July 31, 2025 • 38 mins
James talks with Inmn from the Live Like the World is Dying podcast about the basics of community and individual preparedness for disasters of all kind.
Links:
More Live Like the World is Dying:
https://www.tangledwilderness.org/live-like-the-world-is-dying
Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness:
http://www.tangledwilderness.org
http://www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness
“The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse” by Douglas Rushkoff:
“Ready for Anything” by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness:
https://www.tangledwilderness.org/features/ready-for-anything
“It’s Time to Build Resilient Communities” by Margaret Killjoy:
https://margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/its-time-to-build-resilient-communities
Etymology of Apocalypse:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apocalypse
"Kitty Stryker on Anarchist Prepping" (LLWD Ep. 1):
https://www.liveliketheworldisdying.com/s1e1-kitty-stryker-on-anarchist-prepping/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media, Hi everyone, and welcome to it could
happen here, a very special edition of It could Happen Here,
in which we are very lucky to be joined by
Inland from Lift The World Is Dying and what will
be the first of many crossover episodes where the folks
(00:23):
from Strangely Tangled Wouldness are going to share with us
some of their preparedness advice. Welcome to the show. Would
like to introduce yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me, James. I'm in
Man Marowin and I use they then pronouns, And I'm
one of the hosts of Love Like the World Is Dying,
your podcast for What Feels Like the End Times, which
is a lefty prepper podcast about community and individual preparedness
for disasters of all kinds. And really excited to be
(00:55):
on the show with you. Yeah, on a different show,
because you're on that show with me sometime, which is great.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
I don't know. Yeah, I'm bringing together the two like,
I'm sure there's a superhero reference I could make here,
but I don't really understand that wild say I won't.
I don't either. Great, Okay, two people talking about a
thing they don't understand that is what podcasts are sometimes,
but not today. What are we going to talk about today?
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, what I'm really excited to talk about today is
preparedness in general, how community preparedness differs from some more
conventional modalities, and being really nice with that phrase.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, that's one way of saying it.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
How individual preparedness fits into community preparedness, and kind of
about my own journey into prepper stuff or preparedness, which
might be a new term for some people.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, I like to call.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
It preparedness over like prepping as a term sort of
because like, I don't know, Like if I say I'm
into prepping, then people start to give me funny looks
and think I want to live in a bunker with
a thousand cans of beans and more guns than I
know what to do with. Yeah, But if I say
I'm into preparedness, people are like, ooh, I know who
(02:13):
to call if I need help with something or get
in a jam, you know. Yeah, Yeah, And it's kind
of exactly that sentiment that I want listeners to think
of when they think of preparedness is what connections and
resources we have for when things go wrong, and how
we are going to respond to disasters of all kinds
(02:35):
when we're faced with them, because having a plan kind
of makes things less scary, you know.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, definitely, I feel safeer approaching bad things because I've
approached bad things with my friends and we have gone
through them and we've helped other people get through them. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I also think a lot of people engage in preparedness
without really realizing this. I feel like i'd ask these
questions to you on a less rhetorical basis if I
didn't know them to be true. But for instance, listener,
do you keep tools and a snack in your car
in case you break down on the side of the road,
(03:15):
or if your car won't start? Do you have a
friend that will take a look at it for you
and help you fix it. If so, then congratulations, you're
into preparedness for a very specific kind of disaster. And
now we just have to figure out how to apply
that to other disasters, whether it's your car breaking down,
the climate breaking down, or the world as we know
(03:38):
it breaking down, because unfortunately, with the world as it
is right now, as Margaret has said before, we're all
preppers now. Yeah, I don't know, it's something that makes
thinking about disaster just less scary, and I think that's
ultimately kind of one of the best reasons of like
(03:59):
why we should get into preparedness is because it makes
things less scary.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah, definitely, and I think it gives you if you're
doing it right, And I think this is something we
can get into, Like you realize how much your community
can get through if you will have each other rather
than necessarily the alternative that the other modality that you
talked about, it is theoretically thinking how much you could
get through whilst never helping anyone. Yeah, and that's very
(04:26):
different things. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
And I don't know, listeners, we're talking about kind of
more traditional like bunker mentality prepping, which we'll get into Yeah, yeah,
a little bit later, but that is my euphemism so
far as more conventional modality.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, So, like, can you give some ideas of like
why people might want to get into preparedness, what they
might want to be prepared for.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, absolutely, so many things. The list is kind of endless,
which is yeah, which is unfortunate, and I don't want
to overwhelm overwhelm people, but there's just a lot of
things and new things are emerging every day. But the
first step of preparedness is kind of identifying what your
(05:13):
threat model is, or really just asking yourself, you know,
like what are you personally worried about for yourself or
for your community, and some kind of like larger categories
that we can lump that stuff into. Is I feel
like what comes to mind for people immediately probably is
natural disasters. They're ever more frequent, They're growing in intensity
(05:37):
and happening in more places. People who never thought they
would become climate refugees are now becoming climate refugees. I
still live on a chunk of land, and like we
got flooded out. We lived in a hundred year floodplain.
And like, yeah, I know it's not once every hundred years,
that's not how it works. But like our time came,
we got flooded out. Yeah, there's my migration. This could
(06:01):
be due to climate change, political upheaval, economic reasons, family bigotry,
and obvious tie into this. Right now is everything going
on with ice raids where a lot of people are
being displaced and either trying to return to their homes
or find new ones. And there's also like I don't know,
(06:22):
there's like a lot of people like in more conservative
states in the US, who for instance, are trans or
have trans people that are in their family or in
their close friend group and are deciding whether they need
to move somewhere else or at least come up with
an escape plan if things get worse where they are,
(06:43):
And the same is true for like, I don't know,
maintaining access to abortion. Everything is very different in very
different places or very close spaces, even in the United States,
And so I think a lot of people who never
thought they'd need to think about migration are now thinking
about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
A big problem with how migration is reported on in
America is that like people who are migrants have seen
as like some kind of subcategory of humans, you know, totally. Yeah,
if you're a person who can get pregnant, and you're
a person who might consider, in whatever circumstances, accessing abortion,
then in some states you need to be prepared to
(07:25):
become a migrant, like a yeah, relatively very short notice, right,
Like it's something that we're all closer to than we think. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Another big one is kind of like larger economic, social,
or political collapse, you know, simply meaning that like the
structures of the world, no longer mean what they used
to mean. This could mean the collapse of capitalism or
capitalism turning more into like literal corporate feudalism. Another big
(07:57):
one is I'm just have this broad category of war.
This could be an invasion, a civil war, a revolution,
a rise in right wing militias, another rise in right
wing militias, whatever. I'm kind of neglecting some more fantastical
apocalypses that I'm sure we can all imagine, but there
are those we might wake up as fungus, you know
(08:18):
who can say. And then lastly, there's the current disaster
that is late stage capitalism. And this one is the
one that I spend the most time thinking about because
it's the one that's ever present in our lives currently
and kind of informs and maybe creates a lot of
the other larger threats I just mentioned, Yeah, except becoming fungus.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Well yet yeah maybe, Yeah, we're doing a lot with
the the old whatever rfkas into idea of Ministry of health.
