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Hi everyone, and welcome to the podcast. I was going to go for a really Robert Evans intro there, but I bottled it. I own a coward and I couldn't do it.
I hate all of you.
It's Margaret Kiljoy, everyone here to spread the good news.
I was trying to rap at Evans that.
Oh, okay, yeah, and it doesn't he only hate a certain percentage of them, all right, Statistically speaking.
He likes some of you.
Yeah, And because I know some nice people list in there Robert likes. Maybe it's you, maybe it's not. You'll never know. Today we're not here to talk about who Robert Evans likes. But we are here to talk about what to do if your house is going to burn down or you have to leave because they think it might burn down. This is obviously a topic that is front of mind for people in southern California currently, given the massive wildfires that have engulfed whole neighborhoods of Los Angeles.
There are fires in Ventura and Start as well. Now the whole of East County San Diego is under a red flag warning. Fire conditions continue because climate change continues, and we have decided as a society not to do anything about that, and so this shit is going to be the rest of our lives.
If you're on the East Coast or somewhere else and you're like, oh, I'm fine, I'm not on the West Coast, bad news for you. You're not fine. Slowly, more and more the East Coast, including the northeast, is being seen as a fire prone area, and we're seeing an increase in fire out east as well.
Yeap, the United Kingdom as wildfires now a thing did not exist.
Do you all even have wild over there?
Yeah? We have like land owned by the monarch fires, we have like parks and protected land. We don't really have. We have commons to a degree, but not not like public land of the US does. Like when I was a kid, we used to burn the stuff into draw fields. Like that's how how a few fucks we gave about fires. We just burn it in a plat back in and air quality. I guess that is not a thing that people engage in anymore.
That's probably for the best.
Fire it's coming for you. It's happening everywhere. Hooray, hooray. Yeah, lucky you. The cleansing fire. I feel like there's a John Betchaman poem I could go off with here, but I'll spare you all right. So, if you are in a place where you are very likely to have to evacuate your home soonish for a fire, here are some things that you may wish to consider doing. I've harvested these from mutual a groups in LA and from the Cowfire website, where they give you advice on what to
do if you're evacuating. The first thing that you want to do is turn off your gas. For those of you who are not familiar, this is a flammable substance, and your gas pipe rupturing and then catching on fire would be bad, would be sad. It's pretty easy to do this. Normally, you should have a valve near the meter. Some places we'll have what's called earth quake shut off or an earthquake valve where you won't need a tool.
I'm not sure that. In fact, i'm pretty certain those are not mandatory, even in California, because I've lived places that don't have them. Then again, there are things that are mandatory that landlords just aren't doing. I think we all know that.
Yeah, or like grandfathered into or whatever. M hmm yeah.
Yeah, given that people outside California are listening and the earthquakes are are fortunately not coming for us all just yet, I would just suggest that you try and find where your gas shut off is now. It's often where the gas comes into the property, like there's a gas meter, and normally you're going to need some kind of tool to term that. What I've used normally is just like an adjustable spanner or wrench. For those of you in the United States.
The people at California that you're talking to.
Yeah, yes, yeah, Hi, fellow Californians. You can turn that valve so it turns parallel with the pipe. That's kind of shut off the gas coming into your house.
Do you mean a perpendicular to the pipe. I'm curious.
I think parallel is shut off.
Interesting with water, you turn it off by moving a perpendicular. I've never messed with a gas line. I've lived weird and off grid instead.
Yeah, let me have a look. I'm checking now.
Yeah.
Sorry, it wants to be at ninety degrees to the pipe. Yeah, so it should be in line with the pipe when you start in ninety degrees to the pipe when you turn it off, which you.
Can just kind of imagine as like when it's in line, you can imagine like, oh, that's how the gas and water can flow through, and then when it's to the side, it's like, oh, now it's blocking it. That's how I yeah, I remember.
That's much easier visually if you imagine like the hole in the valve lining up with the handle.
Thing on there.
Yeah, do you want to turn that off? I've seen some suggestions that you want to turn water off. Generally, the advice is not to turn your water off, and to hook up your outdoor hoses to your outdoor taps such that they can be used if they need to be used. I have seen some suggestions to turn water off because I guess people's pipes are bursting, which is decreasing water pressure.
And it seems like that's probably a like city versus rural or like city the city kind of divide. You should listen to your local authorities around this kind of thing, right, Like in the case of California, you can go to CalFire right and there will be evacuation advice on the CalFire website.
There might even be on your city website. Some of it is useful. This is a useful thing if you do need to turn off your water. Again, water shut offs could be in a variety of places, so it kind of depends. Especially if you're on a well, you're probably row and if you're roll, you're probably going to be leaving it on.
Yeah, you're probably turning off your water. Yeah, but if you do need to do it's just a pipe going into your basement that you turned it on.
You can sometimes be at the side of your house. You might need to give this a little bit of WD forty. Sometimes do a little little plastic box as well, and the little plastic box has a little hole and you kind of have to shove a screwdriver in that hole and pop it open.
We're now talking about city water again, right, municipal water, Yes, yeah, that's city water. Yeah.
