CLASSIC: Power, Water and Texas: What happened?

When an unprecedented series of winter storms left millions of people throughout Texas struggling to survive without electricity or clean water, local authorities scrambled to get the lights back on--and to find a scapegoat. What exactly happened? What is it about Texas in particular that made the state so vunerable to this weather, and what happens next? Tune in to learn more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fill a conspiracy realist. We're returning with a classic episode.
Cast your mind back to twenty twenty one, so long ago, now, right, guys,
it's a yeah, it's a story that takes us to
an event that captured national attention. As winter storms swept

(00:21):
through Texas, the people of Texas very quickly found themselves
without electricity or clean water millions.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Wasn't this the one where Ted Cruz kind of effed
off to vacation town when all this was going on,
very same, I think.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
So, oh, okay, and that's ringing bells.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yes, sorry, he was a senator at the time, but yeah,
that's what's ringing a bell. He went to Cancun.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Dude, this was the whole Urkat thing, the Electric Reliability
Council of Texas.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
And we are airing this because although it is a
discrete instance happened years ago. Now we know that winter
is coming, not to be all Game of Thrones about it,
and our question is will Texas be prepared for this winter?

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Oh, especially as those data centers start making their way
into the big state.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Let's jump right in.

Speaker 4 (01:21):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
They call me Ben.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
We are joined as always with our super producer Paul.
Mission control decands. Most importantly, you are here and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. As always,
this these episodes are for all our fellow conspiracy realist
out there. Today's episode is especially for our friends and

(02:12):
family in Texas and for all your friends and family
in Texas as well. This is an ongoing situation. It's
kind of it's kind of wild, to say the least.
We've been on an infrastructure kick lately, ever since our
earlier strange news segment about that hacker in Oldsmar, Florida.

(02:32):
You know, the one who tried to poison the city
with lie.

Speaker 4 (02:37):
I believe it was mm HM.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Which apparently is a thing that goes in water in
some small amount and he just upped the ante yup.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
And then we talked about the brian that gets produced
that may be radioactive. No, it is radioactive in making
energy from fracking and other processes.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Who new infrastructure could be so terrifying and fascinating, so boring.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
That's why it's a sleeping giant of conspiracy, corruption, and problems. Like,
if you're reporting for a news site, you know that
a story about infrastructure probably won't get you a ton
of clicks or eyeballs. If you are running for office,
railing about the danger of failing infrastructure probably isn't going
to do much to help.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
You get elected.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
And if you do fix this stuff, people will usually
not bother to acknowledge or thank you for maintaining or
fixing it, not because they're being dicks, but because infrastructure,
when it works, becomes invisible.

Speaker 5 (03:38):
Right.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
It's sort of like when you have to buy new
tires for your car, or like a new battery. That's
like the least sexy fun purchase ever. You just resent
it because it's just supposed to work, and when it
doesn't it makes you angry, and then you resent having
to spend the money. But then you know it's nice
when it does work, but then you forget all about it.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
Right, Yeah, we only notice this stuff or care about it,
and it breaks when the lights don't come on when
you flip the switch, when the water doesn't come out
of the faucet when you turn the knob, and then
immediately we scramble for someone to blame. It is boring
as hell to be prepared, but if you ask any
boy scout or any Texan nowadays, they'll tell you being

(04:18):
prepared can save lives. Our story today is about the
ongoing winter storm crisis in Texas. Here are the facts
to figure out what happened. You know, first, this storm
was not restricted to Texas. It hit parts of northern Mexico.
It hit huge swaths of the US and the rest

(04:40):
of the North American continent. But Texas had a unique
situation due to their power grid. And there's an old
story behind this, right, a.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Story that begins in Texas in the dawn of the
previous century. In the years following the construction of the
first US power plant by Thomas Edison in Manhattan in
eighteen eighty two, small plants started popping up again. Maybe
that's where plants came from, because they're like plants popping
up around different areas of the nation, including Texas. And

(05:14):
as time went on, these utilities began to become interconnected
to one another, and the phenomenon of this interconnectedness accelerated
during the First World War because it was.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
Necessary absolutely, and expansion continued, more and more folks living
further and further away from city centers. And guess what
in World War Two? That expansion continued and the interconnectedness
grew more connected, solidified. I don't know what we want
to call it, more connecting, yes, yes, And something else

(05:50):
interesting happened during the World War two times here in
the US, specifically out Texas Way utilities there in Texas
began joining together too. Ben, you've written in the isline
here vultronning up. And I love that that concept of
all of the different plants and electrical minigrids, they're just

(06:11):
vultroning to become one giant. What's what's bigger than a
megawatt or ki gigawatts.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
Or perhaps for our younger listeners, power rangering up, becoming
a megatron of.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
Sorts, right, or they assembled the Avengers. Look, we spend
a lot of time megazored. Yes, yeah, uh so they
formed something collectively known as the Texas Interconnected System. Let's
call it the TIS for the sake of brevity. This
had some tremendous advantages in the beginning, both for the

(06:49):
businesses and for the customers. First, it allowed these this
network really allowed for the transmission of extra electricity to
these factories that have massively ramped up production for the
war effort. They're working around the clock. You gotta feed
the machine. But second, in the longer term, it allowed

(07:11):
these utilities to link to ginormous dams along Texas rivers.
And this is where our first plot twist starts. So
for a very long time, this TIS was actually a
group name for two distinct entities, one in northern Texas,
one in southern Texas. They were different, but they worked

(07:33):
together because they were on the same page about pretty
much everything. They had one primary ulterior motive, and it
was not to provide the best service to customers what right.
Their ulterior motive was to stay independent from larger oversights,
avoid the constraints and big brotherhood and those silly regulations

(07:56):
that come in at the federal level.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Which is a thing kind of at the heart of
like Texas history, right, I mean that they've always kind
of threatened to secede from the Union or formed their
own you know, mega state or whatever it seems to be.
That that autonomy and that fear or resentment of big
government is very much ingrained into the history of the
state of Texas.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
Oh yeah, well, and remember another thing. There's a reason
it's called Texas tea oil that is black goal.

