January 26, 2022 • 38 mins
Robert Evans sits down with archaeologist Chris Begley to discuss his book about historical collapse.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to It could happen here, a show about things
falling apart and how to maybe put them back together
a little bit better than they were before. I am
Robert Evans, and with me this week is I guess
I'm very excited about Chris Begley, author of the Next Apocalypse,
The Art and Science of Survival. Chris, Welcome to the show.
(00:26):
Thank you now, Chris. Before we get into the meat
of our discussion, I have to talk about what you
do for a living, because for years and years it
was my job to go around the world I talked
to people and pretty much every continent about their different
interesting jobs. So I've I've talked interviewed everybody from like
Bravo workers in Nevada to Iraqi counter terrorism special forces
(00:48):
in Iraq. And you have probably the coolest job title
if anybody I've met. You're an underwater archaeologist. How did
you um? How did you? I mean? Was that was
it just kind of like were you kind of laser
focused on that goal or was it more you were
interested in archaeology and you loved diving, and so the
two just kind of made sense together. Yeah. Well, I
(01:10):
started out as ah, what I now called a terrestrial archaeologists,
you know, working on the land as most people do,
and worked for years in Central America. Honduras was my focus,
as you saw in the book, but other other places
uh nearby as well, and really it was about I
(01:31):
would say, I don't know, twelve thirteen, fourteen years ago.
I wanted to just branch out a little bit from that.
And one of the things that that all archaeologists have
seen is that, you know, there are certain things that
really just aren't as explored as other things, and one
was all of the archaeological resources underwater. I mean, we
(01:53):
hear about underwater archaeology or maritime archaeology in the Mediterranean, right,
you know them, and shipwrecks and all that, but there
are big chunks of the world where we've done very
little to see what's out there, you know. And one
other interesting thing about that is there are many different
things you could look at underwater, but often we look
(02:14):
at shipwrecks, and shipwrecks are different from regular archaeological sites
because you know, shipwreck is a moment in time that
all happened in in one instance, and so when we're
looking at that kind of archaeological site, we see this
snapshot that we don't see when we look at a
place that was occupied over hundreds of years. So you know,
(02:36):
so yeah, so that wasn't my focus, but it became, uh,
sort of somewhere I wanted to go as I learn
more about it. And one of the things I find
really interesting that the basic thrust of your book is
that the way in which we think about civilizations falling
or collapsing or how however you you know, the ways
(02:58):
in which folks tend to discuss and we're talking about
the Maya or the romans um is very different from
what archaeologists who tend to study these cultures, how they
tend to perceive of of what you might more accurately
call a decline or or you know, a decentralization or whatever.
I think there's a number of terms that we could use.
But these ideas that like, you have these civilizations and
(03:20):
then they suddenly fall apart um are not really based
in rigorous historical analysis. Usually. Um, there's some cases as
as you go out into the book, um, and I'm
I'm I'm interested in that because you're kind of coming
at from a very rigorous historical standpoint in this book. Um,
a lot of the stuff that we talked about on
(03:41):
on this show in a more contemporary sense. And I'm
kind of wondering how the idea to write this sort
of came together because you you started it before the
COVID nineteen pandemic. Obviously that had an impact on the book.
It's it's it's all over there. Yeah yeah, Um, well,
I've I was. One of the things that I do
(04:04):
is teach the wilderness survival courses and um, and I
don't do that as frequently as some people that that
sort of dedicate themselves to that do. But but but
I do it fairly frequently. And UM. It became obvious
to me over time that people were taking these courses
not just to learn how to deal with being lost
(04:26):
out in the wilderness, which is sort of was my vision.
What do you do if you unexpectedly have to spend
a night out in the woods or or two or three. Um,
they were really thinking about what do I do when
things fall apart? How do I take care of myself?
How do I take care of my family using these
skills that you could use in a situation where things
had fallen apart, And that sort of oriented me towards
(04:50):
the fact that you know, people were worrying about the future.
I mean I could see it. I could see it
in my students at university. I could see it, you know,
the people's faces at the supermarket. You know, there was
something going on there that was um uh, there was
concerning people, and a lot of it had to do
(05:11):
with climate change, and that I think was was the
focus initially for me writing this um because what I
saw was you know, sort of the prepper community and
survivalist community looking at things that really seemed to be
short term and didn't at all focus on what we
(05:33):
really saw historically. So I think that my um, my
initial motive to motivation to write this was really just
seeing this concern that was that was growing among people
about what the future is going to look like. And
then of course COVID Hitn't that that that really brought
all this to the to the forefront. And are there
(05:55):
any specific ways in your mind that you you can
you kind of think on how COVID all heard what
you were what you were writing, or how you conceived
of what you were writing. Like once you you know,
you you have this kind of vision that's inspired by
the things that you're seeing and hearing, particularly in these
wilderness survival courses. And then as you get started, we
have this horrible, horrible plague hit and a number of
(06:16):
of of things start to happen very quickly. How does
that kind of alter the trajectory of what you're writing? Yeah,
I guess the you know, the there were some just
sort of practical logistical things obviously, right, Uh, some things
that I intended to do, or ways that I had
hoped to interact with folks in the course of interviewing
(06:37):
people for the book or writing it, you know, wasn't
going to be possible. But in terms of thinking about
how things happened, the big thing for me was, um,
how it became politicized so quickly. You know, that was
you know in them you know you know, well, now
you see all of the memes you know, um talking
(07:01):
about the zombie movies where half the population doesn't believe
their zombies or something. You know, that was never really
on the radar, at least not on my radar before,
and so now, um, um, you know it is because clearly,
not only do these things happen, and then you have
(07:21):
a group of people that are dealing with it. You
have obviously the dynamics within the group, which which of
course we knew, but to see it play out in
this way, in this sort of dramatic way, that really
altered the course of history. I mean, the pandemic could
have turned out, uh, you know, differently, but it didn't.
(07:42):
And part of the reason that didn't was because of
the way folks reacted to it. And I'm wondering because
a part a chunk of your career, in a big
chunk of this book is kind of looking at in
places like Honduras where these these civilizations entered decline, and
in some cases it was very sharp, like within a
fairly short period of time, nine of the population leaves
(08:04):
or you know, uh is deceased. UM. And you you
see like the crumbling of a lot of these governmental
institutions and whatnot that had had organized life for a while.
You see the pretty significant migrations. UM. Is there any
ways in which kind of the last two years as
an archaeologist has changed or informed how you were thinking
(08:25):
about um, these places that you've been you've been studying,
in these moments in history that you've been studying for
so long. Yeah, in some ways, it brings some of
it into a little sharper focus. For instance, you know,
one of the things that that archaeologists had long talked
about was it during these declines or these collapses, that
it's uneven. It's not equal for everybody. It's not equal
(08:48):
over space and time, and certainly depending on your position
in society. UM, there's different ways in which it it
plays out for you, UM, you know, and that's something
that we see. We see it from um, you know,
access to vaccines to um well, I mean even things
(09:11):
like you know, if we think about folks that are unvaccinated.
