S7E58 - This Week in the Apocalypse: Nov 3, 2026

Hello and welcome to Live Like the World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. We are doing This Week in the Apocalypse. That's what this episode is that we are here having in front of us that we're doing for the first week of November. Yay! Every week.

The apocalypse is every week. The apocalypse is in our hearts.

This might be an extra apocalyptic week. Who knows? We're going to talk about that. But before we do, we are going to share a jingle from one of the other anarchist podcasts on the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts, which we are a member of the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts. And so is the jingle you're about to hear. Let's do it!

Welcome to Propaganda by the Seed, a podcast about plants and the nerds that love them. We alternate between hour-long interview episodes that usually focus on a single species or crop, and shorter episodes that focus on topics related to plants like grafting, composting, and the rest. You can find Propaganda by the Seed on the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts, at propagandabytheseed.com, or most podcast platforms. I'll see you deep in the weeds.

I was 14 years old in 1994. Kurt Cobain had just died, and not one of us believed it was suicide. A grunge girl moved from the city to the house next door on my country road, and she had the right flannel, the right jeans, and a Mudhoney shirt. I'd never even heard of Mudhoney, but I was sure they were about to become my new favorite band. She was a year older than me. She never smiled. She never brushed her hair. And she was perfect in every way, assuming she liked girls. When we rode our bikes up the overgrown road to the Devil's Shack and we passed that rusted-out little water tower with the old gold spray paint that says, the devil lives here, I started saying, devil take you, under my breath. Everyone knows if you say it 100 times in less than a minute, the devil will do it. He'll take whoever you're thinking about. I didn't even get to 40, though, because I'm not a monster. Nothing that happened was my fault.

This month on the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness podcast, we have The Devil Lives Here by Margaret Killjoy, a short story about a weird shack in the woods that some teenagers hang out at. We also have a really fun interview with Margaret. about being a teenager and all the weird shit you do in your adolescence. The word of the month is weirdly contrary to popular Halloween eerie time, uh, times, about dispossession. Read and listen along at tangledwilderness.org or wherever you get podcasts.

Anyway, that was an excellent jingle, and we're happy to be back and to be talking about the news this week. I, um, I wanted to bring you headlines, Margaret, but, um, the only thing that the news seems to want to talk about is that this is election week.

Oh, is it?

Yes, in, in the United States. And actually not just in the United States, there are in fact other places in the world doing elections. But, um, if you try and get some news Apparently nothing else is being reported upon.

Yeah, that's why I hate election years.

Yeah, exactly. So for those of us who are listening to this podcast the day it comes out, that'll be Tuesday, November 3rd, and it is in fact Election Day in the US. Most people do listen to this on the day it comes out. Some of us listen to it on Wednesday. If you're listening on Wednesday, you know much more than we know.

Maybe on Monday we might just know that there's nothing to know, you know.

There's some things that'll be settled. It's not all gonna go to uncertainty.

Fair enough, fair enough.

But yeah, a bunch of it is, and that's kind of the thing to be talked about. Although I'll give you one other breaking news headline. Do do do do do do do do do! Just came in over the wires from our cohort Inman in Arizona. They shared that the Four Corners area got 20 trillion gallons of rainwater over the past two weeks.

That seems like a lot of rainwater.

It— yeah, I think so.

I'm not an expert in big numbers, but that seems like a lot.

Maybe they heard our podcast about how the Colorado River and its, um, things were, uh, empty, and they were like, oh no, we need to do that, and they dumped.

What's really fun about when it rains after a drought is that it doesn't actually, um, get into the soil. It just runs off because when the soil is like really dry, it's not in a very good position to absorb water.

Right.

Because inertia is true just as much for soil as it is for people, apparently. So I'm sure all that rainwater did a lot of good. I actually have less weather news than usual. I know I'm usually the apocalyptic weather girl.

You sure are.

But I wanted to talk about prepping this week. Are there more headlines? Should we— do we have more headlines?

No, just that breaking headline that came in from Inman as we began to record. And they also noted that because of all that rain, that Arizona was the wettest state In the United States.

Yeah, that's where we should all move. I'm sure it's the safest

for

climate.

Yeah, exactly. Everything's good there.

Yeah. Well, it has been a— okay, the other thing in the news for my algorithm, because I have poisoned my algorithm— that's not true. You can actually actively poison your algorithm where it shows you garbage. That's cool and good. But no, instead I have an algorithm poisons my brain by mostly showing me preparedness content. Whether I'm looking on Reddit or Instagram or YouTube or wherever, it's just going to show me people talking about what's going on in terms of preparedness around the world. And it is a big week for preparedness. It is a big week in that there's like one version— I'm making this number entirely up— there's like one version where there's about twice as many people preparing as there used to be as of this week.

