Speaker 1: Welcome to It could happen here, a show about things
Speaker 1: falling apart and how to maybe put them back together
Speaker 1: a little bit better than they were before. I am
Speaker 1: Robert Evans, and with me this week is I guess
Speaker 1: I'm very excited about Chris Begley, author of the Next Apocalypse,
Speaker 1: The Art and Science of Survival. Chris, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you now, Chris. Before we get into the meat
Speaker 1: of our discussion, I have to talk about what you
Speaker 1: do for a living, because for years and years it
Speaker 1: was my job to go around the world I talked
Speaker 1: to people and pretty much every continent about their different
Speaker 1: interesting jobs. So I've I've talked interviewed everybody from like
Speaker 1: Bravo workers in Nevada to Iraqi counter terrorism special forces
Speaker 1: in Iraq. And you have probably the coolest job title
Speaker 1: if anybody I've met. You're an underwater archaeologist. How did
Speaker 1: you um? How did you? I mean? Was that was
Speaker 1: it just kind of like were you kind of laser
Speaker 1: focused on that goal or was it more you were
Speaker 1: interested in archaeology and you loved diving, and so the
Speaker 1: two just kind of made sense together. Yeah. Well, I
Speaker 1: started out as ah, what I now called a terrestrial archaeologists,
Speaker 1: you know, working on the land as most people do,
Speaker 1: and worked for years in Central America. Honduras was my focus,
Speaker 1: as you saw in the book, but other other places
Speaker 1: uh nearby as well, and really it was about I
Speaker 1: would say, I don't know, twelve thirteen, fourteen years ago.
Speaker 1: I wanted to just branch out a little bit from that.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that that all archaeologists have
Speaker 1: seen is that, you know, there are certain things that
Speaker 1: really just aren't as explored as other things, and one
Speaker 1: was all of the archaeological resources underwater. I mean, we
Speaker 1: hear about underwater archaeology or maritime archaeology in the Mediterranean, right,
Speaker 1: you know them, and shipwrecks and all that, but there
Speaker 1: are big chunks of the world where we've done very
Speaker 1: little to see what's out there, you know. And one
Speaker 1: other interesting thing about that is there are many different
Speaker 1: things you could look at underwater, but often we look
Speaker 1: at shipwrecks, and shipwrecks are different from regular archaeological sites
Speaker 1: because you know, shipwreck is a moment in time that
Speaker 1: all happened in in one instance, and so when we're
Speaker 1: looking at that kind of archaeological site, we see this
Speaker 1: snapshot that we don't see when we look at a
Speaker 1: place that was occupied over hundreds of years. So you know,
Speaker 1: so yeah, so that wasn't my focus, but it became, uh,
Speaker 1: sort of somewhere I wanted to go as I learn
Speaker 1: more about it. And one of the things I find
Speaker 1: really interesting that the basic thrust of your book is
Speaker 1: that the way in which we think about civilizations falling
Speaker 1: or collapsing or how however you you know, the ways
Speaker 1: in which folks tend to discuss and we're talking about
Speaker 1: the Maya or the romans um is very different from
Speaker 1: what archaeologists who tend to study these cultures, how they
Speaker 1: tend to perceive of of what you might more accurately
Speaker 1: call a decline or or you know, a decentralization or whatever.
Speaker 1: I think there's a number of terms that we could use.
Speaker 1: But these ideas that like, you have these civilizations and
Speaker 1: then they suddenly fall apart um are not really based
Speaker 1: in rigorous historical analysis. Usually. Um, there's some cases as
Speaker 1: as you go out into the book, um, and I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm interested in that because you're kind of coming
Speaker 1: at from a very rigorous historical standpoint in this book. Um,
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff that we talked about on
Speaker 1: on this show in a more contemporary sense. And I'm
Speaker 1: kind of wondering how the idea to write this sort
Speaker 1: of came together because you you started it before the
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen pandemic. Obviously that had an impact on the book.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's all over there. Yeah yeah, Um, well,
Speaker 1: I've I was. One of the things that I do
Speaker 1: is teach the wilderness survival courses and um, and I
Speaker 1: don't do that as frequently as some people that that
Speaker 1: sort of dedicate themselves to that do. But but but
Speaker 1: I do it fairly frequently. And UM. It became obvious
Speaker 1: to me over time that people were taking these courses
Speaker 1: not just to learn how to deal with being lost
Speaker 1: out in the wilderness, which is sort of was my vision.