Now there's a you know, a chunk of those people
that are doing it for a sort of political reasons
or other ideological reason, but there's also a big, uh,
a big group of those folks that are doing it
because history shows that they should be wary of anything
(09:36):
that uh society tries to do to them. And so,
you know, you have these these things playing out for
different ways for um, you know, people from different regions
of the country or political orientations or race or ethnicity
or um, you know, a whole variety of things. And
so seeing how uneven it was the pandemic, UH makes
(10:00):
me think that you know, it certainly was that way.
Then the other thing that we see when we look
archaeologically is that it's these big structures or systems that collapse.
That really is the collapse and the things that cause
it initially, whether it's I don't know, deforestation or drought
(10:20):
or warfare or even a natural disaster of some sort
um that really it's the way people respond to those
and the way these UH systems deal with those changes
that really creates the problems that you see later on.
(10:42):
And we can see that now. For instance, one of
the things that we're talking a lot now about is
supply chain issues, right, and this is a result of COVID,
But it's not a direct result. I mean, it's not
because the cruise on the ships are at the ports
or truck drivers have UH are sick. It's because of
(11:07):
the ways in which all of this disrupted things. And
especially when we get these really efficient but inflexible systems,
like a lot of our shipping system was um, these
disruptions result in really big changes. So you know, you
have these huge ships that can only dock a few ports.
(11:30):
Once that gets backed up, you can't really shift and adjust,
and so that's I think for me, just a lot
of it is seeing it play out, where we see
the fact that we have something that sets it all off,
but then we have the response of the system or
(11:50):
the structure that really creates the day to day impact.
I suspect a big part of kind of why we
conceive popularly of quote unquote collapses in the past is
(12:12):
based on, as you talk about extensively in your book,
the way in which we look at it kind of
in fiction, and in fiction it's nearly always like the
societal equivalent of a bullet in the head, right, the
zombie plague is out, and then a couple of days
everything's fallen apart. And the point that you make in
this is that it's probably I mean, this isn't exactly
a phrase, but it's probably better to look at it
kind of like it's like a tumor or something, where
(12:35):
the things are set in motion that are going to
lead to things falling apart much much, um, at a
point before a lot of people probably would have noticed it.
You know, the problem can be too far gone, um
before it's really obvious. Um. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think
that's that's a good point, and that's the that's really
(12:56):
something that you know, even with COVID, it shows that right. Um,
you know, the problems are not only the existence or
the appearance of this virus, but first of all, how
did it appear? And that has to do with, um,
you know, decreasing habitat for wild animals and the proximity
(13:18):
of human populations to animals. And then we have increased
sort of communication and travel, which you know is not
a bad thing obviously, but it is going to change
the way in which these things spread. But then we
have the way that we divide ourselves up into nation states,
(13:38):
and the way in which we have you know, economic
systems that are working in certain ways. So you know,
the vaccine gets here but not there, and and and
so forth. Um. But yeah, that's you know that I
think is at the heart of it. You have these
things that have been set in place, you of these
(14:00):
parameters in which you're going to have to react, and
they really set um the stage for what's going to happen.
You know, you have it's like looking backwards four or
five moves in chest to see how did we get
in this situation. It's not just because of that last move,
it's because of the last ten. Yeah. And one of
(14:20):
the things you bring up that I like is that
if you're looking for kind of a historical example of
a collapse that that most mirrors the way we tend
to look at it in fiction, it would probably be
what happened to the indigenous population of particularly like North
America um after the arrival of colonizers, which was by
a lot of accounts, like nine of the population dead
(14:43):
within a fairly short span of time, primarily from disease.
This this really rapid and cataclysmic um um shock. But also,
at the same time, as much as it does seem
to mirror some of our you know, kind of fictional
depictions of of viral outbreaks or other's sort of of
of societal calamities, um, the ways in which people survived
(15:05):
don't really in any meaningful way mirror are our kind
of popular fictional depiction of like who makes it out
of that sort of a situation, you know, the the
strapping military veteran with a rifle and a stockpile of
food or whatever. You know. Yeah, yeah, that that, you know,
I would say that certainly having these skills to keep
(15:27):
yourself alive is important, and it is true that if
you don't make it through the first thirty days, you're
not gonna make it through the next thirty years. But um, yeah,
the way people survive outside of a few days perhaps
when they're dealing with some of these uh, what we
would think of a survival situations is this a community.
(15:50):
I mean we see that with uh, you know, when
we look at the Native American history in North America.
You know, even as populations and entire groups were being
decimated by these diseases, sometimes a village in a single
winner from a wave or waves of disease. Even in
(16:15):
the in the face of that, they reconstituted themselves as communities,
sometimes um, multi ethnic or multicultural communities. I mean, there
was a whole variety of ways in which people regrouped.
And I think that that, you know, that was the
message and you know, part of the uh this image
(16:36):
of you know, grabbing your bugout bag and heading out
to the hills is um it just doesn't work, you know.
And and the the stockpiling you know as well. Um,
And so yeah, when we look archaeologically, you know, we
always see communities. Yeah, that's something we really try to
(16:58):
encourage people to this show where obviously some amount of
disaster preparation is is not just helpful, but is I
think kind of morally necessary if it's at all financially
feasible for you. You know it is you are it
is absolutely the right thing to do to try to
have two three weeks of of relatively storable food, some water, um,
you know, some other emergency supplies, but kind of beyond that,
(17:22):
as you said that first, like thirty days, if you
actually want not just to live, but to have you know,
life have any kind of meaning, um, you have to
be thinking in a community oriented situation. Yeah, I mean,
because ultimately, you know, what's the difference between two weeks
or two months worth of food? You know it's gonna
be gone and you know you have to come back.
(17:46):
You know. One of the things in researching for this
for this book, one of the things I looked at
was the history of how we made a living, uh
and the history of agriculture. And one of the things
that you know that that I found was that the
last time that humans lived where a significant portion of
(18:09):
the population was hunters and gatherers, that is, not farmers,
there was like one of the current population, you know,
less than five million people in the world. So even
a catastrophic disaster that you know, reduced us to of
(18:30):
you knowent of current population, We're still going to have
more people in the world than ever lived without agriculture.
And so we're gonna have to uh recreate some of
these systems. And you know, agriculture by and large is
going to be a community based system. It's I mean,
(18:51):
you can garden on your own, but but the way
that it needs to work is is going to be
a collective. Yeah, and I think, yeah, this is we
talk a lot about. I actually live with a couple
of wilderness survival instructors and we have about an acre
of land and we do a decent amount of of
of you know gardening, you know, animal husbandry and that
(19:12):
sort of thing, and it it is. Um I've I've
spent a lot of my life on farm, so I've
kind of always had an appreciation for how much work
it is. And one of the things we try to
talk about on this show regularly is the value of
even just having a garden of things like guerrilla gardening.
