Episode 18
Here Comes the Apocalypse: Jennifer Heller's Guide to Disaster Preparation for Non-Preppers
Here Comes the Apocalypse! Panicked or Prepared?
The art of preparation in today's polycrisis, conspiracy-driven world is far from straightforward. In all cases, it is an art that encompasses, among other things, science-based common sense and community-oriented planning. Just as important is a sense of humor. With preparation, we can laugh in the face of the Apocalypse!
As we navigate the eerie and unsettling landscape of climate change and societal upheaval, the notion of being prepared has evolved into a complex tapestry of ideologies and practices.
Our guest, Jennifer Heller, the founder of Here Comes the Apocalypse, dives into this transformation, offering a refreshing perspective that strips away the theatrics often associated with disaster preparedness.
Heller’s approach is grounded in community spirit and practical solutions, advocating for an informed yet light-hearted method of preparing for the unexpected. Through her personal experiences, including the loss of two close relatives' homes in two separate California wildfires, she emphasizes the critical importance of having a structured disaster plan that is accessible, sensible, and grounded in reality.
Heller’s unique brand of humor shines throughout our chat, reminding us that while the topics at hand may often be grim, a dash of wit can make the daunting task of preparing for disaster a bit more palatable. Her program, Here Comes the Apocalypse, is not just about survival; it's about recovery and fostering a sense of community where preparedness is a shared responsibility.
We conclude our conversation by remembering that, amidst the chaos, we should not lose sight of the joy in our daily lives.
Humor and gratitude can keep us sane in crazy times.
Takeaways:
- In an uncertain world, being prepared is not just a motto but a necessity for survival, as the reality of disasters is increasingly undeniable.
- Humor can play a crucial role in disaster preparedness, helping to lighten the weight of serious topics while equipping ourselves for potential crises.
- Local community engagement and cooperation are essential; when disaster strikes, your neighbors may be your best resources for support and safety.
- The traditional prepper mentality can be daunting, but practical approaches to preparedness can empower individuals without succumbing to paranoia or extremism.
- Having physical copies of important documents is vital; during a disaster, relying solely on digital information can lead to unnecessary complications and stress.
- Fostering a sense of community resilience not only prepares us for disasters but also cultivates connections that can enrich our everyday lives.
Resources:
- Jennifer Heller
- Here Comes the Apocalypse
- FEMA Community Emergency Response Training
- GlobalWarmingIsReal
Transcript
Be prepared.
Speaker A:I remember well my Boy Scout motto, But am I?
Speaker A:Am I prepared?
Speaker A:Whatever it was I was preparing for as a young lad in the late 60s, it's different now, a fundamentally different world than it was half a century ago.
Speaker A:Preparation morphs into prepping and suddenly meanings change.
Speaker A:A cultish ideology tinged with a militaristic flare from silly or impractical to serious, step by step instructions for the second coming.
Speaker A:But what if people just want to be prepared?
Speaker A:What can actually keep people alive and safe in what is likely to happen in the real world?
Speaker A:That we live in an age when the real world is up for debate is unsettling.
Speaker A:But when the fire is licking the treetops down the road, the water is rising through the front door, or the coming wind sweeps aside houses like toys, preparation without BS is best.
Speaker A:When we emerge from the ashes, we can resume our petty disputes then.
Speaker A:And as uncomfortable as it is for everybody, there's something we all seem to agree on one way or another.
Speaker A:The apocalypse is coming.
Speaker A:Whether through divine intervention or climate change, things could get bad.
Speaker A:I don't remember that maintaining a sense of humor was emphasized while we Boy Scouts prepared for whatever, but it should have been.
Speaker A:Which leads us, in a roundabout sort of way, to Jennifer Heller.
Speaker A:My guest today on Global Warming is real.
Speaker A:Heller is a content creator, entrepreneur and occasional blogger.
Speaker A:Her entrepreneurship, community spirit, big heart and self professed dark sense of humor help us be prepared for what may befall us in the blood, flesh and feathers world we inhabit.
Speaker A:Heller recently launched Here Comes the Apocalypse, her dark sense of humor evident in the title.
Speaker A:It's a self paced disaster preparedness system for non preppers like you and me.
Speaker A:No bs, no fluff, and some things that might surprise you from every angle.
Speaker A:Heller's playbook is thoroughly researched.
Speaker A:She goes down the prepper rabbit hole so we don't have to.
Speaker A:She understands the genre, if you will, and extracts the practical, helpful information from the nonsense.
Speaker A:Heller also participated in a FEMA sponsored Community Emergency Response Training, or CERT for short.
Speaker A:She was organized with her neighbors in the Bay Area town of San Leandro, recognizing that preparation is most effective when the burden is shared.
Speaker A:Beyond the training and prepper rabbit hole, Heller has also lived it with two close family members losing their homes in two separate wildfires in California.
Speaker A:She incorporates her training, research and experience into a first responder recommended disaster preparation system that users can navigate at their own pace.
