Zombie Book Club
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Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse: Lessons from Baby Animals | Zombie Book Club #12
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What can we learn from baby animals to survive the zombie apocalypse? In this fascinating conversation, we uncover the extraordinary survival skills of various animals like octopuses, orangutans, beavers, and elephants, and discuss how we can apply their creativity, adaptability, and resilience to enhance our own chances of survival. Join us as we share life updates, our excitement for the growth of our Zombie Book Club, and our four-part strategy series to help our friend Eric build his interior design business.
From the mesmerizing intelligence and camouflage capabilities of octopuses to the tree-climbing and foraging skills of orangutans, we explore numerous ways to improve our survival techniques. Discover the incredible engineering feats of beavers and how their dam-building expertise can help us withstand a zombie-infested world. We also touch on the importance of cute animals in our lives and how they can serve as a coping strategy in dark times, as well as the effects of climate change on the environment.
In the final segment of our captivating discussion, we delve into the survival tips we can learn from the animal kingdom, such as the food storage strategies of squirrels and the adaptive camouflage of Chameleons. We also discuss the importance of community and kindness, as demonstrated by the loving behavior of elephants, and how winter tires can be repurposed as bulletproof clothing. So tune in to this engaging episode and become a better survivor by taking cues from the incredible baby animals around us!
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Welcome to the Zombie Book Club, the only book club where sometimes the book is a fluffy, cute little baby animal that knows more about surviving the zombie apocalypse than any of us could ever hope to know. Hi, i'm Dan, i'm a writer and when I'm not being slow roasted inside of a dump truck filled with hot asphalt, i'm writing a book that's based on the zombie apocalypse. Please buy it so I can end the cycle of abuse that capitalism perpetuates, or, i guess, just change the way in which capitalism inflicts its abuse, i suppose.
Speaker 2I was going to say you want people to participate in capitalism by buying your books but you are not participating in capitalism. I'm a slave to the system.
Speaker 1Buy my shit.
Speaker 2Aren't we all? And I'm Leah, and one of my favorite life coping strategies is scrolling through very cute baby animal videos on Instagram, often ones that Dan sends me, so I'm very excited for this episode. We're going to talk about the baby animals.
Speaker 1Yeah, we're going to talk about how the baby animals, how animals have these really great survival skills that we can learn from to become better survivors of the zombie apocalypse Things that they just do, they just do in normal life. that it's like, wow, we have to learn how to do that because we're like the shittiest animals on the planet.
Speaker 2I'm so glad This is like you know. It's really important to have your values be aligned to the person you marry. I'm very glad that you also think that humans are the shittiest animal, i mean pick an animal and wear shittier than that animal Pretty much. I mean, maybe there's a few that are shittier. I don't think I want to be a naked mole rat. I mean, we kind of are naked mole rats Well at least we're ones with like somewhat big brains, problem solving brains, And we have better eyesight?
Speaker 1Yeah, we have slightly better eyesight, yeah. So to start things off, just a quick note our listeners doubled in the last month, wild. We have no idea how. I guess it's something we're doing. We did it. We did something, right, i guess. So, hi, i knew zombie book club members. Welcome to the club, hello.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's a call to action. Don't do that I would be held responsible.
Speaker 2Only toddlers and zombies can get away with biting other people, that's how it starts Toddlers. Yeah.
Speaker 1The first patient zero is a toddler, because if people are like it's just a kid, let him bite you. So yeah, let us know how you found us. The best way to do that is through Instagram right now, maybe other ways, and that's what our link tree is for. We have all of our links in our link tree Life update Leah.
Speaker 2Yeah, what's been going on with you? I have no idea.
Speaker 1Well, life can be used to be a soul crushing grind. Yeah, i'm doing my summer job. I talk about this like every episode now It's all encompassing, but I actually don't drive a dump truck. Like I said in my intro, i drive a flow boy. It's a tractor, trailer, dump truck that has a little conveyor belt in the bottom And you just turn on the conveyor belt and it rolls the asphalt out of the back. It's I mean, it's cool. I like it in theory. I would just wish I only had to do it eight hours a day instead of 12 to 14 hours.
Speaker 2Yeah, and also get diesel covered all over you, and air conditioning. Have your whole body vibrating by the end of the day because your truck's a piece of shit, and also your hearing, which will eventually probably you'll be deaf after this job. Yeah, probably.
Speaker 1Even wearing ear protection. I come home and Leah's like so how was your day? I'm like what Yeah?
Speaker 2it's not great, but that's why we're trying to change things, dan, and I'm really excited about that. We've been. We're actually today is our last day of a four part strategy series I've been doing with Dan on his mushroom business And our friend Eric, who we gave, who is the person who coined Dan, dan of a good cock. I'm going to keep saying that.
Speaker 1In our business strategy session.
Speaker 2Yes, as her drag name. Anyhow, we've been doing these because Eric is starting a interior design business. Actually, if you're looking for some pro bono interior design support, Eric is open to doing that right now to build his portfolio. So you can find him at Eric Lloyd Designs on Instagram. But anyhow, we've been doing these strategy sessions because that's what I do for a living. Y'all part of what I do is help people build strategies and implement them. So how are you feeling about your business, Dan, because of those strategy sessions?
Speaker 1Oh, you know what The strategy sessions are? a roller coaster of emotions, because it starts off on a high point where you're like what are your wildest dreams and ambitions? And in some cases that's a little bit upsetting, because that you realize that your dreams and ambitions aren't as grand as they could be.
Speaker 2Yeah, yours were definitely like the beat down version of you.
Speaker 1Yeah, i'm like I don't want to drive a truck anymore. I want to make enough money to survive, and that's about it. But yeah, then you go into like here's all the reasons why you can't do it, but then let's talk about reasons why those obstacles aren't a problem anymore or how to deal with that. So that's where we're at And this is something that you've, that you're kind of like dipping your toes into, like doing it as like a side thing with us, right?
Speaker 2Yeah, like I get paid to do strategy work every day through my my day JOB. That gives me nice benefits and stuff, but I really like working with people doing individual stuff like this. So yeah, eventually I'd like to have my own consulting business.
Speaker 1Yeah, i mean, maybe people listening one day are are themselves being like I want to work for myself and pay twice as much taxes and also never have any days off ever again and not make very much money. How do I go about doing?
Speaker 2that. I feel like I talked to Leah from the zombie book club.
Speaker 1Yeah, so in lighter news, moving on your homeland's on fire.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's been really great watching my friends and family be in positions where they can't breathe the air when they're outside and they're not at all prepared because they don't have air purifying systems like they do out in West, apparently like there's been wildfires at West and Canada for a long time, but nothing like what you hear about in California in terms of it like being chronically happening, although I think it was last year Edmonton had the worst air quality in the in the world from a fire And right now I'm not going to remember the name of the First Nation. I can probably put it in the show notes, but they've been completely evacuated. They can't be there right at this moment because it's so bad. My sister's family had to leave their area and not have their kids in school for a week because the fire was five kilometers away, and all I hear about in American news is people complaining about the smoke and like literally no mention of I don't know the people who are literally on the front lines of these fires in Canada.
Speaker 1Like I can barely see the city skyline anymore. This is inconvenient to me.
Coping With Cute Animals and Climate
Speaker 2Well, more than that. I mean, new York City was completely like animals are dying, i'm sure, and they're they're predicting that it's actually going to come back. So it's been okay for a couple of days in New York City, but basically the Canadian scientists are saying that this summer is going to be probably well, already actually already is the worst summer for wildfires and recorded history in Canada, but that it's probably going to keep getting worse all summer. So climate change Maybe zombies are an interesting metaphor for climate change, because suddenly our earth is very inhospitable to humans with zombies.
