It Could Happen Here - Wildfire Smoke: A Self Defense Guide

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

Since our East Coast friends are choking on smoke, Robert and Margaret Killjoy put together a guide to protecting yourself and your community from wildfire smoke.See 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. You should probably keep your lights on for

Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Oh boy, it could happen here. A podcast about what we like to call the crumbles,

which is the process of the aspects of modern life that were nice and convenient and functional breaking down as the climate and our political systems continue to fray around the edges and gradually collapse. Today, a lot of you are living through a pretty undeniable piece of that. If you're anywhere kind of in the eastern seaboard, if you're in New York City, if you're in Philly, if you're in D.C., if you're in one of the other places or Baltimore, you're dealing with air quality the likes of which you've probably never seen unless you fled there from the West Coast. Basically, everyone who lives in the northeast of the United States right now, as well as a huge number of Canadians,

are absolutely cloaked in wildfire smoke, drowning in the ghosts of a thousand forests. And that's a bummer. It's a bummer and it's a real problem. that's a bummer. It's a bummer and it's a real problem. And so I wanted to kind of sit down with Margaret Kiljoy, our resident prepper extraordinaire. Hi, Margaret. Hello. How are you? Yeah. Doing great because we're not drowning in wildfire smoke. But three years ago in Portland in 2020, the air quality was even worse than it is in New York City right now. So I've got some experience dealing with this. And Margaret, you spend a lot of time thinking about practical prepping. And that's something that I think a lot of folks probably are wishing that they had spent

more time doing right now. This is the kind of thing that happens. It's not on anybody as a moral thing, but it happens anytime there's a disaster that affects everybody at once. All the stuff that is useful for countering that disaster sells out or is looted very, very quickly. And then people suddenly don't have the kind of options for tools that they need. You know, this is not great. So I wanted to kind of sit down first off and kind of talk about one of the better airsats tools that you can put together if you are trying to deal with the problem of making your air cleaner. And basically, we have to kind of split this problem into two, right? There is the problem of what do I do if I'm going outside? And we'll

talk about that later. But there's stuff that you purchase, you know, that is the only things that's going or stuff that you already had on hand is all that's going to help in that instance. But there are some things you can do to keep your inside space clean of particulate and relatively safe that don't require at least as many things to purchase and that are, you know, can be made with stuff that you probably are likelier to have on hand. So I want to talk first about what you can do to like filter your indoor air. You know, in Portland, when we had our horrible fucking wildfire apocalypse, yellow smog, blanketing the world and making everything look like fucking blade runner. Um, everyone at least had gas masks and full face respirators, which, you know, folks in the Northeast right now, um, haven't gone through that experience. And so don't have that kind of stuff on hand, but what we didn't have in Portland was the stuff that can keep your indoors cleaner. For one thing, people don't have HEPA filters or central air in Oregon

as often as they have it in some other parts of this country. And so a lot of people wound up creating, building for themselves, what are called Corsi-Rosenthal boxes. Now, a Corsi-Rosenthal box a a kind of like air filtration system for rooms that's made up of a box fan and five air filters like the kind of filters that you're going to use for your hvac system in your house right pretty much most houses are going to have some kind of like air filter already um and they're also widely available like if you you go to any Home Depot or Lowe's, they're going to have a shitload of air filters. You can use multiple different types. The bigger

the air filter, the more air it'll handle. Corsi Rosenthal boxes were invented kind of right at the start of the pandemic. One of the guys who made it, Richard Corsi, was an environmental engineer who kind of realized as soon as the Pando started that a lot of poor people were going to be absolutely fucked when it came to filtering air in their homes because good, you can get like a nice HEPA filter, like standalone HEPA filter, but they're usually several hundred dollars. So he wanted to try and provide people with something they could make that was a lot cheaper. He had worked previously with the CEO of a filter company that I think is based in Texas. So he called that guy up and they collaborated on a design that basically used, you build like a box out of air filters and you stick a box fan on top of it. If you Google Corsi, C-O-R-S-I dash Rosenthal, R-O-S-E-N-T-H-A-L, box, you'll find the Wikipedia

page, which has a guide to making these. It's very simple. If you're not crafty at all or have no real tools, you can still make it work. I built one a couple of years ago when shit happened in Portland, as did several people I knew, and they're, they're not hard to do. And the most common size of, of box that you can build will allow, it'll basically change the air out in a room, um, five full times, uh, per hour and a 500 square foot room, which is reasonably good. It'll make a meaningful difference in your indoor air quality. If you're like blanketed in, in hell smog right now. Yeah, that's about the same as like $150. If you were to like go out and buy a 500 square foot filter, it'd be about $150. And that is about what this will cost you right now.

