Crazy Town: Episode 74. Prepping for the Apocalypse: Elites’ Foolish Fantasies for Surviving a Collapse of Their Own Creation 

Rob Dietz  
I'm Rob Dietz.

Jason Bradford  
I'm Jason Bradford.

Asher Miller  
And I'm Asher Miller. Welcome to Crazy Town where the most popular courses at the community college are bunker building, bullet smelting, and how to cook human meat.

Melody Allison  
Hi, this is Crazy Town producer Melody Allison. Thanks for listening. Here in Season Five, we're exploring phalse prophets and the dangerous messages they're so intent on spreading. If you like what you're hearing, please let some friends know about this episode or the podcast in general. Quick warning: Sometimes this podcast uses swear words. Now, onto the show.

Rob Dietz  
Hey, Jason. Hey, Asher. As you know, I moved to Portland, Oregon fairly recently.

Jason Bradford  
I'm sorry. 

Asher Miller  
Yes, we do know.

Rob Dietz  
Well, it has a really cool geography. They've got all these extinct cinder cones all dotted around the city. It's in this extinct lava field called the boring lava fields, but - 

Jason Bradford  
That's exciting. 

Asher Miller  
B-o-r-i-n-g?

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, yeah.

Asher Miller  
Who had a bad day when they named it?

Rob Dietz  
I don't know. But I live near one called Mount Tabor. That's a really neat park in the city. There's another one called Powell Butte where you go hiking in the forest and look at all the mountain ranges and stuff. But then there's one - The one that's probably closest to my house is called Kelly Butte.

Jason Bradford  
I haven't heard of this one. 

Rob Dietz  
It is the forgotten one. 

Jason Bradford  
That's why I've never heard of it. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. You sort of go over there. And I don't know, it's not too pretty, but it has a really interesting history. So going way on back to 1952, just at the start of the Cold War, right. Yeah. Soviet Union, United States. Well, the City of Portland decided to build the Kelly Butte Civil Defense Center.

Jason Bradford  
In an extinct volcano.

Rob Dietz  
Yes. 

Asher Miller  
Cool. It's like the beginning of a movie. 

Jason Bradford  
It's like a James Bond movie.

Rob Dietz  
I'm thinking it's where the James Bond villain would hang out or something. 

Jason Bradford  
Exactly. Yeah.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. So it was built in 1955-56. It cost a grand sum of $670,000. That's like a decent house in Portland these days. 

Asher Miller  
That's a cheap house. 

Rob Dietz  
But it was built to house local government in case of a nuclear attack on the city.

Asher Miller  
Smart thinking. Good thinking.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. So they put like 19,000 square feet of space in and under this Butte. And it was designed to hold 250 people. So they're the emergency government after the Russians. . . 

Jason Bradford  
That's an incentive to be a civil servant honestly. Geez. Perks.

Asher Miller  
Yeah, they've got the pension. 

Rob Dietz  
It's pretty funny. If you look at photos of what it looked like, it's kind of like something out of the Stanley Kubrick movie, "Dr. Strangelove." Kind of looks like that war room.

Jason Bradford  
Yeah. Black and white. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. So it actually got some notoriety. It became a model for other cities to follow. And the network CBS actually made a documentary a docu drama, I guess you'd really call it, called "A Day Called X."

Jason Bradford  
I hope It's on YouTube. I'm gonna look it up.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, you can find it. It's pretty fascinating.

Asher Miller  
This was in the 50s that they made that?

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, yeah.

Asher Miller  
Pretty interesting.

Rob Dietz  
So 1957 that thing came out. It was actually kind of like - They had to put a warning on it and say, "The Russians aren't really attacking us. We're just explaining what happens if they do."

Asher Miller  
What was that movie that came out when we were kids that came out that was like . . . something . . .

Rob Dietz  
"The Day After."

Asher Miller  
"The Day After," yes.

Jason Bradford  
"The Day After Tomorrow?"

Asher Miller  
No, that was a terrible - 

Rob Dietz  
That was a climate change one. They were talking about a nuclear holocaust.

Asher Miller  
People were fucking freaking out after that one came out.

Jason Bradford  
Sorry. You just add "tomorrow," and it means climate change. 

Rob Dietz  
There you go. 

Asher Miller  
You just got it. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah. I've lived through two like existential threat kind of memes.

Rob Dietz  
Right. Network television and in the movie theater. Okay. So they build this thing, right? And it's louded  as this incredible - 

Jason Bradford  
Lauded.

Rob Dietz  
Lauded, sorry. It's not that loud. It's pretty loud. So they go and close it down in 1963. Did not last all that long.

Asher Miller  
That's not very long. I thought you were going to say like 2013.

Rob Dietz  
No, actually after they closed it, they retrofitted it into this 911 dispatch center. 

Asher Miller  
Can you imagine having to go work down in there? That sucks.

Rob Dietz  
Well, that was the thing. People were going into this, you know, under mountain building, and they were complaining of sick building syndrome.

Asher Miller  
Because of weather in Portland isn't shitty enough most of the year. You gotta go down and be underground.

Rob Dietz  
So after they did that, 20 years after they made it a dispatch center, they permanently closed it. And it became this hotspot for vandals and drug users, you know, kind of a little hideaway. And then the city finally came in with bulldozers and just buried the thing in 2006. 

Jason Bradford  
Well, this kind of reminds me, this whole story of - Asher and I have a artist, right? Donald Fagen of Steely Dan.

Asher Miller  
Wait, Steely Dan is not an actual person?

Jason Bradford  
It's two guys. Two guys. With a lot of session musicians, but anyhow.

Rob Dietz  
You guys have lost me again. I'm going back to my bunker.

Jason Bradford  
Okay, it doesn't matter. Well, this song on Steely Dan's album.

Asher Miller  
No, Donald Fagen's album.

Jason Bradford  
On Donald Fagen's album called "New Frontier" is a great one. And it's got a line, "It's just a dugout that my dad built in case the Reds decide to push a button down."

Asher Miller  
Yeah, there was a craze of building bunkers. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, exactly. 

Asher Miller  
Not a huge city of bunkers, although I guess they did a bunch of those, but a lot of backyard bunkers.

Jason Bradford  
Oh yeah, little ones. Yeah.

Rob Dietz  
That could be my backyard bunker if I go do some excavation.

Asher Miller  
Sounds like it's being used for other purposes.

Rob Dietz  
Well, this brings us to the false prophet of the day, a man named Barrett Moore, who we might call sort of a head of the curve prepper.

Asher Miller  
Yeah, I was thinking we'd call him the patron saint of white male preppers. Is that fair?

Rob Dietz  
I think that is fair. He's quite a character. And we don't want to spend a ton of time on this guy because it just ain't worth it. 

Asher Miller  
Here's a relevant piece in terms of his bio, the guy is from Northern Michigan, the Upper Peninsula, which by the way, I'd love to visit someday.

