Speaker 1: Technology text from dot com You welcome to text to
Speaker 1: buy job in Strickland. And with me once again is
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. Hello everyone, Joe, you and I have had
Speaker 1: a loue long conversation about the post apocalyptic state of
Speaker 1: affairs and how that deals with technology. So long in fact,
Speaker 1: that we suddenly discovered we've been walking through the desert
Speaker 1: looking for gasoline for five hours and that horse still
Speaker 1: has no name. So we want to go back to
Speaker 1: where we left off with our post apocalyptic discussion. We
Speaker 1: will conclude this episode with our talk of our favorite
Speaker 1: post apocalyptic stories and settings, So enjoy. Okay, let's talk
Speaker 1: about our nuclear facilities, because I know I have at
Speaker 1: least heard or read that, like a nuke, your reactor
Speaker 1: goes for a long time without needing refuel. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: more than a year. Yeah. So, I mean, you've got
Speaker 1: those rods in there, they're doing their things. You don't
Speaker 1: need to replace them. But like the other plants, this
Speaker 1: might just be an issue of maintenance and monitoring. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: The I was reading the reports from or 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 to get their estimations. And when they said,
Speaker 1: when I talk to the nuclear guys, they said, are
Speaker 1: you crazy, because it was like, look, I'm just trying
Speaker 1: 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 they're just looking at the probability
Speaker 1: of one of these smaller events that would lead to
Speaker 1: an automatic shutdown occurring. I said, you know, if a
Speaker 1: human is there to deal with whatever the issue is,
Speaker 1: you could go for more than a year without having
Speaker 1: to worry about refueling. And after that it would be
Speaker 1: tricky depending upon how many people are around, because it
Speaker 1: requires a lot of special equipment to refuel a nuclear
Speaker 1: power plant. But up to that point, you could supply
Speaker 1: power for a year. But if there's no one there
Speaker 1: to monitor it, probably maybe a week would be about
Speaker 1: as long as you could expect before something leads to
Speaker 1: an automatic shutdown. So the best one so far, But
Speaker 1: then we have the the best one of all if
Speaker 1: you are getting your power from a hydroelectric plant, assuming
Speaker 1: nothing's gone wrong with the dam, then you are in
Speaker 1: great shape. Fuel. Yeah, your your energy is coming from
Speaker 1: water flowing through those turbines. As long as nothing mechanical
Speaker 1: is going wrong with that, you could probably get power
Speaker 1: for weeks or maybe even a month without any interruption. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: when would you have to have major maintenance intervention? I
Speaker 1: guess it would maybe if the if the water flow
Speaker 1: changed dramatically, if there was flooding and you needed to
Speaker 1: change the levels of the floodgates or something. There could
Speaker 1: be that, or it could even be through the transmission
Speaker 1: of power, not even the generation, but just the transmission lines.
Speaker 1: Like there are a lot of different parts that are
Speaker 1: that are involved in this and many different power plants.
Speaker 1: Like typically they would have engineers come in and step
Speaker 1: up or step down the amount of power being put
Speaker 1: out due to demand, Like the grid typically is making
Speaker 1: just as much electricity as the demand warrants, Like it's
Speaker 1: that's it, like as much as we need, that's what
Speaker 1: the power grid is providing. In this situation, you no
Speaker 1: longer have someone there to make sure that that's what's happening.
Speaker 1: So so problems could result ultimately from that. You know,
Speaker 1: there are actually a couple of different post apocalyptic movies
Speaker 1: and fictional scenarios I can think of where the main
Speaker 1: goal certain characters had was getting hydroelectric plants back up
Speaker 1: and running. Yeah, I'm not surprised. I mean that to
Speaker 1: me would be well again, it's it's the one where
Speaker 1: as long as you have the mechanical knowledge of how
Speaker 1: to do repairs and maintenance on the system, and uh
Speaker 1: just general knowledge of how the transmission system works, it's
Speaker 1: the most reliable, right, Like it's it's more reliable than
Speaker 1: solar or wind because the water is always going to
Speaker 1: flow unless something really major changes the nature of the area,
Speaker 1: in which case you probably have more things to worry
Speaker 1: about than your electricity. Um uh. But otherwise, yeah, I
Speaker 1: would imagine that would be a top priority. It's the
Speaker 1: simplest of all the things because you think of things
Speaker 1: like coal. You have to mind the coal. So even
Speaker 1: if you even if you had people to keep moving
Speaker 1: coal into the the power plant, most coal firing plants
Speaker 1: have enough coal on hand for sixty to seventy days
Speaker 1: of power. So after that sixty seventy days, even if
Speaker 1: you had the people there to look after it. You
Speaker 1: would have to then go and mind more coal. You
Speaker 1: have to get your hands on more coal to keep
Speaker 1: the coal plant going. So hydro electric makes way more
Speaker 1: sense in that case. Yeah, I just trying to think
Speaker 1: what different types of alternative or imagined power plants would
Speaker 1: be the most resilient to Earth disasters, you know, whether
Speaker 1: it's zombies, nuclear bombs, nuclear zombies, asteroid impact, cyber attacks.
Speaker 1: And the one idea I came up with it was
Speaker 1: most interesting to me at least, though perhaps wrong, is
Speaker 1: orbital solar all right, so let me take a guess
Speaker 1: what you mean. And I'm literally guessing because I have
Speaker 1: not I have not looked at these parts of the notes.
