4 years ago
S1E1 - Kitty Stryker on Anarchist Prepping
Episode Notes
Kitty Stryker can be found on twitter at @kittystryker and at http://kittystryker.com/
Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter at @magpiekilljoy and at http://www.birdsbeforethestorm.net/
The following transcript was provided by a comrade who wants to help us make this show more accessible:
S01E01 Kitty Stryker on Anarchist Prepping Live Like The World Is Dying
0:00:00.0# (Introductory music)
0:00:15.1# Margaret Killjoy: Hello and welcome to Live Like The World Is Dying; a podcast that explores life when it feels like the end times. I say "when it feels like the end times", and I’m gonna get into this more throughout various episodes of the podcast, because of course, the world is always ending. It’s always changing the status quo. Always shakes and changes, collapses, rebuilds, all of these things. So sometimes people roll their eyes when you talk about the world ending. And sometimes that makes sense, the world has ended in a lot of different ways. But... It sure feels like the world is ending right now to me and to... Maybe to you and maybe it will, maybe it won't. Obviously what it means for the world to end is a subjective thing. But it's a... It's a stress factor to say the least, on a lot of people's lives right now. Thinking about climate change and thinking about the... The rise of global fascism. So this is a podcast that's gonna explore... Well, how we can live while we feel like the world is dying. For myself and for this podcast I've found that I focus on four different priorities. I focus on living like the world is going to end and that I might not survive, living like the world is going to end and I can try to survive, living like we can prevent the end of the world, and of course, living like maybe the world isn't ending after all. So basically hedonism, prepping, revolution, and not burning all your bridges because... Who knows, the status quo might linger on after all. With this podcast I'm probably going to focus on the middle two of these priorities. I'm gonna focus on prepping and revolution. And I'm going to do that because... Well, I've always sort of wanted there to be more information and more... More going on about anarchist and leftist prepping. Because most of the prepping world is of course steeped in... Not just like right-wing politics, but also right-wing values and individualistic values and of course as an anarchist I believe in the balance between the individual and the community and because of that I don't believe in individualistic survival. I don't believe that the bunker mentality, which we're going to talk a lot of shit on in this podcast over the next couple episodes, is appropriate to most... To most threat models. So I'll be your host, but for the most part I'm going to interview people who know a lot more about a lot of this stuff than me. As for me, I am a prepper I suppose on some level. I keep a small stockpile food. Dried food in 5 gallon buckets in case there's an interruption in... Well, food supplies. I make sure I know where water filtration is. I also keep a to-go bag and... At my house. And I keep another one in my car that's much smaller. Neither of these are a particularly elaborate. They're... They're fairly simple things I put together. And that's... That's more for my own mental welfare than it is like any immediate expectation of crisis. And I also... I live off grid. Which is not something that I'm gonna specifically advocate that anyone else do. I actually live off grid because it just sort of meets my needs here and now in terms of how I like to live. I live about half an hour away from a small city in a cabin I built myself in the woods because I like doing that. I like living that way. I'm an anarchist and that's going to certainly bleed over into the content of this show. I believe in a world without course of hierarchies like the state or capitalism or white supremacy or heteronormativity or... Or any of the intersecting oppressions and hierarchies that rule the world that shouldn't. And so of course, a lot of my... I tell you this because I want you to know my biases because I want you to come to your own conclusions. I have a bias against state and federal aid. I tend to find it to be wildly inefficient. I'm far more interested in creating a society based on mutual aid. And so... And I find agency to be wildly important. I find it very important for us to encourage each other to have agency and so I'm interested in disaster relief or crisis preparation or whatever, that maximizes individual agency, that maximize community agency and... Yeah, that's what's interesting to me so that's what I'm going to be focusing on more. This first episode, our guest is Kitty Stryker who I can let introduce herself. Thanks so much for listening.
0:05:01.9# (Musical transition)
0:05:06.5# Margaret: So today our guest is Kitty Stryker. Well actually, do you want to introduce yourself with your name and pronouns and kind of any political or organizational affiliation you feel like shouting out.
0:05:21.4# Kitty Stryker: Sure. I'm Kitty Stryker, I use she/her pronouns. I'm a... I identify myself as a leftist doomsday prepper. But I'm more of a like... Emergency prepper, street medic. I work with Struggle Of Circus, which is a of bunches of leftists and other sort of radical political groups and a bunch of juggalos coming together to help out at protests and usually do medic related stuff but also be kind of a meat wall around marginalized communities. I identify as an anarchist and... Yeah, I guess I just found it really interesting that when I was looking for communities of leftist to talk to about prepping, there wasn't anything there.
