Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, John,
Speaker 1: that's Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you? It is time for
Speaker 1: a tech Stuff classic episode. It's also time for us
Speaker 1: to continue last week's classic episode. So if you have
Speaker 1: not listened to last Friday's episode that was called tech
Speaker 1: in the post Apocalyptic World Part one, now we're gonna
Speaker 1: listen to tech in the post Apocalyptic World Part two.
Speaker 1: And Joe McCormick of Stuff to Blow your Mind joined
Speaker 1: us for this episode. Hope you enjoy. We want to
Speaker 1: go back to where we left off with our post
Speaker 1: apocalyptic discussion. We will conclude this episode with our talk
Speaker 1: of our favorite post apocalyptic stories and settings. So enjoy. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about our new clear facilities, because I know
Speaker 1: I have at least heard or read that like a
Speaker 1: nuclear reactor goes for a long time without needing refuel Yeah,
Speaker 1: like more than a year. Yeah. So I mean, you've
Speaker 1: got those rods in there, they're doing their things. You
Speaker 1: don't need to replace them. But like the other plants,
Speaker 1: this might just be an issue of maintenance and monitoring. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: the I was reading the reports from our really the
Speaker 1: estimations from someone who had worked in power plants, and
Speaker 1: they had talked to various power plant engineers of different
Speaker 1: types of plants UH to get their estimations. And when
Speaker 1: they said, when I talk to the nuclear guys, they said,
Speaker 1: are you crazy, because it was like, look, I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to answer a question about zombie outbreaks. I'm not crazy.
Speaker 1: And they said, well, maybe if everything went well, if
Speaker 1: there were none of these little same thing, like, if
Speaker 1: there were none of these alerts that pop up that
Speaker 1: would necessitate a shutdown, you might go as long as
Speaker 1: a week. And they're just looking at the probability of
Speaker 1: one of these smaller events that would lead to an
Speaker 1: automatic shutdown occurring. I said, you know, if a human
Speaker 1: is there to deal with whatever the issue is, you
Speaker 1: could go for more than a year without having to
Speaker 1: worry about refueling. And after that it would be tricky
Speaker 1: depending upon how many people are around, because it requires
Speaker 1: a lot of special equipment to refuel a nuclear power plant.
Speaker 1: But up to that point, you could supply power for
Speaker 1: a year. But if there's no one there to monitor
Speaker 1: it probably maybe a week would be about as long
Speaker 1: as you could expect before something leads to an automatic shutdown.
Speaker 1: So the best one so far. But then we have
Speaker 1: the the best one of all. If you are getting
Speaker 1: your power from a hydroelectric plant, assuming nothing's gone wrong
Speaker 1: with the dam, then you are in great shape. I
Speaker 1: mean doesn't need fuel. Yeah, your your energy is coming
Speaker 1: from water flowing through those turbines. As long as nothing
Speaker 1: a mechanical is going wrong with that, you could probably
Speaker 1: get power for weeks or maybe even a month without
Speaker 1: any interruption. Yeah. Now when would you have to have
Speaker 1: major maintenance intervention? I guess it would maybe if the
Speaker 1: if the water flow changed dramatically, if there was flooding
Speaker 1: and you needed to change the levels of the floodgates
Speaker 1: or something. There could be that, or it could even
Speaker 1: be through the transmission of power, not even the generation,
Speaker 1: but just the transmission lines. Like there are a lot
Speaker 1: of different parts that are that are involved in this
Speaker 1: and many different power plants. Like typically they would have
Speaker 1: engineers come in and step up or step down the
Speaker 1: amount of power being put out due to demand, like
Speaker 1: the grid typically is making just as much electricity as
Speaker 1: the demand. Warrants like it's that's it. Like, as much
Speaker 1: as we need, that's what the power grid is providing.
Speaker 1: In this situation, you no longer have someone there to
Speaker 1: make sure that that's what's happening, so so problems could
Speaker 1: result ultimately from that. You know. There are actually a
Speaker 1: couple of different posts to pop elliptic movies and fictional
Speaker 1: scenarios I can think of where the main goal certain
Speaker 1: characters had was getting hydroelectric plants back up and running. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not surprised. I mean that to me would be
Speaker 1: well again, it's it's the one where as long as
Speaker 1: you have the mechanical knowledge of how to do repairs
Speaker 1: and maintenance on the system, and uh just general knowledge
Speaker 1: of how the transmission system works, it's the most reliable, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's more reliable than solar or wind because
Speaker 1: the water is always going to flow unless something really
Speaker 1: major changes the nature of the the area, in which
Speaker 1: case you probably have more things to worry about than
Speaker 1: your electricity. Um uh. But otherwise, yeah, I would imagine
Speaker 1: that would be a top priority. It's the simplest of
Speaker 1: all the things. Because you think of things like coal,
Speaker 1: you have to mind the coal. So even if you
Speaker 1: even if you had people to keep moving coal into
Speaker 1: the the power plant. Most coal fire ring plants have
Speaker 1: enough coal on hand for sixty to seventy days of power.
Speaker 1: So after that sixty to seventy days, even if you
Speaker 1: had the people there to look after it, you would
Speaker 1: have to then go and mind more coal. You have
Speaker 1: to get your hands on more coal to keep the
Speaker 1: coal plant going. So hydro electric makes way more sense
Speaker 1: in that case. Yeah, I was trying to think what
Speaker 1: different types of alternative or imagined power plants would be
Speaker 1: the most resilient to Earth disasters, you know, whether it's zombies,
Speaker 1: nuclear bombs, nuclear zombies, asteroid impact, cyber attacks. And the
Speaker 1: one idea I came up with it was most interesting
Speaker 1: to me at least, though perhaps wrong, is orbital solar Alright,
Speaker 1: so let me take a guess what you mean. And
Speaker 1: I'm literally guessing because I have not I have not
Speaker 1: looked at these parts of the notes. You added this
Speaker 1: while I was recording a different episode. So this would
Speaker 1: be a network of solar power capture ring satellites that
Speaker 1: would then use a means like a microwave beam to
Speaker 1: beam energy down to the surface of the planet, which
Speaker 1: then would be distributed through a power grid. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: So you you've got solar farms, except you're moving the
Speaker 1: solar farm itself from the surface of the Earth to orbit,
Speaker 1: and that has some pretty obvious advantages. I mean, number one,
Speaker 1: you're not dealing with cloud cover intercepting that that precious
Speaker 1: solar energy you need. The receivers are out there in space,
Speaker 1: so they're always getting sunlight. Also, you don't have night
Speaker 1: time because at geosynchronous orbit, these things will almost never
Speaker 1: be blocked from the Sun. They might pass, you know,
Speaker 1: in the shadow of the Earth in very rare cases,
Speaker 1: they don't spend much time in it. So these are
Speaker 1: giant solar panels in space that can receive almost uninterrupted sunlight.
