How The World Ends 101 with Special Guest Dr. David Perlmutter | Zombie Book Club Ep 129 - Zombie Book Club

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_01 (01:26):
University professor.
It's on the apocalypse.
It's kind of densely populated.

SPEAKER_02 (01:42):
I can't wait for that.
I'm Leah, somebody who lovesanthropology.
Shocking.
I'm Leah.
Welcome back to our Zombie's.
And hello there to any newlisteners.
Glad you're here.
Today we are going back toschool with a cool professor,
Dr.
David D.
Perlmutter, professor of mediaand communication at Texas Tech
University, and a scholar of howwe tell stories about war,

(02:02):
crisis, power, and the end ofthe world, our favorite topic
here at Zombie Book Club.
He's the author of Policing theMedia, Street Cops and Public
Perceptions of Law Enforcement,and Visions of War, Picturing
Warfare from the Stone Age tothe Cyber Age.
That's pretty punk rock, Dr.
Pearl Mutter.
You may have seen him on TheDaily Show or the Sword and Pen
YouTube channel talking aboutThe Last of Us, or heard him on

(02:25):
Apocalypse Apocrypha, or many,many other awesome podcasts.
He is also, I feel this isrequired to mention, a recipient
of Texas Tech's Excellence andGender Equity Award, which
immediately made him feel like afriend of the pod, because
that's a pretty cool honor toreceive.
Today we are asking Dr.
Pearl Mutter the big zombiequestions about government
collapse, authoritarianism,propaganda, and yes, even

(02:48):
apocalypse software.
Welcome back to SchoolZombesties.
Today's lecture is How the WorldEnds 101.
Hello, Dr.
Pearl Mutter.
Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 (02:56):
Thank you so much.
I am very glad to be here.
Uh, you know, since Apocalypseis is coming, and uh I just want
to talk to you uh uh uh a coupledays before it actually happens,
and you know, this will be ourlast podcast, of course.

SPEAKER_01 (03:12):
So that feels true.

SPEAKER_02 (03:17):
Um it's actually this is coming right before
2023.

SPEAKER_00 (03:23):
I'm sorry.
I you didn't oh okay.
Well we'll well this a certainpoignancy to the are we gonna
die?
Yes.
Well I'll I'll fill you in aboutthe meteor later.
Go ahead, okay.

SPEAKER_01 (03:33):
If uh if you're listening to this episode, we
survived the meteor.
Maybe.

SPEAKER_02 (03:38):
But will we survive 2026?

SPEAKER_01 (03:40):
We'll find out.
Or you're picking this up 150years from now through the uh
the rubble.

SPEAKER_02 (03:46):
Archaeological evidence.

SPEAKER_01 (03:47):
Yeah, in which case, how did we do?

SPEAKER_00 (03:51):
That's a great conversation topic, by the way.
What we find of lots of uh civilcollapsed and lost
civilizations, you know, whatthey're gonna find of ours, you
know, our podcasts and things.

SPEAKER_02 (04:02):
You know what?
We do our rapid fire questionsright off the bat with every
guest, but I'm gonna ask you,completely unprepared, what do
you think is the number onething people would find from our
collapsed civilization?

SPEAKER_00 (04:12):
Uh that depends on how long.
And I've actually been in somediscussions of this on panels
with real scientists.
I'm a social scientist, but uhand I do consider that to be a
real scientist.
But uh there was a panel I wason, and then there was uh some
really good articles.
There was a TV series after us,and there was speculation about

(04:35):
how long it would take for thereto be no trace of us.
And I think the consensus wasthat even like a hundred million
years from now, some of ourdebris in terms of like steel
girder buildings, skyscrapersmight be like a dust layer that
they would notice and say, hey,something was going on there.

(04:56):
Um but I certainly think that uhit's good, it would be very
interesting if a collapse camein the time period that we all
are reading now.
Because look, I started readingapocalyptic fiction when I was
very, very young, like I was inmy zero digits in the 60s, and
they always put the apocalypsein like 1985 or 1990 or 2025.

(05:22):
That that move uh that that waslike a really bad year, 2025.
And uh and tell me about it.
What what what's interesting tome is that we have records of
past civilizations like theAssyrians and the Mycenaeans,
because they used as one oftheir media clay tablets.

(05:43):
And one of the great thingsabout a clay tablet is if
somebody comes along and burnsyour city to the ground, that
preserves your civilization interms of those clay tablets.
Because a baked clay tablet, ifyou want to go long term, forget
like uh you know a shock harddrive or something like that, do
all do this podcast on claytablets and then bake them.

(06:05):
Because then we for tens ofthousands of years, they will
stick around.
So then now we contrast it withus, and you think of so much of
our civilization is ephemeral.
The power grid goes out, youknow, let's face it, what are
the scenarios for apocalypse,EMP blast, nuclear war, virus,
but but it's all has to do withthe collapse of, yeah, the

(06:28):
collapse of the power grid, thecollapse of electricity, the
collapse of ability to readdocuments.
Um just a fun fact, uh a numberof years ago, the there was a
project in England to recreatethe talk about Doomsday.
Where do we get that?
The Domesday Book.
When William the Conquerorconquered England, he wanted to

(06:51):
see how much what all the stuff,the the land, the goods, the
people were in his new realm,and he commissioned essentially
a census there, and it becameknown as the Domesday Book.
It still exists, right?
And you can see like twopeasants you know registered in
this town, and they had threedonkeys and so on.
I'm I'm oversimplifying.

(07:12):
I want to know how many donkeysyou have.

SPEAKER_02 (07:13):
I'm gonna say like adding this to my T VR right
now.

SPEAKER_00 (07:15):
Well, I I do need to know how many donkeys you have.
That's right, uh for for justfor the census.
But after the apocalypse, thosedonkeys are already worth their
weight of gold.
So we we all agree on that.
But um the point was that thewriting medium that they had
there was was often beautifulparchment or vellum, you know,
which is like a skin.

(07:36):
And and you can go visit thedomesday books today and look at
them, and they look fresh andnew.
But then for the anniversary ofthe writing of the Domesday
book, the I think it was the BBCand a couple of other
institutions decided we're gonnause the latest medium on
computers and memory to have avirtual Domesday book.

(07:58):
Well, as I understand it, thatis now unreadable.
It's an old format.
Yeah.
And I'm old enough to rememberworking with IBM punch cards.
I think there's only a fewarchives in the country where
you can take an IBM punch cardand have it transferred to
modern data.
Uh there's just a lot of ourcivilization, we've produced

(08:19):
more content than any othercivilization.

(08:54):
But if there was a collapse, I'mnot sure besides tombstones and
like inscriptions on buildings,there would be anything left
whatsoever because our paper andcertainly everything electronic
would be zapped or fried ordecayed very quickly.

SPEAKER_02 (09:09):
Yeah.
And how do you like I could notum I don't think of access to
anything that would make afloppy disk work.
And sometimes I actually thinkabout like, I want to read my
grade seven essay just becauseI'm curious.
And I have that floppy disk, andI just look at it and I'm like,
I don't know what to do withthis.
It's just a disk now.

SPEAKER_00 (09:28):
I have Microsoft Office files from the 1990s,
which I can't read.

SPEAKER_03 (09:35):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (09:35):
It's a real problem.
Uh I mean, I'm sure I could paysomebody somewhere to do it, but
but but if the civilizationcollapses, we may they they may
know we built things, but theyreally it'd be sort of like a
Etruscan level of just we seethese inscriptions and we knew
that they that they could write,but we just don't know what they
were talking about.
That is so sad.

SPEAKER_02 (09:56):
Well, I don't know if this is gonna bias you
against your very first thisvery first question I'm about to
ask you.
These are our questions we askall guests.
Um it's a rite of passage.
So would you choose the 40-hourwork week where you still get to
keep all this information, butyou got 40 hours of work plus
whatever you got to do at home,or the zombie apocalypse.

SPEAKER_00 (10:15):
What's your dream life?
Well, I I I I should introducemyself a little bit and say that
for the last 30 years, I've beenexploring the creation of media
content, especially forpolitical purposes in wartime,
in times of crisis.
And adjacent to that, I'vealways been fascinated by

(10:36):
apocalyptic media.
Uh and this would these arebooks, television shows, movies,
eventually games, uh thatcontinued to this day.
I'm I'm very interested in thenotion of like how people
behave, how they communicate,how societies are organized
under extreme stress.
And so, for example, my fatherand my mother were involved in

(11:00):
World War II.
And for m most people on planetEarth, especially in Asia the
Pacific, Europe, Africa, Asia,that was the apocalypse.
It seemed like the apocalypse.
When people come into your townand burn everything down and
kill anybody, that is afunctionally equivalent
apocalypse, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 (11:22):
Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (11:22):
It's like your entire world is empty and
everybody you know is beingkilled.
So I I'm really interested inhow people behave at those
times.
I do not want to go through it.
Now, a 40-hour work week is verytough because we we we
professors, we we get to do whatwe really love, which is
teaching and doing research, andthen because I'm a journalism

(11:45):
professor, this kind of outreachwhere I talk to great people
like you, then show it to mystudents.
And so I I would really feelonly 40 hours would would cramp
me.
But if the choice was versuszombie apocalypse, which by the
way, I already have my plans forsurviving, I I would still pick
the 40-hour work week.

SPEAKER_02 (12:03):
Because that's less than what you work now.

SPEAKER_00 (12:05):
Oh, yes, substantially.
And I don't mean to brag.
I just I'm very lucky to have ajob where I look forward to
every hour.
Yeah.
And I realize that's not ineverybody's situation.

SPEAKER_02 (12:14):
No, I think it's kind of amazing to remember that
there are jobs out there likethat.
And that, you know, you you saidyou'd feel cramped by 40 hours.
And I get that.
If I if my full-time job wasart, I'd be hyper-focused and
forget to eat or sleep veryfrequently.
So I totally understand.
Well, uh, you're not going toget your wish.
It is a zombie apocalypse nowfor these next couple of
questions.

SPEAKER_01 (12:34):
So it's a zombie apocalypse, and you still have
to go to work.
No, I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_00 (12:38):
Uh well, that's that is a good question, though,
right?
About like, do do we some jobsin the a zombie apocalypse?
I mean, like sheriff, you mightstill need to go to work and and
uh farmer, you might still needto go to work.
Other jobs like professor, Imean, I'm would I be invited
into the community, right?

(12:59):
I think it depends on the use.
Is that a useful skill?
I would hope I could help onlike maybe hey, I could be the
archivist, you know, for thefuture and teach, I could teach
writing.
I mean, it probably people wantto still learn that.

SPEAKER_02 (13:12):
Yeah, we were just talking about roles in the
apocalypse last week, and itwon't be last week when this
comes out.
Sorry, time is weird withpodcasts.
A few weeks ago.
A few weeks ago.
Uh, and I think you would be astoryteller.
That would be your role in theapocalypse, because that is the
archivist, that's the person whokeeps the history in that
storytelling role is also veryimportant because I mean,
frankly, you'd be invaluable inthe apocalypse.

(13:34):
You have so much experience ofhow shit's gone down.
Oh, beep that out.
How stuff has gone down.

SPEAKER_00 (13:41):
Well, that's that's one of the real interesting
questions is about society,right?
And like how uh human beingshave risen, and I say that with
a little bit of sarcasm becauseI think the rest of the world
isn't thanking us for this, butlike we've risen to this
dominance on planet Earth overother species, which is
unfortunate for a lot of otherspecies.

(14:01):
But we have done so by communaleffort.
And that communal effort hasbeen like building a skyscraper,
it's also been like bombing acity.
And you know, I mean that we wewe we are really good at
communal effort some of thetime.
So, what happens when acivilization cracks and breaks
down?
How do we restart that communaleffort in maybe a different way

(14:25):
there?
So I think I I could make somecontribution to saying, like,
hey, this is what the bestpractices are for say a small
community defending itself andits farms, goods, you know?

SPEAKER_02 (14:35):
Yeah, you're invited to our survival group, without
question.

SPEAKER_00 (14:38):
Thank you so much.
Please come.
I will write a novel about mygreat travel up to Bennington to
get to you.