0:06:15.5# Margaret: Yeah that was... I think we ended up kind of finding each other through a similar... I don't actually remember how we first ended up talking about it. Maybe you do. But we've been, for anyone who's listening, Kitty and I have been talking vaguely about how we needed to do something about this... This lack of...
0:06:34.2# Kitty: Lack of information, yeah.
0:06:35.9# Margaret: Yeah. Because so much of the information that's out there about prepping is not really applicable, well, to anyone realistically. But certainly not necessarily applicable to people whose ideology isn't "fuck you, I've got mine", you know? So...
0:06:53.5# Kitty: Right and I think... And it could be actively hostile in forums and stuff. Like places that you wanna go to ask for information and ask for advice become really hostile when people are talking about how much they want to kill antifa or of like... "I can't wait til the race war". It's not really a very comfortable place to ask questions about fortifications.
0:07:19.5# Margaret: Yeah. That makes sense. So why don't we start by kind of talking about the general conception of preparedness and kind of what is leftist or anarchist prepping or preparedness. As... At least as you can conceive it.
0:07:37.7# Kitty: Sure, well, so for me I grew up with parents who are sort of like... Suburban homesteader types, with a mixture of prepping. But are also hoarders so while they have everything you would need in an apocalypse you also wouldn't necessarily be able to find it. So I kinda grew up with the hoarding tendency that they think comes with a lot of prepping. You wanna have lots of things that seemed very important. But also this desire to try to make it organized and make it easily accessible. I realized fairly quickly that while I'm more of a stay-in-place kind of prepper and sort of emergency preparedness person, I also will potentially need to be able to put what I need a backpack and carry it with me. At least for a mile or two depending on the emergency and if I have so much stuff that I can't practically do that without a car, it's not really going to be that useful. I live in earthquake country so I just have to anticipate the roads are going to be kind of a mess. So that was sort of where I came from, was this not very political, camping and also very pagan, getting in touch with earth kind of thing. Like my parents beehives that drives all of their neighbors off the wall. They hate it.
0:09:12.7# Margaret: That's interesting. I've only a couple times been around this, yeah, suburban homesteading idea where you have access to a little bit of land. Not necessarily so much privacy, not so much... Place where you can keep your bees.
0:09:24.5# Kitty: Nope, no privacy. Everyone in my neighborhood is like, "That's the witch house. You can tell because there's thirteen sacred trees in the front lawn. And her dad goes outside and scythes the lawn."
0:09:38.1# Margaret: Wow.
0:09:39.7# Kitty: I don't think he's actually even done that in years so I think it's just an overgrown tangle at this point.
0:09:45.9# Margaret: Well that's even more fun.
0:09:46.7# Kitty: But we have like... We have a pond in there. There's a little herb garden, a veggie garden. We have a crow feeder. It's... It's elaborate.
0:09:56.8# Margaret: I'm imagining this on like a quarter acre, half acre. Is that..?
0:10:00.5# Kitty: Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. With manicured lawns right next to us on either side.
0:10:08.5# Margaret: Well, that's a...
0:10:09.1# Kitty: Really... That's where I was raised. I think that explains a lot.
0:10:13.7# Margaret: Okay. It's an interesting metaphor for being the one person who's... You know, either prepping or being a hoarder.
0:10:22.4# Kitty: I've been the one person for a while. Yeah. But I think that that's in such staunch contrast to doomsday preppers which is what most people think of when they think of prepping. They think of like, "Oh, that's those rednecks in the middle of the really rural areas with their bunker and their nine million guns and their giant water containers." And they're, you know, being completely convinced that there's going to a nuclear war or there's going to be... I don't know. What are some of the other disasters that they're always prepared for? Well, I mean like, definitely race wars. Definitely one of the things.
0:11:09.1# Margaret: Yeah, I mean and that's kind of the... I feel like that's the tell between whether you're talking to a racist prepper or a... Well, obviously if someone's talking about a race war they're clearly racist. But... You know, there's a tell of whether or not they're obsessed with like the... The boogaloo or if they're obsessed with... You know, the possibility of invasion or... System collapse in general.