Speaker A:The process is admittedly tedious and come on now.
Speaker A:She tries to make it fun.
Speaker A:But let's get real.
Speaker A:This is going to Be tedious.
Speaker A:But at the other end emerges a customized exhaustive plan that will guide you through the disaster de jour.
Speaker A:Fire, flood, extreme weather, earthquake.
Speaker A:And once the immediate danger has passed, your town is a smoking ruin.
Speaker A:And you're trying to get through the day and maybe rebuild your life.
Speaker A:What then?
Speaker A:Information is what then.
Speaker A:Don't depend on the cloud.
Speaker A:Having all your essential information with you in hand is the start of the rebuilding process.
Speaker A:In the aftermath, as Heller says, the bureaucracy of life doesn't stop with the apocalypse.
Speaker A:And I'd like to add, it probably only gets, well, more apocalyptic.
Speaker A:So what do we know?
Speaker A:Let's sum it up in three points.
Speaker A:Shit happens oftentimes when we least expect it, perhaps mostly when we least expect it.
Speaker A:So it's best to plan for it.
Speaker A:Which leads me to my next point.
Speaker A:Risk management is the only sane approach to disaster preparation.
Speaker A:And it can only be accomplished before the aforementioned shit hits the proverbial fan, or real fan for that matter.
Speaker A:Otherwise, it's not risk management, but neglect leading to a panicked reaction.
Speaker A:And who needs more panic in this world?
Speaker A:In all cases, we must foster local flesh and blood community.
Speaker A:Get outside.
Speaker A:Know your neighbor.
Speaker A:They're likely the ones you'll be around when the apocalypse comes calling, so.
Speaker A:Oh, I forgot one.
Speaker A:Find joy.
Speaker A:It's out there.
Speaker A:Gratitude and humor keep us sane.
Speaker A:Bring it on.
Speaker A:We're ready.
Speaker A:We're prepared.
Speaker A:And now, over to you, Jennifer Heller, founder of Here Comes the Apocalypse.
Speaker A:Jennifer Heller, welcome.
Speaker B:Hello.
Speaker B:Thank you for having me.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's great to have you.
Speaker A:You are the founder of Here Comes the Apocalypse?
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:So why don't you tell us about what that's about?
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B: re my family for disasters in: Speaker B: I had my first child in: Speaker B:And suddenly I cared a lot more about how we responded to disasters.
Speaker B:It also was the first year that here in the Bay Area we had smoky air so bad we couldn't go outside.
Speaker B:And I had always thought, oh, global warming.
Speaker B:I know it's happening.
Speaker B:It's going to be something my kids deal with.
Speaker B:But suddenly that year I realized, oh, no, this is something that I'm going to deal with in my lifetime.
Speaker B:And so I was like, okay, well, we need a disaster plan, we need gear, we need to know what we're gonna do.
Speaker B:And I found all of the resources out there.
Speaker B:Really obscure, hard to understand, and super right wing crazy.
Speaker B:Like, oh, here's my guns.
Speaker B:I've got all the ammo.
Speaker B:I've got a bunker full of food and all this stuff, and that's not me.
Speaker B:I'm community oriented.
Speaker B:A future where it's me and my family stuck in a basement for the rest of my life does not sound good.
Speaker B:So I was like, well, gosh, I can't be the only one trying to prepare my family and finding just these resources really hard to stomach and hard to use.
Speaker B:And I've always been an entrepreneur.
Speaker B:I have a design company, we do websites, marketing, that sort of thing.
Speaker B:And I was like, you know, this is a fun niche, right?
Speaker B:I mean, fun is such a fun niche, right?
Speaker B:I've got kind of a dark sense of humor.
Speaker B:So I did find some humor in the topic.
Speaker B:And since I had to understand it anyway, I thought, okay, well, let's turn it into something.
Speaker B:And that was where I got the idea for Here Comes the Apocalypse.
Speaker B:The inspiration came from, like the last scene of Monty Python's Life of Brian where they're all nailed on the cross and they're singing, you gotta look on the bright side of death, you know, and like, how do we find the bright side in these dark times?
Speaker B:And that's what I wanted to bring.
Speaker B:A humorous but practical approach to disaster preparedness.
Speaker A:That's great that you bring a humorous aspect to this because obviously these aren't light topics and there's a lot of doom and gloomy, you know, just kind of, we're all going to die.
Speaker A: least partly with you back in: Speaker A: remember was in September of: Speaker A:Waking up to the middle of the night, even though it was the day and the sky was orange.
Speaker A:And you know, I've been writing about climate change and stuff.
Speaker A:I, I, this is kind of my beat for a long time.
Speaker A:But something like that really opens your eyes and you go, well, this is getting close to home.
Speaker A:How did you go about so realizing you needed to do something, you wanted to have a, bring a sense of humor to it, and you found all these preppers and their right wing and their guns and what was the journey of creating Here Comes the Apocalypse?
