June 9, 2023 • 44 mins
Since our East Coast friends are choking on smoke, Robert and Margaret Killjoy put together a guide to protecting yourself and your community from wildfire smoke.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Oh boy, it could happen. Here a podcast about what
we like to call the crumbles, which is the process
of the aspects of modern life that were nice and
convenient and functional breaking down as the climate and our
political systems continue to fray around the edges and gradually collapse. Today,
(00:29):
a lot of you are living through a pretty undeniable
piece of that. If you're anywhere kind of in the
Eastern Seaboard, if you're in New York City, if you're
in Philly, if you're in DC, if you're in one
of the other places at Baltimore, you're dealing with air
quality the likes of which you've probably never seen unless
you fled there from the West coast. Basically everyone who
(00:52):
lives in the northeast of the United States right now,
as well as a huge number of Canadians, are absolutely
cloaked in wildfire smoke, drowning in the ghosts of a
thousand forests. And that's a bummer. It's a bummer, and
it's a real problem. And so I wanted to kind
of sit down with Margaret Killjoy, our resident Prepper extraordinaiy Hi, Margaret, Hello,
(01:15):
how are you yeah? Doing great? Because we're not drowning
in wildfire smoke. But three years ago in Portland in
twenty twenty, the air quality was even worse than it
is in New York City right now. So I've got
some experience dealing with this, and Margaret, you spend a
lot of time thinking about practical prepping, and that's something
(01:37):
that I think a lot of folks probably are wishing
that they had spent more time doing right now. This
is the kind of thing that happens. You know, it's
not on you know, anybody is like a moral thing.
But it happens anytime there's a disaster that affects everybody
at once, all the stuff that is useful for countering
that disaster sells out or is looted very very quickly,
(02:00):
and then people suddenly don't have the kind of options
for tools that they need. You know, this is not great.
So I wanted to kind of sit down first off
and kind of talk about one of the better airsats
tools that you can put together if you are trying
to deal with the problem of making your air cleaner.
And basically we have to kind of split this problem
(02:22):
into two. Right there is the problem of what do
I do if I'm going outside, and we'll talk about
that later. But there's stuff that you purchase, you know,
that is the only things that's going or stuff that
you already had on hand is all that's going to
help in that instance. But there are some things you
can do to keep your inside space clean of particulate
and relatively safe that don't require at least as many
(02:45):
things to purchase, and that are you know, can be
made with stuff that you probably are likelier to have
on hand. So I want to talk first about what
you can do to like filter your indoor air. You know,
in Portland, when we had our horrible fucking wildfire apocalypse,
(03:07):
yellow smog blanketing the world and making everything look like
fucking blade runner, everyone at least had gas masks and
full face respirators, which you know, folks in the Northeast
right now haven't gone through that experience and so don't
have that kind of stuff on hand. But what we
didn't have in Portland was the stuff that can keep
your indoors cleaner. For one thing, people don't have like
(03:28):
HEPA filters or central air you know in Oregon as
often as they have it in some other parts of
this country. And so a lot of people wound up
creating building for themselves what are called Corsey Rosenthal boxes
now a Coarsey Rosenthal box is a kind of like
(03:49):
air filtration system for rooms that's made up of a
box fan and five air filters, like the kind of
filters that you're going to use for your HVAC system
in your house. Right, pretty much most houses are going
to have some kind of like air filter already, and
they're also widely available, Like if you go to any
home depot or lows, they're going to have a shitload
(04:10):
of air filters. You can use multiple different types. The
bigger the air filter, the more air it'll handle. Coursey
Rosenthal boxes were invented kind of right at the start
of the pandemic. One of the guys who made it,
Richard Corsi, was an environmental engineer who kind of realized
as soon as the pandos started that a lot of
(04:30):
poor people were going to be absolutely fucked when it
came to filtering air in their homes because good you
can get like a nice Hepa filter, like standalone Hepa filter,
but they're usually several hundred dollars. So he wanted to
try and provide people with something that could make that
was a lot cheaper. He had worked previously with the
CEO of a filter company that I think is based
(04:52):
in Texas, so he called that guy up and they
collaborated on a design that basically used you build like
a box out of air filters and you stick a
back box fan on top of it. If you google
Coursey Co R SI, Dash Rosenthal R O, S E
N T H A L box, you'll find the Wikipedia
(05:13):
page which has a guide to making these. It's very simple.
If you're not crafty at all or have no real tools,
you can still make it work. I've won a couple
of years ago, you know, when shit happened in Portland,
as did several people I knew. And they're not hard
to do, and the most common size of box that
you can build will allow it'll basically change the air
(05:33):
out in a room five full times per hour and
a five hundred square foot room, which is reasonably good.
It'll make a meaningful difference in your indoor air quality
if you're like blanketed in Hell's mog right now.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yeah, that's about That's about the same as like one
hundred and fifty dollars if you were to like go
out and buy, yeah, a five hundred square foot filter,
it would be about one hundred and fifty bucks.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
And that is about what this will cost you right now,
I think, because shit's got more expensive. At least that's
what a recent Outside magazine article gave the cost of
constructing this interesting that said you might be able to
get it for cheaper. There's a good chance, that's if
you're buying everything. Most people in most places have a
box fan, you know, and most people have a couple
of filters, which which should cut down on the cost.
(06:19):
You know, It'll depend on kind of where you are
and what things are are running. But Hepa filters are
also standalone ones likelier to sell out fast as opposed
to kind of the raw components to making a Coarsey
Rosenthal filter, So you may find it easier to get
access to I like the Corsey Rosenthal filter for a
couple of other reasons. Obviously, it's accessible and it's comparatively affordable,
(06:43):
but it also is something that you can make yourself
that will have a meaningful impact on how you weather
this event. That's important psychologically in a disaster, feeling as
if you have some sort of agency by actually doing
the useful thing, and it can also be important from
a community point of view. You can thear hdically raise
money and put together people to make Corsey Rosenthal boxes
(07:03):
and hand them out to people who maybe can't afford
them or you know, have mobility issues or less able
to get the equipment. That's the kind of thing that
builds community connection and also offers an immediate alleviation of
suffering and health consequences for people, which is the kind
of thing that I like to see people doing in
(07:25):
a disaster like this. I also kind of like this
filter because it represents a rare example of people you
might call elites taking immediate action to ensure cash poor
individuals had a life saving tool available to themselves. It's
one of those kind of rare examples from the start
of the pandemic of like that radical solidarity we saw
bits and pieces of. And I think Jim Rosenthal and
(07:48):
Richard Corsi are pretty cool in my book for figuring
out this thing. So you know, there's a lot that's
nice about these filters.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
So I just looked at the cost of making one,
I just like kind of added it together. It looks
like you could probably make one for about sixty five bucks.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Oh great, great, great grade. It is probably the outside
guy was probably buying all the Gucci shit.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Right, if you just buy cheap, you need at least
a MERV thirteen filter. That's the level of filter where
it starts cutting out smoke. And if you get the
twenty inch filters, which I think is what usually people
are getting a twenty inch box fan, and so it's
and then you only need the four filters, I believe,
because the bottom isn't sucking air in the bottom ends
up a flat when I was looking at it earlier today.
(08:28):
But you've built one and I haven't.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
So yeah, honestly, it was three years ago. Yeah, everybody,
I misspoke saying five. I think you can do it
just fine with four. I'm not sure if either we
did it weird when we did it last or if
I was just remembering wrong, But that means, yeah, a
lot more available. Like I had three filters on hand
in my house this morning, just because that's how many,
(08:51):
you know, I usually keep as a backup. So a
lot of you are probably in a similar situation. And yeah,
that's a more accessible thing compared to the equipment. We're
about to start talking about stuff like respirators and stuff
like standalone HEPA filters, which are likely to sell out
pretty quickly as people go to all of the stores
to buy up all the things.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Although I will say it's almost depressing right now. I
was checking availability for some of my East Coast friends.
I'm actually an East Coast friend normally, but I went
to the land of Smoke, the usual smoke Pacific Northwest
and missed it. But most things are still available right now,
at least as of recording. I don't know whether it's
people just haven't put it together that it's necessary, or
(09:34):
people felt like they couldn't afford it. A lot of
stuff is still in stock as of this.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
That's really good to hear, because that's what we're about
to get into. So I did want to kind of
lead into this, moving from this kind of what I
think is inspiring about the course E. Rosenthal filter, which
is that it's something that is accessible, something that people
can work on and provide for each other together, and
sort of representative of the kind of radical solidarity see
(10:00):
in disasters. I think that's kind of particularly meaningful to
me because of why this air quality event is so
frightening to folks. You know, people who are in New
York or Philly, or Richmond or DC or a lot
of other places in the Northeast have not dealt with
this kind of air quality before. This is because most
(10:25):
people who are young in those areas, because most young
Americans have had the privilege of experiencing air pollution primarily
as either an annoyance or as an abstract concept. A
big part of why is that the Clean Air Act,
instituted in nineteen sixty three, did a huge amount to
stop the kind of poisoning of the sky that led
to fairly regular smog events in the fifties and early
(10:47):
to mid nineteen sixties, even nineteen seventies in a lot
of parts of this country. You know, it took a while.
There was more involved than just the Clean Air Act,
but shit like this used to be a lot more common,
and Americans suffered from a variety of illnesses, including adult
onset emphysema or young adult on set mphysima at a
much higher rate because of stuff like this. If you
(11:08):
are young, and by young, I mean like my age,
Margaret's age, you know, not all that young. Because air
quality in the United States has been significantly better than
it was for like my parents when they were kids.
