Zombie Book Club

How The World Ends 101 with Special Guest Dr. David Perlmutter | Zombie Book Club Ep 129

• Zombie Book Club • Season 3 • Episode 129

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Texas Solves the outbreak in 5 minutes, sorry New York.

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. David Perlmutter, professor of Media & Communication at Texas Tech University, to dissect how societies record—and eventually lose—their histories when the grid goes dark. From ancient clay tablets to floppy disks, we explore why the very mediums we trust to preserve culture can become our Achilles’ heel. Dr. Perlmutter breaks down the role of teachers, archivists, and storytellers in a crisis, weighs the ethics of propaganda versus transparent messaging, and shows how decentralized decision‑making keep military units cohesive when supply lines crumble.



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SPEAKER_01:

University professor. It's on the apocalypse. It's kind of densely populated.

SPEAKER_02:

I can't wait for that. I'm Leah, somebody who loves anthropology. Shocking. I'm Leah. Welcome back to our Zombie's. And hello there to any new listeners. Glad you're here. Today we are going back to school with a cool professor, Dr. David D. Perlmutter, professor of media and communication at Texas Tech University, and a scholar of how we tell stories about war, crisis, power, and the end of the world, our favorite topic here at Zombie Book Club. He's the author of Policing the Media, Street Cops and Public Perceptions of Law Enforcement, and Visions of War, Picturing Warfare from the Stone Age to the Cyber Age. That's pretty punk rock, Dr. Pearl Mutter. You may have seen him on The Daily Show or the Sword and Pen YouTube channel talking about The Last of Us, or heard him on Apocalypse Apocrypha, or many, many other awesome podcasts. He is also, I feel this is required to mention, a recipient of Texas Tech's Excellence and Gender Equity Award, which immediately made him feel like a friend of the pod, because that's a pretty cool honor to receive. Today we are asking Dr. Pearl Mutter the big zombie questions about government collapse, authoritarianism, propaganda, and yes, even apocalypse software. Welcome back to School Zombesties. Today's lecture is How the World Ends 101. Hello, Dr. Pearl Mutter. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much. I am very glad to be here. Uh, you know, since Apocalypse is is coming, and uh I just want to talk to you uh uh uh a couple days before it actually happens, and you know, this will be our last podcast, of course.

SPEAKER_01:

So that feels true.

SPEAKER_02:

Um it's actually this is coming right before 2023.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm sorry. I you didn't oh okay. Well we'll well this a certain poignancy to the are we gonna die? Yes. Well I'll I'll fill you in about the meteor later. Go ahead, okay.

SPEAKER_01:

If uh if you're listening to this episode, we survived the meteor. Maybe.

SPEAKER_02:

But will we survive 2026?

SPEAKER_01:

We'll find out. Or you're picking this up 150 years from now through the uh the rubble.

SPEAKER_02:

Archaeological evidence.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, in which case, how did we do?

SPEAKER_00:

That's a great conversation topic, by the way. What we find of lots of uh civil collapsed and lost civilizations, you know, what they're gonna find of ours, you know, our podcasts and things.

SPEAKER_02:

You know what? We do our rapid fire questions right off the bat with every guest, but I'm gonna ask you, completely unprepared, what do you think is the number one thing people would find from our collapsed civilization?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh that depends on how long. And I've actually been in some discussions of this on panels with real scientists. I'm a social scientist, but uh and I do consider that to be a real scientist. But uh there was a panel I was on, and then there was uh some really good articles. There was a TV series after us, and there was speculation about how long it would take for there to be no trace of us. And I think the consensus was that even like a hundred million years from now, some of our debris in terms of like steel girder buildings, skyscrapers might be like a dust layer that they would notice and say, hey, something was going on there. Um but I certainly think that uh it's good, it would be very interesting if a collapse came in the time period that we all are reading now. Because look, I started reading apocalyptic fiction when I was very, very young, like I was in my zero digits in the 60s, and they always put the apocalypse in like 1985 or 1990 or 2025. That that move uh that that was like a really bad year, 2025. And uh and tell me about it. What what what's interesting to me is that we have records of past civilizations like the Assyrians and the Mycenaeans, because they used as one of their media clay tablets. And one of the great things about a clay tablet is if somebody comes along and burns your city to the ground, that preserves your civilization in terms of those clay tablets. Because a baked clay tablet, if you want to go long term, forget like uh you know a shock hard drive or something like that, do all do this podcast on clay tablets and then bake them. Because then we for tens of thousands of years, they will stick around. So then now we contrast it with us, and you think of so much of our civilization is ephemeral. The power grid goes out, you know, let's face it, what are the scenarios for apocalypse, EMP blast, nuclear war, virus, but but it's all has to do with the collapse of, yeah, the collapse of the power grid, the collapse of electricity, the collapse of ability to read documents. Um just a fun fact, uh a number of years ago, the there was a project in England to recreate the talk about Doomsday. Where do we get that? The Domesday Book. When William the Conqueror conquered England, he wanted to see how much what all the stuff, the the land, the goods, the people were in his new realm, and he commissioned essentially a census there, and it became known as the Domesday Book. It still exists, right? And you can see like two peasants you know registered in this town, and they had three donkeys and so on. I'm I'm oversimplifying. I want to know how many donkeys you have.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm gonna say like adding this to my T VR right now.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I I do need to know how many donkeys you have. That's right, uh for for just for the census. But after the apocalypse, those donkeys are already worth their weight of gold. So we we all agree on that. But um the point was that the writing medium that they had there was was often beautiful parchment or vellum, you know, which is like a skin. And and you can go visit the domesday books today and look at them, and they look fresh and new. But then for the anniversary of the writing of the Domesday book, the I think it was the BBC and a couple of other institutions decided we're gonna use the latest medium on computers and memory to have a virtual Domesday book. Well, as I understand it, that is now unreadable. It's an old format. Yeah. And I'm old enough to remember working with IBM punch cards. I think there's only a few archives in the country where you can take an IBM punch card and have it transferred to modern data. Uh there's just a lot of our civilization, we've produced more content than any other civilization. But if there was a collapse, I'm not sure besides tombstones and like inscriptions on buildings, there would be anything left whatsoever because our paper and certainly everything electronic would be zapped or fried or decayed very quickly.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And how do you like I could not um I don't think of access to anything that would make a floppy disk work. And sometimes I actually think about like, I want to read my grade seven essay just because I'm curious. And I have that floppy disk, and I just look at it and I'm like, I don't know what to do with this. It's just a disk now.

SPEAKER_00:

I have Microsoft Office files from the 1990s, which I can't read.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a real problem. Uh I mean, I'm sure I could pay somebody somewhere to do it, but but but if the civilization collapses, we may they they may know we built things, but they really it'd be sort of like a Etruscan level of just we see these inscriptions and we knew that they that they could write, but we just don't know what they were talking about. That is so sad.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I don't know if this is gonna bias you against your very first this very first question I'm about to ask you. These are our questions we ask all guests. Um it's a rite of passage. So would you choose the 40-hour work week where you still get to keep all this information, but you got 40 hours of work plus whatever you got to do at home, or the zombie apocalypse.

SPEAKER_00:

What's your dream life? Well, I I I I should introduce myself a little bit and say that for the last 30 years, I've been exploring the creation of media content, especially for political purposes in wartime, in times of crisis. And adjacent to that, I've always been fascinated by apocalyptic media. Uh and this would these are books, television shows, movies, eventually games, uh that continued to this day. I'm I'm very interested in the notion of like how people behave, how they communicate, how societies are organized under extreme stress. And so, for example, my father and my mother were involved in World War II. And for m most people on planet Earth, especially in Asia the Pacific, Europe, Africa, Asia, that was the apocalypse. It seemed like the apocalypse. When people come into your town and burn everything down and kill anybody, that is a functionally equivalent apocalypse, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

It's like your entire world is empty and everybody you know is being killed. So I I'm really interested in how people behave at those times. I do not want to go through it. Now, a 40-hour work week is very tough because we we we professors, we we get to do what we really love, which is teaching and doing research, and then because I'm a journalism professor, this kind of outreach where I talk to great people like you, then show it to my students. And so I I would really feel only 40 hours would would cramp me. But if the choice was versus zombie apocalypse, which by the way, I already have my plans for surviving, I I would still pick the 40-hour work week.

SPEAKER_02:

Because that's less than what you work now.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yes, substantially. And I don't mean to brag. I just I'm very lucky to have a job where I look forward to every hour. Yeah. And I realize that's not in everybody's situation.

SPEAKER_02:

No, I think it's kind of amazing to remember that there are jobs out there like that. And that, you know, you you said you'd feel cramped by 40 hours. And I get that. If I if my full-time job was art, I'd be hyper-focused and forget to eat or sleep very frequently. So I totally understand. Well, uh, you're not going to get your wish. It is a zombie apocalypse now for these next couple of questions.

SPEAKER_01:

So it's a zombie apocalypse, and you still have to go to work. No, I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh well, that's that is a good question, though, right? About like, do do we some jobs in the a zombie apocalypse? I mean, like sheriff, you might still need to go to work and and uh farmer, you might still need to go to work. Other jobs like professor, I mean, I'm would I be invited into the community, right? I think it depends on the use. Is that a useful skill? I would hope I could help on like maybe hey, I could be the archivist, you know, for the future and teach, I could teach writing. I mean, it probably people want to still learn that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, we were just talking about roles in the apocalypse last week, and it won't be last week when this comes out. Sorry, time is weird with podcasts. A few weeks ago. A few weeks ago. Uh, and I think you would be a storyteller. That would be your role in the apocalypse, because that is the archivist, that's the person who keeps the history in that storytelling role is also very important because I mean, frankly, you'd be invaluable in the apocalypse. You have so much experience of how shit's gone down. Oh, beep that out. How stuff has gone down.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that's that's one of the real interesting questions is about society, right? And like how uh human beings have risen, and I say that with a little bit of sarcasm because I think the rest of the world isn't thanking us for this, but like we've risen to this dominance on planet Earth over other species, which is unfortunate for a lot of other species. But we have done so by communal effort. And that communal effort has been like building a skyscraper, it's also been like bombing a city. And you know, I mean that we we we we are really good at communal effort some of the time. So, what happens when a civilization cracks and breaks down? How do we restart that communal effort in maybe a different way there? So I think I I could make some contribution to saying, like, hey, this is what the best practices are for say a small community defending itself and its farms, goods, you know?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, you're invited to our survival group, without question.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much. Please come. I will write a novel about my great travel up to Bennington to get to you.

