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Hurricane Sandy is dominating the news cycle as the massive storm prepares to make landfall along the Northeast and put thousands of people at risk. Stu, who lived in New York and Pennsylvania before moving to Texas, didn't express a lot of faith in his friends and co-workers still in the Big Apple to be properly prepared for the hurricane.
"Ever since, particularly since Katrina, government officials now show no possibility that anything else can happen except the worst tragedy because they know they can't be caught on record if something does go really wrong. They have to be making sure that everyone is as focused on the worst‑case scenario as possible," Stu said.
"And it kind of goes back to what Glenn always talks about. Glenn gets mocked constantly because he says have some food, have some water in case something goes wrong, yet as soon as a storm like this approaches the seaboard, there's absolutely nothing in the stores. People freak out, they run and they buy 9,000 loaves of bread and then no one can get any food, there's no batteries anywhere, none of the basics are available in the stores and all you have to do is instead of mocking people like Glenn when they say, 'Hey, have some food storage, have the basics available in case of a natural disaster or terrorist attack or something like that,' you could just do that stuff. You could still mock him if you want. But how about doing it at the same time so that this stuff doesn't happen?"
"You can't prepare for the show Revolution on NBC where the power goes out forever," he continued. "But you can prepare for, you know, a significant, maybe being out of work even for a few months, you're prepared for that. You know, I'm prepared in that you way of, like, for something like this where, you know, food, water, basics for a couple of weeks if you were to lose electricity or something, I'm probably prepared in that range."
"Manhattan is totally different. I know, I have a lot of friends who live in Manhattan. They don't even think about not having access to everything instantly. It's not even a consideration. Like, they don't even have tissues for tomorrow. Like, these guys, on their way home walking from an office to their apartment, they stop at CVS and buy their groceries, or Duane Reade which is another CVS type store. You know, they have the very, very basics and that's it."
"Their apartments are, like, 170 square feet. There's no storage at all. If this thing gets wiped out as far as, like, power and access to goods for a couple of weeks, these people are completely screwed."