Speaker 1Yeah, we're going to have to develop some survival skills.
Speaker 2Yeah, i mean, i don't know. Climate change is not a good thing. Their entire society is based on a stable climate, which you've only had for about 12,000 years. Folks, i don't know if you know that we've been around for 200,000 years as a species, ish, and 12,000 years our climate has been stable enough to predict the seasons, to grow things. So this is not good.
Speaker 1Yeah, that sounds bad when you put it like that. You know I'm glad that the East Coast is taking steps to like really up their game when it comes to wildfires and poor air quality. Like you know, the West Coast has been doing it really well for a while And like I feel like now we're like let's set some fires, let's burn a train, let's do that, and we're really like we're getting ourselves on the map really. The air quality index map is what I'm talking about map.
Speaker 2Yeah, I read a really interesting article about how, like you know, in North America, unless you've been somewhere where these wildfires are frequent, most of the bad air quality that exists is sort of elsewhere, in all the places that that make our shit for us. So this is like for New York City to experience. That is terrible. But also, if you think about all the things that people buy from New York City that are getting shipped over from China, from places where their air quality is like this all the time, Yeah, it just shows you that, like, eventually, even though right now I think a lot of climate change is invisible to a lot of North Americans, it's coming for us and other people have been suffering for a long time. So that's my downer life update for us all.
Speaker 1You know this is something I talked about quite a bit because you know, as in getting into the mushroom growing business, especially for mushroom health supplement type stuff like Cordyceps Cordyceps is this really valuable mushroom.
Speaker 1When I first became interested in it, a pound of Cordyceps mushroom would range anywhere from 600 to $1,200, which is one of the most valuable mushrooms on the market, one of truffles are higher And also there's a different, different strain of Cordyceps that can only be harvested wild, which is like $22,000 per pound. Just because you have to live in Tibet and harvest them from the ground after being grown out of a caterpillar, i digress, i digress. So there's a lot of mushroom farms in China and you know, when I'm telling people that I'm willing to sell a pound of Cordyceps for as low as $200 a pound, you know they'll point to like an online sale that says, well, this is $65 a pound. And then you look at it and that's because it came from China, and that's you know, it's not like where is this going And how does this connect to climate change?
Speaker 1Well, it's not necessarily, like on paper, it doesn't sound like a huge problem. Mushrooms are mushrooms, but one thing that mushrooms do is they breathe air, so mushrooms become an air filter basically. So when the air conditions are so bad in China that, like they're under the equivalent of a wildfire all the time, they're just those mushrooms are just absorbing all that, all that toxic particles and smoke, and then you're eating that, which is why it's $65 a pound instead of $1,200 a pound.
Speaker 2Love that for us, love, love, climate change for all living creatures. It's really just not a great thing. But you know what is great, dan? I don't Cute baby animals.
Speaker 1Oh yeah.
Speaker 2Are my main coping strategy in this dark, dark world. It's to look at cute animals. Do we have a scoring system planned or are we just going to blurt these out And I think what I wanted to do is like we each take turns And then at the end we can decide which one do we think would like most be like the best zombie survival Okay.
Speaker 1You decide together, and that's to be a competition. Would you like to go first, or should I?
Speaker 2I'll go first, why not? Okay, i think you've heard me talk about this one before, so it won't be a surprise to you, dan, but I really love octopuses And. I'm going to call them octopuses, the whole time.
Speaker 1Yes, I know that's not what they're called Or anything crazy like that.
Speaker 2I know, that's not totally what they're called. I also say things like skizzers instead of scissors. All right, y'all, this is just who I am. So octopuses, just a couple of like basic facts about them. If you don't know a lot about octopus, one sad fact they are declining in numbers because they're getting overfished. So please stop eating octopus. If you are eating it, just don't do that. And they can be anywhere from half an inch to 30 feet in length. They're like fucking wildly varied in the different species and all the way up to 600 fucking pounds. I had a nightmare once where an octopus came up onto the shore of a beach and pulled me underwater and tried to eat me.
Speaker 2I've had a dream like that too. It was a good time, and they are carnivorous. That is what they eat.
Speaker 1Oh, also that show that you really liked had an octopus in it. The the OA.
Speaker 2Yes, it did. Oh my God, it had a genius octopus that was captive, yeah.
Speaker 1And it could. It was telepathic.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, that was such a good show At least with the OA.
Survival Lessons From Nature
Speaker 1I got canceled. That was telepathic, not with anybody else.
Speaker 2Well, they are brilliant. So they have brains, not only in their head but in every single one of their eight limbs has its own brain that can operate independently. But the head brain can literally override the arm brain. But they have a short lifespan one to five years not very long But each arm is capable of tasting, touching and completely doing whatever it wants. I know it's a good time.
Speaker 1Yeah, let's taste eight different things at once.
Speaker 2I would love like I think it was called like my best friend, the octopus.
Speaker 1My teacher, the octopus.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's on Netflix. highly recommend Documentary about a guy who?
Speaker 1who dives and documents this, the goings on of one very specific octopus for like six months?
Speaker 2Yeah, it's great, yeah, it's, and very, very sweet. So I have, i think I have three. I have three survival tips that I gleaned from octopus, because they're really fucking smart. One is be creative and adaptable and have many different strategies for survival, like you can't just rely on one, like I'm going to do this. One thing You have to have, like plant A, b, c and D, because that's what octopuses do They can camouflage themselves by quickly changing their skin color.
Speaker 1They can make colorful displays on the startle predators. Yeah, In the movie that we just mentioned, my teacher, the octopus or I'm going to have to look that up because I can't remember what it's called The octopus uses its suction cups to grab like rocks and shells from around it and pulls it up over it. So it just looked like a garbage pile.
Speaker 2Yeah, they also use tools. Yeah, and they also do things like they squeeze into smallest crevices to escape. They can propel themselves really quickly. So you need to have, like, don't just rely on you. know and everybody say like to somebody who has a hammer, everything is a nail. You need to think about, like, if you're really serious about survival, what are your, what are your multiple options for how you're going to do that? And, like, think strategically about different situations you could get into.
Speaker 1Yeah, you can cover yourself in garbage.
Speaker 2Yeah, you could also. I mean, like, the camouflage thing is interesting because you could also like I think you know the whispers didn't have it wrong in the walking dead looking like a zombie, acting like a zombie, is one smart way to do it. It shouldn't be the only option, which is the point of the octopussy, but it's one which actually is my, my second tip, which is to learn and mimic nature around you to survive. So octopuses can mimic other animals. they can resemble plants, algae, rocks. you cannot know what they are, and I think that that's actually a really good lesson. Generally, there's this thing called biomimicry. Have you heard of that, dan?
Speaker 1No, but I can imagine what that means.
Speaker 2Yeah, just look like looking at how nature works, like and then replicating it for human use, and I think that that's a really smart lesson. like, whatever your environment is in the moment, which could be changing in a zombie apocalypse, is like think about how you can learn from the creatures around you to survive. Like, what are they doing? to survive, yeah, and then last and then last but not least, be sneaky. You got to be sneaky in the zombie apocalypse to survive right. Yeah, octopuses.
Speaker 2Yes, so there's this one story about. There is a research lab and all the fish kept going missing from one of the research lab tanks. So they set up a video camera and the octopus was getting out of its tank, going to the other tank, opening it, eating the fish, closing the lid, going back to its own tank and hiding the evidence.
