Making Emergency Preparedness Less Weird with Annie from Come What May Day

You can’t control the weather, but you can control how you prepare for it. Annie’s showing us how to face disaster preparedness without fear, shame, or overwhelm, and why it matters more than ever to connect with your neighbors now instead of waiting for a crisis.

In this episode:

0:00 Why emergency preparedness feels overwhelming, and how to make it human
4:46 Fear, stigma, and why we avoid “prepper” conversations
10:27 Community over stockpiling: Why your neighbors matter more than your bunker
16:04 The only three basics you need to start preparing (without going overboard)

We also kept the conversation going with a Live Q&A where we talked about:

• The truth about survival water straws
• Using preparedness materials as a community book club
• Wills, paperwork, water storage, and peace of mind

Hang out with Annie:
https://www.comewhatmayday.com
https://www.instagram.com/comewhatmayday/

Hang out with Deanna:
https://deannaseymour.com
https://instagram.com/thedeannaseymour

🪩 Listen to the extended version when you join us inside The Playhouse + Get your first month for just $10 with the coupon code PODCAST
https://jointheplayhouse.com 

And if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share it with a friend! It really helps us grow and keep the good vibes coming!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Welcome to the Playhouse Podcast, where we hang out with all the brilliant owners inside the Playhouse that make this community so awesome. I'm your host, Deanna Seymour, collaborative growth strategist and founder of the Playhouse. Today I'm talking with Annie from Come What May Day about why so many of us avoid emergency preparedness, even when we know we probably shouldn't, and how she's helping people rethink it in a way that feels less overwhelming, less fear-based, and a whole lot more human. The thing is, climate change is here. Annie helps people face that reality and start preparing for what's ahead together. There's an extended version of this interview available just for members where we dive into the truth about survival water straws, using preparedness materials as a community book club, wills, paperworks, water storage, and peace of mind. Unlock that extra content when you become a member at jointheplayhouse.com. All right, let's get started. Hey Annie, how's it going? It's going great, Deanna. Thanks. How are you? I am awesome. I feel like today has been a little stressful, but I'm so looking forward to chatting with you about the amazing project that you have been working on. So I'm gonna let you kind of explain what it is because I don't want to do it wrong.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Okay. Well, I would I would love to hear your thoughts on it because we've talked a bit about how this is a topic of emergency preparedness that a lot of people don't love thinking about. And so it's one of those things that I gotta tell you, I've never wanted to be this person. I've never wanted to be the disaster preparedness girl, but here we are. And part of that is because I guess just to name this morning we were having some technical difficulties based on a power outage, right? And so these things can just happen at any time and we don't know when they're gonna happen. And so the way I think about it is why not just do the thing now so that you're ready later to be more prepared, especially when it comes to longer-term outages and things or extreme weather. We're living in a time of climate change and it's impacting all of us. The I think we all see it in various ways, but not all of us have prepared accordingly to make that happen. So, how how did this all start for me? Well, I've been doing this kind of my whole life, to be honest, just making sure that everybody's got their disaster bag ready to go, their food in their pantry, a water supply. But I lived in Los Angeles for many years, and we have earthquakes there and wildfires there. And last January, a year and a half ago, we had some wildfires come to the city that were pretty unprecedented in terms of the scale of impact and damage and this carnage that they caused. And I realized that a lot of people I really cared about weren't ready. Not that you can be ready for something like that, but a lot of my friends weren't ready to leave their homes if they needed to. And they were delaying evacuating, even though that would have been the smart thing to do, because they didn't have their affairs in order, the things that they needed, and they were panicking. Also had friends who hadn't stored up any water, and there was fire retardant from the the, if they were trying to put out the fires that was possibly getting into water sources. They didn't know at the time how extensive that was. And so people were making a run on the stores to get bottled water, which meant that there wasn't any more bottled water at the stores. So had that really been an issue, there would have been a lot of people without clean drinking water. And so the way I approach this is let's look at the potential things that could happen in our lives based on where we live, and just do a little now so that later we have what we need to kind of ride things out for a little while.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Yeah. You, I mean, what'd you say in the beginning? People don't really like doing this. And I'm like raising my hand. I'm like, I know, like it's I don't know. I like it's a weird thing where, and I'm sure you know a lot of people like this, like we know it's important, but for some reason we're like not doing it. I think maybe it feels a little bit overwhelming to people. And also it's like like uh you it's almost like are you are you gonna like manifest this happen? Like you don't want to talk about it or something, like you avoid it. You're like, yeah, yeah, I know. But we like know again, I feel like we just recorded Adam's episode, but our logic is like, okay, this is important, but our intuition is like, oh, this feels scary. So why do you think you aren't you aren't scared of it? Like, how how do you think? I mean, I think I know a little bit of your backstory growing up and stuff, but like what has made what do you think has made you disastered preparedness girl?