It's not cool that health and human services. Yeah, I
think this is the one that, like, this is a
disaster that people don't often like see because it's slow. Yeah,
it kills us slowly rather than quick and it kills
(09:01):
us quickly. Yeah, talking of killing us slowly in it
my obligation to pivot to adverts is slowly killing my
soul that I have to do it anyway.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Yeah, we this is new for me. We don't have
these little livel like the world that is dying.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah, I know. I thought i'd take the first time.
I'm going to leave the second one up to you.
You can have a swing at it. All right, thank
you Products and Services for supporting this show. We are back. Imen.
(09:43):
Let's break it down for people in like a very
basic sense. If that's okay, how do we start being
more prepared? Like I imagine the first step would be to
immediately go to a federal firearms license. Se is that right? Yes?
Speaker 2 (09:59):
That is that is the first step. It is to
fill your bunker with guns. No, that's that's not the
first step because you can eat them. Yes, and no
jokes aside. So the first step we just talked about
it before that break is determine your threat. You know,
in the case of let's use earthquakes as an example.
(10:21):
If you live somewhere with earthquakes, then your threat model
should probably include earthquakes, you might prepare for earthquakes more
than you might prepare for wildfires too. The second step
is make a plan, which means like, when there's an earthquake,
you're going to do X and Y and meet so
and so at blank. Yeah, you can also include not
living somewhere with earthquakes anymore as part of your make
(10:44):
a plan, because maybe that's just the one thing you
don't want to deal with. The next part is acquire
the parts of the plan and so like, if your
plan includes resources, which everyone's plan should include a go bag,
an escape route, and any kind of equipment that you need.
And at this point you're mostly ready. I maybe would
(11:04):
add to collaborate with others. And then this step gets
missed a lot. But at this point, since you're mostly ready,
hopefully you can let go of some anxiety and despair.
You've done the hardest part, which is to get started,
and hopefully you can we can feel comfort in that
if we can't forestall a disaster, that we can at
(11:28):
least be ready for it, and then act on the plan,
do the thing, and assess what you can do better
next time. Yeah, that's those are my basic steps. Yeah,
it is makes it seem also simple.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
It's so simple. Yeah, obviously we will spend a love
time in the next few months breaking down each of
those steps and explaining them for people. Yeah. Yeah, Like
I live in a place where wildfires are common. In
my time living in California, I've been evacuated for a
couple of fires. I've had an earthquake, you know, I've
had a fewer than natural disasters. Of course, earth quake
(12:03):
channels had become fives they did in San Francisco. But yeah,
it would not make sense if you live where I
live to not have a plan for that. You would
be being naive. Yeah, it's that like a story like
that for you, Like, is there a thing did you
did you? Like, you know, have to evacuate for a
wildfire and you couldn't find your shoes like what?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
So one of my funny things was living on this
land project and like we were we were experiencing a flood.
We were experiencing what could have very easily been a
flash flood, and I was trying to just convince people
to leave, and I had a hard time convincing people
to leave. Yeah, Like there was like water up to
our chests and this is my answer now, But my
(12:48):
answer that I wrote about for this episode is so
a little bit of preliad. In the first episode of
Live Like the World Is Dying, Margaret talks with Kittie
Striker about anarchists, and Margaret talks about the possibilities that
she's preparing for, which she identifies as kind of these
four possibilities, living like the world is going to end,
(13:10):
and that we might not survive, living like the world
is going to end, and we can try to survive,
living like we can prevent the end of the world,
and then maybe trying to live like the world isn't
going to end after all. And I got into preparedness
for a lot of reasons, some of which evolved over time.
(13:31):
It went from something that felt scary to something that
feels comforting, and I hope that it can become comforting
for other people. I hope that's where a lot of
you can land who are listening who are either new
to the concept or think that prepping is only for
people who expect to need to survive for thirty years
in a bunker after a nuclear, zombie, bio apokarev or whatever,
(13:53):
eating canned beans. I'm really harping on this image because
I think it's what a lot of people think of
when they think of prepping. You know, beans bunker, a
little battie, and the fourth maybe lesser known one billionaires
or the four bees of the apocalypse, as I want
to think about them, to kind of confront this as
(14:14):
like a word, this like apocalypse. There's a lot of
different kinds of apocalypses, and whether we like it or not,
if it isn't already here, it's coming. And for some
people it's coming swiftly, for others it's slowly, but it
is coming. And billionaires are preparing for it, even if
they want us to think their tech will save the world.
(14:35):
They have all the money and resources, and they are
still worried. And while they'll try to use their money
in power to kind of escape the consequences becoming a
billionaire has had on the world, most people probably don't
have access to those kinds of resources. But what we
all do have access to our social and community ties,
even if it might not seem like that now. And oddly,
(14:56):
these social ties are things that billionaires often lack, or
doubt the authenticity of, or just can't comprehend Yeah, there's
this article by Douglas Ruscoff. This tech consultant who gets
flown out to the desert to talk to rich people
about collapse, and he's surprised because they don't really ask
him about tech stuff. They ask him about like maintaining
(15:17):
social control over the people that work for them when
money no longer means anything. And I'm like, I don't know,
do maybe make like more authentic friendships, you know?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe don't rely on having people so
subservient to you.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah, But I think this kind of air quotes conundrum
speaks a lot to people's fears about collapse and is
what gets people into a bunker mentality. You know, everyone's
worried about roving bands of armed people taking what they've
prepared for their own survival. And I think that is
a fantasy that we don't really see happen in real
(15:54):
life as often as we might think.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Yeah, I've reported from plenty of natural and human created disasters.
Actually it is the opposite of that. Like, we can
talk about this another time, but it's one of the
reasons I can keep doing it. Like, despite being hugely traumatic,
is it's actually incredible how much people go out of
(16:16):
their way when they're thoroughly miserable to help other people
who they see is needing help. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Yeah, it's a really beautiful thing. Yeah, to be a
little bit of a word nerd real quick. I feel
like everyone who talks about prepping has talked about the
etymological origins of the word apocalypse. But it is very
interesting and I think it's relevant, which is like, Okay,
it's from these two Greek words appo and colliptine, which
means like often to conceal, and so like a more
(16:45):
literal translation of it is a revealing and I think
that disaster really reveals things. It reveals the ways that
society has really like bailed. It reveals the consequences of
what living in a corporate oligarchy looks like. And it
also reveals like what beautiful and powerful things people have
(17:09):
built as communities and prepared for to give like a
little bit of a positive spin on a grim, grim
grim word.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah. Now, Like when I think about that, I think
about like two years ago, I was in the Marshal
Islands right where like the apocalypse has come, right, the
atomic bomb has dropped on the Marshal Islands. The United States.