I think because shit's gotten more expensive. At least that's what a recent Outside Magazine article gave the cost of constructing this. Oh, interesting. That said, you might be able to get it for cheaper. There's a good chance. That's if you're buying everything. Most people in most places have a box fan, you know, and most people have a couple of filters, which should cut down on the cost. You know, it'll depend on kind of where you are and what things are running. But HEPA filters are also standalone ones, likelier to sell out fast as opposed to kind of the raw components to making a Corsi Rosenthal filter. So you may find it easier to get access to.

I like the Corsi Rosenthal filter for a couple of other reasons. Obviously, it's accessible and it's comparatively affordable. But it also is something that you can make yourself that will have a meaningful impact on how you weather this event. That's important psychologically in a disaster, feeling as if you have some sort of agency by actually doing a useful thing. And it can also be important from a community point of view. You can theoretically raise money and put together people to make Corsi Rosenthal boxes and hand them out to people who maybe can't afford them or have mobility issues or less able to get the equipment.

That's the kind of thing that builds community connection and also offers an immediate alleviation of suffering and health consequences for people, which is the kind of thing that I like to see people doing in a disaster like this. I also kind of like this filter because it represents a rare example of people you might call elites taking immediate action to ensure cash poor individuals had a life-saving tool available to themselves. It's one of those kind of rare examples from the start of the pandemic of like that radical solidarity we saw bits and pieces of. And I think Jim Rosenthal and Richard Corsi are pretty cool in my book for figuring out this thing.

So, you know, there's a lot that's nice about these filters. Also, I just looked at the cost of making one. I just like kind of added it together. And it looks like you could probably make one for about 65 bucks. Oh, great. Great, great, great. The outside guy was probably buying all the Gucci shit. Right.

If you just buy cheap, you need at least a Merv 13 filter. That's the level of filter where it starts cutting out smoke. Um, and if you get the 20 inch filters, which I think is what usually people are getting a 20 inch box fan. Um, and so it's, and then you only need to four filters,

I believe, because the bottom isn't sucking air in the bottom ends up a flat when I was looking at it earlier today, but you've built one and I haven't. So yeah, honestly, it was three years ago. Yeah, everybody, I misspoke saying five, I think that you can do it just fine with four. I'm not sure if either we did it weird when we did it last or if I was just remembering wrong. But that means yeah, a lot more available. Like I had three filters on hand in my house this morning just because that's how many, you know, I usually keep as a backup. So a lot of you are probably in a similar situation.

And yeah, that's a more accessible thing compared to the equipment we're about to start talking about. Stuff like respirators and stuff like standalone HEPA filters, which are likely to sell out pretty quickly as people go to all of the stores to buy up all the things. Although I will say it's almost depressing. Right now, I was checking availability for some of my East Coast friends. I'm actually an East Coast friend normally, but I went to the land of smoke, the usual smoke, Pacific Northwest, and missed it. But most things are still available right now, at least as of recording. I don't know whether it's people just haven't put it together that it's necessary or people felt like they couldn't afford it. A lot of stuff is still in stock as of this.

That's really good to hear because that's what we're about to get into. of lead into this, moving from this kind of what I think is inspiring about the Corsi-Rosenthal filter, which is that it's something that is accessible, something that like people can work on and provide for each other together and sort of representative of the kind of radical solidarity you see in disasters. I think that's kind of particularly meaningful to me because of why this air quality event is so frightening to folks. You know, people who are in New York or Philly or Richmond or D.C. or a lot of other places in the Northeast have not dealt with this kind of air quality before. This is because most people who are young in those areas, because most young Americans have had the privilege of experiencing air pollution primarily as either an annoyance or as an abstract concept. A big part of why is that the Clean Air Act instituted in 1963 did a huge amount to stop the kind of poisoning of the sky that led to fairly regular smog events in the 50s and early to mid 1960s, even 1970s in a

