Bunkers, Bazookas, and Bespoke Moats: How to Be Safe in an Unsafe World

The world has gone bunking mad. The bespoke security industry is burying bunkers stocked with arsenals of automatic rifles and surrounded by flaming moats. Is there a better way to prepare for the polycrisis, the zombie apocalypse, or whatever hard times are on the horizon? Jason, Rob, and Asher have some fun at the expense of the bunker builders before examining the positive aspects of peasanthood and stressing the need to build community.

Originally recorded on 5/5/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Coralie Kraft, "The 'Panic Industry' Boom," New York Times Magazine, April 10, 2025.
• The SAFE company offers "bespoke, fortified residences" and other silly signs of our times. 
• Aaron Gell, "'All of his guns will do nothing for him': lefty preppers are taking a different approach to doomsday," The Guardian, April 17, 2025.
• Will Petersen, "Nuggets star Nikola Jokic is again living a good life back in Serbia," Denver Sports, June 20, 2023.

Related Episodes of Crazy Town:

• Episode 73. How Longtermism Became the Most Dangerous Philosophy You’ve Never Heard of
• Episode 34. Fear of Death and Climate Denial, or… the Story of Wolverine and the Screaming Mole of Doom
• Episode 100. A Temporary Techno Stunt: Tom Murphy on Falling out of Love with Modernity

Transcript

Rob Dietz  
I'm Rob Dietz.

Jason Bradford  
I'm Jason Bradford

Asher Miller  
And I'm Asher Miller. Welcome to Crazy Town, where we sell fireproof suits so you can swim across your neighbor's flaming moat.

Rob Dietz  
In today's episode, we're exploring the wackadoodle world of bunker living, home bunker accessories and bunker mentality. So grab some popcorn kernels, get outside, and light your moat on fire and start popping. And stick around for some smart and workable ideas for navigating the shit show that us wonky types call the polycrisis.

Asher Miller  
Jason, every time I come out here to your home, slash farm -

Jason Bradford  
Estate. 

Asher Miller  
Slash podcast studio, slash brothel. Oh, sorry, I shouldn't mention that part. 

Jason Bradford  
For chickens. 

Asher Miller  
Right. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah. 

Asher Miller  
There's something going on, okay? This time there's a lot of equipment.  Big, you know, we got our back hoes. Big equipment. 

Jason Bradford  
Excavators.

Rob Dietz  
Trench diggers, bulldozers. 

Asher Miller  
What's going on? I mean, I'm glad that you asked them to stop, you know, work for today while we're recording.

Jason Bradford  
Yeah for today I told them to take the day off. Totally.

Asher Miller  
I appreciate that. 

Jason Bradford  
Because we'd be rumbling in here. 

Asher Miller  
What's the deal, dude? 

Jason Bradford  
Alright, so, yeah. These guys usually work on freeways and, you know, and they're excited about this. All these guys wish they could do this too. It's gonna be about a 2,000 foot long in circumference moat. It's at least 20 feet wide and 10 feet deep. 

Asher Miller  
What? You're digging a moat?

Jason Bradford  
It's a modest mode. I mean . . .

Asher Miller  
As far as moats go.

Jason Bradford  
I mean, if you're, like, a long jumper, you can get across it. But most people can't cover 20 feet.

Rob Dietz  
What about those pole guys? You ever see that competition where they run, stick a pole in the ground, and then --

Asher Miller  
Yeah. The Dutch do this over -

Jason Bradford  
It's a modest moat. I can't do it all. Okay. So a moat? A moat. It's for security.

Asher Miller  
Where did you guys get this idea? 

Jason Bradford  
Well, I forwarded to you guys a New York Times Magazine photo essay --

Asher Miller  
Oh right. 

Jason Bradford  
 Titled, "The Panic Industry Boom." And it's from April 10, 2025. Not that long ago. I got on it.

Asher Miller  
It inspired you. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, you read that article and just started digging. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah.

Rob Dietz  
And you realized with your fingernails you weren't gonna get very far so you hired this team? Am I getting that right?

Asher Miller  
If we're gonna keep using fossil fuels, might as well put them to good use.

Jason Bradford  
Oh, highest and best use, baby. 

Rob Dietz  
Okay, I will say that that article blew me away. Like the photos in it had this weird mix between Mad Max and like a 1960s/70s sci fi. Like picture rusty shipping container as the exterior and interior was this white hyper sterile, like from 2001: A Space Odyssey looking thing. It was crazy. 

Asher Miller  
Some of them had a little bling to them, you know, a little touch of class. You know, some wood trimmings on things. 

Jason Bradford  
Oh yeah, a couple pieces of art might have been hanging there.

Asher Miller  
Yeah. I mean, my favorite piece, I have to say, are the gun ranges. I mean, if there's one thing that brings all of these people together, location might vary, you know, the size of their bunkers might differ, but they all have to have their gun ranges for some reason. 

Rob Dietz  
What do you mean for some reason? You know the reason.

Asher Miller  
Yeah, they've got to get practice because you know when the hordes show up, you have to be judicious with your use of bullets.

Rob Dietz  
Marksmanship, very important in the zombie apocalypse. Well, my favorite part, you've already hit it because you're building it, is the moat. But the part that really struck me is it's not just a moat, it's a flaming moat. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, I can't afford that. I'm sorry. 