Speaker 1: They convert the sunlight into d C electricity, which would
Speaker 1: then be converted into some type of radiation that could
Speaker 1: be sent via a targeted beam down to receiving stations
Speaker 1: on Earth. And the two major candidates for the beam
Speaker 1: radiation are lasers and microwaves, and microwaves are really where
Speaker 1: it's at today, So these solar power satellites are usually
Speaker 1: sps s in the industry. LINGO would be a really
Speaker 1: daunting project to create because they have to be absolutely huge,
Speaker 1: and you need a bunch of them to really cut
Speaker 1: into Earth's energy demands. And there was a former Department
Speaker 1: of Energy NASA joint research project from the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: that envisioned a fleet of sixty satellites, each one about
Speaker 1: fifty five square kilometers in photovoltaic surface area uh together
Speaker 1: all generating about three hundred gigawatts of electricity okay um.
Speaker 1: So then of course there's the question of the wireless
Speaker 1: energy transmission, which has been a problem historically, but we're
Speaker 1: getting better at. In fact, just in the past few
Speaker 1: years there have been some projects that are that are
Speaker 1: making strides in this. In fact, I just read an
Speaker 1: interesting article in the I tri Police Spectrum from last
Speaker 1: year about Jackson that the Japanese Space Agency's plans to
Speaker 1: possibly look into creating an orbital solar farm, and they're
Speaker 1: doing preliminary research on that, like on these wireless energy transmissions,
Speaker 1: and so these days it looks like most of the
Speaker 1: people who are still interested in sps are talking about
Speaker 1: microwaves rather than lasers, and so this would be a
Speaker 1: microwave frequency transmission from the satellites to the Earth and
Speaker 1: then the receivers on the Earth would be what things
Speaker 1: that are called rectifying antennas, their antennas that receive the
Speaker 1: microwaves and then convert them into electricity. The microwaves are
Speaker 1: generally considered better than lasers for beaming the energy to
Speaker 1: Earth because lasers in the visible spectrum or wherever they
Speaker 1: would be, are more likely to be intercepted by cloud cover,
Speaker 1: and the microwaves are much more resilient into penetrating the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Apparently low frequency microwaves, so the really long wavelengths are
Speaker 1: the best at penetrating the atmosphere. They're they're much better,
Speaker 1: but they of course come with the problem that you
Speaker 1: need really big antenna's. Yeah, your antenna's size is uh
Speaker 1: is reliant upon the length of the wave, the wavelength
Speaker 1: of whatever you're trying to pick up. So I couldn't
Speaker 1: exactly figure out how well the space based you know,
Speaker 1: life root of the microwave beam would survive cloud cover
Speaker 1: that was based on particulate matter instead of water vapor,
Speaker 1: because I was trying to imagine, Okay, let's say there's
Speaker 1: an asteroid impact, supervolcano eruption, or nuclear bombs create nuclear winter,
Speaker 1: whatever it is that puts ash dust particles into the
Speaker 1: atmosphere and blocks the sun. Would the microwaves from space
Speaker 1: to be able to penetrate that any better than the
Speaker 1: sunlight itself would just get to you know, solar panels
Speaker 1: on your roof or in the desert, And I don't
Speaker 1: know the answer to that. That's one of those things
Speaker 1: that probably doesn't come up in a lot of the
Speaker 1: white papers on the project. So in the case of
Speaker 1: nuclear winter, this would still provide power. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: just one interesting possibility of sort of like outsourcing our
Speaker 1: our energy production needs away from the ground in places
Speaker 1: where an earth based catastrophe might not touch them. Though
Speaker 1: they're like I said, some scenarios that might interrupt power
Speaker 1: from those sources or might not. It's hard to tell.
Speaker 1: I mean, again, it all depends upon the nature of
Speaker 1: the disaster, right, And of course you can still imagine
Speaker 1: that some kind of space weather event could could very
Speaker 1: well fry those satellites. Sure, yeah, solar flare might might
Speaker 1: end up disrupting that, or it could be something on
Speaker 1: the ground ends up frying the transmission infrastructure, not not
Speaker 1: necessarily the receiving antenna, but just the means of getting
Speaker 1: electricity from the receiver site to the places where it's needed.
Speaker 1: If that's fried, then you know, you could still be
Speaker 1: generating electricity, but you can't get it to where it
Speaker 1: needs to go. In other words, if the power lines
Speaker 1: themselves are damaged as a result of whatever the catastrophe was,
Speaker 1: then you're really you're still stuck. And and some of
Speaker 1: the things that would come out of this, I mean
Speaker 1: they're really pretty grim, like even the immediate effects. And
Speaker 1: this is the people who have gone through blackouts, Uh
Speaker 1: can talk about the these There was a big one
Speaker 1: in UM two thousand three that had people trapped on subways,
Speaker 1: had people trapped in elevators. You know, you couldn't things
Speaker 1: that relied upon electricity for operation stopped, and then you know,
Speaker 1: you could be in a place like an elevator where
Speaker 1: you also no longer have climate control. Yeah, imagine getting
Speaker 1: stuck in one of the elevators here during this month,
Speaker 1: like Atlanta has been incredibly hot and humid this month,
Speaker 1: So you're stuck in an elevator. Let's say there's like
Speaker 1: seven other people in there with you. The elevator stops,
Speaker 1: climate control stops after an hour or two, you know,
Speaker 1: you are already with a bunch of other people crammed
Speaker 1: in this small space. That's gonna get in tall, terribly hot. Um.
Speaker 1: And I mean they can get to a point, depending
Speaker 1: upon where you are, I can get to a you know,
Speaker 1: a point that's that's very dangerous, particularly for people who
Speaker 1: are already in poor health. Uh. Subways similar problem. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily want to immediately evacuate the train if
Speaker 1: it's a temporary power problem. Then once that comes back online,
Speaker 1: you've got that third rail that would be of deadly
Speaker 1: to come into contact with it. So it's one of
Speaker 1: those things that you definitely need an evacuation plan. Uh.
Speaker 1: I've read that if you had a blackout that lasted
Speaker 1: longer than a few days, like a true blackout that
Speaker 1: lasted longer than a few days in New York City,
Speaker 1: then the many of the subways would end up having
Speaker 1: flooding issues because they no longer would have some pumps
Speaker 1: that would pump water out. Yeah. I've read the same thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have to be pumped out every single day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even if it's a day that's there's no rain, they
Speaker 1: still have to be pumped out. So then you you
Speaker 1: have infrastruct your problems that once the power comes online,
Speaker 1: that electricity going through the areas that have water that
Speaker 1: can actually end up causing debreed to catch on fire.
