WEBVTT - The Next Apocalypse with Chris Begley 0:00:04.880 --> 0:00:07.480 Welcome to It could happen here, a show about things 0:00:07.520 --> 0:00:10.320 falling apart and how to maybe put them back together 0:00:10.920 --> 0:00:13.840 a little bit better than they were before. I am 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:16.439 Robert Evans, and with me this week is I guess 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:22.280 I'm very excited about Chris Begley, author of the Next Apocalypse, 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:25.479 The Art and Science of Survival. Chris, Welcome to the show. 0:00:26.360 --> 0:00:30.000 Thank you now, Chris. Before we get into the meat 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:33.080 of our discussion, I have to talk about what you 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:35.159 do for a living, because for years and years it 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:37.440 was my job to go around the world I talked 0:00:37.479 --> 0:00:40.400 to people and pretty much every continent about their different 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:43.440 interesting jobs. So I've I've talked interviewed everybody from like 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:48.800 Bravo workers in Nevada to Iraqi counter terrorism special forces 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:52.440 in Iraq. And you have probably the coolest job title 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:57.600 if anybody I've met. You're an underwater archaeologist. How did 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:00.960 you um? How did you? I mean? Was that was 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:03.840 it just kind of like were you kind of laser 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:05.520 focused on that goal or was it more you were 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:08.080 interested in archaeology and you loved diving, and so the 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:10.720 two just kind of made sense together. Yeah. Well, I 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:14.880 started out as ah, what I now called a terrestrial archaeologists, 0:01:15.200 --> 0:01:18.360 you know, working on the land as most people do, 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:23.280 and worked for years in Central America. Honduras was my focus, 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:26.640 as you saw in the book, but other other places 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:31.160 uh nearby as well, and really it was about I 0:01:31.160 --> 0:01:35.200 would say, I don't know, twelve thirteen, fourteen years ago. 0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:39.160 I wanted to just branch out a little bit from that. 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:43.319 And one of the things that that all archaeologists have 0:01:43.360 --> 0:01:45.440 seen is that, you know, there are certain things that 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:49.640 really just aren't as explored as other things, and one 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:53.480 was all of the archaeological resources underwater. I mean, we 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:59.080 hear about underwater archaeology or maritime archaeology in the Mediterranean, right, 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:02.400 you know them, and shipwrecks and all that, but there 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:05.840 are big chunks of the world where we've done very 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:08.960 little to see what's out there, you know. And one 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:11.880 other interesting thing about that is there are many different 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:14.040 things you could look at underwater, but often we look 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:18.720 at shipwrecks, and shipwrecks are different from regular archaeological sites 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:22.280 because you know, shipwreck is a moment in time that 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:26.840 all happened in in one instance, and so when we're 0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:30.080 looking at that kind of archaeological site, we see this 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:32.880 snapshot that we don't see when we look at a 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:36.360 place that was occupied over hundreds of years. So you know, 0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:40.079 so yeah, so that wasn't my focus, but it became, uh, 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:43.320 sort of somewhere I wanted to go as I learn 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:46.720 more about it. And one of the things I find 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:50.760 really interesting that the basic thrust of your book is 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:54.800 that the way in which we think about civilizations falling 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:58.440 or collapsing or how however you you know, the ways 0:02:58.440 --> 0:03:00.799 in which folks tend to discuss and we're talking about 0:03:00.840 --> 0:03:04.720 the Maya or the romans um is very different from 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:08.520 what archaeologists who tend to study these cultures, how they 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:12.040 tend to perceive of of what you might more accurately 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:15.720 call a decline or or you know, a decentralization or whatever. 0:03:15.760 --> 0:03:17.760 I think there's a number of terms that we could use. 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:20.840 But these ideas that like, you have these civilizations and 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:24.400 then they suddenly fall apart um are not really based 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:28.360 in rigorous historical analysis. Usually. Um, there's some cases as 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:32.040 as you go out into the book, um, and I'm 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:35.320 I'm I'm interested in that because you're kind of coming 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:39.360 at from a very rigorous historical standpoint in this book. Um, 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:41.080 a lot of the stuff that we talked about on 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:43.560 on this show in a more contemporary sense. And I'm 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:46.640 kind of wondering how the idea to write this sort 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:49.200 of came together because you you started it before the 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:53.440 COVID nineteen pandemic. Obviously that had an impact on the book. 