Yeah, that's where if you have a water meat box it could and the shut offs in there. Familiarize yourself with that stuff now so that you're not doing it in a panic later, And that's kind of where a lot of what we're talking about today is. It's important. It's if you do it now, you don't have to dash about your house grabbing thinking. It's just important do I need this?
Do I need that? Right?
Because like I've evacuated for wildfires living in California a few times. I like to think I have it pretty down now, but definitely the first time I was, you know, freshly minted European migrant, it was not familiar with this stuff, and it definitely just ran around grabbing things.
So it turned out to be the wrong thing.
It's like, cool, I've got three bicycles here, let me let me go to the shelter.
And you can get something called a water key or a silcock key. And I have a thing I have not personally used it. I have a thing called an eight way key. Sometimes they are called four way keys, depends on how many little wrenches on them are on them. And these are just cheap things that have like basically all of the weird wrench style things that you would never otherwise use, like all the weird like triangle things.
They can get you into like the boxes on a subway car, and they can turn on and off water, like I carry one in case you know, you're in the apocalypse and you need to turn on the water at a rest area, you know, that kind of thing. I've first learned about this from squatters, so it would just move into houses and then turn the water on. And they they're built in specialized ways to try and prevent squatter from doing exactly what I'm describing.
Yeah, so you couldn't use your standard socket set or what happens. So that's where you need these specialized keys. Yeah, and they're not very expensive you can buy.
They're also not very high quality. This isn't the kind of thing you're going to want to use over and over again. They're usually cast and like they break, it's like pot metal. Yeah exactly. Yeah, but they're are right as far as I can tell. Yeah, and any you hope you're not going to need to use them very much. Other things that you should turn on or off, turn off your air conditioning. No one's in the house anyway, don't need it. I would consider leaving your exterior lights on.
This is just going to help firefight to see things and see your house in the event that your house is still there. You can close your windows and doors. It's amazing how much difference closed doors even internally make it in fire spread that There are plenty of videos you can watch about this online, but like it's amazing how much difference it makes having those closed. But you don't want to lock your front door like you're going
to see a lot of stuff about looting. I will tell you right now that the people who are looting from wildfire survivors are the landlords who are charging one hundred and fifty percent of the rent that they were a month ago for people to find a flaceplace to live. Also, if my house is about to burn down and you go steal all my stuff, good have it?
Yeah yeah, lucky you like I hope you don't get burned, like yeah, yeah, compared to if a firefighter needs to enter that house to prevent it burning down. It takes a meaningful amount of time to break down a door, yeah, and you can save that time by leaving it open. So yeah, that is something that I think you will get the wrong impression of if you're watching too much corporate news. If you can close metal shutters on your windows but remove curtains, flammable things near windows generally not
a good idea, right, that makes sense. So if you've got fabric curtains, I know they look nice, but take them down. But you could just live like me and never purchase curtains and just I don't have to have the sun in your face. You know what is happening to right now? Yeah?
Yeah, we're going to start a whole interior design thing. And when I see James interior design where you hang your curtains.
Yeah, James's effectively squatting in a house that he actually rents. You should also move flammable items into the middle of the room again, right, that's where the fire is not. And then before you go, choose an outfit that covers your legs and arms. Right, and you want to wear some sturdy shoes as well, something that's comfortable, something you could potentially sleep in and wear for a few days and not be uncomfortable.
Shoes that you could walk in. Right.
We saw a lot of people in la weren't able to take their vehicles as far as they had expected to be able to, and so having a pair of shoes that you're comfortable in, your nice, comfy walking shoes is definitely a useful thing to have something to think about. I hope you're not listening to this dashing around your house if you are, best of luck, Yeah, yeah, but you know you can prepare all this stuff now for
the outside of your house. Flammable stuff that might catch outside your house is best either bought inside inside your shed if you have a shed or a garage or something, or in a particularly California piece of advice, CalFire suggests chucking your path to your furniture in the pool. So that is the thing that you can do. That makes some sense, it does. Have you seen the picture of this lady in the nineties who put all her fine china in her swimming pool before evacuating in a wildfire.
Oh that's amazing.
Yeah, it's very like of the time, Like it was a time when people could afford swimming pools, and also people had china that they cared about, which is something that our generation generally does not.
Unless they inherited it from their parents, and in which case they still also yeah right they have like one plate.
Yeah yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Apparently it's a big issue with people like inheriting china and not want to get in and just dumping on good wiels.
Yeah I believe that.
Yeah, I can see that. So, yeah, you can put stuff in your pool if you don't want to burn. If it is possible for you to do that you have something you mentioned Margaret about you your fence right living in a more rural setting.