Speaker A:What were your challenges and what were your aha moments, Things you might not have realized that you, you found out?
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:So when I started out, I was kind of like, oh, well, I can make a website with affiliate links, right?
Speaker B:And someday maybe I'll make a little bit of money from affiliate links and I'll map out what a good disaster plan is and give people gear recommendations and stuff.
Speaker B:And that was my vision in the Beginning.
Speaker B:And I started doing the research, right?
Speaker B:I started going down the prepper rabbit hole, which was very boring.
Speaker B:Okay?
Speaker B:It was terrible.
Speaker B:And I got all these prepper books, and I look at them.
Speaker B:And so one aha moment was definitely like, oh, my gosh, the advice is so crazy.
Speaker B:There's this one book that I was reading, and I couldn't read it because it was so dense.
Speaker B:I scanned it.
Speaker B:I got the main takeaways.
Speaker B:But she suggested.
Speaker B:The advice that she gives at Holly Drennan is that you bury a fridge in your backyard to keep your go bags in because it would be impervious to raccoons, and so it would be safe, and it'd be underground.
Speaker B:And then she tells you to plant some flowers on top so your neighbors don't know where it is.
Speaker B:And then if you can't go into your house, you can get your go bag.
Speaker B:So I. I can understand that this is practical advice, but in my mind, with a, you know, I probably had a 2 year old at the time, right?
Speaker B:I'm not gonna bury a bridge.
Speaker B:I was also living in Oakland.
Speaker B:I didn't have a yard.
Speaker B:I didn't have.
Speaker B:And, like, there's so many people who don't have space for a fridge or have an extra fridge to bury.
Speaker B:And then there was this other book that wanted us to carry tools on us all the time in case we need to get ourselves out of an elevator.
Speaker B:Like if we're stuck in an elevator so that you can take a little crowbar out of your bag and get yourself out.
Speaker B:And I was just kind of like, nobody is going to do this, right?
Speaker B:And so the preparedness resources that were given are so full of crazy advice.
Speaker B:Then all of a sudden, all of the advice loses its credibility because you don't know where the boundary is between what is reasonable and what one should do.
Speaker B:And what is this person's idea, right?
Speaker B:Because this person is insane enough to be writing this book.
Speaker B:And so the other.
Speaker B:Aha.
Speaker B:Really came from.
Speaker B:During the period that I was doing this research, I actually had two.
Speaker B:Two different family members lose their homes to wildfires in California.
Speaker B: eir home in the tubbs fire in: Speaker B:That fire took out part of Santa Rosa, which is like a urban suburban area, right?
Speaker B:It's not out there.
Speaker B:It's like a town, a real town.
Speaker B:And that was really shocking to me.
Speaker B:And during that time, they woke up in the middle of the night, saw flames, and escaped in their pajamas with their dogs.
Speaker B:And they were Lucky to get out of there.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:So they had nothing.
Speaker B:And then my in laws lost their home four years later in the Dixie fire, which took out their entire town, Greenville, California, or almost the entire town.
Speaker B:And so watching these experiences really highlighted to me the needs for disaster preparedness.
Speaker B:And one of those is that you have to have printed resources.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:You're not going to necessarily have access to the web or the cloud in a disaster scenario.
Speaker B:We look at what happened in Asheville with the tornado earlier this year, and it took 28 days for them to restore cell phone power for everybody.
Speaker B:So my vision of like, oh, this website that has resources really shifted to I need a physical thing that people are going to reference and use as a guide to create physical plans so that it's not all in the cloud.
Speaker B:One of the things we designed is a grab and go checklist, which has sections for one minute.
Speaker B:You have one minute to get out what are you grabbing, and you put down what you're grabbing and also where it's located.
Speaker B:Because when you are triggered and you're in an emergency scenario, it's very hard to make decisions, very hard to decide what to bring in that moment.
Speaker B:You really need to think about it ahead of time.
Speaker B:But it can also just be hard to function.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Certain people deal with the danger and the immediacy of the situation by just freezing as one of the main reactions to fear.
Speaker B:And so writing down where it is so you're like, okay, it's there and you just have to follow the list, right?
Speaker B:So we divide it into if you got one minute, if you got five minutes, and if you've got an hour, we joke that that's the dream apocalypse because you've got a whole hour to evacuate your house, you know, and so doing it ahead of time, you already know what you're grabbing, right?
Speaker A:You were talking about having a crowbar.
Speaker A:If the elevator is stuck, that would come in handy.
Speaker A:But there's a balance between practicality and, I don't know, what's the word?
Speaker A:Paranoia.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, and that's.
Speaker B:I think the big issue with prepping is that you get this.
Speaker B:Like people say, oh, are you a prepper now?
Speaker B:And I don't identify as a prepper.
Speaker B:I just want to be prepared.
Speaker B:The general idea of what prepper is is going down this rabbit hole and getting totally extreme and like carrying a crowbar around.
