Related:
Sweden's 'Doomsday Prep for Dummies' guide hits mailboxes today - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42173777 - Nov 2024
Sweden's 'Doomsday Prep for Dummies' guide hits mailboxes today - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42173777 - Nov 2024
plus several in his inner-circle, and his likely replacements, are just as hard-line, in some cases moreso.
"si vis pacem para bellum"
Well, let's really hope not. (Let us hope that nothing of worth is ever destroyed, and let us not speak about destruction of universal goods lightly.)
Edit: let us be even more clear (possibly in light of the dismissing feelers who just passed by). If you are into destruction of the cultural heritage, you are the enemy. Complexities just come later.
a real life James Bond villain -- who won the game, and took over a country.
In fact, his playbook of installing a puppet regime and having them "voluntarily" integrate into russia isn't particularly original — the USSR did the same thing with the Baltic states in the 1940s.
So, others around him could certainly take the reigns and continue the status quo.
For peace and prosperity in russia and for russians, there would need to be a deep reformatting and denazification of the country.
Sorry.
Edit: I will express it again, and to stress the point: some things are the fruit of the drive towards construction. Some other things may be destroyers. So, it all depends. No, we will not attribute worth to destroyers.
If we turn St Petersburg into rubble, I doubt anyone will be worrying about a few trifling conventional weapons. NATO and Russia go at it, and we're all just sitting around next month waiting for the Chinese, Brazilians, Indians and South Africans to sort out who is responsible for which relief efforts.
Actually, now I think about it, that quad will probably be far more concerned with determining the disposition of the remaining NATO/Russian warheads. So even relief efforts might be impacted by their more pressing concerns.
In any case, the world would just be a mess for a good long while.
Edit: Huh, a totally legitimate question that points directly at the underlying cause, and downvoted to the limit. Does it hurt that much to admit that people are getting exactly the government they want?
Yes, exactly, that's why this isn't going to happen.
in which he says that WWIII may be a more urgent risk. It's a race.
And it was gratious cruelty from NATO to destroy the pipes fabrication plant during the first Libyan civil war.
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/what-happened-sovie...
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/post-cold-war-worl...
All that said, you are absolutely right about "spoils". No one is gonna be thinking about "spoils". Probably top of everyone's list of questions will be, "How many warheads are left? And what remnants of NATO or Russia control them?"
We're talking about two groups who would have conclusively shown they are perfectly willing to use their nuclear arsenals to achieve their goals. That, combined with the fact that their goals would become a whole lot less lofty overnight makes me think the world would become a very precarious place.
One could also say "The problem is with Americans, not Trump" and that would also not be interpreted as racist.
a few hundred, maybe, and back in the day they had thousands.
https://media.defense.gov/2021/Oct/21/2002877353/-1/-1/0/DOD... (1.5 MB PDF)
Of course, when Niall Ferguson spoke, it looked at the contingency: he sees a possibility of catastrophic consequences that may come much earlier than the climatic "Armageddon". (Well, in some news peices today they spoke about "before Xmas"... It makes the order of events very definite.)
There are reports that much of the tritium in Russian nukes has been stolen and sold on the black market. When you have a culture that is basically a kleptocracy, few internal controls, and tritium prices of $30K/gram, it doesn't take a genius to figure out where the incentives lie.
Nitpick: I get your point, but phrasing it like this is basically the gambler's fallacy. That's not how probability works.
You could ask though if, given the changed environment, the one-in-a-million event still has the odds of one-in-a-million. Or if one-in-a-million is really such a rare thing if you make a billion draws...
Definitely some elements of some western countries are guilty of what you're alleging, but I don't think enough to justify saying the countries themselves did.
Stalin's successor was Khruschev, who dismantled Stalin's cult of personality, and reformed Stalin's system to an extent that Khruschev was removed from power without an incident by his own system, and lived happily ever after in retirement as the power transitioned to the next ruler.
Being the only ruler of Russia, over the past ~1000 or so years, to achieve that, namely:
1. Being removed from power (by term ending, elections lost, etc - not by their own will)
2. The removal happening procedurally, and not by disorder/coup/murder
3. Leaving the former ruler to live a decent life in retirement
Khruschev was a Ukrainian, see.
You're also assuming that the GMMR would not have been commissioned by another Libyan government, and perhaps even been completed more efficiently, had Gaddafi not seized power and held onto it for decades.
