I Don't Know About That - Survivalism

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

In this episode, the team discusses survivalism with associate professor in Literature at American University and author of the novels "The Hive" and "Flood", Melissa Scholes Young. Follow Melissa on Instagram @MelissaScholesYoung and go to her link tree at linktr.ee/melissascholesyoung for links to her books and other helpful resources. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/IDKAT for ad free episodes, bonus episodes, and more exclusive perks! Tiers start at just $2! Go to JimJefferies.com to buy tickets to Jim's upcoming tour, The Moist Tour.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Okay. Dogs. Cats. Which one was first domesticated? We did that one already. Did we? Yeah. Oh, well, you've already found out about that.

No, we didn't do it. I think you did this. I don't know about that. I think you did it as an intro. Oh, did I? Wow. That's right. Running out of fucking dogs.

Okay. Birds. Running out of words. Birds and fish. Which ones were first kept in bowls? Were birds kept in bowls? Bird bowl? Yeah.

Speaking of birds, did you guys see that video of all the birds falling out of the sky? Yeah, I did it. Oh, you did it? What? What? All the birds are falling out of the sky? Oh, you haven't seen it. Just explain it to me.

Use theater of the mind. Okay, so there's a video. I can't remember where it is, but there's a security video, and all of a sudden this giant flock of birds falls out of the sky, and apparently it was like some fumes that were happening at a plant nearby that like poisoned them all, but just hundreds of birds fell out of the sky at once. Only with Mexico.

I have a mate who was in the Navy, and he said that when hurricanes happened, right, you have a hurricane, all the birds are in the eye of the hurricane, right? They're all flying around where there's no wind. And once the hurricane passed over the ship and they were in the eye for a good hour or something before it passed again, all the birds, they just landed on the ship and just stood there. They weren't scared of people anymore because they were just knackered.

Yeah. That's interesting. They don't seek out the eye. Sometimes they'll get stuck. Most of them will leave because, you know, the Miami Hurricanes is the football team for New Jersey Miami. Their mascot's an ibis because supposedly the lure is the ibis bird is the last one to leave before Hurricane

and the first one to return. But they'll sense the pressure. Like my cats, when Hurricane was coming, they would all hunker down because they could feel all the pressure dropping and stuff. Yeah, they reckon before tsunamis or something like that, all the seal, or no, before earthquakes, all the seals out at Marina del Rey,

they fuck off before an earthquake two days before or some shit you know so they know it's coming so yeah look to the seals wait for okay i'm just gonna show you this okay okay all right i'm looking at a house what the fuck all the birds how many birds are up there to begin with a lot of fucking birds is that how many

is above us at all times no no no they're like starlings European starlings will travel in these big flocks there was another video

going around this week of all these starlings flying over the water so there are certain types of birds that will travel in big blocks like that sheesh

that's crazy yeah that was crazy um have i where am i this week you're ready reading pennsylvania reading pennsylvania washington dc not the state but the capital and i'll also be in boston but i believe boston is sold out now maybe i can click on your link here on your website. Let's see. There's still a few tickets here and there. A few. Very little seats spread out. A lot of single seats. If you buy yourself, you can still come. Big place. A lot of people come. Yeah, it's close

to 4,000. That's a big gig. The people of Boston, I've got to thank you, man. You've always supported me. You're always there. I appreciate it. Still tickets available in Reading. Still tickets available in Washington. But the Washington Room is fucking massive as well. Yeah, I'm looking at it right now. It's ridiculous.

You've sold a lot of tickets there too. Yeah, no, no, no. It's getting there. It'll be close. Reading, yeah. Cool. I'll be with you in D.C. and Boston. Our guest today is from D.C.

Oh, yeah. Hint, hint. Oh, it's Batman. I'm going to be at Sidesplitters in Tampa, April 7th through April 9th. There's six shows. Come on out. It's the original Sidesplitters because they have a couple of locations now.

It's off Dale Mabry Road in Carolwood, I think is the name of the area. But April 7th through 9th. If you live in Tampa, please come see me. Please. I used to do the same joke every time I was at Tampa Sidesplitters because it's like a very basic sort of room. then the corner they've done that open brick work that a lot of comedy clubs like the improv right here and they've put a couch and everything like that just in the corner but the rest of the walls are just bare and i used to joke i go oh this will be nice when they finish

the place we've done this corner yeah people always used to laugh at that i don't know so you can have that i don't play science but iplitters. I think they got rid of the couch and they had a shelf. They had like a bookshelf with fucking bobbleheads on it and shit. They've gotten rid of all that if I remember correctly. It's a brick wall still there. That was the magic.

That was the sidesplittingly good time. Let's start this podcast. Okay. Please welcome our guest, Melissa Scholes-Young. G'day, Melissa. Now it's time to play. Yes, no. Yes, no.

Yes, no. Yes, no. Judging a book by its cover. All right, here we go. Let's play. Melissa, she owns books. That always is the sign of an intelligent person. I own books.

I own loads of them. My interior decorator decorated my house and he put a whole lot of books up because he says that's a good thing to have. Let me tell you something. You see that book behind her? I have it right here. This is her book. Yeah, I can see that.

I know, but I'm showing it to you this close too. She not only has books. She writes books. Don't open it. There's no words in gonna talk about you're gonna talk about skin conditions pictures of butterflies all over and he's like skin condition yeah you might be fucking allergic the hive what could the hive be about his pictures of butterflies. I don't think, I think it looks like a piece of fiction. It's not going to help you. Is your book a piece of fiction?

It is, yes. Yeah, okay. The book really won't help you in guessing the topic, probably. I'm just trying to throw you off. So are you literate? I am literate. I use words. All right, enough of the bragging.

Some of us aren't. Bloody flashing it around. Some of these books are fake. Most of them are not. Okay, so I'm going to say, even though you wrote a piece of fiction, I'm going to say that you, are we going to talk about something in entertainment? It's going to say that you, uh, is it, are we going to talk about something in entertainment? It's going to be entertaining.

It's not an entertainment. I'll give you, I'll give you a hint here. Um, what we're going to talk about at some point, I, you wouldn't, you wouldn't consider yourself one of these.

You do know people that are these, uh, that, that dabble in this, in this, in this world. However, you did purchase something on the house that you used to own that would fall into this category.

Also, a lot of these people can be- Are we talking about women? I'm not one of those. I know a few of them. I've purchased one. A lot of it has been considered extreme in the past, but is probably a little bit more relevant today.

I'm going to give you John Ratzenberger. Yeah, you do. Oh, is it guns? No, they could be a malt. But you told me that he's always ready to go. We're talking about viagra

no i don't want to say this word because it's one of the questions so you said that i think he's like he's falls in this category of being one of these types of people that's like uh oh he's uh he knows facts and What about like apocalypses? Oh, he's a prepper. Yeah. So we're in that kind of world. We're going to be talking about survivalism today. Ah, yeah.

All right. All right. I don't know if that's a, okay. We're talking about people with bunkers and shit. Sort of. I mean. I mean, some of, yeah, some of them do. I've got a theory on that. Yeah.

I've got a theory that if the apocalypse does happen and there's other preppers, I don't want to live. Yeah. Because I don't want to hang out with them. That's what I said yesterday. I was like, who are all these people who are trying so hard to live? I'll be like, it's just me and crazy Joe now. Although we call him Joe now because it turns out he was right.

Okay, so Melissa Scholes-Young is the author of the novels the hive as you saw and the flood i mean flood sorry not the flood that's okay and editor of grace and darkness and furious gravity which are two anthologies by women writers she's born and raised in hannibal missouri and she's an associate professor in literature at american university melissa can you please tell us a little bit more because Because I just said survivalism. He said doomsday preppers. Without giving away any answers, can you just kind of tell us how you got to be interested in this or an expert in this or involved in this and what we're actually talking about? Yeah. So I'm a novelist. I make things up that are absolutely true.

