Episode 186: What If TEOTWAWKI Happened Right This Minute?

Salty and Spice discuss the thought exercise of "what would happen if TEOTWAWKI happens right now". Go to Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You by clicking HERE!

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spk_1:   0:00
Hello, everybody.

spk_0:   0:01
Hello, everybody. And welcome to the show The Big Show, the most important, critically acclaimed podcast that is recorded in our vehicle. And today we're in the big, noisy, Windy Truck, so some quality is going to be a little less than normal. Sorry about that. But the truck is. It's an old farm truck. If you were a 30 year old, Barbara Q might be a little noisy, too. Welcome to the show. We got a big show for you today. Actually, it's gonna be a fairly short episode. And we were just We were just at the grocery store in town. For those of you who don't know, we live in a very small town in our local grocery store in our very small time is extremely limited. In What? What did Carrie. So we do Bigger shops. We've been after the place today. Did some maintenance out of place. I would thio way we got a problem with the cabin. It's not a big problem, but it's a a bad, uh, support that needs to be replaced. Its we're the good things about buying a pre manufactured cabin from a good sources that'll fix it So I was making arrangements to get that done. And we were like So we stopped at the grocery store, were sitting out there, and I forget the exact comment that was made with something along the lines as well. You know, in case the walkie happens all the way home, we always play this game. What would you What would you do? What would you do? What would you D'oh. We're always doing that. What would you do? Game, You know, like well, yeah, because we're the truck. I don't have a bicycle, which I often carry with me. But I don't have one today and I think I could probably walk home from here. Probably. It's about 25 25 to 30 miles, depending on the exact route we're taking right now. It's about 28 miles and you know it. They're probably saying what salty. If you think you're not in shape to walk 28 miles, man, you need to get the gym. While that's true, I do need to hit the gym, but that's not This is kind of not a normal thing. Normally, I would first of all get on a bicycle in writing 28 miles on a bi school on a road with no traffic is not much of a challenge.

spk_1:   2:19
And if you're saying that, well, if you can't do 25 miles, you just need to hit the gym. You only really have the right to say that if you have actually walked 25 miles in a day. Guys

spk_0:   2:31
were cycled more than, uh, 25 miles a day. Most people don't, I would think. Did you think?

spk_1:   2:38
No. I think most people have not cycle more than 25 miles in the day.

spk_0:   2:42
For those of us who have cycled more than 125 miles in a day, we can talk, and that's both people sitting in this truck. I think

spk_1:   2:51
my on foot mileage is about 25.

spk_0:   2:54
Well, mine isn't. I've never done 25 on foot,

spk_1:   2:57
but I felt pretty good at the end of that. So

spk_0:   3:00
yeah, but anyway, long story short, I'm coming off of a major ankle surgery that had broken bones and torn ligaments and stuff like that. I'm still, you know, I'm not a month and 1/2 out of all out of a walking boot so kind of a different deal. And also and these are the kind of things that come up when you start throwing out these scenarios and talk about stuff. I wearing new shoes, brand new shoes. I'm breaking them in. That's part of what I'm doing today is breaking in the issues. You gotta start breaking. You know, these are not the shoes I would pick if I needed to walk 25 or 30 mile, I would pick those boots with the nice ankle supports in them. That would be what I would pick. Not a pair of sandals on a 44 degree day. You know, not these are actually cycling sandals. So they got the hard bottom, huh? Really, really hard. But I'm not really great for walking around any way you can, But, you know, there's certainly not a comfortable hiking shoe. They're not designed for it. And they were intended to do it, but for walking around where I've been, they were fine in a except trying to break him in there. Still really step. The straps are still really stiff, so yeah, well, often do this game of Okay, So what are our assets Well, obviously we're in the truck in assuming the Milwaukee happens, the truck will just take us home. Not a problem. We'll get plenty of gas. But what

spk_1:   4:31
happened to run into hordes of people in a traffic jam? Because we have no hordes of people between here and there.

spk_0:   4:36
There's no traffic

spk_1:   4:37
we might run into hordes of cattle.

