Zombie Book Club

Apocalypse Tech (Casual Dead) | Zombie Book Club Ep 148

• Zombie Book Club • Season 4 • Episode 148

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In this episode, we dig into the real-world tools for communicating and coordinating without cell towers or cloud services: Meshtastic mesh radios, ham radio via Winlink and JS8Call, GMRS repeater networks, and the more radical vision of Reticulum — a cryptographic network stack built for a post-internet world. We also cover the surprisingly active landscape of community mesh networks already running in cities like New York and Philadelphia, and why building decentralized infrastructure now is mutual aid, not just prepper fantasy.

Offline Wikipedia via Kiwix, self-hosted media libraries with Jellyfin, Calibre, and Audiobookshelf, and knowledge preservation archives like Open Source Ecology and Appropedia can turn a Raspberry Pi into a local server that keeps your community informed, entertained, and capable.


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Cold Open And Life Updates

SPEAKER_04

Welcome to the Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is stored in an off-grid apocalyptic resistant storage device. I'm Dan, and when I'm not preparing for the inevitable fall of civilization, I'm writing a book about survivors of a zombie apocalypse who might use some of this technology to survive.

SPEAKER_01

Whoa. And I'm yeah, I've heard a lot of cool things that I think uh from your book will come into play. Yeah. That we're gonna talk about today, but I'm not sure how much you're gonna reveal. I don't know. I know things that you don't know about Dan's book. Isn't that nice for me? Uh I'm Leah, and I'm sitting across from the handsomest Dan I've ever met. Also, we just got a new couch.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, a new couch.

SPEAKER_01

Dan, why are you so handsome today?

SPEAKER_04

Um, I recently trimmed my beard and hair um from like the mountain goat version that I was just one day ago.

SPEAKER_01

Mountain man. I I think goat is appropriate. I mean, goats are really fucking cool on the mountainside. They can do things that and have you seen their beards? Epic. Epic. It's true. And they're really smart. They are. They're really good at navigating.

SPEAKER_04

You're a mountain goat. Also, they can eat anything. Like that's kind of like anything. Like dirt, rocks. If you don't believe me, feed a goat a rock.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, Dan has these beautiful blue eyes and they're all twinkly today. And his smile's really nice, and his hair is really cute. And I'll stop making everybody want to gag.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I'm gonna have to edit all of that out.

SPEAKER_01

No.

SPEAKER_04

People can't know how handsome I am, Leah. Uh Leah, we release episodes every Sunday. So Subnet. What's a subnet? Oh, a subnet is a smaller local division of a larger network created to organize devices, improve performance, and manage IP address allocation within a network.

SPEAKER_01

What the fuck does that have to do with our podcast?

SPEAKER_04

We're talking about apocalyptic apocalyptic apocalypse tech. Off-grid tech. I we probably should have mentioned that before I went into this whole thing uh uh in the intro about uh technology. Yeah. Um, but you know what, you probably saw the title. That's true. Most people know the topic. And the thumbnail.

SPEAKER_01

Who's enjoying our thumbnails? Yeah, we put a lot of work into them. Yeah. Remember that time when we used to use AI, and by we I mean you. Oh, yeah. A darker time. Yeah. Speaking of apocalypse tech, apocalypse bringing technology.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, we're not gonna talk about AI. Though we could do a uh a deep dive on off-grid AI options as well. Fascinating. It's not in this list, but there there are things that you could do to have your own localized AI.

SPEAKER_01

Interesting.

SPEAKER_04

Um, if that was your thing.

SPEAKER_01

We keep teasing we're gonna do this AI episode. I don't know if it's ever gonna happen. You know, it took us four seasons to get to the poopocalypse.

SPEAKER_04

It advances too quickly. It's true. Yeah, by the time we we plan an episode, it would be just before.

SPEAKER_01

I will say this. Oh, I don't have my phone in front of me, so never mind. Life updates, Leah. What are we even up to? We bought a camper. That's right. Yes. And by camper, we don't mean one that drives itself. We mean one that we pull because Dan was totally game to buy one that drives itself that's super used and old. And I was like, you know what? I don't want to be in the middle of Arizona in a hundred degree heat, and we're stuck, and we don't have any way to get anywhere because our vehicle is attached to our camper.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I mean that could still happen.

SPEAKER_01

I guess the truck could break down, but the truck is in good condition and we know it. We've kept its maintenance up, it's a known quantity, and it's still relatively new.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, but anyways, we got a travel camper. It's uh it's it's not huge, but it's not tiny either.

SPEAKER_01

It's pretty nice. I'm very excited about it.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01

We have dreams of driving across the country and visiting. I think we might have mentioned this already, actually. I think we were talking about getting one and um the very high likelihood that we'll be seeing some zombesties along the way. Yeah, we got in one of our trips. I think this year we're probably gonna make it through Missouri. You know who you are.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, you know. You know who you is.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, maybe we'll make it else other places too, but I know for sure Missouri because we're hoping to drive to my besties, one of my besties, Eric, who's been on the podcast, his weddings in Palm Springs, California. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

In the fall. Known from the um uh evil magic chicken zombie trailer fame.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_04

If you don't know what that is, you know, I'm actually gonna add it as as an ad and just like play it in the middle. You really need to. Yeah. Yeah. So if an uh if a if an ad for a fake movie starts playing, um that's because you asked for it and you're welcome.

SPEAKER_01

And you will know why Eric is one of my favorite people in the world after listening to him.

SPEAKER_04

Uh Leah, what what's your life updates?

SPEAKER_01

I mean, the camper is really the biggest thing because I'm very excited to be in this new era where we can go places and Ziggy, like I'm still surprised every time we go somewhere, and Ziggy just doesn't want to bite anybody. It's great.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. I mean, he never did. It's very different from um the before times when we had Nero around who wanted to bite everyone.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, that's not true either, but he required a lot of caution and care and worth every f bit of effort, but still strange when we like have a car drive by us and Ziggy's like, eh. Yeah. Um Ziggy's chill. Yeah. We got a new couch, which is exciting.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, it's pretty nice.

SPEAKER_01

The funny thing about it is that actually we just promptly went and sat down on our old couch, which we put on. We have like a covered back porch. Um, and that was more exciting to me than sitting in the new couch because it's beautiful out here in Vermont. That's the news. I think we've I really feel scared to say it, but I think winter's over. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

It it is kind of funny though that like we're like, wow, look at this great couch. And then we put the old couch on the back porch, and then we're like, let's sit out here.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it was like a beautiful breeze, the sun was shining, the perfect temperature. My my toes were a little cold, so I got a blanket. Oh. I fell asleep. It was great. I ate chips.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So everything I ever wanted.

SPEAKER_04

Sent tortillas, yeah. A blanke, the couch out in the sunlight. It's my dream. Yeah. Yeah. It is pretty nice.

SPEAKER_01

Um, I guess the other news is that uh my job is a job, I think I've said before, that's gonna have a lot more travel than my last one did, and it's gonna be to some very cool places. So I'm gonna be heading to the West Coast um very soon. I'm gonna be gone for seven whole days. But part of that is actually to see Eric. I'm gonna get to visit Eric. I might get to visit my friend Rachel while I'm there for work. Wow. Because they all live there. Yeah. And I never get to see them. Yeah, that sounds great. That'll be nice, but also I'll miss you a lot. Yeah. And I think Ziggy might be mad. Ziggy will be furious.

SPEAKER_04

Um, but we're gonna watch John Wick movies. Um, John Wick is Ziggy's favorite movies. He really likes those movies because John Wick cares so much about dogs. It's true. And has a dog friend.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, but doesn't I mean isn't the dog friend gone in the first five minutes of the first movie?

SPEAKER_04

Because then he meets another dog.

SPEAKER_01

Oh.