Yeah, can I actually just kind of like really quickly run through some if you fire protecting your house. There's two things you're gonna do. One is the oh, I'm going to run away now version, and then there's the ahead of time version. The really quick basic version of the ahead of time is that, and this is more applicable rurally. But you want to have a defensible space. You know, everyone's going to give you a different number,
but like one hundred feet from your house. You don't want densely packed trees, especially conifers, and you're gonna want you know, the one tree is okay as long as it's a little bit further from the other. You're gonna want to clear out yard debris, even though leaving leaves on the ground is overall good, kind of want to create this space where there's not a lot of leaf litter and things like that directly under your house so
that the eaves don't catch. You want to make sure that you don't keep a lot of flammable stuff there. And if like if I was fleeing my house in a hurry, I would be pulling all the stuff away from under the eaves that I should have pulled away from under the eaves months ago. If I were to design my house better, there would be a basically a three foot like gravel line around the edge of my
house right of landscaping. Yeah, But the other things that you're going to want to do is you're going to want to look for how embers can get in through the vents and stuff like in your roof area or under wherever. And you're gonna want to basically make sure and it might already have that, but you want to make sure that there's tighter than chicken wire. I think it's I think you want quarter inch mesh covering those things.
Yeah, like construction netting. Yeah, well metal, but yeah, it's metals the name of it. Oh okay, it's what they put into concrete. I think I use it to build chicken Oh yeah, runs for some reasons. Well, yeah, because raccoon hans can't get through it, and raccoons they're bastards as it turns out.
Yeah, that makes sense. If your porch is wooden, you have a porch, you don't want fire to get underneath it, and so you can keep your wooden porch, but you want to screen off underneath of it to keep flaming debris from going under there. And then if you have a wooden fence, consider having the first ten feet or so of the fence the brick or something like that. I can't afford this, but imagine you can. Then you would want the first chunk of it to be that way.
If you have gates, you open them. The deal with fences and everything is that you don't want like a wick that brings fire to your house. So if the forest around you is burning, you don't want it to catch your fence and have that go right up to under the eaves, catch the eaves on fire. And now I you have a structure fire. So what you're gonna
do is you open the gates if you're leaving. And then, for example, my plan, because I have a wooden fence that goes all the way up to my house, is that if I have more than like five minutes to flee a fire, by a half an hour to flee a fire, I am taking the chainsaw and I am cutting down about ten feet of that wooden fence before I leave, And that should dramatically increase the chances that
my house will survive a fire. Yeah, smart move. And then another thing with a pool thing, And I think I've read about, but I've never there's no version of my life where I'm ever gonna have a pool if you live in a fire prone area. They actually make pumps that are designed to pump your pool water into a fire hose, and they have saved a lot of rural areas and probably city areas too by having that
accessible to firefighters. Immediately, your pool can become a resource for the people who are coming in to try and keep your house intact.
Yeah, amusingly, we use one of those. When I was a kid, we had a whole wow like to get out, and one day she got out. We all went looking for of course, there were some wealthy people who like well, they didn't live in the village that we lived in. They owned it because Britain has never moved on from this Ugal era, and they had a pool and that that was where our horse was. And so the fire brigade came and they used one of those things, just pumped out the water and just like host down the
surrounding garden. And then we came with the tractor and we put some different strawbeles of different sizes, made a set of stairs and got her out.
That's the least relatable story I've ever heard about England.
It's in yeah, just like a rural people living the dream. Yeah, she was a good horse, misty. Yeah, we had a lot of horses that, like, we had access to land and not a great deal of finances, so we inherited problematic horses. I think for people who had like who had the means to purchase.
That is relatable to the Americans. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, any people find themselves in this situation, I'm sure.
Yeah. Horse poor is a whole thing. Yeah it is.
Yeah, Yeah, it's it's the rich people who buy fancy horses and then like find the horse not to their liking and can afford to discard a living thing spent more than a car is worth on.
Well and also, I mean, horse poor is you have a horse, but you don't have any money, and you're like, you're partly poor because you have the horse. Because horses are incredibly expensive to ye maintain, Yes, they are. Vets cost a lot.
Yeah anyway, so yeah, make sure not quite a horse relation. But if you are more of a horseless carriage transport person. If you are, this is a very American thing. In possession of an electric garage door opener, it is a good idea to work out how to open your garage without that. Yeah, because you don't want to be in a situation where you can't use your vehicle because you can't open your garage, or you don't want to be dashing around going where's the bloody cord? Not the time, Yeah,
so work out how to do it now. Also, your front gate. Hopefully you don't live in a gated community. It's not the way to live. But if you do, for whatever reason, you know, know how to open the gates. Or if you have an electric front gates, you're drive I suppose know how to open that, Margaret. Now will be a good time for us to pause for ads. I wonder if we will get an advert for electric garage doors.
Or electric horse. Oh yeah, maybe do they dream of electra care.
We'll find out in its advertising break. All right, we are back, and we're continuing on the theme of animals because they are.
Our little friends.
Yeah, So if you have animals inside your house, pets We have farm animals inside my house growing up, so I guess it's not exclusive to pets. Used to bring the lambs in when it was cold, little often lambs. Again, this is turning into like James story.
That's okay, it's cute stories.
People who are in possession of a range, like like a big cooking if you have a very old house in the UK, or again if you're rich, you have these like coal burning or oil burning ovens, so they stay at his temperature, and they have a number of doors. The coldest one you can put a lamb in there in the winter time and you can keep it warm that way.
Like in a live one.
