This is a close approximation to what we saw from the vantage point of Westwood and UCLA during the Los Angeles Riots just after the Rodney King verdict. Plumes of smoke in the distance. Were they getting closer? Was that Beverly Hills on fire or West Hollywood? What would happen if any rioters tried to come up through Westwood itself? Would the Los Angeles Police stop them? What about the National Guard? None of my roommates or friends wanted to speak these questions out loud, but that’s what I was thinking.
We also saw these images on TV:
Looting, beating and burning. Chaos. Uncontrolled, unbounded, senseless and mindless chaos. Okay, maybe the looting wasn’t mindless. But the violence and the fire-setting were, to my eyes, just pent up rage being released. I didn’t condone it or agree with it, but I understood what was going on. The problem came when I started to imagine what might happen if it continued to rage out of control. What would stop the rioters and firebugs from taking out there anger all over town, including the part of town that I, my girlfriend, my good friends and classmates and my place of residence were? Would I end up beaten to a pulp like Reginald Denny who we saw on TV? Would we be killed or burned or just scared by the rampaging mobs? We holed up in the dorm at UCLA or our apartment in heavily populated Westwood. I suppose we thought that there was more safety in numbers. There certainly was no thought of stocking up on guns or food. We hadn’t planned ahead for any of that. At least no one I knew had. So we sat and watched things unfold on our TV. I couldn’t shake the notion, even then, that the LAPD and later the National Guard were letting the rioters take out the bulk of their anger and frustration on the “lesser” parts of town and that if anything really serious ever took place up our way (which just happened to be nestled next to both Bel Air and Beverly Hills), that the rioters would all of a sudden run into a force that would stop them from proceeding using any means necessary. Ultimately, we were safe because we were close to the rich folks. I don’t know if that was true, as it turned out – I did hear later that there was damage in Westwood only six or eight blocks from where I lived – but the idea obviously stuck with me because I made it a centerpiece of my novel Fortress Beverly Hills: http://bit.ly/byMrxm.
Fast forward seven and a half years. The next time I really thought about prepping was in the months leading up to January 1, 2000. My wife and I were living in San Rafael, California in a one bedroom apartment :I was working at UC San Francisco as a computer programmer. As the only computer-savvy person in my division, I was tasked with preparing the computers for the year 2000 changeover. To be honest, I had no idea what I was doing and even as 01/01/00 approached I still was not at all confident that what I had done was sufficient to protect us. I was pretty sure that anything that could go wrong with our computers and data could be repaired in the new year, but I wondered…. If I was feeling unsure of how ready the computers were in my office, what about the people asked to do the same job with some of the more important systems out there? What about the transportation systems, the medical infrastructure, the police? What if any of those systems shut down at midnight on New Year’s Eve and couldn’t get back online? My imagination was running wild with unpleasant scenarios. One was that the nation’s air traffic control systems, which I had heard were woefully out-of-date, would go down and no airplanes were able to fly. Airports full of hungry, cranky people sleeping on floors and uncomfortable chairs. Travelers stranded far from home with no knowledge of when or how they would get back to their families.
Another scenario was that the police would be crippled and unable to function due to outdated dispatching and crime-fighting systems. Combine that idea with the notion that the traffic lights could go haywire. Who would ensure the nation’s roads and cities were safe for travel if the police were shut down? And would gridlock trap everyone in place, unable to move to safety or avoid hazardous situations or people?
How should we prepare for these imagined scenarios or any others we hadn’t conjured up? We didn’t have a stocked up pantry, weapons or protection in our little apartment. Our solution was simple. We went to my in-laws in Santa Rosa. We knew they had a full pantry and a well with fresh water. They had extra room for us if we needed to stay for longer than just the night of New Year’s Eve. And it was geographically removed from the great masses of the San Francisco Bay Area. As midnight fell and the following morning emerged, we watched carefully for any signs that things had gone terribly wrong.
As it turned out, Y2K was a false alarm. But my mind became alert to the kind of disasters that could shut our system down either temporarily or permanently.
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