Hmm.

Because Oh, huge number of—

Is it for good reasons? Is it for good, happy reasons? Because usually I'm excited when people get some preparedness taken care of. It kind of is.

It's interesting. I'm not a big fan of government as a thing that I've written some books about, but I do like the social function of people trying to encourage each other for things, and sometimes government fulfills that role. Governments all over the world, especially in the last week, but it's mostly just that it's in the news this last week, have been telling their citizens to get prepared. Okay. The biggest news headlines of this is that the UK has announced it's, like, updated all of its preparedness stuff and put out a big push to be like, hey everyone, go get tinned beans, 'cause that's what they call it instead of canned because they don't know how to speak English. And it'll never be fun— not funny for me to make fun of the way that English people talk. There's not a lot of punching up that a white American gets to do. But, but as a trans girl and an Irish American, I like— anyway, so the UK government was like, hey everyone, be prepared, get like 3 days worth of food, water, power, and like has put out a lot more stuff about this. So has Japan. Japan has launched a new— or actually, I think it launches the day we record this. They are launching a new basically like preparedness agency and initiative.

Oh.

A lot of other countries are doing this too. But when we see the really long lists that everyone collates in their scare articles, because the thing is, people have jumped on this fact to scare people, and that is the exact opposite of what should be happening with this. But if you look at like, like Newsweek has an AI-generated map that's incorrect. This is going to shock you to know that an AI-generated map is incorrect. But like Newsweek had an article that was like, Every country telling people to get prepared, and it like lists all the countries, and then it like shows them on a map, and it's just very clearly different than the ones it just listed.

And

then at the bottom is like prepared by our AI prepared fucking robot newspaper garbage. And I'm still waiting for people to just realize that everything that AI does is wrong. I tried to watch a Oh, never mind. I was about to—

Go off on an AI tangent?

Yeah, I started watching the, like, this is the best kind of batteries that they don't want you to know about on YouTube. And it wasn't they with 3 parentheses. It wasn't like, um, uh, antisemitic conspiracy. It was just like the government, the man, big lithium. They were like, actually what we all need is lead acid batteries. And I was like, what the fuck is a lead acid battery? And then I'm like, oh, this is being presented by AI, and it's just the lead acid battery. That's not a good type of battery for deep storage. It's like, this is what everyone needs to know. This is that we've been doing this for years and it was fine, but it's not good enough now. And you're like, because it doesn't have a touchscreen. And I'm like, I'm sorry, the reason lithium is better as a battery— there's a lot of reasons, and it doesn't have to do with touchscreens. Um, I have used giant, weird, old, cranky lithium batteries. I started this podcast while powered off-grid on a used, about 200-pound lithium battery that was at about 60% capacity because it was like really cheap. It— because it had been like an industrial, like—

Okay.

I don't know, I think it had been used, um, for like road signs or something like that. And then it was retired, so they sold it for really cheap to me. And then I had to drag it up a hill. This is really what everyone's here to hear about. I had to drag it up a hill and I couldn't— I didn't have stairs up to my old cabin. It was just a dirt path that was very steep. And at the end, I had to set up like ratchet straps and like lie on the ground and like drag this fucking— because it didn't occur to me that I could get people's help to do things.

Oh, the things we did when we were younger and poorer and Fiercely independent.

Yeah. So this AI map, incorrect. And there's a lot of scare articles out there in mainstream media and elsewhere being like, kind of implicitly saying, what do the governments know that you don't, right? If everyone is telling you to get prepared. Oh, just to continue the list, the EU is always on this list, but the EU, almost every country in the EU has been telling their citizens to get prepared for about 2 or 3 years. It's almost like a historically imperialist neighbor of theirs, Russia, has invaded one of them.

Yeah, and maybe there was a giant world plague that occurred as well.

Yeah, so like, people— like, I remember when Sweden did it, and like, a Swedish friend of mine like reached out and was like, oh, how worried should I be? And I was like, no, you should just like do this. It's good. It's fine, you know? World War III is either gonna happen or it's not.

Or it's already happening.

Yeah, honestly, we won't totally know where we draw the beginning of it until the history books, which some people might be around to write. Then, okay, so the EU has also been telling people to prepare, and then the US hasn't told people to prepare, but you'll find individual agencies occasionally being like, hey, we're in for some wacky weather this winter, which we are, although wacky doesn't necessarily mean, like, inherently stormy or destructive, but like different than usual, and that tends to be destructive. Right. In this case, most of the, uh, kind of Midwest and like eastern north, like everywhere but the Pacific Northwest, is going to be, um, substantially warmer than the average year. And the south is going to be— oh crap, everyone look this up— uh, a little colder than usual. And specifically, just like, there's gonna be like maybe a lot of storms. But we don't know. El Niño is going to fuck up our winter, like real interesting directions. Anyway, so the US, it didn't tell its citizens to get prepared. Instead, Pete Hegseth told all the military bases to get prepared.