SPEAKER_04

See, I haven't watched the other ones. A dog becomes his new dog. Oh. Um, and is really nice, really nice dog.

SPEAKER_01

I watched a reel today that was like, would you slap people in the face if your dog would live longer? Yeah. And then this person went around and slapped everybody, and I was like, it's true.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Sorry, you're not immune. Whoever you're whoever's listening, I would slap you for my dog to live longer. Including you, Dan. We could slap each other.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. I think it only counts like one slap per person.

SPEAKER_01

I don't know how the math works. Like, is every slap an additional year? It's an unknown quantity. Yeah, it's just longer.

SPEAKER_04

Longer. Just longer.

The Camper Sparks The Tech Plan

SPEAKER_01

Okay. Well, I think we should get into it. Yeah. One of the things, oh, actually, just a little context, one of the things we've been talking about that inspired this episode is having the camper. I want to be able to work from anywhere.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And uh to do that, I gotta be able to get on Zoom calls. Uh, and know that I can have those Zoom calls work anywhere with my video on no issues, because I can't, I am spoiled by fiber internet. I'm it w it's a requirement of my job. It's gotta happen. So some of this.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. So right off the bat, we've got two options for that. This isn't even my in my list.

SPEAKER_02

Oh.

SPEAKER_04

Um the thing that they push at the R V dealership uh is Starlink. And we I mean, I don't know, I don't know how you feel, but personally, I don't want Starlink because it's made by a Nazi. Um I mean, yeah, that's a good reason. Also, its capabilities are highly exaggerated. Like the the bitrate that you get actually isn't as high as some people claim it is. Um interesting. It's it's comparable to or lower than cell phone bandwidth. Well, that's useless to me. Uh and also they're like, well, you could you can connect anywhere. That's only true if one, you're not in a area that's covered by trees.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Line of sight to the sky is important. And also it's dependent on there being a satellite overhead, which there usually is. However, not always, Elon's satellites have been burning up in the atmosphere a lot because he's a total fucking shithead.

SPEAKER_01

It's true. And also, I think didn't didn't my mom and um her partner try and have Starlink. I feel like they're up in Huntsville, Ontario. I can say that they're not there anymore, so it doesn't matter. And they were in such a dense forested area they couldn't really get anything. Yeah. They had no internet there, it sucked.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Speaking of the future of the apocalypse, what are we gonna do, Dan, if there's no internet and it sucks?

SPEAKER_04

Well, the other option is um cell phone extenders, which is uh basically just like a device that your phone connects to that can then boost and relay that signal, and it can uh use uh one or two much larger cell antennas that can be mounted much higher. And by larger, I mean like they're like three times taller than the phone itself. Like your phone has an antenna in it, but it's tiny, and it's amazing that cell phones can do what they do uh with such a tiny antenna. Um, but that's because we have infrastructure, there's cell towers everywhere. Um, we could probably cut back on the number of cell towers if cell phones just had antennas sticking out of them. Not in Vermont. Can we have more, please? No, nobody wants that shit in their pocket.

SPEAKER_01

You know, that was the true test with whatever we get, is if it can make it so that I have cell service where we never get cell service. Oh, we should go to the Adirondacks where there's not even no cell service. You can't even get a radio station.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, there's no radio station.

SPEAKER_01

That's the ultimate test. Nothing. Yeah. For like three hours. You just you just there's no communication.

SPEAKER_04

So I mean, those things aren't on my list because those are things that require infrastructure. So what we're talking about are things that don't require infrastructure or like require you to act now while you have infrastructure to build the things that you'll need. Can I ask a super basic question?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I think it's really, I mean, until AI, honestly, I didn't really know a lot about data centers or why we needed them.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And for the longest time, I thought the cloud meant like it's just up in the air.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

The clouds. The clouds hold our data. So, what is the infrastructure that could potentially go down or would go down if we have an apocalypse? Everything.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So obviously, like, well, cell phone towers are still going to exist. So like, why wouldn't our phones keep working as long as we have batteries?

Why Starlink Is Not The Answer

SPEAKER_04

So even though cell towers would exist, uh, the infrastructure that allows you to connect to another cell phone when you call them, um, which I don't know what they call them now, but back in the day they were called multiplexers. Uh, and multiplexers were responsible for routing your call. So, you know, you're you would pick up your phone in the old-fashioned days uh when it was plugged into the wall, and that little wire was basically connected to a large grid with some repeaters in the middle that would go to a centralized location where there was a multiplexer that would determine the address of the number that you dialed and then communicate with other multiplexers around the country until you found the phone that you needed to call.

SPEAKER_01

So, in other words, this is the technological replacement for a person sitting and making cord, not what are they even called? The things that they would stick into the holes.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, well, that was before the multiplexer.

SPEAKER_01

I know, but that's like the switchboard. Like the switchboard is the is the multiplexer. Yes. Essentially.

SPEAKER_04

A multiplexer is a computer operated switchboard.

SPEAKER_01

Oh.

SPEAKER_04

Essentially. Okay. Um I don't know what they use now, but like 20 years ago was multiplexers, and they probably still use multiplexers because like I don't I don't know what else you did use. So all of this kind of uh the apocalypse tech depends on decentralization. So phones, uh, the the no the internet that we know today, um TV networks, satellite networks, they're all centralized. Meaning that like even though you can connect to a cell phone tower, that cell phone tower is useless if it's independent from the network. Um unless that cell phone tower can connect to another cell phone tower and then to a multiplexer. Like even just dialing in a phone number, it'd just be like, what what are these buttons for? I don't know what you're doing. You just sit there and not do anything.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. So um I've got a num I've got a I've got so much here. Um, and I don't think that we should go through all of it one thing at a time, even though like that's the autism side of me that just wants to be like, let's start at the top and I'll just read it until we get to the bottom.

SPEAKER_03

I will start doing something else.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, but you know, since you were talking about communications, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, like that's the number one. I want to be able to talk to all of our zombesties.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. So let we want to talk to our zombie besties, and it's the apocalypse. What are our options?

SPEAKER_01

Um We gotta be able to have go get to our meetup, which we all know where that is, also Missouri.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. We've agreed. So right now there is kind of a new-ish thing that kind of blew up after the during and after the pandemic called Mesh Tastic. Um, MeshTastic is a network of nodes that individuals can build from uh from a circuit board. Um, you can buy a kit for anywhere between$30 to$50. It runs on what's called an ESP32 board, which are very cheap circuit boards that have like a little computer on it.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

And people are doing really cool stuff with these boards, including making meshastic nodes. And if you build a meshastic node, uh it kind of works as a repeater and you can create a network of mesh meshastic devices.

SPEAKER_01

I feel like this is an assignment we need to just do with everybody that we love.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I do, I absolutely want to get some of these kits because I've I like we could just hand them out to people.

SPEAKER_01

How far away, like how what's the proximity to make this actually work? Like if we want to have our friend Eric on the West Coast to be able to talk to him, how do we how like how does that work?

SPEAKER_04

It's so that's gonna be the complex part. Um, so meshtastic works on what's called LoRa, which is I don't remember what that can stands for. Uh I think it's like low. Let's look it up. Yeah. Look, look, look up LoRa for me.

SPEAKER_01

L-O-R-A. L O R A. Mesh Tastic, just to okay, yeah, it comes right up. An open source decentralized project that uses low power, oh, long range is LoRa. Long range. Okay. Yeah. So LoRa is just a long-range radio that creates off-grid mesh networks for text messaging and GPS location sharing without cellular service.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So how long range is it long range?

SPEAKER_04

Okay. So um, so one of these devices can typically go between two and five miles, which is really good considering the amount of energy that they're using, which is like it can just like sip energy. You can have you can have a little tiny solar panel that would power it basically infinitely.

