Episode 40: Prepping For The Plague? In 2017? Yes. Really.

spk_0:   0:00
Hello, everybody.

spk_1:   0:01
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the three B Y podcast Were in the beautiful downtown living room of our house. We're actually not traveling for once. We pay for X amount of air space in a month, and we're coming up on our period with a little bit of extra extra times. We're doing an extra special extra broadcast podcast. Whatever you wanna call it just for you

spk_0:   0:31
give you a bonus?

spk_1:   0:32
Yes, because we've had this this this time this just black of time has been sitting out that I've been watching the days come closer and closer. Thes air podcasts are recorded well ahead of time. So just that, you know, But it's kind of closer, closer in this amount of time has been plaguing me and I'm watching it. It's just plaguing me and plaguing me and plaguing me Spice said

spk_0:   0:59
What could be more fun than to talk about the black death plague,

spk_1:   1:04
the plague, the plague? Rats? Oh, rats, Nouman IQ, boo biotic All kinds of fun with the play

spk_0:   1:15
for Gets up to see Mick? No, actually, it would be okay if the world would could forget septicemia plague. That would be all right.

spk_1:   1:23
Okay. Well, you know, if you don't want to listen to me, I'll put on some anthrax t jets, which, actually, anthrax is not the black. It's a totally different thing, which we could talk about, but not right this very minute.

spk_0:   1:38
It's another nasty disease, but not so famous that it gets to be the plague.

spk_1:   1:43
Although we could talk about anthrax as well, if you happen to be digging around in a plague pit that was really actually anthrax, you can still get it to this very day. You probably look at the plague that way, too.

spk_0:   1:58
Uh, that was likely.

spk_1:   1:59
I was like anthrax.

spk_0:   2:01
Anthrax is a stable little bugger.

spk_1:   2:03
Okay, so you're gonna talk about rats.

spk_0:   2:08
That's the problem. The plague never actually went away.

spk_1:   2:11
The plague didn't go away.

spk_0:   2:13
This is the same plague, by the way, that killed on the average across Europe about 40% of the population between 13. 48 13 50 and then

spk_1:   2:25
came back. Did you say

spk_0:   2:27
about 40% of Europe as a whole? That's a lot of people. Yeah, some communities. It was 90% some communities. It was far less the most isolated communities it was. It was less. And then it came back every 20 years until we figured out that hygiene thing basically every 20 years, because that's about how long it took to get enough. Kids who hadn't been hadn't already survived it to be able to sustain another epidemic worth of it.

spk_1:   3:01
And, of course, as it went on and went on it. It did get in, in a sense, a little less lethal as it went on, because it was not what you know now with known as a virgin field anymore,

spk_0:   3:18
but not necessarily that the infection even changed. It's the people changed,

spk_1:   3:23
but it still was really deadly.

spk_0:   3:25
Humans, Europe of European descent have been selected for some ability to resist the plague.

spk_1:   3:31
That's right. So, for example, Native Americans not so much if you do hear a noise in the background that is our heater. Unfortunately, it's eater time cycling on and off. I could turn the heater completely, often be totally happy. I like the house and 50 degrees. That makes me happy. The space unit not so much so if you do here, maybe a little rustling, that's that. That's the heater blowing its little warmth over despise. Yes, we use our main heater, in case you wanted to know is electric. And we do have supplemental heat that requires absolutely no electricity because where

spk_0:   4:16
and power goes out here from

spk_1:   4:17
time to time, the power goes out here because we're preppers middle of nowhere. But we don't have the plague in this house. At least, I hope we know we don't have any plague rats here. But there is plague in the United States. I'm gonna let you just tell the story.

spk_0:   4:33
All right? So the main way people get plague is they get bitten by a rat flea that has the plague.

spk_1:   4:40
Not a rat A flee.

spk_0:   4:42
The bacterium Yersinia pestis is the name of it is happy to spend its whole life cycle living in rats and being transferred from rat to rat by the rat flea.

spk_1:   4:53
Who are your dirty right? Yeah,

spk_0:   4:56
And rat fleas don't mind infecting other rodents. They infect prairie dogs and, uh, deer mice and moles in the United States. So the main carriers in the US

spk_1:   5:08
we have lots that we've spent a lot of time and in the middle of prairie dog fields because We loved him to watch the little puppies, but, you know, it's hard to imagine that those little guys air carrying the plague around with them, But they are. And if I'm not incorrect, don't, um, the speed bumps. Armadillos. Don't they

spk_0:   5:29
have it? Yes, they contrasted

spk_1:   5:31
to. Yeah. So if you ever go to pick up a dead armadillo on the side of the road, don't use a shovel, because I mean, who's really tempted anyway. But shovel it and don't touch it personally.