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Yeah, how did this happen? That's a great question. I'm not exactly sure. I do think that I like to stare things in the face. Like I I just don't want to avoid the hard thing in general. I mean, I would love to avoid the hard thing, but I just am incapable of doing that for some reason. I think that maybe it has to do with the way that I understand fear. I think that we hear the word fear a lot from all different sides. There's people that say, I don't want to live in fear. Like, I don't want to operate in fear. I don't want to make my life all around fear. I'm just gonna live my life. There are people that use that as an accusation against other people. They say, Oh, those people are living in fear. Like, I don't want to live in fear. I think that fear is is just an a part of being a human. It's a part of being part of the natural kingdom. Like if you think of a little hamster that like a nervous little hamster, like fear is is a gift, it's a tool. You don't have to be driven by it, but it's a sensor. And so if you just are constantly overriding that sensor and saying, like, I don't want to, I don't, I don't want fear, I don't want to live in fear, I don't want to, you're actually dismissing a pretty powerful tool that you have. I think we do that a lot in a lot of things in life is just override that fear because it's unpleasant. And I think you just named a few different things. I would I, you know, to break them down, the reasons why I think a lot of people don't want to think about this. You named several of them. So if you're listening to this, I wonder what camp you fall into. And you might fall into multiple camps. So there it's unpleasant for one. So for a lot of people, yeah, like this might be you. It's it's sort of like a situation where you're asking me to think about something that could happen that's really bad, but I've already got enough really bad things actually happening in my day-to-day. Why would you want me to think about something that hasn't even happened yet? So yeah, that feels, you know, something like people like something people don't want to do. It is overwhelming in terms of where do you even begin? And I gotta be honest, part of the reason that I also made this is that I have scoured the internet looking for what is out there. And that has also meant being on a lot of websites for towns, communities, cities to see what they have out there. And a lot of it is a graveyard of PDFs that were probably made in 2004 with like Clippy, the Microsoft paper clip, to help. And they're just a list of things that don't have any real category or sense of direction, and you don't even know why you're gathering up this stuff. So it's no wonder that a lot of people look at that and think, okay, great. I don't that this is just what what are we even doing here? Like, I guess if something happens, I'll grab a flashlight, you know. I think that's pretty common to just feel like, I don't even know what to do with this. And then the third thing, and I honestly think this is a lot of people because I talk to a lot of people about this. I have been, I say this all the time. I have been ruining dinner parties for years. Just bringing this up, just making sure everybody is on everybody's radar. I am that person, and it will be quiet because they don't want to, they're like, what are you doing? Like, why are you like this? I don't know why I'm like this, but I am like this, and I can accept that. But what is interesting is after those dinners, there would always be people that would pull me aside and want to have a little chit-chat. They just didn't want other people to know. And it was interesting to me because it it sometimes would be couples that wouldn't want to tell each other because they were embarrassed. They felt silly, like they were being a little bit too paranoid. So they'd be one of them would be like getting stuff in a little box together, but they weren't telling talking to each other. And so I just want people to talk to each other. That's the whole goal here is if your power goes out, I can't do anything about it three time zones away. But the people that are next to you or near you in your community, that's if things go sideways for a little while, it's the people who are next to you. And so why not have those conversations now? And I just really want to make that easy for people to do to start that conversation.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Do you think that people like sort of making fun of preppers is like why people are scared? Like, I'm just thinking, because like I know we've talked before and I've like made fun of my husband for being like a little bit of our prepper. Like, I kind of make fun of him, but I also thank him. So that doesn't even make any sense that because I'm like, oh, thank god. Okay, dad has like flashlights and batteries and candles and whatever and the wrong straws, but we're gonna get to that. But um Yeah, that's my my hottest take in the world, yes. I'm gonna get to that. Uh, but like I think people who are prepared almost get like made fun of. Just is do you find that? Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