SPEAKER_02 (14:44):
So I mean that would be a fantastic story all on its
own, just getting here inVermont.
And on the way, what weapon areyou going to use to keep
yourself safe?

SPEAKER_00 (14:51):
Uh, this is Texas.
So now we we we also have totalk about um So you're gonna
use the cowboy hat.
Yeah, well, we've talked aboutthis before.
I mean, you you you brought itup in your podcast.
I certainly have a conversationall the time, is that zombie
apocalypses are situationaldepending on where your
situation is.
Um I I had an interestingconversation just about this

(15:12):
online.
I think the assumption here inTexas is that a zombie
apocalypse would last about fiveminutes.
Because uh statistically, peopleare heavily, heavily armed, and
everybody would just go out inthe street and the zombie
apocalypse would be over andwe'd be going, heh, too bad
about New York there, you know.

SPEAKER_01 (15:33):
I do think that's true.
I think it's like if it's it'salso about timing.
So like if you caught the zombieapocalypse right after like the
first person was infected, youcould deal with it really
easily.
But if you know, if the if thesystems and powers that be um
prolong their response for toolong, that's when it becomes a
problem.

SPEAKER_00 (15:53):
Right.
And that that if we can get tothis at some point in this
conversation, that's one of thetopics I love to cover with you
is um uh watching The Last of Usis an example, and I'm assuming
most of your your viewers likeknow what The Last of Us is, is
like a video game, and then withat least two seasons of a TV
series.
And there's one particular sceneI'm thinking about.

(16:16):
Have you seen it?

SPEAKER_04 (16:17):
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (16:18):
Yeah, okay.
So uh yeah, you've seen it.
Right.
So I was I'm sorry, sorry, Ithink, but but um I I believe
it's Indonesia, where ascientist is presented with
evidence that there's thisvirus, and she asks these
questions.
And what I love about thatscene, um, and I have to think
the person who wrote that scenewas the the guy who also did
Chernobyl uh, because he's theco-creator, and I think he wrote

(16:40):
that scene because it wasfantastic low-key.
And if you remember, for thoseof you who have not seen the
scene, the scientist inIndonesia is presented with this
evidence that, like, oh yeah,there's a zombie apocalypse.
And she very quietly tells themilitary.
Now, usually in these things,it's the military who are the
sort of rampaging, let's gonuclear, and things like that.

(17:00):
But this time it's this quiet,you know, nice woman, you know,
in proper shoes, who's ascientist, who says, You will
need to drop a nuclear bomb onthe city right now.
If you don't mind, could I getit right at home to my family?

unknown (17:16):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (17:17):
I just thought that was the most devastating,
powerful scene I have everwatched in any zombie apocalypse
movie.
That quiet moment there, itprobably only a couple hours of
real time have passed, and shesays, drop a bomb on me and my
family to stop it.
So that question of likestopping it, and a lot of the

(17:38):
pro the IP we've seen, a lot ofthe content we've seen, yeah,
the authorities wait, but yousort of understand why they
wait, right?
I mean, like, you know, I firstof all, I believe Indonesia does
not have an actual thermonuclearweapon.
So like imagine the phone call.
You know, the president ofIndonesia calls, I guess China,
India, Pakistan, but you know,United States, and says, Look, I

(18:03):
want to borrow three hydrogenbombs, or if you could just
launch them on my major cities.
You can see why authoritieswould be really slow to respond
to something like that.

SPEAKER_03 (18:18):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (18:18):
Yeah.
So so it would get out ofcontrol.
I think it it it sometimes thatyou wonder why it got out of
control, but you can sort of seehow bureaucracies move and you
know, set levels of approval.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (18:30):
I think it still would have gotten out anyways
because it uh it kind of spreaditself via uh the food supply.

SPEAKER_02 (18:37):
Well, yeah, it was already in um what were they
eating?
Pancake wheat.
It was in wheat.

SPEAKER_01 (18:41):
Yeah, wheat, yeah.

unknown (18:43):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (18:43):
Um which I've grown more than you know, that like
because there's countries thatdon't eat pancake mix, so I I
don't know.
But anyway, um, I think it wouldspread faster in some places
than others.

SPEAKER_01 (18:55):
Yeah.
Yeah.
The question was what would beyour weapon of choice?

SPEAKER_00 (18:59):
Oh, what my weapon of choice?
Well, um, I are these thezombies that the sort of
standard zombie that, you know,if you hit hit them in one part
of their body versus another,they just drop and they're gone.

SPEAKER_02 (19:13):
If they're undead, shoot them in the head.
That's the zombies we're talkingabout.
Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 (19:16):
It's a pretty safe bet.

SPEAKER_02 (19:17):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (19:18):
I mean, you might have to find out if it turns out
to be the foot, you know.

SPEAKER_02 (19:22):
Or the all of us are dead zombies, which appears to
be the neck.
Yeah.
For some reason.

SPEAKER_00 (19:27):
Um Yeah, I I I I think I think the uh the I the
US Special Forces just committedto a new I forgot what the brand
manufacturer was, but being inTexas, I know I I just watched
the video on this.
There's a new$20,000 all-purposesniper assault rifle that the US
Special Forces are have justmade a contract for to buy.

(19:51):
I'd like that because you canuse it as for sniper and also on
full auto.

SPEAKER_02 (19:57):
I think you are more useful than you initially let on
in the zombie apocalypse.

SPEAKER_01 (20:02):
Yeah, this but this book you're gonna write is gonna
be amazing.

SPEAKER_02 (20:05):
Amazing, yeah.
Uh, so you're on your way to us,to your survivor group here in
Vermont.
Right.
And you stumble upon a, I don'tknow, let's let's let's make it
more reasonable for thisscenario.
You stumble upon an 18-wheelerthat is full of a shelf-stable
food item that will be able tolast you until you get to
Vermont.
What do you hope is in thattrailer?

SPEAKER_00 (20:26):
Okay, now that's a very interesting question.
There's a great book out there,I forgot the author's name, but
it's called PackingP-A-C-K-I-N-G for Mars.
And this was a journalist whowrote about the logistics of
space flight.
Like, you know, what would theyhave to take to go to the
bathroom on a trip to Mars?

(20:47):
And then one of the questionswas food.
And it turns out that NASA hasdone a lot of research on what
foods have the maximumnutritional and caloric value
versus weight and bulk bulkthere.
And it some of what we've seenin popular culture, basically

(21:08):
steak and potatoes are reallygood to have in terms of caloric
value.
Behind me, I the this is apodcast you can't see it.
Behind me is a picture from theLascaux cave in France, is one
of the first art we have.
And this is a beautiful, veryfat and juicy horse that our
ancestors said, man, that is agood looking horse there.

(21:31):
They weren't riding them yet,they were eating them, and you
can see.
It's really it's probablypregnant.
It's very plump, juicy, andfatty.
So I think dried dried meatwould be very helpful.
Dried potatoes would be veryjerky.
A tractor trailer full ofhorses.
I don't think you're gonna getthat.

(21:52):
But beef jerky.
Yeah, I I mean let's theindigenous people of the
Americas actually perfected thisin in North America, Pemicin.
So if you ask me what I'd liketo have, I would like to have
like some specialty company wasdelivering to a California
supermarket uh an 18 wheelerfull of real Pemicin.

(22:13):
And uh that's that is the bestpackaged food you could possibly
have.
What is Pemicin?
It it if if everybody looks itup, it is a special food that
the Native Americans designed umall over North America, but but
I think concentrating in theNorthwest, where they took fat
from like buffalo or from salmonand mixed it with spices, uh

(22:38):
nuts, cranberries, berries, andbasically made a traveling food
that's tight and a great, youknow, you can carry a lot of it.
And it was designed for whatyou're talking about.
I mean, it was designed forlike, especially during heavy
winters where they weren't ableto hunt as much or or grow.
Uh very high calorie,lightweight.

(23:00):
So I I'm sorry for gettingprofessorial here, but like this
is I I actually looked this up,but I if I would like a an
18-wheeler pole of penicillin.

SPEAKER_02 (23:08):
I love it.
Thank you.
That is definitely the mostunique answer we've gotten.
Yeah.
And we all learned somethingtoday.
So I'm here for it.

SPEAKER_01 (23:15):
We had a lot of peanut butter, but this is
definitely the first time we'veheard this.
Pemicin, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (23:20):
And we had an uh have you watched the TV show
Chopped, Dr.
Pearl Mutter?
Okay.
It's a competition where you geta random basket of food and then
the chefs have to make differentmeals out of it.
Anyways, we did an apocalypticchopped with everybody's answers
this summer.
Um, and so next time we do it,we're gonna get to use Pemicin
uh as an ingredient because ofyou.
So thank you.
This is the last rapid firequestion uh that I think is

(23:42):
gonna be particularlyinteresting for you.
Uh, you find a workingsolar-powered DVD player and box
set along your journey.
What show do you hope or a boxset is uh available for you to
watch forever if you want to?

SPEAKER_00 (23:58):
Um I guess because I'm a teacher, I would think
what would be educationallyhelpful for the the new the
generations to come that don'thave access to school systems
and and live maybe evenlibraries or something like
that.
So I I I I know I'm every singleanswer I'm giving you is like a
complicated cop-out answer, butlike I would I would try to find

(24:21):
some, you know, um I would someof those PBS cartoons, you know,
where they taught like you know,our friend the the comma or
something like that.
I I would I would have somebasic uh uh how to math, like
you know, how to learn math andhow to learn I it may not be the
most exciting thing for me, butI think in terms of like what's

(24:41):
best for the next generation,which is our duty, right, is to
not just survive ourselves, butlike raise kids who will
survive, uh, would be some sortof educational videos about math
and writing.
Because other people will teachthem about blacksmithing and
black powdered guns, but I Ithink I like to have teach them
about writing and math.

(25:02):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (25:03):
That's amazing.
It's a very different answerthan anything we've ever gotten
because most of the time it'slike, how do I not be bored for
the world?
Is that the number one answer?

SPEAKER_02 (25:12):
Or is like yeah, no, math videos are not the number
one answer.
Yeah.
But I appreciate that.
Again, you're really sellingyourself as an excellent zombie
survivor group member.
And I have a feeling people aregonna be writing to us asking
how do we get Dr.
Pearl Mutter to Vermontcollectively for all of us to
survive with.
Uh, what inspired you to be onour podcast and share it with
your students?
It was a really it was a lovelysurprise to receive your email.

SPEAKER_00 (25:35):
Sure.
Well, we I got my PhD in 1996,and it says PhD, Doctor of
Philosophy in masscommunication.
That was the field.
Um we still have masscommunication, but we also have
it connected with interpersonalcommunication.
In fact, I tell my students thatone of the master truths of

(25:58):
communication is the best kindof mass communication is that
which best approximatesinterpersonal communication.
So, what that means is that2,000 years ago, the Emperor
Hadrian was described as givingan address to his troops, and
there's 50,000 Romanlegionnaires, and he made every

(26:19):
Roman legionnaire individuallyfeel as if he cared about them
personally.
And then we fast forward topeople who in traditional
politics we call greatcommunicators, people sitting at
home in television would say,gosh, you know, I felt like he
was talking to me or she wastalking to me.
And so now we live in an erawhere we have independent

(26:41):
content creators who are outsidegovernment, even big nonprofits,
and certainly outside thecorporate structure, who are
creating wonderful content likeyou.
And I want to make my studentsin the classes where I teach
about writing and I talk aboutcontent criticism and
appreciation and contentcreation to be inspired by

(27:02):
independence.
I don't want to just say, well,here's how you know this big
network with$50 billion doesthis, or here's how this movie
studio that threw$200 billion atthe screen does it.
I I mean I don't know what thecost of each of your podcasts
is.
It's your time.
You know, you bought equipment,it looks like you have very nice
equipment.
You have very i you have youhave very good sound quality, by

(27:23):
the way.
That's something that we talkabout, is how difficult it is to
get good sound quality.
It's good audio is harder thangood videos, as people learn
when they try to do that.
But my point is I want toinspire my students by saying,
look, these are independentpeople here.
They were not gifted this bytheir mother who owned a
television network.
You know, they're not like afront for the German government

(27:47):
or something like that.
They're independent contentcreators, and yet they create
really interesting, educational,exciting, thoughtful,
intellectually stimulatingcontent on their own.
You can do that too.
You might be doing it for anemployer, but or you might be
doing it for yourself, but likelet's learn from them.
So I feel my students can learnfrom you and other independent

(28:09):
content creators.
That's why, and you do thisexciting stuff on zombies and
post-apocalyptic, which I love,and the students all love too.