0:11:32.3# Kitty: Right, right. And like what system collapse looks like. Like what are they actually afraid of, I think is very telling. A lot of times you'll see people say, "Oh, I'm afraid that people are going to come and murder my family for my resources because my resources are so awesome that everyone for miles around is going want to come and murder me." Which, first of all, if that was true I would not be saying it on the internet. That just seems like a bad idea. That's... My boyfriend and I watch doomsday preppers and talk about how we would raid their bunkers because they show us everything. And that just seems very shortsighted, if that is indeed what you are worried about.
0:12:22.2# Margaret: Right, as compared to just kind of showing off and being excited about... Like kind of nerding out about gear...
0:12:27.6# Kitty: I think it's like... Yeah, it's like nerding out and they think it's more of a threat than it is. I don't know. I think... I think it speaks to a desire for conflict that I don't personally have. I don't want to have to use my apartment complex to snipe people. I just don't want to do that. I just wanna be able to grow a garden using a discarded... Shoe organizer from the broken down Ross down the street. That's my type of prepping, rather than preparing for endless violence.
0:13:10.4# Margaret: Yeah, there's kind of a... I feel like one of the main myths or concepts that I'm trying to get across with this podcast... Not a myth I'm trying to get across this, prove that something is a myth, is the bunker mentality is the "I've got mine, fuck you" mentality, that is so common in prepping circles and it's... It's really off-putting because... I mean, even... Even from a pure self-interest point of view it just seems so dumb. So you hole up with your five closest friends in the middle of the woods during the apocalypse, and that's like all fine and good until your appendix bursts and you forget that you're not a surgeon and that your brother isn't a surgeon, you know? And...
0:13:56.0# Kitty: Well you just need more useful friends.
0:13:57.9# Margaret: Well, sure but...
0:13:58.7# Kitty: That's what I did.
0:13:59.2# Margaret: But what if you are the surgeon, right? And then your appendix bursts.
0:14:02.4# Kitty: Well, yeah. Then... Yeah. Then... Then... Well, then you just die. I mean, that's the thing. I think that they... They're so afraid of violence coming from other people that they don't... A, think of the violence that could happen amongst themselves which is kind of inevitable if you're locked in a bunker together. And there's... Especially if there's power dynamics in place and stress, then I feel like there's gonna be some abusive dynamics that come out of that. So if you're not prepared for that, it doesn't really matter how good your resources are. And there's... So that's just even within your unit, and then never mind if you're then expanding out to like... Do you know how to do literally everything in the world? Because you're probably going to help. It's the same as the idea about currency. Everyone's so keen on like... Oh yeah, make sure that you have currency. Make sure you silver buried in your yard. Like... What are you going to do with that, really? Like... I mean... It's cool, I guess. But unless you're going to use that as a brick... I don't understand.
0:15:12.3# Margaret: Well I guess it gets into... In some ways, I think the apocalypse... People who think too much about the apocalypse, whether on they're on the left or on the right, or just bored centrists or moderates or whatever, I think that people are thinking about and imagining clean slates and imagining about how they would like to act and what kind of societies they would like to create, what kind of dynamics they'd like to create. So it's really easy for someone who, say of a libertarian mindset, to be like "Well, of course gold is what matters because we're all going to trade resources. There's definitely going to be market economics after the apocalypse because we're going to institute market... Economics. And then maybe like... Those of us that are like, "Wow, the market's a dumb thing and isn't really particularly interesting to me at all." Like, yeah I have a really hard time imagining that I'm going to be doing much... Even bartering after the apocalypse. Like, I'm... I'm either like rolling with people and sharing shit or I'm keeping shit to myself but like... I'm not gonna be like, "Well, these three bullets are worth that tourniquet," or whatever, you know? At least that's my conception of it. That's when... When I like to imagine the end of the world, which is not actually something I like imagining anymore, but I'm imagining something that is closer to the ideological interest that I have. Which is maybe a fault of mine, maybe that's a blind spot of mine.
0:16:39.5# Kitty: Well, I don't think that's... I don't think it's necessarily a fault. I mean, like one thing that I think when... You know, I have a group friends that we talk about this stuff a lot amongst ourselves. Especially because we're within bicycling distance from each other, so we're sort of like, "Okay, if there is an emergency, we're pretty sure that we could get to each other." But we all have... Slightly different ideas of what we would like to see happen which means we also have a different... Like different ideals and different areas of expertise. And I think that that is actually super helpful. I don't know that I would want to be in a group that everybody thinks the same way, as long as you think cooperatively versus competitively. And for me that's what's important. I don't really care how we get to cooperative instead of competitive, but that's what I want.
