Icelandic volcanic ash alert grounds UK flights

[Matthew]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8621407.stm

Not very nice.

I work with a Polish lady whose husband is meant to be flying back from Poland today but thats looking unlikely.

[edwin]

Harbinger of the equivalent or the Nuclear Winter and a neww Ice Age. Thankfully we have global warming

I think

Edwin

[Matthew]

We have two sets of people stuck abroad.

The first one is not to bad as they are only in Zagreb and could get a train or even coach if they had to and are staying with family anyway.

But the others are in Egypt and I think things are a bit more problamatic for them.

Makes you wonder what it might be like is a real EOTHAWKI senario was to play out quite quickly. I guess at certain times of the year there could be hundreds of thousands of British people stuck all over the world.

I wonder how they would cope in say a mass pandemic ? Would you make your way back to England or just make the best of it where you were ?

[edwin]

Real dilemma, strike out on your own and try and, say, drive Overland back from Egypt if you can pass from Israel into Syria. But, you are then away from assistance and a quick return if the ash clears. Ferry across to Turkey then drive/coach/train is probably the best option if space and vehicles can be bought and hired.

In PA one would have to be strong and mentally wipe off absent family members. If surviving they might try and return and if it was a Survivors scenario then the quicker they moved the better when there is petrol and food for the gathering and no real organisation but where would they find any other still existing family? These would have been subject to the vagaries of the PA scene as well?

Find the bestest place you can wherever you happen to be would be the sensible choice but a caravan moving through the howling PA environment is an appealing image.

For one of the foremost novels of travelling in search of sanctuary try Neville Shute's Pied Piper
(from Wikipedia):
Pied Piper (1942). An old man rescues seven children (one of them the niece of a Gestapo officer) from France during the Nazi invasion.

Edwin