I'm a professor. I teach creative writing. My books, they're set in the rural Midwest of America and prepping, survivalism. They allow me to look at questions of power and identity, political structures. So I was raised out in the country in rural Missouri. So we didn't call it prepping. We called it practicality. So we raised chickens. We kept pigs. We grew mountains of corn. It's about 100 miles. Well, it's a couple hundred miles south of where Kelly was in Chicago, which is much more civilized than the country. But we cut our own firewood.

We canned our harvest for winter. We didn't make a lot, but our labor. So we sold. We bartered. It was a long drive from the store. So we kept enough to not need to go often. I don't remember anyone calling it prepping, though. We were taught to take care of ourselves.

But while I was researching for my latest novel, The Hive, I went to a place called Prepper Camp. And this is completely true. I cannot make this up. It's a three-day wilderness skill-building workshop in rural North Carolina. And I went to Prepper Camp thinking it was going to be more as Jim said, like a gun show. And it turned out to be more of a survivalist skill building camp. So there were well-intentioned hippies, uh, more than folks playing war and, and in one in workshops,

we walked the forest and they taught us what we could eat. I learned about beekeeping, composting, solar energy, just really, really practical things that preppers do to survive. So I think and that's yeah, I grew up that way. And then I started writing about it. Yeah. So I think we can as we get into this, we'll talk a little bit about maybe what a doomsday prepper, as they call them now, survivalist or, you know, different things like that. So because I think there's nuance there is what you know different things like that so um because i think there's nuance there is what you're kind of we're talking about because i remember i went to camp and they taught me flowers i could eat and i was like and like plants i could eat we were hiking

around that's because you were eating all of them and i had to stop you from getting all of them no but but at the end of this hike when the leaves of three are for me yeah at the end of this hike, I was like, cool. I know flowers and plants. At the end of the hike, they go, well, this is in case you ever get lost in the woods and you're all alone. You can eat this. I was like, well, that's scary.

I didn't want to hear about that. I thought this was just fun plants. Melissa, have you ever seen the bush tucker man in Australia? I have not, but Australia is pretty big and prepping. Yeah, that's a TV show you might enjoy, The Bush Tucker Man. What's that? Did you say taco? Taco?

Tucker. T-U-C-K. Like Tucker Carlson. Tucker. Okay. Oh, Tucker. Yeah, Bush Tucker Man. Because in Australia, we call food tucker.

Oh. That's like a slang term for food. Bush Tucker is eating witchetty grubs and shit that you dig from underneath the dirt. It's basically, Aboriginals were hunter and hunter-gatherers. And so it's all that type of stuff, but it's a bloke who was in the military. He was

before Man vs. Wild. I think he was the first one of his kind. He was just a bloke who was eating bugs out in the Australian desert. And he used to walk out and he'd go, bloody hell, this might look like desolate land to you, but it's teeming with food. He's not wrong. He's not wrong.

Delicious. Well, that's how you survive. All right. And this has become, this is the thing, too, I think we can get into, because there's like that Man vs. Wild show or the guy where they just drop them off in the middle. Big grills. People love those shows and they're like, cool,

I'd like to be like him. But then they see a doomsday like a person in a bunker hungering like, I don't want to be that guy. Survivor's one of my favorite shows. Yeah, because you want to be like a tough guy. There's a fine line between those two people, though. Ah, yeah, there's a bunker involved. At least that guy doesn't have

a whole lot of canned goods. Stuck up on Spaghetti goods. So, all right. So, so, uh, I, we're going to ask him a bunch of questions, uh,

here, uh, and Melissa and you, you can hear his answers. We'll put them here in the stock. And at the end of it, you can give us a score zero through 10, 10 being the best on how he did on his knowledge of survivalism.

And, uh, Kelly's going to grade my confidence. I'm a great amount, et cetera. We're going to add all those scores together. If you're 21 through 30, that's a lot. You're a doomsday prepper.

11 through 20, income tax prepper. Zero through 10, salt and prepper. Oh, yeah. Salt and prepper. Salt and prepper. Yeah. It's a new rap group. I used to think, okay, this is a side note.

I'm famous for them. I used to think when I was a kid when Salt-N-Pepa, I used to think the lyric was pick up those dicks. Pick up those dicks. It's not. I'll get up on this. Yeah, I thought it was pick up those dicks. When I was a kid, I thought it was a couple of girls

who were going to the club to pick up a few dicks. Well, sort of. Pick up those dicks. Push it real good. Push it real good. Pick up those dicks. Push it real good. Push it real good. Pick up those dicks. I mean, it's close. Yeah.

But, you know, the song still works. All right, Jim, what is survivalism? Pick up those dicks. Survivalism is being able to survive. Oh, yeah. Okay, next question. It's being able to survive in your habitat

that is around you being able to use the resources that are available to you to survive I just habitat what is the difference between a survivalist and a prepper

a survivalist can work on the land and chop wood and keep bees. And preppers would keep bees. Survivalists eat witchetty grubs and bush tucker and places are teeming with food. And he'll do that or she. There might be a female survivor. And then a prepper is a person that keeps a whole lot of canned goods in a bunker with a whole lot of guns ready to go, and they have a few booby traps around their house for when the government comes.

What types of emergencies are people prepping for? Some, okay, so you can even say like COVID was an example of something, people buying all the toilet paper and all that type of stuff. So people prep for anything that they think will stop the world from moving, if that makes sense. So anything, a virus, a nuclear bomb coming in, we go to war, we have a trade embargo problem with another country where we can't get our goods and services delivered to us. Anything that stops the world from moving that they go all right I'll I'll I'll prep for that okay and so well

this next question there should be a plan though why is it important to have a plan in place if you're if you're trying to survive oh everything needs a plan sometimes if you need small plans sometimes you need big plans. I've had a lot of medium plans in my life. You know what I mean? No, you've got to have a plan. You've got to have a plan to know what you're doing. So what's your plan to survive? Let's say there's...

I'm not going to. Jim and I are exactly the same. I'll tell you why I know this. But before you do this, one of the hints was you used to have an earthquake kit at your house that is a form of survival yeah earthquake kits are the stupidest fucking things you can

it's a tube it's a plastic container that they used to keep it's a bucket container with it sealed up I still have it somewhere and it's sealed up it's the same bucket that they used to have at McDonald's they kept the pickles in it. I worked at McDonald's as a kid.

Same bucket manufacturers for earthquake and pickle closure. Anyway, so what it does is I don't know what's in it. It could just be a rock to weigh it out because I'm not allowed to open. You haven't looked through it? I'm not allowed to open the fucking thing. What do you mean? Because the things will go off. It's sealed in there for the earthquake.

So what I do is I keep that in my garage because what will happen in an earthquake is the rest of the house will fall down, but the garage will be safe. And then it's got a tent in it. It's got a wind-up radio. It's got water for about five days. So you know what's in it. Okay.

Yeah, it says on the outside of the bucket what's in it. But it could just be a rock. Don't open it. Don't open it. Well, we'll get into those things. Who's going to return it after the earthquake? The shop's fucking falling down. We'll talk about that.

I'll tell you why I'm not going to prep. I've got a story for you. So when SpaceX launched his rocket and it was over the LA skies, remember that? Yeah, I remember, yeah. That was right in the – there was a moment – there was like a three-month period where we were really concerned about Korea dropping a bomb on us.