Speaker 1: And then you've got fire on the tracks as well.
Speaker 1: I mean there's lots of issues that roll out just
Speaker 1: from losing power. That sounds like a great like folk
Speaker 1: album title fire on the Tracks, it's the lost Johnny
Speaker 1: Cash album. Uh. Also, you got you have issues with
Speaker 1: traffic because if all the traffic signals are out, then
Speaker 1: there's no way to regulate traffic. Yeah, Joe, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've driven in Atlanta after there's been power outages where Yeah,
Speaker 1: how how lovely is it to come up to one
Speaker 1: of those intersections? Well? Are now? Are you talking about
Speaker 1: the intersections that have the flashing lights or it's just blank,
Speaker 1: It's just blank. I've come on that too. It's not fun.
Speaker 1: People are eager for their turn. Yeah, there are times
Speaker 1: where like it's odd. I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: the case in lots of different cities, but in Atlanta, Uh,
Speaker 1: people either treat everything like it's a four way stop,
Speaker 1: even if it's a blinking yellow light, which means proceed
Speaker 1: with caution, not stop. Um, but people will treat everything
Speaker 1: like it's a four way stop, or they treat like
Speaker 1: nothing is a Moore Wi stop, and either way it's
Speaker 1: not good. And just imagine like this is nationwide. You've
Speaker 1: got no means of regulating the traffic. You also have
Speaker 1: no way of of being able to have emergency responders
Speaker 1: get to where they need to go in a in
Speaker 1: a fast way because everything's clogged up with traffic as
Speaker 1: people are trying to get home, or people are worried
Speaker 1: about how much fuel they have. That's another big issue
Speaker 1: if the electricity goes out. Most fueling stations, in fact,
Speaker 1: nearly all of them required electricity to operate, so you
Speaker 1: can't refuel your vehicle, but you can siphon someone else's
Speaker 1: and that might end up being an issue too. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh, cell phone service might go out. A lot
Speaker 1: of cell phone towers have backup generators, but that will
Speaker 1: only last as long as the fuel does. Not all
Speaker 1: cell phone towers have backup generators, so once it goes out,
Speaker 1: there offline, which means your phone might work, but the
Speaker 1: person you're trying to call they might not have a
Speaker 1: working cell phone tower and range. And then of course
Speaker 1: remember that in many major catastrophes and events, you're gonna
Speaker 1: have so many people trying to access the cellular system
Speaker 1: they're flooding it. We've seen that happen. We've seen that
Speaker 1: have even in even in non emergency situations when there's
Speaker 1: just a large number of people, like when c e
Speaker 1: s happens every year are Comic Con. There's so many
Speaker 1: people trying to connect to the local network that it
Speaker 1: just overloads it and nothing goes out, uh, and nothing
Speaker 1: comes in. It's like the Willy Wonka factory before they
Speaker 1: opened it up with the golden tickets. Nobody ever goes
Speaker 1: in and nobody ever comes out. Uh. Yeah, So it's
Speaker 1: it's a pretty grim situation. We'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about um possible uh the possible toll in just
Speaker 1: a bit, But before we do that, let's talk also
Speaker 1: about some of the other systems that because of the
Speaker 1: power outage, would be affected. We we just touched on one,
Speaker 1: the communication system. So satellites would largely be unaffected by
Speaker 1: any Earth based catastrophe. If it were a solar flare,
Speaker 1: then obviously satellites would be Actually they'd be the most
Speaker 1: vulnerable the further out you are, the more vulnerable you
Speaker 1: are to to like a solar flare or coronal mass ejection. UM.
Speaker 1: Then you know, you could end up having the electronics
Speaker 1: fried on the satellites. A lot of them are shielded
Speaker 1: pretty heavily for that sort of stuff, because it's more
Speaker 1: likely to happen to a satellite than it is to
Speaker 1: electronics here on Earth. But a truly powerful one, and
Speaker 1: there have been some in the past, could really overwhelm
Speaker 1: those satellites. UM. Anything connected to the power grid obviously
Speaker 1: would be uh, it would be vulnerable. So uh, you
Speaker 1: might be able to get radio signals if you have
Speaker 1: a battery operated radio, which, by the way, you should
Speaker 1: have a battery operated radio. Handk Yeah, hand Craig operated
Speaker 1: radio would be great to uh, either of those are both.
Speaker 1: You know, there are a lot of combination systems out
Speaker 1: there where you can get one that works on either
Speaker 1: battery or hand crank. I recommend having one of those.
Speaker 1: Of course, that will only last as long as the
Speaker 1: radio broadcasting power has you know, has a supply of
Speaker 1: power from whatever source it's pulling it from, like a generator,
Speaker 1: a backup generator. Once the backup generators out of fuel,
Speaker 1: if the blackout continues, then that's gonna go dark too.
Speaker 1: So communications might last a little longer than the power does,
Speaker 1: but not it won't be indefinite. Um. I've also seen
Speaker 1: people recommend that you go ahead and invest in walkie
Speaker 1: talkies because they can provide for communication over sometimes miles
Speaker 1: of distance, uh and could be invaluable depending upon where
Speaker 1: you are. So uh, cell phone towers and radio stations
Speaker 1: will all go offline eventually. Are actually some developing nations
Speaker 1: that are making certain that their cell phone towers are
Speaker 1: not on the power grid at all, either because there's
Speaker 1: not a power grid in those remote locations or it's
Speaker 1: just so unreliable that in order to have a stable
Speaker 1: communication systems own power supply. The A lot of them
Speaker 1: are running on their own generators, and many of them
Speaker 1: are using solar power as a primary means for generating
Speaker 1: electricity for during the daylight hours. So it's pretty interesting
Speaker 1: and we could take a note from that, like we
Speaker 1: could start building out infrastructure to be robust in that
Speaker 1: same way and independent in that same way. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, just because you have access
Speaker 1: doesn't mean everybody else, you know does. It could still
Speaker 1: end up being a big issue and you might not
Speaker 1: be able to get in touch with anybody. We'll be
Speaker 1: back with more of this classic episode of tech stuff
Speaker 1: after this quick break. So that's power and communications. But
Speaker 1: you know, there are other things that we rely upon
Speaker 1: that we take for granted, like, hey, have you ever
Speaker 1: gone up to a faucet and turned on the knob
Speaker 1: and nothing came out? I've done that in my home before.
