covid-19

Tom Gresham – Gun Talk Radio Transcript

Tom Gresham - Gun Talk Radio

Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.

Rob McNealy
Okay, folks, I am real excited. Today I have an a guest that I’ve been a big fanboy of for a long time. And that is Tom Gresham. He is the host of the gun talk radio show. He has been a gun rights activist and gonna choose yes for decades. I’ve only been listening to him for a few years, but his wisdom is amazing. So Tom, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Tom Gresham – Gun Talk Radio
Oh, you bet. This is fun. Anytime we get to talk about gun to what’s going on from the political standpoint. And it got to it crazy right now what’s going on over the last, what, three, four weeks without Coronavirus thing?

Rob McNealy
Yeah, a lot of things are happening because of that. And I wanted to get your kind of, you know, take on what you’re talking to people about and what you’re hearing on the streets because I got a much smaller, you know, network in this space than you do. But it’s certainly interesting that before the corona pandemic, it seemed to me that there’s definitely been a war on guns, especially in states like Virginia and California, where people are really going out there and trying to destroy liberty. What effect has the corona pandemic have had on the states that are trying to go after gun rights?

Tom Gresham – Gun Talk
Maybe just a little bit of background there because I’ve been doing this for about 50 years. So fighting for gun rights are talking about it everything else. The key thing to understand is that they always are after your rights. is not new. It’s been there 25 years ago, 50 years ago, they always have want to ended, want to end private sale guns, they want to end private ownership of guns. They really truly do think on the government’s own guns. So when you start with that background, you realize what they’re actually doing now. And so under the corona virus pandemic, we have a number of states who use that as an excuse to shut down gun stores stop all sales of guns in their state when they can’t do that, legally. But that said, you know, why not? Let’s go to shop. So what happened was the gun rights groups, owner groups all got together individually, they’re taking action, but also they’re taking action together. For instance, in California, you have four different gun rights groups working together Sacramento Foundation, in our a Firearms Policy Coalition, and one of the California State groups all working together, but NRA has been suing thicker metal Foundation has been suing an unsung group that people don’t know a lot about. It’s actually one of the most effective groups is the National Shooting Sports Foundation. That’s the group that puts on the SHOT Show. And they have entree into the White House into various places. And honestly, they’re the ones who made one of the biggest changes about two weeks ago, where now the Department of Homeland Security has listed gun stores and shooting ranges as essential businesses under the law enforcement umbrella. And so that gave cover for a number of governors to who are looking at a lawsuit we’re going to lose, we’re suing them. They said, Okay, well, we’ll just say we’re going to follow the federal guidelines, and that’s our cover political cover on the thing. So in most states, we’ve been able to get the gun stores opened up again. New Jersey was difficult. Massachusetts has done a flip flop like three times, four times now maybe in California is problematic as California always is. And that’s just going to take More legal action they’re working on?

Rob McNealy
Well, it’s good that I think that in this case, the President in the department Homeland Security made the right call. One of the things that I’m seeing with this pandemic and one of the things that a lot of people I know in the prepper space are kind of concerned about and it looks like it’s going to go that direction is that there may be an increased crime, at least in certain jurisdictions. Combined from the facts that many police departments are coming down with, you know, a lot of the officers are, you know, come becoming infected. I’m originally from Detroit right now, I think almost 25% of the Detroit police force is out on quarantine because of COVID. You have cities in my city to Salt Lake City where I am, California, Philadelphia have already put listed all the crimes they’re not going to come and send a cop for. Which to me, you know, I don’t I’m not a criminal. Right. I’m not one of those guys that have all the statistics. But it seems to me that when you have on one hand, you have the cops not coming to calls for 911. You have cops that are sick. And you combine that with releasing a bunch of prisoners, even if they’re low level low risk prisoners, it seems to me you’re gonna have an increase in crime. Anecdotally, I have a friend of mine in New York City right now lives in a good neighborhood in New York City said I’ve been there five years. He’s one of our community members. And this we were talking about this yesterday morning, he told me this time he said, Look, he I asked him, I go, what are you seeing on the ground? Because I don’t trust anything I’m seeing anywhere else. I want to hear from people that are there. Sure. And this is what he said. He said, Look, he goes, there’s been eight armed robberies and one home invasion in my neighborhood in the last two weeks. That’s never happened in the five years I’ve been here. So to me, it seems like having gun stores open seems to be the thing that people are getting. have to learn to defend themselves or at least have the tools available to defend themselves going forward. Now, I don’t know.

Tom Gresham – Gun Talk Radio
It’s a great point. And it’s practice why we’re watching this rush of people going to the gun stores and buying guns and buy an apple. And I’ve had a couple of gun stores, people who are in the business community tell me that 90 to 95% of people buying guns right now are first time gun buyers. Imagine that these are people who do not own a firearm, and all of a sudden they have decided out of the blue to go buy a gun of why are they doing that? It goes back to what you were just saying. But also it’s just kind of this general sense of unease. It doesn’t take a lot for people to get rid of that bubble, artificial bubble that they choose to put themselves in where they can pretend that they’re safe, or we don’t need guns. We have the police we have this we don’t have to worry about it. Part of that is why I also say you guys are crazy for thinking that you need a gun for something Defense around the police. We saw the same thing happen in 2005 with Hurricane Katrina, the world and especially that night, the nation watched on video. As all symbols of civilization went away. There were no police. There were no police. There was only brute force source you’re left with, and you’re left to survive or not survive on the basis of what you could keep or protect yourself with. And people even in Detroit, or Seattle, or Salt Lake City looked at that what? Wow, honey, if that happened here, we don’t have any way to protect yourselves. So people went out and bought guns all over the country. Same things happen right now. They have come to grips with the realization that they really are on their own. This is not something we’ve always done this. This is always true. The police will be there when they can. Sometimes it’s two minutes, sometimes it’s five minutes, sometimes it’s 30 minutes, no matter what it is. It’s too late to Two minutes is too late. Just this morning, we had a story I believe it was out of Knoxville, Tennessee, where three women were stabbed to death. In a convenience store. A guy goes in there and kills three women stabbed them to death. The police arrived at two minutes a fabulous response time to live for those women. My whole deal is really simple. When you put your pants on in the morning, put on a gun. I wear a gun in my house all the time. I have a gun on all the time. Why is that? Because I don’t know what’s going to happen. And I’m competent. And I practice and people. They’re new gun owners. We’ll talk about that a second. What should you do if you just bought a gun? But the reality is, you’re responsible for your own safety, you are your own first responder.

Rob McNealy
I couldn’t agree with that more. Interestingly enough, I’m a pretty moderate guy. I’m very conservative on things like guns in the economy and fiscally I’m very fiscally conservative. And but I still have a lot of friends that are you know, liberals straight up liberal so I’m not even going to hide it now I don’t hate liberals because they lean a different way than I do. Like I try to get along with everybody. In the last week and a half I’ve had four phone calls from friends. Three of them were asking me about their first gun purchase the fourth person was asking where they can find emergency food. Like and of course I’m the guy they call but and and then and and I always I always like to play with people like I thought you weren’t a big gun guy and they’re like, you know, I’m not a big gun guy but but you know, in there backpedaling and I love my friends don’t get me wrong, and I do. Trust me. I give them a little crap upfront, but I do absolutely everything that I can to give them good advice. And and then you know, you know, help them get along and do it safely. So I guess that’s a good segue. What would you recommend to all these new gun owners, especially these liberal gun owners that have never really been around guns What would you recommend they do first thing after they get their gun?

Tom Gresham – Gun Talk
Well, first of all, I, I don’t make a distinction between conservatives and liberals. I just don’t care. It’s truly a non starter for me. I know it’s a fun thing to talk about those liberals or those conservatives, but when it comes to gun rights, All I care about is you’re either with us or against us. And I don’t care if you’re the super leftist and there are a lot of leftist and liberals who are really pretty good on the second amendment because they believe in the Bill of Rights, they protect all the other rights and they back the Second Amendment. But to your question, I guess a couple of things. If you are a first time gun buyer, go to kids, you can’t go to a lot of shooting ranges right now and can’t get instruction. But there are a lot of places you can go online and get some instruction we just put up a brand new video on our YouTube channel, go to gun talk media on YouTube, and we’re calling it the three minute EDC, three minute everyday carry. It’s a tip we’re going to do. There’s three minutes that’s On basically how to load and unload a revolver, we’re going to do the same thing with a lot of other things. But here’s the other if you’re a gun owner, and there are a lot of gun owners who are watching this right now, this is our opportunity to once again show that we’re the responsible ones out there. All of us have friends who may not be into guns, they you may know people who are first time gun owners, and if you don’t, maybe you have this extended group of Facebook people or even church members, and you can make an offer, hey, I could help. And even if you can’t go see them with a social distancing. You can do a FaceTime chat, zoom connection, and say, okay, that gun your pistol you just bought, put it on the table in the box. And Alright, we’re going to walk through this open up the box, there’s a pamphlet in there. The gun makers spent a lot of money and a lot of time on the owner’s manual. Read every page in your owner’s manual you will learn a lot actually ended up knowing a lot more than a lot of gun owners do. And then let’s talk about our We’re gonna take it out the box, and we’re going to make sure it’s unloaded, you’re gonna show me on your camera. And we as gun owners can walk them through. How do you take out a magazine? How do you work a slide? How do you when you pick up your gun, here’s your tip for the day to grab a gun, make a gun, that is you make a finger gun, right. And then you pick up the gun with your finger gun. Now your finger straight along the side of the gun. It’s a safe way to teach people to pick up guns and not wrap their finger inside the trigger the way people tend to do. So we as gun owners can actually help people be safe with how they handle their gun. Let’s talk about the four rules of gun safety. We’ll talk about muzzle discipline. We’ll talk about how you work a slide, keep your finger off the trigger. We can help these people out and then when we can all get back together and you just have a standing offer. When we can do this. I’ll take you out to the range and I will teach you some things We’ll get you some level of comfort and familiarity. We may have a million or 2 million or who knows how many new gun owners who some of them could be persuaded to come to the side of the Second Amendment. You’re not going to make them conservative. But we don’t need them to be conserved. We just need them to vote on the basis of the Second Amendment. I truly don’t care where they are on any other issues. Nothing.