Yeah yeah, yeah, well I mean any of them. You can put a dead one in if you felt the knee. If you look at you're saying okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. If you're looking to take care of your animal, you put them in there and keep the More so, if you have pets in your house, things to do before you evacuate would be make sure they have a collar on which has your name and your contact information. Yeah. I'm a big fan of the breakaway collars, especially for dogs.
We never had collars on a dog showing up because the dogs were always out in the fields and going through hedges and stuff, and you don't want them to get caught up. Yeah, and so I'm a big fan of those, especially in a situation where your pet's going to be scared. You know, God forbid that you'd lose your pet goes running for a bit. You don't want them to get caught up by that neckus.
W'll probably want to chip your dog as you chip your pets.
Yes, yeah, I was going to say, now it's a good time where you have the time to chip your pets, to make sure you have a carrier, make sure you have their vaccination records, all that.
Stuff, and also particularly the particularly rabies vaccination is like the thing that you need to make sure that you have with you. There's a lot of places you can't go with a pet, like Canada unless you have Yeah.
Yeah, hopefully you and your pet will be fine, you'll come home in a few days. But keeping that stuff is important if you have a cat having a so what you can buy those little mobile list of boxes. If you're in danger of having to evacuate, just buy one and check in your vehicle.
Now.
Of course, any medications that your pet has, right, you'll want to have a supply of those and those who want to be in your go back. It's also nice to have some familiar toys and things that's not like home. Yeah, so consider puting them in the carrier now, and then they'll just be there and you won't have to look for them. They have advice if you have to leave your pet, which would be a pretty heartbreaking situation to be honest.
Yeah, I think that choosing to be in charge of an animal's entire life is a pretty solemn vow.
Yes, I would agree, and I don't think I would leave them to burn.
I think, yeah, but I guess there's probably I mean, you see, like for example, I know we're gonna talk about livestock in a second, but like you know, people have had to like let loose some of their horses because they can only personally escort so many horses or whatever. Right.
Yeah, a few years ago, my friend and I were in a situation where a stables had more horses than it did vehicles. Yeah, and were able to go in a vehicle with a towdruck and just help, Like they would load them up and just be like go to the evacuation point with these horses. Yeah, and so having a plan.
For that is good.
But yeah, I know, I struggled be conceive of leaving pets. I grew up with dogs and like they were part of my family.
Yeah. I suppose there's some situation I am not imagining where it is literally a necessity, but I struggle to Yeah.
I heard about people in LA who were forced to leave relatives who were not mobile, which is just fucking heartbreaking, just you know, one of the worst things I could imagine happening.
Which is literally why I actually think that your evacuation plans. Not trying to blame those people that we're talking about, but I believe that your evacuation plans need to include people with disabilities who are in your area, not just were you not just in your house, but elsewhere. Like yeah, hundred, if you have someone who can only travel by a wheelchair, then you should be considering for your only vehicle a
wheelchair accessible vehicle. Like this is the kind of thing that I think that, like plans need to include people who are at different levels of ability.
Yeah, yeah, if you have older people in your neighborhood, Yeah, people who might not have their cell phone on or on them all the time. They might not get that like beat beat buzz buzz.
Yeah. If you have like older folks who live alone in your neighborhood, you should know that.
You know, yeah, yeah, a few years ago I helped some older neighbors evacuate.
Yah.
You live in a community and you need to take responsibility and take care of one another. If you have livestock again, like you know, I grew up with livestock, I think you're taking responsibility for the animal's life, and that includes situations where you might have to help that animal escape in a way that leg is not necessarily
like lucrative for you. Right, So that might just mean opening your fences, right, opening your gates if you're not able to evacuate them, or at least giving it a chance you can before just to avoid having yourself in that situation. Need to make transport arrangements. You should be able to look where large animals refuges are, like San Diego in the big fires, maybe fifteen years ago, they
have them on Fiesta Island for a while. Little island out in the bay or del Mar Race Course is often a place of San Diego where you can take them. You should be able to find that now, if you're in Los Angeles, you can find that. Now. Again, you're going to want to have your essential documentation. You are not going to want nylon halters for your livestock. I've seen a lot of people have, Like people have nylon
lead ropes for horses. We had like more hempy ones when I was younger, just because those a much left likely to melt, right, So that's why we had them in the UK. But we had them because we'd have them for a long time. But plastic key things that can melt. You don't want to put them around your horse's head or near your horse.
Okay, that makes some sense.
Yeah, if you have chickens right now, you're going to run into the issue of AV and flu. Oh yeah, which is a further complications. So like this is a scenario of like a big chicken shelter where you take them is not a good one for AV you and flu reasons also for like chicken dynamics reasons. So that
means you should make a plan. Now, you might have a friend who you're like, hey, I know that you're not normally a poultry person, but would it be cool in the event of us having to evacuate for me and my chickens to come and stay at your house. Making a plan. Now, it's going to avoid you being in a very difficult situation of either driving around with your birds in your in your truck being like where the fuck can I go? Or like being turned away
from places. Right. Yeah, The last thing I have here and then we're going to move on to packing your go bag is insurance. My house flooded when I was a kid, Like, it completely leveled the first floor of the house.
