The Crypto-Gram is on my monthly reading list when it comes out, and I saw his comments on worse case scenarios. I was reminded of my younger brother. He lives outside Lubbock, and he's convince there'll be a suitcase nuclear bomb, so he's bough a year's worth of food from the local dehydrated survival place (at least he's spending his money locally). I asked him why he though Lubbock was on the terrorists' list, and he said he expects a suitcase nuclear bomb in LA or San Francisco and the fallout will drift over Lubbock. He's serious.

I pointed out the size of a suitcase nuke, but he's emotionally invested in his belief of a suitcase nuke in California destroying life as he knows it in Lubbock. The facts of fallout reaching Lubbock in life-destroying amounts from California are of no interest to him.

He's much more likely to get hit by a tornado, more likely to suffer a blizzard, so I hope all that dehydrated food gets some use, although I don't know where he'll get the water if his house is wiped out in a tornado. Or where he'll find a pot to cook in.

C'est la vie.