spk_0:   4:39
Whatever. I took a picture just as we were leaving town to go with this story in this podcast. But that's just a CZ. We were leaving town. That was, does not your typical traffic pattern out where we're going to be. That was

spk_1:   4:55
because you could see a couple cars, two

spk_0:   4:58
cars and maybe one on coming. If I were to stop and take one now,

spk_1:   5:01
you'd get nothing and like

spk_0:   5:02
it just absolutely nothing out here because where we were driving through Ah, very, very sparsely populated area. Having said that, we're not in a typical situation. So we got the truck right, and the truck would take us home unless there was, like, any MP kind of a thing in the truck might or might not take us home. That's just simply because we don't know exactly how much damage would be done. The people, assuming that it knocked out all electronics. What resource is do we have? Okay, so let's just stop and take a look right now. And this is this was part of the exercise. Well, we're hauling her little. We happen to be hauling her little wagon from the place back home so she could do her some composting work. She needs to take the compost pile and the couple years old compost. Robin, it's nice to see their back. Um, sorry, Robin. Florid prose. And put that little wagon and haul it over to the garden and start using compost of the garden. But we don't have one of these wagons. I've offered to buy another one, but she kind of says no. So where we are? It's kind of a thing. My answer to everything is Well, let me buy you a

spk_1:   6:20
replies Where she don't know

spk_0:   6:22
we'll have all the everything always,

spk_1:   6:25
ever. Yeah.

spk_0:   6:27
Somebody must say no. She is the nose there. So anyway, long story short, I come back to that again. We've got the wagon. Okay.

spk_1:   6:38
Pretty hand card. Good. Sturdy hand pull wagon. Yes. Large capacity.

spk_0:   6:44
We've also got in the truck a bunch of my favorite drinks that they don't have at my local grocery store in case you're wondering it. ISS Nani Berry Non Me very. It's off the tee, but it's a Snapple snap t a Snapple drink. That's that's That's a salty favorite 90. Very. So I got 1/2 dozen of those. Uh, we've got ah, leader of lemonade. And you know, we've got some energy drinks.

spk_1:   7:25
What? Our purification in about 12 streams between here and there.

spk_0:   7:29
Water purification. Two types of maybe even three. If she carries one in her black back, I don't know, she does, but I certainly have two different types in the truck all the way out. We had three because we're taking out. There was a another water purification system. Went to the cabin. It's in storage now in the container. So we've got water. Okay, we have food. Well, we got some asparagus. Desa potato chips have a bag of potato chips. I slept over from lunch because we had a sub sandwich. Potato chips for lunch.

spk_1:   8:09
I've always got enough food to walk 25 miles in my black bag, right? I've gotten stuck with nothing but my black bag before.

spk_0:   8:16
Yeah, and of course, I've got some quite a bit of a straight up emergency food in the truck. So we always keep a go bag in all vehicles. So food for 25 miles? Not a problem. We could actually call quite a bit of our extra stuff with us because we have the wagon, All right, because I've had the difficulty with my leg. I carry good walking cane in the truck, and I do think I actually if I look back in there, I think this I have at least one pair of boots in this truck that I would swap out these shoes for. And

spk_1:   8:58
you do? It's a winter pair. Was

spk_0:   9:00
Yeah, that's Yeah, that's what about Of course, it's, you know, 40 degrees outside. It's hardly summer. Hello? It feels rather like it. Today. Lives blowing 30 miles an hour. It's 42 degrees. It still feels like someone us that should tell you that kind of winter. Reman. So, yeah, The purpose of my bringing this up, though, is not to say Okay. Well, we this what? All the stuff we've gotten our truck the purpose of my bringing us up is mental izing brutalization going through thought exercises. What would I do here? What would I do hit there? Stopping and thinking about our resource is that we have with us in any given situation and then starting to look from glaring holes. Now, mechanically, this is an old truck with 200 close to 300,000 miles on it. Right? So, you know, I know what it's very likely to happen with a truck with this many miles on it, You know, you're likely to have on oil week or you're likely have a lot happens you're likely to have Ah, the radiator hose or, you know who knows? So I keep the general stocky. I keep extra oil. I keep extra radiator fluid in the truck and keep a battery charger. Uh, charger, but one of those crank systems that crank toe start the truck up, keep jumper cables. I keep Ah, certainly all kinds of necessary winter clothing. I keep a complete change of clothing in case I should you know, I get asked battery acid all over me or something like that. I could change out, not after where Battery acid clothing. So there's all that. That's the stuff we have. But the interesting part is, what? What do we need? That we maybe could really use in the truck if we were stuck 25 miles from home today. So can you think of anything?

spk_1:   11:09
No, you have got first aid gets We've got a couple of days worth of emergency medications. We've got basic needs, cover shelter, warmth, reasonable stuff to walk in food and drink. We'll be fine.

spk_0:   11:27
It's more important. I think there we keep in mind that, you know, 10 walking probably is not going to happen in our lifetime. The global mass big chill walking, but a personal t out walking the end of the world as we personally know it is liable to happen several times in our lifetimes for each one of us would just be a personal t out walking in. So we need to not only keep prepping, and by prepping I mean in each individual vehicle in each individual place that we live in our suitcases. If we travel, we need to keep this These perhaps in mind, we need to have our documentation in order. We need to have survival in mind wherever we go, whatever we d'oh and that's wherever we go and whatever we do,

spk_1:   12:33
what happens if you have flown off on vacation and somebody steals your wallet? Can you fly back home?

