Speaker 1: Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast
Speaker 2: about things falling apart and how people work to put
Speaker 2: them back together again, because it's the Humpty Dumpty of podcasts,
Speaker 2: except Humpty Dumpty couldn't be put back together in the
Speaker 2: end because there was a bunch of state actors who
Speaker 2: were trying and really that's not how you usually get
Speaker 2: things done. I'm your guest host today, Martyr Kiljoy, and
Speaker 2: with me as my regular host today is James Hi.
Speaker 3: James Hi, Margaret, thank you for having me on a
Speaker 3: podcast that I worke for.
Speaker 2: I'm glad to have you on your podcast. So this
Speaker 2: episode is about what I learned about prepping by going
Speaker 2: down to western North Carolina in the immediate wake of
Speaker 2: the flooding caused by two storms, one of which was
Speaker 2: Hurricane Helene. And there's a few things I like an
Speaker 2: awful lot. One of them is prepping. Another one of
Speaker 2: them is Asheville, North Carolina, where I lived longer than
Speaker 2: I have lived anywhere else in my adult life, which
Speaker 2: isn't actually saying that much because I lived there for
Speaker 2: about six.
Speaker 3: Years, but it's a decent amount of time, you know,
Speaker 3: A place. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Before that, I was fully vagabondie. This is a story
Speaker 2: about prepping in Nashville, North Carolina, and so I thought
Speaker 2: i'd bring on another it could happen here prepper James.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's me someone who has been to Ashville, North Carolina.
Speaker 3: But oh yeah, still lives in San Diego.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Nice, nice pace to go outside normally.
Speaker 2: Okay, but have you ever heard that song though, like
Speaker 2: I've been everywhere man song, I've been everywhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't think I'm allowed to sing things on this podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've started liking that song. Is like, yeah, I've been everywhere.
Speaker 2: That man starts listening where he's been, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 2: I haven't been. I ain't been shit. I have never
Speaker 2: been anywhere in my life.
Speaker 3: I've not made it. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: It is one of the nice things about my job
Speaker 4: that people I get to go places and meet people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that is fun.
Speaker 2: So, as I assume listeners are aware, about two weeks ago,
Speaker 2: Hurricane Helene dumped an enormous quantity of water onto the
Speaker 2: mountains of western North Carolina, which would have been bad
Speaker 2: no matter what, but another unnamed storm had already been
Speaker 2: dropping unconscious able unconscious not good amounts of water on
Speaker 2: the area for a day or so. The two storms
Speaker 2: together caused the worst natural disaster and recorded history for
Speaker 2: the region. The only thing that came close was the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixteen flood, which was again like a regular storm,
Speaker 2: and then I think a coastal tropical storm hitting at
Speaker 2: the same time. So the way to have everything fail
Speaker 2: is to have two storms at once. In case anyone's
Speaker 2: curious how to have bad things happen, doe two storms. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I drove down in a vanful of supplies because my
Speaker 2: friends were the err and they needed the supplies more
Speaker 2: than my basement did, and because I had enough cash
Speaker 2: on hand to hit up a bunch of stores to
Speaker 2: get more stuff to bring to them too. I also
Speaker 2: drove down there as a journalist, figuring i'd talk to
Speaker 2: people about mutual aid and about preparedness. This week on
Speaker 2: my own podcast, Cool People Did Cool Stuff, I talk
Speaker 2: about my experiences there, what I saw, with an emphasis
Speaker 2: on the mutual aid side, on the enormous amount of
Speaker 2: grassroots informal disaster response. But this is it could happen here,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to talk about preparedness. I want to
Speaker 2: talk about what worked and what didn't, what lessons we
Speaker 2: can draw anywhere we are listening to this from what
Speaker 2: people experienced there in Ashville, North Carolina, or at least
Speaker 2: what lessons I was able to pick up on. And
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about like stuff and specific things
Speaker 2: in a second GAD. But first, when I talk about preparedness,
Speaker 2: which I do a lot, I talk about how I'm
Speaker 2: interested in both the individual and community as two different
Speaker 2: types of preparedness. And I had some hypotheses that these
Speaker 2: were deeply related and reliant on each other in fact,
Speaker 2: and that you do one better by doing the other better.
Speaker 2: But now that I've seen those hypotheses tested, I was right.
Speaker 2: That's that's my answer. It's in fact to approve in hypotheses. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I don't want to run more tests,
Speaker 2: but we probably will. Yeah, because we ain't doing shit
Speaker 2: to stop being always no no, We're mostly doing things
Speaker 2: to make it worse.
Speaker 3: Hm hm cool.
Speaker 2: Basically, we need both individual and community preparedness, and we
Speaker 2: should stop seeing them as opposing forces. There might be
Speaker 2: no single false dichotomy that has more wrecked our imaginations
Speaker 2: than the idea that the individual and the community are
Speaker 2: two opposing forces that they must be balanced against one
Speaker 2: another instead of interwoven, Instead of allowing what's best about
Speaker 2: both things to reinforce the other. I would argue the
Speaker 2: twentieth century did us dirty? The Cold War?
Speaker 3: Did us dirty? In the US?
Speaker 2: I grew up presented with the idea that the USSR
Speaker 2: represented community in that side, and that meant being a
Speaker 2: cog in the machine, devoid of individuality in thrall to
Speaker 2: an authoritarian state. If I cared about the individual and
Speaker 2: individual freedom and liberty, I had to accept capitalism and
Speaker 2: competition and to see myself in a war against everyone else.
Speaker 3: I don't know how you.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be a cargon machine, and I
Speaker 2: also don't want to be in a war against everyone else.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is the This is the sort of false
Speaker 4: dichoto media were presented with. Right. It's like, I'll tell
Speaker 4: an anecdote here. When I was writing my dissertation, I
Speaker 4: would describe my politics as left libertarian, and I would
Speaker 4: describe the politics of the many different types of anarchists
Speaker 4: and anarcosyndicalis in Spain similarly, because it accurately describes their perspective. Right,
Speaker 4: and I was forbidden from doing so, the probably fair
Speaker 4: enough objection that Americans could not comprehend the idea of
Speaker 4: libertarianism without individualism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is annoying because, oh is it Rothbard? Someone
Speaker 2: consciously stole that word from us. You used to not
Speaker 2: have to say left libertarian because if you said libertarian,
Speaker 2: you meant left libertarian.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this was the pre dates Rothbard. It is something
Speaker 4: I've written about on my Patreon. But yeah, libertarian began
Speaker 4: to be used by French anarchists to avoid censorship and
Speaker 4: persecution of anarchists for being anarchists. Yeah, and then it
Speaker 4: came to America, where, like many things in America, it
Speaker 4: was stolen from its original original creators and custodians and
Speaker 4: fucking ruined by chuds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is a shame.
Speaker 4: But yeah, there is in fact an option where you
Speaker 4: don't have to pick one or the other.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: What is good for me as an individual is to
Speaker 2: be able to express the full range of my possibilities, right,
Speaker 2: And I'm more able to do that in a supportive
Speaker 2: community than like alone in the woods somewhere, cut off
Speaker 2: from everyone else, chasing rabbits with a hatchet and dying
Speaker 2: of easily preventable infections, like it's the.
Speaker 3: American dream, Margaret, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2: I used to joke that I was going to start
Speaker 2: a YouTube channel called how to Survive Alone in the
Speaker 2: woods of the hatchet eating squirrels that you kill with
Speaker 2: the aforementioned hatchet.
Speaker 3: But unfortunately you died of tetanus before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. The existence of society makes me more free.
Speaker 2: It makes me more capable of doing what I want
Speaker 2: to do. I really like I don't remember which old
Speaker 2: theorists came up with it, but I really like the
Speaker 2: idea of understanding freedom as a relationship between people, not
Speaker 2: a like static state. It is something that we offer
Speaker 2: each other and that we work to maximize with each other.
