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Joe Rogan Experience #1515 - Dr. Bradley Garrett

Dr. Bradley Garrett is an American social and cultural geographer at University College Dublin in Ireland and a writer for The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom. His new book "Bunker: Building for the End Times" is available August 4, 2020.

Joe RoganhostDr. Bradley Garrettguest
Jul 28, 20202h 42mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 6:48

    Preppers in the wild: gear, signaling, and why Big Bear makes sense

    1. JR

      And boom, (claps) because we're live. What's up, man? How are you?

    2. BG

      Nice.

    3. JR

      Cheers. Salud.

    4. BG

      Ha- hey, cheers, brother.

    5. JR

      Nice to meet you.

    6. BG

      Good to meet you, too.

    7. JR

      By the way, congrats on the mustache. The mustache-

    8. BG

      (laughs) .

    9. JR

      ... lower piece combo, that's, uh, the anarchist guy, with, that guy that, uh, who's the mask?

    10. NA

      Guy Fawkes.

    11. JR

      Guy Fawkes, that's right.

    12. BG

      Yeah, yeah.

    13. JR

      Perfect, right?

    14. BG

      Yeah. Yeah, I was kind, I was going more for a kind of a, a Doc Holliday. Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday.

    15. JR

      Oh.

    16. BG

      I'm, I'm your Huckleberry.

    17. JR

      How good was he in that role?

    18. BG

      He was fantastic.

    19. JR

      Come on, man. Mm. Many people have played Doc Holliday, but he's the best. So, uh, are you a prepper yourself? 'Cause you do have one of them GPS watches on, so either you're like-

    20. BG

      (laughs) .

    21. JR

      ... a hardcore hiker or you just don't wanna get lost.

    22. BG

      So, you, you were waiting to see the paracord bracelet, right?

    23. JR

      (laughs) Ah, but they always have that, right?

    24. BG

      I know, right?

    25. JR

      Does that ever come up?

    26. BG

      That, uh, when do you ever unravel that thing, you know?

    27. JR

      (laughs)

    28. BG

      It's, it's... (laughs)

    29. JR

      Yeah, that always seems to me like someone who, like, preps at, you know, they, you just try a little too hard if you've got a paracord bracelet.

    30. BG

      Yeah. No, it's a kind of virtue signaling.

  2. 6:48 – 12:20

    Pandemic reality check: lockdown psychology, risk, and the need for an endpoint

    1. JR

      Did you... Does it feel good to be tested? You, you were tested today.

    2. BG

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      Did it feel good?

    4. BG

      I, it feels-

    5. JR

      Did it feel like a weight lifted off of you?

    6. BG

      It actually... Yeah.

    7. JR

      Yeah, right?

    8. BG

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      It's nice.

    10. BG

      It feels great. But I was a little-

    11. JR

      'Cause you can start thinking like-

    12. BG

      I was, I was actually kind of disappointed to see I didn't have the antibodies, you know.

    13. JR

      Everybody thinks they have them.

    14. BG

      I don't know.

    15. JR

      Everybody does. Everybody in here is like, "I think in January, I think back in January, I had this cough. I'm pretty sure I had it and beat it."

    16. BG

      Yeah. But I have to say, um, I guess my, m- you know, my anxiety about coming here was kind of ramped up by the, by the po- by the possibility that they were gonna say, "You've tested positive." Like, drag me out by my hair, you know? (laughs)

    17. JR

      Well, we wouldn't do that.

    18. BG

      No, but-

    19. JR

      If you were positive, I would just back up a little and put a mask on, I guess. What would we do?

    20. BG

      I don't know.

    21. JR

      W- would you feel comfortable doing a podcast with someone who's in the room who's positive? I think it's a bad move. We probably would, would be b- we'd do it in the parking lot. We could do that. (laughs)

    22. BG

      Could do something.

    23. JR

      Just we'll fig- we would figure it out. If you were positive, we'd figure it out. We'd do it in the parking lot with masks on or something.

    24. BG

      But here's... The thing about Big Bear, right, is that, is that, um, when we were in lockdown in LA, in the early days of it, like, a- a- again, I'm speaking from a space of ver- (laughs) of privilege here, you know, 'cause my paychecks were still coming in, whatever, but like, I almost experienced a sense of euphoria. Like, all my talks were canceled, my plane tickets, I canceled like four plane tickets, you know.

    25. JR

      So the pressure's relieved.