We did that, and the sea levels a rising such
that like children born there today won't die there, right,
they probably won't even have their own children there, you know,
twenty thirty forty years left, and I didn't see like
(17:43):
people fighting each other for the highest point of land. Yeah,
I saw people taking care of one another, thinking about
how like not just like that individual, you know, they
could maintain their assets, but how their community could survive,
how their culture could survive, and you know, how they
could keep the things the incredible hospitality is so special
(18:03):
to them, which I thought was like very revealing compared
to this sort of mindset that you see more conventionally
in like prempa spaces. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
And to finally get to my own kind of little
journey into preparedness, Yeah, I wasn't a prepper until like
not that long ago.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Really. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
When I first heard Live Like the World Is Dying,
it was twenty twenty. COVID was still new. There was
like extreme civil unrest because there was an uprising going
on and the same fascist that's our sitting president now
was our president then, and he was backed up by
people like Kyle Rittenhouse who were gunning people down in
streets for protesting a racist murder where I lived in
(18:47):
entire mountain range was also on fire. Yeah, and the
idea that it was the coolest summer I might ever
remember was still setting in. And then I heard about
Margaret doing live like the World Is Dying, and I
actually refused to listen to it because I knew with
every fiber of my body that things were irrevocably different,
and I wanted to stick my head in the sand,
(19:09):
you know, like, not because I was scared, but because
getting prepared is overwhelming, and I didn't have any clue
where to begin. Like I was a scrappy punk. I
didn't have like thousands of dollars to spend on gear
and stockpiling food and guns and shit, you know. Yeah,
And so it felt for a while like preparedness was
(19:31):
only for people who had a lot of money, and
that I'd be left behind. But I did eventually listen
to the show because Margaret's my friend and I trusted
she had good things to say, and because it was
a show about beginnings and I needed one. And so
as I listened, I slowly started to warm up to
the idea that preparedness wasn't just necessary, but that it
(19:53):
was also very much within my reach, especially in the
framework of community preparedness. Yeah, and you know who can
tell you a lot about community preparedness.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Who's that? I think these lovely sponsors.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Or advertisements or products that we're about to hear about.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
I sure hope. So we are back. There was a
fantastic ad transition, first of many. Hopefully it wasn't like
apparently beginning ads for like some kind of gold company
that is also sanctioned by God God that that is,
(20:36):
just just to be clear, not the way to go
in terms of community preparedness that the precious Metals route.
This one we're not advising here. Can you explain the
difference between those two modalities, because I think, yeah, like
I still when Margaret was asking me if I wanted
to do live like the World is dying, she was like, oh,
(20:56):
because James is like when we did an episode together,
Ande go back. She's like, oh, ye, James, like at
Lefty Prepper a community preparing And I was like, WHOA,
that's not me. I'm not going to be on the
Discovery Channel show, you know, like where do people shoot
themselves on camera? But Noy didn't too clearly kill themselves
that they handle their firearms in an unsafe manner and
(21:17):
hurt themselves totally. So let's explain, like, let's break down
the good and the bad.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Yeah, and there's kind of a tension between them, yeah,
and between like what I'll call community preparedness and like
bunker syndrome prepping.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
So the image that prepping brings to mind for a
lot of people is like a right wing alpha dude
in a bunker with a dragon horde of preserved food
and more guns than anyone could ever use. It's like
an image of one person against the world. And I'm
kind of like, Okay, your fantasy apocalypse happens. You survive
the nuclear apocalypse, Armed gangs rove the wastelands, food is
(21:55):
hoarded and fought over, and you're protecting your bunker and
then what, you know, what happens next? How do you
build back a world alone? What is the world if
you're alone? And not only like we've talked about that,
we mentioned this earlier, but like, I don't I think
this is not only like a fantasy, but it's not
what happens. I think historically in disasters and the way
(22:19):
that we can make it through disasters, I think is
not based on how many resources we have hoarded, but
based on our abilities to make and maintain community friendship
and connections. You know, it's a trope, but the real
horde in the bunker was the friendship all along, you know,
I don't know, Yeah, but you know, we do need
(22:40):
to learn how to produce and preserve food and build stuff.
We just don't have to do it alone in a disaster.
Our greatest resource is help from people that we care
about and potential new friends. And it's sort of the
overwhelming amount of skills that come with the bunker syndrome
that I think causes a lot of people to become
overwhelmed by starting to prepare. And the traditional prepper community,
(23:01):
it's it's very right wing conservative, and it really makes
it seem like every single person has to learn every
skill they could possibly need in order to get prepared. Yeah,
And I think part of that kind of bunker syndrome
is also maybe that you have to learn all that
stuff on your own because you low key think that
everyone you know is going to turn on you, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Right, Yeah, because you've been an odious piece of shit
for your entire life.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, And again, make better friends, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Yeah, Like I used to think that like preparedness was
a lot of people who'd never really experienced genuine hardship,
wondering what it might be like probably is, yeah, a
lot of it is, right because like if you've been
just like poor or otherwise facing like like trans folks
right now, right even like anyone really in their LGBTQIA area,
(23:56):
Like it's scary right now, and you've probably found that
the things are keeping going to other people, yeah, and
not your pile of beans. And like I certainly have
not experienced what transfercts are experiencing, but like I've had
some difficult times and I've been poor, and like it's
always been like other people who have come through for me,
not stuff I had or even skills I have, really, Yeah,
(24:19):
And I think there's this real divide between like there's
people who are in fantasy bunker land, and then there's
people who are like, yeah, either too afraid to think
about preparedness or feel too overwhelmed to think about it,
or think that yeah, they can't possibly do it because
it's too far gone already. And I think preparedness is
(24:42):
for everyone, you know, like we say start small, put
food away every week, start to get your go back together.
Just start. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
And so to maybe now to find like what community
preparedness is is. I think that it's what we get
when we take a lot of different prins and mash
them together.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
You know, there's like.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
It's like part mutual aid, it's part individual preparedness. It's
principles of autonomy, solidarity, direct action, and collective decision making,
and it's all synthesized into a kind of.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
A beautiful little alchemy. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
It's kind of the most like anarchistic thing you can do,
which is really fun to me.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
And I think it really means investing in the people
around you so that you can all invest in collective survival.
And I know we mentioned this earlier, but like there's
this thing that happens during disasters that gets referred to
as disaster communism.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Yeah, have you heard that one? Yeah? Yeah. It doesn't
mean that like Lenin emerges and leads a vanguard group
to show you where the pupercation's at.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
No, no, no, no, It means that the logic of
capital is kind of temporarily suspended and people just help
each other for free, not even for barter for free,
and like people like go out and just give out
stuff they have in excess, even if they purchased it,
and even if they're like you don't look like the
kind of people I like, just give.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
It out, yeah, one hundred percent, Like yeah, I think,
like I can think of a few, Like I can
remember when thousands of people were being housed outside in
the cold and when wet at the border house is
not the word I would use, corlt in the desert.
I was out there with my friends and like we
looked like dirty crusspunk people, right, Like we were not
(26:26):
like clean and well put together in that sense, right,
Like we just scruffed totally, and that's fine, and I
like being scrubbed. Yeah that's nice. But like, yeah, it
was amazing to see like folks who one hundred percent
do not have the same politics as me, like roll
out and whatever, like set ups you know they had
and like be like, yo, this is fucked luckily, Like
(26:49):
I have some stuff that I was going to use
for a barbecue next week, so I will drag my
barbecue out here and cook for people or like yeah,
you know people who cook for their church's bake sale,
being like I have a giant ass pot, Like let
me make some beans for you guys, you know, Like, yeah,
I think people would be so surprised, And it's great
that people have not experienced that, like because I think
(27:10):
it's quite a traumatic thing to experience, but they get
you'd be so surprised how how much? Or like I
remember one time just building shelters with a bunch of people,
and like everyone was pretty miserable rates of cold and windy,
and like there were some Kourdish guys that uspect guys,
some Chinese guys, and we're building these shelters together and
like all of these people who didn't even share a language,
(27:31):
and we're going through very difficult times. We're just like
nerding out on knots together rare and just helping each
other and then not doing that so they could sleep inside,
doing that so little children wouldn't have to sleep in
the cold. But yeah, that's the way humans behave in
these situations, and capitalism or YouTube might have convinced you
it's not like it is.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Yeah, And I think like more traditional preppers really like
get into it too, Like they'll show up, they're like
I got forty chainsaws, are like like it's like every
like Chud Truck's time to shine to like haul away
raggage and the like. I don't know, you know, it's
like I'm making it sound exciting, but what's exciting is
when people collaborate autonomously and collectively for like more good
(28:16):
than their own.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
And then kind of the problem is that like capitalism
comes back in the initial fallout fads from sight and yeah,
just because the disaster kind of fades doesn't mean it's gone.
