Live Like the World is Dying—S1E66
Talking Trash on Traditional Prepping
Episode Summary
Margaret and Eric discuss the ins and outs of prepping from a more traditional perspective than usual. They go over the basic tenets of preparedness, outline some easy and manageable ways to start prepping, find new and fun ways to laugh at traditional bunker mentalities, and discover that community is once again the best resource anyone can hope for.
Guest Info
Eric Shonkwiler (he/him) is the author of the newsletter When/If: A Leftist Guide to Prepare for a Changing World. He can be found at https://when-if.ghost.io/ where you can sign up for his newsletter. You can also find Eric on Twitter @eshonkwiler
Host Info
Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
Publisher Info
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Transcript
Margaret 00:15
Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what probably feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. And this week I'm really excited about this week. I've been hoping to do an episode...this particular episode for a while. This week, we're going to be talking about talking about prepping. And we're going to be talking about...well, I'm going to be talking to someone who writes the best newsletter I'm aware of for individual community preparedness, which is called When/If. And it's written by Eric Shonkwiler. And I'm really excited about this conversation. But first, I'm really excited to tell you that we're a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here is a jingle from another show on the network.
Margaret 01:34
Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then kind of just a little bit about When/If, you know, the reason that I've brought you on here to talk.
Eric 01:45
Hi, I'm Eric ShonkWiler My pronouns are he/him. When/If is a newsletter on preparedness and collapse from a leftist perspective. I set out a couple of years ago to try to try to create some content around preparedness and prepping that was more accessible for folks on the left handed side of the political spectrum.
Margaret 02:13
Yeah, and just to...we'll ask you to shout it out at the end too, but how can people get this fine newsletter?
Eric 02:19
It might be easier to find me. My name is Eric Shonkwiler, a little bit difficult to spell. The newsletter itself is on ghost.io. Search "When/If." That's probably the best way to find it. It's a bit of a goofy address.
Margaret 02:36
Yeah, it's hard to...every now and then I've tried to Google "When/If" and then I realize that's not going to work.
Eric 02:43
But there are only two Eric Shonkwilers on the planet. So if you can remember my last name, you can probably find me.
Margaret 02:49
Whoa. Who's the other one?
Eric 02:52
Some kid in New Mexico.
Margaret 02:53
All right. All right. I'm the only Margaret Killjoy I'm aware of. And whenever that changes, I'm going to be really sad. So I don't know...Were you like sad when you found out you weren't the only Eric Shonkwiler
Eric 03:05
It was super weird. It turned out that for a little while we lived in the same town. I've lived all around the country.
Margaret 03:14
Are y'all related?
Eric 03:14
I don't...Like probably not really. I wasn't born and raised in New Mexico. It's just one of my favorite places to be and I was living out there working. And I I think I was looking myself up for something and found them on like a, you know, like a high school Spelling Bee sort of an article or something like that, you know, and found out he lived in the same town at the same time that I did. Super weird. Not a very big town. Very strange.
Margaret 03:44
I kind of like that. That's kind of weird. Maybe you just....
Eric 03:48
Shout out to the other Eric Shonkwiler.
Margaret 03:50
Yeah, totally. Okay, so. So you started this this newsletter and I kind of wanted to, you know...What do you cover in this newsletter? Right? What kind of stuff are you talking about?
Eric 04:04
Everything. I focus on kind of, in my head, the big three, which is climate change, fascism, and the ignorance of the government/police brutality, kind of the three fronts, as I see it, that are going to be causing problems for folks in the future.
Margaret 04:04
Isn't it kind of funny that--to me, I agree. These are, you know, probably the three big categories of things and then all three of them are ignored by right wing preparedness.
Eric 04:46
Yeah.
Margaret 04:47
Not always. Right? I mean, they claim there's a rise in fascism, but they claim it from a really odd perspective, not the people walking around with Nazi flags, but the people walking around with anti Nazi flags. And then Climate change. I feel like preparedness places used to talk about climate change. And then...I don't know if you experienced this? Did they just stop talking about it at some point when it became culture war or something like?
Eric 05:13
I haven't seen a whole lot about climate change addressed in particular. They will just sort of ally it and talk about weather preparedness. But at the same time, I'm doing a little bit of research because I'm trying to turn When/If into a book. And so I'm looking at comparable titles. And one of the comps that I looked at went immediately out of the gate in the first few pages. It talked about the dangers of hurricanes and then under a discrete subheading: typhoons. And I just wanted to tell the author, who's my friend, "Those are the same thing."
Margaret 05:57
Yeah, I was just thinking that.
Eric 05:58
Just in a different hemisphere. Like, it's just in a different ocean you. Like you're telling someone to prepare for the same thing twice but differently. Like the the instructions were a little bit different too. It was wild.
Margaret 06:13
They just googled "What to do with a typhoon" and wrote that down. Yeah. And they Googled "What to do in it?"
Eric 06:17
Yeah. And, and that's why I do what I do, so that there can be some actual help when it comes to emergencies like that. And you're not stuck getting your information from a guy who really wants you to buy a Faraday bag because the EMP is coming.
Margaret 06:17
Okay, so that's a really good segue into one of the main things I kind of wanted to talk about: one of the...I'm really excited to talk to someone who also sort of interacts in an intersection with a traditional prepping world, but then also cares about, you know, leftist prepping or community preparedness or whatever the hell we're going to call it because it seems like some of the information that's in traditional prepping is good, but we should talk about some of that like bullshit, like some of the nonsense that traditional preppers get wrong. Okay, so like Faraday bags, do you want to you want to myth bust the Faraday bag?
Eric 07:14
My biggest thing would be that we're not going to see the long heralded EMP blast. Like that's just not what's gonna come get us. I think that I think there is very limited utility to the idea of the Faraday bag, and it’s primarily in regards to protesting. Yeah, and it has much less utility than leaving your device at home. Yeah. So rather than buying a fancy bag or trying to guard your credit card chips from getting stolen at the grocery store, like I would just leave the things at home or turn them off. Keep them in your car if you're going to be someplace that you don't want to be linked to from a tower pin, you know? Yeah.
