Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Are We On Borrowed Time? Canadian Prepper & Brian Keating (#386)

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

Remastered from our interview in June 2023.  Have you ever wondered why people become preppers? Well, you're in luck because today you're going to find out from one of the most famous preppers in the world, Nate Polson, also known as the Canadian Prepper!  Canadian Prepper is an educational YouTuber who talks about self-defense, survival, and all things preparedness. He analyzes current events, reviews innovative equipment, and theorizes about the demise of civilization as we know it. In this interview, we talk about preparedness and living in a post-apocalyptic world.  Tune in! Key Takeaways: 00:00:00 Balancing preparedness, perspicacity, and cheerfulness 00:04:14 Why Canadian Prepper stays prepared  00:15:03 Is it worth living in a post-apocalyptic world?  00:20:19 Appreciation of what we have Additional resources:  ➡️ Check out Canadian Prepper: 💻 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CanadianPrepper ➡️ Follow me on your fav platforms: ✖️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating  🔔 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1  📝 Join my mailing list: https://briankeating.com/mailing_list  ✍️ Check out my blog: https://briankeating.com/blog.php  🎙️ Follow my podcast: https://briankeating.com/podcast  — Into the Impossible with Brian Keating is a podcast dedicated to all those who want to explore the universe within and beyond the known. Make sure to follow/subscribe so you never miss an episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I believe it's selfish to think as Elon does, or as many other people think, that because there's no God, and because they're ultimately in a universe with no God, you have to construct your own meaning. It may be just as real as my meaning, and I'm not denigrating agnosticism. I actually think a true scientist should be an agnostic. Not only could it be a soul simulation, which smacks of divine inspiration and intervention. But it could also be that, you know, God has started the universe and then he's gone or she's gone or it's gone. And that's unfalsify him. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Open the pod bay doors, hell. I've always wanted to ask you, Nate, what keeps you going? Like, what is your, like, you face doom and gloom? Like, I've been counting, you started going daily, you know, in 2020. In January 2020, when it was like the Iran, they killed some guy in Iran. I remember you going basically live. This is it. You have a family.

what do you do? What do you do? Like, what is your coping mechanism? How do you maintain, you know, the cheerfulness along with the perspicacity that you have and knowing what you know, how do you maintain a cheerful disposition and get through life, essentially? Can I ask you that? Absolutely. You use the word percipicacity, which I think was Andrew Tate. My unmatched perspicacity. He has popularized that term. Anyways, no, I think. I think. I think it's just a matter of, you know, making sure that my kids are obviously a big role in that and just, you know, we kind of goof around and bring some levity to my day to kind of balance things out. Exercise is a vital importance. But I've always been fascinated with the end of anything, you know, but in particular, you know, human beings as to this potential collision course that we're on right now with our meeting our own existential demise.

perhaps. There's definitely a component of self-development when it comes to trying to think about how we would navigate very difficult situations. There's probably some right of passage stuff in there with respect to, you know, the grid war to collapse. You know, who do you become in that situation? So there's definitely a self-development component to all of this, which I think is perhaps missing in our current society that for the most part most people live their lives throughout the city they never have to forage for food they'll never have to challenge themselves in any way that we've historically had to up until this point you know that's why i've sometimes thought well maybe prepping and survivalism is just some like evolutionary hang up which needs to be

eventually gotten rid of so that we can get to the next level of things but i also think that it's vital that we constantly are reminded of survivalism. And there's a role that it plays, I think, in navigating the future, being aware that there might be unintended consequences of various technologies that emerge. This is where I might differ with a lot of more optimistic people who don't like the alarmism. They think that it's detrimental. But I think that fear is like a base emotion that is almost in many cases been medicated out of the population but it does serve a vital function it just to survive we need to be fearful of the world but in order to thrive obviously we have to go beyond that fear and trust one another I

guess even understanding my own place in the universe I'm comfortable with my whatever you want to call my spirituality agnosticism whatever is I'm comfortable knowing that someday I'm going to die anyways. But for me, it's just fascinating to contemplate, you know, the potential downfall of civilization for a myriad of reasons. Why do you watch the channel? What is your motivation for preparedness? What intrigues you about it all? You know, I have to say maybe I'll get canceled for it, but most of my colleagues are pretty weak. They're weak physically, a lot of them. And I'm not like some super jock, although, you know, I can hold my own.

