BONUS | The Waffle House Index: America’s Strangest Dining Minisode - Doomsday: History's Most Dangerous Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
We've been a lot of places together on this show,
and I'm trying to think of the weirdest nuclear reactors,
the insane asylums, the mouths of volcanoes. But now, by
fan request, it's finally time that we visit our strangest
location yet, a restaurant. And before we begin, I hop

(00:21):
you survived the experience. Hello, and welcome to Doomsday Histories

(00:41):
Most Dangerous podcast. Together we are going to rediscover some
of the most traumatic, bizarre, and awe inspiring but largely
unheard of or forgotten disasters from throughout human history and
around the world. And this is a very special by
request not so many so on today's episode, we're visiting

(01:03):
an American institution recognized around the world for its bizarre
duality as a magnet for cartoonish levels of violence, you know,
for an all day breakfast place, and its role as
America's most well respected king of disaster logistics. Part one
begins now, and for those listening on Patreon, I'm going

(01:25):
to teach you how to incapacitate an opponent and pull
their still beating heart right out of their chest like
your Mala Ram from Temple of Doom. I am not kidding.
This is not the show you play around kids, or
while eating, or even in mixed company. But as long
as you find yourself a little more historically engaged and

(01:45):
learn something that could potentially save your life, our work
is done. So with all that said, shoot the kids
out of the room, put on your headphones and safety glasses,
and let's begin. No hope you brought your appetite, because

(02:06):
we are going out to eat. Hello, my name's Johnny Knoxville,
and today we are visiting the waffle House. If you're
not cheering or cringing, we have an awful lot to
teach you about this Roman colosseum of the South. If
you're not familiar with it. The waffle House is a
twenty four to seven diner chain that has become famous

(02:29):
or infamous for its conflicted blend of inexpensive comfort food
and chaotic behavior across the Southern United States. And we'll
come back to that. Every country has its own version
of comfort food plenty or cultural dishes, but the most
are probably something surprisingly simple or routine. In this case,

(02:52):
our comfort food will be a plate of eggs, hash browns, bacon,
toast with coffee. It's not fancy but it's hot and
fast and familiar. Good food fast. That's what the waffle
house promises, and you can find a waffle house at
almost two thousand locations across twenty four different Southwestern and

(03:13):
mid Atlantic states. With that many locations, that means there's
no shortage of places to stop in the middle of
the night to fill that stomach when you are half
hammered and mentally ill. A stomach full of starch and
grease and carbs won't fix a bad day, but it's
there for you like an old friend. The waffle house

(03:33):
is different when you order something with onions and cheese.
The cook here's smothered and covered. You say chunked, diced, peppered, capped, topped,
or country. It's all cold for ham, tomatoes, alapinos, mushrooms, chili,
and sausage gravy. It's kind of like the way Starbucks
refers to their cup sizes in Latin, but less pretentious

(03:55):
and way more filling. So that's fun. Well, then there's
the jukeboxes. I don't know if you ever heard the
Hamburger Helper rap album. Yep, that's a real thing. Sometimes
brands want to appear fun or approachable so it put
out a catchy, little branded novelty tune. Waffle House has

(04:15):
its own record label, Waffle Records. They have been recording
songs since nineteen eighty four, serious, actual songs celebrating every
aspect of your visit, and they appear on jukeboxes in
every restaurant pop, country, gospel, doo, wop, R and B.
I even heard a Christmas song. Imagine eating a waffle

(04:37):
at three am while a smooth jam love ballad about
hash Browns plays overhead. When you eat at a waffle house,
you're gonna leave full and happy, but you might also
leave with a busted lip or a swollen nose. There's
also a chance you might witness a robbery, or maybe
some drug use, or maybe an assault on the staff.