Oh, really?

With Fortress America. Yes, Fortress is an acronym. I will admit that it was pretty impressive that they made it an acronym. I didn't write it down. But they have basically been saying, hey, every military base of this list of, I want to say, 500-some military bases, get prepared to be independent for 90 days energy-wise. And this, I believe, includes both the US and overseas.

Okay.

And everyone's like, okay, so they know something we don't. And the thing is, my big takeaway after doing a bunch of research about this, I stayed up late one night when it first started kind of coming out. I was like, do they know something we don't? And then I, like, looked and I was like, no, they know the stuff that we know, which is that everything's really fucked and bad right now. Specifically, the kind of threats that most of these things are talking about, Japan is talking about bad weather because Japan, it, uh, El Niño is also fucking the western side of the Pacific, which people often forget. And, um, there's like hurricanes there instead of, um, the Caribbean. So they're kind of like, hey, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, like, you know, kind of like, let's go, let's all kind of be more prepared.

Mm-hmm.

And then, but in general, the preparedness is around retaliation of, you know, Iran is saying like, hey, you bomb us, we're not telling you we're not going to bomb you. And everyone's like, what? You might attack us? That's unfair. You're like, what do you fucking think is going to happen here?

I'm going to murder you.

Yeah, like, don't get me wrong. I'm, I'm not in favor of any military attacking civilians. That is like outside my ethics. But like, what the fuck do you expect? Um, and then specifically one of the big threats is cyber threats, is AI empowered hacking. And when people worry about AI, they're doing it wrong. They— what some people are doing it right. I might be doing it wrong. I don't fucking know. But don't only get your news from us anyway.

Amen.

AI is not going to go rogue and kill everyone because it's not people and it doesn't have consciousness and it doesn't have desires. It will do what it is programmed to do, which is often bad. Um,

yeah,

and it does like sort of go rogue in that it's like a little bit of black box. Um, like when they're making it, they're not quite sure what they're doing, which is Fucking imbecilic, whatever my opinion of AI. Yeah,

bananas.

Yeah. So instead we have people were calling October Black October. And the idea here is that AI hacking tools are incredibly good at finding vulnerabilities in code. And specifically, you know how AI is always like, oh, the thing we're working on now is the powerful one. I know we've been saying that for a while, but this next one, it's going to be the powerful one. People are saying that again.

Yeah.

But it's a little bit maybe true this time, specifically around AI's ability to empower hackers to hack things. And I posted about this actually on my Substack, and someone who works in, um, cybersecurity was like, hey, we're actually kind of more referring to it as the bug apocalypse instead of the hack apocalypse. What AI is currently doing is showing us vulnerabilities. It hasn't yet been really proven that it's being used extensively for cyber warfare and hacks. That said, anecdotally, there are a fucking ton of hacks that might be cyber warfare happening right now. Like, this morning when I woke up, I read about how, um, Scandinavia, I believe Sweden, had a whole bunch of its supermarket freezers hacked and like the temperature turned up in the freezers to just destroy all the food.

Okay.

Um, which leads me to the question, why the fuck is your freezer attached to the internet? Yeah. What the fuck?

Yeah.

But, but that's like, okay, my weird optimism. My weird optimism is that maybe this will actually lead to everyone stopping using oil for everything and getting their shit off the fucking internet. Like, the internet of things was always a security nightmare, and now it's being proven more so. So basically, there's a lot of worry that, not that AI agents are going to go rogue and destroy shit, but rather that hackers will use AI to destroy shit. And specifically, We have a lot of enemies right now as America, right? And they're not unintelligent people. They can figure out how to hack things. And now that there is this like incredibly capable method of hacking available, or is becoming available, there's a lot of people really worried about that.

Mm-hmm.

For example, earlier this week, the biggest threat of crypto— sorry, the biggest theft of cryptocurrency ever happened. $6-point-something billion in crypto.

Oh, my gosh. Wow.

Oh, yeah, from Binance, one of the crypto exchanges. They had more than $6 billion stolen, almost certainly by North Korean hackers. And it's hard to recover stolen crypto. About $2 billion of it was somehow locked down. I'm not a big crypto girl, so I'm not 100% certain how all this works, although I have spent many hours of my life trying to understand how it works. So that happened, right? And so when everyone's like, oh, there's not that much hacking going on. There like is a lot of hacking going on. And specifically, there's a lot of worry around the US power grid. That is like one of the main things that people are worried about is that the US power grid— there's a really good exposé in, I think, New Yorker magazine a couple months ago where it just talks about how like our grid relies on these like handmade transformers that there's an incredible bottleneck of because they're just incredibly complicated. Hmm. things, and all of our infrastructure is aging and not being replaced as fast as it's being destroyed by time. Add to that everything going online, you have all of these new vulnerabilities. So there's like stuff to worry about. And then of course there's the fact that, you know, even other countries have to respond to US elections because we're probably— y'all, if you're listening on Election Day, it's like everyone kind of knows that no one's going to believe the results no matter what they are.