For quite a while, you have benefited from a pretty
remarkably successful campaign to render Americans at least less vulnerable
(11:30):
to them to this kind of pollution. Now, this came
alongside years of others' reforms and things like emission standards,
which were successful enough that in like West La right now,
a lot of days of the year you can see
the mountains. That was not a thing for people who
lived in Los Angeles and say the nineteen seventies. I
had an annual check up right after I moved there
(11:51):
with my doctor in you know, southern California, and I
asked him, like what life had been like there during
the small years. And the thing that he mentioned to
me that stuck with me is that he had a
shitload of like patients in their twenties who had like
the early symptoms of emphysema, which is just not a
thing that really occurred occurs in southern California anymore. Although,
(12:14):
you know, because of climate change, there are similar things
that are starting to hit. You know, there's a number
of like fungal based infections that people are getting, particularly
in the valley that's really nasty and wildfire smoke could
bring back a lot of this stuff. And so yeah,
we're kind of looking at a lot of the gains
(12:35):
in public health caused by reducing you know, the amount
of smog in the air going away as a result
of you know, externalities that can't be controlled locally. Now,
(12:56):
the downside of the really lovely state of affairs that
was kind of ushered into the Clean Air Act is
that most Americans have spent their lives in kind of
a bubble of artificially pure air, while the negative externalities
that made are tech heavy lives possible were exported to
the global South, and those people experienced with increasing regularity
the kind of catastrophic pollution that in an earlier age
(13:18):
here caused the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland to light on
fire every spring or so. Globally, in twenty eighteen, some
eight point seven million deaths were caused by air pollution,
specifically pollution created via the burning of fossil fuels. David
Wallace Wells, who writes about climate catastrophe better than most people,
put the cost this way in a testimony before the
(13:39):
US Senate Committee on the Budget in twenty twenty one.
Those punishments are harrowingly widespread. The Lancet puts the global
annual death toll of air pollution at nine million. This
is dying at the scale of the Holocaust every single year.
In India, where three hundred and forty nine thousand stillbirths
and miscarriages have been attributed annually to the effects of
air pollution, the average resident of Delhih had his or
(14:00):
her life expectancy shortened by more than nine years from
the repetitive inhalation of smog. Globally, the average figure is
two years.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
So this is bad.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
So this is real bad, and it's one of those
things that we're it's it's so shocking and traumatic to
people right now because we haven't experienced this in most
of the US outside of like, yeah, the West, you
know recently as the wildfires have gotten worst for quite
a while, but the problems that cause this we were,
you know, suffered by people outside of the United States
(14:33):
consistently for years. Like one of the things that's you know,
you've kind of seen on like Twitter and shit, is
like people in the West Coast and the East Coast
fighting about who's had it worse in terms of wildfire
smog lately and like, well, the answer if you want
to talk about who's been dealing with this the worst
and the longest, is like people in fucking Deli, people
in Shinzen, you know, the in China. Like this is
(14:57):
a problem that is primarily born. I mean, this is
not in the US too, by the poor, but it's
been borne by the poor outside of the United States
because we successfully externalized a lot of the consequences of
our lifestyles. And ideally, the hopeful thing is that perhaps
experiencing this in New York City, which is, if you're
(15:18):
not aware, we're the only writers that people apparently listen
to live will cause some kind of enhanced solidarity for
the folks in what you might call or what often
is described as the Global South, who are have been
dealing with this for years and will continue to deal
with this in a much more severe form with much
fewer resources available to them. If you are currently living
(15:40):
in one of the great cities besieged by wildfire smoke,
your life span has already been shortened. Now I'm not
trying to be like panic inducing. We're talking about like
by the same it would be like if you had
smoked half a pack of cigarettes since this all started.
It's kind of similar to that, But there is no
safe amount of time to inhale, particular in the quantities
(16:00):
when you're talking about AQI over four hundred. There's no
safe amount of time to just kind of be raw
dogging the air out in the street. Any amount is
going to damage your lungs, it's going to stiffen your arteries,
it's going to increase your chances of a number of cancer's.
Heart attack risk increases by a meaningful amount. When you
are out dealing with stuff like this, your immune system
is significantly weaker, and.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
You don't get to look cool like smoking.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
You don't get to look cool like smoking. Right Like,
it's all of the downsides of being a daily smoker
with none of the significant benefits of looking rad as
hell of looking like fucking Martin Sheen and apocalypse. Now,
ah man, I love a good smoker, but nobody looks
good in this shit unless you're like, have one of
(16:43):
those sick ass you know, apocalypse dusters, and like a
face mask, which we're about to talk about. Then you
can look cool, although your clothing will probably always smell
of wildfire. There's a lot Also, it's kind of worth
noting that, like when we're talking about the day here,
it's not It may smell like a little like campfire smoke,
(17:04):
but you're also inhaling an incinerated asbestos and particle board,
and you know, presumably hordes of ammunition that had been
buried by Canadian preppers. So like, there's a lot of
reasons why you don't want to breathe this shit in.
So when you go outside, you are going to want
to wear a mask. In ninety fives work reasonably well
for adults if you have any on hand, or if
(17:24):
you're fortunate enough to live in a city with the
kind of emergency preparedness budget that allows them to provide
stuff like that New York City is providing in ninety
fives in some quantity right now. If you're out on
your own, an N ninety five maybe an easy thing
to acquire quickly for relatively cheap. That said, they're not
perfect for one thing. They don't tend to work very
(17:45):
well on kids. For this just because like the fit
is off and wrong. You may find that something like
a KF ninety four allows you to get a better
fit on a child, and those do work reasonably well,
certainly better than like nothing at all in this kind
of a situation. My personal recommendation, if they are in
stock and if you can afford them, is either a
(18:05):
half or a full face respirator. We'll talk about the
differences between those in a second, but these are the
kind of masks that like, if you're a contractor and
you're like putting together a building, you're dealing with a
shitload of insulation, you're like cutting certain kinds of metal,
or you know, you're doing a whole bunch of different
things that can kick up nasty particulate. You probably have
a number of these, right Like people I know in
(18:26):
graffiti and graffiti. Yeah, if you're doing a lot of graffiti,
you know, hang out near a building, you know that
kids that kids spray paint a lot, and then you know,
stick them up with a handgun for their their respirators.
That's a responsible way to deal with Yeah, that's trying
to teach everyone smoke through the respirator. That makes it
(18:46):
extra cool and healthy. So yeah, what we're talking about here, Like,
if you're looking for a thing to type into Google
or whatever, three M half mask respirator. I found a
three and a half mask respirator kit with a couple
of what are called Bayonet filters for forty six forty
(19:06):
one on Granger dot com right now. You can get
them for similar prices on Amazon dot com. If you
walk into a Lows or a home depot and they
have not there hasn't been a run on them, you
can probably find these. You will want to make sure
you get filters with them. Sometimes you get just the
respirator and you have to buy the filters separately. Usually
if you get one, it'll it'll come with them, But
(19:27):
make sure the filters are going to be these. Most
of them look kind of like triangles with like rounded
edges that are sort of this like pinkish purple color.
For the most part, there's some that are gray and
like circular. It doesn't really matter you know which kind
of filters yours get. I would say just get whatever
they have the most of Well, yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
The in general, the filters filter out a ton of
different stuff, And the thing you're looking for is the
particulate filteration, which is actually the easiest and that's why
almost any filter will do this. The rawest doesn't do
anything else. Filter that you would be looking for is
a P one hundred and sometimes those are they're more likely.
I believe three M marks them as the pink, So
(20:07):
if it's pink, it's particulate with three M. There's other brands.
There's Honeywell, and then there's Yeah, I can't remember off
the top of my head, but anyway, P one hundred
is like you just look for particular filter. But honestly, yeah,
pretty much anything is going to do it.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Basically, any kind of respirator you're going to get it,
like a home depot with filters is going to be
sufficient for this. Yeah, there are kind of like the
one and that. There's two main categories of respirators. The
one we're interested in are called air purifying respirators. That
means you breathe in the air from outside and it
filters it right. The other kind of atmosphere supplying respirators,
(20:42):
which normal people do not need in this situation. That's like,
you know, it has like a tank of stuff walking around.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Don't get that.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
It's going to be a lot more than is necessary
for at least the next like six to eight months.
Respirators are then further divided into half face masks, which
things like Batman from that the worst of the Nolan
Batman or not Batman, think of Bane from the Worst
of the Nolan Batman movies. It's a little bit like
that right where it's kind of just over your mouth
and jaw. And then there's full face masks and there
(21:15):
are also reusable elastomeric respirators. I tend to prefer half
a full face masks for one thing, there's no reason
to like, you're not working in some sort of like
capacity where you want to be tossing it every time.
You know, you might as well just get one. You
can plug new filters into. A half face mask is
going to be a lot more convenient. It's a lot
(21:35):
less sort of weight and stuff, but it doesn't protect
your eyes or anything, which if you're dealing with really
heavy particulate, you may find your eyes getting irritated out there.