Rob Dietz  
Get a bunker, yeah, put in a flaming mode. They literally have like, deployment of some kind of burnable liquid over this watered moat. 

Jason Bradford  
Ready to go. 

Rob Dietz  
And then you hit the ignition switch, like, I guess on a propane grill or something. 

Asher Miller  
They got it from the old Byzantine Empire. They had this special flaming thing that would burn ships.

Jason Bradford  
Right. It's some like gel thing that kind of splooges out of some like turrets, and then you light it up. I think that's how it works. 

Asher Miller  
I guess you can only use it once. 

Rob Dietz  
That's the thing. I know we're gonna critique this. But let's say you're trying to attack Jason's estate, and he's got this flaming moat capability. 

Asher Miller  
Why are you giving our listeners -- Dear listeners, please don't listen to this. 

Rob Dietz  
I'm just saying --

Asher Miller  
Giving them ideas.

Rob Dietz  
I'm just saying, bring a picnic lunch, sit, maybe some marshmallows you can roast over the flames, and then it's gonna go out.

Asher Miller  
Wait for it to go out.

Rob Dietz  
And then you just storm on in. 

Asher Miller  
Look, in this day and age, nobody has the patience for that. In the TikTok era, who can't wait, Rob? You're just gonna just try to cross the moat, I guess.

Rob Dietz  
While we're on this topic, and I'm sorry to do this to you guys and to our listeners as well, but when I was thinking flaming moats, of course, I went to the realm of cinema. You know, the formative flaming moat scene happens in Braveheart, right?

Jason Bradford  
Oh, I haven't seen that. 

Asher Miller  
Maybe that's where they got the idea from. 

Rob Dietz  
You haven't seen Braveheart? 

Asher Miller  
You've never seen Braveheart?

Jason Bradford  
No.

Rob Dietz  
Oh my gosh. Maybe that's a good thing. You know, Mel Gibson playing the Scottish hero. 

Jason Bradford  
I know what it's about. 

Rob Dietz  
So anyway, there's a scene there where they've set up the flaming moat. It's not flaming yet, but the bad guys are in it, and then their archers shoot the flaming arrows from afar and burn it all up. That's the one that comes to mind first for most people. But I had another movie in mind when I thought flaming moat. 

Asher Miller  
I can't believe you have more than one flaming moat in mind. It's amazing. 

Rob Dietz  
It's the 1982 classic, Beastmaster. About the guy -

Asher Miller  
That won best picture that year.

Rob Dietz  
I think it did. It's about the guy who can speak to animals through his mind. But the reason that one stuck in my head so much is the way he lights the flaming moat on fire. It's like they set some bad guy on fire. He's like, running, burning, and then the hero like sidekicks him into the moat and that lights it up.

Jason Bradford  
That's beautiful. Yeah. And there's many ways to do this, apparently.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. The whole gel thing from the turret, I'd rather, you know karate kick some flamed up bad guy. That's a better spark.

Jason Bradford  
Human creativity and innovation, and where's it gonna go? 

Asher Miller  
Yeah, and when you get desperate enough, you know.

Jason Bradford  
I love the website that the builders put together for this.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. So in that article you sent, they said there's this SAFE company, right?  And their whole thing is --

Asher Miller  
That's an acronym, right?

Rob Dietz  
No, no. I think it just capitalized "SAFE" to emphasize. Yeah. They had in all caps "PROTECTING WHAT MATTERS MOST." So this is the company that builds bunkers, digs moats. What did they call it? Bespoke Security . . . 

Jason Bradford  
Solutions. 

Rob Dietz  
Solutions.

Jason Bradford  
That's my favorite part. 

Asher Miller  
So this is who you hired to do yours?

Jason Bradford  
No.

Asher Miller  
They're just too in demand?

Jason Bradford  
I couldn't afford them. Their minimum is $10 million for a project. So, no.

Asher Miller  
That's too bad.

Rob Dietz  
Well, if you go to this website. . . I mean, they're serious. But I think the three of us take it somewhat as farse. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah. 

Rob Dietz  
Bring your favorite part from that website. What's your favorite part, Jason?

Jason Bradford  
I love how they do yacht security as well for pirates. And so there's these pictures of super yachts. And there'll be one of the company representatives, you know, the Our Team page is spectacular. And sort of standing, you know, in the distance is some yacht being launched out of whatever yachts get launched from with the implication that if you're a pirate, don't even come close to this. 

Asher Miller  
Don't fuck with this yacht. 

Jason Bradford  
Don't fuck with this yacht. They've got all kinds of crazy stuff. You know, they're gonna, like, microwave your brain or something. I don't know.

Asher Miller  
Well, I think that their team is world class. In fact, they told us that their team is world class. I mean, if you read the bios of the team members it's a family affair, except they got this one guy named Parrot. I don't know. He maybe just repeats everything that they say. Not sure. But Naomi, I feel kind of bad for making fun of these people, but maybe not so much. A little bad.

Jason Bradford  
Naomi, it looks like she might be the daughter of the founder. 

Asher Miller  
Yeah. His name is Al V. Corbi.

Jason Bradford  
Yes. And she's Naomi Corby, right?