Speaker 2: On the other side of things, what's good for communities
Speaker 2: is not to be rigidly top down controlled, but instead
Speaker 2: to allow people free expression, develop new ideas, try new things,
Speaker 2: to have communities grow organically. We are not actually factory cogs.
Speaker 2: We do better as a garden. And that's been my
Speaker 2: working theory. With preparedness, it's been similar. On one side,
Speaker 2: are these deals, these goods and services, the ads that
Speaker 2: interrupt things?
Speaker 3: Magnificent?
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you. I live to do this. Here's
Speaker 2: the ads, and we're back on one side. I saw
Speaker 2: preppers as being kind of a primarily an individualistic bunch
Speaker 2: of folks obsessed with what I've called the bunker mentality,
Speaker 2: the hole up and guns and shoot anyone who comes
Speaker 2: to close mentality that I've got mind fuck you mentality
Speaker 2: you've ever seen on like older prepper Reddit and stuff
Speaker 2: like that, where people like kind of get sad when
Speaker 2: they realize they're all planning to shoot each other, all
Speaker 2: their friends after the apocalypse.
Speaker 4: Yeah that like, anyone who's able to has more than
Speaker 4: two weeks of food stored, it's inherently going to kill
Speaker 4: anyone else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's more than two. Yeah. It's great when they
Speaker 3: all come around to educasionally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're like, wait, but I like this community
Speaker 2: I've built.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're also the only friends because they've alienated everyone
Speaker 4: else with their weird obsessions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fall out.
Speaker 2: This is not a good mentality to have. I would
Speaker 2: argue it's behind a lot of what's happening on the
Speaker 2: border right now. Actually, I think that the Right waying
Speaker 2: actually does believe in climate change and is not willing
Speaker 2: to just say it publicly because it doesn't play to
Speaker 2: their base. But they they're like, we've got ours, fuck you,
Speaker 2: and want to close down the borders as best as
Speaker 2: they can in the global North.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we'll move the borders as far from your
Speaker 4: eyesight as possible. That's what I saw in Panama. I was, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: listeners will know I was in the daddy and gap.
Speaker 4: But like Panama without funding you and me, Margaret Home,
Speaker 4: we pay our taxes, We pay for families to be
Speaker 4: split out. Hell yeah, deportations to happen, fences to be
Speaker 4: built in Panama because that makes it further from our
Speaker 4: site and from our mind. Right.
Speaker 3: That's what liberty means. Yep.
Speaker 2: Liberty is the ability to interfere in other countries' families.
Speaker 4: Yep, domestic politics in other countries by fire hose of money.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's funny because it's the same like justification.
Speaker 2: Every now and then you meet the people who genuinely
Speaker 2: think Russia is like allowed to invade Ukraine because border
Speaker 2: security because Ukraine's too close to it.
Speaker 3: You're like, amazing, what it? Yeah, Ukraine bad, therefore fuck it?
Speaker 3: Why not?
Speaker 4: Like it's yeah, yeah, like the Monroe doctrine, but for Russia,
Speaker 4: like this is my hemisphere.
Speaker 3: Don't fuck with me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they burn down your neighbor's house because you're just like, Nah,
Speaker 2: you're living too close to me.
Speaker 3: Don't like it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, senior yard sign. They've got one of those in
Speaker 4: this house signs. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, Yeah, which they've
Speaker 4: all taken down now because it's no human beings legal
Speaker 4: and they.
Speaker 3: No longer believe that. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Cool.
Speaker 2: Well, I would argue this is a fundamentally right wing
Speaker 2: individualistic mentality, whether it's coming from ostensibly leftis tankies or
Speaker 2: ostensibly center left Democrats, or they admit their right wing
Speaker 2: individualistic preppers. Yeah, And this was dominant in prepping circles
Speaker 2: before Round twenty twenty, when an awful lot more people
Speaker 2: with different ideas came into the space. But the older
Speaker 2: school preppers focused on individual preparedness or family level household
Speaker 2: level preparedness, and they have an awful lot of really
Speaker 2: good ideas around some of these things, around storing food
Speaker 2: and water, around maintaining communications, around all sorts of things
Speaker 2: to help the individual or family during crisis to be prepared.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: On the other end of things, there are mutual aid
Speaker 2: groups and other community organizations that do community preparedness. They
Speaker 2: build organizational communication and logistical networks, and they're fantastic and
Speaker 2: their overall what's been left out of preparedness conversations. But
Speaker 2: until more recently, I haven't seen as many of those places.
Speaker 2: The people who are doing those things also concern themselves
Speaker 2: with individual preparedness, you know. Yeah, I've been operating under
Speaker 2: the assumption for years that the two can work really
Speaker 2: well in tandem with each other. If you are self sufficient,
Speaker 2: you're in a better place to help others. That was
Speaker 2: my hypothesis. This is really just the Margaret was Right
Speaker 2: episode of it could happen the victory lap Yeah, oh wait,
Speaker 2: it's a victory wrap around bodies.
Speaker 3: I don't like it anymore.
Speaker 2: Well, it's people who did do these things getting to
Speaker 2: have not thrived but did not died. I don't know
Speaker 2: how to say this.
Speaker 4: It's a tricky subject getting credit for being right and
Speaker 4: putting in the work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of people were and a lot
Speaker 2: of people had done that, and it showed really well
Speaker 2: in the disaster response in Ashville, because when I went
Speaker 2: down to Ashville, one of the things that I asked
Speaker 2: most of the people I talked to is what they prepared,
Speaker 2: what they wish they'd prepared, and what lessons they were taking.
Speaker 3: Away from all of this about preparedness.
Speaker 2: And one of my friends is old Punk, and he
Speaker 2: was one of the first old he's like my age whatever,
Speaker 2: it might be a few years older than me.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Margaret crushed by moment of reflection live
Speaker 3: on Podcasts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm jealous because I don't have enough gray hair.
Speaker 3: They keep falling out of my head.
Speaker 2: But one of my friends who does have very nice
Speaker 2: gray hair, Old Punk, is one of the first people
Speaker 2: who was out on the street cooking food to give away.
Speaker 2: He told me that he was able to do that
Speaker 2: because he knew he was fine by and large during
Speaker 2: this particular crisis. Every crisis is going to be real
Speaker 2: different if your house wasn't in the actual floodplain, and
Speaker 2: since it was in the mountains, that was not most houses.
Speaker 2: Instead it was like most roads and some houses. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the big problems you were dealing with was lack of food,
Speaker 2: lack of water, lack of cell service. And he had
Speaker 2: plenty of water and food stored. And at one point
Speaker 2: someone had even kind of come up to him been like,
Speaker 2: are you no, You're fine, aren't you?
Speaker 3: And he was like, yeah, no, I'm fine. So just
Speaker 3: being like getting off prepared vibes, I guess yeah. No.
Speaker 3: I was real proud.
Speaker 2: Like once I was doing this community defense thing and
Speaker 2: we were like, oh, we need a flashlight. Does anyone
Speaker 2: hey Margaret, you have a flashlight, right, And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: with any.
Speaker 4: Want Yeah, being the flashlight person, Yeah, it's a huge
Speaker 4: win in the moment you get to deploy that flashlight
Speaker 4: you've been toting around.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, And that's actually part of my like core argument
Speaker 2: that I make in the other podcasts I recorded today
Speaker 2: that's gonna come out some sign around now, is that
Speaker 2: like people want to help people. Oh yeah, like the
Speaker 2: average pickup truck guy. We even kind of see. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm a pickup truck girl, but like we see the
Speaker 2: average pickup truck guy is the like, ah, good out
Speaker 2: of my way, limberal, guns, dogs, whatever, you know.
Speaker 3: And I like pickup trucks and guns and dogs and
Speaker 3: as I don't really like.
