In this episode of Zombie Book Club, we delve into the CDC's ingenious strategy for public health communication: a comic book about zombie apocalypse as a metaphor for real-world disasters. We discuss how this approach not only captivated global audiences but also effectively raised awareness about emergency preparedness. From examining the comic's narrative to critiquing its representation of women, LGBTQ+ communities, and racial diversity, we offer a comprehensive analysis. Co-hosts Dan and Leah share their perspectives, with Dan providing humorous anecdotes from his life and Leah discussing the 'stoned ape theory' and the interconnectedness of humans and mushrooms. We also evaluate how well we are prepared for a real-life disaster, based on the CDC's guidelines. Tune in for an insightful and entertaining discussion on how a fictional zombie outbreak can teach us real-life survival skills!
Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast! https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub
Link to the CDC's Zombie Preparedness Comic
https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/6023
Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast!
https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub
Zombie Book Club Voicemail
(614) 699-0006
Zombie Book Club Email
ZombieBookClubPodcast@gmail.com
Our Secret Website That Isn't Finished
https://zombiebookclub.io
Our Merchandise Store (Where you can find our Evil Magic Chicken Zombie Shirts)
https://zombie-book-club.myspreadshop.com
In this episode of Zombie Book Club, we delve into the CDC's ingenious strategy for public health communication: a comic book about zombie apocalypse as a metaphor for real-world disasters. We discuss how this approach not only captivated global audiences but also effectively raised awareness about emergency preparedness. From examining the comic's narrative to critiquing its representation of women, LGBTQ+ communities, and racial diversity, we offer a comprehensive analysis. Co-hosts Dan and Leah share their perspectives, with Dan providing humorous anecdotes from his life and Leah discussing the 'stoned ape theory' and the interconnectedness of humans and mushrooms. We also evaluate how well we are prepared for a real-life disaster, based on the CDC's guidelines. Tune in for an insightful and entertaining discussion on how a fictional zombie outbreak can teach us real-life survival skills!
Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast! https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub
Link to the CDC's Zombie Preparedness Comic
https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/6023
Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast!
https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub
Zombie Book Club Voicemail
(614) 699-0006
Zombie Book Club Email
ZombieBookClubPodcast@gmail.com
Our Secret Website That Isn't Finished
https://zombiebookclub.io
Our Merchandise Store (Where you can find our Evil Magic Chicken Zombie Shirts)
https://zombie-book-club.myspreadshop.com
In 2011, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, aka the CDC, embarked on a rather unorthodox mission to educate the masses about disaster preparedness through the lens of a zombie apocalypse. Picture this a comic book brimming with the undead, a narrative design not just to thrill but to teach. It's a world where zombies aren't just brain-eating fiends. They're metaphors for hurricanes, earthquakes, pandemics, you name it. This comic wasn't just a piece of entertainment. It was a survival manual disguised as a horror story. The public ate it up like zombies at a brain buffet.
Speaker 1:The CDC, known for its stern warnings and clinical advice, suddenly became the cool kid in the room. Their website crashed under the weight of eager clicks as people from all corners of the globe scrambled to download their very own copy. Who knew that preparing for the end of the world would become a global sensation? The comics took a chord, intertwining fear and fascination with a dash of practical advice, making disaster preparedness unexpectedly trendy. People who wouldn't normally give a second thought to emergency kits and evacuation plans were now discussing them over dinner. The CDC's zombie apocalypse wasn't just a fleeting pop culture fad. It was a masterstroke of public health communication In a world numbed by endless warnings and guidelines. It took a horde of fictional undead to make us sit up and pay attention to the very real threats lurking around the corner. Today we dive into this internet curiosity, dissect it and ask the big question when will AMC pick this up and make 11 seasons out of it?
Speaker 2:We're waiting. Welcome to Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book was written by a government agency. I haven't read it. I am Dan and I'm a writer. And when I'm not cursing the engineers at Cub Cadet for making every nut and bull on their snowblower attachment a different size and impossible to reach with human appendages, I'm writing a book about a truck driver stuck in traffic during a zombie outbreak while he balances his desires to live a pacifist life with his urge to clobber everything in his path with a wrecking bar. A lot like when I try to assemble a snowblower attachment for our Cub Cadet lawnmower.
Speaker 1:Is this you trying to get a Cub Cadet sponsorship?
Speaker 2:No, I don't want it. Keep your shit, cub Cadet.
Speaker 1:But, john Deere, if you want to talk, yeah, Cub Cadet, we spend a lot of money on you and we're disappointed.
Speaker 2:Actually, I really like our lawnmower.
Speaker 1:Do you I?
Speaker 2:hate building, shit for it.
Speaker 1:And I'm Leah. I'm of the species Homo sapiens. Did you know that, Dan oh?
Speaker 2:yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, so am.
Speaker 2:I.
Speaker 1:I'm like great. We are characterized by attributes such as bipedalism. Walking on two legs, I like it. I have opposable thumbs and supposedly a large brain relative to my body size, but I think I kind of have a small head. So it all balances out and we're part of the biological order primates and the family homidae, homidae, homidae, honde, honde, which also includes our great eight relatives chimps, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans. Orangutans, apologies, orangutans. But also did you know that we share 97% of our genetic material with mice?
Speaker 2:Yeah, did you know that we share 92% of our genetic material with mushrooms? Really, mm-hmm, that's fucking cool yeah. We share it with us now, but it is cool, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is some percentage though.
Speaker 2:We do have a shockingly high relationship to mushrooms To mushrooms yeah, mushy babies, interesting, interesting.
Speaker 1:Well, that will come into play later. Today we're talking about the Center for Disease Control's Zombie Preparedness Guide.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we release episodes every two weeks on Sundays, regardless of whether or not we post on social media. When we do so, like this week when I was a week late for letting everybody know that it was uploaded- All right, it was a week.
Speaker 1:Our episode's always on time, but our time to promote it is often zero. So for those of you who just are here and listening, we appreciate you. I don't even know how you got here, unless you're Eric.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's Eric's excuse? Personal life update Leah yeah what's going on Should. I go first, of course I'm retired, retired For this year. Oh yeah, I wish, I wish I could just retire at 40. I should have just stayed in for the 20 years in the Army.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, no, our whole life would be different. Yeah, and you would be more like the person who's clobbering people with a wrecking bar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd be so crusty. So yeah, as you could imagine, I get. So I got laid off from my seasonal job. I've been talking about it and it's great, but it's not what I expected it to be, because this week was so fucking hard. We got we got some really messed up snow, like really sticky stuff, and I hadn't yet assembled our snow blower attachment for our riding lawnmower, which costs more than the riding lawnmower, and it was a. It was. It was terrible the design of it. They're like you know, you need a five, five eighths wrench for this one and a nine, sixteenths and 11 sixteenths for this one and a seven eighths. Get a three quarter inch wrench. Now you need a half inch and I'm like just make them all the same size. Why couldn't we?
Speaker 1:get one that was assembled.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that too. I was not predicting the level of assembly that I would have to do. I thought like, oh, I probably got to put like the bottom frame onto the onto the snow blower attachment. I was like, no, first of all you have to modify your lawn tractor entirely and there are very few instructions about how to do that.
Speaker 1:How long did it take you? I know you were gone a long time, like eight solid hours but we're even working on. Actually, you're still not done.
Speaker 2:I'm still not done.
Speaker 1:Like isn't there something else you have to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have to put chains on it. That's the only thing that I got.
Speaker 1:to put chains on the tires you know what else, though, too, like when I saw you testing it around. Cause you, it will not work without chains.
Speaker 2:That's also not that snow.
Speaker 1:Not that snow, no is. That is very underwhelming for the amount of money we spent, and I'm not going to say how much we spent on this, but I was like that's, I could have bought a used car, I think maybe a jelloppy, yeah, and then we could have just bolted a regular snow blower to the front of it or the snow plow that's still sitting in somebody's yard, that you bought but never picked up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's all. That's a whole other story yeah. I'm a subscriber.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:I shouldn't bring it up, yeah, so on top of that, you know we talked about the snow tires. Snow tires, oh. Snow tires for the truck, oh my God. So I scheduled with Toyota. We have a Toyota and I made a schedule online and then I showed up to have just the old tires take it off, snow tires put on. But the only way that you could schedule it is to schedule it for a tire rotation. They didn't have the options for what I wanted. So I go there, not only not, not only. Okay, they didn't schedule it. They did not schedule the appointment because they didn't have a time slot for replacing snow tires, only tire rotations. Any day of the week you could just walk in, have your tires rotated, but if you want those tires taken off the rims and new tires put on, they can't get to that till next month.
Speaker 1:Pretty fucked up. So let me we should get some really hot rims for the talk to the camera. We should.
Speaker 2:I mean it would actually save us a lot of drama in the wintertime if we had our snow tires mounted to a different set of rims and then we just I could do it in the garage.
Speaker 1:Can I get some fun rims for my Elantra too? Yeah, let's just, let's get rims. I want hot pink.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is this a good time to tell us, tell everybody who we're sponsored by Sign up for our Patreon, so we can get sweet rims. We don't have a Patreon yet. No, maybe one day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2:If people want it. You know, only if people want it.
Speaker 1:I think. I think people want merch. Let us know if you want merch, because I really want a zombie book club t-shirt like stat.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, then also. Uh, had a situation the other day where, like every gas station I went to, just didn't work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a real thing in Vermont. Not only are there almost zero gas stations and they close on Godly early, but they also just don't have gas.
Speaker 2:They either just don't have gas to pump or they, or it seems like they do and the pump just doesn't put anything out. Where you go up and they're like we're not accepting Pay at the pump, pay inside with cash. And it's like what the fuck? What the fuck? Everybody wants cash in Vermont. So then we went to CVS and I stood in line in between a whole bunch of people that were just chit chatting around the, the, the checkout counter. I'm like I just want to leave. I got ice cream. It's melting in my hands.
Speaker 2:Um, so my question is one is magic, real to? Am I cursed? Because my realization is this is also how my day job goes driving dump trucks. It's always catching fire, something's always breaking. It's never a case of like go show up at the place that gives you the asphalt, take the asphalt to the paver and pave the fucking road. No, it's like. No, you're. You almost died today and you're going to almost die again later today and you're going to do like very little in the way of progress and then we'll just make that up at the end of the year instead of laying you off on time.