I don't know whether we were really concerned, but there was talk of it. There was an air raid siren happening in Hawaii by accident and everyone thought they were going to die. I have this theory that people don't, for the most part, don't give a fuck about their lives, really, because it's like, okay, so when I was in a car park, I was near a pharmacy and I saw the fucking bomb and I was like,

oh, fuck, and I still went in. Yeah. I thought I was going to die. I still went in. Got to get the toothpaste. Yeah. Everybody was like, and I didn't prep. I didn't go in and buy everything I could.

It's too late then. You need a plan. I have psoriasis on my skin and there's a cream they sell. And so I needed that. I don't want to have crusty skin during the nuclear outage, right? But everyone was standing in the car park going, fuck, fuck. And then none of us did fucking jack shit. No one said, it's this whole thing.

Okay, so is there life on Mars? Is there life this? Is there UFOs, right? And the government said, we're not going to tell you because the human brain would explode if we found out. We wouldn't be able to handle it. And then last year, the government went, there's UFOs. Here's a few photos.

And we all went, huh. Knew it. Yeah, yeah. No one. It wasn't even the top story on the news. Let's get back to the questions here. Okay. What is a Bob or a B-O-B?

A Bob? Yeah, B-O-B. It stands for something. Oh, it's a thing that goes in the water. The buoyance is called a Bob. Okay. No, that is. There is a water.

What item should be in a Bob? Oh, okay. A bucket of balls. Yeah, some balls. Okay. What are MREs? Wait, what items? So it's just the balls in the bucket?

No, no. Okay. Inside your Bob, you want to have a knife. You want to have a compass. Yeah. You want to have yourself a tent. What's a Bob? It's a fucking earthquake kit.

It's a Bob. Okay. It's a big, it's a thing. I think I'm meant to bury my earthquake kit in my backyard, but I don't want to do that. I don't know if that's the thing I'm meant to do. I'm meant to do something. I don't know where I'm meant to keep the fucking thing.

Did you move it to your new house? Yeah. Okay. Fucking move it. All right, so knife, compass, tent. What else? Knife, compass, tent. Wind up radio.

Yeah. Water. Water. Energy bars. Wind-up radio. Yeah. Water. Water. Energy bars. Energy bars, yeah. And salt. Salt. What are MREs?

It's what you get on your brain to check they're all right, but it involves your ears as well. Okay. How long can you go without water? Oh, I've done a long time. Me personally? Humans. About 12 hours, personally.

A human can go weeks without food, and I think it can go maybe a week without water. How do you purify water? Boil it. I got a baby, man. I know this shit. What would you do if the power grid goes down, like it fails?

It's not going to, you're not going to have power anymore. Play board games mostly. That's what you're going to do with your life. Get the candles out. My wife doesn't like paraffin wax, so I don't like that. We'll all die. I'm like, fuck it, I'm over here vaping. Okay, let's say you don't have medical help. No hospitals,

no ambulance, none of that. And you get either stabbed with a knife or a gunshot wound. How do you fix yourself? I have a wank and bleed out. You know what I mean? What do you mean, how do I fix myself? Yeah, what would you do?

I would stick my finger in and try to get the bullet out. I'd wiggle it out like I was finding the G spot. Right? And then with stabbing, I would go, fucking what did you do that for, Forrest? You're grumpy in the apocalypse. Fuck it.

How do you store food long-term without electricity? Like what are some methods? Cans. Yeah. Long-term without electricity like what are some methods cans yeah um long term without electricity if you live in the snow now you put them in the snow what if you live in a hot place uh cans bagged things things in bags um like you know like sealed, like crisps. Twinkies. Yeah, twinkies. Yeah, that's what you do, cans and twinkies. Okay.

Is survivalism a religious thing? No, but I'm sure there's some counterculture religions, some culty type religions where it's in their sort of manifest. Okay. Prepper camp, Melissa talked a little about. We can go back to that. Talk about that. I bet you they organized that for years before it happened. What's that? Prepper Camp.

What are the financial barriers to survivalism? Are the banks gone down? Is the nuclear bomb the banks gone down? No, I mean like if you want to be a survivalist. Like can anybody be a prepper? Yeah. Do you have to be? It costs a bit of money. You got to buy the things. You can't do it in a studio apartment. You need basically a house in the farm,

really to do a real good job, to have yourself a bunker and a barn and some animals, the milk and all that type of stuff. So to be a real survivalist, I think you need property. Okay. Last question. And then there's some acronyms.

I want to ask you if you know what they are, which I'm sure you will. will where is what is the line between preparedness and paranoia oh bloody thin line that one yeah i'll tell you what that you have an earthquake kit so that you you had something there i'm i'm paranoid and not prepared okay um okay the the thing the thing about um paranoia and preparedness, it's a person-to-person fucking thing. I'm sure that most people who are super prepared and super paranoid, they're not in equal measures.

You know, you're either one, you know, you're either too paranoid or not. I don't think you can be too prepared and not paranoid. Like, I just want to get real fucking down with your listeners right now what's the point of all this life and everything don't just just eat your fucking stuff in your cupboard and that'll last you a day or a couple of days i was telling her yesterday i just watched yellow jackets on showtime so it's about a plane crash and they're surviving for 18 months in the woods and i'm like like, I would have given up so long ago. Like they had a stash of drugs, mushrooms.

I would take the mushrooms day one and I would just wait to die. I would survive until someone found me for the most part. I would have no problem eating people. Oh. It came down to it. If they died, I'd be like, all right, let's eat Kevin. You know what I mean? I wouldn't kill someone to eat them.

I'd let them live. But I reckon I'd be all right with that. Okay. I wouldn't eat like a dick or anything. Are these acronyms weird? I'm not weird. I'd eat like a lovely bit of- That would probably be the best part.

A bit of thigh meat, a bit of brown meat. Last thing. Luis is in trouble. Yeah. No. No. Last thing. Luis is in trouble. Yeah, no. I would eat Luis over Jack. Are these acronyms? Yeah.

Oh, really? Okay. Here's some acronyms. I'll ask you if you know it. This is an acronym. Good. G-O-O-D. Go off on Dave. How does that relate to this? Because Dave's fucking prepping. He's still in the food. He's on Dave.

How does that relate to this? Because Dave's fucking prepping. He's still in the food. He's crazy Dave. He's still in the food. He's crazy Dave. You got to go off on him. So you got to go off on him. He'll keep fucking taking advantage.

You give Dave an inch, he'll take a fucking mile. And then you'll go, oh, Dave's crying in the corner. Good. Very specific. Very specific. Okay. Inch. I-N-C-H.

You give Dave an inch. It's not Dave. specific. Okay. Inch. I-N-C-H. You give Dave an inch. No. In. How do you spell inch? I-N-C-H. Okay. In natural. In natural canned house.

That's good. Yep. It's like cans. Okay. This one is T-O-T-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A You're terrible. You off, you on. What does that mean? It's like if you have a boat and Dave is like on the land. You off, you on. No, because it takes too long to say you off, you on. Yo-yo.

Yo-yo. Yeah, you off, you on. I'm with you here. Last one, foof. F-O-O-F-F. Aren't these things meant to make words that make sense? No, that is a word, foof. Well, good and intro words, yo-yo, those are actual acronyms, but FOOF is like an abbreviation.

Food. F? O-O-F-F. Food. Orientation. Oriental. A lot of these are racist. That's what they do. Alright, let's get back to Melissa. Melissa, how are you doing there?

As your 10's the best, how did Jim do on his, his knowledge of survivalism? I'm surprised I was expecting less. I think he overperformed. I had low expectations, but I, he has entertainment value, but I'm not sure. Well, you can a little bit. I mean, that morale matters in a bunker. I'm not sure I'm inviting him into my bunker, but I'd give him a solid. I mean, as a professor, solid five out of 10, five. Okay.

