The Brunch Table

An online discussion on the topic of David Mitchell’s prodigious Cloud Atlas led me to this post about post-hurricane Florida, in which we get a preview of what southern states might be like in future energy shortage conditions:

An underground economy quickly developed with ice as the pinnacular commodity. “People are fighting over ice!” she yelled into the phone. “I mean fist fights — right in the parking lots!”

“What are they doing with the ice?” I asked.

“It’s hot!” she cried.

“But the power’s out, so it will just melt in a few hours — right? Seems like ice would be a luxury item compared to food and just regular old water.”

“You don’t understand: WE NEED THAT ICE!” She cried. “Some of Germaine’s friends brought us ice from Naples in the back of their car” — such a trans-state delivery, I should point out, requires a three hour drive — “and when they got to our parking lot, people were clamoring to buy the ice from them before they got it up the stairs. This morning, David went to the store and there were police guarding the ice. They have to keep the hordes away. They’re scalping it in some places — for twenty bucks a pound!”

The extent to which order was deteriorating was surprising:

“Yeah — there was a truck coming down to Palm Beach with those army meals and some water, and it was hijacked. Taken before it got here.” Thus had Frances created modern-day brigandry right in the middle of suburban Florida.

Still, the post ends on a positive note, with the sort of heartwarming tale of neighborly generosity that we heard so much after the recent New York outage.