Speaker 1:And you know this is why you're probably okay with the zombie apocalypse versus your day job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, zombies, please end it all.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, if you're already a life at risk in your situation, what's going to change?
Speaker 2:One good bit of news brand new laptop. I'm very excited about this, though UPS did just deliver it into a fucking snow bank while it was raining and then just left it there, not even near our house where anybody could just drive up and grab it. But luckily, our nosy neighbor did tell me that there was a package for me sitting in a snow bank and that I should probably go get it before I completely soaked through and luckily I did, because it was my laptop.
Speaker 1:Is that our nosy neighbor that also brings us stuff sometimes? Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, she's really great. She's very nosy but also very nice, and it's a mixed bag of emotions.
Speaker 1:Overall, I appreciate her yeah.
Speaker 2:I appreciate her, but also wish she would keep her nose out of our business but also bring us shit when it's sitting in a snow bank.
Speaker 1:She's got a good heart. You know, it's just small town life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, at least she uses leashes on with her dogs now.
Speaker 1:She does. I appreciate that a lot, I appreciate that too. You know. Thank you for saying that.
Speaker 2:She has four golden retrievers. When you see her walking down the road, it's just a flurry of golden fur. Yeah, it's just fur for miles. It takes up the whole road.
Speaker 1:They're so sweet, though, and our little dog Ziggy fucking loves them, yeah, and every time we walk by her yard he's like please, let me go play. And I was like, but then I got to talk to the neighbor, who's nice, but I'm a recluse and I don't want to as far as my personal life update. Dan, I don't think I'm cursed. Oh good, I don't know that you're cursed either, but I do think magic is real. Yeah, we should make a poll, friendship is magic, that's true.
Speaker 1:My little pony. Anyways, I am not only a homo sapien, I'm also a mushroom having a human experience, or, as Terrence McCann I would call it, I'm a stoned ape. We are stoned apes Not right now, no, not anymore, but we have been. For those of you who've been listening for a while, you probably remember the tales of Jamaica and our beautiful, uh, psilocybe, psilocybin, fun times. And that happened again last night, thanks to a lovely friend I will not name. Thank you, friend. And uh, the stoned ape theory, dan, have you heard of it before?
Speaker 2:I have. What is it? I unfortunately heard about it from Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1:So why?
Speaker 2:don't you tell me so that I can rewrite all of that information in my brain?
Speaker 1:Well, I quickly Googled it, or not Google that I quickly put into chat GPT. So I'm not sure that's better or worse than Joe Rogan. I think it's better, I don't know. I have some thoughts with chat GPT later in this episode.
Speaker 2:I think chat GPT is objectively better than Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1:You know what? It's not that hard of a thing to be better at Joe Rogan is not coming for our jobs.
Speaker 1:True, true, he's just destroying the world. Okay, anyhow, a stoned ape theory suggests that the use of psychedelic substances by early hominids, aka us, can treat it to our cognitive evolution. And that's what we're proposed, proposed by the um renowned Terence McKenna. Google them if you don't know them. But this theory is actually not widely accepted by the scientific community, which I think is disappointing, because that's why I just like chat. Gpt, like hey is the stoned ape theory doesn't have any evidence. I know, I just tipped up the you can all hear that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's typing, yeah, um typing on the table.
Speaker 1:And like there is evidence that we did utilize psychedelic substances, but there's no evidence that it had a role in our human evolution specifically. So, dan, what's your take?
Speaker 2:I like scientists. I really like the, uh, the stoned ape theory. I think it makes a lot of sense as a scientist that I am, I'm definitely a scientist. I think Terence McKenna, uh, was a smart dude. Um, I I. I understand if the scientific community says that you know like there's no evidence for this. But how do you go back in time, uh, millions of years and give early hominids psychedelics as a control and then some hominids no psychedelics as control and then do what happens and then follow scientific method to figure out whether or not this was true or not.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I guess I could ask chat to PT that later too, but supposedly it's not scientifically verified. But there are many things that are not scientifically verified that are still a valid lived experience. We just don't know if this is actually part of human evolution. What I can say is, as part of my own personal evolution, I have a lot to be grateful for the techniques. They fundamentally changed my life. Um and every time I have the privilege of doing that, I uh feel like I'm a better person at the end and a happier person.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of mushrooms that do a lot of great things for us and mushrooms have not been very well studied by the scientific community, despite the scientific community's um criticism of Terence McKenna saying that it's not scientifically valid. There's also been not very good studies on a lot of mushrooms Uh. One of those is the Amani, the miscaria Um, also known as the fly agaric. It's a. It's the Mario mushroom, you know the one red white spots, I feel great tattoo. So until like a couple years ago, this mushroom in every foraging guide was labeled poisonous Um and, to be fair, if you eat it you'll get very sick. So it's poisonous kind of. Sometimes it requires a very specific type of uh preparation which people figured out over thousands of years. But this information was lost to us because of mycophobia, the fear of mushrooms. People just assume that all mushrooms were bad and from the devil.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, if you have a bad trip, I could see how it gets there.
Speaker 2:So the Amani, the miscaria, I mean it's. It's got history all the way back to, like you know, the beginnings of our, our known civilization that we have recorded history on, like tens of thousands of years ago, um, starting in Siberia and then traveling down into India and then making its way to Europe and across the ocean. Um and the? Uh, the Norseman, you know, the Vikings, said that uh, this mushroom was was a way to talk to the gods, and every culture has figured out some way to uh to make this a safe mushroom to consume. They've all figured out a very similar way to do it and to maximize its benefits.
Speaker 2:What I firmly believe to be true is that, um, mushrooms were the first, the first organisms on our planet. We all evolved from mushrooms, plants evolved from mushrooms and animals evolved from mushrooms, and mushrooms are more related, uh, humans are more related to mushrooms than they are related to plants, and all of us have evolved in over millions and millions of years alongside of each other. And the same way that mushrooms and plants um wait for us to die and decay so that they can eat us, I believe that there are um, in the same way, plants and mushrooms are like eat us because we can fix you, and a perfect example of that is is the aminida muscaria, and, despite not having a lot of research on that mushroom, one medicine that we use to this day is based on a compound in aminida muscaria, and it's called uh benzodiazepam.
Speaker 1:Which is actually highly addictive and problematic.
Speaker 2:It is highly addictive and problematic because it is an isolated compound of the aminida muscaria mushroom. And what the aminida muscaria mushroom has that nobody has really figured out yet is it has other compounds that work with that compound that negate the negative drawbacks of benzodes. That's incredible, and the thing that benzodiazepam is good for is um reducing anxiety and helping you process trauma, insomnia. So as, as we're growing as people, we have to do all these traumatic things just to survive. Like we gotta go out and like and like stab a rabbit with a stick Because we're like it's the middle of winter, there's nothing, there's no leaves to eat. We gotta stab this rabbit. You feel bad about stabbing that rabbit and your whole life you're just like I stabbed a rabbit. I can't sleep at night because that rabbit it just squealed like a baby. And then the M&E to Muscaria is like eat me. And then you eat the M&E to Muscaria and you're like feel better about that rabbit situation. I can sleep now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that's what? That's psilocybin. I know the M&E to Muscaria is different than other magic mushrooms, but that is my experience overall with psychedelics, not just mushrooms. Psychedelics is they are, they're healers. I don't really know that it's possible to abuse them. I guess some people could.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. Well, the way I look at it. Like the reason that M&E to Muscaria was considered poisonous is because you know like you would if you consumed an entire bottle of aspirin. You would probably think that aspirin is poisonous. You'd be like, and if somebody told you, yeah, don't use aspirin. A friend of mine ate an aspirin and had to go to the emergency room and have their stomach evacuate and like, how much of an aspirin did he have? A whole one, a whole aspirin. So, like the problem is sometimes dosage. There's definitely some very poisonous mushrooms out there, but a lot of them is just a matter of dosage.
Speaker 1:Honestly, that's so many things that, like the health wonks get really up in arms about, and it's like aspartame, for example. You have to consume so much aspartame for it to be a problem, like an ungodly amount. I know human being would ever do.
Speaker 2:No, I don't think you would. I don't know the amount. Yeah, it could see diapepsy. We're going to do this.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying aspartame is nutritionally valid, like useful, but I'm just saying it's not going to poison you.
Speaker 2:I think aspartame is medicine.
Speaker 1:Sometimes A diet coke every once in a while is kind of what I need, but I do want to follow up with this thing about, like if plants could talk, or if mushrooms could talk, because before we get into the CDC which might not agree with me about this, I will. I am putting my foot down right now and I'm saying mushrooms and plants do talk. First of all, they communicate with each other. They just have a completely different chemical language than us. They also use vibration to make music.
Speaker 1:They do make music, and tons and tons of indigenous cultures talk about how they talk with plants. That's how ayahuasca was created. Ayahuasca requires two different plants to come together but aren't anywhere near each other in the Amazon forest Chepruna and the ayahuasca vine. And how did ayahuasca the drink, the medicine become a thing? According to the Chepibo? They talked to them and said you should put us together.
Speaker 1:I have some indigenous friends in my life that I'm grateful for, who I will not name, who have told me stories about one of them who had cancer, who was driving down the road one day and saw a cedar tree, and the cedar tree said to her if you eat my bark, I'll be healed. She doesn't have cancer anymore. Another person talked about how they were walking in the woods and they saw a blueberry bush, and the blueberry bush said to them if you give this many of my blueberries every day to your sister who is dying from cancer, she'll be healed. And she was. And these are things that I realize are very hard to replicate scientifically, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't use modern science for things like cancer. My sister died of cancer and she did all the things that she could and unfortunately, a plant did not talk to her.
Speaker 2:No, blueberry plant, told her, but also to be frank.
Speaker 1:Sometimes for one we're going to die, and sometimes things are too foregone. She had stage 4 cancer when she was diagnosed, and so I don't think there was coming back From that. There was just delaying it. But my point is that plants and mushrooms do talk. It's about whether or not we listen. That's my deep comment for the day.
Speaker 2:So that's our personal life update. That got deep, it did. I do love conversations like Leah. Are you going to let us know what we're talking about today, Because I don't know anything about this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, this was actually supposed to be an episode about two things the Center for Disease Control's preparedness 101, zombie pandemic guide and also what's it called Dan the something 888?.