SPEAKER_02 (28:16):
So I love that.
Have you like, do you find thatyou make more students who
didn't know they were inpost-apocalyptic stuff into it
after being in your class ormore afraid?

SPEAKER_00 (28:27):
Um, this generation we're talking about now right in
the classroom where severalgenerations are we're getting
going through a generationalshift, right?
We have Generation Z, which aretechnically the ones who are in
college right now.
We have Generation Alpha justcoming up, and in fact, they're

(28:47):
already taking classes.
There's this, you know, highschool students take college
classes, dual credits, and sortof thing.
And then we have a lot of peoplegoing back to college.
Like one of the classes I teachare all people who are in their
40s and 50s and for one reasonor another never went to college
and now are coming back tocollege.
So like I have vice presidentsof technology companies and

(29:11):
former military officers orsomething like that.
So there's no such thing as anormal college student, but I
think all of them have thepost-apocalyptic genre uh fights
higher than its weight class.
It's like everybody knows somepost-apocalyptic films, and it's
almost like a genre that nobodyhas not heard of it.
Like, let me just take another,like there are people, you know,

(29:33):
a lot of people who have neverread a romanticy, which is a
super hot category right now inthe fantasy world, is romanticy
is super hot.
But yet I maybe 70% of thepopulation that has no idea what
that is and will never read one.
Whereas everybody has seensomething post-apocalyptic,
whether it was an old TwilightZone episode or Pluribus today.

SPEAKER_02 (29:56):
Twilight Zone.
That was the show the lastperson chose.
Oh for that.
That took me for a ride.

SPEAKER_01 (30:03):
I didn't know what you were talking about.

SPEAKER_02 (30:06):
Um That's interesting.
I think you're right.
And yet a lot of people look atus funny when we say, like, oh,
we have a podcast about thezombie apocalypse.

SPEAKER_00 (30:14):
Well, we don't want them on our team now, do we?

SPEAKER_02 (30:17):
No.
Well, maybe if they're a doctor,yeah.
You know, I'll forgive them.

SPEAKER_01 (30:22):
A lot of people will say that they're that, you know,
like if if we ask them ifthey're into the zombie
apocalypse genre, they'll belike, Yeah, it's not really my
thing.
It's too scary.
It gives me anxiety.
Uh but they they'll saysomething that they do like.
Like I'm more into like romancenovels or fantasy.
Um, I like comedies orpsychological horrors.

(30:43):
But like if you look at thezombie apocalypse genre, like
the zombie apocalypse is just uhan environmental hazard, and it
can be any genre.
Even romanticy, I'd be willingto say.

SPEAKER_00 (30:55):
I mean, there was that uh yeah, yeah, and and also
it to me they're they're allsubdivisions of world building,
right?
And I appreciate high effort,high talent, high execution
world building.
Uh that uh a lot of sciencefiction authors, Isaac Asimov,
uh uh, I think Robert Bloch inHorror said, oh, I I think

(31:17):
George R.
Martin said this, BrandonSanderson said this, is that if
you're going to write sciencefiction or fantasy, you have to
have hard walls.
That is, you have to have rulesand you have to stick to those
rules.
So it's okay to have dragons,but don't keep adding new powers
to the dragons that should havebeen revealed in the first book

(31:38):
of your 19 book series, right?
Like you shouldn't find out inbook 17.
Oh, by the way, dragons can timetravel.
Really?
For 16 books, the dragons havebeen not time traveling to solve
a problem, but suddenly now theycan.
You know, just tell us what theworld is and then obey the rules
of your world.
And I think the the really goodscience fiction and fantasy

(32:02):
authors try to do this.
I mean, it's very hard as as youas creators yourself.
So you know it's extremely hardto like obey your own rules, but
they do achieve that, most ofthem.

SPEAKER_02 (32:12):
I think it's essential.
As I like nodding my head sohard, I feel like it's gonna
fall off because all I'mthinking about is how in the
very last season of The WalkingDead, they introduced sort of
sentient zombies.
And I was like, what is this?
You can't do that 11 yearslater.

SPEAKER_00 (32:28):
Well, it's zombie zombie apocalypse is and of
course we've had lots ofvariations of it, right?
We've had the uh an actual likecorded the cordyceps in um Last
of Us, which by the way, there'sa fantastic story from like a
hundred years ago.
I think the author was FrankBelknap Long about cordyceps

(32:50):
taking over people.
So that so this is an oldconcept, right?
About literally this the fungivirus.
But and then we've hadpsychological viruses, we've had
virus viruses, we havealien-induced viruses, we've
we've we've had a lot of things.
The word zombie, I think, throwssome people off because they
think it's like almost like halfa joke.

(33:12):
But as we know, there there isin nature the ability to um
disturb the mind, let's put itthis way, of individuals.
And it's not, you know, somesomething within the world of
zombies is not completelyimplausible.
All I ask is that once you'veestablished the rules of zombie,
you you follow those rules.

(33:33):
And sometimes somebody has to,maybe I'm dumb, somebody has to
explain to me, oh yeah, youknow, in comic book 27, they
explain why if you put pepper onyour nose, it you know.
If it gets too complicated, likeuh I I'm I'm a little I'm out at
that point.
Uh I want to know the rules andthen tell a story within the

(33:54):
rules.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (33:55):
Yeah, and the the you can reveal the rules to us
over time, that can beinteresting, but it better be
well done.

SPEAKER_01 (34:00):
Um like the kingdom did that, where like yeah, it
kind of made us believe acertain set of rules, but then
revealed that we didn'tunderstand the rules and then
gave us a twist.

SPEAKER_02 (34:11):
Have you seen the kingdom, Dr.
Pearl Mutter?
No.
Oh, okay.
We're not gonna ruin it for you,but I highly recommend it based
on what you just said.

SPEAKER_00 (34:18):
Uh, you had some questions for us.
Great.
Well, yes, I I wanted to knowmaybe this is something you've
already answered, but likecertainly for the point of view
of my students, is that how didyou march into this topic and
decide to do this form ofcontent about this topic?
What what were your goals andwhat was your process to get

(34:40):
here?

SPEAKER_01 (34:40):
Actually, I I've I found it interesting earlier on
when you were talking about umpeople who have had their
countries and homes invaded bywar and how that is an
apocalypse for them.
And I hadn't really thoughtabout it that way, but uh my my
interest in the zombieapocalypse started when I was in
Afghanistan because I'm a I'm aveteran of both Iraq and

(35:05):
Afghanistan.
Uh and I experienced a differentworld that felt much more like
the Wild West.
Um and I, you know, I saw peoplewho were living in situations
where it was highly stressful,uh highly dangerous.
Um, their their day-to-day liveswas dictated uh often by whether

(35:29):
or not they could go retrievewater for their family without
stepping on a landmine or uh umgetting mortared or having some
uh patrol come along and harassthem.
Um and like it's it's absolutelytrue that it does feel like an
apocalypse.
And I kind of feel like I livedin an apocalypse for a little

(35:52):
while.
And maybe that makes a lot ofsense why I have nightmares
about the zombie apocalypse thatkind of like make more sense out
of life and how I feel about itthan real life.

SPEAKER_00 (36:07):
Um so Yeah, and and I I I sometimes I don't I don't
mean to draw to draw up, but Ijust on that that's a super
important point is that from theearliest origins where people
write about the creation of art,they talk about art as being a
psychological and a culturalexpression as well as sometimes
often a political expression.

(36:29):
So again, I have these picturesfrom the Lascaux Cave, which is
one of the earliestrepresentative art we have,
where it's I mean, we have somecarvings and things like that,
but like this is the if you ifyou've seen the pictures of the
Lascaux Cave, they're theseabsolutely beautiful renditions
of these ancient animals.
And we don't know why they weredoing it, but they expended a

(36:52):
huge amount of effort.
And but what certainly some ofthe theories are that these are
magical, that these are thesehelp them process their world.
Actually, they thought it had aneffect on their world.
There's something calledsympathetic magic.
It is this it's the idea behindvoodoo dolls.
You know, you stick, you make adoll of somebody you hate and
stick a pin in it, they'll feelpain.
One of the thoughts is that likethey painted the animals that

(37:16):
they wanted to catch in order tofeed their family and survive
another week, and that wouldhelp them magically, you know,
the the the ancestors or thegods would intervene to help
them actually catch and kill theanimals.
So there's always been going tomagic and art as a way to
process what happens to us inour real life.
And great art has always servedthat a function.

(37:40):
So you thank you for bringingthat up.
That's you know, for for ancientRoman legionaries and uh someone
like you who served inAfghanistan and in Iraq, that I
I I see these parallels, and Ijust because I'm a history pro
historian that I I I I find veryfascinating.

SPEAKER_01 (37:57):
Yeah.
And uh yeah, so I I've beenobsessed about writing, writing
this story.
It started it all stemmed from anightmare uh that I still
remember to this day.
And uh it was weird because itwas highly stressful, but also
I'm like, I kind of want to goback to it.
And um so I'm I'm writing thisbook, and then Leah was said,

(38:19):
Hey, you you should make apodcast about it.

SPEAKER_02 (38:23):
Yeah, because just a little bit of backstory.
Dan has had a YouTube channel.
Um, and so you're no stranger todoing things like this.

SPEAKER_03 (38:30):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (38:31):
But I think we chose this this format because um it's
nice to not have to worry whatour faces look like.
Yeah, frankly.
Uh and it's also, I think, oneof our favorite mediums is a
podcast versus having to look atsomething.
And then for me, much lessdramatic reason.
I um I think I've always beeninterested in the apocalypse
because of my inneranthropologist and the what-ifs

(38:53):
of that scenario and also thethe big reset that that might
allow.
Um obviously I don't wantbillions of people to die.
Um, but I do think that thereare ways that we could think
differently about how we livetogether.
And it's a lot easier to makechange when there's just like
the I don't know if if theslate's wipe clean, because
you're still human and you haveyour history, but um, you gotta

(39:15):
figure things out, and that'snew and that's exciting to me.
So Dan basically wrote me intobeing his podcast host, which I
keep trying to get out of Dr.
Pearl Mutter every time I'mlike, why don't you talk to this
person without me?
Absolutely not.
And I love it.
It's an excuse to get geeky,which is why I was so excited
when you when you wrote us,because I try and put a little

(39:36):
bit of anthropology facts inevery episode just for fun.

SPEAKER_00 (39:39):
Yeah, and I I think that's sort of leads to my my
second question about um well, Imean, I'm sort of adapting some
of the questions I've listed towhat you're saying now.
Besides learning aboutinteresting content that
contains zombies and zombiestories and how to tell zombie
stories and critiquing zombiestories, are there sort of like

(40:00):
meta lessons that you feelpeople can draw about the world
that they live in?
And probably again giving theexample from Dan, processing
your your own experiences.
I personally think, yeah,post-apocalyptic is not just
about post-apocalyptic, it'sabout today.
It's about, you know, ourcivilization surviving and uh

(40:21):
civilizations have historicallybeen pretty bad at noticing that
they were about to be destroyed.

SPEAKER_03 (40:28):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (40:28):
I mean, we have very few uh you know, those clay
tablets, you know, you'veprobably read about the Bronze
Age collapse, where a lot of thecivilizations of the Bronze Age
over a relatively short period.
I know the scholarship ischanging, but uh the Homer's
Iliad may be a true story, youknow, about a city that's
sacked.
You know, I mean I mean there'sparallels there.

(40:49):
I mean, they're uh that's awhole separate subject.
But the point is that that veryfew civilizations go, yeah, in
about 40 years we're gonnacollapse.
Yeah.
You know, it just it it oftenjust happens.
I mean, the the uh theconquistadors show up.
Yeah.
You know?
I mean I don't think that's theequivalent of what's gonna
happen to us, but like, orthere's a virus.