    26. BG

      Oh, yeah, and I was just like, "I can just hang out with my mom."

    27. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    28. BG

      "This is great." You know? (laughs)

    29. JR

      Mm.

    30. BG

      But, but you get, you know, you get through that initial phase and then you get into the stamina phase.

  3. 12:20 – 18:54

    Why prepping isn’t automatically paranoia: faith in systems and the ‘72 hours to anarchy’ idea

    1. BG

      ... uh, for the prepping. But I think a lot of that comes from-... uh, feeling belittled, right? Like they, they've been mocked, they've been made fun of.

    2. JR

      Sure.

    3. BG

      They've been, you know. People are, people were, prior to the pandemic, embarrassed to admit that they were prepping, you know?

    4. JR

      Yeah.

    5. BG

      Um, I mean-

    6. JR

      Which is odd.

    7. BG

      Yeah. In fact, (laughs) I've been working on this book for three years and about a month into the pandemic, I get this email from my brother, who's here with me right now, and he's like, "Oh, yeah, you know, just so you know, I've got a, I've got a storage unit with some masks and some food." And I, and I'm like, "What? You didn't, you didn't think you might mention that to me?"

    8. JR

      (laughs)

    9. BG

      You know? Like... But, I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's, uh, sort of deemed, it's almost deemed pathological, right? Like people-

    10. JR

      Yeah.

    11. BG

      ... equate prepping to hoarding.

    12. JR

      Yeah. Yes.

    13. BG

      It's like, "Why do you need all that stuff?" You know?

    14. JR

      Yeah.

    15. BG

      But the thing is, if you... (sighs) In order to not stockpile in that way, right, you have to have so much faith in capitalism. You have to have so much faith in our social systems. You have to have, uh, faith that everything is gonna hold together roughly in the way that it is right now.

    16. JR

      Right.

    17. BG

      And, of course, the world that we built, the society that we built is, is incredibly new, right? You only have to go back a few hundred years and it's like, if you weren't stockpiling, you were effectively committing suicide. You couldn't make it through winter, right?

    18. JR

      Right.

    19. BG

      'Cause people are growing their own food, raising their own animals. Now, it's like we ha- we have this expectation that you're gonna be able to, you know, order your takeout or, you know, go to the grocery store and, and stock up. You know, think about this. Imagine this scenario. Imagine that the, that the lethality rate on this virus was like 10%.

    20. JR

      Right.

    21. BG

      Right? What, like what do you have to do to convince those grocery store workers to come to work at that point?

    22. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    23. BG

      No one's coming to work.

    24. JR

      Exactly.

    25. BG

      No one's driving the trucks. No one's gonna deliver anything. And then what preppers would say is, "We're 72 hours to anarchy," or, "72 hours to animal," right? It's like y- once you shut down those kind of supply lines, right, our entire mentality starts to shift into a different mode.

    26. JR

      Yeah. Yup-

    27. BG

      And it doesn't take long before you think, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna take something from my neighbor at this point. I'm hungry. My family's hungry."

    28. JR

      Sure. Yeah. I mean, it's, it gets real scary. Or cooperate with your neighbor, hopefully.

    29. BG

      Yeah.

    30. JR

      You know, um, I, uh, I hunt, so I have a lot of meat. And so, um, one of the things that happened during the pandemic when it hit, I s- I had a lot of people come over and I, I gave them meat 'cause I have, uh, three commercial freezers here at the studio. Like, you, you know, if you shoot an elk, a elk's 400 pounds of meat.

  4. 18:54 – 24:16

    Conspiracy theories, lab-leak talk, and modern existential threat stacking

    1. BG

      So, so let's get back to your conspiracy theories.

    2. JR

      Okay.

    3. BG

      If someone told you that we would be in this situation a year ago, would you have believed them?

    4. JR

      Sure.

    5. BG

      You would have?

    6. JR

      I would have, yeah.

    7. BG

      'Cause the pandemic seemed like a realistic scenario to you?

    8. JR

      Well, because I've been to the Center for Disease Control.

    9. BG

      Right.

    10. JR

      I, um, went to Galveston, Texas for the Center of Disease Control for a show that I did with my friend, Duncan. And, uh, Duncan Trussell and I went down there and we talked to these doctors that work with these viruses, and they scared the shit out of us. We d- we went down there to, f- for a television show that we were doing for Syfy, and it was basically on the idea of weaponized viruses. The, the, the basic premise of the show was what if someone engineered a virus and released it on our, on, you know, on the country, like a weaponized virus. And they said, "That's not what we have to worry about. What we have to worry about is nature. That's what we have to worry about." Turns out both.