lot of parts of this country. You know, it took a while. There was more involved than just the Clean Air Act. But shit like this used to be a lot more common. And Americans suffered from a variety of illnesses, including adult onset emphysema or young adult onset emphysema at a much higher rate because of stuff like this. If you are young, and by young, I mean like my age, Margaret's age, you know, not all that young, because air quality in the United States has been significantly better than it was for like my parents when they were kids for quite a while, you have benefited from a pretty remarkably successful campaign to render Americans at least less vulnerable to this kind of pollution. Now, this came alongside years of others' reforms and things like emission standards,

which were successful enough that in West LA right now, a lot of days of the year, you can see the mountains. That was not a thing for people who lived in Los Angeles in, say, mountains. That was not a thing for people who lived in Los Angeles in, say, the 1970s. I had an annual checkup right after I moved there with my doctor in Southern California. And I asked him what life had been like there during the smog years. And the thing that he mentioned to me that stuck with me is that he had a shitload of patients in their 20s who had the early symptoms of emphysema, which is just not a thing that really occurred in occurs in Southern California anymore. Although, you know, because of climate change, there are similar things that are starting to hit, you know, there's there's a

number of like fungal based infections that people are getting, particularly in the valley, that's really nasty and wildfire smoke could bring back a lot of this stuff. And so, yeah, we're kind of looking at a lot of the gains in public health caused by reducing, you know, the amount of smog in the air going away as a result of, you know, externalities that can't be controlled locally. Hey, guys. externalities that can't be controlled locally. 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, 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. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora, an anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available 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. Now, the downside of the really lovely state of affairs that was kind of ushered in by the Clean Air Act is that most Americans have spent their lives in kind of a bubble of artificially pure air, while the negative externalities that made our tech-heavy lives possible were exported to the global south. And those people experienced with increasing regularity the kind of catastrophic pollution that, in an earlier age here, caused the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland to light on fire every spring or so. Globally, in 2018, some 8.7 million deaths were caused by air pollution, specifically pollution created via the burning of fossil fuels. David Wallace-Wells, who writes about climate catastrophe better than most people, put the cost this way in a testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on the budget in 2021.

Those punishments are harrowingly widespread. The Lancet puts the global annual death toll of air pollution at 9 million. This is dying at the scale of the Holocaust every single year. So this is bad. So this is real bad. And it's one of those things that we're, it's so shocking and traumatic to people right now, because we haven't experienced this in most of the US outside of like the West, you know, recently as the wildfires have gotten worse for quite a while. but the problems that caused this were were you know suffered by people outside of the united states consistently for years like one of the things that's you know you've kind of seen on like twitter and shit is like people in the west coast and the east coast

fighting about who's had it worse in terms of wildfire smog lately and like well the answer if you if you want to talk about who's been dealing with this the worst and the longest is like people in fucking delhi people in shenzhen you know in china like this is a a problem that is primarily born i mean this is not in the u.s too by the poor um but it's been born by the poor outside of the united states because we successfully externalized a lot of the consequences of our lifestyles. And ideally, the hopeful thing is that perhaps experiencing this in New York City, which is, if you're not aware, where the only writers that people apparently listen to live, will cause some kind of enhanced solidarity for the folks in what you might call or what often

is described as the global south who are have been dealing with this for years and will continue to deal with this in a much more severe form with much fewer resources available to them um if you are currently living in one of the great cities besieged by wildfire smoke uh your lifespan has already been shortened now i'm not trying to be like panic induinducing. We're talking about like by the same, it would, like if you had smoked half a pack of cigarettes since this all started. It's kind of similar to that.

But there is no safe amount of time to inhale particulate in the quantities. When you're talking about AQI over 400, there's no safe amount of time to just kind of be raw-dogging the air out on the street. Any amount is gonna damage your lungs. It's gonna stiffen your arteries. It's going to increase your chances of a number of cancers. Heart attack risk increases by a meaningful amount when you are out dealing with stuff like this. Your immune

system is significantly weaker. And you don't get to look cool like smoking. You don't get to look cool like smoking, right? Like it's all of the downsides of being a daily smoker with none of the significant benefits of looking rad as hell, of looking like fucking Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now. Oh, man, I love a good smoker, but nobody looks good in this shit unless you like have one of those sick ass, you know, apocalypse dusters and like a face mask, which we're about to talk about. Then you can look cool. Although your clothing will probably always smell of wildfire. There's a lot. Also, it's kind of worth noting that like when we're talking about the dangers here, it's not it may smell like a little like campfire smoke, but you're also inhaling incinerated asbestos and particle board and, you know, presumably hordes of ammunition that had been buried by Canadian preppers.