SPEAKER_01

Is this like the most off-grid and secure way to have like a neighborhood um top secret chat? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

And in fact, it's great for local. So while it's not necessarily secure, um, because like anybody can connect to it and anybody could receive those signals, it's not registered to anybody. So like if you have a LoRa radio or a mesh tastic device and you're like, I need to send a message to my friend, it gets to your friend, and even if somebody intercepts it, they're like, There's no telling where this came from.

SPEAKER_01

Interesting.

SPEAKER_04

Because it's radio.

SPEAKER_01

But I mean, what you're telling me though is like we would need to have somebody we love every five miles all across the entire United States. Okay.

SPEAKER_04

Or and and this is kind of the fun of LoRa radios that people are having is because they're such such cheap devices and it's open source. So people are like improving on the designs, they're making their own LoRa radios. Even MeshTastic is like uh a reiteration of a LoRa radio that somebody was like, I'm gonna make Mesh Tastic. Um and because people get to play around with it and experiment with it, people have been able to communicate over a hundred miles.

SPEAKER_01

Damn.

SPEAKER_04

Because they position their their mesh tastic node on the top of a mountain. And we have a we have a mountain.

SPEAKER_01

We do.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Hell yeah, we do. Although I'm about uh I've been told by the folks at West that I will think of my mountain very differently when I get back. And I was like, don't be rude. She's old.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Um, our mountain mountain is a Menadnak.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

What Breaks When Networks Fail

SPEAKER_04

Which uh is is a single mountain that's surrounded by non-mountains. Um, so it kind of uh kind of is up over everything. So our mountain's actually kind of ideal for transmitting long range, and which is a good thing because where we live, the closest mesh tastic node that I've found is in Burlington. Well damn. And then there's another one in uh in way southern eastern New Hampshire. So there's a big gap for us. Like MeshTastic right now isn't a huge uh a huge thing that we would benefit from unless we built the network out. Um the cool thing about LoRa radios in general, though, is that they are decentralized, so they just work. So like if you get a LoRa radio or a MeshTastic device and you want to communicate with other devices, it basically just works like a radio, but a radio that uses very small amounts of power and can transmit very long distances. So like this two to five mile distance in Vermont is kind of uh unheard of. So, like another thing that exists in my list is CB radio. I used C B radio a lot for truck driving.

SPEAKER_01

We have a big antenna. Can we put a big antenna antenna on for when we drive across the country?

SPEAKER_04

We can and we will.

SPEAKER_01

Can I have a trucker name?

SPEAKER_04

Yes. What's your trucker name?

SPEAKER_01

Pickles.

SPEAKER_03

All right, pickles.

SPEAKER_01

I don't know why. Oh, I know why, because we have pickles on my car. So when Dan and I first got back together, if you can hear happiness back in my voice, it's because of two things. Work makes sense now a little more, because I'm almost three months in. And two, the sun is shining and it's springtime, and I feel like I'm I'm not high, but God am I so happy. Uh vitamin D does a lot. Anyway, pickles pickles. Dan and I, in the early days of being back together, uh, would go to the Walmart and look at the toy section because we were both broke. That was our idea of a date. We're like, let's go to Walmart, let's look at the toys. And I don't remember who saw pickles first.

SPEAKER_04

It was you. It was me. You were like, you were like, Dan, can I get this? And I'm like, you're the one with the money. So pickles is not a pickle. Yeah, it's like a little toy dog. It's a tiny little fuzzy dog.

SPEAKER_01

He's white with a a brown spot around one eye and brown ears.

SPEAKER_04

His name is pickles.

SPEAKER_01

And I use some sticky tack and he stares at me when I drive. Yeah. He's right above the the steering wheel.

SPEAKER_04

And your name is your your handle is now pickles.

SPEAKER_01

I think so.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Um pickle pony. So when I used C B.

SPEAKER_01

Pickle Pony, that's what I want. Pickle pony. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_04

Perfect. Um, when I used C B to communicate with other other truck drivers when I was doing construction work, here in Vermont, I could maybe communicate two, one to two miles. And that's with a really big antenna, a lot of radio knowledge on my behalf to reach that distance, and a pretty high wattage. The the highest you can legally do without the um uh without the uh the government having a problem with you and saying that you're committing a war crime. We don't want to be doing that. Uh typically those CBs could transmit up to 20 to 35 miles if you're on very flat ground. Okay. But here in Vermont, one to two.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

If oh if you're on top of a mountain, maybe five. Um, so the I the the the fact that this little meshastic device that like literally can just fit in your pocket can transmit between two and five miles. And like we need to test that out here in Vermont.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, because of all the hills.

SPEAKER_04

Now is but that's still great as a two-way radio to option.

SPEAKER_01

So it's a radio. So I like hold my little mash bleh ble mesh chastic up and I say ten ten four Dan? How do you sound ten four?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah ten ten four. This is this is pickles. This is pickle pony. Pickle pony.

SPEAKER_01

Come on back. Come back up back uh Peter Piper.

SPEAKER_04

Is that me? Am I Peter Piper?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah because Peter Pi didn't Peter Piper Piper pick a pack of pickles?

SPEAKER_04

Pickled peppers, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Something.

SPEAKER_04

It was pickled peppers. They're not pickled peppers. They're not like cucumbers.

SPEAKER_01

Peter Piper picked a pack of pickled peppers. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04

We're never gonna get through this list.

SPEAKER_01

I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_04

Um yeah so I I think we gotta uh we gotta test this stuff out. I need to get a couple. I think that they're great for radios. You can also send uh text messages through them if you have a a keypad.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

Uh the thing about these devices is that like they're they're hand built sometimes. So like even if you buy them on like um Amazon it's probably somebody who 3D printed the case for it they soldered the board and they're sending it to you. Wow. Um so like it's highly customizable and some of them they're just like you just push the button and talk. And some of them are like this is like a Blackberry.

SPEAKER_02

A blackberry?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah wow yeah there's some ESP32 devices out there that look exactly like blackberries. And if you're too young to know what a Blackberry is the coolest phone of what like 2001?

SPEAKER_01

Or is that the Motorola razor? When was the Blackberry a thing?

MeshTastic And LoRa Texting

SPEAKER_04

I feel like it was like mid-2000s to like 2013. Like people held onto them as long as they possibly could. Um so I've got a couple other options here which um I I haven't heard of but I did a little bit of research uh just for this episode. Um one of them's called reticulum uh which is it it's it's a cryptographic network stack which um I don't know exactly what that means. Uh so it's it's primarily a protocol but it's also an alternative network stack that assumes that the internet is compromised or veiled or gone. Uh it runs over LoRa radio um I also use TCP which is um uh actually I don't even remember what TCP means anymore. Oh okay TCP? TC yeah and back in the day I had to learn support range?