Speaker 1: Isn't that a terrifying experience. Yeah, it's It's especially bad
Speaker 1: when it's like your mouth is full of toothpaste. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's not that's not good. Yeah. Um. Running water is
Speaker 1: one of those things that we often take for granted.
Speaker 1: And uh uh, if the paragrid system is down, running
Speaker 1: water will follow, maybe not immediately. You might actually be
Speaker 1: able to have running water for a day, maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit longer. If you happen to live in a
Speaker 1: place that has a lot of water in its pipes
Speaker 1: like New York City actually could potentially hold a couple
Speaker 1: of days worth of water in their pipes. Um, just
Speaker 1: because that the water pressure that's built up and the
Speaker 1: water supplies are enough to go for another couple of days,
Speaker 1: assuming that everyone's not immediately thinking oh humanities, every container
Speaker 1: in the house. Yeah, or which I mean, honestly, if
Speaker 1: I thought, if I thought that the apocalypse was happening,
Speaker 1: the first thing I would do is fill up every
Speaker 1: container in the house with water. Yeah, me too. Also,
Speaker 1: I'd want to run the washing machine to clean on
Speaker 1: my underwear because I'm sure that it was very recently soiled. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's all scared that would be I would soil not
Speaker 1: just the underwhere I was wearing, but every pair I own. Um,
Speaker 1: but no, you would you would think that that would
Speaker 1: very quickly eliminate the supplied water. In the United States,
Speaker 1: we mostly are creating our water pressure through water tanks.
Speaker 1: The water tanks are elevated. Um. It's funny. There's actually
Speaker 1: a very specific formula. Every every foot of height provides
Speaker 1: point for three one pounds per square inch of pressure.
Speaker 1: So if we want to convert that to the metric system,
Speaker 1: for every thirty point four eight centimeters you get two
Speaker 1: point nine seven two kilo pascals of pressure. Uh, that
Speaker 1: means nothing to me. I have to do the prounds
Speaker 1: of the pressure that the per square inch of pressure.
Speaker 1: But a municipal water supplies run between fifty and a
Speaker 1: p s I or three to six kilo pascals, and
Speaker 1: most water towers contain enough water to supply the surrounding
Speaker 1: community for a day, assuming normal, not that everybody is trying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the problem is that to refill those water tanks,
Speaker 1: you have to pump water up to those and yeah,
Speaker 1: those pumps maybe running on electricity, so if they're not
Speaker 1: running on electricity, they're running on fuel. So either they're
Speaker 1: running on electricity and therefore you can't use them anymore
Speaker 1: because the grid is offline. So once the water's gone,
Speaker 1: it's gone, or they're running on fuel. And then once
Speaker 1: your fuel runs out because you aren't able to transport
Speaker 1: or refine more of it or or get your hands
Speaker 1: on more of it, the water runs out. Either way,
Speaker 1: the water runs out. It's just a question of time. So, uh,
Speaker 1: that's a huge issue. So it would really make you
Speaker 1: wish that you had access to clean well water, and
Speaker 1: you might depending on where you are. Like we live
Speaker 1: in an urban environment, we don't have access to clean
Speaker 1: well water. I think, I don't know, you don't have
Speaker 1: a well in your backyarddea. If I do have one,
Speaker 1: I don't know about it, But I don't know. There's
Speaker 1: some weird stuff buried back there. Yeah. It all depends
Speaker 1: on how often you do yard work, you know, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's back underneath that mass. Sometimes ghostly
Speaker 1: creatures come crawling out of my backyard, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: Oldridge horrors are not necessarily an indication that there is
Speaker 1: a well in the nearby area. It's a common misconception.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. So unless you have access to clean water,
Speaker 1: that's gonna be a huge, huge problem. And for much
Speaker 1: of the population of the United States, that is in
Speaker 1: fact a huge problem that you don't you know, you
Speaker 1: don't necessarily live near a place where you can reliably
Speaker 1: get potable water. Uh. Even bigger problem in other products
Speaker 1: of the world obviously, So that's another issue. Then we
Speaker 1: have the cars and fuel. So your car, let's say
Speaker 1: it's an electromagnetic pulse, some of your car systems might
Speaker 1: get fried. But in general, you know, we're talking about
Speaker 1: good old internal combustion that's not affected by electromagnet neetic pulses.
Speaker 1: That's not an issue. It's a mechanical system, not a well.
Speaker 1: I understand it is largely I mean, wouldn't there be
Speaker 1: electronical electron um Uh yeah, It is, of course largely mechanical,
Speaker 1: you know, combustion. But I wonder about the electronic components,
Speaker 1: especially if you have one of these newer cars that's
Speaker 1: all computer brains. The newer, the newer your vehicle, the
Speaker 1: more prone it would be to a real issue with
Speaker 1: an e MP or solar flare. Uh. The older your vehicle,
Speaker 1: the more reliable it would be in those conditions, assuming
Speaker 1: that everything's in good working order obviously, But even so,
Speaker 1: you can't get to the gas. If it's a gas
Speaker 1: powered car, then you are You've got as much as
Speaker 1: you have in your tank, and that's pretty much gonna
Speaker 1: be it. Right. You can't go cut down some gas
Speaker 1: from the forest next door. Gas has to be refined
Speaker 1: from oil, yeah, and so the refineries are going to
Speaker 1: be offline. The even if even if they weren't offline,
Speaker 1: do you still have to have transportation, like you have
Speaker 1: to transport the fuel to the different fueling stations. Fueling
Speaker 1: stations will be offline because they need electricity to run.
Speaker 1: So it's a big, big problem. Right, you would have
Speaker 1: enough gas to get you wherever, you know, however far
Speaker 1: your tank of gas will take you, assuming you've got
Speaker 1: a full tank. Uh, and that would be it. Once
Speaker 1: you ran out, you'd be pretty much stuck unless you
Speaker 1: were able to against siphon gas out of some other vehicle.
Speaker 1: Max's car, but be careful because it's booby trapped. You're
Speaker 1: talking about Mr mad Max. So then if we're looking
Speaker 1: at diesel engines, that's a little different. Some diesel engines
Speaker 1: can run on bio diesel, which is some of them
Speaker 1: can actually run on vegetable oil. You know, I would
Speaker 1: say that's an ideal scenario, but then I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: you don't encounter vegetable oil anymore commonly in nature than
Speaker 1: you do gasoline. I mean that's also something that is
Speaker 1: has to be expressed in an industrial process. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could. You could run out and buy as much
Speaker 1: as you could from assuming that you have some way
Speaker 1: of buying. I mean, I don't care you that much
Speaker 1: cash on me on any given day. So maybe, like
Speaker 1: in your imagining in the early days of the apocalyptic scenario,
Speaker 1: there is less price gouging on vegetable oil than there
Speaker 1: is on gasoline. And probably water would be the biggest
Speaker 1: one actually that I would guess water would be chief.