Speaker 1: What do you do if you unexpectedly have to spend
Speaker 1: a night out in the woods or or two or three. Um,
Speaker 1: they were really thinking about what do I do when
Speaker 1: things fall apart? How do I take care of myself?
Speaker 1: How do I take care of my family using these
Speaker 1: skills that you could use in a situation where things
Speaker 1: had fallen apart, And that sort of oriented me towards
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, people were worrying about the future.
Speaker 1: I mean I could see it. I could see it
Speaker 1: in my students at university. I could see it, you know,
Speaker 1: the people's faces at the supermarket. You know, there was
Speaker 1: something going on there that was um uh, there was
Speaker 1: concerning people, and a lot of it had to do
Speaker 1: with climate change, and that I think was was the
Speaker 1: focus initially for me writing this um because what I
Speaker 1: saw was you know, sort of the prepper community and
Speaker 1: survivalist community looking at things that really seemed to be
Speaker 1: short term and didn't at all focus on what we
Speaker 1: really saw historically. So I think that my um, my
Speaker 1: initial motive to motivation to write this was really just
Speaker 1: seeing this concern that was that was growing among people
Speaker 1: about what the future is going to look like. And
Speaker 1: then of course COVID Hitn't that that that really brought
Speaker 1: all this to the to the forefront. And are there
Speaker 1: any specific ways in your mind that you you can
Speaker 1: you kind of think on how COVID all heard what
Speaker 1: you were what you were writing, or how you conceived
Speaker 1: of what you were writing. Like once you you know,
Speaker 1: you you have this kind of vision that's inspired by
Speaker 1: the things that you're seeing and hearing, particularly in these
Speaker 1: wilderness survival courses. And then as you get started, we
Speaker 1: have this horrible, horrible plague hit and a number of
Speaker 1: of of things start to happen very quickly. How does
Speaker 1: that kind of alter the trajectory of what you're writing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess the you know, the there were some just
Speaker 1: sort of practical logistical things obviously, right, Uh, some things
Speaker 1: that I intended to do, or ways that I had
Speaker 1: hoped to interact with folks in the course of interviewing
Speaker 1: people for the book or writing it, you know, wasn't
Speaker 1: going to be possible. But in terms of thinking about
Speaker 1: how things happened, the big thing for me was, um,
Speaker 1: how it became politicized so quickly. You know, that was
Speaker 1: you know in them you know you know, well, now
Speaker 1: you see all of the memes you know, um talking
Speaker 1: about the zombie movies where half the population doesn't believe
Speaker 1: their zombies or something. You know, that was never really
Speaker 1: on the radar, at least not on my radar before,
Speaker 1: and so now, um, um, you know it is because clearly,
Speaker 1: not only do these things happen, and then you have
Speaker 1: a group of people that are dealing with it. You
Speaker 1: have obviously the dynamics within the group, which which of
Speaker 1: course we knew, but to see it play out in
Speaker 1: this way, in this sort of dramatic way, that really
Speaker 1: altered the course of history. I mean, the pandemic could
Speaker 1: have turned out, uh, you know, differently, but it didn't.
Speaker 1: And part of the reason that didn't was because of
Speaker 1: the way folks reacted to it. And I'm wondering because
Speaker 1: a part a chunk of your career, in a big
Speaker 1: chunk of this book is kind of looking at in
Speaker 1: places like Honduras where these these civilizations entered decline, and
Speaker 1: in some cases it was very sharp, like within a
Speaker 1: fairly short period of time, nine of the population leaves
Speaker 1: or you know, uh is deceased. UM. And you you
Speaker 1: see like the crumbling of a lot of these governmental
Speaker 1: institutions and whatnot that had had organized life for a while.
Speaker 1: You see the pretty significant migrations. UM. Is there any
Speaker 1: ways in which kind of the last two years as
Speaker 1: an archaeologist has changed or informed how you were thinking
Speaker 1: about um, these places that you've been you've been studying,
Speaker 1: in these moments in history that you've been studying for
Speaker 1: so long. Yeah, in some ways, it brings some of
Speaker 1: it into a little sharper focus. For instance, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that that archaeologists had long talked
Speaker 1: about was it during these declines or these collapses, that
Speaker 1: it's uneven. It's not equal for everybody. It's not equal
Speaker 1: over space and time, and certainly depending on your position
Speaker 1: in society. UM, there's different ways in which it it
Speaker 1: plays out for you, UM, you know, and that's something
Speaker 1: that we see. We see it from um, you know,
Speaker 1: access to vaccines to um well, I mean even things
Speaker 1: like you know, if we think about folks that are unvaccinated.