So what are you doing confidence Kelly? It was, it seemed ten. Five, okay. So what did I do on confidence, Kelly? It was seemed confident, honestly. I'm going to give him a seven on confidence for the Twinkies. You're on your off. Yeah, you're on your off, Dave. That's 12. I'm giving you a minus three rate setter. I want you to be salt and pepper. Just because I wanted to say it again.

I don't know. Why am I not letting you in your bunker? The world is going to need laughter. You need to know what's in your bunker? I'd bring the world. It's going to need laughter. You need to know what's in your earthquake bucket. I'm going to encourage you to open the bucket and find out what's in there. That's what I call my anus. It was not five minutes of water in your bucket.

All right. So the first question we asked Jim was what is survivalism? He said, being able to survive in your habitat that is around you using the resources that are available for you to survive. Survivalism. It was not completely off. I will acknowledge that. Yeah.

Survivalist. No, it's not that it's not the yo-yo, but it is someone who prepares for an emergency. So it could be natural, political, social, economic survivalist. As Jim said, they want to be self-reliant. So they focus be natural, political, social, economic, survivalist.

As Jim said, they want to be self-reliant. So they focus on skill building, shelter building, stockpiling, and defense training. A lot of people, I watch hoarders, all right? I have a little bit of that. My mother was a hoarder. I got a little bit of the gene in me. My mother, every one of her sons, when they left the house, she just filled those rooms with shit. Just filled them. We had an oven once that fucking broke down, so my dad pulls a wall oven.

My dad pulled it out of the wall, and before he brought another oven back, she'd filled the hole in the wall. Wow. And there he is. He used the oven as storage. Mind you, it took my dad seven years to get that next oven. Anyway, so every time you watch hoarders there's always some fucker and he's surrounded by all of his shit that he thinks

is important and then he goes i could live in here for years don't throw out something because that might be able to i might be able to use that jar to hold things in is there a lot of hoarders in your community and is hoarding to a certain degree a good thing? No, it's not. It's not going to help you survive because you don't know what's in that house. You don't know where it is. You can't locate it when you need it. It's certainly not going to help you with really basic things that you need for survival.

Now, if we dig in it, I don't doubt that we could find what we need, perhaps. But I have, again, entertainment value. I think we could enjoy ourselves in there, but I'm not sure that we could actually survive in there. What's the top five things I've got to get right away to survive? Water. Yeah, water. Defense. Air.

Food. You need food supply. Is that five? Did I give you five? That's four. Okay, four. Game boy color. You're going to need shelter.

You're going to need something to keep you warm. I've got all these things. Yeah, but you've got them now. How much am I meant to fucking have? Well, I've got two cases of liquid death in me cupboard, which is water. I've got a pantry full of fucking food. My freezer's full to the

boot yeah but your freezer it's good to have a full freezer a full freezer lasts longer than an empty freezer that's right yeah yeah it does yeah because the stuff that's frozen but eventually that'll all melt what what you're assuming the power's gone out yeah yeah it's solar yeah oh yeah your house is solar. My house is solar. But it's not completely solar. But what if the doomsday I'm preparing for is now crocodiles can fly and they're coming. Right? That would be crazy.

That's not going to affect my electricity. No. Flying crocodiles scare the fuck out of you, man. That's a doomsday scenario. That's more of like fun. They're biting people. No, but they don't fly well. Zombie crocodiles. They just learned how to fly. Oh, man. That's a doomsday scenario. That's more of like fun. They're biting people. They don't fly well. Zombie crocodiles. They just learned how to fly. Oh, shit.

The worst kind. So, what is the difference between a survivalist and a prepper? Jim said survivalists can work on the land, chop wood, keep bees, teaming with food. Prepper keeps a whole lot of kangaroos in a bunker with a bunch of guns. There's always booby traps in those shows. Wait, Kevin McAllister was a prepper.

All right. He's not wrong on this. Actually. It is pretty much semantics. I think both want to survive. Prepping is just an act of preparing to survive. Survivalists have supplies and as Jim said, they want to live off their surrounding resources. They have much more of like a minimalist approach. Preppers, I think, get a bad label because of hoarding. They might want to bunker down rather than live off the land.

The term prepper, it's much more mainstream now. There are sensational shows like National Geographic's Doomsday Preppers. I love that show. It's really entertaining. It's also completely absurd, often misleading. But I give it credit because it showed more of a wide-ranging prepper ideology, right? It wasn't partisan. But I think some of these Hollywood stereotypes we have of preppers that are more related to guns and ammunitions, when we see survivalists, you know,

when survivalists see guys like Rambo, they see resources. You don't brag about your stockpiles or you become a target. But don't you, yeah, that's the whole thing. Don't you need a gun to protect your bindle of stuff that you're protecting? Like, I feel like you need a gun in that situation. I'm pro-gun, by the way. You certainly need ways of defending yourself.

That's correct. The folks who run Prepper Camp, actually, Survivor Jane and Rick, actually had a, they grew a barrier around their house of hot chili peppers. And they made an actual concoction so that they could spray it to defend their barrier. And unfortunately, on Doomsday preppers, as with most guns, that actually backfired. Really? How that backfired? Sprayed in their faces? Right in your face. Right in their face. They never thought the wind would change.

Yeah, it's tough. It's tough when your weapons turn on. What were the names of his, Survivor who? It's Survivor James. And Rick. And Rick. Why doesn't Rick get himself a fucking, who? It's Survivor James. And Rick. And Rick. Why doesn't Rick get himself a fucking, oh, he's Prepper Rick. All right. Pepper, Pepper Rick.

Well, one of the last questions we asked is, where is the line between preparedness and paranoia? So that's because I think that's where, you know, I mean, a lot of stuff you're saying is sensible. We were like, yeah, we're preparing for a situation, but, you know, they will show people that are paranoid they're like this is about to happen they're like you know the government is being able to tap into my brain or something like that or they're coming for everything and it's

like even people that are preparing for like zombie apocalypses are like when everybody taps into their reptilian brain shit's gonna hit the fan like there's a difference between like natural disaster preparedness and being so paranoid that zombies are coming i'm i'm not uh i'm not saying you are melissa but how do you know you're not crazy it's a great question nobody knows yeah crazy people don't know they're crazy it It's what makes them crazy. Right. So when you go preparedness versus paranoia, how do you know what you fall into?

Because the paranoid people don't think they're paranoid. They think they're the only one who is seeing the fucking light. Yeah. So are you crazy? I'm not. That's what a crazy person would say midwestern like kelly so i'm not crazy uh but i think it's a good question it's why i write novels about it i'm trying to figure out like what would you be willing to do to another human uh in order to survive and to me when you cross that line into kind of othering someone else and justifying that you could do something

to them in order to protect yourself i think that's where you've crossed a line yeah did you see that show station 11 on hbo yes absolutely love it i just finished watching have you seen that jim i mean the books the book's amazing too yeah i heard good things i it's it's like a apocalyptic scenario where a flu of some sort kills almost everybody in the world. But then it's like, it's a time jump thing where you'll go backwards and forwards in the time, you know. But it is, there's a lot of that, like where there's like different factions of people and communities and they're trying to stay safe by, because that's another way of staying safe is finding like-minded people, right? That's like, that's what I would do. Like I, if something went down like that, the first thing you have to do is figure out who you're going to trust and who you're going to hang out and who you're going to be with.