Speaker 1: But yes, I do think that um at least initially,
Speaker 1: so you would have to, you know, somehow have a
Speaker 1: means of purchasing the stuff, assuming that people have faith
Speaker 1: in the currency. It all depends on what the nature
Speaker 1: of the catastrophe was, obviously, but um, you would also
Speaker 1: have to have currency, don't If you don't have cash
Speaker 1: on you, you're probably stuck. Uh But yeah, you could.
Speaker 1: You could presumably use vegetable oil or some other means
Speaker 1: of oil to to fuel your vehicle, at least in
Speaker 1: the short term. But then once you once those supplies
Speaker 1: are out, then you're just as stuck as everybody else.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Yeah, the Mad Max future where people are
Speaker 1: fighting over water and they have cars that magically are
Speaker 1: fueled by means that I don't know like how that works.
Speaker 1: I don't know how they're able to keep a system
Speaker 1: in place to capture and refine fuel and then distribute fuel.
Speaker 1: But apart from barter Town, which is run on methane. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is also in the second movie, The Road Warrior.
Speaker 1: Isn't the little settlement that the raiders are attacking their
Speaker 1: their like extracting oil from the ground and refining it.
Speaker 1: Aren't they like set up their own refinery. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: just It makes me wonder, like, if you can set
Speaker 1: your own refinery, couldn't you set up a desalination facility
Speaker 1: because the big issue is water in the Mad Max world,
Speaker 1: that's the water and gasoline. I mean, yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: like they're both pretty But I mean, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're able to get your if you're able to set
Speaker 1: up a refinery after this whatever the apocalyptic event is, uh,
Speaker 1: then you probably also could create a desalination plant, which would,
Speaker 1: assuming you are anywhere close to the ocean, would solve
Speaker 1: a lot of your water issues, or at least at
Speaker 1: least diminish them. Um So, then getting the cars all
Speaker 1: the way, assuming that we haven't reached this Mad Max
Speaker 1: magical world where we can still operate a refinery but
Speaker 1: everything else has gone completely bonkers. What about personal electronics there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean what are you going to do with them? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they might have a battery that'll work as long as
Speaker 1: the batteries charge, or you need to plug them in
Speaker 1: somewhere and that will work as long as you have
Speaker 1: access to power. But if you do, why are we
Speaker 1: talking about this? You could you could potentially have solar
Speaker 1: panels to recharge electronics, like there lot of things to
Speaker 1: do that. But again we sort of said at the beginning, like,
Speaker 1: if you've got off the grid power, you're in a
Speaker 1: whole different situation. Then mainly you gotta worry about who's
Speaker 1: coming to get your goods. Well, I'm just thinking back
Speaker 1: to when I got a house Stuff Works backpack that
Speaker 1: had a solar panel built into it where I could
Speaker 1: charge of it that came up with so much power
Speaker 1: twelve hours of having it sit in the sun would
Speaker 1: charge it would charge your phone. But that's twelve hours
Speaker 1: of direct sunlight on that panel. By the way, sun
Speaker 1: does not stay still for twelve hours, So you gotta
Speaker 1: like you would have to continuously position the backpack to
Speaker 1: have an ideal amount of sunlight in order to generate
Speaker 1: the electricity necessary just to recharge a phone. Uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could potentially have some electronics last a fairly long
Speaker 1: time with rechargeable batteries with solar power, it would be sporadic,
Speaker 1: and also the underlying infrastructure that supported them is no
Speaker 1: longer there, so you're not getting a lot of use
Speaker 1: out of it, unless you're just like, well, it's the apologism.
Speaker 1: I downloaded all these episodes of I don't know whatever.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking. I was just thinking, like the
Speaker 1: apocalypse and everything's gone to hell, but at least I
Speaker 1: can still play Angry Birds, you know. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's some Lord Humongus will kill you for that iPad. Right, So,
Speaker 1: so the the electronics problem also non trivial. Alright, so
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about what would happen during
Speaker 1: one of these blackouts. Actually, uh, you linked to an
Speaker 1: article that was part of a National geographic special about this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was written by Patrick Jake Tiger, who writes for
Speaker 1: house Stuff Works. Yeah, so one of our one of
Speaker 1: the members of the family. He wrote this thing and
Speaker 1: and it was a really good article and it also
Speaker 1: linked to an interactive page that was all part of
Speaker 1: this package National geographic put out. It was a depressing
Speaker 1: but very interesting yeah, called American blackout. And uh, the
Speaker 1: page that was interactive was really cool. It was it
Speaker 1: was telling you how a nationwide blackout in America might
Speaker 1: unfold over the course of ten days. They assumed that
Speaker 1: after ten days, whatever the issue was has been resolved
Speaker 1: and power can be restored. But within that ten days,
Speaker 1: an amazing amount of catastrophe and chaos would occur. Um
Speaker 1: and they looked at UH, the potential death count of
Speaker 1: a ten day blackout, nationwide black blackout. Keeping in mind
Speaker 1: this also affects things like hospitals, so people who would
Speaker 1: be reliant upon um medical facilities to keep them in
Speaker 1: and keep them alive, they would be at most at
Speaker 1: risk obviously, and they figured that it would have a
Speaker 1: death count of around three nine thousand, thirteen people after
Speaker 1: ten days. That's a that's without factoring in whatever it
Speaker 1: was that caused the blackout in the first place, of right,
Speaker 1: So if there was some other catastrophic event that happened first,
Speaker 1: obviously that death toll would be in addition to this number, UH,
Speaker 1: and the numbers would be much higher depending upon whatever
Speaker 1: catastrophe it was, zombie apocalypse through the roof UM. So
Speaker 1: then you've got the financial impact. So assuming that it's
Speaker 1: something that we could recover from where it doesn't stay
Speaker 1: post apocalyptic for very long, like whatever the issue issue is,
Speaker 1: we resolve it, UH after ten days, it would be
Speaker 1: a cost of one point to trillion dollars of lost
Speaker 1: productivity of damages of all those things kind of lumped
Speaker 1: in together. Yeah, but just think about all that pent
Speaker 1: up demand. It sounds like a great time to start
Speaker 1: a business. Just think of how much you would save
Speaker 1: on your electricity bill because you haven't been able to
Speaker 1: use it for ten days. Stay tuned for the exciting
Speaker 1: conclusion of this Tex Stuff Classic episode right after we
Speaker 1: take this break. So then we will have a real
Speaker 1: brief section here us to talk about what you what
Speaker 1: you might want to consider to have as kind of
Speaker 1: a preparedness kit. Yeah, these are your five tips, and
Speaker 1: this is in case of you know, these these blackout
Speaker 1: situations which could happen for lots of different reasons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to stock enough food and water and any
Speaker 1: medical supplies you might need for everyone in your family
Speaker 1: to last for seventy two hours. Now, obviously this is
Speaker 1: referring to food that would not need to be refrigerated.