Asher Miller  
Yeah. And their photos are great because they got a photographer who told them, what you need to do is cross your arms and for some reason, Al is sticking his thumb up, like, you know  I don't know what he's doing. He just wants everyone to see his Rolex. But she happens to be a distinguished professional with a dynamic background in bioscience, health care strategy, and medical preparedness. She brings unmatched expertise --I love bios. We should do this at Post Carbon. We should play up our bios a little bit.

Rob Dietz  
Well, it reminds me from The Simpsons episode where Homer wins the award for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence.

Jason Bradford  
Yes, all the bios sound like that.

Rob Dietz  
Jason, you are outstanding in the field of excellence as well. Asher, you're excellent in the field of outstandingness.

Jason Bradford  
They call themselves beyond Bond security. 

Asher Miller  
Beyond bond.

Jason Bradford  
But they do look like they could work for a super villain and create a layer for a super villian.

Asher Miller  
Here's the only thing - Their photos look a little too photoshoppy for me. I'm not sure they've done much like in the real world.

Jason Bradford  
I'm curious. Well, I mean, they're building a moat. 

Asher Miller  
Maybe we should contact them. Hey, dear listener, maybe you want to contact them and let us know, you know, if they're available for work these days.

Rob Dietz  
I have to say, when I saw the website, I agree with you, Jason, the yacht thing did jump out. Where they you know, they said, "We'll maintain the opulence and comfort of your yacht while safeguarding against any potential threats." Like that struck me. But the thing --

Asher Miller  
You think like torpedoes?

Jason Bradford  
Sure

Rob Dietz  
Oh yeah. The thing that really did it for me, though, is that they do advanced C4I STAR command centers. You guys know that acronym? Of course you do, C4I STAR: Command control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance.

Asher Miller  
Okay. 

Jason Bradford  
They've got it covered. 

Asher Miller  
Target acquisition, nice.

Jason Bradford  
Well, I guess this is a big deal. Like companies like this, there's more than one. They just might be the most bespokeish. But my favorite bit from this article was this statistic - A 2023 survey found that about 1/3 of American adults were prepping for a doomsday scenario, spending a collective $11 billion over 12 months.

Rob Dietz  
Wow, $11 billion. This cellar project you got going on? Is that counted in that, or no?

Jason Bradford  
I don't think so. Although my contractors thought it was. So I've told this story before, but I'm like, "Hey, contractor people, I would like a veggie and wine cellar." And they brought this guy out that does bunkers for people. He was bragging about how like, "Oh yeah, one of the state senators . . .  I can't say his name. He has got one of these - I can get you 200 yards, trap door." You know, it was like this sort of thing. 

Rob Dietz  
I mean, a root seller and a bunker aren't substantially different in design.

Asher Miller  
Is your trap door in the chicken coop? Or, actually, maybe you don't want to say.

Jason Bradford  
I can't tell people where it is. It's under the rutabagas.

Rob Dietz  
Well, you know in the SAFE one or in one of the articles, the guy, it's behind his fireplace and you play the James Bond theme to open it. 

Asher Miller  
We should really take these people seriously when you tell me stories like that.

Jason Bradford  
Well, then I'm like, you know, I said, "Hey, hey, come on in" I was talking to the contractor. "Hey, come on in. I'm gonna show you -- I'm really excited. I'm gonna show you what I'm gonna put in there." And I led him into the bedroom.

Asher Miller  
He thought it was gonna be like a stash of AR15s.

Jason Bradford  
He was like, do I really want to see this? You know? I let him into the bedroom and I had literally cases of wine stacked against, on the walls of my bedroom. Like three deep and high, whatever. "I can't wait to get this out of here."

Rob Dietz  
Let's just tell the listeners too, Jason is a member of a wine club --

Asher Miller  
You're not just a severe alcoholic.

Jason Bradford  
No, no. We make our own wine in this club. And I store it for years before drinking it to make it more bespoke.

Rob Dietz  
The word for the day is bespoke. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, yeah. I thought if ever I use that word, you should kill me. But now --

Asher Miller  
We're going to throw you in the flaming moat. 

Jason Bradford  
But now we all know it's ironic. 

Asher Miller  
Thank God you told us. 

Jason Bradford  
But anyhow, he looks at me in the eye, and he goes, "Oh, so you really are gonna put wine in there."

Asher Miller  
He said, "Where's the gun rack going?"

Jason Bradford  
I mean, we're in pretty bad times when nobody believes you actually want a wine and veggie seller. They just assume it's a euphemism for a doomsday vault. 

Asher Miller  
So we don't know if that -- We're gonna guess, I guess, assume the money you spent on putting that cellar does not count as part of that $11 billion.

Rob Dietz  
Well it did at first, but they had to subtract it out to correct for the actual --

Asher Miller  
I think Elon Musk got in there with the DOGE guys and made sure that the numbers added up properly. $11 billion in one year. That's quite a lot of money if you think about it. In fact, that is more than the amount of money that all of the nonprofits in the U.S. working on climate mitigation spent in the year. 

Jason Bradford  
Of course. 

Asher Miller  
So if you think about priorities 

Rob Dietz  
Well the priority, if I had $11 billion, I would become the Atlanta sports mogul. 