Margaret 08:16
Yeah, like people talk about EMPs as if they're like...the tactical EMP is right around the corner. And as a science fiction writer I appreciate it, but literally only because otherwise it's impossible to imagine how we're going to deal with like swarms of nano robots with facial recognition. You know? Like until we have the EMP shotgun we're just kind of like...or like EMP force fields or something.
Eric 08:41
I like the EMP much more all of a sudden.
Margaret 08:44
Yeah, no, it's...But as far as I'm--it's been a while since I've looked this up--but I believe EMP or electromagnetic pulse, people are worried this blast will destroy all electronic devices, all modern cars, everything with a computer, everything with a chip or whatever. There is some EMP hardened equipment out there. And then a Faraday cage is like something that protects certain types of radiation from reaching certain things and it also blocks communications. I'm under the impression that the only way that anything produces an EMP right now is nuclear blasts high in the atmosphere.
Eric 09:17
I think that's right. Yeah.
Margaret 09:19
So I guess if we get into a nuclear war some electronics might be messed up, but I kind of feel like overall we have bigger problems.
Eric 09:29
At that point, yeah. Yeah, we have a few few more things to worry about than the fact that you can't stream the latest season of whatever.
Margaret 09:41
Well, I think it gets into...I really like to use Faraday bags as the example, right? Because it's like, I worry about this a lot, right? Because--and I'm curious what your take is--I worry about being a fear monger professionally, right? I worry about like spreading worry. My goal is to spread calmness and preparedness and you know ways we can...Okay, I have a Go bag. So if there's a forest fire I know what I'm doing so now I don't have to worry about forest fire. But there is a version where you just worry about stuff more and more and more. And especially if you're trying to sell someone something it's a really good system. It's like if I'm watching something, and the thing they're trying to sell me is a Faraday bag, to me that's a big red flag that like, "Oh, you're just a grifter." Because in the abstract of once I have every object in the world that I could possibly need, I suppose I could Faraday cage my basement or something. Right? But like...No.
Eric 10:42
Yeah, that's a real problem because particularly when you tie your output to commerce you're kind of getting into Alex Jones territory where, you know, you're talking about chemicals in the water...and here's this water filter or here are these protein shakes that will solve everything.
Margaret 10:42
Turn you into a man again instead of a gay [Inaudible word.]
Eric 10:43
Yeah, and that's a big problem. You know, that creates a circular system where you just you spin people up and you give them the solution, and that isn't a solution at all. It might temporarily ease their worry, but they can just as easily get that by shopping at Etsy, you know, just any kind of consumption tends to ease that pang that we have. But if you're the one creating it, obviously, that's a different situation. Controlling that fear, or finding out the meter at which you should distribute it is, is something that I think about pretty much every time I hit publish. But at the same time, I'll stop and I'll look at the objective data that I've got, the new things that have occurred, whatever they may be new, anti trans legislation, the new IPCC report just came out last Monday and that really grounded some bad news about climate change. And you can't ignore the news and the updates that you receive on things like that just because you're worried that all that you're doing is making your readership afraid. I think that you should couch it appropriately. And how I do that is by at least trying to give the reader some actionable items at the end of my 1000 word screed where I talk about all of the awful shit that's happening in the world.
Margaret 12:57
Action Items is a really good point. Action Items is...You know we did an episode a while ago about mental health first aid, right. And, you know, one of the things that I feel like we learn over and over again is that acting with agency is one of the main ways to prevent PTSD during bad situations. And I feel like even if we can't stop what's coming, acting with agency as much as we can about how we handle it and things like that, is how we keep it from destroying us. Like, it might literally destroy us. We might all drown in the rising waters or get murdered bu fascists or whatever, right? But like, you know, we can...there's some cliche here about not letting it destroy us along the way or something, you know, but yeah, the action items. That makes a lot of sense. Okay, but I want to talk more shit on traditional preppers.
Eric 13:54
Okay, let's do it.
Margaret 13:55
What else are they getting wrong? Like, it's funny because it's like some of the stuff....Well, okay, you're talking about for example, if you tie your stuff to what you're selling--I think I've been thinking about this a lot--I make and distribute these emergency kits and I don't sell them. And I spend thousands of dollars at the time when I have it and create these emergency kits. And I covered in one of my YouTube episodes. And I give them away to my friends and family and stuff, right? And then everyone's like, "Sure, whatever, my crazy friend who..." You know, and then every now and then someone tells me, "Oh, it was actually really useful that I had band aids in my backpack," or...you know, and it's always these tiny minor things. It's never the potassium iodide or whatever, you know? And there's a chance that I'm going to start selling them but literally just in order to make enough money to make this not be this massive sinkhole in my life that I distribute these things. And I worry. I worry about being an Alex Jones. Also, I really want people to have stored food in their basement and so part of me is like, "Man, I'm just gonna get a freeze dryer. I'm gonna freeze dried ton of stuff and I'm going to fucking give it to people." And then I'm like, "And I guess we'll sell it," you know? And then I'm like, "Oh, God, where does this end?" At what point am I selling supplements to make people stay virile or whatever, you know. And I don't know....
Eric 15:16
I think that the way to avoid that is like I said to eliminate the circle. So you can't be directly addressing an issue and saying that the solution is on your website, that it's in your store. Once you do that you're just a shill. And and whether or not the product is even remotely relevant at that point, you're losing credibility, at least to people that know what they're talking about. And you may have followers who are addicted to that circle, you know, that cycle that says, "Here's this panic. By the way, here's the thing that will cure the panic." But if you avoid that then I think that there's...then you don't have to be worried about perpetuating that and falling into an Alex Jones trap.