While NATO's bombing of the Brega plant was controversial, it was in my view justified by Gaddafi's forces staging rocket launchers at the location. If you're staging active military assets inside civilian locations, and they're part of hostilities, those locations lose their protection under international law.
The Brega plant was also not critical to the ongoing operation of the GMMR, as there was a second plant at Sarir that was able to make the pipe sections and had sufficient capacity to handle maintenance and sustainment needs.
hit the 10 largest cities and it's basically over. big cities are also primary transport hubs of food and fuel, and with those gone everything else collapses. most people aren't farmers, and even if they were, no one is using pulled plows in the First World these days, so without gas and farming everyone starves. most of your best educated, most likely to govern smartly, are also in those 10 big cities; everything turns into Riddley Walker pretty quick.
the US or Europe or Russia or China are a big larger, but that just means you need 20-40 instead of 10. 100 nukes is enough for basically all of the West, or Russia, or China, etc. 1000 if you want to be sure, and have some redundancy / second-strike capability.
for that matter they're not going to be able to supply much relief effort, either. hopefully they'll pick a side - India or China - and ride out the eventual hegemonic war between those 2.
I haven't inquired about the UK, but that is not even close to true for the US.
For one thing, at any given time, there's enough food stored on US farms to feed half the US population for about 3 years, which is probably enough time to restart mechanized agriculture or failing that re-open enough port facilities to import enough food from our friends to keep most survivors alive.
(This food stored on farms is mostly intended to be fed to farm animals, but it is food humans can live on even if they probably cannot thrive on it.)
A nuclear attack leaves most internal-combustion vehicles intact. The US produces all the oil it needs, and the attack necessarily leaves most of the wells intact because (like the vehicles) the wells are too spread out for an attack with even 3000 warheads to get even half of the wells.
The vast majority of comments on nuclear war on the internet are wrong, and it offends me that people are being so careless about spreading falsehoods. (Spreading these falsehoods does not make us safer.)
What they will tell you is -- up until the genocide against the Tatars (and other groups), the majority of its population was always solidly non-Russian.
And that its prior ownership by whichever colonial powers is entirely irrelevant to its current legal jurisdiction.
Which is unambiguously Ukrainian.
It's about being prepared for all kinds of eventualities, whatever they might be.
For example, last year and early this year heavy winds fell trees on electric lines both in Finland and Sweden, cutting off electricity locally for many days. There was a pandemic not too long ago. Waterworks problems have happened in the past in Finland and also happened this year in Sweden. DDoSing happens here and there, it can impact banks and such.
In addition, grayzone/hybrid operations i.e. all kinds of stupid bullying are constantly conducted: for example, earlier today a submarine cable between Germany and Finland (C-Lion1) was cut, and later today another submarine cable between Lithuania and Sweden was cut as well. Such cables don't just snap by themselves.
Like the Finnish page says: "Prepared people cope better".
https://www.suomi.fi/guides/preparedness
https://www.msb.se/en/advice-for-individuals/the-brochure-in...
But Stalin's Soviets were comparable to N. Korea, than, say, modern Russia, in terms of regime and its complete grip on everything. So I'd say the result would be more chaotic, might be actually comparable to Libya.
Maybe the Australians wouldn't allow that?
I guess I always assumed they would. Kind of like North Korea with Russian warships. I don't think we could take the chance that the Russian naval assets harbored in N Korea were harmless. Likewise, I'm assuming Russia wouldn't be able to make the assumption that American warships harbored in Australia were harmless.
I don't know? Maybe everyone's naval ships just surrender or something? I doubt it though. Your nation being destroyed is, in my mind, more reason to fight in those circumstances, not less.
Also, there is a chance that in the event of a full-blown nuclear exchange Russian leadership would see the showdown as fundamentally civilisational, and seek to take Australia down simply because it is unambiguously an outpost of Anglo-American culture.
Of course not. Civil defence is a good thing, sticking your head in the sand is not. Also, the brochure is not just about war but also about other crises. Sweden can experience 'interesting' weather which can leave people out of reach of rescue services for a while so 'be prepared' is just good advice.
For those who wonder, no I am not comparing Trump to Putin, they are two totally different people with different personalities. I am referring to the ineffective rhetoric used by their opponents.
