S1E113 - Tyler on Dark Winter Concepts

Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Tyler from Dark Winter Concepts talk about homesteading, preparedness, prepper culture, and focus on inclusion of marginalized communities within these spaces.

Guest Info

Tyler (he/him) can be found on Instagram @Darkwinterconcepts

Host Info

Margaret (she/they) can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

Live Like the World is Dying: Tyler on Dark Winter Concepts

**Margaret ** 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Margaret Killjoy, and today I have a guest on that I'm excited about. You might have been noticing that I haven't been hosting as much and that's because I burned out really hard. And not on this subject, but just in general. But I'm trying to get back into it. And part of the reason I'm getting back into it, I've been really excited to have Tyler on, who we're going to be talking to in a minute, because I'm really excited about what's going on in the preparedness space. And it's rare that I get to bring someone on who's just also in the preparedness space and has similar ideas. I think you all will be really excited. And so--well I was gonna say, "Without further ado," but there is more ado. This following ado is that we're a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on that network.

**Margaret ** 01:42 Okay, and we're back. So if you could introduce yourself with your your name, your pronouns. And then I guess just a little quick introduction to what you do.

**Tyler ** 01:51 Yeah, so my name is Tyler. I am started a company called Dark Winter Concepts. Pronouns are he/him. Basically, what I have started doing is I noticed there was a huge void in the prepping homesteading space when it came to making it accessible to newcomers or anyone who's just in a marginalized community. And it's really just so, so important for me to take all the stuff that is natural to me, just from my upbringing, and just make it accessible to people who actually need it, the people who are under pressure in society already.

**Margaret ** 02:27 Hell yeah. Do you want to talk about. . . I have this question here of like, "What got you into it?" But you've already said it's how you grew up. But do you want to talk about that a little bit more? Like what got you into preparedness and homesteading.

**Tyler ** 02:41 It's kind of a funny story/full circle with the name. So I grew up in very rural Pennsylvania and grew up on a farm, but moved around a lot afterwards, working and all that sort of stuff. But then I was kind of coming into wanting to be able to use all the skills that I learned growing up. And then I had a weird gateway experience playing the video game The Division, where the idea of a personified trained individual could use their skills beyond just like, you know, tactical combat--all this sort of stuff--that could use all these technical engineering and other skills to maintain stability in communities after a disaster. And that checked a lot of boxes for me that a lot of other games of that type just really don't. And so that kind of triggered an interest as kind of exploring, "Well, where, where could I be applying these skills? Like how could I be doing this?" And as time went on, I started to explore it more. And once we got out to West Virginia, where--I mean, losing access to resources is pretty common here anyways--it kind of just became a part of life. And then obviously, COVID happened, which, I mean, thankfully, we had kind of already started because that made it a good wake up call, but we were much less affected than a lot of folks were. But after that, we got serious about it and, you know, started developing those skills, had space to practice them and decided that, you know, someone with the privilege to have that space to practice skills, to try out things, that I should be using that privilege to share and to share that learning experience and failures--because there's been plenty of those. But I just felt like with with the privilege that I had, it was really my responsibility to share as much knowledge of my own journey as I could.

**Margaret ** 04:36 Okay, so I find this really interesting. I really like...you know, framing it around as "having the privilege to have the space to try out these things," and it's interesting to me because--I mean, obviously in preparedness space living rurally is generally looked positively upon. I actually don't think there's an intrinsic. . . It's not necessarily better in rural or suburban or urban. I think they all have advantages and disadvantages. I clearly like rural. But the idea. . . I hadn't heard of this phrasing before, thinking about it like "the privilege of the space to try things out," like, you mean in terms of how you can actually be like, "Oh, I want to try and build a thing. Well, no one's gonna yell at me if I build this. I don't have to go do it in the parking lot behind my apartment building." Is that kind of what you mean?

**Tyler ** 05:24 Oh, yeah, that, and then I mean, when you get down to things like learning fire starting, I can literally step outside my house and start a fire if I want. And that's not. . . I don't have to worry about a cop driving by. I don't have to worry about upsetting neighbors. Like, I can just go do that. I can go walk out of my house and go into the woods and learn to forage and learn about the plants that are in my space. Just. . . Yeah, the ability to have space where I don't have to plan a camping trip to go be outside in nature--which, I mean, is obviously part of my prepping, being in nature because this is where I'm located--but to have space to try out survivalist skills, to try construction skills, to, you know, do more defensively minded capabilities and practices on my own time and not have to arrange a range day or anything like that, it's a privilege to have this much space. And it's something that I've been trying to make the most of.

**Margaret ** 06:21 Now that makes sense. I think about. . . I sometimes get. . . I think everyone knows this. I'm also in West Virginia. It was actually part of why I was really excited to talk to you. But I tend to think about like what I currently don't have access to, right? Like, I have access to space. And it's really nice. And I actually need to remember to focus on that. I think about how I don't have to plan to go learn camping things, I have to plan to buy anything I can't get at Walmart, you know? [Tyler affirms] That's the main downside I've run across. I mean, that said, I mean, I know where to buy gravel near me and if I lived in the city, I might not know where to buy gravel, but I wouldn't need to buy gravel if I lived in a city, so. . .

**Tyler ** 07:09 Yeah. And I think that comes down to...like, when you live rurrally, yes, you do