Al Zone Media.
Hello, and welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and how people work to put them back together again, because it's the Humpty Dumpty of podcasts, except Humpty Dumpty couldn't be put back together in the end because there was a bunch of state actors who were trying and really that's not how you usually get things done. I'm your guest host today, Martyr Kiljoy, and with me as my regular host today is James Hi.
James Hi, Margaret, thank you for having me on a podcast that I worke for.
I'm glad to have you on your podcast. So this episode is about what I learned about prepping by going down to western North Carolina in the immediate wake of the flooding caused by two storms, one of which was Hurricane Helene. And there's a few things I like an awful lot. One of them is prepping. Another one of them is Asheville, North Carolina, where I lived longer than I have lived anywhere else in my adult life, which isn't actually saying that much because I lived there for about six.
Years, but it's a decent amount of time, you know, A place. Yeah.
Before that, I was fully vagabondie. This is a story about prepping in Nashville, North Carolina, and so I thought i'd bring on another it could happen here prepper James.
Yeah, it's me someone who has been to Ashville, North Carolina.
But oh yeah, still lives in San Diego.
Yeah.
Nice, nice pace to go outside normally.
Okay, but have you ever heard that song though, like I've been everywhere man song, I've been everywhere.
Yeah.
I don't think I'm allowed to sing things on this podcast. Yeah, I've started liking that song. Is like, yeah, I've been everywhere. That man starts listening where he's been, and I'm like, no, I haven't been. I ain't been shit. I have never been anywhere in my life.
I've not made it. Yeah. Yeah.
It is one of the nice things about my job that people I get to go places and meet people.
Yeah, yeah, that is fun.
So, as I assume listeners are aware, about two weeks ago, Hurricane Helene dumped an enormous quantity of water onto the mountains of western North Carolina, which would have been bad no matter what, but another unnamed storm had already been dropping unconscious able unconscious not good amounts of water on the area for a day or so. The two storms together caused the worst natural disaster and recorded history for
the region. The only thing that came close was the nineteen sixteen flood, which was again like a regular storm, and then I think a coastal tropical storm hitting at the same time. So the way to have everything fail is to have two storms at once. In case anyone's
curious how to have bad things happen, doe two storms. Anyway, I drove down in a vanful of supplies because my friends were the err and they needed the supplies more than my basement did, and because I had enough cash on hand to hit up a bunch of stores to get more stuff to bring to them too. I also drove down there as a journalist, figuring i'd talk to
people about mutual aid and about preparedness. This week on my own podcast, Cool People Did Cool Stuff, I talk about my experiences there, what I saw, with an emphasis on the mutual aid side, on the enormous amount of grassroots informal disaster response. But this is it could happen here,
and I wanted to talk about preparedness. I want to talk about what worked and what didn't, what lessons we can draw anywhere we are listening to this from what people experienced there in Ashville, North Carolina, or at least what lessons I was able to pick up on. And we're going to talk about like stuff and specific things in a second GAD. But first, when I talk about preparedness, which I do a lot, I talk about how I'm interested in both the individual and community as two different
types of preparedness. And I had some hypotheses that these were deeply related and reliant on each other in fact, and that you do one better by doing the other better. But now that I've seen those hypotheses tested, I was right. That's that's my answer. It's in fact to approve in hypotheses. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, I don't want to run more tests, but we probably will. Yeah, because we ain't doing shit to stop being always no no, We're mostly doing things to make it worse.
Hm hm cool.
Basically, we need both individual and community preparedness, and we should stop seeing them as opposing forces. There might be no single false dichotomy that has more wrecked our imaginations than the idea that the individual and the community are two opposing forces that they must be balanced against one another instead of interwoven, Instead of allowing what's best about both things to reinforce the other. I would argue the twentieth century did us dirty? The Cold War?
Did us dirty? In the US?
I grew up presented with the idea that the USSR represented community in that side, and that meant being a cog in the machine, devoid of individuality in thrall to an authoritarian state. If I cared about the individual and individual freedom and liberty, I had to accept capitalism and competition and to see myself in a war against everyone else.
I don't know how you.
I don't want to be a cargon machine, and I also don't want to be in a war against everyone else.
Yeah, this is the This is the sort of false dichoto media were presented with. Right. It's like, I'll tell an anecdote here. When I was writing my dissertation, I would describe my politics as left libertarian, and I would describe the politics of the many different types of anarchists
and anarcosyndicalis in Spain similarly, because it accurately describes their perspective. Right, and I was forbidden from doing so, the probably fair enough objection that Americans could not comprehend the idea of libertarianism without individualism.
Yeah, which is annoying because, oh is it Rothbard? Someone consciously stole that word from us. You used to not have to say left libertarian because if you said libertarian, you meant left libertarian.
Yeah, this was the pre dates Rothbard. It is something I've written about on my Patreon. But yeah, libertarian began to be used by French anarchists to avoid censorship and persecution of anarchists for being anarchists. Yeah, and then it came to America, where, like many things in America, it was stolen from its original original creators and custodians and fucking ruined by chuds.
Yeah, which is a shame.
But yeah, there is in fact an option where you don't have to pick one or the other.
Yeah.
What is good for me as an individual is to be able to express the full range of my possibilities, right, And I'm more able to do that in a supportive community than like alone in the woods somewhere, cut off from everyone else, chasing rabbits with a hatchet and dying of easily preventable infections, like it's the.
American dream, Margaret, what are you talking about?
I used to joke that I was going to start a YouTube channel called how to Survive Alone in the woods of the hatchet eating squirrels that you kill with the aforementioned hatchet.
But unfortunately you died of tetanus before.