Not because I'm not one of those people who thinks
that like, oh, we need to replace industrial agriculture, with
like individuals tending small gardens. That's not going to work.
(19:34):
But because the more you kind of interface directly with
the concept of growing food and with working with other
people in order to do that, the more prepared you
are for any number of things that could go wrong,
Like even if those things don't involve a crunch in
the food supply lines, the connections you make with people
doing that sort of work will be more valuable than
an extra two months of stockpiles. You know, when you're
(19:55):
in your food buckets or whatever, you're Alex Jones dried
food buckets. Well, that's that's absolutely right. And you know,
one of the things that occurred to me looking into
the past at some of these uh, you know, collapses
or declines that had happened in the past, was that
a huge percent of the population um um was engaged
(20:20):
directly in agriculture. And you know here in the well
in the industrialized world, is typically less than five percent
less than that even in the United States. Most people
like me don't, uh don't engage in it. And you know,
I know something about gardening, perhaps like everybody else, but
I'm not a farmer. I don't really have that collected
(20:42):
wisdom and if I had to do that, um, you
know probably it's like a lot of other things. When
everything is easy, it's not so bad when you know
when it goes bad, it really helps to know what
you're doing. Uh. And of course everything goes bad sooner
or later, and so um, you know, that's that kind
(21:04):
of things very important, you know. And I think also
there could certainly local systems and some flexible scale would
be really important, you know. So I'm also, like you,
a proponent of of this sort of thing. You know,
if we can get everybody to participate in ways that
(21:26):
we aren't now, that will give us some flexibility. What
if what if we do have supply chain problems, Well,
we have a number of people in the community that
are already doing some of this stuff that could maybe
be expanded or get us through this period. So yeah, yeah,
I mean, even if you're not like dealing with everyone's
caloric needs, it could be as simple as because of
(21:48):
where you're located. You know, when when the oranges and
other kind of fruits aren't able to come in from
a supply line thing, there's a shortage of vitamin C,
and then knowing how to make teata pine needles or whatever,
or what kind of plants have a lot of vitamins. See,
you know, even though you're not you're not focused on
meeting everyone's you know, entire caloric needs through small scale farming,
(22:08):
but you can deal with them a nutrient deficiency or
something because you understand your environment a little bit better. Yeah,
and you know, probably quality of life issues too. I mean,
you know, for uh, you know, kids and u you know,
there's there's lots of there's lots of ways you can
survive that are pretty miserable. So you wanna you want
(22:29):
to try to uh direct it towards those that are desirable.
And I think part of that is having this flexibility,
having this knowledge, having a lot of people involved in things.
And you know, one of the things I talked about
in in my book or ideas of you know, diversity
and inclusion, which we talk about in certain ways now
(22:50):
and often I think unfortunately it's talked about, is if
it's done to benefit the people that are marginalizing, left
out only, And while it is partly that it benefits everybody,
of course, I mean, anyone in a business knows, anybody
in a university knows the benefits of of diversity. In
(23:14):
the same way anybody that's trying to do something understands
the benefit of a diverse range of experiences. You know.
That's why we make these multidisciplinary teams that go out
and do things. Uh, you know, it's so that you
have this this wide variety that can help you keep going. Yeah.
And one of the things that I really found fascinating
(23:36):
in your book and that that kind of made me
feel a little bit um bad as I You know,
I've I've spent a lot of time thinking about the
what happened, what was done to and what also just
kind of happened as a result of the way diseases
spread when when colonizers reached North America. I had never
really devoted that much thought to the actual actions that
(23:58):
in different indigenous groups hook consciously to prevent to protect
themselves from the spread of diseases. You mentioned the Cherokee
in particular, Um in your book. Could you talk a
little bit more about that, because that's something as soon
as I read it, I marked that page because I'm like,
I need to look up what the studies he's referencing,
because I I don't know anything about this. Yeah, that Um,
you know, a lot of that stems from the research
(24:21):
of of some other archaeologists and they you know what,
You're exactly right. We don't think about that. We're not
taught about it that way. You know, we sort of
have this this contradictory and sort of u uh doubly
problematic way of talking about this. First, for a long
(24:42):
time we denied sort of the how traumatic and how
much of a genocide it was when Europeans arrived um
And then after denying that, we sort of say, well,
Native Americans are gone and no longer relevant, so we
can cease to talk about them. Of course, that's not true.
(25:07):
And one of the things that we see when we
look more in detail at the histories, or we listen
to the oral histories, or we look at the archaeology,
is that there are a number of things that that
that people did and do to um uh uh to
(25:28):
create the outcomes that they want. And that was no
different for the Native American groups, you know, I mean,
they had ways of dealing with disease, and some of
them will be will be able to understand it via
our sort of our system, right, isolating people, cleanliness, minimizing
(25:50):
contact expect especially with sort of problematic groups like the
Colonizer's um you know. But in other ways, there are
things that are gonna be unfamiliar to us and we're
not gonna see the effectiveness or the value in it.
But one of the things that that all of these
(26:11):
things did, that these groups were doing was created or
maintained um group identity and cohesion and allowed the perseverance
of of community. And so there are um you know.
It's it's easy to think about people as sort of
(26:32):
passive victims of something, especially when it serves your purpose
to to think about it in these ways, and we
just see that it's it's not the case. Yeah, there
was a remarkable moment in the book, and I think
it was from when you were in Honduras where you
you talk about your finding pottery shirts and they have
these specific kind of markings on them from I don't
(26:54):
like a thousand years ago or so, and you also
know a local woman who's a potter and she's putting
the same markings on and you ask her why and
her answer is like, well, because the pottery shirts that
we find from our ancestors have those on them. And
my initial thought was like, oh, what a shame that
she doesn't know what those originally meant. But then I
thought like, well, but is that any different from like
(27:16):
all of the different things that that I do, because
their traditions, because like they're things that like people a
thousand years ago in in in my line did like, no,
it's not like it's it's just what people do, and
it is a continuation, and it's a very there's um,
that's a that's that's survival, you know, that's that's conscious survival. Yeah,
you know, and in that case, of course, whatever it
(27:38):
meant initially, it now means that to her, right, So
there's the meaning, you know, um. And so it's it's interesting,
you know. One of the things you know, I from
and I live in Kentucky. And one of the things,
(27:59):
especially when people come to say Appalachians, they're looking for
sort of authentic Appalachian Kentucky you know, um, and they
already have an idea what that is. And if you
don't see it, because that's not really what people do,
then the response is never, oh my idea is about
(28:19):
what is authentic? Might be erroneous. It's I wonder why
I didn't see authentic Appalachians, you know, it's like what
you did. But you know, there's gonna be more hip
hop and punk groups than there are bluegrass groups because
you know, these are twenty year old kids. That's you know,
(28:42):
they're doing this as much as this other stuff, and uh,
you know more probably, And so that that is something, uh,
that that I think of often as an archaeologist. You know,
my focus is in the past. But if I'm going
to understand things, of course you also have to understand
and how are people thinking about in the present, and
how am I thinking about it in the present, because
(29:05):
you know, everything, all the stories I tell about the
past are coming out of or coming out of my
experience in the present too, and it's hard to uh,
it's hard to separate those and that really the best
we can do is try to, um, you know, reflect
on that and see how is it that I might
be limiting my understanding because of my particular experience. And
(29:28):
one of the things I really like about your book
that I also found fascinating, So it's I you know,
I I for a while did um conflict journalism and
before when when that was just an ambition of mine,
Before I started to do it, I would see the
articles that were being written by all these war correspondence,
and I would just be in awe of like how
did they get that story? How did they get that access?