Right.

Because there's already been so much fuckery largely coming from the right wing, but there's, you know, like—

Right.

—ways of accusing the Democrats of doing it too. So yeah, there's a lot to worry about, but it's not some sinister thing where the government is like— all of these governments know that doomsday is coming on November 7th at 6:42. Don't listen to me, I'm making these numbers up.

Okay.

And the thing is, I still think it is good that governments are telling people to get prepared. There's a reason that we tell people to be prepared. And I am using— if you're listening to this on Tuesday, on Election Day, if you like have enough of today off that you are either going to vote or not vote, do whatever you want, it's not a bad time to do a little bit of preparedness or like kind of inventory some of your stuff. Right. Because a lot of crises are possible in the very near future, and it is a bit of a crisis if various parts of the government don't believe other parts of the government about what's happening.

Yep, for sure.

Any, uh, any questions about the doomsday?

No, I, I, um, yeah, it's interesting that so many other governments are talking about it. It's not— which it's worth noting, like, it's not uncommon for governments to have like emergency preparedness information.

Totally.

Like the US government has had for decades, you know, emergency preparedness guidelines and recommendations and stuff like that. And I, I imagine other countries do some of the amount of that as well.

Yeah, and what do they kind of do is like, I was talking to someone, um, oh, what's the Instagram? It's like Start Prepping UK. It's like a, uh, very community-focused prepping, uh, influencer in the UK. And they've been talking about how like they've been like suddenly seeing this huge wave of interest. And a lot of what the government is saying is the same shit from their like 2004 paper that they put out about this too, right? But like, so it's like kind of, it's less that governments are like all of the sudden for the first time are saying like, hey, get prepared and have resources. They're kind of reinvigorating that and being like, hey everyone, remember this? You should probably do it.

Yep. And doing updates to their, to their proposals and things.

Yeah. You done any good prepping lately?

You know, I have not done any good prepping lately, my friend. But this is— we were talking about this before we recorded. Now as we're recording, I'm like, you know what, I need to do at least my quarterly check-in on things that I do, which is like, you know, various battery packs that I have around the house. You know, I keep Like a super powerful cell phone charger one, and there's one in each of the cars. And I also have a quote unquote electric generator, which is—

Yeah, solar generator. It's just a big battery.

Yeah.

Those are fucking great. Yeah.

I love it. It's super helpful, but I don't remember the last time I pushed the button and saw what level it was at and plugged it into the wall. So there's a bunch of things like that that now that we've talked about, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm going to go check all of those battery packs and plug them in and make sure that they are Plugged in. Because when, you know, power outages are one of— obviously one of my bigger things that happened, as you may guess. I'm worried about batteries, and that's like the first thing I go to then when the power goes out is like finding these various batteries that I have.

Yeah,

in the cars and in the go bag and whatnot, and, um, getting them out and assessing them and, and plugging stuff into them as needed.

Yeah, that was like, um, yesterday. I like— I think sometimes people have this theory that I'm like the prepper and like I have everything, all my shit together. And it's like my big solar generator guy was at like 63% yesterday and it had been there since the last time the power went out like a month ago, you know? And so I like went and plugged it in and charged back up to 100 and put it back to where it was. And like, okay, I'm gonna tell you what I've been doing for prepping.

Okay.

Because I think today that's, that's my, my, my interest of the, the This, This Week in the Apocalypse. Um, basically I've been kind of using this moment to sort of, you know, I kind of prep in cycles. I like, oh, I'm gonna go and do these things. But like, a lot of prepping is expensive, like, uh, whether time investment or money investment. So we can't do it all the time, you know. But it's nice because it's cumulative, right? Like, um, if you do it right, like, I got a lot of stuff that isn't going to go bad before I die in my basement, you know.

You're gonna die in your basement?

Well, I don't know, maybe depending on the storm, that's where I'm gonna go. Uh, okay. Actually, one of the things I'm working on right now is I'm actually trying to, like, I don't have a bunker at my house, but a lot of crises, a lot of weather crises and also nuclear fallout. People have this attitude about nuclear fallout where it's like, oh, the bombs drop, you just all die. For better or worse, it's like, not true.

Damn. That's kind of what I was hoping for.