Speaker 1: Now there's a you know, a chunk of those people
Speaker 1: that are doing it for a sort of political reasons
Speaker 1: or other ideological reason, but there's also a big, uh,
Speaker 1: a big group of those folks that are doing it
Speaker 1: because history shows that they should be wary of anything
Speaker 1: that uh society tries to do to them. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, you have these these things playing out for
Speaker 1: different ways for um, you know, people from different regions
Speaker 1: of the country or political orientations or race or ethnicity
Speaker 1: or um, you know, a whole variety of things. And
Speaker 1: so seeing how uneven it was the pandemic, UH makes
Speaker 1: me think that you know, it certainly was that way.
Speaker 1: Then the other thing that we see when we look
Speaker 1: archaeologically is that it's these big structures or systems that collapse.
Speaker 1: That really is the collapse and the things that cause
Speaker 1: it initially, whether it's I don't know, deforestation or drought
Speaker 1: or warfare or even a natural disaster of some sort
Speaker 1: um that really it's the way people respond to those
Speaker 1: and the way these UH systems deal with those changes
Speaker 1: that really creates the problems that you see later on.
Speaker 1: And we can see that now. For instance, one of
Speaker 1: the things that we're talking a lot now about is
Speaker 1: supply chain issues, right, and this is a result of COVID,
Speaker 1: But it's not a direct result. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: because the cruise on the ships are at the ports
Speaker 1: or truck drivers have UH are sick. It's because of
Speaker 1: the ways in which all of this disrupted things. And
Speaker 1: especially when we get these really efficient but inflexible systems,
Speaker 1: like a lot of our shipping system was um, these
Speaker 1: disruptions result in really big changes. So you know, you
Speaker 1: have these huge ships that can only dock a few ports.
Speaker 1: Once that gets backed up, you can't really shift and adjust,
Speaker 1: and so that's I think for me, just a lot
Speaker 1: of it is seeing it play out, where we see
Speaker 1: the fact that we have something that sets it all off,
Speaker 1: but then we have the response of the system or
Speaker 1: the structure that really creates the day to day impact.
Speaker 1: I suspect a big part of kind of why we
Speaker 1: conceive popularly of quote unquote collapses in the past is
Speaker 1: based on, as you talk about extensively in your book,
Speaker 1: the way in which we look at it kind of
Speaker 1: in fiction, and in fiction it's nearly always like the
Speaker 1: societal equivalent of a bullet in the head, right, the
Speaker 1: zombie plague is out, and then a couple of days
Speaker 1: everything's fallen apart. And the point that you make in
Speaker 1: this is that it's probably I mean, this isn't exactly
Speaker 1: a phrase, but it's probably better to look at it
Speaker 1: kind of like it's like a tumor or something, where
Speaker 1: the things are set in motion that are going to
Speaker 1: lead to things falling apart much much, um, at a
Speaker 1: point before a lot of people probably would have noticed it.
Speaker 1: You know, the problem can be too far gone, um
Speaker 1: before it's really obvious. Um. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's that's a good point, and that's the that's really
Speaker 1: something that you know, even with COVID, it shows that right. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the problems are not only the existence or
Speaker 1: the appearance of this virus, but first of all, how
Speaker 1: did it appear? And that has to do with, um,
Speaker 1: you know, decreasing habitat for wild animals and the proximity
Speaker 1: of human populations to animals. And then we have increased
Speaker 1: sort of communication and travel, which you know is not
Speaker 1: a bad thing obviously, but it is going to change
Speaker 1: the way in which these things spread. But then we
Speaker 1: have the way that we divide ourselves up into nation states,
Speaker 1: and the way in which we have you know, economic
Speaker 1: systems that are working in certain ways. So you know,
Speaker 1: the vaccine gets here but not there, and and and
Speaker 1: so forth. Um. But yeah, that's you know that I
Speaker 1: think is at the heart of it. You have these
Speaker 1: things that have been set in place, you of these
Speaker 1: parameters in which you're going to have to react, and
Speaker 1: they really set um the stage for what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: You know, you have it's like looking backwards four or
Speaker 1: five moves in chest to see how did we get
Speaker 1: in this situation. It's not just because of that last move,
Speaker 1: it's because of the last ten. Yeah. And one of
Speaker 1: the things you bring up that I like is that
Speaker 1: if you're looking for kind of a historical example of
Speaker 1: a collapse that that most mirrors the way we tend
Speaker 1: to look at it in fiction, it would probably be
Speaker 1: what happened to the indigenous population of particularly like North
Speaker 1: America um after the arrival of colonizers, which was by
Speaker 1: a lot of accounts, like nine of the population dead
Speaker 1: within a fairly short span of time, primarily from disease.