SPEAKER_01

No. TCP what's this in relationship to again uh network networking came right up the transmission control protocol there we go a core connection oriented transport layer protocol that none of those words made sense to me uh to alone yes together what the fuck that guarantees reliable ordered and error checked delivery of data between applications on IP networks.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. So when you're connected to a network um TCP IP is the protocol that's used for computers to see each other. It's the reason why we have the internet.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_04

So reticulum basically it's an infrastructure for using the creating a new internet over MeshTastic nodes or I guess in this case LoRa LoRa uh radio networks. So I don't think it's necessarily compatible with Mesh Tastic. It's kind of like another option versus MeshTastic that uses these radios to transmit information. So technically you could create an internet over reticulum um that would be completely untraceable and I'm assuming that since it says that it's uh cryptographic it's a cryptographic network stack that that also means that it's secured.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

Um uh so there's also a messenger app called Sideband and it's a let's it's a BBS type um uh messaging system so like back in the day when you were on forums oh bbs forums if you don't know what a BBS forum is then you definitely don't know what a Blackberry is. Uh anyways it's called uh the net uh the Nomad network and it's uh it's it's a smaller community than Mesh Tastic but um it's it's one of these types of groups that's like more ideologically aligned because they're all about anti-surveillance infrastructure um and like they're they're they are about serious business but I feel like reticulum is something that you would adapt if you had a bunch of people locally that you want to build a a network with whereas mesh tastic is bigger and you'd be able to connect to other nodes as long as you were within a certain range of one and you'd be be able to connect to other groups because it's just there's just more of it.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

Um then there's everybody's favorite amateur radio ham why are there so many fucking acronyms everything's an acronym what does ham stand for uh all right um high frequency amateur M. Ham radio let's look it up just as amateur radio I don't even know if it actually is uh okay I'll just put ham acronym everybody start a drinking game and every time Dan uses an acronym you can drink you'll be dead by the end of this episode oh no uh Reddit says it stands for he's a moron uh in any case ham radio is a um a high frequency communications okay uh platform uh uses VHF and uh VHF is very high frequency UHF is ultra high frequency gotta drink twice and if you're as old as us you saw both of those acronyms on your television whoa on that knob oh god are we're really at that annoying age where we're like when I was we had to turn knobs on her TVs I had to get up to change the channel we had to get up to change the channel I had there's always the children and nobody wanted to do it themselves so they got children to do it for them but there was only three channels.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my god I only had to do it a couple times oh yeah but if you wanted one of those three channels you had to have somebody go outside and watch the antenna while you use this weird thing inside that like moved it from the inside it was like a huge dial yeah like it would take two hands to move it size dial and somebody had to be like down there moving it and the other person had to be watching the antenna and like you just hope and pray that you get a fuzzy version of the third television channel. That's rural.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah there there was always one um TV channel that came in really well and then the there was one that was kind of okay and then there was one that was absolute shit and the weather had to be perfect. And that's exactly what ham radio is like uh you know it's it's kind of interesting because you know TV and radio have so many sim similarities in that in that era because the TV station was like 50 to 100 miles away and ham radio if you know what you're doing and you have a good setup you can reach people on the other side of the planet because you can bounce signals off of the ionosphere. The ionosphere the ionosphere is a part of our atmosphere that is dense with ions um when I was in the army and we couldn't connect to satellites and there was no explanation why my go-to answer was it's because of ice crystal uh crystals in the upper atmosphere or i uh ion based um interruptions in the connection between us and the satellite hot diggity dog that's what I gotta say so for long range communication ham radio is number one and I feel like all of all of us if we want to stay in touch um after the apocalypse I do we should we should all get our our our amateur radio license because this is something that you need a license to use I don't know how they catch you if you don't have one but apparently it's a big deal. Why do you need a license?

SPEAKER_01

What can you do that's like bad?

SPEAKER_04

Uh well you're you're transfer you're you're transmitting at um at frequencies and at power levels that are that could be disruptive to other devices. So you have to be trained in order to not uh to not disrupt other communications.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

Um and that's really kind of all I know about about ham. There's a I go to I I'm I'm part of a makerspace and they have a ham radio operators club and you can get your license through this club and I think I'm gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01

They also have they have a radio. I mean why not?

CB Ham And GMRS Options

SPEAKER_04

Yeah I think it's we we need these skills Dan and I don't have time so yeah and you know there's a there's a a bit of um a a stigma around ham especially with us young people us young people and we're young for our area because ham radio operators tend to be very old uh and very conservative people that's kind of been who's operated in these spaces for such a long time um but there's a growing contingent among leftists to start using ham radio and you could uh check out some some groups like the ham radio for socialists club or the anarchist the anarchist radio networks who else is listening though anyone can listen and that's that's the danger with with uh with amateur radio they also call it shortwave radio makes me wonder how you were listening to Eugene and his love yeah his love interest in in the walking dead yeah uh season nine of the walking dead when eugene's a ham radio operator for a few episodes and then a novelist and then an adventurer and has a cool hat. He does um there's also some like new stuff that people have been doing with uh with shortwave radio uh like winklink winklink or win link sorry I put a K in there's like winkling which is email over radio um so basically you could transmit email messages through shortwave radio and they use this during disasters like in uh like uh Hurricane Maria they use this in Puerto Rico so that people could still email and communicate um because their entire infrastructure was destroyed yeah I think still is uh yeah let's not even get started on that it's like first of all can it just be a state can we like do basic things we could if racism weren't the a thing um but also it was used in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. Helen? Is it Helen or Helene? Helen? Helen I don't know it's probably Helen I don't want to say who cares but it I don't think that the hurricane's gonna take it personally the people who maybe were impacted would take it personally yeah um but yeah uh things like Winlink you uh kept communications alive when everything else was failing. Um there's also some other things that I'm not entirely uh I don't I don't have a whole lot of examples. One's called JS8 call and there's also FT8 which are weak signal high frequency digital modes that uh can worse were work cross continent on just uh just five watts. Five watts is the energy levels that uh C B radios are allowed to use so the amount of energy that you would use transmitting with a C B radio compared to JS8 or FT8 um they they're able to communicate across an ocean instead of just 10 to 20 miles.

SPEAKER_01

That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah uh and JS8 specifically is designed for what they call keyboard to keyboard conversations. So I guess maybe that would work with like really old um text chatting protocols like um I can't remember the name. You know, you know the one. I don't anyways moving on I don't know the damn Dan. Yeah. Um and that kind of brings me to like rate just radio in general. So like ham radio you need a you need a license to operate it. And you can get a license. Um it takes time you gotta study for it costs money probably um I haven't looked into it too much uh because there's other options um there's something called FRS which we usually just call two-way radio you know when you go to the store and you're you you're like I want to have a radio to talk to my friends and you buy one and it says Barbie on it. Yeah. And they they only work between each other. Yeah we need those. Yeah that's called FRS family radio service. Um and there's 22 channels between the 462 to 467 megahertz UHF band. Uh and usually in order to tune them you have to take the cover off and like use a screwdriver to manually tune it. So you can actually take all of those Barbie radios and make them all talk to each other if you got the frequency right. Whoa. This next one is something that I learned about at work. I'd never heard of it before uh and it's honestly kind of amazing is called uh GMRS uh this does require an FCC license. What does GMRS stand for? I'm gonna ask you every time general mobile radio service. Okay it doesn't really mean anything there's gonna be a quiz after this everybody I hope you're writing down what these acronyms mean. Um so it does require a license but it's like$35 you don't have to take a test or anything you just pay them$35 and then that's good for 10 years. Wow and that's really affordable. It covers it covers your whole immediate family so if everybody in your family has a GMRS radio they can all communicate on this one channel. That's kind of nice. And the way that we had it set up our company had its own channel. So when you talked on the radio it only went to other radios that were set up to be receiving on that channel and nobody else could really either find it or even tune in if they wanted to like I love that they'd they'd have to know exactly what the the frequency was and they'd also have to have like you know this license key. If they didn't have the license key then it's like get off this channel. So it's a little bit on the secure side. A little bit even though all of the communications when it's set up for frequency hop mode or um repeater mode goes when you when you talk that data gets routed through everyone else's radio and it creates its own mesh network. So I don't know what the limit is with GMRS but I know that when I picked up the radio as long as I had connectivity to another node so like I wasn't like in the shadow of a mountain okay um I could talk to somebody at least a hundred miles away. Wow okay now we're talking there's a little bit of a delay but because because so many people use these GMRS radios there was a a mesh of of uh of repeaters ours were set up for repeaters as well so like you could communicate on them but also they were transmitting and receiving all of the communications around you but you had no idea because it was all silent it's uh it's pretty rad.

SPEAKER_01

Rad it is yeah um so we've solved communication except for to California that might be too far.

SPEAKER_04

It might be too far but it also might work.

SPEAKER_01

All right everybody if you're on the West Coast let's give this a try.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah um I already mentioned C B.