Speaker 2: But one of the main things you want to make
Speaker 2: a man with a pickup truck happy. Get your car
Speaker 2: stuck in a ditch.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 4: There are whole Facebook groups where people love to pull
Speaker 4: other people out of stupid situations they've got themselves into
Speaker 4: off road.
Speaker 3: Yeah it is fun for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like because then the fact that you've been doing
Speaker 2: this thing had a purpose. I carry a flashlight and
Speaker 2: a knife every single moment in my life, So when
Speaker 2: someone needs a flashlight or a knife, I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I am fucking the the reincarnation of the Goddess.
Speaker 3: Like, no one is better than me. Yeah, you're the
Speaker 3: all powerful light carrier.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, exactly when all other lights go out for me,
Speaker 4: it's the moment I get to deploy. Like obviously this
Speaker 4: has been an audio podcast, but I have a leavenman
Speaker 4: that I like to carry around. Yeah, like where someone
Speaker 4: needs pliers or wire cutting, you have that capability.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're just like Chad. You're a superhero. You're a mutant,
Speaker 2: you know, Like yeah, I say, yeah, this friend of
Speaker 2: mine had plenty of water and food stored, and you
Speaker 2: can usually go a couple of days without communication if
Speaker 2: you don't have any immediate crisis, right.
Speaker 4: Ye.
Speaker 2: He told me that what most people did or needed
Speaker 2: to do was first they needed to make sure to
Speaker 2: meet their own needs, you know, like the whole affix
Speaker 2: your own oxygen mask before helping your seat mate. So
Speaker 2: it was the people who were the most resilient, the
Speaker 2: most prepared, who were out driving around in their trucks
Speaker 2: or you know, cars whatever, giving away food, or were
Speaker 2: working to coordinate meetings most immediately. And the other part
Speaker 2: of it was that people who had community preparedness skills
Speaker 2: were also among the first people getting stuff done on
Speaker 2: the ground because mutual aid it's organic, and it's chaotic
Speaker 2: and it's spontaneous, right, but it is organized. It is
Speaker 2: a developed skill about how to organically organize. The more
Speaker 2: people who are experienced with chaotic, decentralized organizing, the better
Speaker 2: a community was able to weather the immediate aftermath of
Speaker 2: the storm because people knew how to set up distribution
Speaker 2: hubs and connect people and so basically like a solid
Speaker 2: church or an anarchist group, and your rural town was
Speaker 2: in a much better spot. Yeah, that makes sense, And
Speaker 2: this is one of the main places in the country
Speaker 2: where you're going to find entire anarchist groups in random
Speaker 2: rural small towns. Having been one of those people in
Speaker 2: one of those small towns, I keep saying I lived
Speaker 2: in Ashville, I lived in Sandy Mush. Where Sandy Mush is.
Speaker 2: I don't bother saying it because no one knows where
Speaker 2: it is. No hell of a name though I know
Speaker 2: it's almost British and its weirdness.
Speaker 3: I was like too.
Speaker 2: Fem for baseball caps back then, and all my landmates
Speaker 2: were the camera baseball caps from the local store that
Speaker 2: says Sandy.
Speaker 3: Mush, you know.
Speaker 2: And I'm really sad that I didn't get one, especially
Speaker 2: now because now I have one and I'm wearing it
Speaker 2: out that has the name of the town I live in.
Speaker 2: But I can't wear it anywhere because it doses me.
Speaker 3: Ah yeah, see that's the fool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you had a Sandy Mush one, you'd be Yeah,
Speaker 4: someone send Margaret at baseball.
Speaker 2: Cap yeah from Sandy Mush, Yeah with Camma.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, I probably won't wear it otherwise I'll be real
Speaker 2: because I still got to be fem and somehow that
Speaker 2: is how things work in my subculture. So you need
Speaker 2: individual preparedness so that you're free enough to help people,
Speaker 2: and you need community preparedness so you know what to do.
Speaker 2: And then you also have all of these people with
Speaker 2: really specialized skills and tools, and these are the kinds
Speaker 2: of things that I can't say that every prepper needs
Speaker 2: to go out and do. But like ATVs have been
Speaker 2: crucial to disaster relief efforts, that doesn't mean that everyone
Speaker 2: should run out and buy an ATV to keep around
Speaker 2: in the case of flooding. This note for me because
Speaker 2: I don't quite live on enough land to justify an
Speaker 2: ATV and I really want one. But yeah, it's get
Speaker 2: one of those little ones. Yeah, there's little children once.
Speaker 2: I know, I'm just a drive around a circle. I'd
Speaker 2: like mostly live in the woods, and so there's like
Speaker 2: just not a lot of ATVs. Are great when you
Speaker 2: got like twelve acres with horses on them, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah you're going out. You can get a sheep dog
Speaker 4: on the back. Very practical for that kind of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 4: rifle case, but.
Speaker 2: That said A dirt bike friend of mine, who was
Speaker 2: a quite prepared person, immediately went out and spent days
Speaker 2: going into hard to reach areas to connect with people
Speaker 2: and bring them supplies. Yeah, so maybe I can just.
Speaker 3: Fight a dirt bike.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, dirt bike, said, E bike, E dirt bike.
Speaker 4: Then you can run off solar power, don't need gas,
Speaker 4: store it sideways.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're gonna talk about electronics versus gas later in
Speaker 2: the episode.
Speaker 3: I got a whole part got it?
Speaker 5: Yea?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, okay, good.
Speaker 2: But first, what we really need for the apocalypse is
Speaker 2: whatever comes next in the ads. That is what will
Speaker 2: save you in the apocalypse. If it's a podcast, yeap
Speaker 2: that is the podcast that will give you the secret
Speaker 2: to surviving the apocalypse.
Speaker 5: Yea.
Speaker 4: Hopefully it's the Reagan gold coins, which will become the
Speaker 4: currency as soon as the state collapses.
Speaker 2: I bet it's gambling and if you go gamble, you're
Speaker 2: guaranteed to win.
Speaker 3: That's how I think we legally cannot say that.
Speaker 2: Oh well then, yeah, yeah, I wonder if we can
Speaker 2: get away with saying don't gamble it's a bad idea.
Speaker 4: Yeah no, I think we actually can't say that. Okay, great,
Speaker 4: don't gamble it's a bad idea.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Er Back, the overall lesson was that some stuff is
Speaker 2: and was useful for everyone to have. We're going to
Speaker 2: talk about some of that stuff. Well, other certain specialized
Speaker 2: tools and skill sets only made sense for some people
Speaker 2: to have. Not everyone needs to know how to repair
Speaker 2: a chainsaw or even own a chainsaw, but it sure
Speaker 2: proved to be a handy skill in this particular crisis
Speaker 2: is easily an image of the climate crisis future. I
Speaker 2: think you and Robert got into that in the episode
Speaker 2: you did about this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we spoke a little bit about how like this
Speaker 4: is a vision it was coming for a lot of us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm basically doing a like me too. I couldn't
Speaker 2: be on the call because I was busy. That's what
Speaker 2: this episode is. No, we, Robert and I have not
Speaker 2: been there. My house flooded when I was younger, but yeah,
Speaker 2: we were not there this time. Asheville is not okay.
Speaker 2: It is a somewhat remote part of the country in
Speaker 2: terms of its raw geography. Yeah, you're not getting into
Speaker 2: that city without taking steep, curving freeways or flying into
Speaker 2: a regional airport. But culturally, and because of the level
Speaker 2: of infrastructure the United States provides, it is not an
Speaker 2: isolated city. It is a very much a modern and
Speaker 2: hip city with about I think one hundred thousand people
Speaker 2: had I think about eighty thousand when I left a
Speaker 2: couple of years ago, but it's been growing, Yeah, partly
Speaker 2: because lots of Silicon Valley folks moved there to work remote,
Speaker 2: much to the sorrow of locals like everywhere else as
Speaker 2: people moved, I know, And then I'm also like, I
Speaker 2: work remote and lived. I actually can't tell the stones here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have lived here since I didn't work or remote.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fair enough. I'll take my stern throwing opportunity.