And then once you're in that group, same way animals do that wild animals, it makes you safer. Right. So that's another thing that you can do besides getting weapons to help protect yourself. I think resources are more important than weapons. The guy that's, you know, got all the weapons and is wearing them like Rambo. That's the first guy that people are going to take down. You don't wear your resources like that. Yeah. Okay. Where do you put your where do you put your

bunker? Well, it depends. I mean, there's strategies where you leave versus strategies where you stay. I have to pull out the rocket launcher to make it work. I've got to show it at some stage. To be fair to Rambo, in the first Rambo he didn't he wasn't wearing all that those guns and bullets he just had a knife he had one knife with a little compass and matches and stuff yeah and then he got really paranoid but he was able to make all those traps

with the knife like yeah yeah yeah that rambo is definitely a survivalist you want macgyver in your bunker yes yeah yeah macgy. That's what I want. What type of emergencies are people prepping for? Like, is there something specific that you are prepping for or just in general? Or like, what are people Jim said, you know,

the run of the mills COVID he cited as an example, flying crocodile, new, new bomb or trade embargo war and trade embargo. Yeah. Well, certainly pandemics, mostly because medical facilities are not having enough equipment, you know, to care for people who are ill.

So testing, scarcity, food supply and change challenges, natural disasters. You mentioned earthquakes, but flooding actually is a huge thing to prepare for. I grew up in a floodplain in Missouri, and that's something that we always knew how to do. Extreme storms, wildfires, tornadoes. EMPs are a big conversation in the prepping community also. I don't know if EMPs are familiar out there. Is that electromagnetic pulse something?

That's exactly it. Like a brief burst of electromagnetic energy. It can be natural. It can be artificial too. But it definitely makes a power grid often fail. So it can short circuit electronics, computers, satellites, radios. So that's part of why, because there's so much unknown, survivalists actually focus on skill building. And we just saw that recently with Texas. I think a lot of people in Texas weren't expecting that

they would have the power grid freeze and they'd be, you know, boiling their water and doing all this stuff. Like I worked in solar for 11 years. And that was one of the things that I was thinking is like, when you think about terrorism, one of the easiest ways to affect a city would be to blow up their, their power plant because it, you know, feeds everybody with electricity. And so there are certain things that you would need to know if the grid goes down for an extended period of time, for sure. Right. And that power grid, most power grids are more than 30 years old.

So power outages today are two and a half times more likely than they were, say, in like 1984. This is happening. Yeah, I guess it is interesting with the COVID thing because I think people were, it was right in the precipice of like, oh, I don't have anything in my house. I don't have. Yeah, but I didn't prep at all.

It's fine. I know. I said this the other, I said this the other, the day though, with hurricanes when I was younger, when hurricanes were coming, you had to go to the grocery store. You just picked yourself a halotushi, man. What's that? Thank you.

That's our advertisement. When I was young, when the hurricane, we would get food, we would get water, fill the bathtub up with water for the toilets, all that stuff, and now people don't do that. Is that why you fill up the bathtub? You fill it up so you can run your toilet. Oh, I thought it was so you could have fun

and splash around. No, don't get in that water. There's no electricity in here. Don't get in the water, Jim. Don't get in the water. There's no electricity. Don't get in the water, Jim. Don't get in the water. I'm not, nobody wants to drink that after you. You were using it to flush toilets a second ago. Now you're like, I can't get in the water because it won't be good enough for the fucking toilet.

I'm saying you shouldn't drink it after you've been in it. I was in Hawaii and I was in a hotel and I think my gig was cancelled or something, but there was a hurricane happening. I was with my son. He was about maybe four at the time. And a hurricane was going to happen and I was fucking, I was so up for it, man. Because it wasn't like, it wasn't my house.

I was in a hotel. Fucking nothing's happening to me. I've never seen one before. And then just they, everyone like boarded up their shops and the streets were quiet and you've got to get home in the next hour. So I just got in this hotel room and they were like, alright, good luck

everybody and all the staff were gone. And then fucking it'd be windy. Well, I missed you. No, but I wanted it so bad. And that's the point between preparedness, right? It's like if it had been a really bad storm. They said we might be in there for two days or whatever like that, so I bought board games for me and the kid.

Did you eat the board game? We had some food. No, but did you have food you could eat if the power was off? I was in a hotel for a room service. Well, there's a thing. Nope. You can't rely on that. I had some breakfast cereal and shit ready to go.

Yeah, because I remember when that happened and I was like, oh, it missed you. But you still have to prepare for it because if it doesn't miss you then you don't have all the... I knew it was coming for three days and we were like, oh, it's going to be... And my son was like, this is going to be crazy, dad. I'm like, yeah, we're going for it, mate.

And we were on like the 16th floor. I go, windows might smash in. We'll go be all right, me and you, mate. Don't worry about it. Yeah. And fucking nothing happened. Well, there's always like when storms are coming, there's like, there's always a bunch of people who leave the area. Right.

And then so some people are like, these people are fucking crazy. They're going out of state because there's always a bunch of people who leave the area. Right. And then, so some people are like, these people are fucking crazy. They're, they're going out of state because there's a storm coming. But then also if the storm destroys their area, they're like, why the fuck did they stay? And we've known about this for days. Yeah.

They stayed because they couldn't, I mean, not to be a buzzkill, but they're saying, cause they can't afford to get out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Right. Like if you don't have a car, you don't have the 16th floor. You can't really, uh, make your way out of that situation. The traffic's going to be bad. Yeah. Traffic was terrible. Traffic is going to be bad. I just don't have the 16th floor, you can't really make your way out of that situation. The traffic's going to be bad. Yeah, traffic will be terrible.

I just don't want to leave. No, it will be bad. Some people like Katrina, people couldn't get out because of the traffic. I remember Katrina. I was living in Britain at the time and I remember that news story happening with Days Out. That's the only one I ever really lived up to the hype, Katrina. Like it went for it.

What are you talking about? Andrew tore open my roof on my house and a tree came in our living room. Hurricane Sandy at the East Coast? Sandy destroyed the entire Long Island. I don't know what you're talking about. Sometimes it's better to stay. Sometimes it's better to go. What's the difference between hurricanes and cyclones? You mean a typhoon?

Like a tornado? Isn't a tornado more of a cyclone? And cyclones. Or cyclones and tornadoes. Because you didn't actually have a hurricane. I thought it was a typhoon, probably. Yeah. No, in Australia, we have hurricanes.

And then you have cyclones. Cyclone is a tornado, right? Cyclone. Maybe cyclones in Australia. I don't know. I thought one went one way and one went the other way. Yeah, I thought it was depending on what part of the world you're in.

It's like the water going down the toilet. I can't tell if you guys are doing a bit or not. We'll have to look that up. No, I'm serious. I think it's depending on what part of the world it is. Cyclone and hurricane is not related. We don't know about that. I don't know about that.

If only we had a machine. We'll do an episode on that. You know what I would enjoy about a power outage? Everyone fucking knowing everything. This is it, buddy. This is why I made this podcast. Oh, here's what it is. Okay.

Hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons. Hurricanes form over the North Atlantic Ocean and Northeast Pacific. Cyclones form over the South Pacific and Indian Ocean. That's why why you know from there and typhoons form over the north pacific there's no difference in the spinning they all spin in the same direction they're just different parts of the world they all spill spin clockwise all the storms do so there you go all right you have you experienced a cyclone i'm reading it right now i have i have because it's the same thing as a hurricane that cunt's been in every single one has he that's that fella who wrote that has been in every type of fucking sorry i use the c word literally this is bbc i'm australian it's nothing

what do they know they know it's government body trying to bloody keep secrets from us i didn't ask this question but when did modern survivalism start like when was this always been i mean that, back with Korag, right, Jim? There was no. No, he would have stockpiled stuff. Korag, Korag would have stockpiled more than most. Okay. He would have gone, all right, we'll keep that.