Speaker 1: This this really rapid and cataclysmic um um shock. But also,
Speaker 1: at the same time, as much as it does seem
Speaker 1: to mirror some of our you know, kind of fictional
Speaker 1: depictions of of viral outbreaks or other's sort of of
Speaker 1: of societal calamities, um, the ways in which people survived
Speaker 1: don't really in any meaningful way mirror are our kind
Speaker 1: of popular fictional depiction of like who makes it out
Speaker 1: of that sort of a situation, you know, the the
Speaker 1: strapping military veteran with a rifle and a stockpile of
Speaker 1: food or whatever. You know. Yeah, yeah, that that, you know,
Speaker 1: I would say that certainly having these skills to keep
Speaker 1: yourself alive is important, and it is true that if
Speaker 1: you don't make it through the first thirty days, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna make it through the next thirty years. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: the way people survive outside of a few days perhaps
Speaker 1: when they're dealing with some of these uh, what we
Speaker 1: would think of a survival situations is this a community.
Speaker 1: I mean we see that with uh, you know, when
Speaker 1: we look at the Native American history in North America.
Speaker 1: You know, even as populations and entire groups were being
Speaker 1: decimated by these diseases, sometimes a village in a single
Speaker 1: winner from a wave or waves of disease. Even in
Speaker 1: the in the face of that, they reconstituted themselves as communities,
Speaker 1: sometimes um, multi ethnic or multicultural communities. I mean, there
Speaker 1: was a whole variety of ways in which people regrouped.
Speaker 1: And I think that that, you know, that was the
Speaker 1: message and you know, part of the uh this image
Speaker 1: of you know, grabbing your bugout bag and heading out
Speaker 1: to the hills is um it just doesn't work, you know.
Speaker 1: And and the the stockpiling you know as well. Um,
Speaker 1: And so yeah, when we look archaeologically, you know, we
Speaker 1: always see communities. Yeah, that's something we really try to
Speaker 1: encourage people to this show where obviously some amount of
Speaker 1: disaster preparation is is not just helpful, but is I
Speaker 1: think kind of morally necessary if it's at all financially
Speaker 1: feasible for you. You know it is you are it
Speaker 1: is absolutely the right thing to do to try to
Speaker 1: have two three weeks of of relatively storable food, some water, um,
Speaker 1: you know, some other emergency supplies, but kind of beyond that,
Speaker 1: as you said that first, like thirty days, if you
Speaker 1: actually want not just to live, but to have you know,
Speaker 1: life have any kind of meaning, um, you have to
Speaker 1: be thinking in a community oriented situation. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: because ultimately, you know, what's the difference between two weeks
Speaker 1: or two months worth of food? You know it's gonna
Speaker 1: be gone and you know you have to come back.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the things in researching for this
Speaker 1: for this book, one of the things I looked at
Speaker 1: was the history of how we made a living, uh
Speaker 1: and the history of agriculture. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that you know that that I found was that the
Speaker 1: last time that humans lived where a significant portion of
Speaker 1: the population was hunters and gatherers, that is, not farmers,
Speaker 1: there was like one of the current population, you know,
Speaker 1: less than five million people in the world. So even
Speaker 1: a catastrophic disaster that you know, reduced us to of
Speaker 1: you knowent of current population, We're still going to have
Speaker 1: more people in the world than ever lived without agriculture.
Speaker 1: And so we're gonna have to uh recreate some of
Speaker 1: these systems. And you know, agriculture by and large is
Speaker 1: going to be a community based system. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: you can garden on your own, but but the way
Speaker 1: that it needs to work is is going to be
Speaker 1: a collective. Yeah, and I think, yeah, this is we
Speaker 1: talk a lot about. I actually live with a couple
Speaker 1: of wilderness survival instructors and we have about an acre
Speaker 1: of land and we do a decent amount of of
Speaker 1: of you know gardening, you know, animal husbandry and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and it it is. Um I've I've
Speaker 1: spent a lot of my life on farm, so I've
Speaker 1: kind of always had an appreciation for how much work
Speaker 1: it is. And one of the things we try to
Speaker 1: talk about on this show regularly is the value of
Speaker 1: even just having a garden of things like guerrilla gardening.