Speaker 1: Seventy two hours worth of mayonnaise has would be like
Speaker 1: canned goods, that sort of stuff. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you might also want to go ahead and invest in
Speaker 1: some means of like like like some non electronic means
Speaker 1: of heating said food if you want to have it cooked.
Speaker 1: And of course, as Harlan Ellison would remind us, you
Speaker 1: need a can opener. Yes, a can opener would Yes,
Speaker 1: a manual can opener would be very important. Uh. You
Speaker 1: also want to make sure you have a stocked first
Speaker 1: aid kit, which makes sense. Uh. Flashlights and a battery
Speaker 1: powered radio plus batteries doesn't do you much good if
Speaker 1: you don't have any good you know, reliable batteries to use,
Speaker 1: candles and matches, perferably waterproof matches also a really good idea.
Speaker 1: And if you have a car, make it a habit
Speaker 1: to avoid dipping below half full on the gas tank
Speaker 1: because if one of these events happens, you want to
Speaker 1: have enough fuel for you to be able to get
Speaker 1: home or get away from whatever the incident is, if
Speaker 1: it happens to be localized to your area. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously we've said several times now your your best case
Speaker 1: scenario is to be energy and dependent, Like if you
Speaker 1: actually had a bunch of solar panels or some kind
Speaker 1: of way of generating power in your home that's not
Speaker 1: going to run out there. You go, yeah, I've actually
Speaker 1: seen I was looking into this. Tree Hugger did a
Speaker 1: article about the various types of power generation you could do.
Speaker 1: Our electricity generation you could do at home, and solar
Speaker 1: power is good except of course, if it is super
Speaker 1: volcanic canoe or dust or whatever, there's if there's something
Speaker 1: that's blocking the sunlight from getting to the earth, that's
Speaker 1: not gonna help you too much, right so, um, but
Speaker 1: then you would also have much more serious problems than
Speaker 1: not being able to charge your eye pass, such as
Speaker 1: like crops won't grow we're breathing. That could also be
Speaker 1: a problem. Wind turbines also are a possibility possibility, depending
Speaker 1: upon where you live and the regulations they're personal wind
Speaker 1: turbine would a generate I mean like a like a
Speaker 1: resprobably sized one that you could build on your own property.
Speaker 1: Would that get enough energy? Wind turbine with a four
Speaker 1: foot diameter of blade diameter would be enough to power
Speaker 1: a an average home without running all your major appliances,
Speaker 1: Like you're like, you wouldn't be able to run the
Speaker 1: dryer on that. You don't need a one with a
Speaker 1: nine ft diameter to generate enough electricity to do that,
Speaker 1: assuming that you're getting reliable amount of wind where you live.
Speaker 1: And obviously this would be more for people who are
Speaker 1: not in a dense servant environment. Yeah, exactly, So if
Speaker 1: you have to live out in a rural area where
Speaker 1: you could build such structure. Um, that would be a possibility.
Speaker 1: I've also seen even micro hydro electric power where if
Speaker 1: you live near a running stream that's running with enough force,
Speaker 1: you could have a micro hydro electric power generation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard of this. Yeah, it's a great idea because again,
Speaker 1: like just like with the major hydraulic systems or hydraulic
Speaker 1: system hydro powered systems, you don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: running out of fuel. So great if you have the
Speaker 1: accessibility to that sort of thing. So let's conclude this
Speaker 1: by talking about some of our favorite post apocalyptic stories.
Speaker 1: And you know this, this isn't so much on the
Speaker 1: technology side as as just the the worlds that have
Speaker 1: been imagined by various people that take place in in
Speaker 1: an you know, on on Earth where something like this
Speaker 1: has happened, like some some castrophic event has happened. Sure. Well,
Speaker 1: these tend to divide between like the very serious and
Speaker 1: then the less serious. I would say so, so both
Speaker 1: of US's hard to compare The Road and Mad Max. Yes,
Speaker 1: both of us really like The Road. That is one
Speaker 1: of my favorite books of all time. It is a
Speaker 1: very sad, very disturbing book, but it's also very moving
Speaker 1: it has a very uplifting ending. Uh some might say
Speaker 1: that at least it ends on a at least an
Speaker 1: but from my reading depends on an optimistic note. I would. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's but it is it's a hard read, guys.
Speaker 1: I mean it's not it's not uh pleasant. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It is imagining sort of the last gasp of humanity.
Speaker 1: So it's not one of these where you know that
Speaker 1: we've we've just had the the apocalyptic event. It's it's
Speaker 1: one of these where there aren't many people at all left.
Speaker 1: And the really cool thing, or one of the really
Speaker 1: cool things about the book is it never explains what
Speaker 1: the event was. Yeah. So it describes lots of things
Speaker 1: like their earthquake. Um, the sky is constantly gray, and
Speaker 1: all of the plant life is dead, presumably because the
Speaker 1: sunlight has been blocked by the cloud cover in the skies.
Speaker 1: And when I first read it, I assumed, well, I
Speaker 1: think it's probably talking about nuclear war or something like that.
Speaker 1: But then I read and I wish I could find this.
Speaker 1: I tried to go back and find it and couldn't.
