, of course people who were prepared we not the ones we saw on the news after Katrina.

    Can .gov move a city, sure they can, history shows that, Hitler, Saddam, Stalin, these people wiped out millions, under the idea of relocation in many cases.
    We were watching a show on WWII the other day and my wife still can't figure out how these people let this happen. Start by moving small amounts of people, at some point you will be moving large amounts of people. Who are the first people affected, hmm, let's see, you have to register guns in the state you live in, or you need a CCW license, or you get a hunting license .gov now has a list of armed citizens among them, sent the troops there first. Then figure out who is all on Survialmonkey.com and find out where they are located because this group needs to be put down really quick, and we can't let them get together! [beat] Don't think the government doesn't have a plan to relocate the masses, they have plans for everything else, one can only hope that when this all starts you have the resources to vanish on your own!
     
  3. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

    I truly do not mind the concept of moving large numbers of people out of the way of something like Katrina or other messy situation. My problem is with "mandatory." Therein lays the rub, to resist to the point of armed confrontation, or be a sheep, or something in between. If I think I should leave, I will. If I'm willing to take the chance, I should be allowed to do so. Key word to me is "choice" and it is mine to make based on my evaluation of my situation, including the preps I have made. And, in my mind, there is no reason for any dot gov organization, large or small, to know or be allowed to evaluate my state of readiness.

    (If they think we here are a threat, they already know who and where we are.[winkthumb])

    Sorry about the hijack back to reality, bad tempered this morning (more so than usual.) MM is in a good position to see things, and I'm not too sure that the TFHL is the right place for the thread. Never saw the busses on the news, nor the troops mentioned.
     
  4. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    Thanks"G", again not to rehash old material but one of the katrina vids that struck me was the one where the old woman has armed andcamo'd authorities of somecolor; show up banging on her door. She protests; She showed the police "look I've got my pantry full and all this bottled water ..and I've got my pi-"(stol)..here"AT WHICH POINT 6 BIG "COPS SIT ON HER RELIEVE HER OF HER FIREARM producing massive bruises)and remove her from the house..
    Law?? who's law? Rights??
    fuggeddaboutdem youse "er" livin inda past...,
    its Just wrong
    And if you think you're gonna shoot your way out against a bunch of heavily armed and supported "guardo's"
    don't forget your tac barrow and your ciener.22conversion kit.
     
  5. Blackjack

    Blackjack Monkey+++

    Good post MM. I remember the thread that spawned this, and I think you pretty much just hammered your point home. It can be done, it HAS been done.
     
  6. monkeyman

    monkeyman Monkey+++ Moderator Emeritus Founding Member

    I have thought a bit on ths topic. While I live in a rural area which I figure would likely be the last areas to be forcibly removed under a mandatory evacuation, I have no doubt that they could and if the whim hit them would come through to evac the area and if its 'mandatory' they would use force to implement it if you didnt want to go.

    I need to go back through and find the info again and reprint it since the copy I had is missing, but what I came up with as a good way to hopefuly avoid the problem of confrontation if I didnt want to go was to tell them in their own language I was already gone. You can get the code key for how FEMA marks buildings they have/are cleared/clearing and those marks tell others if it has been searched, saftey of the structure, number of people/bodies inside and if searchers/personel are there or completed and gone. Well my thought was if you had spray paint on hand and the code keythen you could make sure to avoid drawing attention (no lights at night unless ALL windows were inconspicuously TOTALY blacked out, no generators, no fires to make smoke, no loud noise, etc.) untill SURE personel had cleared the area and LEFT and go out and mark your home as haveing already been cleared, vacant, no bodies, no reason to go in, and unsafe to enter.

    Now they come along and it appears that others with them have already taken care of it and nothing needs to be done there and unlike most of the other places around (most likely) it is hazardous to enter so would be a bad place to stop for lunch, to 'resuply' or make 'camp' for the night if stayng in the field. So they pass by (hopefuly) and (hopefuly) move on haveing already been 'told' by 'cooperateing personel' that you have already been removed.

    There would of coarse be possibilities of SNAFUs with the idea like if the code key had been adapted, the paint was a standard color for the op and you had/used the wrong one, they didnt believe it or checked anyway, etc., but I figure it would be a good first level to try to avoidhaveing to deal with storm troopers that have been ordered to clear the area of all ocupants if you wanted to and were prepaired to stay.
     
