Three Meals From Revolution

I apparently first encountered this concept, amusingly enough, in an episode of Red Dwarf:

Rimmer: They say that every society is only three meals away from revolution. Deprive a culture of food for three meals, and you'll have an anarchy.

I spent this morning trying to find the "real" source for that, but can't. It appears that it may have actually been a made-up quote. Regardless of it's pedigree, though, it has certainly proven to be true, given the events in New Orleans.

In the first 24 hours -- the first three meals -- society hadn't really "broken down" yet... people were waiting to be rescued, holing up wherever they were, dealing with crappy conditions and accepting them as temporary (or at least, anyway, that's the way it seemed here watching it all on TV).

After 24 hours, though -- when you'd gone past the third missed meal -- all hell seems to have truly broken loose. Rape and murder inside the alleged safe-haven Superdome, police themselves became looters (I saw a nice AP photo of this, with a cop walking out of a wal-mart his hands full of DVDs and it looked like stemware, but I can't find the picture now), you name it, it happened.

In fact, to anyone who's read Stephen King's "The Stand", this seemed like you were watching a real live televised interpretation of the first third of the book. If you were a Christian person, living in NOLA, you might seriously wonder if you were witnessing the "end times".

D and I were discussing last night, "What's going to happen to all these people who shot other people who were trying to come after their food, etc.?"

Louisiana state statute RS 14:20 says:

§20. Justifiable homicide

A homicide is justifiable:

(1) When committed in self-defense by one who reasonably believes that he is in imminent danger of losing his life or receiving great bodily harm and that the killing is necessary to save himself from that danger.

(2) When committed for the purpose of preventing a violent or forcible felony involving danger to life or of great bodily harm by one who reasonably believes that such an offense is about to be committed and that such action is necessary for its prevention. The circumstances must be sufficient to excite the fear of a reasonable person that there would be serious danger to his own life or person if he attempted to prevent the felony without the killing.

(3) When committed against a person whom one reasonably believes to be likely to use any unlawful force against a person present in a dwelling or a place of business, or when committed against a person whom one reasonably believes is attempting to use any unlawful force against a person present in a motor vehicle as defined in R.S. 32:1(40), while committing or attempting to commit a burglary or robbery of such dwelling, business, or motor vehicle. The homicide shall be justifiable even though the person does not retreat from the encounter.

(4)(a) When committed by a person lawfully inside a dwelling, a place of business, or a motor vehicle as defined in R.S. 32:1(40), against a person who is attempting to make an unlawful entry into the dwelling, place of business, or motor vehicle, or who has made an unlawful entry into the dwelling, place of business, or motor vehicle, and the person committing the homicide reasonably believes that the use of deadly force is necessary to prevent the entry or to compel the intruder to leave the premises or motor vehicle. The homicide shall be justifiable even though the person committing the homicide does not retreat from the encounter.

(there's a 4b, but it says basically "unless the person committing homicide is a drug-dealer").

So it would seem clear that if a person is in their own residence, business, or is, simply "there lawfully", that they could easily shoot-to-kill anyone who attempted to break in, without having to attempt retreat. So those people are protected.

More interesting, though, are the reports of people (including police officers and National Guard troops), who were simply telling people "If you come any closer, I will shoot and kill you." The fear of bodily injury was so great that even trained soldiers were ensuring that they kept the upper hand by making sure they didn't get into hand-to-hand range. So, given the circumstances, a reasonable person might be able to make the case that "that person I don't know simply coming near me is an imminent threat, especially if trained professionals also felt exactly the same way." That would give him a sub-paragraph (1) defense for the homicide.

Now, and here's the interesting part -- with a complete absence of evidence, how do you differentiate someone who shot a man because he was positively fearful of what would happen if the man kept coming closer, and someone who shot a man because he had some food that the killer wanted? Answer: You really can't.

And when you can't differentiate between "lawful homicide" and "unlawful homicide", that's pretty much when society ceases to exist. And the revolution has begun.