Yeah. Everyone has this kind of like, oh, I'm planning on just dying if that happens.

Yeah. And that's not the case.

There's ways you could work it to make sure you die, like be outside.

Yeah.

But it's actually not— like, the US has dropped bombs on major cities, and those places still exist. We killed fucktons of people. It wasn't okay, right? But it's like, it's not necessarily the end of the world. And obviously there are versions that are the end of the world, but like, limited nuclear exchange, um, or as, uh, Robert Evans refers to it as like a nuclear January 6th, like a kind of a whoopsie, a like sort of rogue agent being like, fuck this, I'm doing this thing that doesn't lead to, like, total back and forth nuclear apocalypse, right? Well, there's like, basically, at some point we should just do episodes on nuclear survival. It's like kind of the topic that people see as like totally wingnut, but I think it's actually worth understanding. You basically just go in your basement for 3 days. If you can go in your basement for 3 days, like, if the bomb doesn't drop on you, almost all the shit's gonna settle out of the air.

And it's very quick,

huh? Yeah. And, like, so it's not— I mean, I'm not trying to downplay the destructive destructiveness of a nuclear bomb, but it's like, there's a lot of situations where it's like, if there's that big flash on the horizon or you hear the, like, weird warning or whatever, like, go into your basement, um, and get ready to hang out. Um...

Okay, this is good info. I didn't know this at all, that, like...

Yeah.

You know, I would've just been like, oh, shit, a bomb— a bomb dropped on the downtown. I'm near downtown. I'm fucked.

Right.

I'm gonna get cancer and die in a month or A year or whatever it is.

Right. And like, maybe, but like, there's a lot that you can do to minimize that risk. Um, and, uh, actually in my, my local prepping group, there was someone who— it's actually something we should cover more on the show is that like, um, there's a lot of people who are like, oh, my plan for prepping is to die, right? Like, I run across that all the time. And there's someone in my, my local prepping group who, who was that and they were like, ah, but I'm a, I'm a parent now. Fuck.

Yeah, exactly. That changes the equation. Yeah,

it's like no longer really— I'm like not allowed to, you know?

If that's your plan, then I really hope that you do in fact die, because otherwise you are going to be a drain on resources, and I'm kind of pre-mad at you for needing my help and not dying.

I like to believe that most of those people will— even if they didn't stockpile their tinned beans, they'll still show up and help.

But

I try to be optimistic about this. Ironically, I might— so my basement, I'm like kind of working on, uh, doing a little bit more insulation and like kind of like making it a little cozier. Um, it's just like one of the things I'm doing. But the big thing I did this morning, I love when my pickup truck gets to be a pickup truck. It's always happy when it gets to be a pickup truck instead of the worst gas mileage that I could possibly have.

And the most annoying thing to try and park. Yeah.

Yeah. No, no. Every time I like, When I'm in the country and I have to go pick up 2x4s, I'm like, I'm so glad I have an 8-foot bed on my truck. And then every time I'm in a city, I'm like, what the fuck? What's wrong with me? It's immoral. I can't see children. Like, trucks should not have been designed this way. But I'm also like, today I went and I picked up 2 IBC totes. You know, these big plastic totes in metal containers?

Yeah, they have like a cage thing around them, right? Yeah.

They're called IBC totes. And I don't know what IBC stands for. Irritable Bowel. No,

constipated.

Yeah, I don't know if you use the wrong ones, but you can get clean ones and use them, collect rainwater. Or in this case, like, I don't have time to set up the rainwater thing, so I've been putting this off. I know I want them hooked up to some downspouts, but like, I've done rainwater collection setups in a bunch of different places and it's a pain in the ass.

Yeah.

Partly because I'm not particularly naturally talented at plumbing because it's a little bit more perfectionist of an art than I tend to be good at.

Right.

But I've done them before, I'll do them again. And I've been putting off going and getting these totes because I was like, well, I got to get the— got to put gutters on this thing and then set up the thing and do all the things. And then I was like, you know what, like, water is one of the weakest spots in my preparedness. So, okay, I went today and bought 2 of them from a, like, you know, it's like an industrial yard. I found it on Facebook Marketplace where they're just like, they sell mostly to chemical manufacturers and they're like, you just show up, Pay us, we'll give you some totes. The guy with the tote— the forklift was incredibly impressed that I could fit 2 of them in the bed of my truck with the tailgate closed.

Fuck yeah.

He was, he was very surprised. And I was like, 8-foot bed. Yeah. And, uh, I don't know. And they're also— they're like 130 pounds empty. So that's like heavy. But like, I suspect you can lift that.

Too heavy though. I would have assumed them to be much heavier. Every time I see them, I'm like, oh fuck, like that's gonna be annoying to deal with.