So like there's a lot of reasons why you don't want to breathe this shit in. So when you go outside, you are going to want to wear a mask. N95s work reasonably well for adults. If you have any on hand or if you're fortunate enough to live in a city with the kind of emergency preparedness budget that allows them to provide stuff like that. New York City is providing N95s in some quantity right now. If you're out on your own, an N95 may be an easy thing to acquire quickly for relatively cheap. That said, they're not perfect. For one thing, they don't tend to work very well on kids for this just because the fit is often wrong. You may find that something like a KF94 allows you to get a better fit on a child. And those do work reasonably well,

certainly better than like nothing at all in this kind of a situation. My personal recommendation, if they are in stock and if you can afford them, is either a half or a full face respirator. We'll talk about the differences between those in a second, but these are the kind of masks that like, if you're a contractor and you're like putting together a building, you're dealing with a shitload of insulation or you're like cutting certain kinds of metal or, you know, you're doing a whole bunch of different things that can kick up nasty particulate. You probably have a number of these, right? Like people I know and graffiti and graffiti. Yeah. If you're doing a lot of graffiti um you know

hang out near a building you know that kids that kids spray paint a lot and then you know stick them up with a handgun for their their respirators that's a responsible way to deal with yeah this probably smoking that's what we're trying to teach everyone smoke through the respirator that makes it extra cool and healthy. So, yeah, what we're talking about here, like if you're looking for a thing to type into Google or whatever, 3M half mask respirator. I found a 3M half mask respirator kit with a couple of what are called bayonet filters for $46.41 on Grainger.com right now. You can get them for similar prices on amazon.com. If you walk into a Lowe's or a Home Depot and they have not, there hasn't been a run on them, you can probably find these. You will want to make sure you get filters with them. Sometimes you get just the respirator and you have to buy the filters separately. Usually if you get one,

it'll come with them, but make sure the filters are going to be these. Most of them look kind of like triangles with like rounded edges that are sort of this like pinkish purple color for the most part. There's some that are gray and like circular. It doesn't really matter, you know, which kind of filters yours get. I would say just get whatever they have the most of. Well, in general, the filters filter out a ton of different stuff. And the thing you're looking for is the particulate filtration, which is actually the easiest. And that's why almost any filter will do this.

The rawest doesn't do anything else filter that you would be looking for is a P100. And sometimes those are, they're more likely, I believe 3M marks them as the pink. So if it's pink, it's particulate. With 3M, there's other brands. There's Honeywell, and then there's, I can't remember off the top of my head. But anyway, P100 is like, you just look for particulate filter, but honestly, yeah, pretty much anything is going to do it.

Basically, any kind of respirator you're going to get at a Home Depot with filters is going to be sufficient for this. There's two main categories of respirators. a Home Depot with filters is going to be sufficient for this. Yeah. There are kind of like the one, and there's two main categories of respirators. The one we're interested in are called air purifying respirators. That means you breathe in the air from outside and it filters it, right? The other kind are atmosphere supplying respirators, which normal people do not need in this situation. That's like, you know, it has like a tank of stuff.

A scuba tank for walking around. Don't get that. It's going to be a lot more than is necessary for at least the next like six to eight months. Respirators are then further divided into half face masks, which things like Batman

from that the worst of the Nolan Batman or not Batman thing of Bane from the worst of the Nolan Batman movies. It's a little bit like that, right? Where it's kind of just over your or not Batman. Think of Bane from the worst of the Nolan Batman movies. It's a little bit like that, right? Where it's kind of just over your mouth and jaw. And then there's full face masks

and there are also reusable elastomeric respirators. I tend to prefer half or full face masks for one thing. There's no reason to like, you're not working in some sort of like capacity where you want to be tossing it every time. You might as well just get one you can plug new filters into, um, a half face mask is going to be a lot more convenient. It's a lot less sort of weight and stuff, but it doesn't protect your eyes or

anything, which if you're dealing with really heavy particulate, you may find your eyes getting irritated out there. Um, the benefit of a full face mask is that it does protect your eyes. And if you happen to ever be in a situation where there's hella mace or tear gas being used, it provides excellent protection from that kind of thing. The downside is that these are three to four times as expensive as the half face respirator. So they're not my general recommendation to people. But again, either of them is going to be perfectly adequate for wildfire smoke. And then the full face ones have the additional problem of most of them are not designed for wearing glasses yes and you need a full seal on the side of it so don't just throw it over your glasses

but they make adapters or you can wear contacts if you're not actually out expecting chemical weapons and i i would do that sometimes when we were dealing specific particularly with like mace heavy fights as contacts and a full face yeah um it always worked for me people will say that if you have a beard it can fuck with the seal i think i'm sure that's true with like really heavy beards i keep mine reasonably trim and i never noticed a problem you know even in very thick tear gas with either my full face or with my gas mask did you know this is why beards fell out of favor in the United States? Oh, because of World War I and gas masks? Military people had to start shaving because otherwise you'll die.