Speaker 1: You added this while I was recording a different episode.
Speaker 1: So this would be a network of solar power capturing
Speaker 1: satellites that would then use a means like a microwave
Speaker 1: beam to beam energy down to the surface of the planet,
Speaker 1: which then would be distributed through a power grid. That's
Speaker 1: exactly right. So you you've got solar farms, except you're
Speaker 1: moving the solar farm itself from the surface of the
Speaker 1: Earth to orbit, and that has some pretty obvious advantages.
Speaker 1: I mean Number one, you're not dealing with cloud cover
Speaker 1: intercepting that that precious solar energy you need. The receivers
Speaker 1: are out there in space, so they're always getting sunlight. Also,
Speaker 1: you don't have night time because at geosynchronous orbit, these
Speaker 1: things will almost never be blocked from the Sun. They
Speaker 1: might pass, you know, in the shadow of the Earth
Speaker 1: in very rare cases, they don't spend much time in it.
Speaker 1: So these are giant solar panels in space that can
Speaker 1: receive almost uninterrupted sunlight. They convert the sunlight into d
Speaker 1: C electricity, which would then be converted into some type
Speaker 1: of radiation that could be sent via a targeted beam
Speaker 1: down to receiving stations on Earth. And the two major
Speaker 1: candidates for the beam radiation are lasers and microwaves, and
Speaker 1: microwaves are really where it's at today, So these solar
Speaker 1: power satellites are usually sps s in the industry. LINGO
Speaker 1: would be a really daunting project to create because they
Speaker 1: have to be absolutely huge and you need a bunch
Speaker 1: of them to really cut into Earth's energy demands. And
Speaker 1: there was a former Department of Energy NASA joint research
Speaker 1: project from the nineteen seventies that envisioned a fleet of
Speaker 1: sixty satellites, each one about fifty five square kilometers in
Speaker 1: photovoltaic surface area uh together all generating about three hundred
Speaker 1: gigawatts of electricity okay um. So then of course there's
Speaker 1: the question of the wireless energy transmission, which has been
Speaker 1: a problem historically, but we're getting better at. In fact,
Speaker 1: just in the past few years there have been some
Speaker 1: projects that are that are making strides in this. In fact,
Speaker 1: I just read an interesting article in the I tri
Speaker 1: Police Spectrum from last year about Jackson that the Japanese
Speaker 1: Space Agency's plans two possibly look into creating an orbital
Speaker 1: solar farm, and they're doing preliminary research on that, like
Speaker 1: on these wireless energy transmissions, and so these days it
Speaker 1: looks like most of the people who are still interested
Speaker 1: in sps are talking about microwaves rather than lasers. And
Speaker 1: so this would be a microwave frequency transmission from the
Speaker 1: satellites to the Earth, and then the receivers on the
Speaker 1: Earth would be what things that are called rectifying antennas,
Speaker 1: their antennas that receive the microwaves and then convert them
Speaker 1: into electricity. The microwaves are generally considered better than lasers
Speaker 1: for beaming the energy to Earth because lasers in the
Speaker 1: visible spectrum or wherever they would be, are more likely
Speaker 1: to be intercepted by cloudcover, and the microwaves are much
Speaker 1: more resilient to penetrating the atmosphere. Apparently low frequency microwaves,
Speaker 1: so the really long wavelengths are the best at penetrating
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. They're they're much better, but they of course
Speaker 1: come with the problem that you need really big antenna's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your antenna's size is uh is reliant upon the length
Speaker 1: of the wave, the wavelength of whatever you're trying to
Speaker 1: pick up. So I couldn't exactly figure out how well
Speaker 1: the space based you know, life root of the microwave
Speaker 1: beam would survive cloud cover that was based on particulate
Speaker 1: matter instead of water vapor, because I was trying to imagine, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's say there's an asteroid impact, supervolcano eruption, or nuclear
Speaker 1: bombs create nuclear winter, whatever it is that puts ash
Speaker 1: dust particles into the atmosphere and blocks the sun. Would
Speaker 1: the microwaves from space be able to penetrate that any
Speaker 1: better than the sunlight itself would just get to you know,
Speaker 1: solar panels on your roof or in the desert, and
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to that. Yeah, that's one
Speaker 1: of those things that probably doesn't come up in a
Speaker 1: lot of the white papers on the subject. So in
Speaker 1: the case of nuclear winter, this would still provide power.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's just one interesting possibility of sort of
Speaker 1: like outsourcing our our energy production needs away from the
Speaker 1: ground in places where an earth based catastrophe might not
Speaker 1: touch them. Though they're like I said, some scenarios that
Speaker 1: might interrupt power from those sources or might not. It's
Speaker 1: hard to tell. I mean, again, it all depends upon
Speaker 1: the nature of the disaster, right, And of course you
Speaker 1: can still imagine that some kind of space weather event
Speaker 1: could could very well fry those satellites. Sure, yeah, solar
Speaker 1: flare might might end up disrupting that, or it could
Speaker 1: be something on the ground ends up frying the transmission infrastructure,
Speaker 1: not not necessarily the receiving antenna, but just the means
Speaker 1: of getting electricity from the receiver site to the places
Speaker 1: where it's needed. If that's fried, then you know, you
Speaker 1: could still be generating electricity, but you can't get it
Speaker 1: to where it needs to go. In other words, if
Speaker 1: the power lines themselves are damaged as a result of
Speaker 1: whatever the catastrophe was. Then you're really you're still stuck.