The benefit of a full face mask is that it
does protect your eyes, and if you happen to ever
be in a situation where there's hella, mace or tear
gas being used, it provides excellent protection from that kind
(21:56):
of thing. The downside is that these are three to
four times as expensive as the half faced respirator, so
they're not my general recommendation to people. But again, either
of them is going to be perfectly adequate for wildfire smoke.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
And then the full face ones of the additional problem
of most of them are not designed for wearing glasses, yes,
and you need a full seal on the side of it,
so don't just throw it over your glasses. But they
make adapters or you can wear contacts if you're not
actually out expecting chemical weapons.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
And I would do that sometimes when we were dealing
specific particularly with like mace heavy fights. As contacts and
a full face it always worked for me. People will
say that if you have a beard, it can fuck
with the seal. I think, I'm sure that's true with
like really heavy beards. I keep mine reasonably trim, and
I never noticed a problem, you know, even in very
thick tear gas with either my full face or with
(22:47):
my gas mask.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
So you know, this is why beards fell out of
favor in the United States.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Oh, because of a World War One and gas masks.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Military people had to start shaving because otherwise you'll die.
Because that's the difference, right, Like, oh, a little bit
of smoke is getting in that sucks a little bit
of murder gas gets in.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Yeah, that's you have a more severe problem. Yeah, so
a lot of folks may be and I've seen questions
about like getting a gas mask, right and obviously, if
that's what's available to you, if you already happen to
have one because you're a weirdo prepper, or if that's
just what you can find, a gas mask will indeed
protect you from particulate. You may if you are someone
(23:25):
who has the benefit of money, decide I'm going to
just go ahead and get a good gas mask if so,
you know, there's a number of places you can look
to for that. The one I have is called a
Mirram ir. They're three four hundred dollars something like that.
I can confirm that they work great when you're drenched
in tear gas so heavy that you can't see through it.
People bitch at them online in like weirdo prepper communities
(23:47):
sometimes because they have some like silly attachments and stuff
that are kind of too expensive. But like I have
used every kind of face mask filtering product in heavy
gas and mace. Mirror are comfortable, they do work well.
That said, much more expensive and much heavier than you
need for something like filtering particulate. This would not be
(24:08):
my first go to for anybody. Any kind of gas
mask you get is going to be very bulky. Even
the ones that are made specifically for stuff like special
Forces use where they're like really streamlines so that you
can like shoulder a rifle with them, those are still
much bulkier than you know a normal half faced respirator
is going to be. They also, you know, one of
(24:30):
the benefits. One thing I will say I did a
few times when Portland was bad, as I would put
on two filters in my gas mask, which allows you
to kind of breathe it close to the normal rate
that you can, and I would go jogging because like
otherwise you really can't safely. I'm not saying you should
do this. Please don't like avoid outdoor exercise as a
general rule anyway, Military surplus gas masks if that's what
(24:53):
you have again, and you have filters for them that
can help. If you do attempt to do this, you
will immediately get in an understanding of why chemical warfare
sucks so much, because most especially MILLSERP gas masks suck
ass to wear super uncomfortable, super shitty visibility, not ever
my primary recommendation, but again, if that's what you've got
(25:16):
and all you can get, it will indeed filter out
particulate and an.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Expired filter, a military style filter. It's usually the NATO standard. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
they an expired one. It's like I'm not recommending people
use expired ones, yeah, but they're if you're not defending
yourself against like murder gas, yeah, an expired one should
do you. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
We are again when we come to stuff like this,
as long as you have some sort of filter and
a military gas mask, it's probably going to be certainly
better than nothing. Yeah, because we are just kind of
dealing with smoke in particulate here. We're not dealing with
like mustard gas or saren or whatever. Yet I'm bringing
(26:04):
up gas masks just because it's what a lot of
people might already have on hand or something. As opposed
to recommending that as what you get, you should just
get a respirator. That's going to be a lot more
effective for basically one hundred percent of people. Now, you
will probably notice, if you've been paying attention to what
we've been talking about today, that all of the effective
measures for mitigating the danger of smoke cost money nearly
(26:28):
all of them at least, and also rely on having
stuff like access to transit that can get you to
a store, on you know, having an address that packages
can be delivered to, because once again, as we talked
about with you know, places like India that have been
dealing with smog like this for many, many years, the
costs of climate collapse are always heaviest on those who
can least bear them. Assuming you are housed. There are
(26:51):
some other decent tips that can allow you to protect
your house. One of them is that you probably want
to create a clean room for your animals. Yours and
your dogs number one, are less capable of understanding what's
happened happening, and they will notice something is wrong. You know,
they will not go outside and feel like it's a
normal day just because they're stupid dog or whatever. Like,
(27:15):
they will recognize that something is gravely wrong. You want
to keep them inside as much as possible because it's
even they're smaller than you, right, it's even worse for them.
The same thing with thin like you want to keep
your kids inside because the kind of shit that like
maybe a two hundred pound adult can sort of shrug
off in terms of particulate will hit a sixty five
pound child or a forty five pound dog a lot worse.
(27:36):
So a good thing to do is to create a
clean room, potentially with the kind of filters, the Corsey
Rosenthal filters that we talked about, if you have the
ability doing something like you would do kind of for
a mudroom, a little kind of airlock situation when you
take your pets in and out from doing their business,
so you can minimize the amount of shit that gets in.
(27:56):
There's a few ways to do this. You know, when
there's not currently smog everywhere, Making sure that the seals
and stuff on your windows and doors are of quality
and up to date and recently replaced is key. Obviously,
if you're under smog right now, that's less of a
realistic thing that you can do. But one thing you
can do people, did you know in Portland during this
(28:18):
if you get like towels and soak them and put
them around the edges. If you know you've got oh
I know this windows, Yeah, I know stuff's getting in.
If you kind of can tape that up around and
keep it wet around the window, that will take some
of the basically particulate, it'll get kind of soaked into
the towel and it should minimize kind of what you're
(28:40):
dealing with in the house. I haven't seen, actually, this
is one of the things I haven't seen like studies
on how well this works. But it's what most of
the people I knew who had kind of older houses
did and do during wildfires, and it seems to have
an impact. So I would recommend kind of trying that.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
And if you can get to the store, you get
like foam strips and stuff like that. If you don't
have much money, you can do the whole everything's a
free store for the brave. Yeah, but it's not very
expensive anyway. They're like foam tape.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yeah, And that would be again, much better than trying
to do the wet towel thing. That said. One thing
you should be doing every day is wiping off large
surfaces in your house with a damp cloth to clean
away the particulate that's settled during the day. That's going
to reduce the strain on whatever kind of filters you've
got going indoors. You're going to want to very quickly
(29:31):
change your air filter unless you like if you change
your filter a week or two before this hit, you
know it'll be fine for a little while. But if
like most people, you kind of let that go a
little long, probably one of the first things you should
do is slot in a fresh air filter if you've
got one. If you are shopping for an air filter
and you want something that is going to work better
(29:53):
in your HVAC system on particulate, you want something with
a high minimum efficiency reporting value or MERV, which Margaret
mentioned a little earlier value. Those are going to catch
more particles than normal filters. You're going to want to
switch your HVAC into fan only mode immediately. This will
insist ensure that it runs your indoor air through the
(30:15):
filter rather than pulling air in from the outside. Yeah,
that is a key thing to do. If you've got
kind of a central system, you're also going to want
to turn off anything that pulls in air from the outside, like,
for example, the portable air conditioner units with like hoses
that go at your window, which is the things that
like everyone in the East Coast tends to have as
opposed to a central system.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
So if you've got.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
One of those, some window acs will have what's called
an outdoor air damper that you can close. If they
don't have that, you're going to want to keep it
off and sealed, and you're going to want to in
any case use tape or whatever you have to ensure
that the seal around the unit is more robust. I know,
people generally, you know, can be a little bit lacks
(31:00):
daisical about the actual like window seal with a unit
like that is generally not perfect. You're going to want
to be extra careful because even a small gap, you know,
that that allows shit in, is going to allow quite
a lot of particulate and like a surprising amount. Again,
a lot of some of these methods are just like
stuff that you should be doing to prep your house,
but a lot of them do require resources, which is,
(31:24):
you know, frustrating for a lot of reasons. I'm sure hope.
I'm hoping Margaret that like what you found online is
accurate people's experience and that stores have not sold out
of the things that are useful in this situation. That
is one of those things kind of when we talk
more broadly about preparation for stuff like this, that people
(31:46):
should be thinking about, like don't just think about what
stuff has gone wrong in the past. That's a great
way to have plenty of toilet paper when there's a
shortage of water or whatever. Right Likewise, it's one of
those things where where you know, if you were in
when I made a couple of posts about what was
happening in New York earlier, and somebody responded, and I
(32:08):
was making the joke that like, hey, if you get
a full face respirator, it'll be useful, you know, if
you've got to fight the cops too, And their comment
was like, well, we don't really get tear gassed here.
And first off, I mean that may be true, but
like you guys do get maced, and they're great against mace.
I can say that from a intense personal experience. But
the other thing is that, like, well, that's part of
when we talk about kind of proactive practical prepping. A
(32:31):
big part of it is thinking about stuff that like
maybe unlikely, but it's not impossible, and that if you
don't have shit on hand, you're not going to be
able to deal with, right, Yeah, And one of those
things is having a fucking respirator. Basically, everybody who is
capable of affording them should have a half or a
full faced respirator. You should get that. You should get
(32:51):
a couple of spare filters, and you should just have it,
even if you're in a place where wildfire smoke has
never been a problem for you, because it will be
at some point. That's just basically guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Yeah, And I want to say for dogs, I don't
know about cats, but they make masks for dogs. They
make respirators for dogs. The brand that I've gotten that
I can't specifically, I haven't compared to other brands is
called Canine Mask. And then I know people who have
made their own dog respirators basically out of and ninety
(33:23):
fives and tape and stuff. And then if your dog,
if you're really on top of it, you're going to
do the work to acclimate your dog to this, right, Yeah,
reward reward your dog greatly and slowly build up their tolerance.