Speaker 5 (08:28):
There's a reason.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
It's because that's a resource that is all over the
place in Texas and has been for a long time.
And that meant that being independent from the other larger
systems across North America was easier for Texas, right, because
they've got so much natural energy already existing there, not
just oil too. Well.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Also, they don't want anyone coming in and drinking up their.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Milkshake, right, Yeah, they've got Texas is a resource rich
state in a resource rich country. They don't just have oil,
they have natural gas and coal, and natural gas plays
a big part in today's story. There was a really
interesting study I read a number of years ago about

(09:12):
which US states could function autonomously, like just in terms
of providing resources for the people who already lived there
other than geopolitical about it. And you know, California is
on that list, but Texas is on that list too.
It's a big, big place with a lot of stuff,
very climate. You know, a ton of agriculture as well.

(09:35):
So with all this, with all these resources already at
their fingertips, the powers that be in Texas were able
to fuel their power plants with in state resources. This
was very important because it meant that they had encapsulated
this industry all within the state lines.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
On both ends.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
They were kind of think of it as like growing
or harvesting their own power. And then they also only
sending it to places in Texas. That's the way they
wanted it because otherwise Uncle Sam gets involved and makes
you do silly things like be prepared. Back in nineteen
thirty five, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who's the president at the time,

(10:16):
signed something called the Federal Power Act into law. This
gave an outfit called the Federal Power Commission the ability
slash mandate to oversee all interstate electricity sales. The Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission replaced it, and they currently handle all
this stuff today. So what was Texas's solution to what

(10:38):
they saw as federal overreach? Just never cross the state line.
Just don't ever do it, and then we will be
fine here with our lone star approach to energy and
the rest of you, you other forty nine states. Well,
there weren't fifty at that point. Can continue your own
song and dance, just leave us out of it.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
It makes me think of something Hank Hill I'd say,
is like, Wow, would I ever want to leave Texas? Exactly?

Speaker 3 (11:04):
Well, and also, good luck to you Hawaii and Alaska.
Good look getting power lines out to where you are.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
Hah right, The caption says laughs in Texan. Yes, So,
Texas flirted with the idea of regulation at various points,
and until the nineteen seventies they have virtually no regulation.
In nineteen seventy, something probably heard a lot of in

(11:32):
the news recently was formed. It's the Energy Reliability Council
of Texas or Urkott. Not to be confused as we
discussed earlier with Ergot poisoning or EPCOT at Disney. Urkott
is not as bad as Ergot poisoning, and it is
probably not as fun to visit there as it is

(11:52):
to visit Epcott. So I feel like that's a very
fair way, a fair spectrum. You put Urkott off.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
For sure, Well, you definitely can't get a Belgian beer
while walking around parts of Urkot. I don't think it
works that way.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
You're right, that's true. You also probably won't get spasms, diarrhea, mania, psychosis, headaches, nausea, vomiting.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
Desquamation not EPCOT.

Speaker 5 (12:14):
That's not epcot.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
That's not epcot.

Speaker 2 (12:16):
That's not that's not what I got's about, man.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
Desquamation is a grizzly word of the day. It's it's
its street name is skin peeling. Anyway, anyway, before I
take us two far down the wrong rabbit hole. Urkott
was formed largely in reaction to a massive blackout in
November of nineteen sixty five, which some of our listeners
may may remember. When Texas went back to deregulation in

(12:46):
the nineteen nineties, this agency, this institution, Urkott, assumed additional responsibilities,
and the entire time they kept that old, that old goal.
They stayed beyond the reach of the FEDS. There were
complications because the thing about these sorts of grand, multi
generational schemes with many moving parts is they never work

(13:09):
out one hundred percent. I wish people would just say
that at the top of this kind of stuff. They
never work out one hundred percent. There are always exceptions,
there are always missteps, there are always plot twists, and
over the years, Texas itself has breached its energy independence
a couple of times out of necessity, I would say, yep.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
Once it happened during World War Two, when special provisions
were made to link Texas to other grids and time
of crisis obviously makes sense. Glad they went along with it,
but I guess they could probably have had their arms
twisted as well. Then there's nineteen seventy six, during an
event known as a very sexy event name the Midnight Connection.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
It's also our that's the inspiration for our stuff. They'll
want you to know R and B band.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
Yes, yeah, And that was when a Texas utility on
purpose flipped a switch and sent power to Oklahoma, just
for a few hours. And this was what the Feds
were hoping for, and it set off a massive legal
battle that could have brought Texas to their knees in
terms of, you know, power autonomy under federal regulators. Ultimately,

(14:18):
Texas did win the day and ended up staying off
those larger grids.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
And this wasn't the only event. That's one of the
big ones, right, there's several others, and Texas ended up
in a bit of a have your cake and eat
it too situation. I love the concept there. In twenty eleven,
the state started getting some power from Mexico during another
set of issues where they were rolling blackouts where they

(14:44):
kind of had to force some people to go without
power in order to get power to the places that
it needed to be.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
The expression and have your cake and eat it too
is always really fascinating me.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
You know.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
It makes me think of Schrodinger's cat. We call it
like it's there and not there at the same time,
which is to referra to that as Shirtinger's cake.

Speaker 3 (15:01):
I like that, and we we say it this way,
having your cake and eating it too. Because this connection
to Mexico a couple this one connection that we just
mentioned earlier. It means that Texas right now does have
several power connections to Mexico as well as to the
larger energy grid in the United States. But it doesn't

(15:22):
mean that they're being regulated by the FEDS. They've they've
they've still got some regulation when it comes to RKAT,
that Energy and Reliability Group that we're talking about here,
they are kind of looked over in a way. It's
kind of strange when you read some of the some
of the ways it works online, but they're they're kind

(15:45):
of overseen by the Public Utility Commission of Texas. And
I only say kind of because it feels a little
strange sometimes at least from an outside perspective about who
is actually in charge in many situations.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
Yeah. Absolutely, because we talked a little bit about the
territoriality of different stakeholders in the energy industry. The Public
Utilities Commission has been accused of being toothless in the past,
and that's why you see Urkott getting a lot of
the a lot of the spotlight of infamy and controversy

(16:23):
right now. Urkott does have They have three ties to Mexico,
two ties to the larger Eastern Grid. The US think
of it in terms of three big grids for the country.
They're not very creative with the names. One is the
Western Interconnection, one is the Eastern Interconnection, and the other

(16:44):
one is Texas. Ninety percent of Texas falls under the
purview of Urkot, and well, as I think we mentioned earlier,
the parts of Texas that were in that ten percent,
or we're in areas that ha and full deregulated. Whethered
the literal storm better than their neighbors. So all five

(17:07):
of those links to these other grids can be used
to move commercial power, and they can also be used
in emergencies. But to your point, Matt, they do not
They do not trigger federal oversight, which is what these
organizations want. Everything was going fine now under a deregulated market. Yes,

(17:30):
many people in Texas were paying more for power than
they would have in a more regulated market, but that
wasn't necessarily the priority of these companies. Things start to
go wrong earlier this month, in early February, the s
hit the fan. And by s we mean massive winter storms.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
I really thought you're going to say massive winter.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
Well, we'll keep this part in.