Jason Bradford  
What? 

Rob Dietz  
I would buy the Atlanta Hawks, the Atlanta Braves, and the Atlanta Falcons. 

Jason Bradford  
You could get them for that much? 

Asher Miller  
All birds. You should do this. Actually, Braves are not birds. 12? How much is it? 

Rob Dietz  
It's around 11 billion. The valuation might be a little higher than that, but I think if I get all three at once, they'll give me a discount.

Asher Miller  
Sure you come in, yeah. Well, interestingly, the global firearms market in2024 is even less than this. And you've got to wonder if one is a subset of the other, but it's only ten billion dollars spent on all fire arms.

Jason Bradford  
There's some overlaps. 

Rob Dietz  
That's gotta be private firearms.

Asher Miller  
Yeah, we're not talking about the military. That's like a rounding error for the military.

Jason Bradford  
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Asher Miller  
You don't want them to come for you. 

Jason Bradford  
No, no, I got a moat though. Really stupid. Okay? 

Rob Dietz  
Wait, your moat is really stupid or these people who have shooting ranges in their bunkers?

Jason Bradford  
Most of what I've probably done is stupid and the shooting -- Anyway, let's look at these imagined scenarios for why this would be needed, quote unquote.

Asher Miller  
Okay. 

Jason Bradford  
We're talking about a complete breakdown of modern civilization, right? Nuclear wars, deadly pandemics, massive unrest. You know, the trucks stopped running for whatever reason. You know, Mexico and Canada coordinate some pinching maneuver on us. 

Asher Miller  
Massive EMP attack. 

Jason Bradford  
Massive EMP, zombie apocalypse kind of stuff. Okay? So maybe the photo essay didn't cover the breadth of the industrial prepping community, but I saw a lot of concrete and steel, nothing that would really help anybody once they crawled out of this hole, right? 

Asher Miller  
Good point. 

Jason Bradford  
They got a year of storage or whatever, right? You can only store so much food. And actually, if you took these pictures, right, you notice the landscape people are in for these bunkers, they're often quite barren.

Asher Miller  
I love the one is, is it Nevada where it's the old missile silos or whatever?

Jason Bradford  
That was in one of the Dakotas. Doesn't matter which one. They're the same. But there was one in, like, ex-urban Dallas or Phoenix. It's like, are you kidding me? You get out, and then what?

Rob Dietz  
You want to get out. Because if you're in Phoenix, say, a few decades out, climates already, it's too hot to get out. So you want to stay in your little hot hole.

Jason Bradford  
Forever?

Asher Miller  
Forever.

Jason Bradford  
So, you know, I don't think most of these places are going to be highly conductive or conducive, let's say, and they may not conduct well either to human life in some post apocalyptic scenario.

Asher Miller  
So you're what you're saying is, they haven't really thought this thing through. 

Jason Bradford  
Haven t thought it . . .I think they're thinking like one step as opposed to three, five steps.

Asher Miller  
It's interesting, ike, all the the gadgetry stuff makes me think, like you were saying, playing the James Bond thing to, like, open up the trap door. It's like they're cosplaying or something,

Rob Dietz  
It's pretty clear that a lot of the people engaged in this have the same brain disease that I have. They've watched way too many movies and they think that that's how things work. Like Al V. Corby, the guy from the SAFE company, I think he saw those same fire moat movies as I did and that's what he's thinking. I mean, what you're saying, Jason, like the whole I'm gonna pop out of this thing at some time, the idea is they're gonna go rummaging through old stocked stores. They'll be down at the Costco or the Piggly Wiggly or the Walmart Super Food Center, and they'll just grab it and it's fine. I can eat for years off of that. Again, it's the movie thing. Like people watch the movie "Zombieland." The zombies invade and all the stores are still stocked. You just got to go in with your baseball bat, kill a few zombies, and then you got pork and beans. Yeah, it's a problem. I don't think these people that are in their bunker will know what the root end of a rutabaga is. Okay? And that's a problem.  Honestly, I think it's a mad dream. It's a failure to reckon with what's actually coming. People, they sort of love this idea of the stores are still stocked, and I can go through them. It's like the joy and wonders of shopping and consumerism without the crowds and without the having to pay. 

Asher Miller  
Some people are a little bit more sophisticated in their thinking, okay? They're not just thinking about how they could have, how many cans of whatever that they're gonna compile. So remember, we did a, in our false profit season, we did an episode on long-termism. And I think it was episode 73.

Rob Dietz  
Can you describe long-termism? Because, by itself, that just sounds like, you know, many years.

Asher Miller  
Sure. Yeah, right. So there's a whole group of people who are long-termists. And they're part of kind of a collection or connected to people, they're called effective altruists. And their thinking is, you know, there are existential threats and risks to humanity. Humanities needs to be focused on supporting as many people living for as long as possible, and we need to eventually colonize the stars because this earth, you know, at some point, something's gonna happen. If it's not a nuclear holocaust, it's gonna be, you know -- 

Jason Bradford  
The comet.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, or we just use it all up ourselves. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah.