Speaker 1: And and some of the things that would come out
Speaker 1: of this, I mean they're really pretty grim, like even
Speaker 1: the immediate effects. And this is the people who have
Speaker 1: gone through blackouts, Uh can talk about the these There
Speaker 1: was a big one in UM two thousand three that
Speaker 1: had people trapped on subways, had people trapped in elevators.
Speaker 1: You know, you couldn't things that relied upon electricity for
Speaker 1: operation stopped, and then you know, you could be in
Speaker 1: a place like an elevator where you also no longer
Speaker 1: have climate control. Yeah, imagine getting stuck in one of
Speaker 1: the elevators here during this month, like Atlanta has been
Speaker 1: incredibly hot and humid this month. So you're stuck in
Speaker 1: an elevator. Let's say there's like seven other people in
Speaker 1: there with you. The elevator stops, climate control stops. After
Speaker 1: an hour or two, you know, you are already with
Speaker 1: a bunch of other people crammed in this small space
Speaker 1: that's gonna get intolerably hot. Um. And that I mean
Speaker 1: they can get to a point, depending upon where you are,
Speaker 1: I could get to a you know a point that's
Speaker 1: that's very dangerous, particularly for people who are already in
Speaker 1: poor health. Uh, subways similar problem. You know, you don't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to immediately evacuate the train if it's a
Speaker 1: temporary power problem. Then once that comes back online, you've
Speaker 1: got that third rail that would be of deadly to
Speaker 1: come into contact with it. So it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that you definitely need an evacuation plan. Uh. I've
Speaker 1: read that if you had a blackout that lasted longer
Speaker 1: than a few days, like a true blackout that lasted
Speaker 1: longer than a few days in New York City, then
Speaker 1: the many of the subways would end up having flooding
Speaker 1: issues because they no longer would have some pumps that
Speaker 1: 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 infrastructure problems that once the power comes online, that
Speaker 1: electricity going through the areas that have water that can
Speaker 1: actually end up causing debreed to catch on fire. And
Speaker 1: then you got fire on the tracks as well. I
Speaker 1: mean there's lots of issues that roll out just from
Speaker 1: losing power. That sounds like a great like folk album title,
Speaker 1: Fire on the Tracks, Fire on the Track, it's the
Speaker 1: lost Johnny Cash album. Uh. Also, you got you have
Speaker 1: issues with traffic because if all the traffic signals are out,
Speaker 1: then there's no way to regulate traffic. Yeah, Joe, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've driven in Atlanta after there's been power outages
Speaker 1: where Yeah, how how lovely is it to come up
Speaker 1: to one of those intersections? Well? Are now? Are you
Speaker 1: talking about the intersections that have the flashing lights? Let's
Speaker 1: or it's just blank, It's just blank. I've come on
Speaker 1: that too. It's not fun. People are eager for their turn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there there are times where like it's odd. I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is the case in lots of different cities,
Speaker 1: but in Atlanta, Uh, people either treat everything like it's
Speaker 1: a four way stop, even if it's a blinking yellow light,
Speaker 1: which means proceeded with caution, not stop. Um. But people
Speaker 1: will treat everything like it's a more y stop or
Speaker 1: do they treat like nothing is a more rated up?
Speaker 1: And either way it's not good. And just imagine like
Speaker 1: this is nationwide you've got no means of regulating the traffic.
Speaker 1: You also have no way of of being able to
Speaker 1: have emergency responders get to where they need to go
Speaker 1: in a in a fast way because everything's clogged up
Speaker 1: with traffic as people are trying to get home, or
Speaker 1: people are worried about how much fuel they have. That's
Speaker 1: another big issue if the electricity goes out. Most fueling stations,
Speaker 1: in fact, nearly all of them required electricity to operate,
Speaker 1: so you can't refuel your vehicle, but you can siphon
Speaker 1: someone else's and that might end up being an issue too.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so uh, cell phone service might go out.
Speaker 1: A lot of cell phone towers have backup generators, but
Speaker 1: that will only last as long as the fuel does
Speaker 1: not all cell phone towers have backup generators, so once
Speaker 1: it goes out, there offline, which means your phone might work,
Speaker 1: but a person you're trying to call they might not
Speaker 1: have a working cell phone tower and range. And then,
Speaker 1: of course, remember that in many major catastrophes and events,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have so many people trying to access the
Speaker 1: cellular system they're flooding it. We've seen that happen. We've
Speaker 1: seen that have even in even a non emergency situations
Speaker 1: when there's just a large number of people, like when
Speaker 1: c e S happens every year or Comic Con, there's
Speaker 1: so many people trying to connect to the local network
Speaker 1: that it just overloads it and nothing goes out, uh,
Speaker 1: and nothing comes in. It's like the Willy Wonka factory
Speaker 1: before they opened it up with the golden tickets. Nobody
Speaker 1: ever goes in and nobody ever comes out. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's a pretty grim situation. We'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about um possible uh, the possible toll
Speaker 1: in just a bit, But before we do that, let's
Speaker 1: talk also about some of the other systems that because
Speaker 1: of the power outage, would be affected. We we just
Speaker 1: touched on one the communication system. So satellites would largely
Speaker 1: be unaffected by any Earth based catastrophe. If it were
Speaker 1: a solar flare, then obviously satellites would be Actually they'd
Speaker 1: be the most vulnerable. The further out you are, the
Speaker 1: more vulnerable you are to to like a solar flare
Speaker 1: or coronal mass ejection. UM. Then you know you could
Speaker 1: end up having the electronics fried on the satellites. A
Speaker 1: lot of them are shielded pretty heavily for that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff, because it's more likely to happen to a
Speaker 1: satellite than it is to electronics here on Earth. But
Speaker 1: a truly powerful one, and there have been some in
Speaker 1: the past, could really overwhelm those satellites. Uh. Anything connected
Speaker 1: to the power grid obviously would be it would be vulnerable.