Speaker 2:Oh, the ComPlan 8888?.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but then, as I was reading the preparedness plan for a zombie pandemic, there's so much to say about it, so we're doing a whole episode just on this. I will do ComPlan 888 another time, yeah.
Speaker 2:And what I found out about ComPlan 8888 is there is also an entire episode's worth of content.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, we can compare ComPlan 888 to this one when we get to it. But anyways, let's start with the basics. What is it? It is the US Department of Health and Human Services Center for Disease Control and Prevention's preparedness 101 zombie pandemic. We just call it the CDC.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can Google it too and you can see this for free. You can just go get it.
Speaker 1:It's available to you. There's an actual comic story of a zombie apocalypse, and the point of it is to teach key points on how to be prepared for emergencies, actually of any kind, which I find disappointing. I wish there'd been more specifics for zombie preparedness, but while the guide does use this fictional zombie apocalypse scenario, they say that its main purpose is just to promote general emergency preparedness and that they realize that using fun media is how you get attention. And hey, here I am talking about it. So it's true.
Speaker 2:Well, this is also just how I've always approached zombie survival preparedness. Like you know, we are reasonable human beings. We don't load up our basement with cans of chickpeas and guns just because we're like the zombies are coming, no, like we know that zombies are a work of fiction. But it's fun to prepare for real world crises by putting something fun on it like zombies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, zombies are the best version of that apocalypse. So let's get into it. It is a story and I want to talk about the story first, because this is a book club, and then we'll get into the part that they care about, the CDC, which is the preparedness guide, and I'm actually going to ask Dan to rate for us how prepared he thinks he is and we are not. He is, how prepared we are, based on their guide. All right, we'll see if we can give ourselves a score for that. But first we got to talk about zombie type. Oh good, they have a very specific zombie type. According to the CDC and the TV that the main characters are watching. They have slow and slurred speech. They're a slow zombie but they have quote violent tendencies. There were no images of anybody biting anybody, just that they were violent.
Speaker 2:Sounds like my uncle.
Speaker 1:I'm assuming, when he's intoxicated.
Speaker 2:I mean, is there any other way?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't know your uncle well, you've used my family, I know. I just don't know which one, but I'll try and figure it out over Christmas.
Speaker 1:The virus is called Z5N1, or Z5N1 for you Americans.
Speaker 2:It's definitely Z.
Speaker 1:No Z, and there were some interesting statistics that they shared. One zombie can infect 21 others, resulting in very rapid spread.
Speaker 2:That is an interesting little factoid. You know, when we look at zombie media, they rarely ever discuss like how infectious one zombie can.
Speaker 1:It's just kind of assumed that it's highly infectious. They show us it's highly infectious by people eating each other quickly. And then the other thing that's interesting especially because we just talked about Kingdom on the last episode is that these zombies also don't like daylight. Yeah, it's two in a row.
Speaker 2:Who knew Two in a row. We got a twofer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they like nighttime. They're not hiding from the daylight, they're just kind of dormant Solar powered yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're charging. Yeah, they're charging.
Speaker 1:Charging overnight. So here's the synopsis. It's set in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Speaker 2:That makes sense.
Speaker 1:The southeast and the main character is Todd. Todd is in a relationship with Julie. It's not to determine what kind, but they clearly live together and sleep together.
Speaker 2:Is it an open relationship?
Speaker 1:Maybe, ok, we can make out anything. We all know of this because they don't tell us. They also have a very cute golden retriever-esque looking dog. Shout out to our neighbor named Max and it starts out with them watching a scary movie. And when they're watching the scary movie, it's one of the few times Julie has any dialogue because she's scared of the scary movie and wants to pick the movie next time. This is important to remember because she's going to have bad dreams. Ok, after the scary movie, julie's really tired. She goes to bed but Todd stays up and he decides to watch the news and the news is starting to discuss this strange virus outbreak of these slow, slurry speech zombies that are violent. And as he's watching it he's just kind of like oh that's really weird. Maybe I should start preparing. I don't want to wake Julie. It doesn't seem that bad yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wouldn't wake you up for zombies.
Speaker 1:He's shuffling at the door and it says neighbor. He's elderly neighbor, Mrs Clements, and she's a zombie. And the best image of this comic strip is Todd shoving Mrs Clements down the stairs. She's just flying down the stairs and then he slams the door shut and he has a slam sound.
Speaker 2:Mrs Clements.
Speaker 1:So this is when he starts to take it seriously, right, because zombie's literally coming to his front door. So he wakes Julie up, he tells her what's going on. We've got to create an emergency preparedness kit. I think he heard something on the TV about it and they pointed out that they need to include items for their dog, max, which was so sweet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nobody ever thinks about the dogs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've got to have all of the living creatures in your life. And then they go down to the basement to see what they've got and he discovers that his dad's old hand crank radio is there. Wow, yeah, lucky, very important. Then they kind of break from Todd, julie and Max and they show us a bunch of CDC doctors that are like, oh my god, there's an outbreak in the Southeast and that's these zombies, and we learned the 1 in 21 statistic, all these things. But they're really close to having a vaccine, but not close enough. It's going to take a week, just a very short amount of time, yeah, point out.
Speaker 2:Look, we went through COVID. Yeah, we know it doesn't take a week.
Speaker 1:No, but they're going to get it to a week. But they're concerned that that won't be quick enough because of how fast this spreads. I think the Southeast is going to be overrun.
Speaker 2:First I want to back up. The CDC is really blowing themselves up here, thinking that they can facilitate a virus vaccine in a week.
Speaker 1:In a week.
Speaker 2:They're like is this propaganda for the CDC?
Speaker 1:Maybe because it helps for all people who are afraid of vaccines and happily we got them out. They're like, oh you know, you can get them in a week, but here's nothing.
Speaker 2:If everybody just stays out of the CDC's way, they could have cured COVID in a week.
Speaker 1:Who knows, who knows. But then they break back to Todd, julie and Max. They have been sheltering in place per the radio and the news they've been listening to, but now they have run out of food. They have run out of toilet paper. We also know how important toilet paper is. I'm adding that for color. That's actually not a part of it.
Speaker 2:I was actually. I thought, that was.
Speaker 1:I think there is an image of a toilet paper roll somewhere in there and I wrote it down because I think it's actually a good idea to have a roll of toilet paper available.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, the emergency roll.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like we should have one in Shreveghars, because you never know, that's true when you're going to have an emergency. Yeah, all right. So anyways, they realize by watching the news that there are a few community shelters and one of them is close to them. It's the local elementary school. I'm like, ok, we got to get there. And the best thing about the shelter is that it allows animals.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's really nice, so Max can come. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I never thought about these things before, so I will say it's already doing a good job, because I'm like, oh my god, we have a dog that doesn't like people or other dogs. What are we going to do if we have to go to a community shelter? But anyways, they wait until they think that there's no zombies in the road and they run to their car. But of course, as soon as they get in their car, there's zombies surrounding them. They manage to get away. They arrive at local shelter right when the car runs out of gas, because the gas is on empty.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Some important lessons we're learning here from this comic strip.
Speaker 2:That was us on Friday.
Speaker 1:Another one of Julie's lines why didn't you fill up the gas tank? It was us on Friday.
Speaker 2:Or Saturday, sorry, saturday.
Speaker 1:When they arrived, they had this image of hundreds and hundreds of people there. It's packed in the gymnasium and Todd pulls out his crank radio and listens to it and learns that the vaccine is on its way.
Speaker 2:That's really good news.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they said it was going to take them a week. It's on its way now it's coming to Raleigh.
Speaker 2:How long has it been? Like 20 minutes.
Speaker 1:A week. Oh right, yeah, they ran out of food, ok, yeah.
Speaker 2:I was skipping right from him listening to his crank radio to getting in their car and hitting the shelter. We've already got one.
Speaker 1:It's been 20 minutes Literally flutters out and they barely get into the shelter on time because it's dusk and the zombies are trying to come out again, so they get in. He hears the vaccines coming, but it's one more day. They just got to survive one more day, but here's the thing You've got a one in 20. One zombie makes 21 zombies. Raleigh has become all of the worst versions of hordes we can picture, and nighttime is here the zombies. I don't know why they hear or they see. Whatever they figure out, there's people there and they start to swarm the building and they break through.
Speaker 1:And this is when Todd's like oh fuck, we don't have an emergency exit plan.
Speaker 2:Oh, he didn't make a plan.
Speaker 1:No of how to get out. But here's the worst slash best part. When you used to write stories as a little kid for class, what was the classic way to end a story? That was just absolutely fucking ludicrous and you couldn't figure away out of it.
Speaker 2:Oh, they all fly away, that's one.
Speaker 1:What's that? What else?
Speaker 2:Oh my god, You're not going to suggest that they pulled a Sopranos, did they?
Speaker 1:What's a Sopranos?
Speaker 2:It was all a dream they did. I used to read Word Up Magazine.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's what it is. Todd wakes up, realizes he fell asleep at the couch. He wakes up to a loud crash, bang because there's a big thunderstorm outside, an actual possible emergency.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he wakes up and he's like, oh shit, I'm not prepared, but it was all a dream. That's how they get away. And then Julie comes downstairs from hearing the thunderous check on him and she says he tells her a dream. She says that's why I'll pick the movie next time.
Speaker 2:Wow, what a ride. Did you enjoy that? Yeah, I mean the whole, it was all. A dream is, of course, a copout.
Speaker 1:I was so mad.
Speaker 2:I think it's even more of a copout that they didn't have to then survive a flood using the skills that he learned in his dream Turns out, the thunderous room was an intense but not so bad. Corbin's the news there's no stakes.
Speaker 1:No, not really. It's ridiculous. That was when you were sitting on the couch reading a confluent 88. And I was like, oh my fucking god, I cannot believe that they just did this. I was so upset about it Like I remember. In grade five I wrote a story like that and my teacher was like you can't do the copout, dream ending. But you can't do that. It's not a good ending.
Speaker 2:I know it's the fifth grade, but we're going to learn about tropes today. What's a trope? Is that a kind of fish Shut up? Leah, Listen.
Speaker 1:Well, the thing is the guy does conclude a list of emergency items to have on hand, which is really cool, and there are many morals of the story for how to be prepared. But we're going to get to that in a minute because I have a lot to say about the racist, capitalist, colonialist, homophobic misogyny of the living dead.