Yeah, exactly. The existence of society makes me more free. It makes me more capable of doing what I want to do. I really like I don't remember which old theorists came up with it, but I really like the idea of understanding freedom as a relationship between people, not a like static state. It is something that we offer each other and that we work to maximize with each other.
On the other side of things, what's good for communities is not to be rigidly top down controlled, but instead to allow people free expression, develop new ideas, try new things, to have communities grow organically. We are not actually factory cogs. We do better as a garden. And that's been my working theory. With preparedness, it's been similar. On one side, are these deals, these goods and services, the ads that interrupt things?
Magnificent?
Thank you, thank you. I live to do this. Here's
the ads, and we're back on one side. I saw preppers as being kind of a primarily an individualistic bunch of folks obsessed with what I've called the bunker mentality, the hole up and guns and shoot anyone who comes to close mentality that I've got mind fuck you mentality you've ever seen on like older prepper Reddit and stuff like that, where people like kind of get sad when they realize they're all planning to shoot each other, all their friends after the apocalypse.
Yeah that like, anyone who's able to has more than two weeks of food stored, it's inherently going to kill anyone else.
Yeah, it's more than two. Yeah. It's great when they all come around to educasionally.
Yeah, and they're like, wait, but I like this community I've built.
Yeah, they're also the only friends because they've alienated everyone else with their weird obsessions.
Yeah, fall out.
This is not a good mentality to have. I would argue it's behind a lot of what's happening on the border right now. Actually, I think that the Right waying actually does believe in climate change and is not willing to just say it publicly because it doesn't play to their base. But they they're like, we've got ours, fuck you, and want to close down the borders as best as they can in the global North.
Yeah, and we'll move the borders as far from your eyesight as possible. That's what I saw in Panama. I was, oh, yeah, listeners will know I was in the daddy and gap. But like Panama without funding you and me, Margaret Home, we pay our taxes, We pay for families to be split out. Hell yeah, deportations to happen, fences to be built in Panama because that makes it further from our site and from our mind. Right.
That's what liberty means. Yep.
Liberty is the ability to interfere in other countries' families.
Yep, domestic politics in other countries by fire hose of money.
I mean, it's funny because it's the same like justification. Every now and then you meet the people who genuinely think Russia is like allowed to invade Ukraine because border security because Ukraine's too close to it.
You're like, amazing, what it? Yeah, Ukraine bad, therefore fuck it? Why not?
Like it's yeah, yeah, like the Monroe doctrine, but for Russia, like this is my hemisphere.
Don't fuck with me.
Yeah, they burn down your neighbor's house because you're just like, Nah, you're living too close to me.
Don't like it.
Yeah, senior yard sign. They've got one of those in this house signs. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, Yeah, which they've all taken down now because it's no human beings legal and they.
No longer believe that. Yeah.
Cool.
Well, I would argue this is a fundamentally right wing individualistic mentality, whether it's coming from ostensibly leftis tankies or ostensibly center left Democrats, or they admit their right wing individualistic preppers. Yeah, And this was dominant in prepping circles before Round twenty twenty, when an awful lot more people
with different ideas came into the space. But the older school preppers focused on individual preparedness or family level household level preparedness, and they have an awful lot of really good ideas around some of these things, around storing food and water, around maintaining communications, around all sorts of things to help the individual or family during crisis to be prepared.
Yeah.
On the other end of things, there are mutual aid groups and other community organizations that do community preparedness. They build organizational communication and logistical networks, and they're fantastic and their overall what's been left out of preparedness conversations. But until more recently, I haven't seen as many of those places. The people who are doing those things also concern themselves
with individual preparedness, you know. Yeah, I've been operating under the assumption for years that the two can work really well in tandem with each other. If you are self sufficient, you're in a better place to help others. That was my hypothesis. This is really just the Margaret was Right episode of it could happen the victory lap Yeah, oh wait, it's a victory wrap around bodies.
I don't like it anymore.
Well, it's people who did do these things getting to have not thrived but did not died. I don't know how to say this.
It's a tricky subject getting credit for being right and putting in the work.
Yeah, and a lot of people were and a lot of people had done that, and it showed really well in the disaster response in Ashville, because when I went down to Ashville, one of the things that I asked most of the people I talked to is what they prepared, what they wish they'd prepared, and what lessons they were taking.
Away from all of this about preparedness.
And one of my friends is old Punk, and he was one of the first old he's like my age whatever, it might be a few years older than me.
I don't know. Margaret crushed by moment of reflection live on Podcasts.
Yeah, I'm jealous because I don't have enough gray hair.
They keep falling out of my head.
But one of my friends who does have very nice gray hair, Old Punk, is one of the first people who was out on the street cooking food to give away. He told me that he was able to do that because he knew he was fine by and large during this particular crisis. Every crisis is going to be real different if your house wasn't in the actual floodplain, and since it was in the mountains, that was not most houses.
Instead it was like most roads and some houses. You know, Yeah, the big problems you were dealing with was lack of food, lack of water, lack of cell service. And he had plenty of water and food stored. And at one point someone had even kind of come up to him been like, are you no, You're fine, aren't you?
And he was like, yeah, no, I'm fine. So just being like getting off prepared vibes, I guess yeah. No. I was real proud.
Like once I was doing this community defense thing and we were like, oh, we need a flashlight. Does anyone hey Margaret, you have a flashlight, right, And I was like, yeah, with any.
Want Yeah, being the flashlight person, Yeah, it's a huge win in the moment you get to deploy that flashlight you've been toting around.
Yeah.
Well, And that's actually part of my like core argument that I make in the other podcasts I recorded today that's gonna come out some sign around now, is that like people want to help people. Oh yeah, like the average pickup truck guy. We even kind of see. I mean, I'm a pickup truck girl, but like we see the average pickup truck guy is the like, ah, good out of my way, limberal, guns, dogs, whatever, you know.