Speaker 1And hiding evidence. Yes, that's incredible. Yes.
Speaker 2So figure out like how, if you're going to steal something from somebody else, for example, be fucking sneaky, don't, you know, don't. And also, like, do your research. Obviously, this octopus knew when to do it. Don't pull a walking dead season. When is it when they go to Negan's outpost and they don't do any background research to?
Speaker 1figure out that there's like way more going on. Yeah, they're like we found an outpost Negan's probably there, we're going to attack it And then, like they did no scouting whatsoever, they didn't figure out what their organization was like, how big they were, and then it turned out it was a satellite outpost. Spoiler alert Yeah, you haven't seen season seven.
Speaker 2Be a sneaky thief. That's what the octopuses tell you. So that's my first one.
Speaker 1Be a sneaky thief. I also had octopus in my list.
Speaker 1And I think it came to the same conclusions that you did. You know they're highly intelligent, they have problem solving skills. We can escape enclosures, use tools and adapt to new environments rapidly. So like being adaptable and using ingenuity is their survival skill, i feel. And if you can be like an octopus in those in those senses and you should be able to, we have pretty good brains then we can, then that'll help you survive. I think octopuses are probably a good candidate for the best survivor.
Speaker 2Well, we'll see right. And this is the same zombies, or the zombies that can be underwater and survive. All right, is it my turn? It is.
Speaker 1All right. Number one on my list are meerkats Meerkats if you don't know, it's from the Lion King, timon. Timon's a meerkat, so meerkats. They live in really large groups with complex social structures, and one thing that they all that they do that's a lot different from how other animals work is that they always have a designated sentinel that watches out for predators.
Speaker 1So while the rest of the group is busy like foraging, finding food or playing or taking naps or whatever meerkats get up to. I don't know if you need to watch more meerkat videos is what I'm thinking.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, i don't have a meerkat in my insta feed, for sure.
Speaker 1There's always one that's like got his head on a pivot, like looking around for I don't know I'd eat some meerkat. I guess a lion, lions eat meerkats. Let's assume they do.
Speaker 2Probably hyenas, i would say more than hyenas.
Speaker 1They're small, they're snack, they're a lion, yeah. So, yeah, they have a strong ability to work cooperatively in a group and maintain constant vigilance, and they can teach us about the importance of maintaining a watchful eye for zombies and cooperating with a within a survival group.
Speaker 1And like I could see that like, especially when you get to like, when you have, like, a survival camp where you have a whole bunch of people. Something that I always see in movies and TV shows is like they, they, they haven't like picked anyone. Like there's no rotating roster of sentinels, like there's nobody. That's like in a high place looking for zombies, or like they're the walls. A hold, probably, let's, let's start a campfire and make a lot of noise. Oh, it's so annoying.
Speaker 2Every time, like Dan's probably. You're sick of me saying it. Every time somebody makes noise in the zombie show, i'm like really upsets me.
Speaker 1Yeah, so. so keep, be ever vigilant and have have a lot of organization within your survivor group.
Speaker 2I'm going to add one more to that, based on what I know about meerkats. but also they must be related to gophers, because gophers have very similar behaviors.
Speaker 1I think so.
Speaker 2Yeah, But I think what's interesting is like they also have their own language. So they did a stuff, a study of gophers, and they have like there they have the ability to tell each other like they're studying their language, Like oh, this is a new person I've never seen before that's wearing a blue shirt. Like they have that level of ability to communicate. I'm assuming meerkats must as well.
Speaker 2They know, what shirts are They? well, yeah, they're able to describe colors, people, shapes, if it's new or not new. Anyways, my point being is that I think, like next level smart is to have a code language with your community, so that if people are listening, they don't know the fuck you're talking about, but you're able to communicate important things.
Speaker 1Yeah, i'd also say that they also teach us that it's important to have a survivor group, like so many stories are, like the lone wolf, like the self-reliant person who has, like all the answers to all the problems. But really the best survival tool you can have is other survivors with you to share the burden of survival. The community is very important And meerkats they have big, complex communities. They are pretty cool creatures. Yeah.
Speaker 2I'm definitely gonna search for meerkats.
Speaker 1Yeah, we need some meerkat videos.
Speaker 2All right, are you ready for mine?
Speaker 1Yeah, I'm ready.
Speaker 2Orangutans, or, as I like to say, orangutans. I'm not actually sure what the correct pronunciation is, but there's no G at the end of the word orangutan So.
Speaker 1I think it's tans.
Speaker 2So orangutans, one of our relatives. I'm not sure how closely related they are to us. They're, they're, they must be relatively close. Yeah, and they are only in a few places on earth, like Borneo, Indonesia, and just a little bit about them. they're also very social and nonviolent creatures, very peaceful creatures, which you'd think like. why am I bringing up peaceful creatures in the zombie apocalypse? You need to be violent, but I'll get there. But just a little shout out for the orangutan friends Between 1999 and 2015, 100,000 Borneo and orangutans were killed because of the loss of habitat from logging for timber, from forest fires, but particularly for making way for oil palm plantations. So this is my shout out for try and only buy things with oil palm or palm oil in them that are fairtride certified or organic, because that is going to be a much less devastating environmental impact for our orangutan friends.
Speaker 1It's really sad They are under threat of extinction. Or avoid palm oil entirely.
Speaker 2Yeah, my biggest palm oil sin is Oreos. Yeah, they have palm oil in them And I will be honest, i think about the orangutans and I should probably stop.
Speaker 1Yeah, i don't know if there's a way to make Oreos without palm oil.
Speaker 2Yeah, side fact, if you don't know, oreos are vegan. We couldn't talk about that another time. There's no milk product in them. Also creepy Hard to believe.
Speaker 1Huh, But that is not the point.
Speaker 2Orangutans Okay, so I've got three big tips for orangutans that I think is really cool. One of them is consider the trees for your shelter. If you're in a forested area, don't be on the fucking ground. Most zombies can't climb. Some zombies can't climb, but most zombies can't.
Speaker 1Yeah It depends on the movie. So if you're off the ground.
Speaker 2if you're off the ground, you could create a really fucking cool tree fort system with multiple points of exit and sleep up there and be safe. Because that's how orangutans do it They make a sleeping platform or a nest every single night. It takes them 10 minutes. So if you could master this, maybe get one of those lightweight hammocks which Jan and I have.
Speaker 1I don't know if we'll support my weight.
Speaker 2String it up high in the tree.
Speaker 2Eventually as you slowly starve to death in the zombie apocalypse. Yeah, that's a good point, and they even add a roof and wet weather, so it's a really smart way to keep themselves safe. Which brings me to my second zombie survival tip, which is Predator Avoidance. So we know, sometimes you got to kill the zombies and that's a good thing, but it's smart to think no when you probably should just avoid and have strategies for doing that. So orangutans are very susceptible to predators like leopards, crocodiles, large pythons, venomous snakes, and they teach their young very early how to avoid those predators. That's their main way of staying safe, which also includes why they sleep in trees. Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 1So I would say how was it? Willie Nelson, i think, said it best. He had no one to hold him, no one to fold him, no one to stand up and walk away. I don't think that was Willie Nelson. I don't know who that was.
Speaker 2Orangutans only have one strategy, which is get the fuck out of there.
Speaker 1Yeah, they were just never let them know you were there in the first place. Yeah.
Speaker 2But it's a good one to remember instead of always thinking it has to be a fight And also like just shut up and be quiet.