Speaker 2:AKA the.
Speaker 1:CDC. I cannot fucking believe, but also can, because let's all talk about how this country was formed and continues to be run in structural racism, but I just can't believe they did it at the same time. I feel like they just put this out. It's like 2022. They put it out, or 2023. Even I got to look and see what year it was and it was brutal. First of all, there's a ton of sexism. It absolutely does not pass the Bechtel test.
Speaker 2:What's the Bechtel?
Speaker 1:test. You tell us, dan, what's the Bechtel test?
Speaker 2:Oh, the Bechtel test is a wonderful test where we measure the female representation in a form of media.
Speaker 1:How do we measure it.
Speaker 2:Oh, you know, women's, they got to talk to each other. Yeah, at least two of them, two of them have to talk about, not a man. They have to have names, they have to be named characters and that's it. That's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they have to be at least two named women. They have to talk to each other. It's something other than a dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It does not pass. But according to chat GPT it does pass because the CDC gets a pass, because it's a informational material, not a story. And I was like that's not fucking true. There's a story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, chat, gpt doesn't know.
Speaker 1:There are a few women who do have. They all have names. I'll give them that, but there's no time where two women talk to each other. There's a few women that are at the CDC. The CDC is the best representation that there is. Pretty much every doctor is a person of color and they're mixed gender, and I will say that also. My favorite part of this was that when he wakes Julie up and she comes downstairs in her sleep T-shirt, her tits are out and down and they're not in a bra, and I appreciate that you don't see that represented enough in media Like where do boobs actually sit, when not in a?
Speaker 2:bra. Well, this is a measurement that we're making up, called droop representation.
Speaker 1:Droop presentation. Yeah, that's what they do. They're not meant to be up under your chin all the time. That's what gravity is, but anyhow, I did appreciate that. But the reality is that Julie is just along for the ride. She has almost no fucking dialogue. It's all Todd. It's all Todd.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's all Todd all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and like it's a Todd show, it is the Todd show, honestly. Max had more pictures and meaning, I think than Julie did, which I don't mind. I like dog representation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know there needs to be a measurement for non-human animal representation. What would it be? There needs to be two dogs talking to each other about, not a human. They have to be Dogs, have to have names, they have names.
Speaker 1:That wouldn't be that hard to fulfill. You just have like two dogs barking at each other and you need to know their names. Oh, that's really easy. Their guardians could be like shut up, whatever the name is. So abuse to dogs, but yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or they could have collars with names on them.
Speaker 1:That's true, keeping it fun.
Speaker 2:My hands are getting loud.
Speaker 1:So let's move on to the Vito Russo test. Yeah, what's that test that evaluates LGBTQ plus representation in films using three criteria. It includes a queer character or a trans character. The character is well-developed and integral to the plot beyond their sexual orientation or gender identity, and the character is not portrayed in a manner that reinforces negative stereotypes. This one fails because it's heteronormative and has so heteronormative.
Speaker 2:You know, I find this very surprising, yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't believe you. Yeah, it just was like so boring, nobody interesting in there, just like you know, a white couple that's heterosexual, we presume. I mean, I guess I'm presuming their gender identity and sexual identity.
Speaker 2:We could make up our own story about them.
Speaker 1:I think they're actually part of like a polyamorous group is just those two happen to live together right now.
Speaker 2:I think they are each other's beards. They have this whole other life but they're together. I mean they love each other, they are a family, but they do not have sexual intercourse with each other. It's kind of like James Beard and whoever. That steel magnet is from Wisconsin.
Speaker 1:Oh, from the show, julia.
Speaker 2:From the show Julia. It's like that they just travel Europe. They're not traveling right now. They're just kind of like hanging out back home, just like resting up before their next big European backpacking vacation, where they're just going to go off on their own paths and find strange European people to put their genitals together with. And then you know, at the end of the night they come together, back together and they're like well, let's share our experiences.
Speaker 1:They're friends, they're having a romance. That's not sexual. That's lovely. I can see that Also. It is the southeast and even though it's technically in present day, I can see a world where you might not be out in the southeast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you definitely have to go to Europe. Yeah, I mean, that's why they go to Europe.
Speaker 1:That's why they go to Europe, yeah, it wasn't that long ago that I had to pretend I didn't have a girlfriend in Georgia to be able to keep my job.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I could see that in North Carolina. I like the story Race test. The race test is similar to the Bechtel test, but it focuses on the representation of non-white characters. Past the race test, a movie must have at least two named characters of color who talk to each other, but something other than a white character. Again, chatgpt says this doesn't matter because it's a CDC guide about zombie apocalypses.
Speaker 2:Yeah, chatgpt is the thing that's going to take over all of our jobs, so this is great.
Speaker 1:I think it really needs some training, like some anti-oppression, anti-racism training.
Speaker 2:Yeah, who's going to do that?
Speaker 1:I don't know. I know a few good trainers. If you're interested, ChatGPT, but not me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let us know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, can you imagine if that's what we get on this podcast? I get a job helping train ChatGPT to not be an asshole and not live in the capitalist colonial's heteronormative patriarchy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm all for it.
Speaker 1:Race is patriarchy. Yeah, it went up, but it does pass. Okay, so again this is an example of the floor and not the ceiling, of what's possible representation. It does pass because in the two pages of the CDC part of it, like I said, all the doctors are different races and ethnicities, they're men and women and they're talking about saving all people. But I feel like there's an implied saving of white people because we care about Todd and Julie, also Max also. All the zombies were white. Yeah, like all of the zombies.
Speaker 2:Just like in the walking dead. What is that yeah?
Speaker 1:like what the fuck is that?
Speaker 2:You know what? This is why I need to start my zombie actors guilt, so that we can have better representation among zombies.
Speaker 1:I think it's very important. We've talked about this a few times now. So there are 18 whole pages before you see anybody of color Again, then it's only a couple pages of doctors, and then the main characters themselves are a white heterosexual couple with the dude as the protagonist who basically says everything, and the woman is one dimensional, like me in our first episode. So, oh, except that she finds the scary movie scary and that she doesn't want to watch him anymore.
Speaker 2:That's all we know about Julie. Yeah, that's the only color that we get for her character.
Speaker 1:So I'm really disappointed in the CDC for publishing this. I'm going to look up when it was published because I'm making that up right now. But I'm curious, dan do you think that they should have cared a little bit more, or not, about representation and making this zombie preparedness one on one guide?
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot of things that they should have cared about more. One of them is a satisfying ending, because, first of all, you're not going to get any sequels when you end it like that. But yeah, I think I mean I've said it before I think that when, when you think more deeply about people other than the heteronormative white character that is your lead, you get a better story. You get a more fleshed out story. You have the opportunity to tell more stories within that story, which makes it better, and I know that they're just trying to like appeal to the young people and like have a fun way to tell people to be prepared for disaster situations. That doesn't mean that they can't make it good too.
Speaker 1:I agree. I mean there were some entertaining parts of the story, but it could have been a lot better. It could have had a longer representation. I'm completely wrong about when it was made. I heard about it in 2023. It was made in 2011. Wow yeah very incorrect 12 years ago, but I still think the exact same critiques apply in 2011. Like when did walking dead come out?
Speaker 2:2010. I mean the show.
Speaker 1:And it already had. I mean, it had some issues in the beginning, but it already had more representation than the fucking CDC the government that's supposed to be caring about this shit, but we all know doesn't loves keeping the status quo.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we're saying that now the government loves the status quo and wants to bring the status quo back to an earlier status quo in some cases. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They don't want us thinking about big things.
Speaker 1:I can imagine that they could make the argument like oh you know, like most people are going to read this, or white people, and they'll be too freaked out if there is a queer person in it or a black person. God forget it, man. Which is like, just like the show.
Speaker 2:Julia, they might just throw it right out the window.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're watching the show called Julia on Max. Highly recommend it, julia Child, and there is this one moment that was really powerful. There's a black producer, black female producer, and she makes this like groundbreaking show called Women Talking to Women. It's a pilot, whatever, and the host of the show is a black woman and the guy who runs the what is it called? The TV studio?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like a local affiliate.
Speaker 1:Whatever. Yeah, it says to her he loves it. It's amazing, it's groundbreaking, it's ahead of his time, but it's too far out of his time. And then he says, because I thought about it and my wife wouldn't watch that host, that host. Obviously this guy's a white dude and like that is racism.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he's acknowledging that this is where the future is, but is unwilling to take that step.
Speaker 1:Yeah, doesn't want to upset his wife. Yeah, fucked up.
Speaker 2:I think he's using his wife as an excuse. He doesn't want to upset the people above him, the people who watch the station. He doesn't want to be held personally responsible for going too far into the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, that's the thing about pushing for change or like critiquing these things. I think it's really easy to critique and like see racism elsewhere, be like oh well, that's why it is this way and those people are the problem. But we did all do a much better job of being like wait, how am I perpetuating it? And that's an example of where I really think he thought that he was being progressive.
Speaker 2:But he, just like you know, I think he, I think he was trying to be safe and he was just kind of going along with what was the societal status status quo and it was. This was before the civil rights movement.
Speaker 1:This is one of the civil rights movement was taking the civil rights movement in the 60s.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, it's building momentum. At this point it's not reached the 1968 peak. Yeah, yeah, it's really where we solve all civil rights problems.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everything was perfect after 1968. We fixed the south. That's a whole other podcast, but I will say that I appreciate them pointing out that Boston, which is not that far from us, is an extremely segregated city, still to this day in many ways. But yeah, it was a good. It was a good example of what I think somebody might try and say about this. But at the end of the day, it wasn't accessible and there are plenty of black zombie authors and readers and other Sylvester Barsi. Yeah, I'm really excited to read his book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now that I'm off.
Speaker 2:I'm going to have time I'm going to have time to read with my eyes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sylvester, if you happen to randomly listening to this, the only reason we haven't read your book yet is because Dan drives for a living. Yeah, and we couldn't listen to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've tried to read and drive at the same time and those lives will never be the same again. Yeah, we don't do that. We don't do that. I have a theory and I'd be interested to hear other people's ideas about, because you were talking about representation in zombies, and I wonder if producers and filmmakers, while wanting to portray positive images of race in their characters that they have on screen, I wonder if they worry about having black zombies because it sends like a message of like these are inhuman things, that it's okay to be violent and destructive.