And I like pickup trucks and guns and dogs and as I don't really like.
But one of the main things you want to make a man with a pickup truck happy. Get your car stuck in a ditch.
Oh yeah.
There are whole Facebook groups where people love to pull other people out of stupid situations they've got themselves into off road.
Yeah it is fun for them.
Yeah, like because then the fact that you've been doing this thing had a purpose. I carry a flashlight and a knife every single moment in my life, So when someone needs a flashlight or a knife, I'm like, oh, yeah, I am fucking the the reincarnation of the Goddess.
Like, no one is better than me. Yeah, you're the all powerful light carrier.
Yeah, exactly, exactly when all other lights go out for me, it's the moment I get to deploy. Like obviously this has been an audio podcast, but I have a leavenman that I like to carry around. Yeah, like where someone needs pliers or wire cutting, you have that capability.
Yeah, you're just like Chad. You're a superhero. You're a mutant, you know, Like yeah, I say, yeah, this friend of mine had plenty of water and food stored, and you can usually go a couple of days without communication if you don't have any immediate crisis, right.
Ye.
He told me that what most people did or needed to do was first they needed to make sure to meet their own needs, you know, like the whole affix your own oxygen mask before helping your seat mate. So it was the people who were the most resilient, the most prepared, who were out driving around in their trucks or you know, cars whatever, giving away food, or were
working to coordinate meetings most immediately. And the other part of it was that people who had community preparedness skills were also among the first people getting stuff done on the ground because mutual aid it's organic, and it's chaotic and it's spontaneous, right, but it is organized. It is
a developed skill about how to organically organize. The more people who are experienced with chaotic, decentralized organizing, the better a community was able to weather the immediate aftermath of the storm because people knew how to set up distribution hubs and connect people and so basically like a solid church or an anarchist group, and your rural town was
in a much better spot. Yeah, that makes sense, And this is one of the main places in the country where you're going to find entire anarchist groups in random rural small towns. Having been one of those people in one of those small towns, I keep saying I lived in Ashville, I lived in Sandy Mush. Where Sandy Mush is. I don't bother saying it because no one knows where it is. No hell of a name though I know it's almost British and its weirdness.
I was like too.
Fem for baseball caps back then, and all my landmates were the camera baseball caps from the local store that says Sandy.
Mush, you know.
And I'm really sad that I didn't get one, especially now because now I have one and I'm wearing it out that has the name of the town I live in. But I can't wear it anywhere because it doses me.
Ah yeah, see that's the fool.
Yeah, if you had a Sandy Mush one, you'd be Yeah, someone send Margaret at baseball.
Cap yeah from Sandy Mush, Yeah with Camma.
Yeah.
Oh, I probably won't wear it otherwise I'll be real because I still got to be fem and somehow that is how things work in my subculture. So you need individual preparedness so that you're free enough to help people, and you need community preparedness so you know what to do. And then you also have all of these people with really specialized skills and tools, and these are the kinds of things that I can't say that every prepper needs
to go out and do. But like ATVs have been crucial to disaster relief efforts, that doesn't mean that everyone should run out and buy an ATV to keep around in the case of flooding. This note for me because I don't quite live on enough land to justify an ATV and I really want one. But yeah, it's get one of those little ones. Yeah, there's little children once. I know, I'm just a drive around a circle. I'd like mostly live in the woods, and so there's like
just not a lot of ATVs. Are great when you got like twelve acres with horses on them, you know.
Yeah you're going out. You can get a sheep dog on the back. Very practical for that kind of thing. Yeah, rifle case, but.
That said A dirt bike friend of mine, who was a quite prepared person, immediately went out and spent days going into hard to reach areas to connect with people and bring them supplies. Yeah, so maybe I can just.
Fight a dirt bike.
Yeah, yeah, dirt bike, said, E bike, E dirt bike. Then you can run off solar power, don't need gas, store it sideways.
Okay, we're gonna talk about electronics versus gas later in the episode.
I got a whole part got it?
Yea?
Yeah, yeah, okay, good.
But first, what we really need for the apocalypse is whatever comes next in the ads. That is what will save you in the apocalypse. If it's a podcast, yeap that is the podcast that will give you the secret to surviving the apocalypse.
Yea.
Hopefully it's the Reagan gold coins, which will become the currency as soon as the state collapses.
I bet it's gambling and if you go gamble, you're guaranteed to win.
That's how I think we legally cannot say that.
Oh well then, yeah, yeah, I wonder if we can get away with saying don't gamble it's a bad idea.
Yeah no, I think we actually can't say that. Okay, great, don't gamble it's a bad idea.
Yeah.
Er Back, the overall lesson was that some stuff is and was useful for everyone to have. We're going to talk about some of that stuff. Well, other certain specialized tools and skill sets only made sense for some people to have. Not everyone needs to know how to repair a chainsaw or even own a chainsaw, but it sure proved to be a handy skill in this particular crisis is easily an image of the climate crisis future. I think you and Robert got into that in the episode you did about this.
Yeah, we spoke a little bit about how like this is a vision it was coming for a lot of us.
Yeah, I'm basically doing a like me too. I couldn't be on the call because I was busy. That's what this episode is. No, we, Robert and I have not been there. My house flooded when I was younger, but yeah, we were not there this time. Asheville is not okay. It is a somewhat remote part of the country in terms of its raw geography. Yeah, you're not getting into that city without taking steep, curving freeways or flying into
a regional airport. But culturally, and because of the level of infrastructure the United States provides, it is not an isolated city. It is a very much a modern and hip city with about I think one hundred thousand people had I think about eighty thousand when I left a couple of years ago, but it's been growing, Yeah, partly because lots of Silicon Valley folks moved there to work remote, much to the sorrow of locals like everywhere else as people moved, I know, And then I'm also like, I
work remote and lived. I actually can't tell the stones here.