(41:11):
I mean, just think uh we we hadall of those preps for having a
major virus before twentytwenty.

SPEAKER_03 (41:19):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (41:20):
All the all all all the thousands of books I I've
heard of or read or T V showsabout a virus spreading, uh, we
should have been, you know, alittle bit more prepared, I
guess.
It wasn't like it was the firstinfectious disease that we ran
into either.
Science fiction.
And fantasy can be very good fortraining us.
And so I just I I I'd like toknow what are your some of the

(41:40):
takeaways you think in people'severyday lives of what they can
learn from the stories thatyou're discussing.

SPEAKER_02 (41:49):
I'm gonna start with a very basic one, but I think
it's important because the CDCput out a zombie apocalypse
survival guide as a way ofgetting folks interested in
being prepared.
And um, you know, to my left, wewe jokingly call our podcast
room the bunker.
It's not really, it's just inthe basement.
But we do have five five-gallonbuckets full of rice, beans, and

(42:11):
what else?
Lentils, lentils.
Yeah.
And then upstairs we have ourlong-term storage, which
includes oats, um, fruit,freeze-dried vegetables, and
some other thing, probably morebeans.
We have so many beans.

SPEAKER_01 (42:21):
Yeah, I think this I think it's just more beans.

SPEAKER_02 (42:23):
And we're, you know, we also make sure we have water
on hand um and some otherbasics.
We've got a bag behind us withsome things.
And I don't think that we allneed to necessarily prepare to
survive for decades, but thingscan happen, you know, even just
a couple of years ago, we had nopower for five days, and all
that stuff came in real handy.
So having some basicpreparedness that you could

(42:44):
survive a week if you needed toleave real quick or you needed
to stay is a basic one that Ithink you can learn.
But there's deeper stuff thanthat.
Dan, what would you say is likeyour biggest lesson from reading
zombie apocalypse fiction?

SPEAKER_01 (42:55):
Oh, um that's a that's a big question.
Uh I mean, I I use I use thegenre as like a way to explore
humanity.
Um I am interested in how andhow people respond to
situations.
That's probably something thatalso goes back to uh being in
combat is like you know,sometimes there's a person next

(43:18):
to you and you aren't you don'tknow how they're going to
respond to a really badsituation until one happens.

SPEAKER_03 (43:25):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (43:25):
And you know, maybe I'm trying to understand the
psychology of how stress affectspeople on a deeper level.

SPEAKER_02 (43:33):
Yeah, I think the last one I would ask add in
terms of the anthropologist inme is that it's really reminded
me of why the tangible communitythat you have physically around
you within walking distance isso essential because just like
how much knowledge we havetoday, we all we that is
available at our fingertips.
I also have friends all aroundthe world.
Love that, love that we'retalking many, many miles away

(43:55):
from each other, thousands ofmiles away from each other.
But tomorrow, if things didhappen, unfortunately, Dr.
Pearl Mutter, you're not goingto get here very fast.
You probably have other peopleyou need to take care of.
So having connections andreconnecting to a sense of
community is something that thezombie apocalypse really gets
at.
That I think that in our currentday and age, we're very
separated from and we think ofourselves as all just little

(44:17):
individuals.
But when stuff gets hard, youneed each other.

SPEAKER_00 (44:20):
Well, I I think that's those are great insights.
And it reminds me, uh, youmentioned one of the books I
wrote uh was a book about policein the media.
And I was really interestedbecause police and law
enforcement, uh, CI CSI typestuff, uh, detectives are like
the wildly overrepresented inthe media.

(44:43):
I mean, it seems like everysecond show on the air is a
mystery show of some kind,right?
True crime is a fantasticallypopular genre in podcasts.
I think it's like the half ofpodcasts are true crime or
something like that.
So I called, this is 25 yearsago, I called my local police
department and I said, I wouldlike to ride, this is in

(45:06):
Minnesota, I would like to ridealong with you and observe how
you interact with the public,how the public interacts with
you, and connect that tostereotypes of police work and
policing in the media.
And incredibly, they said yes.
So I spent a year and a half ina police car.
I actually joined the departmentas a reserve officer who used to

(45:27):
work parades and like help outin emergencies and things.
But where I want to narrow downis your experience, Dan and
Leah, is that I was fascinatedhow in situations of sudden
crisis or danger, uh, somepeople were much better than
others in processing informationand making decisions.

(45:50):
Sometimes even when thosedecisions would be life and
death decisions, right?
And certainly as somebody whostudied war, not participated in
war, but certainly read enoughuh you know diaries and memoirs
and you know, now the video ofcombat that you can see every
day, uh the ability to put asidethe panic and crisis of a moment

(46:16):
and say, okay, I need to dothis, this, and this for
survival.
Um and I had need to do itquickly.
I can't like you know form aplanning committee and you know
have a team meeting and run itby my boss and things like that.
And I was very interested inthat.
And in zombie post-apocalypticuh uh fiction, and I'm gonna

(46:38):
take The Walking Dead as anexample.
My favorite character in TheWalking Dead was Carol.

SPEAKER_03 (46:43):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (46:44):
Because Carol has one of the best story arcs I've
ever seen.
I I get a little bit suspiciouswhen somebody is an accountant
and then the apocalypse comesand they're a stone clothed cold
killer five minutes later.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
I think you need some training.
You know, like you need bootcamp, you need you need you need
like something before you gofrom killing machine, you know,

(47:08):
from like mild-mannered person.
Okay.
So Carol starts out, for thoseof you who haven't seen it,
Carol is introduced as I won'tsay a weak character, but she is
literally a an abused housewife,you know, who hasn't been given
much power in her life.
She's dominated by her husbandwho actually physically beats
her and certainly mentally, youknow, gaslights her and treats

(47:29):
her badly.
And then five seasons later, sheis your number one person to be
on your side.
Yeah.
She is this fierce, intelligent,guileful, um stone cold killer
to protect her family group.
And I just, wow, that's that,and but it but it's done very
well as a character arc, notlike you know, a magic pill that

(47:53):
somebody took to become aRussian hitman after being, you
know, a bus driver for 10 yearsor something.
So I appreciate that, and Ithink that is one of the things
we can learn from any fictionwhere people are in hugely
stressful situations, is like,how would I do?
And the police specifically,when they gave workshops on how

(48:15):
not to be a victim of crime,would say, remember, the
criminal, even if it's anopportunistic crime, has
rehearsed in their head whatthey plan to do.
You must rehearse in your headwhat you plan to do.
If you are in the Walmartparking lot and it's night and
you're going to your car andsomebody grabs you and says, get
in your car, I'm not going tohurt you.

(48:37):
You have to, you should haverehearsed beforehand on what
you're going to do in thatsituation.
Now, I I don't know what currentpolice advice is, but back then,
1995, police said, do not go tothe second crime scene.
It's better to have a fightscreaming in the Walmart parking
lot than to be taken to an emptyfield somewhere or the forests

(48:58):
of Bennington.
Oh, goodness.
Yeah.
Right.
Okay.
So and again, I'm I I I Idisavow myself as an advice
giver on this, but the point isthat you must rehearse scenarios
and situations ahead of time onwhat you're going to do so that
you're not at a disadvantage ina crisis situation.
Just like every office we'veever worked at, I I mean, I was

(49:21):
an administrator for 15 years.
We had to turn in a crisismanagement plan.
And we had to come up with allsorts of scenarios.
There's a fire, you know, allthe computers go down because of
a virus or something like that.
There's a tornado here inLubbock.
Okay.
Everybody should have, likegoing on what you said,
everybody should have a crisismanagement plan for like food,

(49:43):
but also a crisis managementplan for like my my thinking,
how I'm going to behave.
And these movies, TV shows,books, games help us do that, I
think.

SPEAKER_02 (49:53):
I totally agree with you because when you're watching
it, you're putting yourself inthat situation.
So again, we're watching all ofus are dead right now.
And there's a scenario wherethese students are locked in a
classroom.
It's a few stories above groundlevel, and they need to go to
the bathroom because they'vebeen there for a long time.
And they have a wholeconversation about it and they
land on a decision that I thinkis really dumb because they

(50:14):
could just poop out the window.
But instead of doing that, orlike poop in a bucket and throw
it out the window, instead ofdoing that, they find a bunch of
absorbable materials, make uhtake filing cabinets and make
like a makeshift bathroom, andthen then people just pile their
poop on each other's poop andmake it stink and stay there.
And like, I know that this seemssilly, but also I'm watching
that and I'm thinking, okay,what would I do?

(50:35):
I would poop out the window orI'd find a waste basket.
And like these are hopefullythings I'll never need to figure
out, Dr.
Pearl Mutter.
But these are the kinds ofquestions that you think about
when you're.

SPEAKER_00 (51:07):
And you know, historically, as as Dan and
Shigley, both of you know,armies have lost more people
from typhus, more people fromillness than they have from
combat.
I mean, that certainly was trueof ancient and medieval of the
Civil War army there.

SPEAKER_01 (51:22):
When I was in um it was vending machines.

SPEAKER_00 (51:25):
Really?

SPEAKER_01 (51:29):
It was briefly a statistic that there were more
um injuries and deaths fromvending machines falling on
people.

SPEAKER_00 (51:37):
Oh.
But that was self-cause they gotmad at the machine.
Right.
Machines didn't attack.
It wasn't like a machineapocalypse, you know.
Machines were rising up.
Five years from now, the AImachines will you know fall on
us.
The AI vending machines willgrow legs.
Yeah, so so just I agree thatit's important for us to like

(51:57):
review, uh, but also just goingback to you know the subject of
of that is that I I do think wewe need to have conversations.
I mean, I I know some peoplehere in Texas.
I'm sure there are people in inin New England, Vermont, who do
black powder, like recreatingbasically last of the Mohicans
type weaponry, right?

(52:18):
There's still very few I knowpeople who like do
blacksmithing.
I know people like this thisthese are going to be super
important skills.
Okay if we actually have a nearcomplete technological breakdown
where we we can't like go to thesupermarket and get something,
or we can't we we we have tofigure like, okay, yeah, the

(52:38):
plumbing system doesn't work,nothing flushes anymore.
You know, where do I dig mylatrine?
Right.
And like I'm sure, Dad, you weretrained to be in situations
where you know you were you wereyou were a highly trained uh
pooper.
You know, I mean you you youwere you were in a you were
told, right?
That was part of the disciplineof learning to be a soldier in

(52:59):
the field of how to how to takecare of you know basic bodily
functions safely.

SPEAKER_01 (53:05):
Yeah, so uh a quick story on that.
Um so we we pooped in MRE bags.
Uh there's there's a rule aboutlike not leaving anything
behind.
Um anything that you leavebehind could potentially be used
by your enemy.
Including MRE bags.
Um you know, the little thelittle heating elements that you
put in there can can be turnedinto all kinds of things.

(53:27):
And also, um, I guess they thatalso applies to poop.
Uh you can't just poop in thesand.
You gotta you gotta poop in anMRE bag, and then you gotta
bring that with you.
So there's a there was a pointwhere the back of our Humvee was
just filled with empty boxesfull of refilled MRE bags.

(53:48):
That's disgusting.
It was, it was not pleasant.
Luckily, I mean the the smell isbad, but we were so climatized
to it because we also smelledreally bad.

SPEAKER_00 (53:58):
Um, so uh but it was important to to health, but also
safety.
I mean, as you're right, I mean,you imagine in a lot of
post-apoc, I mean, we can talkabout this, but post-apocalypse
scenarios, your zombies aren'tyour only enemy, right?
Yeah.
Unfortunately, other humanscompeting for resources like
that truck full of pevasin oryou know, your rice uh might be

(54:22):
more dangerous than the zombiesor or the the immediate
proximity cause of thepost-apocalyptic situation.
And like, you know, this came upin The Last of Us.
I I I felt I disagreed with someof the decisions there, you
know, not that it everybodycares, but I think, but but uh
one of them was they had uh RonSwanson from Parks and Wreck as

(54:45):
Bill the survivalist.
And now it seems to me that ifyou want to be a survivalist on
your own, like alone, you wantto be off the grid literally and
physically, not visible.
The idea that he would create asurvival community in the middle
of a town with like razor footwire fences, basically

(55:07):
advertising to everybodysomething important is behind
these fences, just seems insaneto me.
And it didn't seem like anyactual survivalist would do
that.
They'd find a place in thewoods, a cabin in the woods is
where you want to be alone withyour stuff, not in the middle of
a town.
I never understood that.
I I guess I guess they theythought it was different and
looked interesting, but um thatjust made no sense for

(55:31):
surviving.