Speaker 2: Asheville is a very climate stable area. All of Appalachia is,
Speaker 2: and it's nowhere near the coast. There's not a lot
Speaker 2: of earthquakes. There are far fewer forest fires than there
Speaker 2: are out west. There were some forest fires that were
Speaker 2: there one of the years that I lived there, but
Speaker 2: you know, they didn't. It didn't impact my life the
Speaker 2: way it impacts my friends' lives that live out west. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there are industrial accidents and there's occasional flooding, but no
Speaker 2: one had any reason to expect anything like this, except
Speaker 2: that all of us have every reason to expect something
Speaker 2: like this. Areas hit more regularly by climate disasters have
Speaker 2: protocols in place for those sorts of things. People in
Speaker 2: California pay attention to the fires during that fire season.
Speaker 2: People on the Gulf Coast track the hurricanes. And not
Speaker 2: that these disasters aren't disastrous, but they're expected. They're part
Speaker 2: of living where you live Ashville. What happened there could
Speaker 2: be any of us at any time, So what was
Speaker 2: useful for them for prepping seems like it might be
Speaker 2: really useful for all of us. And most of that,
Speaker 2: most of what was useful is the basics. People I
Speaker 2: talked to were either real happy that they stored water
Speaker 2: or real sad that they hadn't stored water. With the
Speaker 2: storm coming, people filled up their bath tubs. One friend
Speaker 2: cut the down spouts on his house to direct them
Speaker 2: into trash cans, and now a week later, they still
Speaker 2: have water.
Speaker 3: To flush the toilet. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And you know, if you're like super ahead of it,
Speaker 2: you've got your little rain collectors all the time, right,
Speaker 2: but yeah, worst case scenario caught your down spout and
Speaker 2: throw a trash can there, yep, or anything else that's
Speaker 2: food safe. Yeah, well in this case is mostly water flushing.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: But it's funny just as you mentioned this, Like I
Speaker 4: was in the village I stayed in last week, didn't
Speaker 4: have rang water electricity, and that's exactly what they did.
Speaker 4: They had a person I stayed I've had like a
Speaker 4: normal toilet, but they don't have plumber in water, so
Speaker 4: they just collect rainwater and use that every time they
Speaker 4: want to flush it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, every time I've lived off grid and don't have a
Speaker 2: busy access running water instead of bucket flushing, I'm shit
Speaker 2: in a bucket with sawdust.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, they I think, like there's a hole underneath.
Speaker 4: I'm interesting, but you have to flush it to get
Speaker 4: it in. I think this was like a status upgrade
Speaker 4: to have the physical toilet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that actually makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Some of the first water distribution centers that came online
Speaker 2: after the storm in Ashville didn't have water containers, and
Speaker 2: this is actually still the case as of recording, so
Speaker 2: people had to bring their own. One friend only had
Speaker 2: those big clear water drugs, the kind that you put
Speaker 2: into like a water cooler and like get refilled at
Speaker 2: the grocery store, you know. Yeah, and these don't have
Speaker 2: good caps and you can't really bicycle with them while
Speaker 2: they're full.
Speaker 4: I've bicycled with one when it was full. But yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: it's not a fun, not a fun. This is where
Speaker 4: you need a long tail cargo bike, the ultimate prep
Speaker 4: a vehicle.
Speaker 2: Fair enough, I would argue, Jerry cans, that's my pitch
Speaker 2: instead of yeah, Yeah, you can also get Jerry Kant's
Speaker 2: or like the like big opaque water jugs for storing water.
Speaker 2: But yeah, or even bags, what are bags the like
Speaker 2: MSR drone bags. Okay, if you says before, there's a
Speaker 2: pretty rarebust, I've only seen little ones that it makes
Speaker 2: sense of those big ones too. Yeah, big ones expedition stuff.
Speaker 2: I would argue that if you're thinking about getting the stuff,
Speaker 2: opaque water containers with good lids are more useful than
Speaker 2: the blue clear ones. But if you have access to
Speaker 2: the blue clear ones and that's what you got, go
Speaker 2: get them.
Speaker 5: Yea.
Speaker 2: And many people lacked any containers at all, so the
Speaker 2: water distribution site.
Speaker 3: Was not as directly useful as it could have otherwise been.
Speaker 3: That's tough.
Speaker 2: One friend during the storm pulled out all the recycling
Speaker 2: and filled every jug with water and put it in
Speaker 2: the fridge, which did two things. One it gave you
Speaker 2: slightly orange tasting water to drink for a while, and
Speaker 2: two it added thermal mass to keep the fridge cool longer.
Speaker 2: And of course, you know story, more water always good.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: For the most part, most water people at access to
Speaker 2: had a boil advisory on it before it went out completely.
Speaker 2: Oh you're a water filter expert. I want to talk
Speaker 2: to you about this.
Speaker 4: I was about to fucking dive into that shit. I
Speaker 4: so I was ready to go. Okay, hold on, all right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, floodwater itself is generally an awe, or at least
Speaker 2: it is in this case too toxic to use a
Speaker 2: simple filter or boil at home. Things like pesticides are
Speaker 2: incredibly hard to get out of water. Yeah, and lightweight
Speaker 2: backpacking type filters, which overall are what I recommend for
Speaker 2: most things like sawyers and life straws. They don't really
Speaker 2: cut it, as from what I understand. From what I understand,
Speaker 2: the two methods that can work are the like fairly
Speaker 2: slow and like intense charcoal filters, activated charcoal filters, and
Speaker 2: then in home style reverse osmosis filters, which normally I
Speaker 2: don't like, but for this it seems like they might.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have enough power for an hour filter. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a nice touch. Also, if you.
Speaker 4: Get one, then your home appliance did if you'd have
Speaker 4: in a hard water area, which is a lot of
Speaker 4: the West, won't get fucked up by the classification so much.
Speaker 2: Oh that makes sense. I use a water softener AM
Speaker 2: I well, similar approach, but I like reverse as mosoa
Speaker 2: seems like it has some advantages. Maybe I never liked
Speaker 2: reverse as mosos because when I first was looking into it,
Speaker 2: I lived off grid and reverse osmosis creates a lot
Speaker 2: of wastewater. Yeah, and I was just like, all of
Speaker 2: this water was hard to come by.
Speaker 3: Fuck that.
Speaker 4: There are some filters that have an activated charkhole element
Speaker 4: that specifically the pesticide runoff and like industrial guitaminates are
Speaker 4: something I have been really worried about in a couple
Speaker 4: of places I've been for work. You know. Actually I
Speaker 4: was somewhat concerned about that in a recent trip, the
Speaker 4: one in the one in Panama. But it's not so
Speaker 4: much pesticides. There's human waste and decaying human remains, which
Speaker 4: is pretty rough. But in the end my that was
Speaker 4: a big concern for we went there. The MSI Guardian
Speaker 4: I think has an activated charkhole, and so does the
Speaker 4: camelback in line filter.
Speaker 3: Oh interest kind of a small one.
Speaker 4: Yeah that And what's really cool about that is a
Speaker 4: lot of them you can't replace because the activated charcoal
Speaker 4: is you can't backflush it in the same way that
Speaker 4: you can backflush a filter right, Camelback will sell you
Speaker 4: just the actual activated charcole element you can then replace.
Speaker 3: I've got a few of them in a cupboard behind.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, but that would be what to look for
Speaker 4: if you're but yeah, don't be just boiling it or
Speaker 4: just filtering it. And those are for like something like
Speaker 4: a soawyer. They're great for rainwater, but if you're filtering
Speaker 4: water you weren't a fast flowing clear not a turbid
Speaker 4: or a stagnant water source or an industrially bluted water source.