SPEAKER_01

What if we did an episode where we tried to bring everybody in on like ham radio what what if we did a ham radio episode? Yeah we just transmit over ham yeah well no but we record it but we're talking to each other over ham.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah I mean that'd be pretty cool. There's actually um there are some radio shows where people do like interviews over shortwave radio. That's cool.

SPEAKER_01

Will the sound quality be really different?

SPEAKER_04

Uh I mean it'll it'll I mean it's radio so like it all depends on the signal.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

It could it could come in loud and clear it could be static y could have those like weird like like high pitch wavy sounds in the background. It's not it's not perfect but like you know that's that's radio.

SPEAKER_01

That's radio baby Yeah that's the Adirondacks baby no radio.

SPEAKER_04

I'm just gonna give a few mentions of these things that I don't actually know a whole lot about like MERS uh multi-use radio radio service. I don't know a whole lot about that but it's also a VHF radio. Okay. Um these fall under the types of radios that you don't need licenses for. And also there's one called Part 90 Business Band um which uses MERS adjacent frequencies. And uh if you wanted to get into any of these radios you could get a bao fang radio. A bao fang? Bao Fang. It's a Chinese radio you can get the uh U UV5R or the UV 82 um they're very cheap. Some in some cases$25. I've seen them$40$50 for the newer ones. What I love about these is that they kind of can do anything. Like they are a shortwave radio it's a handheld radio it's like you know it's like a like a a walkie-talkie in your hand um but you can program it to do just about anything. So like if you wanted to if you wanted to use it as a ham radio you'd have a portable ham radio in your hand. That's cool. If you wanted to set it up for a GMRS it could do that.

SPEAKER_01

What does GMRS stand for again?

SPEAKER_04

I'm General Mobile Radio Service.

Offline Wikipedia With Kiwix

SPEAKER_01

Thank you. Hard topic change what happens if um you know okay I'm gonna go backwards a little bit when I was a young lass a young lade I uh have actually I still have the book it's like a reader's digest book and it's like a homesteading book and it's like here's how to do literally everything you need to homestead. But it's outdated. Is it called Back to Basics? I think so yeah it's upstairs on our other bookshelf upstairs not down here in the bunker maybe it should be in the bunker actually uh and I have some other books I've got foraging books I've got permaculture books I've got um mushroom books but that's like I can't be like if I'm mobile and let's say we don't have our camper for whatever reason and we can only carry very little yeah I can't be carrying all these books. And like normally even now you know if we find a mushroom we're like what's that? We use a mushroom app. Yeah we're not gonna have mushroom apps. We're gonna have to like make sure that the barrier the mushroom is not going to murder us. So like what options do we have in the apocalypse that would help us do that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Um well first of all with mushrooms never munch on a hunch that's number one rule with mushrooms but I do have some answers for you.

SPEAKER_01

Speaking of we did eat fiddleheads last year that Simon admitted to us were not edible. He picked the wrong ones we were on a walk and he's like oh by the way guys by the way I poisoned you last year. He's like nobody had gastrointestinal distress right and I was like I don't know this is a year ago. It wasn't notable. Yeah it wasn't like it was I maybe I had some and I just was like oh something just didn't do well in my tummy I don't know.

SPEAKER_04

I've got two options for you Leah one is called Kiwix kiwix? Quicks. Quicks. Kiwix because it's quick. Quicks. Okay what does that K-I-W-I-X.

SPEAKER_01

What does that stand for?

SPEAKER_04

This is a French nonprofit. Oh okay and it's offline Wikipedia so they created um I don't know if they created it but they're using a Zim file for format Z I M.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

Uh and basically what they've been able to do is download the entirety of Wikipedia um and compress it to about a hundred gigabytes for text. Wow uh if you want it with all the images they got it down to 300 gigabytes. That's all of Wikipedia.

SPEAKER_01

That's pretty incredible. But like how do they know it's the most updated Wikipedia? Obviously it's not like at what point do you have to update it occasionally is it like when you buy it like that's the latest like is it like this is the 2026 you don't buy it you download it.

SPEAKER_04

Oh this is uh this is a nonprofit onto what uh disc your computer oh okay like so I could put it on my phone for example okay I'll get to that okay sorry jumping ahead uh so um so this is uh it started off as offline Wikipedia for Africa uh it's a French nonprofit uh building tools that put uh Wikipedia on hardware that could serve schools without internet um and uh it works with uh with Stack Exchange Project Gutenberg Con Academy um I don't know what those things mean anyways uh yeah okay so yeah I don't know what Project Gutenberg is so it has Project Gutenberg's entire library all uh all of Stack Exchange um if you Do stack exchange, you'd know what that means. I've never done a stack exchange.

SPEAKER_01

I know nothing of these things.

SPEAKER_04

Uh has medical references, con academy, TED Talks, Wiktionary, and WikiHow. Um, and if you had QIX Quix Qix, uh, you might combine that with internet in a box. Oh. This is a Raspberry Pi reload. Raspberry Pi is very similar to what we were talking about before, the ESP32, in that it is a little project circuit board that you can buy for you know$20 to$40. Okay. You put it together yourself, and it's a little tiny computer that's like it fits in your hand. Um people love making these little tiny computers. And um, if you like making little tiny computers, you should get into Raspberry Pi. Sound delicious. In this case, they're using Raspberry Pi uh with this Internet in the Box preload uh as a Wi-Fi hotspot serving up Quix content, um which they deployed to refugee camps, schools, and prisons. Essentially, Internet in a Box is a Wi-Fi hotspot that you can connect to and it acts like the internet.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_04

Um so is this what we need for our road trip? I mean, I think we need it in general just to preserve information. Uh so like I said, the the they the well deployed these into refugee camps and schools and prisons. Um so like if this is the apocalypse and you have a little survivor camp, makes a lot of sense to have this because then people are like, oh, I gotta go on WikiHow and find out how to make a s a solar panel. No. Um no.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, I feel like there'd be solar panels everywhere and you could just take them.

SPEAKER_04

Well, to set up a solar network, we're not making a solar panel.

SPEAKER_01

No, okay, yeah. Okay, yes. To set it up, yes. But I would just be like, there's solar panels literally everywhere.

SPEAKER_04

So some other things to integrate into your internet in a box, one would be Calibre, which is an ebook library. So like any ebook that you have, you put it into Calibre and host ebooks on your internet in a box.

SPEAKER_01

See, I like that a lot because I feel frustrated that like if I've bought an album that's like sitting on iTunes, or I've bought or Bandcamp. I mean, Bandcamp, I don't, it doesn't bother me as much, but like iTunes, or if we've bought Audible books or audiobooks, they're just they're on Audible. It makes me forced. I will never be able to stop. Hey, that's not true. It would be hard for me to stop using Audible. And also, I'd need to be able to download it from their servers to listen to it offline.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So I see the value of this.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Um, something else that you would probably uh load onto your internet in the box. It's called Navadrone, uh, which is self-hosted music. So if if you're like, oh, we won't have Spotify in the apocalypse, or you're just like, Spotify sucks because they support Nazis. You could have a Navadrone self-hosted music library and connect to your Wi-Fi hotspot, be walking around with your phone in the apocalypse, and be like, I gotta get my Taylor Swift on. That's for you, Joe Salazar. Uh, and the last thing that I would recommend, it's called Audio Bookshelf. And this is exactly what you were talking about.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

This is a self-hosted audiobooks and podcast software. So uh this would be a good thing for us to do in general because we could use it to back up all of our podcast episodes. Oh, uh so that we won't lose them if society crum crumbles.

SPEAKER_01

Why would we need our podcast episodes if society crumbles? What value is other than like we're sad and we want to listen to our own selves talk? We're so lonely that we're just talking. You know, we'd go and listen to all the interviews and be like, oh, remember that time?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. We could talk. Or and here's the other use case it's the apocalypse. You have a survivor camp, and everyone's like, we're fucking bored and we're tired of just working and surviving all the time. And then you're like, well, what if we start a podcast in our survivor camp that you could just connect to on Wi-Fi and listen to while you're out there digging holes?