Speaker 1Please. I want to add one to the tree for ideas that also. that could be good camouflage as well. If you are in the trees and you're well concealed, zombies would walk by right underneath you not even know. Yeah, i think there is a danger in them realizing that you're in the tree and then gathering around the tree. But the orangutans they're able to travel through the trees. So if you also took that into consideration and found a way to travel through the treetops to another location, you could come down the tree at another point or guide the zombies away.
Speaker 1And then that wouldn't be a problem.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's kind of genius. I don't think I'm trying to think of a single zombie, anything media that had tree top like a treehouse situation, and I can't think of one.
Speaker 1I don't know, but I want. I want to see that, i want to see it.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, you put your book, i might.
Speaker 1I'm also. I'm also thinking I need to put a put trash camouflage in my book too.
Speaker 2Absolutely. I mean that's very much like the. I figure out they're called from walking dead trash people.
Speaker 1But oh yeah, that's. maybe that's what they did. I don't know, They don't camouflage with it?
Speaker 2I don't think they camouflage, but anyways, the last tip I have from the good old orangutans is learn how to forage. That's how they get all their food. They eat fruit, primarily, and invertebrates if they're feeling hungry, so they're constantly snacking. They're constantly moving around looking for food Always be snacking.
Speaker 2Yeah, but more importantly, like based on where you live. I'm curious, but club listeners, do you know what foods you can eat that are around you, that are just growing? Because if you don't, you should probably learn. it's a really good survival skill that all of us really need to have, and I would say that I only probably identify like four plants in my backyard that we could eat that are native, and then obviously some mushrooms.
Speaker 1I'll give one way was that.
Speaker 1I'll give. I'll give one, one edible plant away that there are billions of. No matter where you go in Vermont and New Hampshire, a lot of the the northeastern states on the road sides and in farmers fields there are these yellow flowers when they grow and they look like Queen Anne's lace kind of like a little canopy of yellow flower. People have been treat them as weeds because if you touch them and then let your skin be exposed to the sun it's worse than poison ivy. It's like a chemical burn.
Speaker 2It burns a shit out of you. It's bad.
Speaker 1Yeah, however, if you harvest them in the, in the dark or on a cloudy day with gloves because again it is UV reactive chemical And you pull them up by the roots, they are parsnips.
Speaker 2I love parsnips.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I mean, you can live off of parsnips. I know that they're not like the most gourmet food in the world, but you know, if you don't mind carrots, you'll like parsnips.
Speaker 2Honestly, a fire roasted parsnip sounds so good like caramelize it on a pan over a fire. Very tasty.
Speaker 1Yeah, and yeah, i mean, if you're in this area, there are millions just on the roadside. You don't have to go far and you can see them from like a mile away.
Speaker 2Yeah, oh, i'm gonna shout out Block Forager again on Instagram, probably also TikTok, but I am TikTok deficient. They're a great person to follow because they are showing you all the time things that you can do and things you can make with it. So if you are curious to learn more, that's a good, like fun, place to start. What's your next one, dan?
Speaker 1My next one is your homelands national animal, really The beaver.
Speaker 2Yay, I love beavers.
Surviving Zombies With Animal Examples
Speaker 1All right. So beavers are known far and wide for their engineering prowess The engineers of the forest they're called. I'm a proud beaver fan By bringing down trees and building dams. I never really truly appreciated beavers until I came to Vermont. Like I'd always seen beaver dams. I'm like it's cool that they made a pile of sticks, but I didn't see the extent of which beavers will engineer. There are entire lowland areas in Vermont that I see now on a daily basis where it's like you look at it and it's like that's a hundred acres of like marsh Beaver town, that they have built an entire dam around and created an artificial lake And it's just, it's like it looks like an infinity pool, like to the degree that they have created this structure. It's super, super impressive.
Speaker 2What's also really cool, if you don't know, is that I know you probably know, Dan, but those are listening that that is actually how our water gets cleaned And that's how marshes are typically made is by beavers. So they are not. one time somebody told me that beavers are like the second most destructive animal on earth.
Speaker 1They're like humans being first.
Speaker 2But the difference is that beavers are actually contributing to the overall environment because those marshes are basically like our water gets filtered through those marshes to be cleaned. Oh yeah, well, how much money do they make? What would money be for a beaver like sticks?
Speaker 1Yeah, that'd just be shit that they add to their dam.
Speaker 2And like different, i would imagine, like different kinds of like, oh, like their currency, oh yeah.
Speaker 1I bet they, like a beaver, shows up with like a good beefy log And they're like, wow, jim, look at that, look at that stick you got That's a good one. This guy's, this guy's, you know, keep an eye out for this one. He's going places with a stick. So, yeah, they create safe environments for themselves and their families. They use their sharp teeth to bring down big, big trees. Meanwhile we can't even get a professional logger to come to our house and cut down like two or three trees that are threatening to crush our house.
Speaker 1Let's go get some beavers. Get some beavers, yeah. So in a zombie apocalypse, their dam building skills could be a metaphor for creating a secure bases or barricades. Keeps zombies out, while their teeth remind us of the importance of having the right tools for the job, or weapons.
Speaker 2That's very smart. You know what else, though? That they make those dams to be able to catch fish easier.
Speaker 1Yeah, they catch their food with these structures.
Speaker 2Yeah, you could actually make dams for the same purpose, like, if you've got a little river somewhere, build a little dam. you're going to be able to get some fishies.
Speaker 1Oh, you think I should build a dam.
Speaker 2No, i mean, i'm only eating fish if I have to and it's the apocalypse, but I will definitely build some dams in the apocalypse.
Speaker 1I mean, maybe we could just share the dam, like I feel like beavers are pretty accommodating And you know if I said have you encountered a beaver in the wild?
Speaker 2They are not accommodating.
Speaker 1They're very territorial. There's one that Ziggy tried to fight.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's right. Oh, my God.
Speaker 1Quick story. So this is 2019, when I was on the road truck driving visiting Leah in Georgia. We take the dogs for a walk. Ziggy, our little corgi mix little guy with stumpy legs and a fearsome howl, it's true.
Speaker 1It just starts running for the waterline. We're walking across along the Savannah River And then we see it There's like a 40 pound beaver there, that's. He's just going after it And like it didn't even care, like it turned around and was walking away, but like it didn't pay any mind to Ziggy and Ziggy, ziggy, kind of like he backed off, he got all the way to it And then he's like I shouldn't fuck with you, yeah.
Speaker 2Then he ran back to us looking a little bit ashamed of himself.
Speaker 1So beavers.
Speaker 2Have you never, dan, have you never encountered a beaver like close up? I mean, I've seen them in the water. Have they slapped their tail at you? Oh yeah, on the water. Yeah, they're very territorial. They don't want you to fuck around, so I don't think they'd be really cool to stealing their fish, but do you? remember the story that we heard. I love you're sneaky about it.
Speaker 1Of the local woman here who used to swim in the ponds And then would swim up into the beaver dams and hang up with the beaver, are you fucking? kidding me. Yeah, we heard the story together.
Speaker 2I forgot it obviously, But yeah like that was her thing.
Speaker 1She was a woman of your heart, I'm sure.
Speaker 2I would love to do that.
Speaker 1Yeah, like that was the thing that she did, and what she was known for in this area is that like she wasn't like a business woman, she didn't do like a lot of community work. She was known as the person who swam with beavers. She would go there every day and swim up into the beaver dam and hang out with beavers.