I used to say I could beat any, you know, I could beat Stephen Hawking in arm wrestling. You know, that was my claim to fame. Did you ever roll with Lex? I didn't roll with him, but I hung out with him for about six hours in his bachelor pad in Austin to do an episode of his podcast. I'm hoping we will.

I'm hoping I will do that at some point. We'll see. But, you know, when I watch a channel, I think about a couple things. One is to pregame. and have, you know, the ounce of prevention, potentially. And the worst thing that will be wrong, as you said, you know, is you'll have a bunch of, you know, you'll have a bunch of freeze-dried food line around, which you could use.

And then, you know, it'll last forever, basically. You can pass it on. It's cool to have, you know, have tools to teach the kids that, you know, they can get a little, you know, bird poop on them. They're not going to die. And that you can raise strong, you know, strong men, I think. You're not the first person to compare me to Andrew Tate, if you're, you know, You could, no, I'm just kidding. You're the first person to have.

No, it's just that word. That's the only similarity. Yeah, Percivicacity. There's this connotation on one hand you have Andrew Tate. On the other hand, you have my friend, Jordan Peterson. And those are the role models that young men have. Okay. I don't think either one's perfect.

You know, I love Jordan and we're coming very close. I don't necessarily need the 12, you know, like I don't need to make my bed every morning. Like, I'm a 50-year-old man. Like, I've achieved a lot. But that doesn't mean that some 18, 19, 19, 20, old guy. Same for Jocko. My friend Jocko Willink lives not too far from here. I've got his Jocko fuel here. You know, get up 4 and 30 in the morning and do your burpees and then, you know, swim in the 60 degree percent. I don't need to do that, okay? I have other things that I do.

But on the other hand, I want to give, you know, kind of these lessons to my kids. It's because children are like the seeds, you know, survival vault seeds. You don't know what's going to sprout out of them sometimes, but you want to put them and make them resilient so they can take a cold winter. They can take a dry summer we have here as well. And the point being, the notion that some preppers have, and you've talked about this, Altman, talked about Peter Teitel, who's a friend of mine, sort of a friend. I mean, I've spent a lot of time with him. I don't know Altman. I'd love to talk to him on the podcast. If he's listening, I'd love to talk to him because I'd like to talk about things from a physics perspective, as you can tell. I'm concerned with what is knowable from not just a physics,

and Chiokaku, you know, wormholes, black holes, other kinds of holes the guys obsessed with. But from the perspective of what can we build to learn about to test hypotheses to do deduction, which I don't believe AI can do, at least not yet. That's a subject for another time. But getting back to sort of why I do what I'm doing, at least in this realm, I don't believe, I believe it's selfish to think as Elon does or as, you know, many other people think, that because there's no God and because they're ultimately in a universe with no God, you have to construct your own meaning.

It may be just as real as my meaning. I'm not denigrating agnosticism. I actually think a true scientist should be an agnostic because if you're purely an atheist, that means you're denying the existence. You're saying you know without a shadow of a doubt, no God exists. And then agnosticism means it's unknowable. It doesn't mean like some days I believe in God, some days I don't know. No, it means it's unknowable, which I believe it is, right?

Because not only could it be a soul simulation, which smacks of divine inspiration and intervention, but it could also be that, you know, God has started the universe and then he's gone or she's gone or it's gone. So, and that's unfalsifiable. Getting back to the selfishness of the prepping community. So when I was with Peter Thiel, spent a week with him and others in Italy about six to eight months ago. And the guy has, you know, a bulletproof. Mercedes-Benz on, like, on standby. It's, you know, this is well-known.

I'm not like spilling the beans. He has a jet. It's on standby. And he's got domiciles and all over the world, but including, you know, Malta and including the South Island of New Zealand. And I said to him, I said, Peter, you know, you're incredibly wise, but like, how are you going to get there? You know, you're not a pilot, right?

So you're going to get there. So there's a pilot. It's going to fly you. That guy, you know, our gal, they got a family. Like, how, how is all. all the money in the world, going to convince you to teleport, you know, them to this scenario. Or here's another thing. Elon wants to die on Mars, as I said.