SPEAKER_02:

So I mean that would be a fantastic story all on its own, just getting here in Vermont. And on the way, what weapon are you going to use to keep yourself safe?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, this is Texas. So now we we we also have to talk about um So you're gonna use the cowboy hat. Yeah, well, we've talked about this before. I mean, you you you brought it up in your podcast. I certainly have a conversation all the time, is that zombie apocalypses are situational depending on where your situation is. Um I I had an interesting conversation just about this online. I think the assumption here in Texas is that a zombie apocalypse would last about five minutes. Because uh statistically, people are heavily, heavily armed, and everybody would just go out in the street and the zombie apocalypse would be over and we'd be going, heh, too bad about New York there, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

I do think that's true. I think it's like if it's it's also about timing. So like if you caught the zombie apocalypse right after like the first person was infected, you could deal with it really easily. But if you know, if the if the systems and powers that be um prolong their response for too long, that's when it becomes a problem.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. And that that if we can get to this at some point in this conversation, that's one of the topics I love to cover with you is um uh watching The Last of Us is an example, and I'm assuming most of your your viewers like know what The Last of Us is, is like a video game, and then with at least two seasons of a TV series. And there's one particular scene I'm thinking about. Have you seen it?

SPEAKER_04:

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, okay. So uh yeah, you've seen it. Right. So I was I'm sorry, sorry, I think, but but um I I believe it's Indonesia, where a scientist is presented with evidence that there's this virus, and she asks these questions. And what I love about that scene, um, and I have to think the person who wrote that scene was the the guy who also did Chernobyl uh, because he's the co-creator, and I think he wrote that scene because it was fantastic low-key. And if you remember, for those of you who have not seen the scene, the scientist in Indonesia is presented with this evidence that, like, oh yeah, there's a zombie apocalypse. And she very quietly tells the military. Now, usually in these things, it's the military who are the sort of rampaging, let's go nuclear, and things like that. But this time it's this quiet, you know, nice woman, you know, in proper shoes, who's a scientist, who says, You will need to drop a nuclear bomb on the city right now. If you don't mind, could I get it right at home to my family?

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I just thought that was the most devastating, powerful scene I have ever watched in any zombie apocalypse movie. That quiet moment there, it probably only a couple hours of real time have passed, and she says, drop a bomb on me and my family to stop it. So that question of like stopping it, and a lot of the pro the IP we've seen, a lot of the content we've seen, yeah, the authorities wait, but you sort of understand why they wait, right? I mean, like, you know, I first of all, I believe Indonesia does not have an actual thermonuclear weapon. So like imagine the phone call. You know, the president of Indonesia calls, I guess China, India, Pakistan, but you know, United States, and says, Look, I want to borrow three hydrogen bombs, or if you could just launch them on my major cities. You can see why authorities would be really slow to respond to something like that.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So so it would get out of control. I think it it it sometimes that you wonder why it got out of control, but you can sort of see how bureaucracies move and you know, set levels of approval. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I think it still would have gotten out anyways because it uh it kind of spread itself via uh the food supply.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, yeah, it was already in um what were they eating? Pancake wheat. It was in wheat.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, wheat, yeah.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Um which I've grown more than you know, that like because there's countries that don't eat pancake mix, so I I don't know. But anyway, um, I think it would spread faster in some places than others.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah. The question was what would be your weapon of choice?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, what my weapon of choice? Well, um, I are these the zombies that the sort of standard zombie that, you know, if you hit hit them in one part of their body versus another, they just drop and they're gone.

SPEAKER_02:

If they're undead, shoot them in the head. That's the zombies we're talking about. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a pretty safe bet.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, you might have to find out if it turns out to be the foot, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

Or the all of us are dead zombies, which appears to be the neck. Yeah. For some reason.

SPEAKER_00:

Um Yeah, I I I I think I think the uh the I the US Special Forces just committed to a new I forgot what the brand manufacturer was, but being in Texas, I know I I just watched the video on this. There's a new$20,000 all-purpose sniper assault rifle that the US Special Forces are have just made a contract for to buy. I'd like that because you can use it as for sniper and also on full auto.

SPEAKER_02:

I think you are more useful than you initially let on in the zombie apocalypse.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, this but this book you're gonna write is gonna be amazing.

SPEAKER_02:

Amazing, yeah. Uh, so you're on your way to us, to your survivor group here in Vermont. Right. And you stumble upon a, I don't know, let's let's let's make it more reasonable for this scenario. You stumble upon an 18-wheeler that is full of a shelf-stable food item that will be able to last you until you get to Vermont. What do you hope is in that trailer?

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, now that's a very interesting question. There's a great book out there, I forgot the author's name, but it's called Packing P-A-C-K-I-N-G for Mars. And this was a journalist who wrote about the logistics of space flight. Like, you know, what would they have to take to go to the bathroom on a trip to Mars? And then one of the questions was food. And it turns out that NASA has done a lot of research on what foods have the maximum nutritional and caloric value versus weight and bulk bulk there. And it some of what we've seen in popular culture, basically steak and potatoes are really good to have in terms of caloric value. Behind me, I the this is a podcast you can't see it. Behind me is a picture from the Lascaux cave in France, is one of the first art we have. And this is a beautiful, very fat and juicy horse that our ancestors said, man, that is a good looking horse there. They weren't riding them yet, they were eating them, and you can see. It's really it's probably pregnant. It's very plump, juicy, and fatty. So I think dried dried meat would be very helpful. Dried potatoes would be very jerky. A tractor trailer full of horses. I don't think you're gonna get that. But beef jerky. Yeah, I I mean let's the indigenous people of the Americas actually perfected this in in North America, Pemicin. So if you ask me what I'd like to have, I would like to have like some specialty company was delivering to a California supermarket uh an 18 wheeler full of real Pemicin. And uh that's that is the best packaged food you could possibly have. What is Pemicin? It it if if everybody looks it up, it is a special food that the Native Americans designed um all over North America, but but I think concentrating in the Northwest, where they took fat from like buffalo or from salmon and mixed it with spices, uh nuts, cranberries, berries, and basically made a traveling food that's tight and a great, you know, you can carry a lot of it. And it was designed for what you're talking about. I mean, it was designed for like, especially during heavy winters where they weren't able to hunt as much or or grow. Uh very high calorie, lightweight. So I I'm sorry for getting professorial here, but like this is I I actually looked this up, but I if I would like a an 18-wheeler pole of penicillin.

SPEAKER_02:

I love it. Thank you. That is definitely the most unique answer we've gotten. Yeah. And we all learned something today. So I'm here for it.

SPEAKER_01:

We had a lot of peanut butter, but this is definitely the first time we've heard this. Pemicin, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And we had an uh have you watched the TV show Chopped, Dr. Pearl Mutter? Okay. It's a competition where you get a random basket of food and then the chefs have to make different meals out of it. Anyways, we did an apocalyptic chopped with everybody's answers this summer. Um, and so next time we do it, we're gonna get to use Pemicin uh as an ingredient because of you. So thank you. This is the last rapid fire question uh that I think is gonna be particularly interesting for you. Uh, you find a working solar-powered DVD player and box set along your journey. What show do you hope or a box set is uh available for you to watch forever if you want to?

SPEAKER_00:

Um I guess because I'm a teacher, I would think what would be educationally helpful for the the new the generations to come that don't have access to school systems and and live maybe even libraries or something like that. So I I I I know I'm every single answer I'm giving you is like a complicated cop-out answer, but like I would I would try to find some, you know, um I would some of those PBS cartoons, you know, where they taught like you know, our friend the the comma or something like that. I I would I would have some basic uh uh how to math, like you know, how to learn math and how to learn I it may not be the most exciting thing for me, but I think in terms of like what's best for the next generation, which is our duty, right, is to not just survive ourselves, but like raise kids who will survive, uh, would be some sort of educational videos about math and writing. Because other people will teach them about blacksmithing and black powdered guns, but I I think I like to have teach them about writing and math. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

That's amazing. It's a very different answer than anything we've ever gotten because most of the time it's like, how do I not be bored for the world? Is that the number one answer?

SPEAKER_02:

Or is like yeah, no, math videos are not the number one answer. Yeah. But I appreciate that. Again, you're really selling yourself as an excellent zombie survivor group member. And I have a feeling people are gonna be writing to us asking how do we get Dr. Pearl Mutter to Vermont collectively for all of us to survive with. Uh, what inspired you to be on our podcast and share it with your students? It was a really it was a lovely surprise to receive your email.