How did they must have put so much work in?
(29:49):
And then when I actually got there, I realized like,
oh no, they met they made a contact with the
local who was good at it, and that person showed
them around and made all these connections, and like, actually,
none of this work happens without the local fixers. And
you make the point that in archaeology you're not generally
discovering things, like even when you're finding shipwrecks, it's because
these sailors who lived nearby were like, well, yeah, a
(30:11):
bunch of shipwrecks every there, Like yeah, this is where
you're gonna go find them. You know, It's always the
way it is, you know there um um. In the
example you're talking about, I was part of this project
in Forney in Greece, which you know, made the news
because we found so many shipwrecks there something ultimately like
fifty shipwrecks around this island, um, and almost all of
(30:34):
them were shown to us by local folks. Uh. You
know that sponge divers or people that were fishers, you know,
people that were out on the water all the time.
And the few that we found by ourselves, I'm sure
people knew about them, we just stumbled on them before
somebody had a chance to show us. It's the same
way in in the Honduras. Would we would be walking
(30:56):
through the rainforest and you know, maybe we've been walking
for a week, so we're way out in the middle
of this place. People were constantly telling me, the guys
that I was with, would say, Okay, if we go
up this creek, you know, for about six hours and
we go over here, here's what we'd find. Here's what
we'd find over here. Here's what we find over here.
(31:16):
They knew where everything was. Um. And that's you know,
one of the things that you uh uh uh that
that you learn is you know how reliant you are
on people that live in a place. I mean, they
just know it. Yeah, there's no Um, when you get
right down to it, is as obsessed as we are
(31:38):
kind of in in the Western Cannon with the idea
of lost cities. Um, that's not really a thing that
tends to happen. Um. Yeah, no, no, no, it's not.
And and in fact, most of the archaeological sites that
people didn't know about. It was just because they were
so small and ephemeral that no one really paid attention anything. Yeah,
(31:59):
there's no lost city. They're always known for somebody. Well, Chris,
I think that's that's most of what I wanted to
get into in this conversation. I'm wondering before we kind
(32:19):
of close out, because you are both the author of
this book, The Next Apocalypse, which is I think a
fascinating way of looking at the idea of things falling
apart and a wilderness survival instructor. If you're going to
suggest people, you know, a practical kit bag to prepare
for short and kind of long term problems, what are
you what are you putting in your bag? Well, you know,
(32:42):
there's the two main things, uh, that you're always gonna
want is is a knife because that allows you to
make a lot of other things. And a way to
start fire, you know, and we've all seen in the
movies roving sticks together and you know, friction methods and
that works, and you can do that, but it is
(33:02):
incredibly difficult to do in the butt, you know, and
for most of us that don't do it all the time. Uh,
You're just not gonna be able to do it when
it's forty degrees in raining and you really need a fire.
You know, you'll be able to do it when it's
a hundred degrees and dry, you know, uh, because everything
is about to catch on fire anyway. But uh, you
(33:24):
know so um and what would what would that look like? Well, uh,
you need something that will catch on fire pretty quickly.
And the thing I always takes cotton balls. You know,
if you take cotton balls and a disposable lighter or
one of those uh fire starter sticks, it will make sparks.
Um that those cotton balls will catch fire instantly. And
(33:47):
if you take one and you coat half of it
with petroleum jelly, then not only will catch fire, it
will burn you know for you know, a minute or so,
long enough to catch other stuff on fire. So you know,
making are and having some sort of cutting tool are
the very basic things. But um, you know, the beyond that,
(34:10):
I would say, uh, you know, clothing or some sort
of shelter is is the other thing. You know, exposure
to elements will kill you quicker than anything, and so
having some way to uh to protect yourself and that's
usually gonna be you know, first line of defense is
going to be your clothes. And one of the things
(34:32):
that that you'll know anybody that that deals with sort
of survival situations is that most people that really get
in trouble with things like hypothermia, you know, it's not
when it's thirty degrees below and they're out doing something.
It's when it's fifty degrees and sunny and they're out
in a T shirt during the day, and then at
(34:53):
night it drops to thirty degrees and you know they're
stuck out somewhere with without proper clothing. That's that is
when things get really dangerous. So you know, I would say,
you know, if you can have some way to start fire,
some sort of knife, and appropriate clothes for spending the
(35:14):
night out, you know, then then uh, and you're probably
in pretty good shape for most situations. Well, Chris, thank
you so much for talking with with us today. Chris Begley,
underwater archaeologist, author of the Next Apocalypse, The Art of
Science and Survival. Chris, is there anything you'd like else
you'd like to say or kind of get into before
(35:35):
we close out for the day. No, just thank you
very much for for reading the book and for reaching
out to talk with me, because I think that, you know,
especially now as we go into sort of an uncertain future.
I mean, future is always uncertain, I suppose, but um
as you know, we're really recognizing some of these challenges.
(35:59):
You know, really am hoping that this sort of um uh,
community based idea becomes the way we think about things. Uh.
You know, it doesn't mean it's easy or that we're
gonna like it. It doesn't mean that that's what I want.
I mean, tell you the truth, I would love it
if it was just me out in the woods with
(36:21):
my family, you know, I can do that. It's much
harder to be part of a community and make things
work for a big group of people. But that's just
the way it's going to be. Yeah, And that's that's
ultimately the way in which you have a lot more
real security because I think, um uh, I think people.
I don't know, the world seems so complex and messy
(36:43):
that it's easy to imagine that that safety comes from
getting away from the world. But historically that's just not
how it works. Now, the world finds you. You know,
it's the best. Being part of a group is always best,
and your your little group can never defend against the
(37:06):
big group. I mean, if we want to put it
in those terms, you know, you can't just hoard everything
and uh it just doesn't work. Might work for a
little while, but yeah, so that you know that for me,
that's the message I'm hoping, Yeah, people take from it. Well,
Thank you very much, Chris. For those of you listening
at home again, please do check out The Next Apocalypse
(37:29):
The Art and Science of Survival by Chris Begley. That's
going to do it for us all today. Chris, Thank
you again, and have a wonderful day here you too.