SPEAKER_01

Um Do you think you'd want to listen to a um theoretical apocalypse, zombie apocalypse podcast while actually in the apocalypse? I think I'd want to listen to like I don't think I could listen to things that are like about home improvements or like really things that just feel like impossible, but I would enjoy things like normal gossip as a podcast. Yeah. Or like, you know what I'd love? Like a survivor podcast. Yeah. About about the show survivor, not legit survivor. Yeah. Or survival.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. That's what I want, Dan.

SPEAKER_04

I mean, you could. You could and also, I mean, this is the apocalypse, so like laws don't matter anymore. You could just if you if you had these downloaded onto your phone, like you're like, I've been listening to this one podcast a lot and they're still loaded on my phone. You drop them into uh into audio bookshelf, and now everyone can listen to them. They are re-hosted now. That's nice. Um, and I think the the big thing is that you could you could use this to self-host audiobooks too. Uh, and I think there's a big value for that in the apocalypse because otherwise a lot of a lot of our books disappear because physical copies of books are like kind of decreasing in number. I'm so sad. Because of digital copies of books. Yeah. So like combining calibre with audio bookshelf, you'd be able to preserve a lot of literature. Um, stuff that you wouldn't find on bookshelves or in libraries, you would be able to uh scavenge from people's cell phones. Like you're out there shooting zombies in the apocalypse. All of those zombies probably have cell phones in their check their pockets. They got phones. Oh my god, they do. And you power up that phone, and it's like, whoa, this is some weird music. And you you put it into your Navodrome.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. New idea want somebody to do. Dan, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say you can have this idea, nobody else. You ready?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I want the zombie apocalypse story of people collecting people's cell phones. Yeah. And like, I don't know. The kinds of things you could find on people, like cell phones are very private things.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It could be really entertaining in a world where it's like not ethically an issue because, well, is it still ethically an issue if they're dead to look at somebody's cell phone content? I don't know. And go to their private photos and be like, so did you take a picture of like a butt pimple at one point? Or like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_04

But also, like, you know, the the world collapses and like digital records have to be preserved because it's all that's left.

SPEAKER_01

That's a very noble reason. I'm just doing it for snooping.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. But like there's there's people out there that turned into zombies and their stories aren't told. So like maybe the last couple pictures before the zombie apocalypse is highly valuable because it's like, look at who these people were just a few days before all of this happened.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Wow. It's a it's a big question because I I don't know. Like stealing people's shit off of their phones after they're dead maybe is not more uh ethically um good. Well, yeah, they're dead.

SPEAKER_01

But like that doesn't mean that they would have wanted their shit. Like, I'm trying to think, like But also if you find a shoebox full of photos, is that also ethical? Well, you know, I think that there's I mean, this isn't a hundred percent true because people, some people have no shame, and like good for you if you have no shame and you have physically printed at a printer house something scandalous. I would not because I don't want some random person looking at it. Anyways, I don't know. I just maybe I'm revealing too much with what I have on my phone. I don't want anybody like you can look at my phone, that's fine. Yeah, but I don't want my mom to look at my phone, that would be like horrible.

Self-Hosted Books Music And Podcasts

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Um, I'm gonna briefly go over this next section because this is just uh just some things that you might want to like download before the end of the world and maybe store on like your little your little internet in a box somewhere. Um this is uh under my section called Knowledge Preservation. Uh first one is the Survivor Library. Um this is a a whole bunch of um pre-industrial and early uh early industrial technical books that teach you how to do things like tan leather, build a forge, uh practice 1890s dentistry. Wow. Um things like that. It's it's kind of like what you were talking about. 1890s dentistry. The back to basics book.

SPEAKER_01

I don't think back to basics has 1890s dentistry, though. So this is an added perk.

SPEAKER_04

You're gonna want it.

SPEAKER_01

You're gonna want it. Oh my god. Yeah. That's this is the part of like, I want to just say fuck civilization. Then you think about you got a toothache. Yeah. Well, and like I have sensitive teeth. What if I run out of sensodyne?

SPEAKER_04

That's yeah, you're gonna have to learn how to make sensodyne. So d figure that out first. Uh Apropedia. It's uh this is a tech wiki specifically geared. I don't know if it's entirely geared towards it, but uh what I've seen it um used for is uh solar punk and degrowth alignment.

SPEAKER_01

Uh can you define those two things?

SPEAKER_04

Solar punk, I mean you know what solar punk is. Yeah. Yeah, you live the solar punk life.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, I live this I dreamed of solar punk life. I feel like we're kind of moving that direction. It's the idea of a greener, more ecologically savvy tech world. Yeah. You can still have technology, but it's not um, I don't know, fueled by dirty fossil fuels and uh enriching people who are already fucking filthy rich, and I hope in our in a warehouse that gets burned down soon.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. It's all about creating solar-powered uh ways of living. And I'm not entirely sure what the definition of degrowth is, but I think Me, me, me, me, me. Do you know what it is?

SPEAKER_01

I do. Oh, well, you tell me. Well, economic okay, so the entire field of economics is a Western, like, it's very Western point of view that is fundamentally focused on this idea that there has to be growth in order for things to be okay. Okay. Which means if there's more growth, there's typically more extraction, which is what solar punk is against, right? There's more extraction, there's more exploitation. Like it's un in it's unavoidable. That's why you have future shows like The Expanse, where they just they've gotta expanse, they gotta extract and exploit further and further and further out to keep the economy growing. Because what do people say when the economy stops growing?

SPEAKER_04

Uh well, they're like, yo, dog, this is bad. I don't know what the answer was you're looking for.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, basically, right? Like people, if if the stock market's not going up, if the job numbers aren't going up, if the things aren't going up, everybody's freaking out. Degrowth is a political, economic, and social theory that advocates for planning reducing our use of energy and resources over time.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Instead of thinking of it as like we have to do more, be more, get more. What if we and like things like universal basic income work very well in a degrowth mentality? Because it's no longer about uh for all, it's you know, basically our current economic systems is based on the idea of trickle down still, which is ridiculous. Yeah. Because like we've not clearly is not trickling down if we have billionaires.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. We have we have 40 years of data that proves that it's not working.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Um, and by the way, everybody who's listening, they're like, oh, but socialism doesn't work and communism doesn't work. You know what? You know what has been deliberately, who and what has been deliberately interfering with every single fucking socialist or communist experiment? The United States assassinating people.

SPEAKER_04

The United States wouldn't spend so much money trying to destabilize it if it didn't work.

SPEAKER_01

Yep. So, anyways, that's a sidebar. But that's degrowth.

SPEAKER_04

And there's plenty of countries right now that are democratic socialist countries that are performing very well.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I mean, it's it's like let's it's like actually, you know what, it's very conservative, actually. It's like, hey, what if we focus on reducing our production, only doing what's necessary and prioritizing health of people and the environment and other life forms over wealth?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Isn't that wild? A wild idea.

SPEAKER_04

Weird idea, Leah. Yeah, it'll never work. Um the next thing that you would want to add to your internet in the box is called open source ecology. This one's really interesting because um this this uh this guy, uh there's a TED talk about it in 2011, apparently. Uh I haven't seen that, but I've heard about this idea. And what he created was um an open source project called the Global Village Construction Set. And it is it is a machine that combines 50 industrial machines, including tractors, brick presses, sawmills, induction furnaces, um CNC torch tables, uh, that a small community could build and maintain on their own. And like these are the 50 industrial machines that would rebuild society, basically.