SPEAKER_03 (55:32):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (55:33):
So learning how to hide, you know, to be to be not
noticeable, right?
These are we lost those skills.
I don't I don't think we can dohide and seek anymore.
Is anybody playing like that?

SPEAKER_02 (55:45):
Uh I played with my nephew last year.
Okay.
Uh the kids can still do it, Iguess, if you take their phones
away if they have them.
Um I'm I'm curious.

SPEAKER_00 (55:54):
If you found him by calling his phone, it would
ring.
Yeah, that would be amazing.
I should have.
What was I what was I thinking?

SPEAKER_02 (56:00):
That would have been perfect.
Uh I know that you know, therole of governments in
militarization is something wewanted to talk about in the
zombie apocalypse with you.
And I'm curious, um, when youthink of any large-scale crisis
like the zombie apocalypse, whatdo you think uh is like a
realistic depiction of howgovernments might respond that
you've seen?

SPEAKER_00 (56:18):
Oh, yeah, that's a really good question because
typically um I'm thinking of TheLast of Us, I'm thinking of The
Walking Dead, but really a bunchof other post-apocalypse.
Well, there's the duringapocalypse, right?
And then there'spost-apocalypse, and then
there's like longtimepost-apocalypse and before

(56:39):
apocalypse, so they're allsub-variations.
But government doesn't seem todo well.
So let's just take The Last ofUs.
Uh another thing that I foundodd there, again, this is this
um zero to one hundred, is thatlike in the was it like the
second scene of the firstepisode, you've got Texas
National National Guards peopleshooting children.

unknown (57:03):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (57:03):
And I'm going like, no, no, no, no, no.
There would be there would be alonger transitional phase there.
You can't, that's just not goingto happen, you know, that that
quickly.

SPEAKER_01 (57:14):
Um see that's how the zombie apocalypse starts.
It's that it's that moment whereit's just like, yeah, I'm not
ready to take that step yet.
So then that zombie gets awayand bites somebody.
So also you don't kill thechange.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (57:28):
Yeah.
There's a great, I think thebest apoc post most best during
apocalypse and post-apocalypsenovel ever written was by an
author named John Christopher,who sort of made a specialty in
the 60s and 70s of writing YApost-apocalyptic.

(57:48):
But this one was an adult one.
It was called, it had twotitles.
One was No Blade of Grass, andit was made into an
unfortunately a very bad movie.
But in the movie, there's avirus that kills all grasses.
And wheat, uh uh, rye,everything, everything is a
grass.
So just imagine all every formof food, you know, bread
related.

(58:08):
And of course the cows need, youknow, to eat the grass, and so
like horses, and so anyway.
And uh the government ofBritain, I guess they're they're
thinking ahead, decides to dropthermonuclear weapons.
This is this is 1960, uh, on themajor cities of England because
they know that they can't feedthe whole population.

(58:32):
The simplest thing to do is towipe out all the major cities.
And that decision was takenpretty quickly.
I just went, ah now, what wasinteresting is a character in
the book says, you know, I knowthey took that decision, but I
just can't believe that peoplewill actually go through with
it.
And true enough, they don't, Iwon't give away too much, but

(58:53):
mostly they don't go throughwith it.
There's there's a civil revoltwithin the government.
So I think governments, itdepends on what the government
is being stressed to do.
If we have a complete collapseof our civilization, we're going
to have mass starvation.
There's no way.
I mean, like every everyAlbertson's, every United

(59:13):
Grocery, every um, you know, uhuh Ralph's, I don't know what
the big chain is up in Vermontor something like that.
Costco, whatever.
Yeah, Shaw's.
Okay.
You ask the manager there, ifyou stop getting truck
deliveries, how long would yourstuff last?
He'll he'll hit he or she willsay a week, maybe, you know,
right?

(59:34):
Because they need continu Yousee the trucks pull up all the
time, right?
Yeah.
They don't go a week without atruck, they don't go an hour
without a truck pulling out.
So what would happen?
Governments would have to getorganized very quickly.
I don't know how you do thatwithout coercion, right?
Because how could you organizerationing?

(59:56):
We had rationing in World WarII.
That's the last time we hadrationing, but it was
implemented slowly andcarefully, and like everybody
you know was organized, andeverybody knew there was enough
food, but that that you know wehad to have enough you know, uh
given out.
There was a public relationscampaign behind it.
It wasn't overnight the way itwould have to be.

(01:00:16):
And also back in 1945, a lot ofpeople had more access to land
than do now.

SPEAKER_01 (01:00:22):
You know, they uh also victory gardens and
everything like that.

SPEAKER_00 (01:00:27):
Yeah.
We wouldn't have t in in thetypical scenarios that we see in
these TV shows and games, we wewe don't have like six months to
prepare our victory garden, asyou as you put it.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, and and have our owncow, you know.

SPEAKER_01 (01:00:41):
Yeah.
Learn how to grow a carrot insix months.

unknown (01:00:45):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:00:45):
It's interesting.
As you think about places likeDetroit that have been through
pretty significant economiccollapse and the urban gardening
movement that came out of that,like figuring out how to supply
your food as locally aspossible.
Um, and I think about my grannyeven, like she used to force me
to help her garden as a kid, andI hated it.
And now I think like, oh man, ifgranny was still alive, I have
so many questions for her.

(01:01:07):
Because she knew how to dothings that I I am figuring out
now badly.
Like, Granny, how did you dealwith the cabbage worms?
I'd like to know.
Um, although I guess we couldjust eat them in the apocalypse.
I'm not there yet into theeating of the cabbage worms.
But uh, I think you make areally good point.
Yeah.
Yeah.

(01:01:27):
Um that like that preparednessagain is is really essential.
And I think it's really easy inthis day and age to walk.
Into a grocery store and getyourself an orange.
I remember realizing that theoranges I was getting in Canada
were from South Africa.
You know, like that kind ofsupply chain is going to break
down.

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:44):
So that's a great example.
I I'd love to join you inBennington.
What's your plan for not gettingscurvy?
Foraging.
Right.
You have to know what now wehave a wonderful author here in
Texas.
I I happen to know this becausemy wife is his editor at Texas
Tech Press.
And he his uh he publishes abook about uh authentic uh

(01:02:08):
Mexican American uh TexasMexican uh indigenous cooking.
And he did a really good uhspecial about how everything is
edible.
And he just went through justwalking through West Texas
wildlife, you'll see a lot ofthings, maybe a cactus, you
think, oh yeah, I could probablychop that open and it's got

(01:02:29):
water inside.
But if you look at what theindigenous people, from the
Apache to the Wapakki people,they ate, they ate almost
everything.
They learned to use almosteverything in their environment.
And uh the woods, you know, wewe forget that forests were
gardens.
People ate almost everything inthe forest.

(01:02:51):
They just learned how to use it.
These berries you couldn't use,or you could if you boiled them
and then you drain them.
And like you know, acorns, youcan't eat it.
I think it I think some nuts youcan't you first you have to like
soak them in a river in a bagfor a week, you know, before you
you can eat them.
But like we need to learn allthese lost skills.

(01:03:11):
So, you know, you'd hope thatlike there's a library in
Bennington that has you know awhole section on like uh things
that have vitamin C in theNorthwoods in the winter.

SPEAKER_02 (01:03:23):
Yeah, and that's why we have physical books like that
around foraging.
Um and I'll give a little shoutout to Black Forager on
Instagram.
I've learned more from her justwatching her videos of what's
available in our backyard thananything else.
Um I'm curious a little bitmore, going back to the the
government, what kind ofpropaganda do you think would
work?
Say the apocalypse startstomorrow.

(01:03:45):
What do you think would actuallybe effective in the United
States to convince people to bewilling to ration their food?

SPEAKER_00 (01:03:51):
Propaganda works best when people feel it's sort
of true.
And that could be negative.
Like in the past, uh propagandahas been used to attack certain
groups.
It works best when peoplealready have prejudices against
those groups.
Yeah, that makes sense.
So if if you're if you're sayingsomething like, man, those
people from Maine, don't youjust hate them?

(01:04:13):
It it helps better that if theVermonters already don't like
the Mainers.
And I I know that's a sillyexample, but I almost come down
here to look at our leaves,don't they have their own
leaves?

SPEAKER_02 (01:04:24):
You picked the wrong M-word.
It's the Massachusetts folks whocome and park in the middle of
our dirt road where the coveredbridge is and take pictures, and
I can't get home.
Anyway, I'm already biased.

SPEAKER_00 (01:04:35):
Well, that that that actually is a very is is a good,
is a mild, a mild, good, goodexample.
Yes.
So so um if people feel thatpropaganda, because remember,
propaganda was the wordpropaganda comes from
propagation of the faith, theCatholic Church set up an and
they felt that they were that itwas an office of telling the
truth about the Catholic faithand you know the salvation.

(01:04:57):
And so they didn't feel likewe're gonna manipulate people
and we're gonna be evil.
Um so if you are saying thingswhich people feel makes sense,
is sensible, and is basicallytrue, it can be helpful.
So let's just take the exampleof rationing.

(01:05:18):
Um if people believe the systemis fair, because human there's a
lot of psychological researchthat that humans demand
fairness.
Even other primates, like theydo these experiments where like
you give a monkey enough foodthat it's gorged, but it's still
angry if it sees the othermonkey getting more food, right?

(01:05:40):
So, you know, uh, I mean, Iguess they both have the same
job at the lab, so you know,maybe they don't feel bad.
But uh so so there has to befairness.
So, for example, you know, myadvice if I if I were minister
of propaganda of like the UnitedGovernment of Bennington, you
know, post-appocalyptic governorof Bennington, I'd say, okay,

(01:06:00):
the leaders of the government,you must eat in the same
communal places with everybodyelse.
They must see you eating theexact same rations.

SPEAKER_02 (01:06:11):
That's smart.

SPEAKER_00 (01:06:11):
You can't gain 20 pounds, you know, while being
vice president of the of the ofthe of the food bank.
You know, you know, you know,you have to be really careful
about your your your image.
You have to have transparency.
People have to like when youweigh the portions and like you
people have to like have toursand say, okay, these are our
50,000 bags of rice, you know,and we're trying to do this.

(01:06:33):
I mean, you you have to have alot build trust.
And secrecy hurts trust.
Uh and I think that that's wherepropaganda can be very useful,
is people feel like we're inthis together, everybody's
pitching in, you know, my kidsare getting as much food as
anybody else's kids.
Now, the the problem, and thisis where coercion comes into

(01:06:55):
place, is that um let's take ascenario which I've seen happen
in a lot of uh books, uh,especially about the prepper
world, is that okay, let's justsay you do the right thing.
You are ants, and you have savedbags of rice and and lentils,
and then you get a knock on thedoor from the sheriff's

(01:07:17):
department.
Well, you know there's been anapocalypse, and we need to
centralize all the food so thatwe can share with your neighbors
who didn't prepare at all.
Your grasshopper neighbors hadyou know one one bottle of
vermouth and like a cup of a canof coffee and some KFC takeout.
So, what's your answer, Dan andLeah?

(01:07:38):
Are you going to share with theentire community what you've
been smart in saving foryourselves?

SPEAKER_01 (01:07:44):
Logically, especially since like this is
something that we think about alot.
Like we know that that helpingthe community survive is the
best way to help ourselvessurvive.
Um, but there is a part of usthat's like, but we've been sit
it's been sitting in our housefor like we could have put a TV
there in a we could have boughta TV.