Thank you. It Could Happen Here is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
(37:50):
us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone
Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Welcome to It could happen here, a show about things
falling apart and how to maybe put them back together
a little bit better than they were before. I am
Robert Evans, and with me this week is I guess
I'm very excited about Chris Begley, author of the Next Apocalypse,
The Art and Science of Survival. Chris, Welcome to the show.
(00:26):
Thank you now, Chris. Before we get into the meat
of our discussion, I have to talk about what you
do for a living, because for years and years it
was my job to go around the world I talked
to people and pretty much every continent about their different
interesting jobs. So I've I've talked interviewed everybody from like
Bravo workers in Nevada to Iraqi counter terrorism special forces
(00:48):
in Iraq. And you have probably the coolest job title
if anybody I've met. You're an underwater archaeologist. How did
you um? How did you? I mean? Was that was
it just kind of like were you kind of laser
focused on that goal or was it more you were
interested in archaeology and you loved diving, and so the
two just kind of made sense together. Yeah. Well, I
(01:10):
started out as ah, what I now called a terrestrial archaeologists,
you know, working on the land as most people do,
and worked for years in Central America. Honduras was my focus,
as you saw in the book, but other other places
uh nearby as well, and really it was about I
(01:31):
would say, I don't know, twelve thirteen, fourteen years ago.
I wanted to just branch out a little bit from that.
And one of the things that that all archaeologists have
seen is that, you know, there are certain things that
really just aren't as explored as other things, and one
was all of the archaeological resources underwater. I mean, we
(01:53):
hear about underwater archaeology or maritime archaeology in the Mediterranean, right,
you know them, and shipwrecks and all that, but there
are big chunks of the world where we've done very
little to see what's out there, you know. And one
other interesting thing about that is there are many different
things you could look at underwater, but often we look
(02:14):
at shipwrecks, and shipwrecks are different from regular archaeological sites
because you know, shipwreck is a moment in time that
all happened in in one instance, and so when we're
looking at that kind of archaeological site, we see this
snapshot that we don't see when we look at a
place that was occupied over hundreds of years. So you know,
(02:36):
so yeah, so that wasn't my focus, but it became, uh,
sort of somewhere I wanted to go as I learn
more about it. And one of the things I find
really interesting that the basic thrust of your book is
that the way in which we think about civilizations falling
or collapsing or how however you you know, the ways
(02:58):
in which folks tend to discuss and we're talking about
the Maya or the romans um is very different from
what archaeologists who tend to study these cultures, how they
tend to perceive of of what you might more accurately
call a decline or or you know, a decentralization or whatever.
I think there's a number of terms that we could use.
But these ideas that like, you have these civilizations and
(03:20):
then they suddenly fall apart um are not really based
in rigorous historical analysis. Usually. Um, there's some cases as
as you go out into the book, um, and I'm
I'm I'm interested in that because you're kind of coming
at from a very rigorous historical standpoint in this book. Um,
a lot of the stuff that we talked about on
(03:41):
on this show in a more contemporary sense. And I'm
kind of wondering how the idea to write this sort
of came together because you you started it before the
COVID nineteen pandemic. Obviously that had an impact on the book.
It's it's it's all over there. Yeah yeah, Um, well,
I've I was. One of the things that I do
(04:04):
is teach the wilderness survival courses and um, and I
don't do that as frequently as some people that that
sort of dedicate themselves to that do. But but but
I do it fairly frequently. And UM. It became obvious
to me over time that people were taking these courses
not just to learn how to deal with being lost
(04:26):
out in the wilderness, which is sort of was my vision.
What do you do if you unexpectedly have to spend
a night out in the woods or or two or three. Um,
they were really thinking about what do I do when
things fall apart? How do I take care of myself?
How do I take care of my family using these
skills that you could use in a situation where things
had fallen apart, And that sort of oriented me towards
(04:50):
the fact that you know, people were worrying about the future.
I mean I could see it. I could see it
in my students at university. I could see it, you know,
the people's faces at the supermarket. You know, there was
something going on there that was um uh, there was
concerning people, and a lot of it had to do
(05:11):
with climate change, and that I think was was the
focus initially for me writing this um because what I
saw was you know, sort of the prepper community and
survivalist community looking at things that really seemed to be
short term and didn't at all focus on what we
(05:33):
really saw historically. So I think that my um, my
initial motive to motivation to write this was really just
seeing this concern that was that was growing among people
about what the future is going to look like. And
then of course COVID Hitn't that that that really brought
all this to the to the forefront. And are there
(05:55):
any specific ways in your mind that you you can
you kind of think on how COVID all heard what
you were what you were writing, or how you conceived
of what you were writing. Like once you you know,
you you have this kind of vision that's inspired by
the things that you're seeing and hearing, particularly in these
wilderness survival courses. And then as you get started, we
have this horrible, horrible plague hit and a number of
(06:16):
of of things start to happen very quickly. How does
that kind of alter the trajectory of what you're writing? Yeah,
I guess the you know, the there were some just
sort of practical logistical things obviously, right, Uh, some things
that I intended to do, or ways that I had
hoped to interact with folks in the course of interviewing
(06:37):
people for the book or writing it, you know, wasn't
going to be possible. But in terms of thinking about
how things happened, the big thing for me was, um,
how it became politicized so quickly. You know, that was
you know in them you know you know, well, now
you see all of the memes you know, um talking
(07:01):
about the zombie movies where half the population doesn't believe
their zombies or something. You know, that was never really
on the radar, at least not on my radar before,
and so now, um, um, you know it is because clearly,
not only do these things happen, and then you have
(07:21):
a group of people that are dealing with it. You
have obviously the dynamics within the group, which which of
course we knew, but to see it play out in
this way, in this sort of dramatic way, that really
altered the course of history. I mean, the pandemic could
have turned out, uh, you know, differently, but it didn't.
(07:42):
And part of the reason that didn't was because of
the way folks reacted to it. And I'm wondering because
a part a chunk of your career, in a big
chunk of this book is kind of looking at in
places like Honduras where these these civilizations entered decline, and
in some cases it was very sharp, like within a
fairly short period of time, nine of the population leaves
(08:04):
or you know, uh is deceased. UM. And you you
see like the crumbling of a lot of these governmental
institutions and whatnot that had had organized life for a while.
You see the pretty significant migrations. UM. Is there any
ways in which kind of the last two years as
an archaeologist has changed or informed how you were thinking
(08:25):
about um, these places that you've been you've been studying,
in these moments in history that you've been studying for
so long. Yeah, in some ways, it brings some of
it into a little sharper focus. For instance, you know,
one of the things that that archaeologists had long talked
about was it during these declines or these collapses, that
it's uneven. It's not equal for everybody. It's not equal
(08:48):
over space and time, and certainly depending on your position
in society. UM, there's different ways in which it it
plays out for you, UM, you know, and that's something
that we see. We see it from um, you know,
access to vaccines to um well, I mean even things
(09:11):
like you know, if we think about folks that are unvaccinated.