Everything was gone, which, since it's England, is actually the second floor to Americans.
Yeah, it's true. It was actually the great Yeah.
I love to uh it's the ground the ground floor you have to hide on the first thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love to go into a lift and be confused in this country after sixteen years of living here, go up and down, up and down, playing this stupid game until I google what do American call their flaws? And you can't do it, so you're in the lift and your phone doesn't work. It's one of my favorite experiences.
It's because you try to google what do American lifts do? And they're like What the fuck is a lik.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true. Yeah yeah, an elevator. It's not an elevating experience. Away my favorite thing to pick. James, I don't know.
Yeah, it's true. Sure, I'm the only person who does it. I'm sure it never happened to me.
Yeah, it was never an issue when I worked in a building with a lift and would routinely miss my own floor.
So that I just took the fire escape.
So I remember it taking months the time I was working in construction, and what we were doing was for the most part, pulling wet carpet out of people's homes that have flooded. Highly recommend not doing that as a way to make a living if you can. It's not good for the body, not good for the soul, for the lung. It's probably cleaning out restaurants. Like a month later the power had been off from month. Just going
into the walk in. Oh my god, I've never seen so many people vomit, like one after the other being like, no, I could do it. I'm a builder straight, Like, yeah, pretty horrific. So don't recommend if you can go around your house taking a video.
Of your yeah stuffs, it will.
Just make it easier, Like this happened to my family, and like maybe you know, the early two thousands, so it wasn't possible. Well, I mean I could have got the old like Sony handicam out I didn't. So now you know you have a video camera in your pocket going around your house taking a video especially of you know, the things that are expensive and hard to move that you're going to rely on insurance to replace.
Yeah, and then this is actually a decent regular prepper practice regardless. This isn't a like, oh I'm just about to have to run out for a fire. This is a like every six months or every year, or every time you get a new, weird, expensive thing that you put in your house, make this video so that it's easier to prove all of the stuff that you had that needs to be replaced. Yeah, if you do that on a regular basis, there's a little bit of like security of like where do you put it? Do you
really want? You know? But it's honestly, for almost all people probably totally fine to just have that, yeah on the cloud, Yeah yeah, I think I think it. Don't put it on Facebook, but you can get it directly.
Ensure it's going to be your Instagram where you post an interior video of your home every month. Yeah, that's that's your thing. I guess join us next month for behind the podcast. Yeah, podcast crips.
It's just in my shed.
It's me critiquing your interior you have. That would be a weekly podcast for some time. Shame James and James Shame podcasts la Things that I've heard people thinks that you will need. If you have a nebulizer, if you're a person who uses a nebulizer to help them breathe, those are in very high demands. You're probably not going to be able to replace it, so bring that with you. If you have medications, ideally grab the meds in the
little orange thing and take those with you. That where you've got the RX number and you can easily go to a pharmacy and be like, hey, this is my prescription for me. It has my name and the RX number. Can you issue me an emergency supply? And that's something they should be able to do. And also if you grab the whole bottle, then you've got, you know, hopefully a decent supply, Hopefully your insurance isn't annoying and only lets you go three weeks at a time.
Yeah, that's that comes up for a lot of people.
But I will not name any companies because I think it is against my contract to do that. I will say that if you have like your important documents, right, you're potentially your deed to your house, if you're own on your car, your passport, your birth certificate is a big one.
Yeah, you're right to be in this country.
Yeah, any dream card, visa, that kind of thing, especially those in the after Well, this will come out in the era of Trump two point zero. So those documents are going to be very important for some people. Right, you're darker registration, Put those in a file and grab the whole thing, bring it with you.
Do not rely on.
Scan copies of those, especially your immigration documents. If you're a person who has firearms, records of the serial numbers of those are going to be useful. And again I would just snap a picture. It's not reasonable or sensible to be taking a lot of firearms with you in a situation like this. You're not going to need them, and there's.
Gona be a lot of places that you won't want to bring them.
Yes, you know, I would suggest locking them up and like I say, documenting that you've done that, you may have to prove at some point that firearm no longer exists, and then they're probably the best way to do that. And being prepared to travel on foot. Like I said, another thing that people have been needing and not having
is P one hundred masks. So that's a particle filter generally in the three M and I think the Honeywell filters they're pink, so I'm talking about like a screw in filter here, although they.
Do make P one hundred masks that are more like they more like COVID masks. Yeah, they're just a little bit thicker and yeah.
Yeah they're a little bit more sort of burdensome than those masks, but that is what you need if you're in those situations. Yeah, so if you have one of those, I have ones like when I'm when I'm a poxying wood, I have a little half face respirated I wear for that. We will actually talk about masks, Margaret, after some of the products and services support the show have talked about themselves.
It'd be pretty sick of a honey Well. Yeah, yeah, they'd be pretty small. Yep. All right, here we go.
All right, we're back, thank you, honey. Well, yeah, well, keeping us safe from here gas.
