Read the book, one second after. They talk about making shallow graves in the golf course due to the fact that its easier digging by hand there. A person would need to dispose of a body right away to prevent any desease outbreak and the smell of decomp.

G'day M-P you are pretty spot on in what you think. Events that occurred in sever disasters like Katrina and Hati shows devastation on a localized level. Multiply that by a national or a step further - globally and your pretty much on your own.

When I was a kid - 'before the age of computers' (lol), I read a book called 'Lord of the Flies' it's about a bunch of school kids marooned on a tropical island, It starts with them trying to emulate the society they knew and came from and then, the turn around, and regression of becoming a tribal community ruled by the strongest. It left a lasting impression on me to this day.

As for your BOL - you can bet if you thought of it - so did others. It could become an adult version of 'Lord of the Flies'. Venturing back into cities in my opinion needs a risk assessment to be done; 'WHAT ARE THE RISKS?' compared to 'WHAT ARE THE GAINS?' 'WHAT WAS THE EVENT THAT LEAD TO THE CURRENT CRISIS'?

It's also a fair chance that someone has taken that risk before you have and everything and all resources would be depleted. I also think that with a population quoted of 32,000 there will be a high probability of groups forming and territories would also be claimed.
And YES - you should have an alternate filter system for water - I would be looking at more than one system. Regular water supplied through 'normal' channels would cease to work and treatment would also be out. All water found should be considered as dangerous - even that stream may have some nasty surprises of drowned corpses/animals upstream from where you are drawing your supply.

Basically everyone and everything should be considered a threat and a risk until shown or proven otherwise.
Then your chances will increase.
Try and find others that have the same ethics and standards - as yourself, this will be harder than you think, (a good way is to, start 'networking,' is on sites such as this, or community groups such as community gardens and such), as the human psyche operates on a different level once placed under a stressful level of change that is expected after a national/global disaster event.

To increase your chances it would be an advantage to bond together with others as a group with a common goal - to survive.

Good observations and good advice FN. I think that if it was really bad then it would be far worse that most of us could possibly imagine. There could easy be so many dead that burial would be a logistical impossibility. This would likely lease to a secondary culling through disease and pandemic. In the long run the only way that families would be able to survive would be to join a group.

Bodies can be an issue, but the other problem will be that people who bug out will end up camping near a body of water and in no time it will be contaminated by human waste through runoff. This happens time and time again all around the globe and the result is the spread of diseases such as cholera, etc.

With respect to the bodies...... you would be amazed at just how fast a human corpse will disappear in warm weather. They will be reduced to dried skin and bones a lot fast than you would believe just from natural breakdown and insects. Throw in a few predators scavenging and it wouldn't take many months before you could re-enter areas that had to be vacated due to rotting corpses. Even in buildings I have personally seen a couple of corpses that virtually 'melted' away in just two weeks.

In cold weather of course, with power gone, most bodies would freeze until spring. Water bodies would freeze over and people would be faced with melting snow or chopping through the ice for drinking water............... at least those who had a plan and survived would.

Packs of feral dogs would also likely be a huge problem.

When I was a kid - 'before the age of computers' (lol), I read a book called 'Lord of the Flies' it's about a bunch of school kids marooned on a tropical island, It starts with them trying to emulate the society they knew and came from and then, the turn around, and regression of becoming a tribal community ruled by the strongest. It left a lasting impression on me to this day.

I remember that book ( 😳 I still have it) I think it's also been made into a movie - not sure if it's available on DVD or just video though.....

For anyone interested, Wikibooks have a condensed version ...
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies

Yes we had to read that book in school too, back in the old UK.

I've heard of the book and am now feeling like a babe because it was way before my time in school 😆
Yes often when driving to town we come across road kill wallabies etc and in summer it only takes a couple of weeks before they are totally gone.

Your right all the corpses decay at the same rate - unfortunatly the time frame could be over an extended period of time from the first to the last in a pandemic.

True. I believe however that in the harsher climates the death curve will be a lot steeper than in more moderate climates. Severe cold and areas with extreme heat will see things happen a lot quicker. I also think that lots of people in urban areas, when faced with huge numbers of dead, will be forced to bug out........ although they may attempt to hang on in familiar surroundings initially. Large groups will band together in outlying areas and then a second wave of deaths will hit these makeshift communities at a later date as disease crops up.

Any which way you slice it, it won't be pretty and most people............ even a lot of prepers I have talked to............... really do not have a handle on how bad it could get and how quickly things will deteriorate.

I believe your assessment is dead on Mooswa. Pretty scary isn't it.

thanks for all the help guys.
contrary to popular belief new zealand doesn't have heaps of empty land that untouched apart from the fiordland park. it reallyy is quite packed with towns/cities/although we have dogs and possums over here nothing else would eat a body. also FNQ thanks for the tip on finding someone. i have one friend that has good skills and such and would easily bug out. hes at the position where he knows 50% of the media is to distract you, but hes at the illuminati stage of figuring out whats actually going on. so he should listen and would be a great asset. i have reconsidered on the numbers would bug out though because everyone i have talked to has the typical "i'll go to the gun store get a gun rob the supermarket and drive around on a truck shooting people for their supplies" so i think i'll be safe. also my town is full of old timers so i dont expect any of them to bug out. i think my biggest question now is when to bug out and when to come back.

Read the book, one second after. They talk about making shallow graves in the golf course due to the fact that its easier digging by hand there. A person would need to dispose of a body right away to prevent any disease outbreak and the smell of decomp.

the smell wil be the worse part, the only other consideration is contamination of water. but disease like the flu, or blood borne stuff will not be a concern, once the body cools down, germs can't survive. bowel borne bugs will be more of a concern, but again that comes with water contamination.

i think Cody Lundin talks in his book "98.6 degrees . . . Keeping your ass alive" about dead bodies.

I believe your assessment is dead on Mooswa. Pretty scary isn't it.

i agree it's dead on, but the joke was bad bro 😀

but dead body's will help any garden grow! just need a good shovel, and a few months . . . 😮
but seriously, if the world is gone, why let it go to waste, feed the soil, save other lives. our soldiers are sacrificed for our freedom, why can't the dead aid our survival?