Yeah, no, full, they're like insane, right?

Yeah,

but like the worst case scenario, I can deadlift one. Realistically, the way that I move them around is I like walk them. I like pull them up and I like corner to corner, you know, kind of like the way you move any big heavy thing, you know. But like, they're not that bad. What's really annoying is plumbing them. Right. Um, what's really annoying is setting up— there's several different types of outlets on these fucking things. And then the other thing is that like, this is really funny, this just turned into Margaret talks about whatever. I think that was my plan.

All right.

And the other thing is that there's like a bunch of different ways that they, the outlets all have different threading sizes and blah, blah, blah. There's not like one universal thing. And so hooking them up to a hose is complicated. They also don't have a ton of water pressure unless you put them up on a tower or hook them up to a pump, which is like a whole other deal.

Mm-hmm.

But you know what? After we finish recording, I'm going to go fill one with a hose. And then worst case scenario, I go out there with a bucket and get 5 gallons at a time out of it. And then run it through a water filter and I'm good. So like the doing it like proper and right is going to take me a lot longer. But as a, as a good last minute prep, that's what I did today. And my dog didn't even freak out and bark at them, which I'm surprised at because the yard changed. And usually that is an upsetting thing.

Go puppers. Yeah. I think it's the thing that, you know, we've talked about, we've written about here at Strangers and you've talked and written about specifically as well of like preparedness can feel really overwhelming if you think about it. with that big sense of all of the things you have to do to do it right or to do it finished. But really what's most important is that you get it started and you have some of it, even if it's an imperfect system or not how you ideally want it, what you really want, it's not the best version of it, etc., etc. Having something mediocre is better than having nothing when it comes to preparing.

Totally. And that's when people are like, oh, why only 3 days' worth of canned— sorry, tinned beans? And like, I'm surprised they call them beans. I feel like there's must got to be some other British word for it.

Bines.

Yeah.

No British accent though.

No, neither could I. I think if there was a gun to my head and they were like, speak British, I'd be like, oi, and then hope for the best. Crikey. Nope, that's not even French.

That's not part of. You don't need to do that for preparedness. It's okay.

Yeah, it's not a threat. It's not in my threat model. It's gun to my head. Speak British. One time I was in England. I was in London for a while and, um, and this does not speak well of me. I ended up being like, I was on the subway or whatever they call it there. And—

The underground.

Yeah. And after a while I just started getting like annoyed by how pretentious everyone was talking. I was like, why does everyone keep fucking talking like this? And then I was like, oh, they're talking normal. I'm the one talking weird. Why is Margaret so laid back? They probably think.

Wow, such a white American traveling.

Yeah.

Uh,

so, um, what else have I done for preparedness this— I, uh, I think it is a good time to just make sure your car has a tank of gas in it. Um, I think it's a good time to clean out your car. Um, and basically, like, so that your car is ready if, like, if your version of crisis is go bag goes into car and then you go. Um, it's much nicer if, uh, your car has gas in it. Especially since like gas availability is like— oh, the other thing I forgot when I was like listing the omnicrisis, that whole war that's destroying the world's entire economy, um, because the entire world runs on diesel.

Yeah, that one, that little thing.

Yeah, that's gonna come to a head. Um, yeah, and there's also always the threat of like the AI bubble popping, um, which will have like both schadenfreude and, um, just a shitstorm attached to it. It's the only thing propping up the US economy or whatever. And I don't know, a thing that I'm doing that I recommend to people is sometimes people have— even people who don't believe in electoral politics as a way of changing society— have election watching parties just to kind of see what the future is going to hold. But I think that this is a particularly good moment to kind of get together with people, Not necessarily specifically about election results and more— I mean, if you're into that, that's chill. And I'm not not into that. I'm very interested in what the landscape that we live in is. But specifically, I don't know if Trump is going to declare martial law to invalidate the election or whatever the fuck. That's nicer to talk about in person with people.

Uh-huh. And your community and the people that are going to be impacted similarly to you. And that'll look very different in very different places too. What would that look like in DC versus out here in my fairly liberal state that I live in where I'm so much worried about that kind of thing? Yeah,

it's less likely that there's going to be specifically federal troops on the ground in Not DC. But at the same time, if a place goes blue and the government doesn't want it to go blue, that might be where they put people. Probably none of this will happen. Probably the crisis we are in will continue to be drawn out.

And if you've prepared, then lucky you. You've checked your supplies, you've done another thing to get ready for a crisis that does happen because they do come around.

Yeah,

even if one doesn't come right now, and we don't want one to come. There's no amount of us being like, yay, we love preparedness, we love crises, we want this to happen to validate our preparedness. What I would love the most in the world is to never actually need any of the preparedness stuff.