Speaker 4: A fast flowing clear mountain stream great, but like turbid,
Speaker 4: stagnant water with industrial pollutants not so good.
Speaker 2: That makes sense. And so if you're listening to as
Speaker 2: an ashwell or elsewhere, I'm like, I'm trying to think
Speaker 2: of what I'm like. I'll probably I have some activated
Speaker 2: charcoal stuff, but I don't like it as much because
Speaker 2: I don't like I don't like disposable things.
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, but I yeah, thinks that you can
Speaker 3: reuse are always better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but for certain threat models, especially if you don't
Speaker 2: have the power for reversus messus.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's not that expensive. Yeah.
Speaker 4: The MSR ones actually the that's what the US military
Speaker 4: issues to some of it's like, I guess more special people.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they pop up on the surplus market pretty cheap okay,
Speaker 4: and they have a bomber warranty. You can trash it
Speaker 4: and they'll replace it.
Speaker 3: Oh hell yeah, I like that.
Speaker 2: A lot of outdoors gear is like pretty like they'll
Speaker 2: stand by their product.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I would keep wanting trying to pitch his story. Itgaly,
Speaker 4: but yeah, Like I have an MSR quilt. This is
Speaker 4: not like an MSR sponsored episode, but I've used that
Speaker 4: shit on. It's a very small, very light but like
Speaker 4: an ultralight quill. I've used I think literally on almost
Speaker 4: every continent in the world. Well, and just through like
Speaker 4: it's down and through like my body's greasiness, my inherent
Speaker 4: oiliness gradually down, even if you take really good care of.
Speaker 3: It, right, the downs, Yeah, packed in in there. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I had it for probably six years. I was like,
Speaker 4: fuck it, this isn't working anymore. Let me see if
Speaker 4: they'll do me a discount of a new one, put
Speaker 4: in a warranty claim, send it back to them. Okay,
Speaker 4: here's a new one, Just just send me one.
Speaker 2: That's cool. Yeah, yeah, no, I like that more outdoor stuff.
Speaker 2: I like people who stand by the shit they do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they also fixed stuff, which is cool, Like
Speaker 4: I like that, and they will ship you the part
Speaker 4: to fix it well, which is I feel less wasteful
Speaker 4: when that happens.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So with food, this one's real simple. People were either
Speaker 2: glad they stockpiled food or they were sad that they
Speaker 2: had in stockpiled food.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's an easy one.
Speaker 2: One friend immediately took about half a stash of freeze
Speaker 2: dried foods to distribute out to friends and strangers.
Speaker 3: Awesome.
Speaker 2: Most people I talked to did not have any real
Speaker 2: amount of backup power available to them. On any given street,
Speaker 2: I would pass only a few houses with generators running,
Speaker 2: which also, of course, takes gas or propane. Propane has
Speaker 2: the advantage of storing and indefinitely, it has the disadvantage
Speaker 2: of being substantially more expensive per like kill a lot
Speaker 2: hour or whatever of power.
Speaker 4: M h yeah, probably more bulky too to store, right,
Speaker 4: like per energy unit totally.
Speaker 2: When I was off grid, I used a dual fuel
Speaker 2: gener I actually I took it down and I no
Speaker 2: longer have the generator and gave it to some folks.
Speaker 2: But I had a gas propane generator, and I ran
Speaker 2: it off of propane because it also is like cleaner
Speaker 2: on the engines. You have to do less maintenance. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but you know, if I needed it all the time,
Speaker 2: it was a backup to my solar. If I had
Speaker 2: to run it all the time, I would have used
Speaker 2: gas because it Yeah. Anyway, I talked with one homeowner
Speaker 2: with solar on his roof about how he hadn't sprung
Speaker 2: for the house battery because after all, power in the
Speaker 2: area never really went out.
Speaker 3: For more than a day at a time, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I personally delivered two solar generators, which just means
Speaker 2: like big ol' lithium batteries with inputs and outputs built in,
Speaker 2: And those would be my personal primary recommendation for people
Speaker 2: who want to run lights and charge phones and things.
Speaker 3: Like that drain power outages for a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, while gas or propane generators more useful for keeping
Speaker 2: heavy duty appliances going like fridges.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I also passed out a couple different like portable or
Speaker 2: luggable solar panel setups that can charge phones or other devices.
Speaker 2: And there were some mutual aid folks going around and
Speaker 2: helping people with their solar setups, but overall, I didn't
Speaker 2: see as much of it as I expected. I expected
Speaker 2: to show up and they'll just be like outside the
Speaker 2: mutual aid stations, a big old foldable solar panel with
Speaker 2: a yeah power brick. I think fewer people had that
Speaker 2: than I. Wow, So what are you doing to go buy?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Because money is hard to come by, that's the reason.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can't make them yourself, save a little bit,
Speaker 4: uh that way, but be careful with big blocks of
Speaker 4: cells and shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like I'm always trying to price out the
Speaker 2: difference between like I build my own solar setups. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I also like just get these solar generators. Sometimes,
Speaker 2: until you're looking at like big systems, the price difference
Speaker 2: is not as dramatic as you want, you know.
Speaker 3: Because, yeah, because you're putting in a lot of time and.
Speaker 2: Or even like an inverter costs a fair amount of money,
Speaker 2: and so if you're building a big system, the inverter
Speaker 2: is like worth the expense, right, But if it's a
Speaker 2: little system, the little thing that has a built an
Speaker 2: inverter may be cheaper, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And like the charge controller, charge.
Speaker 4: Controller, Yeah, I was recently building one out for leaving
Speaker 4: out for migrants. Yeah, or having in the bed of
Speaker 4: my truck, so when I run into people and need
Speaker 4: to charge their phones, they can just do that without
Speaker 4: my truck being gone.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I ended up shoving a bunch of twelve fort
Speaker 4: batteries and that ammocan and hooking it up to a
Speaker 4: bunch of USB boards on the outside of the amacan
Speaker 4: and then just bringing them home at charging them make
Speaker 4: other than doing a charge controller, And.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not worth it. No, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: And honestly, like my van's off grid setup is, I
Speaker 2: have the equipment to run it off my alternator or
Speaker 2: solar panels on the roof. I just have a fuck
Speaker 2: ton of batteries in my van, so I just plug
Speaker 2: it in every couple of weeks and it's fine, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you end up doing I've tried.
Speaker 4: A bunch of a different solar panel so I use
Speaker 4: them when i'm this company called Pale Blue that I
Speaker 4: used a decent amount. I left it with someone on
Speaker 4: a word trip because they needed it more than me. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's also a useful, but like if you're really trying
Speaker 4: to run anything big, you need a lot more soelar panel,
Speaker 4: then you're probably gonna you know, carry around on your backpack.
Speaker 2: That's what I think people don't quite recognize is that,
Speaker 2: like I used to have a pretty large array of
Speaker 2: twelve hundred watts, and you know, I had to go
Speaker 2: run hundreds of feet of cable to put that in
Speaker 2: a field and build like a whole structure to hold
Speaker 2: it and get it to the right angle and things
Speaker 2: like that. Yeah, and even then in the winter, I
Speaker 2: ran the generator. And this is to keep my laptop
Speaker 2: and a little tiny super efficient fridge going right and
Speaker 2: some other stuff right. But like, solar is not space efficient.
Speaker 2: It's not going to do what you think it does
Speaker 2: because it's not gonna do what it's advertised to do.
Speaker 2: But it'll keep your cell phone alive, yeah, which is important.
Speaker 2: Or if you use a satellite communicator or something, then
Speaker 2: you can keep that charged.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: With gas, one friend usually keeps her half full of gas,
Speaker 2: but forgot that week because you've been driving so much
Speaker 2: and started the crisis with only an eighth of a
Speaker 2: tank and was extra stuck. You need to have a
Speaker 2: gas can if you want to drive out of the
Speaker 2: city and get as much gas as possible.
Speaker 3: Of course, you.
