Saturday, September 3, 2011

Wild Animals in the Long Emergency

When thinking about the times we live in, and the road that I believe we are heading down on, one of the things I think about most are the fate of my pets.  My family has a dog, but I'm really not too attached to him.  Not that I don't care for him or love dogs, his personality is just totally at odds with mine.  He is very loud, and easily ruffled.  But I love my cats though, especially Lucky, who is an American Shorthair.  It would kill me if we were faced with not having enough food for them; I couldn't imagine setting them loose, especially since they are declawed and would be defenseless in the outdoors. 

Here is a good pair of articles from someone who is a trapper and lives off the land.  He believes that when the proverbial shit hits the fan, people in the cities (and I presume the suburbs as well, although he only mentions cities), will let their animals go.  These animals will meet up with other animals and form packs of anywhere between 6 to 100.  He offers an elaborate and detailed synopsis of animal psychology and pack mentality that is really quite fascinating.  His general point, and one that the most squeamish or those who love animals will probably want to avoid, is that these animals will number in the tens of millions and must be dealt with in a collapse scenario.

In this case, a worry of mine would be that a significant portion of these animals would carry rabies.  Obviously, vaccinations would be limited or completely unavailable, so rabies would be easy to spread among other animals and humans, until each eventual carrier would die.  It's kind of a zombie-lite scenario, although it would be very fitting in an economic/social upheaval.  




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