Because that's the difference, right? You're like, oh, a little bit of smoke is getting in. That sucks. A little bit of murder gas gets in. Yeah, then you have a more severe problem. Yeah. So a lot of folks may be, and I've seen questions about like getting a gas mask, right? And obviously, if that's what's available to you, if you already happen to have one

because you're a weirdo prepper, or if that's just what you can find, a gas mask will indeed protect you from particulate. You may, if you are someone who has the benefit of money, decide, I'm going to just go ahead and get a good gas mask. If so, you know, there's a number of places you can look to for that the one i have is called a mira m-i-r-a um they're three four hundred dollars something like that uh i can confirm that they work great when you're drenched in tear gas so heavy that you can't see through it people bitch at them online and like weirdo prepper community sometimes because they have some like silly attachments and stuff that are kind of too expensive. But like I have used every kind of face mask filtering product in heavy gas and mace. Mirrors are comfortable. They do work well. That

said, much more expensive and much heavier than you need for something like filtering particulate. This would not be my first go-to for anybody. Any kind of gas mask you get is going to be very bulky. Even the ones that are made specifically for stuff like special forces use, where they're like really streamlined so that you can like shoulder a rifle with them. Those are still much bulkier than, you know, a normal half-face respirator is going to be. They also, you know, one of the benefits, one thing I will say I did a few times when Portland was bad is I would put on two filters in my gas mask, which allows you to kind of

breathe at close to the normal rate that you can. And I would go jogging because like, otherwise you really can't safely. I'm not saying you should do this. Please don't like avoid outdoor exercise as a general rule. Anyway, military surplus gas masks, if that's what you have again and you have filters for them, that can help. If you do attempt to do this, you will immediately gain an understanding of why chemical warfare sucks so much, because most especially mills, gas masks suck ass to wear. milsurp gas masks suck ass to wear super uncomfortable super shitty visibility um not ever my primary recommendation but again if that's what you've got and all you can get it will indeed filter out particulate and an expired filter a military style filter

um it's usually the nato standard yeah yeah yeah um they an expired one it's like the NATO standard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They, an expired one, it's like, I'm not recommending people use expired ones, but they're, if you're not defending yourself against like murder gas, an expired one should do you. Yeah, we are again, when we come to stuff like this, as long as you have some sort of filter in a military gas mask, it's probably gonna be certainly better than nothing.

Yeah. Because we are just kind of dealing with smoke in particulate here. We're not dealing with like mustard gas or sarin or whatever yet. 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. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available 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. I'm bringing up gas masks just because it's what a lot of people might already have on hand or

something, as opposed to recommending that as what you get. You should just get a respirator. That's going to be a lot more effective for basically 100% of people. Now, you will probably notice, if you've been paying attention to what we've been talking about today, that all of the effective measures for mitigating the danger of smoke cost money, nearly all of them at least, and also rely on having stuff like access to transit that can get you to a store, on having an address that packages can be delivered to. Because once again, as we talked about with places like India that have been dealing with smog like this for many, many years, the costs of climate collapse are always heaviest on those who can least bear them. Assuming you are housed,

there are some other decent tips that can allow you to protect your house. One of them is that you probably want to create a clean room for your animals. Your cats and your dogs, number one, are less capable of understanding what's happening, and they will notice something is wrong. You know, they will not go outside and feel like it's a normal day just because they're a stupid dog or whatever. They will recognize that something is gravely wrong. You want to keep them inside as much as possible because they're smaller than you, right? It's even worse for them. The same thing with like you want to keep your kids inside because the kind of shit that like maybe a 200 pound adult can sort of shrug off in terms of particulate will hit a 65 pound child or a 45 pound dog a lot worse. Um, so a good thing to do

