Reading about the hurricane disaster, which continues to unfold in Louisiana since Katrina passed through the region, I am repeatedly struck by a “truth is stranger than fiction” feeling. For instance:
Employees at A.J.’s Produce Co. on Chartres Street in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans, spray-painted bright-red stern warnings for would-be thieves right on the sides of the building.
“You loot, we shoot!” they read. “Looters will be shot!” And “loot and die!”
“We had a few come around, but the boogie man scared them away,” said 59-year-old John Allen, who sat in a lawn chair guarding the building about 10 a.m. Tuesday. “The signs did the job.”
Link to the original article.
Citizens taking up arms against gangs of looters?! Whoa.
When I first came up with the idea of armed citizens protecting their property from looters in Bad Day LA there were a few who questioned the “reality” of this scenario. My usual response to this sort of “But is it real?” question is to say, “Reality can go out the window for the sake of gameplay.” But here we have real life imitating something that was put into the game as a background element.
(Shooting looters in Bad Day LA)
The truth is that given a large enough disaster it IS every man for himself. As much as we like to believe that our government is going to immediately rush in and save us, often times it is only our direct friends, family, and neighbours that we can rely on. Waiting for help from “outside” is often a formula for a quick end.
The constant theme in Bad Day LA is that of helping others in order to help yourself. You want to live, everyone does, but in order to do so you’ve got to do your part to help control the chaos going on around you. Only by helping each other, protecting one another, and fighting together do we get through disaster.