Speaker 1: So uh, you might be able to get radio signals
Speaker 1: if you have a battery operated radio, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: you should have a battery operated radio. Hand Yeah, hand
Speaker 1: crank operated radio would be great to Uh, either of
Speaker 1: those are both. You know, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: combination systems up there where you can get one that
Speaker 1: works on either battery or hand rank I recommend having
Speaker 1: one of those. Of course, that will only last as
Speaker 1: long as the radio broadcasting power has, you know, has
Speaker 1: a supply of power from whatever source it's pulling it from,
Speaker 1: like a generator, a backup generator. Once the backup generators
Speaker 1: out of fuel, if the blackout continues, then that's going
Speaker 1: to go dark too. So communications might last a little
Speaker 1: longer than the power does, but not it won't be indefinite. Um.
Speaker 1: I've also seen people recommend that you go ahead and
Speaker 1: invest in walkie talkies because they can provide for communication
Speaker 1: over sometimes miles of distance, uh, and could be invaluable
Speaker 1: depending upon where you are. So uh, cell phone towers
Speaker 1: and radio stations will all go offline eventually. Are actually
Speaker 1: some developing nations that are making certain that their cell
Speaker 1: phone towers are not on the power grid at all,
Speaker 1: either because there's out of power credit in those remote
Speaker 1: locations or it's just so unreliable that in order to
Speaker 1: have a stable communication system power supply that a lot
Speaker 1: of them are running on their own generators, and many
Speaker 1: of them are using solar power as a primary means
Speaker 1: for generating electricity for during the daylight hours. So that's
Speaker 1: pretty interesting, and we could take a note from that,
Speaker 1: like we could start building out infrastructure to be robust
Speaker 1: in that same way and independent in that same way. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, like I said, just because you have
Speaker 1: access doesn't mean everybody else, you know does. It could
Speaker 1: still end up being a big issue and you might
Speaker 1: not be able to get in touch with anybody. So
Speaker 1: that's power and communications, But you know, there are other
Speaker 1: things that we rely upon that we take for granted, like, hey,
Speaker 1: have you ever gone up to a faucet and turned
Speaker 1: on the knob and nothing came out. I've done that
Speaker 1: in my home before. Isn't that a terrifying experience? It's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's It's especially bad when it's like your mouth is
Speaker 1: full of toothpaste. Yes, that's not that's not good. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: Running water is one of those things that we often
Speaker 1: take for granted, and uh uh. If the paragrine system
Speaker 1: is down, running water will follow. Maybe not immediately. You
Speaker 1: might actually be able to have running water for a day,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit longer. If you happen to live
Speaker 1: in a place that has a lot of water in
Speaker 1: its pipes like New York City, actually could potentially hold
Speaker 1: a couple of days worth of water in their pipes. Um,
Speaker 1: just because that the water pressure that's built up and
Speaker 1: the water supplies are enough to go for another couple
Speaker 1: of days, assuming that everyone's not immediately thinking oh, humanities,
Speaker 1: every container in the house, yeah, or which I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: if 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.
Speaker 1: That's all scared I would be. I would soil not
Speaker 1: just the under where I was wearing, but every pair
Speaker 1: I own. Um. But no, you would you would think
Speaker 1: that that would very quickly eliminate the supplied water. In
Speaker 1: the United States, we mostly are creating our water pressure
Speaker 1: through water tanks. The water tanks are elevated. Um. It's funny.
Speaker 1: There's actually a very specific formula. Every every foot of
Speaker 1: height provides point four three one pounds per square inch
Speaker 1: of pressure. So if we want to convert that to
Speaker 1: the metric system, for every thirty point four eight centimeters
Speaker 1: you get two point nine seven two kilo pascals of pressure. Uh,
Speaker 1: that means nothing to me. I have to do the
Speaker 1: pownds 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 five to six nine kilo pascals,
Speaker 1: and most water towers contain enough water to supply the
Speaker 1: surrounding community for a day, assuming normal use, not that
Speaker 1: everybody is trying to. Yeah. So the problem is that
Speaker 1: to refill those water tanks, you have to pump water
Speaker 1: up to those and yeah, those pumps maybe running on electricity,
Speaker 1: So if they're not running on electricity, they're running on fuel.
Speaker 1: So either they're running on electricity and therefore you can't
Speaker 1: use them anymore because the grid is offline. So once
Speaker 1: the water's gone, it's gone, or they're running on fuel.
Speaker 1: And then once your fuel runs out because you aren't
Speaker 1: able to transport or refine more of it, or or
Speaker 1: get your hands on more of it, the water runs out.
Speaker 1: Either way, the water runs out. It's just a question
Speaker 1: of time. So that's a huge issue. So it would
Speaker 1: really make you wish that you had access to clean
Speaker 1: well water, and you might depending on where you are,
Speaker 1: Like we live in an urban environment. We don't have
Speaker 1: access to clean well water. I think. I don't know.