Yeah, I have lived here since I didn't work or remote.
Yeah, fair enough. I'll take my stern throwing opportunity.
Asheville is a very climate stable area. All of Appalachia is, and it's nowhere near the coast. There's not a lot of earthquakes. There are far fewer forest fires than there are out west. There were some forest fires that were there one of the years that I lived there, but you know, they didn't. It didn't impact my life the
way it impacts my friends' lives that live out west. Yeah, there are industrial accidents and there's occasional flooding, but no one had any reason to expect anything like this, except that all of us have every reason to expect something like this. Areas hit more regularly by climate disasters have protocols in place for those sorts of things. People in California pay attention to the fires during that fire season. People on the Gulf Coast track the hurricanes. And not
that these disasters aren't disastrous, but they're expected. They're part of living where you live Ashville. What happened there could be any of us at any time, So what was useful for them for prepping seems like it might be really useful for all of us. And most of that, most of what was useful is the basics. People I talked to were either real happy that they stored water or real sad that they hadn't stored water. With the
storm coming, people filled up their bath tubs. One friend cut the down spouts on his house to direct them into trash cans, and now a week later, they still have water.
To flush the toilet. Yeah.
And you know, if you're like super ahead of it, you've got your little rain collectors all the time, right, but yeah, worst case scenario caught your down spout and throw a trash can there, yep, or anything else that's food safe. Yeah, well in this case is mostly water flushing.
Oh yeah, yeah.
But it's funny just as you mentioned this, Like I was in the village I stayed in last week, didn't have rang water electricity, and that's exactly what they did. They had a person I stayed I've had like a normal toilet, but they don't have plumber in water, so they just collect rainwater and use that every time they want to flush it.
Yeah, every time I've lived off grid and don't have a busy access running water instead of bucket flushing, I'm shit in a bucket with sawdust.
Yeah yeah, they I think, like there's a hole underneath. I'm interesting, but you have to flush it to get it in. I think this was like a status upgrade to have the physical toilet.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that actually makes a lot of sense.
Yeah.
Some of the first water distribution centers that came online after the storm in Ashville didn't have water containers, and this is actually still the case as of recording, so people had to bring their own. One friend only had those big clear water drugs, the kind that you put into like a water cooler and like get refilled at the grocery store, you know. Yeah, and these don't have good caps and you can't really bicycle with them while they're full.
I've bicycled with one when it was full. But yeah, okay, it's not a fun, not a fun. This is where you need a long tail cargo bike, the ultimate prep a vehicle.
Fair enough, I would argue, Jerry cans, that's my pitch instead of yeah, Yeah, you can also get Jerry Kant's or like the like big opaque water jugs for storing water. But yeah, or even bags, what are bags the like MSR drone bags. Okay, if you says before, there's a pretty rarebust, I've only seen little ones that it makes sense of those big ones too. Yeah, big ones expedition stuff.
I would argue that if you're thinking about getting the stuff, opaque water containers with good lids are more useful than the blue clear ones. But if you have access to the blue clear ones and that's what you got, go get them.
Yea.
And many people lacked any containers at all, so the water distribution site.
Was not as directly useful as it could have otherwise been. That's tough.
One friend during the storm pulled out all the recycling and filled every jug with water and put it in the fridge, which did two things. One it gave you slightly orange tasting water to drink for a while, and two it added thermal mass to keep the fridge cool longer. And of course, you know story, more water always good.
Yeah.
For the most part, most water people at access to had a boil advisory on it before it went out completely. Oh you're a water filter expert. I want to talk to you about this.
I was about to fucking dive into that shit. I so I was ready to go. Okay, hold on, all right.
Yeah, floodwater itself is generally an awe, or at least it is in this case too toxic to use a simple filter or boil at home. Things like pesticides are incredibly hard to get out of water. Yeah, and lightweight backpacking type filters, which overall are what I recommend for most things like sawyers and life straws. They don't really
cut it, as from what I understand. From what I understand, the two methods that can work are the like fairly slow and like intense charcoal filters, activated charcoal filters, and then in home style reverse osmosis filters, which normally I don't like, but for this it seems like they might.
Yeah, you have enough power for an hour filter. Yeah, it's a nice touch. Also, if you.
Get one, then your home appliance did if you'd have in a hard water area, which is a lot of the West, won't get fucked up by the classification so much.
Oh that makes sense. I use a water softener AM I well, similar approach, but I like reverse as mosoa seems like it has some advantages. Maybe I never liked reverse as mosos because when I first was looking into it, I lived off grid and reverse osmosis creates a lot of wastewater. Yeah, and I was just like, all of this water was hard to come by.
Fuck that.
There are some filters that have an activated charkhole element that specifically the pesticide runoff and like industrial guitaminates are something I have been really worried about in a couple of places I've been for work. You know. Actually I was somewhat concerned about that in a recent trip, the one in the one in Panama. But it's not so much pesticides. There's human waste and decaying human remains, which is pretty rough. But in the end my that was
a big concern for we went there. The MSI Guardian I think has an activated charkhole, and so does the camelback in line filter.
Oh interest kind of a small one.
Yeah that And what's really cool about that is a lot of them you can't replace because the activated charcoal is you can't backflush it in the same way that you can backflush a filter right, Camelback will sell you just the actual activated charcole element you can then replace.
I've got a few of them in a cupboard behind.
Okay, yeah, but that would be what to look for if you're but yeah, don't be just boiling it or just filtering it. And those are for like something like a soawyer. They're great for rainwater, but if you're filtering water you weren't a fast flowing clear not a turbid or a stagnant water source or an industrially bluted water source. A fast flowing clear mountain stream great, but like turbid, stagnant water with industrial pollutants not so good.