And if you don't have time for that, you can
put a cone on your dog to keep your dog
to keep the mask on. And obviously you don't want to,
like I mean, mostly just want to keep your dog inside, right,
(33:45):
But yeah, if your dogs, yeah, exactly, there's actually an
argument for pad training my dog that I I've never.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Bothered to do. And that may be by the way,
when we're talking about like what stuff should you keep
on hand, Well, if you're not a normal pad training person, yeah,
that could be a useful prepping thing to have to
have pads on hand and to occasionally use them. So
the animal understands that that's an option, because they are
a variety of things that might make it not feasible
to take them outdoors, you know, if you don't have
(34:15):
a yard especially so yeah, but also.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Say, even though it's better to look at what's next
instead of what's current, right, like, look at the next
problem instead of the current problem, it's also okay. And
what most people do realistically is prep for the thing
that went bad last time. Yeah, you know, like I
have an emergency blanket on me at almost all times
in my emergency kit because when I was like thirteen,
it saved my life or whatever. Right. Yeah, I've never
(34:41):
needed one ever again, but I didn't forget that I
needed one and someone else had one. I will just
have one, right And you know, so if this is
you're suddenly I need an air purer of fire, it
maybe is too late. It may not be too late.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
It.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Don't beat yourself up if this is when you decide
that you're going to start having one.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Yeah, like it's for one thing. There's this, there's this.
If you like study military history, you run into this too,
like the problem that military planners are always fighting the
last war right when they're when they're preparing for shit,
which is why a lot of like stupid and useless
crafts is on hand every time we enter a new conflict.
(35:20):
But everything actually really does work that way because that's
just the way people be. And so like, I'm sure
basically everyone in New York had extra toilet paper on
hand just shit hit, but they weren't ready for you know,
which is you know that's not New Yorkers, you so stupid. No,
that's everybody. That's how that's how we all are. The
only reason Portland was more prepared for this when it
hit us is that we'd been getting like a significant
(35:42):
portion of the city had been going out and getting
tear gassed every night.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Yeah, but it is.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
It does kind of mean that like part of prepping
is like sitting around and like bullshitting with your friends
if you want to like be all cool and and military.
Larpie about it. You can you can put on gear
and you can like sit around a war table with
a map and game plan out stuff. You can make
it fun. Yeah, Like, there's no reason not to treat
it like a you know, a session of D and D.
(36:09):
Walk through different kinds of problems that you guys think
are more likely and try to lay out kind of
consequence trees as to like what might happen and what
might be necessary, and then you know, think about what
kind of equipment would be useful in those situations and
put it in a kind of teer it in a
list of like what is more affordable, what is more likely,
(36:31):
and you know kind of trioge with that, and what's
small too, Yeah, what's small? Like what's easy to have
on hand?
Speaker 2 (36:37):
I'm going to go get eye drops? Now. I don't
keep eye drops around normally. But as I'm like looking
at this stuff and I'm talking to people who deal
with smoke, they're like, well, the half mask rustpbraider is great,
but if you don't have a full mask rust braider,
bring eye drops, yeah, you know. And I'm like, oh,
that's not something I ever considered. That's cheap and takes
up no room in my truck.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Yeah, you can have that in your go bag, you
can have that in your car.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
You know, I always please keep a set of bone
knives and nitrial gloves and a tarp in my car
because I like to process roadkill. But there's other disasters
that's potentially useful, you know, much like your pig farm.
But much like my pig farm. Yeah, so, and it's
just kind of like like this this this shit's going
(37:23):
to keep happening. Something else will probably happen this year.
That's like a chunk of the country dealing with some
sort of terrible disaster that affects everybody at once that
people in that area at least haven't dealt with before,
like it, because that's the world that we're living in now.
And so you're never going to be perfect at thinking
through stuff. But like, the more time you spend kind
(37:45):
of trying to make your brain elastic when it comes
to disaster, the more likely you are to have at
least some of the things that you need to deal
with problems when they occur, especially since a lot of
tools are like multi use tools. You know, respirators are
great with wildfire smoke. They're also you know, potentially useful
(38:06):
if like, for example, a pandemic where to hit.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Right, wouldn't it be awful if that all this happened
during a respiratory pandemic.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
That would be fucked? Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
And I think that if you do prepping right, it
can actually reduce anxiety instead of increase it. A lot
of people avoid prepping because they're afraid to engage with
these problems because if they if they think, if they
look at the it's the prey animal thing. I don't
know if this is real or not, but you think
if you don't look at the predator, it won't notice you.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
And I think that people do that because they don't
want to think about these things, and that is understandable.
We live in a very high anxiety time, right, But
I think that looking at these problems has overall reduced
my anxiety around them because like, for example, when I
lived in more in the woods than I currently do,
and I live in a cabin in the woods, and
I was like, what will I do if there's a
forest fire? And I thought it through and most of
(38:54):
the answer was keep my car, you know, gassed and
ready to go and have my go bag and I
was like, that's it. That's the only preparation I'm going
to do for this fire that may or may not happen.
And so then I stopped worrying about it because I've
done everything that I'm going to do. There's like a
next level thing, like actually these particular fires, I was
looking it up. I think one hundred thousand people have
(39:15):
been displaced from their homes in Canada as a result
of this.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Jeez it is.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
We are currently at one four hundred percent of the
fires that are normal for this time of the year.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yeah, and we're not even in summer yet.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah, they've eight point seven million acres have burned so
far this year. Six point two million per year is
normal like total, and we're not at summer yet, and
so shit's gonna get worse, but it's not. But we can.
We can handle it. And we can like look at
these things, and we can look at the predator and
(39:51):
well we can't it's invisible because of the yeah, little
invisibility field.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
But we can, we can. I mean, there are some
predators that we can look at, which is where I
should say that. Like there's a pretty good movie about
pipelines that came out recently. Oh yeah, but uh yeah, no,
I mean you you have like looking at in the
face is necessary and also finding This is part of
why I brought up the first thing I brought up
was those those Coarsey Rosenthal filters, because like having a
(40:16):
thing to do when like you wake up in the
morning and it's orange. Yeah, like is a nice way
to allay the doom feeling. Like give yourself a task.
It increases agency. And when you once you build that thing,
you know, either you'll use it all up right away
because those filters don't last forever, or you'll have something
on hand the next time this occurs. Yeah, so yeah,
(40:40):
I don't know. That's what I got, Margaret, You got
anything else to get into?
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Uh. I want to say that if you're in a
fire area, you should have your plan of escape. You
should have your go bag. If a fire is like
particularly likely, you're going to keep that go bag in
your vehicle and keep it pointed outwards. You want to
clear the area around your house if that's something that
you choose to do. Obviously, if you're like, no, the
whole points I live in a cabin with trees over
it or whatever, right, Yeah, And there's more that you
(41:07):
can do to look at making sure that like a
lot of the fires are about sparks getting sucked in
through vents, and there's ways to close it up. And
I also want to say, this is a really good
time to take care of each other in particular, look
out for asthmatic friends, or if you're the asthmatic friend,
get other people to help take care of you. Go
(41:28):
get groceries for your asthmatic friends during a smoke emergency,
because you're going to be able to handle it a
lot better than some other people might.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Yeah, if you're heading down to the store to go
get filters in a box, fan or something, check in
with your neighbors and see how they're doing and what
they're capable of handling for themselves and stuff. You know,
hopefully this won't be bad for everyone for too long,
you know, as we always say. But like, look, guys,
this isn't going to be the last time in New
(41:55):
York is the color of Mexico in a breaking bad right, Yeah,
Like it's this is going to happen again, because the
fires aren't going to stop until there's no more forest
left than they all have, more gloriously clean air.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Well, and then the final thing I want to say
is that like a lot of the stuff, right, like
walking around in a half mask respirator is a little
bit less weird to people than walking around in a
full face respirator is a little bit less weird than
walking around in a gas mask. And and we actually
need to build these social norms. I think the reason
that people have stopped masking in a lot of parts
(42:30):
of the country is literally just because of social norms.
Have stopped having people mask, and people don't want to
be the weirdo with a mask. And I will say,
as someone who has been the weirdo for the past
thirty years of my life, it's not that bad to
be the weirdo. And we can build new social norms.
And so if you're worried about wearing a half mask
(42:51):
respirator and a smoke emergency because you'll look weird, it
is better than getting sick.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Yeah, Yeah, it's one of those things. All of us
crazy people had a nice moment, Yeah, at the start
of the pandemic when we like looked over at our
mountains of beans and storable foods and rifles, and ah,
it was all the worthwhile.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Yeah, and so we need to break the social modum
about preparing in general, right, and I actually, I mean
if you're listening to the show, then you're probably a
little bit aware of this. But we just yeah, like
talk to your friends who wouldn't normally talk about preparing
and talk about how we can how we can do this.