Speaker 1:That's interesting.
Speaker 2:And because, like we lived in the South, we know that the zombie population of Georgia and Virginia is not 99% white, like it is in the Walking Dead, but I wonder if there was a conversation about that and they're like we don't really want like a bunch of white people killing black zombies by the handful.
Speaker 1:That's a really good point, dan, I didn't thought about that. I don't think I have an answer to that because I'm not a black person and I think probably folks would have different like perceptions about it, but I think that's very thoughtful. That's what I'll say.
Speaker 2:That's something to think about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the key thing would be like don't have it be majority people of color and don't have to be the first people that are killed. You know, because of the whole trope of like, if you're in a horror movie and you're the black person, you're going to die first.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was a book that I read recently and for the most part the zombies kind of went without full description, like they didn't specify like their skin color or their hairstyle. It was just like this zombie over here, there's a zombie over there, they'd smash their heads in. And there was one time when they specified that the zombie had dark skin and dreadlocks and it kind of upset me because it was the only time that it was ever brought up. Oh God, and yeah, exactly, and like, was that the author's intention? I don't know, but I do know that I remembered it.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that that's a doubt. It was intentional, because most racism is unconscious. That's true, because these are things that we are taught and we grew up in and if we don't ever question them or like learn how to actively question them for the rest of our lives as white people. Basically, you might not see it, because even for me, just this moment ago, when I was talking about the episode in Julia, I specified the race of the woman and then I had to remember that I needed to specify the race of the producer, guy who runs the studio?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's because, like, whiteness is seen as the default and everything else is something else. And actually think about it, it's like white and people of color, like a false dichotomy. Yeah, great song by Metric, complete sidebar listen to it False. Dichotomy by Metric. Please sponsor me, Metric. Oh my God, just send me merch.
Speaker 2:Leo will work for Metric shirts.
Speaker 1:I just want to see Emily Haynes again.
Speaker 2:So you know, it's interesting how we started talking about zombie preparedness via the CDC, but our conversations always lean this way.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's what I think about most of the time.
Speaker 2:But it's also like really apt criticism of a lot of these things is like whether they, you know, like the TV producer in Julia, avoid these topics out of fear, or if they just don't think about it and think of white people as the default.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or don't think about like. Doesn't occur to them that there's no real characters of substance that are women? It's the same thing. It's usually not. I really believe it's usually not intentional. It's just the way that we're raised and unless you actively interrogate it, you're just going to keep perpetuating it. On to another topic Dan, are you ready to test your preparedness according to zombie preparedness 101? And I say your, but it's ours.
Speaker 2:I basically wrote the book on this. Oh right, You're confident. So, CDC, you can contact me at my email address if you hear these answers.
Speaker 1:Okay, there are seven categories or seven elements of preparedness that this guide helps us think through and we're going to literally score ourselves because maybe we'll want to work on it and improve our score. And if you hear the tippy tapis, our dogs have finally finished eating their dentistic on our back.
Speaker 2:And they want more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm going to go through each one of these and I'm going to ask you to rate you what you think our little preparedness is on a scale of one to 10 Zeds, 10 Zeds being most prepared for zombie apocalypse.
Speaker 2:Got it, I'm ready Okay.
Speaker 1:The first one is a long one, because there's an actual list on the zombie preparedness guide, which is the emergency kit. So, I'm going to ask you to rate how prepared you think we are before I read the list to you.
Speaker 2:Oh, like a before and after, yes, okay, I'm going to give us a five, because we do have multiple first aid kits. We have emergency sources of light, small emergency sources of heat that will keep us from dying, we have cold and wet weather gear, we have tools for doing things and we have a home to shelter inside of.
Speaker 1:So five out of 10 Zeds.
Speaker 2:Five out of 10 Zeds.
Speaker 1:What do you think we're missing? Oh, just give me like the top three things you think we're missing A stable food supply of more than a week. You learned that from the preparedness guide story for more than a week.
Speaker 2:You know what I did, but also also I already know that you need food to survive. We don't have. We don't have any water stored other than like two gallons that I distilled. Yeah, we don't have proper water purification, except for my water distiller. That would purify most things. It does have actually an activated carbon filter in it. That's cool. Also, we have an activated carbon filter for our shower head, so we could we could break that drink out of the shower hood.
Speaker 2:We do have extra fuel on hand for a generator, we have an emergency radio, but it does not have functional batteries. I bought AA batteries from Amazon. They are called the brand is called Power Owl and they are anything but power. They are all owl.
Speaker 1:Sounds like we should have gone the energizer bunny ones.
Speaker 2:I like Dorosel.
Speaker 1:So the other thing you didn't mention is preparedness for our animal friends.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, we do have a bag of disgusting dog food. I mean, we could eat that too if we're really desperate. Yeah, but they would all. Well, they have a week's worth of water between them. True, but we would. We would have to find more water for all of us.
Speaker 1:Yes, we probably have to increase the list, so I'm going to read to you what they say we need. Okay, and folks, you should pull up on paper and write this down for yourself, or just go to the website. We're going to put it in the show notes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or open up a Google Sheets document. Yeah, that's what I would do I don't do this pen and paper anymore.
Speaker 1:So first of all you need water. One gallon per person per day, doesn't say how many days just per day, just one gallon per day per person. Yeah so that'd be four gallons, but their dogs don't need a gallon, so I guess like three gallons a day would be plenty.
Speaker 2:They need like. They need like two gallons a week yeah.
Speaker 1:They're little buddies. Food, non perishable and easy to repair items. Minimum three day supply. Oh, we got that. We do. Oh God it was. It's so boring and we lost power over the winter. It was like the most boring food experience of my life. Flashlight.
Speaker 2:We have flashlights, we do.
Speaker 1:Battery powered or hand crank radio. I think a hand crank radio is actually what we should get. We should keep working.
Speaker 2:So I've got a handheld CB radio, but it's also a national weather alert radio. Hmm, that's true, but it needs. It needs batteries that work.
Speaker 1:Damn batteries. They apparently want us to have an NOAA weather radio if possible. Is that what you have? Yeah, interesting Extra batteries.
Speaker 2:I've got so many batteries, they're all power and they all suck.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's nice First aid kit including a whistle. I would never have thought of a whistle?
Speaker 2:I don't think it has a whistle, but I mean I you know I'd have to check through it. But we have three first aid kits.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of them is from a summer camp I ran a long time ago and I never had to use Thank God, maybe I used like a bandage once, antibiotic appointment bandages, face masks, gloves and a reference book. I thought that was interesting, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, I listened to a podcast called the casual preppers every now and then and they are always advertising this preppers medical handbook and they say that it's like the most comprehensive medical handbook that a non professional medical person could ever use. Hmm, one of the hosts is a medical professional and knows what he's talking about. Medical wise. So I've always wanted to get this book. Maybe we can convince them to sponsor us so that we can we should we can buy some dope rims for our car.
Speaker 1:I was going to say just maybe pay for the cost of the podcast, but you know, this is our hobby.
Speaker 1:We don't mind sanitation, personal hygiene items and bleach. I really don't like that. This one in particular. They don't give us the specific examples because, like, I think this is one that should say things like toilet paper, tampons or pads, baby wipes, like give us something specific, because I guarantee I would not think about things like a tampon, and then, well, actually that's not true. I did think of things like the tampon because of the Amazon.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But they're not on our kit.
Speaker 2:That's for sure there might be there's. There's a lot of little things like that that are in my first aid kit Really, but I'd have to look at it. That's so nice and also we. Just we do have a lot of stuff on hand.
Speaker 1:Yes, I do have those things. Yeah, copies of personal documents is also what I didn't think about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's something that nobody thinks about is like you want. You want to have your personal documents like passports, birth certificates and stuff. You want to be together that you could just grab if you needed to leave, like in a binder, in a folder or a binder. You also want to store that in like a fire fireproof safe, which we have.
Speaker 2:I was actually thinking about that that we do have a portable safe and some of those things are in there, but others are not like you can just grab the safe and go insurance policies as well.
Speaker 1:Then I was like do you really? Because either we're in a world where we have internet or we're in a world where we don't, and the world is fucking over.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So at that point, Well you know if our house got flooded out? Right yeah, and we had to go to an emergency shelter, we might be spending our time at that emergency shelter talking to FEMA and also calling our insurance providers. Yeah, and not having that information would make things very difficult, that's true. And we might not have access to internet because everything we live in Vermont, it snowed and we didn't have internet or power for three days last year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that sucks so bad and we're still not totally repaired. And medications it's interesting they want you to have a three-day supply of food one gallon per day per person for water, but they don't specify how many days. But they want you to have seven-day supply of medication.
Speaker 2:Well, I think medication is going to be harder to get. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's hard now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like if a disaster happens and you have one day of medication left, you're kind of fucked because your doctor is not going to be able to write a prescription. Even if they're going to, you're not going to be able to fill that prescription unless you go significantly far away where the disaster is not affecting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was actually talking to a friend about this. They really should have it so we can have larger and longer supplies of medicine and not do this whole month-to-month or once every three months thing. If you're going to be on something for the rest of your life, you should be able to have access to a large amount, just because shit can fucking happen. You need to have its life saving Cell phone with charger. Yeah, family disaster plan, family and emergency contact information, extra cash we were just talking with this last night. Actually I was like we need cash on hand.
Speaker 2:We did, but for different reasons. You were high and you just said we should carry around money. I'm like why? And you were like I don't know, like maybe the kid who comes by to watch our dogs might want money. Yeah, you might want to give money to the person at CVS.
Speaker 1:People like cash in Vermont, so I think we should have some more on hand, but apparently we also need to.
Speaker 2:I didn't actually know what you were talking about at the time. Is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:I told you I went on a whole rant about how we've been resisting the culture of Vermont that's cash based and like that. We should just accept it because we always need it. True, yeah, you're right, because also like fun fact about Vermont is, if you want to tip somebody, a lot of places that would like have the tipping option electronically don't. Yeah, so then you're fucked. But I also understand why they want to be tipped electronically On having cash on hand.