Speaker 2I'm taking this to a real sexual place, i'm sorry, like that entire thing you described. Who doesn't want to swim with a beaver? Yeah, i guess if you're a gay man, you probably don't?
Speaker 1Yeah, get those beavers out of here. I love a good beavers. I'm going to ask you a few questions. I'm going to ask you a few questions.
Speaker 2What's your next animal? I've got two and I'm deciding which one. Okay, i'm going to ask you which one you want me to talk about. I've got two options.
Speaker 1Komodo dragons or elephants. Elephants.
Speaker 2Because they're cuter than Komodo dragons, objectively. You know, have you seen them? It's cute baby animals. Google a baby Komodo dragon. They're not so cute when they're big Elephants. Elephants are the largest land animals. There are three surviving species the Asian elephant, the African bush elephant and the African forest elephant. I didn't know there were two kinds of African elephants. This was new to me. I didn't know that either.
Speaker 1I thought there was only two kinds of elephants.
Speaker 2Yeah, there's three. I have to Google African forest elephant versus bush, because I really have no idea.
Speaker 1And then, depending, on the species One's conservative and the other one's liberal.
Speaker 2They'll live between 48 and 80 years, so very similar to human lifespan. Unlike humans, though, dan, can you do the math for me? They weigh anywhere from 2,700 kilograms to 6,000 kilograms. I don't know what that is in pounds. I did not.
Speaker 1Oh, kilograms, oh hell, hell, if I know.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Big really, Let's say 4,000 pounds, probably more.
Speaker 2I'm pretty sure a kilogram is worth more than a pound, but anyhow, i think you're right.
Speaker 1There seems to be a medium, medium duty heavy truck.
Speaker 2I think there are more than that. Okay, hold on. How many pounds is an elephant? I need to know. 15,000 pounds.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's about the size. That's a little bit lighter than my truck. Oh, really Okay, I have no context of how big a car is or truck is.
Speaker 2Well, the truck I drive for work, Right, oh, okay, so the flow boy, not the trailer Just the truck. Damn, that's terrifying. That one's about 20,000 pounds. I don't want to. It scares me that you're driving that, but anyhow. On a less exciting note, there's only 400,000 elephants left in the wild Again, humans climate change capitalism, It's not good.
Speaker 1Why do their appendages need to be so valuable?
Speaker 2It's ridiculous. It's really ridiculous. And at the same time, I will say that people who are poaching elephants are doing it probably because they don't have a lot of other options to survive. So it's all a fucked up web of terrible.
Speaker 1I mean, if you go down a rabbit hole with that, i think that the poachers are making a lot of money. I don't know if the people who you know, the people who comprise the poaching teams, are all on the same wealth level, but there's definitely one person in that poaching team who's like I'm just trying to get another Lamborghini.
Speaker 2Yeah, somebody's making a lot of money, but as usual, it's not probably not the person who's killing the elephant directly or taking the tusks. So here's why I think that they would be excellent in a zombie apocalypse and things we could learn from them. They could absolutely stomp and kill a human if they're 15,000 pounds. They are basically zombie crushing machines.
Speaker 2So what I thought was like bear with me Well, hey, maybe we could learn this way then, because what I was thinking about it was like, what can I learn from something of that size that is protective? Like they also love their families very much. They have incredibly long memories and deep, deep relationships with each other and they will fuck you up if they think you're a threat. So how do we create like zombie crushing machines around our safe zone? Like, is there like a thing that we could make, like zombie traps that just like kill them?
Speaker 1Sure, i mean, the easiest way, like the most comparable thing I could think of is if you had an excavator and you basically just maneuver the arm and just slam it down on top of a zombie. Yeah, that'd be great.
Speaker 1But you know, if you have heavy access to heavy equipment, you could like lift up like really large objects, like a, like a shipping container, and just like have it as a deadfall trap And then when they trigger the trap underneath it just drops on top of them. But that also be incredibly dangerous and also incredibly loud. When you get into that amount of weight, things become dangerous really fast.
Speaker 1And something I think about all the time and it's kind of. One of the main reasons why I want to get out of my line of work is that I'm traveling down the road at 65 miles an hour but I've got 100,000 pounds behind me, So like if I go off the road, if I hit a solid object, if somebody breaks in front of me too hard, like all of that, all of that mass and energy needs to go somewhere And I'm at the front.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's fucking scary, But maybe it doesn't have to be like. I was thinking more like a tree trunk. You know, not a, but I think the general like. Rambo did it with tree trunks that, like because elephants are very protective of each other and they have close relationships.
Speaker 2What they'll do with their babies is, if they think their babies are under threat, they will circle around them right creating that safe permity and then they basically stomp or spear the shit out of you And a lot of the protections around like communities in zombie apocalypse is there are things like just sticks that like stab them but don't actually kill them. So I would like to have like mechanisms that immediately kill a zombie, instead of it just kind of like yeah, all of their ears in the middle.
Speaker 1There's, there's, there's spear defenses at these, at these zombie camps that we've all been to. They seem a bit pointless And yeah mostly just make them a hazard.
Speaker 2that are Or even just like a slicing device for their head or something like if you can engineer whole fucking walls around communities that we have seen in these different shows, you should be able to think a little bit more creatively about killing of zombies. That's like hands off is just if they encounter your camp.
Speaker 1I mean everything that I know from heavy equipment. Like if you, if you have any amount of knowledge in hydraulics or air powered, air actuated devices, like you could have a giant blade on the outside of your wall that, like it's just air actuated, just a single air piston, and that thing would, would just decimate, like any, any piece of equipment when it goes, when it goes haywire and, like you know, like something, let let's lose the most. The most times I've ever seen this is like when digging with an excavator and they're like trying to bring up this giant rock and the bucket slips. Like the amount of energy behind that, when the, when the arm slips and the whole thing just goes, my God is incredible.
Speaker 2Yeah, I wouldn't want to be underneath that.
Speaker 1Yeah, two more. Typically, you try not to.
Lessons From Elephants and Survival Tips
Speaker 2Yeah, i'm pretty sure that you would get some really good workers come up or be dead and I would get some sort of weird check that I don't want to receive. Yeah, so two more tips. Elephants are constantly eating. Obviously they have to be if they want to feed 15,000 pounds, so eat whatever you can get your hands on.
Speaker 1Yeah, eat when you can.
Speaker 2Don't be picky, especially like in the early days. I think it'd be easy to be like that's a kind of dog food. I don't want to eat it. You probably should, because there'll be a point where you're like, damn, i should have eaten that can.
Speaker 1Eat those parsnips, man. You need to keep your calories up.
Speaker 2Yeah, Yeah. And also like, if you don't want to eat dog food, maybe your dog doesn't want to eat dog food. Just think about that sidebar Yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, i mean, i feed my dog dog food, so I'm not innocent here. And then, last but not least, as I said, they are herd animals And I think, like you mentioned with meerkats, similarly with elephants it's really kindness is really important and community care is really important to elephants. So I think it's important to take care of your herd of zombies survivors. So people want to keep going and people will be there for you when you need them. To Like that's the whole point of community, where social creatures is as humans too. And just to share a little story like if an elephant becomes upset, another elephant would come close and provide reassuring touches on their trunks. They make high chirping sounds that comfort their friends when they're upset, and when an individual elephant is appearing really stressed, all of the other elephants will surround them and like press into them like a group hug, oh, group hug.
Speaker 1Yeah, they group hug.