SPEAKER_00:

Sure. Well, we I got my PhD in 1996, and it says PhD, Doctor of Philosophy in mass communication. That was the field. Um we still have mass communication, but we also have it connected with interpersonal communication. In fact, I tell my students that one of the master truths of communication is the best kind of mass communication is that which best approximates interpersonal communication. So, what that means is that 2,000 years ago, the Emperor Hadrian was described as giving an address to his troops, and there's 50,000 Roman legionnaires, and he made every Roman legionnaire individually feel as if he cared about them personally. And then we fast forward to people who in traditional politics we call great communicators, people sitting at home in television would say, gosh, you know, I felt like he was talking to me or she was talking to me. And so now we live in an era where we have independent content creators who are outside government, even big nonprofits, and certainly outside the corporate structure, who are creating wonderful content like you. And I want to make my students in the classes where I teach about writing and I talk about content criticism and appreciation and content creation to be inspired by independence. I don't want to just say, well, here's how you know this big network with$50 billion does this, or here's how this movie studio that threw$200 billion at the screen does it. I I mean I don't know what the cost of each of your podcasts is. It's your time. You know, you bought equipment, it looks like you have very nice equipment. You have very i you have you have very good sound quality, by the way. That's something that we talk about, is how difficult it is to get good sound quality. It's good audio is harder than good videos, as people learn when they try to do that. But my point is I want to inspire my students by saying, look, these are independent people here. They were not gifted this by their mother who owned a television network. You know, they're not like a front for the German government or something like that. They're independent content creators, and yet they create really interesting, educational, exciting, thoughtful, intellectually stimulating content on their own. You can do that too. You might be doing it for an employer, but or you might be doing it for yourself, but like let's learn from them. So I feel my students can learn from you and other independent content creators. That's why, and you do this exciting stuff on zombies and post-apocalyptic, which I love, and the students all love too.

SPEAKER_02:

So I love that. Have you like, do you find that you make more students who didn't know they were in post-apocalyptic stuff into it after being in your class or more afraid?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, this generation we're talking about now right in the classroom where several generations are we're getting going through a generational shift, right? We have Generation Z, which are technically the ones who are in college right now. We have Generation Alpha just coming up, and in fact, they're already taking classes. There's this, you know, high school students take college classes, dual credits, and sort of thing. And then we have a lot of people going back to college. Like one of the classes I teach are all people who are in their 40s and 50s and for one reason or another never went to college and now are coming back to college. So like I have vice presidents of technology companies and former military officers or something like that. So there's no such thing as a normal college student, but I think all of them have the post-apocalyptic genre uh fights higher than its weight class. It's like everybody knows some post-apocalyptic films, and it's almost like a genre that nobody has not heard of it. Like, let me just take another, like there are people, you know, a lot of people who have never read a romanticy, which is a super hot category right now in the fantasy world, is romanticy is super hot. But yet I maybe 70% of the population that has no idea what that is and will never read one. Whereas everybody has seen something post-apocalyptic, whether it was an old Twilight Zone episode or Pluribus today.

SPEAKER_02:

Twilight Zone. That was the show the last person chose. Oh for that. That took me for a ride.

SPEAKER_01:

I didn't know what you were talking about.

SPEAKER_02:

Um That's interesting. I think you're right. And yet a lot of people look at us funny when we say, like, oh, we have a podcast about the zombie apocalypse.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, we don't want them on our team now, do we?

SPEAKER_02:

No. Well, maybe if they're a doctor, yeah. You know, I'll forgive them.

SPEAKER_01:

A lot of people will say that they're that, you know, like if if we ask them if they're into the zombie apocalypse genre, they'll be like, Yeah, it's not really my thing. It's too scary. It gives me anxiety. Uh but they they'll say something that they do like. Like I'm more into like romance novels or fantasy. Um, I like comedies or psychological horrors. But like if you look at the zombie apocalypse genre, like the zombie apocalypse is just uh an environmental hazard, and it can be any genre. Even romanticy, I'd be willing to say.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, there was that uh yeah, yeah, and and also it to me they're they're all subdivisions of world building, right? And I appreciate high effort, high talent, high execution world building. Uh that uh a lot of science fiction authors, Isaac Asimov, uh uh, I think Robert Bloch in Horror said, oh, I I think George R. Martin said this, Brandon Sanderson said this, is that if you're going to write science fiction or fantasy, you have to have hard walls. That is, you have to have rules and you have to stick to those rules. So it's okay to have dragons, but don't keep adding new powers to the dragons that should have been revealed in the first book of your 19 book series, right? Like you shouldn't find out in book 17. Oh, by the way, dragons can time travel. Really? For 16 books, the dragons have been not time traveling to solve a problem, but suddenly now they can. You know, just tell us what the world is and then obey the rules of your world. And I think the the really good science fiction and fantasy authors try to do this. I mean, it's very hard as as you as creators yourself. So you know it's extremely hard to like obey your own rules, but they do achieve that, most of them.

SPEAKER_02:

I think it's essential. As I like nodding my head so hard, I feel like it's gonna fall off because all I'm thinking about is how in the very last season of The Walking Dead, they introduced sort of sentient zombies. And I was like, what is this? You can't do that 11 years later.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's zombie zombie apocalypse is and of course we've had lots of variations of it, right? We've had the uh an actual like corded the cordyceps in um Last of Us, which by the way, there's a fantastic story from like a hundred years ago. I think the author was Frank Belknap Long about cordyceps taking over people. So that so this is an old concept, right? About literally this the fungi virus. But and then we've had psychological viruses, we've had virus viruses, we have alien-induced viruses, we've we've we've had a lot of things. The word zombie, I think, throws some people off because they think it's like almost like half a joke. But as we know, there there is in nature the ability to um disturb the mind, let's put it this way, of individuals. And it's not, you know, some something within the world of zombies is not completely implausible. All I ask is that once you've established the rules of zombie, you you follow those rules. And sometimes somebody has to, maybe I'm dumb, somebody has to explain to me, oh yeah, you know, in comic book 27, they explain why if you put pepper on your nose, it you know. If it gets too complicated, like uh I I'm I'm a little I'm out at that point. Uh I want to know the rules and then tell a story within the rules. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and the the you can reveal the rules to us over time, that can be interesting, but it better be well done.

SPEAKER_01:

Um like the kingdom did that, where like yeah, it kind of made us believe a certain set of rules, but then revealed that we didn't understand the rules and then gave us a twist.

SPEAKER_02:

Have you seen the kingdom, Dr. Pearl Mutter? No. Oh, okay. We're not gonna ruin it for you, but I highly recommend it based on what you just said.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, you had some questions for us. Great. Well, yes, I I wanted to know maybe this is something you've already answered, but like certainly for the point of view of my students, is that how did you march into this topic and decide to do this form of content about this topic? What what were your goals and what was your process to get here?

SPEAKER_01:

Actually, I I've I found it interesting earlier on when you were talking about um people who have had their countries and homes invaded by war and how that is an apocalypse for them. And I hadn't really thought about it that way, but uh my my interest in the zombie apocalypse started when I was in Afghanistan because I'm a I'm a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Uh and I experienced a different world that felt much more like the Wild West. Um and I, you know, I saw people who were living in situations where it was highly stressful, uh highly dangerous. Um, their their day-to-day lives was dictated uh often by whether or not they could go retrieve water for their family without stepping on a landmine or uh um getting mortared or having some uh patrol come along and harass them. Um and like it's it's absolutely true that it does feel like an apocalypse. And I kind of feel like I lived in an apocalypse for a little while. And maybe that makes a lot of sense why I have nightmares about the zombie apocalypse that kind of like make more sense out of life and how I feel about it than real life.

SPEAKER_00:

Um so Yeah, and and I I I sometimes I don't I don't mean to draw to draw up, but I just on that that's a super important point is that from the earliest origins where people write about the creation of art, they talk about art as being a psychological and a cultural expression as well as sometimes often a political expression. So again, I have these pictures from the Lascaux Cave, which is one of the earliest representative art we have, where it's I mean, we have some carvings and things like that, but like this is the if you if you've seen the pictures of the Lascaux Cave, they're these absolutely beautiful renditions of these ancient animals. And we don't know why they were doing it, but they expended a huge amount of effort. And but what certainly some of the theories are that these are magical, that these are these help them process their world. Actually, they thought it had an effect on their world. There's something called sympathetic magic. It is this it's the idea behind voodoo dolls. You know, you stick, you make a doll of somebody you hate and stick a pin in it, they'll feel pain. One of the thoughts is that like they painted the animals that they wanted to catch in order to feed their family and survive another week, and that would help them magically, you know, the the the ancestors or the gods would intervene to help them actually catch and kill the animals. So there's always been going to magic and art as a way to process what happens to us in our real life. And great art has always served that a function. So you thank you for bringing that up. That's you know, for for ancient Roman legionaries and uh someone like you who served in Afghanistan and in Iraq, that I I I see these parallels, and I just because I'm a history pro historian that I I I I find very fascinating.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And uh yeah, so I I've been obsessed about writing, writing this story. It started it all stemmed from a nightmare uh that I still remember to this day. And uh it was weird because it was highly stressful, but also I'm like, I kind of want to go back to it. And um so I'm I'm writing this book, and then Leah was said, Hey, you you should make a podcast about it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, because just a little bit of backstory. Dan has had a YouTube channel. Um, and so you're no stranger to doing things like this.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

But I think we chose this this format because um it's nice to not have to worry what our faces look like. Yeah, frankly. Uh and it's also, I think, one of our favorite mediums is a podcast versus having to look at something. And then for me, much less dramatic reason. I um I think I've always been interested in the apocalypse because of my inner anthropologist and the what-ifs of that scenario and also the the big reset that that might allow. Um obviously I don't want billions of people to die. Um, but I do think that there are ways that we could think differently about how we live together. And it's a lot easier to make change when there's just like the I don't know if if the slate's wipe clean, because you're still human and you have your history, but um, you gotta figure things out, and that's new and that's exciting to me. So Dan basically wrote me into being his podcast host, which I keep trying to get out of Dr. Pearl Mutter every time I'm like, why don't you talk to this person without me? Absolutely not. And I love it. It's an excuse to get geeky, which is why I was so excited when you when you wrote us, because I try and put a little bit of anthropology facts in every episode just for fun.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and I I think that's sort of leads to my my second question about um well, I mean, I'm sort of adapting some of the questions I've listed to what you're saying now. Besides learning about interesting content that contains zombies and zombie stories and how to tell zombie stories and critiquing zombie stories, are there sort of like meta lessons that you feel people can draw about the world that they live in? And probably again giving the example from Dan, processing your your own experiences. I personally think, yeah, post-apocalyptic is not just about post-apocalyptic, it's about today. It's about, you know, our civilization surviving and uh civilizations have historically been pretty bad at noticing that they were about to be destroyed.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, we have very few uh you know, those clay tablets, you know, you've probably read about the Bronze Age collapse, where a lot of the civilizations of the Bronze Age over a relatively short period. I know the scholarship is changing, but uh the Homer's Iliad may be a true story, you know, about a city that's sacked. You know, I mean I mean there's parallels there. I mean, they're uh that's a whole separate subject. But the point is that that very few civilizations go, yeah, in about 40 years we're gonna collapse. Yeah. You know, it just it it often just happens. I mean, the the uh the conquistadors show up. Yeah. You know? I mean I don't think that's the equivalent of what's gonna happen to us, but like, or there's a virus. I mean, just think uh we we had all of those preps for having a major virus before twenty twenty.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