Margaret 16:14
Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And there's a reason that we haven't started selling anything yet, anything along those lines, you know. I mean, at some point, we'll be putting out more books and stuff and that will be a selling. But I think we just have to...Cause I think about that guy who--maybe it's a perfectly fine book; I doubt it--but the guy who's like typhoons versus hurricanes or whatever, I suspect that this person is just trying to make a buck by googling some stuff and rewriting it poorly, throwing it into an e book, doing print on demand, putting it up on Amazon, and then selling it to this fear cycle, right? But then it's so frustrating because some stuff that comes out of traditional preparedness is useful. I think that a lot of their focuses are all wrong...Now I'm just trying to come up with the other stuff that I get annoyed about, right?
Eric 17:10
Let's talk about what they get right? And then we can shit talk on the vast majority of they get wrong. And that is always going to be the basics, you know, the very essential stuff. Because like you said, you know, you find it really important that people have food stored in their basement or if they don't have a basement, you know, under their bed in a tote or something like that. Just whatever they can do. And just as an aside, that's my circle. And that's where I scratch my panic itch. An every once in a while, I'll just buy a giant can of freeze dried vegetarian imitation beef.
Margaret 17:53
Oh, yeah, totally. Augason Farms.
Eric 17:55
Yes. Yeah. I just got a can last night.
Margaret 17:58
Yeah, the cheap brand.
Eric 17:59
Yeah, I just put that on my shelf next to all the other--shout out to Augason Farms--all of my other Augason Farms cans, and something in my in my lizard brain just went, "Yeah, yeah. Okay. I feel a little bit better now."
Margaret 18:18
Yeah.
Eric 18:20
But to bring that back to what the Right wing gets gets right...What those preppers get right is just the basics, which I think is actually sort of...it's letting them lay claim to preparedness, actually.
Margaret 18:35
Right.
Eric 18:35
And--now I'm getting into a different idea--but they shouldn't because preparedness comes from us living on the planet--
Margaret 18:43
Totally.
Eric 18:44
--Outside of the normal capitalistic cycle. The thing that I say...So this is how I launched When/If is that the first newsletter that I wrote was just called "Your Grandma Prepped."
Margaret 18:59
Yeah, totally.
Eric 19:00
Because she did. She canned. She had food stored away. My my grandma Skylar had three refrigerators. Two of them were almost as old as she was and I just ran like a dream. And they were full of food and water. And that's just--she had lived through the Great Depression--and that's where her inclination for it came from. And that got passed down to me. But I always knew if I was walking into her house, I could walk into the kitchen and I could open the cupboard and I would see 30 or 40 cans of whatever, Chef Boyardee, green beans, peas, you know, just as much food as you could want for probably damn near a month. And that's the kind of goal that I shoot for in my newsletter and for my own household. But it's the basic stuff.
Margaret 19:56
What you saying about like not letting the right wing lay claim to it and I agree with that. And I think that the sense of who actually--you know, I talk about that a lot that, like purse snacks as prepping, you know, like you go to a show, the person who has snacks in their purse is more prepared than the person with the handgun. Because there's a scenario in which the handgun is the right tool. It is a lot less likely than the scenario where you get snacky.
Eric 20:20
Yeah, absolutely.
Margaret 20:22
And a purse can hold both. Although, that would be an off body carry…Whatever, anyway. And so I think in my head, I've been thinking about traditional prepping, as in like, the kind of people who call themselves preppers without necessarily assigning that to the Right wing. It's like this thing that is fed upon by the right wing, but I don't think it's apparently right wing. And I've gotten some feedback from listeners every now and then, who are in traditional prepping, and could see the right wing kind of trying to be like, "And hate your neighbor." And they're like, "Wait, aren't y'all Christians?" And then being like, "Oh, thank god." It was less even that they were like, "Oh, thank God, a Leftist approach," although that's accurate from my point of view, but like, "Oh thank God, something that's not a right wing approach."
Eric 21:09
Right.
Margaret 21:12
You're right about the basics. And then I think sometimes they get some stuff right but they prioritize it wrong. I do believe that having, you know--depending on the situation that you're in and who you are and all these things--like firearms and things like that are incredibly useful tools. And if I want to know how much ammunition I should probably have, a lot of those YouTube channels and things like that are very useful for that, right? Because they've mathed out like being like, "Well, if you want to continue to practice at this rate, which is about the rate that you should stay in practice at..." And so I find that stuff to be very useful. But it's really easy to think that the sexy stuff, the violent stuff, is the main thing. The main thing is like first aid kit, food, and water, you know, and knowing not to run a generator in your garage. I finally got a deep freezer recently. And I was like, "I don't eat meat." I was like, "What the fuck am I gonna do with this deep freezer?" And now it's like, full of bread, frozen vegan meals. Like, it's great. I'm so glad it's there. And it's so...I didn't realize this but it barely uses any electricity compared to a regular fridge because it's full of frozen stuff and you open it up once a week. Like, the little tag on it is like, "Estimated electricity cost is $34/year" or whatever, you know, and I'm like, "Okay, okay, I can do that."
Eric 22:55
It's less than my washer. Yeah.
Margaret 22:59
Have you seen the stuff that's like...I feel like there's more and more. Maybe I just fall down YouTube holes too much about people just really getting ready to defend their giant castles of stuff or whatever, you know?
Eric 23:13
Yeah. And that's not a new thing, either. That has I think always been if nothing else, the popular idea of a prepper is that Right wing guy who post 2016 was wearing a red hat, and had a wall full of guns, and a bunch of food and water, and maybe some skills? Which is something we should talk about? But maybe not. Maybe all he knew how to do is shoot his gun and bury some Claymore mines in his yard because people were going to come get his stuff. <laughs> And that's something that I've been thinking a lot about lately is contrasting the Leftist prepper philosophy against that because if it's just you, unless your Bill from The Last of Us, you're not going to be happy with that life.
Margaret 24:19
Right.
Eric 24:19
And the first time that you fall down the stairs and break your leg, you're done because you don't have anybody to help you with it. And it doesn't matter how much ammo you have at that point. There's nothing to be done for you because you have booby trapped your yard. No one's going to be able to come and help you and no one's going to want to.