Speaker B:And so at Here Comes Apocalypse, where it's really trying to keep you out of that.
Speaker B:You can go down that if that's where you want to go.
Speaker B:But we just want to give you practical advice that is reasonable.
Speaker A:You talk to your family and relatives that lost their homes to wildfire, climate related disasters.
Speaker A:Is that what we're focusing on in this?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So along the way I wound up creating a step by step guide called the Disaster Playbook, which guides you through prepping for all sorts of things for emergencies.
Speaker B:Like a house fire is actually the most common emergency that any of us will encounter in our lifetimes.
Speaker B:So we devote some space to that and then definitely to extreme weather.
Speaker B:Climate change is exacerbating that.
Speaker B:So that is one of the very real things that we guide you to prepare for.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker A:Hopefully you haven't had to use this yourself, but have you heard from anybody, any clients or customers that have had to use.
Speaker B:I have not heard from anybody who has done the work as we outline it and then had to use it.
Speaker B:But I've gotten some wonderful reviews.
Speaker B:One came from a first responder who said that other resources are incomplete or full of crazy advice and that this is not.
Speaker B:And that they really believe that if you get the Disaster Playbook and follow it step by step that you and your family will be safer and more prepared.
Speaker B:And that made me very, very happy.
Speaker B:You know, I came at the subject as a layperson.
Speaker B:I was a girl Scout till I was 18.
Speaker B:I've been CPR trained more times than I can count, but I didn't work for fema.
Speaker B:I didn't have any of that expertise.
Speaker B:But I think that that's actually a real benefit because there's a lot of jargon that comes with disaster response and I didn't have any of that.
Speaker B:So it is written for the layperson.
Speaker B:I really had moms like me in mind.
Speaker B:A lot of this sort of thing falls upon moms in the household, although I know that preppers are often male and lots of households are made up of two women or two men.
Speaker B:So really trying to reach more liberal minded people, more people who wouldn't necessarily go down the prepper rabbit hole because they go a little bit down there and see, oh, this stuff is insane.
Speaker B:I'm not interested in this culture.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's an interesting point.
Speaker A:You had the feedback from a first responder and he or she said that most serious stuff out there is wacko or incomplete, I think was the word.
Speaker A:I don't wanna characterize it as wacko.
Speaker A:But is it, is some of this stuff really wacko?
Speaker A:I mean, you already described some of it.
Speaker B:I think so.
Speaker B:But you know, a lot of other people think that it's very important to have all of this stuff lined up.
Speaker B:You have your bug out location and we have you.
Speaker B:One of the steps is to designate meeting places.
Speaker B:So if you can't meet at home, where are you gonna meet?
Speaker B:I think that everybody needs to go to the extent that will make them feel safer.
Speaker B:But my focus is on enjoying my life while I've got it.
Speaker B:If I have to lose my home to a fire, I really hope I don't.
Speaker B:That's gonna be a life changing event.
Speaker B:And while I've got it, I don't wanna spend my time stressing, so I wanna do what I can and move on with my life.
Speaker B:That's really my philosophy.
Speaker A:It sounds like the prepper community is more of a sort of a lifestyle.
Speaker A:Lifestyle.
Speaker A:I was gonna say cult, but maybe that's a little bit too much.
Speaker A:But it's not just about being prepared.
Speaker A:It's about.
Speaker B:It's a lot.
Speaker A:It's a lot.
Speaker A:And it's interesting as I'm talking about it here, I'm trying not to make it so much about left and right, but there seems to be that element to it.
Speaker A:And again, it's kind of a generalization.
Speaker A:But it's a generalization, from my experience that bears itself out, that the folks on the right think climate change is a hoax.
Speaker B:Yeah, but.
Speaker A:Right, but they're ready for it, right?
Speaker A:What, in your research, what are they prepared for?
Speaker B:I think a lot of them are prepared for Armageddon.
Speaker B:They're prepared for this religious event that has been foretold.
Speaker B:So they're viewing it through that lens.
Speaker B:I say this having done some podcast interviews with some people who talked about that with me, and I was surprised because I was raised not religious.
Speaker B:And I view this through a science angle.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So science.
Speaker B:We have had the scientific knowledge to get us out of this situation for so long and we didn't get ourselves out of it because the oil and gas companies have so much money that they've invested an insane amount in sowing disbelief about climate change.
Speaker B:And I think that that knowledge, I learned that from from the podcast Drilled, which is a really wonderful podcast about.
Speaker B:It's a true crime podcast about the oil and gas industry.
Speaker B:And that really radicalized me and made me realize that these disasters are just gonna keep coming and keep coming bigger and worse, and that we have only ourselves to look to for help.
Speaker B:Especially as we look at what's happening right now with female and just funding in general, like the NOAA losing funding.
Speaker B:I mean, it's just.
Speaker B:It's a terrifying Time.