is to create a clean room, uh, potentially with the kind of filters, the Corsi Rosenthal filters that we talked about. Um, if you have the ability doing something like you would do kind of for a mudroom, a little kind of airlock situation when you take your pets in and out from doing their business. So you can minimize the amount of shit that gets in. There's a few ways to do this. You know, when there's not currently hell smog everywhere, making sure that the seals and stuff on your windows

and doors are of quality and up to date and recently replaced is key. Obviously, if you're under smog right now, that's less of a realistic thing that you can do. But one thing you can do, people did in Portland during this, if you get like towels and soak them and put them around the edges,

if you know you've got, oh, I know this window's leaky, I know stuff's getting in. If you kind of can tape that up around and keep it wet around the window, that will take some of the basically particulate. It'll get kind of soaked into the towel and it should minimize kind of what you're dealing with in the house. I haven't seen actually this is one of the things I haven't seen like studies on how well this works. But it's what most of the people I knew who had kind of older houses did and do during wildfires. And it seems to have an impact. Um, so I would recommend kind of trying that. And if you can get to the store, you get like foam strips and stuff like that.

If you don't have much money, you can do the whole, everything's a free store for the brave, but it's not very expensive anyway. They're like foam tape. Yeah. And that would be again, much better than trying to, to trying to do the wet towel thing. That said, one thing you should be doing every day is wiping off large surfaces in your house with a damp cloth to clean away the particulate that settled during the day. That's going to reduce the strain on whatever kind of filters you've got going indoors. You're going to want to very quickly change your air filter. If you unless you like if you change your filter a week or two before this hit, you know, it'll be fine for a little while. But if like most people, you kind of let that go a little long, probably

one of the first things you should do is slot in a fresh air filter if you've got one. If you are shopping for an air filter and you want something that is going to work better in your HVAC system on particulate, you want something with a high minimum efficiency reporting value or MERV, which Margaret mentioned a little earlier value. Those are going to catch more particles than normal filters.

You're going to want to switch your HVAC into fan only mode immediately. This will ensure that it runs your indoor air through the filter rather than pulling air in from the outside. Yeah, that is a key thing to do if you've got kind of a central system. You're also going to want to turn off anything that pulls in air from the outside. Like, for example, the portable air conditioner units with like hoses that go at your window, which is the things that like everyone in the East Coast tends to have as opposed to

a central system. So if you've got one of those, some window ACs will have what's called an outdoor air damper that you can close. If they don't have that, you're going to want to keep it off and sealed. And you're going to want to, in any case, use tape or whatever you have to ensure that the seal around the unit is more robust. I know people generally, you know, can be a little bit lax-daisical about the actual like window seal with a unit like that.

It's generally not perfect. You're going to want to be extra careful because even a small gap, you know, that allows shit in is going to allow quite a lot of particulate in like a surprising amount. Um, again, a lot of, some of these methods are just like stuff that you should be doing to prep your house, but a lot of them do require resources, um, which is, you know, frustrating for a lot of reasons. Um, I'm sure it, I hope I'm hoping Margaret that like what you found online is accurate to people's experience and that stores have not sold out of the things that are useful in this situation.

That is one of those things kind of when we talk more broadly about preparation for stuff like this that people should be thinking about. Like, don't just think about what stuff has gone wrong in the past. That's a great way to have plenty of toilet paper when there's a shortage of water or whatever, right? Likewise, it's one of those things where, you know, if you were in, when I made a couple of posts about what was happening in New York earlier and somebody responded and I was making the joke that like, hey, if you get a full face respirator, it'll be useful if you've got to fight the cops too. And their comment was like, well, we don't really get tear gassed here. And first off, I mean, that may be true, but like you guys do get maced and they're great against mace. I can say that from an intense personal experience. other thing is that like, well, that's part of when we talk about kind of proactive practical prepping, a big part of it is thinking about stuff that like maybe unlikely, but it's not

impossible. And that if you don't have shit on hand, you're not going to be able to deal with, right? And one of those things is having a fucking respirator. Basically everybody who is capable of affording them should have a half or a full facefaced respirator you should get that you should get a couple of spare uh filters and you should just have it even if you're in a place where wildfire smoke has never been a problem for you because it will be at some point that's just basically guaranteed yeah and i want to say for for dogs i don't know about cats but they make masks for dogs they make respirators for dogs the brand that i've gotten that i can't specifically i haven't compared to other brands is called canine mask and then i know people who have made their own dog respirators basically out of n95s and tape

and stuff um and then if your dog if you're really on top of it, you're going to do the work to acclimate your dog to this, right? Yeah. Reward, reward your dog greatly and slowly build up their tolerance. And if you don't have time for that, you can put a cone on your dog to keep your dog to keep the mask on. And obviously you don't want to like, I mean, mostly just want to keep your dog inside, right? But yeah, if your dog isn't pad trained and yeah, exactly.