Rob McNealy
Well, I agree. I’m glad that you bring that up. Because I’m basically a one issue voter anymore on the second amendment and, and I look at a pretty straightforward if you’re going to be bad on the Second Amendment, you’re probably not going to be good on any of the other ones either. And that goes for conservatives, too. I tell people I tell people all the time you do not have a you are not entitled to my vote ever. When it comes to politicians, and I think that’s important to stress that is, you know, if you you know, there’s no good politicians that don’t like certain rights, either Do you like the rights or you don’t? You may not like what people do with those rights. It’s a different story, I think. But you know, I think it’s important that you know, we point out that you know, you can be more liberal in some ways and still be a big defender of your your person your right to self defense and I think a lot of people miss the fact that ultimately everybody is conservative when it comes to their own life. Typically, about this it just they don’t usually sometimes they don’t realize it until it’s too late to do something about it. And I and I see that it’s interesting. I was arguing with this not arguing discussing on social media recently with a one of my more liberal Facebook friends who was in Dallas, and I was shocked that she must be suicidal because her position you know, she I posted an article about why people should get a gun and this is like, three four weeks ago before people were freaking out. And and my position was like, get it while you can get it now because it’s going to be A lot harder and a few weeks to get anything, which is so far proven to be correct. And and she’s like, Well, why do I need a gun? I go, Well, there’s a good chance that you know, the crime is going to go up around you and everywhere else. And she’s like, well, if I need a gun to defend myself, then I don’t really want to live on this planet. And I go, and I said, bless your heart. But I hope you don’t change your mind when it’s too late to go back from that decision. And that’s an interesting,

Tom Gresham – Gun Talk Radio
One of things I tell people to look, particularly if you’re a parent, you don’t have that choice anymore. You don’t have the choice to say, well, I’ll just die rather than defend myself because, number one, if you’re protecting your child, then you need a tool to do that. You need the skills to do that. But more than that, even if you’re by yourself, if you die, you traumatize that child, what a selfish thing to do. To say I’m going I’m willing to die for this and traumatize my children. Forever, because I wouldn’t take the simple steps to take to get protection to learn how to use a gun. I describe a gun as a parachute. It’s the thing you use, when every other thing is failed. You know, you run out of gas, the wings don’t fire the engine don’t fire, you’re crashing, you jump out with a parachute. In this case, we try to do everything we can to not use a gun. We work hard at, you know, avoid those evasion, awareness, you know, de escalation, all the other things we can do, because any day I don’t have to use my gun, it’s a great day, and I hope I end up dying at the age of 142. Never having used my gut. But having said that, I also know that stuff happens. I mean, we have fire extinguishers in our house. I didn’t plan to ever have a fire. I did. Okay. It’s the thing you use to control the situation. Until help gets there. Think of the fire extinguisher analogy. It’s not there to put out a house. is to try to control it until the fire department gets there. Same thing with a gun. And you know, one of the things that people and you know this, but a lot of people don’t know the public is that the police legally have no duty to protect anyone. The courts have ruled over and over, but they’re not responsible for you, and they don’t have a legal duty to even come. Or if they come, they can sit there and watch you get injured, they don’t have a legal responsibility to protect you.

Rob McNealy
Well, that came up down in Florida, right? Down Down at Sandy Hook, right, the resource officer waited on the outside of the building, during that environment or during that that mass shooting and so and you know, and it’s funny because I follow that a little bit, but a lot of the courts basically said there’s nothing we can do against them and then they you know, work really hard because of the public outrage about it. But ultimately, they’re they’re not legally obligated to defend you. And I was the first and only As a first responder, I was been an EMT and a firefighter and I’ve worked around law enforcement many years. And I can tell you, it’s not a bad thing, but even EMTs and firefighters are told, save yourself first. Don’t put yourself in danger. That’s typically the mantra, right? So I think it’s a personal responsibility, and no one’s gonna care about your life more than you. Let’s be honest.

Tom Gresham – Gun Talk Radio
Well, to your point, if the police and the firemen EMTs will save your life first. That’s pretty good advice for all of us. Save Your Life first. don’t depend on anybody else. And don’t you love the folks who said, Well, you know, I would never have a gun in my home. Really? Okay. So if somebody breaks in, we’re going to call, I’m gonna call at least Well, that doesn’t make any sense. I thought you just said you would never had a gun in your home. What do you think the police are going to come in? They’re going to come in with a gun. That makes no sense whatsoever. You’re okay with somebody having a gun, but only if they were a certain kind of clothing. Only if they’re wearing

Rob McNealy
Tiny little badge, right?

Tom Gresham – Gun Talk Radio
Yeah, exactly. That’s which we already have to get into the whole. Who’s more competent? Yeah, very well, maybe the woman is walking in the streets more confident about 90% of the police officers out there. And that’s no knock on the cops, they get what they get. We’re trading, but most of them are not gun people. Most of them don’t train on their own, most of them won’t spend the money on ammo. And so they get minimal training with very minimal remedial recurrent training, and they’re just simply not very good. So once again, do you really want to trust your life to that, but this whole Corona Virus Pandemic has been interesting. And as I say there may be an opportunity here at the end of it for us to pick up some people in the gun world and gun culture if you will. But only if we reach out to them and we’re not engaging in the Where have you been all along and also, you know, we’re making fun of them. There’s a an addictive attraction for putting people down, especially on the internet, and, you know, rather than do that we should be looking at this and going, Wow, what a golden opportunity. We could pick up a million votes with a million votes we win on a national basis with a million votes, you win.

Rob McNealy
Well, it was interesting. One of the people that asked me about advice is someone who’s actually in New York City, and he’s an attorney of all things. And, and I said, Look, I don’t know your laws in New York City. But I said, it’s really hard to get a gun at all right now, because they’re everywhere I know, is sold out of most inventory right now. But I tried to help them out, gave me some suggestions on what he could do and where he could go. But it’s I think you’re right. I think unfortunately, I think it’s part of the human kind of, you know, programming that we have that people don’t think about those things still, it’s right in their lap, right. Right now there’s somewhere between two and 600 people De dying in New York City from COVID right now I just looked at the numbers, the raw numbers from New York City that’s what the numbers are looking for look like 400 people died from COVID since yesterday which is sad and scary and and I can’t imagine what it would be like if I was living there Now personally because I know there is gonna be unrest people just I think when you get people in a group or you know people a lot of people are in a mass and they live close to each other like in a big city like New York City. People just get dis gets scared and they get restless and they go crazy. So, so the guess the last thing I wanted to ask you about and see if you’ve heard anything about this is what do you see is happening to the supply chain and I don’t just mean about the FOMO knowing the fear of missing out and the panic buying or the last minute buying. I’ve heard some rumors that because China has been shut down for so long that that could start impacting the US gun manufacturing industry as a whole. Have you heard anything about that at all in your circles?

Tom Gresham – Gun Talk Radio
I really haven’t. Again, remember, we’ve been through these crushes before, when Obama was elected when it looked like Hillary was going to be elected, we have a run on guns. There was was eight years ago, 10 years ago now, you couldn’t find guns, you couldn’t find animal. There’s just nothing there. That’s going to happen again, that’s happening right now. The gun makers are, especially the ammo makers are not going to gear up to take care of this demand. Because they know it will go away and when it goes away, it drops off the end of the table. It’s just gone. And so they’re not going to hire more people. They’re not going to add shifts just not going to happen. So what’s out there is out there there’s there’s enough ammo in the pipeline to take care of all of our shooting for the next 10 years. But not if you buy your next 10 years worth of ammo right now all at once. That’s what’s going on. I guess my takeaway is what I’ve been telling people on gun talk radio for yours now is investing they have a thing called dollar cost averaging, which means buy stock every month. Whether it’s up whether it’s down just every month to buy a little bit. We should do the same thing with ammunition. ammo six months ago was so cheap, it was like a giveaway ammo. You could buy it for nothing and it was available everywhere. When this whole nonsense is over. You know anybody can find $10 a week. Okay, that’s one box of nine millimeter ammo. Anybody can find 10 bucks a week. Buy a box of ammo a week. At the end of the year or two years you have two or three shelves full of ammo. This is not your shooting ammo This is your the next time the world loses its mind ammo, and then you can just you know do shooting but you know this will all come back. This will all get back to normal. The gun makers are making guns there’s gonna be plenty of guns for everybody. Actually, I’ve heard a gun people say Huh, dig around in my safe. I’m selling guns right now. Prices are up, I put them in the gun stores on consignment, I’m gonna make some money. If you’re a real gun person, you don’t have really a need to go out and buy guns at inflated prices right now. So just take a deep breath, sit back Come middle of the summer, this will all be over. And if you went out bought several guns at inflated prices, if you have to sell them, you’re gonna take a PDR

Rob McNealy
I think that’s really good advice. Tom. I do appreciate your time today. Thank you so much for coming on. Where can people find out about you and where can they check out your website?

Tom Gresham – Gun Talk Radio
Well, several different ways to go. Gun talk comm is the home base for everything. We have videos on YouTube, Roku, Amazon Fire Apple TV, just look for gun talk where we have thousands of those. We have the guns in gear television show which runs on the sports channel. And then of course, the gun talk radio show is available in podcast. So that’s the number two all time podcast in the hobby category according to Apple. So those are the basic ones. And then we actually have a smartphone app is very cool GunDealio that gives you great deals on guns and ammo. If you go to GunDealio calm, you can get it for your iPhone or your Android. So a lot of ways to keep up.

Rob McNealy
Tom Gresham, thank you so much. I really appreciate it today.

Tom Gresham – Gun Talk Radio
For sure, take care.