Speaker 1: Not because I'm not one of those people who thinks
Speaker 1: that like, oh, we need to replace industrial agriculture, with
Speaker 1: like individuals tending small gardens. That's not going to work.
Speaker 1: But because the more you kind of interface directly with
Speaker 1: the concept of growing food and with working with other
Speaker 1: people in order to do that, the more prepared you
Speaker 1: are for any number of things that could go wrong,
Speaker 1: Like even if those things don't involve a crunch in
Speaker 1: the food supply lines, the connections you make with people
Speaker 1: doing that sort of work will be more valuable than
Speaker 1: an extra two months of stockpiles. You know, when you're
Speaker 1: in your food buckets or whatever, you're Alex Jones dried
Speaker 1: food buckets. Well, that's that's absolutely right. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that occurred to me looking into
Speaker 1: the past at some of these uh, you know, collapses
Speaker 1: or declines that had happened in the past, was that
Speaker 1: a huge percent of the population um um was engaged
Speaker 1: directly in agriculture. And you know here in the well
Speaker 1: in the industrialized world, is typically less than five percent
Speaker 1: less than that even in the United States. Most people
Speaker 1: like me don't, uh don't engage in it. And you know,
Speaker 1: I know something about gardening, perhaps like everybody else, but
Speaker 1: I'm not a farmer. I don't really have that collected
Speaker 1: wisdom and if I had to do that, um, you
Speaker 1: know probably it's like a lot of other things. When
Speaker 1: everything is easy, it's not so bad when you know
Speaker 1: when it goes bad, it really helps to know what
Speaker 1: you're doing. Uh. And of course everything goes bad sooner
Speaker 1: or later, and so um, you know, that's that kind
Speaker 1: of things very important, you know. And I think also
Speaker 1: there could certainly local systems and some flexible scale would
Speaker 1: be really important, you know. So I'm also, like you,
Speaker 1: a proponent of of this sort of thing. You know,
Speaker 1: if we can get everybody to participate in ways that
Speaker 1: we aren't now, that will give us some flexibility. What
Speaker 1: if what if we do have supply chain problems, Well,
Speaker 1: we have a number of people in the community that
Speaker 1: are already doing some of this stuff that could maybe
Speaker 1: be expanded or get us through this period. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, even if you're not like dealing with everyone's
Speaker 1: caloric needs, it could be as simple as because of
Speaker 1: where you're located. You know, when when the oranges and
Speaker 1: other kind of fruits aren't able to come in from
Speaker 1: a supply line thing, there's a shortage of vitamin C,
Speaker 1: and then knowing how to make teata pine needles or whatever,
Speaker 1: or what kind of plants have a lot of vitamins. See,
Speaker 1: you know, even though you're not you're not focused on
Speaker 1: meeting everyone's you know, entire caloric needs through small scale farming,
Speaker 1: but you can deal with them a nutrient deficiency or
Speaker 1: something because you understand your environment a little bit better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, probably quality of life issues too. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, for uh, you know, kids and u you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's lots of there's lots of ways you can
Speaker 1: survive that are pretty miserable. So you wanna you want
Speaker 1: to try to uh direct it towards those that are desirable.
Speaker 1: And I think part of that is having this flexibility,
Speaker 1: having this knowledge, having a lot of people involved in things.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the things I talked about
Speaker 1: in in my book or ideas of you know, diversity
Speaker 1: and inclusion, which we talk about in certain ways now
Speaker 1: and often I think unfortunately it's talked about, is if
Speaker 1: it's done to benefit the people that are marginalizing, left
Speaker 1: out only, And while it is partly that it benefits everybody,
Speaker 1: of course, I mean, anyone in a business knows, anybody
Speaker 1: in a university knows the benefits of of diversity. In
Speaker 1: the same way anybody that's trying to do something understands
Speaker 1: the benefit of a diverse range of experiences. You know.