Asher Miller  
Yeah. They're not thinking that much about that. But so, you know, there are these threats. And what we need to think long term. And so our investments, this is where the Effective Altruism comes in. It's like, what's the best use of our money and resources, you know, to be most effective in the long term. And that's why, you know, fuck the lives of poor struggling people in Africa or even the United States. We have to be thinking about who's going to help us. you know, get off of this Godforsaken rock. So one of these long-termist, effective-altruist guys named Robin Hanson, he's an economist, he had a great solution for thinking about, how do you prepare? You know, you've got your contingency plans. And this is what he said and I'm quoting here. Quote, "It might make sense to stalk a refuge," or let's say it's a bunker, "with real hunter gatherers and subsistence farmers together with the tools they find useful. Of course, such people would need to be disciplined enough to wait peacefully in the refuge until the time to emerge was right. Perhaps such people could be rotated periodically from a well protected region where they practice simple lifestyles so they could keep their skills fresh." So this is different, you know, it's not just a bunker for you and your little nuclear family. You're gonna have a refuge where you put these hunter gatherer types, you know, so that you can count on them after Armageddon happens.

Rob Dietz  
I feel like he wrote that for The Onion, not for a real place. 

Asher Miller  
He did not, dude. 

Rob Dietz  
That is unbelievable. Is there a more Orwellian name, by the way, than Effective Altruist? They're like, let me pick something that sounds kind and generous. Meanwhile, it's all about me and traveling to the stars. 

Asher Miller  
Exactly.

Jason Bradford  
Yeah. Okay, well, would it be fair to say that most of the folks that were covered in the New York Times Magazine essay, or the folks that were covered implicitly that showed their bunkers were on the political right?

Asher Miller  
I would think so, yeah.

Rob Dietz  
I would say so. I mean, I don't know what the author s or photojournalist's intent was. I think they might have been on our side, like, trying to expose this as silly, but the actual practitioners I will give you, righties.

Jason Bradford  
There were some giveaways, like, like, everyone had a -

Asher Miller  
All of the Trump posters in their bunkers. That was a giveaway. 

Jason Bradford  
What's interesting, though, is that I also shared some articles, which you guys did a great job of reading, that covered some preppers on the left. This was covered kind of because of Trump's election. It seems like the reporting community, the media said, "Oh, there's probably some freaked out liberals out there, or lefties. What are they doing?"

Asher Miller  
Wait, that happened in 2016, also.

Jason Bradford  
Sure. And whenever a Democrat gets elected, there's articles about the right freaking out and bunker sales skyrocket.

Asher Miller  
Yeah. Remember, there were gonna be the death panels when they were trying to do the health care bill.

Jason Bradford  
Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Rob Dietz  
Well, your Guardian article that you shared was called, "All of his guns will do nothing for him." Now, let's not go that far. I mean, they'll do something. But they put some stats out and said that 20% of U.S. citizens are considered preppers. Not in the sense like the doomsday prepper TV show or whatever, but like just kind of thinking it through, maybe having some supplies set aside.  It's 70 million. 

Asher Miller  
I think the pandemic -- I mean, look, I did that. We came up with some extra food and a list of things that we needed to have.

Rob Dietz  
Have some water jugs and things. And a lot of people have a go bag, you know, in case there's a wildfire, earthquake, something like that. But that's substantial, right? I mean, 20% of the U.S. population. But then 15% of those are politically left. We saw that too in another article you shared that came out around the time of Trump's inauguration that said, "Should you be prepping for Trump?" So that's getting to your point exactly. So that's about 10 million on the left versus about 70 million total, or something.

Asher Miller  
So the Guardian one I thought was interesting because even the title gives away like a real difference. It read, "The liberal prepper is different from their right-wing counterparts because the calamities they anticipate have different characteristics." So like, the right wing is worried about tyranny, civil unrest. They're worried about basically people coming after them. 

Rob Dietz  
People coming for your guns. 

Asher Miller  
Yeah. So they focus on stockpiling weapons, and you know, they're gonna protect their property and their family from the --

Jason Bradford  
UN helmets.

Asher Miller  
Liberty is, that's the enemy du jour, right? That they need to be worried about. And, you know, the the left tends to be more worried about things like climate breakdown. You know, the entire global ecological system breaking down, right? It's not a fleeting crisis. It's that you can ride out, to your point Jason, right? It's not like an acute kind of situation. It's something that's longer term that you have to deal with.

Rob Dietz  
That article had an awesome quote I thought about one of the people they were interviewing. He said, "if you find yourself in a situation where you're having to let off some rounds to protect your canned goods, you've already failed." I tend to pretty well agree with that. Well, one of the issues that the lefty side is facing is, you know, okay, we recognize climate change. We agree that it's a real thing and you're starting to feel the effects. It's gonna make places uninhabitable and people are gonna have to maybe be moving. But there's kind of this argument around, is that even possible? It's kind of silly to think a large percent of population can actually pick up and move. And even if you could, you're leaving behind the people you know, maybe, if they can't go. How are we going to deal with this in hard times if you're busting up communities? Because that's what the lefty preppers are sort of trying to do is build community.

Jason Bradford  
Build a community but then they're leaving a community. They struggle with this. It's a lot of guilt even related to leaving somebody behind, or leaving a poor person behind that you love. This kind of thing.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. So they're a little bit conflicted, I would say, the lefty preppers. But they do share some stuff in common. I mean, one of the things I wanted to share with you guys is just the opening sentence of one of the articles. The one about, should you be preparing for Trump? It's a fantastic opening sentence. It starts like this. It says, "Julie Gettinger keeps a bag packed with iodine pills and a machete." 

