Fireside Chats, Episode 34: How to Survive a Disaster

Just seeing this. I know we spoke, but I hope you're doing okay.

Colin Moriarty

Just had to leave my home in Kapoho yesterday Kawai. Hope you are in a safe place.

Will Caldwell

you must be on the big island. nice to see another big islander digging CLS.

Holy moly. Stay safe out there!

Colin Moriarty

I chose a good day to listen to this episode this morning. Had a 6.9 earthquake the other day, lava is 9 miles from my home and water supply just got taken out. Filling up my bathtub before the waters completely out stocking up on emergency supplies.

Will Caldwell

I see what you mean. We probably should start evacuating, but the city of Houston told us not to...... he thought it would be best if we hunkered down.

Nathan R

I liked his approach, too. We often think of survival on a cataclysmic scale (and for good reason), but as he was saying, that shit is unlikely. Preparing for more reasonable eventualities makes more sense.

Colin Moriarty

really interesting and informative to hear someone discuss survival for the practicalities of an urban environment. Don't have to deal with earthquakes/hurricanes/etc where I am in Canada, but every once in a while I think of the '03 blackout when I was a kid and could i take care of myself if something as basic as that happened again.

Carrie Andrews

I absolutely, positively want to have a rural prepper on. I'm gonna look into it after E3, as I've got a guest slate already lined up between now and then.

Colin Moriarty

Thanks for the tip!

Colin Moriarty

I live in a rural community, and found his opinion about non-urban preppers seemed like his source of information may be YouTube or movies, and not actual people. I'd love to hear another more rural prepper give you there perspective. Here are a few things I've noticed in my community that is very different from the urban setting: 1) Mass gun/ammo collections have nothing to do with prepping, they are just a part of everyday life for many (maybe most) people in fly over country. I don't think most default to using the firearm, as was eluded, but instead respect the value. We absolutely can feed our family with it, not just defend the property. 2) Most people keep a reasonable amount of food on hand (probably >1 month if you were forced to eat your way through standard stock). Of course this isn't ideal meals, but for many of us, getting to stores is already a chore, and stocking multiple weeks is a norm. Add to that what I will call the "Costco" effect, and people simply over buy and store. 3) Lots of country folks already barter. This is huge in an emergency situation. We already know who has farm fresh eggs, a commercial cattle farm, reloads ammo, has an orchard, has a body of water to fish, etc. I can't emphasize enough how important relationships are in prepping. In closing, in the country it isn't unusual for us to lose power for a few days or a week because of a good snow storm. Interesting, we don't think of most of the stuff discussed here as "prepping" as much as just normal life. So the folks in the country talking about "prepping" are focused more on true catastrophic events, because planning for emergency events is already a normal part of everyday life.

Chris Holtzer

As always, thank you for making excellent content. I'm a "knife guy" and was laughing at the description of your Bowie Knife. If you want a good fixed blade knife at a good price, grab an Ontario Knife Company Sp-2 Survival Knife (<a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Ontario-Knife-Company-8680-Survival/dp/B075S58XDM/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1525113084&sr=8-10&keywords=ontario+knife)" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://smile.amazon.com/Ontario-Knife-Company-8680-Survival/dp/B075S58XDM/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1525113084&sr=8-10&keywords=ontario+knife)</a> It will do everything you need it to in most environments.

Rob Laycock

Dude, the bowie knife I have is longer than my arm. LOL.

Colin Moriarty

It is crazy. I grew up pretty much on the beaches of East Coast Florida. Hurricanes are looked at so differently. It's bad, but they don't bother my family. We've been through so many and evacuated so many times, you get used to it.

Jimmy Valentine

Great episode! Immediately following listening to this I went and organized my emergency supplies in my Jeep haha. This has inspired me to get some basic prep items in case the proverbial shit hits the fan. Will need to up my Bowie Knife game though.

Justin Tudor

Yeah it was nuts. But until the power went out I got some good gaming in lol

Nathan R

I couldn't even imagine, dude. I'm glad you're okay.

Colin Moriarty

I 100% agree with him. I was in Houston whenever Harvey hit and holly shit. It was madness for like a week. The crazy thing was that you couldn’t rely on the government to come save you because there were to many people in disparate need of attention. You kept hearing helicopters fly over you and sirens it felt like it was the end of the world lol. But for real it was intense. My apartment complex was surrounded by water for like 3 days. Everyday the water kept rising and rising. Honestly, one of the most terrifying moments in my life. Everyone thinks you can just swim when it floods, but fuck that water moves way to fast to just hop in. So everyday/every 30mins I was constantly thinking what’s next, how do I get my wife (and two dogs to safety). I know 3 days is not a long time, but I was freaking out because you couldn’t trust what the government was saying. One day they said something wouldn’t happen and it did and the other they said they wouldn’t do something and they did. Not to mention the only thing I had was like chips and canned beans. Luckily the water stopped rising and went down so we could leave and go help others in need. Because trust me it was a shit show. This disaster changed my opinion on how to properly prepare for a disaster. You can’t just wait for the government and You can’t just have a gun and chips lol. Good stuff!!

Nathan R

True enough. It's amazing that the US is so big and so diverse geographically, with different weather and natural occurrences and such, that we all have to suffer from different, totally unrelated things. Here in California, we deal with droughts and earthquakes, but where I grew up, we dealt with nor'easters and hurricanes.

Colin Moriarty

I almost suggested a few, then I remembered they were characters I recently encountered in Far Cry 5 and not real people I know 😂

Marc Boggio

Fascinating episode. I haven’t really thought about practical survival, since all I have to worry about is tornados in dfw.

Chris B

I loved the restraint he showed. I was telling him that I want to find a Montana-style survivalist for a follow-up. =)

Colin Moriarty

Stoked that you liked the episode!

Colin Moriarty

Thank you! I'm so glad that that's shining through, because that's what I'm trying to do.

Colin Moriarty

Interesting insights - I’ve got the med bag part on lock (minus freezables like IV fluid and certain meds which I keep at home for obvious Canadian-winter related reasons), but I should probably take a bit more care into my food plan. I also own more guns than the average Canadian, but as he pointed out, you don’t want to jump right into apocalyptic pirate mode when a well measured and prepared strategy will last quite a while without bloodshed. Great episode.

Marc Boggio

Just listened to this and it was super interesting.

Craig Carter

I love how varied the topics are on Fireside Chats. Just weekly chats with interesting people. As a listener it's easy to tell that you enjoy learning about these people/topics just as much as we do. Keep up the great work 👍

Jon Cordeiro