(04:58):
And rarely, but once in a while, you may see
customers square up on each other and begin to battle
royale right there in the booths. Yes, waffle house has
developed a reputation as an unusual hotspot for sporadic violence,
and we'll get into that too. You know how I've
always said everything is a weapon. Well, you have no

(05:19):
idea how many weapons there are in a diner. There's
a very famous video of one customer throwing a metal
chair at the head of a young employee in Austin, Texas, Hey, Texas.
It wasn't the severity of the head wound she received
that fascinated people know. It was how she caught it
out of the air one handed, like catching an arrow

(05:41):
in midflight. Newscasters later said, you know, you don't mess
with the waffle house employees. And I'm not talking because
it's not polite. I mean because you won't win. Waffle
House employees have lived through some things, but of all
the headlines surrounding this place, my favorite has always been
beef for breakfast. There's also a joke that their employment

(06:02):
application asks if you can fight. I mean, it's not
the canteena from Star Wars, but if you come over
that counter, the staff aren't going to go to work
on you. And to be clear, it's not like some
kind of in the no public sparring cafe people specifically
seek out as an arena to start or settle beef.

(06:22):
It's that it's popular and it's open twenty four hours
a day, including those wee hours when drunken people are
maybe not at their best. Kid Rock got arrested there Once,
he'd stopped at a waffle house in Atlanta around five
in the morning when his entourage got into it with
another customer and started throwing hands before pouring into the

(06:44):
parking lot through a freshly broken window. To quote the man,
I've been kicked out of places better than waffle house.
And that's saying something. Search the internet for waffle house
and fight, and you are in for something. But it's
not all gravy smothered biscuits and black eyes. I'm not
saying every location is some kind of waffle scented mma octagon,

(07:07):
or that every inch of your average waffle house has
blood cleaned off it. But and it totally That girl
who caught that chair, she said she has cleaned blood
off of every inch of her location. So you know,
grain of salt, drop of blood. So it's the middle
of the night, you're starving. You want to shut your

(07:28):
stomach up with some waffles. But the couple at the
table beside you argue vociferously and drunkenly about who the
real father of her unborn baby is, and she points
at you. Would you know what to do? The best
fight is the fight you never have. But that said,

(07:49):
this guy is coming at you like he has no
problem with prison food or getting handsy. We're not going
to turn you into shang Chi master of kung fu here,
but let's see about how helping you out of a jammie.
When I was young, my dad wanted me to be safe,
and he taught me a few things that he thought
I should know, like carrying around a roll of change

(08:10):
in my pocket so that I could land a punch
without having to break my fist. He taught me how
to judo flip a person by first landing a very
solid punch into their armpit. And he taught me how
to punch someone's eye out I was in public school.
There's a fairly simple poky knuckle technique where you punch
at the top of the eye below the brow ridge,
and if you do it right, you can deliver a

(08:32):
traumatic ocular luxation. But I'm not going to be teaching
you how to punch anyone's eye out. The best thing
to do if someone throws a punch at your face
is put up your hands to protect yourself, like you're
holding a phone up to the side of your head.
But with each hand they're probably going to be swinging
like crazy. So keep an eye on their hands, turn
your body a little to the side, and block anything

(08:54):
thrown at your head. Think of your hands as a
fence that you're peering over. Protect your head and keep
your feet moving. Just try to think of the way
that you would naturally bob and weave your head and
shoulders if water balloons were being thrown out your face.
Now you look like you know what you're doing. This
is a good stance. If someone's throwing feet too, you

(09:14):
just want to lean your head back a bit. You
want to treat feet with dodgeball rules, except trying to
catch this ball could break your hands. Most kicks are
going to be aimed low to the legs or shins
or torso, so don't bother trying to actually stop a kick.
Just keep an eye on their feet and focus on
keeping your balance and moving out of the way. Pretend

(09:34):
someone's trying to give you cooties something like that. But
let's say this guy throws himself on you, and now
you find yourself in a headlock. Don't waste your time
trying to pry your way out of there. You want
to tuck your chin in to protect your neck, then
bend your knees like you're trying to sit down, and
turn your whole body like you're trying to look at
their belly. This will take a lot of pressure off