Although I'm kind of a three M girl, I gotta admit, Oh controversial, Okay, I know. So. One of the things I did during twenty twenty was a lot of testing of protest care. And if you want to see, I've written up a whole bunch of pieces about exactly everything about masks in body armour and blah blah blah blah blah. But in general, when you think about masks, there's sort of three levels that actually are matter a useful. There's the version that we kind of see as a COVID mask.
There's a version where it's like you you wear it around your face and you make sure you need to get a rated one and N ninety five is better than nothing for smoke, but a P one hundred is better. And then there is a half mask respirator. Half mask respirators are great. They are probably the sweet spot for this. They are less good for pandemics because they do not filter the xhale. They are better for your daily life because they don't filter the xhale. It's much easier to
breathe with a half mask. Respirator than a fabric mask, and you can switch out the cartridges and unfortunately almost all of them are various proprietary types of filters, and the bayonet mount is the three M style. There's a NATO version. If something looks more like a gas mask,
it's probably the NATO screw on kind. So you can get a half mask respirator, or you can a fold face respirator, which is more or less what looks like a gas mask, but those coming kind of civilian styles that are using the same three M brand or Honeywell or whatever cartridges, or you can get the more military style that'll have the NATO style screw in. The military style is kind of overkill in terms of it'll position you oddly socially. Yes, set me a fire, Yeah, I
think that a thing that is worth everyone having. Are these respirators a half mask respirator or depending on your life, like if you use them a lot, or you're going to be protesting, or there's a lot of different reasons you might want a full face one. They make really cheap knockoff ones that you can get imported, although maybe if you're listening to this in the future, you can't get it imported, but they work fairly well, they're just not quite as good. I've tested a whole bunch of
them against various impacts and things like that. I think that half masks are great. I keep a half mask in my truck literally for wildfire smoke, because when I'm traveling, if I'm driving out west, I've been around wildfire smoke while traveling before. Another thing, just really quickly. They make these for dogs as well, so cool. They're more like COVID mask style. And my dog hates it. Yeah, you know, but you could train your dog into not hating it.
I just haven't. I just keep it around to be like, well if it really if we had to sleep in the vehicle in a smoky area, my dog would hate it, and he would put up with it, you know, and he would survive.
Yeah.
Yeah, I like masks. Yes, they're great.
Yeah, they are good. The hat face respirator is great. Yeah, that's what I used, like could say when I'm at poxying, so I don't get high because that would be bad.
Yeah. Oh, and then really quickly about physical stuff like deeds and all of that stuff. Yeah. I'm actually kind of curious because it's like I see why it matters the most to have the physical originals mm hmm for most crises. A lot of people talk about how safety deposit boxes at banks are kind of the way to go for stuff like that you don't need on a
regular basis. This wouldn't be your proof of documentation necessarily, but it might be your like birth certificate, maybe like deeds and titles and things at a safe deposit box, because then if your house burns down, it's still fine.
La.
Wildfire kind of disproves this a little bit, right, because then you're like, well, what if your bank burns down?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And then if.
It's not on your property, you can't grab it and go, So it's a little bit complicated. I think overall, I think that there's a real advantage to keeping stuff in a safety deposit box off site. And then also I just want to shout out that fire proof safes aren't fireproof.
Yeah, not for the situation and we're talking about here right.
They are designed for like your kitchen catches fire or your bed catches fire, and your safe is under your bed.
Yeah, and the firefighters come and they get out in fifteen minutes.
But some stuff gets charred right when there is a structure fire and a structure is destroyed. Fireproof safes, like all other safes, are generally not protecting their contents, and that's not the safe fault of the fire safe, it's just they're not designed for that.
Google the melting point of steel for this and many other interesting Internet things that you can learn.
If jet fuel can't melt fire proof.
Safe, yeah, which is why they build buildings out of it.
Oh and one more thing about documents really quick, While the original matters, having copies is like better than nothing, and also just like scanning and having them on encrypted hard like encrypted USB stick, a little USB stick with all of your stuff is a really pretty good thing
to have. It has some advantages too, right, because sometimes you don't want the originals of your documents, Like, for example, you probably want a list of all of your bank accounts, the bank account numbers, your pins or your credit card numbers, like all of that stuff that you really don't want someone else to have, but if you lost you would be really sad. You probably want digital encrypted copies of
that available to you. Yeah. Yeah, also your like master passwords and all that terrible horrible stuff that's scary to put onto a USB stick.
Yeah, but that's why you're putting it then on the internet. Yeah, so really quickly, Margaret, it's going to be a long one. I guess you and I talked about prepper stuff.
It went long.
Yeah, shocking go bags. We've done a whole episode on. If you're new to the show, Hello Welcome, you can go back and listen to Margaret and James talking about go bags. We'll try and put a link in the description here for you. But what is the like super fast speed round version of what you want to put in your go back?
Oh?
Lord, change of socks and underwear, your basic toiletries, like the kind of like travel toiletries, because your go back is like more like so it's not gona be a long tangent. Your go back is like more likely I have to spend the night in my car than like I'm starting a new life somewhere out in the planes. Yeah. And so the small little things like bring deodorant, even if you don't have deodorant in your daily life, because you might be crammed into a place with lots of other people.