But not for an emergency. I'll keep that saber tooth for the winter and those berries that my wife got, I'll keep them. Melissa doesn't know this, but Korag the caveman is Jim's answer for anything, who was the first person to do this pretty much. Korag the caveman. Korag the Caveman. Korag the Caveman. I want to write a TV set because I've been watching Peaky Blinders, right?

Because long story, but I've been watching it, right? And it's basically like old school Sopranos set in the 1920s in England, right? I reckon we should go back even further with these mob bosses and go back to Caveman korag and he's bloody running the place that'd be fun yeah i reckon do it do it straight like a drama just like fucking korag's off man he's getting some safety rocks because for your protection do do we know when modern survivalism started uh so the idea of survivalism isn't new at all i think the fear that kind of drives that movement we're seeing a lot more of that

in modern times. But you can trace the roots of it back to pioneers, 19th century, 50s and 60s, Cold War, paranoia, recession. The government wanted folks to build these fallout shelters and practice nuclear bomb drills. So the 70s, there's all kinds of books written about economic collapse, retreaters, which is another term, I think, for preppers and kind of survivalists. But then the 80s kind of changed everything. The 80s is when survivalism became this multimillion dollar industry.

And the 90s, we've got these radical events that you'll remember, things like Ruby Ridge, Waco, Timothy McVeigh. Then Y2K, everybody's worried about it. And yeah, nothing really happens. 9-11. So I think each of these events has kind of brought more fear. And most survivalists I know are kind of rational, hardworking people, but the extremists among us are much louder

and they kind of fuel these stereotypes. How long in your mind should you prep for? When prepping, how long for? Depends on the disaster, but I think at all moments in your house, you want to have at least three days, minimum 72 hours. Oh, I've got three days in my house all day. Yeah. And then what happened? The question is, what happens when you have to leave your house? Like if you can't stay in your house more than 72 hours or if your house isn't safe.

So that's where survivalists want you to focus on skills so that when you leave your house, you actually have ways to survive without just the resources that you've brought along. Well, that's our next question. What is a Bob? Jim said thing that goes in the water, bucket of balls, earthquake kit.

That is, is not at all. What a Bob is although although driving ranges should call them bobs they should yeah they're gonna get a bob over there back at a ball right no uh no a bob is a bug out bag oh yeah oh it's like when you it's like when you go to the hospital with a pregnant woman yep um different Different resources, but similar ideas. No, no, no, no. People think it's all going to be like maternity clothes.

I packed her a whole thing. You have a tent, a compass, a knife. I gave her enough to survive on her own because she wasn't coming home. I got to tell you, as a woman who has gone to that, the resources are not quite the same, but the sentiment is like you're trying to get out and definitely if you want to grab

and go, a bob is what you need. Are all your family survivalists as well? I don't know what you say. Or is your husband? I don't know what your status is, but you said you had kids, right? I have teenagers. I live in Washington, D.C. Do they ever look at you and go, Mom, what are you buying that for? Do you go, Oh, I need it. It's a magnifying glass for killing ants for food.

No, they're mostly just eating all the things that I buy. You can't keep a pantry with teenagers around. But no, my family is from rural Missouri, so this is much closer to how I was raised. But a lot of it just seems to me sort of practical rather than preparedness. I didn't grow up with a lot of extremists at all but we knew how to work the land but i have my freezer full of food i got you know you have a bug out bag i definitely haven't i have enough to live in my house for three weeks but that's the point is i got bag is when you leave your house right because

you can't stay in your house i can it's my my house. What if a herd of flying crocodiles lands on top of your house and crushes it? The zombie crocodiles. The zombie crocodiles come in. That's right. And they've now infested your entire home. It's not safe to stay there. I know little rooms. They don't know how to get in the cinema.

They don't have opposable thumbs. And that's the protection. other than jim let's say if you needed to leave your house and you had a bug out bag what would go into this bug out bag jim said knife compass tent wind up radio energy bars he's not wrong those things actually go in your bio gut bag he's not wrong you do want a face mask um long before the pandemic you wanted a face mask because you can only survive about three minutes without filtered air. You want matches, something to make a fire, actually. So, map, compass. A map's good because you need to be able to navigate around you without GPS, without any electronics. You do need that compass, but you need to also know how to use it. You need a tent. You need a space blanket, sleeping bag, flashlights. And you need tools, though.

You need a headlamp, a shovel, axe. You need multi-tool equipment. You need a filtration system so that you can actually make the water potable. Food rations are good. Gloves are good. You need a first aid kit, for sure. You need a sewing kit. How big is this bag?

Yeah. It's a backpack. It's on my back. Oh, you have one? You have one, I'm assuming, right? So you can decide to pack your own bug out bag or, I mean, that's where the multi-billion dollar industry comes in. You can actually buy these bug out bags pre-packed for you.

Oprah loves them. Oprah? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she featured a few years ago. She had a bug out bag. This one's got bread in it. Well, it's true. I mean, a book i should have an earthquake kit but i don't like i'm not prepared for anything and it's interesting that you mentioned gps because it's like that's something we take so much for granted

now but i remember years ago my phone died and i felt like i was stuck in little cambodia for like four days i could not figure out how to get home it's just like GPS, all of those things that we're so used to relying on, like no idea. What would have you used during the bushfires in Australia? Because you're like, you want something to start a fire. You've got that. You don't want that. That's on lockdown.

That's on lockdown. You've got fire all around you. You can cook anything you want. So what do you need? I'm going to give you different disasters. You give me my bug out bag. Bushfires in Australia. Yeah.

Definitely need a mask, and I think I probably wouldn't stay. You wouldn't stay? You have to. It was over the whole country. You can't outrun it. You'd have to find little patches. I'd get like one of those forks that you use to get oysters out of their shells so I could eat a koala.

The squirt gun. I didn't kill him. He's already burnt on the tree. I'd get one of those forks that you use to get oysters out of their shells so I could eat a koala. He's already burnt on the tree. He's cut. Medium rare. I feel like everybody's at some level of this. You have an earthquake, so there's at least part of your brain that you should get it. But I kind of want a bug out bag. Now that you're talking about it, I'm like, this sounds fun.

You need to have cash in there. You need to have your documents. You've got to have prescription drugs. You need to have pet food. You have to think about who you're taking with you. But if I've got a bushfire, I'm probably going to use my outdoor tanks to wet the roof to make sure that you can protect your own house. Well, I lived through plenty of bushfires as a kid. I grew up in Caringo National Park, which is the national park

through Sydney, and I used to love the bushfires. As a little kid, I really enjoyed it because it was a bit of excitement and you could see it coming out over the hill and sometimes some people down the road would lose a house or something like that, a bit more exciting. But all the dads would get on top of the roof and they'd bloody be hosing it down, they'd hose it down, and then they'd look over, g'day Steve, g'day Gary, it's a big one this year.

Oh, yeah, nah, I don't think it'll make us, but bloody get your fucking Steve, get your leaves out of your gutter, you dickhead, you're going to fucking kill us all. And then they'd do that. And then all the men in the street would get Hessian sacks and they'd go up with the firemen and they'd put out the little fires with the Hessian sack. Bloody Steve showed up.

He was wearing thongs, which we call flip-flops. He was wearing thongs and stubby shorts and he put four metres of green garden hose. Fucking dickhead. He didn't know how. I used to love it. Fantastic. And then all the – this is the you know, this is the 70s

and 80s, so it was a bit different now. And I'm sure there'd be women hosing down their roofs and all that stuff. But it was like all the mums would get the kids and we'd all evacuate together. It was really exciting. Good stuff. Here's a bug out bag for $589. Better have a fucking PlayStation in it for that money. It just is a PS5.