Asher Miller  
Oh nice. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah.

Asher Miller  
That's what every go bag needs. 

Rob Dietz  
This is a lefty prepper with iodine pills and a machete. I thought we should, you know, I always want to be a game show host. I thought we should play a fun prepper game, which is, what two objects do you have with you? That's all you got in your go bag, two objects. So for me, I would have a bottle of psilocybin pills and a live hornet's nest. 

Jason Bradford  
What? What the? Why the live hornets nest? 

Rob Dietz  
Well okay . . . So we had an episode about entropy and self-organization. And we were saying, if you're gonna be out in maybe a post-industrial world, think about things that self-organize. So I don't want a gun. I mean, that's just subject to entropy. That'll fall apart, it'll misfire. I'll run out of ammo. I have a live hornet's nest. I've got a bio-weapon.

Jason Bradford  
You're gonna somehow throw it? Fling it at your pursuers?

Rob Dietz  
Well, I haven't worked out all of the technical details yet, okay?

Jason Bradford  
Yeah. You keep working on that, buddy. 

Asher Miller  
He's smart. 

Jason Bradford  
You keep working on that .

Asher Miller  
Rob is very smart.

Rob Dietz  
All right. Well, what do you got? What's in your bag? 

Jason Bradford  
It's easy. It's easy. A boomerang and a bowie knife.

Asher Miller  
A boomerang? 

Jason Bradford  
A boomerang. 

Asher Miller  
How good are you with a boomerang with your busted shoulder, buddy?

Jason Bradford  
It's my left shoulder. My right wing has still got some firepower. Alright, so one is for distance, right? The Boomerang, right. And the Bowie nice is for close quarters and for also, you know, skinning and these sort of things. I think I'd be set. 

Asher Miller  
I don't think you guys are being practical. 

Rob Dietz  
I'll take him out with my hornet's nest before he can throw his boomerang. But that's if we don't form up community and work together.

Asher Miller  
You guys would be a formidable team. I'm much more practical. So my two things are, I've got a copy of "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. 

Rob Dietz  
User manual. That's brilliant. 

Asher Miller  
It's a user manual. And the other is, I'm gonna put a hunter gatherer in my backpack. 

Jason Bradford  
Small.

Asher Miller  
Yeah, a short statured one. You know, not too heavy.

Jason Bradford  
Okay. 

Asher Miller  
Much more practical than you. 

Rob Dietz  
Wow, you guys . . . What was that guy's name? The long-termism nut? Maybe that was a pen name. You actually wrote the article?

Asher Miller  
Yeah. My real name is Robin Hanson.

Jason Bradford  
Yeah. Well, I think it was a Guardian article who relied a bit on this guy, Alex Steffen. He's sort of well known in more of the liberal, you know, leftist to modern.

Asher Miller  
He was a big -- He's been a big voice on climate mitigation for a long time. And I think he actually made a big turn from climate mitigation to more thinking about like, okay, this climate system is gonna break down.

Jason Bradford  
What are you gonna do. Yeah, and what's interesting is he sort of suggests to a lot of people, is they stay in cities where people can share infrastructure and look out for each other in a mutual aid sort of way. So you have this community that is in place in these cities. I found that interesting. It's counter to what I would consider conventional wisdom. And in some situations, maybe that is the best, but I don't know if that's great for long term. So I thought maybe we could flesh out some distinctions. 

Asher Miller  
Well, I think that that is, it's worth I think teasing out. Maybe we'll get a chance to do that in a future episode. But it's true. It's like, that is one of the distinctions that stood out to me. And we talked about it a little bit that some of the quote, unquote "lefty preppers," the ones who are thinking more about community, are doing so because they're probably anticipating more like a long descent, a slow collapse than they are some crazy event, like a nuclear holocaust or some isolated natural disaster, right? And I think that that is a point of differentiation, whether cities are the best place to ride out those long descent type things. That's something I think worth us talking about. But it's really around, I think, a community approach versus a solo approach. Although I will say, I think we're not giving enough credit to some maybe more conservative or more right politically leaning who are very community oriented. They might exclusionary in terms of who they define as part of the community and maybe there's a distinction there. But the Mormons have been great about, you know, doing preparation stuff, and they're very community focused.

Jason Bradford  
Yes.

Rob Dietz  
It would be interesting to talk to that guy, Alex Steffen, and see what his view is on the urban-rural divide. I suspect, you know, urban, you have your neighbors. It's kind of easy to form community. You have block parties or whatever. And he's probably thinking of U.S. rural as, you know, one family living out here and then two miles away is the next family. But if you're thinking rural more the old school village style, you could still be building that community and having this ability to prepare together in a communitarian way. I think what's interesting too about this political -- You know, we're so politically divided right and left. You think we've already pointed out the righty preppers or individualists stocking their guns and building their bunkers with the shooting range. And the lefties are more like, you know, I need to have a community farm that we all gather around, kind of like the hippie dream you have here, Jason. But there's a lot of similarity as well. There's some things in common. The surprising one is that they both have guns. The lefties maybe don't have the wall of AR15s.