Margaret 24:39
Yeah, well, what you do is you catch a guy and then you date him.
Eric 24:43
Right. [Skeptical]
Margaret 24:44
Like in The Last of Us. <Both Laugh> Yeah, no, yeah. Go ahead.
Eric 24:49
Oh, I was just gonna continue making a joke. That's my new favorite show.
Margaret 24:52
Yeah. I loved that episode so much.
Eric 24:56
So good.
Margaret 24:57
And that man had a plan. He knew how to turn the gas back on on his house. But one of the things that actually always strikes me right away is that you always have the wall of guns, right? And like, I don't know about you, but I can only use one gun effectively at a time. And I can only dream of using two guns effectively at a time. It caps out at that point.
Eric 25:21
Only two hands.
Margaret 25:22
Yeah. So in my mind, a wall of guns should mean I am prepared to help an entire community of people.
Eric 25:30
Yes
Margaret 25:32
Otherwise, you're just a collector, which is fine, but it seems so obvious to me. How could anyone look at their wall of guns and think "That's what I personally need," you know, is two AR-15s. Like, two guns that serve the same purpose as each other. I know, you can do your AR in different ways. Whatever. But like, everyone I know with a wall of guns has guns that cover the same role as each other. You know? It's just, it seems so obvious to me that it should be community preparedness at that point. But yeah. Okay, what else do they write about? Have you ever buried anything?
Eric 26:11
In a preparedness setting?
Margaret 26:14
Yeah. No, this isn't a crime question.
Eric 26:19
For legal reasons, no.
Margaret 26:21
Yeah.
Eric 26:23
No. Outside of, unless you count potatoes and seeds, which I have done a lot of. No, I have thought about doing the PVC pipe with...making a cache and putting it someplace. For me, in my situation, it's not particularly useful because despite the fact that I'm in a city, in a city that if we wanted to game out how well it would fare in various situations like we're pretty good against climate change here in Ohio. Bad against fascists and we would need to leave. Bad against threat of nuclear war, but we'd be hit and we'd be toast.
Margaret 27:12
Why would someone [Nuke Ohio]...I guess there's enough cities there.
Eric 27:14
There's enough stuff here that they would probably. I mean, if you've got 1000s of nukes you hit Columbus. You just do. So called Columbus. Flavortown, as I really like to think of it. <Laughs> So yeah, I haven't. I haven't buried anything, though I certainly have thought about it. But the situation in which we're fleeing home and are able to reach that cache, doesn't seem likely to me. I'm sure in other situations for other people, probably mostly folks that live out in the country who have a more static route of escape that would make sense. But for me, it would be hoping that I had enough time to get all of my chickens, and dogs, and my wife in the back of the car. And hoping that we didn't have to abandon the car 20 feet away because Columbus is a city of a million people. And once they try to escape...I mean, there's a reason why in every post apocalyptic TV show or movie that you see, you see a highway full of cars. Because cars break down, and crashes happen. And once you can't move, that car is nothing but a very small house. And that's not very useful. So that particular idea has never been useful for for me in my situation. I'm sure it's useful in some. And I'm sure that if you have an entire wall of guns, you won't miss the pistol that you stuff in that PVC pipe and bury.
Margaret 28:56
Right. Yeah, like I think about like...because the concept is not...once again, it's this like priorities thing, right? It's like, the lowest priority thing for me that I can think of...Well, Faraday caging in my basement would be lower priority. But like, you know, honestly, most of the things I could imagine would be almost like if there is major civil conflict or another civil war, and I'm dead, and someone needs to make use of the space, but it's been cleared out. Right? Like, if this space has been cleared out--or I left, right--but someone needs to make use of this space then that's I think were buried stuff--or people put stuff like on their route out of a place and you read about Antarctic explorers burying caches and stuff like that in order to...but that's a real different situation than any realistic thing that people are going to be dealing with. I think people do it because it's neat. Like, you always feel like a pirate if you bury gold. I haven't done this yet, but, you know, at some point in my life...Everyone should buy a little sliver of gold from our sponsor. <laughs jokingly> No. And then bury it somewhere. In the back your head there's $50 of gold in a tube somewhere....
Eric 30:32
But if nothing else, you can always take that to your grave.
Margaret 30:35
Yeah, exactly.
Eric 30:36
That you...or they didn't get my gold.
Margaret 30:39
Yeah, that's what matters. I guess that's part of the thing about burying is it is like, "I don't want other people to have this." And it's like in a war type scenario, I do want other...I don't want other people to have it because I don't want the enemy to have it. But in a survival type scenario, like, I'm dead. Fucking...
Eric 31:00
Take my stuff.
Margaret 31:02
Yeah, that's fine. From what you were talking about, I'm like, "Oh, that's why we need a dirt bike." And I'm like, oh yeah. You got chickens and dogs. How you gonna get past those cars? You need a bulldozer. Or you need the keys to the bulldozers? Which, we did an episode on, actually. If you go back to Deviant Ollam talking about universal keys way back near the start of our show, I think.
Eric 31:27
I need to find that one.
Margaret 31:28
Yeah, a lot of things are keyed the same. So if you have keys to heavy equipment, you have keys to heavy equipment. And then if there's a lot of cars in the road, they could be not in the road. But if there's people in them it's not such a good plan.
Eric 31:42
No, not so good.
Margaret 31:44
So to go back to your newsletter. I'm curious. We talked a little bit about this. You said that you haven't been getting that much of a response from it, even though you put it out to hundreds of people. Like do you have a sense of what's happening there? I have my own thoughts too because I get a similar thing, but...
Eric 32:03
So in the earlier days, I used to get a little bit of feedback. And that was...I think the most feedback that I got was once I kind of dropped the bomb that people need to have firearms. And up until that point, if you were a liberal you could have read, you could have read my newsletter and been like "This is fine. This is fine." And then I was like, "Uh, we should arm up because the other side is and yeah, things could get bad." Yeah. And, and people like, "Oh, you really think that we should have guns? But guns are ew. Bad" That was probably one of the only things that I've really gotten a response from.