(01:08:06):
I could have a PlayStation and aTV where all of that food was
all this time.
I could have not spent my moneyon on it.
Uh and uh and I'd still be, youknow, the the community would be
rationing to us, uh just likethe rest of the grasshoppers out
here.
But um I don't I like as long asthat I trust that the community

(01:08:29):
that's coming to take it doeshave the intention of sharing it
with the rest of the community,and it's not just like some
rogue militia coming by andbeing like, give us your food.

SPEAKER_02 (01:08:39):
Yeah.
So that trust I think is is keyagain.
Um and I don't know that that'snecessarily going to be the
natural reaction of most people.
Like you and I are not are notyour average bears.
Most people don't have giantbuckets full of food in their
house, um, or have thought a lotabout this.
Like, I donated some of it tothe local food bank recently
because I just thought like theyneed some extra food and I have

(01:09:01):
it.
Uh, but I've also thought a lotabout community.
But you're right.
If we trust the community, theperson who's taking it will give
it to them.
If we don't, then it's gonna bea problem.

SPEAKER_00 (01:09:11):
And you can see how in a real life scenario, but
also in the fictional scenarios,you know, not everybody and not
every government or entity, uh,first of all, we're saying
government, but like, yeah,you're bringing up entities.
Like, suppose the organizationis not, I mean, the government
falls apart and something stepsin to replace the government, we

(01:09:33):
wouldn't necessarily have thesame, like, I didn't vote for
you, you know, and I don't knowwho you are, and like uh
actually you're my neighbor whoI hate, you know.

SPEAKER_01 (01:09:42):
Yeah, that's actually very real.
And you know, I think it's it'salso different if it's like if
it's the local, the localcommunity comes by and they're
like, we need you to contributeto the community, that feels a
lot better.
But if some three-letter agencycame knocking on the door, I'd,
you know, I'd I'd be like, youbetter start kicking rocks.

SPEAKER_02 (01:10:01):
Yeah, Liz the librarian comes, I'm giving it
to her.
Our neighbor whose name I won'tuse, I'm not so sure.
So you're right, who it is thatshows up on that or two.

SPEAKER_00 (01:10:09):
Right.
So the that's the question aboutlike the federal government
versus the Bennington, VermontCity Council, you know?
I mean, there's so many issuesthere, and you can see why there
is this um tendency towardscollapse.
Because it's actually reallyhard to keep a community

(01:10:29):
together.
We I mean we have to work at it.
And you and you, Dan, have givenexamples of parts of the world
where uh people live a life thatis much closer to the way we
lived thousands of years ago.
And that's not I'm notdenigrating, I'm just saying
that like we've we all existedin tribal clan genetically

(01:10:51):
related groups.
And it's relatively extremelyrecently in human history that
we've put aside that, although,I mean, Nebo babies exist.
I mean, you know, people stillstill do things for their kids
and their uncle or somethinglike that.
But like in the United States,there's still an expectation,
for example, like the mayor ofBennington would not say, and so

(01:11:15):
now I bequeath the mayorship tomy son and heir, my firstborn
male child.
He wouldn't like put downcampaign posters.

SPEAKER_03 (01:11:22):
No, no.

SPEAKER_00 (01:11:23):
Vote for my firstborn male for mayor, right?
You know, that I've never seenas a political communication,
but I've never seen that before.
But there are politicaldynasties.

SPEAKER_01 (01:11:31):
Now I'm tempted to make signs.

SPEAKER_02 (01:11:33):
Well, in Vermont, it would be more like the thing
that the the positive propagandayou'd want in Vermont is like,
I've lived here all my life.
That's the thing that peoplewould need to hear to trust you.
Like Dan and I would have aproblem becoming any kind of
like uh political leader havingonly lived here for six years,
unless we really worked hard atlike showing up every day.

SPEAKER_00 (01:11:54):
Um and then refugees from Boston would be pretty low
on the uh totem pole, wouldn'tthey?

SPEAKER_02 (01:12:01):
I mean, people discriminate here all the time
based on license plate, and itdidn't take me long, having
heard it, to be like drivingalong.
And if somebody's driving toofast or too slow and they'd all
move them on plate, it goesthrough my head, you know, and
then I'd be like, Leah, you'rejudging.
You they could live here.
Maybe they just haven't changedtheir plates yet.
And it doesn't really matter.

SPEAKER_01 (01:12:18):
Actually, a friend of ours made a short film about
that that had a really hilarioustwist.

SPEAKER_02 (01:12:23):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:12:24):
I wasn't expecting it to be funny, but it was
actually pretty much.
We'll send it to you after Dr.
Pearl Miller.

SPEAKER_02 (01:12:29):
Um So what how do people react to Texas plates?
Um, I think that's like more ofthat would be more of a novelty,
but similarly.
Yeah.
I think like if I see a we allhave in communities, yeah,
right?

SPEAKER_00 (01:12:41):
We we we all have a sense of we we have a sort of
inverted funnel of a communityof like what we define there.
And of course, the greater theshortage, you know, the greater
disaster, the more umMachiavelli said in one of his
writings, uh, I think it was onwar rather than on politics.
He said that when an army isscattered, it flocks to the

(01:13:06):
banner.
It returns to the flag assomething that they can
literally rally around the flagin ancient warfare or medieval
warfare, you know, even civilwar warfare, you know, rally
around the flag, boys, the theMaine and Vermont troops and the
uh Maine troops, especially,we're famous for that.
Uh little roundtop, right?

(01:13:26):
So um how to create that in a ina time of extreme stress, and
and the the the despicablepeople, because let's talk about
we were talking about goodpeople so far.
Let's talk about despicablepeople.
They will emerge and they willsay, This is my chance, you
know.
This is my time.
The first shall be last, and thelast.

(01:13:47):
I mean, uh, this is where you'regoing to get people emerging and
going, like, hey, you know, Icould be king of Vermont.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh I mean, I I was uh you know,I was a deputy sheriff, I was a
school teacher, I was a uh, youknow, a carpenter, whatever, but
like uh this is my chance to beon top in a community.

(01:14:10):
And and so there can be for thegood, but they can all be, and
and I think what's zombie showsthat Walking Dead and others do
very well.
Uh I I thought The Last of Usactually, I I as a professor, I
really like comprehensive mediawhere you're shown different
points of view and you yourealize it's complicated
sometimes about like it's notjust we're the good guys in the

(01:14:33):
white hats and they're the badguys in the black hats.
It's complicated.
And in the uh Last of Us, theydid show like this uh Pacifida
was the government authority.
And in the beginning, you'regoing like, oh yeah, they're the
bad guy, government authority.
But then people bring up like,well, what's to replace them?
And you know, our our is is uhthe the Wyoming.

(01:14:55):
I'm sorry, I had to laugh when Isaw this when they take a take a
tour of the Wyoming community,and uh one of the leaders says,
and this is our religious area,interfaith, of course, you know,
and I just thought that was justa funny line, you know, like to
just reassure people that theseweren't you know religious
fanatics of any one religion, itwas like an interfaith center.

(01:15:15):
I don't know how many of thosethey'll be, the post-apocalypse,
but we'll we'll see.
Um it's more likely that peoplewill spin to the gravitational
attraction of the smaller groupsthat they've already built trust
in.
Though then there'll be a lot ofinter.
And that's really the danger, isthat the society will keep

(01:15:36):
spinning into smaller andsmaller breakups.
That there'll be no chance ofrestoring anything, you know,
statewide, let alone you know,nationwide or globally.
Civilizations don't have a longhistory of coming back from
breaking up.

SPEAKER_02 (01:15:53):
Yeah.
And we don't have a long historyof living and uh and agreeing on
things at such mass scale ingeneral, like you said, like we
we've been living in groups oflike 25 to 50 for most of human
existence.
Exactly.
So I always think of like theUnited States, every country
really, as just a giant grandexperiment.
Um, and we're all kind of stillfiguring it out, sometimes well,

(01:16:16):
sometimes not so well.

SPEAKER_00 (01:16:17):
Um there's a wonderful scene.
There was a movie made in the1960s, 70s about the life of
Oliver Cromwell uh of England,starting starting, excuse me,
Richard Harris and Charles I ofEngland, the king, has a line
there that I've alwaysremembered.
He says, democracy, Mr.
Cromwell, is a Greek drollerybased on the idea that a common

(01:16:43):
person can have uncommon talentsor extraordinary talents.
And you know, we have toremember democracy, it was
around in one form, like onlymale uh citizens of Athens,
about 6,000 of them, for acouple of years, and then it
dropped off completely.

(01:17:03):
Yeah.
And for a thousand years, and wehave different countries.
I mean, North North Korea callsitself, you know, a democracy.
I mean, it's a popular term.
Um, not everybody is actuallypracticing it, but it doesn't
have to stay.
And in in in times of crisis, itit's almost been inevitable that
democratic freedoms have itseems to be a law, sort of like

(01:17:26):
a scale.
Like the the hot the bigger thecrisis, the more of a decline.
You know, Abraham Lincoln did alot of things which, you know,
if you read about them on paper,were not democratic, you know?

SPEAKER_02 (01:17:39):
You had to make some executive decisions.
Um it makes me think about howthe military is a hierarchy
because it's a situation wherepeople need to be able to make
decisions quickly.
And in a crisis, you have tomake decisions quickly, um,
which is very hard to do indemocracy, let alone like a
consensus-based model, which islike how I do a lot of my work
is we all sit around a table andwe talk about things until we

(01:18:01):
have come to like a strongagreement where pretty much
everyone is at least are like,okay, I can live with that
decision.
And that takes time.
And you can't do that when youhave zombies literally at your
doorstep.

SPEAKER_01 (01:18:12):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:18:12):
Although you can't be talking about how we're gonna
kill the zombies for a few days.

SPEAKER_01 (01:18:16):
Well, post uh post-World War II, um, the
creation of the continuity ofgovernment uh plans that uh led
into the Cold War and everythingtook a lot of um gave a lot of
powers to the presidency thatusually was reserved for
Congress because they neededsomebody that could uh make a
decision in minutes, not uhweeks or months.

(01:18:39):
In in the event that like anuclear war broke out.
They needed somebody that couldjust be like, okay, we're
reacting to this bomb that'sexploding right now.

SPEAKER_02 (01:18:48):
Yeah.
Part of me wonders, and I'mcurious what you think about
this, Dr.
Perlmutter, that it's in thecrisis situation, I think it
might actually be better ifwe're working in small groups
because the trust factor willinherently be higher.
Like I'm way more likely totrust my neighbors in figuring
this out together than I am ifsomebody from Washington shows
up and asks me for my food.
Well, they wouldn't even betelling me at that point, I'm

(01:19:11):
pretty sure.

SPEAKER_00 (01:19:12):
Yeah.
Let me use a military umexample.
I was talking about this the theother day.
Um, I was doing something on theFalklands War, and the British
won the Falklands War, and theydid so for a number of different
reasons.
It wasn't that the Britishtroops were necessarily uh

(01:19:33):
veteran troops versus the theArgentinians being
inexperienced.
It was true a lot of Argentiniantroops in the Falklands War in
the early 80s were, I'm sorry,80s, was um were inexperienced,
but uh the British troops wereabout the same age, but they had
much, much better, longertraining.
They had a long, long traditionof an officer caste.

(01:19:56):
I say officer caste as well asclass, where the officers were
given a lot of independentcontrol and command to make
decisions on the spot.
And in today's world, the armiesthat seem to be extremely
successful in small unitactions, not necessarily wars,
but except but in small unitactions are the ones where the

(01:20:20):
local officer is highly trainedand has a lot of decision-making
skills.
So, in other words, an Americanofficer, uh, you know, British
officers, Israeli officers, uh,Canadians, uh, other armies that
have historically been verysuccessful, they allow the local
lieutenant and captain atremendous amount of leeway to

(01:20:44):
accomplish the mission.
Somebody up the chain of commandsays, I need you to take that
hill.
Do it any way you want to, justdo it.
Whereas other kinds of armies,and I'm not going to name names
here, but there are countrieswhich have consistently done
badly in warfare, are the oneswhere they have this rigid
structure where local officers,first of all, are never trained

(01:21:08):
to be independent because thethe leader of the non-democratic
leader of the country is muchmore worried about coup and
revolt than they are about war.
So they put their uncle is thehead of the military, and their
nephew is the head of the 5thArmored Brigade, and nobody can

(01:21:28):
do anything without 17 calls upthe chain of command.
I mean, there was one MiddleEastern Army.
Me where I was reading aboutthis, and in order to call in an
airstrike, they have to make 17levels of approval.
And I was thinking, Dan, it itwas true, right?
That like if you needed anairstrike, you picked up the

(01:21:49):
phone and you called like one ortwo people, and then some A10s
showed up, right?
I mean, it it was you didn'thave to like check too much.