Jason Bradford  
I would too.

Rob Dietz  
Not the Upper Peninsula.

Asher Miller  
Oh, It's not in the Upper Peninsula.

Rob Dietz  
 Yeah, he's from Northern Michigan, but just didn't quite get across whatever it would be, Lake Michigan.

Asher Miller  
Loser. Anyways, in a town called Pellston. Way up between Lake Michigan Lake Huron. And apparently, Michigan's like a prepper paradise.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, I think it's one of those states that people think, "Oh, I'll move there. There's lots of water."

Asher Miller  
Yeah, I think a lot of people are heading that way. 

Rob Dietz  
There's a big hunting culture. 

Jason Bradford  
A lot of fresh water.

Asher Miller  
Yeah, a lot of people are heading to Duluth as well.

Rob Dietz  
There's probably already a lot of bullets up there.

Asher Miller  
Yeah. I think the important thing to know about this guy really, for our purposes is that he's got a shady sort of checkered past. You know, he ran some businesses that were a little exploitative, you could say. He had a tendency, we could say a penchant for exaggeration, but the guy fucking lied. He made up stuff about himself. Allegedly - In case he's listening. 

Jason Bradford  
We don't want libel suits. 

Asher Miller  
He's litigious. We've discovered this, right? 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, we're not really sure about anything we're saying right now.

Asher Miller  
So according to some people, the guy was a con man. Right? So he claimed that he was an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, specializing in issues related to Non Proliferation of biological weapons or weapons of mass destruction. Turned out, you know, his military career slightly exaggerated. Dude was in college ROTC and spent eight years in the Army. 

Jason Bradford  
In the reserves.

Asher Miller  
Right, in the reserves.

Jason Bradford  
Weekend army.

Asher Miller  
Yes. He claimed he was a spy in Australia. First of all, like, is that a big hot spot for spies?

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, how do they make Vegemite? How do they do it?

Asher Miller  
Yeah, not an industrial spy.

Rob Dietz  
What is the true lineup of surfers in the break at Bondi Beach?

Asher Miller  
Who put the shrimp on the barbie? I really want to know.

Rob Dietz  
The same guy who let the dogs out.

Jason Bradford  
Does the toilet bowl really spin the other direction?

Asher Miller  
So apparently, you know, he's in hot demand as a spy there. But actually, the truth was that, you know, he was saying that he was tapping into all these illegal operations. What it allegedly turns out to be is that he was actually part of a illegal car smuggling ring. Got busted and then he's turned like state's evidence or whatever and became an informant, right?

Rob Dietz  
As you do.

Asher Miller  
As you do, right. Look, I've never been in his shoes. I can't really say what I would do in a situation like that. The relevant piece though is he founded a company called Triple Canopy. 

Jason Bradford  
Like an arborist?

Asher Miller  
Yes, it was. But then it made a turn when the Iraq War happened. And moving from trees, he went to provide mercenaries for the U.S. government. Okay.

Rob Dietz  
 As you do, again. 

Asher Miller  
As you do. Natural leap, right? They actually took over a billion dollar contract from Blackwater in 2009. That's what Blackwater was, you know, they were a little bit of hot water.

Rob Dietz  
At least they were named appropriately. 

Asher Miller  
They changed their name to Blackwater. Because it was a little too on the nose there.

Rob Dietz  
Triple Canopy does kind of sound like a nice - Like I would hire them to see what kind of diseases the forest has or something. 

Asher Miller  
Right. And, you know, these were the days where billions were sloshing around there. And all these grifters and con artists were coming in. So anyways, he got in on that act. But by the time that they took over that contract from Blackwater, he had already been kicked out of the company. He was sued for enriching himself.

Rob Dietz  
Wasn't ethical enough to be on top of that company.

Asher Miller  
That's kind of what you need to know about him.

Jason Bradford  
Okay, so the background is kind of a shady character, but he's creating this persona, somewhat phonily. And the thing that really we want to get into is that he formed this company called Life Continuity in 2007. And he was basically providing private salvation in the face of existential threats like, you know, jihadists, and electromagnetic pulses, and pandemics, and you know. For hundreds of thousands of dollars - You can pay in installments - You would get the services of life continuity.

Asher Miller  
After I read, "Dies the Fire," and I learned that ENPs could take down, you know, airplanes, and they crashed in downtown Corvallis, I looked this dude up. I just didn't have enough money.

Rob Dietz  
Installments. Get on the payment plan. Come on. 

Jason Bradford  
So, you know how we have sponsors at the end of the show. Very prestigious companies. 

Rob Dietz  
Love our sponsors.

Jason Bradford  
Well, I wish I had gone after this guy when you know, they were in business still. Because this is one of their PR kind of quotes, okay? "Only a fool ignores approaching threats and just hope for the best. My concept of life continuity speaks to the whys, who appreciate that history does have a habit of repeating itself, and that cultural deviations can swell over time to impact nation states influencing their behavior. It is critical for families to address cultural decline, to think generationally, and to plan purposefully, so that loved ones and their offspring can mitigate today's risks of living in densely populated metro areas. Particularly the risks associated with interruptions, large or small, of our fragile supply chains, whether by manmade or natural events."

Rob Dietz  
Are you sure you didn't write that?

Jason Bradford  
It's perfect. It's absolutely perfect. I'm sold.

Asher Miller  
We would have come up with a better name. Jason would have come up with a better name than Life Continuity.

Rob Dietz  
Jason doesn't come up with . . . ?

Rob Dietz  
Sorry. Sorry. He just writes copy based on what our ads - 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, I work with our clients. 

Rob Dietz  
Okay. So let's talk a little bit more about Barrett Moore's strategy. There's actually a very recent article in 2021 from a writer Sam Biddle called "The Rise And Fall of the Ultimate Doomsday Prepper." And in it, he talks about how Barrett Moore's big sell was this comprehensive package to evacuate. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, get out of that big sea. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. So if you're in some kind of apocalyptic scenario, and you're a member of Life Continuity, they would transport you to a haven. 

Rob Dietz  
The haven. Love that.

Rob Dietz  
Quote, unquote, "The Haven."

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. And the haven was actually on Moore's property up there in Michigan. And he would hook clients by doing all this fear mongering. I mean, you mentioned what? Jihad and pandemic and, you know, magnetic pulses.

Jason Bradford  
All kinds of crazy stuff. Solar flares. It doesn't matter.

Rob Dietz  
He would do all that and really come up with - Here's this huge list of things that's gonna plague humanity, and if you're smart, you know, you're gonna come in with me.

Asher Miller  
I have to say, it was interesting, the whole cultural decline bit. That's interesting. Like, is that coded for something? Because sort of a contrast from these acute sort of crises like a pandemic or something like that.