Episode Links

Audio Interview
Video Interview
Interview Transcript

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge Transcript

Lewis Dartnell - The Knowledge

Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.

Rob McNealy
This podcast is sponsored by Tusk, an open source non Ico crypto project powered by community. Check them out on the web at task dot network. That’s TUSC dot network. The Rob McNealy program is the nexus of cryptocurrency, blockchain technology and entrepreneurship. Now, welcome to the program. Today, folks, we’re gonna have a really good show. We are talking to Professor Lewis Darnell. He is professor of astrobiology at the University of Westminster in the UK. And he is a best selling author and his latest book is called the knowledge how to rebuild civilization in the aftermath of a cataclysm, and I can’t think of a better topic, or that’s more prescient than that is right now. So, Louis, welcome to the show. How are you today?

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
That Rob I’m doing well. I’m self isolating in my flat in West London at the moment. I’m not getting outdoors. Nearly As much as I’d like to at the moment,

Rob McNealy
So that means you get less sun than you normally would I’m guessing and..

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
less less less vitamin D. Yeah, well we’ve so we live in London we don’t have anything even remotely approaches a garden or a backyard. But we have got a little bit of terrorists on the roof. So we have about a 20 square foot of outside space that we’ve been taking our lunch on, just to get just get a little bit of the sunlight.

Rob McNealy
Well, I think that’s really important because we personally in my household, we’ve been self isolating for approximately two weeks now. And but even at night, my wife and I are still going for walks in the neighborhood. And if there’s somebody else we see we walk way around them and give them a wide berth. But

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
Basically, yeah, so I’ve been I’ve been taking runs along the river running along the River Thames between the two bridges, but it’s just getting like busier and busier. I think people are starting to get a bit Cabin Fever cooped up at home and going out again, which you know, as you all know, is The last thing you want to be doing in terms of social distance, and you want to be kidding apart from people not congregating. Even if you’re hungry eating outside,

Rob McNealy
I couldn’t imagine what it would be like for people in major cities like New York and London to have to self isolate like that. I think it would be really hard if I have a pretty big lot for my yard. And if I couldn’t get out there and the sun and work around the garden, we’re getting ready for the year, it would be really, really hard. If I couldn’t leave the house. That would be I would go nuts. I absolutely would. So tell us a little bit about your background.

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
Yeah, so I’m a research professor and summit University of Westminster here in London. And my research field, as you mentioned, is in a very new field of science called Astro biology, which is all about looking at the possibility of there being life beyond the earth. So my actual background in science is in biology. I was at Oxford. We in biological sciences, my PhD University College London and What we’re trying to do with astrobiology is extend our understanding or knowledge of life on Earth of hardy bacteria, and the conditions they can survive under. And extending that knowledge to see if there could be the possibility of material life microbial life beyond the earth. So in particular, I spend my time thinking about our next door neighbor planets, which is Mars, and could they be highly bacteria in the dusty desert surface soil of Mars? And if is there, and importantly, how could you detect it? How could you design some kind of experiment or instrument you strapped to the front of the Mars rover to look for signs of life while it’s there? So NASA is launching this summer. It’s Mars 2020 rover, and the European Space Agency was due to launch this summer as well. It’s ExoMars rover, but that’s had to be pushed back two years to the next launch window. But that’s that’s the bread and butter of what I do. I’m a scientist. I Help and hunt for aliens, if you like in terms of Heidi bacteria, fossilized life forms and bio signatures, we call it on Mars. But alongside that research and having PhD students working with me and running a laboratory, I do a lot of science communication. I write books about things I think are of interest or of interest to the general public. And my last book, in fact, I’ve had a new one out since but my last book is one we’re talking about, which is called the knowledge and as you said, it’s it’s becoming, unfortunately, particularly pertinent right now with this coronavirus global pandemic. But what the knowledge does as a science book is it’s not really a prepper book or survival manual. It’s a science book that uses the conceit uses the premise of some kind of global catastrophe, some kind of Apocalypse, that pushes the reset button. And you are now part of a post apocalyptic survival community, trying to work out how to make and do things, everything from scratch yourself, how? How does our civilization run behind the scenes providing stuff for us making things appear magically on the shelves of the supermarket? How does that work? by imagining that it stops working tomorrow, and then therefore trying to explore all the science and technology through the pages of the knowledge this book?

Rob McNealy
You know, it’s weird. I actually think about weird things like that, because I’m just built experiments. Yeah. You know, I do a lot of that a little bit back to your, you know, study of microbiology, and then in foreign places, do you look at things like on Earth, like in Antarctica or sea floor vents are those places to kind of get an idea of the kinds of biological agents or, you know, microbes that live in harsh environments?

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of my work is focused on what we call extremophiles. So extreme tolerant, extremely loving microorganisms on earth. And these are kinda like survival superheroes, there are bacteria growing at 120 degrees Celsius. So beyond the normal boiling point of water, there are bugs that can still survive those incredibly hot temperatures around hydrothermal vents on the sea floor, or what’s particularly relevant to my studies. And the possibility of life on Mars is by going to the most Mars like places here on Earth. So very cold places very dry places, like Antarctica, you mentioned and in particular, the Antarctic dry valleys, the McMurdo dry valleys, which is one of the driest spots anywhere on the planet is in Antarctica. It’s night by the South Pole, but it’s not covered in ice and snow. It is incredibly dry. So it’s got a Martian like environment. So I’ve got samples From those Antarctic sites by studying, analyze and lab, finding how the life survives that environment, and importantly, what signs of its existence, it betrays itself with what bio signatures we can detect. It’s not just based like Antarctica, the Atacama Desert in Chile in South America is also exceedingly dry as a high powered core looking, we can also look at life that comes from, you know, top of mountains, over acidic places, very alkaline places, like the soda lakes in Kenya, or I grew up, I grew up in Nairobi. So a lot of astrobiology is trying to understand as much as we can about the survival limits of life on earth. And what is what is the total range of climactic conditions and environmental conditions that biology can tolerate?

Rob McNealy
But I’d love to have a show just on that because I’m going to come back. Well, my my undergrad degree was in geography. So I was really into earth science. Anyway, just kind You know, as a hobby kind of thing, and

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
we know what we can come back to this in another episode, but the new book that came out in paperback a few weeks ago. It’s called origins, how the earth shaped human history. And that is right up your streets. There’s very much a geography book about how things like plate tectonics, or continental drift or atmospheric circulation, or the distribution of metals and resources have deeply influenced the human story from from our very evolution, across thousands of years of the development of civilization and current affairs and modern politics. today. That’s very much geography.

Rob McNealy
We call that’s another topic of population geography. And I took that course in uni.

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
So yeah, it looks like Guns, Germs, steel by Jared Diamond or tuck ins by Yuval. Noah Harare, it’s along similar lines. It’s kind of big history, kind of human geography type crossover interdisciplinary.

Rob McNealy
It’s a good stuff and I actually fascinated that you know, you’ve got back from A lot of academics have a hard time, kind of going from the theoretical, really, really narrow and specified niches of their, their topic and then being able to extrapolate how that affects the bigger picture. I think a lot of people miss that in academia. So you actually are kind of cool,

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
right? Yeah. So like that I’m cool. But like that it’s important to do that.

Rob McNealy
I do think you’re cool. So. So the book at hand, the the knowledge tell us about the things that we need to know about to rebuild civilization.

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
Yeah. So this thought experiment of imagine everything has disappeared, everything you take for granted? And how do you start pulling yourself back up by your own bootstraps? How’d you get the resources and the materials and the substances that you need to support your lifestyle and that of your society, you’re rebooting from scratch, you’re recovering. So in a sense, what I’m talking about in the knowledge is Could you do Minecraft for real? assuming you’re not a prepper, you notice a survivalist. You haven’t stockpiled things to keep you going for for several years. And even if you are a prepper, things are going to run out in your own stockpile sooner or later. And when that happens, you’re going to have to ask yourself a question and know the answer, which is, how do I do that myself? How do I make that myself? Where do I go to to extract what I need from the natural environment to meet these things. So in each of the chapters of the knowledge, I’ve looked at the different sector, different areas of our everyday lives, whether that is the basic chemistry that supports us, or technology for communication, or for transport, or agriculture and where food comes from so you starve to death. And the beginning of every chapter is absolute. Back to Basics, fundamental type stuff. This is what you most need to know in a company. densed boil it down to its essence kind of way. And then over the course of every chapter, we allow that fundamental knowledge to expand and kind of unfurl again. It’s almost like an acorn, growing over time to an entire tree. So that over the chapters of this book, we’ve reestablished the entire network of capability of scientific discoveries, and technological inventions and how they connect to each other, and enable each other to coexist. And we develop that network over the course of the book.

Rob McNealy
So I’ve always wondered about weird things in my thought experiments and I think people listening to this will think I’m really nuts but like, I think like, if I was, you know, in that whole Naked and Afraid kind of environment having to start over, how do you make wire? How do you get to making wire? How do you make things precise? That was one of the things that I always was wondering about, like, you know, how do we make things super level just basically precision, where does it start? Yeah,

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
it is a cracking question. And I think what most people overlook or misunderstands is that yes, the Industrial Revolution was about steam engines and coal. And that kind of fossil energy was important for pulling us out of, you know, basically agrarian society into an industrialized manufacturing, mass producing, dripping with energy type society we live in today. But it was all the prerequisite technology and knowledge you needed that enabled the industrial revolution in the first place. And one of those things that we just overlook, it kind of seems boring into understand why it’s phenomenally fascinating is that idea of precision, and exactitude. There was no point trying to make a cast iron or steel, cylinder and a piston for steam engine, or internal combustion engine. If you can’t make it to Within, you know the range of tolerances that allow the piston to smoothly move up and down within, within the cylinder so it’s not just having the material of steel, or the coal is the fuel, you’ve got to have the basic button standing and knowledge of how to make things accurately. You’ve got to understand the science as well about you know, expansive power of steam science and technology, interacting history, which one of the things I explore.