SPEAKER_01 (01:21:57):
I mean, I never called in an airstrike.
What?
Oh man.
But um, yeah, I mean, I don'tknow, I don't know where the
orders came from, but like let'ssay there's a team that's being
fired upon.
They call they call in over theradio, and usually it's you
know, there's there's like athey they have to get approval
from a commander, but thatcommander might like have like a

(01:22:20):
blanket approval if they're ifthey're like, yeah, there's bad
guys out there, go go bomb them.
Um but you'd call in and usuallyit's like whoever's in charge of
uh of um you know the artilleryunit or whatever um that would
be the one who would make thedecision, uh as long as they
have the authorization fromtheir their higher up.

SPEAKER_00 (01:22:43):
But they would often be, as you say, given the author
pre-authorization.
Yeah.
Whereas a lot of these otherrigid control armies, nobody is
authorized to do anything.

unknown (01:22:53):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:22:54):
And as soon as assuming they had authorization
like that, it could they couldbe uh wheels off the ground in
the air uh within minutes.

SPEAKER_00 (01:23:02):
Yeah.
I mean, I'll name one of them.
So like last year the Syrianarmy collapsed in like a week.
And and this is a militarydictatorship that's lasted that
lasted for 52 years, I believe.
And you're thinking like, man,you can't even have a military
that lasts more than a week, butyou've had 52 years of prep.

(01:23:23):
Yeah you know, everybody,everybody's a general, you know,
there's three, there's there aremore generals than there are,
you know, like chefs.
I just it it was really amazingto see how a completely
militarized government is wascompletely incompetent at
anything to do with militarybecause of the system that they

(01:23:44):
had in place, right?
It wasn't their weapons wouldn'tfire.
It just that nobody trustedanybody, nobody could get
anybody on the phone forauthorization.
Everybody was incompetentbecause most people were
incompetent because who wasthere?
It was somebody'sbrother-in-law.
That was the only reason theywere they were.
I mean, the American military,all militaries have challenges,

(01:24:04):
but most of the time you knowthat a Marine commander is there
not because he's somebody'snephew.
And that's the only reason.
That he never had to go to bootcamp, he never had to pass any
tests, you know.
He's just a nephew of somebody.
And and that's really thedifference.
Now, in in a post-apocalypticsituation, you know, we would we

(01:24:26):
would try to.
I mean, I I find it hard tobelieve that militaries collapse
as quickly as they do.
Um, I was just watching this uhpleuribus show, and I I don't
want to give too much away, butyou know, it's it's said in the
first five minutes, the firstepisode.
So it is like like, where's themilitary?
Right?
Where they they disappearedcompletely.

(01:24:48):
Um and I'm going, like, wait aminute, this is a virus, and how
did they get the virus tosubmarines?
Like, we have nuclear submarinesall over the Pacific and the
Atlantic, and they're under theice caps.
Like, so I mean, you know one ofthe things that I find
implausible, and maybe because Ilive in Texas, uh I don't know,

(01:25:09):
maybe it's it's a prejudice Ihave.
I I think the military cohesionof the United States military is
so strong that it would take anincredible collapse uh uh
disaster to break that up andthe military just to fall apart
overnight.

SPEAKER_01 (01:25:26):
That's something I I think of a lot as well, um,
especially in my writing, isthat like how does how does a
zombie apocalypse uh take outthe world's strongest, most
technologically advanced andwell organized military?
And I I think the best answer isthat um somebody somebody way

(01:25:46):
high up did something that madethe military less effective and
uh and essentially just somebodyscrewed up.

SPEAKER_00 (01:25:55):
Yeah, well, you just said something really important.
Let's go back to calling in anairstrike.
See if a marine commander in umIraq calls in an airstrike, they
have some level of faith thatthe bombs will be dropped on the
grid square that they they said.
Like the technology, like today,you know, we we have an example

(01:26:18):
from the Ukraine war and fromMiddle Eastern Wars.
Our technology is so good rightnow, we can take out somebody
having dinner and not hurtpeople in the kitchen.
Yeah.
I mean, it it it sometimes itdoesn't work, but like the the
drone technology and the guidedmissile technology is so good

(01:26:39):
that we can find the people thatused to just hide under rocks
and say, uh, well, go ahead,Americans, you know, we don't do
whatever you want.
Now now we can find them, right?
Yeah.
So the question is how much ofthat technology, as you know
from your experience, thattechnology is super expensive
and it also demands a ma massivelogistics chain to keep going,

(01:27:02):
right?
So I do think that once if ifthe logistics change collapses,
then you might start worryingabout the cohesion.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:27:13):
There's a say there's a saying that um uh
rifles win battles, butlogistics wins wars.

SPEAKER_00 (01:27:19):
Right.
Amateur study battles, uhprofessional study logistics, I
think is another one from thehistorian point of view.

SPEAKER_02 (01:27:27):
It doesn't bode well considering how badly um supply
chains were hurt by COVID, whichis nothing compared to like the
bubonic plague um or the zombieapocalypse.

SPEAKER_01 (01:27:37):
Yeah.
Uh the military's been at leastthe army, as far as like I can't
speak for anybody else, butlogistics has has always had a
very strong amount of attentiongiven to it because they know
that fact.
Like if you if you don't getammunition, food, and water to
the people who are fighting thewar, then you're not going to

(01:27:59):
win the war, which is exactlywhy Russia's not doing well,
because they have terriblelogistics.

SPEAKER_00 (01:28:05):
Yeah, and just something as simple as uh you
know, I was just reading aboutlike the Russian soldiers
refusing to use North Koreanammo that the Russian government
bought all this North Koreanammo because it blows up in the
gun at an unacceptable rate.
By the way, the unacceptablerate, I'm sure for you, Dan, was

(01:28:28):
like one.
Right?
I mean, what it wasn't like, uhyeah, one out of 15 times is
okay.
No, no, no.
Zero.
We need zero my gun blowing upin my face, you know, for me to
use my gun.
I will not use my gun unless youpromise to me it's it's a zero
chance of it blowing up in myface.
And so so yeah, the the thatisn't where the trust comes in.

(01:28:50):
Um so so in other words, I Iguess my my takeaway is that uh
I have much more faith in thecohesion of some institutions
like the military, uh, that willsurvive a lot of stress and
pressure.
But I can conceive, becausewe've had fiction stories where

(01:29:10):
you have something that's bigenough that it just can't
survive on the national scale.
And then the problem with havinglike local military authority is
that our military system is sointegrated, right?
I mean, you can't just say,okay, Vermont, you know, all the
military in Vermont just runyourselves.
Well, yeah, but how manyartillery shells do you make in

(01:29:31):
Vermont?
You know, how many carburetorsfor home fees or whatever's the
newest do you make in Vermont?
Like we have a national supplychain, and I don't see how you
shrink that to a county or acity.

SPEAKER_01 (01:29:43):
Yeah.
It'd start to look uh real roughafter a while.
Yeah.
You'd have people doing onpatrol and Honda Civics and
Subaru's.

SPEAKER_02 (01:29:52):
I've got to drag season 11 of Walking Dead one
more time.
They sure where did they havethe supplies and the money to
make these ridiculous white armyoutfits?
Where?
I don't know if you've seenseason 11 of The Walking Dead.

SPEAKER_00 (01:30:05):
No, I I gave up after season six, seven.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:30:08):
Well, I mean, I I recommend till nine.
Ten's uh dicey, but then elevenis just all roles are gone and
somehow they're able to makethese brand new, fancy, like
futuristic looking.

SPEAKER_00 (01:30:17):
From our topic here, Negan is what drove me away from
the series.
I think that's it.
Well, he was an implausibleauthoritarian.
Interesting.
Say more.
Like, I mean, he he was anauthoritarian that you know the
thing about authoritarians isyou gotta give people a way to
be successful in the system,right?

(01:30:38):
You gotta say, like, okay, look,we're authoritarian, but if you
do these things, you'll prosper.

SPEAKER_01 (01:30:45):
I think he didn't know.
Yeah, I thought he was toorandom.
Um, maybe not to the peopleoutside of his community, but
within his community, he's likehis whole thing is if you follow
the rules, then you'll thrive.
Like they work for credits, theyget food, they're safe from
zombies.
So that like really they he wasjust picking people who wanted

(01:31:06):
to be safe.

SPEAKER_03 (01:31:07):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:31:07):
And he would reward the people who were loyal to him
and punish the people who werenot.
I I felt he was a little toocackling.

SPEAKER_00 (01:31:15):
Cackling?
Yeah, cackling.
I I feel that if if you're goingto be an authoritarian dictator
post-apocalyptic, you have to bemuch more crisp and
businesslike, and like likemore, more a bureaucrat than
jump.
He was he was jumping around,cackling, laughing, you know,
just just I I don't know how toput it.

(01:31:37):
He was too much like a like a1960s Batman villain.
You know, that's fair.
I was expecting him to have likea shirt with a like a N on it,
and like these henchmen withlike weird hats and and you
know, or something.
It just it just it felt so overthe top that I mean uh who

(01:31:57):
knows, right?
But like uh I I would adviseanyone who's trying to set up
authority to be much more coldand calculating and quiet um
than he was.
Like the governor.

SPEAKER_02 (01:32:11):
The governor is more plausible.

SPEAKER_00 (01:32:13):
The governor, I I I mean, you know, in terms of
authoritarian, uh, I felt he didit right.
And again, he made the sameoffer, right?
He said, like, you know, youstay here and and we'll protect
you from the evil outside andand you know, we'll all work
together.
And then that that othercommunity, this sort of suburban
authoritarian community with thethe was run by like a a woman, a

(01:32:38):
wealthy woman.
Oh, Alexandria.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, um, I don't know,that's that sort of felt like
what a suburb would become.
Yeah.
Like it would run by the countryclub presidents or something
like that.

SPEAKER_02 (01:32:51):
It's an example of how people who are already doing
okay in this society like wellenough to buy into a uh HOA
where everybody has solar powerand water filters and everything
is already off-grid, they'regonna be doing a little better
than you just put up the steelwalls.
Yeah.
Um speaking of like uhtechnology and logistics, you

(01:33:13):
had mentioned that there was orthat there is apocalypse
software being developed.
How does that tie into thisconversation for you?
What do you what do you thinkour listeners need to take away
when they think about apocalypsesoftware?

SPEAKER_00 (01:33:27):
Yeah, so a lot of apocalyptic scenarios, whether
it's zombies or something else,people go from modern 21st
century to uh medieval prettyquickly, right?
Now, it's not quite truebecause, like, for example, for
many, many for like maybe therest of our lifetimes, there

(01:33:49):
will be guns around that don'tfire black black powder.
And we, you know, maybe somebodyhas a 63 Ford truck that
survives the AMP and there's agood mechanic, and you know, you
you synthesize like ethanol oryou know, maple sap into fuel or

(01:34:09):
whatever.
I mean, there's gonna beremnants of our technology.
We're gonna live in our houses,maybe we don't have to build a
new, completely new like yurt,you know, we can still live
inside our house.
So we're gonna be these medievalpeasants in some ways, but we'll
still have some modernconveniences and like wash
couches and and and so on.