Jason Bradford  
I think it is playing into then sort of fears of like the others. In other words, you can't relate to the rest of your society anymore.

Asher Miller  
Well, in fact, there's a well-known fiction writer named Brad Thor. I actually don't even think that's his pen name, I think that's his real name, Brad Thor.

Jason Bradford  
That's a nice one. 

Asher Miller  
And he's written a bunch of books. They are pretty terrible, I gotta say. I read one of them. Anyways, very successful. And he got turned on to Barrett Moore, they actually became quite close. They were friends and then they fell out later and started suing the pants off of each other. But to your point, what you were just talking about Jason, he actually talked about what drew him in to thinking about the world of preparedness and drawn to Garrett Moore - 

Rob Dietz  
That's Barrett Moore. 

Asher Miller  
Sorry, Barret Moore. I keep saying Garrett Moore. That he was living in LA when the riots happened in 1992. And it kind of scared the pants off him, right. So now of course, you could have a response to an event like that and think, hmmm. . . maybe we need to address some of the structural deep systemic issues that lead this many people to be this angry. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah. Redlining, police - 

Asher Miller  
Institutional racism within the police force. You know, all this stuff. No. He's like, how do I protect my family and bugout?

Jason Bradford  
Well, here's what's gonna happen. Okay? You're gonna get whisked to the haven, and it will support 200 people for a period of five years against any hazard.

Rob Dietz  
What about shark-nados? Does it protect against shark-nados?

Jason Bradford  
It's covered. 

Asher Miller  
It's on the list. 

Jason Bradford  
And so you know, they're equipped to provide your needs in the event of broken supply chains. You've got the food. you've got the water, all these other provisions. Plenty of toilet paper, electricity, telecommunications in case there's anyone left to talk to out there. And you know, they've got security personnel, you know, from his connections to the 

Asher Miller  
Supposed connections. 

Jason Bradford  
To the mercenaries and stuff like that. Medical services. You got air filters and water filters, environmental needs are cared for. 

Rob Dietz  
I'm sold.

Jason Bradford  
They've got entertainment, you know, and guns. Guns, guns, guns.

Rob Dietz  
Can we just talk for one second about the name, the haven? It sounds so close to heaven.

Jason Bradford  
I think it's brilliant. Alliteration.

Asher Miller  
Is there a difference really?

Rob Dietz  
Well, in Lord of the Rings they had the Grey Havens. That was like where the elves all went. So he's pulling from great literature. The Bible, Lord of the Rings. Drawing people in.

Jason Bradford 
Yes, this is frickin' genius. 

Asher Miller  
The guy kind of, I gotta say, went a little crazy with some of his ideas. Everything you said so far, Jason, totally rational. 

Jason Bradford  
It's all wonderful. 

Asher Miller  
Yeah, it's good. But he had a few other ideas. He submitted something like 400 patent applications to go along with this Life Continuity scheme. Here's my favorite.

Jason Bradford  
Okay.

Asher Miller  
Okay? So, for people who you know didn't have the wherewithal, the money, to get into the haven, you could get a tomb, basically. Think of it as like you know, your safe room in your house like rich people. It's just on your roof . It's like a crypt. You could store all your survival supplies in there. It's on the top of your house. If some shit goes down quickly, you just gather up the family, the kitten. You know, don't smush the cat.

Jason Bradford  
It's like one of these bunkers, but It's on the roof

Asher Miller  
Yeah, it's not even a bunker. It's much smaller than that. 

Rob Dietz
Okay, like a survival pod. 

Asher Miller  
Yeah, and then you close it up. Hopefully you can open it again. I don't know. But then a helicopter will come and whisk you away. 

Jason Bradford  
But where are you taken? They're not taking you to the haven?

Rob Dietz  
They take it straight to the graveyard and put it in a hole, and then just bury it over. Done. We evacuated the family.

Asher Miller  
That's the thing.

Jason Bradford  
Maybe you've got your own little private compound in Idaho that you're getting whisked to or something? What is this?

Rob Dietz  
Think about it. If you have enough of these on enough houses, they could be like bricks. You could make a border wall.

Asher Miller  
Yeah, exactly. Don't tell the clients this, Rob.

Rob Dietz  
Okay, so I mean this really for Barrett Moore comes down to a money thing. I mean, like we're trying to reveal the guy is bit of a con man. Maybe that's even putting it nicely. 

Asher Miller  
And by the way, the guy is out of business. Right? I mean, the website doesn't exist anymore. He's been sued to high heaven. You've got to go to the way back machine to find any of this stuff online. 

Rob Dietz  
The Biddle article, he's got a pretty good way of describing it. He says, "Moore's company operated like an affluent only disaster relief firm. It's like FEMA for millionaires." So you know, the long story short is that this life continuity project, unsurprisingly, fell apart, kind of like a bunker in Portland, after about 10 years. And it just had all these impractical things going on. You know, construction projects, and then lawsuits for not following through.

Jason Bradford  
Okay. Well, we're picking on this poor guy. 

Rob Dietz  
Poor guy. 

Asher Miller  
Fucking con artist. Allegedly.

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, yeah. But, you know, he's basically representing a certain type of the surviving the apocalypse sort of genre. It's a sort of rugged individualism and lots of private capital. Kind of a prepping 1.0 style, right? And what's interesting is that there's different niches for this. So you can market to different niches. And one of my favorite ways of getting a view into this is, you know that show, "Love, Death, and Robots?"

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, I've seen it. It's sort of like an animated Twilight Zone or something. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah. It's really It's kind of off the wall stuff. And it's kind of a little sci-fiy, but also kind of dark, you know, in many ways. Anyway, in season 3, there's these three robots, and they're walking around planet earth after the apocalypse, exploring the ruins of various bunkers. And they've got different levels of bunkers. So first, they show up to this compound that looks like out of "The Walking Dead." You know? Okay, so like, you know, tall fences and razor wire and stuff. And there's all these rednecks.

Asher Miller  
Lookouts in towers. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah. 

Rob Dietz  
One of the robots is wearing a hat that says, "My guns are lubricated with liberal tears" that a he picked up from a skeleton.

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, exactly. It's a right-wing compound. And they ran out of bullets and beans and they all died. And then the next one is they're out onto this offshore oil derrick that has been tripped out like it's some resort in the Bahamas. 

Asher Miller  
They converted it. 

Jason Bradford  
They converted it, and they've got an AI robot serving them drinks stuff like that. And of course, they're all dead too. And then the last is the rocket ships to Mars. You know, the billionaire. So you've kind of got these different levels of wealth.

Asher Miller  
It's like class. It's organized by class. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, exactly.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. Well, I tend to side with the not wealthys, right? Because that's more my style. I'm not going to be on the rocket ship. I'm not going to make it into the sea-steading oil derrick. So I think that there is prepping that's not for the wealthy. And some of the best descriptions of that occur on one of the most popular shows that ever aired on the National Geographic Channel.

