It Could Happen Here - Disaster Relief, Survival & Hurricane Helene

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

Robert sits down with Margaret Killjoy for a dispatch from Asheville in the wake of a disaster, and then talks to James Stout about disaster survival lessons we need to learn before the next one. Sources:https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/hurricane-helene-death-toll-missing-people-b2622259.htmlhttps://www.broadcastify.com/webPlayer/43107https://www.amazon.com/dp/1625951558?ref=cm_sw_r_apan_dp_JGGGWKAWJN5Z9A3RKRRB&ref_=cm_sw_r_apan_dp_JGGGWKAWJN5Z9A3RKRRB&social_share=cm_sw_r_apan_dp_JGGGWKAWJN5Z9A3RKRRB&starsLeft=1&skipTwisterOG=1https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09J8GWC6D?ref=cm_sw_r_apan_dp_82FMND05X67E2RBH1JTC&ref_=cm_sw_r_apan_dp_82FMND05X67E2RBH1JTC&social_share=cm_sw_r_apan_dp_82FMND05X67E2RBH1JTC&starsLeft=1&skipTwisterOG=1See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming.

This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite

and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

wherever else you get your podcasts from. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous

strangers as a fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's very interesting. Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds

and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Call Zone Media. Hey, everyone. This is It Could Happen Here. I am Robert Evans. This is a podcast about things falling apart. Call zone media. But before we get into that, and we'll be talking largely about what this means for your own preparations for future disasters, what we can kind of learn initially from everything that's been happening, I wanted to start with a few minutes of us talking to Margaret Kiljoy, who is on the ground in the Asheville area doing disaster relief work right now. And obviously, the audio here is not up to our usual quality, but it's only about five minutes. And then you will get James and I talking crystal clear into your ears. So here is Margaret.

Hi, everyone. I just got on the ground about two hours ago and immediately have been basically running around with my van, delivering food to different places just because van did van thing and it's i mean it's intense everyone is having an intense time but also at the same time there's like you know more people are out walking around and riding bikes and you know there's hundreds of people gathering at every place that's passing out food and water and And there's a very kind of community spirit happening right now. I'm actually recording this from up in Marshall, which is a small town immediately north of Asheville that also has a mutual aid distribution hub.

We just came up here to drop stuff off. And even in the 20 minutes that I've been here, other people have come with pickup trucks full of harm reduction supplies and diapers and just all the things that people need. And everyone is trapped on basically little islands, right? There's a very different style of flood than when you have like a coastal flood. And what's happened is that the houses that are near the river have been destroyed.

And the roads, a lot of them have been destroyed. And a lot of them went underwater for a long time. And so all the infrastructure is down. But many of the houses, at least as I record this, seem to be intact and doing well. And what it is that everyone is just trapped and isolated. Most people don't have food, water, sewage, or even cell signal, although cell signal is kind of the first thing to come back and power is starting to filter back in. And we're hoping that some places are maybe getting water. But one of the things that's kind of come up is that, again, because it's in the mountains,

it's a very different setup. It's a very different culture and community. And one of the things that's happened is that, I mean, a lot of people have wells. And so immediately, the problem has been more about distribution of water and also getting generators to people who have wells so that they can pump. You know, a friend of mine got a generator pretty quickly and, you know, pulled a thousand gallons out of their well right away to get and distribute around.

And there's a, you know, just while I was waiting outside my friend's house, someone drove by and asked us if we needed water and then asked us if we knew about each of the neighbors and who did and didn't have water. Yeah. And I mean, one of the things that makes me think of is like, having the generator, having the well, that's great. The kind of thing that maybe people wouldn't think about as much as having the ability to put 1000 gallons of water in something, which seems like it was also crucial

and is probably would have been lower down the list for a lot of people. But there's really no replacing it when you need it. Totally. And but one of the things that, again, I mean, I'm not trying to say that everything's fine here. It's very much fine. For example, the only federal response that anyone is talking about is that ICE is already in the area. So before anyone has been given food by the federal government, they have sent ice to detain people and question people at least that is the word on the ground obviously you know details and truths come later when you're in a crisis situation but we do know that ice is on the ground and no one i've talked to has seen much in the way of federal response besides law enforcement but one of the things that's happened here is that a lot of people have pickup trucks in Appalachia.

