drove from Cedar City, UT to Tehachapi,CA last weekend - fast business trip;

between 11:30 pm and 1:30 am Friday evening: bumper to bumper traffic from the LA Basin going towards Las Vegas; one steady stream of solid headlights - Barstow to Vegas;

between 1:30 am and 4:30 am Saturday morning, on C-58 the 18-wheelers were bumper to bumper headed South-east from the Central Valley toward Barstow; never saw so many trucks in my life - all at one time; all going the same direction, all whizzing 65 mph the opposite direction;

coming back: left Tehacapi about 1:30p midday Saturday; Mohave, Barstow, Baker, Stateline, Vegas, the Gorge, arrived New Harmony about 8:30p.

I-15 East-bound from Barstow to Vegas: weekend players bumper-to-bumper 80 mph!; some of the worst Interstate Freeway I've ever driven; terrible road condition; cars, trucks - anything/everything overheated, pulled off the side of the road; between Barstow and Baker there is a stretch of freeway shoulder and median that is literally ankle-deep in tire carcasses!

Observations:

1) the traffic leaving the LA basin to 'play in Vegas' on Friday and Saturday nights makes I-15 North-bound totally risky; RH slow-lane full of trucks and campers going 55; middle lane full of cars going 80; LH passing-lane almost full of yuppies doing 90-120 darting in and out...

anyone who thinks that they will leave the LA basin at the last minute for Las Vegas, Southern Utah, Colorado or other parts East or North to escape a major calamity in the Basin is surely mistaken; that stretch of road will be SO full SO fast, no one will get anywhere; the perfect military choke-point...

case in point:

a friend was going to LA from here two weeks ago; other cars were heating up on the grade just West of Stateline (30 miles or so South of Las Vegas); their clutch started to heat up; all the CHP wreckers were already dispatched but they were able to sweet talk the dispatcher [from a Callbox] to get a wrecker to tow them up the hill: there were so many cars overheating and clutches burning in all the West-bound lanes, it took 4 1/2 hours being towed by a CHP wrecker to go the 6 miles to the top of the hill!!! my friend's comments:" oh, that's the way this stretch of I-15 is ALL THE TIME - nothing unusual"...

2) the California Central Valley supplies too many people with food and fibre; that produce is transported by truck and rail to terminals in the LA Basin and the Bay Area; too many small events could disrupt that flow of produce enough to cause major shortages throughout the nation

3) when I lived in Vegas in the late 50's and 60's, talk was that trenchers were pre-positioned in the state road sheds at Baker to trench all lanes of I-15 to prevent emigre's from the LA Basin from leaving California... : neither Nevada nor Utah have the health and welfare infrastructures to cope with a mass influx of millions of Californians due to a major catastrophe; whether those trenchers are there or not I don't know - but I do know that it is too easy to totally cut-off the flow of traffic on a freeway from one point to another.

POINT : those who are not now relocated and who plan to do so, should do so soon.

3) late model cars with computer-controlled engines when working correctly, work very well, but when the computer modules heat-up excessively, those cars are dead! take heed in the choice of what you plan to drive for 'serious' travel.

still hoping for a 1.5 - but expecting an 8+ ...

FWIW

Perry

http://www.pdqnet.net/pjarnett

-- Perry Arnett (pjarnett@pdqnet.net), July 25, 1999

Answers

Perry--I'm staying put, but the same scenario will be EVERYWHERE! People trying to get out of the cities and into the hills where an extended family may be or where their second home lies. You have the highways and railways moving merchandise to warehouses to be distributed and trucked to it's final destination. IFSHTF, what worker would even try to make it to work to get the goods flowing? Warehouses will be left unsecured and gangs will infiltrate and empty them as fast as they were filled. Those goods will hit the black market and who knows how long food or any other merchandise will be in the stores? I'm no expert, but you can see the possibilities. Food, water and ammo, the three basics needs for survival.

-- lockandload (lockandload@lockandload.com), July 25, 1999.

Perry,

You're lucky to live in cear City! Less like a city and more like a small town...if I could swing it, that is where I would be. Compared to Cedar City, St.George is a moonscape!

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@It's ALL going away in January.com), July 25, 1999.