It's got lots of stuff in it. But that kind of leads us to that question. I mean, so you got to have money to do this. That's right. That's it. I mean, you have to have money if you want to buy that. You can make a bug out back on your own. It doesn't cost that much.

Most Americans, though, don't. Less than 50% actually have any type of emergency supplies whatsoever in their house. But I think you're right. Of course, there's a lot of privilege in prepping. Do you think, what if I just carry around wads of cash and just buy someone else's bag at the last minute? Yeah. So, unfortunately, I don't think cash is going to go very far.

You need gold bars. Gold bars. You said money, though. You said money. Yeah, but this isn't happening forever. Gold bars. You said money, though. You said money. Yeah, but this isn't. Yeah, but gold. I mean, for a short term. This apocalypse isn't happening forever. People will be like, money, the money system will come back in.

It hasn't become War of the Flies where we're all painting our skin and we're carrying spears. This is day one. The earthquakes just happened day one. Have you seen survivalism? Survivor's like day two. I'm in LA. I'll be like, day one, I'll drive around and go, hey,

I can get a thousand bucks for your bug out bag. I'll tell you what won't be good during this is cryptocurrency. I got some Bitcoin. Those gold bars aren't going to help either, Kelly. We're just going to throw them. We're going to throw them at the zombies. You need defense.

Yeah, because this has like a knife and flares and gloves and first the first. I've got first aid kit in my car and I've got a first aid kit at my house and I don't think a lot of people have that and I have fire to have water the winding radio the winding radio you can actually get

those crank those cranks can actually also use on USB ports you can you can charge electronics that way but you need to have a radio to find out what's going on because the ham radio operators will still, that's how nine 11, how they,

how they found out what was happening on nine 11 was the, I assume the apocalypse was happened. All the radio DJs have left. You know, I don't know that it's DJs. I'll be like, Oh, fucking world's ending.

I think we'd be surprised by how long people would pretend. I love this tune. Welcome back to Opie and Anthony. This has cheered me up. Okay. I'm going to get a bug out back. What are MREs?

Jim says... I'm looking forward to Forrest's bug out back. He should carry it with you everywhere. It's so funny though because you're acting like it's crazy to have a bag full of but none of this is weird stuff it's got two of everything I bought me the earthquake kit

after there was an earthquake and Kate asked me to get one and I'll tell you what when the earthquake happened it was like it was so cool it was like a Steven Spielberg movie it wasn't a major one it wasn't a major one but the whole house went like that and paintings fall off the wall type of level, right? And so boom, and bookshelves and stuff.

Anyway, so it went boom. And then it went rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, boom, like that. And then my son, who was a baby baby at that time, he had a lot of motion detected toys that just started leading up like, welcome to my learning game. Learning game. They all started like four or five and started walking around the house. Like, here we are.

I was like, this is terrifying. That's a close encounter. That's the apocalypse right there. Yeah, yeah. All right. So MREs, Jim saidim says what you get your brain checked out with that's an mri i'm so sorry mres uh they're meals ready to eat so it's individual no not quite i mean they they had they were made you're right for service members uh bought by the

department of defense uh so they replaced canned foods. Jim kept mentioning canned foods, which were really popular in the 80s. But sometimes civilians are also given those MREs when there's a disaster, like a natural disaster. They have about 1,200 calories each, and they're intended to hold up during parachute drops. They should last a few years. So they're useful, but they're not really uh it's just

dry every day dried food we add boiling water yeah it's like i'm looking at them right now like it's like you don't really need water uh they're meant to be like yeah you're meant to eat them straight out of the pack like you can just put them out there and it looks like it's like kind of rice kind of thing and it was military is what they they originated from right that's what you were saying? Yeah. I used to eat a thing in my lunch every day called space food sticks. And they came in caramel and chocolate. And there's a company in Australia.

And they come in a little silver vacuum pack thing. And they were two like mushy things. And you could strip them off like that. And we were told that's what chocolate tastes like in space. How long can you go without water? Jim said one week without water. Someone send us a photo of some space food sticks that you got if you still got them in the house.

You can last about three days maximum. It depends on your health, the environment. What if I'm drinking my own piss? I wouldn't recommend that. People say it's good for you. Yeah, they do in the movies. They do say that. I know people who drink their own piss.

I would recommend, if you're going to drink it, recommend boiling it first, I suppose. But it's not really exactly. They don't drink only their piss. They're drinking piss live first. I'm not drinking my own piss. I have a friend,

you piss in my mouth and I piss in yours. And that way the water still keeps rotating around and around and around. Yes, that's not how you purify things. We 69 piss, Forrest. I recently had like an

intestinal infection where I was like... Oh, I'll do it with Kelly then. My piss is clean. Where I was like, I was dehydrating because I was like basically all my water was coming out of my butt. So, I get more graphic than that. But i kept drinking water and it was still coming out of his penis but i i kept drinking water but i wasn't keeping up enough with it and i felt like i was gonna die i was like a week of that yeah because water is not actually you need something with

electrolytes you have to replenish yeah all your stuff yeah and then as soon as i got this iv i got this iv water i was like oh i feel better it looks like i was dehydrated but i get three days i think that that seems right yeah it seems like you could no water you're done three days that's pretty good food you can go a lot longer right so yeah right um so you boil it um but there's also other ways to purify water besides boiling it, right? Yeah, you can grab some purification drops, which you can just stock in a pantry, put them in your bug out bag. There's also water bottles now that come with built-in straw purifiers. You can get a sheet of plastic and leave it out overnight and that the condensation will run down to a point where you can put it into it.

I would discuss that. He's not wrong. When we used to hike in the mountains, they would give us pills. They weren't even drops. You'd get water out of a stream in your bottle or your canteen, and then you'd put these pills in it, and it tasted like a swimming

pool. Aren't they iodine pills or something? Disgusting. You did it because you had to drink the water. It's gross. We always boil the water. Yeah, but I was out in the middle of nowhere. How do you survive a major injury without access to medical help? Gunshot, wound,

a knife. Jim said, you stick a finger, you get the bullet out and then you yell at me. You have a wank and bleed out first. Oh, you have a wank

and bleed out. Yeah, you don't even care. You're just going to die. No, I just, well, you didn't say how long would I survive. Yeah. I would survive

for how long it took to have a wank. And bleed out. And bleed out. What do you do? I mean, a first aid kit, obviously, but how do you, do you know how to,

if you got shot with a gun, would you be able to fix yourself up? So, I mean, hopefully in your first aid kit, you've got what's called quick clot, which, you know, stops the bleeding. You want to use pressure,

dressing, a tourniquet. You really don't want to go in there and try to get the bullet out. You want to wait until you've got some equipment that's more sanitized before you get the bullet out. But quick clot will work or a tourniquet that has quick clot in it. Yeah, that will stop the bleeding. Yeah, you can't have your cum all

over your hands and then stick your finger in the bullet hole. I'm sorry. It needs to be more sanitary than that. If you've seen how gelatinous my cum is, it would fill a bullet wound, mate. I don't know. It needs to be more sanitary than that. If you've seen our gelatinous Mike Cummings, it would fill a bullet wound, mate. I love that every episode we still manage to bring cum back. It would make the skin look better than it did before. Nice.

How do you store food long-term without electricity? Jim said cans, put them in the snow, bag things, Twinkies. Bag things. Twinkie. Those are not terrible things. You know, anything that's non-perishable, full freezer, it's going to last about 48 hours. Refrigerators only last a couple hours.