That means he's got 10 kids. They're not going to have a father with them for at least two years. I don't think he's going to put little baby X on the starship, you know, at age five and cruise out to Mars. The kid could die, you know, from exposure to cosmic rays. I mean, his life expectancy will be shortened. It's no doubt about it. The brain function diminishes. There have been studies on brain tissue in space.

It's a horrible environment, long-term exposure. And then when you get to Mars, they don't have the auroras. They don't have the magnetic field protection that we have here. The days are different. The days are the same length, but the seasons are different. It's a very inhospitable world. So he wants to go there to extend humanity, make it interplanetary. I tell all these guys, Nate, I say, look, you want immortality.

But you're greedy because you want to be there when immortality happens. But you have an opportunity to be immortal. mortal. And that's by your children. And I don't just mean your biological children. I believe we all have ideological children. You have millions, you know, people that you've influenced. I have, you know, smaller amount, but I'm influencing people. That's my mission. What I'm doing in a large way as an educator. You can teleport not your physical body, but you can teleport your value system to the infinite future. And I think that's such a powerful thing because it relies on networks of individuals to be there. The pilot that flies Peter Tila, he's got a whole network

of people too or she's got a whole network of people too. How are you going to convince them to excise themselves from that reality to support your kind of fantasy of, you know, the wire goes up and you're sitting in the in the doomsday bunker? Okay. Look, that doesn't mean don't prepare for it, but don't freaking delude yourself. You have a network that you're enmeshed in in a project that we call humanity and you have the benefit of being able to project those values into the future through some hard work, but making connections that are durable. And I think that's, you know, essentially, if we're turning into Lex Friedman podcast, you know, final segment, that's the meaning of life. You know, you have immortality at your future. You can be prepared. You can prepare an infinite

network of people such that if you were to disappear, the network is resilient and it survives. I think that's very powerful in hopegiving, even if you don't believe in a God or believe in this master simulator or even believe in aliens. Hello, students of the impossible. It's Professor Brian Keating here with just a tiny little homework assignment to interrupt your podcast. And that's to make sure that you're subscribed to the podcast or following us on your podcast app of choice.

Get some research and actually only about 50% of you are actually following or subscribing to The Into the Impossible podcast. And really mean a lot if you could subscribe and keep up to date. with me and with all the greatest content. I'm putting out tremendous amounts. Podcast has grown in popularity, but it can be better and bigger with your help. Do that. Please do it now. Don't wait. You'll forget. If you're looking to really boost your position on the grade curve for some extra credit, make sure to leave a rating or review of the podcast. It really helps. Thanks a lot. Now back to the show. For me, going back to the motivation to prepare, and I think maybe this is where

myself and Peter Thiel and these other people might have some similarity, There's this wisdom, I think, in some people right now that the system is fragile and it becomes increasingly more as it becomes more complex. It's more prone to catastrophe. And I always use this metaphor of the island, you know, like we're on a ship and our primal skills have been left. So there's a lot of people panicking right now because they've had the realization that without all of the modern amenities, I'd be dead, you know.

So there's this realization that the further we go into metaverse world, the more our natural abilities atrophy. And they almost have this crisis point where you realize, holy cow, like, you know, if I was left to my own devices in this world, in the cold forest, I would not survive. And I think that there's this understanding that whatever game theory, game we're playing right now with, you know, this arm. race or, you know, all these crises, this group think and all of these other flaws that we have and our ability to reason with one another, that it's accumulating into a potential disaster of some sort and that if I'm not prepared, I like to think that that's the most sane way I can interpret it as opposed to just I want to live the rest of my life in a bunker because there is that selfishness to preparedness, which is solely individual focus that you bring

up and that's a good point that, you know, preparedness needs to be more community focused. And there are those groups. The only problem is then you get into the realm of like culty type behavior and, you know, communes. And it gets weird, right? So I agree with you. I like what you say about ideological children and then, you know, potentially, I think Musk is somewhat unique in that I think he is pretty big picture in his thinking. And not solely. just so he can ride out the apocalypse in a bunker somewhere by himself with a shotgun trained on the door type thing. I think he does, you know, genuinely, or some of these people do want to include other

people in their plans, but at the end of the day, you can't save everybody. And if you know that this system is doomed to collapse, be it economically due to just we're going to run out of certain things, we're going to eventually reach an impasse with this conflict where there's going to have to be a nuke fired off. What do you do, asides, you know, prepare for the inevitable? I mean, maybe I'm incorrect in that it's, it's not inevitable. And maybe that would be the flaw in my thinking. And I'm willing to, you know, I'm always looking for people to challenge me on those things to say, no, you're, you're crazy. You're just, you know, there's no, there's no reason for this. But I haven't,