0:17:33.5# Margaret: Yeah, that makes sense. So, look, I want to talk more about... Okay, one of the things I really like about prepping in general is that it can be very practical. It's not, it's... Obviously a lot of it is not practical at all. But like... But to take this conversation practically for a minute... Like, what you do... Not necessarily... Both in terms of things that you keep around, but also what are your plans? You talked about bicycling to meet up with your friends. What is... What kind of preparedness do you personally practice?
0:18:05.4# Kitty: So my boyfriend and I talk a lot about what our plans are. Pretty much every three months or so. And we're mostly... And ust to give some context, we're mostly prepping for an earthquake, for a big earthquake, because that's the most likely thing to happen here. I guess there's some possibilities that will end up having a bunch of neo-nazis coming and terrorizing us but I think they've gotten tired of Berkeley and have moved to Portland instead so... We're probably fine for now. So we talk a little bit about what are the risks that are current, what are the resources that are currently around? Maybe... We've been talking about creating a map, like actually getting a map and write, marking down important things that we might want to know where they are when you don't have Google Maps for example. So stuff like that is really important. Like the sort of... Preparing... For immediate needs and also for where you are going to be able to get resources. What area is around that could conceivably be turned into a garden if need be. Which we're actually lucky, we have a park really close by. And we also make a point to know our neighbors. Both our housed and houseless neighbors. So having good relationships with them is really helpful and like giving them ideas of how to be prepared so that we're not overwhelming ourselves trying to take care of them as well as ourselves. So you're trying to match up add the younger folks with older folks or able-bodied folks with people with disabilities so that way there's... It's easier for people to mobilize and so that we know who in our area is going to need help. So that's some of the community planning stuff that's not even focused on my group of hyper-focused friends but just making my environment less chaotic. And so that's sort of like... And again, like a garden, it takes some pruning and some cultivating and a little bit of upkeep but I feel reasonably confident that my neighbors are going to be able to handle themselves. Which is my first big concern because then I can start worrying about things like, what do I personally actually need? One thing that is kind of difficult, I live in an apartment and we don't have a huge amount of space. So I can't have buckets and buckets of freeze-dried food. We do tend to have a lot of canned food, we do tend to have a lot of nuts and dried fruit and stuff like that around so that helps a little bit. It makes it easier for us to find stuff in rubble that we can eat. We also have a... A dresser that we put our prepper stuff in and it's sorted with medic supplies in the first two drawers because that's sort of my specialty... That's my area focus. And then we have sort of more general supplies, so that's where we have LifeStraws and we have bandanas and we have masks for filtering out smoke or disease. We have lots and lots of gloves, we have... Water filtering tablets, we have a bunch different kinds of fire starters. So we sort of put together a compendium of things that we felt would be useful. And then what's probably the least practical thing is my... In the main living room I have a hatchet, I have a walking stick, I have my camping stuff. So it's not all condensed in one place but I have... I do have a spare tent at my partner's house and I have a medic bag. A fully packed medic go-bag that I take to protests in the trunk of my car. So that way I can... I have one medic bag in the house, I have one in the car, and I usually have one at my partner's house. Sometimes I have one at my local bar too but that's the one that usually get used if I go to a protest 'cause that's near downtown. But just having pockets stuff... And then I have a storage unit downtown as well. So I figured it might be more difficult to get into my storage unit but at least it's underground and that would be not a bad place to have some stuff that I don't need immediately but might want down the line, yeah. So... But it's sort of a pack rat... Pack ratty, squirrel type prepping. Of burying little caches...
0:23:27.8# Margaret: I'm impressed because you're... Yeah, you're managing to successfully do in an urban environment what... Well... Something I associate more with the rural environments of... You know, one of the things that I was realizing...
0:23:41.1# Kitty: It's harder. It's harder, but it's only harder if you care about being the only person who can get to it. And I don't really care so much about that. I just wanna have access to it. I'm... Because, for me, I'm someone who... I saw a guy on a scooter get hit by car. I was so glad I had that medic kit on me so that I could actually help him out. And immediately help him out. I'm so glad I had that expertise. So... And actually that's one thing that I also have is a first aid book because, again, I don't know how to do everything. But if I have a book, I can probably figure out how to do most things safely. So...