Speaker 2: Can store gas in a good container for a while,
Speaker 2: but it goes bad after three to six months. You
Speaker 2: store gas that way, So you should set an alarm
Speaker 2: for yourself. This is kind of telling myself. I have
Speaker 2: like gas cans where I was like, oh, I should
Speaker 2: store some gas, and then I'm like, oh wait, how
Speaker 2: long has that one been there?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Crap? Now what am I dealing with it? Yeah?
Speaker 2: You have to take it to real specialized places to
Speaker 2: deal with it. Yeah, it's hard to get rid of
Speaker 2: it once you. Yeah, let it go bad. And so
Speaker 2: an empty gas can actually would have done people in
Speaker 2: Ashville a lot of good. A full gas can even better, right,
Speaker 2: But honestly, full tank of gas in your car better
Speaker 2: in a full gas can, empty gas can allow people
Speaker 2: to leave and go get gas because they were not.
Speaker 2: Civilization didn't end. Civilization ended a ninety minute radius, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so you can set an alarm for yourself. If you're
Speaker 2: going to keep full gas, you put it in your
Speaker 2: gas tank and then you go refill it again, and
Speaker 2: then you get annoyed about doing this, and then you
Speaker 2: stop doing it, and then an apocalypse happens, and then
Speaker 2: you're really annoyed that you forgot.
Speaker 3: Don't ask me how I know.
Speaker 4: Just if you have the money to not let your
Speaker 4: vehicle get below half full, you'll probably be fine.
Speaker 3: You can get a long way in a tank.
Speaker 2: Well, it's about when you have the money is an
Speaker 2: important party. But at the end of the day, it
Speaker 2: does not cost you more money to keep your gas
Speaker 2: tank at half full.
Speaker 4: Right, No, it doesn't because you're and unless you're driving
Speaker 4: a long way to get the gas, but like you're
Speaker 4: still driving the same amount, you're just stopping off a
Speaker 4: little more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, empty gas can ended up crucial, and people who
Speaker 2: stored them were glad, and a lot of them were
Speaker 2: donated immediately. Volunteers collected gas cans and drove the three
Speaker 2: hour round trip to fill them up with gas several
Speaker 2: times a day. You should learn the range of your vehicle.
Speaker 2: Newer cars will tell you automatically, but if not, it's
Speaker 2: not super hard to figure out your gas mileage. You
Speaker 2: have to like look at your mileage when you fill
Speaker 2: it up and do some division and shit and find
Speaker 2: out the size of your fuel tank and your gas mileage,
Speaker 2: and you'll know whether or not you have enough gas
Speaker 2: to reach an area, especially if you're doing disaster relief.
Speaker 2: You never want to do disaster relief if you can't
Speaker 2: get out of the situation yourself, because then you're a
Speaker 2: fucking asshole, because then you are just actually another person
Speaker 2: who needs relief. Communications, as this show covered last week,
Speaker 2: were one of the hardest hit areas of preparedness in
Speaker 2: this crisis. There were Ham radio operators doing stuff, but
Speaker 2: a lot of my activist and anarchist friends with Bao fangs,
Speaker 2: which are these cheap Ham radios, struggled to get them
Speaker 2: to work well during the storm due to the mountains,
Speaker 2: water in the air, lack of repeaters, and frankly that
Speaker 2: Ham radios are really goddamn complicated and not everyone has
Speaker 2: fully up on exactly how it works at that moment,
Speaker 2: right Yeah, and this has put a fire under them
Speaker 2: to get better at it, but especially in the mountains,
Speaker 2: repeaters need to be a part of a radio communications plan.
Speaker 2: People with satellite phones were some of the only people
Speaker 2: in communication at the beginning. I was curious about and
Speaker 2: did not find any information about whether or not the
Speaker 2: new iPhone satellite texting.
Speaker 3: I wanted to ask about that.
Speaker 2: I didn't find anyone who used it.
Speaker 4: Okay, I found it to be less reliable than what
Speaker 4: I have is Garment in Reach. I pay for it, yeah,
Speaker 4: and it works real well. Used it in the dairy
Speaker 4: and gap. I've used it again, okay, every continent part
Speaker 4: from Antarctica.
Speaker 2: So you would say that the iPhone doesn't replace the
Speaker 2: Garment in Reach in terms.
Speaker 4: Of well, the iphonely works in North America, so for
Speaker 4: me my model then absolutely not, Like it didn't work
Speaker 4: in Panama, Central America, I guess. So yeah, for me,
Speaker 4: the in Reach has been faster. It's also another device
Speaker 4: that's not your cell phone. Yeah, and like sometimes you
Speaker 4: know the device that you're playing Angry Birds on and
Speaker 4: then you run out of battery or whatever. You know, Like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's useful to have a device which is only for emergencies,
Speaker 4: which lasts for two weeks if you charged it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I leave mine off and so yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, I mean, if you're getting one for that purpose,
Speaker 4: I would say that, like the bigger in Reach is better.
Speaker 4: This in Reach Mini and Mini two again. I used
Speaker 4: a Mini for about eight years I think, eventually destroyed
Speaker 4: it and got it warranty place with a Mini too.
Speaker 4: The bigger one allows you to type on the device
Speaker 4: the Mini too. Sending any kind of message without a
Speaker 4: cell phone to do the input.
Speaker 3: Is a real bastard.
Speaker 4: But this, yeah, it's just like remember when used to
Speaker 4: do predictive texts and you do like one was ABC two.
Speaker 3: Yeah it's like that.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, I have the in Reach too, and I've
Speaker 2: only proof of concept that I'm often driving around replaces
Speaker 2: where I could break that down the.
Speaker 3: Middle of nowhere.
Speaker 2: Actually I broke down yesterday about three miles from where
Speaker 2: I lose cell service in the mountains that I live in.
Speaker 3: Oh, that could have been rough. I know.
Speaker 2: I also broke down in an auto mechanic shop. I
Speaker 2: got real lucky with what was otherwise a real bad situation.
Speaker 4: If you're getting it in Reach Mini, this is my soapbox.
Speaker 4: Don't trust the crappy little carabineer. It comes with by
Speaker 4: a small locking DMM makes it only locking carabiner. It's
Speaker 4: an important thing to lose it because you didn't want
Speaker 4: to spend ten bucks on a carabino.
Speaker 2: Would be a bad day. Hey you mentioned this. I'll
Speaker 2: end up doing this because I trust you, because your
Speaker 2: users more than mine. Mine just is like clip to
Speaker 2: my hiking bag. But it hasn't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, inherently and ling and unlocking Caribin. You want to
Speaker 4: be using a locker for something that's like an essential safety, No,
Speaker 4: that makes sense. Threadlock the little yeah it uses. I
Speaker 4: think it talks or alan threadlock that bad boy in. Okay,
Speaker 4: you're good to go.
Speaker 2: I know that starlink doesn't work very well during storms.
Speaker 2: There's this method of internet called starlink that's owned by
Speaker 2: someone who I don't like and wouldn't like me because
Speaker 2: I'm a transperson. But starlink is not incredibly reliable during storms.
Speaker 2: I know that because I live remote and you starlink.
Speaker 2: I'm on talking on starlink right now. It does not
Speaker 2: work great during storms. But after the storm passed and
Speaker 2: when cell service was still out, a restaurant with starlink
Speaker 2: was where many people first were able to reach their
Speaker 2: loved ones. It's cool and so that is a thing
Speaker 2: to know. It is a fairly reliable service.
Speaker 4: Frankly, same deal in the darien Acually, that's how migrants
Speaker 4: are first able to contact their loved ones and let
Speaker 4: them know that they're safe. Yeah, it's an indigenous village
Speaker 4: where someone has a starlink.
Speaker 2: Unless you personally piss off a particular billionaire, in which
Speaker 2: case he will personally turn it off for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Great.