I haven't really found any good arguments. It's peak pollination season, and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing, I need a phone plan with top priority data speeds. That's why I chose GoogleFi Wireless. My connections stay strong even when the hive is buzzing. Plus, unlimited plans started $35 a month. Now that's a deal that doesn't stay. Explore Google Fi Wireless plans today. Plus taxes and government fees. Google Fi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. But, I mean, you are and you're not. I mean, you wouldn't like to say somebody to say it's, it's pointless to prepare, right? But, but, you know, I mean, there's a lot of arguments you could make. I'm not saying I believe in them, but you could make an argument that,

look, once something of a civilization, you know, extinction level event occurs by definition, I mean, we'd just be one of, what, 15 million different species that have gone extinct in the history. We're just one out of all those. We happen to be, you know, kind of attached to ourselves and think we're pretty great. And we've, you know, built a lot of, you know, with Snapchats and there's a lot of Kardashians around. But the point being, how, how, you know, likely is it that surviving is, is a good option. You know, it's, it's, and there's not a small number of people that would choose, I think, a suicidal, you know, approach rather than live in a post-apocalyptic world, not even like one on TV, just just the sheer isolation, you know,

the devastation of it, the depression involved in it. But I think, you know, at our core, Or, you know, our operating system, you know, if you think of, you know, the physical world, physics and math, or the operating system of the physical world, what is the operating system of the human being? Well, religious people have notions of that. It could be the Koran. It could be the Bible. It could be the Bhagra Gita.

Those are operating manuals that attempt to give, you know, kind of object lessons, some apocryphal, some true. But I think there's several things that are, you know, just obviously true and are self-evident as a declaration of independence would state, you know, and that is the pursuit of happiness. And I think you have to really speculate on what level of happiness there could be in such a scenario. And so is prepping futile? Of course it's not because, look, you've got in shape, you've bonded with your kids, you've taught them different lessons.

They are resilient. They are strong. And I think that's psychological too. You actually, I mean, we're mammals, right? And we're not just, we're primates. We're not just mammals. We're not just organisms. We need physical contact.

We need social interaction. And those are kind of our base level realities as well as a species. So we were talking earlier like what would another, an alien civilization, like how would it resemble us? And I think that is some of the use of thinking about these big picture things, not just like the beginning of the universe. I always say, by the way, they're like really kind of like four different big bangs if you think about it. like the origin of the universe from nothing, perhaps, which came with the origin of matter from no matter. The origin of matter then became the origin of chemistry, and the chemistry became organized

into life. That's another kind of big bang. Then there's the origin of technology and consciousness and thinking for the future and planning for the future, that spatial reasoning and constructing technology and preparing for the future. So those are different unique things. that had to come into play. And the way I like to invert that is imagine that, like, let's say there are eight things, Nate. Let's say there are eight things that had to happen.

I think there's probably like 10 to the 50th power things, but let's just say there were eight things, okay? And there were eight things that needed to happen for us to have this conversation right now. Let's say, you know, there had to be a big bang. There had to be, you know, life existing, life had to evolve into Homo sapiens, there had to be like a Jupiter-sized planet in the solar system to deflect these. pieces of asteroid, and you keep going, and then, you know, there's, there hasn't been, you know, nuclear war or whatever. Say there's eight different things. And let's say each, each event had only a probability of one in a thousand to occur.

Actually, I think it's, it could be like zero probability. Let's say it's one part in a thousand. Take, you know, one over a thousand and raise that to the eighth power. This is the only equation in this whole podcast, Nate, right? So you get a trillion, trillion. that's the number. That's more than the number of stars in the observable universe. So now, if you ask, you say, like, there's one other planet that had that. That means it had to have all those 10 to the 24th different powers. And that was, again, assuming this is like Keating's paradox,

assuming that the probability of there being Jupiter and the probability of there being a big bang are only one in a thousand. In fact, they could be much, much smaller than that, or as big as one in a thousand. In fact, you're much smaller than that. So I think that connotes the pressure. The fragility of our species. Some people say, oh, it makes me feel so, you know, I don't need a God or whatever. I don't. I'm like, we're on borrowed time. This is very precious where we are.