0:24:26.7# Margaret: What's the book?
0:24:29.4# Kitty: It's an old field manual medic guide, I forget what era. But I prefer to try to go for stuff that's military because... Or serious environmental wilderness strategy guides because then they're not focused on you having access to a full hospital. It's not ideal conditions. Sometimes first aid advice is like, "Oh well just call an ambulance" and it's like well that's not really practical in the sort of situations I'm preparing for so I prefer to look at older stuff. And then take newer knowledge and pack that on top. But knowing how to do some of these things when you don't have electricity, a lot of modern medicine depends on electricity, depends on you having access to different kinds of medications and solutions that might not have. So I think it's kind of... I don't... Until I have to do it in practice I don't know how useful it actually will be. But I'm interested in learning how have people prevented disease... In wartime, in... A forest in the middle of nowhere versus what you you would get trained necessarily if you're getting CPR training for your work.
0:26:08.8# Margaret: Have you taken the wilderness first responder course or anything like that?
0:26:12.4# Kitty: I want to so badly. I'm hoping that I can save up for it or have somebody gift it to me. But that is on my list of, oh my god I would... That be so dreamy. But... I really... I just also am just also am obsessed with medical stuff. I guess that's... That's one thing I would really recommend for people curious about prepping. I would say while it is nice to be able to have information about a bunch of different areas, find the thing that you're really interested and nerd out on that. One of my friends is really, really into finding plants and urban foraging. So that's her area of expertise. It's like, oh, she can tell you every plant you can eat within two miles of your house. And that would be really useful, it's not necessarily something that my brain can hold onto... As easily as medicine stuff. My partner is really good with weapons and... Building shelters. It's not really my area so it's nice to have somebody who can teach me just enough but also has a lot more expertise.
0:27:29.4# Margaret: Yeah, that's something that I... I think about a lot in terms of even just the world I wanna live in. I'm really excited about the idea where we... Instead of having a generalism versus specialization kind of argument, it's another bullshit false dichotomy, probably we should all as much as we can generalize as broadly as we can and then pick the things that stand out to us to specialize in. Like, I don't need to know how to do surgery but I should probably know first... Literal first aid. Like first response... Like there have been a number times in my life where I've... I'm incredibly squeamish, I hate medical things, I hate thinking about it the way that like... Like someone showed me how to use a tourniquet and... You know, I disassociated in order to learn. Because the concept of thinking about like... Arterial bleeding doesn't work for me. But I know that I need to know how to do that so I learn pretty much by disassociating and then kind of when things happen I like disassociate again and then deal with it.
0:28:34.6# Kitty: Yeah, I mean there's some practicality to that. When I was doing medical work at protests I really underestimated how traumatized I was until months later... When I was like, "Wow, I just didn't have feelings for a while." It's a lot and I'm... I love... See, I'm not squeamish at all about that stuff but I'm impatient so like building structures is not my thing. It's like, I could learn how to do it but I don't even put up the tent when I go camping if I can avoid it. So... Knowing that I have a good solid group of people around me who are really excited to do that stuff allows us to do the thing we're excited about but also in case something happens to that person, we know how to do it we just don't like it.
0:29:26.1# Margaret: Yeah. Or at least have a... Can do a rougher version of it, you know? Can do a... I had a... I was just talking to a friend about all of this. I actually don't remember if it's... I'm recordings these interviews out of order from how they're going to play. So I was talking to a friend of mine who's a... A medical professional and he was talking about how in a crisis situation if you have two people, maybe what you want is a nurse and a world class generalist, you know? As like the two people that you need.