Speaker 1: You don't have a well in your backyard, do you
Speaker 1: If that I do have one, I don't know about it,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. There's some weird stuff buried back there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it all depends on how often you do yard work,
Speaker 1: you know, like, yeah, I don't know what's back underneath
Speaker 1: that mass. Sometimes ghostly creatures come crawling out of my backyard.
Speaker 1: So oldridge horrors are not necessarily an indication that there
Speaker 1: is 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 in 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 parts
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 bustion that's not affected by electromagnet neetic pulses.
Speaker 1: That's not an issue. It's a mechanical system. Not well,
Speaker 1: I understand it is largely I mean, wouldn't there be
Speaker 1: electronical electronic Um Uh yeah, it is, of course largely mechanicals,
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 is 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 again siphon gas out of some other
Speaker 1: vehicle of Max's car, but be careful because it's booby trapped.
Speaker 1: You're talking about Mr mad Max. So then if we're
Speaker 1: looking at diesel engines. That's a little different, right, Some
Speaker 1: diesel engines can run on bio diesel, which is some
Speaker 1: of them can actually run on vegetable oil. You know,
Speaker 1: I would 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. That's also something that is has to be
Speaker 1: expressed in an industrial process. Yes, yeah, you could. You
Speaker 1: could run out and buy as much as you could
Speaker 1: from assuming that you have some way of buying. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't care you that much cash on me on
Speaker 1: any given day. So maybe, like in your imagining in
Speaker 1: the early days of the apocalyptic scenario, there is less
Speaker 1: price gouging on vegetable oil than there is on gasoline,
Speaker 1: and probably water would be the biggest one actually that
Speaker 1: I would guess water would be chief. But yes, I
Speaker 1: do think that, um, at least initially, so you would
Speaker 1: have to, you know, somehow have a means of purchasing
Speaker 1: this stuff, assuming that people have faith in the currency.
Speaker 1: It all depends on what the nature of the catastrophe was, obviously,
Speaker 1: but um, you would also have to have currency if
Speaker 1: you don't If you don't have cash on you, you're
Speaker 1: probably stuck. Uh but yeah you could. You could presumably
Speaker 1: use vegetable oil or some other means of oil to
Speaker 1: to fuel your vehicle at least in the short term.
Speaker 1: But then once you once those supplies are out, then
Speaker 1: you're just as stuck as everybody else. Uh So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Mad Max future where people are fighting over water
Speaker 1: and they have cars that magically are fueled by means
Speaker 1: that I don't know like how that works. I don't
Speaker 1: know how they're able to keep a system in place
Speaker 1: to capture and refine fuel and then distribute fuel. But
Speaker 1: apart from Bartertown, which is run on methane. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is also in the second movie, The Road Warrior. Isn't
Speaker 1: the little settlement that the raiders are attacking. They're there
Speaker 1: like extracting oil from the ground and refining it. Aren't
Speaker 1: they like set up their own refinery. Yeah, it just
Speaker 1: it makes me wonder like, if you can set your
Speaker 1: own refinery, couldn't you set up a desalination facility, because
Speaker 1: the big issue is water in the Mad Max world.
Speaker 1: That's the huge water and gasoline. I mean, yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems like they're both pretty but I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: if you're able to get your if you're able to
Speaker 1: set 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 are anywhere close to the ocean, would solve a
Speaker 1: lot of your water issues, or at least at least
Speaker 1: diminish them. Um So, then getting the cars all the way,
Speaker 1: assuming that we haven't reached this mad Max magical world
Speaker 1: where we can still operate a refinery but everything else
Speaker 1: is 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'll work as long as you have access
Speaker 1: to power. But if you do, why are we talking
Speaker 1: about this? You could you could potentially have solar panels
Speaker 1: to recharge electronics, Like, there are a lot of things
Speaker 1: to do that. But so again we sort of said
Speaker 1: at the beginning, like if you've got off the grid power,
Speaker 1: you're in a whole different situation. Then mainly you got
Speaker 1: to worry about who's coming to get your goods. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking back to when I got a house
Speaker 1: stuff works backpack that had a solar panel built into
Speaker 1: it where I could charge of it. That came up
Speaker 1: with so much power twelve hours of having it sit
Speaker 1: in the sun would charge it would charge your phone.
Speaker 1: But that's twelve hours of direct sunlight on that panel.
Speaker 1: By the way, sun does not stay still for twelve hours,
Speaker 1: so you gotta like you would have to continuously position
Speaker 1: the backpack to have an ideal amount of sunlight in
Speaker 1: order to generate the electricity necessary just to recharge a phone.
Speaker 1: Uh so, yeah, you could potentially have some electronics last
Speaker 1: a fairly long time with rechargeable batteries with solar power,
Speaker 1: it would be sporadic, and also the underlying infrastructure that
Speaker 1: supported them is no longer there, so you're not getting
Speaker 1: a lot of use out of it unless you're just like, well,
Speaker 1: it's the am I downloaded all these episodes of I
Speaker 1: don't know whatever I was just thinking. I was just thinking,
Speaker 1: like about the apocalypse and everything's gone to hell. But
Speaker 1: at least I can still play Angry Birds, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's um Lord Humongus will kill you for that ip, right, So,
Speaker 1: so the the electronics problem also non trivial. All right,
Speaker 1: so let's talk a little bit about what would happen
Speaker 1: during one of these blackouts. Actually, uh, you linked to
Speaker 1: a an article that was part of a National Geographic
Speaker 1: special about this. Yeah. It was written by Patrick Jake Tiger,
Speaker 1: who writes for house Stuff Works. Yeah, so one of
Speaker 1: our one of the members of the family, he wrote
Speaker 1: this thing and and it was a really good article.