We need to make preparedness like a part of our
culture because shit is getting more intense.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yeah, so you know, handle handle your shit. Sorry, this
is happening to you, you east Sts, you coasties. I
did hear a good joke recently where someone was like,
the visibility is so bad that we New Yorkers can't
even go on walking here anymore. Yeah, it's good. It's
good anyway, enjoy that joke, everybody, and avoid dying.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
monthly at coolzonmedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,
Oh boy, it could happen. Here a podcast about what
we like to call the crumbles, which is the process
of the aspects of modern life that were nice and
convenient and functional breaking down as the climate and our
political systems continue to fray around the edges and gradually collapse. Today,
(00:29):
a lot of you are living through a pretty undeniable
piece of that. If you're anywhere kind of in the
Eastern Seaboard, if you're in New York City, if you're
in Philly, if you're in DC, if you're in one
of the other places at Baltimore, you're dealing with air
quality the likes of which you've probably never seen unless
you fled there from the West coast. Basically everyone who
(00:52):
lives in the northeast of the United States right now,
as well as a huge number of Canadians, are absolutely
cloaked in wildfire smoke, drowning in the ghosts of a
thousand forests. And that's a bummer. It's a bummer, and
it's a real problem. And so I wanted to kind
of sit down with Margaret Killjoy, our resident Prepper extraordinaiy Hi, Margaret, Hello,
(01:15):
how are you yeah? Doing great? Because we're not drowning
in wildfire smoke. But three years ago in Portland in
twenty twenty, the air quality was even worse than it
is in New York City right now. So I've got
some experience dealing with this, and Margaret, you spend a
lot of time thinking about practical prepping, and that's something
(01:37):
that I think a lot of folks probably are wishing
that they had spent more time doing right now. This
is the kind of thing that happens. You know, it's
not on you know, anybody is like a moral thing.
But it happens anytime there's a disaster that affects everybody
at once, all the stuff that is useful for countering
that disaster sells out or is looted very very quickly,
(02:00):
and then people suddenly don't have the kind of options
for tools that they need. You know, this is not great.
So I wanted to kind of sit down first off
and kind of talk about one of the better airsats
tools that you can put together if you are trying
to deal with the problem of making your air cleaner.
And basically we have to kind of split this problem
(02:22):
into two. Right there is the problem of what do
I do if I'm going outside, and we'll talk about
that later. But there's stuff that you purchase, you know,
that is the only things that's going or stuff that
you already had on hand is all that's going to
help in that instance. But there are some things you
can do to keep your inside space clean of particulate
and relatively safe that don't require at least as many
(02:45):
things to purchase, and that are you know, can be
made with stuff that you probably are likelier to have
on hand. So I want to talk first about what
you can do to like filter your indoor air. You know,
in Portland, when we had our horrible fucking wildfire apocalypse,
(03:07):
yellow smog blanketing the world and making everything look like
fucking blade runner, everyone at least had gas masks and
full face respirators, which you know, folks in the Northeast
right now haven't gone through that experience and so don't
have that kind of stuff on hand. But what we
didn't have in Portland was the stuff that can keep
your indoors cleaner. For one thing, people don't have like
(03:28):
HEPA filters or central air you know in Oregon as
often as they have it in some other parts of
this country. And so a lot of people wound up
creating building for themselves what are called Corsey Rosenthal boxes
now a Coarsey Rosenthal box is a kind of like
(03:49):
air filtration system for rooms that's made up of a
box fan and five air filters, like the kind of
filters that you're going to use for your HVAC system
in your house. Right, pretty much most houses are going
to have some kind of like air filter already, and
they're also widely available, Like if you go to any
home depot or lows, they're going to have a shitload
(04:10):
of air filters. You can use multiple different types. The
bigger the air filter, the more air it'll handle. Coursey
Rosenthal boxes were invented kind of right at the start
of the pandemic. One of the guys who made it,
Richard Corsi, was an environmental engineer who kind of realized
as soon as the pandos started that a lot of
(04:30):
poor people were going to be absolutely fucked when it
came to filtering air in their homes because good you
can get like a nice Hepa filter, like standalone Hepa filter,
but they're usually several hundred dollars. So he wanted to
try and provide people with something that could make that
was a lot cheaper. He had worked previously with the
CEO of a filter company that I think is based
(04:52):
in Texas, so he called that guy up and they
collaborated on a design that basically used you build like
a box out of air filters and you stick a
back box fan on top of it. If you google
Coursey Co R SI, Dash Rosenthal R O, S E
N T H A L box, you'll find the Wikipedia
(05:13):
page which has a guide to making these. It's very simple.
If you're not crafty at all or have no real tools,
you can still make it work. I've won a couple
of years ago, you know, when shit happened in Portland,
as did several people I knew. And they're not hard
to do, and the most common size of box that
you can build will allow it'll basically change the air
(05:33):
out in a room five full times per hour and
a five hundred square foot room, which is reasonably good.
It'll make a meaningful difference in your indoor air quality
if you're like blanketed in Hell's mog right now.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yeah, that's about That's about the same as like one
hundred and fifty dollars if you were to like go
out and buy, yeah, a five hundred square foot filter,
it would be about one hundred and fifty bucks.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
And that is about what this will cost you right now,
I think, because shit's got more expensive. At least that's
what a recent Outside magazine article gave the cost of
constructing this interesting that said you might be able to
get it for cheaper. There's a good chance, that's if
you're buying everything. Most people in most places have a
box fan, you know, and most people have a couple
of filters, which which should cut down on the cost.
(06:19):
You know, It'll depend on kind of where you are
and what things are are running. But Hepa filters are
also standalone ones likelier to sell out fast as opposed
to kind of the raw components to making a Coarsey
Rosenthal filter, So you may find it easier to get
access to I like the Corsey Rosenthal filter for a
couple of other reasons. Obviously, it's accessible and it's comparatively affordable,
(06:43):
but it also is something that you can make yourself
that will have a meaningful impact on how you weather
this event. That's important psychologically in a disaster, feeling as
if you have some sort of agency by actually doing
the useful thing, and it can also be important from
a community point of view. You can thear hdically raise
money and put together people to make Corsey Rosenthal boxes
(07:03):
and hand them out to people who maybe can't afford
them or you know, have mobility issues or less able
to get the equipment. That's the kind of thing that
builds community connection and also offers an immediate alleviation of
suffering and health consequences for people, which is the kind
of thing that I like to see people doing in
(07:25):
a disaster like this. I also kind of like this
filter because it represents a rare example of people you
might call elites taking immediate action to ensure cash poor
individuals had a life saving tool available to themselves. It's
one of those kind of rare examples from the start
of the pandemic of like that radical solidarity we saw
bits and pieces of. And I think Jim Rosenthal and
(07:48):
Richard Corsi are pretty cool in my book for figuring
out this thing. So you know, there's a lot that's
nice about these filters.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
So I just looked at the cost of making one,
I just like kind of added it together. It looks
like you could probably make one for about sixty five bucks.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Oh great, great, great grade. It is probably the outside
guy was probably buying all the Gucci shit.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Right, if you just buy cheap, you need at least
a MERV thirteen filter. That's the level of filter where
it starts cutting out smoke. And if you get the
twenty inch filters, which I think is what usually people
are getting a twenty inch box fan, and so it's
and then you only need the four filters, I believe,
because the bottom isn't sucking air in the bottom ends
up a flat when I was looking at it earlier today.
(08:28):
But you've built one and I haven't.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
So yeah, honestly, it was three years ago. Yeah, everybody,
I misspoke saying five. I think you can do it
just fine with four. I'm not sure if either we
did it weird when we did it last or if
I was just remembering wrong, But that means, yeah, a
lot more available. Like I had three filters on hand
in my house this morning, just because that's how many,
(08:51):
you know, I usually keep as a backup. So a
lot of you are probably in a similar situation. And yeah,
that's a more accessible thing compared to the equipment. We're
about to start talking about stuff like respirators and stuff
like standalone HEPA filters, which are likely to sell out
pretty quickly as people go to all of the stores
to buy up all the things.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Although I will say it's almost depressing right now. I
was checking availability for some of my East Coast friends.
I'm actually an East Coast friend normally, but I went
to the land of Smoke, the usual smoke Pacific Northwest
and missed it. But most things are still available right now,
at least as of recording. I don't know whether it's
people just haven't put it together that it's necessary, or
(09:34):
people felt like they couldn't afford it. A lot of
stuff is still in stock as of this.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
That's really good to hear, because that's what we're about
to get into. So I did want to kind of
lead into this, moving from this kind of what I
think is inspiring about the course E. Rosenthal filter, which
is that it's something that is accessible, something that people
can work on and provide for each other together, and
sort of representative of the kind of radical solidarity see
(10:00):
in disasters. I think that's kind of particularly meaningful to
me because of why this air quality event is so
frightening to folks. You know, people who are in New
York or Philly, or Richmond or DC or a lot
of other places in the Northeast have not dealt with
this kind of air quality before. This is because most
(10:25):
people who are young in those areas, because most young
Americans have had the privilege of experiencing air pollution primarily
as either an annoyance or as an abstract concept. A
big part of why is that the Clean Air Act,
instituted in nineteen sixty three, did a huge amount to
stop the kind of poisoning of the sky that led
to fairly regular smog events in the fifties and early
(10:47):
to mid nineteen sixties, even nineteen seventies in a lot
of parts of this country. You know, it took a while.
There was more involved than just the Clean Air Act,
but shit like this used to be a lot more common,
and Americans suffered from a variety of illnesses, including adult
onset emphysema or young adult on set mphysima at a
much higher rate because of stuff like this. If you
(11:08):
are young, and by young, I mean like my age,
Margaret's age, you know, not all that young. Because air
quality in the United States has been significantly better than
it was for like my parents when they were kids.
