A Legal Manual for an Apocalyptic New York

A Legal Manual for an Apocalyptic New York

www.nytimes.com

Quarantines. The closing of businesses. Mass evacuations. Warrantless searches of homes. The slaughter of infected animals and the seizing of property. When laws can be suspended and whether infectious people can be isolated against their will or subjected to mandatory treatment. It is all there, in dry legalese, in the manual, published by the state court system and the state bar association.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Doomsday clocks, Seed vaults, DUMB's, Continuity of government, the Georgia Guidestones, and so on. But what are we missing?

A "doomsday book", of course.

All the local, state, and federal employees need to know how to meet out justice after an apocalyptic event.

Forgive my cynicism, but after reading this article, it left a sour taste in my mouth. And once you read it, you'll see why.

On first thought, one might think a "doomsday book" might be a necessary evil. But at the same time, I can't help but feel it's quite timely as well.

And I'm sure New York isn't the first, nor will it be the last to have one of these.

www.nytimes.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I dunno. I'm having a problem with this. I guess it depends on the scale of the apocalypse, which kind of defeats the use of the word. This manual, and the attitude it represents, depends wholly on containability. In other words, this apocalypse (there's that word again) has to be small and limited for the manual to do any good. Just look at past experience. Remember that vast power outage in NYC many years ago? They called it "The Night of the Animals" because of all the looting. You can suspend all the laws you want, but the animals don't really care what the laws are.

In anything really large scale I have a hard time believing that "the authorities" would even try to stay on station. They just might tend to their families first, if they are alive to do it. I remember seeing a cartoon a few years ago. Two guys are out fishing in a small boat. In the distance is a big city with a couple of mushroom clouds emerging above it. One guy says to the other, "What does this mean? It means I don't have to retrun those DVDs to the library!"

so...if shtf this gives the power to...emergency services to do...pretty much anything they feel like...

I know your whole thing is "if your perceptive enough you can take measures to avoid" but this is rediculous, just kill us already?! lol...

good luck america.

ed: it makes me wonder why they want to rule over a smouldering ash pile instead of doing something creative. like, actually helping the human race for once...

reply to post by schuyler

You raise a good point schuyler. It kind of makes you think it's really written for this quote below:

Without mentioning that judges and other court officials themselves may be among the dead or injured, the manual says that when there is a shortage of court personnel, administrators can take any number of steps to keep the courts operating. It says they can hold multiple proceedings before a single judge, change rules of procedure and give priority to cases arising out of the emergency.

If the judges, or others are missing in action, we'll just appoint someone. Anyone.

ETA: I think you're right. In the event of a truly apocalyptic event. The book goes out the window.
Which makes this mostly beaureaucratic...

reply to post by Klassified


Our leaders would be remiss if they did NOT plan for emergency situations. Unfortunately, such legalese tends to allow some extremely loose definitions. ...eg., Define "attack."

...in the event of an attack, officials can control traffic, communications and utilities.

...about that kill switch.

It's interesting how many times the article uses the adjective "grim."

Well, it certainly is grim stuff. Personally Id rather have somebody at city-level authority thinking this stuff through. You basically have to make a doctrinal decision for yourself: in the event of a catastrophe, do you want to see the old mechanisms of basic daily life continue to function? If like me you come to the conclusion that this would be by far the best for most concerned, then it makes lots of sense to game out contingencies and establish protocols.

They issued post nuclear civilian survival guides in the cold war era too...