Speaker 1: I read a blog post years ago on the Internet
Speaker 1: somebody had put together explaining their theory of why they
Speaker 1: thought the the event imagined by the author Cormick McCarthy
Speaker 1: was a super volcano eruption, And I remember thinking that
Speaker 1: they made a really good case, but then I couldn't
Speaker 1: find what they wrote. Yeah. I think the best argument
Speaker 1: for that is I don't recall anything in there about
Speaker 1: a fear of radiation. Yeah, whereas a super volcano could
Speaker 1: cause many of the same features as a nuclear winter,
Speaker 1: but without the nuclear fallout. Um. Yeah, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a great it's a great story. It's again tough read,
Speaker 1: but a great worth while Along the same lines. I
Speaker 1: guess some people might consider this lower form of art,
Speaker 1: but I was actually really impressed by the story in
Speaker 1: the video game The Last of Us. I'd say that definitely,
Speaker 1: hands down had the best writing of any video game
Speaker 1: I've ever played. And in the world they imagined was
Speaker 1: kind of sad and beautiful, and and it was a
Speaker 1: post apocalyptic scenario caused by a fungal infection that created
Speaker 1: a zombie like state. Yeah, it's a it's essentially another
Speaker 1: zombie outbreak story, but without it being uh dumb, Yeah,
Speaker 1: without it being magical zombies. It's it's based more on
Speaker 1: on things that we have actually observed in natured though
Speaker 1: not with humans but with other life forms. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's based on the fungus that infects ants and changes
Speaker 1: their behavior, gets into their brains. It's just kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: what if a fungus could get into your brain and
Speaker 1: make you want to bite people? So that is that
Speaker 1: is another good one. I also enjoyed World War Z,
Speaker 1: which I would argue still falls on the serious side.
Speaker 1: I haven't read the novel. I saw the movie and
Speaker 1: was not very The novel is entirely different from I've
Speaker 1: heard that I heard. The novel was in fact and
Speaker 1: just like completely different format. There there are tiny elements
Speaker 1: that happened in the novel that are touched upon in
Speaker 1: the film, but they are not at all related otherwise.
Speaker 1: It's the novel is really more of a collection of
Speaker 1: UH stories. It's it's told as there's a journalist, not
Speaker 1: well journalist who's working essentially for the u N collecting
Speaker 1: the stories from survivors. This this is post zombie outbreak,
Speaker 1: post war with the zombies. The humans have won the war.
Speaker 1: Zombie outbreak has been largely defeated. There's still some zombies
Speaker 1: in the world, but they are few and far between,
Speaker 1: and are are often you know, rounded up and killed off.
Speaker 1: So humanity is on the rebound now, and it's more
Speaker 1: of a discussion about what happened leading up to and
Speaker 1: throughout this zombie war, uh whether and I. And it's
Speaker 1: told in a way where you don't really know what
Speaker 1: the actual precipitating event was, um, which is very realistic.
Speaker 1: I think. You know, like, as as someone who wants
Speaker 1: to hear a story, you kind of want to know
Speaker 1: all the details, But if you were actually a person there,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't necessarily have all the information available to you,
Speaker 1: especially when you consider a lot of the people who
Speaker 1: might have been responsible in some way or another or
Speaker 1: had observed what happened are no longer around because they've
Speaker 1: been turned into zombies or killed in some other way. UM.
Speaker 1: Very powerful story though, and also very interesting to hear
Speaker 1: kind of the the human psychology that might be involved
Speaker 1: in something like that. Yeah. So in both of the
Speaker 1: ones I mentioned so far, there was a pretty much
Speaker 1: a total breakdown of of the larger function of technological society.
Speaker 1: Though in the last of us there there, you know,
Speaker 1: there are still people who get some power from generators
Speaker 1: and stuff. It seems like somebody is still locating gasolines
Speaker 1: them how But also that's one of the examples I
Speaker 1: was mentioning. Another one would be Dawn to the Planet
Speaker 1: of the Apes, where people are trying to get hydroelectric
Speaker 1: plants back online, because that, as we mentioned, that does
Speaker 1: seem like a really good vet for trying to revive
Speaker 1: at least a local power grid in a post apocalyptic scenario. Right,
Speaker 1: and in that world, I mean, it's only like a
Speaker 1: tiny bit of San Francisco. I think that's still alive
Speaker 1: or is the concentrate mean you mean? And Dawn of
Speaker 1: the Planet of the Apes, not the last No, none,
Speaker 1: last us, last of us. It's all spread out all
Speaker 1: over the place. Yeah. Uh So here's another one along
Speaker 1: a maybe sillier line. I love Dawn of the Dead.
Speaker 1: I like the way things are progressing there. I like
Speaker 1: watching there the scenes that depicted the breakdown of discipline
Speaker 1: in the media, like the TV stations that are still
Speaker 1: trying to broadcast but people are sort of losing focus.
Speaker 1: I assume you are talking about the original Dawn, yes,
Speaker 1: not the remake, Yes, the one that was also a
Speaker 1: commentary on consumerism. Yeah, it's a movie, uh for for me.
Speaker 1: One of the big ones the Fallout series of games.
Speaker 1: Fantastic weird tone mishmash of comedic and tragic in those games,
Speaker 1: but I think it works. Yeah, there's this this kind
Speaker 1: of almost almost manic optimism that is being portrayed in
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff you come across as a
Speaker 1: character in those games, despite the overwhelmingly awfulness of the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's the nineteen fifties style of you can
Speaker 1: do it, but meanwhile, like everything's on fire and everyone's terrible. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: another way that it it sort of has a mash
Speaker 1: up is it's very high tech low tech mash up.
Speaker 1: So it has you know, lasers and exoskeleton power suits
Speaker 1: and robots, but also you know extremely you know, bow
Speaker 1: and arrow kind of logs, and the aesthetic tends to
Speaker 1: be the nineteen fifties style of our vision of the future,
Speaker 1: not how things actually turned out. So it's a really
Speaker 1: it's it's an alternate past leading to a an alternate,
Speaker 1: bizarre future. Um, and you've got some other ones on here.
Speaker 1: In fact, these are also some of my favorites. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: a couple of the Mad Max movies. Of course, you
Speaker 1: I could not neglect Mad Max. I have to confess
Speaker 1: I've never actually seen the first one all the way through. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Road Warrior is is a more entertaining film. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so you start with the second one. I love The
Speaker 1: Road Warrior. Can't get enough beyond Thunderdome. I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people think it's bad. Maybe it is kind
Speaker 1: of bad, but I still love it. It's it's definitely
Speaker 1: more campy. Yeah, and then so folks, when I saw
Speaker 1: Mad Max Fury Road, it's not necessarily that it's the
Speaker 1: best movie I've ever seen in my life. It's that
Speaker 1: once I walked out of the theater, it was the
Speaker 1: only movie I had ever seen. I love that movie
Speaker 1: so much. It just it hit all of the happy
Speaker 1: places in my body and in my brain. It's also
Speaker 1: funny that on forward thinking, somehow we managed to bring
Speaker 1: it back to the doufwagon every few episodes. That was
Speaker 1: just such an amazing, amazing reality that they created. I
Speaker 1: think what I told Rachel when we walked out of
Speaker 1: the theater was I feel like I could rip Australia
Speaker 1: in half with my hands. All right, now, you've got
Speaker 1: to tell everybody what Zardas is, because unless they are
Speaker 1: you know a fan of B movie schlock science fiction?