Speaker 1: That's why we make these multidisciplinary teams that go out
Speaker 1: and do things. Uh, you know, it's so that you
Speaker 1: have this this wide variety that can help you keep going. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I really found fascinating
Speaker 1: in your book and that that kind of made me
Speaker 1: feel a little bit um bad as I You know,
Speaker 1: I've I've spent a lot of time thinking about the
Speaker 1: what happened, what was done to and what also just
Speaker 1: kind of happened as a result of the way diseases
Speaker 1: spread when when colonizers reached North America. I had never
Speaker 1: really devoted that much thought to the actual actions that
Speaker 1: in different indigenous groups hook consciously to prevent to protect
Speaker 1: themselves from the spread of diseases. You mentioned the Cherokee
Speaker 1: in particular, Um in your book. Could you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about that, because that's something as soon
Speaker 1: as I read it, I marked that page because I'm like,
Speaker 1: I need to look up what the studies he's referencing,
Speaker 1: because I I don't know anything about this. Yeah, that Um,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of that stems from the research
Speaker 1: of of some other archaeologists and they you know what,
Speaker 1: You're exactly right. We don't think about that. We're not
Speaker 1: taught about it that way. You know, we sort of
Speaker 1: have this this contradictory and sort of u uh doubly
Speaker 1: problematic way of talking about this. First, for a long
Speaker 1: time we denied sort of the how traumatic and how
Speaker 1: much of a genocide it was when Europeans arrived um
Speaker 1: And then after denying that, we sort of say, well,
Speaker 1: Native Americans are gone and no longer relevant, so we
Speaker 1: can cease to talk about them. Of course, that's not true.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that we see when we
Speaker 1: look more in detail at the histories, or we listen
Speaker 1: to the oral histories, or we look at the archaeology,
Speaker 1: is that there are a number of things that that
Speaker 1: that people did and do to um uh uh to
Speaker 1: create the outcomes that they want. And that was no
Speaker 1: different for the Native American groups, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: they had ways of dealing with disease, and some of
Speaker 1: them will be will be able to understand it via
Speaker 1: our sort of our system, right, isolating people, cleanliness, minimizing
Speaker 1: contact expect especially with sort of problematic groups like the
Speaker 1: Colonizer's um you know. But in other ways, there are
Speaker 1: things that are gonna be unfamiliar to us and we're
Speaker 1: not gonna see the effectiveness or the value in it.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that that all of these
Speaker 1: things did, that these groups were doing was created or
Speaker 1: maintained um group identity and cohesion and allowed the perseverance
Speaker 1: of of community. And so there are um you know.
Speaker 1: It's it's easy to think about people as sort of
Speaker 1: passive victims of something, especially when it serves your purpose
Speaker 1: to to think about it in these ways, and we
Speaker 1: just see that it's it's not the case. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a remarkable moment in the book, and I think
Speaker 1: it was from when you were in Honduras where you
Speaker 1: you talk about your finding pottery shirts and they have
Speaker 1: these specific kind of markings on them from I don't
Speaker 1: like a thousand years ago or so, and you also
Speaker 1: know a local woman who's a potter and she's putting
Speaker 1: the same markings on and you ask her why and
Speaker 1: her answer is like, well, because the pottery shirts that
Speaker 1: we find from our ancestors have those on them. And
Speaker 1: my initial thought was like, oh, what a shame that
Speaker 1: she doesn't know what those originally meant. But then I
Speaker 1: thought like, well, but is that any different from like
Speaker 1: all of the different things that that I do, because
Speaker 1: their traditions, because like they're things that like people a
Speaker 1: thousand years ago in in in my line did like, no,
Speaker 1: it's not like it's it's just what people do, and
Speaker 1: it is a continuation, and it's a very there's um,
Speaker 1: that's a that's that's survival, you know, that's that's conscious survival. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and in that case, of course, whatever it
Speaker 1: meant initially, it now means that to her, right, So
Speaker 1: there's the meaning, you know, um. And so it's it's interesting,
Speaker 1: you know. One of the things you know, I from
Speaker 1: and I live in Kentucky. And one of the things,
Speaker 1: especially when people come to say Appalachians, they're looking for
Speaker 1: sort of authentic Appalachian Kentucky you know, um, and they
Speaker 1: already have an idea what that is. And if you
Speaker 1: don't see it, because that's not really what people do,
Speaker 1: then the response is never, oh my idea is about
Speaker 1: what is authentic? Might be erroneous. It's I wonder why
Speaker 1: I didn't see authentic Appalachians, you know, it's like what
Speaker 1: you did. But you know, there's gonna be more hip
Speaker 1: hop and punk groups than there are bluegrass groups because
Speaker 1: you know, these are twenty year old kids. That's you know,
Speaker 1: they're doing this as much as this other stuff, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know more probably, And so that that is something, uh,
Speaker 1: that that I think of often as an archaeologist. You know,
Speaker 1: my focus is in the past. But if I'm going
Speaker 1: to understand things, of course you also have to understand
Speaker 1: and how are people thinking about in the present, and
Speaker 1: how am I thinking about it in the present, because
Speaker 1: you know, everything, all the stories I tell about the
Speaker 1: past are coming out of or coming out of my
Speaker 1: experience in the present too, and it's hard to uh,
Speaker 1: it's hard to separate those and that really the best
Speaker 1: we can do is try to, um, you know, reflect
Speaker 1: on that and see how is it that I might
Speaker 1: be limiting my understanding because of my particular experience. And
Speaker 1: one of the things I really like about your book
Speaker 1: that I also found fascinating, So it's I you know,
Speaker 1: I I for a while did um conflict journalism and
Speaker 1: before when when that was just an ambition of mine,
Speaker 1: Before I started to do it, I would see the
Speaker 1: articles that were being written by all these war correspondence,
Speaker 1: and I would just be in awe of like how
Speaker 1: did they get that story? How did they get that access?