Jason Bradford  
That channel disappointed me by the way.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, I thought it was gonna be seeing like Sylvia Earle doing stuff about the ocean.

Asher Miller  
I remember as a kid getting National Geographic magazines and like all this really interesting cultural anthropology stuff. Like looking at tribes in Borneo or whatever it is. 

Jason Bradford  
I know. They could have done so much. 

Asher Miller  
Well now this isn't modern cultural anthropology on television.

Jason Bradford  
I just quit National Geographic. It just made me sick. 

Rob Dietz  
We're gonna dumb it down here and go to "Doomsday Preppers." That was a TV show.

Asher Miller  
That was airing after "Ancient Aliens?"

Rob Dietz  
It was on the air from 2011 to 2014. You can still catch it on National Geographic's website. I couldn't get through all of episode one. But I watched a couple of the vignettes in there, and it's - Oh my gosh. So when I went over to a relative's house once and she said, "Oh Rob, you do that stuff for PCI. I know the show you should watch." And then she told me "Doomsday Preppers."

Asher Miller  
That's why I never tell anybody what I do.

Rob Dietz  
So I as I said, I watched a little bit of it. They started talking about the Yellowstone supervolcano, financial meltdown nuclear war, solar flares. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, that's scary. 

Rob Dietz  
AI nanobot terminator nightmare stuff. All that.

Asher Miller  
Otherwise known as Kurzweil's wet dream.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, so they had this couple, they were shooting rifles, the .22 caliber. So not not the big guns, but shooting at the walls of their house to make sure it wouldn't penetrate.

Asher Miller  
Wait, at their own house?

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, they want to make sure they've got enough armor on the house. So these folks were prepping for a magnetic polar shift. 

Jason Bradford  
That could happen. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. And they thought there would be major landmass shifts. So Texas would like float up to where Canada is. Earthquakes would knock out the grid. 

Asher Miller  
I  hope nobody told them about the Cascadia earthquake.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, so they ended up compiling a new living arrangement in a bunch of steel shipping containers And they had 50,000 pounds of food laid out in there. So I don't know man. This stuff got a little wackadoodle. Little bit.

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, a little bit. Okay well, that's kind of pathetic compared to what the millionaires do. There's this guy named Larry Hall. And he's the owner and developer of Survival Condo Projects. And these guys convert decommissioned underground -

Asher Miller  
Just think about that name for a second. 

Jason Bradford  
I know. It's great. 

Asher Miller  
Do you really want to survive if you have to live in a condo?

Jason Bradford  
They've got great HOA rules.

Asher Miller  
Can you imagine? You can't get kicked out.

Jason Bradford  
No. Okay, they convert decommissioned underground missile silos in the you know, nuclear hardened condos. And I've seen pictures. They look frickin' awesome.

Rob Dietz  
How do you go about buying a decommissioned missile silo?

Jason Bradford  
I mean, there are these websites for like government, you know? 

Rob Dietz  
Are they like on Craigslist or something?

Jason Bradford  
No. The government has this stuff that they auction off right? What are those called? Those sites where they have like government stuff that's no longer useful for the government. 

Rob Dietz  
I have no idea. That's why I'm asking the question.

Jason Bradford  
Yeah. I got it. We'll talk about this. Okay. You know, 900 square foot half floor unit to these 3600 square foot penthouse. Like I don't know why you -

Asher Miller  
Explain the penthouse. Is that the one on the very bottom?

Jason Bradford  
It should be upside down

Asher Miller  
It's like it should be flipped, right?

Jason Bradford  
I know. It's upside down. Anyway, yeah. They've got shooting ranges and hydroponic food and all underground military grade security, indoor pools, rock climbing walls, dog parks, arcades, classrooms, libraries, movie theaters, high speed elevator, you know. 

Asher Miller  
You've gotta get some more equipment. 

Jason Bradford  
You know, time is of the essence here. And so, you know, since COVID-19, interest has frickin' skyrocketed. And he's got actually a consultant who worked on the biosphere two project. He's trying to learn from the mistakes that were made on that project. So I mean, step it up, people.

Rob Dietz  
We need to move our studio into a missile silo. I think that would be pretty sweet acoustics. You know, we could improve things a lot. Okay. Well, holy cow. We've gone from the kind of low class to the middle class, or maybe middle plus, the millionaires. What's next?

Jason Bradford  
Well, I mean, if you're a millionaire, you gotta head - You can't just rely on a U.S. missile silo? Maybe you ought to think about going somewhere else just in case.

Rob Dietz  
Oh, that's right. You shared that article from Molly Redden from the Huffington Post called, "The American Elite Are Planning Their Escape — And It Starts With Paying For Passports" 

Jason Bradford  
Exactly.

Rob Dietz  
That article was - I highly recommend it. Basically what you do is you pay a million dollars so that your family can get a passport and become a citizen of Malta. Which, that's in the EU because that's a small island in the Mediterranean. So then you could kind of go with your EU passport. Yeah, live wherever you want. 

Jason Bradford  
Genius. 

Rob Dietz  
It's weird. Like, it's catching on, too. Same as you said - After the pandemic people are worried. And especially in America where you've got this polarization. You've got insurrection. 

Jason Bradford  
You know, people on the far right worried about the Black Lives Matter destroying this society. Now, people on the left are worried that, you know, Trump's white Christian nationalist thugs are going to take over and we're going to be in a Margaret Atwood novel. And so they they all want to converge on Malta.

Rob Dietz  
You got pretty much normal people walking around seeing this shitshow, too. They just don't have the money to buy their way into Malta. Right?

Asher Miller  
That's right. Well, we should talk about what the billionaires are doing. I mean, they're also getting themselves citizenship in multiple places. You know, New Zealand was a particularly appealing hotspot for some of those folks covering their butts in all kinds of ways. But you know, I have to bring up the story that Douglas Rushkoff had shared with us. We talked about this before. You know, Douglas talked about this experience he had sitting down with some some billionaires in a book that he wrote recently called, "Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires." And then he just describes how he thought he was being invited to public talk. He got a really fantastic honorarium to do this. He shows up, and instead it is just like less than a handful of billionaire dudes who are like prying him with questions. You know, like trying to figure out, well, how do we handle this? How do we handle that? How do I make sure that my armed guards, you know, my security detail doesn't turn on me when the shit goes down? You know, it's a sign that they're desperate to try to figure out, too, how to hedge their bets, cover their asses, whatever you want to call it.

Rob Dietz  
We should send them all to Kelly Butte and put them down where the Portland Center used to be. They could just have it. 

Asher Miller  
Yeah. And then of course, the ultimate prepper plan, and that is, let's get the hell off of this rock in the first place.

Jason Bradford  
Right. There's two competing visions.

