S1E50 - This Month In The Apocalypse

Episode Notes

Episode Summary For this This Month in the Apocalypse episode Brooke, Margaret, and Casandra all researched different topics and discuss them. Margaret talks about climate collapse, droughts, floods, wildfires, the cost of wheat, and the dangers of rising humidity for wet bulb temperatures. Casandra talks about Monkey Pox, rises in other viral and vector borne illness, and discovers why rain might actually be a bad thing for your food. Brooke talks about student loan forgiveness and things you, brave listener, might not be aware you are forgiven for. Everyone attempts to get us sponsored by 'Big' Rain Barrel. If you're out there 'Big' Rain Barrel. Please sponsor us.

Host Info Casandra can be found on Twitter @hey_casandra. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Brooke is just great and can be found at Strangers helping up keep our finances intact and on Twitter @ogemakweBrooke

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.

Next Episode Come out Friday, September 23rd, and every two weeks there after. Might be about thru-hiking, Parenting, or Archiving.

Transript

An easier to read version is available on our website TangledWilderness.org.

Margaret 00:16 Hello, and welcome to Live Like The World Is Dying, your podcasts for what feels like the end times. I'm one of your hosts, Margaret killjoy. I have Brooke and Casandra with me as well as cohosts today, because today, you will be very excited to know that the world's still ending...that we are doing our second monthly This Month in the Apocalypse and we're going to be talking about basically the last month and the I guess that's in the name. Okay. So, Brooke, Casandra, do you want to introduce yourselves? Possibly with Brooke going first.

Casandra 00:52 Your name was first.

Brooke 00:53 Yeah. Okay, alphabetically. Hi, everybody, it's Brooke Jackson again, coming to you live? Oh, wait, no, this will be recorded by the time you hear it. From the sunny lands of the Willamette Valley in Oregon.

Casandra Johns 01:11 We're all in the Willamette Valley right now.

Margaret 01:14 It's true.

Casandra 01:15 It's true. This is Casandra. That's me.

Margaret 01:19 Okay, and so this will be a very short episode, because actually, nothing bad has happened in the world, certainly not nything that feels end times ish, nothing out of the ordinary. I'm under the impression we have reversed most of the major...I mean, I think Biden passed a bill. So, I'm pretty sure climate change is over. And COVID is over. I learned that just the other day walking into a place where I thought everyone would be wearing masks, but it's over. So that's cool. Or, alternatively, let's talk about how China's in the worst heatwave in human history...in recorded history. We're gonna cut it up into segments. And I'm gonna go first with my segment.

Casandra Johns 02:06 Do we need to say "Du duh duh duhh, Channel Zero? As part of the intro?

Brooke 02:13 Do a Jingle?

Margaret 02:16 Yes. Okay. You want to do it?

Brooke 02:20 She just did.

Casandra 02:21 Oh, yeah, I did. Duh duh duh duh!

Margaret 03:19 Okay, and we're back. Okay, so, China...70 Day heatwave as of several days ago, now. And by the time you all are hearing this, I believe we're recording this about five days before this episode comes out. So, who knows what will have happened? There has been a lot of heat waves and floods all over the world this summer. And so China's in the middle of a 70 day heatwave. The drought has reduced hydroelectric output, which huge areas were reliant on the electricity because the water levels are so far down. And of course the electricity is what powers the AC. So no air conditioning is really fun as things get really hot. AC has been turned off in a lot of office buildings. It's cut power to tons of industry, including a bunch of car manufacturers where I'm a little bit like "Eh, whatever. Cars are bad." I mean, I drive cars so I'm kind of an asshole and hypocrite. Anyway. But also solar panel output and EV battery plants and like lots of stuff that's like being pitched as the alternative to things...y'all can feel free to cut me off too as I talk about these things. I'm just like going through my notes. And I don't know, it's breaking records all over the place by like four degrees in a lot of places. It's four degrees Fahrenheit.

Brooke 04:44 What is heatwave in this context? Like are they having like, you know, 115 degree temperatures, are they just?

Margaret 04:53 I mean, so. I mean, I believe in localized places. It's getting like crazy hot but what's interesting about this is that it's it's more the length of it and the abnormality to its usual that is, like, it's a lot of this stuff is like 106 degrees Fahrenheit and things like that. You know, things that are very not nice, but are...well, human survivable. Although we should probably at some point talk about wet bulb temperatures and how dry places are survivable at substantially higher temperatures than humid places. But yeah, so it's it's, it's an it's an abnormality causing problems as far as I understand, rather than like, just specifically, if you step outside, you will be scorched by the heatray that is the sun. It's affecting over a billion people, which is a lot of people. The area of the heatwave is 530,000 square miles, which for context is Texas, Colorado and California combined.

Casandra Johns 05:57 Does that overlap with the area...like, isn't there like a massive wildfire happening in China right now?

Margaret 06:04 I think you know, more about the wildfires than I do.

Casandra Johns 06:07 I don't know what region it was in.

Margaret 06:09 Okay.

Casandra 06:09 I guess I'm curious. Of course, they're related because everything climate-y is related, ultimately.

Margaret 06:16 Yeah.

Casandra 06:19 Yeah, I'm curious how closely they're tied together. But, if you don't know, and I don't know, that's fine. Because there's also a massive wildfire. And that sucks.

Margaret 06:27 Yeah. There's a massive wildfire.

Brooke 06:31 Is that a continuous area, Margaret? That five? Whatever, something miles?

Margaret 06:37 You all are exceeding my level of research that I did, because I did research about the entire world. So I don't know.

Brooke 06:44 Okay, fair.

Casandra 06:45 Oh, yeah. You have more. This is just like heat waves everywhere. Okay.<