I've certainly felt that as a person who talks about this all the time, but I guess I'm just okay with that. Yeah, I think that is probably part of the reason why it's incredibly stigmatized. I think it's been politicized. I think there's a lot of ways that camps have been formed about who who is allowed to know this stuff or care about this stuff or buy this stuff, or it says something about what you believe. And I just fundamentally disagree with that. I think that for most of human history, people have just known how to prepare for tough times and known how to prepare for seasons where there would be less of something, or we've just lived in a very comfy bubble in some ways for most of the last few decades. And um, I think you're right. I think there's I think people feel that sort of societal embarrassment. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Well, and one thing I love about the way the way that you approach this work is that you do sort of, I feel, uh like encourage people to speak to their neighbors. Like it's a community sort of idea. Like we're preparing, but like you were saying, I mean, even within a household, like a husband and a wife, like not two partners not communicating about it, but those are gonna be like your people that you need. So I just love this idea. Cause I I guess what I'm trying to process really quickly, because we're on a podcast and I don't want dead air, um, is that kind of making fun of like an individual for being prepared. It's like the community is gonna gather around that person if they all need water and that person has water. Um and I always kind of think of zombie movies like or is I guess The Walking Dead is really my most watched zombie thing. I have not watched it all the way to the end, but like at some point you switch from being scared of them finding zombies to them being scared of finding more people because like resources are so low. And I'm not I'm not saying that you have ever talked about a zombie apocalypse or anything like that. I'm just saying resources like matter and being prepared, and especially like talking with your neighbors and your community about it and like having that, I think not only destigmatizes it, and then you're like all in it together and it feels a little less weird, maybe. I guess that was I just rambled for a long time to get to that little nugget, is what I think is really beautiful about the work you do and what drew me to actually paying attention to you as opposed to being like, oh, Matt handles that kind of stuff here. It feels like bigger than a pack of batteries when I see your work.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Oh, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. I've appreciated your your feedback and your take on it too, as someone who wasn't coming to it initially enthusiastic about the subject matter yourself, or was kind of wanting to have your husband take care of it. And that's been neat for me to see and hear. I think you were asking, you know, why I'm like this. I think one of my core values in life is, or my core ways of showing up is to be the one who goes first. I'm an oldest kid, and that has impacted a lot of how I turned out as a person. There's a lot of oldest kids out in the world. And one thing I think we've we've learned growing up is you're just the first one to do a lot of stuff. And I translate that into my conversations. I try to be the person that goes first and asks the thing. And so I just think that if there's one person in every neighborhood or every block who's like, you know what, this is awkward. I'm just gonna be the first person to ask it because I know everybody's thinking about it. It's under the surface at some level for most people. How far down, I don't know. It depends. But when I talk to people now, there's a there's a pervasive feeling of, I don't like how this is going, or there just seems to be more weird stuff happening, or the weather has just it's not the same as it felt like when I was a kid. Like it's feeling like there's more damage, more storms, more extreme heat, because there is, you know, there has been a shift in the climate and the time that all of us on this call have been alive. And so I just name it. And then when you're the person that goes first, sometimes it brings people out of their shell to say, okay, you're right, like I'm feeling this too. And wouldn't it be nice if we have to solve this anyway when something happens, if everyone on your block had some stuff so that it wasn't just dependent on one person. Wouldn't it be nice if you knew what resources and skills people had? You know, whether that's medical response skills or certain power tool skills or things that might be needed, know that ahead of time and it can make all the difference. Honestly, it can make all the difference because um I think we've seen time and time again when there's regional disasters. I I think one of the most profound things I heard when I was doing my community emergency response team training was that when the Northridge earthquake happened in Los Angeles um in the 90s, which was the basis for many of the emergency preparedness programs that followed, when that Northridge earthquake happened, within five minutes, all of the city's emergency response resources were gone. They were, they were being used up, which means that no one was coming. So if you weren't someone who was being helped in those first five minutes, it was you and your neighbors. And so that's that's not an uncommon thing, I think, looking forward.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Yeah, that's I mean, I don't mean to bring it back to, I'm like, that's scary. And I'm like, no, wait, everybody, it's not we're we're gonna handle it. It's not scary the way Andy talks about it. But it's sort of scary, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:28