Speaker 2:It is widely accepted that one of the best survival items you can have is an extra $1,000 cash that you just have for emergencies, and it sounds like something that's very hard to do, especially if you don't make a lot of money, but it's something that, like every month, like just put put away like $20 until you have $1,000. But, and especially among the zombie crowd, they're like the money is going to be worthless when the zombies come, and not right away. I don't need that. I need guns and bullets, but people don't think about the immediate 24 hours after a crisis happens. And even if the value of the dollar has dropped off the map because everything is gone that we know of, it's going to take a long time for other people to realize that. And if it's a matter of like getting a water bottle or an extra day's worth of food or a few cans of gas, if you have an extra $1,000, you're going to be in such a better position than people who don't.
Speaker 1:That's true, I agree. You should have cash on hand, also an emergency blanket, extra clothes, a sleeping bag for each person and physical maps of the area. Physical ones. Yeah, the last time I had a physical map was when I was driving between Canada and Georgia all the time, because it was a long trip, and once I made the mistake of using my very old cell phone because it's 2009, 2010, I think to talk to you and I had a $1,000 phone bill.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that's right. I remember that.
Speaker 1:Because it was that kind of era.
Speaker 2:You were like I'll put it on my credit card.
Speaker 1:I didn't have a choice at the time, but that was what it was. But my point is is because things like I don't think the Google Calendar was really a thing. There was a map quest. You could pre-print it out. So I had a map of the Northeast that I would follow to get back and forth before I memorized it and will never need to do again. That's the lesson. I've had a map. My grandparents had a really cool Atlas map that you would open up different pages and you'd like find the quadrant for how to find things, and I think we need something like that.
Speaker 2:We do. We do have that, we do, we have a full United States Atlas Road Atlas.
Speaker 1:Wow, is that because you're a truck driver? Because I'm a truck driver.
Speaker 2:That's really cool. Yeah, when I first started as a truck driver, I actually got a whole. I paid for it, but I bought a whole duffel bag worth of stuff that you need to be a truck driver. And one of those things was a giant laminated Rand McNally Atlas. Oh, that's so cool, yeah, and it has the whole country and all the big roads, but also it has all of the states and different sections of each state.
Speaker 1:That is very cool. While you said that, I just had this wild art vision where I'm going to do a sculpture of Atlas and then do a Mondala made out of maps.
Speaker 2:Atlas is Leah's unlawful source.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, that's where my mind went.
Speaker 2:Atlas was a very good boy.
Speaker 1:He was the best. Yeah, I've got a lot of best boys in my life.
Speaker 2:Well, we're doing a lot better on this list than I thought we were.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, maybe you're going to go up the scale, so there's a few more specific medical supplies that you might have. I would need glasses and contact lenses. This is something I worry about a lot in the apocalypse is not being able to see and or just not having access to contacts, because I hate wearing glasses so much.
Speaker 2:I made the mistake once of playing Fallout 3 with the drawback of being nearsighted, thinking that my character, when reaching the age of 18 years old and decides to leave the vault and go into the wasteland, would have a pair of glasses. They don't, and they didn't. And immediately after leaving the vault I'm like I can't see shit. So I wandered around and eventually, just after a whole bunch of terrifying incidents with monsters and braiders and bandits, I stumbled across an old woman who was wearing glasses and I killed her and I stole her glasses. Wow, and and that's I want a lot of people. Prescription is right.
Speaker 2:A lot of people that play Fallout 3 like I want to play as myself. I want to do it as legit as possible and I want to try to be a good person. I went five minutes before I killed an old woman and stole the glasses.
Speaker 1:This is definitely your shot of a side coming up, not the pacifist side of you. Baby supplies. So we don't need those games and activities for children, don't need those, but we need them for ourselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got a, I've got an Oculus.
Speaker 1:Pet supplies, collar leash, id carrier, food and bowls. There's, honestly, we do need to have a. Oh also, we got battleship. We do a battleship which didn't beat me. Yes, every time we played once, so every time Two way radios and extra set of car keys and house keys and was not on. Here is a vibrator.
Speaker 2:That's not on there, you're right.
Speaker 1:Also a good smelling scent spray.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see, see our episode about our Amazon Survival Guide for more information about other things you'll need that are not on this list.
Speaker 1:Yes, but this is a pretty good list. So, after having read through that, what would you give us for Zeds?
Speaker 2:Oh, it's a lot higher. I'd say like an eight. We had pretty much all of those things. We have all the things for immediate one week survival. I feel like there's a few things that we didn't.
Speaker 1:Water is a key one we don't have water.
Speaker 2:We have some water. But you know what? We also live in Vermont, true, and we have. We have the means to distill the water.
Speaker 1:And I actually do have a water filter from camping out in the garage. I'd have to probably fix it because it's been sitting there for so long, but I know it's still worse.
Speaker 1:Get the column. Yeah, well, mostly you'd fix it because you're good at that, all right. Well, eight out of ten Zeds is not bad. I'd probably give us a seven, but I'll stick with an eight. I like it. Let's see Number two make a family emergency plan. Hmm, establish meeting points and communication methods, identify evacuation routes and emergency contacts. How many Zeds have preparedness Do you think we have, and why?
Speaker 2:Okay, so we do have a an emergency plan. We won't tell you guys what it is, so we don't want you showing up at our emergency.
Speaker 1:We have two locations. Well, we have three locations. One of them is our house. The other two we're not going to share.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what are the other ones we?
Speaker 1:need to have a plan for communication.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we. I mean, I have, I have one CB radio, but we don't have like two way radios, we have our phones and that's about it. Yeah, what, one of one of our evacuation zones is a communication area, because there is a place that we said that we would leave a note. Yes, if we went to it, yes, so that is any of the places.
Speaker 1:Yes, if we leave.
Speaker 2:So that's, that's all we got. We need more radios. Yeah, we need long distance radio, so maybe we need some handheld shortwave radios.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean they do say that two way. That was on the list. Two way, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But we need some range. We need some range where we live because there's a lot of mountains. Yes, so there's actually a brand. I think it's called Baufang. They make a really good kind of like an open source radio that basically works on shortwave. We could set it up for GRMS radio. We could do shortwave. We can do anything we want on it. They're like there's no rules, just do what you want. This is from China. We don't give a shit about the FCC.
Speaker 1:Do we have evacuation routes, routes, routes I don't know how you say it and emergency contact? I mean we have emergency contact and I have numbers in my phone and you have my family's numbers in your phone, but if we don't have our phones, we don't have them. We should probably write them out and put them with all of our other documents.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we should put our contacts in our documents.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and as far as evacuation goes, I think it would depend on what's happening and, honestly, where we're positioned. Based on the flooding that happened this year, I think that I probably choose to stay here, unless our house, like, was demolished.
Speaker 2:Sides down the mountain. I had that nightmare. Then we just ride it to the bottom, we go into the garage and we grab a kayak. Yeah, and we slide down the mountain.
Speaker 1:I think actually, and a key thing to remember is evacuation routes inside of the house. This is a thing I used to think about a lot as a kid. I was a little bit neglected as a kid.
Speaker 1:My dad was a sax player saxophone player and you know how that is when I was super little, they would take me to his gigs every weekend.
Speaker 1:And then when I was like 10, they were like you're fine alone, and you're fine alone in the big house in the dark, and which I was, like I could take care of myself. But it was really scary because they lived in the middle of fucking nowhere and I would just sit in my house alone, by the way, without television, without cell phones, no distractions, just sit in the fucking dark in the basement, because that's where my bedroom was, and I would think about how far away all of my different neighbors were All of them at least a five minute walk away and like if an intruder came in through my window versus through the side door, like how I would get out and I would like rehearse escape scenarios all the time. And then like what I would do if I got to my neighbor's house I was five minutes away and they weren't there either Like I have elaborate plans. I don't have that here. Maybe I'm less insecure than I was as a 10 year old.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, we're a lot more capable than we were when we were 10 years old. True, yeah, I was also a latchkey child. First time I was left home alone, I was seven, damn, and I remember it was. It was a thunderstorm. My parents went to the store real quick to get some stuff. Lightning struck and the phone rang, you know, like a landline telephone, because we're old and the phone rang and I want to answer it and no one was there. Turns out it's just because lightning struck and it caused the phone to ring.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's fun, yeah, but scared the shit out of me. I'm like go start calling me. It's the beginning of scream. And it kept. It kept ringing Like I'd hang it up. I had to answer it and be like hello and it's like be like nobody's there. I hung that up and then all of a sudden it'd be like ring, ring, ring, ring ring.
Speaker 1:That is terrifying. That would freak me out too. Phones ringing when my parents were home also scared me. This is before you and I were talking to each other, yeah, and I had like used the phone as a social tool.
Speaker 2:That's why I am the way I am now.
Speaker 1:I'm like how many Zeds would you give us for having a family emergency plan? Oh, Establishing meeting points, communication methods, evacuation routes, emergency contacts.
Speaker 2:I'm going to give us seven Zed words. We don't have like a huge support network in Vermont, and I think that is a huge drawback, and we don't have very good communication other than societally implemented things like phones and mailboxes.
Speaker 1:Are you ready for criteria number three? Yeah, hit me with number three Stay informed, be aware of potential risks and stay informed through reliable sources, aka, not thecomingattacknet, not box news, not what else.
Speaker 2:I will say that there is value in looking at those sources to know how crazy everyone else around you is going to be yes yes, and that is why I pay attention to them.
Speaker 1:Also follow local news and government announcements. How prepared do you think we?
Speaker 2:are. Oh, I think I personally am pretty prepared. I'm gonna give myself a nine. I stay very informed Of local news. I dabble in local news. There just happens to not be very much of it.
Speaker 1:I don't know there's been some interesting stuff. I get local news.
Speaker 2:Well, I was all over thecomingattacknet and I did not find anything about our space, our place in Vermont.
Speaker 1:Usually the news is things like Bobcat, Rabbit. Bobcat runs into person's house to try and eat them. Person managed to lock Bobcat in a bathroom.
Speaker 2:A white woman came along and immediately adopted it. Now they live together. His name is Sam.
Speaker 1:Yep, there's a.
Speaker 2:there's a TikTok slash YouTube channel called white women comedy and it's this guy and he reacts to videos of white women saving wild animals that are dangerous and then just treating them like their own children. Loves it, it's hilarious.
Speaker 1:That is wonderful. It is very funny. I enjoy it, but also I feel a little bit called out, a little bit as a person who's identified as female and most people. I am also white and I was socialized to be female and I do really love Annie Mallies.