Jason Bradford
They have little pea shooters. 

Asher Miller  
Right. If there's anything that's gonna bring Americans together across political divisions, it's guns. 

Jason Bradford  
Of course, of course. 

Asher Miller  
There's nothing more American than that. 

Jason Bradford  
You're absolutely right.

Rob Dietz  
The other thing is, you know, that both sides of the political spectrum in trying to prepare will store food and emergency supplies. That makes sense. I think the main thing they have in common is this skepticism of institutions. This shared distrust, or mistrust in government. And it's not just government, also big business. Kind of just being wary of any big outside institution that is going to come help us.

Jason Bradford  
Yeah. 

Asher Miller  
I would be curious to hear from our like Aussie listeners, for example. Places where maybe guns is not the thing that they would have in common in terms of people who are anticipating or thinking about preparing for some kind of collapse. Because there are many countries where guns are not quite so readily available, right? So how are they thinking about it. Maybe it's the machetes.

Jason Bradford  
Boomerang. 

Rob Dietz  
Boomerang, come on.

Asher Miller  
No, no, no. That's not a knife. This is a knife.

Jason Bradford  
That's right. 

Rob Dietz  
Well, Jason did it. He's got the bowie and the boomerang. That's very Aussie.

Asher Miller  
I didn't realize you were Australian.

Rob Dietz  
Alright, we're going to real Aussie with a new segment on, What Are Our Listeners Doing?  So we heard from a listener named Veree Fraser, and she said, "Greetings from the land down under." So Australia, yeah. She says, "We live in a rural community in New South Wales, Australia. And last year, we started a small group, 14 members, called Living at 1.5." She says, "We naively thought we could develop lifestyle strategies to bring our individual carbon budget down to 3.5 tons of CO2 equivalent, and fall from there." Presumably down to 1.5. And she said, "The journey took us into the belly of global modernity. We couldn't breathe. Then we found Tom Murphy," our buddy. "Then we read Ishmael and "The Story of B," great books. "Then we found Alex Leff.," a friend of ours. 

Jason Bradford  
Awesome.  A great podcast. 

Rob Dietz  
"And Nate Hagens and Crazy Town."

Jason Bradford  
Wow. Hitting the highlight reels. 

Rob Dietz  
Said, "Whoa. What a relief."

Asher Miller  
One thing is not like these others. And that's us.

Rob Dietz  
So she said, "The group is continuing for a second year with four new members, almost a 25% increase, and they're following Tom Murphy's metastatic modernity program." 

Jason Bradford  
Ooh. 

Asher Miller  
Cool. 

Rob Dietz  
And says, "Our brains are exploding, our hearts are widening. Our ability to sit with uncertainty is expanding."

Jason Bradford  
That's huge. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, and they're all -- "All the people," she says, "are involved in local projects and activities like community owned solar farm, rehabbing wetlands, running a community garden." So anyway, all the kinds of things that we are strong proponents of. And it's awesome that folks out there are doing these kinds of things. It's inspiring. 

Asher Miller  
I didn't hear anything about a bunker though. So maybe we can get back to them and find out like how big the bunker is.

Jason Bradford  
What's the bunker industry like in Australia? We gotta figure this out.

Asher Miller  
Do they have individual bunkers? Do they have a collective bunker?

Jason Bradford  
Private bunkers, private gun ranges.

Rob Dietz  
You guys are not invited to the Living at 1.5 Group. 

Asher Miller  
On a serious note, that's awesome to hear. And the key word there was community. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah. Thanks Veree. And anybody else out there that's doing any projects like this or has got something going on to respond to the polycrisis, the great unraveling, let us know.

Jason Bradford  
Good job.  Okay guys, do those crazy existential risk people that you were talking about earlier, Asher, wanting to put peasants and hunter gatherers in bunkers for the apocalypse, have a point?

Asher Miller  
You mean geniuses? 

Jason Bradford  
Yes, yes. Do they have a point? I mean, hear me out. I don't mean putting peasants in bunkers. I mean that's cuckoo, but I mean becoming a peasant. 

Asher Miller  
Oh you think that? Yeah. So they just got it slightly rightly wrong.

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, yeah. This is not something you can just pick up from a book when you need to. You have to be good at it. You have to embody it in a sense.

Asher Miller  
Your big takeaway here is, let's all be peasants,

Jason Bradford  
Pretty much. 

Rob Dietz  
And maybe it's a reclaiming of the word. I feel like in high energy modernity, peasant has a bad connotation.

Asher Miller  
Yeah.

Jason Bradford  
Totally. 

Asher Miller  
I think we need role models.

Jason Bradford  
So did Luddites. 

Asher Miller  
That's true. 

Jason Bradford  
It was phony. They misconstrued it.

Asher Miller  
So we got Brian Merchant, who's, you know, trying to bring back the Luddites. We need role models. We need inspiration here. How about the best basketball player in the world? Why don't we recruit him? 

Jason Bradford  
Who's that? 

Rob Dietz  
Michael Jordan.

Asher Miller  
No, currently playing. I should have . . . Yeah

Rob Dietz  
Sorry. 

Asher Miller  
Nikola Jokic.

Jason Bradford  
I've heard of the guy.