I think that's the looking it in the face and being able to say it's worth being afraid of and responding appropriately so that when that happens, okay, we're doing this now. We've got a plan. And I think that everything I do with the resources that I make, the classes that I teach, the podcast that I make is with that in mind. Let's look at the thing. It's not good. It's it is scary. And also, okay, we're smart. We got we got stuff we can do about it. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

And we're smart and we're not like in crisis right now. So we have lots of resources to pull from to be prepared for if those resources are not as readily available.

unknown 16:06

I think.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Okay, so why don't you just real quick give us the like main sort of things that you touch on? I feel like I don't want to leave anything out. I feel like you know them, but sure.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

So the basis for everything that I do starts with three very simple things. So it's having an emergency water plan. So if there's not water coming out of your tap, or there is water coming out of your tap, but it it needs to be treated, what's your plan for that? Great. Two, having a food plan. So a pantry plan, if the supply chain cuts out for a little while and your grocery store doesn't have things or you're stuck at home for an extended period of time for whatever reason, do you have a way that you're gonna have food if your refrigerator isn't working? And do you have a way to prepare it if your gas and electric stove isn't working? Both of those are very solvable problems. And the third thing is what's the other stuff in your house that you should have around that's gonna help you get through extreme weather events, whether that's extreme heat, uh, extreme cold, especially when the power goes out and you need to make it through. We are living in a time where temperatures are becoming more and more the the global, the wet bulb globe temperatures are becoming something that is going to be a real crisis. And so having things to do in the case of extreme heat is maybe my number one recommendation for people in these times. And so I just walk people through those three categories: water, food, and the stuff of it all, this the shelter in place kit. And if you have those under control, you've got a really good base. There's a lot of other things you could always do or add, but that's the place to start, and that's where all of my materials in my emergency essentials start. And that's where all my classes also start in terms of covering the basics.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Yeah. And I've been through the course. I have the materials. And I mean, I just want to give you a shout-out and say how organized they are, how I mean, honestly, like fun and engaging it is to look through the PDFs and uh user-friendly, like checklists are checklists. Like it's very, I mean, in case you haven't noticed, someone who's uh being prepared for emergencies that haven't happened yet is also very uh prepared and organized when giving people information. So it's it's really like it's weird to call it beautiful, but it's like a very beautiful, easy to digest uh thing, which is especially important, I think, because we've already covered that it's kind of weird and dangerous and or scary. So the way that you present it, I think automatically starts to ease people's nervous systems.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

So I just want to call that, Deanna. Yeah, I appreciate that so much. I think the nervous system piece of it is maybe one of my like top uh goals is to ease people's nervous systems with this. So and there's a checklist for each of those three categories so that you can walk through it and feel like, okay, I've I've walked through all of these corners of this particular topic, and at least I know have got I've got a plan for that. So you can actually physically check it off.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Yes. Okay, so as we wrap up this part of the podcast, I want you to tell the people who are listening where they can hang out with you online.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Okay. Yeah. So if you go to comewatmayday.com, you can find everything there. My emergency essentials and podcast and info about the classes that I teach. And if you would like to get in touch, I love doing courses or events with groups or libraries. So I'd love for you to find me there.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Yay! Okay, thanks for hanging out with us today, Annie. You are amazing. Okay.

unknown 19:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Don't forget, Annie and I kept the conversation going inside the playhouse, including a live QA where we got into the truth about survival water straws, using preparedness materials as a community book club, wills, paperworks, water storage, and peace of mind. And I even ramble about trolls and branches bunker a little bit. Unlock the extended episode when you join us inside the playhouse. Get your first month for just 10 bucks when you use the coupon code podcast. Learn more at jointheplayhouse.com, and hopefully we'll see you soon. Learn more about Annie and Come What May Day by clicking the links below in the show notes. See you next time.