Asher Miller  
Let's go. This is not sustainable to live on the earth necessarily for very long. So, you know, Elon Musk is trying to get us to Mars. That should be easy. No problem. Piece of cake. And then Bezos, you know, his vision is a little different. He's like, no let's just harvest the moon and we'll just float around in space. 

Jason Bradford  
O'Neill colonies, which we covered with the Stewart Brand episode. 

Rob Dietz  
And this is no, I mean, it's not just the stuff of Netflix, dark comedy, animation, right? Cartoons. This is real resources, money going to the business leaders launching stuff into space. 

Asher Miller  
Now, I will say, if we call all that, like I think you talked about as 1.0 prepping? You know, we're talking about maybe extreme examples, you know. I'm sure that the National Geographic show was not going for nuance and subtlety in their coverage, right?

Rob Dietz  
I will give this to them. They did have kind of a, what do our actual experts think of this plan? And they would do a little critiquing. So there was at least leaning towards that. But it was pretty sensationalistic.

Asher Miller  
But I would say prepping has come a long way. If you want to think of it in those terms. You know, I think the pandemic has really dramatically changed a lot of the conversation around prepping. It's been, I think, primarily historically viewed as something that that kind of white males are doing. Survivalists, sort of like off the grid, you know, maybe associated with kind of right wing political views. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, I mean, you get together to talk about what kind of beans store the best and then the next weekend you just kidnap the governor.

Asher Miller  
One, I think that does a disservice to the community of people that are involved in prepping on some level. And I also think that the prepping quote unquote "movement" has changed a lot. 

Jason Bradford  
Oh yeah. 

Asher Miller  
Particularly after the pandemic.

Jason Bradford  
Oh yeah. I think a lot of things changed. In fact, there was a huge uptick in gardening for example, remember during the pandemic. Which is sort of a form of prepping. You're trying to make sure you've got basic food supply covered for your family.

Asher Miller  
I was growing toilet paper trees.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. Wait, what's the difference between a tree and a toilet paper tree?

Jason Bradford  
Just very soft fibers. Nothing rough. Anyhow. No chafing.

Rob Dietz  
Cottonwoods. 

Jason Bradford  
So sort of the mainstreaming, you know, prepping. 2.0 might be the mainstreaming of prepping. Where kind of normies are into this now. And It's not just men. So it is estimated now from FEMA that households are prepared if they can survive on their own for about 31 days. And about 10% of households might be preparing for that about now in this day and age. So that's significant. 10% is a lot of households. And there's a group called ReadyWise. And they said that their market has shifted from about 95% men to more than 60% women.

Asher Miller  
That's pretty - 95% men

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, and these are known in the industry now as guardian moms. And they're really concerned about a reliable food supply for their kids. So you know, they've got the minivans and the doors automatically open from either side.

Asher Miller  
You could swivel the gun pretty easily.

Rob Dietz  
No. We're on to prepper 2.0. Not 1.0.

Asher Miller  
Sorry. I just like picturing this jacked out, you know, minivan. Yeah.

Jason Bradford  
Bullet proof doors.

Rob Dietz  
I saw that van in the movie "Tango And Cash" with Kurt Russell. Okay, so we're into 2.0, which means this is a studyable thing. So there is this professor at the University College of Dublin named Bradley Garrett. And he spent three years doing ethnographies of preppers. 

Jason Bradford  
Nice. 

Rob Dietz  
So yeah, it's like instead of whatever, you know, going off into some distant land and studying - He's just studying preppers in his countryside. And he actually wrote that most of the preppers he studied were not preparing for the doomsday. They're just everyday people who anticipate and try to adapt for conditions that, you know, that might not go as expected. And so he was trying to draw this distinction between the Cold War era survivalists, my Kelly Butte bunker guys in the missile, silos with today's preppers, who are not so much into the politics and partisan ideology, but they're more focused on okay, how do I just be prepared for what's coming? Now, the punch line of this is that this researcher, Bradley Garrett. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, very nice academic. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, he actually, after doing this study became a big time prepper himself and started living off grid. So I don't know, that might say something about what we ought to be doing.

Jason Bradford  
Well, he drank the Kool Aid, which will survive a long time in storage. That's for sure. 

Asher Miller  
Thank God.

Melody Allison  
How would you like to hang out with Asher, Rob, and Jason? Well, your chance is coming up at the 4th annual Crazy Town Hall. The town hall is our most fun event of the year, where you can ask questions, play games, get insider information on the podcast, And share plenty of laughs. It's a special online event for the most dedicated Crazy Townies out there. And It's coming up on June 6, 2023 from 10 to 11:15am U.S. Pacific time. To get an invite, make a donation of any size, go to postcarbon.org/supportcrazytown. When you make a donation, we'll email you an exclusive link to join the Crazy Town Hall. If we get enough donations, maybe we can finally hire some decent hosts. Join us at the Crazy Town Hall on June 6, 2023. Again, to get your invitation go to postcarbon.org/supportcrazytown.

Jason Bradford  
Well, this is a really easy species to key out and describe. We're talking about homo caverno, otherwise known as Bunker Builder. And basically, this species sees existential threats all over the place, and also sees that there's a corrupt and inept government that really can't protect patriotic citizens. So, families need to look to private enterprises to find a way to survive through the future shitshow we're gonna have. With enough upfront money and logistics, you know, life underground will be all a-okay.

Asher Miller  
If you've got a pool down there it should be fine. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, live like a gopher. Yeah. Well, I think that Barrett Moore, he's got a quote that you just know he's this species. 

Jason Bradford  
Perfect. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, let me lay it out. And he says, "We may well face a day of reckoning where a choice between buying beans or bullets is starkly set before us. Neither FEMA nor the military nor the police could be relied on in a true national crisis, leaving only the private sector to save you and your children from jihadists or germs compared to the hellacious suffering to come after the end of civilization. What self respecting businessman could say any sum of money wasn't worth the peace of mind?"

Jason Bradford  
Ching ching.

Asher Miller  
I guess I have to say, I am finding it interesting that we picked Barrett Moore as this as a false prophet in this whole topic of prepping, you know, for this season. Because when you are doing the typology, Jason, it sounds like I kind of see myself related to the species.

Rob Dietz  
Oh yeah, you've got some risk aversion running through your veins. 

Jason Bradford  
You share a common ancestor.

Asher Miller  
You know, I was thinking a lot about some of the areas of overlap. Now, we talk about this with quite a number of our false prophets, right, which is that there's a lot of what they say, or a certain portion of what they say and believe that we're like nodding along to, and then all of a sudden it just veers off into some stupid direction or dark direction. And thinking about some of the overlaps - I'm gonna read another quote from Moore that was in St. Bill's article, which I think, you know, is something that we would probably agree with. So here's something that Moore said, quote, "Today it's becoming apparent that this post World War Two period of global prosperity was just an aberration in time. Our economic stability is fading. Having been undermined by poor leadership, erroneous policy, ideological self-centeredness, and unprecedented levels of debt that render the future much more ominous in the recent past. We have conspicuously lived beyond our means for too long. I mean, that's something we would say. 