(09:55):
your neck, and dropping your weight like this lowers your
center of gravity. It makes it harder them to control you.
Now you can breathe and think, and you are free
to speedbag their testicles until the police show up. But
it's obviously better to leave before his girlfriend lives up
to her promise of driving their truck through the restaurant
and killing you. But let's say this guy really wasn't

(10:18):
playing and just straight up started strangling you. Well again,
protect your neck by tucking your chin to buy yourself
some time. And if you could remember to inhale as
he's gripping you instead of screaming, that would be helpful too.
Then try this. Bring your arms up like you're surrendering,
with your elbows bent at ninety degrees and your palms

(10:39):
facing forward like you're saying don't shoot now. Bring them
inward and bring them down hard, breaking their grip with
your elbows. The thumbs are the weakest part of any grip,
and with this technique you can definitely break it with
enough force. I'm talking about the grip, not the thumbs.
Of course, this guy's crazy if they rip their shirt

(11:00):
off and they have their own face tattooed on their chest,
all bug eyed and screaming. I'm gonna go ahead and
say and this now, Now you can apply the throat punch.
No one ever ever thinks about how vulnerable they truly are.
Anything between their colorbone and their jaw is largely unprotected
where there's no bone or real muscle to protect anything,

(11:24):
and it is utterly punchable. A short, fast punch or
a knife hand strike should do the trick. In martial arts,
a throat punch like this is generally reserved for life
threatening self defense situations. It's only advised to use it
when you are in grave danger and you have to
disable your attacker immediately. It causes choking and gasping and

(11:47):
sudden interruption of breathing. It's super great. However, it could
also collapse the trachea, which could knock them out or
kill them. So maybe think twice about how you use
this technique before you develop your own taste for prison food. Now,
for my Patreon listeners, i am going to explain not
only how to incapacitate, but how to pull the still

(12:10):
beating heart out of an opponent's chest. I was not kidding. Now,
after hearing all that, what I am about to tell
you may seem deeply ironic and counterintuitive. So how does
America's eighth most popular breakfast place keep people safe? Well,
we don't apply to the waffle house if you don't
have at least a yellow or a purple belt. And

(12:33):
they don't put a map to the hospital on the
back of the menu. They don't really sweat the small stuff.
They choose to protect their customers on a much grander scale.
And this will sound weird, considering we're talking about a
place that offers hash browns and a broken knuckle. But
waffle House has come to be known as a beacon
of reliable intelligence and normalcy in times of turmoil and

(12:56):
natural disaster. Whether the power goes out, or the waters
rise or the trees start falling over, people across the
South realize, no matter what nature threw their way, the
local waffle house seemed to be the only thing reliably
still open during a storm, or at least the first
thing to reopen after dangerous weather passed. Even with the

(13:17):
power still off. As long as the building still stood,
it remained a guiding light to the weary. It's got
to be hard for the guys at Duncan to be
nailing wood paneling across their windows while watching the guys
at waffle House put up storm specials like it's nothing.
Part of its appeal is how every waffle house is
the same. They all have the same griddle, the same

(13:38):
songs playing on the jukebox, right down to the clock
on the wall. They're all the same layout, and for
people put out by disaster, that sameness can be deeply comforting.
Familiar sights and smells and sounds trigger associated memories of
feelings of safety or routine, so familiarity can be emotionally
soothing when you're out of sorts. It reinforces the idea

(14:00):
that the world still works when you have no other
reason to believe that's true. But a tornado could drop
you into a waffle house two states away and it
would still feel the same. All of this might sound
like a joke, and in a way, it kind of
started as one, but the so called waffle House index
has become a legitimate and strongly valued instrument for public safety.