  7. sheen_estevez

    sheen_estevez Monkey+++

    I agree with you, if you choose to stay then it's your problem and really only your business. Again, being an active member of this site you are 10 steps or more above the average citizen as far as dealing with the situation at hand. I also agree there are times that people should be "relocated" but it's these people who are in no way ready, willing or able to deal with the situation at hand. Living in a rural area I feel I have a better chance to just vanish and not be bothered by anyone until the situation blows over. Just hope we never have to deal with that.
     
  8. Minuteman

    Minuteman Chaplain Moderator Founding Member

    Ghrit is absolutely right. There is nothing wrong with relocating people out of harms way. And even the mandatory order could be justified. If you stay behind your on your own, but it doesn't work that way. If things get too bad and now your trapped then somebody has to come rescue you.

    We wouldn't just sit back and say "Hey, it was your choice, deal with it." We would be forced to send in resources and risk lives to rescue those who thought they were prepared.

    But therin lies the problem. If they can do it for humane reasons now, they can do it for more sinister reasons later. But it would be for our own good, of course.
    Any deprivation of our liberties will come as a helping hand.

    And my tin foil hat side couldn't help but wonder, watching all of this unfold, if it wasn't a dry run for something coming in the future. A lot of firsts. First time a president ever "pre-emptively" declared a state of emergency. First time a massive mobilization was undertaken in advance of a remote possibility that it would be needed.

    It could have been nothing more than erring on the side of caution. Or it could have been the precursor of things to come.
    And the lack of reporting on the news seemed odd too.
     
  9. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

    The missing news stories are the most obscure part of it. Or, more likely, something went way wrong on the exercise, and TPTB are embarrassed. Like, for example, the buses couldn't get out of town for lack of fuel for a day or two. We may never know.
     
  10. Minuteman

    Minuteman Chaplain Moderator Founding Member

    I was playing devils advocate. The rationale was supposed to be the governments reasoning.

    They wouldn't sit by with people sitting on top of their houses on CNN and say "Hey it was their choice to stay". They would be forced by PC politics to send rescuers in.

    That would be their justification for the mandatory order.

    If it was me I would be like Monkeyman. No one would be home when they came to my house. Then after the door was "marked" I would return and barricade in.

    And what bothered me was what would happen if they evacuated the population from the border? The illegals would have a wide open door and plenty of places to plunder when they came over. The people wouldn't have anything to return to, even if the storm never hit!
     
  11. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    Once you're in the system on the bus: Problem is you just don't know where the bus will stop..(remember "arbeit macht frei"?)
     
  12. Tracy

    Tracy Insatiably Curious Moderator Founding Member

    • A single diagonal slash indicates that a search in the building is in progress. This is used to indicate searcher locations and to avoid duplication of the search effort.
    • An X inside a square means "Dangerous - Do Not Enter!"
    • An X with writing around it means "Search Completed", with the time (and the date if appropriate) written above the X, the team conducting the search written to the left side of the X, the results of the search (number of victims removed, number of dead, type of search such as primary or secondary) written below the X, and any additional info about the structure to the right of the X.[​IMG]
    INSARAG - the United Nations International Search & Rescue Advisory Group marking system:
    • A 1 meter by 1 meter square with G or N (for go or no-go), the team conducting the search, the date and time of the start of the search, and the date and time of the completion of the search written inside.
    • The number of live victims removed is written to the left of the square. The number of dead victims found is written to the right of the square. Persons unaccounted for and/or location of other victims is written below the square.
    • Additional information on hazards pertaining to the structure is written above the square.
    • Any reference to building floor numbers use ground as G, 1 as the first floor above G, B1 as the first floor below G, and so forth. This is contrasted with US floor numbering, that starts with 1 as the ground level.
    • INSARAG marking squares are usually written in day-glo orange.
     
  13. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    Ingenious idea for a natural disaster; but arm chair quarter backing during an "insurrection" Asa ".gov trooper" I would be driving my national guard bradley fighting vehicle (or tossing WP incindieries) through any hidey holes that may provide cover or concealment to "insurgents" flowing in and out of my area...I know,totally different threat level...
     
  14. Jonas Parker

    Jonas Parker Hooligan

    It's too bad our government can't mobilize those buses to ship 12,000,000 illegal aliens back to Mexico...
     
  15. ColtCarbine

    ColtCarbine Monkey+++ Founding Member

    [ditto] but they need to get new voters from somewhere, most folks Democrat and Republican are tired of the two-sided coin.
     
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