    11. BG

      (laughs)

    12. JR

      Because this virus most likely had been leaked from a lab, what we're dealing with, with COVID-19, according to my friend, Brett Weinstein, who is a biologist, and he detailed on a podcast that I did with him all of the different points of, uh, of evidence that, that lead to what he believes is a, a very likely scenario, that it was released from, accidentally released from a, a, a, a lab and not actually from a wet market, that the wet market's the cover-up. It's like the, the disease is too advanced. It, it has too many hallmarks and indicators of, uh, a virus that had been tampered with for study, for, uh, for, y- for study in a lab and for the examinations and all the, the different tests that they would run. And, uh, so you got both those things, right? You have, you have, um, the possibility of something just morphing in nature, like many other pandemics that have happened in the past, and then what we have now, which is this weird virus that doesn't make any sense. And we were talking about all the different, d- different symptoms that people get from it, neurological problems, blood clotting. I was reading this article where they were saying that, uh, the people that have died from, uh, COVID, when they've done autopsies on them, they found blood clots in every major organ. And they, they, they're like, "This is astonishing. Like, this is so weird."

    13. BG

      Yeah, it does seem very unpredictable.

    14. JR

      Lungs, liver, kidney, bl- just blood clots everywhere. It's like, uh, people are hemorrhaging. It's, it's very strange. It's a strange fucking virus. And the am- uh, the transmissibility, is that a word?

    15. BG

      Mm-hmm.

    16. JR

      The, uh, the, the, the ease of transmission is terrifying. It's so, it's so contagious. It's a ridiculously contagious virus. So once we went to that Center for Disease Control, I started getting scared. I saw the 2015 Bill Gates TED Talk on, uh, pandemics and about the, the possibility of a pandemic and I got scared of it too. So I would have thought it's possible, yeah. I w- I would never would have thought it's impossible.

    17. BG

      So here's the thing, regardless of, of where this virus came from, you have to imagine that, uh, there are governments and individuals, uh, who are now keyed in to how effective this visit- this virus was at cripple- crippling, uh, capitalist economies, right?

    18. JR

      Sure.

    19. BG

      Because it's b- the thing, the thing is, we created COVID's pathways, right? I mean, it's international flights, it's international trade, it's people moving around, it's, it's, you know, the neoliberal, uh, global capitalist system that we built over the past 30 years that created the pathways that, that, that took the virus everywhere at once, right?

    20. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    21. BG

      So if this were to be a test run, (laughs) um, it's now proven to be extremely effective. And so you have to imagine the governments around the world, probably including the United States, are thinking, "Well, what e- you know, how could we, how could we weaponize this, potentially?" And this is the thing, the, I mean-

    22. JR

      I don't know if the United States is thinking that, but I would imagine-

    23. BG

      Well, I don't, I don't, I don't know either, but the thing is, we, you know, the threats, existential threats that, uh, we face now have been multiplied exponentially, right?

    24. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    25. BG

      In the past, in the past, you know, post-World War II, right? We had ... I mean, this is the first sort of global catastrophe, right? You know, World, World Wars, right? But then once we developed nuclear weapons, and we're, we're just past the 75th anniversary of the, the Trinity test now. Uh, you know, once we create that ability to destroy ourselves and potentially the entire world, we have to live with th- with the possibility of that happening, right? Now, stack on top of that artificial intelligence, climate change, you know, synthetic biotech. Uh, all o- all of these threats that we face are, are something that we have to kind of hold in our heads all the time, and I think it's cracking us-

    26. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    27. BG

      ... mentally, to like, think about these possibilities. So, um, yeah, I mean, some of the preppers are conspiracy theorists, right? (laughs) And they're s- they're spinning some really outlandish scenarios. Um, but a lot of them are just trying to work through these things, right? And rather than get caught in this kind of perpetual future tense, like, you know, uh, thinking about something terrible happening, they're trying to take action now in the present, and that gives them some sense of, of, of peace, right?

    28. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    29. BG

      Like it g- it gives them a sense of like ... It gives them some solid footing in the present. And a lot of the preppers I talked to were, um, uh, are not actually very anxious or paranoid at all, right? (laughs) Because they have a plan. It's those of us who don't have a plan that are, that are anxious.