That makes sense. And so if you're listening to as an ashwell or elsewhere, I'm like, I'm trying to think of what I'm like. I'll probably I have some activated charcoal stuff, but I don't like it as much because I don't like I don't like disposable things.
I'm like, yeah, but I yeah, thinks that you can reuse are always better.
Yeah, but for certain threat models, especially if you don't have the power for reversus messus.
Yeah, and it's not that expensive. Yeah.
The MSR ones actually the that's what the US military issues to some of it's like, I guess more special people. Sometimes they pop up on the surplus market pretty cheap okay, and they have a bomber warranty. You can trash it and they'll replace it.
Oh hell yeah, I like that.
A lot of outdoors gear is like pretty like they'll stand by their product.
Yeah.
I would keep wanting trying to pitch his story. Itgaly, but yeah, Like I have an MSR quilt. This is not like an MSR sponsored episode, but I've used that shit on. It's a very small, very light but like an ultralight quill. I've used I think literally on almost every continent in the world. Well, and just through like it's down and through like my body's greasiness, my inherent oiliness gradually down, even if you take really good care of.
It, right, the downs, Yeah, packed in in there. Yeah.
I had it for probably six years. I was like, fuck it, this isn't working anymore. Let me see if they'll do me a discount of a new one, put in a warranty claim, send it back to them. Okay, here's a new one, Just just send me one.
That's cool. Yeah, yeah, no, I like that more outdoor stuff. I like people who stand by the shit they do.
Yeah, and they also fixed stuff, which is cool, Like I like that, and they will ship you the part to fix it well, which is I feel less wasteful when that happens.
Yeah.
So with food, this one's real simple. People were either glad they stockpiled food or they were sad that they had in stockpiled food.
Yeah, that's an easy one.
One friend immediately took about half a stash of freeze dried foods to distribute out to friends and strangers.
Awesome.
Most people I talked to did not have any real amount of backup power available to them. On any given street, I would pass only a few houses with generators running, which also, of course, takes gas or propane. Propane has the advantage of storing and indefinitely, it has the disadvantage of being substantially more expensive per like kill a lot hour or whatever of power.
M h yeah, probably more bulky too to store, right, like per energy unit totally.
When I was off grid, I used a dual fuel gener I actually I took it down and I no longer have the generator and gave it to some folks. But I had a gas propane generator, and I ran it off of propane because it also is like cleaner on the engines. You have to do less maintenance. Yeah, but you know, if I needed it all the time, it was a backup to my solar. If I had to run it all the time, I would have used
gas because it Yeah. Anyway, I talked with one homeowner with solar on his roof about how he hadn't sprung for the house battery because after all, power in the area never really went out.
For more than a day at a time, right.
Yeah, I personally delivered two solar generators, which just means like big ol' lithium batteries with inputs and outputs built in, And those would be my personal primary recommendation for people who want to run lights and charge phones and things.
Like that drain power outages for a while.
Yeah, while gas or propane generators more useful for keeping heavy duty appliances going like fridges.
Yeah.
I also passed out a couple different like portable or luggable solar panel setups that can charge phones or other devices. And there were some mutual aid folks going around and helping people with their solar setups, but overall, I didn't see as much of it as I expected. I expected to show up and they'll just be like outside the mutual aid stations, a big old foldable solar panel with a yeah power brick. I think fewer people had that than I. Wow, So what are you doing to go buy?
Oh?
Right?
Because money is hard to come by, that's the reason.
Yeah, you can't make them yourself, save a little bit, uh that way, but be careful with big blocks of cells and shit.
Yeah, And like I'm always trying to price out the difference between like I build my own solar setups. Yeah, but I also like just get these solar generators. Sometimes, until you're looking at like big systems, the price difference is not as dramatic as you want, you know.
Because, yeah, because you're putting in a lot of time and.
Or even like an inverter costs a fair amount of money, and so if you're building a big system, the inverter is like worth the expense, right, But if it's a little system, the little thing that has a built an inverter may be cheaper, right.
Yeah.
And like the charge controller, charge.
Controller, Yeah, I was recently building one out for leaving out for migrants. Yeah, or having in the bed of my truck, so when I run into people and need to charge their phones, they can just do that without my truck being gone.
Yeah.
Yeah, I ended up shoving a bunch of twelve fort batteries and that ammocan and hooking it up to a bunch of USB boards on the outside of the amacan and then just bringing them home at charging them make other than doing a charge controller, And.
Yeah, it's not worth it. No, that makes sense.
And honestly, like my van's off grid setup is, I have the equipment to run it off my alternator or solar panels on the roof. I just have a fuck ton of batteries in my van, so I just plug it in every couple of weeks and it's fine, you know.
Yeah, yeah, you end up doing I've tried.
A bunch of a different solar panel so I use them when i'm this company called Pale Blue that I used a decent amount. I left it with someone on a word trip because they needed it more than me. Yeah, that's also a useful, but like if you're really trying to run anything big, you need a lot more soelar panel, then you're probably gonna you know, carry around on your backpack.
That's what I think people don't quite recognize is that, like I used to have a pretty large array of twelve hundred watts, and you know, I had to go run hundreds of feet of cable to put that in a field and build like a whole structure to hold it and get it to the right angle and things like that. Yeah, and even then in the winter, I ran the generator. And this is to keep my laptop and a little tiny super efficient fridge going right and
some other stuff right. But like, solar is not space efficient. It's not going to do what you think it does because it's not gonna do what it's advertised to do. But it'll keep your cell phone alive, yeah, which is important. Or if you use a satellite communicator or something, then you can keep that charged.
Yeah.
With gas, one friend usually keeps her half full of gas, but forgot that week because you've been driving so much and started the crisis with only an eighth of a tank and was extra stuck. You need to have a gas can if you want to drive out of the city and get as much gas as possible.
