>>Wow! To have been present for all of those major events, you must be the unluckiest person on Earth. Don't stand near me in a lighthing storm! <<<br><br>Nah.. in most ways, I've been extremely fortunate.<br><br>Almost none of the events I named made me feel that I was in personal jeopardy- in most cases, it was something going on "over there", not something I was in the middle of. The few times in my life where I did feel that I was in serious danger were not incidents that made the news.<br><br>The point was that I've seen the infrastructure break down, maybe more than most folks. Sometimes it's widespread, more often it's very local, but it's happening constantly on some scale, somewhere. My experience hasn't led me to trust the infrastructure much, and that certainly applies to a long commute. Urban threats are different, but they are none the less real. Most people, though, are more likely to be prepared in the wilderness than they are for any serious problem during their normal working day.<br>