All the all all all the thousands of books I I've heard of or read or T V shows about a virus spreading, uh, we should have been, you know, a little bit more prepared, I guess. It wasn't like it was the first infectious disease that we ran into either. Science fiction. And fantasy can be very good for training us. And so I just I I I'd like to know what are your some of the takeaways you think in people's everyday lives of what they can learn from the stories that you're discussing.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm gonna start with a very basic one, but I think it's important because the CDC put out a zombie apocalypse survival guide as a way of getting folks interested in being prepared. And um, you know, to my left, we we jokingly call our podcast room the bunker. It's not really, it's just in the basement. But we do have five five-gallon buckets full of rice, beans, and what else? Lentils, lentils. Yeah. And then upstairs we have our long-term storage, which includes oats, um, fruit, freeze-dried vegetables, and some other thing, probably more beans. We have so many beans.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think this I think it's just more beans.

SPEAKER_02:

And we're, you know, we also make sure we have water on hand um and some other basics. We've got a bag behind us with some things. And I don't think that we all need to necessarily prepare to survive for decades, but things can happen, you know, even just a couple of years ago, we had no power for five days, and all that stuff came in real handy. So having some basic preparedness that you could survive a week if you needed to leave real quick or you needed to stay is a basic one that I think you can learn. But there's deeper stuff than that. Dan, what would you say is like your biggest lesson from reading zombie apocalypse fiction?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, um that's a that's a big question. Uh I mean, I I use I use the genre as like a way to explore humanity. Um I am interested in how and how people respond to situations. That's probably something that also goes back to uh being in combat is like you know, sometimes there's a person next to you and you aren't you don't know how they're going to respond to a really bad situation until one happens.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And you know, maybe I'm trying to understand the psychology of how stress affects people on a deeper level.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think the last one I would ask add in terms of the anthropologist in me is that it's really reminded me of why the tangible community that you have physically around you within walking distance is so essential because just like how much knowledge we have today, we all we that is available at our fingertips. I also have friends all around the world. Love that, love that we're talking many, many miles away from each other, thousands of miles away from each other. But tomorrow, if things did happen, unfortunately, Dr. Pearl Mutter, you're not going to get here very fast. You probably have other people you need to take care of. So having connections and reconnecting to a sense of community is something that the zombie apocalypse really gets at. That I think that in our current day and age, we're very separated from and we think of ourselves as all just little individuals. But when stuff gets hard, you need each other.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I I think that's those are great insights. And it reminds me, uh, you mentioned one of the books I wrote uh was a book about police in the media. And I was really interested because police and law enforcement, uh, CI CSI type stuff, uh, detectives are like the wildly overrepresented in the media. I mean, it seems like every second show on the air is a mystery show of some kind, right? True crime is a fantastically popular genre in podcasts. I think it's like the half of podcasts are true crime or something like that. So I called, this is 25 years ago, I called my local police department and I said, I would like to ride, this is in Minnesota, I would like to ride along with you and observe how you interact with the public, how the public interacts with you, and connect that to stereotypes of police work and policing in the media. And incredibly, they said yes. So I spent a year and a half in a police car. I actually joined the department as a reserve officer who used to work parades and like help out in emergencies and things. But where I want to narrow down is your experience, Dan and Leah, is that I was fascinated how in situations of sudden crisis or danger, uh, some people were much better than others in processing information and making decisions. Sometimes even when those decisions would be life and death decisions, right? And certainly as somebody who studied war, not participated in war, but certainly read enough uh you know diaries and memoirs and you know, now the video of combat that you can see every day, uh the ability to put aside the panic and crisis of a moment and say, okay, I need to do this, this, and this for survival. Um and I had need to do it quickly. I can't like you know form a planning committee and you know have a team meeting and run it by my boss and things like that. And I was very interested in that. And in zombie post-apocalyptic uh uh fiction, and I'm gonna take The Walking Dead as an example. My favorite character in The Walking Dead was Carol.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Because Carol has one of the best story arcs I've ever seen. I I get a little bit suspicious when somebody is an accountant and then the apocalypse comes and they're a stone clothed cold killer five minutes later. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I think you need some training. You know, like you need boot camp, you need you need you need like something before you go from killing machine, you know, from like mild-mannered person. Okay. So Carol starts out, for those of you who haven't seen it, Carol is introduced as I won't say a weak character, but she is literally a an abused housewife, you know, who hasn't been given much power in her life. She's dominated by her husband who actually physically beats her and certainly mentally, you know, gaslights her and treats her badly. And then five seasons later, she is your number one person to be on your side. Yeah. She is this fierce, intelligent, guileful, um stone cold killer to protect her family group. And I just, wow, that's that, and but it but it's done very well as a character arc, not like you know, a magic pill that somebody took to become a Russian hitman after being, you know, a bus driver for 10 years or something. So I appreciate that, and I think that is one of the things we can learn from any fiction where people are in hugely stressful situations, is like, how would I do? And the police specifically, when they gave workshops on how not to be a victim of crime, would say, remember, the criminal, even if it's an opportunistic crime, has rehearsed in their head what they plan to do. You must rehearse in your head what you plan to do. If you are in the Walmart parking lot and it's night and you're going to your car and somebody grabs you and says, get in your car, I'm not going to hurt you. You have to, you should have rehearsed beforehand on what you're going to do in that situation. Now, I I don't know what current police advice is, but back then, 1995, police said, do not go to the second crime scene. It's better to have a fight screaming in the Walmart parking lot than to be taken to an empty field somewhere or the forests of Bennington. Oh, goodness. Yeah. Right. Okay. So and again, I'm I I I I disavow myself as an advice giver on this, but the point is that you must rehearse scenarios and situations ahead of time on what you're going to do so that you're not at a disadvantage in a crisis situation. Just like every office we've ever worked at, I I mean, I was an administrator for 15 years. We had to turn in a crisis management plan. And we had to come up with all sorts of scenarios. There's a fire, you know, all the computers go down because of a virus or something like that. There's a tornado here in Lubbock. Okay. Everybody should have, like going on what you said, everybody should have a crisis management plan for like food, but also a crisis management plan for like my my thinking, how I'm going to behave. And these movies, TV shows, books, games help us do that, I think.

SPEAKER_02:

I totally agree with you because when you're watching it, you're putting yourself in that situation. So again, we're watching all of us are dead right now. And there's a scenario where these students are locked in a classroom. It's a few stories above ground level, and they need to go to the bathroom because they've been there for a long time. And they have a whole conversation about it and they land on a decision that I think is really dumb because they could just poop out the window. But instead of doing that, or like poop in a bucket and throw it out the window, instead of doing that, they find a bunch of absorbable materials, make uh take filing cabinets and make like a makeshift bathroom, and then then people just pile their poop on each other's poop and make it stink and stay there. And like, I know that this seems silly, but also I'm watching that and I'm thinking, okay, what would I do? I would poop out the window or I'd find a waste basket. And like these are hopefully things I'll never need to figure out, Dr. Pearl Mutter. But these are the kinds of questions that you think about when you're.

SPEAKER_00:

And you know, historically, as as Dan and Shigley, both of you know, armies have lost more people from typhus, more people from illness than they have from combat. I mean, that certainly was true of ancient and medieval of the Civil War army there.

SPEAKER_01:

When I was in um it was vending machines.

SPEAKER_00:

Really?

SPEAKER_01:

It was briefly a statistic that there were more um injuries and deaths from vending machines falling on people.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh. But that was self-cause they got mad at the machine. Right. Machines didn't attack. It wasn't like a machine apocalypse, you know. Machines were rising up. Five years from now, the AI machines will you know fall on us. The AI vending machines will grow legs. Yeah, so so just I agree that it's important for us to like review, uh, but also just going back to you know the subject of of that is that I I do think we we need to have conversations. I mean, I I know some people here in Texas. I'm sure there are people in in in New England, Vermont, who do black powder, like recreating basically last of the Mohicans type weaponry, right? There's still very few I know people who like do blacksmithing. I know people like this this these are going to be super important skills. Okay if we actually have a near complete technological breakdown where we we can't like go to the supermarket and get something, or we can't we we we have to figure like, okay, yeah, the plumbing system doesn't work, nothing flushes anymore. You know, where do I dig my latrine? Right. And like I'm sure, Dad, you were trained to be in situations where you know you were you were you were a highly trained uh pooper. You know, I mean you you you were you were in a you were told, right? That was part of the discipline of learning to be a soldier in the field of how to how to take care of you know basic bodily functions safely.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so uh a quick story on that. Um so we we pooped in MRE bags. Uh there's there's a rule about like not leaving anything behind. Um anything that you leave behind could potentially be used by your enemy. Including MRE bags. Um you know, the little the little heating elements that you put in there can can be turned into all kinds of things. And also, um, I guess they that also applies to poop. Uh you can't just poop in the sand. You gotta you gotta poop in an MRE bag, and then you gotta bring that with you. So there's a there was a point where the back of our Humvee was just filled with empty boxes full of refilled MRE bags. That's disgusting. It was, it was not pleasant. Luckily, I mean the the smell is bad, but we were so climatized to it because we also smelled really bad.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, so uh but it was important to to health, but also safety. I mean, as you're right, I mean, you imagine in a lot of post-apoc, I mean, we can talk about this, but post-apocalypse scenarios, your zombies aren't your only enemy, right? Yeah. Unfortunately, other humans competing for resources like that truck full of pevasin or you know, your rice uh might be more dangerous than the zombies or or the the immediate proximity cause of the post-apocalyptic situation. And like, you know, this came up in The Last of Us. I I I felt I disagreed with some of the decisions there, you know, not that it everybody cares, but I think, but but uh one of them was they had uh Ron Swanson from Parks and Wreck as Bill the survivalist. And now it seems to me that if you want to be a survivalist on your own, like alone, you want to be off the grid literally and physically, not visible. The idea that he would create a survival community in the middle of a town with like razor foot wire fences, basically advertising to everybody something important is behind these fences, just seems insane to me. And it didn't seem like any actual survivalist would do that. They'd find a place in the woods, a cabin in the woods is where you want to be alone with your stuff, not in the middle of a town. I never understood that. I I guess I guess they they thought it was different and looked interesting, but um that just made no sense for surviving.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So learning how to hide, you know, to be to be not noticeable, right? These are we lost those skills. I don't I don't think we can do hide and seek anymore. Is anybody playing like that?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh I played with my nephew last year. Okay. Uh the kids can still do it, I guess, if you take their phones away if they have them. Um I'm I'm curious.