Speaker B:So I think it's more important than ever, if you're paying attention, to get your ducks in a row and get prepared, because we expect that there will be a safety net to pick us up.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And I recently participated in the citizens emergency response training, and so I'm now part of my town cert team.
Speaker B:So I will be deployed if there's an emergency to help.
Speaker A:Good.
Speaker B: ree first responders to every: Speaker B:And that's fire people.
Speaker B: s three fire people for every: Speaker B:And so I can easily imagine a disaster where there are more than one or two people trapped somewhere.
Speaker B:And so I think that we always expect, oh, well, if something happens, help will come.
Speaker B:It might be days and it might be weeks before help comes.
Speaker B:And I'm not trying to scare you, I'm just like to scare anybody.
Speaker B:I don't want to scare people.
Speaker B:I just want us to be aware of what we're dealing with.
Speaker B:We're dealing with FEMA losing funding.
Speaker B:We're dealing with the oil and gas companies making sure that we're not investing the level that we need to be investing in renewables and getting us off of carbon.
Speaker B:And instead the reality is that it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Speaker A:Yeah, I've heard that you should be able to survive on your own for at least three days.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:But you can see where it would be depending on what happens.
Speaker A:Of course, it could be longer.
Speaker A:And I think as a general society, we're kind of coddled.
Speaker A:We expect the cloud to be there.
Speaker A:You know, I just get online and get my insurance papers or things like that.
Speaker A:We don't think about it.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:Until something bad happens.
Speaker A:And by then it's too late.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Well, this is something that actually makes me actively worried about us as a society, you know, especially urban dwellers.
Speaker B:Before COVID we, my household, went to the store every single day.
Speaker B:Every single day we went to the store because I'd be like, oh, I found this cool recipe online and I want to try it.
Speaker B:And we need these fancy cheeses or whatever.
Speaker B:And so we would go to the store and get this stuff.
Speaker B:And once Covid happened, I was like, oh, you know what, we need to stockpile.
Speaker B:We just not stockpile, but we need a more fleshed out pantry so that in the event that we can't get to the store every day we've got food.
Speaker B:The recipe boxes that get delivered where you get a recipe card and all the ingredients.
Speaker B:You know, that to me is a symptom of the fact that we aren't very practical anymore.
Speaker B:Like if we a box that's delivered with every single ingredient and the instructions in order to cook dinner, then how are you gonna get through a big storm where you can't get to the store for three weeks?
Speaker B:It's a big problem.
Speaker A:Yeah, I've seen some of those delivery and here's the ingredients.
Speaker A:They even include the cup of milk or things like every last ingredient.
Speaker A:It suggests that we aren't prepared to even make it through the day, let alone a few weeks.
Speaker A:You mentioned you have a dark sense of humor.
Speaker A:How did that work in.
Speaker A:And how does that work now in your work in developing Here Comes the Apocalypse?
Speaker A:It must, I would imagine, help.
Speaker B:It does help.
Speaker B:I think it is really hard.
Speaker B:So during this search training we explored, we went through FEMA's binder.
Speaker B:So FEMA produced this binder on how to respond and to train people.
Speaker B:And the binder kept saying, oh, well, FEMA's going to do this and FEMA is going to do that.
Speaker B:And that was hard because here I am very aware of the fact that FEMA might not be able to do any of these things that it's promised.
Speaker B:I think that I'm very good at looking on the bright side and I have an optimistic nature and I'm good at finding humor in dark times.
Speaker B:But this is dark subject matter.
Speaker B:My team and I were researching the content for the Playbook for about three years, and there were times where I just had to take a couple weeks off.
Speaker B:I just couldn't do it anymore.
Speaker B:And now I have Google alerts for disasters and stuff, and sometimes I can't look at them.
Speaker B:You know, it's so real out there and the actual human suffering that's happening is really upsetting.
Speaker B: , Santa Rosa, which burned in: Speaker B:And Greenville, California, which was a very, very tiny town, has not been fully rebuilt four years later.
Speaker B:And seeing the way that communities are really being wiped off the map faster than we can rebuild them is really, really upsetting.
Speaker B:Also being aware of the climate costs of rebuilding.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:There's huge climate costs to losing these communities and then rebuilding them.
Speaker B:And so it's hard.
Speaker B:So, yeah, it's hard.
Speaker B:I like to watch really light tv and I have been avoiding apocalypse shows because I spend my days on that topic.
Speaker A:Yeah, I can relate.
Speaker A:I've been writing, talking about climate change for about 20 years now.
Speaker A:It is frustrating to see the 20 years, how relatively nothing has happened.
Speaker A:Yeah, I remember 20 years ago going, the time is running out, time is short, no more time left.
Speaker A:And now it's 20 years later.
Speaker A:And, well, yeah, the time has run out and you see it happening.
Speaker A:The, the extreme weather is increasing.
Speaker A:I just read a.
Speaker A:There was a report, I think, from the Met in the uk, maybe it was the Grace satellite, where I think we all know this, but the science is bearing it out that extreme weather is becoming much more intense and frequent, and people have to understand that it's going to come home to roost and it's not something that's going to be.