Perry,

You're lucky to live in Cedar City! Less like a city and more like a small town...if I could swing it, that is where I would be. Compared to Cedar City, St.George is a moonscape!

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@It's ALL going away in January.com), July 25, 1999.

Perry, you forget that Y2K starts in January and the desert heat is minimal.

-- freddie (freddie@thefreeloader.com), July 25, 1999.

Perry: Your point about Interstates as bottlenecks is well taken, no matter what time of year we're talking about. I recetnly drove from Boston to central Maine and back and made much the same observations. This is tourist season in New England, and even the side roads are bumper to bumper. A major urban population migration is pre-ordained to failure simply because the highways can't cope with that level of traffic. All it takes is one roadblock -- a jackknifed semi, two or three cars in an accident, or, as you imply, a purposely created obstacle -- and the situation will deteriorate very quickly.

-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), July 25, 1999.

Perry,

We don't need traffic jams to stop all travel. It requires only a few bullets:

Ma wrote me:

"Old Dr. Bork was in charge of the kindergarten. I asked him every day, for eight days, to examine you. Every day he said the same thing, tomorrow you could return to the kindergarten. Every day I told him that this was false. You had Nesselsucht and kept clutching your ear. I asked him to sign you over to the hospital, which he finally did eight days later."

And eight weeks too late.

Ma could not muster someone with a car until late in the evening to drive us to the hospital in Loerrach. ...the Fuehrer also confiscated private vehicles to help enlarge his Reich. At the junction of two highways a Nazi guard stopped us.

Fear and paranoia permeated the fatherland; blood covered the street, Dr. Wehrle's blood. He had passed through this checkpoint several times that day and shown his identification card to the guard. On his last trip through he sped past the sentry to help with the birth of another cannonball baby. Dutifully protecting his fatherland, this guard shot him.

The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night.

Now this guard would not let us pass but Ma insisted that I was very ill. He searched our car, babies must be checked, could be enemy agents. Ma became hysterical and showed him her fiery offspring. This convinced the astute sentry that I was very ill, so let us pass. She delivered me to the hospital and spent a sleepless night waiting."

-- Not Again! (Seenit@ww2.com), July 25, 1999.

Was it the pig guts that you ate that made you sick? Just curious.

-- curiousone (curiousone@curious.com), July 25, 1999.

Yes, we did upchuck. But the above event was years before.

-- Not Again! (Seenit@ww2.com), July 25, 1999.

K. Stevens :

talk to me...email is real

Perry

-- Perry Arnett (pjarnett@pdqnet.net), July 25, 1999.

My experience of living along the I15 corridor a few years back is that you were lucky. On most three-day weekends, in the middle of nowhere, that Interstate backed up for miles along with I40 where the two highways merged in Barstow. And in the opposite direction I15 would jam up because people had to shuffle lanes to make the split between the two highways. Accidents weren't required but made things more fun.

And again, this was only holiday traffic going to/from LA and Vegas or LA and the Colorado River. Add Y2K panic, oveloaded vehicles, a few breakdowns and you'll have people stuck out all over the Mojave Desert.

And while someone pointed out that extreme heat isn't present there in the winter, I will personally attest that it can get cold enough, very quickly after sundown, to kill people from hypothermia in less than one winter night. And if people are stuck out there in their cars they will find out why the Mojave is called a desert. Hot weather or cold, there is no appreciable water supply out there. The mountain resevoirs for San Bernardino and the pumping by upstream towns make the Mojave River nothing more than a funny name for a strip of sand across the desert. And that's the main water supply out there.

The upshot of this? If you're thinking to travel out of Southern California for Y2K, don't plan on waiting till the last minute. If you're must try that method, don't be foolish enough to try and take main roads. Go out now with a good map (DeLormes for example) and start learning the back roads and trails.

WW

PS: WW's hint; If all else fails, railroad access roads and 4-wheel drive. I could make it from San Bernardino to Vegas without driving on any paved road using the UP and Santa Fe railraods and a few unpaved county roads.

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), July 25, 1999.

In 1951 someone just returned from a security conference in LA passed the word to a group of us that plans were then in place to close state borders in the event of a nuclear attack, to prevent large- scale population movements that would destabilize surviving communities. These days this is called "triage".

-- Heard it (onthe@grapevine~.org), July 25, 1999.