spk_0:   5:45
Well, please come jump. So I would just leave them alone.

spk_1:   5:48
Yeah. I mean, yeah, we actually here in North Missouri. We're on the other side of the armadillo line. They do come up here occasionally, but they really can't. We're just a little too cold in the winter for them to make it.

spk_0:   6:03
They find winter fairly disgusting,

spk_1:   6:05
but they get caught up on the in trucks and stuff like that. So we do see the occasional armadillo. We don't see prairie dogs around here. There are rats. It's dummy. It's the rural area. Hab lots and cattle lots. Barnes. We're gonna have rats. So

spk_0:   6:21
plague it got to the U. S. Actually by rats on ships. But once it got here, it infected some of the native rodents and the armadillos and things like that we have. Oh, the U. S. Averages 10 or less infections most years. Sometimes there's a worst outbreak when the weather in the Southwest gets dry and the little mice and things that are carrying the fleas have to migrate into people's houses to find something to eat because it's been so dry and then people usually catch it that way. Or they catch it from park cabins when they're out camping from the base that hang out there from Prairie Dogs. Wildlife biologist died of the plague here not too long ago. He was dissecting a mountain lion to find out what had killed the mountain lion, and sadly, he discovered what had killed the mountain lion. Uh, well, the reason is we came up with this topic is because it's in other parts of the world, too. And there is recently been an epidemic outbreak in Madagascar,

spk_1:   7:33
and we were discussing at the time we were discussing antibiotics because this is a big thing. Antibiotics, antibiotic resistance. Um, of course, when you're prepper, if you're in A s h t f situation. Antibiotic availability would be quite limited. Um, so I was just basically wondering Well, you know, with all the resistance that's out there, has the plague become antibiotic resistant?

spk_0:   8:06
Not that I've been able to find a record of when I've been.

spk_1:   8:09
This is apparently a thing.

spk_0:   8:11
Oh, yeah, This is a good thing,

spk_1:   8:13
but really, it doesn't affect probably enough people to make it happen.

spk_0:   8:18
And the kinds of animals that carry the plague or not, kinds of animals were protecting or trying to make grow by feeding antibiotics to nobody's really that interested in sustaining the well being of their barn rats, so they haven't been exposed to a whole bunch of antibiotics.

spk_1:   8:34
Now, this is another topic for another day, but I'm just gonna mention that we are going to come back to antibiotics in mass produced animals. Well, that's gonna be a topic. Women talk about where Spice and I are, in a sense, vegetarians because we don't eat mass produced meat,

spk_0:   8:59
but in a sense, not vegetarians, because we actually do eat meat, just not mass produced me,

spk_1:   9:03
right? I mean, we're killing ourselves or have a friend of ours who supplies us with things like venison, jerky and stuff like that. We'll eat that. But cattle lot stuff not so much. And there's many reasons that one of the reasons is all the antibiotics and crowd they put in those animals. But anyway, that's a different topic for a different day. Um, let's talk about people hear words like bubonic pneumonic stuff like that. What does mean

spk_0:   9:33
all the same bacterium causes all of them if you get it from the bite of a flea, and it's likely to settle in your lymph nodes and make your lymph nodes swell up in the bacterium replicates in your lymph nodes. And it's really disgusting and painful and unpleasant. And about 30 to 60% of the people who catch the bubonic version of the plague die and the other 70 to 40% survive it

spk_1:   10:03
up. To be fair, we're talking about untreated people.

spk_0:   10:06
Yes, all of this is untreated. Untreated, huh? But sometimes it takes different forms if it breaks out of the lymph system and just generally infects the whole bloodstream, it's cold septicemia plague, and at that stage it's very easy to catch it. If you're contacting the body fluids of the person who's got the plague. Like, say, trying to remove Ah, corpse or clean a corpse from burial is a great way to catch the plague. If the person had septicemia. Clegg.

spk_1:   10:38
And yes, we're going to come back to if you have to bury people in the future, uh, episode pot together podcaster article. Because there are certain things really have to dio if there's no mortuary available. You know you, of course, obviously depends. I'm also what they died out, but now you can really end up messing yourself over if you don't do that right.