Speaker A:I don't know, even if it was, even if, okay, the worst is going to be in 50 years or so.
Speaker A:Well, what about your kids and your grandkids?
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:You have to prepare for this and preparing in the long term and the short term.
Speaker A:What have you learned or what's your philosophy around community resilience and how you go about creating a more resilient community in the face of, you know, there's the individual preparedness.
Speaker A:And what would you say?
Speaker A:How do a community.
Speaker A:Let's just take San Leandro, for instance.
Speaker A:How can they prepare better for whatever might be coming our way?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, at the end of this CERT training, the representative from San Leandro came up, and this is the person in charge of emergency services in San Leandro.
Speaker B:And she said, if you'd like to join our CERT team, please email me.
Speaker B:And she was like, my email's on the website, or maybe it's not.
Speaker B:And I was sitting in that room.
Speaker B:There were 15 of us there that graduated that day.
Speaker B: to: Speaker B:And I'm just like, if I were you, I would be phrasing this differently.
Speaker B:I would be saying, now you are officially part of our team.
Speaker B:And like, forcing people to be like, I don't want to be on the team.
Speaker B:Because this training was A, free And B, only 15 people were trained.
Speaker B:So we need every last one of those boxes on this team.
Speaker B:And so I found that, Wow, I don't know how she sleeps at night.
Speaker B:If I were in charge of emergency services for this town of 86,000 people, I think that I would feel more passionate about ensuring that everybody has some level of preparedness.
Speaker B:What I'm doing in my neighborhood is I'm working with My neighborhood group.
Speaker B:And we're forming block captains.
Speaker B:And so I'm my block captain.
Speaker B:And this summer our goal is to get an initial meeting with everybody on our block and talk through, okay, what have you done to prepare for disasters?
Speaker B:Do you have a go bag?
Speaker B:Do you have designated meeting places?
Speaker B:Do you have an out of town contact to help you communicate during an emergency and also talk about what resources we have?
Speaker B:Like, I have noted that I have a pediatrician down the street and a first responder, you know, paramedic that lives around the corner.
Speaker B:And so, okay, who are these people?
Speaker B:I want to have them in my head or written down as resources in the event that something really bad happens and I need to ask them for help.
Speaker B:You know what I did is I bought like the community life straw, okay?
Speaker B:So it's like a life straw that will filter a ton of water.
Speaker B:And then I've got water tanks that are filled with rainwater in our side yard.
Speaker B:And so I know that I have water to share.
Speaker B:I don't have a giant solar powered battery, but I do have a small one, you know, so I'm thinking about, like, from a community perspective, how can we cooperate and collaborate because we are going to be stronger together.
Speaker B:And then in terms of designating designated meeting places, I'm coordinating those with the other parents of my kids friends so that if we have to meet at one of these locations, there will be other adults there.
Speaker B:So if I can't be there for whatever reason, I'm trapped in the rubble or whatever, you know, like, my kids will see somebody else that they know and have some familiarity with.
Speaker B:And that means that there's more boots on the ground to ensure that we're reunited safely.
Speaker B:The other thing that I think is really important is that you can save a lot of money and buy higher quality gear by doing it in a group than if you're doing it by yourself.
Speaker B:I buy a lot of flashlights and my kids immediately grab the flashlights and I don't know where they are.
Speaker B:One Saturday I was like, okay, I'm going to label each flashlight.
Speaker B:And this is, this is the dining room flashlight and this is the kitchen flashlight because obviously here in California, we're very worried about earthquakes.
Speaker B:And I started doing that and suddenly all the flashlights were gone because they were playing with them and everything.
Speaker B:And then suddenly all the flashlights were broken because they were pieces of crap and they weren't built to last.
Speaker B:That's how it is with a lot of stuff.
Speaker B:So if you really can partner with some other family or a couple of families to buy higher quality materials or gear and know that you're going to share, then you're going to potentially even have working gear instead of not working gear.
Speaker B:Because unfortunately corporations are not being.
Speaker B:They're no longer rewarded by creating quality goods, let's say.
Speaker A:Right, right.
Speaker A:Planned obsolescence.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:It sounds to me, from what you're describing here is this community resilience has a few knock on effects.
Speaker A:First off, everybody's better prepared for whatever might happen for a disaster.
Speaker A:But also you get to meet your neighbors.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:And it becomes more of a community and maybe then people get along and there'd be a little bit less division.
Speaker A:I'm just dreaming here, you know, because everybody's just in their silos and they're on their screens and they're not talking.
Speaker A:I remember in San Francisco, when I was in San Francisco, I knew some of my neighbors, but there were a bunch of neighbors, people I lived next to for decades.
Speaker A:Didn't really know them.
Speaker A:That's probably my fault.
Speaker A:I could have done something about that.
Speaker A:But that's I think its tendency.