And there's a lot of people who kind of still
have to deal with it for potentially ever. Yeah, And
that's kind of like the disaster of light stage capitalism
(28:39):
is similar. We have people who are constantly invisibilized even
though it's part of their regular lives.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Can I maybe break down some of these terms that
are maybe.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
It can be good for people, Yeah, Yeah, because I
think they get thrown around about right totally.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
So, Mutual aid is knowing that any help that we
give our community helps us by strengthening our strengthening our community.
Autonomy is deciding what's best for us based on what
we know about ourselves and our needs. Solidarity is unity
through action and knowing that, like it's like the you know,
I got your back even if you don't got mine.
(29:19):
You know, direct action is working directly to achieve our
goals instead of waiting for someone else to do it.
You know, we see this in disasters like don't wait
for FEMA. There's like so many people who are just
out there doing autonomous relief efforts and it's incredible collective
decision making, finding ways to make decisions together in ways
where power isn't being like abused or accumulated. And then
(29:43):
there's individual preparedness, which is kind of the last little
thing I want to talk about. So individual preparedness is
kind of like the ways that we prepare individually so
that when a disaster strikes, we have our basic needs
met and you know, there's a lot to learn. So
it's like it's easy to get lost back in that
overwhelm mentality. Yeah, but I think we can really think
(30:06):
about it in terms of disaster since we're on that track. Like,
if there's a disaster and power goes out, then the
roads are less traversible. If you have all of your
needs met through individual preparedness, then you're in a really
good position to go help others and if everyone in
your community already has prepared for their basic needs, then
(30:27):
your whole community is prepared to take kind of the
next step towards recovery. And it means that your community
can now help other communities that were less prepared or
more impacted by a disaster, even if they thought.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
They were prepared.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Community preparedness is like what happens when we kind of
mash all of these ideas together and start doing it
not just as an individual but as a community. And
this can look small or it can look big, you know,
And I think a lot of people's biggest hurdle is
just like kind of making a plan. And like, I
(31:03):
don't know, your disaster plan might include you and the
people you live with. It might include you and your polycule,
It might include you and your whole block, and it
might include your whole neighborhood. And I think there's just
this like big, beautiful spectrum. And to kind of carry
an example through, like some interviews that we've done on
a livef the world is dying. Someone's measure of individual
(31:26):
preparedness might include having a radio when cell networks go down,
and anothers might include building communication infrastructure that they can distribute,
and another maybe smaller groups idea might be agreeing on
a place to meet up because they don't have radios,
(31:47):
can't afford them, don't know how they work, and they've
just said when shit hits the fan, we're meeting at
the library.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yeah, that's still a whole love better than like dashing
around on town wondering where the people you love are. Yeah, yeah,
and it's that easy.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
You know, we get overwhelmed by tech, but there's so
many low tech solutions to a lot of these problems.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Yeah. Yeah, that's why we're doing an episode on carry
a pigeon. Yeah, carrier pigeons. Are they extinct? That's passenger pigeons,
different pigeons, passenger visions. Yeah. Yeah, So, like, what are
some basic ways we can we can think about preparedness
And we're going to cover these in more detail, right,
we'll do episodes on each of these. But maybe someone's like, well, shit,
(32:32):
I would like to get on that. What are some
things people can work on? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (32:38):
I think it does start with kind of individual preparedness.
And when I say individual, I mean, like, you know,
for ourselves, But that doesn't mean we can't do individual preparedness.
Parallel and like with other people. So don't think of
individual as being alone. It's just we're thinking about your
(32:58):
specific basic needs. It's and so here's kind of a
checklist that we put out in a zine for strangers
in a tangled wilderness called Ready for Anything. There's documentation
you know, get or renewed documentation like passports, DOACA, other
status cards, whatever. Get a driver's license from your state
(33:21):
if you are undocumented, If you have other kind of
permits like concealed carry permits, or medical documentation for you
and your pets. Get all of those together. And you
want to think about having both physical and digital backups
of those things, Yeah, because digital might not work. You
(33:42):
want to do some kind of basic just supply preparedness,
which is, store three days or three weeks of food,
store three days or three weeks of water, Store enough
portable power to keep your phone and other essentials charged
for three days or three weeks. Build yourself a go bag,
stockpile prescription medication you need, keep your vehicle in good
(34:06):
running condition with at least half a tank of gas,
and get kind of any equipment stuff that you might
want now because it's going to be wildly unavailable when
a disaster does come.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
And then on the community side, get to know your neighbors,
plan with them, help them with documentation and preparedness components.
Make sure vulnerable neighbors know that you are a potential resource.
Connect with activist groups locally. Build an affinity group. Maybe
you and your friends are really into communication infrastructure, and
(34:43):
when a disaster does strike, you just have that ready
to go while you know some other affinity group is
making sure that everyone's fed. Divide and conquer. I don't
like that phrase, but it works right now, Make a
plan for securely communicating and make plans for meeting up
when things go wrong. And even when things kind of
(35:05):
go wrong with your plan, you know, have a backup plan.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Yeah, primary, alternate, contingency and emergency plan if you want
to use the cringe military acronym. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
And then these are some kind of questions that I
think you can ask your community when you're trying to
think about building resiliency. What disasters are dangerous do you
feel like you're likely to face How can you maintain
access to food, water, and communication? How will you interact
with other groups? What skills do you currently have? What
skills do you wish you had? Can you learn those skills?
(35:41):
How will you foster care and address specific needs of
individuals in your community? How will your community defend itself?
And how can we resist despair and maintain access to joy?
Which I think that last one really gets lost a lot.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Yeah, yeah, people forget about that one, but it's important
even in like really dark places, like I've attended civil wars, right,
Like maintaining access to joways important. Like I've sat with
people in Kurdistan and sung songs and played tempbole, which
is like I think the English word is ood. It's
an instrument and wild drones were vomited and so we
(36:18):
didn't want to go outside at night gy and like,
let me tell you, it's a lot better if you
have people to sing songs with and sitting on your own.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah, I'm putting a song bock in my go back now,
that's that's happening.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
These people had a folder, like they came equipped with
like laminated shit, like they were ready to rock. Golly. Yeah,
that's kind of what I got, you know. Yeah, that's
a great place for people to start, and we're going
to be covering a lot more of this stuff, so
like you will hear more about water and food and
all the other things that we spoke about. Will try
(36:54):
and do at least one of these episodes a month,
and then where can people find you if they have questions,
if they want to listen to other episodes, maybe if
the world is dying or otherwise reach out.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Yeah, if you want to hear more about anything that
I've talked about, then you can listen to Live Like
the World Is Dying wherever you get podcasts, where an
entirely listener supported podcast with zero ad breaks. And you
can find more of what our publishers, Strangers and a
Tangled Wilderness does, including books and other podcasts we put
(37:26):
out at Tangled Wilderness dot org. Or you can support
us on Patreon dot com slash Strangers and a Tangled Wilderness.