    30. JR

      D- well, you, you've talked to them post, post, po- yeah.

  5. 24:16 – 29:59

    Apocalypse geography: Yellowstone, New Zealand fantasies, and invasive wildlife politics

    1. BG

      I ... What, what most of them have told me is that this was a mid-level crisis. This-

    2. JR

      Well, they're right about that, right? I mean, if Yellowstone blows, this is gonna look like a cakewalk.

    3. BG

      Yeah, exactly.

    4. JR

      If we get hit with an asteroid, th- I mean, it's a wrap for humanity.

    5. BG

      Yeah.

    6. JR

      If there's a solar flare that takes out the power grid, we got real problems.

    7. BG

      Yeah.

    8. JR

      This is minor in comparison when you look at the-... the actual fatality rate for healthy people, it's very, very low. You know, it's less than 1%, much less than half of 1% for, for most healthy people. So when you look at what, what could happen if Yellowstone blows, that's a continent-killer.

    9. BG

      Oh, yeah.

    10. JR

      I mean-

    11. BG

      I mean, we're talking about volcanic, volcanic ash clouding the sky. And -

    12. JR

      Nuclear winter.

    13. BG

      Yeah, killing-

    14. JR

      Yeah.

    15. BG

      ... killing crops, all over-

    16. JR

      Killing everything.

    17. BG

      ... all over the United States.

    18. JR

      All over the world.

    19. BG

      Yeah. I mean being-

    20. JR

      I mean, you gotta have a jet and go to New Zealand, like instantly. (laughs) I mean, it's like, you've-

    21. BG

      I mean-

    22. JR

      ... I don't even know if that's-

    23. BG

      It's... New Zealand is in a volcanic zone. I mean, this... Like, this is one of the great, uh, red herrings of our time that, you know, that all of these wealthy people are gonna flee to New Zealand and find safety there. I mean, I also find it totally ironic that a lot of them are sort of, you know, libertarian free market capitalists that are quite happy to make money off this system, but when shit goes wrong, they want a really strong government to clamp down and take care of it, you know?

    24. JR

      Is that what they want? I think they just want a remote place to escape with a small amount of people and a lot of, uh, wildlife resources and real natural beauty. Look, new Zealand's gorgeous.

    25. BG

      New Zealand's fantastic. I've-

    26. JR

      I have friends who go there every year.

    27. BG

      Yeah, I've spent a lot of time there. Since I was-

    28. JR

      Matt Lauer bought a crazy farm out there. He's got like a giant ranch.

    29. BG

      Well, that's... You know, it's, it's got the qualities-

    30. JR

      I was like, "Why doesn't that guy move there?"

  6. 29:59 – 37:50

    Lost skills and deep time: navigation maps, stone tools, and why archaeology feels like time travel

    1. BG

      Dude, have you ever seen their maps that are made out of sticks?

    2. JR

      No.

    3. BG

      Dude, they have... They're, so they're these, uh, they're 3D maps that are made from, like, sticks put together, and they can tell wind and air currents, and they can read the stars with them. That's how they navigated with these.

    4. JR

      Really?

    5. BG

      Yeah.

    6. JR

      Whoa.

    7. BG

      Yeah, they're fantastic.

    8. JR

      Where did you see one?

    9. BG

      Uh, I don't know. Well, actually, my, my, uh... I did my master's degree in maritime archeology, so I probably picked that up during that degree at some point.

    10. JR

      So you, you did, uh, some of your studies was, were in Sydney, right?

    11. BG

      Yeah, I sta-... I started... I actually started here, um, at the University of California. I did anthropology and history. I went to Australia to do a degree in maritime archeology, and then I went to London to do a PhD in cultural geography.

    12. JR

      Oh, wow.

    13. BG

      So I've ha- I've hopped four disciplines. Uh-

    14. JR

      Did you get anything, Jamie?Let me see what this looks like.

    15. BG

      This way. Yeah, this way.

    16. JR

      Holy-

    17. BG

      Yeah, look at those things.

    18. JR

      ... shit.

    19. BG

      They're sweet, right?

    20. JR

      Wow.

    21. BG

      I-

    22. JR

      What is that even?

    23. BG

      Obviously, I have absolutely no idea how to-

    24. JR

      Oh, my God.

    25. BG

      ... how to read those things.

    26. JR

      That's so weird.

    27. BG

      See, the thing-

    28. JR

      So how do they tie them together, with twine, or like, what is ...