Speaker 1: And it also linked to an interactive page that was
Speaker 1: all part of this package National Geographic put out depressing
Speaker 1: but very interesting called American Blackout. And uh, the page
Speaker 1: that was interactive was really cool. It was it was
Speaker 1: telling you how a nationwide blackout in America might unfold
Speaker 1: over the course of ten days. They assumed that after
Speaker 1: ten days, whatever the issue was has been resolved and
Speaker 1: power can be restored. But within that ten days an
Speaker 1: amazing amount of catastrophe and chaos would occur. Um and
Speaker 1: they looked at, uh, the potential death count of a
Speaker 1: ten day blackout, nationwide black blackout. Keeping in mind, this
Speaker 1: also affects things like hospitals, So people who would be
Speaker 1: reliant upon medical facilities to keep them in and keep
Speaker 1: them alive, they would be at most at risk obviously,
Speaker 1: and they figured that it would have a death count
Speaker 1: of around three thousand thirteen people after ten days. That's
Speaker 1: a that's without factoring in whatever it was that caused
Speaker 1: the blackout in the first place, of course, right, So
Speaker 1: 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 of it. Uh, after ten days, it would
Speaker 1: be a cost of one point to trillion dollars of
Speaker 1: lost productivity, of damages, of all those things kind of
Speaker 1: lumped in together. Yeah, but just think about all that
Speaker 1: pent up demand. It sounds like a great time to
Speaker 1: start a business. 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. So then we will have
Speaker 1: a real brief section here just to talk about what
Speaker 1: you what you might want to consider to have as
Speaker 1: kind of a preparedness kit. Yeah, these are your five tips,
Speaker 1: and this is in case of you know, these these
Speaker 1: blackout 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: Hours worth of mayonnaise has to be like canned goods,
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. And uh, you know, you might
Speaker 1: also want to go ahead and invest in some means
Speaker 1: of like like like some non electronic means of heating
Speaker 1: said food if you want to have it cooked. And
Speaker 1: of course, as Harlan Ellison would remind us, you need
Speaker 1: a can opener. Yes, a can opener would Yes, a
Speaker 1: manual can opener would be very important. Uh. You also
Speaker 1: want to make sure you have a stocked first aid kit,
Speaker 1: which makes sense. Uh. Flashlights and a battery powered radio
Speaker 1: plus batteries doesn't do much good if you don't have
Speaker 1: any good, reliable batteries to use. Candles and matches, perferably
Speaker 1: waterproof matches also a really good idea. And if you
Speaker 1: have a car, make it a habit to avoid dipping
Speaker 1: below half full on the gas tank, because if one
Speaker 1: of these events happens, you want to have enough fuel
Speaker 1: for you to be able to get home or get
Speaker 1: away from whatever the incident is, if it happens to
Speaker 1: be localized to your area. Yeah. Now, obviously we've said
Speaker 1: several times now your your best case scenario is to
Speaker 1: be energy and dependent, Like if you actually had a
Speaker 1: bunch of solar panels or some kind of way of
Speaker 1: general rating power in your home, that's not going to
Speaker 1: run out there. You go, yeah, I've actually seen I
Speaker 1: was looking into this. Tree Hugger did a article about
Speaker 1: the various types of power generation you could do. Our
Speaker 1: electricity generation you could do at home, and solar power
Speaker 1: is good, except, of course, if it is super volcanic
Speaker 1: canoe or dust or whatever. There's if there's something that's
Speaker 1: blocking the sunlight from getting to the earth, that's not
Speaker 1: gonna help you too much, right so, um, but then
Speaker 1: you would also have much more serious problems than not
Speaker 1: being able to charge your eye pass such as like
Speaker 1: crops won't grow we're breathing. That could also be a problem.
Speaker 1: Wind turbines also are a possibility, possibility depending upon where
Speaker 1: you live and the regulations there. Personal wind turbine would
Speaker 1: a generate I mean like a like a reasonably sized
Speaker 1: one that you could build on your own property. Would
Speaker 1: that get enough energy? Wind turbine with a four foot
Speaker 1: diameter of blade diameter would be enough to power a
Speaker 1: an average home without running all your major appliances. Like
Speaker 1: you're like, you wouldn't be able to run the dryer
Speaker 1: on that. You do not 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 denserving environment. So if you have to
Speaker 1: live out in a rural area where you could build
Speaker 1: such a structure, um, that would be a possibility. I've
Speaker 1: also seen even micro hydro electric power where if you
Speaker 1: live near a running stream that's running with enough force,
Speaker 1: you could have a micro hydro electric power generation. I've
Speaker 1: heard of this. It's a great idea because again, like
Speaker 1: just like with the major hydraulic systems or hydraulic system
Speaker 1: hydro powered systems, you don't have to worry about running
Speaker 1: out of fuel. So great if you have the accessibility
Speaker 1: to that sort of thing. So let's conclude this by
Speaker 1: talking about some of our favorite post apocalyptic stories. And
Speaker 1: you know this, this isn't so much on the technology
Speaker 1: side as as just the the worlds that have been
Speaker 1: imagined by various people that take place in in you know,
Speaker 1: on on Earth where something like this has happened, like
Speaker 1: some some catastrophic event has happened. Sure well, these tend
Speaker 1: to divide between like the very serious and then the
Speaker 1: less serious. I would say so, so both of us,
Speaker 1: it'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 it's at least it ends on a at least
Speaker 1: an but from my reading depends on an optimistic note.