And so a lot of people have, you know, you call them water buffaloes, the big water tanks that you can put in a pickup truck or a trailer. I definitely left this feeling, you know, my first, you know, I drove with my van full of stuff and on the highway and being passed by pickup trucks, pulling flatbeds full of pallets of water and things like that. pickup trucks pulling flatbeds full of pallets of water and things like that. But then even, yeah, in the city, people are driving around in trucks and filling them up with water and delivering them. But don't get me wrong. Yeah, if you're preparing, think about how to deliver water. Even some of the things for me, for example, the city government has been doing some things. And there are places where people can go and fill up water containers, but they don't have the water containers. So the people who are prepared by having a couple five-gallon totes in their basement are in a much better position. And so that's like some of the things that I brought for some of my friends is literally just a couple five-gallon water containers so that people can go get them filled up. Now, obviously, you're talking

about when we're thinking about the places that people are able to drive around where the places that you've been reaching are hit pretty hard. But we also then have these more isolated mountain communities that both seem to have suffered a lot more physical damage, although that's not entirely clear at this moment, but are certainly not accessible in the same way. And I think that's one of those things we're still going to be waiting to hear, like how extreme it is but like we talk a little bit on the episode before this about people using burrows to deliver food and water in places where vehicles can't even reach yeah yeah yeah and one of the things also you know one of the things that went out on the mutual aid list that i'm on is people are saying hey if you have your atv bring down your atv you know um and that

makes complete sense you the listener are listening to this don't just drive down with supplies and if you are plugged into a mutual don't just roll to ashville in your polaris yeah yeah uh but but yeah no one of the hardest things has been getting the supplies you know i mean disaster relief is just it's just logistics in the same way that war is just logistics, you know, it's like, how do you get things from one place to another? And what people have set up is all of these, you know, you centralize the acquisition of supplies, and then you decentralize getting them out. But yeah, people have been working, I'm going to know more about what people have been doing to get things out. But I've already talked with people or heard from people who, you know,

were getting rescued by people with hand saws, right? And then one of the main things that people are doing is that there's chainsaw crews, mutual aid chainsaw crews going around. One of the big asks that I came with a lot of was bar and chain oil, you know? And it's a little bit hard because gas is also, until just recently, gas is starting to come back online now.

But getting gas for a chainsaw or an ATV or your vehicle has been tricky. But people have been working on that too. Yeah. Well, Margaret, I'm not going to take up more of your time while you try to help in the wake of a disaster. But thank you for being on the ground. Good luck to you and everyone else who's out there. We will be hearing more from you and more about the specifics of what's happened in North Carolina and elsewhere in the wake of the hurricane next week. So thank you and thank everybody there. Good luck. Yeah, thank you. That is done. I am now going to move on with our previously recorded episode. Here is James and me.

Oh, welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast where it's happened for some chunk of our listeners who are probably not listening right now because as we record this on Monday the 1st, this on monday the first uh technically a tuesday we're just now getting word that internet has come back on like mobile internet has come back onto parts of ashville and north carolina that were incommunicado for several days after hurricane helene tore through you've heard something about this i'm hoping i'm hearing different things from friends about how much news attention there seems to be on this i'm seeing it a lot but i'm seeing it largely through social but the gist of it is i mean there's a photo i came across right before getting on here where there was a memorial marker for the 1916 flood in asheville that was knocked out by what used to be a road and was now nothing but rushing water and mud. Beautiful. Three out of four highways into Asheville are down. I heard yesterday

from people who were coming in and doing an aid drop that what had been previously a 30-minute drive took 12 and a half hours from the state of the roads and the number of checkpoints and stuff. All of this is pretty common stuff for a natural disaster, obviously amped up in severity because this disaster was correspondingly worse than even most natural disasters tend to be. Yeah, certainly in this country. Yeah, I was just looking through, just doing a little bit of googling before we got on and i found a reddit post from the ashville subreddit from two years ago saying ashville is apparently the number one city in the united states to be a climate haven according to the cnbc

although that article it just made the list of best climate cities but the original post has been deleted i don't know if that was earlier or as a result of this but that is one of like the side stories here is that ashville is not we're not talking about one of these coastal cities in florida that everyone is known as doomed for forever right we're not talking about new orleans which lovely city great history doomed as fuck and everyone has known it for quite a while yeah we're talking about places that are many miles inland and that something like 2 000 feet elevation yeah it's certainly not below sea level or even at sea level like yeah it's an inland mountainous community

it's just not the kind of threat that people are used to having here yeah and the devastation has been pretty total like whole communities wiped out i think the death toll from the county ashville is in let me let me pull this up to make sure i'm not getting it wrong i've just now pulled up a story from 30 minutes ago on the independent uh that says yeah at least 143 people have been killed. Yeah, that's a total death toll from Helene. 40 people in Buncombe County, where Asheville is, 600 people unaccounted for. Governor Roy Cooper has told CNN that there are communities that were wiped off the map. Kind of the first thing that I noticed outside of the footage coming in was friends of mine, because I've spent a decent amount of time

in Asheville. I have friends on the East Coast, including our own Margaret Kiljoy, who has a lot more friends in Asheville. And I was in a couple of different signal loops where people were trying to contact their people. And there was a line from one of the folks I was chatting with who had reached out to multiple people in the area and said, I have not heard anything from anyone in Asheville in hours. Nothing is getting in and nothing is getting out. And that seems to be consistent with everyone's experience. Starlink was largely not functional. Starlink doesn't work very well when the weather's really bad.

Sat phones seem to have had some efficacy i know some people were getting messages in and out but they weren't super reliable because sat phones also are reliant upon climactic conditions right yeah it's certainly better than just trusting your normal cell phone but it's not going to do great when you've got a fucking hurricane dumping half an ocean on your head right so that was the first thing i was thinking about, because we talk a lot about disaster preparedness, and we talk a lot about having stuff that would have been useful in this, and that people who were prepared and had water set aside and food set aside were certainly in a better situation, because those both very quickly became problems.

I mean, I heard a devastating story of an old folks home that was completely cut off from the outside and didn't have enough water or food. Hoping that story ends as well as possible, but there's a lot of stories like that. But even outside of that, there were people who were prepared, who had food and water, but who wound up stuck on the roofs of their house because the water just came in so quickly. There was no chance to really get much other than maybe a bag. And when you're stuck up on there, like, what are you going to do if you, your sat phone or you don't have a sat phone and that doesn't work and there's no internet and there's no

cell service? Well, that's why we're going to start today talking about ham radios because those motherfuckers there's actually uh i'll see if i can pull it up um through this like that has been the most reliable way for people in the area to communicate with the outside world because if it is possible to communicate using technology you can do it with ham yeah right like that's just that's just how ham radios be yeah they don't need to see the sky like yeah yeah they don't give a fuck if it if there is any way to communicate via technology with people in a disaster you will be able to do it with the ham radio yeah so let's let's chat about that james you have more experience with this than i

do this is something i have been working on getting into but i certainly am not very knowledgeable on the matter so we'll start like what what do people need to think about when it comes to like actually getting set up to communicate with a ham radio because there there's definitely you could just go buy a bow fang or something like that like you can get ahead they're not expensive this is actually a very affordable thing to have right now kind of the most recommended model is the uv9r pro which is eight watt instead of five and waterproof yeah that's what i was gonna say and you can charge it off usbc which is really nice yeah they're what like 30 something bucks yeah they're like you can get them cheaper in bulk i think you used to get them cheaper on alie I think. You used to be able to get them cheaper on AliExpress, but it seems like they're kind of hanging them up and charging customs,

so you end up not getting them cheaper. Yeah. So yeah, for real basic stuff, I think you do need to be licensed to operate these radios on certain bands, right? Yes. And that's something that you can, I believe, in a case of emergency, you can operate on any band. No one's going to arrest you for illegal use,

unlicensed use of a ham radio if you're trying to get people rescued from a flood. Yeah. Right? Like, that said, you should not be learning how to use a ham radio when you're hiding on your roof. Yeah, yeah. This is like, you know, the people who buy guns and put them under their bed and never shoot them and expect to be able to become a marksman in a crisis or yeah buy medical gear and never train

with it again right these things that you want to practice before so we use these a lot at the border we use radios to communicate when there were high numbers in hakumba we my friends and i put a massive antenna on the roof of the youth center where we were yeah i know a lot of listeners have been out there and they've probably seen the antenna that we put up and then i was using a radio in my truck and then we also all had personal radios right because cell phone signal is crap out there and it was the only way for us to communicate and it worked really well so the things that you need if you want to get started in this are first of all some kind of education or a license there are yeah tons of local groups ham people fucking love to be ham