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:58.920 It's it's it's all over there. Yeah yeah, Um, well, 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:04.280 I've I was. One of the things that I do 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:10.000 is teach the wilderness survival courses and um, and I 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:12.320 don't do that as frequently as some people that that 0:04:12.400 --> 0:04:16.000 sort of dedicate themselves to that do. But but but 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:20.080 I do it fairly frequently. And UM. It became obvious 0:04:20.080 --> 0:04:23.880 to me over time that people were taking these courses 0:04:23.920 --> 0:04:26.919 not just to learn how to deal with being lost 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:29.839 out in the wilderness, which is sort of was my vision. 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:32.840 What do you do if you unexpectedly have to spend 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:36.480 a night out in the woods or or two or three. Um, 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:38.520 they were really thinking about what do I do when 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:40.720 things fall apart? How do I take care of myself? 0:04:40.760 --> 0:04:42.839 How do I take care of my family using these 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:46.479 skills that you could use in a situation where things 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:50.320 had fallen apart, And that sort of oriented me towards 0:04:50.520 --> 0:04:54.320 the fact that you know, people were worrying about the future. 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:55.960 I mean I could see it. I could see it 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:59.680 in my students at university. I could see it, you know, 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:03.400 the people's faces at the supermarket. You know, there was 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:09.039 something going on there that was um uh, there was 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:11.080 concerning people, and a lot of it had to do 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:14.560 with climate change, and that I think was was the 0:05:14.640 --> 0:05:19.279 focus initially for me writing this um because what I 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:25.040 saw was you know, sort of the prepper community and 0:05:25.120 --> 0:05:28.839 survivalist community looking at things that really seemed to be 0:05:28.920 --> 0:05:32.960 short term and didn't at all focus on what we 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:37.000 really saw historically. So I think that my um, my 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:41.560 initial motive to motivation to write this was really just 0:05:41.600 --> 0:05:45.839 seeing this concern that was that was growing among people 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:47.839 about what the future is going to look like. And 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:51.359 then of course COVID Hitn't that that that really brought 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:55.040 all this to the to the forefront. And are there 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:57.400 any specific ways in your mind that you you can 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:01.200 you kind of think on how COVID all heard what 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:03.560 you were what you were writing, or how you conceived 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:05.320 of what you were writing. Like once you you know, 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:07.640 you you have this kind of vision that's inspired by 0:06:07.760 --> 0:06:10.120 the things that you're seeing and hearing, particularly in these 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:13.359 wilderness survival courses. And then as you get started, we 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:16.960 have this horrible, horrible plague hit and a number of 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:19.160 of of things start to happen very quickly. How does 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:22.479 that kind of alter the trajectory of what you're writing? Yeah, 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:25.880 I guess the you know, the there were some just 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:30.559 sort of practical logistical things obviously, right, Uh, some things 0:06:30.560 --> 0:06:34.080 that I intended to do, or ways that I had 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:37.360 hoped to interact with folks in the course of interviewing 0:06:37.360 --> 0:06:39.400 people for the book or writing it, you know, wasn't 0:06:39.400 --> 0:06:43.120 going to be possible. But in terms of thinking about 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:47.359 how things happened, the big thing for me was, um, 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:51.520 how it became politicized so quickly. You know, that was 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:56.920 you know in them you know you know, well, now 0:06:57.040 --> 0:07:01.360 you see all of the memes you know, um talking 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:04.360 about the zombie movies where half the population doesn't believe 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:07.320 their zombies or something. You know, that was never really 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:11.480 on the radar, at least not on my radar before, 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:18.280 and so now, um, um, you know it is because clearly, 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:21.400 not only do these things happen, and then you have 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:24.000 a group of people that are dealing with it. You 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:27.880 have obviously the dynamics within the group, which which of 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:30.200 course we knew, but to see it play out in 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:33.560 this way, in this sort of dramatic way, that really 0:07:33.600 --> 0:07:37.520 altered the course of history. I mean, the pandemic could 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:42.200 