Of course, you.
Can store gas in a good container for a while, but it goes bad after three to six months. You store gas that way, So you should set an alarm for yourself. This is kind of telling myself. I have like gas cans where I was like, oh, I should store some gas, and then I'm like, oh wait, how long has that one been there?
Yeah? Crap? Now what am I dealing with it? Yeah?
You have to take it to real specialized places to deal with it. Yeah, it's hard to get rid of it once you. Yeah, let it go bad. And so an empty gas can actually would have done people in Ashville a lot of good. A full gas can even better, right, But honestly, full tank of gas in your car better in a full gas can, empty gas can allow people to leave and go get gas because they were not. Civilization didn't end. Civilization ended a ninety minute radius, you know. Yeah,
so you can set an alarm for yourself. If you're going to keep full gas, you put it in your gas tank and then you go refill it again, and then you get annoyed about doing this, and then you stop doing it, and then an apocalypse happens, and then you're really annoyed that you forgot.
Don't ask me how I know.
Just if you have the money to not let your vehicle get below half full, you'll probably be fine.
You can get a long way in a tank.
Well, it's about when you have the money is an important party. But at the end of the day, it does not cost you more money to keep your gas tank at half full.
Right, No, it doesn't because you're and unless you're driving a long way to get the gas, but like you're still driving the same amount, you're just stopping off a little more.
Yeah, empty gas can ended up crucial, and people who stored them were glad, and a lot of them were donated immediately. Volunteers collected gas cans and drove the three hour round trip to fill them up with gas several times a day. You should learn the range of your vehicle. Newer cars will tell you automatically, but if not, it's
not super hard to figure out your gas mileage. You have to like look at your mileage when you fill it up and do some division and shit and find out the size of your fuel tank and your gas mileage, and you'll know whether or not you have enough gas to reach an area, especially if you're doing disaster relief. You never want to do disaster relief if you can't get out of the situation yourself, because then you're a fucking asshole, because then you are just actually another person
who needs relief. Communications, as this show covered last week, were one of the hardest hit areas of preparedness in
this crisis. There were Ham radio operators doing stuff, but a lot of my activist and anarchist friends with Bao fangs, which are these cheap Ham radios, struggled to get them to work well during the storm due to the mountains, water in the air, lack of repeaters, and frankly that Ham radios are really goddamn complicated and not everyone has fully up on exactly how it works at that moment, right Yeah, and this has put a fire under them to get better at it, but especially in the mountains,
repeaters need to be a part of a radio communications plan. People with satellite phones were some of the only people in communication at the beginning. I was curious about and did not find any information about whether or not the new iPhone satellite texting.
I wanted to ask about that.
I didn't find anyone who used it.
Okay, I found it to be less reliable than what I have is Garment in Reach. I pay for it, yeah, and it works real well. Used it in the dairy and gap. I've used it again, okay, every continent part from Antarctica.
So you would say that the iPhone doesn't replace the Garment in Reach in terms.
Of well, the iphonely works in North America, so for me my model then absolutely not, Like it didn't work in Panama, Central America, I guess. So yeah, for me, the in Reach has been faster. It's also another device that's not your cell phone. Yeah, and like sometimes you know the device that you're playing Angry Birds on and then you run out of battery or whatever. You know, Like, yeah, it's useful to have a device which is only for emergencies, which lasts for two weeks if you charged it up.
Yeah, well I leave mine off and so yeah.
Yeah yeah, I mean, if you're getting one for that purpose, I would say that, like the bigger in Reach is better. This in Reach Mini and Mini two again. I used a Mini for about eight years I think, eventually destroyed it and got it warranty place with a Mini too. The bigger one allows you to type on the device the Mini too. Sending any kind of message without a cell phone to do the input.
Is a real bastard.
But this, yeah, it's just like remember when used to do predictive texts and you do like one was ABC two.
Yeah it's like that.
Okay, Yeah, I have the in Reach too, and I've only proof of concept that I'm often driving around replaces where I could break that down the.
Middle of nowhere.
Actually I broke down yesterday about three miles from where I lose cell service in the mountains that I live in.
Oh, that could have been rough. I know.
I also broke down in an auto mechanic shop. I got real lucky with what was otherwise a real bad situation.
If you're getting it in Reach Mini, this is my soapbox. Don't trust the crappy little carabineer. It comes with by a small locking DMM makes it only locking carabiner. It's an important thing to lose it because you didn't want to spend ten bucks on a carabino.
Would be a bad day. Hey you mentioned this. I'll end up doing this because I trust you, because your users more than mine. Mine just is like clip to my hiking bag. But it hasn't.
Yeah, inherently and ling and unlocking Caribin. You want to be using a locker for something that's like an essential safety, No, that makes sense. Threadlock the little yeah it uses. I think it talks or alan threadlock that bad boy in. Okay, you're good to go.
I know that starlink doesn't work very well during storms. There's this method of internet called starlink that's owned by someone who I don't like and wouldn't like me because I'm a transperson. But starlink is not incredibly reliable during storms. I know that because I live remote and you starlink. I'm on talking on starlink right now. It does not
work great during storms. But after the storm passed and when cell service was still out, a restaurant with starlink was where many people first were able to reach their loved ones. It's cool and so that is a thing to know. It is a fairly reliable service.
Frankly, same deal in the darien Acually, that's how migrants are first able to contact their loved ones and let them know that they're safe. Yeah, it's an indigenous village where someone has a starlink.
Unless you personally piss off a particular billionaire, in which case he will personally turn it off for you.
Yeah. Great.