Speaker 5 (17:56):
They just or we could just bleep the storms.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Remember that line from that robot voice track on Okay Computer.
He literally says froze and winters.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Yeah, yeah, okay, So let's keep this whole thing.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
So there was this, because we'll need the levity in
a second, there was an unprecedented Matt. You've heard there
was a massive storm. There were actually two. There was
a pair of winter storms that caused record low temperatures
across the state. First one hits February tenth through February eleventh,

(18:32):
and then another one February thirteenth to February seventeenth. Just
for a snap shot, temperatures in Dallas Fort Worth plummeted
to negative two degrees fahrenheit minus nineteen degrees celsius.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
And it is clearly like unprecedented, to be fair, maybe
is the right word. This is something that's never really
happened there before, right.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
Right, Yeah, this was a record that hadn't been broken
in for seventy two years, at the very least in Dallas.
But your absolutely rights, unprecedented for all two hundred and
fifty four or so counties in Texas to have winter
storm warnings. And then things get even worse. Just imagine it.

(19:17):
Demand for power skyrocketed as people were trying not to
freeze to death. Supply plummeted because you see, the power
plants were also affected by the storm, and one by
one they started going dark when the people needed them
the most. As a result of this, more than four
point three million homes and businesses in Texas alone lost

(19:42):
power for some amount of time.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeah, and forty seven that we know of people lost
their lives as a direct result of this absolute catastrophe.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
And the causes of death here range from the actual
cold itself leading to someone death, to carbon monoxide poisoning
from people attempting to find creative ways to find heat
to get heat to their bodies and into the house,
to drownings to house fires to hypothermia. There were automobile

(20:14):
accidents related with this whole thing. It's just it's been tough,
and I think the way you put it as a
catastrophe is it's almost a too light of a word,
but it's a terrible thing that has gone on.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
It's certainly a step up from a disaster because it's
like literally a perfect storm where so many things went
wrong at the same time.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Exactly well put. And this leads us to our question
what happens when things go wrong? How did we get here,
and perhaps most importantly, what happens next. We'll dive into
this after a word from our sponsor.

Speaker 4 (21:00):
Here's where it gets.

Speaker 1 (21:02):
Crazy, corruption conspiracy. Since Texas did not have federal oversight,
the various people that would be described as stakeholders in
this energy game were not mandated to do things that
other organizations and other states do have to do. They

(21:22):
didn't institute certain safety measures like winterizing equipment and facilities.
Winterrizing is being thrown around like a buzzword, but it
just means weather proofing, you know what I mean, Like,
it just means let's get maybe insulator material around various
equipment and components and structures.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
On a smaller scale, it reminds me a lot of
what happened here in Atlanta several years ago with the
snow Pockellipse. On a much smaller scale, this was more
a situation of massive inconvenience. I believe a few people
maybe died in traffic situations like cars sliding off the
roads and all that, but it was just they just
weren't prepared, you know, for that level of icing of roads.

(22:05):
And this is that but on a completely fundamental level
that affects so many things. Because again that word interconnectedness,
and we're.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
Going to get to a lot of that. But one
of the reasons that it is not quite the same,
but it is applicable here. The situation in Atlanta during
snow apocalypse is that Atlanta as a city learned from
what occurred. And I don't know if you guys remember,
but we've had some pretty intense snow since that time,
and there is now an infrastructure built up around it,

(22:35):
and the infrastructure has been improved to the extent where
the highways at least are not going to be a
place where a ton of motorists get caught up for
a couple of days.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
I have anything. They overprep now or they like overreact,
you know.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
Oh, I'll I'll know if that will last, because we
have to we have to be very conscious folks, and
it's our city, so I think it's fine for us
to dunk on it. We live in a where part
of the interstate will just sort of drop out of
the sky. Like remember one time a bridge on eighty

(23:09):
five just like part of it just wasn't there, and
we got a really sketchy story about people starting a
fire a bridge, which is like an episode of Always Sunny.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
They also blamed it on like the homeless population, smoking
math or something that ended up being a complete fabrication
or at the very least a real reach.

Speaker 3 (23:29):
I am not I'm not speaking to this nonsense of
which you are speaking. This is nonsense, and I agree
all that stuff ridiculous. Watch my video on YouTube, which
you can still find, I think on our YouTube channel
of the of the burning of a highway in Atlanta.
But what I mean is a very specific thing occurred
that was a major problem. And let's be honest here

(23:52):
a pr issue for sure for the city, and steps
were taken.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
Sure, yeah, but then we also have to consider again
It's like the argument I set up at the very
very top. People, there's a great quote in literature. Maybe
it was Chekhov, soone check me on this, check me
on my checkof I can't remember which authors said it,
but they said, like the mark of a good story
and a good writer is when the author becomes invisible.

(24:21):
That's the mark of good infrastructure as well. I know
this might be maybe unpopular, something people don't want to
hear right now, But if we look at this situation
from the perspective of the companies, the various people at
every point in the energy flow of Texas in that business,
we can understand their logic. They're in a tremendously competitive,

(24:43):
even cutthroat market, so why bother preparing for blizzards when
subfreezing temperatures are so infrequent? Like from their perspective, Just
for comparison, imagine you live in Miami, why would you
invest in a pair why would you invest in this
set of tire chains. They're probably never going to leave
your garage because you'll probably never need to drive in

(25:06):
the snow. And that's of course the same logic with Atlanta,
and it's three snowplows. And there were even people, you know.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
Real.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
Thrift talks, very fiscally conservative people who are saying, why
are we even wasting money on this? This is these
snowplows are unnecessary. It's wasteful government spending. And then it
turned out that even that spending wasn't enough. But we'll
see how these words taste if we have to eat
them in another snow apocalypse in Atlanta. But as Michael

(25:36):
Weber pointed out, he is an energy resource as professor
at the University of Texas at Austin, their plans were
flawed because their plans were based on precedent. As we
said earlier, the storm is unprecedented. They were using outdated
weather patterns. And if you use those outdated weather patterns,

(25:58):
I'm not saying there was something that are available to
them at the time. Maybe future modeling, which is predictive
but can have a wild margin error if you're using
that outdated weather as as your roadmap. Then of course
you're going to say things don't freeze, you know it
just it makes sense.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
Well, they also didn't learn from past occurrences where this
very thing has happened in the not like not that
long ago, right, would that we mentioned in our our
episode that we already that we've like mentioned this in before.
We talked about how it's happened several times in the
past where this very thing occurred.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
Yeah, you're absolutely right, and this it's important to understand
that perspective because also picture yourself like you're the you're
the movement shaker, the CEO of some company in the
energy industry in Texas, and your business starts failing because
you invested so much in winterrization, and people are coming

(26:57):
to you and saying, why did we waste a million
and millions of dollars on this? We have to spend
that money fighting for our lives as a business, because
there are other hungry people out there. They want to
eat our electric lunch.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
Is this a byproduct of the complete isolation of their
power system, having no subsidization or no assistance from Uncle Samuel?