It's almost designed. I can see why people are religious because it seems so fertile, so for sun, so delightful, designed for our enjoyment. You know, it's not like I was watching you, and you seem to really enjoy the 10-day challenge. Like, you're eating these freeze-dried stuff. And you were like, you were like, I ate worse than this in college. And you said there are about six billion people on Earth who would die to eat this right now. You're absolutely right.

But did you ever think, like, let's go deeper? You could actually get by in just like some spirulina and some, you know, some like some vitamin. Like, it could be very. You could eat dog food. I thought about it. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save?

Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your oceanfront room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected.

When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. Even more primitive. You could just have like proteins, fats, and carbohydrate. and you could have like vitamins and just like a gel that goes into your body. That's what happens when people are in comas, right? They don't like serve them beef stroganoff.

We have a multitude of different colors we can see, multitude of different flavors, a multitude of different people that we can exist. We are living in paradise and we need to protect it. And I think it might fall to the physicist to say maybe, you know, you've taken our inventions, you've taken our discoveries, you've led us to the brink of annihilation on multiple fronts

from the biosphere, from the nucleus of the of the of the of the cell to the nucleus of the atom no more we're not going to play your silly mind games anymore we're going to think we're going to be knowledgeable and we're going to act with wisdom and maybe it'll create some you know scientific technological elite as eisenhower said everybody knows the military industrial complex speech date they don't realize in that same speech he warned of a scientific technological elite that would act as i call it an academia military complex, which is a subject for another day. But let's try to figure out how we can scale up millions of people listening to your channel

and inspire them to protect and conserve the physical universe that is the only one that we know exist, with the only life form supporting habitation that we know exist. I believe it's the only one that does exist. That's a subject for another time that harbors technological life. And so for those reasons, I think we should act with great care and concern, but also be hopeful, happy, optimistic about the future, but preparing for the worst at the same time. I really like how you sum that up, and I know you have to get going, and we're going to have to touch on some of these issues next time because we still have about two or three pages of questions that we haven't got to. But I just wanted to add to that. And I like how you phrase about, you know, this is paradise.

This is almost like we're in the Goldilocks zone here, cosmologically speaking. And I think preparedness in a lot of ways, it's also about self-mastery, but it's also about appreciation for what we have. And it's very, I think only a person of the preparedness mindset of the true survivalist mindset can appreciate everything that we have. And that is the reason why we are motivated to. to try to maintain that standard living afterwards. Because if you don't appreciate what we have,

then you're not going to see any reason to better yourself or be prepared. Like if you don't truly appreciate the grid and all its sophisticated capability, then you're likely, you know, you're just going to be like that kid who nothing pleases them because they've been given every single thing.

So you have to go through this. And as you say, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but this is a very powerful thing that you've mentioned many times. You call it the rule of 100, I believe. Yeah. I think it's like the rule of infinity almost. It's so available right now.

And you make this point, but it's true of everything, Nate, and what I want to say and applaud you on that philosophy, it's true of everything, not only of getting fresh water and toilet paper tablets and whatever else we can get at Canadian Preparedness.com, but it's true of your relationships too, right? Imagine, God forbid, whether you believe in God or not, Okay. What are your relationships going to be like? They'll be there, but it'll be a hundred, like, watch the movie The Road as a father and tell me that doesn't rip your freaking heart out. And I can't spoil a movie that's 20 years old, but people know that, Nate. But I'm saying, I want to take your philosophy, but apply that to spirituality and relationships. It's a hundred times easier, if not more, to create and nurture relationships. And your philosophy, your mental resilience and I believe you have a stoic philosophy that lives below its means in order

to prepare and extend for the future because like you, I plan on spending an awful lot of time in the future. So let's extend the law of 100, but apply to your relationships as well. Nurture them while you can. Tomorrow is promised to no man. Own it all. Pay off your home. Travel for life. Drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package.

The biggest prize in Yamava's history. Club Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale May 29th. Don't pass go and own it all. Only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Details at yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro.

Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion.