It Could Happen Here - The Things That Helped People In Western North Carolina

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

James and Margaret discuss her trip to Western North Carolina, the things people had prepared that helped, the things that didn't help, and how you can learn from their experiences. MADR: https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/ Appalachian Medical Solidarity: https://www.facebook.com/appmedsolid/MSR Dromedary Bags: https://www.msrgear.com/water-treatment/storage-bags/dromedary-bags/dromedary-bags.htmlMSR Guardian: https://www.msrgear.com/search?q=guardianCamelBak Filter: https://www.camelbak.com/shop/accessories/filtration/Garmin InReach Mini: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/765374DMM Mini Locking Carabiner: https://dmmwales.com/products/xsre-lock?_pos=3&_sid=a7e7b4e4f&_ss=rSee 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. 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. 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. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world

and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. 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 Tex 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 iheart radio app apple podcasts wherever else you get your podcasts from

iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. CallZone Media. Hello, and welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and how people work to put them back together again, because it's the Humpty Dumpty of podcasts. Except, Humpty Dumpty couldn't be put back together in the end, because

it was a bunch of state actors who were trying. And really, that's not how you usually get things done. I'm your guest host today, Martyr Killjoy. And with me as my regular host today is James. Hi, James. Hi, Margaret. Thank you for having me on the podcast that I work for. I'm glad to have you on your podcast.

So this episode is about what I learned about prepping by going down to Western North Carolina in the immediate wake of the flooding caused by two storms, one of which was Hurricane Helene. And there's a few things I like an awful lot. One of them is prepping. Another one of them is Asheville, North Carolina, where I lived longer than I have lived anywhere else in my adult life, which isn't actually saying that much because I lived there for about six years. It's a decent amount of time.

You know a place. Yeah. Before that, I was fully vagabondy. This is a story about prepping in Asheville, North Carolina. And so I thought I'd bring on another It Could Happen Here prepper. James. Yep. It's me.

Someone who has been to Asheville, North Carolina. Oh, yeah. Still lives in San Diego. Yeah. Nice place to go outside. Normally. Yep. It's me. Someone who has been to Asheville, North Carolina. Oh, yeah. Still lives in San Diego. Yeah. Nice place to go outside. Normally. Okay, but have you ever heard that song, the like, I've been everywhere man song? I've been everywhere. Yes. I don't think I'm allowed to sing things on this podcast. Yeah, yeah. I started liking that song because I was like,

yeah, I've been everywhere. That man starts listening where he's been and I'm like, no, I haven't been I ain't been shit. I ain't never been anywhere in my life. I've not made it. Yeah. Yeah. It is one of the nice things about my job that people, I get to go places and meet people.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's fun. So as I assume listeners are aware, about two weeks ago, Hurricane Helene dumped an enormous quantity of water onto the mountains of Western North Carolina, which would have been bad no matter what. But another unnamed storm had already been dropping unconscious, not good amounts of water on the area for a day or so.

The two storms together caused the worst natural disaster in recorded history for the region. The only thing that came close was the 1916 flood, which was again like a regular storm and then I think a coastal tropical storm hitting at the same time. So the way to have everything fail is to have two storms at once, in case anyone's curious how to have bad things happen

due to storms. Anyway, I drove down in a van full of supplies because my friends were there and they needed the supplies more than my basement did. And because I had enough cash on hand to hit up a bunch of stores to get more stuff to bring to them too. I also drove down there as a journalist, figuring I'd talk to people about mutual aid and about preparedness.

This week on my own podcast, Cool People Did Cool Stuff, I talk about my experiences there, what I saw with an emphasis on the mutual aid side, on the enormous amount of grassroots and informal disaster response. But this is it could happen here. And I wanted to talk about preparedness. I want to talk about what worked and what didn't, what lessons we can draw anywhere we are listening to this from what people experienced there in Asheville, North Carolina, or at least what lessons I was able to pick up on. And we're going to talk about like stuff and specific things in a second. Oh, good. But first, when I talk about preparedness, which I do a lot, I talk about how I'm interested in

both the individual and community as two different types of preparedness. And I had some hypotheses that these were deeply related and reliant on each other, in fact. That you do one better by doing the other better. But now that I've seen those hypotheses tested, I was right. That's my answer. It's in fact a proven hypothesis. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, I don't want to run more tests, but...

We probably will. Yeah, exactly. Because we're doing shit to stop it aren't we no no we're mostly doing things to make it worse cool basically we need both individual and community preparedness and we should stop seeing them as opposing forces there might be no single false dichotomy that has more wrecked our imaginations than the idea that the individual and the community are two opposing forces, that they must be balanced against one another instead of interwoven, instead of allowing what's best about both things to reinforce the other. I would argue the 20th century did us dirty. The Cold War did us dirty. In the US, I grew up presented with the idea that the USSR represented community in that side,

and that meant being a cog in the machine, devoid of individuality, enthralled to an authoritarian state. If I cared about the individual, and individual freedom and liberty, I had to accept capitalism and competition, and to see myself in a war against everyone else. I don't know how you feel. I don't want to be a cog in a machine and i also don't want to be in a war against everyone

else yeah this is the uh this is the sort of false dichotomy that we're presented with right it's like i'll tell an anecdote here when i was writing my dissertation i would describe my politics as left libertarian and i would describe the politics of the many different types of anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists in spain similarly because it accurately describes their perspective right and i was forbidden from doing so uh because under the probably fair enough objection that americans could not comprehend the idea of libertarianism without individualism yeah which is annoying because oh was it Rothbard someone consciously

stole that word from us you used to not have to say left libertarian because if you said libertarian you meant left libertarian yeah this was uh that predates Rothbard uh it is something I've written about on my patreon oh okay but yeah libertarian began to be used by French anarchists to avoid censorship and persecution of anarchists for being anarchists. And then it came to America where, like many things in America, it was stolen from its original creators and custodians and fucking ruined by chuds, which is a shame. But yeah, there is in fact an option where you don't have to pick one or the other yeah what is good for me as an individual is to be able to express the full range of my

possibilities right and i'm more able to do that in a supportive community than like alone in the woods somewhere cut off from everyone else chasing rabbits with a hatchet and dying of easily preventable infections like it's the American dream, Margaret. What are you talking about? I used to joke that I was going to start a YouTube channel called How to Survive Alone in the Woods with a Hatchet, eating squirrels that you kill with the aforementioned hatchet. But unfortunately, you died of tetanus before.

Yeah, exactly. The existence of society makes me more free. It makes me more capable of doing what I want to do. Yeah I really like I don't remember which old theorist came up with it But I really like the idea of understanding freedom as a relationship between people not a like static state Yeah, it is something that we offer each other and that we like work to maximize with each other. Yeah on the other side of things

What's good for communities is not to be rigidly top-down controlled, but instead to allow people free expression, develop new ideas, try new things, to have communities grow organically. We are not actually factory cogs. We do better as a garden. Yeah.

And that's been my working theory with preparedness it's been similar on one side are these deals these goods and services the ads that interrupt things magnificent thank you thank you i live to do this. Here'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. 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.

Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. 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 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. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. headlines everywhere. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story,

as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Parenti. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck.

You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Toot, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year, you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. On one side, I saw preppers as being kind of a, primarily an individualistic bunch of folks obsessed with what I've called the bunker mentality. The hole up in guns and shoot anyone who comes too close mentality. The I've got mine, fuck you mentality. You ever seen on like older prepper reddit and stuff like that where people like kind of get sad when they realize they're all planning to shoot each other all their friends after the apocalypse yeah that like

anyone who's able to has more than two weeks of food stored is inherently going to kill anyone else yeah who has more than two yeah it's great when they all come around to that occasionally yeah and they're like wait but i like this community i've built yeah they're also their only friends because they've alienated everyone else with their weird obsession yeah fallout this is not a good mentality to have i would argue it's behind a lot of what's happening on the border right now actually i think that the right wing actually does believe in climate change and is not willing to just say it publicly because it doesn't play to their base but they they're like we've got ours fuck you and want to close down the borders as best as they can in the global north yeah and we'll move the borders as far from your eyesight as possible that's what i

saw in panama right i was in oh yeah listeners will know i was in the darien gap but like panama without funding you and me margaret when we pay our taxes we pay for families to be split up hell yeah deportations to happen fences to be built in panama because that makes it further from our sight and further from our mind right that's what liberty means yep liberty is the ability to interfere in other countries families yep domestic politics in other countries by a fire hose of money i mean it's funny because it's the same like justification every now and then you meet the people who genuinely think russia is like allowed to invade ukraine because border security because ukraine's too close to it you're like oh amazing yeah ukraine bad therefore fuck it why not like it's yeah yeah it's like the monroe doctrine but for russia like this is my

hemisphere don't fuck with me yeah burn down your neighbor's house because you're just like nah you were living too close to me don't like like it. Yeah. Senior yard sign. They've got one of those in this house signs. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Which they've all taken down now because it says no human being is illegal and they no longer believe that. Yeah.

Cool. Well, I would argue this is a fundamentally right-wing individualistic mentality, whether it's coming from ostensibly leftist tankies or ostensibly center-left democrats or the they admit they're right-wing individualistic preppers yeah and this was dominant in prepping circles before around 2020 when an awful lot more people with different ideas came into the space but the older school preppers focused on individual preparedness or family level, household level preparedness. And they have an awful lot of really good ideas around some of these things, around storing food and water, around maintaining communications, around all sorts of things to help the individual or family during crisis to be prepared. On the other end of things, there are mutual aid groups and other

community organizations that do community preparedness they build organizational communication and logistical networks and they're fantastic and they're overall what's been left out of preparedness conversations but until more recently i haven't seen as many of those places the people who are doing those things, also concern themselves with individual preparedness. I've been operating under the assumption for years that the two can work really well in tandem with each other. If you are self-sufficient, you're in a better place to help others. That was my hypothesis. This is really just the Margaret was right episode of It Could Happen Here.

The victory lap. Yeah. my hypothesis this is really just the margaret was right episode of it could happen here the victory lap yeah oh wait it's a victory wrap around bodies i don't like it anymore well it's people who did do these things getting to have not thrived but did not died i don't know how to say this it's it's a tricky subject getting credit for being right and putting in the work yeah and a lot of people were and a lot of people had done that and it showed really well in the disaster response in ashville because when i went down to ashville one of the things that i asked most of the people i talked to is what they prepared what they wish they'd prepared and what lessons they were taking away from all of this about preparedness. And one of my friends is old punk, and he was one of the first old,

he's like my age, whatever, might be a few years older than me, I don't know. Margaret crushed by moment of reflection live on podcast. Yeah. I'm jealous because I don't have enough gray hair. They keep falling out of my head. But one of my friends who does have very nice gray hair old punk is one of the first people who was out on the street cooking food to give away he told me that he was able to do that because he knew he was fine by and large during this particular crisis every crisis is going to be real different if your house

wasn't in the actual floodplain and since it it was in the mountains, that was not most houses. Instead, it was like most roads and some houses, you know? Yeah. The big problems you were dealing with was lack of food, lack of water, lack of cell service. And he had plenty of water and food stored. And at one point, someone had even kind of come up to him and been like, are you? No, you're fine, aren't you? And he was like, yeah, no, I'm fine. That's awesome. Just being like giving off prepared vibes, I guess. Yeah, no, I was real proud. Like once I was doing this community defense thing and we were like, oh, we need a flashlight.

Does anyone, hey, Margaret, you have a flashlight, right? And I was like, yeah, which one do you want? Yeah, being the flashlight person. Yeah. It's a huge win the moment you get to deploy that flashlight you've been toting around. Yeah, well, and that's actually part of my like core argument It's a huge win the moment you get to deploy that flashlight you've been toting around. Yeah. Well, and that's actually part of my core argument

that I make in the other podcast I recorded today that's going to come out sometime around now, is that people want to help people. Oh, yeah. The average pickup truck guy, we even kind of see, I mean, I'm a pickup truck girl, but we see the average pickup truck guy as the, I mean, I'm a pickup truck girl, but like we see the average pickup truck guy is the like,

I'm good out my way, limberal, guns, dogs, whatever, you know, and I like pickup trucks and guns and dogs. And I also don't really like liberals. But one of the main things you want to make a man with a pickup truck happy, get your car stuck in a ditch. Oh, yeah. There are whole Facebook groups where people love to pull other people out of stupid situations they've got themselves into off-road yeah it is fun for them yeah like because then the fact that you've been doing this thing had a purpose i carry a flashlight and a knife

every single moment of my life so when someone needs a flashlight or a knife i'm like oh yeah i am fucking the the reincarnation of the. Like no one is better than me. Yeah. You're the all powerful light carrier. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. When all other lights go out. For me, it's the moment I get to deploy, like, obviously this has been an audio podcast,

but I have a Leatherman that I like to carry around. Yeah. Like, oh, wait, someone needs pliers or wire cutting. You have that capability. Yeah. You're just like, you're a superhero. You're a mutant, you know, like. Yeah.

And so, yeah, this friend of mine had plenty of water and food stored. And you can usually go a couple of days without communication if you don't have any immediate crises. Right. Yeah. He told me that what most people did or needed to do was first they needed to make sure to meet their own needs. You know, like the whole affix your own oxygen mask before helping your seatmate. So it was the people who were the most resilient, the most prepared, who were out driving around in their trucks or cars, whatever, giving away food, or were working to coordinate meetings most immediately. And the other part of it was that people who had community preparedness

skills were also among the first people getting stuff done on the ground because mutual aid it's organic and it's chaotic and spontaneous right yeah but it is organized it is a developed skill about how to organically organize yeah the more people who are experienced with chaotic decentralized organizing the better a community was able to weather the immediate aftermath of the storm because people knew how to set up distribution hubs groups in random rural small towns having been one of those people in one of those small towns i keep saying i lived in nashville i lived in sandy mush where sandy mush is i don't bother saying it because no one knows where it is no hell of a name though i know it's almost british in its weirdness i was like two femme for baseball caps back then and all my landmates wore the camo baseball caps from the local store that says sandy mush you know and i'm really sad that i didn't get one especially now because now i have one and i'm wearing it now that has the

name of the town i live in but i can't wear it anywhere because it doxes me ah yeah see that's important yeah if you had a sandy mush one you'd be yeah someone send margaret a baseball cap yeah from from sandy mush yeah with camera yeah oh i probably won't wear it otherwise i'll be real because i still got to be femme and somehow that is how things work in my subculture so you need individual preparedness so that you're free enough to help people and you need community preparedness so you know what to do and then you also have all of these people with really specialized skills and tools and these are the kinds of things that i can't say that every prepper needs to go out and do but like atvs have been crucial to disaster relief efforts that doesn't mean that everyone

should run out and buy an atv to keep around in the case of flooding. This is a note for me because I don't quite live on enough land to justify an ATV and I really want one, but. Yeah. Let's get one of those little ones. Yeah. It's just, you know, the little children ones. I know I'm just driving around in a circle. I'd like mostly live in the woods.

And so there's like, just not a lot of ATVs are great when you got like 12 acres with horses on them, you know? Yeah. You're going out, you can get a sheepdog on the back. They're very practical for that kind of thing. Yeah. Rifle case. But that said, a dirt bike friend of mine, who was a quite prepared person,

immediately went out and spent days going into hard to reach areas to connect with people and bring them supplies. Yeah. So maybe I can justify a dirt bike. Yeah. Dirt bike is an e-bike. E-dirt bike because then you can run it off solar power don't need gas store it sideways okay we're going to talk about electronics versus gas later in the episode i got a whole part about it yeah yeah okay good but first

what we really need for the apocalypse is whatever comes next in the ads that is what will save you in the apocalypse if it's a podcast yep that is the podcast that will give you the secret to surviving the apocalypse. Hopefully it's the Reagan gold coins, which will become the currency as soon as the state collapses. I bet it's gambling. And if you go gamble, you're guaranteed to win. That's how... I think we legally cannot say that. Oh, well then...

Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if we can get away with saying, don't gamble, it's a bad idea. Yeah, no, I think we absolutely can say that. Okay with saying, don't gamble, it's a bad idea. Yeah, no, I think we absolutely can say that. Okay, great. Don't gamble, it's a bad idea. Yeah. 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. 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 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 Thank you. 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 Tex 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. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make

headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba.

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian González story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Gianna Parenti. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k?

Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. The overall lesson was that some stuff is and was useful for everyone to have. We're going to talk about some

of that stuff. While other certain specialized tools and skill sets only made sense for some people to have. Not everyone needs to know how to repair a chainsaw or even own a chainsaw, but it sure proved to be a handy skill in this particular crisis. Asheville is easily an image of the climate crisis future. I think you and Robert got into that in the episode you did about this. Yeah, we spoke a little bit about how this is a vision of what's coming for a lot of us. Yeah, I'm basically doing a like, me too, I couldn't be on the call because I was busy. That's what this episode is.

No, but we, Robert and I have not been there. My house flooded when I was younger, but we were not there this time. Asheville is not... Okay, it is a somewhat remote part of the country in terms of its raw geography. You're not getting into that city without taking steep, curving freeways or flying into a regional airport.

But culturally, and because of the level of infrastructure the United States provides, it is not an isolated city. It is very much a modern and hip city with about i think 100 000 people had i think about 80 000 when i left a couple years ago but it's been growing yeah partly because lots of silicon valley folks move there to work remote much to the sorrow of locals

like everywhere else as people moved i know and then i'm also like i work remote and lived i actually can't throw stones here yeah uh i have lived here since I didn't work remote. Yeah. Fair enough. I'll take my stone throwing opportunity. Asheville is a very climate stable area. All of Appalachia is. And it's nowhere near the coast.

There's not a lot of earthquakes. There are far fewer forest fires than there are out west. There were some forest fires that were there one of the years that I lived there. But, you know, it didn't impact my life the way it impacts my friends' lives who live out west. There are industrial accidents and there's occasional flooding, but no one had any reason to expect anything like this, except that all of us have every reason to expect something like this. Areas hit more regularly by climate disasters have protocols in place for those sorts of things. People in California pay attention to the fires during that fire season.

People on the Gulf Coast track the hurricanes. And not that these disasters aren't disastrous, but they're expected. They're part of living where you live. Asheville, what happened there, could be any of us at any time. So what was useful for them for prepping seems like it might be really useful for all of us. And most of that, most of what was useful is the basics. People I talked to were either real happy that they stored water or real sad that they hadn't stored water. With the storm coming, people filled up their bathtubs. One friend cut the downspouts on his house to direct them into trash cans. And now, a week later, they still have water to flush the toilet.

Yeah. And, you know, if you're like super ahead of it, you've got your little rain collectors all the time, right? But worst case scenario, cut your downspout and throw a trash can there. Yep. Or anything else that's food safe. Yeah. Well, in this case, it's mostly water flushing.

Oh, yeah, yeah. It's funny, just as you mentioned this, like I was in a village I stayed in last week, didn't have rainwater electricity, and that's exactly what they did. The person I stayed with had like a normal toilet, but they don't have plumbed-in water, so they just collect rainwater and use that every time they want to flush it.

Yeah. Every time I've lived off grid and don't have easy access to running water instead of bucket flushing, I shit in a bucket with sawdust. Yeah. Yeah. They, I think like there's a hole underneath.

Oh, interesting. But you have to flush it to get it in there. I think this was like a state, a status upgrade to have the physical toilet. Yeah. Yeah. No, that actually makes a lot of sense

yeah some of the first water distribution centers that came online after the storm in asheville didn't have water containers and this is actually still the case as of recording so people had to bring their own one friend only had those big clear water jugs the kind that you put into like a water cooler and like get refilled at the grocery store you know yeah and these don't have good caps and you can't really bicycle with them while they're full i've bicycled with one when it was full but yeah okay it's not a fun no not a fun uh this is where you need a long tail cargo bike the ultimate prepper vehicle fair enough i would argue jerry cans that's my pitch instead of yeah yeah you can also get jerry cans or like the like big opaque water jugs for storing water but yeah or even bags what

are bags i like they're like msr drum bags okay a few so's before there's a pretty robust i've only seen little ones so that makes sense that there's big ones too yeah big ones expedition stuff i would argue that if you're thinking about getting the stuff opaque water containers with good lids are more useful than the the blue clear ones but if you have access to the blue clear ones and that's what you got go get them yeah and many people lacked any containers at all so the water distribution site was not as directly useful as it could have otherwise been. That's tough. One friend during the storm pulled out all the recycling and filled every jug with water and put it in the fridge, which did two things. One, it gave you slightly orange tasting water to drink

for a while. And two, it added thermal mass to keep the fridge cool longer. And of course, storing more water always good. For the most part part most water people had access to had a boil advisory on it before it went out completely oh you're a water filter expert i want to talk to you about this i was about to fucking dive into that shit i was ready to go okay hold on all right yeah flood water itself is generally an awe or at least it is in this case too toxic to use a simple filter or boil at home. Things like pesticides are incredibly hard to get out of water.

And lightweight backpack intense charcoal filters, activated charcoal filters, and then in-home style reverse osmosis filters, which normally I don't like, but for this, it seems like they might. Yeah, you have enough power for an RO filter. Yeah. It's a nice touch. Also, if you get one, then your home appliances, if you live in a hard water area area which is a lot of the west won't get fucked up by the uh calcification so much oh that makes sense i use a water softener on my well similar approach but i like reverse osmosis

seems like it has some advantages maybe i'm i i never liked reverse osmosis because when i first was looking into it i lived off grid and reverse osmosis creates a lot of wastewater yeah and i was just like all of this water was hard to come by fuck that there are some filters that have an activated charcoal element specifically the pesticide runoff and and like industrial contaminants is something i have been really worried about in a couple of places i've been for work you know actually i was somewhat concerned about that on a recent trip the one in the one in panama but it's not so much pesticides there is human waste and decaying human remains uh which is pretty rough and but in myanmar that was a big concern before we went there uh the msi guardian i think has an activated charcoal element and so does the camelback inline filter oh interesting kind of a small one yeah yeah that

and what's really cool about that is a lot of them you can't replace because the activated charcoal is you can't back flush it in the same way that you can back flush a filter right camelback will sell you just the actual activated charcoal element okay that you can then replace i've got a few of them in a cupboard behind okay yeah but but that would be what to look for if you're... But yeah, don't be just boiling it or just filtering it. And those are for something like a soya. They're great for rainwater, but if you're filtering water,

you want a fast-flowing, clear, not a turbid or a stagnant water source or an industrially polluted water source, a fast-flowing, clear mountain stream, great. But like turbid, stagnant water source or an industrially polluted water source, a fast-flowing, clear mountain stream, great. But turbid, stagnant water with industrial pollutants, not so good. That makes sense. And so if you're listening to this in Asheville or elsewhere,

I'm trying to think of what I'm going to... I'll probably... I have some activated charcoal stuff, but I don't like it as much because I don't like... I don't like disposable things. I'm like... Yeah. But I... Yeah, things that you can reuse are always better.

Yeah, but for certain threat models, especially if you don't have the power for reverse osmosis. Yeah, and it's not that expensive. The MSR ones, actually, that's what the US military issues to some of its, I guess, more special people. So sometimes they pop up on the surplus market pretty cheap okay and they have a bomber warranty you can trash it

and they'll replace it oh hell yeah I like that a lot of outdoors gear is like pretty like they'll stand by their products yeah I would well I keep wanting

trying to pitch this story actually but yeah like I have an MSR quilt this is not like an MSR sponsored episode but I have used that shit on

it's a very small very light but like an ultra light quilt I've used that shit on it's a very small very light like an ultra light quill I've used that thing literally on almost every continent in the world and just through like

it's down and through like my body's greasiness my inherent oiliness gradually the down

even if you take really good care of it right the down gets packed in and I've had it for probably six years I was like

fuck it this isn't working anymore let me see if they'll do me a discount a new one put in a warranty claim send it back and okay here's a new one just just send me one that's cool yeah yeah no i like that more outdoor stuff i like people who stand by the shit they do yeah and they also fix stuff which is cool like i like that and they will ship you the parts to fix it cool which is i feel less wasteful when that happens yeah so with food this one's real simple people were either glad they stockpiled food or they were sad that they hadn't stockpiled food yeah that's an easy

one one friend immediately took about half her stash of freeze-dried foods to distribute out to friends and strangers. Awesome. Most people I talked to did not have any real amount of backup power available to them. On any given street, I would pass only a few houses with generators running, which also, of course, takes gas or propane. Propane has the advantage of storing indefinitely. It has the disadvantage of being substantially more expensive per kilowatt hour or whatever of power. Yeah yeah probably more bulky too to store right like per energy unit

totally when i was off grid i used a dual fuel generator i actually took it down and i no longer had the generator and gave it to some folks but i had a um a gas propane generator and i ran it off of propane because it also was like cleaner on the engines you have to do less maintenance yeah but you know if i needed it all the time it was a backup to my solar if i had to run it all the time i would have used gas because it yeah anyway i talked with one homeowner with solar on his roof about how he hadn't sprung for the house battery because after all power in the area never really went out for more than a day at a time right yeah i personally delivered two solar generators which just means like big old lithium batteries with

inputs and outputs built in and those would be my personal primary recommendation for people who want to run lights and charge phones and things like that during power outages for a while yeah while gas or propane generators more useful for keeping heavy duty appliances going like fridges yeah i also passed out a couple different like portable or luggable solar panel setups that can charge phones or other devices sick and there were some mutual aid folks going around and helping people with their solar setups but overall i didn't see as much of it as i expected i expected to show up and they'd just be like outside the mutual aid stations a big old foldable solar panel with a yeah power brick i think fewer people had that than i oh wow so what are you doing to go buy

oh right because money is hard to come by that's the reason yeah you can make them yourself save a little bit uh that way but be careful with big blocks of cells and shit. Yeah. And I'm always trying to price out the difference between... I build my own solar setups. Yeah. But I also just get these solar generators sometimes. Until you're looking at big systems,

the price difference is not as dramatic as you want. Yeah, because you're putting in a lot of time. Or even an inverter costs a fair amount of money. And so if you're building a big system, the inverter is like worth the expense, right? But if it's a little system, the little thing that has a built-in inverter, it's going to be cheaper.

Right, yeah. And like the charge controller. Charge controller, yeah. I was recently building one out for like leaving out for migrants or having in the bed of my truck. So when I run into people and they need to charge their phones, they can just do that without a truck being on. Yeah. And yeah, I ended up shoving a bunch of 12 volt batteries in an ammo can and hooking it up to a

bunch of USB ports on the outside of the ammo can and then just bringing them home and charging them rather than doing a charge controller and it's not worth it. No, that makes sense. And honestly, like my van off-grid setup is i have the equipment to run it off my alternator or solar panels on the roof i just i have a fuck ton of batteries in my van so i just plug it in every couple of weeks and it's fine you know yeah yeah you end up doing i've tried a bunch of the different solar panels i use them when i'm this company called pale blue that i used a decent amount i left it with someone on a work trip because they needed it more than me yeah those are useful but like if you're really trying to run anything big you need a lot more solar panel then you're probably gonna you know carry around on your backpack that's what i think people don't quite recognize

is that like i used to have a pretty large array of 1200 watts and you know i had to go run hundreds of feet of cable to put that in a field and build like a whole structure to hold it and get it to the right angle and things like that yeah and even then in the winter i ran the generator and this is to keep my laptop and a little tiny a super efficient fridge going right and some other stuff right but like solar is not space efficient it's not going to do what you think it does because you know it's not going to do what's advertised to do but it'll keep your cell phone alive yeah which is important or if you use a satellite communicator or something then you keep that charged yeah with gas one friend usually keeps her car half full of gas but forgot that week because she'd been driving so much and started the crisis with only an eighth of a tank and was extra stuck you need to have a gas can if you want

to drive out of the city and get as much gas as possible of course you can store gas in a good container for a while but it goes bad after three to six months you store gas that way so you should set an alarm for yourself this is kind of telling myself i have like gas cans where i was like i should store some gas. And then I'm like, oh wait, how long has that one been there? Yeah, crap. Now what am I doing with it?

Yeah. You have to take it to real specialized places to deal with it. Yeah, it's hard to get rid of it once you let it go bad. And so an empty gas can actually would have done people in Asheville a lot of good.

A full gas can, even better, right? But honestly, full tank of gas in your car, better than a full gas can. A full gas can, even better, right? But honestly, full tank of gas in your car, better than a full gas can. Empty gas can allowed people to leave and go get gas because they were not, civilization didn't end. Civilization ended a 90 minute radius, you know? Yeah. So you can set an alarm for yourself if you're going to keep full gas and then you put it in your gas tank and then you go refill it again. And then you get annoyed about doing this and then you stop doing it and then an apocalypse happens and then you put it in your gas tank and then you go refill it again. And then you get annoyed about doing this and then you stop doing it.

And then an apocalypse happens and then you're really annoyed that you forgot. Don't ask me how I know. Just if you have the money to not let your vehicle get below half full, you'll probably be fine. You can get a long way on a tank. Well, it's about when you have the money is an important part. But at the end of the day, it does not cost you more money to keep your gas tank at half full.

Right. No, it doesn't. Because unless you're driving a long way to get the gas, but you're still driving the same amount. You're just stopping off a little more. Yeah. Empty gas cans ended up crucial. And people who stored them were glad. And a lot of them were donated immediately.

Volunteers collected gas cans and drove the three-hour round trip to fill them up with gas several times a day. You should learn the range of your vehicle. Newer cars will tell you automatically, but if not, it's not super hard to figure out your gas mileage. You have to like look at your mileage when you fill it up and do some division and shit and find out the size of your fuel tank and your gas mileage. And you'll know whether or not you have enough gas to reach an area, especially if you're doing disaster relief, you never want to do disaster relief if you can't get out of the situation yourself

because then you're a fucking asshole because then you are just actually another person who needs relief. Communications, as this show covered last week, were one of the hardest hit areas of preparedness in this crisis. There were ham radio operators doing stuff, but a lot of my activist and anarchist friends

with Baofangs, which are these cheap ham radiosios struggled to get them to work well during the storm yeah due to the mountains water in the air lack of repeaters and frankly that ham radios are really goddamn complicated and not everyone has fully up on exactly how it works at that moment right yeah and this has put a fire under them to get better at it but especially in the mountains repeaters need to be a part of a radio communications plan people with satellite phones are some of the only people in communication at the beginning i was curious about and did not find any information about whether or not the new iphone satellite texting i wanted to ask about that i i didn't find anyone who used it okay i found it to be less reliable than what i have

is garmin in reach i pay for it yeah uh and it works real well used it in the derringham gap i've used it again okay every continent apart from antarctica so you would say that the iphone doesn't replace the garmin in reach in terms of well... Well, the iPhone only works in North America. So for me and my model, then absolutely not. Like it didn't work in Panama, Central America, I guess. So yeah, for me, the inReach has been faster. It's also another device that's not your cell phone. And sometimes the device that you're playing Angry Birds on,

and then you run out of battery or whatever you know like yeah it's useful to have a device which is only for emergencies which lasts for two weeks if you charge it up yeah one i leave mine off and so yeah yeah yeah i mean if you're getting one for that purpose i would say that like the bigger in reach is better there's in reach mini and mini 2 again i used a mini for about eight years i think yeah i eventually destroyed it and got it warranty replaced with a mini 2 the bigger one allows you to type on the device the mini 2 sending any kind of message without a cell phone to to do the input is a real bastard but this yeah it's just like uh remember when you used to do predictive text and you do like one was abc two yeah yeah it's like that okay yeah i have the inreach too and i've i've only proof of concept

of it i'm often driving around replaces where i could break that down in the middle of nowhere actually yeah i broke down yesterday about three miles from where i lose cell service in the mountains that i live in oh that could have been I know. I also broke down in an auto mechanic shop. I got real lucky with what was otherwise a real bad situation. If you're getting an inReach Mini, this is my soapbox, don't trust the crappy little carabiner it comes with. Buy a small locking. DMM makes a tiny locking carabiner.

It's an important thing to lose it because you didn't want to spend 10 bucks on a carabiner. Would be a bad day. You mentioned this. I'll end up doing this because I trust you because your user is more than mine. Mine just is like clipped to my hiking bag, but it hasn't.

Yeah, inherently an unlocking carabiner, you want to be using a locker for something that's like an essential safety. No, that makes sense. Threadlock the little, it uses I think a Torx or an Allen. Thread bad boy in okay you're good to go i know that starlink doesn't work very well during storms there's this method of internet called starlink that's owned by someone who i don't like and wouldn't like me because i'm a trans person but starlink is not

incredibly reliable during storms i know that because I live remote and use Starlink. I'm talking on Starlink right now. It does not work great during storms. But after the storm passed and when cell service was still out, a restaurant with Starlink was where many people first were able to reach their loved ones. That's cool. And so that is a thing to know.

It is a fairly fairly reliable service frankly yeah same deal in the darien actually that's how uh migrants are first able to contact their loved ones and let them know that they're safe yeah so that's an indigenous village where someone has a starlink unless you personally piss off a particular billionaire in which case he will personally turn it off for you yeah great everyone i talked to had a regular like amfm weather blah blah radio at home which is great yeah people should have radios in their homes radio was the main mechanism that the city used to broadcast information about various threats like evacuations of regions threatened by the destruction of dams or the contamination in the

water however how you charge them is you know i fortunately had some d batteries in my van to give to someone because oh wow that's old school yeah no yeah some of my stuff i brought like in case someone i knew needed and some stuff i just like brought to give away yeah and my like stash of batteries was just like came with me in case anyone needed you know yeah you can get wind up weather radios i. I have one. Yeah, no, totally. That's actually, I dislike most all-in-one gadgets for survival. But the wind-up radio with the little shitty solar panel is one of the ones that I'm like, no, that's, they're 30 to 50 bucks and they work.

Yeah. And you don't need much power to listen to a radio, you know? No, there are whole parts of the world where wind-up weather radios are how people get their information. Yeah, it makes sense. For travel, most people still got around. Yeah, it makes sense. For travel, most people still got around by vehicle just with limited gas,

though I saw more than the usual number of people walking or biking, pulling trailers or wagons. As a general rule, consider floodwaters to be impassable and do not attempt to drive through them. Interestingly, electric cars do better in floods

than gas engines because if water gets into the air intake of a gas engine, the engine will stall. And usually it's people with giant pickup trucks who overestimate the capabilities of their vehicles who go out and do this. Yeah. When I got my truck and I was like, I'm a prepper, I'm going to get those like bull bars or the, you know, front cage things or whatever. Grill. And then I looked into it and I read about it and they just murder people.

Yeah, as someone who rides a bicycle a lot, those things do not like. It's already bad that pickup trucks are so gigantic, but if you add one of those things to the front of your car, front of your truck, you're just going to...

And you have to think about it. Are you more likely to need to push broken down cars during the end of the world or accidentally hit a pedestrian with your vehicle that is taller than a child? Yeah. And I would guess for most people, including me, I am more likely to accidentally hit a pedestrian. So I ran that through my cost-benefit analysis and I do not have one of those things on my truck. I could imagine a world is like low, low, low on my list of priorities.

Like one day I'm going to get one and I'm going to keep it in my garage. And then it's like, and the world has ended and I'm going to put it on my truck in case I need to push cars out of the way. With the 350 miles, I can drive my truck before it's useless. Yeah. Yeah, using all that gas that my truck before it's useless. Yeah.

Yeah, using all that gas that you stored. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That totally lasts a long time. Anyway, one of the problems with electric vehicles with flooding that I think we're starting to see, I think these videos were from Asheville, but I'm not certain, is that electric vehicles, if they're underwater for long enough, especially with saltwater,

this is less of a North Carolina and more of a coastal thing. The saltwater can cause fires if it hits the battery long enough. Don't drive through flood water and floods in the mountains are particularly fast moving as compared to like coastal area floods where the water might be still and staying around. Yeah. On the other hand, fast moving flood water goes away faster and on its own yeah so yeah with gravity don't cycle through it i've cycled through a couple of uh rivers uh once in iceland it just picked up the bike from underneath me and it like not an optimal situation actually to be swimming down a river chasing after a bicycle in iceland yeah i don't want to do that yeah avoid famously warm place iceland yeah only 100 kilometers from

the nearest place i could re-warm myself it was a great day roads were washed away in many places while many many more were blocked by downed trees improper chainsaw use is one of the leading causes of injuries and disasters oh i bet proper use of chainsaws has been absolutely essential although there were reports of people who self-rescued with with hand saws yeah and you know awesome yeah you got time and people and you got a hand saw and there's a tree in your way you can get through it yeah don't be like the uh the guy if maybe margaret saw this didn't there's some like homesteader on oh god x.com who i've started uh war with yeah because he's he's lying he's not like i'm sorry this guy they don't braid their hair both of them have long hair and

they don't braid it yeah i do not believe that they work outside regularly if they don't braid their hair yeah your hair will get caught in shit yeah and it'll just tangle it is not worth it the reason rural people with long hair wear their hair in braids yeah it's because it keeps it out the way yeah yeah i would say that if you have a saw keep it you know keep it in reasonable condition the old saw that's been kicking around your shed and it's rusty and blunt yeah you know likewise the old chainsaw so don't don't be dragging that out yeah you haven't used it for a while that said one of the things i was expecting but wasn't true yeah because i brought down a generator that i didn't know if worked right and i was like what a jerk move because if i was going down to like there's like 10 people

and i'm like don't worry i'm here to rescue you i've got a generator i don't know if works that's not so great yeah right there's a hundred thousand people who live in ashville there was the ashville tool library and the western north carolina repair cafe hold up outside the anarchist bookstore fixing generators and chainsaws oh awesome yeah hero shit and it was great of all the various generators people brought i was like i don't know if this one works and they added gas and it worked and so i was like i brought the best shitty generator you know yeah but no sometimes things can be handy if you're knowing how to fix things it's always useful and there are people around with more specialized skills you don't have to learn to do everything for example chainsawing is a specialized skill i own a bunch of devices that are scary and dangerous and some of them are guns

and one of them is a table saw yeah and the chainsaw is the most likely to hurt me. Yeah, for sure. And I've been to a chainsaw class. I'm very glad. Cutting a downed tree is an entirely different skill than cutting a live tree or a standing tree because of the way that tension works. And I cannot teach you this over, well, you might already know it, but don't listen to a podcast to learn how to do it.

Go to a class. Yeah, pay someone to teach you and get the right protective stuff. Yeah, absolutely. Proper protective trousers and class. Yeah. Pay someone to teach you and get the right protective stuff. Yeah, absolutely. Proper protective trousers and things. Yeah. Also never cut up trees woven with power lines

without asserting that the power line is dead. As for how to ascertain it, I asked someone who was on a chainsaw crew how to ascertain it and he didn't know. So they just avoid those ones.

Yeah. I mean, mains power is not a joke. Yeah. People have been reaching the more isolated communities out there by hiking by atv by dirt bike by helicopter and most famously by a string of pack mules there are a lot of ways that people have been getting help to people this doesn't mean you need to go out and buy a helicopter no just get a bill you don't even need to google

how much a helicopter is margaret i wonder how much a helicopter is anyway and then there was one tool and tool set that a lot of my friends have that as of yet has had more or less no use in responding to this crisis and that is guns yes i figured it might be this is interesting for a few reasons one is that north North Carolina is a pretty gun friendly state. It's also a pretty culture war ass state. Yeah. Where I live in West Virginia, people don't, I mean, yeah, you see the Punisher skull every now and then or whatever, but like overall people are like, I don't know, we're all just

trying to live, you know? Yeah. In Western North Carolina, you have intense tensions between strong pockets of blue and red, right? And a lot of people on both sides of that are armed. I have a North Carolina concealed carry permit myself. I'm not anti-gun, but it was not what was wanted or needed. Yeah. If food stays scarce long enough down there, I would expect some people might be doing some out of season survival hunting, but I haven't even heard rumors of that yet yeah there have been occasional rumors of robberies and the occasional rumors of nazi activity in the areas and i i believe both have happened yeah but

there's been nothing widespread and so far there hasn't even been a need for community defense organizations by and large the culture war is on pause and yeah i'm grateful i like getting along with people yeah no it's much more fun than shooting at them yeah yeah like talk about shared interests like guns instead yeah i've had some positive uh discussions with people who don't pause yeah probably align with me because we both enjoy old guns. And this is not to say that firearms are not a useful skill set for different threat models within the

apocalypse, but it hasn't proved particularly useful so far in this particular crisis. And I think overall, I would put this as an overrated skill and an overrated tool. Yeah. And definitely an overrated way to spend a shit ton of money oh my god yeah no one magazine of bullets is a movie that you could go see at the theater yeah yeah or like

a dinner and i'm saying this and yeah i'm looking at like uh what's that one two three four like maybe 12 ammunition cans full of ammunition like mainly i buy that because i like to go shoot clay pigeons and uh then targets and stuff and i buy when it's cheap but also if you have a gun you should know how to use it otherwise you're dangerous yeah yeah like don't be uh don't be buying a gun and then loading it and storing it and not knowing how to use it then you're a liability yeah but like i also have a bunch of lentils and like, just in terms of preparedness, buy the lentils first. Totally. More useful, way more useful in this circumstance. And this circumstance is more likely than most.

And one thing almost everyone I talked to was happy about. No one was sad about just, it's this came up. Everyone was happy that they had extra to share. A random woman who showed up to get water at the anarchist bookstore saw it was happening and turned and told me like oh i have a chainsaw i don't really use should i bring it here and the answer is yes and everyone is happy when we give things to each other that's the that's the thesis of the other podcast episode i did this week is that when you give stuff to someone, it's good for both of you.

You just literally are both happier. Yeah, without a doubt. And like, I remember when my house flooded, I think I was 17, 18, something like that. My little sister and I were at home and I remember at first being like, oh no, back in the day, you know, we had a TV that was relatively flat.

It was probably six inches thick still, you know, but we thought it was shit. And then being like, oh no, this TV that was so cool is being destroyed and then immediately being like my neighbors are in their 80s and fuck the tv yeah like and we got our neighbors and there was one house in our village it was on a hill everyone in our village went to the house on the hill we had a great time yeah like we hung out and everyone was so much happier not having to go through that shit alone yeah and they would have been sitting in the house watching all their stuff wash away yeah we stayed there for a couple days then we went home and it was fine well that's what

i got i thought it was going to be 30 minutes and then i forgot i was going to talk about gear with my friend james where we both separately off mike often do this for hours at a time. Yeah. And so go out and get yourself three days to three weeks worth of food and water slowly build it up.

Go out and talk to your neighbors figure out who they are and it's going to be okay. Main reason is gonna be okay as we all die eventually anyway but like it's gonna be okay.

Yeah. We're gonna take care of each other as best we can. Yeah. That's what we do. Got you want plug i guess this is your podcast yeah i mean participate in mutual aid anyway because then you have the structures to help yourself and other people when you need them yes like if things went shit here tomorrow i could communicate with my border friends because we use ham radios and uh we could help one another because we already engage in the helping of people and we organize horizontally because it is better and that way it doesn't matter if the person who is quote unquote in charge isn't here because no

one's in charge yep totally so do anarchism if you want to support ashville and the relief efforts there and the surrounding areas financially there's a million different small organizations that could absolutely use your help. But the two that I think we've been shouting out a lot on the show, and I can personally vouch for very strongly, is Appalachian Medical Solidarity and Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. And both of those are volunteer organizations. All the money you send is going to buy people stuff. And if you are within a day's drive of Western North Carolina, there might be a hub collecting things. Don't bring them your old sweaters. Bring them stuff that people want.

You could ask them and they'll tell you. And that's what I got. That's what I got to plug. I will talk to you all some other time on It Could Happen Here. 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. 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. 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 i heart podcast sniffy's cruising confessions sniffy's cruising confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals you 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.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into Tex 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. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the from. We'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.

Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us,

and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.