Oh, it looks nasty. Some of my preparedness are like, it's just dried rice.

Yeah, I

mean, rice is fine, but like—

I don't want to— I don't want to eat those beans that I put in the, in the number 10 cans back when I was I was a Mormon and still have because they're good emergency food supply. I don't, I don't want to have to open that, that thing and, and cook those beans.

See, we should be using the fact that you're ex-Mormon as part of our selling point as a preparedness podcast because, um, your people— that's a normal thing to say to people— your people did most of the work about understanding food storage long term.

We're very good at that. Yeah.

If you want Mylar bags, you're probably buying them from a Mormon store, whether you're intending to or not.

Yeah. And honestly, I feel like the US government has done better, but for a long time, the stuff that the Mormon website had about emergency preparedness is some of the better information out there that is like very recent. It's not like super Christian-y and doomsday-y. It's very practical. Like, here's what a 3-day would look like. Here's what a 3-month supply would look like. Here's the kinds of things you need. And they have like worksheets. that are very user-friendly and, and, uh, you know, these links to resources and stuff like that too. So.

Do you know where the hole in their preparedness was?

I want to make a whole joke, but I'm gonna just bite my tongue and let you tell me.

Uh, geography. I struggle to imagine a worse place in the future environmentally than Salt Lake City. Like, not even like culturally, whatever, but like, that lake is drying up and toxic.

Right. Like, it's— yeah,

there's not a future there.

It's funny because, you know, we, we traveled— the Mormon people like traveled west many times because they were like persecuted and chased out of places. And finally, when they got to Utah and the Salt Lake Valley, they were safe. And they were like, oh my God, they're not like chasing us here. We've got these mountains to protect us. And then they're like, oh shit, the land sucks. We can't drink the water. We can't get out of here. Like, yes, we're We're safe here from other people, but that's the only thing that we're safe from.

Yeah. Yeah.

But they wanted to stay there and make it work because that's what we do.

I mean, I guess that's kind of like— I have some sympathy for that. You know, there's like the whole, like, Kurdish, uh, no friends but the mountains idea. Like, like, persecuted people go to, um, rough spots. There's a reason the maroon communities are in swamps and deserts and fucking mountains. And, you know,

Yeah.

All right. All right.

Mormons, so oppressed.

Halfway sell me on— you're not actually, but I don't think you're trying to. There's a reason that the X is an important part of the Mormon thing.

Yeah, exactly.

All right. Well, that's most of what I got is, um, hey everyone, if you're listening to this on Tuesday, like, I don't know, don't be more worried than usual, but just like be a little more aware than usual because like there's not a conspiracy. It's all out in the open.

Right.

Yes, the government is run by a pedophile cult. Yes, AI— no, AI is not going to go rogue and kill us all. Yes, people using hacking tools can do a lot of damage. Yes, we started a war with people who can retaliate, you know. Um, so—

And if you're listening to this on Wednesday or re-listening to this on Wednesday and there are lots of contested elections out there and some chaos going on, you know, that's— it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. Phone a friend, hug a pet. Yeah, we all know this is coming.

Just go buy a— and then go—

perfect. That's an excellent plan, Margaret. That's exactly what we should do.

And legal.

Fully.

Yeah,

probably. We might have to ask the lawyer.

That, by the way, is a joke, and we, uh, as of recording, still have the First Amendment. So anyway, I don't know, that's, that's what I got this week.

Um, other things that make me feel good, Margaret, are, um, reading, uh, really interesting, um, nonfiction and really entertaining fiction, um, which that's available in the world somewhere.

I think that's true. I just read a book called The Spiral Key by Kelsey Day. Oh,

okay.

Um, and who is my agent, so there's a bias here, but it's really good. And it's like, just like a YA thriller. It's like, I read it in one night. It's a big normal size novel. And I just like sat down and read the entire thing. And it's real fun. Um, I think it does some interesting, uh, it's a type of, I haven't seen, I don't know how to, I don't know specifically how Kelsey is trying to identify politically. I haven't seen folks that I tend to agree with about politics writing like Just like a little YA thriller, but like the themes come through. And, um, so I don't know if you're looking for a book, Kelsey Day's The Spiral Key is good.

It's great. I love you so much for promoting your, um, someone else's book, your agent's book, when I was trying to do a lead-in to promote like your stuff that we just finished a preorder.

Oh, that's true.

And we're opening new preorders for.