SPEAKER_00:

If you found him by calling his phone, it would ring. Yeah, that would be amazing. I should have. What was I what was I thinking?

SPEAKER_02:

That would have been perfect. Uh I know that you know, the role of governments in militarization is something we wanted to talk about in the zombie apocalypse with you. And I'm curious, um, when you think of any large-scale crisis like the zombie apocalypse, what do you think uh is like a realistic depiction of how governments might respond that you've seen?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah, that's a really good question because typically um I'm thinking of The Last of Us, I'm thinking of The Walking Dead, but really a bunch of other post-apocalypse. Well, there's the during apocalypse, right? And then there's post-apocalypse, and then there's like longtime post-apocalypse and before apocalypse, so they're all sub-variations. But government doesn't seem to do well. So let's just take The Last of Us. Uh another thing that I found odd there, again, this is this um zero to one hundred, is that like in the was it like the second scene of the first episode, you've got Texas National National Guards people shooting children.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And I'm going like, no, no, no, no, no. There would be there would be a longer transitional phase there. You can't, that's just not going to happen, you know, that that quickly.

SPEAKER_01:

Um see that's how the zombie apocalypse starts. It's that it's that moment where it's just like, yeah, I'm not ready to take that step yet. So then that zombie gets away and bites somebody. So also you don't kill the change. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. There's a great, I think the best apoc post most best during apocalypse and post-apocalypse novel ever written was by an author named John Christopher, who sort of made a specialty in the 60s and 70s of writing YA post-apocalyptic. But this one was an adult one. It was called, it had two titles. One was No Blade of Grass, and it was made into an unfortunately a very bad movie. But in the movie, there's a virus that kills all grasses. And wheat, uh uh, rye, everything, everything is a grass. So just imagine all every form of food, you know, bread related. And of course the cows need, you know, to eat the grass, and so like horses, and so anyway. And uh the government of Britain, I guess they're they're thinking ahead, decides to drop thermonuclear weapons. This is this is 1960, uh, on the major cities of England because they know that they can't feed the whole population. The simplest thing to do is to wipe out all the major cities. And that decision was taken pretty quickly. I just went, ah now, what was interesting is a character in the book says, you know, I know they took that decision, but I just can't believe that people will actually go through with it. And true enough, they don't, I won't give away too much, but mostly they don't go through with it. There's there's a civil revolt within the government. So I think governments, it depends on what the government is being stressed to do. If we have a complete collapse of our civilization, we're going to have mass starvation. There's no way. I mean, like every every Albertson's, every United Grocery, every um, you know, uh uh Ralph's, I don't know what the big chain is up in Vermont or something like that. Costco, whatever. Yeah, Shaw's. Okay. You ask the manager there, if you stop getting truck deliveries, how long would your stuff last? He'll he'll hit he or she will say a week, maybe, you know, right? Because they need continu You see the trucks pull up all the time, right? Yeah. They don't go a week without a truck, they don't go an hour without a truck pulling out. So what would happen? Governments would have to get organized very quickly. I don't know how you do that without coercion, right? Because how could you organize rationing? We had rationing in World War II. That's the last time we had rationing, but it was implemented slowly and carefully, and like everybody you know was organized, and everybody knew there was enough food, but that that you know we had to have enough you know, uh given out. There was a public relations campaign behind it. It wasn't overnight the way it would have to be. And also back in 1945, a lot of people had more access to land than do now.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, they uh also victory gardens and everything like that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. We wouldn't have t in in the typical scenarios that we see in these TV shows and games, we we we don't have like six months to prepare our victory garden, as you as you put it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. You know, and and have our own cow, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Learn how to grow a carrot in six months.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

It's interesting. As you think about places like Detroit that have been through pretty significant economic collapse and the urban gardening movement that came out of that, like figuring out how to supply your food as locally as possible. Um, and I think about my granny even, like she used to force me to help her garden as a kid, and I hated it. And now I think like, oh man, if granny was still alive, I have so many questions for her. Because she knew how to do things that I I am figuring out now badly. Like, Granny, how did you deal with the cabbage worms? I'd like to know. Um, although I guess we could just eat them in the apocalypse. I'm not there yet into the eating of the cabbage worms. But uh, I think you make a really good point. Yeah. Yeah. Um that like that preparedness again is is really essential. And I think it's really easy in this day and age to walk. Into a grocery store and get yourself an orange. I remember realizing that the oranges I was getting in Canada were from South Africa. You know, like that kind of supply chain is going to break down.

SPEAKER_00:

So that's a great example. I I'd love to join you in Bennington. What's your plan for not getting scurvy? Foraging. Right. You have to know what now we have a wonderful author here in Texas. I I happen to know this because my wife is his editor at Texas Tech Press. And he his uh he publishes a book about uh authentic uh Mexican American uh Texas Mexican uh indigenous cooking. And he did a really good uh special about how everything is edible. And he just went through just walking through West Texas wildlife, you'll see a lot of things, maybe a cactus, you think, oh yeah, I could probably chop that open and it's got water inside. But if you look at what the indigenous people, from the Apache to the Wapakki people, they ate, they ate almost everything. They learned to use almost everything in their environment. And uh the woods, you know, we we forget that forests were gardens. People ate almost everything in the forest. They just learned how to use it. These berries you couldn't use, or you could if you boiled them and then you drain them. And like you know, acorns, you can't eat it. I think it I think some nuts you can't you first you have to like soak them in a river in a bag for a week, you know, before you you can eat them. But like we need to learn all these lost skills. So, you know, you'd hope that like there's a library in Bennington that has you know a whole section on like uh things that have vitamin C in the Northwoods in the winter.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and that's why we have physical books like that around foraging. Um and I'll give a little shout out to Black Forager on Instagram. I've learned more from her just watching her videos of what's available in our backyard than anything else. Um I'm curious a little bit more, going back to the the government, what kind of propaganda do you think would work? Say the apocalypse starts tomorrow. What do you think would actually be effective in the United States to convince people to be willing to ration their food?

SPEAKER_00:

Propaganda works best when people feel it's sort of true. And that could be negative. Like in the past, uh propaganda has been used to attack certain groups. It works best when people already have prejudices against those groups. Yeah, that makes sense. So if if you're if you're saying something like, man, those people from Maine, don't you just hate them? It it helps better that if the Vermonters already don't like the Mainers. And I I know that's a silly example, but I almost come down here to look at our leaves, don't they have their own leaves?

SPEAKER_02:

You picked the wrong M-word. It's the Massachusetts folks who come and park in the middle of our dirt road where the covered bridge is and take pictures, and I can't get home. Anyway, I'm already biased.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that that that actually is a very is is a good, is a mild, a mild, good, good example. Yes. So so um if people feel that propaganda, because remember, propaganda was the word propaganda comes from propagation of the faith, the Catholic Church set up an and they felt that they were that it was an office of telling the truth about the Catholic faith and you know the salvation. And so they didn't feel like we're gonna manipulate people and we're gonna be evil. Um so if you are saying things which people feel makes sense, is sensible, and is basically true, it can be helpful. So let's just take the example of rationing. Um if people believe the system is fair, because human there's a lot of psychological research that that humans demand fairness. Even other primates, like they do these experiments where like you give a monkey enough food that it's gorged, but it's still angry if it sees the other monkey getting more food, right? So, you know, uh, I mean, I guess they both have the same job at the lab, so you know, maybe they don't feel bad. But uh so so there has to be fairness. So, for example, you know, my advice if I if I were minister of propaganda of like the United Government of Bennington, you know, post-appocalyptic governor of Bennington, I'd say, okay, the leaders of the government, you must eat in the same communal places with everybody else. They must see you eating the exact same rations.

SPEAKER_02:

That's smart.

SPEAKER_00:

You can't gain 20 pounds, you know, while being vice president of the of the of the of the food bank. You know, you know, you know, you have to be really careful about your your your image. You have to have transparency. People have to like when you weigh the portions and like you people have to like have tours and say, okay, these are our 50,000 bags of rice, you know, and we're trying to do this. I mean, you you have to have a lot build trust. And secrecy hurts trust. Uh and I think that that's where propaganda can be very useful, is people feel like we're in this together, everybody's pitching in, you know, my kids are getting as much food as anybody else's kids. Now, the the problem, and this is where coercion comes into place, is that um let's take a scenario which I've seen happen in a lot of uh books, uh, especially about the prepper world, is that okay, let's just say you do the right thing. You are ants, and you have saved bags of rice and and lentils, and then you get a knock on the door from the sheriff's department. Well, you know there's been an apocalypse, and we need to centralize all the food so that we can share with your neighbors who didn't prepare at all. Your grasshopper neighbors had you know one one bottle of vermouth and like a cup of a can of coffee and some KFC takeout. So, what's your answer, Dan and Leah? Are you going to share with the entire community what you've been smart in saving for yourselves?