Jason Bradford  
Duh. I'm with you, buddy.

Rob Dietz  
So therefore, put a coffin on the roof of your house and fly off to his haven.

Asher Miller  
When the shit hits the fan, we will come against you.

Jason Bradford  
I mean, again, it's sort of like it's a relief to get away from these ecomodernists and these neo liberals full on. Like, in some ways, it's nice to have this change in the season, where that bullshit is kind of dismissed and these guys tell it straight. So sometimes you're like, yeah, thank God, I'm not listening to Pinker again. Right?

Asher Miller  
Tell us straight on some level. Right. But with a prescription that maybe we wouldn't quite agree with.

Jason Bradford  
So I mean, this is what we always go over. Like, if you are worried and you see this type of reality, you agree with that paragraph, then obviously you might be drawn in. Well, what does this person who I agree with think we should do? And so I think there's a lot of susceptibility to this, you know. I can look on with, you know, admiration, at those missile silos that are bunkers. Oh my God.

Rob Dietz  
I know. I'm scared to walk around the property now.

Asher Miller  
Careful where you walk - All of a sudden there's a big hole.

Jason Bradford  
There's a manhole cover. Don't worry, okay? It's dark, though.

Asher Miller  
It's a long drop.

Rob Dietz  
Have you put in the high-speed elevator yet? 

Jason Bradford  
I can't afford that. Anyway, throughout history, there has been a lot of these sort of shocks that drive this survival instinct and these prepping responses. So we kind of mentioned, you know, the nuclear bunkers in the 50s And 60s, and, of course, in the 70s, there were the oil shocks and the back the land movement. We have been very, you know, closely tied to the peak oil community in the 2000s. 

Asher Miller  
Yeah. Do you remember Matt Savinar?

Jason Bradford  
Oh my God.

Asher Miller  
Does that name ring a bell to you, Jason?

Jason Bradford  
I totally remember. I met him actually. 

Asher Miller  
Oh yes. Yes. Before or after he turned to astrology?

Jason Bradford  
This is before astrology, but I kind of knew. 

Asher Miller  
You laugh, Rob, but it's true. 

Rob Dietz  
You guys know all the best -

Jason Bradford  
But I was worried about him even then, I was like, "Oh, no."

Asher Miller  
So for listeners who don't know who Matt Savinar is or was, he had a website called Life after the Oil Crash. And it might have been the most popular sort of peak oil website out there, kind of in the earlier part of like, the first half of the 2000s. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, 2004, or whatever.

Asher Miller  
 And a lot of the reaction for people at that time was anticipating a very acute collapse of the system due to hitting a peak in global crude oil production. And you know, the dude was, frankly, he was selling on his website, you know, survival kits and shit. Probably raking it in. I don't know what the turn to astrology was, but fascinating.

Rob Dietz  
Well, if we go back to what you were talking about in that paragraph of Moore's that you read, Asher, where he's like, you know, we've been living beyond our means and the wrong policies. Well, you guys know I've been pitching steady state economics, sort of a Herman Daly vision of what we should do. And almost right after I started working at PCI, I got this awesome email from one of our esteemed audience members who basically, the premise of his email was, are you crazy? Like we need growth so we can have jobs. We need to keep this game going. But he had an agreement with the premise of that paragraph that we're living beyond our means, or we're consuming too much. And he finished that email, he said, "The only solution we have for the economy and energy and all that is more of the same. We've got to burn more fossil fuels, create more growth, and kick the can for as long as possible. Because when growth stops, we all starve." And then, this is the best part. He said, "The can kicking is about to end. Perhaps you," meaning me, "You, Rob, can print this email out and frame it and refer to it when you're down to your last can of beans."

Asher Miller  
Did you? Did you frame it?

Rob Dietz  
I did not.

Jason Bradford  
You remember it. It was memorable.

Rob Dietz  
Very memorable. I mean, I saved the text because I was like, it made me laugh. But there's like an overlap in our audience, right? With maybe even prepper 1.0? I don't know. But, you know, people who know what's going on and . . . 

Jason Bradford  
And they're saying there's nothing we're gonna do about it. We're just gonna keep kicking cans until it just falls apart. 

Asher Miller  
I would say that's a particular response to it. What he's basically saying is, can we please keep kicking the can down the road until I die? Right? Like, let somebody else deal with the consequences later. But I think you know, the truth is, it is understandable. You talked about susceptibility, Jason. But I think it is understandable when you actually see the vulnerability that our current modern industrial society has. The fact that we don't really have leadership that recognizes it, is doing anything to do a course correction whatsoever. It's understandable that people will be like, "Fuck, I better prepare."

Jason Bradford  
Yeah.  And more recently, of course, you know, the 2008-2009 financial collapse with the Occupy movement. And the pandemic and supply chain disruptions and political mayhem we have now. I can see why there's more and more people are attracted to prepping in some way. And so I think this is an important topic.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, there was another thing that I noticed too, especially when I started looking at the doomsday prepper episode, and some of the other material. It's that, you kind of realize that our culture in the United States has this prevalence of hero stories and rugged individualism. It's built into the founding of the nation mythology. 

Asher Miller  
It's our national DNA. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, it's built into every frickin' superhero movie that we see now. It's like, I am going to survive the coming apocalypse through my grit in my brilliant preparation. And I just don't see that story is playing out too well.

Asher Miller  
I think that there are questions about this approach, which we're going to get more into in terms of if this individualistic response, or this even like neoliberal free market sort of response - You know, let's hire people to bail us out - isn't going to work, that having a community focused, or more community-oriented responses is a better way to go. That said, there is an argument still for individual prepping at some level. And I thought a reporter named Jay Oliver Conroy and The Guardian, you know, made, I think, an important point about this when he was writing about how the pandemic reveals some truth to us, right? Which is that we can only get through disasters collectively. Hopefully, that was a lesson to people through the pandemic. And I remember in particular in the UK, I was really moved by how communities like in the UK and other places in Europe were really, really coming out like at a certain time of night, and clapping or somehow honoring the medical care people, the first responders, and all that. So people really saw that need for collective support, and how dependent they were on it. But Conroy talks about how collective action also requires, quote, unquote, "some level of individual responsibility and preparedness too. At least for those with the ability and the means. You can't aid your elderly, your immunocompromised, or poor neighbors, if you haven't taken the bare minimum preparations. There's a reason that airplane safety demonstrations warn passengers to put on their own air mask before assisting others." So while we might say, this is a very limited prepper, 1.0, or even 2.0 approach is maybe too limited. You do have to take care of this stuff.