Speaker 1 (27:22):
Yeah, this is this is something that comes out of
the deregulation for sure. And at this point I suggest
that we we pause for a moment, not for a
word from our sponsors, but for a word from some
of our fellow listeners who are in Texas and who
have written to us, and some of our own personal experience,

(27:44):
which we don't always do, but we, like millions and
millions of other people, do, have friends and family in Texas. Matt,
you just spoke with your uncle not too long ago, correct,
How's he doing?

Speaker 3 (27:58):
I guess it was a little while ago. It was
least third day as we're recording this, when when they
were still very much in the middle of a power outage.
He lives in Houston, in a suburb just to I
want to say, the southwest of Houston, and he said
the power at that time had been out for two days.

(28:18):
Then it came on for about five hours, then it
went out again. Thankfully, he and then the family were
able to store some food outside because it was cold
enough to preserve food for an elongated amount of time
at that time. And another great thing, and this is
a reason to have a fully gas stove setup. He

(28:38):
didn't need power in order to start that gas stove.
You just turn the knob and then get a source
of fire like a lighter or anything else or a match,
put it over there, and you can cook anything you
need to. So that was very very good. The big problem,
he said, was the water and gaining access to water
during all of this.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Stuff, because if bust burst bypes are just frozen.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
They're a couple factors. Partially burst pipes because of the freeze, right,
and water expands when it freezes, and then partially because
the water treatment plants also had gone offline and that
can lower That can result in lower water pressure those
two factors, and at a certain threshold of water pressure,

(29:23):
when it goes below a certain threshold, people will be
advised to boil water. But then how do you boil water?
If you don't have electricity, right, You're gonna have to
build a fire. You're gonna have to be like Matt's
uncle and have a gas stove or something like that.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
Well, and also remember if you don't have a way
to heat the water, then imagine what it's like to
try attempt to bathe or attempt to do anything that
would require warmer water that is not you know, you're
not going to boil then I guess, mix with some
cold water and pour on yourself. It becomes a big issue.
Just dealt with this when our water went out.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
Speaking of burst pipes and just first hand accounts, John
Oliver did a really great segment on this and then
showed some really shocking images of this stuff, these scenes
in people's homes and businesses, and one of them was
a ceiling fan literally dripping with these like stalag what
is it, stalag tights that go down these you know,

(30:21):
ice crystals coming down off of the ceiling fan blades,
which could only have been because of burst pipes and
water leaking through the ceiling, right, Yeah. And then another
one of a car wash where like the you know,
the cool foamy stuff that's colorful when you go through
and everyone makes the Instagram videos of it going down
their windshield. Well, one of those tanks, I guess burst

(30:41):
and that stuff exploded out and it's frozen and it
looks like literally like some kind of magical cave you know,
in fairy land or something, but way more terrifying and
the sinister.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
And then you know, you kind of also see heartbreaking
accounts of people burning whatever was flammable in their house,
like furniture and so on, to keep their kids warm,
people sleeping in cars or charging their phones off their
car battery, trying to find where water is in any

(31:16):
emergency situation. By the way, once you have found some
modicum of physical safety, your very next thing, no matter what,
your very next thing, is to figure out where you
are going to find potable water. You would be surprised

(31:37):
how long people can survive without eating and without having
permanent damage to their system from doing so. But dehydration
will rock your shit and you can die within four days,
you know, And this your mileage may vary. There are people,
of course, we've all seen survival stories of people who
managed to stay alive, but they didn't thrive past that point.

(32:01):
And you are very much on a ticking clock. The
moment you realize you can't find water, please take it seriously,
even if you think you know, even if you think
I'm just camping somewhere and there's a clearly marked trail
and I can walk half a mile to the parking lot,
Just take some water with you, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (32:21):
And one last thing to add here. My uncle lives
in a very nice area. And on our previous episode
where we were talking about this situation, it was mentioned
at least rumors that power was being sent to very
wealthy communities before it was going to be sent to
anywhere else, or like diverted well where there was an
inequality in power distribution depending on essentially a zip code

(32:46):
or a neighborhood or something like that. I can't speak
to all of those, but I can tell you I've
been to my family's house.

Speaker 5 (32:52):
It is lovely.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
It's in a ridiculously nice area, and they still lost
power just as frequently as everybody else.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
Sure, I don't know exactly where Senator Ted Cruz lives,
but his house apparently got cold enough that they decided
to piss off to what is it Ken Kuhn.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
Yeah, and we'll look into that a little bit later
in the episode two. Before we move on, I want
to thank Miles B.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
Nathan G.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
Jacob D and a number of other people who reached
out to us to give us their experience during this
massive catastrophe. Jacob especially noted something that one of my
relatives in Austin noted, which is that people's odds of
having power did seem to be better if they were

(33:46):
if they were around something like emergency responder building or
a hospital something like that. Jacob You also noted that
the story from Urkat kept changing as far as as
when power would be restored, how rolling blackouts would work,
et cetera.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
And also said Encore was giving updates like, oh, power
is going to be on in fifteen minutes, Oh, your
power's on.

Speaker 5 (34:11):
Not power was not on.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
Right, right, And there's kind of a fog of war
with this too. You know, there are so many moving parts.
But here's what happened when the power outages began. Natural
gas plants, utility scale wind turbines, coal and nuclear plants,
all of those started to trip, meaning, you know, they

(34:34):
fell off the grid because they didn't have the investments
necessary to keep them online during sustained low temperatures. They
just couldn't function this way. Even if there wasn't a
surge in demand for power like that. That's an important note.
Even if it had just been the storm and there
had not been an increase in demand for energy, a

(34:56):
lot of these facilities still would have failed just because
they could handle. That's why URKOT but that's their logic
for ordering utilities to institute rolling blackouts, which are probably
familiar to in Ron fans in California, if there are
any in Ron fans left after their massive debacle.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
And this is a big note that Ben mentioned here.
I just want to make sure we're not going to
go over it too quickly. These were all sorts of
different types of energy generating plants. No matter what you're
reading online or what anybody is saying, this is affecting
all parts of It's not just the green sector. It's
not just coal or you know, natural.