SPEAKER_01

Why do I feel like is this also reminds me of Walking Dead with that book that that person had that was like, here's how to rebuild everything.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, yeah. I yeah. Um that's probably I mean, they were like basically giving out the the back to basics book. But like knowledge preservation is what that group was all about. And if you don't know who we're talking about, it's at they showed up at the very end of season eight of The Walking Dead and had a very small part in the rest of the show. Uh, but Maggie goes off with them because they're like, they are trading this book that contains information about basically how to re to restart your society, and all they wanted was like records, like vinyl records. They wanted music. And they're like, they're they're like, we'll give you also they gave them like a couple bags full of food. Like, here's a whole bunch of grain and corn, and also this book, and we just want vinyl records.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, because what did Dr. Pearlmutter say about our time? It'd be very difficult to find anything because like we've all been talking about it, it's mostly on the internet now.

SPEAKER_04

Not and not physical. These knowledge preservation tools might help uh future generations after the apocalypse know what we were all about, or at least know how to do some of the things that we were doing.

SPEAKER_01

Dan, would you like a knowledge preservation tool for Christmas?

SPEAKER_04

I mean, I think for a friend. I kind of think that we have to build it, but yes. Okay. Yeah. Uh last one on my list, it's called uh FarmHack. Uh, this is a U.S. farmer-led open source tool project. I don't know exactly what that means. Uh, but what I think it means is that all of the information that farmers have about growing crops and all of that data, like like weather data, um, you know, how to plant, how to harvest, is stored in this project.

SPEAKER_01

That is very important. Uh also save your seeds, everybody. That's basic tactic. But it's important.

SPEAKER_04

Uh, there's also a French equivalent. I am I don't know how to pronounce this. Uh the Atelier Paisan. Atelier? Maybe.

SPEAKER_01

Is it A-T-T-I-L-I-E-R? Something like that. Atelier.

SPEAKER_04

Uh and they they're doing a similar thing, a farmer-led open source agricultural tool project. Love that. Um a few a few other mentions. Uh precious plastic. It's all about garage scale recycling infrastructure.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

Um, I love that. Yeah. Shredders, extruders, injection molders. Um, so you can make plastic things from the things that you recycle. So, like, you have a whole bunch of plastic bottles, which in the in the apocalypse, we're gonna have a lot of fucking plastic.

SPEAKER_01

I we will. I mean, like, it's again, I don't know why. Walking Dead, I think, is just the most expansive universe we have. So I keep going back to it and thinking about the garbage people. Yeah. The garbage dump is like the place to be in the apocalypse. Honestly, is the place to be now, except for stinky.

SPEAKER_04

I feel like we didn't really get a whole uh enough information about the garbage people. I agree. We just saw them roaming around in their black clothes and like looking mopey. And their cat sculptures. Cat sculptures and the the zombie that they put like the spiky armor on. Like, I like there's so much to explore there because they could have been doing something like this, like uh recycling plastic and making things that they need or recycling metal. They could have they could have been making weapons and firearms from scrap metal, um, which is an interesting thing to explore as well.

SPEAKER_01

Hey, somebody's got their makerspace permission now. They learn how to weld. Yeah. Not saying that's what you should weld at the makerspace dance.

SPEAKER_04

I mean, even if even if I wanted to make a firearm, there's nothing illegal about that. It's about selling and distributing firearms that you make without an FFL license. If you are if you make a firearm for yourself, as long as it fits into all of the legalities of firearms within your state, you can make a firearm. And it doesn't need a serial number on it. There needs there doesn't need to be a record of it. You can just have it. So um I'm gonna make a firearm. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01

Uh I love sometimes I'm like, what are we saying on the on the public spaces here?

Libraries For Rebuilding After Collapse

SPEAKER_04

Um I've got a lot of other categories, and I feel like we should save these for another episode. Um I just want to give you a a little taste of of what I've got here laid out. We've we've gone through a lot. Uh in fact, I'd say I'd say we went through like half. Half. Uh there's there's a a lot more that I could say about local networks. Um, if you want to do your own research, there's there's uh a few things that you could look into, like um uh Arden, A-R-D-N, AR-E-DN, uh, there's the New York City mesh, there's Libre Mesh. Um and these are all projects, open source projects that people have done to create uh internet networks in their in their cities, in their communities, during times where it was either too expensive, broken, or non-existent. Um and those are things to look into that are really cool. I've got more information about them, but you know, I'll I'll just leave it at a mention because these are pretty deep subjects. Uh I've got a lot about um creating your own media servers. So like if you want to keep movies, music, and things, um, there's a lot of options for that. And the only caveat to that is that now is the time to start. Because I mean, with a lot of these things, if you don't start now while we have the infrastructure, it's going to be a lot more difficult to get the firmware, to get the hardware, to put them together, and then have something to put on it. Like movies and things like that. Movies and like your your wikis, your wiki hows.

SPEAKER_01

Speaking of friends across on the West Coast, like they're doing that right now.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um, every time they add a zombie movie to it, they let me know.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Um, I've got a lot of information about power generation, uh, like the DIY Solar Forum, which is uh a forum that people are building their own solar. Uh there's also something called Libre Solar, which is an open source charge controller project. So you could build much like the LoRa radios, you could get a kit and make your own, make your own solar controller. So you have a bunch of solar panels, you need to figure out how to put the energy from solar panels into batteries. And you need a solar controller for that, and you could build your own. They tend to be very expensive. It's part of a big part of the cost of having a solar system. Um, and if you're like, but where where would I put those that energy? You could build a life PO4 DIY battery bank from cheap Chinese battery cells.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_04

Uh and that's where you could build, yeah, we could. Uh about$1,500. You could build something that's equivalent to a$15,000 Tesla power wall. Uh, but it requires you to do the work, and it's not guaranteed that it'll be the best, but it could be, you know, uh for the price, especially if it's the apocalypse and you're just scavenging and you're like, I've got all of these these uh these Ryobi um batteries from Power Tools, uh, but I I don't need 500 Ryobi batteries. Uh one's just fine. Well, you could take those apart, take the cells out, and build your own power wall.

SPEAKER_01

That's pretty cool. Yeah. We need to be doing these things.

SPEAKER_04

Um, I've got a whole lot about secure communications, which that would be a really good conversation to have in the future because like with our friends, we talk on signal.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Signal's great for uh for communications, and there's more I could say about that and like how to make it more secure, because it in some cases it's not secure. Uh but there's the thing about signals that it requires infrastructure. So you've got things like Briar, uh, which is a peer-to-peer encrypted network. It works over Tor, so the dark, the dark web. Um you can even put messages on an SD card. Uh and these are and and it's uh you know, it basically runs as an app, I think. I I haven't used it personally. I should check it out. Maybe, maybe we can do a thing about stuff like that in the future. That sounds fun. Yeah. There's also a thing called session, which is similar to signal, but doesn't use any phone numbers and uses onion ride routing tour.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that might be good. I do think um, you know, I think recently they've talked about how if you don't have this is actually a good PSA, because I just learned this. You probably already knew this. But if you have it so that signal set. Sends um badges. Is that what they're called? Notifications. Notifications. They're called badges on Apple to your screen, like your lock screen, then it still gets all your messages.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. They can they can extract your messages by ba basically screenshots that your phone takes of your notifications.

SPEAKER_01

Which by the way, isn't that fucking weird? Why are they doing that? What is the point of that? Yeah. Why are they screenshotting our notifications? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

The good questions. Why why is Windows screenshotting uh what's on your screen every every 30 seconds and then sending it to Microsoft?

SPEAKER_01

That's utterly disturbing. Also, why is my why is my work recording everything I do constantly? That's also very annoying. Yeah. We get out stuff like that. But that is that is like such a thing nowadays. Um where if you work remotely, it's like, well, gotta make sure they're working. And it's like, yo, trust, I am working.