radio people they love to talk about ham radio they love to teach you to do ham radio so like and it's not like a hobby you know firearms people love to talk about firearms but lots of them are really toxic people i haven't found that ham radio is premised on talking to people all over the place and often very few people killed with ham radio yeah it's uh i'm sure it's possible but uh if you can find a local club that's a great way to start they can clue you in on stuff but i think to begin with you also need someone to talk to right like if you want to practice with your ham radio you need to be talking to other people on it so you can just go on to different bands different repeaters and and do that or you can get your friends and study together yeah get your

license together buy two bow fangs you know yeah give one to somebody who you live close to but not right next to and work on it with them yeah work on like oh how far does this work you know like i am one of the former guests for the podcast uh james cordero from uh board of kindness he and i were doing that not so long ago, talking to each other from our houses. But yeah, you can certainly get into this pretty cheap. I have a business license, which is another option for people. I would suggest first getting your ham operators license

and then going from there. Yeah, it's called a radio technicians license, right? Like that's the most basic because there's three levels, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I believe so. It's been a while since I did that. i think it's radio technicians general and then amateur extra if the notes i took yeah are accurate still and then in terms of cost like the size of your antenna is what's going to determine you know how far you can transmit and how you can receive

along with like line of sight right it's always about size it's just as big as one possible so you want to be a size queen like you can get yourself a really big antenna i would say if you're using those handheld radios there's a company called nagoya that make pretty decent radios antennas that work with that uv9r that i use i have like a telescoping one and we've had pretty good luck with that and then then I also use one in my, so I've hard mounted a radio inside my truck and I have an antenna that uses the frame of the truck as part of the antenna. And I can get really good signal with that.

Yeah, that makes sense. If you're just doing it at home, yeah, put something on your roof. Like you can get a pretty good antenna on your roof, you know, and it's not that hard and you can get signal much further. I've been recommended a little book that you can get for 20 bucks in kindle form or it's like 30 bucks for the spiral bound which looks pretty durable i haven't received mine yet yeah uh the ar rl ham radio

license manual which is kind of what i was advised to buy and read through yeah and the advice that i got and you can correct me here but this seemed pretty hard to argue with is that like the primary benefit to doing the training and getting the license formally rather than just buying it is it also teaches you how to fix problems if you're trying to like get this thing to work in a stressful dangerous situation yeah you want to be familiar with it if you're going to rely on it right just like anything else there's ham study.org as well which helps you you can also do something called a software defined radio str i've used those before as well i'm sure we'll yeah we'll do a more dedicated episode to this kind of thing once i feel a degree of competence too but i think

what's really important with this is because i can tell you right now as much time as i spend like thinking about water and having a bunch of different water treatment options and spare water stored and i have like i literally have at this point years of dried food on the property i can food all the time i have animals obviously i have guns you know i do stuff like you know go foraging in the woods and shit i had completely because it's a pain in the ass. It seemed like a pain in the ass. There's a lot of numbers. I hate fucking numbers. And I am choosing to use this. And we're starting out with this as coverage of Helene, not because like this is the end of it. We're not, we are going to look at what's actually been happening in the community. We have people, Margaret Killjoy is down there right now. We have some other like friends of the pod who are in the community we have people margaret killjoy's down there right now we have some other like friends of the pod who are in the area doing relief work now it's just too early for those

stories and we don't want to like really bug people who are doing useful work down there yeah but this is the the first thing that terrified me was being like well fuck i have been negligent in my preparations because i don't have comms locked down yeah definitely like and people underestimate it because it's not cool and fun right like i'm fine and i have a sat phone so i was like that's probably fine right like well it wouldn't have been wouldn't have been in ashville yeah or people think that they can have starlink now and i think yeah you know people place a lot of emphasis on that but i think yep going back to basics we were talking about this in our group chat, but for things that you need, having a primary, secondary, and emergency way of doing that makes sense.

So your phone, your sat phone, I think Robert and I both use Garmin inReach as a sat communicator. I have an inReach, and I also have a Motorola smartphone that is a sat phone through a... God, I'm forgetting the name of the service, but a separate service. Like I have two different sat phone through uh uh god i'm forgetting the name of the service but a separate service like i have two different sat phone services and then you got your ham radio as your backup well after that you got smoke signals and pigeons right well that that gets us to a general idea of preparation which i was kind of when i started when i got advice from a colleague about war reporting like the the best it's still to this day some of the best advice i ever got is two is one and one is none right if you have one way of doing something in a disaster you you are very close to having no way of doing it right which

brings me to transit because one of the the the thing that is probably going to wind up being the defining characteristic of this disaster in memory is the degree to which the ability to reach people in an area that is, we're not talking, you know, there, there definitely are a lot of rural communities impacted by this, but like Asheville is a significant place.

We're not talking the middle of nowhere. We are not talking about people living on the edge of the world. Right. Yeah. We are talking about like one of the, what was up to this point, one of like the hippest and more popular parts of the Northeast, right? The immediacy with which the ability to reach people on the ground was wiped out. And obviously while the storm was going on, there was no way to reach them from air.

Like, you know, a helicopter can get places now, but during the worst of the flooding, you're not reliably getting a fucking chopper into a lot of these places. So people were stranded very quickly, much faster than they had been prepared for. You should be thinking about like, oh shit, I could get flooded because you probably could. Most of the people listening to this, there's not a 0% chance a freak storm floods your community, right? Even if it never has before, it's not exactly a common problem in Asheville, right? The last massive flood thing was like 1916.

Right, yeah. So we're not talking about a place that's used to flooding all the time. But likewise, like it's not just flooding that could do, fire could do this, right? I am thinking the last kind of near disaster we had where I was is in 2020. You know where I live right now. I am in the city of Portland and we were like three or four blocks away from where the evacuation orders had spread during the fires in 2020.

It was not a foregone conclusion. They would stop before reaching the city. You know, this is also the people in Southern California. There's a shocking number of communities, communities with money that are really built up that if a fire hit at the wrong time of year, there's no stopping it. You need to be thinking about how am I preparing to be informed during the seasons where this is like of highest likelihood? Because the only real safety there is paying attention to what's happening and building an understanding of how quickly things can go badly so that you get out ahead of time. Because if the disaster just hits, you're not going to get on the highway and drive through a fire or through

a flood i don't care if you have a fucking safari snorkel i'm looking at those waters you are not getting the most kitted out land rover on god's green earth was not getting through some of those waters i'm sorry yeah you need a submarine for that shit like i remember my house flooded when i was probably 17 18 and i remember that a couple of things I remember. First of all was like, most of your shit is not that important to you. I remember being 17 and being like, oh, man, we got this. Back then, having a widescreen TV was a big deal for us. And then thinking like, oh, my neighbors are 80-something.

Like, fuck the TV. I need to check if those people are okay. And then people completely overestimating the capability of their vehicles in floodwater. Yeah. Which they always will do. It will always be the people with the biggest trucks that cause the most problems for everyone else who overestimate where their vehicles can get them.

Yes. And like you can die in your vehicle crossing relatively shallow floodwater. This isn't, you know, it's a serious business. Or get burned to death, which happens all the time, has happened very recently in communities in like California. You know, people just get fucking incinerated.

So don't be that person. Pay attention. Like one of the things to pay attention to is like when the warnings started to come in, there will be good breakdowns fairly soon in places like the New York Times on when warnings came in and how much time people actually had yeah but don't gamble with stuff like this fucking drive to high ground or you know drive to whatever seems like the safest place and fucking crash in your car if you have to yeah and this is why again when it does come to survival stuff i'm a big fan if

you have the money spend 200 bucks on one of those buckets of dried food because you can keep a bucket of dried food and five gallons of water by the door you can throw that son of a bitch in your car and carrying the water might be a pain in the ass but if you have to get out and run those buckets of dried food with a week or so of food in them are not that hard to carry. You hold it under your arm. You keep a backpack on your back and you run like a son of a bitch to whatever evacuation exists. And you'll have some food with you. You know, like this is this is one of the ways I think about stuff like this.

You know, it's obviously preferable if you can just hunker down in your fucking house full of gear and equipment. But I'm sure there were people who had to evac or who got flooded out in Asheville, and their house that got flooded out was full of survival gear. I know for a fact that that happened to people. Yeah, and it happens everywhere to people, right? Talking of happening, Robert, what should be happening right now is an advertising break. Oh, shit. It should have happened 10 fucking minutes ago,

James. Yeah. But here we are, buddy. Here we are. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series,

the running interview show where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real,

inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who

find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge the chapters from thought provoking novels to powerful poetry. We'll explore the stories that shape our culture together. We'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your Thank you. It's going to be filled with cheese man laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries.

Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field,

and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough.

So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming.

This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.

That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. We're back. You know, when it comes to talking about like the degree to which people's high tech and expensive uh equipment including vehicles has run out very quickly one of the stories that has been most interesting to me is of like one of the first groups of people to be able to get supplies in significant quantities to some of these isolated mountain regions was a guy with a shitload of donkeys oh yeah the mule team the mule team guy uh he was one second let me pull this up i've got this bookmarked yeah mountain mule packer ranch which i'm guessing is just some sort of like uh

you know you go there to vacation and do like mule trips mule hikes and stuff it's kind of people who want to backpack or take like a really luxurious camping setup yeah yeah they've been doing mule trains into a town called into uh weaverville it looks like and yeah like a mule can carry it's something at least based on this people article i'm looking at they're saying about 200 pounds of supplies per animal which you, you know, is actually very significant. That's not a whole lot more than you're going to be fitting in like a compact car, at least. Obviously, a truck's carrying more, but you're not getting a truck into a lot of these areas. And it just kind of goes to show, I'm not saying like everyone go buy a mule. That's not

really practical for most people. Although, if you've got some land maybe consider getting the mule they're real they're real handy they do come in very useful in situations like this yeah they get companion animals as well i think people have them for like if you have a horse or whatever alpacas too but they can't carry so much but alpaca packing is a thing and then like montana and places like that yeah they're great you know If you've got a fight in the mountains of Afghanistan, a mule, you can do a lot there. So very useful in a wide variety of situations. I know a lot of our listeners

are actively fighting in Afghanistan right now. So that could be very handy for you. Yeah, proud of you guys. Yeah, yeah. America said we're done there, but you said not me. It could happen here. I said, fuck no. You can't stop me going back with my mule.

That's why this is the official podcast of the Islamic State Khorasan province. That is, that's, oh, James, we shouldn't be saying stuff like that. Hopefully the government's busy. Well, apparently they're not because they ain't doing shit in the in our show yeah so you know i saw a lot of one of the more heartbreaking posts that i saw was this this lady posting a picture of her parents and her daughter uh who was six on the roof with them and she was like a few minutes later the roof collapsed and they were dead like she apparently managed to just kind of barely survive and get out of there but there's there's like i'm i i think a lot of people whose last act was trying to get a good photo or video of their

location you know to post on social media i i don't want there to be a lot of people who made the decision to stay longer than they should have because they wanted to get a good shot for social media, but I'm sure that number wasn't zero. I'm not saying that's what happened to that lady. There's also a matter of like, well, if you are stuck up there, what else are you going to fucking do but document it?

Right, yeah. I have some sympathy for that, yeah. I'm not trying to shit on these people, but it is one of these, there's that post that goes around every time there's a disaster like this where climate collapse is watching a series, to these affected communities. There's places in Georgia that got hard hit. Obviously that's a focus, but from a practical standpoint, the only good that you can make of a disaster like this is to try and pay attention to what happened, to what went wrong for other people and make yourself less vulnerable because the less vulnerable you are, one of the things that we see every time there's something like this hits,

you know, and this is, I would call this a hand of God event, right? You had a bunch of communities that were a part of the developed, you know, whatever term first world one day, and we're completely cut off from everyone else on the planet the next.

And all you can really do in the immediate aftermath of something like that is try to figure out what can I do to make it less likely that I'm a strain on resources during an event like this. And obviously the best way

is to not be there because then you're not a strain on resources. But the next best thing is to have to pay attention to what went wrong for other people and try to make yourself pay attention to what went wrong for other people and try to make yourself less vulnerable to that because not only does that protect you

but you protect other people by not needing the resources that rescuers can bring to bear which will be terribly limited in the immediate wake of the disaster yeah i think like in terms of resources obviously margaret does an excellent podcast called live like the world is dying where you can hear more about that stuff yeah i think the thing that you can buy i guess right now if you have like 30 to 50 bucks and you want to be a little bit more prepared because i understand that for some people this will be an oh shit moment right where this is something that it ought to be yeah no it really should be like you know you've seen a city that thought it was completely invulnerable be very vulnerable you can buy a soya squeeze for like 30 bucks right now you can set them up in a five

off a five gallon bucket yep or you can use the bag that comes with you can buy a bag from a company called knok cnoc which is a much better bag i would recommend that but like you can spend 30 bucks there like we said before you should have backup and other water filtering options. But there are whole countries that use soy squeezes, right? The Marshall Islands, I made a thing about. Liberia uses them too. And you can filter rainwater with that. And you could pretty much have a supply of water for as long as you need it if you backflush it.