(01:34:30):
But the turning things around inthe other direction are is gonna
be very, very difficult unlesswe have a core of people who are
not only just reclaiming pasttechnologies, but are figuring
out a way for us to reclaimpost-medieval, post-19th century

(01:34:51):
technologies.
And I think that that's that'sreally gonna be hard.
How do we ever get out of the19th century?
And that'll be our peak becausethen you have to have a country.
You know, you can't develop anindustrial civilization in one
town, right?
I mean, it's true that likeManchester, England was a leader
in the 18th and 19th century inlike coals and coal coal

(01:35:16):
production and looms and thingslike that, but they had the
whole British Empire to drawupon.
So that's where we we'reprobably gonna get stuck.
Uh, is if we break down intothese small communities, I don't
know, our great grandchildrenmay very well be at like, I
don't know, uh I mean, are wegonna go back to being
hunter-gatherers?
You know, are we just gonna keepgoing back in time?

(01:35:39):
That's uh gradually.

SPEAKER_02 (01:35:41):
I yeah, it would be okay.
I mean, like if you ask me the40-hour wick week or the zombie
apocalypse, I choose theapocalypse because I really love
foraging.
Um and I'm only half joking.
Yeah, but then you get atoothache.
Well, there are, you know, Ithink that there's uh a myth out
there that anything, you know,before the agricultural

(01:36:03):
revolution was just misery andwe had no technologies for these
things.
I mean, like we have evidence ofall kinds of stuff happening,
people surviving who wereclearly injured or born with um
missing limbs that lived wellinto their early 20s.
Like, you know, I'm gonna get atoothache.
I'm that's probably not greatnews, but I would like to
believe that whatevercivilization I'm a part of or

(01:36:24):
group I'm a part of has sometraditional medicines.
Uh, you know, every medicine wehave is from, you know, the
earth in some way.
So am I gonna be as comfortableas I am now?
No, but I'm gonna have a lotmore free time to make art.

unknown (01:36:37):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:36:37):
I've pulled my oath.
In a hunting and gatheringscenario, not a not a medieval
scenario.

SPEAKER_00 (01:36:43):
Um of the best insights we've ever had about
this was do you know about Otsi,the Tyrolean Neolithic person.
So they found a corpse in theTyrolean Alps, which was between
what is it now Italy and what isnow Austria.
I believe he's about 5,300 yearsold, and he fell into an ice

(01:37:05):
crevasse some 5,300 years ago,and they found his body.
And you can go look it up, Otzi,O-T-Z-I, with the two little
umlaufs there, and the umlaug.
Um, and I forgot whether theydecided he was in Italy or in
Austria, but anyway, they'vebuilt a museum around him.
And he is a he fell into acrevasse with all of his stuff.

(01:37:25):
Uh there was a fantasticAustrian movie made about him
called Iceman, where theydecided to have the entire movie
in an ancient dialect with nosubtitles.
It's really interesting towatch.
But if you want to watch likehow people lived before any of
what we even call like thetechnologies of Rome, you know,

(01:37:47):
or Greece or something, likeactual hunter-gatherer, semi,
semi-sedentary.
I mean, they had you know woodenhouses and things like that.
That movie Iceman is reallygood.
Anyway, um, he they found allhis stuff, and you can go
online.
I really I recently postedsomething on like this.
I think I'm forgetting rightnow, but there's something like

(01:38:09):
almost a hundred differentitems.
He had shoes, he had a hat, hehad uh arrows, you know, he had
uh a spear, he had like he'deaten lunch, you know, he had a
spoon.
I mean, just you think about allof this stuff.
And by the way, he died hard.
He had the blood of four otherpeople on him.

SPEAKER_01 (01:38:30):
Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 (01:38:31):
He died of injuries of being killed.
I think I think he was shot inthe back by arrows, but he had
the blood of four others on him.
He had a wild hand.
Yeah, yeah, no easy day there.
Okay.
Um, so the point was that he hadthis tremendous toolkit where
you're thinking, like, wow.

(01:38:51):
And he this wasn't a burial,like he was escaping from
whoever was trying to kill him,and he fell into a crevass.
So we just happened to catchwhat he had on his body.
And each of these things aremiracles.
Like, I mean, I don't know yourskill sets, but like, okay,
could you make me some shoes?
I could they wouldn't be verygood.

SPEAKER_02 (01:39:11):
Yeah, I could try.
Because I can search and I havesome skills, but I don't think
they'd be great.

SPEAKER_00 (01:39:16):
And I I probably I trust your shoes better than
some you know store brands.

SPEAKER_02 (01:39:21):
They would not.
They'd be like they'd be likeleather soles and um leather
laces, basically, to make themtight.

SPEAKER_00 (01:39:28):
Yeah.
Well, you can look up his shoesand see his shoes and their
works of art, you know, becausehe was walking around the Alps.

SPEAKER_04 (01:39:36):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (01:39:37):
So, like, you know, you couldn't have a cheap, you
know, easily destroyed shoe, andhis hat was a beautiful, amazing
hat, you know.
So my point is that that we haveall of these lost skills, and we
would have to either findpeople, because there are people
who who still have these skills,or partly, we have to make sure
that they share these skills,and then we have to make sure

(01:39:58):
that they're protected to dothese things.
And we'd we would also, I guessthis is the real difficult part
is that we have to make surethat each person in the
community feels valued, eventhough they're doing something
which maybe uh you said it aboutcreating art, right?
Like, you know, I'm sorry, Leah,but like we need seven shoes by

(01:40:20):
Thursday.
So could you put off yoursculpture garden until you've
you know this is where thequestion of the balance of
coercion versus freedom come in.

SPEAKER_02 (01:40:31):
I would love to make you the seven shoes, though,
actually, because there'ssomething I don't know if you've
had this experience or anyonelistening's had this experience.
When I'm doing things that feellike my ancestors were doing
them regularly, it feels good.
So like making some shoes feelsgood to me.
Like sitting and sewingsomething, it's like there's
something in my body that'slike, yep, we've been doing this

(01:40:51):
for a long time.
So I'll be fine with that.
More than typing on a laptop.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (01:40:56):
Yeah.
Eating the food that you grewyourself.

SPEAKER_02 (01:40:58):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (01:40:58):
Yeah.
You know, it's I mean, I I I I'min Texas here.
I have a lot of friends who arehunters, you know.
They they are they have a a hugeuh freezer full of wild boar,
you know, that they shot.
I mean, that they it tastesgood.
That they probably taste betterto them because they're they're
the one who went out and and andand killed it.

(01:41:19):
So I mean, uh, yeah, I I thinkthat that that that's a sort of
psychological we started out,you know, maybe we should end on
that, is that they're looking atpost apocalyptic media in
general and even zombie media,which you know sometimes
stretches credulity in like Howhow we got here, but it's still
creating tests for ourselves.

(01:41:40):
Like again, what you you said,you look at it and you go, like,
how would I what would I do?
How would I behave in thatsituation?
How would I treat people?
How would I want to be treated?
You know, what what role would Ihave in this community?
And I think those are going tobe eternal questions.
And that's why this stuff isalways interesting and popular.
I I, you know, I realize Ididn't answer the quite just a

(01:42:00):
quick question.
There are people who are workingon post-apocalyptic technology.
And you can just look that up onthe web, just go like internet
after the apocalypse.
And there are people who aretrying to create sort of
hardwired intranets and uh mediathat will survive.
And so there is this idea oflike we try to preserve

(01:42:21):
knowledge, and there's someprojects that people are doing.
Uh, so it's it's it's very it'snot just black powder and
farming, there's other thingsthat people are trying to figure
out what could be done.
So I've I've never seen that ina movie or a TV show, but that
would be a very interestingpremise of like people trying to
rebuild the TikTok after theapocalypse.

(01:42:43):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:42:44):
I would watch something I think about as well.

SPEAKER_02 (01:42:46):
Apocalypse, TikTok, apocket TikTok.
Yeah, there we go.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:42:49):
Because if you're rebuilding a society, you have
to have a way to both entertainand monitor.
And what better way than TikTok?

unknown (01:42:57):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:42:58):
But Dr.
Pearl Mutter, it's been a realpleasure to chat with you.
Um, we could talk to youforever, frankly.
Thank you so much for how theworld ends 101.
I feel slightly more preparedafter this conversation than I
did before, actually.
So uh where can people find you?

SPEAKER_00 (01:43:12):
Um, no, they can't find me.
I'm sorry, I'm hiding in thewoods.
Uh but no, but uh yeah, just umI I don't have any social media
presence except Facebook oremail, send me an email.
But uh or you can just send bagsof rice and lentils, but uh
that's fine.

SPEAKER_01 (01:43:28):
Yeah.
I think that's how we shouldcommunicate from there.

SPEAKER_02 (01:43:32):
And also um DVDs about how to do math and write
in cursive, because that's alsoa lost art.
Dan, I have news for you.
Uh yeah?
I'm gonna go back to school.
Oh.
I'm gonna get my PhD in zombieapocalypseology.

SPEAKER_01 (01:43:47):
Yeah.
Can I can I get a PhD too?

SPEAKER_02 (01:43:49):
Um, yeah, sure.
We don't nobody needs a job inthis house.

SPEAKER_01 (01:43:55):
Let's just get student debt.
We'll we'll get student debt,and then when we're done, we'll
just get more student debt.

SPEAKER_02 (01:44:03):
I mean, that is one strategy of survival.

SPEAKER_01 (01:44:05):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:44:05):
Yeah.
Well, it was it was a lot of funtalking to Dr.
Pearl Mutter.
I didn't know where we weregonna go in the conversation,
but he took us to many wonderfulplaces, and now I have a whole
list of things I need to lookup.

SPEAKER_01 (01:44:16):
I feel like we could have just kept talking for hours
and hours.

SPEAKER_02 (01:44:20):
Yeah, we didn't even get to call in the apocalypse,
so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:44:23):
We barely touched on apocalyptic technology.
Now I need to look that upbecause that's absolutely in my
wheelhouse.

SPEAKER_02 (01:44:30):
Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 (01:44:30):
I need to know all about that.

SPEAKER_02 (01:44:32):
Well, thanks everybody for joining Zombie
Book Club today.
You can support us by leaving arating or a review.
Send us a voicemail.
I know that's superold-fashioned, but we love
voicemail.
Up to three minutes at614-699-0006.
Tell us what you think.
Tell us what was the thing thatshocked you the most.

SPEAKER_01 (01:44:50):
Yeah.
Um, did you know about the guythat fell into a crevasse?
A crevasse.
Yeah.
That I didn't know that theymade a movie about it.

SPEAKER_02 (01:44:59):
No, and like 5,600 years ago is not long ago like
this.
The agricultural revolution'slong done, and we're yeah,
moving along.

SPEAKER_01 (01:45:08):
Sounds like he had some swag too.
Like, no wonder they shot himwith arrows.
Like he had some sweet boots anda hat.

SPEAKER_02 (01:45:13):
Maybe we need to bring um his fashion back.

SPEAKER_01 (01:45:16):
Yeah, let's check out his boots and make them.

unknown (01:45:18):
Okay.

SPEAKER_02 (01:45:19):
That's that's fun.
Uh, you can also sign up for ournewsletter that we never send,
so you know you're not going toget harassed by us only when
things are important orexciting.
You the place you can find usthe most right now is on
Instagram at Zombie Book ClubPodcast.
We also have a Facebook groupcalled Zombie Book Club
Zombesties, uh, where I'mlearning a lot of people like to
be on Facebook.
And that's new to me.

(01:45:39):
Yeah.
Haven't been on there in years,but I'm hanging out now.
And last not least, if you're onDiscord, you should join us at
the Brain Munchers ZombieCollective Discord where we
discuss things like what wouldyou do in winter in a zombie
apocalypse?
And uh non-zombie things likesend us a cute picture of your
cat.
We love cat pics.

SPEAKER_01 (01:45:56):
Yeah, I want to see some cats.
All links are in thedescription.
Yeah, thanks, thanks forlistening today, everybody.
The end is nigh.
Baby bye, bye-bye.
Don't don't die.

SPEAKER_02 (01:46:08):
Don't die.
Don't die.
Not yet.
Have a good day.
Have a good night.
Have a good everything.
Bye-bye.
Bye.

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How The World Ends 101 with Special Guest Dr. David Perlmutter | Zombie Book Club Ep 129

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}How The World Ends 101 with Special Guest Dr. David Perlmutter | Zombie Book Club Ep 129