SPEAKER_04

Um, but yeah, I I'm I'm gonna I've got all the links for everything in my list, even if I didn't talk in detail about it. Um I'm gonna put it into the notes as long as it fits, because we do have character limits. Uh and links take up a lot of characters. So I'm gonna I'm gonna put all of these links in in the show notes if I can. Um if not I'll trim it based on just what we talked about in more depth. Um I'd like to hear from people if they are interested in various types of uh apocalypse-proof technology and like if they have any ideas. Because we could talk I feel like we could talk about this many, many times.

SPEAKER_01

I'm gonna go back to Sylvester Barzi's suggestion for currency. Seeds, the ultimate technology. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Seeds are a great technology.

SPEAKER_01

They are. Yeah. I'm of the I'm of the belief that nothing is unnatural because everything is from the earth. That's my deep, deep mic drop of the day.

SPEAKER_04

What if it comes from space?

SPEAKER_01

It's still natural. Good point. Nothing is nothing like nothing we've made is not from what is materials that are around us. And the material like we've fucking done some weird things to them. Some possibly unprecedented things, like taking dinosaur bones out and using them for fuel and making plastic, but they're still all I mean, they're still dinosaur bones. Yeah. But um, I I want to do some of these things. What's the very number one thing that you think we need to do?

SPEAKER_04

I don't know. I I really want to make some of these um, you know, these the these off-grid databases. Like I wanna I want to have our own wiki. I want to have open source maps. That was a whole thing that I didn't even talk about yet, is uh is open source maps, which you could use right now instead of Google. It's called OSM. Open source maps.

SPEAKER_01

I tried to use them once, I think when I was like in my really I hate Google moment, uh, and then I just like couldn't figure it out. Yeah. So maybe we should do an episode about that so that I can also figure it out so I can also stop using Google Maps.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And would also be great in the Adderondex, because we always lose signal and then we always don't know where we're going. Yeah. There's like usually an hour we're just like, I hope we're going in the right direction. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

When when you lose GPS, that's how you know that you're really, really in the sticks. Because like the that happens sometimes in the Ad Around X. Like, that's that's the thing that I was saying about um uh Starlink is that people are like, you can you can get get internet anywhere. No, you can't. There's there's places where you will not get internet, and that's when it's gonna fail you the most. So it's better just to have offline versions of it. And that's that's how you apocalypse proof yourself.

SPEAKER_01

I feel like people I've learned a lot. How much I will retain? Questionable, but that's why I have you.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, and we can put it on uh on an offline database, and you won't have to remember it.

SPEAKER_01

You're fucking so much better.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. And when when the grid goes down, we're gonna be like, all right, let's connect to the internet in a box, and uh, and we'll figure out how to set up our own solar charge controllers. Love that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I don't know what I'd do without you. That's how I feel. I'm like, I don't want to do any of these things. Yeah. I just want to like paint some cats. Any forage a little bit.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, and those are important things.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's kind of like our life now, except for that I work, but like you're out there, you're doing stuff that I mean, maybe I could learn to do it, but I don't really have a lot of interest in learning to do it. Yeah. I appreciate you.

What To Build Now And Closing

SPEAKER_04

Well, I think that's the the most important thing. So this can be really overwhelming if you don't if you don't have an interest in it, first of all. And two, if you're just like, I have to do all of this. Like, you know, your your autistic friend will take care of a lot of this. Um if if you want to paint cats and forage some mushrooms, those are those are the things that you can do. And uh, and those those painted cats are gonna help people not lose their mind. Because if if there's something that we've learned about the internet, is that it could be pretty bad out there, and you could just look at a picture of a cat, and it's not so bad anymore.

SPEAKER_01

It's true.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

We need all we need all stripes. We need the storytellers, the artists, the engineers, the mechanics, the foragers. Yeah, everybody's a job. We all, you know, you know, we also need the person who says, Everybody, we've been working too hard. Just fucking lie down.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Yeah, Ziggy's good at that. Um, but yeah, there we go. Let us know uh if there's something that you want to talk about with off-grid apocalypse technology, because I kind of love talking about it.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, it really fits with you're also wearing your um army jacket thing. Yeah and it fits with what you did in the army. It's true, yeah. Which I always forget what it was called. Technological warfare?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Something like that? Something like that. I was um an electronic warfare expert, uh, which doesn't mean anything to a lot of people. Um but you know what? Here's a here's a little a little taste, something that uh will quet your whistle for what I'm writing, is that one of my characters is basically me when I was in the army. And that person, despite being a soldier, is a very different kind of soldier and is thrown into situations that he's not prepared for because he's not infantry, but also utilizes a lot of his electronics skills to help them along the way. Um and I feel like reading that character will give people a better understanding of who I was in the army, um, which is really fun. Uh it wasn't it wasn't originally a thing that I planned on writing, um, but I've kind of gone down this rabbit hole where you know he's got this own whole B plot going on. Um and it's turning into something kind of fantastic, and I'm pretty excited about it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it sounds really good. I haven't read this part, but I I mean, like I know that a lot of people self-insert in different ways or people that they know and love in different ways in their books, and you have a lot of different characters, and I'm sure all of them represent some part of you.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

But I am interested to read this part because it's like I was uh remotely literally in your life at that time, and you couldn't really tell me anything about what you did.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And obviously you're all of this is fictional in a totally different context, but I feel like it'll be a cool opportunity to understand you a little bit differently.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. And I think at the end of the day, I that's that's kind of my reason for uh for writing this book is that like there's so many things that I can't explain to people in a meaningful way about my experiences. Um, I could tell you in great detail many of the things that I've experienced, but you you haven't lived it. And unless you unless you have that lived experience, it's almost impossible for you to understand what I'm talking about. Um and it and that part's been hard. You know, I can't I don't really enjoy talking to other veterans. Um, and it's nothing against them, it's just I don't relate to them because my experience was so vastly different. Uh even people from my unit I'm not really in contact with anymore because my experiences were so vastly different from theirs that they can't relate to me.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Um I can I kind of walked between a number of worlds uh in ways that your average person just didn't in in the military. And because of that, I don't really feel comfortable talking to other veterans. So writing this book is like kind of a way of me talking about my life without it being my life, you know, without without the intimacy required to share exact things and then allow people to cast their judgment. You know, I can just tell a fun story that's kind of uh reminiscent of it, and maybe people might see it and understand it. But yeah, thanks for listening to the Zombie Book Club.

SPEAKER_01

How do we transition out of that? Yeah, thanks for listening. Uh, we have a Patreon, it's a free tree on where we talk about zombie books and other things, get up life updates. Um, things we're talking about, reading right now. We're reading together as a book club feed by Mira Grant, recommended by Zombasti Ali Ali. Whoa, sorry, Alice. Alice be something. We will never call you Ali ever again. No, that was just my brain. But maybe we will. No, I won't do it to you, Alice. I have a hard enough time talking to you as you and then your other name that I would there is no other name. Right. Alice is only Alice. Definitely just Alice. Um, we're gonna have our live discussion on May 1st. Although maybe we need to change that. I don't know. Might have to.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

We got challenges there. Scheduling is definitely the hardest part of this. But regardless, it's gonna come out in the end of May. So even if you don't want to join the uh live discussion, which you can find out more about on our Patreon, again, free. Uh then you can just listen to the episode and read along that way. So in the meantime, everybody, I'm pretty sure our voicemail is about to die if no one calls it. 61469906.

SPEAKER_04

Wow, just one triple though.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, one triple 0006. That's the one. Yeah. You can also find us on Instagram. Not there very much right now. So the best place to find us is on the Patreon.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Sometimes Facebook. At Zombie Book Club Podcast on Instagram.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. The end is nigh. Go get your tech.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Don't die.

SPEAKER_01

Bye.

SPEAKER_04

Bye.

Contributor

Dan

Host
Contributor

Leah

Host