For quite a while, you have benefited from a pretty
remarkably successful campaign to render Americans at least less vulnerable
(11:30):
to them to this kind of pollution. Now, this came
alongside years of others' reforms and things like emission standards,
which were successful enough that in like West La right now,
a lot of days of the year you can see
the mountains. That was not a thing for people who
lived in Los Angeles and say the nineteen seventies. I
had an annual check up right after I moved there
(11:51):
with my doctor in you know, southern California, and I
asked him, like what life had been like there during
the small years. And the thing that he mentioned to
me that stuck with me is that he had a
shitload of like patients in their twenties who had like
the early symptoms of emphysema, which is just not a
thing that really occurred occurs in southern California anymore. Although,
(12:14):
you know, because of climate change, there are similar things
that are starting to hit. You know, there's a number
of like fungal based infections that people are getting, particularly
in the valley that's really nasty and wildfire smoke could
bring back a lot of this stuff. And so yeah,
we're kind of looking at a lot of the gains
(12:35):
in public health caused by reducing you know, the amount
of smog in the air going away as a result
of you know, externalities that can't be controlled locally. Now,
(12:56):
the downside of the really lovely state of affairs that
was kind of ushered into the Clean Air Act is
that most Americans have spent their lives in kind of
a bubble of artificially pure air, while the negative externalities
that made are tech heavy lives possible were exported to
the global South, and those people experienced with increasing regularity
the kind of catastrophic pollution that in an earlier age
(13:18):
here caused the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland to light on
fire every spring or so. Globally, in twenty eighteen, some
eight point seven million deaths were caused by air pollution,
specifically pollution created via the burning of fossil fuels. David
Wallace Wells, who writes about climate catastrophe better than most people,
put the cost this way in a testimony before the
(13:39):
US Senate Committee on the Budget in twenty twenty one.
Those punishments are harrowingly widespread. The Lancet puts the global
annual death toll of air pollution at nine million. This
is dying at the scale of the Holocaust every single year.
In India, where three hundred and forty nine thousand stillbirths
and miscarriages have been attributed annually to the effects of
air pollution, the average resident of Delhih had his or
(14:00):
her life expectancy shortened by more than nine years from
the repetitive inhalation of smog. Globally, the average figure is
two years.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
So this is bad.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
So this is real bad, and it's one of those
things that we're it's it's so shocking and traumatic to
people right now because we haven't experienced this in most
of the US outside of like, yeah, the West, you
know recently as the wildfires have gotten worst for quite
a while, but the problems that cause this we were,
you know, suffered by people outside of the United States
(14:33):
consistently for years. Like one of the things that's you know,
you've kind of seen on like Twitter and shit, is
like people in the West Coast and the East Coast
fighting about who's had it worse in terms of wildfire
smog lately and like, well, the answer if you want
to talk about who's been dealing with this the worst
and the longest, is like people in fucking Deli, people
in Shinzen, you know, the in China. Like this is
(14:57):
a problem that is primarily born. I mean, this is
not in the US too, by the poor, but it's
been borne by the poor outside of the United States
because we successfully externalized a lot of the consequences of
our lifestyles. And ideally, the hopeful thing is that perhaps
experiencing this in New York City, which is, if you're
(15:18):
not aware, we're the only writers that people apparently listen
to live will cause some kind of enhanced solidarity for
the folks in what you might call or what often
is described as the Global South, who are have been
dealing with this for years and will continue to deal
with this in a much more severe form with much
fewer resources available to them. If you are currently living
(15:40):
in one of the great cities besieged by wildfire smoke,
your life span has already been shortened. Now I'm not
trying to be like panic inducing. We're talking about like
by the same it would be like if you had
smoked half a pack of cigarettes since this all started.
It's kind of similar to that, But there is no
safe amount of time to inhale, particular in the quantities
(16:00):
when you're talking about AQI over four hundred. There's no
safe amount of time to just kind of be raw
dogging the air out in the street. Any amount is
going to damage your lungs, it's going to stiffen your arteries,
it's going to increase your chances of a number of cancer's.
Heart attack risk increases by a meaningful amount. When you
are out dealing with stuff like this, your immune system
is significantly weaker, and.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
You don't get to look cool like smoking.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
You don't get to look cool like smoking. Right Like,
it's all of the downsides of being a daily smoker
with none of the significant benefits of looking rad as
hell of looking like fucking Martin Sheen and apocalypse. Now,
ah man, I love a good smoker, but nobody looks
good in this shit unless you're like, have one of
(16:43):
those sick ass you know, apocalypse dusters, and like a
face mask, which we're about to talk about. Then you
can look cool, although your clothing will probably always smell
of wildfire. There's a lot Also, it's kind of worth
noting that, like when we're talking about the day here,
it's not It may smell like a little like campfire smoke,
(17:04):
but you're also inhaling an incinerated asbestos and particle board,
and you know, presumably hordes of ammunition that had been
buried by Canadian preppers. So like, there's a lot of
reasons why you don't want to breathe this shit in.
So when you go outside, you are going to want
to wear a mask. In ninety fives work reasonably well
for adults if you have any on hand, or if
(17:24):
you're fortunate enough to live in a city with the
kind of emergency preparedness budget that allows them to provide
stuff like that New York City is providing in ninety
fives in some quantity right now. If you're out on
your own, an N ninety five maybe an easy thing
to acquire quickly for relatively cheap. That said, they're not
perfect for one thing. They don't tend to work very
(17:45):
well on kids. For this just because like the fit
is off and wrong. You may find that something like
a KF ninety four allows you to get a better
fit on a child, and those do work reasonably well,
certainly better than like nothing at all in this kind
of a situation. My personal recommendation, if they are in
stock and if you can afford them, is either a
(18:05):
half or a full face respirator. We'll talk about the
differences between those in a second, but these are the
kind of masks that like, if you're a contractor and
you're like putting together a building, you're dealing with a
shitload of insulation, you're like cutting certain kinds of metal,
or you know, you're doing a whole bunch of different
things that can kick up nasty particulate. You probably have
a number of these, right Like people I know in
(18:26):
graffiti and graffiti. Yeah, if you're doing a lot of graffiti,
you know, hang out near a building, you know that
kids that kids spray paint a lot, and then you know,
stick them up with a handgun for their their respirators.
That's a responsible way to deal with Yeah, that's trying
to teach everyone smoke through the respirator. That makes it
(18:46):
extra cool and healthy. So yeah, what we're talking about here, Like,
if you're looking for a thing to type into Google
or whatever, three M half mask respirator. I found a
three and a half mask respirator kit with a couple
of what are called Bayonet filters for forty six forty
(19:06):
one on Granger dot com right now. You can get
them for similar prices on Amazon dot com. If you
walk into a Lows or a home depot and they
have not there hasn't been a run on them, you
can probably find these. You will want to make sure
you get filters with them. Sometimes you get just the
respirator and you have to buy the filters separately. Usually
if you get one, it'll it'll come with them, But
(19:27):
make sure the filters are going to be these. Most
of them look kind of like triangles with like rounded
edges that are sort of this like pinkish purple color.
For the most part, there's some that are gray and
like circular. It doesn't really matter you know which kind
of filters yours get. I would say just get whatever
they have the most of Well, yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
The in general, the filters filter out a ton of
different stuff, And the thing you're looking for is the
particulate filteration, which is actually the easiest and that's why
almost any filter will do this. The rawest doesn't do
anything else. Filter that you would be looking for is
a P one hundred and sometimes those are they're more likely.
I believe three M marks them as the pink, So
(20:07):
if it's pink, it's particulate with three M. There's other brands.
There's Honeywell, and then there's Yeah, I can't remember off
the top of my head, but anyway, P one hundred
is like you just look for particular filter. But honestly, yeah,
pretty much anything is going to do it.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Basically, any kind of respirator you're going to get it,
like a home depot with filters is going to be
sufficient for this. Yeah, there are kind of like the
one and that. There's two main categories of respirators. The
one we're interested in are called air purifying respirators. That
means you breathe in the air from outside and it
filters it right. The other kind of atmosphere supplying respirators,
(20:42):
which normal people do not need in this situation. That's like,
you know, it has like a tank of stuff walking around.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Don't get that.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
It's going to be a lot more than is necessary
for at least the next like six to eight months.
Respirators are then further divided into half face masks, which
things like Batman from that the worst of the Nolan
Batman or not Batman, think of Bane from the Worst
of the Nolan Batman movies. It's a little bit like
that right where it's kind of just over your mouth
and jaw. And then there's full face masks and there
(21:15):
are also reusable elastomeric respirators. I tend to prefer half
a full face masks for one thing, there's no reason
to like, you're not working in some sort of like
capacity where you want to be tossing it every time.
You know, you might as well just get one. You
can plug new filters into. A half face mask is
going to be a lot more convenient. It's a lot
(21:35):
less sort of weight and stuff, but it doesn't protect
your eyes or anything, which if you're dealing with really
heavy particulate, you may find your eyes getting irritated out there.