Speaker 1: They probably have no clue. Well, Zardas actually touches on
Speaker 1: something kind of interesting, despite the fact that it's a
Speaker 1: very weird and very intensely bad movie. Yeah. So, it's
Speaker 1: got Sean Connery wearing this like red diaper and carrying
Speaker 1: a gun, and he plays some kind of I don't know,
Speaker 1: future post apocalyptic wasteland policeman who mostly just murders people
Speaker 1: from what you can tell, and then he gets sucked
Speaker 1: into a giant head that's actually a spaceship and taken
Speaker 1: to a strange sort of commune of immortal psychic people.
Speaker 1: It's very hard to describe the plot of Zardas, but
Speaker 1: done a pretty good job considering it's one of the
Speaker 1: weirdest movies I've ever seen, and for that reason it's
Speaker 1: actually worth seeing despite the fact that it is. It
Speaker 1: utterly fails to be good, but it is never for
Speaker 1: a second boring. Yeah. Anyway, but I mentioned that it
Speaker 1: touches on something interesting. It actually does the idea that
Speaker 1: past technologies, through a sort of like dark age imposed
Speaker 1: by I don't know, catastrophe of one kind or another,
Speaker 1: could be rediscovered. But we wouldn't remember how to use
Speaker 1: them or how to maintain them. I mean, it's possible
Speaker 1: for dark ages to happen and then to re emerge
Speaker 1: from them and to rediscover all of the signed a
Speaker 1: bigan technological sophistication of an earlier age that that's actually
Speaker 1: happened on Earth at times. You know, you had the
Speaker 1: Bronze Age collapse, you had the you had what are
Speaker 1: sometimes called the Dark Ages in Europe. Now a lot
Speaker 1: of historians look back and say, well, that's maybe not
Speaker 1: the most accurate way to describe that age in Europe,
Speaker 1: But at least then you had times when a lot
Speaker 1: of the technological progress that had been achieved during say
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire, suddenly people didn't know how to do
Speaker 1: this stuff anymore. Yeah, not until the Renaissance, where they
Speaker 1: began to rediscover and build upon those those advances from
Speaker 1: ancient times. Yeah. So Zardas kind of touches on that.
Speaker 1: It's got all these people who are in some ways
Speaker 1: sort of interacting with high technology, but they don't understand it.
Speaker 1: So I recommend if you've never seen Zardas, you don't
Speaker 1: need to seize artas necessarily, but definitely seek out the trailer,
Speaker 1: which is on YouTube and is amazing. Yeah, especially if
Speaker 1: you love the names Zardas, because you're gonna hear that
Speaker 1: a lot. Yeah, you're gonna hear Sean Connery say it
Speaker 1: in his accent over and over. And then the last
Speaker 1: one you have on here, Robot Monster. Well, this really
Speaker 1: belonging post apocalyptic? Yes it does, because the premise of
Speaker 1: Robot Monster is that this race of aliens who uh.
Speaker 1: The main one we meet is the robot monster named Roman,
Speaker 1: I believe, and he is a guy in some kind
Speaker 1: of ape suit. It's like a guerrilla suit with a
Speaker 1: like a gumball machine on his head and that's his costume,
Speaker 1: and he represents this species of aliens who I think
Speaker 1: comes and conquers Earth. I don't remember all the details,
Speaker 1: but suddenly they're just like five people left on Earth.
Speaker 1: But Roman has an extremely difficult time conquering these five
Speaker 1: people who seem to be about a mile away from him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I uh, I think of that as a movie where
Speaker 1: the audience feels as if they've been through a post
Speaker 1: apocalyptic event. Uh, not necessarily the film itself. Well, I
Speaker 1: think that was on an episode of Mystery Science Theater
Speaker 1: wouldn't it. You know, I want to say I know that, Well,
Speaker 1: they've done so many, but I want to say that
Speaker 1: that was one of the ones they've done. Um. They
Speaker 1: certainly have alluded to it before. Well, Joe, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on here and doing these these
Speaker 1: pair of episodes about post apocalyptic technology, and well, thank
Speaker 1: you for inviting me. It has been a whole barrel
Speaker 1: of fun. Yeah. I enjoyed pulling that tune out of
Speaker 1: the basket. It also, like, like I said, with the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project episodes with Ben, I was like, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like, you know, the stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know is I think of that as the other
Speaker 1: side of the coin of forward thinking, Like that's those
Speaker 1: are two. Forward thinking is the big optimistic side typically
Speaker 1: and stuff they don't want you to know is like
Speaker 1: the dark cynical side stuff. Yeah, And in a way,
Speaker 1: this is also kind of like the other side of
Speaker 1: the forward thinking coin. It's very different from the stuff
Speaker 1: we do over it forward thinking. We wouldn't normally explore
Speaker 1: this kind of topic over there, but it was fun
Speaker 1: to be able to explore it here on X Stuff
Speaker 1: UM and and talk about some of our favorite post
Speaker 1: apocalyptic stories as well as the actual things that we
Speaker 1: would expect in those kind of scenarios. I hope that largely,
Speaker 1: I really I hope that does one of two things. One,
Speaker 1: it convinces people that, yeah, it's important for us to
Speaker 1: think about ways to make our various infrastructures more robust,
Speaker 1: so that in the case of something catastrophic happening, we
Speaker 1: can localize it. We can we can separate it from
Speaker 1: everything else, and we can deal with it so that
Speaker 1: it doesn't become a wider problem. And too that it
Speaker 1: alerts them that there are things that we as citizens
Speaker 1: can do to protect ourselves so that you know, if
Speaker 1: something like this happens, or when something like this happens,
Speaker 1: if you're looking at along the time scale, we get
Speaker 1: through it with the minimum amount of problems, knowing that
Speaker 1: you know, it's not going to be necessarily fun or
Speaker 1: easy easy to get through it, but there are things
Speaker 1: we can do that will make it less traumatic. And
Speaker 1: that was tech in the Post Apocalyptic World Part two.
Speaker 1: Big thanks to Joe McCormick once again for joining us
Speaker 1: on that episode. He's still doing incredible work over at
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind. He's a great guy. Hope
Speaker 1: him he's doing really well. I'll try and get him
Speaker 1: on the show again because it's been a while since
Speaker 1: he's been on tech Stuff. If you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: please reach out to me. The best way to get
Speaker 1: in touch with me is to use Twitter and the
Speaker 1: handle so that you're not just you know, tweeting out
Speaker 1: into the void is text stuff hs W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.