Speaker 5 (35:36):
Gas or whatever.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
It's everything across the board was being affected.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
So the logic here is theoretically sound. Urkott says, Look,
we have to we have to kind of cut off
an arm to save the body temporarily, right, We're going
to strategically reduce temporary demand through a somewhat arcane process
that is very vulnerable to corruption or maybe some phone

(36:02):
calls from powerful people asking for little favors. Anyway, they
said by reducing demand at certain times in certain areas,
they would be able to prevent the entire circus tent
of Texas electricity from collapsing. And that's a rock and
a hard place. Honestly, if the entire grid failed, then
Texans would have been out without power for weeks, even months,

(36:25):
and it could have affected all the other pieces of
infrastructure right including water treatment.

Speaker 4 (36:32):
But that's a.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
Hard thing to square when you are in the midst
of a rolling outage that was supposed to last for
like a couple of hours, and it lasted days at
a time, and that happened to millions of people. We're
going to pause for a word from our sponsor, and
then we're going to dive into the unpleasant story of

(36:55):
people who did keep their power for at least part
of the time. Doesn't in the way you suspect. We're back, Okay,
So imagine you are one of the lucky few, through accident, fate,

(37:16):
or design, managed to keep your power for some or
all of the winter outages. You're not in a super
great place because the people who did have power found
that their bills skyrocketed. Skyrocketed is not the right word.
Your bills launched into orbit. They space rocketed.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Yeah, and you know it follows the concept of supply
and demand, but you don't typically think of that in
terms of like things that people need to survive, as
that being a calculus.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
And yet here we are there's a little bit inside
baseball here.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
But here's what happened.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
One megawatt of what's called wholesale power went from fifty
bucks to nine thousand dollars. A wholesale power is something
that a business will buy and then they will sell
it or provide it to consumers. So this wouldn't affect you.
If you add what's called a fixed rate plan, that's
a very common thing here in the US, you're basically,

(38:17):
as a customer, forced to gamble with a power company,
and you can make one of a couple of You
can make a couple of types of bets. One of
the bets is saying, hey, I will pay this much
per unit of power all the time, and I'll do
that for twelve months. So if there's a surgeon price
or demand, I won't have to pay more than my

(38:39):
you know, thirty cents or buck thirty five or whatever.
But if the price goes lower than that dollar thirty five,
I still have to pay the dollar thirty five. So
you're kind of in a casino with a power company.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
I always wondered, I mean, I guess it really is
up to the individual, But do you see a bet? Obviously,
the benefit here was alarming apparent, But in general, what
would you recommend, Ben.

Speaker 3 (39:04):
I'll tell you.

Speaker 5 (39:05):
Look, I'll give you my opinion.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
I've been I've been officially paying for power now since
two thousand and four, so I've been paying a separate
power bill since two thousand and four. I have attempted
a variable style once, and it's the only time I
had to pay ridiculous amounts of money for power, and
did the same thing with heating bills only once you

(39:28):
got me once, never will do it again.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
I've always felt that fixed rate seemed like the safest bet,
and I'm a fixed rate man myself.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
Yeah, agreed. Again, these are our personal experiences. Your mileage
may vary. But there are power monopolies here in Georgia,
so you have so you are forced to deal with them,
and they want you to gamble. And I personally am
not a big fan of gambling, and I do think
you know, you could say I'd be hyperbolic or whatever

(39:59):
by discription vibing it is this, but it is. It
is gambling, and I had an experience like you met.
Variable can work if you like astute lee time it
and you pay attention, pay close attention. Fixed rate it's
kind of like you're just paying more for the certitude
and the predictability. So fixed rate is pretty good. And

(40:22):
I think a lot of people in Texas were on
fixed rate too, So let's talk about the people who
were with a variable rate. I don't know what the
smallest place all of us listening today have ever lived
in is, But there was one woman in Texas who
had a seven hundred square foot apartment, pretty small. She

(40:43):
was keeping it at sixty degrees. She didn't lose power
for very long. When she got her power bill, it
was one thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
Okay, is this like by design? Are they really thinking
people are went to pay this? Are they really gonna
hold people to these absurd bills?

Speaker 1 (41:05):
Is it supply and demand or is it price gouging?

Speaker 2 (41:09):
It's or is it an accident?

Speaker 4 (41:12):
Think?

Speaker 5 (41:12):
I just I don't know.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
Well, the bill is not an accident. That's how much
the energy cost when they were attempting when they're going
through this crisis. If energy was being supplied to your home,
the supply and demand, baby, it's messed up. It's really
messed up. We can get into that a little more
as we get to the conclusion here, but yeah, the
big thing is that a lot of people dealt with

(41:34):
something like that huge in the thousands bills that were coming.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
Due, and ultimately, as we'll see, this will have to
be decided in the courts. I think one guy was
talking to NBC News and he said, I have a
two bedroom home. My power bill is usually one hundred
and twenty five to one hundred and fifty bucks, but
this month it's more than three thousand dollars, which caught
me by I am editorialized in a little Another family,

(42:04):
one really extreme example. Another family told the same team
at NBC that they were able to keep the power
in their home, which had three bedrooms, and then they
found their bill ended up being ten thousand dollars and
the price gougeon didn't stop there, didn't stop with power
bills because remember, this is a crisis.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
Well yeah, and I get that, and I understand that
this is a crisis for the energy end of it too,
the provider, but again it's kind of their fault, so
it doesn't seem fair that they would pass this on
to the consumer, but I guess that's what utilities do.
But would they have been notified, would they have just
known this was happening from maybe the news, Like I

(42:46):
just I just feel it would have been in the
responsibility of the energy coming to say, hey, head's up,
this is about to get real expensive.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Right, Yeah, it's tough. And also we have to remember
it was happening so quickly, you know what I mean,
peopoz zero PREPTI. But as we record today, Texas officials
are cracking down on businesses that have been accused of
hiking the prices of food and water and hotel rooms,
especially while the state is still battling through the shortages