Rob McNealy
One of the things that I do as a hobby as welding and and when you start looking at how well if I’m so I know how to make things with metal. And yeah, it’s kind of weird. I got an MBA but I’m also a certified welder one through a full Walden course and everything for a year and a half just because I really liked my hobbies and now now the funny thing is I said okay, well how would you make a welder to join metal because joining metal is critical for building and and so then you go back well what did they do before welding and they’ve had rivets before welding right is for Joining metal and that’s back into the steam, you know, days back the Industrial Revolution, you know, metal that’s, you know, the Titanic was riveted together for instance. Yeah. And welding processes are only like 100 years old. And people don’t understand that that it’s like how do you get to welding? And if you just ask that question, wow, that’s that’s, that’s complicated.

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
Yeah, well welding is a very interesting topic to brought up and is something I explained in the knowledge about how you can do welding from scratch Could you do like caveman welding? Because you’re right, it’s a relatively recent invention and our technological development and in our history, and what you need for welding fundamentally, is either a gas fuel that burns exceedingly hot, so you’ve been probably using something like oxy acetylene gas mixture, and to explain that the actually really basic chemistry that you can use to make an oximeter Clean gas mixture for yourself, which you can then ignite with a spark. And as long as you’ve got kind of a metal tube to feed it through that does melt, you can then start using that chemistry of combustion to get to very high temperatures to melt metals and fuses and sticks together. Your welding is basically the trick of gluing metal together by melting the metal itself. But actually, one of the ideas I play with throughout the whole of the knowledge throughout the whole of the book is this idea of technological leap frogging. Just because we did something in a particular sequence in a particular order in our history, doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the only order you could do it. And you could probably like, you don’t need to go to rivets than welding, you can jump right to welding.

Exactly Could you go right back from primitive beginnings and leapfrog back to welding directly going via rivets but they’re not a necessary prerequisite. And electricity is a really interesting example of this. And you mentioned wires earlier because There’s no real reason that electricity was discovered in our history kind of around about 1850 it’s halfway through the 19th century. And in fact, I took in the knowledge that there’s a little bit of I can illogical evidence of the being electrochemistry. So the basic chemistry behind a battery existing in some area, you know, 2000 years ago a long, long time before Michael Faraday and kind of worn institution and people and voltar electrocuting frogs legs and trying to understand this weird phenomenon of electricity that the chemistry behind a battery is actually pretty simple. If you’ve got two different kinds of metal and something like vinegar, you put between them, and you can generate your own electricity. If you’ve got something as simple as a coil of wire, and a magnet. And the ancient Greeks knew about magnets and load stones they knew about these kind of weird rocks, you could dig out of the ground and they kind of dangle them through a piece of string Lee pointing the same direction. You know, the basic understanding behind the compass and they attract each other. And so one of the could have other ways of framing this thought experiment isn’t just how could you reboot civilization as quickly as possible, often Apocalypse, if only you’ve got the most useful things written down in a manual, as this knowledge book is, could you jump into a time machine? Go back, let’s say 2000 years into the past, whisper in the air of one of the leading thinkers of the time whisper into one of the philosophers in ancient Rome, ancient Greece, and and tell them something so that they go hard course. I never thought that I had access to all the basic war ingredients and materials and substances that I needed. I had the basic understanding, but I’ve not made that small conceptual leap. So could you teach an ancient Greek philosopher who had bronze they had a conductive metal, how to beat that or draw that out and wire, I think coil that wire and create an electromagnet or use it to create a primitive telegraph system. So they didn’t need physical runners or, you know, messengers on horses. If the Battle of mouth and they didn’t have to send a runner, sprinting 10s of miles to take the message back, we’ve had a primitive telegraph system. Would that work? Could you take technology out of its own time and our history and neatly implanted 500 years earlier or thousand years earlier, we’ve had the basic understanding, to know what you’re talking about, and how to put it to good effect.

Rob McNealy
I mean, I think you have some examples of that. If you look at the Dark Ages, for instance, and a lot of your own history, even in the dark ages, they forgot a lot of the technology that the Romans actually were actively using, even in What’s now the UK?

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
Well, concrete for example, concrete was a lost technology. It was lost a history through the through the dark ages, architecture, arches and the architecture behind it. Exactly. Yeah.

Rob McNealy
So what would you say would be some of the most fundamental basic principles that people can learn from your book? What would you what would be the things that people should be thinking of?

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
So let’s let’s pick two examples. We can talk about them in more detail, we can we can pick up on things later as well. But if I were to my argument for what is the most useful piece of knowledge, piece of understanding you would hope would never be lost again to history but never be forgotten, after some kind of Apocalypse, some kind of break in the historical record. And I would argue the most useful piece of knowledge for humanity would be the idea of germ theory, that this notion this understanding, that the reason people get sick For L, and can pass that plague from one person to the next isn’t because of bad air. It’s not because of mouth area, which is the original talion translating translation of why people think they got sick. It’s not because of some fractious God who is punishing you for your sins. There’s a very simple mechanism for why people get sick of contagious diseases. And that’s because there are living organisms which are so unimaginably tiny that they are invisible to your eye, but it gets inside your body, and they reproduce and grow and make you sick, and they get out of your body and you can transfer them to someone else if you cough or sneeze or touch them, and then that person gets sick as well. And, in fact, you can prove that for someone as well rather than just writing it down or chiseling into a piece of granite as a new commandment to leave the post apocalyptic society. You can do something even more important which is explained to them How you can demonstrate this for yourself. It’s the very essence of science. It’s not just accepting something that an authority has told you, you don’t just receive things, you demonstrate them for yourself. And you can demonstrate germ theory really easy by creating by constructing a simple primitive microscope. And all you need to make a microscope that is capable of seeing micro organisms, microscopic organisms is a rod of clear glass, which you then melt in a flame, you know, using your oxy acetylene torch or using a candle. And that glass drips and cools as it falls and two sets as a almost perfect sphere, which which can be used as a tiny lens. So this is basically what leeuwenhoek was doing. The early 17th century was creating primitive microscopes and discovering the microscopic world never been seen before. But if you use this kind of thought experiment about jumping in your time machine back into the past, the ancient Romans had everything they needed for making a primitive microscope. They had very high quality pure glass. They were expert glass makers. And they’d even noticed, if you have a vase, made of glass and full of water, that things behind it appear to be bigger. They appear to be magnified somehow. But he never made that next conceptual step of how about we try to deliberately mold glass into that particular curved shape to make a lens so that we can see small things we can design a microscope from scratch, but they had everything they needed to do that. And one of the things that I wanted to do that I was keen to pull off when I was researching and writing the book, The knowledge was not just treated as an academic exercise as a labor project. Act of speaking to hundreds of people and then condensing down their background and their expertise and reading lots of books. But I want to get hands on practical experience myself, I wanted to make and do things from scratch myself. And I wanted in particular, to do the ultimate Robinson Crusoe experiment, because it turns out that all of the raw ingredients you need to make glass from absolute scratch, you can get on the same beach, you can get silica from sand, you can get soda ash, which you need is a flux unit to help melt that silica at lower temperatures. And you can get that from seaweed. And you need some line which you can get from coral or seashells or chalk. And you grind those up, you melt them together in a kill using the heat of fire and you produce a very good quality glass of that recipe. And I did that I made glass from scratch in the course of a weekend on a single beach, that kind of ultimate Robinson Crusoe experiment and how you could make a microscope for yourself if you’d washed up on a desert island. But the beach clay went to more than a particularly pleasant one. It wasn’t the sort of beach you might find in California or some other sunkissed part of the world. This was a beach in Britain. This was a beach in Norfolk, which on the East of England, and it pissed with rain for the entire weekend, I was trying to do this experiment. But I was able to make glass from scratch and therefore in principle, create a simple microscope that could prove the existence of germs and bacteria, which can then prove the importance of germ theory and why you need to keep your drinking water separate from your human waste from excrement about why you should wash your hands during a plague or in general before touching food or touching yourself, incidentally, but the chemistry behind making soap is Also phenomenally simple. Once you know how, and you just boil some animal fat or some plant oil with an alkaline and you can get the alkali from soda ash, which the same compound you need to make the glass or potash, which you get out of. It’s just normal word.

Rob McNealy
So the germ theory is basically to prove Well, that would then increase human lifespan. And so, so let me I’m just, I’m just doing my own brain exercise here. Right? So I’m trying to figure out, why would you think that’s the most important thing? Let me ask you first.

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
Well, if if you’ve only got like 30 seconds to explain something, or you’ve got a very limited paragraph of text, you want to get something which is absolutely true, but it’s also a practical use. It’ll actually change your life will help you out. You We’ll explain how to make a steam engine in a paragraph. And for the reasons we’ve talked about, there’s a whole network, you know, there’s a whole iceberg below the surface you can’t see, you actually need to make a steam engine from scratch or a car engine and then talk about an engine. But you can condense down to the very nuggets, three kernel of understanding the idea of germ theory, it’s very simple idea that this invisibly small things get inside your body, you can also very, very simply explain to someone how to prove that for themselves. And the practical aspect, the application of that is an owl tells you why and keeping your drinking water and your excrement apart from each other important why should always dig you know, well or borehole, at least 20 foot uphill if possible, from where your cesspit is, for basic germ theory. It explains why you should wash your hands. It gives you the reason behind things that we take for granted not in our modern lives because we’re Hold them as a child, but we don’t really know why, what what’s the fundamental reason behind the existence of soap or a flushable? toilet?

Rob McNealy
Wow, that’s actually pretty deep. So but it’s there. And we still don’t wash our hands. So, go figure. So, what would be the next thing what would the so germ theory is number one, what would be like your number two most important thing that people should be looking at.