have turned out, uh, you know, differently, but it didn't. 0:07:42.640 --> 0:07:44.760 And part of the reason that didn't was because of 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:48.920 the way folks reacted to it. And I'm wondering because 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:51.240 a part a chunk of your career, in a big 0:07:51.320 --> 0:07:53.480 chunk of this book is kind of looking at in 0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:58.040 places like Honduras where these these civilizations entered decline, and 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:00.120 in some cases it was very sharp, like within a 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:04.440 fairly short period of time, nine of the population leaves 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:09.240 or you know, uh is deceased. UM. And you you 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:11.080 see like the crumbling of a lot of these governmental 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:14.240 institutions and whatnot that had had organized life for a while. 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:18.280 You see the pretty significant migrations. UM. Is there any 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:21.040 ways in which kind of the last two years as 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:25.080 an archaeologist has changed or informed how you were thinking 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:28.480 about um, these places that you've been you've been studying, 0:08:28.480 --> 0:08:30.480 in these moments in history that you've been studying for 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:34.400 so long. Yeah, in some ways, it brings some of 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:37.400 it into a little sharper focus. For instance, you know, 0:08:37.440 --> 0:08:41.280 one of the things that that archaeologists had long talked 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:44.000 about was it during these declines or these collapses, that 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:48.440 it's uneven. It's not equal for everybody. It's not equal 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:51.800 over space and time, and certainly depending on your position 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:56.360 in society. UM, there's different ways in which it it 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:01.520 plays out for you, UM, you know, and that's something 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:04.800 that we see. We see it from um, you know, 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:10.960 access to vaccines to um well, I mean even things 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:13.959 like you know, if we think about folks that are unvaccinated. 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:16.319 Now there's a you know, a chunk of those people 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:20.600 that are doing it for a sort of political reasons 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:26.720 or other ideological reason, but there's also a big, uh, 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:30.040 a big group of those folks that are doing it 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:35.240 because history shows that they should be wary of anything 0:09:36.040 --> 0:09:40.640 that uh society tries to do to them. And so, 0:09:40.840 --> 0:09:43.600 you know, you have these these things playing out for 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:47.640 different ways for um, you know, people from different regions 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:50.840 of the country or political orientations or race or ethnicity 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:54.679 or um, you know, a whole variety of things. And 0:09:54.720 --> 0:10:00.800 so seeing how uneven it was the pandemic, UH makes 0:10:00.800 --> 0:10:03.880 me think that you know, it certainly was that way. 0:10:03.880 --> 0:10:07.040 Then the other thing that we see when we look 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:11.439 archaeologically is that it's these big structures or systems that collapse. 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:15.840 That really is the collapse and the things that cause 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:20.600 it initially, whether it's I don't know, deforestation or drought 0:10:20.920 --> 0:10:25.880 or warfare or even a natural disaster of some sort 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:31.280 um that really it's the way people respond to those 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:38.120 and the way these UH systems deal with those changes 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:42.800 that really creates the problems that you see later on. 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:44.880 And we can see that now. For instance, one of 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:47.800 the things that we're talking a lot now about is 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:53.560 supply chain issues, right, and this is a result of COVID, 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:56.920 But it's not a direct result. I mean, it's not 0:10:57.040 --> 0:10:59.880 because the cruise on the ships are at the ports 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:07.040 or truck drivers have UH are sick. It's because of 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:10.800 the ways in which all of this disrupted things. And 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:17.920 especially when we get these really efficient but inflexible systems, 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:21.280 like a lot of our shipping system was um, these 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:26.560 disruptions result in really big changes. So you know, you 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:29.439 have these huge ships that can only dock a few ports. 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:34.960 Once that gets backed up, you can't really shift and adjust, 0:11:35.600 --> 0:11:39.319 and so that's I think for me, just a lot 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:41.679 of it is seeing it play out, where we see 0:11:42.440 --> 0:11:45.439 the fact that we have something that sets it all off, 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:50.719 but then we have the response of the system or 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:55.560 the structure that really creates the day to day impact. 