So you want to eat that first. Frozen jugs of water work as ice. So that gives you sort of a backup drinking supply. But I think we forget about the stuff that's already at our house. You've got a gas grill. You can cook on a fire. You can boil your water there too. You want to have a couple extra propane tanks um so you've got actually probably in your house or around your house more resources than you think but i got solar so i should be fine for a couple

of days right for a while you know are you storing solar are you reselling it back to the grid stall storing yeah he stores it he's got a big got a big... I've got three batteries. I mean, your solar only does like 70% of your electricity usage. So you'd have to cut down on your electricity usage. You wouldn't have air conditioning. But you could have a generator. You'd have a generator and a PlayStation. Yeah, and you can make a...

If you've got a golf cart, you can turn a golf cart into a generator. You should get a golf cart. Yeah, there's different things. Okay. is really jim's bug out bag if something happens jack is gonna have to if something happens i'll eat jack oh wait i'll bring louise with me because he's first i don't like spicy food um we already covered this, the financial thing. Oh, is survivalism a religious thing? I have certainly met survivalists that do it for religious reasons, but no, I don't think it is at all. I think that it's pretty diverse, actually.

And there's more women in the movement. There's a lot more ideologies in the movement. It's not a partisan issue, and it's certainly not religious. It feels like a lot of white people it's a lot of white people you're not wrong yeah a lot of white people so why why is that answer the question we're paranoid why is society we have enough time no but i mean i mean is like we were talking about money earlier and she was saying it's definitely people that are more privileged in certain ways. No, but even I don't see it much in Asian culture,

or I don't- Definitely not in- Oh, look, I haven't spent enough time, and I've traveled to Asia a few times, but I don't remember. I don't know. Is it like people in India? Are they doing it as well?

Is this worldwide? Because you said Australia, it's very popular. Are there some countries that are like, eh? New Zealand, it's very popular. Anyone who's got money in LA trying to get to New Zealand during a natural disaster, they're not going to stay in LA. Oh, no. The world is ending.

Right. And if you're surviving day to day, I don't think that you're really trying to survive. You don't have the resources, the time, the energy and the money to survive longer than that. So I think it does. It's a big socioeconomic condition that relates to preparation, too. any kids so my preparedness only affects me but if I'm a mother that has four children I'm probably going to take it a lot more seriously than that they don't have enough they don't even know what life is

life's tough I'm helping him I just realized I have Arnie here you gotta take care of your pet absolutely I would eat Arnie before the kids he's not good what is he going to do fucking hunt for us You have to prepare for your dog. You got to take care of your pet. Absolutely. Why would he eat honey before the kids? Why? He's not good.

He's small. What is he going to do? Fucking hunt for us? Yeah, he gets little rats. All right. I asked him a couple of acronyms. Do you know these acronyms? I know Kelly found them.

Good. Do you know what that stands for? I do. Oh, you do? Okay. Let's not go off on Dave, right? Yeah. Good is get out of dodge

so when would you say that you're just like it's good time just say get out of dodge what do we time are we saving we need these like signals uh in out groups do you know the vocabulary it's a it's a whole culture okay yeah but it's a word that we use all the time. Are you good? Oh, and then they run off. Oh, no. I would assume that these are probably used more in written communication. Well, no, it's more like how you refer to your Bob.

You can have a good bag, a get-out-of-Dodge bag, or a get-out-of-Dodge plan. Yeah. Okay. What about inch? Jim said, if you give Dave an inch, he'll take a mile. And then he said in natural canned house. Okay. What about inch? Jim said, if you give Dave an inch, he'll take a mile. And then he said, in natural canned house. No.

No inches. I'm never coming home again. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Incha. Yeah. That's good for a lot of us.

Where's the A on the end? Just I'm never coming home. I don't know what they did with that. I don't know where the A is. It's Incha. I don't know. And then yo-yo. You off, you on.

That might be bloody close. And now I don't know what good means. I don't know yo-yo. I don't know what that one is. You're on your own. Oh, okay. Close. I like that.

I'm going to start using that yo-yo. My favorite is actually S-H-T-F bag. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know that one, Jim? SHTF. SHTF. No. Shit.

F is for fuck. No, it's not. Shit hits the fan. What about it? That's a good one. That's it. Shit hits the fan. It's not a word. It's harder to say SHFT. Shit hits the fan. That's it. Shit hits the fan. Nope. Yeah, but it's not a word. It's harder to say S-H-F-T than shit hits the fan.

It's harder. You don't think schtiff runs out all the time? I think there's more syllables. It makes you stop. I like foobar. Foobar, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fucked up beyond all recognition.

I know, that's not a good bag. Yeah. And then what about- Your good bag could be smashed and now it's foobar. What's foof? Did you know what foof is? F-O-O-F-F. I had a cousin who's one of them.

You know. Yeah. I mean, I looked it up. So let me just double check it. I can't get in trouble for that joke because no one knows exactly what I was saying. The only implication. Yeah. When I looked it up, just the regular meaning without any prepper, it's it autoed to F-O-O-F, which means the vulva or vagina.

Hold on. That's not what it means. One day we'll have to do an episode on the vagina. Just call it one thing. Stop having several names for it. It's very difficult. It's not several names for the same thing. The vulva, the labia, the gluteus, the thing.

It's all going on. They're different parts. Yeah, I just go cock and balls. Two parts, easy. Two parts. I feel like it looks more complicated, to be honest with you. So the vagina gets two parts. All right.

Well, let's do this. You found it now. All right. We'll do dinner party facts if you find out that. So here's part of the show where we ask our guests to give some sort of fact, something that's interesting or obscure that they can use to impress people about the subject at a party or bar or something. What do you got for us, Melissa? All right.

So you're at a dinner party and I want you to introduce the topic of entomophagy. Do you know what that means? I have to introduce the topic? Yes. Introduce the topic. It's going to be difficult because my other conversations are pretty basic. How do you say the word again? You want me to go like the red M&M's taste different from the brown ones

and I can tell the difference in the two flavors. And entomophagy. Do you want to talk about entomophagy as well? Entomophagy. Yeah, it's the practice of eating insects. Oh. Oh, entomophagy. Entomophagy as well entomophagy it's the um yeah it's the practice of eating insects oh oh right and you want to make the case that you know insects are they're low fat high protein lots of vitamins amino acids and they're also super efficient so they have a high food conversion rate so crickets for example they require six times less feed than cattle and they produce the same amount

of protein. So you probably want to do this after the main course, not before y'all start eating, but this will impress your guests. I ate some grasshoppers in Mexico. I've eaten plenty of bugs, yeah. What have you? I've eaten grasshopper tacos. I've eaten

a little scorpion thing on a stick in Thailand years ago. I've eaten a little scorpion thing on a stick in Thailand years ago. I've eaten I've definitely eaten what's the edible? I've eaten big sea bugs.

No, but like insects like beetles. I've had different type of things like that when I've traveled the world. Just a bit of fun yeah all right well

it can be sweet or savory your bugs what have you eaten tip them in chocolate wow I mean I grew up in a pest control business a family pest control business so we don't use any poison we just come here and eat all the bugs

we got roaches you got ants Come here and eat all the bugs. We got roaches. Yum. You got ants? Yum, yum, yum. All right. All right. Well, the book is The Hive. Here it is by Melissa Scholes Young.

And Yoshua's book, Flood. And you can find this book and that book. I just found foof. Okay. What is it? Fuck off on foot fast. That sounds like one that Jim made up. It should just be GTFO. Get the fuck out of here.

Okay, well the book is The Hive by Melissa Scholes Young. You can find it on Amazon or anywhere else that you buy books. Melissa, thanks for being here. Jim? Thanks for having me. This is fun. Thanks for being on the podcast, Melissa. If you are ever at a party and someone comes up to you

and goes have you got a bob introduce them to your mate Bob and say I don't know about that what goodnight Australia you