Speaker 1: I would yeah, so it's but it is it's a
Speaker 1: hard read, guys, 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 earthquakes. 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 worthwhile Along the same lines, I guess
Speaker 1: some people might consider this lower form of art, but
Speaker 1: I was actually really impressed by the story in the
Speaker 1: 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 stage. Yeah, it's a it's essentially another
Speaker 1: zombie outbreak story, but without it being uh yeah, without
Speaker 1: it being magical zombies. It's it's based more on on
Speaker 1: things that we have actually observed in nature, though not
Speaker 1: with humans but with other life forms. Right, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: based on the fungus that infects ants and changes their behavior,
Speaker 1: 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 Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard that I heard the novel was in fact
Speaker 1: and just like completely different in format and approach. There
Speaker 1: there are tiny elements that happened in the novel that
Speaker 1: are touched upon in the film, but they are not
Speaker 1: at all related otherwise. It's the novel is really more
Speaker 1: of a collection of uh stories. It's it's told as
Speaker 1: there's a journalist, not well journalist who's working essentially for
Speaker 1: the u N collecting the stories from survivors. This this
Speaker 1: is post zombie outbreak, post war with the zombies. The
Speaker 1: humans have won the war. Zombie Outbreak has been largely defeated.
Speaker 1: There's still some zombies in the world, but they are
Speaker 1: few and far between and are are often you know,
Speaker 1: rounded up and killed off. So humanity is on the
Speaker 1: rebound now, and it's more of a discussion about what
Speaker 1: happened leading up to and throughout this zombie war, whether
Speaker 1: and I. And it's told in a way where you
Speaker 1: don't really know what the actual precipitating event was um,
Speaker 1: which is very realistic. I think, you know, like as
Speaker 1: as someone who wants to hear a story you kind
Speaker 1: of want to know all the details, but if you
Speaker 1: were actually a person there, you wouldn't necessarily have all
Speaker 1: the information available to you, especially when you consider that
Speaker 1: a lot of the people who might have been responsible
Speaker 1: in some way or another or had observed what happened
Speaker 1: are no longer around because they've been turned into zombies
Speaker 1: or killed in some other way. UM. Very powerful story though,
Speaker 1: and also very interesting to hear kind of the human
Speaker 1: psychology that might be involved in something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so in both of the ones I mentioned so far,
Speaker 1: there was a pretty much a total breakdown of of
Speaker 1: the larger function of technological society. Though in the last
Speaker 1: of us there there, you know, there are still people
Speaker 1: who get some power from generators and stuff. It seems
Speaker 1: like somebody is still locating gasoline somehow. But also that's
Speaker 1: one of the examples I was mentioning. Another one would
Speaker 1: be Dawn to the Planet of the Apes, where people
Speaker 1: are trying to get hydroelectric plants back online, because that,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned, that does seem like a really good
Speaker 1: bet for trying to revive at least a local power
Speaker 1: grid in a post apocalyptic scenario. And in that world,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's only like a tiny bit of San Francisco.
Speaker 1: I think that's still alive or is the concentrating you mean?
Speaker 1: And Dawn to the Planet of the Apes, not the
Speaker 1: last none, last us, last of Us. It's all spread
Speaker 1: out all over the place. Yeah. Uh so, here's another
Speaker 1: one along a maybe sillier line. I love Dawn of
Speaker 1: the Dead. I like the way things are progressing there.
Speaker 1: I like watching they're the scenes that depicted the breakdown
Speaker 1: of discipline in the media, like the TV stations that
Speaker 1: are still trying to broadcast but people are sort of
Speaker 1: losing focus. I assume you are talking about the original
Speaker 1: don yes, not the remake. Yes, the one that was
Speaker 1: also a commentary on consumerism. It's a great movie for
Speaker 1: for me. One of the big ones. The Fallout series
Speaker 1: of games. Fantastic weird tone mishmash of comedic and tragic
Speaker 1: in those games, but I think it works. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: this this kind of almost almost manic optimism that is
Speaker 1: being portrayed in a lot of the stuff you come
Speaker 1: across as a character in those games, despite the overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: awfulness of the world. Yeah, it's the gallows hum. It's
Speaker 1: that nineteen fifties style of you could do it, but meanwhile,
Speaker 1: like everything's on fire and everyone's terrible, right. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: another way that it sort of has a mash up
Speaker 1: is it's very high tech low tech mash up. So
Speaker 1: it has you know, lasers and exoskeleton power suits and robots,
Speaker 1: but also you know extremely you know, bow and arrow
Speaker 1: kind of logs, and the aesthetic tends to be the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties style of our vision of the future, not
Speaker 1: how things actually turned out. So it's a really it's
Speaker 1: it's an alternate past leading to a an alternate, bizarre future. Um,
Speaker 1: and you've got some other ones on here. In fact,
Speaker 1: these are also some of my favorites. Well, yeah, a
Speaker 1: couple of the Mad Max movies. Of course, you I
Speaker 1: could not neglect Mad Max. I have to confess I've
Speaker 1: 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 in h I love
Speaker 1: that movie so much. It just it hit all of
Speaker 1: the happy places in my body and in my brain.