And if you want to ask me personally about things,
you can find me on Instagram at Shadowtale Artificery, where
you can see other stuff that I do that isn't
this cool?
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Thank you? Yeah, thanks? It could happen here is a
production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you
can now find sources for it could happen here, listed
directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Thanks for listening,
Cool Zone Media, Hi everyone, and welcome to it could
happen here, a very special edition of It could Happen Here,
in which we are very lucky to be joined by
Inland from Lift The World Is Dying and what will
be the first of many crossover episodes where the folks
(00:23):
from Strangely Tangled Wouldness are going to share with us
some of their preparedness advice. Welcome to the show. Would
like to introduce yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me, James. I'm in
Man Marowin and I use they then pronouns, And I'm
one of the hosts of Love Like the World Is Dying,
your podcast for What Feels Like the End Times, which
is a lefty prepper podcast about community and individual preparedness
for disasters of all kinds. And really excited to be
(00:55):
on the show with you. Yeah, on a different show,
because you're on that show with me sometime, which is great.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
I don't know. Yeah, I'm bringing together the two like,
I'm sure there's a superhero reference I could make here,
but I don't really understand that wild say I won't.
I don't either. Great, Okay, two people talking about a
thing they don't understand that is what podcasts are sometimes,
but not today. What are we going to talk about today?
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, what I'm really excited to talk about today is
preparedness in general, how community preparedness differs from some more
conventional modalities, and being really nice with that phrase.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, that's one way of saying it.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
How individual preparedness fits into community preparedness, and kind of
about my own journey into prepper stuff or preparedness, which
might be a new term for some people.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, I like to call.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
It preparedness over like prepping as a term sort of
because like, I don't know, Like if I say I'm
into prepping, then people start to give me funny looks
and think I want to live in a bunker with
a thousand cans of beans and more guns than I
know what to do with. Yeah, But if I say
I'm into preparedness, people are like, ooh, I know who
(02:13):
to call if I need help with something or get
in a jam, you know. Yeah, Yeah, And it's kind
of exactly that sentiment that I want listeners to think
of when they think of preparedness is what connections and
resources we have for when things go wrong, and how
we are going to respond to disasters of all kinds
(02:35):
when we're faced with them, because having a plan kind
of makes things less scary, you know.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, definitely, I feel safeer approaching bad things because I've
approached bad things with my friends and we have gone
through them and we've helped other people get through them. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I also think a lot of people engage in preparedness
without really realizing this. I feel like i'd ask these
questions to you on a less rhetorical basis if I
didn't know them to be true. But for instance, listener,
do you keep tools and a snack in your car
in case you break down on the side of the road,
(03:15):
or if your car won't start? Do you have a
friend that will take a look at it for you
and help you fix it. If so, then congratulations, you're
into preparedness for a very specific kind of disaster. And
now we just have to figure out how to apply
that to other disasters, whether it's your car breaking down,
the climate breaking down, or the world as we know
(03:38):
it breaking down, because unfortunately, with the world as it
is right now, as Margaret has said before, we're all
preppers now. Yeah, I don't know, it's something that makes
thinking about disaster just less scary, and I think that's
ultimately kind of one of the best reasons of like
(03:59):
why we should get into preparedness is because it makes
things less scary.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah, definitely, and I think it gives you if you're
doing it right, And I think this is something we
can get into, Like you realize how much your community
can get through if you will have each other rather
than necessarily the alternative that the other modality that you
talked about, it is theoretically thinking how much you could
get through whilst never helping anyone. Yeah, and that's very
(04:26):
different things. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
And I don't know, listeners, we're talking about kind of
more traditional like bunker mentality prepping, which we'll get into Yeah, yeah,
a little bit later, but that is my euphemism so
far as more conventional modality.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, So, like, can you give some ideas of like
why people might want to get into preparedness, what they
might want to be prepared for.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, absolutely, so many things. The list is kind of endless,
which is yeah, which is unfortunate, and I don't want
to overwhelm overwhelm people, but there's just a lot of
things and new things are emerging every day. But the
first step of preparedness is kind of identifying what your
(05:13):
threat model is, or really just asking yourself, you know,
like what are you personally worried about for yourself or
for your community, and some kind of like larger categories
that we can lump that stuff into. Is I feel
like what comes to mind for people immediately probably is
natural disasters. They're ever more frequent, They're growing in intensity
(05:37):
and happening in more places. People who never thought they
would become climate refugees are now becoming climate refugees. I
still live on a chunk of land, and like we
got flooded out. We lived in a hundred year floodplain.
And like, yeah, I know it's not once every hundred years,
that's not how it works. But like our time came,
we got flooded out. Yeah, there's my migration. This could
(06:01):
be due to climate change, political upheaval, economic reasons, family bigotry,
and obvious tie into this. Right now is everything going
on with ice raids where a lot of people are
being displaced and either trying to return to their homes
or find new ones. And there's also like I don't know,
(06:22):
there's like a lot of people like in more conservative
states in the US, who for instance, are trans or
have trans people that are in their family or in
their close friend group and are deciding whether they need
to move somewhere else or at least come up with
an escape plan if things get worse where they are,
(06:43):
And the same is true for like, I don't know,
maintaining access to abortion. Everything is very different in very
different places or very close spaces, even in the United States,
And so I think a lot of people who never
thought they'd need to think about migration are now thinking
about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
A big problem with how migration is reported on in
America is that like people who are migrants have seen
as like some kind of subcategory of humans, you know, totally. Yeah,
if you're a person who can get pregnant, and you're
a person who might consider, in whatever circumstances, accessing abortion,
then in some states you need to be prepared to
(07:25):
become a migrant, like a yeah, relatively very short notice, right,
Like it's something that we're all closer to than we think. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Another big one is kind of like larger economic, social,
or political collapse, you know, simply meaning that like the
structures of the world, no longer mean what they used
to mean. This could mean the collapse of capitalism or
capitalism turning more into like literal corporate feudalism. Another big
(07:57):
one is I'm just have this broad category of war.
This could be an invasion, a civil war, a revolution,
a rise in right wing militias, another rise in right
wing militias, whatever. I'm kind of neglecting some more fantastical
apocalypses that I'm sure we can all imagine, but there
are those we might wake up as fungus, you know
(08:18):
who can say. And then lastly, there's the current disaster
that is late stage capitalism. And this one is the
one that I spend the most time thinking about because
it's the one that's ever present in our lives currently
and kind of informs and maybe creates a lot of
the other larger threats I just mentioned, Yeah, except becoming fungus.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Well yet yeah maybe, Yeah, we're doing a lot with
the the old whatever rfkas into idea of Ministry of health.
It's not cool that health and human services. Yeah, I
think this is the one that, like, this is a
disaster that people don't often like see because it's slow. Yeah,
it kills us slowly rather than quick and it kills
(09:01):
us quickly. Yeah, talking of killing us slowly in it
my obligation to pivot to adverts is slowly killing my
soul that I have to do it anyway.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Yeah, we this is new for me. We don't have
these little livel like the world that is dying.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah, I know. I thought i'd take the first time.
I'm going to leave the second one up to you.
You can have a swing at it. All right, thank
you Products and Services for supporting this show. We are back. Imen.