Speaker A:People lose their sense of local community because it's all their Instagram feed or whatever.
Speaker A:And that's not gonna help them when the fire is bearing down on your neighborhood.
Speaker B:Absolutely, I completely agree.
Speaker B:I think the Internet and cell phones especially have really destroyed our local community spirit.
Speaker B:And if we're in a situation where we, we have limited power and maybe limited bandwidth for our phones and everything, you're gonna need some skills entertaining yourselves without your phone.
Speaker B:That's something that I think is really important to put in your go bag is a book or a magazine, something.
Speaker B:I always think of being stuck with my family in a high school gym because like that's a common place where they'll create an emergency shelter.
Speaker B:And I imagine being stuck there and my kids are upset and I'm obviously upset because maybe we lost our home.
Speaker B:Maybe we don't know what's happening with our.
Speaker B:For whatever reason, we're not there.
Speaker B:And so when I'm packing our go bags, I'm like, well, what's gonna help us in that moment?
Speaker B:And it's certainly not some emergency food.
Speaker B:I mean, emergency food, yes, you want that.
Speaker B:But what's really gonna help is, I mean, I have earplugs and sleeping pills and toys and games, really small ones that fit.
Speaker B:But things that we can do together like a pack of cards.
Speaker B:You can entertain yourself and a family for hours with that.
Speaker B:Some extra underwear, some extra socks to make sure that you're going to be comfortable.
Speaker B:I even have my favorite face cream there because it's what makes me feel human and I'm going to want to feel human in that moment.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:There's the physical maintaining yourself physically, but then there's the mental health aspect to all this.
Speaker A:Can you speak to that?
Speaker A:How you approach, I don't know, mental health in the apocalypse?
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:So I think this is one of the things that really differentiates our system from the other resources out there, is that we put a big focus on mental health.
Speaker B:First of all, the act of preparing is an act of serving your mental health.
Speaker B:Because if any of us are lying awake and worrying about extreme weather or civil unrest or whatever it is, putting the time into creating your disaster plan.
Speaker B:And so what we provide is like a template.
Speaker B:So you just have to fill it out.
Speaker B:You write down your contact information of important people.
Speaker B:You write down your designated meeting places.
Speaker B:There's a lot of details, and you just write it down in this book, and then you've got it written down.
Speaker B:And so that you don't have to worry so much.
Speaker B:So you get your gear in order, you get your plan in order, and that is in service of your mental health.
Speaker B:But one of the steps that we do is we talk about what will serve you in that moment with mental health.
Speaker B:So we have a series of prompts to guide you through thinking through how you normally react to a situation.
Speaker B:I know that I freeze, right?
Speaker B:That's my reaction is I freeze.
Speaker B:So just coming up with something to do will help me.
Speaker B:Like, just one action to take will help me get back into action.
Speaker B:And when I'm upset, what will help me is making something beautiful, like making a home.
Speaker B:If we're on the high school gym, making it nice for ourselves will help me to recover.
Speaker B:And so what are the things that will help you?
Speaker B:And so we guide you through that, and then you write that down for your entire family so that if you're there and you're overwhelmed, you've got it written down.
Speaker B:We also include a bunch of mental health resources like tricks to help you center yourself in that situation, that sort of thing.
Speaker B:And this template, we call it the I Will Thrive manual.
Speaker B:So you fill out your I Will Thrive manual with all of your info, and we give you two.
Speaker B:One for your go bag and one for your stay bag, so that ideally, in either situation, if you're on the go or if you're stuck at home, you've got all this information.
Speaker B:And we also even include some silly activities so that you can maybe entertain yourselves for a while.
Speaker B:But we also talk a lot in the book about what are the things to pack such as cards or CBD gummies or whatever to improve your mental health during it.
Speaker B:So it's both gear and thinking through the ways to support each other and to support yourself.
Speaker A:So if people are interested in doing this, you have a website, Here Comes the Apocalypse.
Speaker B:Here comes the Apocalypse dot com.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:And it's the Disaster Playbook.
Speaker B:I have two different sets.
Speaker B:The Disaster Playbook which comes with two I will Thrive manuals or the Disaster Bundle which also comes with a bunch of other like we've got the Grab and go checklist.
Speaker B:We have an important papers pack which is a folder with a checklist.
Speaker B:So after my mother in law lost her home, we were actually on vacation right after those house burned down, okay.
Speaker B:And she needed to fill a prescription and I listened to her on the phone for hours trying to get her prescription filled.
Speaker B:And people kept saying, oh well just call your doctor.
Speaker B:And she would say, I can't call my doctor, my town burned down.
Speaker B:And they would be like, oh, okay.
Speaker B:And then she'd get passed to somebody else, right?
Speaker B:And then they'd be like call you, just call your doctor.
Speaker B:And she'd be like, I can't call my doctor, my house burned, my town burned out, or the hospital burned down or whatever.
Speaker B:You know, my mother in law is the sweetest person in the entire universe because I would have been screaming at all these people if this was what my experience.