SPEAKER_01:

Logically, especially since like this is something that we think about a lot. Like we know that that helping the community survive is the best way to help ourselves survive. Um, but there is a part of us that's like, but we've been sit it's been sitting in our house for like we could have put a TV there in a we could have bought a TV. I could have a PlayStation and a TV where all of that food was all this time. I could have not spent my money on on it. Uh and uh and I'd still be, you know, the the community would be rationing to us, uh just like the rest of the grasshoppers out here. But um I don't I like as long as that I trust that the community that's coming to take it does have the intention of sharing it with the rest of the community, and it's not just like some rogue militia coming by and being like, give us your food.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So that trust I think is is key again. Um and I don't know that that's necessarily going to be the natural reaction of most people. Like you and I are not are not your average bears. Most people don't have giant buckets full of food in their house, um, or have thought a lot about this. Like, I donated some of it to the local food bank recently because I just thought like they need some extra food and I have it. Uh, but I've also thought a lot about community. But you're right. If we trust the community, the person who's taking it will give it to them. If we don't, then it's gonna be a problem.

SPEAKER_00:

And you can see how in a real life scenario, but also in the fictional scenarios, you know, not everybody and not every government or entity, uh, first of all, we're saying government, but like, yeah, you're bringing up entities. Like, suppose the organization is not, I mean, the government falls apart and something steps in to replace the government, we wouldn't necessarily have the same, like, I didn't vote for you, you know, and I don't know who you are, and like uh actually you're my neighbor who I hate, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's actually very real. And you know, I think it's it's also different if it's like if it's the local, the local community comes by and they're like, we need you to contribute to the community, that feels a lot better. But if some three-letter agency came knocking on the door, I'd, you know, I'd I'd be like, you better start kicking rocks.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, Liz the librarian comes, I'm giving it to her. Our neighbor whose name I won't use, I'm not so sure. So you're right, who it is that shows up on that or two.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. So the that's the question about like the federal government versus the Bennington, Vermont City Council, you know? I mean, there's so many issues there, and you can see why there is this um tendency towards collapse. Because it's actually really hard to keep a community together. We I mean we have to work at it. And you and you, Dan, have given examples of parts of the world where uh people live a life that is much closer to the way we lived thousands of years ago. And that's not I'm not denigrating, I'm just saying that like we've we all existed in tribal clan genetically related groups. And it's relatively extremely recently in human history that we've put aside that, although, I mean, Nebo babies exist. I mean, you know, people still still do things for their kids and their uncle or something like that. But like in the United States, there's still an expectation, for example, like the mayor of Bennington would not say, and so now I bequeath the mayorship to my son and heir, my firstborn male child. He wouldn't like put down campaign posters.

SPEAKER_03:

No, no.

SPEAKER_00:

Vote for my firstborn male for mayor, right? You know, that I've never seen as a political communication, but I've never seen that before. But there are political dynasties.

SPEAKER_01:

Now I'm tempted to make signs.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, in Vermont, it would be more like the thing that the the positive propaganda you'd want in Vermont is like, I've lived here all my life. That's the thing that people would need to hear to trust you. Like Dan and I would have a problem becoming any kind of like uh political leader having only lived here for six years, unless we really worked hard at like showing up every day.

SPEAKER_00:

Um and then refugees from Boston would be pretty low on the uh totem pole, wouldn't they?

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, people discriminate here all the time based on license plate, and it didn't take me long, having heard it, to be like driving along. And if somebody's driving too fast or too slow and they'd all move them on plate, it goes through my head, you know, and then I'd be like, Leah, you're judging. You they could live here. Maybe they just haven't changed their plates yet. And it doesn't really matter.

SPEAKER_01:

Actually, a friend of ours made a short film about that that had a really hilarious twist.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I wasn't expecting it to be funny, but it was actually pretty much. We'll send it to you after Dr. Pearl Miller.

SPEAKER_02:

Um So what how do people react to Texas plates? Um, I think that's like more of that would be more of a novelty, but similarly. Yeah. I think like if I see a we all have in communities, yeah, right?

SPEAKER_00:

We we we all have a sense of we we have a sort of inverted funnel of a community of like what we define there. And of course, the greater the shortage, you know, the greater disaster, the more um Machiavelli said in one of his writings, uh, I think it was on war rather than on politics. He said that when an army is scattered, it flocks to the banner. It returns to the flag as something that they can literally rally around the flag in ancient warfare or medieval warfare, you know, even civil war warfare, you know, rally around the flag, boys, the the Maine and Vermont troops and the uh Maine troops, especially, we're famous for that. Uh little roundtop, right? So um how to create that in a in a time of extreme stress, and and the the the despicable people, because let's talk about we were talking about good people so far. Let's talk about despicable people. They will emerge and they will say, This is my chance, you know. This is my time. The first shall be last, and the last. I mean, uh, this is where you're going to get people emerging and going, like, hey, you know, I could be king of Vermont. Yeah. Yeah. Uh I mean, I I was uh you know, I was a deputy sheriff, I was a school teacher, I was a uh, you know, a carpenter, whatever, but like uh this is my chance to be on top in a community. And and so there can be for the good, but they can all be, and and I think what's zombie shows that Walking Dead and others do very well. Uh I I thought The Last of Us actually, I I as a professor, I really like comprehensive media where you're shown different points of view and you you realize it's complicated sometimes about like it's not just we're the good guys in the white hats and they're the bad guys in the black hats. It's complicated. And in the uh Last of Us, they did show like this uh Pacifida was the government authority. And in the beginning, you're going like, oh yeah, they're the bad guy, government authority. But then people bring up like, well, what's to replace them? And you know, our our is is uh the the Wyoming. I'm sorry, I had to laugh when I saw this when they take a take a tour of the Wyoming community, and uh one of the leaders says, and this is our religious area, interfaith, of course, you know, and I just thought that was just a funny line, you know, like to just reassure people that these weren't you know religious fanatics of any one religion, it was like an interfaith center. I don't know how many of those they'll be, the post-apocalypse, but we'll we'll see. Um it's more likely that people will spin to the gravitational attraction of the smaller groups that they've already built trust in. Though then there'll be a lot of inter. And that's really the danger, is that the society will keep spinning into smaller and smaller breakups. That there'll be no chance of restoring anything, you know, statewide, let alone you know, nationwide or globally. Civilizations don't have a long history of coming back from breaking up.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And we don't have a long history of living and uh and agreeing on things at such mass scale in general, like you said, like we we've been living in groups of like 25 to 50 for most of human existence. Exactly. So I always think of like the United States, every country really, as just a giant grand experiment. Um, and we're all kind of still figuring it out, sometimes well, sometimes not so well.

SPEAKER_00:

Um there's a wonderful scene. There was a movie made in the 1960s, 70s about the life of Oliver Cromwell uh of England, starting starting, excuse me, Richard Harris and Charles I of England, the king, has a line there that I've always remembered. He says, democracy, Mr. Cromwell, is a Greek drollery based on the idea that a common person can have uncommon talents or extraordinary talents. And you know, we have to remember democracy, it was around in one form, like only male uh citizens of Athens, about 6,000 of them, for a couple of years, and then it dropped off completely. Yeah. And for a thousand years, and we have different countries. I mean, North North Korea calls itself, you know, a democracy. I mean, it's a popular term. Um, not everybody is actually practicing it, but it doesn't have to stay. And in in in times of crisis, it it's almost been inevitable that democratic freedoms have it seems to be a law, sort of like a scale. Like the the hot the bigger the crisis, the more of a decline. You know, Abraham Lincoln did a lot of things which, you know, if you read about them on paper, were not democratic, you know?

SPEAKER_02:

You had to make some executive decisions. Um it makes me think about how the military is a hierarchy because it's a situation where people need to be able to make decisions quickly. And in a crisis, you have to make decisions quickly, um, which is very hard to do in democracy, let alone like a consensus-based model, which is like how I do a lot of my work is we all sit around a table and we talk about things until we have come to like a strong agreement where pretty much everyone is at least are like, okay, I can live with that decision. And that takes time. And you can't do that when you have zombies literally at your doorstep.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Although you can't be talking about how we're gonna kill the zombies for a few days.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, post uh post-World War II, um, the creation of the continuity of government uh plans that uh led into the Cold War and everything took a lot of um gave a lot of powers to the presidency that usually was reserved for Congress because they needed somebody that could uh make a decision in minutes, not uh weeks or months. In in the event that like a nuclear war broke out. They needed somebody that could just be like, okay, we're reacting to this bomb that's exploding right now.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Part of me wonders, and I'm curious what you think about this, Dr. Perlmutter, that it's in the crisis situation, I think it might actually be better if we're working in small groups because the trust factor will inherently be higher. Like I'm way more likely to trust my neighbors in figuring this out together than I am if somebody from Washington shows up and asks me for my food. Well, they wouldn't even be telling me at that point, I'm pretty sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Let me use a military um example. I was talking about this the the other day. Um, I was doing something on the Falklands War, and the British won the Falklands War, and they did so for a number of different reasons. It wasn't that the British troops were necessarily uh veteran troops versus the the Argentinians being inexperienced. It was true a lot of Argentinian troops in the Falklands War in the early 80s were, I'm sorry, 80s, was um were inexperienced, but uh the British troops were about the same age, but they had much, much better, longer training. They had a long, long tradition of an officer caste. I say officer caste as well as class, where the officers were given a lot of independent control and command to make decisions on the spot. And in today's world, the armies that seem to be extremely successful in small unit actions, not necessarily wars, but except but in small unit actions are the ones where the local officer is highly trained and has a lot of decision-making skills. So, in other words, an American officer, uh, you know, British officers, Israeli officers, uh, Canadians, uh, other armies that have historically been very successful, they allow the local lieutenant and captain a tremendous amount of leeway to accomplish the mission. Somebody up the chain of command says, I need you to take that hill. Do it any way you want to, just do it. Whereas other kinds of armies, and I'm not going to name names here, but there are countries which have consistently done badly in warfare, are the ones where they have this rigid structure where local officers, first of all, are never trained to be independent because the the leader of the non-democratic leader of the country is much more worried about coup and revolt than they are about war. So they put their uncle is the head of the military, and their nephew is the head of the 5th Armored Brigade, and nobody can do anything without 17 calls up the chain of command. I mean, there was one Middle Eastern Army. Me where I was reading about this, and in order to call in an airstrike, they have to make 17 levels of approval. And I was thinking, Dan, it it was true, right? That like if you needed an airstrike, you picked up the phone and you called like one or two people, and then some A10s showed up, right? I mean, it it was you didn't have to like check too much.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, I never called in an airstrike. What? Oh man. But um, yeah, I mean, I don't know, I don't know where the orders came from, but like let's say there's a team that's being fired upon. They call they call in over the radio, and usually it's you know, there's there's like a they they have to get approval from a commander, but that commander might like have like a blanket approval if they're if they're like, yeah, there's bad guys out there, go go bomb them. Um but you'd call in and usually it's like whoever's in charge of uh of um you know the artillery unit or whatever um that would be the one who would make the decision, uh as long as they have the authorization from their their higher up.