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
So Gen Z was was was an example of a nugget of condensed knowledge that you would you would preserve you put that in your apocalypse bunker and hope it was never lost history that the survivors community could could put that to effect and, and kind of run with it and it would expand afterwards like this, this oak tree idea idea. And the other example I had was of a physical object, an artifact of a tool that I think is the most useful tool you would hope for Never be lost again. And this tool is the lave. Now if you don’t know if you’re not already, someone who’s conversant the kind of workshops in carpentry or metalworking, Aleve is the simplest machine tool. It is a tool that you use to make other tools that use to mass producing, manufacture things. It’s one of these fundamental tools that enable Industrial Revolution. And that sits visibly behind the scenes in basically every piece of technology or object you ever touch your day to day lives right now. And the leave fundamentally, is just a flatbed. So kind of a rail you lay down on the work surface. And on one end, let’s say on the left hand side, there is a headstock and a spindle and an chalk that holds your workpiece but the thing you want to work on and you spin that work piece And then from the other side, along that rail, you bring in a tool, maybe a cutting piece, maybe a drill, maybe a boring instrument. Or you can bring stuff along the side of that workpiece as it spins on your legs. So everything from candlesticks to table legs to baseball bats are turned on a leaf, but also much more fundamental technology for the running of society, like the cylinders and pistons of a steam engine, are turned on a lathe. That’s the fundamental tool that you need to make a steam engine, and indeed our own history. The cylinder of the steam engine is direct descendant from basically a cannon, you make a cannon for fighting wars. In the same way you make a steam engine for replacing human labor or the horse for moving things around. And what blew my mind when I found out this when I was researching The knowledge is lay there’s not only required to make all other machine tools in the modern workshop that the drill press that the pillar drill or the milling machine, a lathe is also able to make other leads. That leave is like a machine that can reproduce like an organism. It’s almost like a metallic organism that can replicate itself. And there’s a phenomenal example of a machinist of a metal workshop guy called Dave gingery, who in the 1980s, made himself a lave from absolute scratch and then use his leave to make each of the other machine tools you need. And I’m not in a modern workshop and workshops and industry revolution. So a drill press and a milling machine. And in order to make his leave, all he started with was a pile of clay. Basically rhythm and a pile of sand you can get from a beach Dig underground and a pile of trash, tin cans. So basically scrap aluminum, and then just some fuel, some charcoal or you just make your own charcoal by heating wood and turning timber and into charcoal. And using his clay which is a refractory material, he lined trashcan to make a very simple Forge, which had burnt the charcoal in that forge to melt the elementium and then pour that Molten Aluminum into casts the made in the sand. So he had a very simple way of casting new metal components to make his leave out of and then once he’d got a half finished leave, he could then use that half completed leave to turn the remaining components needed to complete that first leave. So I cannot think in the whole of the modern world that a better example of someone bootstrapping of someone pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps from apps Scratch, starting with basic raw materials like sand and clay, making one machine tool blade, then making all the other machine tools in a workshop and then using those to make pretty much any piece of technology any piece of machinery Do you would you would use in an in an industrialized world. But that to me that’s still you know sends tingles down my spine thinking about that phenomenal idea of deep gingers project.

Rob McNealy
I think I want to party with you.

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
Know, I’m quite I’m, I’m one of the things that saddens me about researching writing knowledge is I got to talk to a huge amount of fascinating people of preppers and survivalists, and SAS survival guys and historians and technologists and scientists, but I missed a gingery by about six years. He sadly died in 2007. And I missed in my couple of years and myself researching and writing this book. I’ve loved to have sat down on a beer with this guy, or at least have a chat over Skype before passed away.

Rob McNealy
You know, it’s kind of interesting. I grew up in the Metro Detroit area in the 80s. When I was kid, I was in high school in the 80s. And back then, that was when Detroit was that was B. I grew up before Detroit started outsourcing. So, I grew up and and so I’m in my late 40s now, but when I was growing up, there was still a ton of that Detroit Auto worker machinists were everywhere. In the Metro Detroit area, everybody, you know, had a hands on skill. And so I knew a lot of those old timers that were like the machinists for the auto industry for decades, and that generational knowledge is gone now. I was fortunate, though it’d be illegal today but I worked when I was 16 and a starter in generator rebuilding store or shop. And so I mean, when I was a kid, and so I was working on machines and and rebuilding starters and alternators and things like that, and that would never be allowed to From OSHA, I mean, a kid would not be allowed in an industrial setting like that. But it was still, there was still lots of these like little plating shops like these little two to five to 10 man shops all over the Detroit area that provided just they made one part for like the auto industry,

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
kind of specialized knowledge that we want to make it very, very well. And very exact, and very quickly, and then someone else makes something else and you combine it in one column.

Rob McNealy
And so I grew up in that environment, and that environments gone now. And it just just doesn’t really exist anymore. And it’s unfortunate because I think that knowledge that you’re talking about is something that’s vital for society to have that and I think we’re seeing that now with people are people are all of a sudden starting to care about their supply chain being completely everything being manufactured abroad in China right now. And then I think as the week’s go on here, that’s going to become ever more important. topic of conversation. I

Unknown Speaker
think you’re absolutely right. So I as I said, I am I am not a prepper myself. I’m a scientist, I live in a tiny flat in West London. I’ve only got more than a week’s worth of food now because of this current crisis. But I think all of us are now starting to ask these questions like the things they just took for granted. It isn’t magically appearing on the supermarket shelves anymore, but there are breaks and strains showing in the supply chains. And people now starting to see these questions and think about where does actually come from in the first place? Is it made 10 yards 10 miles down the road? Is it made in the US? I mean, the same country as me, or has it been shipped 5000 miles across the greatest ocean on the planet from the other side of the world from China, and therefore we’re gonna start having supply problems. And I think this is what I wrote the knowledge for x and the knowledge isn’t really about the apocalypse is just using that as a thought experiment to peer behind the scenes and ask where things come from. And how it works. Bless you. I’m glad you raised your child in Detroit, Rob, because clearly that the very heart of the Detroit economy used to be based around the internal combustion engine, but based on the the automobile industry. And one the other stories I tell in the knowledge is the idea of where inventions come from. And on the whole, you know, it’s the whole Shakespearean quote about that there’s nothing new under the sun. And even something like an internal combustion engine wasn’t really invented from scratch. It was just a new arrangement, a new configuration of tried and tested components that the inventor literally picked off the shelf of history’s workshop of mechanical components and parts. And so if you look at internal combustion engine, the car engine and dissect it in the way you would dissect an organism on animals understand what you actually find is just a mess of components, each of which has got a really long history, a thread stretching back across the centuries and millennia of time. And so something like the piston the beating heart of the combustion engine, is based directly on an ancient Chinese water pump is designed for getting water out of the river and into the paddy field to irrigate or to drink. The flywheel is descend directly from ancient Sumerian Potter’s wheels for making clay pots 3000 years ago that is now embedded, and under the hood of your car, and the crank and the camshaft and all these other bits and pieces that make the car engine and made Detroit what is today of each got these long histories stretching back that have only been recently combined into a particular pattern and a particular arrangement. And again, I think that that’s a fascinating idea to kind of play around. With your head.

Rob McNealy
I think that’s all really, really good stuff. So the people listening today, to this, this podcast, they’re they’re really freaked out about what’s going on today with the pandemic. So, is there anything that you can do to recommend people at least even just to keep their minds occupied? What would be the things that you would recommend people to do now to make as a little as a whole, how they might be able to contribute to society to make society a little more resilient?

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
Yeah, so I think you know, you and your listeners, Rob, you’ve already got a very good idea of how to protect yourselves, and what sort of things are useful to make sure we’ve got enough of to be resilient to breaks the supply chain, so make sure you’ve got enough drinking water or means of purifying water. Make sure you’ve got enough preserved food cans of food or food stored in dry condition on a mason jar or whatever. I think what is a golden opportunity right now, with people self isolating, and nation after nation around the world is now going into almost complete lockdown. And people have been cooped up at home is take this opportunity to learn some things to try something out that you haven’t tried before. Even if it’s just, you know, looking through Google or YouTube, watch some videos about how something is made. Maybe go out with your kids in the backyard if you’re lucky enough to have some outside space, and try and making something as a family. On the knowledge is websites, I talked about how you can make a gasifier stove, which is a really simple bit of technology that illustrates the principle of gasification how you turn wood timber into a combustible gas, which you can then burn very cleanly and efficiently. And you can interestingly therefore, run a car, run an auto using wood as fuel Rather than diesel or gas or gasoline or petrol, as we call it in the UK, and indeed in Scandinavia, because they’ve got large areas and natural forest, they have entire modern power stations, burning wood, burning timber, to generate electricity and heating the entire community. And you can demonstrate that process of gasification with a really simple and fun maker project of using your own hands with your kids in the backyard. And just make something as a family. Learn learn something new, try new craft, maybe try doing some knitting or weaving or stitching or something, you know, to keep your mind active. But also I think you’ll find it incredibly satisfying and fulfilling, making something yourself rather than just ordering off Amazon having delivered and it magically teleports to your front door. When the delivery guy turns up.

Rob McNealy
You know, I couldn’t agree with that. That advice anymore? I think making things is not only good for the mind, but I think it’s good for the soul. I think it builds confidence. And Louis, where can people find out more and get the book The knowledge?

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
Yes. So the the US subtitle of the book is the knowledge, how to rebuild civilization in the aftermath of capitalism. So you can get that on any good bookshop or online, but completely for free. You can explore a whole lot of stuff and all the things we’ve been talking about in this podcast on the books website, which is www dot the hyphen, knowledge. org. So the dash knowledge.org. And you can order the book through the website, but you can also watch lots of videos of how to make things from scratch fun maker projects, craft projects, you can do at home with your family, with your kids, your local community. There’s lots of recommended reading lists. So, books that deal with the same idea of being resilient, and working out how to make and do things from scratch yourself. So there’s a lot of nonfiction books, a lot of kind of practical books, but also a lot of novels. books like Robinson Crusoe, or Swiss Family Robinson, or the Martian, which was made into film much more recently with Matt Damon. And if you’ve seen the Martian is basically Swiss Family Robinson, but not a shipwrecked, maroon sailor on a desert island. But the 21st century equivalent, which is an astronaut, marooned alone on Mars and having to work out how to make things from scratch to keep himself alive. So there’s a huge area of fascinating literature, and stories and novels of these sort of post apocalyptic scenarios of people picking themselves up, brushing off the dust, pulling together into community of people, who then work together. To recover, and rebuild, and learn how to make things from scratch themselves. So was all of that to explore on the books website, which is the hyphen, knowledge. org.