The benefit of a full face mask is that it
does protect your eyes, and if you happen to ever
be in a situation where there's hella, mace or tear
gas being used, it provides excellent protection from that kind
(21:56):
of thing. The downside is that these are three to
four times as expensive as the half faced respirator, so
they're not my general recommendation to people. But again, either
of them is going to be perfectly adequate for wildfire smoke.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
And then the full face ones of the additional problem
of most of them are not designed for wearing glasses, yes,
and you need a full seal on the side of it,
so don't just throw it over your glasses. But they
make adapters or you can wear contacts if you're not
actually out expecting chemical weapons.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
And I would do that sometimes when we were dealing
specific particularly with like mace heavy fights. As contacts and
a full face it always worked for me. People will
say that if you have a beard, it can fuck
with the seal. I think, I'm sure that's true with
like really heavy beards. I keep mine reasonably trim, and
I never noticed a problem, you know, even in very
thick tear gas with either my full face or with
(22:47):
my gas mask.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
So you know, this is why beards fell out of
favor in the United States.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Oh, because of a World War One and gas masks.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Military people had to start shaving because otherwise you'll die.
Because that's the difference, right, Like, oh, a little bit
of smoke is getting in that sucks a little bit
of murder gas gets in.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Yeah, that's you have a more severe problem. Yeah, so
a lot of folks may be and I've seen questions
about like getting a gas mask, right and obviously, if
that's what's available to you, if you already happen to
have one because you're a weirdo prepper, or if that's
just what you can find, a gas mask will indeed
protect you from particulate. You may if you are someone
(23:25):
who has the benefit of money, decide I'm going to
just go ahead and get a good gas mask if so,
you know, there's a number of places you can look
to for that. The one I have is called a
Mirram ir. They're three four hundred dollars something like that.
I can confirm that they work great when you're drenched
in tear gas so heavy that you can't see through it.
People bitch at them online in like weirdo prepper communities
(23:47):
sometimes because they have some like silly attachments and stuff
that are kind of too expensive. But like I have
used every kind of face mask filtering product in heavy
gas and mace. Mirror are comfortable, they do work well.
That said, much more expensive and much heavier than you
need for something like filtering particulate. This would not be
(24:08):
my first go to for anybody. Any kind of gas
mask you get is going to be very bulky. Even
the ones that are made specifically for stuff like special
Forces use where they're like really streamlines so that you
can like shoulder a rifle with them, those are still
much bulkier than you know a normal half faced respirator
is going to be. They also, you know, one of
(24:30):
the benefits. One thing I will say I did a
few times when Portland was bad, as I would put
on two filters in my gas mask, which allows you
to kind of breathe it close to the normal rate
that you can, and I would go jogging because like
otherwise you really can't safely. I'm not saying you should
do this. Please don't like avoid outdoor exercise as a
general rule anyway, Military surplus gas masks if that's what
(24:53):
you have again, and you have filters for them that
can help. If you do attempt to do this, you
will immediately get in an understanding of why chemical warfare
sucks so much, because most especially MILLSERP gas masks suck
ass to wear super uncomfortable, super shitty visibility, not ever
my primary recommendation, but again, if that's what you've got
(25:16):
and all you can get, it will indeed filter out
particulate and an.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Expired filter, a military style filter. It's usually the NATO standard. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
they an expired one. It's like I'm not recommending people
use expired ones, yeah, but they're if you're not defending
yourself against like murder gas, yeah, an expired one should
do you. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
We are again when we come to stuff like this,
as long as you have some sort of filter and
a military gas mask, it's probably going to be certainly
better than nothing. Yeah, because we are just kind of
dealing with smoke in particulate here. We're not dealing with
like mustard gas or saren or whatever. Yet I'm bringing
(26:04):
up gas masks just because it's what a lot of
people might already have on hand or something. As opposed
to recommending that as what you get, you should just
get a respirator. That's going to be a lot more
effective for basically one hundred percent of people. Now, you
will probably notice, if you've been paying attention to what
we've been talking about today, that all of the effective
measures for mitigating the danger of smoke cost money nearly
(26:28):
all of them at least, and also rely on having
stuff like access to transit that can get you to
a store, on you know, having an address that packages
can be delivered to, because once again, as we talked
about with you know, places like India that have been
dealing with smog like this for many, many years, the
costs of climate collapse are always heaviest on those who
can least bear them. Assuming you are housed. There are
(26:51):
some other decent tips that can allow you to protect
your house. One of them is that you probably want
to create a clean room for your animals. Yours and
your dogs number one, are less capable of understanding what's
happened happening, and they will notice something is wrong. You know,
they will not go outside and feel like it's a
normal day just because they're stupid dog or whatever. Like,
(27:15):
they will recognize that something is gravely wrong. You want
to keep them inside as much as possible because it's
even they're smaller than you, right, it's even worse for them.
The same thing with thin like you want to keep
your kids inside because the kind of shit that like
maybe a two hundred pound adult can sort of shrug
off in terms of particulate will hit a sixty five
pound child or a forty five pound dog a lot worse.
(27:36):
So a good thing to do is to create a
clean room, potentially with the kind of filters, the Corsey
Rosenthal filters that we talked about, if you have the
ability doing something like you would do kind of for
a mudroom, a little kind of airlock situation when you
take your pets in and out from doing their business,
so you can minimize the amount of shit that gets in.
(27:56):
There's a few ways to do this. You know, when
there's not currently smog everywhere, Making sure that the seals
and stuff on your windows and doors are of quality
and up to date and recently replaced is key. Obviously,
if you're under smog right now, that's less of a
realistic thing that you can do. But one thing you
can do people, did you know in Portland during this
(28:18):
if you get like towels and soak them and put
them around the edges. If you know you've got oh
I know this windows, Yeah, I know stuff's getting in.
If you kind of can tape that up around and
keep it wet around the window, that will take some
of the basically particulate, it'll get kind of soaked into
the towel and it should minimize kind of what you're
(28:40):
dealing with in the house. I haven't seen, actually, this
is one of the things I haven't seen like studies
on how well this works. But it's what most of
the people I knew who had kind of older houses
did and do during wildfires, and it seems to have
an impact. So I would recommend kind of trying that.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
And if you can get to the store, you get
like foam strips and stuff like that. If you don't
have much money, you can do the whole everything's a
free store for the brave. Yeah, but it's not very
expensive anyway. They're like foam tape.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yeah, And that would be again, much better than trying
to do the wet towel thing. That said. One thing
you should be doing every day is wiping off large
surfaces in your house with a damp cloth to clean
away the particulate that's settled during the day. That's going
to reduce the strain on whatever kind of filters you've
got going indoors. You're going to want to very quickly
(29:31):
change your air filter unless you like if you change
your filter a week or two before this hit, you
know it'll be fine for a little while. But if
like most people, you kind of let that go a
little long, probably one of the first things you should
do is slot in a fresh air filter if you've
got one. If you are shopping for an air filter
and you want something that is going to work better
(29:53):
in your HVAC system on particulate, you want something with
a high minimum efficiency reporting value or MERV, which Margaret
mentioned a little earlier value. Those are going to catch
more particles than normal filters. You're going to want to
switch your HVAC into fan only mode immediately. This will
insist ensure that it runs your indoor air through the
(30:15):
filter rather than pulling air in from the outside. Yeah,
that is a key thing to do. If you've got
kind of a central system, you're also going to want
to turn off anything that pulls in air from the outside, like,
for example, the portable air conditioner units with like hoses
that go at your window, which is the things that
like everyone in the East Coast tends to have as
opposed to a central system.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
So if you've got.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
One of those, some window acs will have what's called
an outdoor air damper that you can close. If they
don't have that, you're going to want to keep it
off and sealed, and you're going to want to in
any case use tape or whatever you have to ensure
that the seal around the unit is more robust. I know,
people generally, you know, can be a little bit lacks
(31:00):
daisical about the actual like window seal with a unit
like that is generally not perfect. You're going to want
to be extra careful because even a small gap, you know,
that that allows shit in, is going to allow quite
a lot of particulate and like a surprising amount. Again,
a lot of some of these methods are just like
stuff that you should be doing to prep your house,
but a lot of them do require resources, which is,
(31:24):
you know, frustrating for a lot of reasons. I'm sure hope.
I'm hoping Margaret that like what you found online is
accurate people's experience and that stores have not sold out
of the things that are useful in this situation. That
is one of those things kind of when we talk
more broadly about preparation for stuff like this, that people
(31:46):
should be thinking about, like don't just think about what
stuff has gone wrong in the past. That's a great
way to have plenty of toilet paper when there's a
shortage of water or whatever. Right Likewise, it's one of
those things where where you know, if you were in
when I made a couple of posts about what was
happening in New York earlier, and somebody responded, and I
(32:08):
was making the joke that like, hey, if you get
a full face respirator, it'll be useful, you know, if
you've got to fight the cops too, And their comment
was like, well, we don't really get tear gassed here.
And first off, I mean that may be true, but
like you guys do get maced, and they're great against mace.
I can say that from a intense personal experience. But
the other thing is that, like, well, that's part of
when we talk about kind of proactive practical prepping. A
(32:31):
big part of it is thinking about stuff that like
maybe unlikely, but it's not impossible, and that if you
don't have shit on hand, you're not going to be
able to deal with, right, Yeah, And one of those
things is having a fucking respirator. Basically, everybody who is
capable of affording them should have a half or a
full faced respirator. You should get that. You should get
(32:51):
a couple of spare filters, and you should just have it,
even if you're in a place where wildfire smoke has
never been a problem for you, because it will be
at some point. That's just basically guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Yeah, And I want to say for dogs, I don't
know about cats, but they make masks for dogs. They
make respirators for dogs. The brand that I've gotten that
I can't specifically, I haven't compared to other brands is
called Canine Mask. And then I know people who have
made their own dog respirators basically out of and ninety
(33:23):
fives and tape and stuff. And then if your dog,
if you're really on top of it, you're going to
do the work to acclimate your dog to this, right, Yeah,
reward reward your dog greatly and slowly build up their tolerance.