I've seen tons of requests for deodorant in the La mutal a chat almost every day.
Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. So basic toiletries and a little bit extra to share. I think whether or not you menstright, you should have tampons for example, and your go back, and so I think that the basic toiletries basic first day's less survival stuff, and then like change of clothes, and also like at least one or two morale items. I keep a Nintendo switch in my go bag. It Skyrim is I need a Skyrim box in order to fight anxiety sometimes. Yeah.
Yeah, you can get those tiny little game boys now which have like it looks like a game boy every game, every game ever. Yeah, yeah, I have one of those in their two okay sick. Yeah, those would be a perfect item for one of those that.
Actually I had like almost no electricity at the beginning of COVID, and so the ability to play the Sega Genesis version of Shadow Run from like the nineties was crucial to me because I didn't have enough electricity to run a computer.
Yeah, and look, that's fine, and it's probably going to be more important to you than half the shit you see people online putting in their go backs, Like yeah, you don't need a gender affirming hatchet.
You will.
You will have a lot more fun with your tiny game boy things that you don't needther I see people. I see people houlding a lot of food. Everyone who's evacuated in LA is having a miserable time. They are eating the best they ever have. So many people want to help, and food is a way that so many of us express affection and careful one another. So many people are getting fed right now, thanks for the efforts
to beat A groups. Really remarkably doesn't seem to be so much by you'd think La, a city on a major fault line, would would have some kind of supplies for an earthquake that required feeding lots of people. Seems like it's it's more vibes based for the city. But you know, surprise surprises mutual A groups who are feeding people and they're doing that really well. So you don't need to hold a lot of food.
Having a little bit of food though a little bit of shelf stable food. I really recommend bars you don't like as the food that you put in your go bag, because if you put in bars that you do like, you're going to eat them when you're bored one day, Yeah, and you don't want to go to the store.
II doly recommend I say this.
Literally all of the bars in all my bags have been eating yeah the past week. But that's because there's been like a winter storm, so I haven't been out to the grocery store and I just have been like sugarcreavy and so I eat even the grossbars. I live in San Diego.
I have no hues so to do it because I can't be bothered to leave my offace and go to my kitchen sometimes.
Yeah, So find the one that you don't like, put it in your bag. Just have a couple. It's not to keep you sustained. It's to keep you from being grouchy. Like, don't think of it as like I need to put entire meals in my go bag. Think of it as like I need enough sugar and whatever to keep my headspace right. Yeah.
I kind of like to lay them in between things I do is when I'm camping to I'll get like those little peanut butter packets, yeah, and just like just to throw a few in there. And then you're like, oh, yeah, you know what, I am being cranky And that means you snuff this and I'm going to be beat at. Yeah. I do highly recommend peanut butter. I take it when I travel a lot as well. It's like a comfort food for me. It's filling, it's compact. It's not that bad for you.
When I lived out of a backpack, I kept a plastic jar of peanut butter at the bottom of my pack always because I knew, no matter what, I had at least two days worth of calories in the bottom of my bag. Yeah.
Yeah, it's a wonderful thing, peanut butter. So yeah, put some of that in there. There are things that, like, you probably don't need shelter, right, but it might be nice to have a little compact blanket, right, especially if you're going to have to stay. One of those one thing, little comfort item that I always take. I've taken this all over the world. It's an inflatable pillow. Like there are a lot of hardships that I will endure. I like to sleep on a pillow, and so I take
a inflatable pillow. So it's something that you know, you will have comfort items like that that are things for you. I'll put those in there. I would avoid watching too much go bag content on YouTube because you're going to get anxious about the fact that you don't have like a folding short barrels rifle. And that's because you don't need it, nor do you need like a Like I'm sitting next to my bullet profess that I've used before
for work. I'm not taking it with me staying here. Yeah, I did spend a lot of money on the plate, so I will be claiming those on insurance. But you don't need that stuff. People are taking care of one another, and so pack with the things that will help you be comfortable. And consider that you might be spending a while in a hotel or a hostel or a refuge or staying with a friend or family members yea, and think what would make that more comfortable for you.
I think that's the really good way to put it. It's the get out of town for the weekend. Bag. Y's not the end of the world bag. I think that if you are more rural, you might want some basic camping stuff. Yeh, yeah, definitely, but the average person probably doesn't. I mostly have this at the like there's my go bag, and then there's the stuff that's kind of always in my truck.
Yeah, that's where I'm at too. I like to go camping, so I have my camping stuff in my truck because then it takes me less time to go camping.
Yeah, and so like, I am almost certainly not bugging out on foot from my house. And if I had to, then I would have to bring a not my go bag, I would have to bring a hiking bag, you know.
Yeah.
Most of the time, if you have access to a car and roads, because you're escaping an emergency, you're getting to somewhere with enough civilization that you have, you can expect some level of shelter and food.
Yeah, exactly, but I do.
I will say, have some water. Don't go overboard, like I think that having like a little bit of like chemical water filtration and a water bottle or a little water filter and a water bottle, you know the reason not.