Margaret 32:46
That's so sad. I'm sorry.
Eric 32:48
It is. And yeah, and the rest is mostly radio silence. And I think technically part of it would be that when I switched from Substack to Ghost cause Substack is kind of terfy. Ghost is not. It's a little less user friendly. So there's not like an immediate "Contact Eric button," I don't think. But beyond that, I think that my content has gotten kind of specialized and kind of uniformly dark. Like I recently, about a year or so ago, I pivoted from just preparedness because there's there's sort of only so much that you can say about preparedness. There's a limited amount of things that you can get, things that you can stock, techniques that you can learn to maximize your preparedness, but I wanted to keep writing because I was addressing current issues and I thought that that information was relevant. And so I switched focus a little bit from straight preparedness to talking about things to prepare for, to analysis of events and talking about collapse. And I think that few people really want to enter a discourse about that. We can all dream of the scenario that lets us open our front door and walk out into a world that's like covered in ivy and idyllic and utopian because there aren't people in it, because it's the post apocalypse. But, to have to envision how we get from where we are today to that supposedly idyllic ivy colored dreamland is a different story and it's a dark one. There aren't many ways that we proceed as we are right now that end well. And even the ways that we do proceed in which things go okay are difficult. Nothing about where we are right now no matter which way you go is going to be easy. And I think that limits the engagement and the discourse, which is okay.
Margaret 35:17
Well, to get back to that balance you're talking about before every time you present and you're like, "Am I fear mongering? Or am I helping people calmly and soberly address a hard thing? And that's something that I think about a lot, is that I'm like...I know, a lot of people who are like "I can't engage with the news. It's too much," right? And I've had moments where I'm like, "Today's not a doom scroll day," you know, "Today is a no phone day." And...but what if Trump got arrested while you're away? Anyway. That balance is really hard to strike. But I really want...We need to figure it out. Like, I think more than almost anything else, like our role is to help people not stick their head in the sand but also not freak out. And that, to me, is what preparedness, like the core of preparedness--maybe I'll call the core of preparedness something else some other time--but like, the core preparedness is soberly looking at what is possible, what is likely, and what we can do in those situations. So that when they come, which some of them will... you know, it is always I feel a little bit...like, you know, it's like, sometimes I'll feel silly that before the last presidential election, I was figuring out how I could go on a really long walk to get away from where I was, you know? And I got crampons in case I had to, you know, cross a pass or something. Right? And I'm like, well, that's silly. And then I'm like, it isn't. Like we didn't have a civil war. But they tried. And it could have happened that way. And it's...and this actually...Okay, to tie it into one of the things that I think that traditional preparedness over worries about--but honestly sometimes I'm like, maybe it isn't over worry--is literally nuclear war, right? Like, it seems to me---I'm a, you know, I was a kid when the Cold War ended--it seems to me almost silly to spend your time thinking we're all going to nuke ourselves into oblivion in the 20th century because we didn't. But like, that might just be luck.
Eric 37:42
Yeah, you know, it absolutely is too. Like, historically, it was.
Margaret 37:47
Yeah. And so I don't worry--of all of all the things I worry about, I don't actually worry much about nuclear exchange. Because I'm just like, people aren't gonna do that. And then I'm like, people might do that. You know?
Eric 38:04
Yeah.
Margaret 38:05
And so telling people, "Here are things to worry about," it's so hard to be like...because if something has a 5% chance of happening, it's worth preparing for. If something has a .01% chance of happening, it's not...I'm making these numbers up. But like, it's not really worth preparing for a wolf eating you while you're camping because that kind of just doesn't happen. But it is worth preparing for a grizzly bear attack if you are hiking in grizzly territory.
Eric 38:34
Yeah.
Margaret 38:35
You know, even though most people don't get eaten by grizzly bears. Present company excluded. We're both getting eaten by Grizzly bears.
Eric 38:44
And I think that it's worth pointing out that if preparedness in those unlikely situations is easy then it's worth doing.
Margaret 38:54
Yeah.
Eric 38:55
Somewhat paradoxically, I think that preparing for nuclear war is worthwhile because it's sort of easy in in a morbid sense. Either move out of the blast wave or you buy iodine pills and you follow all the other rules of preparedness. And that's kind of it.
Margaret 39:24
That's true.
Eric 39:24
The world in which you emerge is going to be an extremely difficult one. And it might not be a survivable one. But that is, in part why that particular scenario is an easy one to prepare for. There's a novel called On the Beach by Neville Shute. It's about Australians after a nuclear apocalypse. And not to spoil it, but it's a book about coming to terms.
Margaret 39:53
The ending is famous. I think it's okay to...I haven't read it and I know the ending of this book.
Eric 40:01
Okay. Yeah, everybody dies. And it's about coming to terms with that definite ending. And I think if nothing else, preparedness in that situation gives you time to come to terms, or as perhaps not being prepared in that scenario, you have a grimmer and the worst end. Which, it's not fun to think about. But, this is why nobody talks to me. I'm the meme of that guy in the corner.
Margaret 40:36
<Laughing> Everyone's like, "We know."
Eric 40:39
We know.
Margaret 40:40
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally.
Eric 40:46
Yeah. The unlikely things can be worth preparing for if they are simple to prepare for. Oddly enough, I find nuclear war to be one of those things. Just like preparing for bears when you're hiking is relatively simple, don't eat where you sleep and carry around bear spray, you know? That kind of thing.