Speaker 2It's not just about like protecting each other and like saving each other in these dramatic ways I think the Walking Dead shows it best. It's about like being there for each other and showing kindness when people need it, Because otherwise, what the fuck is the point of surviving? if you don't like? you need love. Humans, I think like on the the needs of things humans have to want to survive. Love is one of them. And just another really sweet story about elephants There's this one elephant named Cinnamon, probably dead now at the San Buro Conservancy in Kenya, And they were tuskless because of poaching, really old in the matriarch, but they had a very tender side and they took care of baby elephants and the families whose mothers had been killed by poachers. So she actually allowed orphan babies from outside the herd to join her family, even in really challenging times of drought. So there's a real lesson there which is like welcome people, even if you think you don't have enough space or room, they will probably surprise you in the way that they support you back.
Speaker 1Yeah, Season 3 or no. Season 4 of the Walking Dead, Rick turns away Tyrese and his sister, And later on they turned out to be really great allies. Yep, that's a really good, good message. And those are all my animals.
Speaker 2Yeah, i just wanted to say on elephants they also have great senses of humor.
Speaker 1Yeah, I've. I saw a video where an elephant is. There's a guy on camera talking about elephants and the elephant comes up and he grabs the hat off of his head and then puts it in his mouth. And the guy thinks that the elephant just doesn't want to be in his mouth. And then when he's like, oh my God, he just ate my hat. The elephant pulls the hat back out of his mouth and puts it back on his head. Oh my God, they play magic tricks. That's amazing. Oh, I actually do have one more.
Speaker 2I forgot. They have really tough skin and like wrinkles and folds on their skin that make it hard to like actually bite through if you're a predator, and it reminds me of our most recent examples of people like taping shit to their arms And stuff where where clothes that are hard to bite through. Yeah, yeah, stay covered, i don't care if it's hot outside.
Speaker 1Yeah, you know one one show that I watched a long time ago, had a really great idea for that. It was called Falling Skies, and speaking of of shows or movies that that feel like a zombie apocalypse, but aren't falling skies, it's about aliens. Oh, apocalypse, aliens war. I want to watch that. It's pretty great. We should watch it. I've watched a few seasons of it. Oh, it's multiple seasons, damn.
Speaker 2Okay, oh it's, i think it's like six now, but I've seen three Oh wow, that's a real commitment I need to get through all of them.
Speaker 1It's good though, but anyways, one thing that they that one of one of the the units in their defense army does because they're more of like a direct, direct action unit is they take winter tires and they cut the steel belts out and put the tread on their clothes because it's more or less bulletproof. Damn, that's really smart, yeah. And he tells the leader is like talking to one of one of his soldiers. He's like go put your tires on, put your winter tires on. It was pretty funny. I mean it makes a lot more sense than that as fucking outfits from season 11 with the foam.
Speaker 2Oh my God, don't even give me stuff.
Speaker 1It's like military equipment exists, but also strapping a bunch of tires to a leather jacket is way cooler. Yeah, you can make some really fucking bad eyes outfits. That would be super fun And, like you know, maybe we should be doing that now, because tires are hard to recycle.
Speaker 2I have one more fact about elephants. I have to tell you that it's unrelated to survival. I think you can tell me it is, but I just learned this that they do foreplay. Oh, you know what That is?
Speaker 1related to survival.
Speaker 2If you want your relationship to survive, don't just try and stick it in there wherever you like to. Why survive when you can thrive? Exactly.
Survival Tips From Animals
Speaker 1This episode is brought to you by Kayaks, not kayakcom, no, not that. The actual thing is Kayaks that you float around in on the water. We bought two today. We're going to go pick them up next week. Kayaks are fun. It's a mode of transportation That's also healthy for you because it's exercise. Also, they come in cool colors. I think they're really cool. They're not wrapping a specific brand, just buy a kayak. When you move to Vermont, they just give you one because everybody has kayak here. They're like welcome to Vermont, here's a kayak Kayaks. Buy one. Also. A great thing to sleep in If we don't have swimming zombies.
Speaker 2Hello everybody, i think out on the water, yeah, sure, tie yourself to shore with a string, because also zombies aren't smart enough to pull you, for You would what?
Speaker 1I'd be worried about it. Why? Okay, Well, so it depends on the zombie, of course. but if we're talking about the night of the living dead style, you know the walking corpse. all of the gases that make up your blood and the fluids inside of you escape when you die. So zombies not needing to breathe, not using their lungs for anything functional and not having oxygen or CO2 in their bloodstreams would just sink, which means that they would just walk across the bottom of a lake or pond or river and they could just be standing there for who knows how long, just standing there just waiting for something to pass by. And if you're sleeping in a kayak on the top, It's so You know the if in the in the, the bottom is shallow enough, they might just reach up at some point and grab the side of the kayak or canoe and try to pull themselves up or just tip you into the water with them.
Speaker 2And eat you in the middle of the night in deep water.
Speaker 1All right.
Speaker 2Over over six feet, no, over 10 feet deep, because they have to build us reach with their arms.
Speaker 1Let's say they also might have some air trapped in them and they might float a little bit.
Speaker 2Oh God, OK, this is just. I don't want to think of like zombie buoys. That's not an OK thing for me. The water is a dangerous place for zombies. Oh, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1Unless you're in a good sized boat that's hard to climb up on.
Speaker 2Is your next animal a fishy fish animal? or what's your last? That's not.
Speaker 1I actually I actually have a couple more animals and I do want to go through them if we have the time.
Speaker 2We are running, we are cutting towards the end, so you might be smarter.
Speaker 1Well, let's, let's play it by ear. I'll check in with you. My third animal is the honey badger.
Speaker 2Honey badgers don't give a shit, of course, honey badger.
Speaker 1So, despite their adorable appearance, honey badgers are one of the most fearless animals. They have tough skin that's hard to penetrate And they are known to be aggressively defensive of themselves against much larger predators. From from honey badgers, we can learn about the importance of having tough skin. Oh, like an elephant resilience physical and mental resilience And also being brave even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. I like that one. I think that most people know the honey badger from the internet. videos of your honey badger, don't care.
Speaker 2Honey badger don't give a shit. Yeah, honey badger, don't give a shit.
Speaker 1Honey badger don't give a shit. My favorite part of that honey badger video is when he decides to eat a venomous snake Yes, it is the best part And the snake which I'm pretty sure was like a black mamba or something like really, really super venomous bites him several times And then he, then he, then he bites the snake and kills it and wrestles it and then passes out and naps for several hours And then, when the poison is worn off, it wakes back up and continues eating the snake. So, yeah, they don't give up, they don't give a shit And they are fearless, sometimes to their detriment. So this is something that you need to take with a grain of salt, like, sometimes you don't need to be fearless all the time. Fear keeps you alive, but sometimes, if you are backed into a corner and it is a hopeless situation, you have to accept that there's no way out except through, and you've got to push through it. That's very true.
Speaker 2It's kind of like when do you need to be in orangutan and when you need to be a honey badger, yeah, and you need to fight.
Speaker 1When do you need to avoid predators?
Speaker 2Yeah, engage honey badger mode. See, that's some fucking. That could be the kind of like language stuff You're like. all right, we're honey badgering, Yeah, although I guess anybody who had ever watched that video would know what it meant.
Speaker 1So I guess we have to, Oh you know he can, he can, he can Komodo dragon.
Speaker 2Komodo dragon.
Speaker 1Well, Komodo dragons probably the same way.
Speaker 2They're very aggressive Yeah, that was the one that I didn't get to on my list And they have quite a track record of attacking people and killing them.