Rob McNealy
Lewis Dartness, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
Well, this has been a fun chat. Thank you so much for having me. And we should, we should chat again about astrobiology and geography in the course of human history, and origins, the new podcast and other time.

Rob McNealy
We absolutely will do that. Thank you very much.

Lewis Dartnell – The Knowledge
Cheers and take care.

Rob McNealy
Thank you for listening to the Rob McNealy program. Make sure you check us out on the web at Rob McNealy calm and subscribe to our podcast at YouTube, iTunes and on the Google Play Store.

Episode Links

Audio Interview
Video Interview
Interview Transcript

Jon Stokes – ThePrepared.com Transcript

Jon Stokes - ThePrepared.com

Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.

Rob McNealy
Hey, today I am talking to john Stokes. He is someone I met in person down at SHOT show. But we’ve been talking to each other for a while on social media. He is the originally one of the co founders of ARS Technica. He’s a former Wired editor, and programmer author. And now he is currently the deputy editor of the prepared calm. So john, welcome to the show. How are you?

Jon Stokes – ThePrepared.com
Good, good. Thanks for having me on.

Rob McNealy
Well, I appreciate you taking the time. I think it’s very prescient, what’s going on today in the news around the world with this Corona virus stuff. But before we got to jump into that, give us a little bit of background and about what you’re working on right now and how you got there working with ThePrepared.com.

Jon Stokes – ThePrepared.com
So I was had taken a bit of time off, and I, I was kind of figuring out what I was going to do next. ended up starting to work on a prepping book because I had gotten into this through writing for the firearm blog and all outdoor I started for a second media. And so I had had a lot of exposure to the prepping scene I was a bit of a prepper myself. I was sort of moderately serious like not super serious, but we covered a lot of the prepping stuff on all outdoor and so I kind of got plugged into it and I learned a lot we had the founder of the survive survival sports, com Kevin felts work work for us on there, and so just a lot of that scene. So I liked it, and I was thinking, What am I gonna do next, and I was kind of done with the programming thing for a while I had, like a couple of years where I wanted to do like a CTO track kind of deal and like get into tech and get out of media. I didn’t like online media. So I started working on this prepping book and I was going to a website and I thought you know, something like the wire cutter, but for preppers because nobody had done this and this was a kick that I had been on for like four years, I want to do it like a wire cutter for preppers. And then I came across the prepared and it had been in existence for close, it was coming up on the one year anniversary when I found the site. And I was like, Man, this is this is like what I want to do next, I already have like a bunch of content written and this is something that I’m really interested in. I’m going to hit up the founder and see if I can invest. So, so I hit up the founder, I found them on Facebook and ping them. Sky john Ramy, who had previously been an ad tech and was a Silicon Valley prepper guy and so we started chatting and he’s like, I’m thinking of raising around this is bootstrapped and so so I was like, Look, man, you know, let’s let’s work together instead of me doing my own thing. Why don’t we? Why don’t we kind of like get together and join forces and so We did and I ended up participating around and coming on as the deputy editor. And I’ve been working on the site since and I think we closed around in January of 2019. And I believe I came on full time and like november of 2018. So it’s been a little over a year that I’ve been that I’ve been doing this full time.

Rob McNealy
So how’s it growing?

Jon Stokes – ThePrepared.com
Well, the answer prior to January of this year would have been modestly but but robustly the answer as I’ll you know, January was insane bananas. And then as of today in the past, like 48 hours, we just had to upgrade the server package like massively because we, you know, blown you know, we blown past like, like pretty much everything that we would have expected to do and unlike, you know, a probably the next two years. So, so there’s a lot of traffic right now there’s a lot of interest in what we’re doing. We just our timing was very good. Speaking of good timing, the blog was not a big part of the site. It was more evergreen content guides, deep detailed reviews, stuff that people would find via Google. And in December, we had done it we had tried to kind of boot up the blog a little bit in fits and starts. And then we built this big kit builder tool that will it’s kind of like lighter pack is actually modeled a lot after lighter pack, but it’s for preppers. And it’s to put together bug out bags and other kinds of kits and keeps track of weight and price. And so I did the API for that. So I did the back end. Um, it’s basically like sort of an SBA embedded in WordPress. And then I did the API for the app. And so I kind of I kind of focused on that let the blog languish and so I got back into the blog. In December and really started hustling the blog into December and then shop show was going to be like the big okay we’re seriously doing the blog thing now. And shacho courses also is the end of January is when this coronavirus stuff exploded. So I was actually going back from SHOT Show and I saw a really good friend of mine, Arielle and for your on Facebook, he was on my old RS writers, and he had been posted about the virus and was like, I’m gonna start taking a real look at this now. And so I thought, Okay, well I’ve already posted about this on Facebook I’m about to write about for the prepared. And so and I had really, I mean, we had kept in touch on Facebook, but I hadn’t followed his career since it’s ours because he when he started writing for me at ours, he was an undergrad at University of Chicago. commodify is principal data scientist at GlaxoSmithKline and has a PhD in bioinformatics and develops drugs for a living so he’s like, you know, like dead center of kind of who will want to track this. And so he started writing about, about a forest and like that work that he I was like super key super critical so I don’t know how to mute this anyway so so that the work that he did was was really critical and and it’s been taken off since then it’s been going completely nuts you know it’s the blog is basically just offering a virus all the time now I’m going to go back into doing some gear doing some other knockaround virus stuff because we are spinning up other people that can help with the load it’s basically just been me and some stuff from our butt but but that’s kind of the the story of the blog and the coronavirus coverage recently.

Rob McNealy
Well, you know, we you know, I’ve talked you know, at length about you know, prepping and things like that and I’ve been in prepper kind of minded person for a long time. You know, I’m not like oh, I discovering prepping like in the last week like everybody else’s right now on Twitter. Then, you know, we organize that conference every year called off chain, which is a mash up of crypto and preparedness and things like that. So I actually am not freaking out because I feel pretty comfortable with where I am with our preps and things like that because, you know, we we just like to have an extra amount of insurance at all times because you never know when there’s going to be a natural disaster or something like that. But it’s interesting right now with the way Corona is, is that previously or prior to this, you know, white collar people and people that prep usually kept it quiet. Because they didn’t want to be seen as like this like Kook or tin foil hat guy or this redneck kind of guy. And it’s interesting, like literally, like in the last month, I’m starting to see like, oh, everyday people that are like, Oh, yeah, of course prepping is what everybody should be doing. And I’m like, dude, where were you guys like five years ago. It’s like, you know, it seems like everybody’s like now really Realizing that you know, being prepared for things is actually kind of a thing you should be doing. So, and you guys kind of come at it, I think from a little more of the prepping side of it, at least with what I’ve seen on your website, is that you guys are a little more intellectual about it. And not just that kind of that weird stereotype or critique that people have about, you know, preppers in general. I mean, are you deliberately coming at it from a different perspective? Do you think?

Jon Stokes – ThePrepared.com
Yeah, we, we really didn’t want to do anything that looked like a traditional forever website. And in fact, my personal goal, and I think I think john, the founder shares this goal is that it’d be great if at some point in the future, the word prepping wasn’t even on the website. This should just be like a normal part of adulting. It should be a thing people do. It shouldn’t be like a niche activity or a subculture. People shouldn’t have to learn a new lingo. It’s there. You know. There’s not um there was a car enthusiast scene, you know, back in the day muscle cars and stuff now just, you know, there’s still a car scene but like people just own cars, you have a car, you know, I mean, I could think of half a dozen analogies, but this shouldn’t be a niche activity that has its own lingo and subculture you know, people are into it in secret or in public or whatever. It’s just part of what you do. It’s like buying home insurance or buying there’s a fire insurance community there’s no home insurance community there’s no you know, anything like that it’s just something you do. So that’s that’s very much where we come where we come out of bro.

Rob McNealy
Well, I see that every year during like hurricane season where all of a sudden they show the you know, the the typical grocery store shelves are completely empty, and I’m thinking if you live on the coast in Florida, this should never be happening.

Jon Stokes – ThePrepared.com
I grew up in Louisiana and on the Louisiana Gulf Coast. I know what it’s like to put your stuff in the car and sit for hours in a hurricane evacuation line have evacuated a couple times. My family evacuated for returned after Katrina. I worked in the Katrina shelters in Lake Charles, Louisiana where I’m from. So yeah, Hurricane perhaps tracking hurricanes during hurricane season, having having fuel having stuff on hand to be ready to bug out. This was just what you did when you lived there. It was there was no subculture there wasn’t like a term for it. We didn’t call it anything. You just were ready for a hurricane.

Rob McNealy
So coronavirus, there’s been a lot of media attention given to this and it’s interesting how, at least on social media, it’s somehow becoming a partisan political issue which to me is absurd. But yet I you’re seeing out there where some people are saying the the coronavirus is overhyped. Some people are saying is under hyped Where is your take? Or what’s your take on it? Where are you coming from on the corona? Is this something that Americans should be worried about now?