I don't think it is a good idea to give the soldiers the impression that they will fight to the last man, since that encourages killing their officers at an earlier stage than they would otherwise. Preferably, you want to lure with some peace agreement that is just around the corner, such that the soldiers believe that there is hope for them.
Which he's also not telling you, for some reason.
- p.v. with storage means freezers operational, and freezers means food, protein in particular, for potentially very long periods
- even without p.v. a home in the wood means being able to heat in the winter sourcing wood in nature, uncomfortable but still heat, also usable to cook
- you have room to store water, from the aqueduct with a personal pump in home pipes, so with p.v. you get cold and hot water, potentially for a week or two, and in nature sources tend to be common at our latitudes
In an apartment in a dense city you can just keep a bit of water, but still much less than the countryside, next to zero chance for p.v. and energy storage, very limited chance to source water in nature, even issues to walk for many stairs if elevators have no energy. Long story short: you can't be resilient. Oh, and you might be targeted because hitting a city it's easy and some damages are assured, hitting the countryside is essentially wasting weapons. Remember as well: with wood you can cook various long lasting foods, like rice, beans, ... without wood or locally produced energy your cooking ability going down to zero.
Floods? Spread homes might be or not at risk, but they are still spread, meaning few per flooded are, so rescuing it's doable as temporary shelters, emergency food supply etc. Dense areas? The same in risk terms, but extremely hard to help simply because there are too many people hit together.
Earthquakes? Very similar, plus the fact that light homes tend to allow quick escape, tall buildings do not, and even if they might be well designed in seismic terms they are still very problematic. Fires? idem.
Long story short: it's pointless to publish such next-to-obvious recommendations, some could do something, many could not.
About Crimea, it seemed that the poster proposed a clear-cut situation, to which I replied with a prestigious example of disagreement: Gérard Chaliand. That has nothing to do with any nationalism. It just happen to be a position (an intellectual position) that some nationalists will appreciate more than others - but that is just a coincidence. The intellectual in question is French; the rebuttal from Aguaviva is appreciated.
The latter part of the post from Romwell, I honestly and not without some reason mistook for a statement that "if you are a citizen for nation N, democratic, then you are responsible for the actions of your governments". Being that a twisted idea, that Romwell in the end does not hold but as I also specified later some people do hold, I countered it. Again, this does not seem to be to be especially tied to nationalism.
It seems to me that we all discussed in very civilized manner - rhetoric aside. (From my post replying to Romwell on, I mean.)
If I am missing any detail (as I seem to be), please indicate.
Edit: Dang, are you simply afraid that people will "trigger"? If so, I think this branch proves otherwise... It seems to show that we are able to discuss quite rationally (well, with these members we have been lucky).
Of course if pushes come to shove the reality is not black and white, no need to be an asshole about it because every adult understands that, quite juvenile of you to think they don't. Guess your kind of rhetoric earn points with the teens, no?
If Sweden ever were to surrender in war it will most likely be broadcast by the prime minister and/or the king/queen (Sweden is a constitutional monarchy). Until such a time and until such a message is confirmed we'll just assume that Sweden has not surrendered.
I had to discuss for months with a mate, who insisted proposing that "Bolsonaro [would be] responsible for the actions of Lula, and Lula [would be] responsible for the actions of Bolsonaro" (actually much worse). And this is just a formulation that should show a paradox; other complexities exist that in the proposed idea of "responsibility" are overridden.
I am sorry. I agree most people 'get it'. The point I am trying to make is that those who don't 'get it' are a big problem if you have nifty slogans like that. Also in a non-total war setting.
> Guess your kind of rhetoric earn points with the teens, no?
I honestly believe that my rhetoric would score very low amongst teens.
Your general points are valid, but undersea cables do fail for many reasons. A few moments of googling turns up industry failure statistics. Most are still due to human activity in some way (but unintentional, like an anchor drag) but plenty are due to the natural environment of the sea floor.
2.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoal_Bay_Receiving_Station - Brrzzt!
3.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Defence_Satellite_C... - Sparkle!
I think the US leases bases in Australia. Given that a single aircraft carrier group contains more power than the ADF combined I would suggest any that limp back to Australia's shores would be able to continue using these ports.
The third question is the simplest one.
When the USSR was breaking apart, various parts of it held a referendum on whether to become independent, stay with what's left of the Union, or something else.
Tatarstan held such a referendum in 1992, and 3 out of 5 people have clearly and unambiguously chosen independence. Tatarstan was to become a sovereign state (as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan did).