Speaker 1: It's also funny that on forward thinking, somehow we managed
Speaker 1: to bring it back to the doufwagon every few episodes.
Speaker 1: That was just such an amazing, amazing reality that they created.
Speaker 1: I think what I told Rachel when we walked out
Speaker 1: of the theater was I feel like I could rip
Speaker 1: Australia in half with my hands. All right, now, you've
Speaker 1: got to tell everybody what Zardaz is because unless they are,
Speaker 1: you know, a fan of being 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 interest. 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 scientific and
Speaker 1: technological sophistication of an earlier age that that's actually happened
Speaker 1: on Earth at times. You know, you had the Bronze
Speaker 1: Age collapse, you had the you had what are sometimes
Speaker 1: called the Dark Ages in Europe. Now a lot of
Speaker 1: historians look back and say, well, that's maybe not the
Speaker 1: most accurate way to describe that age in Europe. But
Speaker 1: at least then you had times when a lot of
Speaker 1: the technological progress that had been achieved during say the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire, suddenly people didn't know how to do this
Speaker 1: stuff anymore. Yeah, not until the Renaissance, where they began
Speaker 1: to rediscover and build upon those those advanced is from
Speaker 1: ancient times. Yes, 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 Ardas 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 the
Speaker 1: 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 gorilla suit with a
Speaker 1: it's like a gumball machine on his head, and that's
Speaker 1: his costume. And he represents this species of aliens who
Speaker 1: I think comes and conquers Earth. I don't remember all
Speaker 1: the details, but suddenly they're just like five people left
Speaker 1: on Earth. But Roman has an extremely difficult time conquering
Speaker 1: these five people who seem to be about a mile
Speaker 1: away from him. Yeah, I uh, I think of that
Speaker 1: as a movie where the audience feels as if they've
Speaker 1: been through a post apocalyptic event. Uh, not necessarily the
Speaker 1: film itself. Well, I think that was on an episode
Speaker 1: of Mystery Science Theater, wasn't it. You know. I want
Speaker 1: to say I know that. Well, they've done so many,
Speaker 1: but I want to say that that was one of
Speaker 1: the ones they've done. Um, they certainly have alluded to
Speaker 1: it before. Well, Joe, thank you so much for coming
Speaker 1: on here and doing these these pair of episodes about
Speaker 1: post apocalyptic technology. Well, thank you for inviting me. It
Speaker 1: has been a whole barrel of fun. Yeah. I enjoyed
Speaker 1: pulling that tune out of the basket. It also, like,
Speaker 1: like I said with the Manhattan Project episodes with Ben,
Speaker 1: I was like, it's kind of like, you know, the
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know is I think
Speaker 1: of that as the other side of the coin of
Speaker 1: forward thinking, Like that's those are two. Forward thinking is
Speaker 1: the big, optimistic side typically and stuff they don't want
Speaker 1: you to know is like the dark, cynical side. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And in a way, this is also kind of like
Speaker 1: the other side of the forward thinking coin. It's very
Speaker 1: different from the stuff we do over it forward thinking.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't normally explore this kind of topic over there,
Speaker 1: but it was fun to be able to explore it
Speaker 1: here on text stuff um and and talk about some
Speaker 1: of our favorite post apocalyptic stories as well as the
Speaker 1: actual things that we would expect in those kind of scenarios.
Speaker 1: I hope that largely, really, I hope that does one
Speaker 1: of two things. One, it convinces people that, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: important for us to think about ways to make our
Speaker 1: various infrastructures more robust so that in the case of
Speaker 1: something catastrophic happening, we can localize it. We can we
Speaker 1: can separate it from everything else, and we can deal
Speaker 1: with it. So that it doesn't become a wider problem,
Speaker 1: and too that it alerts them that there are things
Speaker 1: that we as citizens can do to protect ourselves, so
Speaker 1: that you know, if something like this happens, or when
Speaker 1: something like this happens, if you're looking at along the
Speaker 1: time scale, we get through it with the minimum amount
Speaker 1: of problem, knowing that you know, it's not going to
Speaker 1: be necessarily fun or easy. Easy to get through it,
Speaker 1: but there are things we can do that will make
Speaker 1: it less traumatic, and that's important. So I think those
Speaker 1: are the messages to go home with. Not not that
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not trying to scare anyone. I'm more like,
Speaker 1: just be aware. It's it's good to know that way
Speaker 1: at least, at least if something like that happens, it's
Speaker 1: not a total surprise. Uh. But you can find Joe's
Speaker 1: work over and forward thinking. You can also find his
Speaker 1: work on lots of different stuff. You were your fun
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. I've had a busy week. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I am now one of the hosts of Step
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind along with Robert Lamb and Christian Seger,
Speaker 1: and recently I just appeared on a video and podcast
Speaker 1: with stuff they don't want you to know about paid
Speaker 1: online manipulators, so jumps all over the place. You can
Speaker 1: check out his work there. And of course, if you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future episodes of text Stuff or
Speaker 1: future guests I could have on the show, you can
Speaker 1: write me. Let me know the madresses tex Stuff at
Speaker 1: Houston works dot com, draw me a line on Facebook,
Speaker 1: Twitter or Tumbler. They handled all three US tex Stuff phs,
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again. Really sick for
Speaker 1: more on this and bathands of other topics because it
Speaker 1: has to have works dot com