Jon Stokes – ThePrepared.com
Yeah, you know, I think whether it’s overhyped or under hype depends on your filter bubble. I mean, really, it’s just this is a moment that has highlighted for me the degree to which we all kind of live in different information silos, dependent on where you get your news, who you follow, what kind of voices you listen to, you’re going to have a different headspace about this. And, and this information, you know, the silos, they’re not they’re not disjointed, they leak into each other. So, you know, I have a, I have a very carefully curated list that I have for this. Some people discover it and so you can subscribe to it on my Twitter feed. I follow people you know, I’m constantly adding deleting people and there has been a political aspect to it since the beginning. You know, frankly, there are some people and infectious disease, morality, virology epidemiology who have been more or less alarmed. There have been some people that have come from a certain political slant that you can tell from their bios that are constantly telling everybody to calm down and not panic and this is no big deal and they’ve set themselves over against the alarmist people. You know, that that’s how it is. People have different opinions on things, especially about the future. So So I’ve watched this evolve, I’ve watched virology and infectious disease Twitter and epidemiology, Twitter evolve, and kind of converge on on a more heightened state of concern heightened state of alarm. I’ve watched my media feed I have a lot of I have a media network from you know, 20 something years and online media. Watch the film take up this topic and begin talking about it and worried about it. I’m starting as of the last 24 hours to see this really spread in a big way in my normie feed on Facebook used to I would post something from the prepared I’d get like three likes you know now the the kind of stereotypical, you know, suburban moms and dads and just normal people are are picking up our posts and our Rulon coronavirus page and our sharing is blown up just in the past 48 hours so so there has been a lot of different depending on what subset you are going to where you listen who you listen to your political affiliation and yeah there there is I’m aware that rush limbaugh is telling people that this is some kind of democrat plot the tank the election, tank the markets and you know, something like this. I know that that’s going on. I’m not engaging with it, publicly, like on Twitter and stuff because you know, a nobody got time for that. Like I’m we’re here trying to get people ready. And I don’t care what kind of politics you have. If you’re if you’re super Trumpy if you’re, you know, Bernie Sanders stand Elizabeth Warren, I just don’t care. I want you to be ready. You know, I want you to have the right information and I want you have your head in the right place about this. As far as being concerned about it. I am. I’m really concerned. I mean, I think that i think that’s cool closures in this country and in a lot of areas are kind of I really think that’s a lot. I think it’s gonna happen. As far as a, you know, voluntary shelter in place for a lot of people is going to happen, it’s already happened and there are already people that I’m in touch with that are bugging out, leaving the city, you know, going out to the country if they’ve got like a relative something like this that’s already quietly happening, just the way that the Costco runs have been kind of quietly happening this week. So So more than that, going to pick up more that’s going to happen. How far this is going to go, very difficult for me to say, I try not to you can always you can always, very plausibly model a worst case scenario, you just can and I am a guy that has followed every crisis in the last, you know, two years like in a detailed way. So when we were nose to nose with North Korea and the summer of 2017. I was like I had an appetite, Twitter feed, national security Twitter feed, I followed a super closely and you how close we came or ran stuff from last summer. I followed that really closely. I was on you know, pins and needles with it. Like every one of these different crises that we’ve had recently. I’ve been right in there. I followed the experts, and I know how bad it can look and I knew how it can dissipate. I’ve seen it all happen you know you never press the red button because something always happens but I also was an investor during 2008 and I followed 2008 closely and unfolding there so I’ve seen like a real legit crisis happen and what I’ve learned is you can’t predict the future there are some drugs we’re about to have a blog post on this now the blog is backup I have a post and the camera I’ve got edit there are some drugs like an anti malarial drug and some other drugs that are very very promising at at a rest in the disease that goes with this so so we I’m not we’re not gonna have a vaccine anytime soon. year would be an absolute minimum. But we may find other therapies that work so summer could still I don’t I don’t put a lot of faith in the idea that one weather is going to knock this out. But it could it could be could tamp it down some combination of summer weather and a malarial drug which is already made it scale could be ramped up and could help and could forestalls little worst case scenario. So there’s a range of possibilities. But I think minimum minimum baseline is going to be, you’re going to be at home for a week or two, your kids are going to be at home for a while. You may have to remote work, stuff like that. I think that that stuff is very, very, very likely.

Rob McNealy
So it’s interesting. So my perspective on things like this is I monitor and I’m open minded, and I’m a skeptical at the same time. And so I have a I’m very curious, and I don’t tend to overreact. Some may know that my wife is actually a medical doctor who actually works as a government contractor to the federal government. And so and I’m a former EMT, and so I do view things through the eyes of, you know, a person who’s worked as a first responder for a long time and on this issue, and I tried to be very rational and in you know, controlled about how I view it. Mike, I think the big unknowns that I think a lot of people that I’m seeing around the coronavirus is the fact that one of many of us don’t trust China. And I think the big unknown is what’s Bs, what’s real and what’s happening in China, because you see all these random, you know, clips then you don’t know the context of the clip. You don’t know where it came from things of that nature. But that’s what has a lot of ups like me concerned is I don’t know, I don’t know what’s real are the numbers on that little tracker app that’s out there. Are those real? Are those are being underreported? Are they being over reported? The one thing that least between conversation with my wife and I about this is that at least in my lifetime, I can’t remember where large population centers in China have been completely locked down. In this quarantine. I don’t recall that’s ever happened. Before So, in my mind, this isn’t just SARS, this isn’t the flu, this is something different. It definitely has some government officials over there concerned because they’re taking much more extreme action than I’ve ever seen. So the question is that I would have for you, do you believe that the numbers and reporting about this in China are accurate being underreported over reported or accurate or you know, are normal.

Jon Stokes – ThePrepared.com
So we have a reporter in Beijing. That is that is done some work on this for us, and this is the source. And she’s, she writes for a mainstream outlet is fluent in English in Chinese is native Chinese. And we’ve talked to her about this, I followed this, and my take home on that is that, of course the the the absolute number is going to China in terms of the magnitude or garbage They’re not real, but directionally in terms of when things are swelling and when they’re dropping, that seems to be broadly like probably right. I think that it seems likely that the extreme lockdown measures that the Chinese have done, have arrested the spread and stop the growth and use cases outside of Dubai. I think that’s probably likely i think it’s it’s likely that things may be getting better and move on right now. Again, now, these are people that have been locked down for weeks, they have been under very like welded doors welded shut it not able to go out for groceries, extreme quarantine measures, that’s going to have an impact. Social distancing is apart from hand hygiene. Social distancing is the number one thing that you’re going to do to turn the arrow around in the absence of a vaccine to turn the, you know, the arrow is the, the viral coefficient, which says how far it spreads. And so you want to get that below one. And so to get it below one, if you don’t have a vaccine, you’re gonna have to keep people from spreading it to each other, like physical separation. The Chinese have done an insane amount of that. And it’s probably worked outside of just so so. So my point there is that like directionally when you look at the China, of course, there’s, there’s far more cases far more death than they reported. But I think it is very likely that that things are getting better and some of the cities because of the extremists of the measures, big questions are Can we do that here in the West? Can you do that? Can you lock down a Chicago when people have got guns and you know, stuff like this? open question. To me, I think, if people are scared enough, you know, maybe But I really don’t know. Other questions are about the Chinese health system now in the world, the world, the who is ranking of health systems, they’re pretty far down there, you know, below us. But then but then, you know, these Asian countries have been fighting, have been prepping for SARS mer stuff like this for a while and they’ve got ventilators they can China can ramp up hospital production stuff like this. So there are a lot of unknowns there. I think it’s more instructive for me to look at what’s happening now and what’s unfolding in South Korea, what’s unfolding in Japan? Iran less so but still, that stuff is going to tell the tale because yeah, you’re right. China is largely a black box, a lot of noise. Very difficult to get signal. But But now things of things are in a different a different realm. Italy. Keep an eye on Italy, you know.

Rob McNealy
Yeah. One of the things that my wife and I have kind of looked at is, the United States is very different than Asia and Europe, you know, if those different, you know, those countries decide that you’re going to stay put, they will enforce that. Whereas Americans are a little more persnickety about constitutional rights and things like that. And I keep thinking, you know, I’ve seen people where they have tuberculosis or something, they shouldn’t be going around in public because they’re supposed to be under self quarantine. And they’re like, well, I ran out of smoke. So I had to go to the store, right. And in between our, you know, our homeless populations and Americans just happened to travel a lot more than I think a lot of a lot of places around the world like China, people don’t move around quite as much as we do. And I think, you know, I think Americans are going to be less likely to do self quarantine for me and I was talking to some people in a group that I’m in I’m in a group right now that is talking about prepping for this and look at it like this. Americans send their kids to school. when they’re sick, and they go to work now sick because they think nothing of possibly infecting their friends or coworkers, because it might be inconvenient for them to stay home or have their kids stay home. And I’m not sure that’s going to change just because of this. And it goes back to, you know, people are, you know, you know, going down, you know, partisan lines and saying some people like, Oh, it’s no big deal and all this other stuff. And I’m like, there’s there’s two factors that have been most concerned, you know, because we don’t you’re right. We don’t know yet. how bad it is, because until it starts getting into other countries, and where we have probably better information and communication coming out. It’s hard to evaluate, you know, what this really looks like. And I agree with you, I think the extreme powers that the Chinese government haven’t or you know, the the quarantines and the extreme measures they’ve taken probably are effective. I don’t think the American government can do the same thing and I don’t think Americans will put up with it. And that’s what has me concerned about here. That is actually might get more if it is as bad as we think it is, it might get more out of hand here than it would say it in China. The other the other thing that I’m sorry, good. Oh, the other thing has me concerned is is the economic impacts of this. I’ve been trying to do some research about how much of our supply chain, it comes from China. And the numbers range from anywhere from 20 to 50%. Of all the stuff we get is manufactured in China right now. And my concern is, is that depending on which store you’re talking about, we only have between 30 and 90 days of inventory isn’t like their buffer, right. That’s about what the American supply chain holds currently. The question is, how long is China going to be shut down from their production levels? And how is that going to impact the United States? And so, to me, even if, say, we don’t have a viral outbreak that gets out of hand here. How does the economic impact of the Chinese government and their political production. How does that trade impact? You know, our economy, for instance, a big chunk of our building materials are supplied from China right now. And right now a lot of our economy is being driven by the the current housing bubble that we’re in. Well, even if, you know the price of materials goes up 20% or 30%, that could do a lot to put the brakes on the housing market, which could really hurt the economy. Have you been looking at any of the economic potential economic impacts of coronavirus outside just the normal viral part of it?