And if you don't have time for that, you can
put a cone on your dog to keep your dog
to keep the mask on. And obviously you don't want to,
like I mean, mostly just want to keep your dog inside, right,
(33:45):
But yeah, if your dogs, yeah, exactly, there's actually an
argument for pad training my dog that I I've never.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Bothered to do. And that may be by the way,
when we're talking about like what stuff should you keep
on hand, Well, if you're not a normal pad training person, yeah,
that could be a useful prepping thing to have to
have pads on hand and to occasionally use them. So
the animal understands that that's an option, because they are
a variety of things that might make it not feasible
to take them outdoors, you know, if you don't have
(34:15):
a yard especially so yeah, but also.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Say, even though it's better to look at what's next
instead of what's current, right, like, look at the next
problem instead of the current problem, it's also okay. And
what most people do realistically is prep for the thing
that went bad last time. Yeah, you know, like I
have an emergency blanket on me at almost all times
in my emergency kit because when I was like thirteen,
it saved my life or whatever. Right. Yeah, I've never
(34:41):
needed one ever again, but I didn't forget that I
needed one and someone else had one. I will just
have one, right And you know, so if this is
you're suddenly I need an air purer of fire, it
maybe is too late. It may not be too late.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
It.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Don't beat yourself up if this is when you decide
that you're going to start having one.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Yeah, like it's for one thing. There's this, there's this.
If you like study military history, you run into this too,
like the problem that military planners are always fighting the
last war right when they're when they're preparing for shit,
which is why a lot of like stupid and useless
crafts is on hand every time we enter a new conflict.
(35:20):
But everything actually really does work that way because that's
just the way people be. And so like, I'm sure
basically everyone in New York had extra toilet paper on
hand just shit hit, but they weren't ready for you know,
which is you know that's not New Yorkers, you so stupid. No,
that's everybody. That's how that's how we all are. The
only reason Portland was more prepared for this when it
hit us is that we'd been getting like a significant
(35:42):
portion of the city had been going out and getting
tear gassed every night.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Yeah, but it is.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
It does kind of mean that like part of prepping
is like sitting around and like bullshitting with your friends
if you want to like be all cool and and military.
Larpie about it. You can you can put on gear
and you can like sit around a war table with
a map and game plan out stuff. You can make
it fun. Yeah, Like, there's no reason not to treat
it like a you know, a session of D and D.
(36:09):
Walk through different kinds of problems that you guys think
are more likely and try to lay out kind of
consequence trees as to like what might happen and what
might be necessary, and then you know, think about what
kind of equipment would be useful in those situations and
put it in a kind of teer it in a
list of like what is more affordable, what is more likely,
(36:31):
and you know kind of trioge with that, and what's
small too, Yeah, what's small? Like what's easy to have
on hand?
Speaker 2 (36:37):
I'm going to go get eye drops? Now. I don't
keep eye drops around normally. But as I'm like looking
at this stuff and I'm talking to people who deal
with smoke, they're like, well, the half mask rustpbraider is great,
but if you don't have a full mask rust braider,
bring eye drops, yeah, you know. And I'm like, oh,
that's not something I ever considered. That's cheap and takes
up no room in my truck.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Yeah, you can have that in your go bag, you
can have that in your car.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
You know, I always please keep a set of bone
knives and nitrial gloves and a tarp in my car
because I like to process roadkill. But there's other disasters
that's potentially useful, you know, much like your pig farm.
But much like my pig farm. Yeah, so, and it's
just kind of like like this this this shit's going
(37:23):
to keep happening. Something else will probably happen this year.
That's like a chunk of the country dealing with some
sort of terrible disaster that affects everybody at once that
people in that area at least haven't dealt with before,
like it, because that's the world that we're living in now.
And so you're never going to be perfect at thinking
through stuff. But like, the more time you spend kind
(37:45):
of trying to make your brain elastic when it comes
to disaster, the more likely you are to have at
least some of the things that you need to deal
with problems when they occur, especially since a lot of
tools are like multi use tools. You know, respirators are
great with wildfire smoke. They're also you know, potentially useful
(38:06):
if like, for example, a pandemic where to hit.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Right, wouldn't it be awful if that all this happened
during a respiratory pandemic.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
That would be fucked? Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
And I think that if you do prepping right, it
can actually reduce anxiety instead of increase it. A lot
of people avoid prepping because they're afraid to engage with
these problems because if they if they think, if they
look at the it's the prey animal thing. I don't
know if this is real or not, but you think
if you don't look at the predator, it won't notice you.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
And I think that people do that because they don't
want to think about these things, and that is understandable.
We live in a very high anxiety time, right, But
I think that looking at these problems has overall reduced
my anxiety around them because like, for example, when I
lived in more in the woods than I currently do,
and I live in a cabin in the woods, and
I was like, what will I do if there's a
forest fire? And I thought it through and most of
(38:54):
the answer was keep my car, you know, gassed and
ready to go and have my go bag and I
was like, that's it. That's the only preparation I'm going
to do for this fire that may or may not happen.
And so then I stopped worrying about it because I've
done everything that I'm going to do. There's like a
next level thing, like actually these particular fires, I was
looking it up. I think one hundred thousand people have
(39:15):
been displaced from their homes in Canada as a result
of this.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Jeez it is.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
We are currently at one four hundred percent of the
fires that are normal for this time of the year.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yeah, and we're not even in summer yet.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah, they've eight point seven million acres have burned so
far this year. Six point two million per year is
normal like total, and we're not at summer yet, and
so shit's gonna get worse, but it's not. But we can.
We can handle it. And we can like look at
these things, and we can look at the predator and
(39:51):
well we can't it's invisible because of the yeah, little
invisibility field.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
But we can, we can. I mean, there are some
predators that we can look at, which is where I
should say that. Like there's a pretty good movie about
pipelines that came out recently. Oh yeah, but uh yeah, no,
I mean you you have like looking at in the
face is necessary and also finding This is part of
why I brought up the first thing I brought up
was those those Coarsey Rosenthal filters, because like having a
(40:16):
thing to do when like you wake up in the
morning and it's orange. Yeah, like is a nice way
to allay the doom feeling. Like give yourself a task.
It increases agency. And when you once you build that thing,
you know, either you'll use it all up right away
because those filters don't last forever, or you'll have something
on hand the next time this occurs. Yeah, so yeah,
(40:40):
I don't know. That's what I got, Margaret, You got
anything else to get into?
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Uh. I want to say that if you're in a
fire area, you should have your plan of escape. You
should have your go bag. If a fire is like
particularly likely, you're going to keep that go bag in
your vehicle and keep it pointed outwards. You want to
clear the area around your house if that's something that
you choose to do. Obviously, if you're like, no, the
whole points I live in a cabin with trees over
it or whatever, right, Yeah, And there's more that you
(41:07):
can do to look at making sure that like a
lot of the fires are about sparks getting sucked in
through vents, and there's ways to close it up. And
I also want to say, this is a really good
time to take care of each other in particular, look
out for asthmatic friends, or if you're the asthmatic friend,
get other people to help take care of you. Go
(41:28):
get groceries for your asthmatic friends during a smoke emergency,
because you're going to be able to handle it a
lot better than some other people might.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Yeah, if you're heading down to the store to go
get filters in a box, fan or something, check in
with your neighbors and see how they're doing and what
they're capable of handling for themselves and stuff. You know,
hopefully this won't be bad for everyone for too long,
you know, as we always say. But like, look, guys,
this isn't going to be the last time in New
(41:55):
York is the color of Mexico in a breaking bad right, Yeah,
Like it's this is going to happen again, because the
fires aren't going to stop until there's no more forest
left than they all have, more gloriously clean air.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Well, and then the final thing I want to say
is that like a lot of the stuff, right, like
walking around in a half mask respirator is a little
bit less weird to people than walking around in a
full face respirator is a little bit less weird than
walking around in a gas mask. And and we actually
need to build these social norms. I think the reason
that people have stopped masking in a lot of parts
(42:30):
of the country is literally just because of social norms.
Have stopped having people mask, and people don't want to
be the weirdo with a mask. And I will say,
as someone who has been the weirdo for the past
thirty years of my life, it's not that bad to
be the weirdo. And we can build new social norms.
And so if you're worried about wearing a half mask
(42:51):
respirator and a smoke emergency because you'll look weird, it
is better than getting sick.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Yeah, Yeah, it's one of those things. All of us
crazy people had a nice moment, Yeah, at the start
of the pandemic when we like looked over at our
mountains of beans and storable foods and rifles, and ah,
it was all the worthwhile.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Yeah, and so we need to break the social modum
about preparing in general, right, and I actually, I mean
if you're listening to the show, then you're probably a
little bit aware of this. But we just yeah, like
talk to your friends who wouldn't normally talk about preparing
and talk about how we can how we can do this.
We need to make preparedness like a part of our
culture because shit is getting more intense.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yeah, so you know, handle handle your shit. Sorry, this
is happening to you, you east Sts, you coasties. I
did hear a good joke recently where someone was like,
the visibility is so bad that we New Yorkers can't
even go on walking here anymore. Yeah, it's good. It's
good anyway, enjoy that joke, everybody, and avoid dying.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
monthly at coolzonmedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,
It Could Happen Here News
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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