SPEAKER_00:

But they would often be, as you say, given the author pre-authorization. Yeah. Whereas a lot of these other rigid control armies, nobody is authorized to do anything.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And as soon as assuming they had authorization like that, it could they could be uh wheels off the ground in the air uh within minutes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I mean, I'll name one of them. So like last year the Syrian army collapsed in like a week. And and this is a military dictatorship that's lasted that lasted for 52 years, I believe. And you're thinking like, man, you can't even have a military that lasts more than a week, but you've had 52 years of prep. Yeah you know, everybody, everybody's a general, you know, there's three, there's there are more generals than there are, you know, like chefs. I just it it was really amazing to see how a completely militarized government is was completely incompetent at anything to do with military because of the system that they had in place, right? It wasn't their weapons wouldn't fire. It just that nobody trusted anybody, nobody could get anybody on the phone for authorization. Everybody was incompetent because most people were incompetent because who was there? It was somebody's brother-in-law. That was the only reason they were they were. I mean, the American military, all militaries have challenges, but most of the time you know that a Marine commander is there not because he's somebody's nephew. And that's the only reason. That he never had to go to boot camp, he never had to pass any tests, you know. He's just a nephew of somebody. And and that's really the difference. Now, in in a post-apocalyptic situation, you know, we would we would try to. I mean, I I find it hard to believe that militaries collapse as quickly as they do. Um, I was just watching this uh pleuribus show, and I I don't want to give too much away, but you know, it's it's said in the first five minutes, the first episode. So it is like like, where's the military? Right? Where they they disappeared completely. Um and I'm going, like, wait a minute, this is a virus, and how did they get the virus to submarines? Like, we have nuclear submarines all over the Pacific and the Atlantic, and they're under the ice caps. Like, so I mean, you know one of the things that I find implausible, and maybe because I live in Texas, uh I don't know, maybe it's it's a prejudice I have. I I think the military cohesion of the United States military is so strong that it would take an incredible collapse uh uh disaster to break that up and the military just to fall apart overnight.

SPEAKER_01:

That's something I I think of a lot as well, um, especially in my writing, is that like how does how does a zombie apocalypse uh take out the world's strongest, most technologically advanced and well organized military? And I I think the best answer is that um somebody somebody way high up did something that made the military less effective and uh and essentially just somebody screwed up.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, you just said something really important. Let's go back to calling in an airstrike. See if a marine commander in um Iraq calls in an airstrike, they have some level of faith that the bombs will be dropped on the grid square that they they said. Like the technology, like today, you know, we we have an example from the Ukraine war and from Middle Eastern Wars. Our technology is so good right now, we can take out somebody having dinner and not hurt people in the kitchen. Yeah. I mean, it it it sometimes it doesn't work, but like the the drone technology and the guided missile technology is so good that we can find the people that used to just hide under rocks and say, uh, well, go ahead, Americans, you know, we don't do whatever you want. Now now we can find them, right? Yeah. So the question is how much of that technology, as you know from your experience, that technology is super expensive and it also demands a ma massive logistics chain to keep going, right? So I do think that once if if the logistics change collapses, then you might start worrying about the cohesion. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

There's a say there's a saying that um uh rifles win battles, but logistics wins wars.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. Amateur study battles, uh professional study logistics, I think is another one from the historian point of view.

SPEAKER_02:

It doesn't bode well considering how badly um supply chains were hurt by COVID, which is nothing compared to like the bubonic plague um or the zombie apocalypse.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Uh the military's been at least the army, as far as like I can't speak for anybody else, but logistics has has always had a very strong amount of attention given to it because they know that fact. Like if you if you don't get ammunition, food, and water to the people who are fighting the war, then you're not going to win the war, which is exactly why Russia's not doing well, because they have terrible logistics.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and just something as simple as uh you know, I was just reading about like the Russian soldiers refusing to use North Korean ammo that the Russian government bought all this North Korean ammo because it blows up in the gun at an unacceptable rate. By the way, the unacceptable rate, I'm sure for you, Dan, was like one. Right? I mean, what it wasn't like, uh yeah, one out of 15 times is okay. No, no, no. Zero. We need zero my gun blowing up in my face, you know, for me to use my gun. I will not use my gun unless you promise to me it's it's a zero chance of it blowing up in my face. And so so yeah, the the that isn't where the trust comes in. Um so so in other words, I I guess my my takeaway is that uh I have much more faith in the cohesion of some institutions like the military, uh, that will survive a lot of stress and pressure. But I can conceive, because we've had fiction stories where you have something that's big enough that it just can't survive on the national scale. And then the problem with having like local military authority is that our military system is so integrated, right? I mean, you can't just say, okay, Vermont, you know, all the military in Vermont just run yourselves. Well, yeah, but how many artillery shells do you make in Vermont? You know, how many carburetors for home fees or whatever's the newest do you make in Vermont? Like we have a national supply chain, and I don't see how you shrink that to a county or a city.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. It'd start to look uh real rough after a while. Yeah. You'd have people doing on patrol and Honda Civics and Subaru's.

SPEAKER_02:

I've got to drag season 11 of Walking Dead one more time. They sure where did they have the supplies and the money to make these ridiculous white army outfits? Where? I don't know if you've seen season 11 of The Walking Dead.

SPEAKER_00:

No, I I gave up after season six, seven. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I mean, I I recommend till nine. Ten's uh dicey, but then eleven is just all roles are gone and somehow they're able to make these brand new, fancy, like futuristic looking.

SPEAKER_00:

From our topic here, Negan is what drove me away from the series. I think that's it. Well, he was an implausible authoritarian. Interesting. Say more. Like, I mean, he he was an authoritarian that you know the thing about authoritarians is you gotta give people a way to be successful in the system, right? You gotta say, like, okay, look, we're authoritarian, but if you do these things, you'll prosper.

SPEAKER_01:

I think he didn't know. Yeah, I thought he was too random. Um, maybe not to the people outside of his community, but within his community, he's like his whole thing is if you follow the rules, then you'll thrive. Like they work for credits, they get food, they're safe from zombies. So that like really they he was just picking people who wanted to be safe.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And he would reward the people who were loyal to him and punish the people who were not. I I felt he was a little too cackling.

SPEAKER_00:

Cackling? Yeah, cackling. I I feel that if if you're going to be an authoritarian dictator post-apocalyptic, you have to be much more crisp and businesslike, and like like more, more a bureaucrat than jump. He was he was jumping around, cackling, laughing, you know, just just I I don't know how to put it. He was too much like a like a 1960s Batman villain. You know, that's fair. I was expecting him to have like a shirt with a like a N on it, and like these henchmen with like weird hats and and you know, or something. It just it just it felt so over the top that I mean uh who knows, right? But like uh I I would advise anyone who's trying to set up authority to be much more cold and calculating and quiet um than he was. Like the governor.

SPEAKER_02:

The governor is more plausible.

SPEAKER_00:

The governor, I I I mean, you know, in terms of authoritarian, uh, I felt he did it right. And again, he made the same offer, right? He said, like, you know, you stay here and and we'll protect you from the evil outside and and you know, we'll all work together. And then that that other community, this sort of suburban authoritarian community with the the was run by like a a woman, a wealthy woman. Oh, Alexandria. Yeah, yeah. You know, um, I don't know, that's that sort of felt like what a suburb would become. Yeah. Like it would run by the country club presidents or something like that.