Jason Bradford  
Yeah. So basically, we're saying there's a practicality to being prepared, yourself and your family. But also, you should include thinking beyond yourself and the immediate family. And there's actually an interesting story of, or actually a religious backlash during the Kennedy era, and his administration's push - This was before the Cuban Missile Crisis, but -

Rob Dietz  
Thsis is like back to the bunker days, almost to where we started this thing today.

Jason Bradford  
Yes. Basically, there was a resistance to this -- to saying like, this is individualism, and this isn't thinking.

Asher Miller  
It's immoral, right? There are a lot of religious leaders across - I mean, all kinds of Christian denominations, Jews and others, who spoke out about this as being immoral to basically say, "I'm going to create a bunker for my own family, and screw everybody else."

Jason Bradford  
And also there's a moral hazard like, okay, if I go down into this cave with enough supplies, and I'll open it up someday and the world would be fine. Which is ridiculous. It doesn't do any good. You're gonna have another few weeks.

Asher Miller  
But in the meantime, there's great beer down there. Some good Donald Fagan music that we can listen to.

Rob Dietz  
Maybe some Funyuns and Cheetos.

Asher Miller  
Okay, folks. It's time to rate this guy, Barrett Moore on our, our highly scientific and well calibrated insufferability index. Alright, so again, personality, ideas, his intentions, high scores - bad, low scores - good. Who wants to go first?

Rob Dietz  
Can I go first?

Jason Bradford  
Go ahead.

Rob Dietz  
Okay, because I was studying this guy. He's getting a 3 on intention. So he's a con-man, pretty damn malevolent. I think he's getting a three, two and a half, maybe, on personality. 

Jason Bradford  
Okay, you're at 5.5. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, it could be fun to have a beer with but come on. He's trying to sell me something that doesn't exist. And pretty screwy on the ideas. Seven and a half. 

Jason Bradford  
Okay. 

Rob Dietz  
Strong seven and a half.

Jason Bradford  
Okay. Asher, you want to go? 

Asher Miller  
I'm gonna go a little lower.

Rob Dietz  
So you want to hang with this guy?

Asher Miller  
I didn't say I want to hang with him.

Rob Dietz  
You want to spend the rest of eternity in a missile silo? 

Asher Miller  
That's exactly right. Guys, I have a little invested in him. I'm gonna go probably six and a half, seven, depending on the day. I'm cranky today so I'm going to say seven.

Jason Bradford  
Okay. Yeah, I think you know, his ideas aren't complete wackadoodlery. So I think I give him like a two on that. Seems like kind of a jerk, but I'll give him a two on that. He's not the worst of the worst. And malevolence, power hungry, you know, I'm gonna give him a seven. 

Rob Dietz  
Alright. 

Asher Miller  
Okay

George  Costanza  
Every decision I've ever made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be. If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right. 

Asher Miller  
Okay, so when I think about doing the opposite here, it's actually not totally the opposite. It's not like don't prep, right? It's more like going from prepping 1.0, prepping 2.0, to maybe prepping 3.0.

Jason Bradford  
And I'm so sorry we're doing this. I hate this stuff. I hate when there's 1.0, 2.0 . . . 

Rob Dietz  
I know. I thought you were gonna say 5.0. I had no idea 3 was gonna be the next one.

Asher Miller  
Well, if I was following Kurzweil's logic, it's exponential growth. You know, it's prepping 26.75 million. No, it's kinder, gentler, wiser, more sustainable. 

Jason Bradford  
Sustainable prepping. 

Asher Miller  
We're just prepping. So yeah. Which means, you do start with prepping at home, It's not throwing that out the window.

Rob Dietz  
So get yourself a shovel. Start digging a bunker.

Asher Miller  
In your house. Yeah.

Jason Bradford  
I think bunkers are good. Put your your cabbage in there.

Asher Miller  
Well, you only say that because you have a bunker. 

Rob Dietz  
Your sweet potatoes . . . 

Jason Bradford  
Exactly, yeah. 

Asher Miller  
No, so having a plan in the event of emergency, it's always been recommended. And FEMA, Red Cross, other agencies have got lots of resources for individuals and families to use. I would say two good starting resources for those who haven't done any of this work yet and are looking for some sort of basic first steps, you could check out the Red Cross's preparedness checklist, and FEMA's 12 ways to prepare. We'll have links in the show notes for those. I can tell you that I was a little lazy about this myself, and COVID, you know, definitely woke me up. So I've got my checklist of things that we kind of restock every once in a while. Make sure It's still good. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, nice.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. Unlimited Funyuns at the Miller household.

Asher Miller  
Shh. . . I'm gonna get raided. 

Rob Dietz  
Of course, part of prepping 3.0 is stepping up for more community cohesion as well. And you've already kind of mentioned that a little bit, Asher. And its a recurring theme here in Crazy Town. One of the recent articles on resilience.org is by a friend of ours, Tom Prugh. That article was called, "Idiots are us." But he was talking about how our aim is to support a movement of democracy preppers. So these are people who want to stockpile social and community capital, rather than just dried beans and ammunition.

Jason Bradford  
In addition to dried beans and ammunition.

Asher Miller  
I don't think that that's what Tom said.

Rob Dietz  
Well, you're not gonna deliberate as a community very well if you're out of dried beans and ammunition. Maybe don't bring the ammunition to the Democratic deliberations.

Jason Bradford  
We don't start with that, okay. Show up with the beans first. 

Rob Dietz  
Nice casserole, right? Maybe some corn chips to dip in it.

Asher Miller  
Careful, don't dip into that one. It's got bullets in it.

Jason Bradford  
Well, you know, I do think it's important. Get to know your neighbors before the disaster. Support one another in normal ways of life. And, you know, we're all susceptible to the triggers of fear. But it's probably better to be prepared ahead of time and work together some way in community. That's probably the best defense against your fears and just in case, right?

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. Well, and it's kind of cool. I have something like that, a community thing right in my neighborhood. There's a neighbor of mine who's a volunteer on something called the Portland Neighborhood Emergency Team. And they have these in each neighborhood around the city. And you basically have volunteers who are trained to provide disaster assistance in the place where they live. And, you know, this is very much departure from where this started with the bunker thing out at Kelly Butte, right? I mean, you're training up people there to figure out, how do I help if something happens? And so like, in our region, earthquake is a big possibility. And so these folks are trying to figure out, what would happen if there was an earthquake? How would I help my neighbors? And I get emails about their meetings. The last one was on ham radio operation, and how do you how do you transfer large amounts of data with a ham radio?

Jason Bradford  
Can you explain how that works? I mean, it is because the ham is salted. It's got an electrode in one end and it powers the radio?

Rob Dietz  
Yes, you've got it. Exactly. You are prepared.