Jon Stokes – ThePrepared.com
Yeah, I mean, I’m an investor. I pay close attention to this. I’m very concerned about it. I’ve been talking to other finance people investor types. They were largely not concerned before Sunday night, Sunday night there was some kind of shift in as aight guys, I think well, I’ll be One of the things was that the stock market futures just started to get really ugly. And it was clear on Sunday night that it was going to bloodbath on Monday. There was a big shift in the Zeitgeist on Sunday. I woke up Sunday morning, I had conversations with with market types. And they were like, yeah, I’m a little worried about this, but but we’re gonna handle it. And then Sunday night, you know, it turns into Well, you know, there’s a lot of deer in my neighborhood that I could do. So it’s like, seriously things things change fast for a lot of people. And, and, and so I bill I’m worried about this. I it’s hard for me to model a lot of a lot of what I think is that this is a we’re not destroying a lot of productive capacity. This is not like a war where factories getting bombed or something like this. It’s it’s one of these things where they’re there may be some kind of V shaped recovery. Once people go back to work, factories reopen, that kind of thing. And I think the system will knit will knit itself back together more rapidly than people think. That said, everybody with a brain is now looking at their dependence on on single sources in China and Asia. And thinking, Okay, well, clearly, I’ve got geographic risk. I knew that I had geographic risk, but I didn’t care. But now I care. This isn’t going to happen again. And we’re going to diversify. And so that’s going to have all kinds of impacts on the cost of goods and employment, the US and stuff that’s really hard to think through. But my top line is that is that at some point, depending on how bad this gets, I mean, there are scenarios where you’ve got medical bankruptcies that, you know, frees up the credit system and vaporize a big chunk of the economy. You know, you’ve got people you got a scenario where a lot of people are staying home. looking after their school’s out, like, let’s say that we did what just happened in Japan today, where they announced that all the schools are closed, somebody’s gonna look after those kids. So that’s a lot of people stay at home and a lot of people missing paychecks, a lot of people aren’t financially prepared. There could be a really large impact. But I mean, I think the government’s going to need a government up to and including negative rates and helicopter money, they’re going to do what they can do to get people spend and again, so we have we have maybe some tools there. I don’t know. I tried to maintain some optimism as an investor that that we can snap back pretty quickly. And I also part of this is my experience with 2008. You know, I was bearish for too long. I was bearish into 2010 so I missed a big a big turn up on the market. And you know, I finally got religion near the end of 2010. I was like, Okay, well, this you know, this is real. There’s a real recovery here. This is happening and And I got back in. Um, so I’ve seen how fast things can turn around how suddenly they can turn around. And the big thing to remember too, and this is what people miss, I think with a lot of the doomsday scenarios and the doomsday prepping is when you bet against against the market and you bet against civilization and economy, you’re betting against the combined efforts, the best efforts and billions of people to make this thing go. Humans collectively are trying to make it work. We’re all trying to make it work, whatever for some definition of making it work. And I don’t want to bet against that. I don’t want to gamble that that all those billions of individual efforts at trying to trying to make something productive trying to make money trying to hustle trying to feed themselves are going to go to pot You know, they’re going to amount to nothing so so I like I said I maintain some some optimism but but there are scenarios. I think you’re right Our hospital system is very under resourced. We have a lot of problems, like I said, with people missing work, medical bills, all this kind of stuff is bad already. And this virus is going to whack it hard. And we’re going to see how that shakes out. And it could get really ugly. We don’t have a lot of capable centralized response and not a lot of capability to respond to this. Then there’s the election. You know, I wrote the big, big wired up as a big in terms of length, it was very long. I think it also did pretty well in terms of traffic, but it was it was a it was immediate, immediate editorial about the possible impact on the election and how, you know, do we really want to send people to polling places to stand in line and breathe on each other and touch the same touch screens in November if we’ve got a viral epidemic raging over here and fill out hospitals, I don’t think we do. So there’s that aspect. I said we should move immediately to vote. By Mail, I do not hold out a lot of hope of anything like that happening. I think what is probably realistically going to happen is we’re going to have a big fight over if if there is a big if if the summer doesn’t stop it, and if we’re not able to tamp it down and if we’re still like very substantially fighting this in November. I think that we’re going to have a big argument over whether or not to postpone the election, because there will be a lot of urban dense urban areas where people are not going to want to turn out for this and we will probably not postpone the election. I just I think the the baseline scenario is escalating, nothing gets done, there is no vote by mail. There is a fight over putting it off, but nothing enough is put off and then we just have a situation where rural turnout is is a lot better than urban turnout. And you know, who knows which way things swing if the Rules types are still are still looking for for another Trump term or if they’re sour on them because of the coronavirus response. I don’t have a crystal ball. But but either way you slice it, it’s going to 2020 is going to be even more contentious than we all kind of thought it was. And I know a lot of people, myself included, were looking for trouble around the election in 2020 thinking, well, things are going to get are going to get spicy, and we’re going to be at each other’s throats. And we may see some instances of domestic you know, crazy breakout here. And and I think we were already worried about that I was already worried about it. Now even more worried about it.

Rob McNealy
So before we wrap up here, what would be the things that you say now? What advice would you give to someone who is not already prepared? What would you be? What would be the things that you think people should stock up on right now while there’s still things on the shelves?

Jon Stokes – ThePrepared.com
Obviously, the big one is prescription meds if you’re on something, try to get a stockpile of that by hook or by crook. What are you going to do? You know, I’m not not that I’m telling people to go on the dark web and you know, order drugs. But like, seriously, I wouldn’t even know how to find the dark web personally. I mean, you might get some garbage. That’s like fake fentanyl. I’ll send you a URL to really, really yeah, don’t do that. I know nothing about the dark. I know nothing. But uh, but yeah, however, you got to do it. If you got if you’re on if you’re on something, if you’re on heart meds, whatever it is you’re on, and a sudden stoppage of it is gonna is going to wreck your business. Figure out how to get some more. Um, that that’s, that’s the number one thing. The number two thing is you need to eat hygiene. You need hygiene products, especially for a pandemic. So they talk About I think it’s the three is or the three ages of survival or four there’s there’s hygiene and heat and hydration, you know, and that’s actually not the right order. I think it’s like heat hydrate hydration Anyway, there’s some orange thread. hygiene is one of the big ones that kills a lot of people in any kind of survival or disaster situation. hygiene is huge. So you want to get toilet paper, which was being used as currency in Hong Kong and Hong Kong, walk down joining get toilet paper, feminine hygiene products, bleach, alcohol, things to clean your body things to clean your space that you’re in. If you’re in a confined space with a lot of humans for three weeks, it’s going to get nasty and you want to keep it clean. Um, personal protective gear. If you don’t already have a mask, you’re not going to get one. Those are out nitrile gloves are still in stock, pick those up. They’re probably more important, more important than the mask anyway. So that kind of stuff. So, hygiene stuff prescription meds, plenty of water potable water, I do not think the grocery stores were going to be in a situation where there’s no groceries. At least after some initial panic surge there may be like a spell where everybody runs out on possibly this weekend, everybody runs out and just cleans out the grocery store. The trucks are going to keep running there will probably still be groceries. So so that’s why I put food you know less underneath water you know, PPP stuff like that. still get food, start with two weeks but but get a month you know, get three months if you can, however much you I’m telling people that shoot for 90 days, the very people are going to get there but you know, try to shoot for 90 days but do what you can and and just think about the fact that you’re going to be eaten for a month, two months, three months regardless. Try to get it all at once and then eat your way through it as opposed to just go into the store wants A week or you know, every couple days you want food, you know you want entertainment things that distract yourself. Boredom is has been a big problem in the Chinese lockdown and and the other thing that’s happening per source in China is that people just go on social media, and they drive each other crazy. They share rumors and conspiracies and weird stuff and their mental state deteriorates. And they just thought it’s a bad scene. It’s a bad scene if you’ve got a couple of hundred million people in lockdown, which is what happened in China, and they’re all on social media driving each other nuts. You want to have something else to do besides Facebook, besides Twitter, besides whatever you’re into, to be able to unplug from the news and get off that stuff. And, and, you know, spend time with with with whoever you’re locked down with and connect with people. So game board games. puzzles, books, any that stuff those are all now Congratulations, your board game addiction, your puzzle addiction, video games, whatever those are now pandemic preps, you know, you’re, you’re blessed to go forth and like, you know, load up your Steam library or Nintendo downloads or whatever. Because you really just want to, you want to maintain a good mindset. You want to be able to make high quality decisions, you’re able to see what’s going on clearly. And you don’t want to be in a panic or in a frenzy hopped up on a bunch of weird rumors about what’s going down at the local supermarket or somebody found this or you know, the virus is here or there you just don’t you don’t want to be into that stuff. So, so look out for your mind. You know, protect your your physical person, your body, keep yourself clean, keep your space clean. Keep yourself fed. keep yourself hydrated.

Rob McNealy
Sounds good. Jon Stokes. Where can people find out more about you?

Jon Stokes – ThePrepared.com
ThePrepared.com, visit and check us out. My personal website is just like a bare HTML page john Stokes. com jail in St. Louis, calm you can find out more about what i what i do want to meet you there. But really ThePrepared.com is where I’m spending all my time. Every every waking minute now with this fiber stuff.

Rob McNealy
Very good and I will make sure that I have all that linked up on our website at Rob McNealy calm. JOHN, thank you so much for coming on today.

Jon Stokes – ThePrepared.com
Thanks for having me.

Episode Links

Audio Interview
Video Interview
Interview Transcript

Jon Stokes – ThePrepared.com

Jon Stokes, the Deputy Editor of ThePrepared.com, talks with Rob McNealy about the Corona Pandemic.