Speaker 1Yeah, komodo dragons are pretty nasty, also a lot like zombies. They have very dirty mouths.
Speaker 2Oh.
Speaker 1Komodo dragons aren't considered venomous, but their bites can be deadly because of the amount of bacteria they have in their mouths. They have the dirtiest mouths of. they are venomous, yeah.
Speaker 2I hate to break it to you.
Speaker 1They are. Where are you reading that?
Speaker 2I Googled it, i found fast facts about Komodo dragons. They are venomous. They go grow Might as well, just go for it. They grow to seven feet long. 200 pounds Now this is a really depressing number. There's only one thousand three hundred and eighty three left in the wild And they all live on only five islands in southeastern Indonesia, and they're volcanic in origin, rugged and hilly, and they're covered with forest and Savannah grassland. They are excellent fucking swimmers, so they can swim island to island. I was going to be like that's a good tip, like make sure you're a good swimmer, as an option to get away, but you have convinced me that may not be helpful. Well, you know what?
Speaker 1If you find yourself in the water. You want to be a good swimmer.
Speaker 2But it did make me think, like, if you can find a way to avoid the underwater zombies, find an isolated island to survive on. is not the worst idea if you have a way to get on and off And also, like I, yeah, go on the offense when you need to just proactively beat the shit out of zombies when you, when you can. I'm currently reading day by day Armageddon.
Speaker 1And yeah, there's, there's. He goes to an island for that exact reason. Yeah, but yeah this. So I just googled it, dispelling what one expert calls a scientific fairy tale. A new study shows that the fierce lizards who's venom not talk about bacteria, into bites to help weaken and then ultimately kill their prey. Komodo dragons kill using one to punch of sharp teeth and venomous bite. Scientists have confirmed for the first time What did they confirm this, because I feel like that'd be the easiest thing to confirm. I mean, i don't know.
Speaker 2How, do you like can? you'd have to encounter a Komodo dragon to get this information way too close. You got a milk A.
Speaker 1Komodo or you. They also have a weak bite strength.
Speaker 2But you know what is an interesting one is like. it made me think about it. My last survival tip I had for Komodo dragons is like can you get yourself some Wolverine type claws? Because that's the other thing they use. They have these really wild, long, sturdy claws to slash and tear their prey, But would that be helpful for killing zombies? I don't know. Could a sloth do the?
Speaker 1same thing. They'd be too slow. A sloth might be a good one to look into next time we ever do this.
Speaker 2If we do this kind of episode ever again.
Speaker 1Yeah, i want to make sure that we have a good one. Yeah, i want to move on to another animal. Do we have time for that?
Speaker 2I think we have time for one more.
Speaker 1One more, because this is the animal that made me think of doing this episode in the first place, and and there were there were better animals to talk about first, but this is the one that, like I, was like that's something to learn from Squirrels. Yes, we have an abandoned baby squirrel a few years ago His name was Stevie.
Speaker 2He was so baby, he was naked. Yeah, no, fur in his eyes were closed.
Speaker 1Right in the palm of my hand and he was. his eyes were closed, he had no hair. He was the cutest little guy. We thought he was dead because Ziggy had him in his mouth.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Ziggy was so good.
Speaker 2I was like Ziggy, what is that, Give it to me? And he just dropped it into my hand.
Speaker 1Yeah, we saved. We saved Stevie and took him to a animal rescue And he, as far as we know, he survived because they said that he was doing great. last we checked in many years ago.
Speaker 2Living that squirrel life.
Survival Tips From Animal Kingdom
Speaker 1Yeah, I hope he's fat right now, Fat squirrel Yeah so squirrels. I just smashed my microphone. Squirrels are excellent, excellent hoarders, storing food away for the winter in various hidden spots. This food strategy, a food storage strategy, could be applied to the need for storing and rationing food during a zombie apocalypse.
Speaker 2That's very smart Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, also, the reason why I thought about squirrels and this exact fact is that I also learned that squirrels lose track of 85 percent of the things that they bury. It would be me which is why we have trees. They'll forget that they buried where they buried an acorn. They'll dig all over the place, They're like. I can't find it, i can't find it, i can't find it. And then, a few years later, there's a little sapling growing there.
Speaker 2Yeah, there's a reason we use the shortcut word squirrel whenever we're by either of us or having a genuine ADHD moment. Yeah, I squirrel quite often Me too, i like the idea of like hiding, hoarding and hiding food in multiple places, because if you again, if you're like a community and you've got it all in one spot, you see what happens. It's people will invade and they'll take all your food because it's all in one fucking pantry and it's easy to find, easy to take.
Speaker 1Yeah, i think it was season nine, season eight or season nine of The Walking Dead, the new characters that show up when they fast forward six years. Oh, yeah. There's, there's one. What's her name? Magnus Magnum, Magnum PI.
Speaker 2Leah, I'm pretty sure her name is no, not that.
Speaker 1No, the one that's part of the survival group, but she is like an ex convict. Anyways, she. She steals food from the community's pantry and hides it off site because, much like every other community that she's ever gone to, they're like they, she's like they don't like us, they don't trust us, they're going to kick us out and we need this food to be here if we need to leave in a hurry.
Speaker 2Yeah, she thinks sneaky, but she got found out I wasn't good.
Speaker 1Yeah, they found her out, but also they found it out right at a time where they ran out of food and she brought it back. So because she stored food off site, she had food that she could bring back so that they could survive in the immediate meantime.
Speaker 2Sneaky and smart. Yeah, love it.
Speaker 1You know there's. we have these instincts for a reason and like somebody that like steals and then hordes it somewhere else, I feel like they're just kind of like operating on the survival instinct that they don't know how to rationalize or justify in the moment. But then, like later on down the road, it's like oh no, this was a necessary thing to do, even though I did it for the wrong reason. Yeah, even.
Speaker 2I think the reason was valid. Honestly, you don't know what you're getting into and you join a community. that could be great. They could be fucking terrible. Yeah, they could be cannibals.
Speaker 1So you never, know, In which case, be careful what you're hoarding from their pantry.
Speaker 2Dan, i think you could do one more.
Speaker 1If you want to do one more, all right This one will be quick, because I feel like this is something that octopuses already do, that we've already talked about.
Speaker 2Octopuses.
Speaker 1Cephalopods Octopuses.
Speaker 2Chameleons Ooh yeah, i painted one of those once Yeah.
Speaker 1Well, i hope not, because they need that skin to adapt to the environment. Not at all.
Speaker 2I painted it on the canvas. They're like are you supposed to be a chameleon? Why are you bright pink on a?
Speaker 1green leaf And they're like some asshole painted me I did that.
Speaker 2Whatever, mine is semi camoed, but go ahead. What about chameleons?
Speaker 1Chameleons are known for their ability to blend into the environment. Did you know that?
Speaker 2Shocking had no idea. I love their little hands. Just to find out, Just to sidebar. they're so cute.
Speaker 1Yeah, which they use as a defense mechanism against predators. This could be compared to the skill of blending in or going unnoticed by zombies, which could be critical to survival in a zombie-infested world. I think that the the whispers are the chameleons.
Speaker 2Definitely.
Speaker 1I don't like that they had their own, like this whole like ideology that they have to live in the woods and like and like eat worms and shit, like I feel like those were all unnecessary things that made everybody like really unhappy and not want to be whispers anymore. But if they just like lived in a community like they could have had the best of both worlds, they could have lived in the community like Alexandria had walls And then when zombies try to break into, break into the community, they just put their fucking masks on and the zombies just walk through and leave.