This didn't happen. The results of the referendum were ignored. Russia has considered Tatarstan its territory ever since.
That highlights another form of bigotry: Russia's infamous referenda, held at gunpoint [12], that are used to give its annexations an air of legitimacy.
That includes Crimea[13]. "Anti-war" Russians are still prone to deferring to that sweet 95% "secede" vote. Even if that referendum were legitimate, curiously, Russians don't have the same overwhelming support of the results of the beyond shadow-of-a-doubt legitimate[14] referendum in Tatarstan.
As Putin's regime slowly eroded Tatarstan's sovereignty to zero, Russians did not object [15].
The question "Whose is Tatarstan" is not controversial by any measure either. It surely belongs to the Tatars, the people who live in Tatarstan.
One can argue that Tatarstan being a part of Russia, in reality, reflects what people of Tatarstan wanted: autonomy, not necessarily independence, secession, sovereignty. And if they did want this, then the current state of things is an acceptable, workable compromise.
It's a valid argument. And it's also valid for Crimea being a part of Ukraine, where it enjoyed an autonomy far stronger than that of Tatarstan today.
It also removes the "not a sandwich" objection, as well as the nonsense about "protecting the rights of the Russian-speaking minorities" in Ukraine that was used as a pretext for the 2022 invasion.
Aside from Russian being under no threat in Ukraine (as half the country still speaks it), surely Russian has never been threatened in Crimea as much as local languages in Tatarstan were outright suppressed.
That's before you realize that Crimea was never Russian in the first place, and today's 90%-ethnic Russian population is the result of the ethnic cleansing of Crimean Tatars, the natives of the peninsula (and, like people of Tatarstan, also Tatars), who were subject to mass deportations during the USSR time, as well as persecution under Russian occupation today.
Crimean Tatars — those who have returned after the deportations and their descendants — aren't big supporters of the annexation.
Tatarstan and Crimea can't be both Russian unless you have double standards on whose votes actually count in Russia.
Or, as Stalin said — who counts the votes.
----
Question #4 is the cherry on top of a pie.
By now, I hope most people are aware that Ukraine was left with one of the largest nuclear weapons stockpiles in the world after its split from the USSR.
The weapons, the planes, and rockets that Ukraine helped build. These weren't "gifts" or "inheritance", as Russian sources like to label this asset.
More of a property you get in a divorce.
Russia wanted it all. And the US — in what Clinton admits was a huge mistake [17] — pushed Ukraine to unilaterally disarm and send its nuclear weapons to Russia [18].
The logic was: the fewer nuclear-armed states, the better; the more stable and safe the world is.
All Ukraine got for its nukes was a security assurance that its sovereignty and territorial integrity will be respected. An assurance signed by the US, the UK — and Russia.
We all know by now that Russia's assurance wasn't worth the paper it's written on. Fewer people take time to think about what it means for the US to give such a promise, and then provide lackluster support that is always on the verge of being withdrawn (and, as far as we can tell, will be). What it means for the world, and nuclear proliferation.
But the real interesting part, to me, is how most Russians see the issue. Regardless of how the war goes, Russians think that of course Russia SHOULD have nuclear weapons.
And equally strongly they feel that Ukraine had NO RIGHT to retain its nuclear weapons, and SHOULD NOT have them going forward either.
It's not a contentious question either. Russians simply don't see Russia without nuclear weapons. They're absolutely essential to its security, even though they have what (was) seen as 2nd strongest army in the world.
Reasoning beyond this point is where things get interesting.
----
Above, I have provided extensive, well sourced explanations of why these for particular questions are important, and what they have to do the the current war that Russia is waging in Ukraine.
These four particular questions were posed by Oleksiy Arestovych, a Ukrainian politician and a former advisor in Zelenskyy's cabinet (now in exile) to Yulia Latynina, a Russian opposition journalist and commentator (also in exile) during one of their semi-regular joint live streams [19].
The subject of the discussion was exactly the question raised by the Russian person we're responding to: to which extent is the average Russian responsible for the invasion their country is perpetrating?
The argument goes, the average Russian never wanted anything bad to happen, why are they seen as a problem? It's their bad government, Putin, whatever! Not them!
The four questions beautifully bring us to reality, in which Putin is actually doing what his citizens want him to do. At least 4 out of 5 on each question.