Now there's a you know, a chunk of those people
that are doing it for a sort of political reasons
or other ideological reason, but there's also a big, uh,
a big group of those folks that are doing it
because history shows that they should be wary of anything
(09:36):
that uh society tries to do to them. And so,
you know, you have these these things playing out for
different ways for um, you know, people from different regions
of the country or political orientations or race or ethnicity
or um, you know, a whole variety of things. And
so seeing how uneven it was the pandemic, UH makes
(10:00):
me think that you know, it certainly was that way.
Then the other thing that we see when we look
archaeologically is that it's these big structures or systems that collapse.
That really is the collapse and the things that cause
it initially, whether it's I don't know, deforestation or drought
(10:20):
or warfare or even a natural disaster of some sort
um that really it's the way people respond to those
and the way these UH systems deal with those changes
that really creates the problems that you see later on.
(10:42):
And we can see that now. For instance, one of
the things that we're talking a lot now about is
supply chain issues, right, and this is a result of COVID,
But it's not a direct result. I mean, it's not
because the cruise on the ships are at the ports
or truck drivers have UH are sick. It's because of
(11:07):
the ways in which all of this disrupted things. And
especially when we get these really efficient but inflexible systems,
like a lot of our shipping system was um, these
disruptions result in really big changes. So you know, you
have these huge ships that can only dock a few ports.
(11:30):
Once that gets backed up, you can't really shift and adjust,
and so that's I think for me, just a lot
of it is seeing it play out, where we see
the fact that we have something that sets it all off,
but then we have the response of the system or
(11:50):
the structure that really creates the day to day impact.
I suspect a big part of kind of why we
conceive popularly of quote unquote collapses in the past is
(12:12):
based on, as you talk about extensively in your book,
the way in which we look at it kind of
in fiction, and in fiction it's nearly always like the
societal equivalent of a bullet in the head, right, the
zombie plague is out, and then a couple of days
everything's fallen apart. And the point that you make in
this is that it's probably I mean, this isn't exactly
a phrase, but it's probably better to look at it
kind of like it's like a tumor or something, where
(12:35):
the things are set in motion that are going to
lead to things falling apart much much, um, at a
point before a lot of people probably would have noticed it.
You know, the problem can be too far gone, um
before it's really obvious. Um. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think
that's that's a good point, and that's the that's really
(12:56):
something that you know, even with COVID, it shows that right. Um,
you know, the problems are not only the existence or
the appearance of this virus, but first of all, how
did it appear? And that has to do with, um,
you know, decreasing habitat for wild animals and the proximity
(13:18):
of human populations to animals. And then we have increased
sort of communication and travel, which you know is not
a bad thing obviously, but it is going to change
the way in which these things spread. But then we
have the way that we divide ourselves up into nation states,
(13:38):
and the way in which we have you know, economic
systems that are working in certain ways. So you know,
the vaccine gets here but not there, and and and
so forth. Um. But yeah, that's you know that I
think is at the heart of it. You have these
things that have been set in place, you of these
(14:00):
parameters in which you're going to have to react, and
they really set um the stage for what's going to happen.
You know, you have it's like looking backwards four or
five moves in chest to see how did we get
in this situation. It's not just because of that last move,
it's because of the last ten. Yeah. And one of
(14:20):
the things you bring up that I like is that
if you're looking for kind of a historical example of
a collapse that that most mirrors the way we tend
to look at it in fiction, it would probably be
what happened to the indigenous population of particularly like North
America um after the arrival of colonizers, which was by
a lot of accounts, like nine of the population dead
(14:43):
within a fairly short span of time, primarily from disease.
This this really rapid and cataclysmic um um shock. But also,
at the same time, as much as it does seem
to mirror some of our you know, kind of fictional
depictions of of viral outbreaks or other's sort of of
of societal calamities, um, the ways in which people survived
(15:05):
don't really in any meaningful way mirror are our kind
of popular fictional depiction of like who makes it out
of that sort of a situation, you know, the the
strapping military veteran with a rifle and a stockpile of
food or whatever. You know. Yeah, yeah, that that, you know,
I would say that certainly having these skills to keep
(15:27):
yourself alive is important, and it is true that if
you don't make it through the first thirty days, you're
not gonna make it through the next thirty years. But um, yeah,
the way people survive outside of a few days perhaps
when they're dealing with some of these uh, what we
would think of a survival situations is this a community.
(15:50):
I mean we see that with uh, you know, when
we look at the Native American history in North America.
You know, even as populations and entire groups were being
decimated by these diseases, sometimes a village in a single
winner from a wave or waves of disease. Even in
(16:15):
the in the face of that, they reconstituted themselves as communities,
sometimes um, multi ethnic or multicultural communities. I mean, there
was a whole variety of ways in which people regrouped.
And I think that that, you know, that was the
message and you know, part of the uh this image
(16:36):
of you know, grabbing your bugout bag and heading out
to the hills is um it just doesn't work, you know.
And and the the stockpiling you know as well. Um,
And so yeah, when we look archaeologically, you know, we
always see communities. Yeah, that's something we really try to
(16:58):
encourage people to this show where obviously some amount of
disaster preparation is is not just helpful, but is I
think kind of morally necessary if it's at all financially
feasible for you. You know it is you are it
is absolutely the right thing to do to try to
have two three weeks of of relatively storable food, some water, um,
you know, some other emergency supplies, but kind of beyond that,
(17:22):
as you said that first, like thirty days, if you
actually want not just to live, but to have you know,
life have any kind of meaning, um, you have to
be thinking in a community oriented situation. Yeah, I mean,
because ultimately, you know, what's the difference between two weeks
or two months worth of food? You know it's gonna
be gone and you know you have to come back.
(17:46):
You know. One of the things in researching for this
for this book, one of the things I looked at
was the history of how we made a living, uh
and the history of agriculture. And one of the things
that you know that that I found was that the
last time that humans lived where a significant portion of
(18:09):
the population was hunters and gatherers, that is, not farmers,
there was like one of the current population, you know,
less than five million people in the world. So even
a catastrophic disaster that you know, reduced us to of
(18:30):
you knowent of current population, We're still going to have
more people in the world than ever lived without agriculture.
And so we're gonna have to uh recreate some of
these systems. And you know, agriculture by and large is
going to be a community based system. It's I mean,
(18:51):
you can garden on your own, but but the way
that it needs to work is is going to be
a collective. Yeah, and I think, yeah, this is we
talk a lot about. I actually live with a couple
of wilderness survival instructors and we have about an acre
of land and we do a decent amount of of
of you know gardening, you know, animal husbandry and that
(19:12):
sort of thing, and it it is. Um I've I've
spent a lot of my life on farm, so I've
kind of always had an appreciation for how much work
it is. And one of the things we try to
talk about on this show regularly is the value of
even just having a garden of things like guerrilla gardening.