Right. You've got like a family of four in a house. You have one or two five-gallon buckets buckets full at any time and you have a soy squeeze and you can you know in this kind of situation you can keep filling it up with you know disaster water for lack of a better word and in that sort of situation too you can double up and triple up which i always recommend in an emergency i've nearly died of dysentery so i don't fuck around with this yeah get get a filtration option that's not the only one filter your water and add iodine tablets to it right like you know filter your water and use something like a uh uv light yeah

a steripen a steripen yeah you know don't just rely on one method double up there's no you're not going to have a lot to do other than make sure your water doesn't kill you and that's a real good thing to focus on yeah you could even use bleach right household bleach just make sure you're not fucking around it's not scented etc but yeah you want to look up that ratio just so we're not fucking up the ratio with them but like yeah that's a great you know i keep, I usually keep one or two just big 50 gallon barrels of water. There's like water stabilization tablets and liquid that you can drop in there because water doesn't store indefinitely, but you can use bleach too. People do.

I keep it all times. I just have this as part of my outdoor kit, but it's a good thing to have for a disaster. You can have a Camelback with one company that makes them is called Katadyn. K-A-T-A-D-Y-N. Katadyn, yeah. Katadyn, sorry. But there's a couple of different water filters that you can screw directly onto your camelback. So you pour water in the camelback, and by the time you get the water in your mouth, it has gone through a very serious filter arrangement. And that, again, that can be part of your, I pick this up and I take this with me, and no matter where I go, I can pour water into the camelback

and me and my family can drink off of it, or we have two camelbacks or whatever, you know, have four liters on you. This is not free, but it's not prohibitively expensive. It's certainly not like buying nice firearms, right? And it is considerably likelier to save your life than an AR-15. Yeah, yeah, there are magazines of ammunition that would cost you more than uh than this would and like yeah yeah with all of these things once you once it's dirty it's not clean right so like your camelback bladder is now dirty water bladder and stuff

especially in a disaster situation don't be mixing a match just no get a sharpie and write on it likewise i have a jerry can i just wrote the bleach amounts on it with a paint pen and it's there now and now i know like none of this stuff is hugely complicated and like everything else right like the more familiar you are with it that if you go camping a lot yeah like robert was saying you already have a system in place so you're already ready for that yeah i keep something called a grail on me which is just like a cup that has a filter like it's a two-part like almost kind of a thermos type deal yeah and you fill the bottom part with water and you press the top part in and it fills an internal reservoir with filtered water and then i'll drop a tablet in

there or something and uh you know or i'll pour that into a larger thing and put the tablet in there yeah but you can always have multiple options for water and it's the kind of thing where like there's no reason not to a camelback and a filter plus a bunch of pills plus some sort of like hand pump rig you're you're maybe out 150 bucks yeah you have three different methods of keeping your water clean yeah i think they're surplusing out a lot of the msr guardians so the u.s military used to buy. You can get those pretty cheap. Those are great. I was just in the Darien Gap.

I used one of those and then chemical treatment. I'm okay. You can also bulk process with the Gravity Guardian. You can do 10 liters at a time. We're in this kind of conversation. We are triaging by what we think is the most important stuff which is in a disaster like this water and comms and i i kind of keep those as relatively equal because obviously like you can survive without comms in some situations yeah and

you can't in any without water but if you are in a situation where you're on the roof of your house and your roof is not going to hold out much longer in the floodwaters, comms suddenly become the number one problem that you have, right? Your inability to reach someone who might be able to get you out of there. Yeah. If you need to get help, then you need to be able to ask for help. Yeah. I guess the other thing I would say is if you rely on any medicine, think about how and where you store them. God, yes. a lot of people have been trying having to figure out like i've been reading stories about people needing to set up like