Margaret 41:09
No, that's actually a really good point. A nuclear war is a really good example of this kind of thing because it also shows the diminishing returns of like--because you could build a bunker under your--it's funny, the version of it I saw was like, "Build the bunker under your pool." And I'm like, I am several steps away from having this thing. You know? But like, sure, sure. I could have an in-ground pool with a nuclear bomb shelter underneath it. And that would be rule. I am entirely fine with the version of the world where I have enough money to do that. Or, you stay away from windows, you take potassium iodide, you have enough food to stay inside for I think three days--it's been a while since I've read this--and then you're real goddamn careful what you eat that was growing outside during the fallout or whatever, you know? Yeah, no, that's...and the scale difference, right? Yeah, the scale difference between how three days of food in your house and tablets that cost you $10 versus like spending $80,000 at the low end--I've totally not spent many nights pricing this out--to have a nuclear shelter, whatever. Although, you can actually...Okay, you can also, if you live in the woods, you can actually dig your own because you don't actually need it to be air proof. You just need straight angles. Because of the way that radiation moves, you can kind of like dig yourself a little coffin. And that's the other downside. Yeah. Like, what do you find the most fun to prepare for? What's these like? Okay, nuclear, you know, limited nuclear exchange or nuclear war there's a fairly basic thing you can do. You know, what are some of the other things that you prepare for? Or that you would recommend?
Eric 43:07
Um, so I tend not to think of my preparedness in terms of scenarios. I think that--I guess you'd say it holistically. My preparedness looks like as---it's not actually economical. Like, I know a lot of people looked at the price of their eggs when they went to the grocery and went "Ha, I'm gonna get chickens." You're not saving money doing that, going out and getting chickens, but I did. But I did that before eggs were expensive. My preparedness right now looks like--because I don't have a lot of land--I'm refining my techniques. I am getting better at gardening so that if and when I do have more land, I can learn how to utilize it. I'm raising chickens to give myself experience with raising chickens. And also they're just kind of delightful. Chickens are just neat. I'm learning simple, you know, pretty simple first aid techniques and stop the bleed techniques. I bought myself a little stitch kit.
Margaret 44:21
Oh, cool.
Eric 44:22
So I can learn how to suture.
Margaret 44:24
How do you like that? I've never had one.
Eric 44:26
It's neat. It's different. Depending on what kind of thread you're using, it can be difficult and you're not sure if you're doing it right. And also, it can seem so simple that you think you're not doing it right.
Margaret 44:43
Yeah, that makes sense.
Eric 44:43
Like say if you're stitching a wound and the wound closes, you did it. [Said as a question]
Margaret 44:47
Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's like scarring and stuff is a different question.
Eric 44:51
Yeah, it might not heal well but if it heals, if you keep dirt out of an open wound you have achieved your goal. And like if the bleeding stopped and there's no dirt in it, good job. You did it. Learning techniques like that, I have been slowly acclimating myself to firearms. I have a couple guns. Now, I'm getting them kitted out so that they're useful in situations rather than just big lumps of metal.
Margaret 45:26
Right.
Eric 45:27
Getting myself good enough at using them is probably going to be a lifelong practice, I would assume at the time. Getting better at those things is what I do to prepare. Which, is a bit of a drift from your question, which was like, "What do I like to prepare for?"
Margaret 45:49
I'm just gonna keep it lighthearted as we talked about the end of all things, you know? It's all totally fine.
Eric 45:55
Let me think about something fun....
Margaret 45:57
I mean, the chickens are fun, right? That's a good example, right?
Eric 46:00
Chickens are fun.
Margaret 46:01
You have a delightful new addition to your house, even though it doesn't save you money on eggs in the end. You know?
Eric 46:08
I mean, at this point, because we have an established system for them--we have a coop, we have a run, we have their feed, and their feed does not cost anything--they don't cost as much money. And at this point, if you know, if you're okay with calling all of those expenditures just sunk-and-done then we might make a little money off of them now. But we just, when we have excess eggs we give them away and we eat the rest. And that's just what it is, and how we should be thinking about those things. If you are preparing in that in that way and if you are a leftist or even just a good person and you know, if you've got more than you need I think the answer to that excess is giving it away.
Margaret 47:01
And then even...One of the things I get so annoyed...because that's actually...One of the things that's cool about home gardening is that you end up with like...Like when I was a kid, my mom mostly grew zucchini and tomatoes. And like, not for any particular reason. I think that's just what she liked growing. And so we had too many zucchini, and so you give the zucchini to the neighbors, right? And it's like...and that's what's kind of cool about a lot of gardening stuff, right, is that you just like walk around and give stuff to your neighbors because you have too much and it'll go to waste. And that is a better way to live. But even...I think, it's really hard for me to totally envision myself as like right wing--although when I was younger I was little bit more like libertarian minded before I kind of like thought it all through a little bit more. And it seems to me, that another person is like always...if you could pick any tool to survive, right, someone else with you trumps anything else you can think of.
Eric 48:02
Absolutely.
Margaret 48:03
And people have this...And I think the core problem with Right wing prepping is this presentation of other people as liabilities instead of assets. And if I was an economist, this would be nonsensical. Because every country is trying to raise their population so that they can have more people because [struggles to say seriously] labor produces all value. Because people make stuff and do things. And so like, giving away eggs to your neighbors is a better prep then extra gas masks or whatever. I mean, extra gas masks is nice because you can give them to other people or whatever. But, I would rather have neighbors who like me then have a gas mask. And it seems so basic to me and logical that like..like if you ever had to not do something because someone else did it, that's what other people do. Like every meal I haven't cooked because someone else cooked it, I am blessed.
Eric 49:13
While we're recording this I watched my wife go outside with the dogs. I didn't have to stop recording to do that cause I have my wife. And it's that way with other people too.
Margaret 49:24
Yeah, exactly. And, you get to do that for her. Partnership is a thing that we have developed as a species and community as a thing that...we are not this...Like, we're not lone animals, you know?