Speaker B:But one of the things that we have you do is get physical copies of prescriptions, of insurance paperwork of your marriage certificate, the deed to your house, all of that.
Speaker B:So you make a copy of that, copies of that, put them in your two important paper packs, which are the folders that they go in.
Speaker B:One stays in your stay bag, one stays in your go bag.
Speaker B:There are a lot of stories of people trying to get back to their house that after they've been forced to evacuate and they have to prove that they live there.
Speaker B:If you can't get to the cloud, how are you going to prove it?
Speaker B:So having the deed or your rental agreement or whatever in your go bag will save you a ton of heartache right there.
Speaker B:I always say that the bureau bureaucracy of life doesn't stop with the apocalypse.
Speaker B:Doing this really, really boring work of photocopying everything and compiling it is absolutely going to make a meaningful difference in your ability to recover quickly.
Speaker B:All of this stuff is replaceable, but each of those things to replace them is a bureaucratic trip down through hell that I wouldn't recommend wish on my worst enemy.
Speaker A:It sounds like.
Speaker A:Yeah, if you, you could not do it and do what your mother in law had to do, or you could spend a few hours or however long it takes to get all that squared away and then it's done.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And you don't have to worry about it.
Speaker A:And so that's great.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:Here comes the apocalypse dot com.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:And just to close out, what are you looking ahead?
Speaker A:So we're looking at a situation where the effects of climate change are just going to be more frequent and severe.
Speaker A:We have, at least currently we have a situation where people we might depend on won't be there either because they're just.
Speaker A:There's not enough of them or they pulled out fema, I'm thinking, I understand.
Speaker A:They're just not going to be around anymore or it's just kind of up in the air.
Speaker A:That's the other thing.
Speaker A:Going to expound on this a little bit.
Speaker A:We just don't know.
Speaker A:They keep pulling funds out of things and there could be a health crisis.
Speaker A:We could have another pen.
Speaker A:Anyway, that's another podcast episode, I suppose.
Speaker A:But there's all these things that are coming to get us, I guess.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:What is your hope for what we can do?
Speaker A:Obviously get the disaster playbook, but what are some practical people that might be hearing this and feeling overwhelmed and oh my gosh, and all these things might happen?
Speaker A:What's the first step a person should take?
Speaker A:I guess probably get your playbook.
Speaker B:Yeah, I would say definitely to get the playbook and to follow those steps and go through it and then get to know your neighbors, spend time in community, get offline, get in person.
Speaker B:Because as this stuff gets worse, we're going to need each other.
Speaker B:And where we are physically is we're around the people that are going to be there.
Speaker B:So I'd say that that's like really important.
Speaker B:And then honestly, we should be unionizing and organizing to vote for people who want real change, to invest in renewables and to get us out of this dystopian hellscape that we find ourselves in.
Speaker B:But also let's enjoy our lives while we've got them.
Speaker B:I think about indoor plumbing a lot because as the climate disasters keep happening and communities get wiped off the map, I unfortunately see a future with a lot of housing insecurity.
Speaker B:And we're also seeing that especially here in California, insurance companies are dropping people.
Speaker B:Right, right.
Speaker B:And a lot of people have their wealth in their homes.
Speaker B:And so if you are between insurance policies or whatever and something happens and you lose things, it could be bad.
Speaker B:It could be bad.
Speaker B:And so obviously I didn't want any of this to happen.
Speaker B:When I started this program project, I thought of it as like a 10, 20 year plan.
Speaker B:And then things started going really, really fast and I was like, oh my gosh, this isn't what I wanted.
Speaker B:I really love our convenient life.
Speaker B:I love going to the grocery store and picking out three different types of fancy cheeses that came from all over the world.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker A:Yeah, sure.
Speaker B:But I am worried that climate change is going to impact our supply chains in a major way in the coming years.
Speaker B:And so, so I think we're going to start seeing, we're going to start having a different lifestyle.
Speaker B:And so I would really say to enjoy the lifestyle that we've got while we've got it.
Speaker A:It's been said a few times that you don't know what you've got till it's gone.
Speaker A:Jennifer Hell reminds us that by preparing for the future, we can live more calmly and gratefully in the present.
Speaker A:Check the show Notes to learn more about Jennifer and here comes the apocalypse.
Speaker A:We've also got information if you're interested in the FEMA sponsored Community Emergency Response training.
Speaker A:If you like what we do, please like and subscribe to the podcast.
Speaker A:You can also donate a dollar or two to help keep us going.
Speaker A:Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on Global Warming is there's always more we can do to stop climate change.
Speaker A:No amount of engagement is too little.
Speaker A:And now more than ever, your involvement matters.
Speaker A:To learn more and do more, visit globalwarmingisreal.com thanks for listening.
Speaker A:I'm your host, Tom Schueneman.
Speaker A:We'll see you next time on Global Warming Israel.
Speaker B:Real.