Speaker 2Yeah, camouflage as needed. Yeah, octopuses too. Yeah, I think that's a really good tip. Are there any other tips from our good old friends chameleons, Or is that your big one? That's the big one It was. that was a short one. Have a long tongue. Eat bugs.
Speaker 1Yeah, grow your tongue.
Speaker 2This is very So. this brings me to my last question for us for the day. Curious to hear what club clubbers think. Clubbers, that's a terrible name for you all. Yeah, what's up, clubbers? We're not staying with that, but curious to hear others This brings me to my next animal, seals. Oh, you know at the end you know what are doing it. I'm cool with it, yeah.
Speaker 1Um feels they grow, They get a lot of blubber. They survive in the winter really well. They can swim.
Speaker 2That's I mean. Yeah, you know what Actually, survival tip being fats useful as long as you're still able to be mobile.
Speaker 1Yeah, be mobile.
Speaker 2I love like you know, i I gain weight easily and I'm grateful for that, because it means that my ancestors at some point were probably fucking starving And the ones that survived were able to pack on some pounds. It's an excellent survival mechanism.
Speaker 1True, we have this stuff for a reason.
Speaker 2Yeah Yeah, it's a good backup Not everybody's like. Honestly, it's like my horse that died last year. He's got an incredibly fast metabolism. If the apocalypse happened he would have died like two months later because there's no way we could have fed him enough.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Meanwhile I'll be living for a year.
Speaker 1Give me that grain.
Speaker 2Yeah, But I'm curious, Dan of all the animals we talked about today, which one do you think it would be like the most badass survivor in a zombie apocalypse?
Speaker 1God they are. They are all really good contenders. Let's go through the list.
Speaker 2Just, we've got octopuses, meerkats, what else? Evers, evers, honey badgers, honey badgers, squirrels, squirrels, chameleons, chameleons, elephants, elephants, condo dragons. We got nine.
Speaker 1I'm going to knock some off the list because I think honey badger is a good skill to have sometimes. Other times I think it would get you killed. Sure Beavers I think they would do a fine job, but there's some other animals that do some things that are, i feel, more important, like meerkats, like having a watch out, having a strong social structure, and octopuses being really smart and being able to adapt.
Speaker 2Yeah, meerkats and octopuses are good ones. I feel I honestly like, don't you know? don't count out the squirrel? Yeah, Squirrels survived. I mean, like they've survived the human apocalypse in terms of their life being turned over.
Speaker 1You know, squirrels also have lived among humans and survived. Yeah, maybe they just haven't been valuable enough to humans to be hunted to extinction. I don't know. I feel like. I mean, when I was a kid, i hunted squirrels and I didn't seem to do any, any damage to their gene pool, not in the same way we have elephants and Komodo dragons or octopi, yeah, Yeah, i think I'm going to go team squirrel.
Speaker 2That's where I'm at, yeah.
Speaker 1I'm like. So what if they lose 85% of their food? They're doing fine on 15%, which means they're working really hard. The other, the other parts of the year.
Speaker 2Yeah, i think. Like the octopuses, they're already under threat. Meerkats, i think, are also a good contender, but they can't climb up trees like squirrels can Well not that I know of. They go underground, I guess. But yeah, what is your vote? out of meerkats, octopuses and squirrels?
Speaker 1Yeah, i'm going to go squirrel I guess Team squirrel, because they live in trees. We already talked about that. They store food. Storing food, i think, is a really important part.
Speaker 2They're really problem solvers too. They're super fucking smart.
Speaker 1Yeah, They are territorial so they make a lot of noise. I feel like that would draw in a lot of zombies, but like zombies aren't getting up those trees and they're not out running a squirrel No, they're definitely not. No one is.
Speaker 2Our dog, Nero, caught a couple of squirrels in his heyday, but even he can't now that he's 11. But he's he was. squeaky toys sound the way that they sound for a reason. I just will tell you that if you never heard an animal a dog catch a squirrel, It's a horrifying fucking truth. But that's what we're going to leave you with.
Speaker 1Yeah, there we go. Those are our cute baby animoos.
Speaker 2Yeah, cute baby animoos.
Speaker 1The apocalypse.
Speaker 2So we want to know which baby animal you think would be most likely to survive and thrive with the zombie apocalypse.
Speaker 1Do you have any animal additions?
Speaker 2to your list.
Speaker 1Let us know. You can let us know on Instagram. You know I was kind of toying with the idea of this platform I just recently learned about and probably should have known about a lot sooner called Pod Chaser. I'm not at a point where I'm like so on board with this and I'm going to tell everybody to go there, but it is a place where people can leave rating and review. It's kind of like called like the IMDB of a podcast. I don't know if that's advertising or not.
Speaker 2I feel like that's advertising, because one of my favorite podcasts is We Can Do Hard Things and there are only like 10 reviews on there. So I don't know, i'm not sold on Pod Chaser, but if you want to leave us a review, share a zombie survival tip. We'll read it. It could be useful for actual survival. And don't forget to subscribe as well as we only recently read that. Please subscribe. And this is episode 11, episode 15. We are talking about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Graham Smith.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2The National Austin's classic novel with a zombie apocalypse.
Speaker 1I've been a lot of things to say about it.
Speaker 2Yeah, dan's not even halfway through, or you're halfway through now, right, and you've got big feelings about it.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2So it should be a good conversation.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean I had to write detailed notes at this point about how I feel about it. I don't want to dictate how anybody should feel about this book, So I'm saving my opinions.
Speaker 2Yeah, save your feelings. I got an early morning rant from Dan about it already, so we'll save that for the podcast.
Speaker 1What I'd like to know is if you have read Pride, Prejudice and Zombies already. Did you like it, And I would like to know what you liked about it.
Speaker 2That would be great to hear people liked about it. And last but not least, this podcast comes out every other Sunday, so be on the watch out. For two weeks from now It'll be our next episode, and you know it's always good to have it on a Sunday because you have to go to work on Monday, unless it's a zombie apocalypse. Yeah maybe that's better I don't know.
Speaker 1Oh you know, if it's my job, they'd still have me come in.
Speaker 2It's true, they had you breathing in fucking horrifying air quality with the wildfire situation Never even mentioned it to us, not even a, not even like a.
Speaker 1Be safe out there, or you should wear a mask or something. They're just like. Well, we'll talk to you when you have lung cancer, i guess.
Speaker 2Yeah, i mean they already probably all assume you're going to have lung cancer. They don't give a shit.
Speaker 1That is kind of how capitalism is so great.
Speaker 2A lot of people I work for I feel like the subtitle of this podcast is capitalism.
Speaker 1Some title of every podcast we make.
Speaker 2All right, everybody, we got to go to our last strategy session, so we got to go.
Speaker 1Yeah, we got to go See you guys later. Goodbye, bye, bye, don't get bit or get bitten, yeah, and then bite someone OK bye, bye, bye, bite your family members first Yeah, we passed a milestone last week Five hundred downloads.
Speaker 2That's pretty awesome for only 10. I don't think we'd even published our 10th episode. So nine episodes for doing zero promotion. I'm proud of us. Thank you so much for listening folks. We love you. Yeah, thanks for listening, thanks for being a part of the Horde And I hope that, from my heart to yours, that your job is not crushing your soul. And if it is, go watch Train to Busan. Yeah.
Speaker 1You know, have a little zombie escape And yeah, have a good time everyone, and don't get bit, don't get bit. If you do, bite somebody else.
Speaker 2I never get told Bye, everybody Bye.