SPEAKER_02:

It's an example of how people who are already doing okay in this society like well enough to buy into a uh HOA where everybody has solar power and water filters and everything is already off-grid, they're gonna be doing a little better than you just put up the steel walls. Yeah. Um speaking of like uh technology and logistics, you had mentioned that there was or that there is apocalypse software being developed. How does that tie into this conversation for you? What do you what do you think our listeners need to take away when they think about apocalypse software?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so a lot of apocalyptic scenarios, whether it's zombies or something else, people go from modern 21st century to uh medieval pretty quickly, right? Now, it's not quite true because, like, for example, for many, many for like maybe the rest of our lifetimes, there will be guns around that don't fire black black powder. And we, you know, maybe somebody has a 63 Ford truck that survives the AMP and there's a good mechanic, and you know, you you synthesize like ethanol or you know, maple sap into fuel or whatever. I mean, there's gonna be remnants of our technology. We're gonna live in our houses, maybe we don't have to build a new, completely new like yurt, you know, we can still live inside our house. So we're gonna be these medieval peasants in some ways, but we'll still have some modern conveniences and like wash couches and and and so on. But the turning things around in the other direction are is gonna be very, very difficult unless we have a core of people who are not only just reclaiming past technologies, but are figuring out a way for us to reclaim post-medieval, post-19th century technologies. And I think that that's that's really gonna be hard. How do we ever get out of the 19th century? And that'll be our peak because then you have to have a country. You know, you can't develop an industrial civilization in one town, right? I mean, it's true that like Manchester, England was a leader in the 18th and 19th century in like coals and coal coal production and looms and things like that, but they had the whole British Empire to draw upon. So that's where we we're probably gonna get stuck. Uh, is if we break down into these small communities, I don't know, our great grandchildren may very well be at like, I don't know, uh I mean, are we gonna go back to being hunter-gatherers? You know, are we just gonna keep going back in time? That's uh gradually.

SPEAKER_02:

I yeah, it would be okay. I mean, like if you ask me the 40-hour wick week or the zombie apocalypse, I choose the apocalypse because I really love foraging. Um and I'm only half joking. Yeah, but then you get a toothache. Well, there are, you know, I think that there's uh a myth out there that anything, you know, before the agricultural revolution was just misery and we had no technologies for these things. I mean, like we have evidence of all kinds of stuff happening, people surviving who were clearly injured or born with um missing limbs that lived well into their early 20s. Like, you know, I'm gonna get a toothache. I'm that's probably not great news, but I would like to believe that whatever civilization I'm a part of or group I'm a part of has some traditional medicines. Uh, you know, every medicine we have is from, you know, the earth in some way. So am I gonna be as comfortable as I am now? No, but I'm gonna have a lot more free time to make art.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I've pulled my oath. In a hunting and gathering scenario, not a not a medieval scenario.

SPEAKER_00:

Um of the best insights we've ever had about this was do you know about Otsi, the Tyrolean Neolithic person. So they found a corpse in the Tyrolean Alps, which was between what is it now Italy and what is now Austria. I believe he's about 5,300 years old, and he fell into an ice crevasse some 5,300 years ago, and they found his body. And you can go look it up, Otzi, O-T-Z-I, with the two little umlaufs there, and the umlaug. Um, and I forgot whether they decided he was in Italy or in Austria, but anyway, they've built a museum around him. And he is a he fell into a crevasse with all of his stuff. Uh there was a fantastic Austrian movie made about him called Iceman, where they decided to have the entire movie in an ancient dialect with no subtitles. It's really interesting to watch. But if you want to watch like how people lived before any of what we even call like the technologies of Rome, you know, or Greece or something, like actual hunter-gatherer, semi, semi-sedentary. I mean, they had you know wooden houses and things like that. That movie Iceman is really good. Anyway, um, he they found all his stuff, and you can go online. I really I recently posted something on like this. I think I'm forgetting right now, but there's something like almost a hundred different items. He had shoes, he had a hat, he had uh arrows, you know, he had uh a spear, he had like he'd eaten lunch, you know, he had a spoon. I mean, just you think about all of this stuff. And by the way, he died hard. He had the blood of four other people on him.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00:

He died of injuries of being killed. I think I think he was shot in the back by arrows, but he had the blood of four others on him. He had a wild hand. Yeah, yeah, no easy day there. Okay. Um, so the point was that he had this tremendous toolkit where you're thinking, like, wow. And he this wasn't a burial, like he was escaping from whoever was trying to kill him, and he fell into a crevass. So we just happened to catch what he had on his body. And each of these things are miracles. Like, I mean, I don't know your skill sets, but like, okay, could you make me some shoes? I could they wouldn't be very good.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I could try. Because I can search and I have some skills, but I don't think they'd be great.

SPEAKER_00:

And I I probably I trust your shoes better than some you know store brands.

SPEAKER_02:

They would not. They'd be like they'd be like leather soles and um leather laces, basically, to make them tight.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Well, you can look up his shoes and see his shoes and their works of art, you know, because he was walking around the Alps.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So, like, you know, you couldn't have a cheap, you know, easily destroyed shoe, and his hat was a beautiful, amazing hat, you know. So my point is that that we have all of these lost skills, and we would have to either find people, because there are people who who still have these skills, or partly, we have to make sure that they share these skills, and then we have to make sure that they're protected to do these things. And we'd we would also, I guess this is the real difficult part is that we have to make sure that each person in the community feels valued, even though they're doing something which maybe uh you said it about creating art, right? Like, you know, I'm sorry, Leah, but like we need seven shoes by Thursday. So could you put off your sculpture garden until you've you know this is where the question of the balance of coercion versus freedom come in.

SPEAKER_02:

I would love to make you the seven shoes, though, actually, because there's something I don't know if you've had this experience or anyone listening's had this experience. When I'm doing things that feel like my ancestors were doing them regularly, it feels good. So like making some shoes feels good to me. Like sitting and sewing something, it's like there's something in my body that's like, yep, we've been doing this for a long time. So I'll be fine with that. More than typing on a laptop. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Eating the food that you grew yourself.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. You know, it's I mean, I I I I'm in Texas here. I have a lot of friends who are hunters, you know. They they are they have a a huge uh freezer full of wild boar, you know, that they shot. I mean, that they it tastes good. That they probably taste better to them because they're they're the one who went out and and and and killed it. So I mean, uh, yeah, I I think that that that that's a sort of psychological we started out, you know, maybe we should end on that, is that they're looking at post apocalyptic media in general and even zombie media, which you know sometimes stretches credulity in like How how we got here, but it's still creating tests for ourselves. Like again, what you you said, you look at it and you go, like, how would I what would I do? How would I behave in that situation? How would I treat people? How would I want to be treated? You know, what what role would I have in this community? And I think those are going to be eternal questions. And that's why this stuff is always interesting and popular. I I, you know, I realize I didn't answer the quite just a quick question. There are people who are working on post-apocalyptic technology. And you can just look that up on the web, just go like internet after the apocalypse. And there are people who are trying to create sort of hardwired intranets and uh media that will survive. And so there is this idea of like we try to preserve knowledge, and there's some projects that people are doing. Uh, so it's it's it's very it's not just black powder and farming, there's other things that people are trying to figure out what could be done. So I've I've never seen that in a movie or a TV show, but that would be a very interesting premise of like people trying to rebuild the TikTok after the apocalypse. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I would watch something I think about as well.

SPEAKER_02:

Apocalypse, TikTok, apocket TikTok. Yeah, there we go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Because if you're rebuilding a society, you have to have a way to both entertain and monitor. And what better way than TikTok?

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

But Dr. Pearl Mutter, it's been a real pleasure to chat with you. Um, we could talk to you forever, frankly. Thank you so much for how the world ends 101. I feel slightly more prepared after this conversation than I did before, actually. So uh where can people find you?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, no, they can't find me. I'm sorry, I'm hiding in the woods. Uh but no, but uh yeah, just um I I don't have any social media presence except Facebook or email, send me an email. But uh or you can just send bags of rice and lentils, but uh that's fine.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I think that's how we should communicate from there.

SPEAKER_02:

And also um DVDs about how to do math and write in cursive, because that's also a lost art. Dan, I have news for you. Uh yeah? I'm gonna go back to school. Oh. I'm gonna get my PhD in zombie apocalypseology.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Can I can I get a PhD too?

SPEAKER_02:

Um, yeah, sure. We don't nobody needs a job in this house.

SPEAKER_01:

Let's just get student debt. We'll we'll get student debt, and then when we're done, we'll just get more student debt.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, that is one strategy of survival.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Well, it was it was a lot of fun talking to Dr. Pearl Mutter. I didn't know where we were gonna go in the conversation, but he took us to many wonderful places, and now I have a whole list of things I need to look up.

SPEAKER_01:

I feel like we could have just kept talking for hours and hours.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, we didn't even get to call in the apocalypse, so yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

We barely touched on apocalyptic technology. Now I need to look that up because that's absolutely in my wheelhouse.

SPEAKER_02:

Definitely.

SPEAKER_01:

I need to know all about that.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, thanks everybody for joining Zombie Book Club today. You can support us by leaving a rating or a review. Send us a voicemail. I know that's super old-fashioned, but we love voicemail. Up to three minutes at 614-699-0006. Tell us what you think. Tell us what was the thing that shocked you the most.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Um, did you know about the guy that fell into a crevasse? A crevasse. Yeah. That I didn't know that they made a movie about it.

SPEAKER_02:

No, and like 5,600 years ago is not long ago like this. The agricultural revolution's long done, and we're yeah, moving along.

SPEAKER_01:

Sounds like he had some swag too. Like, no wonder they shot him with arrows. Like he had some sweet boots and a hat.

SPEAKER_02:

Maybe we need to bring um his fashion back.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, let's check out his boots and make them.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

That's that's fun. Uh, you can also sign up for our newsletter that we never send, so you know you're not going to get harassed by us only when things are important or exciting. You the place you can find us the most right now is on Instagram at Zombie Book Club Podcast. We also have a Facebook group called Zombie Book Club Zombesties, uh, where I'm learning a lot of people like to be on Facebook. And that's new to me. Yeah. Haven't been on there in years, but I'm hanging out now. And last not least, if you're on Discord, you should join us at the Brain Munchers Zombie Collective Discord where we discuss things like what would you do in winter in a zombie apocalypse? And uh non-zombie things like send us a cute picture of your cat. We love cat pics.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I want to see some cats. All links are in the description. Yeah, thanks, thanks for listening today, everybody. The end is nigh. Baby bye, bye-bye. Don't don't die.

SPEAKER_02:

Don't die. Don't die. Not yet. Have a good day. Have a good night. Have a good everything. Bye-bye. Bye.

Contributor

Dan

Host
Contributor

Leah

Host