Speaker 2: Everyone I talked to had a regular like AMFM weather
Speaker 2: blah blah blah radio at home, which is great. Yeah,
Speaker 2: people should have radios in their homes. Radio is the
Speaker 2: main mechanism that the city used to broadcast information about
Speaker 2: various threats, like evacuations of regents threatened by the destruction
Speaker 2: of dams or the contamination in the water. However, how
Speaker 2: you charge them is you know, I fortunately had some
Speaker 2: d batteries in my van to give to someone because
Speaker 2: oh wow, that's soul school.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, some of my stuff I brought like in
Speaker 2: case someone I knew needed and some stuff I just
Speaker 2: like brought to give away. Yeah, and my like stash
Speaker 2: of batteries was just like came with me in case
Speaker 2: anyone needed, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can get wind up weather radios. I have one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally. That's actually I dislike most all in
Speaker 2: one gadgets for survival, but the wind up radio with
Speaker 2: the little shitty solar panel is one of the ones
Speaker 2: that I'm like, No, that's they're thirty to fifty bucks
Speaker 2: and they work. Yeah, and you don't need much power
Speaker 2: to listen to a radio, you know.
Speaker 4: No, they are a whole pot set of road where
Speaker 4: wind up weather radios or how people get their information.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes sense for travel. Most people still got
Speaker 2: around by vehicle, just with limited gas, though I saw
Speaker 2: more than the usual number of people walking or biking,
Speaker 2: pulling trailers or wagons. As a general rule, consider floodwaters
Speaker 2: to be impassable and do not attempt to drive through them. Interestingly,
Speaker 2: electric cars do better in floods than gas engines because
Speaker 2: if water gets into the air intake of a gas engine,
Speaker 2: the engine will stall. And usually it's people with giant
Speaker 2: pickup trucks who overestimate the capabilities of their.
Speaker 3: Vehicles who go out and do this. Yeah.
Speaker 2: When I got my truck and I was like, I'm
Speaker 2: a prepper, I'm going to get those like or the
Speaker 2: you know, front cage things or whatever grown. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: then I looked into it and I read about it,
Speaker 2: and they just murder people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as someone who rides a bicycle a lot, those
Speaker 3: things do not.
Speaker 2: Like it's already bad that pickup trucks are so gigantic,
Speaker 2: but the if you add one of those things to
Speaker 2: the front of your car, front of your truck. You're
Speaker 2: just gonna and you have to think about it. Are
Speaker 2: you more likely to need to push broken down cars
Speaker 2: during the end of the world or accidentally hit a
Speaker 2: pedestrian with your vehicle that is taller than a child. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I would guess for most people, including me, I
Speaker 2: am more likely to accidentally hit a pedestrian. So I
Speaker 2: ran that through my cost benefit analysis, and I do
Speaker 2: not have one of those things on my truck.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I could imagine a world is like low, low low
Speaker 2: on my list of priorities. Like one day I'm going
Speaker 2: to get one and I'm going to keep it in
Speaker 2: my garage, and then it's like, yeah, and the world
Speaker 2: has ended, and I'm gonna put it on my truck
Speaker 2: in case I need to push cars out of the way.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: With the three hundred and fifty miles, I can drive
Speaker 2: my truck before it's useless. Yeah yeah, using all that
Speaker 2: gassy stored Yeah, yeah, exactly. That totally lasts a long time. Anyway.
Speaker 2: One of the problems electric vehicles with flooding that I
Speaker 2: think we're starting to see. I think these videos were
Speaker 2: form Ashville, but I'm not certain is that electric vehicles
Speaker 2: if they're underwater for long enough, especially with salt water.
Speaker 2: This is less of a North Carolina and more of
Speaker 2: a coastal thing. Yeah, the saltwater can cause fires if
Speaker 2: it hits the battery long enough. Don't drive through floodwater,
Speaker 2: and floods in the mountains are particularly fast moving as
Speaker 2: compared to like coastal area floods where the water might
Speaker 2: be still and staying around.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, fast moving floodwater goes away faster
Speaker 2: and on its own.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So yeah, with gravity, don't cycle through it. I've cycled
Speaker 4: through a couple of rivers once in Iceland. It just
Speaker 4: picked up the bike from underneath me, and it like
Speaker 4: not an optimal situation actually, to be swimming down a
Speaker 4: river chasing off your bicycle in Iceland.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't want to do that. Yeah, avoid famously
Speaker 2: warm place Iceland.
Speaker 4: Yeah, h only one hundred kilometers from the nearest place
Speaker 4: I could rewarm myself. It's a great day.
Speaker 2: Roads were washed away in many places, while many many
Speaker 2: more were blocked by down trees. Improper chainsaw use is
Speaker 2: one of the leading causes of injuries and disasters. Oh,
Speaker 2: I bet Proper use of chainsaws has been absolutely essential,
Speaker 2: although there were reports of people who self rescued with handsaws. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you know, yeah, you got time and people, and
Speaker 2: you got a handsaw, and there's a tree in your way,
Speaker 2: you can get through it. Yeah, don't be like the
Speaker 2: guy maybe Margaret's sort didn't. There's some like homesteader on.
Speaker 2: Oh god, that's dot com who I've started war with. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because he's he's lying, he's not like, I'm sorry this guy.
Speaker 2: They don't braid their hair. Both of them have long
Speaker 2: hair and they don't braid it. I do not believe
Speaker 2: that they work outside regularly if they don't braid their hair. Yeah,
Speaker 2: your hair will get caught and shit and it'll just tangle.
Speaker 2: It is not worth it. The reason rural people long
Speaker 2: hair wear their hair and.
Speaker 3: Braids, Yeah, it's it keeps it out the way. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say that if you have a soul,
Speaker 4: keep it, you know, keep it in a reasonable condition.
Speaker 4: The old sort has been kicking around your shed and
Speaker 4: it's rusty and blunt. Yeah, likewise, the old chainsaw, So
Speaker 4: don't be dragging that out. Yeah, you haven't used it
Speaker 4: for a while, that said.
Speaker 2: One of the things I was expecting, but wasn't true
Speaker 2: because I brought down a generator that I didn't know
Speaker 2: if worked right, And I was like, what a jerk move,
Speaker 2: Because if I was going down to like there's like
Speaker 2: ten people and I'm like, don't worry, I'm here to
Speaker 2: rescue you. I've got a generator I don't know if works.
Speaker 2: That's not so great. Yeah, right, there's one hundred thousand
Speaker 2: people who live in Asheville. There was the Asheville Tool
Speaker 2: Library and the Western North Carolina Repair Cafe hold up
Speaker 2: outside the Anarchist Bookstore fixing generators and chainsaws.
Speaker 3: Oh awesome, yeah, hero shit, and it was great.
Speaker 2: Of all the various generators people brought, I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't know if this one works, and they added
Speaker 2: gas and it worked, and so I was like I
Speaker 2: brought the best shitty generator, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but no, Sometimes things can be handy, and knowing
Speaker 4: how to fix things is always.
Speaker 2: Useful, and there are people around with more specialized skills.
Speaker 2: You don't have to learn to do everything. For example,
Speaker 2: chainsawing is a specialized skill. I own a bunch of
Speaker 2: devices that are scary and dangerous, and some of them
Speaker 2: are guns, and one of them is a table saw,
Speaker 2: and the chainsaw is the most likely to hurt me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: for sure, And I've been to a chainsaw class. I'm
Speaker 2: very glad. Cutting a downed tree is an entirely different
Speaker 2: skill than cutting a live tree or a standing tree
Speaker 2: because of the way that tension works. And I cannot
Speaker 2: teach you this over. Well, you might already know it,
Speaker 2: but don't listen to a podcast learn how to do it.
Speaker 2: Go to a class.