Speaker 1: How did they must have put so much work in?
Speaker 1: And then when I actually got there, I realized like,
Speaker 1: oh no, they met they made a contact with the
Speaker 1: local who was good at it, and that person showed
Speaker 1: them around and made all these connections, and like, actually,
Speaker 1: none of this work happens without the local fixers. And
Speaker 1: you make the point that in archaeology you're not generally
Speaker 1: discovering things, like even when you're finding shipwrecks, it's because
Speaker 1: these sailors who lived nearby were like, well, yeah, a
Speaker 1: bunch of shipwrecks every there, Like yeah, this is where
Speaker 1: you're gonna go find them. You know, It's always the
Speaker 1: way it is, you know there um um. In the
Speaker 1: example you're talking about, I was part of this project
Speaker 1: in Forney in Greece, which you know, made the news
Speaker 1: because we found so many shipwrecks there something ultimately like
Speaker 1: fifty shipwrecks around this island, um, and almost all of
Speaker 1: them were shown to us by local folks. Uh. You
Speaker 1: know that sponge divers or people that were fishers, you know,
Speaker 1: people that were out on the water all the time.
Speaker 1: And the few that we found by ourselves, I'm sure
Speaker 1: people knew about them, we just stumbled on them before
Speaker 1: somebody had a chance to show us. It's the same
Speaker 1: way in in the Honduras. Would we would be walking
Speaker 1: through the rainforest and you know, maybe we've been walking
Speaker 1: for a week, so we're way out in the middle
Speaker 1: of this place. People were constantly telling me, the guys
Speaker 1: that I was with, would say, Okay, if we go
Speaker 1: up this creek, you know, for about six hours and
Speaker 1: we go over here, here's what we'd find. Here's what
Speaker 1: we'd find over here. Here's what we find over here.
Speaker 1: They knew where everything was. Um. And that's you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that you uh uh uh that
Speaker 1: that you learn is you know how reliant you are
Speaker 1: on people that live in a place. I mean, they
Speaker 1: just know it. Yeah, there's no Um, when you get
Speaker 1: right down to it, is as obsessed as we are
Speaker 1: kind of in in the Western Cannon with the idea
Speaker 1: of lost cities. Um, that's not really a thing that
Speaker 1: tends to happen. Um. Yeah, no, no, no, it's not.
Speaker 1: And and in fact, most of the archaeological sites that
Speaker 1: people didn't know about. It was just because they were
Speaker 1: so small and ephemeral that no one really paid attention anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no lost city. They're always known for somebody. Well, Chris,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's most of what I wanted to
Speaker 1: get into in this conversation. I'm wondering before we kind
Speaker 1: of close out, because you are both the author of
Speaker 1: this book, The Next Apocalypse, which is I think a
Speaker 1: fascinating way of looking at the idea of things falling
Speaker 1: apart and a wilderness survival instructor. If you're going to
Speaker 1: suggest people, you know, a practical kit bag to prepare
Speaker 1: for short and kind of long term problems, what are
Speaker 1: you what are you putting in your bag? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: there's the two main things, uh, that you're always gonna
Speaker 1: want is is a knife because that allows you to
Speaker 1: make a lot of other things. And a way to
Speaker 1: start fire, you know, and we've all seen in the
Speaker 1: movies roving sticks together and you know, friction methods and
Speaker 1: that works, and you can do that, but it is
Speaker 1: incredibly difficult to do in the butt, you know, and
Speaker 1: for most of us that don't do it all the time. Uh,
Speaker 1: You're just not gonna be able to do it when
Speaker 1: it's forty degrees in raining and you really need a fire.