Um, there's actually an argument for pad training my in my dog that I've never bothered to do. And that may be, by the way, when we're talking about like what stuff should you keep on hand. Well, if you're not a normal pad training person, that could be a useful prepping thing to have, to have pads on hand. Yeah. and to occasionally use them so the animal understands that that's an option because there are a variety of things that might make it not feasible to take them outdoors, you know, if you don't have a yard especially. So, yeah. But I'll also say, even though it's better to look at what's next instead of what's current, right? Like look at the next problem instead of the current problem.

It's also okay and what most people do realistically is prep for the thing that went bad last time yeah you know like i have an emergency blanket on me at almost all times in my emergency kit because when i was like 13 it saved my life or whatever right yeah i've never needed one ever again but i don't i didn't forget that i needed one and someone else had one i will just have one right and you know so if this is you, suddenly I need an air purifier, it maybe is too late. It may not be too late. Don't beat yourself up.

If this is when you decide that you're going to start having one, you know? Yeah. Like it's for one thing, there's this, there's this, if you like study military history, you run into this too.

Like the, the problem that military planners are always fighting the last war, right? When they're preparing for shit, which is why a lot of stupid and useless crap is on hand every time we enter a new conflict. But everything actually really does work that way because that's just the way people be. And so I'm sure basically everyone in New York had extra toilet paper on hand when this shit hit, but they weren't ready for, you know, which is, you know, that's not New Yorkers. You're so stupid. No, that's everybody. That's how we all are.

The only reason Portland was more prepared for this when it hit us is that we'd been getting like a significant portion of the city had been going out and getting tear gassed every night. Yeah. But it is it does kind of mean that like part of prepping is like sitting around and like bullshitting with your friends. If you want to like be all cool and and military LARP about it, you can you can put on D and D walk through different kinds of problems that you guys think are more likely and, and try to lay out kind of consequence trees as to like what might happen and what might be necessary. And then, you know, think about what kind of equipment would be useful in those situations and put it in a kind of tier it in a list of like,

what is more affordable, what is more likely and, you know, kind of you triage it with that. And what's what is more affordable? What is more likely? And, you know, kind of you triage it with that. And what's small too. Yeah. What's small, like what's easy to have on hand. I'm going to go get eye drops now. I don't keep eye drops around normally, but as I'm like looking at this stuff and I'm talking to people who deal with smoke, they're like, well, the half mask respirator is great, but if you don't have a full mask respirator, bring eye drops. Yeah. You know? And I'm like, oh, that's not something I ever considered. That's cheap and takes up no room in my truck.

Yeah. You can have that in your go bag. You can have that in your car. Yeah. You know, I always keep a set of bone knives and nitrile gloves and a tarp in my car because I like to process roadkill. But there's other disasters that's potentially useful for, you know? Much like your pig farm. Much like my pig farm, yeah.

And it's just kind of like this shit's going to keep happening. Something else will probably happen this year that's like a chunk of the country dealing with some sort of terrible disaster that affects everybody at once that people in that area, at least haven't dealt with before. Like it, because that's the world that we're living in now. And so you'll, you're never going to be perfect at thinking through stuff,

but like the more time you spend kind of trying to make your brain elastic when it comes to disaster, the more likely you are to have at least some of the things that you need to deal with problems when they occur. Especially since a lot of tools are like multi-use tools, you know? Respirators are great with wildfire smoke. They're also, you know, potentially useful if like, for example, a pandemic were to hit. Right. Wouldn't it be awful if all this happened during a respiratory pandemic? That would be fucked.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that if you do prepping right, it can actually reduce anxiety instead of increase it. A lot of people avoid prepping because they're afraid to engage with these problems because if they, if they think if they look at the, it's the prey animal thing. I don't know if this is real or not, but you think if you don't look at the predator, it won't notice you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that people do that because they don't want to think about these things. And that is understandable. We live in a very high

anxiety time, right? Yeah. But I think that looking at these problems has overall reduced my anxiety around them. Because like, for example, when I lived in more in the woods than I currently do, and I lived in a cabin in the woods and I was like, what will I do if there's a forest fire? And I thought it through. And most of the answer was keep my car, you know, gassed and ready to go and have my go bag. And, and then I was like, that's it. That's the only preparation I'm going to do for this fire that may or may not happen. And so then I stopped worrying about it because I've done everything that I'm going to do. There's like a next level thing. Like actually these particular fires, I was looking it up.