And when you ask all 4 questions, you'll be hard pressed to find a Russian whose answers would NOT indicate that Russia is still a country that's a threat to its neighbors, and WILL REMAIN ONE for the foreseeable future, because THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of Russians support Russia's expansion by means of force.
In my experience, the discussion hardly gets past Question #1. Their thinking doesn't proceed past "well it's ours now, so...".
And the questions aren't about any new borders that may or may not be agreed on in the negotiations to come.
The problem is that 4 out 5 Russians don't see the rest of Ukraine any differently than Crimea, and it's just a matter of time before Kyiv will be "returned" to the fold.
And if Kyiv resists, Kyiv will get the Chechnya treatment, and 4 out 5 Russians want it that way.
Whatever elections or referenda happen in Ukraine (or occupied territories), 4 out 5 Russians will consider them legitimate if the results favors Russia, and and illegitimate otherwise.
And most importantly: Russia should always have nuclear weapons, so that it never has to follow any rules. That's the unspoken part, but it doesn't take long to get to.
This is why Ukraine sees Russians (not just the Russian state) as a threat.
This is also why the Russian I asked these questions downvoted me, and left without answering. All the context I told you above — all the links — is everyone's lived memory there.
And four simple questions make them have themselves. At the very least, it's hard for an intelligent person to lie to themselves.
I want to emphasize (again!) that there's nothing apriori contentious or inflammatory about these questions, nor "nationalistic". Here's an answer that shouldn't be hard to swallow:
—The land belongs to the people who live there, and it's to to them to decide. In all cases.
—After the war, Russia will be better off without nuclear weapons — as are Germany and Japan to this day. Taking away the trump card to blackmail the world leaves the next government with no choice but developing the country and its people, not wars and schemes. And if Ukraine could stand to to us without nuclear weapons, we can do that too, if needs be — and with far less sacrifice.
Sadly, that's not the answer I expect to hear.
On that note: dang, I hope you have reached this point in my writing — and I do expect to hear something from you.
Treating the questions I asked as "perpetuating nationalistic flame wars" was unwarranted, disrespectful, and demeaning.
As you can see, there's more depth to the questions than you perceived — and that the ultimate goal of posing them is reconciliation and understanding.
Nobody but Russians can fix Russia. But it's an uphill battle when, after centuries of indoctrination, we expect them to start seeing things differently, and don't even bother explaining what's wrong with that way they are now (that Russians are the problem was a sentiment expressed by others here — which prompted this thread in the first place!).
This thread can and will be helpful to that end. I know many Russians, and the truth is, they are often unaware of their biases, as most of us are. But as long as they have them, the Russian government will exploit them to wage war.
And so many are putting in effort to discover and grow.
Your remark is not helping. At the very least, you could've asked about the subject you can't be as well informed on as those of us whose lives are directly affected by it before judging. It includes the Russian person too —
— and not the random folks who decided to treat as quiz the question not posed to them that they didn't understand.
I expect a response from you. And, if not an apology, then at least a bit of human compassion.
You haven't lost it yet, have you? Asking as a mod.
—Roman Kogan, PhD, Ukrainian.
(References below)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krymnash
[2] https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/03/07/navalnys-policy-sh...
[2] https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/04/26/most-russians-supp...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_green_men_(Russo-Ukrain...
[4] https://www.fpri.org/books/less-know-better-sleep-russias-ro...
[5] https://theintercept.com/2020/06/28/welcome-to-chechnya-gay-...
[6]https://imgur.com/gallery/enby-kyiv-ukraine-jul-sep-2023-fcj...
[7] https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2014-09-03/rus...
[8] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/26/russia-admits-...
[9]https://jamestown.org/program/levadas-last-poll-on-chechnya-...
[10] https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2022/09/my-country-ri...
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Tatarstani_sovereignty_re...
[12] https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/09/30/fictitious-annexation-fo...
[13] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/16/ukraine-russia...
[14] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/03/23/t...
[15] https://www.kyivpost.com/post/4906
[16] https://verfassungsblog.de/the-legal-status-and-modern-histo...
[17] https://fortune.com/2023/04/05/bill-clinton-ukraine-nuclear-...
[18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
[19] https://www.instagram.com/alexey.arestovich/p/Cl4h7WoNP5G/
As I wrote in the other comment, my point of asking those questions was to get answers from the Russian person who asked what's wrong with them specifically, not from other people (as the subject I wanted to discuss was, ultimately, why people could see well meaning Russians as a threat based on responses to those questions).