Asher Miller  
Center for the Nuggets. 

Jason Bradford  
Serbian? 

Asher Miller  
Yes, he's an incredible basketball player.

Jason Bradford  
I've heard this. Great passer. 

Asher Miller  
Unbelievable. 

Jason Bradford  
He can do everything. 

Asher Miller  
He was top 10 in every, or top five in every category, offensive category. It's never been done before.

Jason Bradford  
Oh my god. Assists, rebounds . . .

Asher Miller  
Dude, there's this great clip of him. A couple years ago, they won the championship, you know, and one of these reporters , they are doing press afterwards, and a reporter asks him, like, "Hey, are you looking forward to the big parade that's gonna happen?" Denver had never won the NBA championship before. Big deal for the city, right? "You looking forward to the parade? And then he turns to like the PR guy for the Denver Nuggets. He's like, "Parade? There's a parade? Like, "When is it?" And the guy must have said something like, "Two or three days." And he's like, "Oh, no, I wanted to get back home." He doesn't want to do any of this shit. He just wants to get home to his horses. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, his farm.

Asher Miller  
Yeah, he just wants to live simply. So let's recruit Nikola Jokic. 

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, he could be our spokesperson. 

Asher Miller  
To be our spokesperson for peasanthood. 

Jason Bradford  
I agree. 

Asher Miller  
Even though he has hundreds of millions of dollars. Put that aside. 

Jason Bradford  
I'll reach out to him. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, I'm all for that. You know, I love the sports, and I think that's where we should go. But if, let's just say if, I mean, you know, we don't happen to get a hold of Nikola Jokic and he does not take this over, we need to figure out how to become peasants.

Jason Bradford  
No, that's not what I'm saying. I just want a spokesperson to encourage me. 

Rob Dietz  
Right.

Asher Miller  
Yeah, Jason is already working on the peasant thing. I mean, have you seen the clothes he wears? Geez.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, yeah. Can you get some pants, dude?

Asher Miller  
The smell? I should not be feeding into the negative stereotypes of peasants. 

Jason Bradford  
Exactly.

Asher Miller  
You smell wonderful. Thank you.  Lavender.

Jason Bradford  
Right? Old leather.

Asher Miller  
Old leather. 

Rob Dietz  
I think there is a big mental piece. I mean, this is where, you know, we talked a little bit, mentioned his name anyway, Tom Murphy, in our listener experience segment. You know, we've got to mentally prepare for the end of high energy modernity and be able to take this on ourselves. And I don't know, maybe I'm stuck on it because I learned so much. Years ago, we did an episode on mortality and basically dealing with death, you know. Getting right with, you have a limited time on this earth. How are you going to treat each other? How are you going to treat the planet? And I think that's something we've all got to move towards. What are we doing mentally that helps us understand that we've got to be part of this ecosystem and we've got to power down.

Asher Miller  
I think it's a really key point, which is none of the conversation of any of the articles that we alluded to and many, I think, of the things that are being written about, in terms of people who are trying to prep, quote, unquote "prep," gets to the emotional psychological component of stuff, right? And that element of care is as important as the more practical things, you know. And focusing on that a bit, I think, is really key. And it's something you could do pre-collapse of stuff, you know, as much as anything else

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, imagining the loss of these things, it breaks me sometimes. Especially when I think about, okay, the Amazon's gonna flip, or the coral reefs are gone. That's, you know, the extinction event is what really gets me. Losing the ability to stream Netflix doesn't bother me. 

Asher Miller  
No? 

Jason Bradford  
No. And so I've already let go of a lot of like, the expectation of the trappings of modernity. It's the natural world and what's happened to that that gets to me. 

Rob Dietz  
I'm good too because I have all those movies continuously playing in a loop in my head. 

Asher Miller  
I think we need Rob in the bunker with us because Rob could just act out all the roles.

Rob Dietz  
I'll be the George Lucas of the bunker. 

Jason Bradford  
That would great. Can you do "16 Candles" tonight, Rob?

Asher Miller  
I also think we have to be honest. So we have to be honest when we think about preparation for the, if you want to call it, the end of modernity, the long descent, the great unraveling. The good and bad news is that there are so many different aspects to engage in, in terms of what people could do now in their preparation. But one of the things that you have to be honest about is where you are in your life. You have to be honest about where you live. You have to be honest about the skills that you have. In my case, I have to be honest, you know, we have this farming club, Jason. I was actually just here yesterday. We were out, you know, on the farm together, and we're trying to move these water lines. And you're indicating to me, you know, straighten out your back - 

Jason Bradford  
I was talking technique. Yeah, that's right. 

Asher Miller  
I'm getting older. I'm getting up there, you know. And there's, I'm more limited in what I can do physically. So just sort of being honest about where we have skills that are valuable, where we don't. And this is the other reason why this whole idea of prepping for your own family or yourself is so wrong. Because you can never get all the skills needed for the future.

Jason Bradford  
No you can't. Right. 

Asher Miller  
This is why we survived as a species was doing it in community. 

Jason Bradford  
There's no "I" in peasant,

Rob Dietz  
No "I" in peasant.

Melody Allison  
That's our show. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button in your podcast app, or just tell them face to face. Maybe you can start some much needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.