S1E66 - Eric on Talking Trash on Traditional Prepping

Episode Summary

Margaret and Eric discuss the ins and outs of prepping from a more traditional perspective than usual. They go over the basic tenets of preparedness, outline some easy and manageable ways to start prepping, find new and fun ways to laugh at traditional bunker mentalities, and discover that community is once again the best resource anyone can hope for.

Guest Info

Eric Shonkwiler (he/him) is the author of the newsletter When/If: A Leftist Guide to Prepare for a Changing World. He can be found at https://when-if.ghost.io/ where you can sign up for his newsletter. You can also find Eric on Twitter @eshonkwiler

Host Info

Margaret 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

Margaret 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what probably feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. And this week I'm really excited about this week. I've been hoping to do an episode...this particular episode for a while. This week, we're going to be talking about talking about prepping. And we're going to be talking about...well, I'm going to be talking to someone who writes the best newsletter I'm aware of for individual community preparedness, which is called When/If. And it's written by Eric Shonkwiler. And I'm really excited about this conversation. But first, I'm really excited to tell you that we're a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here is a jingle from another show on the network.

Margaret 01:34 Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then kind of just a little bit about When/If, you know, the reason that I've brought you on here to talk.

Eric 01:45 Hi, I'm Eric ShonkWiler My pronouns are he/him. When/If is a newsletter on preparedness and collapse from a leftist perspective. I set out a couple of years ago to try to try to create some content around preparedness and prepping that was more accessible for folks on the left handed side of the political spectrum.

Margaret 02:13 Yeah, and just to...we'll ask you to shout it out at the end too, but how can people get this fine newsletter?

Eric 02:19 It might be easier to find me. My name is Eric Shonkwiler, a little bit difficult to spell. The newsletter itself is on ghost.io. Search "When/If." That's probably the best way to find it. It's a bit of a goofy address.

Margaret 02:36 Yeah, it's hard to...every now and then I've tried to Google "When/If" and then I realize that's not going to work.

Eric 02:43 But there are only two Eric Shonkwilers on the planet. So if you can remember my last name, you can probably find me.

Margaret 02:49 Whoa. Who's the other one?

Eric 02:52 Some kid in New Mexico.

Margaret 02:53 All right. All right. I'm the only Margaret Killjoy I'm aware of. And whenever that changes, I'm going to be really sad. So I don't know...Were you like sad when you found out you weren't the only Eric Shonkwiler

Eric 03:05 It was super weird. It turned out that for a little while we lived in the same town. I've lived all around the country.

Margaret 03:14 Are y'all related?

Eric 03:14 I don't...Like probably not really. I wasn't born and raised in New Mexico. It's just one of my favorite places to be and I was living out there working. And I I think I was looking myself up for something and found them on like a, you know, like a high school Spelling Bee sort of an article or something like that, you know, and found out he lived in the same town at the same time that I did. Super weird. Not a very big town. Very strange.

Margaret 03:44 I kind of like that. That's kind of weird. Maybe you just....

Eric 03:48 Shout out to the other Eric Shonkwiler.

Margaret 03:50 Yeah, totally. Okay, so. So you started this this newsletter and I kind of wanted to, you know...What do you cover in this newsletter? Right? What kind of stuff are you talking about?

Eric 04:04 Everything. I focus on kind of, in my head, the big three, which is climate change, fascism, and the ignorance of the government/police brutality, kind of the three fronts, as I see it, that are going to be causing problems for folks in the future.

Margaret 04:04 Isn't it kind of funny that--to me, I agree. These are, you know, probably the three big categories of things and then all three of them are ignored by right wing preparedness.

Eric 04:46 Yeah.

Margaret 04:47 Not always. Right? I mean, they claim there's a rise in fascism, but they claim it from a really odd perspective, not the people walking around with Nazi flags, but the people walking around with anti Nazi flags. And then Climate change. I feel like preparedness places used to talk about climate change. And then...I don't know if you experienced this? Did they just stop talking about it at some point when it became culture war or something like?

Eric 05:13 I haven't seen a whole lot about climate change addressed in particular. They will just sort of ally it and talk about weather preparedness. But at the same time, I'm doing a little bit of research because I'm trying to turn When/If into a book. And so I'm looking at comparable titles. And one of the comps that I looked at went immediately out of the gate in the first few pages. It talked about the dangers of hurricanes and then under a discrete subheading: typhoons. And I just wanted to tell the author, who's my friend, "Those are the same thing."

Margaret 05:57 Yeah, I was just thinking that.

Eric 05:58 Just in a different hemisphere. Like, it's just in a different ocean you. Like you're telling someone to prepare for the same thing twice but differently. Like the the instructions were a little bit different too. It was wild.

Margaret 06:13 They just googled "What to do with a typhoon" and wrote that down. Yeah. And they Googled "What to do in it?"

Eric 06:17 Yeah. And, and that's why I do what I do, so that there can be some actual help when it comes to emergencies like that. And you're not stuck getting your information from a guy who really wants you to buy a Faraday bag because the EMP is coming.

Margaret 06:17 Okay, so that's a really good segue into one of the main things I kind of wanted to talk about: one of the...I'm really excited to talk to someone who also sort of interacts in an intersection with a traditional prepping world, but then also cares about, you know, leftist prep