Eric 49:40
Kind of the bedrock of why we have literally everything that we have right now is because when we first evolved, we said "Hey, what if we took care of each other?" And they all thought, "That's a pretty good idea. Let's give that a shot." And it's worked so far. And, and now that we have all kinds of stuff in addition do that it's like we lose sight of the basic thing that has kept us alive for millennia, which is taking care of each other Like, your bug out bag doesn't splint your leg even if you have a splint in your bug out bag. If you're the only person around with that bag then you need to split your leg. What if you didn't do it well enough because you don't have the right leverage? What if you did something wrong? Another person is infinitely more useful than the entire contents of your bag, than all of the gadgets that are recommended on those prepper magazines and websites, and all of that, you know. Just the person next door or the person next to you, the relationships that we build, they are indescribably more valuable than the instruction that you get in so many of those basic prepper blogs. I told you that I was looking at comp titles for turning my book, or turning When/If into a book and one of them said in the introduction, "You have to beware the duplicitousness of man." And like, sure. But also, have you thought about all the times that people were just cool.
Margaret 51:29
Yeah. And like...and this isn't a...I mean, it is like a hippie feel good thing that I'm advocating. But, it's not a naive one, right? It's not, "No one will ever lie to me. No one will ever hurt me. No one will ever take advantage of me." It's like they think we're all like, naive idiots. And it's like, we've been through some shit. We're adult people. Like and children have also. You know, I've had my trust betrayed. But that doesn't change the fact that developing and building trust is also the thing that all of the good stuff comes from. And so what we need to do is...yeah, we figure out who in the group is likely to betray us and try and murder us all and we like, you know...but we don't spend all of our time thinking about that or then we succeed at destroying ourselves without even starting. Which, is what these books are basically doing, what they're advocating is that we immediately start off as the war of one against all and it's...I think that that's what most people have against preparedness is not the idea of having stuff in case stuff goes bad, but the mindset of, "I've got mine. Fuck you." I think we have this instinctive revulsion of the people who go really far into that page. And I actually think most preppers don't do that. I think most prepper talker-about-errs do that. It ties really well into the grift. It ties really well into selling stuff, you know, because I can't sell you friendship. Unless, you support me high enough on my Patreon, in which case...[said jokingly] Actually, I don't do that anymore. And like, I can't sell you, you know, good connection with your neighbor or whatever, right? There's nothing in it for me. Nah, that's interesting. Yeah, but I think about like...like, I was watching some traditional prepping thing and it was trying to take a more even handed approach to that. And it was like, "Some preppers are waiting to shoot everyone who comes on the property. Some preppers have extra backpacks ready to hand out in times of crisis." And I want to be like, "Where are they? How do I know them? Why are not enough people making videos about like..." I literally have this station in my basement with like...I got the I got the pegboard. I got all the containers that stick to the pegboard with like, Here's the one that has hair ties, and here's the one that has tampons, and here's the one that has, you know, water filtration pills. And, you know, I have my like assembly line built because I want to be the person who's handing out these bags, you know. Anyway.
Eric 54:21
And that is fantastic. I love that idea.
Margaret 54:24
Yeah, no, I recommend it. I need to put together a like "How to do this," or something. And the same with also food storage because the other thing...I'm kind of rambling and you're the guest. I apologize. But, I'm almost done with this ramble. I think about how not everyone is going to do this preparedness thing. So how do we who tend to think in this way pick up some of that slack. And it can't just be that the totes under our beds are completely full, right? But like, I think about like...you know If I get a freeze dryer, I can distribute freeze dried food to people and it gets....And then I just have to absorb that cost basically to avoid the like...But how do we, you know...Here's our Mylar dried food buckets that everyone we know has at least one Mylar dried food bucket because it's good for two days of eaten. And that's the likelihood of the time that you'd have to worry, you know. I don't know. I don't know where I'm going with this.
Eric 55:31
Well, I mean, I think that that naturally segues into what I find to be the next step in preparedness, which is just mutual aid. And I encourage this as much as I can, despite the fact that--I mean, to be honest, I have limited engagement with mutual aid in Columbus for a number of reasons. Not the least of which being that despite the fact that I love people, I don't like people.
Margaret 56:00
Yeah, totally.
Eric 56:01
Like, I absolutely want you to live and have a great life. I absolutely do. But I also just want to stay at home with my wife, and my dogs, and my chickens. You know? When you ask me to come out and do something, I'll do it. But otherwise, I just, you know, want to be want to be alone. But, mutual aid is that next step. It's applying everything that you have learned and done for yourself and your family, if you have a family, and then externalizing it so that if you have skills, you are teaching other people skills. If you have resources, you're giving other people resources. If you have time or you have money, you are using those things to help prepare your community in the same way that you began with yourself. I think that that is absolutely necessary and absolutely intrinsic to the idea of preparedness from a leftist perspective. Without that practical application, the difference between you and a Right wing prepper is philosophical.
Margaret 57:15
Yeah.
Eric 57:17
And so I think that it's important that we--even if it's limited, you know, I'm not saying that everybody out there has to always be doing everything at every mutual aid event. Because if you live in a city and you look around for those things, they're everywhere all the time. And if you don't have the time to dedicate to that you might feel meanly about yourself. And I don't think that you should. But I think that it's necessary to be thinking in that regard and to, when you're able, to give time or resources, you know. Lend your skill set. I think that that is just absolutely critical. It's the next step and preparedness. It's what allows us to think about what is a very uncertain and oftentimes very dark future in just a couple of short years ahead of us and think about it with some hope, which is just as necessary to survival as, you know, food and water. You have to be able to think that tomorrow might change and change for the better.
Margaret 58:24
Yeah. Yeah, morale is as much a determining factor in victory in battle, right, of between two armies, as like anything else. And no, that's interesting. I really liked this way of phrasing it that mutual aid is just basically the next step after preparedness. And I think that as a fellow, you know, I'm an introvert and I'm reasonably happy with my house in the mountains, and my dog, and my friends and stuff, but don't hang out with them as much. And I think about how this is also a good way to develop skills. Like, teaching is a really good way to hone skills, right, when you're ready to, when you've already learned them. Don't just like run out and be like, "I'm gonna go teach stitching," right? But like, you know, now that I have some experience in X, Y and Z, I can go out and present that to people and like connect into a mutual aid organization, perhaps, to teach these things or whatever. No, I like that idea. And then even if it's just... Yeah, whatever, maybe my plan is that I just show up to mutual aid organizations. And I'm like, "Here's giant things of dehydrated vegetables," or "Here's freeze dried food. See you later. Not even gonna tell you my name.