(14:23):
Waffle Houses being open or closed became a very real,
very useful barometer of how significantly a storm will or
has affected a community. The idea of the index was
born in the mind of a man named Craig Fugate.
You mean, the head of FEMA from two thousand and
nine until twenty seventeen. Yes, I do, same guy, And

(14:46):
those were record breaking disaster years. Let's see, under his watch,
America got his teeth kicked in by the Joplin and
more tornadoes, Hurricanes Sandy Harvey, irma Irene, their floods in Louisia, Jenna, Texas, Tennessee,
and Colorado. Endless wildfires across California. We did a whole

(15:06):
episode on that, and one big mud slide in Washington
State that cost sixty million dollars and killed forty three.
After years of coordinating relief efforts for event after event,
he noticed a strange pattern. Waffle house almost never closed.
He started using the waffle house's open and closed status

(15:26):
to understand the needs of the people closest to each location.
If waffle house was still serving its full menu, then
things were probably manageable. If they were only serving a
partial menu, that meant they were probably having staffing or
power issues in the area. They made it easier by
color coding and laminating different versions of their menu. The

(15:47):
blue menu is the normal menu, everything from waffles to
steak to eggs. The Yellow menu is their limited operations menu.
They only serve items cooked on gas powered grills that
don't require refrigeration or deep fryers. Pre cooked and shelf
stable stuff you know, meats, eggs, toast, no waffles, though
they actually draw too much power from generators. The Red

(16:10):
menu is mostly bring your own menu items. They'll have coffee,
bottle drinks, snack packs, and maybe sandwiches, which is limited
but much more comforting than looting from a vending machine.
Craig Fugate told reporters one time, if you get there
and the waffle house is actually closed, that's really bad.

(16:31):
The waffle House Index was adopted by FEMA and disaster
response planners across the Gulf Coast, and your safety is
actually planned around waffles and bacon. During Hurricane Matthew in
twenty sixteen, waffle House had to pull out the red menus.
This had been the first time since Hurricane Katrina back
in two thousand and five and each time rare as

(16:53):
they are that they do have to do this. This
immediately prompts FEMA to bulk up and speed up their response.
By Hurricane Florence of twenty eighteen, they were quoting the
waffle house index in press briefings. The company actually tracks
storms more than a week out so they can figure
out where to move eggs and ice to staging areas

(17:14):
safely outside of a storm's path. They maintain a small
fleet of mobile command centers. The one that I saw
was an RV named e M fifty. They named it
after Bill Murray's urban assault vehicle from the nineteen eighty
one movie Stripes. And from these vehicles they share color
coded maps of restaurant locations that are about to be

(17:34):
hit or recovering from storm damage. They share it all
out on social media in real time. The green code
means that the restaurant is serving a full menu and
damage in the area is limited. Yellow means smaller menu
and they're probably getting power from a generator and food
supplies are lower. Red means the restaurant is closed. They

(17:55):
might not have walls, the grill is cold, conditions aren't safe,
and don't just there staring at the sign head for
the hills. And this may seem hard to imagine, but
waffle House was not created with any of this in mind.
It was founded simply enough in Avondale, Estates, Georgia, in
nineteen fifty five, when two neighbors, Tom Fulkner and Joe

(18:18):
Rogers wanted to create a sit down restaurant that blended
the friendliness of a diner with the speed of a
fast food restaurant, a quick serve, all day breakfast place.
Interesting point both men were born a year apart, served
in World War Two, and then died one month apart
in twenty seventeen. You wouldn't think such humble origins would

(18:38):
spawn the bravest, toughest, and most resilient business in America.
Waffle House locations are famous for having stayed open through
hurricanes and tornadoes and blizzards and blackouts and floods. Fast
forward to today, and waffle House has an internal disaster
preparedness playbook more robust than some state governments. Mobile command

(19:00):
centers and crisis supply trucks with generators are ready to
deploy at a moment's notice, and before that they've already
mapped out every alternative supply route in case of road closures.
And for the staff. The waffle House doesn't just hand
you an apron and say good luck. They put you
through a little something called waffle House University. I'm not kidding.