But I didn't make it clear (and again, corrections on style were very welcome!), and the points mdp2021 brought up were valid.
As far as I can tell, we didn't disagree on anything.
mdp2021 lacked some of the context, but so would most people, including me prior to the 2022 invasion.
So, dang's reaction seems unwarranted.
Beside in spread area you have friends as well as in city, but there we are all collaborative even when we do not like each other much because we are few, in cities we are strangers in the crowd.
(The author is left as an exercise for the reader)
Why are they not scholarized? What are they doing in the wild? There's an infestation and it is mentioned marginally, as opposed to red-level crisis?!
> while they are distracted
They should be trained towards the conditions for focus pre-emptively!
It is not pointless to publish recommendations because it makes people consider the possibility of regular facilities not being available. While city dwellers may not be able to keep more than a week's worth of supplies before they need resupply or evacuation that makes them more prepared for such eventualities than those who think they will always be able to use their mobile devices to order from the plethora of restaurants their city offers. It can make the difference between organised chaos and disordered mayhem if that war or crisis were to occur.
Be Prepared! is not just the boy scouts of old motto - no idea what the modern watered-down version of that institution professes - but also just a good idea. It does not mean you need to become a prepper but it does point out the need for some self-reliance because that whole fragile house of cards which is the service economy may just come tumbling down some day.
One of the places that sends the "shoot 'em up boys* signal to the stealth nuclear subs.
I'd thought these days the signal would be "OK Boomer"?
(I'm still impressed that the РВСН has St Barbara as a patron saint. They claim that it's because they were founded on her day, 17.12.59, but I'd bet it has rather more to do with towers and lightning strikes as attributes, as well as her existing patronage over artillerymen, tunnellers, and explosives workers in general. They make severe waffle irons in Chelyabinsk: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/OUQPxihQfQDuPE-8f8X1... )
The problem wasn't lack of government power, the problem was that shock therapy was a fucking awful way to handle the transition, that Yeltsin was a shitty autocrat who carried out a successful, bloody coup (Which didn't stop him from enjoying Western support - which would overlook any autocratic power grab, as long as Russia under him underwent shock therapy. Friggin' Bill Clinton campaigned for him), and that NATO turned from a purely defensive alliance to an offensive alliance and started acting unilaterally in what Russia felt was it's sphere of influence. (After a few years of good relations and bilateral collaboration.)
All that turned out to be a great way to rebuild an antagonistic relationship.
If you really want to point fingers at, though, I suppose you could blame Gorbachev for failing to keep the USSR intact and resigning, handing over power to assholes like Yeltsin. Gorbachev was a far better statesman and general human being than his successors were.
I think you are confusing Sweden with some other country.
Nobody is gonna be in a situation to reassert control.
During the cold war, there was a widespread theory that an all-out nuclear war would produce a similar effect; there are, after all, a great many warheads out there. So it was theorised that even countries that didn't participate in a nuclear war would end up with crop failures and mass starvation. The so-called "nuclear winter" or "nuclear holocaust".
Thankfully this theory has not yet been put to the test.
It's like the Finnish defense forces. Their training exercises have the OPFOR, the imaginary opposing force usually designated with the color yellow for the sake of the exercise, approaching from the East. Funny that, wonder why.
If you're referring to those being important in a major disaster, I'd disagree. Any major disruption can knock out celular networks and in a war they'd be deliberately targeted.
Instead, your best bet would be a predetermined plan for how to get in contact with loved ones if the comms and electrical grids collapse (where to meet, when, and where to leave notes possibly).
As for cars, maybe in certain scenarios, such as having an offroad vehicle stored in some isolated place that you can reach, but if an earthquake, flood, war or some other disaster suddenly strikes, roads will be one of its major victims, rapidly being damaged and in any case clogged with heavy traffic. A car of any kind inside a city would probably be next to useless after a serious disaster.
Instead, you would be better off with a few motorbikes/dirt bikes, or even better, bicycles safely and carefully stored against possible theft. Having these for your family, and possibly some kind of compact cart that can be hitched up for pulling supplies or anyone who simply cant ride their own bike would be much more flexible and usable no matter how badly your region's transport infrastructure is devastated. Bikes (motorized or manual) can cover nearly any terrain and don't need roads if they're even minimally built for off-roading.