0:29:58.8# Kitty: Pretty much. I think having a medic... Like I think everyone should have basic medical training, just basic shit, because that way anybody can do an emergency... Like, okay, "I can put gauze on this and stop the bleeding." That's what I need from people. And every time I go to a protest, people are asking what they could do to help and I'm like, "Just do that. Just do that, only." And help people with sprained ankles and keep them hydrated. 'Cause if you can do all of that then I can focus on stitching someone's head together. That's what I need to be able to be focused on because I'm not the squeamish one. So... Yeah, I think that helps a lot. Also coming up with things for you to do, that gets ignored a lot on prepper forums. At least the ones I've been on. They talk a lot about like, you know, "Okay, you've gotta have all of this foraging skills and you gotta have shelter building and you gotta have all these supplies in order to make all of this stuff," but there are no downtime options. And you're gonna have downtime sometimes. Like you're gonna get sick eventually, if nothing else. So make sure you have stuff to keep your mind busy during those times. 'Cause watching "Alone" for example, I don't know if you've ever seen that one but they put these people by themselves in the middle of the... Was it Canadian wilderness I think for at least the first couple of seasons? And they have to do everything from scratch. They have some supplies on them and a good supply list. But they have to pick like... 1 of 10 items, or 10 different items out of a list of like... pre-approved 50 different things they can have. So have to do a lot of stuff by themselves. And almost every single time the thing that gets to them is just a lack of food and boredom. And if they can keep themselves busy, somehow, like making music or making art or building... Like adding decorations to their shelter, then the fact that they're hungry doesn't bother them so much. But if they don't have anything like that, they're not creative in any way, then the fact that they're hungry literally gnaws away at their brain. So I just think that's a really interesting aspect... Like thinking a lot about mental health in an emergency scenario because I think that gets ignored with a lot of right-wing prepping forums and stuff like that.
0:32:53.6# Margaret: Yeah. Yeah I wonder what... I feel like there's just the deck of card, is what's written about in all the things.
0:33:03.3# Kitty: Yeah, it's always recommended. Always have a deck of cards.
0:33:05.8# Margaret: Which is like... You can tell that they wrote that in the 50's or whatever, you know?
0:33:10.1# Kitty: Right, in that... Part of it's gonna be like, "Oh, like for gambling in order to entertain yourself if... Gambling with the no money that you have. I don't know. It's just... I would much prefer to have... I don't know, Codenames or something. Endless replayability.
0:33:31.2# Margaret: Yeah, I feel like there's a...
0:33:32.1# Kitty: I mean, but...
0:33:32.8# Margaret: Go ahead.
0:33:32.8# Kitty: Let's be honest, I'd be playing Dungeons & Dragons. In my tracker tent as an actual ranger. Playing Dungeons & Dragons.
0:33:45.2# Margaret: You wouldn't play... What's the opposite of it? The dragons play, they play... Humans and Houses?
0:33:51.3# Kitty: Oh, yeah, maybe that too. I don't know, mix them up. Mix them together.
0:33:56.3# Margaret: You'd have roleplaying about what would you do if apartments still existed or whatever?
0:34:00.4# Kitty: Yeah.
0:34:02.7# Margaret: I think that...
0:34:03.3# Kitty: I mean, I guess I don't... I'm not that scared of that. It would be uncomfortable and I'd probably hate it a lot. I'm a house cat. But, you know, I'm not that worried about it either. And I think part of it is because I just made being prepared, knowing where my go-bag is at all times just part of my day-to-day existence. So it's just muscle memory at this point.
0:34:32.8# Margaret: Yeah. Earlier in our pre-conversation, when we talked about what we might talk about, one of the things you brought up is the ableism that exists in a lot of prepping conversations and I was wondering if you wanted to talk more about that.
0:34:46.0# Kitty: Yeah, so I noticed that a lot of discussions on what your go-plan is involves being able to walk long distances. Presumably because they figure walking a long enough distance would get you to area of wilderness, that they feel would be more suitable. I... That is really impractical for a large number of people. People with small children are going to struggle with that. Elderly people are going to struggle with that. People with disabilities are going to struggle with that. Some people with disabilities aren't going to be able to do that. It won't even be just a struggle, it's just impossible. So I think the... We need more diverse resources and we need to talk seriously about how to make this accessible for people who aren't in their... Super hyper fit, in their 30's, ready to charge over a mountain. And in the bay area you could you could walk for eight hours and I don't know that you would find a bit of wilderness... So I don't think that's necessarily the most practical option for all people.
0:36:08.7# Margaret: it's funny to me that all this stuff about going to the wilderness because I live in... Not the wilderness but I very rurally. I live in a house that I built at the end of a... Beyond the end of a gravel road like every stupid stick of my fucking cabin I had to carry up a hill on my back. I actually started building it with a chronic injury and then managed to... Physical therapy my way... This isn't a... Statement about ableism, just the weird stupid shit of building this fucking cabin I live in.
0:36:40.6# Kitty: But looks really cool.
