Disasters: you are alone

Disasters: you are alone:

The images that resulted from hurricane Haiyan, in the Philippines, are devastating. It is hard to believe one force of nature could have such an effect. Not that the images represent something more terrible than those of Katrina, or Sandy or, Puket or for that matter, any natural disaster.  As humans we live with nature and we understand the contract we have with it.  We know its power, we know its unpredictability and we know we can’t stop it. Although it thrills us most days with the sheerness of its beauty we also accept it can plow us under whenever it wants.

Many of us live with the anxiety, whether during specific times of the year or throughout the year that comes with earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis or typhoons, often that include residual floods, fires and always a total sense of chaos. We know the harshness of nature can, and will, hit us when we least expect it and we accept that no protocol differentiates where it occurs, who gets hit and who gets spared.  There are no entitled people, no political consideration and no priority. Nature is the quintessential democracy. Natural disasters are a part of our lives. We live with them, respect them and can do nothing about them.

But, and I mean BUT in a big way, there are things we have to know about all of them. Let’s call them the axioms of natural disasters.

First we must recognize we are alone. The moment they hit the first thing we do is protect ourselves. We can never be in the right place. There is no such place. We have to depend on instantaneous instincts to keep ourselves alive.  Since there are generally no warnings it is imperative we first secure our own survivability, then think about family and friends, but not until we are protected.

Second there will be no quick solution. For a period of time, 24 hours up to one or two weeks, we have to survive on our own or we will not survive at all.

Normally when we get hurt and go to the ER there we find doctors, nurses, medicines and help to care for our wounds. When tens of thousands of us have the same injuries, the same medical needs, at the same moment there will never be enough doctors, nurses or medications to cover us all.

Third, we will be faced with virtually no communication, no power and little or no means of coping. Phones won’t work, there be no email, texting or cell service. For a society that seems incapable, in good times, of surviving a few minutes disconnected from our mobile devices we will find ourselves in a serious, unnatural environment. 

History has proven that many with guns will take to the streets shooting, stealing, raping and assaulting whoever gets in their way. Looting is a given. No store will be safe. The facilities with food and water will go first, followed quickly by any enterprise that dispenses drugs, then virtually all stores will be looted of everything as though someone really needs, and can use, a television in the midst of an unthinkable powerless world. But the stores are there, unprotected and those who don’t care will avail themselves of whatever they want to take.  Think about stores that sell guns and ammunition. Who gets to these first?

There will be no first responders, no authority and virtually no rules nor law. Often roads will disappear, neighborhoods will lose their boundaries, power lines will be down and gas valves will be open only intensifying the threat of total personal annihilation.

Over time order will replace the chaos. Needed supplies will arrive with those nearest the supply lines first followed, at the end, by the outliers. The injured will be cared for, the dead buried. Finally the personal lives of everyone involved will be rebuilt with borrowed money, the good will of neighbors and the kindness of strangers around the world who simply want to help.

Very few, if any, of the law breakers will be prosecuted and very few lessons will actually be learned.  The survivor’s lives will begin to return to normal with memories of horror welded into their souls.

 This is not a fantasy. This at any moment can be reality. All of us are vulnerable to the    everyday threat of natural disasters.   We can provide for our own survival by accepting that it could happen to us and that we have a plan in the event that it does.  There are questions that have to be asked first.

Could we live for a week or two without phones, stores, and roofs over our heads? Could we stay warm, fed and mobile? Do we have the tools to free someone buried? Could we stop the bleeding, apply the tourniquet, lower the fever, and repair the fracture? Could we protect what we have from renegades who will operate without law, even though we ourselves don’t have guns? Is there a plan in place for how to connect with family and friends who live up the street, across town or on the other side of the country?

These are not random questions. We all know neighbors who could live as such for months based on their own skills but for most of the rest of us these are unfamiliar skills that might be essential only one time in our lives. What will we do if we need them and don’t have them?

The answer lies in getting ready now and praying we never need to use them. Don’t ever be fooled: We are alone. 

NFL LOCKER ROOMS:

In a piece written in the LA Times on November 12^th Neal Gabler speaks to how the NFL locker rooms are out of touch with the rest of the world. While I can’t say I completely disagree with Neal Gabler, although it would be a first, I do agree with the concept of manliness equals physicality. As young men we all thought that somehow our only option to harassment, when push came to shove, was through a show of force. As we got older we learned there are many ways beyond physical to face adversity.

I don’t feel anyone in any workplace situation should be confronted with physical nor emotional pain that is not tolerable. That level of tolerance has to be defined by the one receiving the harassment and that can, and will, vary from one person to another. Some of us are thinner skinned than others. Fine, but that is the way it is in the real world. But I also feel a locker is a different work place, a different environment. It is not an office. Offices do not huddle up before the day and rally to motivate each other to victory; offices do not think the way teams think.  Offices are not judged solely on the basis of 16 days of work. To equate a locker room with a normal work place is naïve, although many offices could probably learn a lot from team locker rooms about teamwork, goals, effort, cooperation, and sacrifice etc., characteristics that have all but been eliminated by lawyers from most office environments but thrive in NFL locker rooms.

Lockers are for teams and teams need to build a team characteristic. The strength of any team is developed when each member of the team willingly submits their ego to the team. There is no individual on the team. The team wins and loses together. When the team has a collective ego, separate from the individual members of the team, it is like having a 12th player on the field in football, a 6^th on the court in basketball etc. The extra team member is invisible, cannot be defended against and is the difference between winning and losing. The team is defined by this characteristic. All members of the team have to buy into this concept.

One only has to look at a winning team. There are no black players, nor white players, nor Hispanics, or Presbyterians. There are only teammates, all of which have a job to do and if done properly then they win. As a team.   I find the NFL a great model against the very concept of racism. Win and they all get more money, more rewards, more of everything and they each know they won’t win without the others on the team. Color and everything else be damned. Just do your job.

In the NFL today management has more interest in marketing the game than in the game. They want to sell NFL merchandise to women, women journalists now have to be in the locker rooms and on the sidelines interviewing coaches and players all so the NFL gets more women as viewers. Maybe a softer thought process to the game will attract more female viewers, maybe the game is too rough so they devise ways to hamper how players hit each other. While it is a fact that the average player today is bigger, stronger, faster and probably smarter than their counterparts of decades ago it is also a fact that the physical relativity of one player to another today is the same as it has always been, they are all bigger, faster and stronger. By hampering how a player hits another player by fines and penalties makes a player hesitate. Any one playing sports knows hesitation is a killer. It has to be all or nothing.

Head injuries have to be recognized and dealt with by professionals in the medical community. Unfortunately concussions will be part of the game yet no one should be subject to a concussion and then expected to go back into the game. There are probably better helmet technologies and there are other solutions no doubt on the horizon, but the answer does not lie in asking players to play unnaturally, which is not to say dirty.

If a locker room is a place where camaraderie is established and they need hazing to create it then have at it. No one should be injured or hampered from performing at their top level through in- locker room high jinks. Any player who violates those principles hurts their team and they should be shunned by their teammates for preventing the team for putting their best effort on the field.

People like to watch hard-hitting football. It is a physical and sometimes violent game. Those who play it know all the caveats and yet love what they are doing. Us, on the sidelines, who don’t play, but love to watch, should not suggest how they ought to play the game nor should we carry on the way we have for the last few weeks because something we don’t understand took place in a place we don’t understand yet we feel qualified to solve. We don’t and we shouldn’t.