Speaker 2:So you know, I think between us, I think you've got your ear to the ground for more local things and I have my ear to the ground for the, the national and wider range regionals.
Speaker 1:I feel like I'm like scoped out all the way out to international and then local, and then I somehow like just and you're like, who's George Santos? Yeah, when Henry Kissinger died I was like who the fuck is that? And then I was like, oh, he was the guy who organized a bunch of coups against socialist, democratically elected leaders of countries in South America. I knew about that, I just didn't know. As he and that guy who did it Piece of shit, Henry Kissinger.
Speaker 2:Well, that out all the hits.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not my favorite person, but I didn't even know his name. Now I do. A vaccinate is number four.
Speaker 2:Oh, you know what? I wasn't always the best at this. You know, I've always had like a really strong immune system. So, like when people are like, get your flu shot, I'm like I don't need this flu shot. I fight all of those flus with this body. Look at me, I'm the pillar of health. I say as I drink 50 beers and eat nothing but meat all day. When was this? Oh, many years ago.
Speaker 2:But, you know, covid really turned things around for me and I'm like, oh my God, there is a virus out there that can kill me. Yeah, and now, like every year, I get that flu virus vaccine. I get every COVID vaccine that comes. Leah helps a lot because she's like there's a new one and I'm like, well, I didn't hear about that in coming attacknet, so let's stop promoting. Don't go there.
Speaker 1:I mean, I know that websites still exist. The only reason I knew it existed is because my ex-mother-in-law was obsessed with it and was really convinced that Obama was gonna put us all in FEMA camps.
Speaker 2:And he did.
Speaker 1:And never give away the presidency he was just gonna take it.
Speaker 2:That's what the tan suit was about. He put on a special suit and that's when we all went to the FEMA camps. Don't you remember? I don't. It was because you had the COVID vaccine and you forgot.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, qanon's right. So yeah, where would you put us on the Zeds for this?
Speaker 2:Oh, we're pretty good.
Speaker 1:I don't think we're a 10.
Speaker 2:I think I'm a 10.
Speaker 1:Because I'm a little bit delayed. Why are you, how are you a 10 when I'm the one who's like damn, we need to get vaccinated.
Speaker 2:I've got a smallpox vaccine. I've got a polio vaccine, so do I. I've been vaccinated for polio twice I was vaccinated for anthrax 18 times. Damn Because they kept on losing my paperwork. They, they did.
Speaker 1:It's also described in the coming attacknet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know what. You're only supposed to get like six of those vaccinations. It's a process you go like every month for six months and right around the fifth month they're like we don't have anything for you. You gotta start the process over again, and by 18,. I was just like I'm not doing this anymore.
Speaker 1:That's wild. I definitely don't have anthrax, but I've had. I don't even know all the things I've had because I've traveled internationally. I know I've had a bunch of stuff that most people don't get and I've had polio twice because when I was in Namibia there was a mysterious outbreak and nobody knew what it was at first. They were just like flu, like symptoms. Then you become paralyzed in 24 hours and die and I was like, oh my God, my mom, who was terrified of me being overseas, like really freaked out and had a lot of racist ideas about Africa in general, didn't know anything about Namibia. It was like freaking the fuck out, calling me on my little international phone making sure that I wasn't anywhere where this was spreading, which I wasn't because I had access to sanitation.
Speaker 2:And even if you were, what are you gonna do? Run away?
Speaker 1:But also turns out it was polio, something that is basically eradicated in the United States.
Speaker 2:There's a cloud of polio coming your way, Leah, you've got to hunker down.
Speaker 1:Polio is because it's spread partly through fecal matter, so like it's a lot to do with hygiene, and when you don't have access to hygiene then you're much more so. Of course, it was basically happening in places like Catatouro, which was a slum village in Vintook, the capital of the country, and other places like that where people were really suffering. But I remember, because it really, I think, indelibly etched into me why vaccines are important, because once I knew what it was, the level of relief that I had was huge. I was like, oh, I'm okay, like on both many levels. One, I have all the privileges of living in a home in Namibia that has everything I need running water, a toilet, a fridge, et cetera and then, two, I'm vaccinated. So I know that I'm okay.
Speaker 1:And that's a really fucked up thing to realize when I'm already grappling with all of the privilege disparities I was experiencing when I was there and realizing I probably shouldn't even be there doing the thing I was doing. Ps, if you're thinking about going on things like mission trips, volunteer work to do development stuff overseas, like build a school, I really urge you to read a little bit more about that. Or like check out the Instagram page no White Saviors. There's a real problem with that whole industry, which is not the point of this podcast. So if you're interested, dm us. I'll tell you about it all day, why I don't think we should do that.
Speaker 2:A few years ago, I donated $35 to a young boy that wanted to go on a mission to the after.
Speaker 1:I was really fucking upset.
Speaker 2:I got a holographic image of a wolf howling at the moon that hurts Leah's eyes and I gave it to her and I said this is for you. And she said that's great, dan, this is awful.
Speaker 1:It was awful on many levels it was hard to look at, and also what I realized.
Speaker 2:You really tugged at my heartstrings and I didn't know how to get rid of him other than giving him $35 for a stupid wolf, if I had been there, me and that kid would have had quite a conversation, and not because I would judge him, because I've been that kid you know, but I would be like, hey, I've done what you're about to do, not an actual mission trip, but I've been to Jamaica as a volunteer and then I went to Namibia doing research on HIV AIDS, which was interesting because that was where the polio outbreak happened.
Speaker 1:But my point is is like I realized pretty quickly how fucked up it was that I was there and how much that money could have gone to a local person doing the work who'd understand everything so much better because of their culture.
Speaker 1:This is going way off track Brief polio story, and then I'll move on because this is a fun one. So they didn't believe me that I had a polio vaccine and they did. The World Health Organization rolled out a universal vaccination campaign for polio and it was an oral vaccine, which means it lives in your gut for like six weeks, which means you can't leave the country while it's still alive in your gut, which I don't really understand. But that was the case and they forced me to take it and the only way that they knew if people had it or not is they like put iodine on your thumb after you got it. So I didn't have iodine in my thumb and I didn't have my vaccination records on me that day at the university so they're like you're getting it and I was like all right, I guess I'm not leaving the country.
Speaker 2:I mean, if I want to.
Speaker 1:But that was, I think, prepared me for COVID and why vaccines are really important.
Speaker 2:Well, I think I ranked pretty high on this. I'm pretty sure if a zombie bit me, the zombie would fall over.
Speaker 1:Let's move on 10,. We'll give ourselves 10. Why not? Yeah, clearly like vaccines over here. Secure your home. Reinforce doors and windows for general emergency preparedness. Consider the safety of your shelter.
Speaker 2:Okay, we have a few glass doors, which I think gives us some points off, but we do have ways to jam the doors from opening. Yep, we have good, solid, dead bolts on our front door.
Speaker 1:Don't give me that look. I'm wondering if you're saying not just because this is gonna be on like publicly aired, we do not have a good dead bolt on our front door. Yeah, we do. No, we don't. We have a simple flip flop. We're supposed to also have a dead bolt, which we never actually installed.
Speaker 2:You're right, and I don't know why I always thought that we did have a dead bolt. We have nothing I do. I can open our front door with a credit card. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, so it's pretty bad. Yeah, but we are armed, so don't come after us or else you'll never be around ever again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's Dan's fault. I bought my first shotgun because of the COVID outbreak and people were getting weird yeah.
Speaker 2:We were kind of like in a downtown-ish part of a medium-sized city it's Augusta, a medium-sized city, I'd say so and my fear was that things were going to become kind of a hot zone of craziness.
Speaker 1:Without government intervention like there was, I think it would have been.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like downtown Augusta has seen riots before. Yes and I wouldn't.
Speaker 1:For good racial reasons.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know I don't necessarily want to make people dead, but I also don't want to be dead. Yeah, so it's interesting because I did own guns at the time, but they were in New York and I couldn't go get them. They were not available to me at the time. So we're like, well, let's go buy one then. And we bought a shotgun wearing face masks.
Speaker 1:Not even like real face masks yet, because we weren't supposed to get them back then, because they wanted the first responders to have protection. It was like you know. I was using, like my, my cloth that I usually put in my hair, like over my nose, which I'm sure did nothing but looked badass.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we did look pretty badass when we showed up to that Walmart and we're like we want a gun, Don't worry about what our faces look like.
Speaker 1:And then it took three days for me to get it, because I'm not a citizen of this country. Yeah, but I got one, and it's another thing that I love having in the house. But I also understand that you live in a place where almost everybody has a gun. It's kind of has to be this like weird equalizing thing, so, yeah, it's what it is. You've got one.
Speaker 2:You know, I think a lot of people that buy guns for self-defense. They imagine the scenario where people come into their house to steal their things. I'm not afraid of that. I feel like if you break into my house and you want the TV, you can just fucking have it. It's planned obsolescence anyway. Our Roku piece of shit, you can have it. We want a new one. We'll just call the insurance people after you've left and say that it was stolen and they'll give us like a check for $1,000. We'll go buy another TV, it'll be fine. The thing that I worry about is all the crazy white people in Claremont that are like the coming attacknet told me that things are going on at this house and I'm not standing for it. These people with their rainbow flags need to go, it's true. And those people I'm going to splatter all over the front yard if they come to our house.
Speaker 1:And it was useful when we were trying to drive away a rabid uh Fisher cat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I used my 22 for that.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:I don't know, you're like that wasn't loud as at all. I'm like it wasn't, it was just a 22. I don't know how that.
Speaker 1:I don't know anything about guns, even though my uh, my grandfather was a hunter. In a drop room we had a bunch of antique guns that my dad left in the trunk of the car I was driving as a teenager. For like months I had no idea they were in there. I'm glad that I never got pulled over, but they were antique. I'm not even sure if they worked. So how would you rate us then, dan?
Speaker 2:I don't think very highly, I think like a six.
Speaker 1:You don't have to say I'm a much harsher raider than you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, we have. We also have a lot of good choke points and uh and, and we have good preparedness for when that happens, we also put a bell on our door. So that's true.
Speaker 1:That's to get rid of all the bad spirits Cause.
Speaker 2:I believe, in magic and that counts. Okay, the spirits, we're trying to keep those out.