To Yeah, I will say specifically, like get a soil squeeze. They are tiny filtration, better than most other filters that are that size. Get it, put it in your backpack, leave it there. They're handy to have, and then yeah, get a little uh I like to have again, this is a little comfort thing I like to have a stain of steel now gene size bottle. It's not made by analogy think, it's made by clean canteen. I like it so I could drink water out of it. I
like it because it's not plastic. And I like it because I can use it to heat up water when it's really cold and have it like a little hot water bottle and snuggle with it. Yeah, so that's a nice thing.
Yeah. I use also like a single wall steel canteen so that you can heat water in it. If you get the double wall ones, then you can't heat them over the fire because they're you know, vacuum insulated or whatever. But then other people I know are like, well they want the ability to have like and they're insulated deep bottles. Sure, yeah, you know you do you so, I will also say
battery packs for phones is a big one. Again, you're less likely to need to hunt squirrels with axes, and you're more likely need to keep your phone charged and other people's phones charged.
One of those little hydra charging cables, which you know breaks one.
That's what I was about to say to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, get get.
One of those, Get a little war water and keep it in there, so you can turn a wall socket into a USB socket if you need that to charge your stuff. Another thing that is surprisingly handy and lots of situations is I like to run a lot, and sometimes you're doing ultramarathon. When you get to the aid station, they just have like big things of water, right, and you fill up your little water bottles. You're carrying your vest, and lots of people have these tiny collapsible cups that
are made of like a thin rubber. They're made of the stuff that camelback gladders are made of. And then they can fill up that cup and they can drink from it, and they just keep it attached to their vest, right, and then off they go running along. Oh interesting, These are very useful and I've started incorporating them and lots of my travel and like, yeah, emergency supplies because if you're in a place where people don't have cups, right that they have big things of water. Now you have
a vessel from which to drink. So those are surprisingly handy.
Yeah. I also keep one of those. I don't know if it's the same one you're talking about it, but it like collapses up almost like forty and stuff.
Yeah, it's like it's like the camping ones, but it's way lighter than those.
Ah Okay, I have the camping style one and I keep it in there as a like emergency dog ball. Yes I know.
Yeah, those are great for that too, and you can drink hot things out of them, which is nice.
Yeah. And another thing that I keep in my go bag is I keep the meds that my dog is on, and I keep some of the meds that I take in there. And you know, it's like, my dog only gets the meds once a month, So I go to my bag and I pull out the meds and I give them to my dog from my bag, because why not. And if you have, you know, other people, whether they're not fully grown yet or are that you also take care of, you know, you need to make sure you have a little bit of their stuff in there, Like
like you keep a dog toy in your go bag. Yeah.
Yeah, if you have a child, keep a child toy. If you need to keep medicines cold, there's a product called freeo Fio. They're not paying me. I've never got one for free. But you dip it in water and it uses the evaporative cooling to keep your insulin cold. I have used them. Oh, they are very handy, they don't rely on electric. It's very nice. So yeah, if that's something that you need, then then then that is
hopefully something useful to you. My last thing would be a little torch, a little pocket flashlight, or even better a headlamp like a head torch, because lots of places in La lost power, right, and if you're having to go places at night, it's much easier if you can see where you're going. Yeah, they're not expensive, they're great gifts. Bring a few, give them to friends, make new friends.
Hopefully this has repared you. The last thing, of course, Margaret is a gold bullion with Ronald Reagan's face on it.
Oh, I forgot to mention that, Yeah, you need to trade. Rather than having a system of mutual aid, which we naturally do, instead, we should interject a complicated barter system, ideally on the gold standard, in which shiny.
Metal replaces our naturally instinct to help one another. Yeah exactly, Yeah, that's how it's been. That's that's humans, famously not a species.
Just bring a copy of Debt by David Graeber in your Yeah.
Yeah, bring at the shrugs and then as you pass the just start ripping that ship off, throwing it in there, let it burn.
Having a paperback book if you like that. It's not weight efficient, but you know what, like.
That's how Yeah, yeah, yeah, Bring the Dawn of Everything by David Graeber. That'll let'll occupy you through most natural disasters. It's a it's a thick book. It is if you can't reach something very handy.
Stand on that.
He really thought he did us one final solid rap David Graeber.
Yeah, and and and on rip to David wengro Is love.
Yes, yeah, yeah, shout out to David. Wegrow the other David than the less venerated David who also wrote that book.
I always feel bad when I just talk about Gramer stuff and they talk about Thought of Everything, and then I don't talk about the other David. Yeah.
Sometimes I'll just say the David's and then people will look at me and yeah, totally the level. But I know, yeah, yeah big to Margaret, I can say that David's. She knows which David's. I mean, that's why we're friends.
Yeah. Well anyway, yeah, it's gonna be okay or it's not. But you know what you weren't going to survive being alive anyway. And keep your car half full of gas, like when you're on your way home, and make sure that you fill up if it's less than halfway full.
Plug your electric car in. Don't skip plugging your little electric car in at night. Yeah, because the night that you do is you know that you need it. So do the little things take care of one another.
Yeah, it could.
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