(09:43):
Let's break it down for people in like a very
basic sense. If that's okay, how do we start being
more prepared? Like I imagine the first step would be to
immediately go to a federal firearms license. Se is that right? Yes?
Speaker 2 (09:59):
That is that is the first step. It is to
fill your bunker with guns. No, that's that's not the
first step because you can eat them. Yes, and no
jokes aside. So the first step we just talked about
it before that break is determine your threat. You know,
in the case of let's use earthquakes as an example.
(10:21):
If you live somewhere with earthquakes, then your threat model
should probably include earthquakes, you might prepare for earthquakes more
than you might prepare for wildfires too. The second step
is make a plan, which means like, when there's an earthquake,
you're going to do X and Y and meet so
and so at blank. Yeah, you can also include not
living somewhere with earthquakes anymore as part of your make
(10:44):
a plan, because maybe that's just the one thing you
don't want to deal with. The next part is acquire
the parts of the plan and so like, if your
plan includes resources, which everyone's plan should include a go bag,
an escape route, and any kind of equipment that you need.
And at this point you're mostly ready. I maybe would
(11:04):
add to collaborate with others. And then this step gets
missed a lot. But at this point, since you're mostly ready,
hopefully you can let go of some anxiety and despair.
You've done the hardest part, which is to get started,
and hopefully you can we can feel comfort in that
if we can't forestall a disaster, that we can at
(11:28):
least be ready for it, and then act on the plan,
do the thing, and assess what you can do better
next time. Yeah, that's those are my basic steps. Yeah,
it is makes it seem also simple.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
It's so simple. Yeah, obviously we will spend a love
time in the next few months breaking down each of
those steps and explaining them for people. Yeah. Yeah, Like
I live in a place where wildfires are common. In
my time living in California, I've been evacuated for a
couple of fires. I've had an earthquake, you know, I've
had a fewer than natural disasters. Of course, earth quake
(12:03):
channels had become fives they did in San Francisco. But yeah,
it would not make sense if you live where I
live to not have a plan for that. You would
be being naive. Yeah, it's that like a story like
that for you, Like, is there a thing did you
did you? Like, you know, have to evacuate for a
wildfire and you couldn't find your shoes like what?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
So one of my funny things was living on this
land project and like we were we were experiencing a flood.
We were experiencing what could have very easily been a
flash flood, and I was trying to just convince people
to leave, and I had a hard time convincing people
to leave. Yeah, Like there was like water up to
our chests and this is my answer now, But my
(12:48):
answer that I wrote about for this episode is so
a little bit of preliad. In the first episode of
Live Like the World Is Dying, Margaret talks with Kittie
Striker about anarchists, and Margaret talks about the possibilities that
she's preparing for, which she identifies as kind of these
four possibilities, living like the world is going to end,
(13:10):
and that we might not survive, living like the world
is going to end, and we can try to survive,
living like we can prevent the end of the world,
and then maybe trying to live like the world isn't
going to end after all. And I got into preparedness
for a lot of reasons, some of which evolved over time.
(13:31):
It went from something that felt scary to something that
feels comforting, and I hope that it can become comforting
for other people. I hope that's where a lot of
you can land who are listening who are either new
to the concept or think that prepping is only for
people who expect to need to survive for thirty years
in a bunker after a nuclear, zombie, bio apokarev or whatever,
(13:53):
eating canned beans. I'm really harping on this image because
I think it's what a lot of people think of
when they think of prepping. You know, beans bunker, a
little battie, and the fourth maybe lesser known one billionaires
or the four bees of the apocalypse, as I want
to think about them, to kind of confront this as
(14:14):
like a word, this like apocalypse. There's a lot of
different kinds of apocalypses, and whether we like it or not,
if it isn't already here, it's coming. And for some
people it's coming swiftly, for others it's slowly, but it
is coming. And billionaires are preparing for it, even if
they want us to think their tech will save the world.
(14:35):
They have all the money and resources, and they are
still worried. And while they'll try to use their money
in power to kind of escape the consequences becoming a
billionaire has had on the world, most people probably don't
have access to those kinds of resources. But what we
all do have access to our social and community ties,
even if it might not seem like that now. And oddly,
(14:56):
these social ties are things that billionaires often lack, or
doubt the authenticity of, or just can't comprehend Yeah, there's
this article by Douglas Ruscoff. This tech consultant who gets
flown out to the desert to talk to rich people
about collapse, and he's surprised because they don't really ask
him about tech stuff. They ask him about like maintaining
(15:17):
social control over the people that work for them when
money no longer means anything. And I'm like, I don't know,
do maybe make like more authentic friendships, you know?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe don't rely on having people so
subservient to you.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah, But I think this kind of air quotes conundrum
speaks a lot to people's fears about collapse and is
what gets people into a bunker mentality. You know, everyone's
worried about roving bands of armed people taking what they've
prepared for their own survival. And I think that is
a fantasy that we don't really see happen in real
(15:54):
life as often as we might think.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Yeah, I've reported from plenty of natural and human created disasters.
Actually it is the opposite of that. Like, we can
talk about this another time, but it's one of the
reasons I can keep doing it. Like, despite being hugely traumatic,
is it's actually incredible how much people go out of
(16:16):
their way when they're thoroughly miserable to help other people
who they see is needing help. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Yeah, it's a really beautiful thing. Yeah, to be a
little bit of a word nerd real quick. I feel
like everyone who talks about prepping has talked about the
etymological origins of the word apocalypse. But it is very
interesting and I think it's relevant, which is like, Okay,
it's from these two Greek words appo and colliptine, which
means like often to conceal, and so like a more
(16:45):
literal translation of it is a revealing and I think
that disaster really reveals things. It reveals the ways that
society has really like bailed. It reveals the consequences of
what living in a corporate oligarchy looks like. And it
also reveals like what beautiful and powerful things people have
(17:09):
built as communities and prepared for to give like a
little bit of a positive spin on a grim, grim
grim word.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah. Now, Like when I think about that, I think
about like two years ago, I was in the Marshal
Islands right where like the apocalypse has come, right, the
atomic bomb has dropped on the Marshal Islands. The United States.
We did that, and the sea levels a rising such
that like children born there today won't die there, right,
they probably won't even have their own children there, you know,
twenty thirty forty years left, and I didn't see like
(17:43):
people fighting each other for the highest point of land. Yeah,
I saw people taking care of one another, thinking about
how like not just like that individual, you know, they
could maintain their assets, but how their community could survive,
how their culture could survive, and you know, how they
could keep the things the incredible hospitality is so special
(18:03):
to them, which I thought was like very revealing compared
to this sort of mindset that you see more conventionally
in like prempa spaces. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
And to finally get to my own kind of little
journey into preparedness, Yeah, I wasn't a prepper until like
not that long ago.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Really. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
When I first heard Live Like the World Is Dying,
it was twenty twenty. COVID was still new. There was
like extreme civil unrest because there was an uprising going
on and the same fascist that's our sitting president now
was our president then, and he was backed up by
people like Kyle Rittenhouse who were gunning people down in
streets for protesting a racist murder where I lived in
(18:47):
entire mountain range was also on fire. Yeah, and the
idea that it was the coolest summer I might ever
remember was still setting in. And then I heard about
Margaret doing live like the World Is Dying, and I
actually refused to listen to it because I knew with
every fiber of my body that things were irrevocably different,
and I wanted to stick my head in the sand,
(19:09):
you know, like, not because I was scared, but because
getting prepared is overwhelming, and I didn't have any clue
where to begin. Like I was a scrappy punk. I
didn't have like thousands of dollars to spend on gear
and stockpiling food and guns and shit, you know. Yeah,
And so it felt for a while like preparedness was
(19:31):
only for people who had a lot of money, and
that I'd be left behind. But I did eventually listen
to the show because Margaret's my friend and I trusted
she had good things to say, and because it was
a show about beginnings and I needed one. And so
as I listened, I slowly started to warm up to
the idea that preparedness wasn't just necessary, but that it
(19:53):
was also very much within my reach, especially in the
framework of community preparedness. Yeah, and you know who can
tell you a lot about community preparedness.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Who's that? I think these lovely sponsors.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Or advertisements or products that we're about to hear about.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
I sure hope. So we are back. There was a
fantastic ad transition, first of many. Hopefully it wasn't like
apparently beginning ads for like some kind of gold company
that is also sanctioned by God God that that is,
(20:36):
just just to be clear, not the way to go
in terms of community preparedness that the precious Metals route.