spk_0:   12:39
If you're us, you pull your state issued I D card out of the out of the other bag that isn't likely to get stolen and get on the airplane. That's what we do.

spk_1:   13:01
The basic idea is that it reminds me of an old 19 fifties nuclear era. What would you do if the bomb landed right now and cover? It's really creepy cover, but the concepts there, if it happened right now, would you be set? Right now we know four different routes home from Pierre, basically, which is about as many as there are without literally going across farm fields

spk_0:   13:31
way literally from where we are. We know every single road between here and there to get we know all of them

spk_1:   13:39
as we go around exploring on days when the gravel roads air solid enough that a good old farm truck is, we'll get you the room. We explore the side routes and things like that We're just out of place today, talking about when the weather gets when the roads firm up a little bit, because some of them right now are bad mode roads. And you don't even take a pickup truck on those unless you absolutely have to, because the quagmire, anything south of a tractor, maybe a tractor. But it's about time to go exploring around there and figure out some additional routes there. But we've got through four outs from there. If the water is this high, which route do you take? If this route is closed, how do you get there from another direction? It's a habit of mine, of thinking about. If I needed to deal with this right now, could I deal with it? And if it if you come up with something that would make you really uncomfortable, then that's something to remediate. Salty and I were in a almost took our heads clean off accident once. Decades ago, there was a wire down across the road, and unfortunately it hit the engine block of our car. Instead of shaving the top of the roof of the car and our upper parts of our bodies off near thing, but that's what it did. And we hit one dark and stormy night, and we had just been at this fancy event where I'd been in a dress and high heels and nylons and all this stuff and dark, nasty cold night before the cellphone era hit. The thing car was completely totaled, just demolished, and the plan was no need for both of us to walk. I would stay there with the vehicle. Salty would walk back. There was a highway patrol station about a mile and 1/2 behind us back down the road. As it turned out,

spk_0:   15:33
Yeah, I was, and I just had a regular. There was a suit coat, a regular jacket and pants. You know, you could wear to, like, a formal type thing. It wasn't a formal formal. We were in a tux tie, but it was no business attire.

spk_1:   15:55
Yeah, and I remember the look on the patrolman's face. By the time he got there, any salty explained what had been happening, and the guy took a look at the car and took a look to make sure I was all right and salty was explaining that we had just been at this fancy party, and there I am, sitting in a pair of corduroys and an old jean jacket. He's gonna look at me like, really like, Yeah, I I changed. I knew we were gonna have to get out and start walking to at least some degree tonight. So I got out of the dress and high heels before it was time to do that. Adam in the car. If you've got shoes you don't wanna walk long in, I'm gonna have another pair of shoes around because it's kill you trying to walk in a bad parachutes for very long. So it's just think about what could happen. See if what you've got it need is there. Do that often and you find holes that you can fill. That's the basic story,

spk_0:   16:56
part of what we're doing now. We're on a road that both of us right now is not a road we drive every day. In fact, this is kind of an alternate route to get to home. But both of us have ridden this road here. I would want to say at least 50 times on a bicycle, the road that we're about to turn on in about 1/4 of a mile from where we are now, and we're gonna start slowing down in a minute. Both of us have ridden this road. I would like to say at least, would you say 500 times

spk_1:   17:30
at least

spk_0:   17:31
at least 500 times.

spk_1:   17:33
It's a convenient. It's about 10 miles from home and are daily 20 mile bike ride. It's convenient direction and not much traveled

spk_0:   17:40
very little traffic and usually not the most horrible wind direction ever. So, yeah, we know these roads intimately and that, really it's part of our comfort in travelling around the area. We know there's a standpipe. We're 10 miles out of town. I know exactly where to look to see the water tower. And I just saw the water tower of our town 10 miles away. I know exactly where it is. If you didn't know where it waas, then you couldn't find it. I know exactly where to look to find the town that six miles from our town, I know exactly where to look. To find it. There's a large standpipe. A standpipe is a water tower that doesn't have like a tank on the top of it back over my left or my right shoulder. There's a town where steeple

spk_1:   18:32
How would you be on alternate routes home if he didn't have your GPS? That's one of the things you can anywhere.

spk_0:   18:38
Yeah, that's me personally, Anywhere around here, I know every single road.