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:08.000 I suspect a big part of kind of why we 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:12.480 conceive popularly of quote unquote collapses in the past is 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:15.440 based on, as you talk about extensively in your book, 0:12:15.480 --> 0:12:16.840 the way in which we look at it kind of 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:19.600 in fiction, and in fiction it's nearly always like the 0:12:19.679 --> 0:12:22.079 societal equivalent of a bullet in the head, right, the 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:24.160 zombie plague is out, and then a couple of days 0:12:24.280 --> 0:12:27.720 everything's fallen apart. And the point that you make in 0:12:27.760 --> 0:12:30.720 this is that it's probably I mean, this isn't exactly 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:32.280 a phrase, but it's probably better to look at it 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:34.920 kind of like it's like a tumor or something, where 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:38.280 the things are set in motion that are going to 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:43.320 lead to things falling apart much much, um, at a 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:45.600 point before a lot of people probably would have noticed it. 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:49.000 You know, the problem can be too far gone, um 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:53.840 before it's really obvious. Um. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:56.280 that's that's a good point, and that's the that's really 0:12:56.840 --> 0:13:03.040 something that you know, even with COVID, it shows that right. Um, 0:13:03.120 --> 0:13:07.319 you know, the problems are not only the existence or 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:10.760 the appearance of this virus, but first of all, how 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:14.600 did it appear? And that has to do with, um, 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:18.599 you know, decreasing habitat for wild animals and the proximity 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:23.319 of human populations to animals. And then we have increased 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:27.800 sort of communication and travel, which you know is not 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:31.000 a bad thing obviously, but it is going to change 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:34.480 the way in which these things spread. But then we 0:13:34.559 --> 0:13:38.800 have the way that we divide ourselves up into nation states, 0:13:38.960 --> 0:13:42.480 and the way in which we have you know, economic 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:46.480 systems that are working in certain ways. So you know, 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:49.719 the vaccine gets here but not there, and and and 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:55.720 so forth. Um. But yeah, that's you know that I 0:13:55.760 --> 0:13:57.480 think is at the heart of it. You have these 0:13:57.480 --> 0:14:00.319 things that have been set in place, you of these 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:03.400 parameters in which you're going to have to react, and 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:07.680 they really set um the stage for what's going to happen. 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:10.080 You know, you have it's like looking backwards four or 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:12.520 five moves in chest to see how did we get 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:16.000 in this situation. It's not just because of that last move, 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:20.640 it's because of the last ten. Yeah. And one of 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:23.400 the things you bring up that I like is that 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:26.760 if you're looking for kind of a historical example of 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:29.320 a collapse that that most mirrors the way we tend 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:31.280 to look at it in fiction, it would probably be 0:14:31.920 --> 0:14:35.680 what happened to the indigenous population of particularly like North 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:40.560 America um after the arrival of colonizers, which was by 0:14:40.560 --> 0:14:43.520 a lot of accounts, like nine of the population dead 0:14:43.560 --> 0:14:46.600 within a fairly short span of time, primarily from disease. 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:52.880 This this really rapid and cataclysmic um um shock. But also, 0:14:52.920 --> 0:14:54.960 at the same time, as much as it does seem 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:57.760 to mirror some of our you know, kind of fictional 0:14:57.800 --> 0:15:00.840 depictions of of viral outbreaks or other's sort of of 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:04.880 of societal calamities, um, the ways in which people survived 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:09.680 don't really in any meaningful way mirror are our kind 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:12.480 of popular fictional depiction of like who makes it out 0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:15.360 of that sort of a situation, you know, the the 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:18.520 strapping military veteran with a rifle and a stockpile of 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:23.760 food or whatever. You know. Yeah, yeah, that that, you know, 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:27.840 I would say that certainly having these skills to keep 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:31.360 yourself alive is important, and it is true that if 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:33.400 you don't make it through the first thirty days, you're 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:38.360 not gonna make it through the next thirty years. But um, yeah, 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:42.880 the way people survive outside of a few days perhaps 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:46.440 when they're dealing with some of these uh, what we 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:49.800 would think of a survival situations is this a community. 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:53.360 I mean we see that with uh, you know, when 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:56.880 we look at the Native American history in North America. 