Speaker 1: You know, you'll be able to do it when it's
Speaker 1: a hundred degrees and dry, you know, uh, because everything
Speaker 1: is about to catch on fire anyway. But uh, you
Speaker 1: know so um and what would what would that look like? Well, uh,
Speaker 1: you need something that will catch on fire pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: And the thing I always takes cotton balls. You know,
Speaker 1: if you take cotton balls and a disposable lighter or
Speaker 1: one of those uh fire starter sticks, it will make sparks.
Speaker 1: Um that those cotton balls will catch fire instantly. And
Speaker 1: if you take one and you coat half of it
Speaker 1: with petroleum jelly, then not only will catch fire, it
Speaker 1: will burn you know for you know, a minute or so,
Speaker 1: long enough to catch other stuff on fire. So you know,
Speaker 1: making are and having some sort of cutting tool are
Speaker 1: the very basic things. But um, you know, the beyond that,
Speaker 1: I would say, uh, you know, clothing or some sort
Speaker 1: of shelter is is the other thing. You know, exposure
Speaker 1: to elements will kill you quicker than anything, and so
Speaker 1: having some way to uh to protect yourself and that's
Speaker 1: usually gonna be you know, first line of defense is
Speaker 1: going to be your clothes. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that that you'll know anybody that that deals with sort
Speaker 1: of survival situations is that most people that really get
Speaker 1: in trouble with things like hypothermia, you know, it's not
Speaker 1: when it's thirty degrees below and they're out doing something.
Speaker 1: It's when it's fifty degrees and sunny and they're out
Speaker 1: in a T shirt during the day, and then at
Speaker 1: night it drops to thirty degrees and you know they're
Speaker 1: stuck out somewhere with without proper clothing. That's that is
Speaker 1: when things get really dangerous. So you know, I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, if you can have some way to start fire,
Speaker 1: some sort of knife, and appropriate clothes for spending the
Speaker 1: night out, you know, then then uh, and you're probably
Speaker 1: in pretty good shape for most situations. Well, Chris, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for talking with with us today. Chris Begley,
Speaker 1: underwater archaeologist, author of the Next Apocalypse, The Art of
Speaker 1: Science and Survival. Chris, is there anything you'd like else
Speaker 1: you'd like to say or kind of get into before
Speaker 1: we close out for the day. No, just thank you
Speaker 1: very much for for reading the book and for reaching
Speaker 1: out to talk with me, because I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: especially now as we go into sort of an uncertain future.
Speaker 1: I mean, future is always uncertain, I suppose, but um
Speaker 1: as you know, we're really recognizing some of these challenges.
Speaker 1: You know, really am hoping that this sort of um uh,
Speaker 1: community based idea becomes the way we think about things. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't mean it's easy or that we're
Speaker 1: gonna like it. It doesn't mean that that's what I want.
Speaker 1: I mean, tell you the truth, I would love it
Speaker 1: if it was just me out in the woods with
Speaker 1: my family, you know, I can do that. It's much
Speaker 1: harder to be part of a community and make things
Speaker 1: work for a big group of people. But that's just
Speaker 1: the way it's going to be. Yeah, And that's that's
Speaker 1: ultimately the way in which you have a lot more
Speaker 1: real security because I think, um uh, I think people.
Speaker 1: I don't know, the world seems so complex and messy
Speaker 1: that it's easy to imagine that that safety comes from
Speaker 1: getting away from the world. But historically that's just not
Speaker 1: how it works. Now, the world finds you. You know,
Speaker 1: it's the best. Being part of a group is always best,
Speaker 1: and your your little group can never defend against the
Speaker 1: big group. I mean, if we want to put it
Speaker 1: in those terms, you know, you can't just hoard everything
Speaker 1: and uh it just doesn't work. Might work for a
Speaker 1: little while, but yeah, so that you know that for me,
Speaker 1: that's the message I'm hoping, Yeah, people take from it. Well,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Chris. For those of you listening
Speaker 1: at home again, please do check out The Next Apocalypse
Speaker 1: The Art and Science of Survival by Chris Begley. That's
Speaker 1: going to do it for us all today. Chris, Thank
Speaker 1: you again, and have a wonderful day here you too.
Speaker 1: Thank you. It Could Happen Here is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
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