Everyone I talked to had a regular like AMFM weather blah blah blah radio at home, which is great. Yeah, people should have radios in their homes. Radio is the main mechanism that the city used to broadcast information about various threats, like evacuations of regents threatened by the destruction of dams or the contamination in the water. However, how you charge them is you know, I fortunately had some d batteries in my van to give to someone because oh wow, that's soul school.
Yeah.
No, yeah, some of my stuff I brought like in case someone I knew needed and some stuff I just like brought to give away. Yeah, and my like stash of batteries was just like came with me in case anyone needed, you know.
Yeah, you can get wind up weather radios. I have one.
Yeah, no, totally. That's actually I dislike most all in one gadgets for survival, but the wind up radio with the little shitty solar panel is one of the ones that I'm like, No, that's they're thirty to fifty bucks and they work. Yeah, and you don't need much power to listen to a radio, you know.
No, they are a whole pot set of road where wind up weather radios or how people get their information.
Yeah, it makes sense for travel. Most people still got around by vehicle, just with limited gas, though I saw more than the usual number of people walking or biking, pulling trailers or wagons. As a general rule, consider floodwaters to be impassable and do not attempt to drive through them. Interestingly, electric cars do better in floods than gas engines because if water gets into the air intake of a gas engine,
the engine will stall. And usually it's people with giant pickup trucks who overestimate the capabilities of their.
Vehicles who go out and do this. Yeah.
When I got my truck and I was like, I'm a prepper, I'm going to get those like or the you know, front cage things or whatever grown. Yeah, and then I looked into it and I read about it, and they just murder people.
Yeah, as someone who rides a bicycle a lot, those things do not.
Like it's already bad that pickup trucks are so gigantic, but the if you add one of those things to the front of your car, front of your truck. You're just gonna and you have to think about it. Are you more likely to need to push broken down cars during the end of the world or accidentally hit a pedestrian with your vehicle that is taller than a child. Yeah, and I would guess for most people, including me, I
am more likely to accidentally hit a pedestrian. So I ran that through my cost benefit analysis, and I do not have one of those things on my truck.
Yeah.
I could imagine a world is like low, low low on my list of priorities. Like one day I'm going to get one and I'm going to keep it in my garage, and then it's like, yeah, and the world has ended, and I'm gonna put it on my truck in case I need to push cars out of the way.
Yeah.
With the three hundred and fifty miles, I can drive my truck before it's useless. Yeah yeah, using all that gassy stored Yeah, yeah, exactly. That totally lasts a long time. Anyway. One of the problems electric vehicles with flooding that I think we're starting to see. I think these videos were form Ashville, but I'm not certain is that electric vehicles if they're underwater for long enough, especially with salt water. This is less of a North Carolina and more of
a coastal thing. Yeah, the saltwater can cause fires if it hits the battery long enough. Don't drive through floodwater, and floods in the mountains are particularly fast moving as compared to like coastal area floods where the water might be still and staying around.
Yeah.
On the other hand, fast moving floodwater goes away faster and on its own.
Yeah.
So yeah, with gravity, don't cycle through it. I've cycled through a couple of rivers once in Iceland. It just picked up the bike from underneath me, and it like not an optimal situation actually, to be swimming down a river chasing off your bicycle in Iceland.
Yeah, I don't want to do that. Yeah, avoid famously warm place Iceland.
Yeah, h only one hundred kilometers from the nearest place I could rewarm myself. It's a great day.
Roads were washed away in many places, while many many more were blocked by down trees. Improper chainsaw use is one of the leading causes of injuries and disasters. Oh, I bet Proper use of chainsaws has been absolutely essential, although there were reports of people who self rescued with handsaws. Yeah, and you know, yeah, you got time and people, and you got a handsaw, and there's a tree in your way, you can get through it. Yeah, don't be like the
guy maybe Margaret's sort didn't. There's some like homesteader on. Oh god, that's dot com who I've started war with. Yeah, because he's he's lying, he's not like, I'm sorry this guy. They don't braid their hair. Both of them have long hair and they don't braid it. I do not believe that they work outside regularly if they don't braid their hair. Yeah, your hair will get caught and shit and it'll just tangle. It is not worth it. The reason rural people long hair wear their hair and.
Braids, Yeah, it's it keeps it out the way. Yeah.
Yeah, I would say that if you have a soul, keep it, you know, keep it in a reasonable condition. The old sort has been kicking around your shed and it's rusty and blunt. Yeah, likewise, the old chainsaw, So don't be dragging that out. Yeah, you haven't used it for a while, that said.
One of the things I was expecting, but wasn't true because I brought down a generator that I didn't know if worked right, And I was like, what a jerk move, Because if I was going down to like there's like ten people and I'm like, don't worry, I'm here to rescue you. I've got a generator I don't know if works. That's not so great. Yeah, right, there's one hundred thousand
people who live in Asheville. There was the Asheville Tool Library and the Western North Carolina Repair Cafe hold up outside the Anarchist Bookstore fixing generators and chainsaws.
Oh awesome, yeah, hero shit, and it was great.
Of all the various generators people brought, I was like, I don't know if this one works, and they added gas and it worked, and so I was like I brought the best shitty generator, you know.
Yeah, but no, Sometimes things can be handy, and knowing how to fix things is always.
Useful, and there are people around with more specialized skills. You don't have to learn to do everything. For example, chainsawing is a specialized skill. I own a bunch of devices that are scary and dangerous, and some of them are guns, and one of them is a table saw, and the chainsaw is the most likely to hurt me. Yeah, for sure, And I've been to a chainsaw class. I'm very glad. Cutting a downed tree is an entirely different skill than cutting a live tree or a standing tree
because of the way that tension works. And I cannot teach you this over. Well, you might already know it, but don't listen to a podcast learn how to do it. Go to a class.
Yeah, pay someone to teach you, and get the right protective stuff. Yeah, absolutely, proper detective trousers and things.