This one we're not advising here. Can you explain the
difference between those two modalities, because I think, yeah, like
I still when Margaret was asking me if I wanted
to do live like the World is dying, she was like, oh,
(20:56):
because James is like when we did an episode together,
Ande go back. She's like, oh, ye, James, like at
Lefty Prepper a community preparing And I was like, WHOA,
that's not me. I'm not going to be on the
Discovery Channel show, you know, like where do people shoot
themselves on camera? But Noy didn't too clearly kill themselves
that they handle their firearms in an unsafe manner and
(21:17):
hurt themselves totally. So let's explain, like, let's break down
the good and the bad.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Yeah, and there's kind of a tension between them, yeah,
and between like what I'll call community preparedness and like
bunker syndrome prepping.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
So the image that prepping brings to mind for a
lot of people is like a right wing alpha dude
in a bunker with a dragon horde of preserved food
and more guns than anyone could ever use. It's like
an image of one person against the world. And I'm
kind of like, Okay, your fantasy apocalypse happens. You survive
the nuclear apocalypse, Armed gangs rove the wastelands, food is
(21:55):
hoarded and fought over, and you're protecting your bunker and
then what, you know, what happens next? How do you
build back a world alone? What is the world if
you're alone? And not only like we've talked about that,
we mentioned this earlier, but like, I don't I think
this is not only like a fantasy, but it's not
what happens. I think historically in disasters and the way
(22:19):
that we can make it through disasters, I think is
not based on how many resources we have hoarded, but
based on our abilities to make and maintain community friendship
and connections. You know, it's a trope, but the real
horde in the bunker was the friendship all along, you know,
I don't know, Yeah, but you know, we do need
(22:40):
to learn how to produce and preserve food and build stuff.
We just don't have to do it alone in a disaster.
Our greatest resource is help from people that we care
about and potential new friends. And it's sort of the
overwhelming amount of skills that come with the bunker syndrome
that I think causes a lot of people to become
overwhelmed by starting to prepare. And the traditional prepper community,
(23:01):
it's it's very right wing conservative, and it really makes
it seem like every single person has to learn every
skill they could possibly need in order to get prepared. Yeah,
And I think part of that kind of bunker syndrome
is also maybe that you have to learn all that
stuff on your own because you low key think that
everyone you know is going to turn on you, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Right, Yeah, because you've been an odious piece of shit
for your entire life.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, And again, make better friends, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Yeah, Like I used to think that like preparedness was
a lot of people who'd never really experienced genuine hardship,
wondering what it might be like probably is, yeah, a
lot of it is, right because like if you've been
just like poor or otherwise facing like like trans folks
right now, right even like anyone really in their LGBTQIA area,
(23:56):
Like it's scary right now, and you've probably found that
the things are keeping going to other people, yeah, and
not your pile of beans. And like I certainly have
not experienced what transfercts are experiencing, but like I've had
some difficult times and I've been poor, and like it's
always been like other people who have come through for me,
not stuff I had or even skills I have, really, Yeah,
(24:19):
And I think there's this real divide between like there's
people who are in fantasy bunker land, and then there's
people who are like, yeah, either too afraid to think
about preparedness or feel too overwhelmed to think about it,
or think that yeah, they can't possibly do it because
it's too far gone already. And I think preparedness is
(24:42):
for everyone, you know, like we say start small, put
food away every week, start to get your go back together.
Just start. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
And so to maybe now to find like what community
preparedness is is. I think that it's what we get
when we take a lot of different prins and mash
them together.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
You know, there's like.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
It's like part mutual aid, it's part individual preparedness. It's
principles of autonomy, solidarity, direct action, and collective decision making,
and it's all synthesized into a kind of.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
A beautiful little alchemy. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
It's kind of the most like anarchistic thing you can do,
which is really fun to me.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
And I think it really means investing in the people
around you so that you can all invest in collective survival.
And I know we mentioned this earlier, but like there's
this thing that happens during disasters that gets referred to
as disaster communism.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Yeah, have you heard that one? Yeah? Yeah. It doesn't
mean that like Lenin emerges and leads a vanguard group
to show you where the pupercation's at.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
No, no, no, no, It means that the logic of
capital is kind of temporarily suspended and people just help
each other for free, not even for barter for free,
and like people like go out and just give out
stuff they have in excess, even if they purchased it,
and even if they're like you don't look like the
kind of people I like, just give.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
It out, yeah, one hundred percent, Like yeah, I think,
like I can think of a few, Like I can
remember when thousands of people were being housed outside in
the cold and when wet at the border house is
not the word I would use, corlt in the desert.
I was out there with my friends and like we
looked like dirty crusspunk people, right, Like we were not
(26:26):
like clean and well put together in that sense, right,
Like we just scruffed totally, and that's fine, and I
like being scrubbed. Yeah that's nice. But like, yeah, it
was amazing to see like folks who one hundred percent
do not have the same politics as me, like roll
out and whatever, like set ups you know they had
and like be like, yo, this is fucked luckily, Like
(26:49):
I have some stuff that I was going to use
for a barbecue next week, so I will drag my
barbecue out here and cook for people or like yeah,
you know people who cook for their church's bake sale,
being like I have a giant ass pot, Like let
me make some beans for you guys, you know, Like, yeah,
I think people would be so surprised, And it's great
that people have not experienced that, like because I think
(27:10):
it's quite a traumatic thing to experience, but they get
you'd be so surprised how how much? Or like I
remember one time just building shelters with a bunch of people,
and like everyone was pretty miserable rates of cold and windy,
and like there were some Kourdish guys that uspect guys,
some Chinese guys, and we're building these shelters together and
like all of these people who didn't even share a language,
(27:31):
and we're going through very difficult times. We're just like
nerding out on knots together rare and just helping each
other and then not doing that so they could sleep inside,
doing that so little children wouldn't have to sleep in
the cold. But yeah, that's the way humans behave in
these situations, and capitalism or YouTube might have convinced you
it's not like it is.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Yeah, And I think like more traditional preppers really like
get into it too, Like they'll show up, they're like
I got forty chainsaws, are like like it's like every
like Chud Truck's time to shine to like haul away
raggage and the like. I don't know, you know, it's
like I'm making it sound exciting, but what's exciting is
when people collaborate autonomously and collectively for like more good
(28:16):
than their own.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
And then kind of the problem is that like capitalism
comes back in the initial fallout fads from sight and yeah,
just because the disaster kind of fades doesn't mean it's gone.