Eric 59:57
Who was that masked rider with buckets of food?
Margaret 1:00:01
Yeah, exactly!
Eric 1:00:03
And you know what, I think that is worthwhile. Particularly for personalities like ours, if we're averse to--one of the main stumbling blocks I think for when you get into mutual aid is the politics. And I don't mean like being a leftist. I mean, like the interesting conflict that occurs. That's been a big stumbling block here in in my town and one of the reasons why mutual aid is constantly stumbling and restarting is because of that. Which, is not to say that there aren't a number of organizations that have stuck it through here in town that have done a lot of good work, because they have done a lot of good work, but it is a difficulty. And I can understand why people have trouble with that, which is why you don't necessarily have to donate your time if your skill set precludes you from that, if your skill set leans toward running by with buckets and food and saying, "Here, we give these out." Like that has absolute value. It absolutely does.
Margaret 1:01:13
And I will say that does tie into something that we've talked a little bit about in the show, and we're hopefully going to talk a lot more about in the show, is that one of the biggest things that any movement, any mutual aid, any Leftism, any whatever needs is more mediation, and more conflict resolution, and like more of a commitment..There's a cliche that someone presented to me once, or a slogan that someone presented to me once, that I hold on to a lot which is, "Deescalate all conflict that isn't with the enemy." And not that the conflict doesn't exist, but we should all go into it with the attitude of "We are looking to deescalate this conflict." And that said, that is part of why I'm...It's like how much am I an introvert and how much am I just like, sick of dealing with that shit? Like, I'm too old for it. I'm just like, I don't care. Leave me alone. But that actually...but then like the work that you do to tie it all back up with your with your newsletter is like one of your skill sets. And you do a very good job of it--I really do recommend to anyone listening to subscribe to When/If--is tracking what's happening and talking about it in a clearer way. And I think you do a good job of that.
Eric 1:01:13
Thank you.
Margaret 1:01:13
Are there any final thoughts that you have? Anything that we should have talked about that we didn't? Or?
Eric 1:01:21
Is there? Is there some some goofy thing that the far Right preppers do that we can make fun of in these last few minutes?
Margaret 1:02:46
Oh, yeah.
Eric 1:02:49
Because that is fun to do.
Margaret 1:02:51
I know. I think it's really just the overall attitude, you know, the overall idea that you're going to fight off the hordes, with your 16 AR-15s.
Eric 1:03:07
I think that maybe this is the thing to make fun of is I think that we often, you know, as a species, we think of things--at least I do it being a writer--I think of things narratively and I want to know, I want to ask these people: Once you have fought off everybody, once nobody's coming to your castle anymore trying to break in and then steal your things--because they did that supposedly--what are you doing? What are you doing with the rest of your life? Do you? Like if you have a family, like, are they just...are they gonna hang out with you? Are you restarting civilization?
Margaret 1:03:52
With each other?
Eric 1:03:53
Yeah. Each other. Presumably, because everybody else is dead. You shot them. So without God's divine intervention making sure that your genes don't get a little wonky I don't know what you're going to do. I don't know what that life looks like. I don't see that life as worth living.
Margaret 1:04:11
Yeah.
Eric 1:04:12
But from a leftist perspective and enacting that leftist philosophy, preparedness becomes a way to not just survive but to make a situation that can be awful into something from which we take benefit. You know, we can we can find new ways to exist in these situations. Is it Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell?
Margaret 1:04:44
Yeah.
Eric 1:04:45
Yeah. There's, so many cases of people who find ways to exist and to thrive in the wake of absolute disasters. And I think that that's something that humans do sometimes instinctively and I think that, particularly, leftists try to pursue. Yeah.
Margaret 1:05:06
I think that is good words to end on. And if people want to--I know I've shouted out a couple times--but if if people want to follow you and get your newsletter, you want to tell them again how to do that?
Eric 1:05:19
Probably easiest to find me. My last name is spelled SHONKWILER. My first name is Eric with a C. Nothing about finding me is easy when it comes to that. I think that the address for the newsletter itself is when-if.ghost.io I think.
Margaret 1:05:46
It is. I just double checked. When-if.ghost.io. Yep.
Eric 1:05:53
Great. Thank you.
Margaret 1:05:55
Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I hope I get to have you on it some other time, too.
Eric 1:06:02
That would be great. Thank you so much for having me. This has been a blast.
Margaret 1:06:10
Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, you should...Well, I mean, you should go subscribe to When/If. But, you should also support us. You can support us by going to patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness and you would be supporting Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which is why the Patreon is Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness is because that's our name. And by doing that, you're supporting a whole podcast network, a book publisher, zine publisher, and an anarchist collective that has been working for 20 years. The current collective has kind of revitalized things and made all kinds of cool things happen. If you support us, you can get zines mailed to your house every month. And also, thanks to you, we're weekly now, probably. If you're hearing this week after the last one came out, it's because we're weekly now. And that's all because of you supporters. And in particular, I want to thank Jans, Oxalis, Janice, Paige, Aly, Paparouna, Milica Boise Mutual Aid, Theo Hunter, Shawn, S.J., Paige, Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Cat J, Staro, Jenipher, Eleanor, Kirk, Sam, Chris, Michaiah, Hoss the Dog, and that's it. No one else. Oh, wait, and all of you, all of you lovely listeners, also, the main thing you can do is put some food and water in your house. Volunteer for mutual aid groups. I don't know. Help people organize against fascism. Build retaining walls that keep the ocean from destroying...Okay, that might be beyond the average person's...Anyway, I hope you're doing as well as you can with everything that's happening and I will talk to you soon.