That's true. I forgot about that. Okay. If you want to read my 5 folktales, uh, set set in the Lowlands of Sakhan, I have a zine for you called The Folktales of Lowlands Sakhan, and that is available from tangledwilderness.org. It is only $6. It is the most beautiful zine that's ever had my name on it, and with art by amazing people. And it is 5 tales that you don't have to have read The Sapling Cage for, but it is set in the same world as The Sapling Cage, just about 500 years earlier. I also, probably around the time this comes out, but if not in the very near future, I'm going to be doing another preorder for another zine that is called And the Cleanbones And it is set in the world of Danielle Cain, but it is also kind of, again, a little bit of a standalone story. It's specifically, if you read The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice, the 3rd book in my Danielle Cain series, all of the characters sit around and tell stories around the campfire of their dead friends. But Doomsday, one of the characters of that book, does not tell a story. And this is her story from the point of view of the husband that she later kills.

Awesome. That's right. So that should be open for preorder when you're listening to this. If it's not, it will literally be within a couple of days open for preorder as we are working on it. It's

gonna be real pretty too.

It is. I'm excited to see that finished cover. I've only seen the digital draft, so it's gonna be great. And, uh, those are both brought to you by, uh, the Publishing Collective, which puts out this podcast, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, of which we are members. And hopefully of which some of you are supporters. In fact, I know many of those of you listening are in fact supporters, because you're listening, and that is a way to support us. And we deeply, deeply appreciate you listening to this podcast.

Yay!

And supporting the other work that we do, including our other 2 podcasts, or engaging with us on our social media platforms, checking out our website, tangledwilderness.org, and seeing the other things that we have available for sale there, or going into Order Folktales or preorder Clean Bones Gone, or sorry, Margaret and the Clean Bones Gone.

And the Clean Bones Gone.

It's a true Margaret Kiljoy title.

Yeah, well, that one actually I cheated. That one's actually from a poem that isn't by me. You would think I would remember the name of the poem off the top of my head, but I do not.

Excellent. You can also engage with us on Patreon, and that is the thing, the tool, the site that provides the financial support that makes this podcast possible. Those of you who contribute to us there, especially the ones who have joined our newest tier, the Friends of Strangers, which is a monthly subscription and you get once per quarter a box of printed materials from us, So you can sign up right now through the end of November, and you will get a box shipped out to you on December 1st that will have a book and a couple new zines and some merch items. And all of the quarterly boxes will include fabulous things such as that. We like to give a special thanks to the Patreon supporters who support us at the $20 a month or more tier. And today that list includes almost more than 70 wonderful individuals, pets, ideas, organizations, and feelings.

Well, we'll basically say whatever you want if you give us $20 a month.

For instance, August Hope, Ghost, Cats, Eddie, and Percy, Chucha Lee, Defending, Tikanu, We Will Remember, Floria Tristan. The Chattanooga Free Store, Santa Fe Food Not Bombs, Glenn, Please Fight Anti-Fatness, Arizona Sunsets, Bunny Bionics, Patrick Harnett Marshall, All Wiener Dogs Everywhere, The first 2 chapters of The Eden Project by James Hollis, Kiwanis Socialist, the Athens People's Assembly of Athens, Georgia, Mr. Craft, Your Canadian Friend, Mark, Tiny Nonsense, Sarah, A Future for Abby, the Canadian Socialist Rifle Association, Max, Lancaster County Chooses Love, Karen, Astoria Food Pantry, Enchanted Rats of Turtle Island, Feral and WV, Blinkcat, the Massachusetts chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association, Shulva, Jenny and Phoebe the cats, Jason, Aiden, and Yuki the dog, Alexander Gopal, Sunshine, Opticuna, Portland's Hedron Hackerspace, Julia, Appalachian Liberation Library, Lord Harken, Baby Acab and Her Three Great Pups, Ephemeral, Princess Miranda, Janice and Odelle, Oldfields, Ali, Papa Runa, Milicia, Thea— Theo, sorry— SJ, Paige, Pocono Pink Pistols, Nicole and Tick for the Dog, David, Towser's Love of Bumblebees, Carson, Dana, Chelsea, Amber, Marjorie, The Truth That We Will Outlive Them, Kirk, Micaiah, Chris, The Incredible Rennerai, Micah, and our very favorite, most beloved

Is it the immortal Haas the dog?

It's the immortal Haas the dog.

Do you want to hear the story of Haas the dog? I'm only going to tell part of the story on air. Haas the dog has been a sponsor of Strangers in Tangled Wilderness since before it was like something like 6 or plus years ago. It was actually just my personal Patreon that we shifted over where I was mailing out a zine every month, and Haas the dog was one of my most stalwart supporters back when I lived off of almost nothing mailing out zines every month. And so, Hoss the Dog is a dog that I do in fact know personally, although I have not seen him in several years. Fortunately, he's immortal, so I'm sure he's still around.

Exactly. We love him very much. Thanks everybody for listening. See you on some planet that is probably this one Sometime soon.

Yay!