(19:21):
Their managers are trained in disaster logistics. The hurricane playbook,
for example, explains how to reopen and what to serve
if say they had gas but no electricity, or you've
got a generator but no ice. They account for everything.
They know how to run a full restaurant with only
half a kitchen, how to reroot delivery trucks around washed

(19:43):
out roads, and how to get generators up before the
power company even knows there's a problem. And they do
all this while wearing a yellow polo shirt and listening
to do Wop songs about toast. Sometimes the warm, comforting
glow of the waffle house sign shines like a kind
of a civilian lighthouse in the rain, before emergency crews
have even cleared the roads. It's often one of the

(20:05):
first signs of life returning to normal. Like we said,
it became the place you could depend on to stay
open when people needed somewhere to warm up or dry
out or charge a phone, or wait out a tornado,
or get some stitches or grab a hot meal. Reading
barometric pressures and spaghetti models of potential storm tracks is confusing,

(20:26):
and waffle House just makes it easy for people. If
they could see the comforting yellow hug of the waffle
House sign blown away, they know they're okay. So from
a business point of view, restaurants typically have a fifty
percent chance of shutting down inside of five years, and
you've probably heard something more like ninety something percent. But

(20:48):
the Bureau of Labor Statistics would like to disagree. And
because of this, most businesses will drop a whack of
cash into advertising to stay relevant or interesting and maintain
their market chair. But waffle House went a different way.
The waffle House spends almost nothing on advertising. Its strategy
draws from the good will gained from being open when

(21:10):
customers are most desperate. Waffle House has become a bonafide
American institution. It's what I call a lynchpin institution. By definition,
lynchpin institutions are ones that play an indispensable social or
political or cultural role within a larger system, a place

(21:31):
so connected to the community's well being that without it,
the whole system would suffer. And there are so few
places we can look to as a beacon of hope
everyone turns to in dark times. I mean, sure, there's
churches and maybe even city hall if your city's any good,
But waffle House offers something more concrete. We know we

(21:53):
are living in the weirdest of timelines when an all
day breakfast place becomes the most reliable go to you
for critical support or survival in a disaster. It's got
a forty year old sign, it's got forty year old menus.
And yeah, you do have the option of hopping onto
social media anytime you like, if you want to see

(22:13):
a man in a wheelchair beat a pair of teenagers
to death with a broken toilet seat. But I hope
you'll remember waffle House not for the teeth it might
have collected over the years, but for the hearts it's
warmed and touched along the way, touched like figuratively, not
touched like Mortal Kombat. The fact that this syrup flavored

(22:33):
hub of safety and security on a bad weather day
also represents your best chance for a black eye or
a broken tooth at three am on a good weather
day provides a world class exercise in irony. There's just
no version of this where it doesn't sound wrong. And
the best description I heard was America's Last Open Door

(22:55):
where brands like ihop, Denny's, and Cracker Barrel just but
I guess just want to see you die. Waffle House
might be part joke, but it's also part restaurant, part
fight club, part life saving early warning system, and all
day breakfast. Waffle House is more than just a restaurant.

(23:25):
I mean, McDonald's doesn't offer any kind of safety and comfort,
and to my knowledge, Zaxby's doesn't even care if you
live or die. Waffle House is the place people go
to feel like they're going to be okay. It's kind
of the same reason people listen to this show. And
on that note, two quick things. I'm going to continue
this minis out in the future with a sequel exploring

(23:46):
an unexpected way that this show profoundly changed my life,
and not in one of those Martha Stewart Hallmark cards.
My heart grew three sizes in one day kind of way,
more like discovering you were separated from a secret twin
kind of way. It'll be a tale more personal and
private than I've ever shared, and that's only going to
be for my patreons. In the meantime, I do hope