(43:15):
that were caused by these storms.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
Like people were going.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
To hotels, not even nice hotels, they were finding that
the price had been hiked up to nine hundred bucks
because folks would pay it. There was something I found
especially wholesome in a very dystopian way. There was a store,
like a you know, like a little grocery store that
or a gas station that had closed down because of

(43:39):
the storm and because they didn't have power, and some
locals have been like breaking into this place to get water.
But then they started paying on an honor system. And
so there's like this pile of cash on the floor
and a nice little like a nice note, which I
thought was a really I thought that was a really

(44:01):
human thing, which I mean is a compliment. But back
to the water, more than twelve million people found their
water service disrupted. More than two hundred thousand people in
Texas live in areas where water systems were completely non operational.
We've got, especially in rural Texas, we've got a lot

(44:21):
of people who have wells, and generally I think that
is an awesome idea. But we had some folks contact
us and say, you know, we thought we'd be okay,
but our wells, our wells were frozen, you know what
I mean. And we're not on the grid.

Speaker 4 (44:37):
So what can we do?

Speaker 2 (44:38):
Can't access that water if it's all locked up in
ice well.

Speaker 3 (44:41):
There's an additional thing there with like depending on where
that water is coming from in that well, where it's
you know, where it's dug into. Just imagine all the
chemicals and stuff that are going into land across parts
of Texas. Yikes, because of what fracking mostly.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Oh, that's right, that's a good point that because the
fracking is still in the chat very much.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
Fract chat, the fract chat.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
Yeah, hold on what and this is where we get
to some much needed levity.

Speaker 5 (45:13):
Here.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
Something happened in the ensuing information war or narrative war
that would be hilarious if it was not so so
very dumb. While people were dying, several pundits and politicians
in the beginning of this crisis tried to blame the
power failures on renewable energy, specifically windmills. That's right, they

(45:38):
are the villain of this story, big wind, which sounds like,
you know, a street name for someone who.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
Is flatgel it.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
But this, this is really easy to disprove. I know,
we all saw the clips, but honestly, folks, maybe twenty
three percent of Texas's energy comes from renewable sources, like
all of them together.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
It sounds a whole lot like a pay no attention
to the man behind the curtain scenario, you know what
I mean, like look over here, misdirection. And also it's
obviously an agenda as well, because as we discussed, I mean,
Texas as a history of fossil fuels and fossil fuel extraction,
so they're best in it and they don't want to
be told what to do by big government, you know,

(46:18):
and something like this, this creepy green new Deal.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
Right, exactly exactly. And you know, natural gas powers most
of that grid if you looked at the statistical breakdown.
So really, natural gas is the first thing you should
be looking at in these power related emergencies. And production
of natural gas had plummeted due to the freezing conditions, right,

(46:42):
which made it difficult for power plants to get the
fuel necessary to generate electricity. So you can have a
working car, but if you don't have the gas, you're
not going anywhere. That's what happened to a lot of
these plants. They don't store a bunch of fuel on site,
has to be brought to them continually. But that being said,

(47:04):
here is a let me know if we should keep
this in guys. Here here is a hot take from
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who is known for his
somewhat opinionated Facebook post trying very hard to be fair here.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
Yep, that's right. Miller said, we should never build another
wind turbine in Texas.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
We should never build another wind turbine at Texas.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
Full stop, full stop. I mean, maybe he's just a
big fan of birds and he's just triggered by wind turbines,
you know, because of whatever.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
Maybe just scare the windmills.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
Maybe he scare of windmills. Maybe he's a don Quixote
type figure.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
And then he had another Facebook post where he said
insult added to injury. Those ugly wind turbines out there
are among the main reasons we are experiencing electricity blackouts.
Isn't that ironic?

Speaker 2 (48:09):
Don't you think that's an a worse set reference.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
Yeah, anyway, he continues, he goes so much for the
unsightly and unproductive energy robbing Obama monuments. At least they
show us where idiots live.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
Oh, min you know who he sounds like? I can
you think? I think you know who he sounds like?
Just Trump. Yeah, it's a familiar tone that we haven't
been hearing as much of lately. Uh, just in terms
of that just out and out you know, name calling
and hyperbole. Uh yeah, Obama monuments. He should just call
it gone the next extra mount and call them obamuments.

Speaker 4 (48:43):
Yeah, you know, I do like that.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
I gotta say, I objectively like the cadence. Uh there's
something about those three m's, how they kind of ride
the beat in that in that phrase monument. You're right,
you're right, But I agree with you that as a portmanteau.
Oh what wassents, Yeah, there is uh, there's there's something

(49:06):
else here. We received some correspondents from a lot of
our fellow listeners, including our main man, James, who was
who told us that there appears to be some corruption
regarding who was able to keep power. It appears that
some wealthy residents or people residing in wealthy zip codes

(49:29):
got preferential treatment. We do know that Urkat and the
utilities were able to direct these blackouts right to a
degree because they prioritize things like keeping the power on
at the fire station, or the power on at the
hospital or the precinct, you know what I mean. And
those are normal things to do during a disaster. The

(49:50):
question is, did, for instance, someone who like, let's say
you're a high up person in like industry or local politics,
are you able to then call the person running things
at your local utility and say, hey, the power and

(50:11):
my zip code stays on and they're like, you gotta
just remember me at the next I don't know, Illuminati.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Cookout, Illumnati cookout, Illuminati.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
Cookout, and for the next the next Bohemian propane grove.
I love it okay, So so that now we're looking
at the aftermath and this is still happening. By the way,
where this is this should just be considered a kind
of one oh one explainer of the opportunities for corruption
and conspiracy. The situation and the weather are improving, but

(50:44):
still tons and tons of people don't have power and
don't have clean water.

Speaker 3 (50:49):
No. By the way, I just got my friend Vanessa,
who lives out I think near in the Fort Worth area,
just called me back and left a voicemail. But I
don't have access to that. I may get a text
in a moment, just to give an update on the ground.
So we'll do that before this episode ends, if we can.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
And there is hope on the horizon, folks, we didn't
want this to end with a total gloom and doom.
Senator Ted Cruz, who was witnessed abandoning his state during
the ongoing disaster for an aboardive trip to Cancum, officially
returned when the press caught the story.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
Nah, he was always coming back. He was always coming
right back. He just had to go to be a
dad for a day, to make sure you get the
kids all settled in to the was it the four seasons,
I believe, and then he was always going to come
right back, you know, with a giant rolling suitcase. I'm sorry,
I'm being snarky. I just say, yeah, people only do

(51:48):
stuff they're supposed to do when they get caught. And
I don't know how he thought he would get away
with this money.