And there's a lot of people who kind of still
have to deal with it for potentially ever. Yeah, And
that's kind of like the disaster of light stage capitalism
(28:39):
is similar. We have people who are constantly invisibilized even
though it's part of their regular lives.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Can I maybe break down some of these terms that
are maybe.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
It can be good for people, Yeah, Yeah, because I
think they get thrown around about right totally.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
So, Mutual aid is knowing that any help that we
give our community helps us by strengthening our strengthening our community.
Autonomy is deciding what's best for us based on what
we know about ourselves and our needs. Solidarity is unity
through action and knowing that, like it's like the you know,
I got your back even if you don't got mine.
(29:19):
You know, direct action is working directly to achieve our
goals instead of waiting for someone else to do it.
You know, we see this in disasters like don't wait
for FEMA. There's like so many people who are just
out there doing autonomous relief efforts and it's incredible collective
decision making, finding ways to make decisions together in ways
where power isn't being like abused or accumulated. And then
(29:43):
there's individual preparedness, which is kind of the last little
thing I want to talk about. So individual preparedness is
kind of like the ways that we prepare individually so
that when a disaster strikes, we have our basic needs
met and you know, there's a lot to learn. So
it's like it's easy to get lost back in that
overwhelm mentality. Yeah, but I think we can really think
(30:06):
about it in terms of disaster since we're on that track. Like,
if there's a disaster and power goes out, then the
roads are less traversible. If you have all of your
needs met through individual preparedness, then you're in a really
good position to go help others and if everyone in
your community already has prepared for their basic needs, then
(30:27):
your whole community is prepared to take kind of the
next step towards recovery. And it means that your community
can now help other communities that were less prepared or
more impacted by a disaster, even if they thought.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
They were prepared.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Community preparedness is like what happens when we kind of
mash all of these ideas together and start doing it
not just as an individual but as a community. And
this can look small or it can look big, you know,
And I think a lot of people's biggest hurdle is
just like kind of making a plan. And like, I
(31:03):
don't know, your disaster plan might include you and the
people you live with. It might include you and your polycule,
It might include you and your whole block, and it
might include your whole neighborhood. And I think there's just
this like big, beautiful spectrum. And to kind of carry
an example through, like some interviews that we've done on
a livef the world is dying. Someone's measure of individual
(31:26):
preparedness might include having a radio when cell networks go down,
and anothers might include building communication infrastructure that they can distribute,
and another maybe smaller groups idea might be agreeing on
a place to meet up because they don't have radios,
(31:47):
can't afford them, don't know how they work, and they've
just said when shit hits the fan, we're meeting at
the library.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yeah, that's still a whole love better than like dashing
around on town wondering where the people you love are. Yeah, yeah,
and it's that easy.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
You know, we get overwhelmed by tech, but there's so
many low tech solutions to a lot of these problems.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Yeah. Yeah, that's why we're doing an episode on carry
a pigeon. Yeah, carrier pigeons. Are they extinct? That's passenger pigeons,
different pigeons, passenger visions. Yeah. Yeah, So, like, what are
some basic ways we can we can think about preparedness
And we're going to cover these in more detail, right,
we'll do episodes on each of these. But maybe someone's like, well, shit,
(32:32):
I would like to get on that. What are some
things people can work on? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (32:38):
I think it does start with kind of individual preparedness.
And when I say individual, I mean, like, you know,
for ourselves, But that doesn't mean we can't do individual preparedness.
Parallel and like with other people. So don't think of
individual as being alone. It's just we're thinking about your
(32:58):
specific basic needs. It's and so here's kind of a
checklist that we put out in a zine for strangers
in a tangled wilderness called Ready for Anything. There's documentation
you know, get or renewed documentation like passports, DOACA, other
status cards, whatever. Get a driver's license from your state
(33:21):
if you are undocumented, If you have other kind of
permits like concealed carry permits, or medical documentation for you
and your pets. Get all of those together. And you
want to think about having both physical and digital backups
of those things, Yeah, because digital might not work. You
(33:42):
want to do some kind of basic just supply preparedness,
which is, store three days or three weeks of food,
store three days or three weeks of water, Store enough
portable power to keep your phone and other essentials charged
for three days or three weeks. Build yourself a go bag,
stockpile prescription medication you need, keep your vehicle in good
(34:06):
running condition with at least half a tank of gas,
and get kind of any equipment stuff that you might
want now because it's going to be wildly unavailable when
a disaster does come.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
And then on the community side, get to know your neighbors,
plan with them, help them with documentation and preparedness components.
Make sure vulnerable neighbors know that you are a potential resource.
Connect with activist groups locally. Build an affinity group. Maybe
you and your friends are really into communication infrastructure, and
(34:43):
when a disaster does strike, you just have that ready
to go while you know some other affinity group is
making sure that everyone's fed. Divide and conquer. I don't
like that phrase, but it works right now, Make a
plan for securely communicating and make plans for meeting up
when things go wrong. And even when things kind of
(35:05):
go wrong with your plan, you know, have a backup plan.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Yeah, primary, alternate, contingency and emergency plan if you want
to use the cringe military acronym. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
And then these are some kind of questions that I
think you can ask your community when you're trying to
think about building resiliency. What disasters are dangerous do you
feel like you're likely to face How can you maintain
access to food, water, and communication? How will you interact
with other groups? What skills do you currently have? What
skills do you wish you had? Can you learn those skills?
(35:41):
How will you foster care and address specific needs of
individuals in your community? How will your community defend itself?
And how can we resist despair and maintain access to joy?
Which I think that last one really gets lost a lot.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Yeah, yeah, people forget about that one, but it's important
even in like really dark places, like I've attended civil wars, right,
Like maintaining access to joways important. Like I've sat with
people in Kurdistan and sung songs and played tempbole, which
is like I think the English word is ood. It's
an instrument and wild drones were vomited and so we
(36:18):
didn't want to go outside at night gy and like,
let me tell you, it's a lot better if you
have people to sing songs with and sitting on your own.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah, I'm putting a song bock in my go back now,
that's that's happening.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
These people had a folder, like they came equipped with
like laminated shit, like they were ready to rock. Golly. Yeah,
that's kind of what I got, you know. Yeah, that's
a great place for people to start, and we're going
to be covering a lot more of this stuff, so
like you will hear more about water and food and
all the other things that we spoke about. Will try
(36:54):
and do at least one of these episodes a month,
and then where can people find you if they have questions,
if they want to listen to other episodes, maybe if
the world is dying or otherwise reach out.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Yeah, if you want to hear more about anything that
I've talked about, then you can listen to Live Like
the World Is Dying wherever you get podcasts, where an
entirely listener supported podcast with zero ad breaks. And you
can find more of what our publishers, Strangers and a
Tangled Wilderness does, including books and other podcasts we put
(37:26):
out at Tangled Wilderness dot org. Or you can support
us on Patreon dot com slash Strangers and a Tangled Wilderness.
And if you want to ask me personally about things,
you can find me on Instagram at Shadowtale Artificery, where
you can see other stuff that I do that isn't
this cool?
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Thank you? Yeah, thanks? It could happen here is a
production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you
can now find sources for it could happen here, listed
directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Thanks for listening,
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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