battery and solar or generator situation like they're fucking c-pap machines and they're like you have people who are on dialysis who are going to need to get evac'd because there's not going to be reliable dialysis you know in town in a while right like that kind of stuff like some of that you know like i have a big cooler and i kind of stuff like some of that you know like i have a big cooler and i can chuck ice in there and i can have enough insulin in that bad boy for a year you know yeah and other medicines you know just putting them in a waterproof bottle and having that in your well i live in california we have a bag for fires and earthquakes right everyone here does and yeah just having a few days of your medicine so you can grab and go you don't

have to think about it you don't forget something that you rely on. Yeah. And that's also what you should be thinking is like, if it takes me two or three days to get evac'd and out to an area where I can like spend money again to get access to the things that I have on a daily basis, what shit can't I survive without until I get to a part of the world where I can get access to things again? Right. Which is, again, why we're kind of focusing on comms so that you know what's happening so that you can maybe reach people.

Water and then underwater, like food and obviously things like, thank God we are not at a time of the year when this happened where people are going to like freeze to death immediately. Right. In the middle of something like this but that would i would say like access to warm and dry clothing could be up there equal with you know water and comms if you're talking about a kind of disaster that might put people out of their homes in an area where you can die in minutes in the front like if you live out in the fucking great lakes region depending on the time of year we're talking about a disaster that could be right up there you know yeah you know what you need based on where you live but be thinking about what keeps you alive that's really a lot of disaster preparedness is actually trying to understand what is it that

keeps me alive a lot of our economy exists in having that not be obvious to you yes yeah yeah you uh and then putting your priorities elsewhere but yeah think think about what stops you dying maybe have a couple of spares and have it in a place having all this stuff is great if it's in 17 different tote bags in your attic that's not much use to you when you don't have very long to get out your house so having stuff like robert said by the door in your car in a backpack whatever like yeah that you can easily access and be okay then you have it and then you when you need it it's there and you know where it is yeah yeah well james how we do it it's happened here buddy it's happened here yeah like we said it would yeah it could like could like we

keep saying this this was like i the messages i was sharing with people immediately after this was like oh this is the one this is the one we were worried about this is the hand of god sweeping into a community and just knocking it off the edge of the earth yeah you know not that this kind of thing doesn't happen but this is this is the first one at least since i've been really focusing on this stuff in the u.s where it hits somewhere that just was not on my radar as a super vulnerable place definitely yeah and it'll happen again next year and with this it'll happen again yeah and it'll surprise you it'll surprise you again where it hits you know that's the thing the thing. There's no climate haven. Yeah, no. It doesn't exist.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not on this planet. I would say like, if you have money and you want to help, mutual aid, disaster relief are great. Yes. Let's talk about that. Let's go to ads one last time.

And then when we come back, we will tell you who you can send some money to, to help people who are actively suffering. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. help people who are actively suffering. the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all.

It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks

while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible.

Don't get me wrong though, I love technology, I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Check out betteroffline.com. Submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game.

If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme, laughs, and all the vibes that you love.

Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey

German where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Before we bounce, we wanted to suggest some places where you could donate if you are looking to help people who are in Asheville, other parts of North Carolina, one of the first places recommended to me is Appalachian medical solidarity. Um,

they are providing, I mean, it's, it's obvious what they're providing a lot of like medical, uh, care and support, uh, a lot of equipment and stuff that people need.

Their Venmo is at app med solid. Their cash app is dollar sign streets 1de put flood support in the description if you send the money through that yeah the other place is mutual aid disaster relief uh their paypal is mutual aid disaster relief at gmail.com their venmo is at mutual aid disaster reliefaster Relief. Yeah, just Google them if you want to find out more about what they're doing. James, did you have anyone else that you wanted to throw out there?

Those are the two. We did an episode, I did an episode a couple of years ago with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief that you can find in your podcasting app. Those are the two big ones, I think. You know, if you're on the ground, help each other.

I'm sure you already are. Yeah. Yeah, those would be the two that I would suggest. If you buy yourself your water filter and you have 10 bucks to help out. Yeah. That's how we make the world better. Yep. So until next week, solidarity to the people who are in the Atlanta area right now.

Yeah. Where a chemical fire, very similar chemical fire to the one that happened in a place I used to live, West Texas, has just blanketed the air and chlorine gas. So remember, folks, weird disasters can hit too. We're living the dream. We're not just talking about hurricanes and fires here. Anyway, that's it for now, everybody. Good luck.

Stay safe. Make sure you drink plenty of water. Bye. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.

But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous strangers as a fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives.

I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's very interesting. Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso cruising and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app

or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.