spk_0:   11:03
That's been a major feature of a bunch of different epidemics of different diseases, especially the most recent Ebola outbreak was largely transmitted by families of the affected. Just couldn't stand, not bury them properly

spk_1:   11:18
right? And frankly, a lot of there was a even in a situation where everybody knows, Look, we've got to contain this, you know, there's still a lot of stigma that that goes with Ebola in Africa, and a lot of families were trying to hide the fact that they had a family member with Ebola, and that's just a bad idea. So

spk_0:   11:42
true. Now, once the played get SEPTA see make, one of the things it can do is get into a person's lungs, and that becomes pneumonic plague. That's bad, considering the fatality rate for the untreated individual is pretty nearly 100%. Yeah, that's bad. That's bad. Worse yet, as if it needed a worse. Yet while the person is dying, which could take several days, they're pretty much coughing their lungs up. And every cough sprays out millions of tiny little droplets that are just chock full of your Scindia pestis bacteria. And if somebody else inhales those, they can get their likely to get pneumonic plague as well. So once it becomes the pneumonic form, it's pretty easy to transmit person to person through cough droplets. And that is what freaks out people like CDC. Our government lists you're seen Nia Pestis, which habitually infects a 7 to 10 Americans a year and kills one every few years. They still listed in the highest danger category of microbes because it is considered weaponize herbal. If you get a bunch of it and you get it in a dispenser so you can spray it into somebody's ventilation system in the form of little bitty droplets or something flatly evil like that. It has extremely high fatality rate, and it transmits pretty well person to person. It's got a latent period of 1 to 6 days. So you're exposed. You don't know you're exposed. You travel all over the country. By the time you're sick, you got sick people all over the country. That's how the Legionnaires outbreak happened. Everybody had gathered at one hotel. It was not plague. It was Legionnaire's disease. Different bacterium. But it was a bacterium that grew in grew naturally, actually in the ventilation system

spk_1:   13:53
in a poorly maintained wet ventilation system. Air conditioning system.

spk_0:   13:58
Yeah. So everybody at the hotel and even people walking by on the street because they had a Mr out there got exposed to the bacterium. And because it was a Legionnaire's conference, all the legionnaires went home afterward, and so they spread it out. Now that wasn't as catastrophic because that wasn't very good at spreading it

spk_1:   14:19
person to person. It wasn't nearly as fate.

spk_0:   14:22
Yeah, I didn't have a fatality rate, but you want you can't spread

spk_1:   14:27
with that particular disease that had a fairly high fatality rate. But a lot of that is because a lot of the Legionnaires were getting on in years, So it was attacking people who probably didn't have the strongest immune systems in the world anyway, so that was part of that. They were old,

spk_0:   14:41
sick guys with a lot of COPD chronic lung disease

spk_1:   14:45
because they're all smoked in there, you know? You want to destroy your lung. Smoking is the way to do it. Okay, I will start, not preach.

spk_0:   14:54
The plague is weaponize herbal, and that's something that the CDC at any rate worries about.

spk_1:   15:00
There's a book to Tom, Clancy wrote, of course, before he died long before he died in one of his

spk_0:   15:05
really best to write them.

spk_1:   15:07
No, um, or you got to give credit. I mean, that would be correct. But, you know, he wrote the book was about weaponizing Ebola and basically did it through a convention. And I'm not gonna you read time looking up Ebola, Tom Clancy, Google it. You can figure out the book. It's actually good book calm. Clancy was a good writer, but

spk_0:   15:30
unfortunately it's harder to spread

spk_1:   15:32
any. But that was just to think Ebola was something that the difference between Ebola and say the plague is There is really no antibiotic knock you out. Kill you dead, Mr Disease. For Ebola, we get even though it was much harder to spread the bullets for the play gun are fully loaded. If you can do it, that is unless, of course, it mutates

spk_0:   16:05
or it gets genetically engineered. You told mutated on command basically so that the drugs work, But right now there are a bunch of antibiotics that work on it. The deal is, if somebody shows up with symptoms of the pneumonic version, you've got about 24 hours to start the right antibiotic or it'll kill him before you figure out what it is because it doesn't take too long to kill

spk_1:   16:27
you and people in 2000 and 17. Just don't think, Hey, this guy's got the pneumonic plague. You've got septicemia, plague. It's not It's not the first thing you think. Well, maybe it is if you're in, You know,

spk_0:   16:43
if you're a doctor in the Southwest and somebody comes in with with swellings in their armpits, that air turning black and a really tender Yeah, Then you think play because, you know, you got it about their.

spk_1:   16:55
But if you're in north Missouri and they've been in the Southwest, you might.