0:36:43.0# Margaret: But there's... Thanks, yeah, no I'm really proud of it and it's funny because actually it's a brilliant place to live during civilization. But if there were some kind of crisis, I would probably get my to-go bag or my car presumably but let's pretend like that's not an option for whatever reason, and I would walk to the city. Because the city is where people are and that is where we can keep each other safe. I think people have this conception of... That people are a danger and that's true, people are dangerous, right? But the wilderness is really fucking dangerous too. And...
0:37:23.7# Kitty: People really underestimate how dangerous the wilderness is. They underestimate how cold it is. The cold will kill you, the wet will kill you.
0:37:34.4# Margaret: Yeah and so getting to... I don't know for certain, it would really depend on the threat, but I would presumably go to a place of higher population so that we collectively can figure out what the fuck to do. And maybe the fact that I have access to certain resources by living on land can become useful to people. And that would be my hope. I could easily imagine a situation where you have, as part of your prepping, you would have... The rural... With rural living access to space. You don't necessarily have access to anything else but you often have access to space and... So you can store tractors and you can store strange devices... Like devices that have very odd and specialized purposes for building or something like that. But then again, the thing I'm slowly learning is that cities have all of those things too. It's just that not necessarily each individual is going to own them. Because not everyone lives on a farm.
0:38:36.4# Kitty: Right. The city owns it or the government owns it. But yeah, there's plenty of parking lots.
0:38:42.5# Margaret: Yeah, that's true.
0:38:45.8# Kitty: So... Yeah. I mean, like... Oh, god. I'm trying to remember what the name of the show was. So I... I watch a lot of prepping and wilderness survival based shows. Somewhat to remind myself that nature is dangerous and also because I find them very amusing. And there was one that was... It wasn't entirely clear if it was a reality show or if it was scripted or both. Pretty sure it was both, but they were in LA. And I forget what they had decided ... The LA one I don't think it was a disease. They had a different calamity happen each season. And in the first season they had a good variety of people. They had several mechanics, they had a couple of nurses and doctors. They had martial arts teachers. So they had a good cross-section of people. And they did decently well surviving in a big warehouse in LA and came up with some incredibly inventive weapons and things. I remember they created a flame thrower out of bits of an old car which was stunning to watch. But then the second season they were in New Orleans, in some of the areas that have been devastated by Katrina. And they had underestimated how swampy it was and how hard it was going to be to get food and how there were tons of snakes and alligators that we're going to kill you. And also that one had a disease element so every once in a while someone would get claimed by a contagious disease and they would just start disappearing. But the thing that really got to them I think is that they didn't have a very diverse group of people. They had a lot of schoolteachers and artists and that's great, that's important stuff, but if they don't have any trade skills as well, they're gonna drop like flies. So it's really important to take your creative energies and learn how to do something that can embrace that but also has a living purpose.
0:41:12.1# Margaret: Yeah. Yeah, as a generalist I think about that where most of my skills are graphic design and audio which is great when you want to start a podcast, if you have been doing electronic music for twenty years or whatever, you know? But I think I've really consciously been working on developing my skills that are not only on a computer, you know? For kind of this purpose.
0:41:39.1# Kitty: Well, hey. Electronic music and audio says to me, making ham radios. Practical and useful. There's always something there, it's just like finding what those things are. Though I will say this, the first season in the warehouse in LA they had a big issue with masculinity.
0:42:04.7# Margaret: I only watched the second season.
0:42:05.4# Kitty: Everybody was...
0:42:06.9# Margaret: I watched the one where they all...
0:42:07.5# Kitty: The first one is great. It's like all these male mechanics shouting at each other about how to fix something better and then this female mechanic just goes and does it.
0:42:16.8# Margaret: Yeah, that sounds like a perfect metaphor.
0:42:19.1# Kitty: And then they when they all brag about how proud that they came up with this idea and she just rolls her eyes and you're just like, "Yup, that's how it would be pretty much." And that said to me a lot about mediation. Knowing how to mediate, knowing your own triggers. Like knowing your own mental health stuff so that you can then navigate other people's mental health stuff. That's also super important. And easy for anybody to do.
0:42:44.9# Margaret: Yeah, yeah I think knowing different organization models. Like I think knowledge and facilitation is a really important skill. I think people basically pick whichever organizational model seems to be practical when the existing larger structure goes away. And I've been in spaces where we haven't been sure how we're going to organize ourselves and I'm surrounded by a bunch of non-anarchists and then I'm like, "Well here's this model where we're all equals but we still actually figure things out." And it just works as compared to I'm pretty sure if someone had been like, "Here's the model, I'm pretty much in charge." And maybe it'll be like some veneer of democracy where he'll be like, and I'm just going to use 'he' for this imaginary patriarch...