Not because I'm not one of those people who thinks
that like, oh, we need to replace industrial agriculture, with
like individuals tending small gardens. That's not going to work.
(19:34):
But because the more you kind of interface directly with
the concept of growing food and with working with other
people in order to do that, the more prepared you
are for any number of things that could go wrong,
Like even if those things don't involve a crunch in
the food supply lines, the connections you make with people
doing that sort of work will be more valuable than
an extra two months of stockpiles. You know, when you're
(19:55):
in your food buckets or whatever, you're Alex Jones dried
food buckets. Well, that's that's absolutely right. And you know,
one of the things that occurred to me looking into
the past at some of these uh, you know, collapses
or declines that had happened in the past, was that
a huge percent of the population um um was engaged
(20:20):
directly in agriculture. And you know here in the well
in the industrialized world, is typically less than five percent
less than that even in the United States. Most people
like me don't, uh don't engage in it. And you know,
I know something about gardening, perhaps like everybody else, but
I'm not a farmer. I don't really have that collected
(20:42):
wisdom and if I had to do that, um, you
know probably it's like a lot of other things. When
everything is easy, it's not so bad when you know
when it goes bad, it really helps to know what
you're doing. Uh. And of course everything goes bad sooner
or later, and so um, you know, that's that kind
(21:04):
of things very important, you know. And I think also
there could certainly local systems and some flexible scale would
be really important, you know. So I'm also, like you,
a proponent of of this sort of thing. You know,
if we can get everybody to participate in ways that
(21:26):
we aren't now, that will give us some flexibility. What
if what if we do have supply chain problems, Well,
we have a number of people in the community that
are already doing some of this stuff that could maybe
be expanded or get us through this period. So yeah, yeah,
I mean, even if you're not like dealing with everyone's
caloric needs, it could be as simple as because of
(21:48):
where you're located. You know, when when the oranges and
other kind of fruits aren't able to come in from
a supply line thing, there's a shortage of vitamin C,
and then knowing how to make teata pine needles or whatever,
or what kind of plants have a lot of vitamins. See,
you know, even though you're not you're not focused on
meeting everyone's you know, entire caloric needs through small scale farming,
(22:08):
but you can deal with them a nutrient deficiency or
something because you understand your environment a little bit better. Yeah,
and you know, probably quality of life issues too. I mean,
you know, for uh, you know, kids and u you know,
there's there's lots of there's lots of ways you can
survive that are pretty miserable. So you wanna you want
(22:29):
to try to uh direct it towards those that are desirable.
And I think part of that is having this flexibility,
having this knowledge, having a lot of people involved in things.
And you know, one of the things I talked about
in in my book or ideas of you know, diversity
and inclusion, which we talk about in certain ways now
(22:50):
and often I think unfortunately it's talked about, is if
it's done to benefit the people that are marginalizing, left
out only, And while it is partly that it benefits everybody,
of course, I mean, anyone in a business knows, anybody
in a university knows the benefits of of diversity. In
(23:14):
the same way anybody that's trying to do something understands
the benefit of a diverse range of experiences. You know.
That's why we make these multidisciplinary teams that go out
and do things. Uh, you know, it's so that you
have this this wide variety that can help you keep going. Yeah.
And one of the things that I really found fascinating
(23:36):
in your book and that that kind of made me
feel a little bit um bad as I You know,
I've I've spent a lot of time thinking about the
what happened, what was done to and what also just
kind of happened as a result of the way diseases
spread when when colonizers reached North America. I had never
really devoted that much thought to the actual actions that
(23:58):
in different indigenous groups hook consciously to prevent to protect
themselves from the spread of diseases. You mentioned the Cherokee
in particular, Um in your book. Could you talk a
little bit more about that, because that's something as soon
as I read it, I marked that page because I'm like,
I need to look up what the studies he's referencing,
because I I don't know anything about this. Yeah, that Um,
you know, a lot of that stems from the research
(24:21):
of of some other archaeologists and they you know what,
You're exactly right. We don't think about that. We're not
taught about it that way. You know, we sort of
have this this contradictory and sort of u uh doubly
problematic way of talking about this. First, for a long
(24:42):
time we denied sort of the how traumatic and how
much of a genocide it was when Europeans arrived um
And then after denying that, we sort of say, well,
Native Americans are gone and no longer relevant, so we
can cease to talk about them. Of course, that's not true.
(25:07):
And one of the things that we see when we
look more in detail at the histories, or we listen
to the oral histories, or we look at the archaeology,
is that there are a number of things that that
that people did and do to um uh uh to
(25:28):
create the outcomes that they want. And that was no
different for the Native American groups, you know, I mean,
they had ways of dealing with disease, and some of
them will be will be able to understand it via
our sort of our system, right, isolating people, cleanliness, minimizing
(25:50):
contact expect especially with sort of problematic groups like the
Colonizer's um you know. But in other ways, there are
things that are gonna be unfamiliar to us and we're
not gonna see the effectiveness or the value in it.
But one of the things that that all of these
(26:11):
things did, that these groups were doing was created or
maintained um group identity and cohesion and allowed the perseverance
of of community. And so there are um you know.
It's it's easy to think about people as sort of
(26:32):
passive victims of something, especially when it serves your purpose
to to think about it in these ways, and we
just see that it's it's not the case. Yeah, there
was a remarkable moment in the book, and I think
it was from when you were in Honduras where you
you talk about your finding pottery shirts and they have
these specific kind of markings on them from I don't
(26:54):
like a thousand years ago or so, and you also
know a local woman who's a potter and she's putting
the same markings on and you ask her why and
her answer is like, well, because the pottery shirts that
we find from our ancestors have those on them. And
my initial thought was like, oh, what a shame that
she doesn't know what those originally meant. But then I
thought like, well, but is that any different from like
(27:16):
all of the different things that that I do, because
their traditions, because like they're things that like people a
thousand years ago in in in my line did like, no,
it's not like it's it's just what people do, and
it is a continuation, and it's a very there's um,
that's a that's that's survival, you know, that's that's conscious survival. Yeah,
you know, and in that case, of course, whatever it
(27:38):
meant initially, it now means that to her, right, So
there's the meaning, you know, um. And so it's it's interesting,
you know. One of the things you know, I from
and I live in Kentucky. And one of the things,
(27:59):
especially when people come to say Appalachians, they're looking for
sort of authentic Appalachian Kentucky you know, um, and they
already have an idea what that is. And if you
don't see it, because that's not really what people do,
then the response is never, oh my idea is about
(28:19):
what is authentic? Might be erroneous. It's I wonder why
I didn't see authentic Appalachians, you know, it's like what
you did. But you know, there's gonna be more hip
hop and punk groups than there are bluegrass groups because
you know, these are twenty year old kids. That's you know,
(28:42):
they're doing this as much as this other stuff, and uh,
you know more probably, And so that that is something, uh,
that that I think of often as an archaeologist. You know,
my focus is in the past. But if I'm going
to understand things, of course you also have to understand
and how are people thinking about in the present, and
how am I thinking about it in the present, because
(29:05):
you know, everything, all the stories I tell about the
past are coming out of or coming out of my
experience in the present too, and it's hard to uh,
it's hard to separate those and that really the best
we can do is try to, um, you know, reflect
on that and see how is it that I might
be limiting my understanding because of my particular experience. And
(29:28):
one of the things I really like about your book
that I also found fascinating, So it's I you know,
I I for a while did um conflict journalism and
before when when that was just an ambition of mine,
Before I started to do it, I would see the
articles that were being written by all these war correspondence,
and I would just be in awe of like how
did they get that story? How did they get that access?