spk_0:   17:00
Somebody comes in with a cough. You don't think Playground off the bat and you probably don't feed him. Struck two myson right off the bat, which is the best antibiotic for it. There's about four others that also worked pretty well, including, like, Corrine Chloramphenicol. I didn't memorize the whole list, but yeah, antibiotics to work. So that's a beautiful thing. The concern is one you got to catch it really early. And two, if somebody did. If we did manage to get a full scale epidemic going, there's only so much antibiotic you've got sitting around on hand. If you've got lots of lots of people who have to have it right now or they're gonna die, well, someone we're gonna die.

spk_1:   17:45
Would you talk to me for a minute? About, um, how important it is and that we've talked about this before? But let's just may reach a different eyes how important it is to complete your meds If you're put on antibiotics. I don't think we could go through that enough. Okay. Why? That's important.

spk_0:   18:06
So let's frame it this way. Suppose you got somebody who shows up with symptoms in the pneumonic plague that, given some strip the myson, he goes home. He knows the hospital's about out of struck two myson, some members of his family that we're hoping take care of them before they got him to the hospital. Start coughing, too. Gosh, there's not enough drug to go around. I'm feeling better. I'm going to give the rest of my obstructed myson to my wife, to my son, to whoever it is who's been taking care of me here. The problem is, the guy took the structure myson, and originally it killed off the most genetically susceptible bacteria that he had in him. So maybe 99% of the bacteria that he had died off in the first couple days and stripped of my sin, which is why he felt so much better. But he didn't take it for long enough to kill that last one or 2% and those are the ones that are most genetically resistant to that particular antibiotic. So he goes off the antibiotic. He gives the rest of his dosage away. He's feeling fine, but that one or 2% of bacteria are still there. And they're multiplying and they're multiplying and they're multiplying. And a week later, or three days later, I don't know it. It grows fast. He's got pneumonic plague again. And now, even if he takes more strapped in mice and it's unlikely to work because he's all the bacteria he's got now are now genetically resistant to the drug. And now when he coughs and spreads it to Aunt Edna, Shoptimize is not gonna work for her either.

spk_1:   19:47
That's how epidemics get started, get really get rolling.

spk_0:   19:52
That's how they get completely out of control and unstoppable.

spk_1:   19:55
That's the sort of thing you're wondering. OK, well, why are these people bringing this up? Well, we don't think we're gonna have a big a plague epidemic here in the next few years. We were not. We really don't. This is not like Ebola. We're not gonna all die of Ebola here. We're much more likely to all keel over from the flu if it's gonna be a pandemic or something similar to that. But it all in a sense, works the same way. Even that really doesn't. It does

spk_0:   20:27
There's a lot of similar

spk_1:   20:28
to a lot of similarities. Antibiotic resistance is a really thing. And just because we have anyway, except work for something now doesn't mean they're gonna work for the same category of disease five years from now. So we just have to be careful. We have to as a prepping in a prepping situation. What's our take? Well, I'm not gonna be able to stockpile strip demise. And And even if I did, I'm not a doctor. She's not a dock worker. And put the disclaimer here were neither one doctors. She is, however, a scientist in the field. Um, so it's not like Bird is pulling this out of the blue are copping off a wiki notes or something. She's actually a scientist in the field of pathos stuff.

spk_0:   21:19
Nasty things that can kill you, is kind of in the

spk_1:   21:22
castle. Okay. I sat down and start reading some of her books. He's

spk_0:   21:27
learned not to look over my shoulder. Could be ugly.

spk_1:   21:30
Her homework. It is some of the most disc casting good you have ever seen in your life is like, Ah, so anyway, um, long story short, though, um, what can you do me as a prepper as an everyday person, you cannot. You could go out and pick up some some antibiotics here. They're in yon. But you're not gonna be really able to diagnose yourself for your family members. You're not gonna be ableto have a fresh supply of antibiotics that is across the board. You may be able to get this and that, but you won't get me able to get everything. So what? What is it? You can do it well, you can do isolation stuff. You could do masks to put over the person who's coughing their heads off faith so they don't spread it all over the world.

spk_0:   22:26
It actually works. Better to have the person who's doing the coughing where the mask, then have the people who are taking care of them Where the mascot that

spk_1:   22:35
did you notice? I said it right. Did you put it over their face and your Facebook? I mean, you could have gowns, the disposable gowns. You could have gloves, the type of gloves which are great.

spk_0:   22:49
How about we wash your with slipping hands? Ah, lot

spk_1:   22:54
wash with soap and wash with soap and watch with soaps amore and hot, so hot you could barely stick it under there but not burn yourself. Obviously, that's not the goal. The hot water last of it. And soap, soap, soap, The material stuff Doesn't matter. Just soap.

