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The 8-Bit Guys house in Texas

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james_s:

--- Quote from: unixb0y on February 26, 2021, 01:46:19 am ---From when I was little, I remember we always shutting off the water of our garage in winter and reopening it in summer, it's kind of a no brainer if you know "its gonna get cold" to me tbh  ;D

--- End quote ---

If you live somewhere like I do where it predictably dips into freezing territory for significant periods of time over the winter then yes this is a no-brainer. If you live somewhere where freezing weather is rare then I can understand not thinking of it. If you live somewhere that has poisonous insects and snakes you'd probably think it a no brainer to check your shoes before putting them on, and check under the bed and in closets and such for snakes, but it wouldn't even occur to me unless someone mentioned it, it's not impossible to get those things here but it's exceptionally rare.

Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: james_s on February 26, 2021, 06:27:46 am ---If you live somewhere like I do where it predictably dips into freezing territory for significant periods of time over the winter then yes this is a no-brainer. If you live somewhere where freezing weather is rare then I can understand not thinking of it. If you live somewhere that has poisonous insects and snakes you'd probably think it a no brainer to check your shoes before putting them on, and check under the bed and in closets and such for snakes, but it wouldn't even occur to me unless someone mentioned it, it's not impossible to get those things here but it's exceptionally rare.

--- End quote ---
Agreed; well put, too.

Where I live, there are no poisonous insects (except perhaps bees and wasps, if you count those; any poisonous arachnids there are physically cannot bite humans) and the only poisonous animal is asp (which is only dangerous if you are allergic; a simple bee sting kit with antihistamine and epinephrine will counteract any bite); so the critters in Australia, especially arachnids, scare me.

Then again, Puumala hemorrhagic fever is endemic here in bank voles.  It is an orthohantavirus, spread mainly via powdered bank vole droppings (so for example when sweeping a hut where bank voles have nested or pooped in).  Most Finns tend to have some sort of genetic protection against it, and only get high fever and temporary renal problems; kids rarely get any symptoms, and having had the infection once, you have a lifelong immunity against it – and about 5% of Finns have today, with most Finns having very little to no contact with bank voles.  Because the virus also causes increased porosity/permittivity of blood vessels, it can be dangerous for some, but in any case the fatality rate is under 0.1%, so fatalities are exceedingly rare; statistically about one person per year.

Yet, an Israeli researcher doing research on bank voles, died of Puumala virus in Finland in 2014.

You can imagine the shitstorm the media whipped up about how dangerous it is.. completely disregarding the fact that it isn't dangerous to Finns because of our genetics.  I bet that >99% of Finnish rodent researchers have had "vole fever" – as the virus is called here –, and just didn't realize how dangerous it can be to those without inherited genetic protection against it.  (Inherited, because of relatively isolated Finnish genetics, and because in the times when most Finns lived in villages or forests a few hundred years ago, probably all children had it in childhood, and the genetic protection is such that it is usually symptomless or very mild when had as a child – AFAIK child mortality is exactly zero, no known cases at all –, and gives a lifelong immunity.)

I bet the fellow researchers knew that, because even I was told about it as a kid in early eighties living out in the boonies.  Perhaps they underestimated the risks, or more likely, it just never occurred to them.  (I mean, the research station did have top notch protections: suits, breathing masks, well insulated test enclosures, and so on; they weren't negligent or careless, the research station is top notch.  They just did not realize how dangerous it could be to someone without the same genetic heritage.)

Because that's what we humans are like; we just aren't adept at dealing with issues that are likely to only occur once or twice in our lifetimes, or anything outside our immediate experience.  So don't be too harsh; you and I make the same mistakes too.

unixb0y:

--- Quote from: james_s on February 26, 2021, 06:27:46 am ---If you live somewhere that has poisonous insects and snakes you'd probably think it a no brainer to check your shoes before putting them on, and check under the bed and in closets and such for snakes, but it wouldn't even occur to me unless someone mentioned it, it's not impossible to get those things here but it's exceptionally rare.

--- End quote ---
That’s actually a good point and a good comparison  :-+

Ian.M:
OTOH if the insects are swarming and covering the path to your front gate, and you've seen a few inside your house, wouldn't you be more careful?

Where I grew up, we might get a hard winter with snow lying for more than a day or two maybe once a decade.   Most winters it would only get cold enough to occasionally find a skin of ice on any small containers or sheltered puddles of water open to the sky outside if you got up early enough.  Even though those with northern roots in the family had moved south three or more generations earlier, we still knew to drain or otherwise protect anything vulnerable to frost damage if a significant freeze was forecast.  I've had to deal with one burst pipe due to frost in 50 years, and it was actually a neighbor's one that was external and ineffectively insulated.

rdl:
Typical of the weather here, last week everything was encased in ice, today we hit 83 F.

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