Speaker 3 (51:53):
Money, As we've said numerous times and Ben, this is
a mantra that we have on this show. Money is
a superpower. It's the close thing you're gonna get to
it Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz has some money. He was like,
uh what is this?

Speaker 5 (52:05):
What?

Speaker 2 (52:06):
Uh?

Speaker 5 (52:06):
Nah?

Speaker 3 (52:07):
And he got out of there. Look, I know it's
not a good political look and I know it's.

Speaker 5 (52:11):
Terrible and loud. People are very very mad.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
At him, but like, can you really blame him? He
has the superpower to be able to go to can
Kun when stuff goes bad.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
So this is the thing, regardless value feel about the guy.
He caught a lot of bad press, and rightly so,
because he kept changing his explanation for the trip. He
kept changing his description of the trip.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
And he's really bad at it too. He's really bad
at like lying in this way.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
Yeah, I'm not saying I think he's a great guy
walking back a little bit. But it's like the you guys,
if you guys don't listen, if any of you out
there doesn't does not listen to the show, this is
important on iHeartRadio.

Speaker 5 (52:55):
You should.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
They've got a segment with take what is it? Takebacks
apology things like that, this is my take back.

Speaker 5 (53:02):
Sorry.

Speaker 3 (53:03):
What I would say is watch SNL that just came
out this past week. There's a great cold open that
is describing what you guys are saying.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
Here right with the corn Rose Yeah, and this so
you know, the cavalry returns. He got dunked on in
the media because he was changing the explanation description of
the story. Other facts came out. There were some leaked
text messages. People who loved dogs were mad that they

(53:34):
left their dog for what was sometimes described as a
forward ay trip or like the length of time kept varying,
but don't worry. After he changed his explanation several times,
Senator Cruz is now currently on the ground and he's
made sure to be photographed handed out water bottles. So truly,

(53:55):
it is the trying times that bring out the hero
and all of us.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
I basically think the man's a saint at this point.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's the thing though, by location
is a saint superpower, right, it's one of the miracles.
So he may still be in.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
Cancun, wouldn't that be cool? Or maybe he has a clone. Anyway,
he could have handled the pr you know, fall out
a little better if he did have a clone or
a better disguise or something. You know, even with the
mask he stuck out like a sore thumb in the airport.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
Yeah, get a get a even a really lazy idea
like travel is said truths or something like that. But
but now I mean that that aside. We know there
are ramifications brewing for everybody here. For the businesses like
Ted Cruz was getting tried in the court of public opinion,
but some of these energy providers are going to you know,

(54:49):
actual court.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
Well, it's like we said at the beginning, I mean,
it's it's a it's a when when these things start
to break, it just becomes a series of fingers pointing.
And when a finger points at you, you point your finger.
It's some one else, and then that finger points it
somewhere someone else, and then it's up to the courts
to decide who deserves the finger.

Speaker 4 (55:05):
That's why I point with my whole hand.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
M hmm.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
Never never just one finger.

Speaker 5 (55:10):
Give him the whole hand.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
Give what's I think presidents have to do? You have
to kind of like point with your thumb when you
talk so you don't look like a dictator. Someone got
paid to figure that out.

Speaker 5 (55:24):
He figured out.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
He was the first one. Someone told him to do that.
But right now as we speak, there is a class
action lawsuit in the works for a Texas electric retailer
named Gritty. They're getting sued for one billion dollars.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
Wait, Gritty like the mascot of Michigan Philadelphia, No two d's.
It's a cute sounding name, though, I'm not gonna lie.

Speaker 1 (55:51):
True, it feels like an app that.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
Yeah, And for sure, that's not the only lawsuit that's
coming out. There's there are going to be so many
happening the next couple of years here because.

Speaker 5 (56:01):
Of the situation.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
And we also know that erkat that Energy Reliability Council,
that's not the folks who are in.

Speaker 5 (56:09):
Charge of that thing are not getting away scott free either.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
It's been a cascade of resignations.

Speaker 3 (56:15):
Correct, Yeah, that's correct. At least as of right now.
I believe it's six people who are leaving.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
That's a minor cascade.

Speaker 3 (56:21):
I'd say, yeah, yeah, it was I know five initially
five members of the board. They all tendered their resignation,
four of them I think, in one message and then
another one separately, and including that, I believe that's the
head of the board, right, the chair, the board chair.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
Yeah, left, yeah, yeah. People, These resignations are all from
the Board of directors. But the headline might be a
little bit misleading in this one because in the joint
resignation letter that I think four of these people wrote,
they said that they were motivated to resign because people

(57:02):
had objected to the fact that these four people did
not themselves reside in Texas. So they said, I like
the way you would put it off air, Matt. They
basically threw their hands up, and we're like, okay.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
Yeah, oh yeah, you guys deal with this. Oh that's cool.
We'll get out here.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Buck Pass officially.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
Break forever.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
So we are we are, you know, we are trying
to handle this with levity. But it is it is
true that regardless of you feel about the role of government,
the role of private industry, or how you feel about
the weather. These three things all played a role in

(57:49):
what whether through their absence or whether through their strategies,
they all played a role in this, in this terrifying
series of events. You in these situations, everybody wants someone
to blame, like we said at the very top of
the episode, but really you can't blame a utilities commission

(58:10):
for not being able to control the weather, right, That's
just something we all have to deal with. And then
when you think about winter rizing, if you dig down
into the boring stuff about winterrization, you'll see that no
small number of experts are saying at this point it
might be better to build out new infrastructure that's already

(58:33):
created to be weather proof then spending the money trying
to winterize the existing stuff.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
I think the issue that I have with that idea
of you can't blame them is the political stance of
so many people in power in a state like that
involves climate change denial. And this is an absolute, in
my opinion, example of the climate changing. So all these

(59:01):
climate deniers that are like you know, baring their head
in the sand, saying nothing to see here, Nothing's going
to happen then stuff like this happens and they weren't
prepared because they denied it.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
I think that's you know, I think that is a
good point. I think it's a valid point. And also,
the weather is becoming increasingly unpredictable. If you are lucky
enough to have elderly people in your life, family or friends, right,
and when you say elderly sit, I'm thinking like seventy plus.

