Bugging out of London

[bealers]

Harry Morgan, BitSlice10101, welcome and thanks for your input.

Interesting point about the ESRs, I assume they won't have changed much.

As I've said previously, I don't forsee overnight shut-down of the entire city and national transport network, but a small grab pack with tent, map and some basics sounds a good idea.

Cyclestreets.net tells me it's 175 miles home, reckon I'll give the journey a go in March when the days start getting longer. I'll start it half way through the day to make it more realistic.

[DominicJ]

You could blow the bridges to break up the north and south, but the only "defendable" area in London looks to be the isle of dogs.
Property prices are off the chart, but how much is council housing for the permanantly unemployed?

Kensington and Chelsea is unlikely to be a pleasant place if law and order breaks down.
Unless they all hire armed guards of course.

[BitSlice10101]

Interesting post, BitSlice10101. Could you tell us what the military action you describe might be attempting to achieve?

Thanks Biff,

There are a number of reasons



The intent logistically would be to secure important M & A roads which are supply lines around and into the City.

More importantly to stop any sort of exodus out of London, this would be devastating to the outer counties and the rest of the country who will have enough on their plate to deal with.

Early on, potential looters trying to come into London and join the party in theory will also be stopped.


Inside the M25 there are two very important Airports, Heathrow and Gatwick they have long runways for heavy military transports used for airlifts, evacuation(V.I.P.) and eventual humanitarian aid if it ever comes.
Airports are everything for the military. They need those runways and main routes to and from.

Any type of shortage or prolonged civil unrest inside London could trigger an exodus out of the City and that won't be allowed to happen because of the knock on effects to the rest of the country and loss of control for the government.

[Tarrel]

"Kensington and Chelsea is unlikely to be a pleasant place if law and order breaks down."

Marauding Sloane-Ranger "Patsy" types tramping on faces in order to grab the last bottle of Bollinger from Fortnums (shudder!)

[BitSlice10101]

T.A. Groups have a lot of stores of armouries, munitions including heavy weapons and vehicles at various locations INSIDE and around London.

See, I remember the mad scramble to try and buy ammunition in the run up to the first gulf war, some poor bugger(s) had to ring round every metalogy factory in the country to see if they could do the hardening process.
Men still crossed the border with 5 rounds.

Maybe the situation has improved since then.....

The Iraq and early Afghanistan situation equipment wise was rock bottom and a scandal.

Due to those lessons learnt & billions of pounds later and we have a completely modernised well trained Regular Armed Forces and T.A. Its still not what it should be but......

Originally the T.A. was never intended to be used short of WWIII

[BitSlice10101]

A cordon could be permeable. Some are allowed through other aren't.

In view of my emerging beliefs about PO and collapse in general I bugged out when I was twelve, may have been a bit early but better safe than sorry

The second paragraph may be stretching the truth a little

Yes a few people could Sneak through, not sure how welcoming other people will be in trying to get to your destination.

ps. Look out for those Drones ..!

[clv101]

All seems like very good reasons not to live/work in London. Population density too high leading to fragile stability. When it works, it works, but if the supporting framework collapses, London has a very long way to fall.

How does London cope with a multi-day power blackout? No lighting, no comms, no water/sewage, to retail... How may day's food and drinking water is available within the M25?

[adam2]

All seems like very good reasons not to live/work in London. Population density too high leading to fragile stability. When it works, it works, but if the supporting framework collapses, London has a very long way to fall.

How does London cope with a multi-day power blackout? No lighting, no comms, no water/sewage, to retail... How may day's food and drinking water is available within the M25?

Not very well !
The last large scale power cut in London was only for about 30 minutes, in daylight and still resulted in chaos.
Food supplies are probably about 2 days.
Bottled water maybe a few days
Tap water, might be a week or two depending on the reliability of standby generating plant at water works.
Sewage disposal, generally has an overflow to the nearest water course in case of failure of treatment plant. Some low lying areas would flood with sewage though.
Cell phone service would be very limited initialy as most base stations have no backup power (a few do) Cellphone service might actually improve after a few days as demand falls due to handset batteries running down. After a week or so, no service as standby generators run out of fuel.
Copper exchange lines should work for some days, until the fuel at telephone exchanges runs out.
Satellite phones should be fine.
Fibre optic service would probably cease immediatly.
Broadcast radio should continue, at least on AM.
TV might continue.
Trains and tube would cease immediatly the power fails.
Buses might run for a day or so, but dont count on it.

[DominicJ]

BitSlice
Fair enough, if you say the UK has a huge stockpile of small arms ammo, I'm prepared to accept you sound like you know what you're talking about.


But with what we're going through in Afghanistan at the moment, you have to wonder how quickly its turned over, and of course, will there be a commitment to maintain those stocks in the long term?

[BitSlice10101]

BitSlice
Fair enough, if you say the UK has a huge stockpile of small arms ammo, I'm prepared to accept you sound like you know what you're talking about.


But with what we're going through in Afghanistan at the moment, you have to wonder how quickly its turned over, and of course, will there be a commitment to maintain those stocks in the long term?

Seeing as the UK are the 5th largest arms trader in the world, China is 6th. Manufacturing capacity should be there, even stocks originally intended for sale could be re-directed and used

[energy-village]

Interesting discussion.

Out of curiosity I looked up how many people live within the M25 area. According to Wikipedia (so it must be true), the M25 roughly marks out 'Greater London'.

In July 2010 Greater London had an official population of 7,825,200, 'making it the most populous municipality in the European Union' and accounting for 12.5% of the UK population living on just 0.6% of the land area.

The Greater London Urban Area is the second-largest in the EU with a population of 8,278,251 while London's metropolitan area is the largest in the EU with an estimated total population of between 12 million and 14 million.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London#cit ... _area_1-28
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_commuter_belt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_London_Defence_Ring

Following the sources back many of these estimates seem to derive from the 2001 census. We may have to wait for Lockheed Martin to finish processing the 2011 data before we have a more up-to-date idea.

[Ludwig]

It might be a mistake just to consider London.

The other night I was driving on a flyover through Greater Manchester at night. Suburban lights as far as you could see, for dozens of miles in all directions. There must be a similar population to London living in that urban area, which now runs from Liverpool to the Pennines without a real break.

With a mixture of awe and horror I took in what an overpopulated country we live in.

[Tarrel]

"Tap water, might be a week or two depending on the reliability of standby generating plant at water works. "

Remember Tewksbury? During the floods of 2008(?), a pumping station was flooded, very quickly disabling the domestic water supply for, IIRC, over a week. Pictures on TV of Army delivering bottled water to collection stations in sports fields, which many people couldn't reach.

[CountingDown]

Harry Morgan, BitSlice10101, welcome and thanks for your input.

Interesting point about the ESRs, I assume they won't have changed much.

As I've said previously, I don't forsee overnight shut-down of the entire city and national transport network, but a small grab pack with tent, map and some basics sounds a good idea.

Cyclestreets.net tells me it's 175 miles home, reckon I'll give the journey a go in March when the days start getting longer. I'll start it half way through the day to make it more realistic.

I'm reckoning at best 3-4 days back to Mcr (190 miles) longer when I work out how to dodge all the towns / ESRs / supply depots. Have two safehouses on the way potentially too.

[energy-village]

The other night I was driving on a flyover through Greater Manchester at night. Suburban lights as far as you could see, for dozens of miles in all directions. There must be a similar population to London living in that urban area, which now runs from Liverpool to the Pennines without a real break.

With a mixture of awe and horror I took in what an overpopulated country we live in.

I suppose we've increased in population because the available resources grew; we're like rabbits on the moor.