spk_0:   23:12
Yeah, not that. Try close and antibacterials

spk_1:   23:14
that. That's just a way to build up resistance in your house. Yeah, we horrible idea.

spk_0:   23:21
I don't use those at all. I don't

spk_1:   23:22
Wouldn't they should be banned.

spk_0:   23:24
I think they actually have been. The FDA is told him to pull dry clothes and where we're doing around dead

spk_1:   23:31
we are. Government should ban things, but those were really dangerous. Those were really danger. That antibacterial stuff was really dangerous.

spk_0:   23:40
So the alcohol, Sanjay, hand gels don't work as well as washing with soap and water. But they work pretty good. Pretty darn good, actually.

spk_1:   23:50
And you could take them everywhere you go. So

spk_0:   23:53
go most of the disease transmission that people get. Yeah, if you're stuck with somebody who's coughing and you inhale it, if you're taking care of somebody or in close contact with somebody who's coughing, you can straight up inhale it. But a lot of the person person disease transmission comes when sick person coughs. Stuff lands on object. Healthy person handles object. Healthy person scratches knows transmission complete. So the more often you wash your hands, the less likely or to get that

spk_1:   24:26
That's good to know. What else can you do? Rats.

spk_0:   24:34
Ah, yeah. Actually, if you live in the American Southwest and you are cleaning up out buildings or things like that because of both the plague and something called the Hanta virus, you want to be careful when you're handling dead animals or even their feces for the Hanta virus, you won't get the plague from the feces, but you can get Thea antivirus from it. So be careful around Ah, the rodents in the American Southwest and the armadillos in the American Southwest. Ah, the plague isn't really a giant risk in the US unless some evil S O. B manages to aerosolize a bunch of it and get a whole bunch of people infected. And then you stay the heck away from coughing people and stay away from where strangers have been and been handling stuff that will take care of a lot of it, actually.

spk_1:   25:34
So that's yeah, that's kind of a takeaway. we want to send home with everybody is this is just one of the many things that's out there. We don't really consider it a topper. We just wanted to use it as an example, and it's really a historically it. Historically, it's been one of the main killers over the years, but it's another one of these deals were, if you learn the proper ways to handle things. If you learn the proper ways to protect yourself, protect your family members through shielding through Mass. Their extraordinary hygiene through washing. Pretty much all of these situations are going to be made less dangerous by following the same exact procedures and these air procedures that you really need to have in your perhaps because this is flew. This is playing, says anthrax. Is Ebola You bought was not going to get you. If you use hot soap and water, you know unless and keep your eyes shielded and don't let anything splashing your pace. I mean, it's just not even if it's there, it's not going to get you.

spk_0:   26:43
Well, we're, uh, before we totally leave the idea. If there is an epidemic that is starting to spread out there I, for one won't be in any airports are on airplanes, Those air. Great transmission notes.

spk_1:   26:57
Oh, airplanes, my gosh, because they re circulate the air. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. No, no. Um, isolation works if it gets to be. We're you know, people are just falling over left and right from whatever. And I would suspect most likely it would be the flu.

spk_0:   27:17
Yeah, um, those are

spk_1:   27:19
the biggest risk that we have as a nation from a pandemic sort of thing. Your isolation. If you walk that door and don't let anybody in, you really won't get the flu.

spk_0:   27:34
And you're a heck of a lot less likely to get it if he just wash your hands lot. Seriously.

spk_1:   27:40
Okay, so we just wanted to share that with you. We're going to continue to have other health related and disease related stuff because people seem to be interested in it, and it's kind of write down her in her strike zone. So,

spk_0:   27:55
frankly, when I read what What's out there in Prepper world? I don't see a whole lot of this kind of information, and it's something that I can contribute that seems to fill a little bit of a hole, which is why I do so much of this kind of the

spk_1:   28:08
other three other part of this. And we're just going straight up with you because we want you to know where we're coming from. We're not making this stuff up. We're basing this off of published information that's taught in textbooks that comes from peer reviewed papers. That's part of the medical community. This isn't just, you know, so much of a prepper world is not documented. It's not. It's not annotated, it's not footnoted. We don't wanna be there. That's not what we're about. We want you to be able to have reproducible information.

spk_0:   28:49
Frankly, I do get a lot of my basic ideas off. Just haven't worked in the field for a while. But then I go to the literature and check out to make sure that things that well, everybody knows actually have some good research behind them because sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't.

spk_1:   29:10
All right, well, thank you for joining us and, as always, be safe and have a great week.

spk_0:   29:17
Be well, be happy