(59:34):
If you have people like that in your life and
you have some time, ask them how the weather was
when they were growing up, you're going to if they
haven't already told you. I know there's a stereotype that
older people like to talk about weather. But if they
haven't already told you, I guarantee that you will see

(59:54):
from firsthand experience that there has been a noticeable change
of weather over those seven decades those people were alive,
and that makes the problem even tougher. That's the question
we have to end on a question how can we
prepare for things that we can't predict? Can we afford
to prepare for everything, no matter how unlikely it may seem?

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
Should we? Should we even do that?

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
You know, like like Matt, you we have this thing
where we put in related episodes while we're working on
the show, and Matt, you cited a really great one
that I didn't necessarily think about immediately, which was our
question about whether a solar flare can destroy civilization. The
answer is yes.

Speaker 3 (01:00:36):
Oh yeah, because the whole point I almost brought it
up earlier. We were talking about how long the power
was out and how long it could have been out right,
and if it was out for weeks, then you're dealing
with potentially the collapse of civilization in Texas.

Speaker 5 (01:00:55):
Man.

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
That's exactly what that episode was about, because when you're out,
when power cannot be turned on for a certain amount
of time right now because of all of the infrastructure
and how everything functions, if it was off for long enough,
I don't have any headphones anymore. If it was long
enough for if it was out for long enough, it's

(01:01:16):
absolute chaos. My son really wants me to tell you
guys about chaos and how exciting it is.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
Is he a proponent of chaos theory?

Speaker 5 (01:01:24):
Oh, he's trying to get me to open a Bark's
root beer.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
Oh got it. I mean, look, we can see what
you're talking about in Thatt just by the series of
events in this story that happened over the span of
like several days, you know, I mean it really triggered
an absolute domino effect of things going horribly horribly wrong.
So you know, given a longer period of time, with
the right conditions, it absolutely would lead to the collapse

(01:01:50):
of civilization if things were you know, just wrong enough.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
But then on the other hand, you know, it's still
kind of a gamble argue will believe because we take
the solar flare example. I'm just using that because it's
like an apocalyptic movie plot. In the solar flare example,
if you take the steps to harden an electric grid

(01:02:17):
right against this unpredictable event, then what happened, Like what
if one doesn't come for fifty years, then you just
look like you're incredibly paranoid. There's that other But there's
this other example. We talked a little bit about off air.
Back when the modern London sewer system was being built.

(01:02:41):
The guy who was heading it up said, look, we're
only going to do this once. I've got all the estimates,
everything that is reasonable, but.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
We're gonna go way bigger.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
We're going to make these pipes like twice as big
as they need to be because if we don't, this
is going to come back to haunt us. And everybody
was like, you're crazy, dude. I don't know what your
thing with pipes is, but you need to pump your brakes.
And it turns out he was right. That's the only
reason the London sewer system still works is because someone

(01:03:12):
had the foresight to think about these future possibilities, and
they also didn't have a problem with being mocked for them,
like the guy who talked about washing your hands and
ended up in a satan asylum.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
And these are questions for you, folks. We want to hear.
I want to hear your thoughts. What's the answer here?
How do we avoid this massive tragedy and tragedies like
this in the future. Is there stuff we should do?
Should there is federal regulation? The answer for Texas? You

(01:03:48):
know a lot of people are going to say no.
A lot of people say that this is the point.
Is better predictive weather models? Do we just tell everybody
constantly live as those civilization may collapse the next.

Speaker 5 (01:04:00):
Seventy two hours. That's the one. That's the one.

Speaker 3 (01:04:04):
Speaking of My friend Vanessa just got back to me
and it's exactly this. I'm going to read this verbatim
to you. We are key preppers, so we were prepared,
but we had zero electricity, not rolling for eighty four hours.
Eighty four hours, the temperatures in our home got to
forty degrees. It was in the forties. We were okay,

(01:04:24):
but we had supplies. The elderly in our area had
it very hard, lots of pipes and damage. But it's
eighty degrees here today. Geoengineering is wacky. So basically, yeah,
unless you are a prepper essentially, or you see yourself
as that way and are prepared for this stuff, you

(01:04:46):
may not be ready when something like this goes down
on the individual level of the home level, the apartment level,
whatever it is. It would be great if the companies
and these big organizations and the profit centers instead were prepared.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
Right right now, as we continue, doubtlessly more information is
going to come out about how this catastrophe was handled,
and that may change everybody's view of the sequence of events.
That's that's just the nature of how these sorts of
investigations work. On a side note, you guys, I finally

(01:05:22):
did it. I achieved my dream of getting a French mr,
which is an R C I R. They're just streets ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
Chicken cordon bleur. What are we talking here?

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
They got some good stuff? Like they all come with
a pat. There's one that's like bor pet bo ar.
They've got some good stuff. I'll send you guys picks
when they come in.

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
But as long as there's something lorange in there that
we're good.

Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
I gotta ask you, guys, though, in a year or guys,
get the year that has already felt like half a year.
Let's just consider this a continuation of last year, just
chock full of crazy, historical, unprecedented events. Where do you
think this one ranks?

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
Tough to say, honestly, because if the past several months
have taught us anything it is that the motto for
the motto for this year, the motto for last year.
The moto for last year was it's always something right,
and the motto for this year may well be but wait,

(01:06:29):
there's more. So I'm having a tough time. I think
it's a great question, and it's one we should send
to you, our fellow listeners. How would you rank it?
What else is not getting reported? Because we can assure
you there's a lot and also how would somebody untangle
the complicated situation of Texas energy? What is the solution

(01:06:51):
and how plausible do you think it is for that
solution to be achieved before another event like this occurs.
We want to hear from you. We try to make
it easy to find us online.

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
You can find us on Facebook and Twitter, where we
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Those are easy ways to follow along with us and
maybe write to us. Another way is to join Here's
where it gets crazy. That's our Facebook page. Lots and
lots of us are already on there, and it'd be
great to see.

Speaker 5 (01:07:19):
Your face there too.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
And if you want to do a different kind of writing,
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Speaker 1 (01:07:32):
It's true, and I want to thank everybody who reached
out to me personally and said that we ruin their
day with that episode about baby food. Sorry, but I
think it's just better to know.

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
My hands are clean. I was on Adventures. You were
on Adventures. That's correct.

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
If you don't want to contact us via social media.
Absolutely understand we have another way to get in touch
with us. We went legit and got we went semi
legit and got a call in number. We are one
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(01:08:12):
Those minutes belong to you. Do with them what you will.
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(01:08:32):
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(01:08:55):
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Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
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Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
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