0:43:28.5# Kitty: I wonder why.
0:43:29.7# Margaret: He'll be like, "I'm in charge and the we can have a little vote about that if we wanna prove that I'm in charge," you know? And everyone will be like, "Well, he's the one who is offering to get shit done." And what... Of course what people fail to realize is that's like... We get shit done, collectively. Whether it's collectively we do it and someone is taking the credit by being up top, you know? Or whether we do it... So that's one of the things that I think about with prepping. How to... And I think that's maybe one of the things that right-wing preppers are afraid of is they're like... They don't have... The only people skills that they know is this hierarchical system. Well, I guess there's plenty of leftists who also only seem to know hierarchical systems. But...
0:44:13.2# Kitty: I mean it's a pretty... It's a pretty common system. That's why... That's why I kind of enjoy the, everybody gets to be an expert in their own thing so that nobody is super... Nobody can be too pleased with themselves. Keeps everybody humble, I think.
0:44:34.3# Margaret: Yeah. So the one other main question that I... Or thing that I kinda wanna hash out with you for this which is probably gonna be the first episode, everyone who's listening will know whether or not it's the first episode. It will be very embarrassing if this is the seventeenth episode, but... Maybe talk about different threat models. That's... How we we determine what we need, of course, is dependent on what we think is likely to happen and as there's no one-size-fits all. And so you say the primary threat model that you're working with is a natural disaster. Do you want to talk about that or do you want to talk about other threat models or...
0:45:12.8# Kitty: Sure. Well, I think... Okay, a great example is the things that I want for a earthquake is not necessarily what I would want in a tsunami, right? Those are very different natural disasters. As somebody who grew up in hurricane country-ish, you know, it was just really really wet. And having a dust mask would not have helped me in any way. But I would be at much more risk of getting trench foot so that would be like, waterpreoof boots would be way more important. So some of it's knowing your environment and being aware of what your environmental concerns ar. Like living in a city, asbestos is a big fundamental concern. So having dust masks is really important. I feel like I read once that most deaths aren't... In an earthquake, come from inhaling the debris. And that... That causes some of the worst injuries because there's just all of this dust everywhere and... I know that was definitely true with the fires. A lot of people have... Still have some... Some still have breathing problems now from the various fires that were going on in Northern California. So knowing what you need to be concerned about. Like with earthquakes, knowing that the roads might not be super useful to drive on. So having alternative plans for that knowing where your bike paths are. Knowing... If you have a wheelchair for example, maybe thinking of a way to add some tread on your wheelchair might be a practical option. I have a beach cruiser. It's not a racing bike by any means but it's heavy and it's easy to find the parts. And it's really easy to fix myself, that's why I chose that. So thinking about what you can actually do, I think is helpful in figuring out your... Your strategy. I know that I don't know enough about my car to be able to completely dismantle it. However, I do know somebody who does know enough about my car to do that. So I can bike to him and then have him do that. So coming up with those kind of like, "Okay, if this then this, if this then this" strategies helps me at least, I have a very ADHD brain. It helps me have a... A process to go through. Now in California, earthquakes are a big concern especially in this area but fire is also a big concern. And the way I would prepare for a fire versus an earthquake, I would be more concerned about my paperwork disappearing in a fire than an earthquake. Though to be completely honest I'm not that fussed about my paperwork in general. I don't think getting rid of paperwork is the worst plan. But that's not what the government wants to hear from me. So I have... I have some paperwork in a folder that's easy to access if I need to grab something go because my apartment is burning but I wouldn't be as... I wouldn't care much about that if it was an earthquake because in my consideration there would will be enough of a drastic interruption in services for an earthquake that I don't think that that would be an immediate need.
0:49:16.3# Margaret: Yeah and you wouldn't certainly be the only one who has lost their paperwork.
#0:49:20.4# Kitty: Right, exactly. Exactly. And again, I think that we use paperwork as a penalty for so many people that... Maybe mucking up that system a little bit is a convenient little thing I can do on the side. So I... Yeah, I guess... And all of that is completely separate from thinking of having invaders come and try to take my apartment away from me or something. That... I usually strategise for that by thinking about what my plan are if the cops get even more out of control.