I think 100,000 people have been displaced from their homes in Canada as a result of this. Jeez. It is, we are currently at 1,400% of the fires that are normal for this time of the year. Yeah. And we're not even in summer yet. Yeah. They've 8.7 million acres of burn so far this year 6.2 million per year is normal like total and we're not at summer yet um and so

shit's gonna get worse but it's not but we can we can handle it and we can like look at these things and we can look at the predator and well, we can't, it's invisible because of the little invisibility field. But we can, we can, I mean, there are some predators that we can look at,

which is where I should say that like, there's a pretty good movie about pipelines that came out recently. Oh yeah. But yeah, no, I mean, you, you have like looking at in the face is necessary.

And also finding, this is part of why I brought up. the first thing I brought up was those, those Corsi Rosenthal filters, because like having a thing to do when like you wake up in the morning and it's orange. Yeah. Like it's, it's a nice way to allay the doom feeling like give yourself a task.

It, it increases agency. And when you, once you build that thing, you know, either you'll use it all up right away because those filters don't last forever or you'll have something on hand the next time this occurs.

Yeah. Um, so yeah, I don't know. That's what I got. Margaret, you got anything else to get into? Uh, I want to say that if you're in a fire area, you should have your plan of escape. You should have your go bag. If a fire is like particularly likely, you're going to keep that go bag in your vehicle and keep it pointed

outwards. You want to clear the area around your house. If that's something that you choose to do, obviously, if you're like, no, the whole point is I live in a cabin with trees over it or whatever. Right.

Yeah. And there's more that you can do to look at making sure that like a lot of the fires are about sparks getting sucked in through vents and there's ways to close it up. Um, and I also want to say, this is a really good time to take care of each other in particular, look out for asthmatic friends,

or if you're the asthmatic friend, get other people to help take care of you. Um, go get groceries for your asthmatic friends during a smoke emergency because you're going to be able to handle it a lot better than some other people to help take care of you. Go get groceries for your asthmatic friends during a smoke emergency because you're going to be able to handle it a lot better than some other people might. Yeah. If you're heading down to the store to go get filters and a box fan or something, check in with your neighbors and see how they're doing and what they're capable of handling

for themselves and stuff. You know, hopefully this won't be bad for everyone for too long, as we always say. But look, guys, this isn't going to be the last time New York is the color of Mexico in a Breaking Bad. This is going to happen again because the fires aren't going to stop until there's no more forests left. Then we'll all have gloriously clean air. Yeah, totally. Until there's no more forests left, then we'll all have gloriously clean air. Yeah, totally.

Yeah. Well, and then the final thing I want to say is that like a lot of the stuff, right? Like walking around in a half mask respirator is a little bit less weird to people than walking around in a full face respirator is a little bit less weird than walking around in a gas mask. And we actually need to build these social norms. I think the reason that people have stopped masking in a lot of parts of the country is literally just because of social norms have stopped having people mask and people don't want to be the weirdo with a mask. And I will say as someone who has been the weirdo for the past 30 years of my life, it's not that bad to be the weirdo. And we can build new social norms. And so if you're worried about wearing a half mask respirator and a smoke emergency because you look weird, it's better than getting sick.

Yeah, it's one of those things. All of us crazy people had a nice moment at the start of the pandemic when we looked over at our mountains of beans and storable foods and rifles and went, ah, it was all worthwhile. And so we need to break the social norm about preparing in general. Right. And I actually, I mean, if you're listening to the show, then you're probably a little bit aware of this, but we just, you know, like talk to your friends who wouldn't normally talk about preparing and talk about how we can, how we can do this.

We need to make preparedness like a part of our culture because shit is getting more intense. Yeah. So, um, you know, handle, handle your shit.

Sorry, this is happening to you. You Easties, you Coasties. I did hear a good joke recently, um, where someone was like, the visibility is so bad that we new yorkers

can't even go i'm walking here anymore yeah it's good it's good um anyway uh enjoy that joke everybody and uh avoid dying it could happen here as 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 find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com. Thanks for listening. 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

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