How did they must have put so much work in?
(29:49):
And then when I actually got there, I realized like,
oh no, they met they made a contact with the
local who was good at it, and that person showed
them around and made all these connections, and like, actually,
none of this work happens without the local fixers. And
you make the point that in archaeology you're not generally
discovering things, like even when you're finding shipwrecks, it's because
these sailors who lived nearby were like, well, yeah, a
(30:11):
bunch of shipwrecks every there, Like yeah, this is where
you're gonna go find them. You know, It's always the
way it is, you know there um um. In the
example you're talking about, I was part of this project
in Forney in Greece, which you know, made the news
because we found so many shipwrecks there something ultimately like
fifty shipwrecks around this island, um, and almost all of
(30:34):
them were shown to us by local folks. Uh. You
know that sponge divers or people that were fishers, you know,
people that were out on the water all the time.
And the few that we found by ourselves, I'm sure
people knew about them, we just stumbled on them before
somebody had a chance to show us. It's the same
way in in the Honduras. Would we would be walking
(30:56):
through the rainforest and you know, maybe we've been walking
for a week, so we're way out in the middle
of this place. People were constantly telling me, the guys
that I was with, would say, Okay, if we go
up this creek, you know, for about six hours and
we go over here, here's what we'd find. Here's what
we'd find over here. Here's what we find over here.
(31:16):
They knew where everything was. Um. And that's you know,
one of the things that you uh uh uh that
that you learn is you know how reliant you are
on people that live in a place. I mean, they
just know it. Yeah, there's no Um, when you get
right down to it, is as obsessed as we are
(31:38):
kind of in in the Western Cannon with the idea
of lost cities. Um, that's not really a thing that
tends to happen. Um. Yeah, no, no, no, it's not.
And and in fact, most of the archaeological sites that
people didn't know about. It was just because they were
so small and ephemeral that no one really paid attention anything. Yeah,
(31:59):
there's no lost city. They're always known for somebody. Well, Chris,
I think that's that's most of what I wanted to
get into in this conversation. I'm wondering before we kind
(32:19):
of close out, because you are both the author of
this book, The Next Apocalypse, which is I think a
fascinating way of looking at the idea of things falling
apart and a wilderness survival instructor. If you're going to
suggest people, you know, a practical kit bag to prepare
for short and kind of long term problems, what are
you what are you putting in your bag? Well, you know,
(32:42):
there's the two main things, uh, that you're always gonna
want is is a knife because that allows you to
make a lot of other things. And a way to
start fire, you know, and we've all seen in the
movies roving sticks together and you know, friction methods and
that works, and you can do that, but it is
(33:02):
incredibly difficult to do in the butt, you know, and
for most of us that don't do it all the time. Uh,
You're just not gonna be able to do it when
it's forty degrees in raining and you really need a fire.
You know, you'll be able to do it when it's
a hundred degrees and dry, you know, uh, because everything
is about to catch on fire anyway. But uh, you
(33:24):
know so um and what would what would that look like? Well, uh,
you need something that will catch on fire pretty quickly.
And the thing I always takes cotton balls. You know,
if you take cotton balls and a disposable lighter or
one of those uh fire starter sticks, it will make sparks.
Um that those cotton balls will catch fire instantly. And
(33:47):
if you take one and you coat half of it
with petroleum jelly, then not only will catch fire, it
will burn you know for you know, a minute or so,
long enough to catch other stuff on fire. So you know,
making are and having some sort of cutting tool are
the very basic things. But um, you know, the beyond that,
(34:10):
I would say, uh, you know, clothing or some sort
of shelter is is the other thing. You know, exposure
to elements will kill you quicker than anything, and so
having some way to uh to protect yourself and that's
usually gonna be you know, first line of defense is
going to be your clothes. And one of the things
(34:32):
that that you'll know anybody that that deals with sort
of survival situations is that most people that really get
in trouble with things like hypothermia, you know, it's not
when it's thirty degrees below and they're out doing something.
It's when it's fifty degrees and sunny and they're out
in a T shirt during the day, and then at
(34:53):
night it drops to thirty degrees and you know they're
stuck out somewhere with without proper clothing. That's that is
when things get really dangerous. So you know, I would say,
you know, if you can have some way to start fire,
some sort of knife, and appropriate clothes for spending the
(35:14):
night out, you know, then then uh, and you're probably
in pretty good shape for most situations. Well, Chris, thank
you so much for talking with with us today. Chris Begley,
underwater archaeologist, author of the Next Apocalypse, The Art of
Science and Survival. Chris, is there anything you'd like else
you'd like to say or kind of get into before
(35:35):
we close out for the day. No, just thank you
very much for for reading the book and for reaching
out to talk with me, because I think that, you know,
especially now as we go into sort of an uncertain future.
I mean, future is always uncertain, I suppose, but um
as you know, we're really recognizing some of these challenges.
(35:59):
You know, really am hoping that this sort of um uh,
community based idea becomes the way we think about things. Uh.
You know, it doesn't mean it's easy or that we're
gonna like it. It doesn't mean that that's what I want.
I mean, tell you the truth, I would love it
if it was just me out in the woods with
(36:21):
my family, you know, I can do that. It's much
harder to be part of a community and make things
work for a big group of people. But that's just
the way it's going to be. Yeah, And that's that's
ultimately the way in which you have a lot more
real security because I think, um uh, I think people.
I don't know, the world seems so complex and messy
(36:43):
that it's easy to imagine that that safety comes from
getting away from the world. But historically that's just not
how it works. Now, the world finds you. You know,
it's the best. Being part of a group is always best,
and your your little group can never defend against the
(37:06):
big group. I mean, if we want to put it
in those terms, you know, you can't just hoard everything
and uh it just doesn't work. Might work for a
little while, but yeah, so that you know that for me,
that's the message I'm hoping, Yeah, people take from it. Well,
Thank you very much, Chris. For those of you listening
at home again, please do check out The Next Apocalypse
(37:29):
The Art and Science of Survival by Chris Begley. That's
going to do it for us all today. Chris, Thank
you again, and have a wonderful day here you too.
Thank you. It Could Happen Here is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
(37:50):
us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone
Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
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