0:15:57.640 --> 0:16:02.080 You know, even as populations and entire groups were being 0:16:02.920 --> 0:16:09.640 decimated by these diseases, sometimes a village in a single 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:14.960 winner from a wave or waves of disease. Even in 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:19.720 the in the face of that, they reconstituted themselves as communities, 0:16:20.600 --> 0:16:26.320 sometimes um, multi ethnic or multicultural communities. I mean, there 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:30.400 was a whole variety of ways in which people regrouped. 0:16:30.440 --> 0:16:32.720 And I think that that, you know, that was the 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:36.040 message and you know, part of the uh this image 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:39.960 of you know, grabbing your bugout bag and heading out 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:46.400 to the hills is um it just doesn't work, you know. 0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:51.040 And and the the stockpiling you know as well. Um, 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:55.200 And so yeah, when we look archaeologically, you know, we 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:58.840 always see communities. Yeah, that's something we really try to 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:02.280 encourage people to this show where obviously some amount of 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:05.919 disaster preparation is is not just helpful, but is I 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:08.480 think kind of morally necessary if it's at all financially 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:11.199 feasible for you. You know it is you are it 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:13.720 is absolutely the right thing to do to try to 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:18.400 have two three weeks of of relatively storable food, some water, um, 0:17:18.440 --> 0:17:22.280 you know, some other emergency supplies, but kind of beyond that, 0:17:22.320 --> 0:17:24.639 as you said that first, like thirty days, if you 0:17:24.680 --> 0:17:27.480 actually want not just to live, but to have you know, 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:30.679 life have any kind of meaning, um, you have to 0:17:30.680 --> 0:17:35.320 be thinking in a community oriented situation. Yeah, I mean, 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:38.200 because ultimately, you know, what's the difference between two weeks 0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:42.000 or two months worth of food? You know it's gonna 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:46.280 be gone and you know you have to come back. 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:49.600 You know. One of the things in researching for this 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:52.280 for this book, one of the things I looked at 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:57.560 was the history of how we made a living, uh 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:00.600 and the history of agriculture. And one of the things 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:03.800 that you know that that I found was that the 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:09.040 last time that humans lived where a significant portion of 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:13.480 the population was hunters and gatherers, that is, not farmers, 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:18.720 there was like one of the current population, you know, 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:22.800 less than five million people in the world. So even 0:18:23.280 --> 0:18:30.359 a catastrophic disaster that you know, reduced us to of 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:34.520 you knowent of current population, We're still going to have 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:38.200 more people in the world than ever lived without agriculture. 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:44.239 And so we're gonna have to uh recreate some of 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:47.560 these systems. And you know, agriculture by and large is 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:51.360 going to be a community based system. It's I mean, 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:54.680 you can garden on your own, but but the way 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:56.760 that it needs to work is is going to be 0:18:56.800 --> 0:19:00.879 a collective. Yeah, and I think, yeah, this is we 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:03.200 talk a lot about. I actually live with a couple 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:06.000 of wilderness survival instructors and we have about an acre 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:08.520 of land and we do a decent amount of of 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:12.200 of you know gardening, you know, animal husbandry and that 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:14.639 sort of thing, and it it is. Um I've I've 0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:16.520 spent a lot of my life on farm, so I've 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:18.640 kind of always had an appreciation for how much work 0:19:18.680 --> 0:19:20.359 it is. And one of the things we try to 0:19:20.400 --> 0:19:23.560 talk about on this show regularly is the value of 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:26.840 even just having a garden of things like guerrilla gardening. 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:29.520 Not because I'm not one of those people who thinks 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:31.879 that like, oh, we need to replace industrial agriculture, with 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:34.680 like individuals tending small gardens. That's not going to work. 