Asher Miller  
I was gonna ask like, do you think that the City of Portland would be more devastated, like the people would be more devastated if there was an earthquake, or if they suddenly ran out of coffee? Which one?

Rob Dietz  
Well, I'm hoping the two don't happen in conjunction. That would be -

Jason Bradford  
If they ran out of coffee, they're just gonna jump in the river off the bridge, you know. There's like six bridges. 

Rob Dietz  
Not after the earthquake.

Asher Miller  
This is totally logical that it is an agnostic non-religious Jew like myself would want to talk about what the Mormons do. 

Jason Bradford  
Oh, yes.

Asher Miller  
But I'm going to talk about the Mormon way, right? Which is, folks might know this already that Mormons do have an expectation. Part of their tradition, their religion, is that you're supposed to have a certain amount of supply of food for your family. But the Mormon way is actually more than that. And there's a pretty sophisticated community network that plans for both individuals and the collective well being. The church operates like a really massive network of grain silos and food depots. People undergoing hardship receive food and household goods for free or in exchange for volunteer service. The system is vertically integrated with food supply by the church on farms. All Mormons, as I mentioned, are encouraged to maintain emergency stockpiles in their own homes. Not just for themselves, but to assist their neighbors if a natural disaster or something else strikes. Hopefully they would make it available to non-Mormons. That's the one question I have. But definitely looking at it from a community approach.

Jason Bradford  
I mean, I think that whole thing is super impressive. But I also look at it, and like, they've got these Costco scale warehouses for everything. I mean, their farms are not, you know, like Amish farms. These are the massive industrial farms. So I'm kind of impressed that they are actually thinking about this, but you also wonder like, how useful is this in a true disaster?

Asher Miller  
Well, and how many of these farms are in the Great Salt Lake area where they're going through massive drought.

Jason Bradford  
I think they own farms all over, actually. It's pretty fascinating. 

Asher Miller  
Probably.

Rob Dietz  
It's interesting. They're actually becoming a little less preppy over time. That's not the right word - the right vocabulary.

Asher Miller  
Hi, I'm Blair the Mormon.

Rob Dietz  
Well, the requirements for how much food they need to store, it's gone from two years, down to one year, and now it's down to three months.

Jason Bradford  
Oh my God. They're slacking. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, It's not. We're not talking a huge long tail here.

Jason Bradford  
They're becoming slack Mormons. Sorry. That's a bad joke.

Rob Dietz  
Let's just talk about something else now, okay?

Jason Bradford  
Okay. So anyway, what I think is happening now is you're starting to get all of these 21st century back to the landers. And I think this is important because - And I'm going to call this prepping 3.5, okay?

Rob Dietz  
Oh geez, says the guy who does not like labeling these things. He is now embracing it.

Jason Bradford  
I'm leaning in, okay. Okay, there's a big difference between being reasonably prepared for some kind of hiccup in high energy modernity, and actually being ready for powering down as sort of the system is forced into some kind of simplification. And so you know, you can have this backpacker mentality, or you've got your MRE-type supplies.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, you've got the water filter. You could drink raw sewage through it.

Jason Bradford  
You've got the sleeping bag. You can live in a pup tent in your backyard, if you have to, whatever. But we're social creatures. We can't prep alone. That's part of 3.0. We get that. But I think it goes deeper. And if you actually develop a livelihood with all the community associations that livelihood requires that isn't so dependent on the trappings of globalization, these complex supply chains, these big financial systems, and all these unfathomable technologies that underpin everything, including the Mormon farming, that's what I mean by 3.5. Was that inspirational?

Rob Dietz  
Yes, yes, it was. And it makes me realize your missile silos do not fit your definition of 3.5. 

Jason Bradford  
That's true. Yes.

Asher Miller  
There is also. You call these Neo-agrarian movements, Jason. But there's a lot of effort underway, different models and experiments with community ownership of land that has worked for procuring sustenance for the community. An example is Living Energy Farm. There's the Wales One Planet Development Program, which is really trying to support that kind of an effort. For some reason, the Welsh are doing some pretty interesting things on a lot of levels. And lots of of, I would say community scale models across the United States. Ones that are also focused quite a bit on BIPOC communities, and other communities that have been disadvantaged, historically. Rushkoff, we talked about him before you know, he does mention that the guy who was trying to raise funds from rich folks to set up organic farms to support rural subsistence, both for you know, their families and local communities. But unfortunately, at the time of publication of the book, they couldn't get these wealthy people - 

Jason Bradford  
I know. It's ironic.

Rob Dietz  
Well, it may be ironic but it's not surprising.

Asher Miller  
Oh yeah, it's not surprising. 

Rob Dietz  
Because the people who have the money, they're not going in for this high level 3.5 style prepping right. They are just relying on, we're gonna have a storehouse of goods somewhere. We're gonna have all these supplies, guns, whatever, put up. Maybe even rocket ships. And we're gonna maintain our comfortable modern lives. What happens when those store houses run out?

Asher Miller  
You know what I think we should do? Honestly, I think we should promote these, we were talking earlier about these like kind of crypts that people can put on the roofs of their houses. Let's sell those to the billionaire types, right? And then we'll just let them know that there's an emergency.

Rob Dietz  
I'm pretty sure Barrett Moore already did that. 

Asher Miller  
Go climb in there, guys. 

Rob Dietz  
You do not have the new plan. Well, I've got my plan. 

Jason Bradford  
What's that?

Rob Dietz  
I'm going to the framer shop so I can get that email framed up and read it over and over when the last can of beans is all I've got.

Jason Bradford  
Well, you know, I do have plenty of something in my bunker, right? Can anyone guess what that is? 

Rob Dietz  
It's not bullets. It's not beans. 

Jason Bradford  
It's wine. And so I think we need to go down there right now. I'm thirsty. 

Rob Dietz  
Let's do it.

Asher Miller  
It's only 9:30am.

Melody Allison  
Thanks for listening. If you've made it this far, then maybe you actually liked the show. If that's true, then there's one very simple thing you can do to help us out. Share the podcast or even just this episode. Think of three people you know who would get a kick out of Crazy Town. Use your podcast app to share it, or send a text, or go way old school and tell them face to face. Let's build a Crazy Town community so that one day we might be able to escape it. Three friends, please share.

Jason Bradford  
Let's face it, most folks can't afford to buy a compound in New Zealand or a decked out defunct missile silo in North Dakota. So what is a regular Joe to do when facing the upcoming collapse of society and resulting mayhem and hunger? The answer is obvious. Become a Mormon. In one frenetic weekend, the crew from Mormon Makeover will transform your home and turn your family into Mormons, complete with fresh undergarments. Imagine the feeling of knowing you have a pantry stocked with a year of food and are members of a tight knit community that owns nearly 2 million acres of North American farmland. Mormon Makeover. Relax. You're now a Mormon.