spk_1:   18:42
That's why he's bringing up. And it might not be obvious to you why he's talking about stand pipes and water towers and things like that. Put him on the tops of hills and they're things you can see from a long way away in this part of the country. And they make good landmarks

spk_0:   18:57
if you're out in the country. Why? I know every cell here by heart, but if you're out in the country, water towers stand pipes. If you have a really tall churches, you can see really tall churches. Um, grain elevators. You just know where they are. And you know, I'll tell you what. If you want to find a greenway, you know there's a green way around here somewhere. Let me give you a hint. You know that there's a bike trail of Greenway or something that you're gonna want to go out and take the family on a little trip and you can't find it. Here's how you find it. If you're in the Midwest, you just look around and look and see what the big old elevator great elevator is. Dr. There, that's where it is.

spk_1:   19:40
Those are the big tall cylinders with kind of cone shapes on top. Generally,

spk_0:   19:43
yeah, just drive there and in cluster right underneath that you'll find the Greenway every single time. Now, if it's not, if it's the newer style. Great Elevator was just like really big,

spk_1:   19:57
shorter and squatter,

spk_0:   19:58
shorter and water that may not be there. But if it's the old tall, concrete style green bends, that's where your green bay's.

spk_1:   20:05
They built him next to the railroads and when the railroads went out of business. That's where they put the greenways and the real trails. So

spk_0:   20:13
although I will tell you thes new style, Ben's, this large elevator bins are quite spectacular when they fail. Way had one failing in a North Missouri here last week, and I saw the somebody had a drone. A friend of mine had drawn pictures that he took it. They are Wow, that was a lot of that was a lot of green

spk_1:   20:36
that they built a new one. They filled it with soybeans and it exploded in all directions. And corn Come, look soybean colored. It's hard to tell from the picture, but you had this giant enormous pile bigger than a regular house.

spk_0:   20:53
Oh, could this You

spk_1:   20:54
have a green bits of elevator around it.

spk_0:   20:59
You could fit three or four houses inside inside this element of this elevator, you're huge.

spk_1:   21:05
If you are in a place like Iowa that has a lot of rail trails, that

spk_0:   21:10
it

spk_1:   21:10
can actually be a an extremely good way to get around if you're on foot or on a bike. And there won't be nearly as much hassle on drama as on the paved roads. But I was gotta create selection of really good trails, and that would be an excellent way to get from one place to another if you weren't gonna be driving anyway,

spk_0:   21:32
right? And if you did, you get out of a city. Jeez, Greenways are great. They're just one of the best ways to get out of the city without being on a car. Yeah, because you're dealing with people who, like you have a little more sense realizing the greenways up better way of getting out of the city, then, you know, it was random motorists who are so tied married to their car anyway.

spk_1:   22:00
And you're gonna have your own way across the waterways. You're gonna have your own bridges that are not blocked with frustrated people in cars.

spk_0:   22:09
Yeah, especially if there's, like, a grid gridlock. You're not gonna have gridlock on the Greenway. You're not gonna have broken down car sitting on how cars that run out of gas on the Greenway.

spk_1:   22:22
I would expect you're gonna have a lot of road rage on the roads as well.

spk_0:   22:26
Oh, you see that all the time in just everyday traffic, you know, So you know, if it's bumper to bumper and you need to get out of town, that Greenway is pretty good choice. If you have any options, especially if you're on a bike and they're designed for it, are designed. Move people.

spk_1:   22:47
And if you don't know it very well, if it's there's probably maps. That's trail. It's that you can grab, which is always handy, and a lot of them connect to other ones. You can get a good. You could get across probably most of Iowa following Greenway's and I know you can get almost entirely across the state of Missouri cause Katie Trail State Park runs from ST Louis area all the way into the hinterlands. Now it actually could. Coast City now

spk_0:   23:14
goes from Kansas City of ST Louis. So Clinton, I think that's where the lowest part of it goes. Yeah, um, as the side Here's my aside because we're driving past a high fence area you were driving to the country driving past up a, uh, field, and it seems to have an extraordinarily tall fence for no particular reason. And you don't know what that is that tokens has called a high fence. Not surprisingly, it's called a high fence, and what a high fence does is it keeps in game animals. High fence hunting is a thing where it's where you were driving past a place with. It looks like a cat a lot, but it's gonna be full of very, very large trophy deer slow down a little bit. Yeah, well, there's a whole bunch of deer out there, some with massive racks already, and basically it's a it's a paid a hunt situation. Where

spk_1:   24:23
have semi tain, dear? Seriously,

spk_0:   24:27
Now, where We're not huge fans of high fence,

spk_1:   24:31
But people pay this guy thousands of dollars to come and your sit in one of his tree sands and shoot one of the dear he's been feeding for five years. So it's got the rack size of New Jersey.

spk_0:   24:42
And, you know, some people care about that. Me just, I don't know be like going to the meat market. My prize? Yes. Well, enough. Enough of that. So, yeah, I just thought we'd share some thoughts about this and and encourage you to do a lot of this. Okay, Well, what if? Well, what if Okay, Thank you for listening.