Speaker 4: Yeah, pay someone to teach you, and get the right
Speaker 4: protective stuff. Yeah, absolutely, proper detective trousers and things.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, never cut up trees woven with power lines without
Speaker 2: ascertaining that the power line is dead. As for how
Speaker 2: to ascertain it, I asked someone who was on a
Speaker 2: chainsaw crew how to ascertain it, and he didn't know.
Speaker 2: So they just avoid those ones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, mains power is not a joke. Yeah.
Speaker 2: People have been reaching the more isolated communities out there
Speaker 2: by hiking, by ATV, by dirt bike, by helicopter, and
Speaker 2: most famously, by a string of pack mules.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: That people have been getting help to people. This doesn't
Speaker 2: mean you need to go out and buy a helicopter
Speaker 2: just get a bule. You don't even need to google
Speaker 2: how much a helicopter is, Margaret, I wonder how much
Speaker 2: a helicopter is anyway. And then there was one tool
Speaker 2: and tool set that a lot of my friends have
Speaker 2: that as of yet, has had more or less no
Speaker 2: use in responding to this crisis, and that is guns.
Speaker 2: I think it might be This is interesting for a
Speaker 2: few reasons. One is that North Carolina is a pretty
Speaker 2: gun friendly state. It's also a pretty culture war ass state. Yeah,
Speaker 2: where I live in West Virginia, people don't I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: you see the punisher skull every now and then or whatever,
Speaker 2: but like overall, people are like, I don't know, We're
Speaker 2: all just trying to live, you know. Yeah, in western
Speaker 2: North Carolina you have intense tensions between strong pockets of
Speaker 2: blue and red right and a lot of people on
Speaker 2: both sides that are armed. I have a North Carolina
Speaker 2: concealed carry permit myself. I'm not anti gun, but it
Speaker 2: was not what was wanted or needed. Yeah, if food
Speaker 2: stays scarce long enough down there, I would expect some
Speaker 2: people might be doing some out of season survival hunting.
Speaker 2: But I haven't even heard rumors of that.
Speaker 3: Yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there have been occasional rumors of robberies and the
Speaker 2: occasional rumors of Nazi activity in the areas, and I believe.
Speaker 3: Both have happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but there's been nothing widespread, and so far there
Speaker 2: hasn't even been a need for community defense organizations. By
Speaker 2: and large, the culture war is on pause, and I'm grateful.
Speaker 2: I like getting along with people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's much more fun they're shooting at them. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like talk about shared interests like guns.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I've had some sitive discussion to people who
Speaker 4: don't pause. Yeah, probably aligned with me because we both
Speaker 4: enjoy old guns.
Speaker 2: And this is not to say the firearms are not
Speaker 2: a useful skill set for different threat models within the apocalypse,
Speaker 2: but it hasn't proved particularly useful so far in this
Speaker 2: particular crisis.
Speaker 3: And I think.
Speaker 2: Overall, I would put this at an overrated skill and
Speaker 2: an overrated tool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and definitely an overage way to spend a shit
Speaker 3: ton of money. Oh my god. Yeah, No.
Speaker 2: One magazine of bullets is a movie that you could
Speaker 2: go see at the theater.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, like a dinner.
Speaker 4: And I'm saying this, Yeah, I'm looking at like, what's
Speaker 4: that one, two, three, four, like maybe twelve ammunition cans
Speaker 4: full of ammunition. Mainly I buy that I like to
Speaker 4: go shoot clay pigeons and then targets and stuff, and
Speaker 4: I buy and it's cheap.
Speaker 2: But also, if you have a gun, you should know
Speaker 2: how to use it, otherwise you're dangerous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Like, don't be buying a gun and then
Speaker 4: loading it and storing it and not knowing how to
Speaker 4: use it.
Speaker 3: Then your liability.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like I also have a bunch of lentils, and like,
Speaker 4: just in terms of preparedness by the lentils.
Speaker 2: First, totally more useful, way more useful in this circumstance.
Speaker 2: And this circumstance is more likely than most. And one thing,
Speaker 2: almost everyone I talked to was happy about. No one
Speaker 2: was sad about. Just this came up. Everyone was happy
Speaker 2: that they had extra to share. A random woman who
Speaker 2: showed up to get water at the Anarchist bookstore saw
Speaker 2: what was happening and turned and told me, like, oh,
Speaker 2: I have a chainsaw. I don't really you should I
Speaker 2: bring it here? And the answer is yes. And everyone
Speaker 2: is happy when we give things to each other. That's
Speaker 2: the thesis of the other podcast episode I did this
Speaker 2: week is that when you give stuff to someone, it's
Speaker 2: good for both of you.
Speaker 3: You just literally are both happier.
Speaker 4: Yeah, without it doubt And like I remember when my
Speaker 4: house faded. I think I was seventeen eighteen something like that.
Speaker 4: My little sister and I were at home, and I
Speaker 4: remember at first being like, oh no, back in the
Speaker 4: daily you know, we had a TV that was read
Speaker 4: to flat. It's probably six inches thick still, you know,
Speaker 4: but we thought it was shit. And then being like,
Speaker 4: oh no, this TV that was so cool, it's being destroyed.
Speaker 4: And then immediately being like, my neighbors were in their
Speaker 4: eighties and fuck the TV. Yeah, Like, and we got
Speaker 4: our neighbors and there was one house in our village
Speaker 4: that was on the hill. Everyone in our village went
Speaker 4: to the house on the hill. We had a great time. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Like we hung out and everyone was so much happier
Speaker 4: not having to go through that shit alone. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: they would have been sitting in the house watching all
Speaker 4: their stuff wash you we Yeah, we stayed there for a
Speaker 4: couple of days and then we went home and it
Speaker 4: was fine.
Speaker 3: Well that's what I got.
Speaker 2: I thought it was going to be thirty minutes and
Speaker 2: then I forgot I was going to talk about gear
Speaker 2: with my friend James where we both separately off Mike
Speaker 2: often do this.
Speaker 3: For hours of the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so go out and get yourself three days
Speaker 2: to three weeks worth of food and water, slowly build
Speaker 2: it up. Go out and talk to your neighbors. Figureut
Speaker 2: who they are and is it going to be okay?
Speaker 2: The main reason's going to be okay is we all
Speaker 2: die eventually anyway, But like.
Speaker 3: That's gonna be okay. Yeah, We're gonna take care of
Speaker 3: each other as best we can. Yeah, that's what we do.
Speaker 3: Anything you want to plug, I guess this is your podcast.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean participant in mutual aid anyway, because then
Speaker 4: you have the structures to help yourself and know other.
Speaker 3: People when you need them.
Speaker 4: Yes, Like if things went shit here tomorrow, I could
Speaker 4: communicate with my board of friends because we use ham radios,
Speaker 4: and we could help one another because we already engage
Speaker 4: in the helping of people, and we organize horizontally because
Speaker 4: it is better and that way, it doesn't matter if
Speaker 4: the person who is quote unquote in charge isn't here.
Speaker 3: Because no one's in charge. Yep, totally, So do anarchism.
Speaker 2: If you want to support Asheville and the relief efforts
Speaker 2: there and the surrounding areas financially, there's a million different
Speaker 2: small organizations that could absolutely ease your help. But the
Speaker 2: two that I think we've been shouting out a lot
Speaker 2: on the show, and I can personally vouch for it
Speaker 2: very strongly is Appalachian Medical Solidarity and Mutual Aid Disaster Relief.
Speaker 2: And both of those are volunteer organizations. Every day, all
Speaker 2: the little money, all the money you send, is going
Speaker 2: to buy people's stuff. And if you are within a
Speaker 2: day's drive of western North Carolina, there might be a
Speaker 2: hub collecting things. Don't bring them your old sweaters, bring
Speaker 2: them stuff that people want. You could ask them and
Speaker 2: they'll tell you, yeah, and that's what I got. That's
Speaker 2: what I got to plug. I will talk to you
Speaker 2: all some other times on It could Happen Here.
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