(24:08):
you enjoyed this minisod and maybe even feel a little
safer for it. Just knowing you can show someone their
own beating heart has got to leave you with a
little more confidence and swagger. Let me know if you
have a hometown horror or miniso that you'd love to
hear about, Because I make no secret of the fact
that I will spend hundreds of hours making your awful

(24:30):
dreams come true. And I wouldn't say it if I
didn't mean it. Before we go, let me just say that,
if you like the show and don't want to see
me have to take on a part time job as
a line cook slash referee at an all day breakfast
place slash food dojo, why not consider becoming a supporter
of the show. The best way to support the show

(24:50):
is actually just to share the show. But the best
way to prevent your favorite host from developing a weird
whistly lisp from all the broken teeth that is new
job is to support it by putting me in your will.
Of course, failing that, you could just visit me at
Buy me a coffee dot com slash Doomsday and make
a one time donation. And I really wish you could

(25:12):
see the sincerity of my face when I say how
much I genuinely appreciate anyone who does that. You are
responsible for keeping the show going, and if you think
getting episodes a little early, with no sponsor interruptions and
additionally ridiculously interesting material in each new episode is worth it,
you could visit Patreon dot com slash funeral Kazoo and

(25:35):
learn more. You can reach out to me on Twitter, Instagram,
and Facebook as Doomsday Podcast, or just fire me an
email the doomsdaypodat gmail dot com. Older episodes can be
found wherever you found this one, and while you're there,
please leave us a review and tell your friends. I
always thank all my Patreon listeners, new and old for

(25:56):
their support and encouragement. But if you could spare the
money and had to choose, I always take a moment
to ask you to consider making a donation to Global Menic.
Global Medic is a rapid response agency of Canadian volunteers
offering assistance around the world to aid in the aftermath
of disasters and crises. They're often the first and sometimes

(26:18):
the only team to get critical interventions to people in
life threatening situations, and to date they have helped over
six million people across eighty nine different countries. You can
learn more and donate at Globalmenic dot CA. On the
next episode, the worst thing about a natural disaster is

(26:38):
waiting for it to finally end. And to best prepare
you for our next episode, I would like you to
try and scream for three minutes straight. It's the Greensburg
tornado disaster of two thousand and seven. We'll talk soon.
Safety goggles off and thanks for listening.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
It was just after two while I was driving on too,
I was sleeping. I need it to the coffee, all
yellow sign up the street. I walked through the door
as the wagress would change. When I turned to my right.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
I saw something real stranger.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
I did a double tape, and I goodn't leave my eyes.
You know why. Last night I saw Elvis at the
Wuffle House tops. He was sitting there in a boot
checking his menu out. He looked straight at me. Somebod

(27:54):
try not to stand, but I knew it was him
with that jet black hair. Well, last night I saw
Elvis at the Mabble House. He motioned to the waitress
coming bore him half of come. He pulled out his
sunglasses and said to her, whevery much. Went over to

(28:20):
the juke box and looked down the list, chopped in
a quarter and played the ditions chips. I wouldn't believe
it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
Last night I saw Elvis at the Wobble House. I
saw he was sending in a mood and checking his
menu out. He looked straight at me, and so I
tried not to stare, but I drew it with him
with that jip like him. Last night, I saw Elvis

(28:55):
at the Wobble House. Here we go, I can't play
that thing.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
When he paid his fee.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
He stood right next to me.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
I could see him on his ring.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
The letters t see me. Last night I saw Elves
at the wuffle House. Last night, I saw Elves at
the Wuffle House. I saw he was sitting in.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
A booth checking his menu owls.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
He looks streaming me. So I tried to stay, but
I knew it was him with a girl stair. Last
night I saw was having my house. I ain't kidding, man,
that was him.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
I know him.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
Anywhere, and his card turned up some classes.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
Oh he's driving to Scotch Phil. I know him anywhere. Man.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
He came walking in there. Kill me, and that was he.
He ain't fluent me.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
I'm not that big of He can and I got
some

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