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:38.479 But because the more you kind of interface directly with 0:19:38.520 --> 0:19:41.440 the concept of growing food and with working with other 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:43.520 people in order to do that, the more prepared you 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:46.080 are for any number of things that could go wrong, 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:47.920 Like even if those things don't involve a crunch in 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:50.160 the food supply lines, the connections you make with people 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:52.360 doing that sort of work will be more valuable than 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:55.400 an extra two months of stockpiles. You know, when you're 0:19:55.440 --> 0:19:58.080 in your food buckets or whatever, you're Alex Jones dried 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:02.040 food buckets. Well, that's that's absolutely right. And you know, 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:04.639 one of the things that occurred to me looking into 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:08.840 the past at some of these uh, you know, collapses 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:11.200 or declines that had happened in the past, was that 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:20.200 a huge percent of the population um um was engaged 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:24.480 directly in agriculture. And you know here in the well 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:27.240 in the industrialized world, is typically less than five percent 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:30.439 less than that even in the United States. Most people 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:35.199 like me don't, uh don't engage in it. And you know, 0:20:35.280 --> 0:20:38.520 I know something about gardening, perhaps like everybody else, but 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:42.280 I'm not a farmer. I don't really have that collected 0:20:42.920 --> 0:20:47.320 wisdom and if I had to do that, um, you 0:20:47.359 --> 0:20:50.600 know probably it's like a lot of other things. When 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:53.399 everything is easy, it's not so bad when you know 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:55.959 when it goes bad, it really helps to know what 0:20:56.000 --> 0:21:00.320 you're doing. Uh. And of course everything goes bad sooner 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:04.680 or later, and so um, you know, that's that kind 0:21:04.720 --> 0:21:08.439 of things very important, you know. And I think also 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:17.359 there could certainly local systems and some flexible scale would 0:21:17.400 --> 0:21:20.960 be really important, you know. So I'm also, like you, 0:21:21.040 --> 0:21:24.040 a proponent of of this sort of thing. You know, 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:26.480 if we can get everybody to participate in ways that 0:21:26.520 --> 0:21:29.560 we aren't now, that will give us some flexibility. What 0:21:29.640 --> 0:21:32.600 if what if we do have supply chain problems, Well, 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:34.520 we have a number of people in the community that 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:37.760 are already doing some of this stuff that could maybe 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:44.040 be expanded or get us through this period. So yeah, yeah, 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:46.120 I mean, even if you're not like dealing with everyone's 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:48.159 caloric needs, it could be as simple as because of 0:21:48.160 --> 0:21:51.439 where you're located. You know, when when the oranges and 0:21:51.480 --> 0:21:53.280 other kind of fruits aren't able to come in from 0:21:53.320 --> 0:21:55.680 a supply line thing, there's a shortage of vitamin C, 0:21:55.840 --> 0:21:58.800 and then knowing how to make teata pine needles or whatever, 0:21:58.840 --> 0:22:01.200 or what kind of plants have a lot of vitamins. See, 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:04.359 you know, even though you're not you're not focused on 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:08.399 meeting everyone's you know, entire caloric needs through small scale farming, 0:22:08.400 --> 0:22:10.760 but you can deal with them a nutrient deficiency or 0:22:10.800 --> 0:22:13.960 something because you understand your environment a little bit better. Yeah, 0:22:14.000 --> 0:22:17.240 and you know, probably quality of life issues too. I mean, 0:22:17.520 --> 0:22:22.119 you know, for uh, you know, kids and u you know, 0:22:22.119 --> 0:22:25.280 there's there's lots of there's lots of ways you can 0:22:25.320 --> 0:22:29.720 survive that are pretty miserable. So you wanna you want 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:34.600 to try to uh direct it towards those that are desirable. 0:22:35.240 --> 0:22:37.680 And I think part of that is having this flexibility, 0:22:37.720 --> 0:22:41.480 having this knowledge, having a lot of people involved in things. 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:43.040 And you know, one of the things I talked about 0:22:43.040 --> 0:22:46.480 in in my book or ideas of you know, diversity 0:22:46.480 --> 0:22:50.320 and inclusion, which we talk about in certain ways now 0:22:50.960 --> 0:22:54.359 and often I think unfortunately it's talked about, is if 0:22:55.000 --> 0:23:00.359 it's done to benefit the people that are marginalizing, left 0:23:00.359 --> 0:23:05.600 out only, And while it is partly that it benefits everybody, 0:23:05.640 --> 0:23:08.560 of course, I mean, anyone in a business knows, anybody 0:23:08.560 --> 0:23:14.640 in a university knows the benefits of of diversity. In 0:23:14.680 --> 0:23:18.840 the same way anybody that's trying to do something understands 0:23:18.840 --> 0:23:22.560 the benefit of a diverse range of experiences. You know. 0:23:22.600 --> 0:23:25.720 That's why we make these multidisciplinary teams that go out 0:23:25.760 --> 0:23:28.639 and do things. Uh, you know, it's so that you 0:23:28.800 --> 0:23:33.879 have this this wide variety that can help you keep going. Yeah. 0:23:34.280 --> 0:23:36.919 And one of the things that I really found fascinating 0:23:36.920 --> 0:23:38.560 in your book and that that kind of made me 0:23:38.600 --> 0:23:41.680 feel a little bit um bad as I You know, 0:23:41.720 --> 0:23:45.160 I've I've spent a lot of time thinking about the 0:23:45.480 --> 0:23:47.879 what happened, what was done to and what also just 0:23:47.920 --> 0:23:50.359 kind of happened as a result of the way diseases 0:23:50.400 --> 0:23:54.000 spread when when colonizers reached North America. I had never 0:23:54.040 --> 0:23:58.080 really devoted that much thought to the actual actions that 0:23:58.600 --> 0:24:02.040 in different indigenous groups hook consciously to prevent to protect 0:24:02.119 --> 0:24:04.359 themselves from the spread of diseases. You mentioned the Cherokee 0:24:04.440 --> 0:24:07.399 in particular, Um in your book. Could you talk a 0:24:07.440 --> 0:24:10.040 little bit more about that, because that's something as soon 0:24:10.080 --> 0:24:11.720 as I read it, I marked that page because I'm like, 0:24:11.760 --> 0:24:14.000 I need to look up what the studies he's referencing, 0:24:14.000 --> 0:24:18.480 because I I don't know anything about this. Yeah, that Um, 0:24:18.520 --> 0:24:20.920 you know, a lot of that stems from the research 0:24:21.000 --> 0:24:25.200