Speaker 1:We are actually very fortified for, for negative vibes. Um, I let me the middle and say a five. Okay, yeah, If zombies were negative vibes, we got this. Yeah, Um. Number six training and drills. Practice emergent scenarios with your family. I'm sure everyone knows what to do in various situations. I don't think we're prepared on this one. You don't think so. I don't think we practice emergency scenarios.
Speaker 2:Um, well, I guess I have, and it's drilled into me so it's just already always there, but yeah.
Speaker 1:I guess you're right, like um.
Speaker 2:I mean, I feel like I'd react pretty quickly if, like, the stove caught on fire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would probably react quickly, but that doesn't. Oh, I don't. I think we need to get another fire extinguisher sidebar.
Speaker 2:We probably do?
Speaker 1:I'm going to write that down Fire extinguisher.
Speaker 2:But do you do? What would you do if the fire extinguisher is empty and our stove is on fire?
Speaker 1:Um, I would grab a blanket Okay.
Speaker 2:That's not bad. And then we kill the fire remove the air. We also have baking soda.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can pour baking soda and smother that way.
Speaker 1:That's also.
Speaker 2:You can just put a lid on it sometime.
Speaker 1:The baking soda is above the stove. We should move that if there's a fire, because that's going to be a problem to try and get to. Um, but I I will say like again, you're probably a 10. I'm probably a five because the last drill I did was like a fire drill in elementary school or high school.
Speaker 2:I'll give myself a nine because, like you know, I'm not as mobile as I was when I was in my twenties, so like so between the two of us, a six. Yeah, okay, sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's fair. And then, last but not least, help your community, volunteer or assist neighbors in times of need. One community support is crucial during emergencies. Um, I have the question for myself like would our dogs be welcome?
Speaker 2:zero shells.
Speaker 1:You think we're zero.
Speaker 2:I don't think we're zero anymore. Yeah, I've done some.
Speaker 1:I have some tendrils out in the community.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you do. Well, I don't know. I guess I could call people that I worked with if things were going wrong. Yeah, like if I was like a tree has crushed our house and nobody's coming to help us. Matt, can I borrow a truck?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we could talk to our neighbor. We've got to uh, we've always named that. I've got my yoga teacher that I'm becoming friends with and her kid is looking after our dog. I've got my book club, which actually that is our fourth emergency location. We talked about it because, of course, I brought up where we should go if there's an apocalypse.
Speaker 1:We decided a specific person's house in the book club. That is the regional distance from you and I and pretty remote and, like you, can't see it from the road, so it's a good, safe spot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd like to know where this place is. Yeah, I should tell you another time.
Speaker 1:So I guess we have four emergency spots now That'd be my fourth one. I would want to so, but like? Am I close enough with anybody where I feel good about calling them? Probably not. I also know coworkers that I'm, I think, like do love me. We just don't talk a lot, but I'm gonna get like I'm gonna go see one of them.
Speaker 1:Also we have front porch forum, a front porch forum, so I'd give us like a four. I think this is something that I actively working on. Yeah, but this is what happens when you move to a new state a pandemic and you're two reclusive people who really have to push yourself to socialize.
Speaker 2:Also, I just had like a brilliant idea of what like front porch forum would look like in a zombie outbreak. Oh my God what. I'm just imagining it. I think it would be hilarious to like mock up like a fake front porch forum of like people being like hey, there's zombies at my front door. Could somebody come by with a shotgun? Does anybody have any bullets I can borrow? I've got his bird shot.
Speaker 1:I mean it was really active during all the floods. Yeah, people were helping each other. So we got 49 out of 70 points, which is a solid C. It's seven like 70% Seas get degrees Seas. I mean we'd be okay for a little bit maybe.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's not bad, I'll take it. I'll take it.
Speaker 2:We'll survive for a couple days.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, dan, I'm curious how many Zeds you would give this guide from the CDC, based on our discussion today and the story.
Speaker 2:I don't know. You know I'm going to give it a solid seven Zed words. Seven Zed words. It was informative. It did the purpose of what it was trying to do, which was to engage people and to inform them of how to be prepared for something, and made it fun. And you know, it's something that, 12 years later, we're still talking about and still comes up a trending on the internet from time to time and people still think it's brand new. Every time it trends Me, yeah.
Speaker 1:Me too.
Speaker 2:And the only thing that I would I would really give it a negative mark for is I think it should have been written better and they should have. They missed an opportunity by not opening this up as a potential series. That could be super fun. Yeah, yeah, I mean they like they didn't cover all the things you need to know in an emergency scenario. If they want to come back and do more emergency tips, they could have just picked up where they left off at the at the school that they were all hiding in from the zombies.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then episode two comes out, when we learn about how to purify dirty water.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but instead, it was all a dream it was all a dream.
Speaker 1:I fucking ruined it for me so deeply. But I agree I think it was. There were some issues overall with it, but a seven out of 10 sounds good. And the truth is this is this is scientifically proven, unlike the Stone Age theory, that the best way that people learn is one of two things through stories or through doing it. Yeah, Plain old facts like are boring. Those are the sprinkles on your donut, I was told once by a communications trainer. Is your like facts and statistics? You have to have a good story to go along with your sprinkles, which is the donut, right? Nobody's just eating sprinkles, I mean, I guess maybe some people are just eating sprinkles.
Speaker 2:I like plain sprinkles.
Speaker 1:I like sprinkles, but the point is.
Speaker 2:is that a story? I didn't plan for the sprinkles before and I was reading it like I could pick it up.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh yeah, I don't think we're prepared for the dogs and that's a problem. So I'm grateful to it, even if it's racist, sexist and needs a lot of work. But I'll take it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know what, for 2011, it ain't bad.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I'm not going to give it that pass. I'm not going to give it that pass, but I will say that, like I am walking away from this being like there's like from this conversation, I think there's some things you and I should start working on and doing, and the thing that stops me, frankly, is money, because I'm like I'm gonna spend a fucking bunch of money on getting all this shit, but we could just like get one thing a month and then also work on compiling it. I just don't want to call it a bug out bag because I think it sounds stupid. Can we call it something more fun?
Speaker 2:There's. You can call it a go bag. That's dude, dumb too. Some people call it a go to hell bag, some people call it there's. There's all kinds of bags. Can we just call it our zombie bag?
Speaker 1:We can call it our zombie bag. Oh my god, that's what it is, yeah.
Speaker 2:And we have a zombie bag. It's where I actually bought survival gear this week. At the dollar store I bought emergency candles plus an unscented candle. That wasn't an emergency candle, but it was just a bigger candle. That was a little bit nicer and about a few other things that I don't recall that they were.
Speaker 1:But we have them in their bag, oh batteries for our lantern. Oh my god, that's right, because last year, when we lost our power, we had this lovely lantern but no batteries.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we bought this lantern a couple of years ago and we're like this is going to be great. It's rechargeable. What it actually is is a lantern that you could upgrade with a rechargeable battery that you plug in via USB but takes D cell batteries unless you do that modification. Yeah, and we did. We never had D cell batteries, so I bought some shitty dollar store D cell batteries. Those will last about 20 minutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, why are we buying cheap what's with you and cheap batteries?
Speaker 2:I was at the dollar store, it's all like they had batteries. They had Energizer, but they only, they only had AAA Energizers. Everything else was dollar store brand Mist opportunity. And I'm like why do they have like several shelves of AAA Energizer batteries? Did Energizer stop making different?
Speaker 1:sized batteries? These are the existential questions that a philosopher thinks about. Yeah, but what I use, what I do know, is that I want to know what your survival preparedness rating is. You've just listened to this episode. You could even go back and score yourself for each of the seven categories.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dan I or a solid C. You can look it up on the CDC website.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and follow that guide. Put that in the show notes.
Speaker 2:It'll be in the show notes along with our link tree.
Speaker 1:It's true. Well, these things I just read for you are from chat GPT actually.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:But they were. I was like what are all the lessons of this only survival guide?
Speaker 2:Okay, so this, so this, this guide you will only find here, on this podcast.
Speaker 1:That's right, yeah, or you could probably ask the exact same question to chat GPT and hopefully get the same answer. You won't, but regardless, I'm going to post some of these questions on Instagram for fun, in my art stories.
Speaker 1:Just to see how people answer and what they think about it, and if I'm just going to check first of all, if you've seen the CDC preparedness guide for zombies and we'll go from there, so look out for that on the internets. Also, two weeks from the era of this episode is episode 25, our last episode of 2023.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's going to be a little bit of celebration for us. Didn't mean for it to be exactly 25 episodes, but it's a hallmark, hallmark.
Speaker 2:It is a milestone, it is the hallmark store.
Speaker 1:What does hallmark actually mean? Oh no, I'm going to say milestone. It's a. It's a big moment for us. It's going to be a landmark. A landmark. That's the world, world word. God, I can't talk A episode for us, and the book we're going to be reading and, dan, I have actually finished and are pretty much ready to record is Clay's Ark by Octavia Butler.
Speaker 2:This book is spicy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's real spicy. In fact trigger warning sexual assault, so if you don't want to read that, then you might want to skip this episode.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, You'll, if, if you get triggered by those things like I mean, we're not going to describe it in detail, but we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know how much of the episode it will take up because it doesn't really happen to the end, but it'll be part of the discussion for sure. Overall, I loved it. Dan has different feelings. It's going to be a contentious discussion. It's an extraterrestrial zombie story, so make sure to listen. Don't forget to subscribe. If you haven't yet, please rate and review us. We love to read your reviews. They're super fun. Thank you everyone who's done that and hope to see you on the Instagrams and the threads.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll be on threads, say hi.
Speaker 1:I'll be on Instagram. That's how this usually goes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, then sometimes we flip flop. Yeah, thanks for listening. Everybody. Stay safe. Yeah, be prepared.
Speaker 1:One gallon of water per day, but we don't know how many days all the days 365 365 for the rest of your life. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Fill your house entirely with water, thanks for the swimming pool.
Speaker 1:There we go, Bye y'all.
Speaker 2:Bye, everybody, don't get bit.
Speaker 1:But if you do get bit bite your dog. Spread it, spread the virus yeah. Spread it to your dog yeah, spread it to 21 people. That's what you can do. You can share this podcast with 21 other people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, spread it to 21 people like a virus. Yes, bye, bye.