Yeah.
Also, never cut up trees woven with power lines without ascertaining that the power line is dead. As for how to ascertain it, I asked someone who was on a chainsaw crew how to ascertain it, and he didn't know. So they just avoid those ones.
Yeah, I mean, mains power is not a joke. Yeah.
People have been reaching the more isolated communities out there by hiking, by ATV, by dirt bike, by helicopter, and most famously, by a string of pack mules.
There are a lot of ways.
That people have been getting help to people. This doesn't mean you need to go out and buy a helicopter just get a bule. You don't even need to google how much a helicopter is, Margaret, I wonder how much a helicopter is anyway. And then there was one tool and tool set that a lot of my friends have that as of yet, has had more or less no use in responding to this crisis, and that is guns. I think it might be This is interesting for a few reasons. One is that North Carolina is a pretty
gun friendly state. It's also a pretty culture war ass state. Yeah, where I live in West Virginia, people don't I mean, yeah, you see the punisher skull every now and then or whatever, but like overall, people are like, I don't know, We're all just trying to live, you know. Yeah, in western North Carolina you have intense tensions between strong pockets of blue and red right and a lot of people on both sides that are armed. I have a North Carolina
concealed carry permit myself. I'm not anti gun, but it was not what was wanted or needed. Yeah, if food stays scarce long enough down there, I would expect some people might be doing some out of season survival hunting. But I haven't even heard rumors of that.
Yet.
Yeah, there have been occasional rumors of robberies and the occasional rumors of Nazi activity in the areas, and I believe.
Both have happened.
Yeah, but there's been nothing widespread, and so far there hasn't even been a need for community defense organizations. By and large, the culture war is on pause, and I'm grateful. I like getting along with people.
Yeah, no, it's much more fun they're shooting at them. Yeah.
Yeah, like talk about shared interests like guns.
Yeah, yeah, I've had some sitive discussion to people who don't pause. Yeah, probably aligned with me because we both enjoy old guns.
And this is not to say the firearms are not a useful skill set for different threat models within the apocalypse, but it hasn't proved particularly useful so far in this particular crisis.
And I think.
Overall, I would put this at an overrated skill and an overrated tool.
Yeah, and definitely an overage way to spend a shit ton of money. Oh my god. Yeah, No.
One magazine of bullets is a movie that you could go see at the theater.
Yeah, yeah, like a dinner.
And I'm saying this, Yeah, I'm looking at like, what's that one, two, three, four, like maybe twelve ammunition cans full of ammunition. Mainly I buy that I like to go shoot clay pigeons and then targets and stuff, and I buy and it's cheap.
But also, if you have a gun, you should know how to use it, otherwise you're dangerous.
Yeah, yeah, Like, don't be buying a gun and then loading it and storing it and not knowing how to use it.
Then your liability.
Yeah, Like I also have a bunch of lentils, and like, just in terms of preparedness by the lentils.
First, totally more useful, way more useful in this circumstance. And this circumstance is more likely than most. And one thing, almost everyone I talked to was happy about. No one was sad about. Just this came up. Everyone was happy that they had extra to share. A random woman who showed up to get water at the Anarchist bookstore saw what was happening and turned and told me, like, oh, I have a chainsaw. I don't really you should I bring it here? And the answer is yes. And everyone
is happy when we give things to each other. That's the thesis of the other podcast episode I did this week is that when you give stuff to someone, it's good for both of you.
You just literally are both happier.
Yeah, without it doubt And like I remember when my house faded. I think I was seventeen eighteen something like that. My little sister and I were at home, and I remember at first being like, oh no, back in the daily you know, we had a TV that was read to flat. It's probably six inches thick still, you know, but we thought it was shit. And then being like, oh no, this TV that was so cool, it's being destroyed. And then immediately being like, my neighbors were in their
eighties and fuck the TV. Yeah, Like, and we got our neighbors and there was one house in our village that was on the hill. Everyone in our village went to the house on the hill. We had a great time. Yeah, Like we hung out and everyone was so much happier not having to go through that shit alone. Yeah, and they would have been sitting in the house watching all their stuff wash you we Yeah, we stayed there for a couple of days and then we went home and it was fine.
Well that's what I got.
I thought it was going to be thirty minutes and then I forgot I was going to talk about gear with my friend James where we both separately off Mike often do this.
For hours of the time.
Yeah, And so go out and get yourself three days to three weeks worth of food and water, slowly build it up. Go out and talk to your neighbors. Figureut who they are and is it going to be okay? The main reason's going to be okay is we all die eventually anyway, But like.
That's gonna be okay. Yeah, We're gonna take care of each other as best we can. Yeah, that's what we do. Anything you want to plug, I guess this is your podcast.
Yeah, I mean participant in mutual aid anyway, because then you have the structures to help yourself and know other.
People when you need them.
Yes, Like if things went shit here tomorrow, I could communicate with my board of friends because we use ham radios, and we could help one another because we already engage in the helping of people, and we organize horizontally because it is better and that way, it doesn't matter if the person who is quote unquote in charge isn't here.
Because no one's in charge. Yep, totally, So do anarchism.
If you want to support Asheville and the relief efforts there and the surrounding areas financially, there's a million different small organizations that could absolutely ease your help. But the two that I think we've been shouting out a lot on the show, and I can personally vouch for it very strongly is Appalachian Medical Solidarity and Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. And both of those are volunteer organizations. Every day, all the little money, all the money you send, is going
to buy people's stuff. And if you are within a day's drive of western North Carolina, there might be a hub collecting things. Don't bring them your old sweaters, bring them stuff that people want. You could ask them and they'll tell you, yeah, and that's what I got. That's what I got to plug. I will talk to you all some other times on It could Happen Here.
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