    29. BG

      Yeah, I think it's twine.

    30. JR

      And what are those images supposed to represent? What is that?

  7. 37:50 – 58:43

    Ethics of excavation and Indigenous knowledge: leaving ‘the stuff’ alone

    1. JR

      What are the rules on that? Like, if you f- if you go to a temple, if they take you to a temple and you find something that's there, what d- are you allowed to say, "I'm a scientist"?

    2. BG

      Well, okay. So I became really uncomfortable with the idea that, you know, because I had a degree, I had some kind of authority over other people's culture.

    3. JR

      Right. That's why I'm asking.

    4. BG

      Yeah. And I, I always felt like, well, that, you know, that village that's there, that's their shit.

    5. JR

      Right. Right.

    6. BG

      Why are we taking it? You know? Um, and obviously, it's for the advancement of knowledge and maybe it brings some benefit to their village, but we don't know.

    7. JR

      Right.

    8. BG

      So, uh, this is eventually what drove me out of archeology. Um, for my, my master's thesis, I went up to Northern California and I worked with this tribe called the Winnemem Wintu. And, uh, they... It's a, it's a pretty tragic story up there, man. They, they had been there for thousands of years and, um, you know, we, (laughs) we, Americans, decided that they were going to, uh, build a giant dam so they could have a reservoir up there, and they, and they inundated all of their ancestral homeland. So like, all of their spiritual sites, all of their graveyards, I mean, all of this stuff went under water. So I'd spent two years, uh, doing a degree in Mar- maritime archeology, I'd been diving shipwrecks all over the world, and I s- and I went up there and I said, "Let me, let me dive, let me dive in the, in the reservoir." And you know, I've got my underwater camera and I've... You know, I said, "I'll take some photos, I'll bring them back, we can have a chat about it." And the spiritual leader of the tribe, Kayleen, she says, "All right. Well, why don't you just hang out for a bit and then maybe we can do that later?" So like, days turn into weeks, and then, you know, a couple of months, and I'm getting nervous. I'm like, "I, I have to write my thesis. I have no... I don't have my... I don't have my data," right?

    9. JR

      And during these months, you're hanging out with these people?

    10. BG

      I'm just... Yeah, I'm just hanging out there.

    11. JR

      Are you eating dinner with them? Just chilling?

    12. BG

      Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm g-

    13. JR

      How do you have all this time?

    14. BG

      Yeah, we actually went... Uh, well, it's p- it's the degree, right? Like, like, that's what I'm there to do. I'm doing my field work.

    15. JR

      And you can just hang out for months?

    16. BG

      Yeah. But I'm supposed to be, like, doing research-

    17. JR

      Right.

    18. BG

      ... and wr- and writing a thesis, you know?

    19. JR

      Right, right.

    20. BG

      And so I c- I s- after a while, I press her. I'm like, "Look, I've gotta... I've gotta do something." And she said, "You know what the problem with you white people is? You're obsessed with stuff. You just wanna get your hands on the things." You know? And she said, "If you wanna know about our culture, you've been hanging out with us this whole time. What can you tell me about our culture? Like, why do you need to get that st- that, that, all that stuff that's, you know, under water out there? Why do you need that? You know, you can just talk to us." So that was sort of my bridge from moving from archeology into cultural geography.

    21. JR

      Hmm.

    22. BG

      Which is much more about, you know, thinking about people's relationships with places and landscapes and...

    23. JR

      And their culture is documented in what way? Like, how, how are they maintaining their historical records?

    24. BG

      Well, that's what... This was actually my, one of my first academic articles is I, I wrote about how a lot of their religious ceremonies had changed because the places that they used to go were now under water, right? So in, so in one case, there was this, uh, there was a rock, um, that young women went to as part of a puberty ceremony, and it used to be above water and they had that ceremony in the spring, but now when the, uh, that's when the, uh, the waters are high, right? So now they do it in sort of drought seasons so that they can still get to the rock. And so they had, they had changed the whole kind of, you know, (laughs) cultural, their cultural fabric had been altered by that inundation event.

    25. JR

      Hmm. Hmm.

    26. BG

      And basically, you know, the point that she was tr- trying to get across to me was like, "That didn't break us. Like, we're still us, even e- even though these things have had to change." You know? And that... I- it was an education for me as an archeologist because, you know, when you, when you go into a place with that very kind of like data-driven empirical mindset, you know, you want, you want hard facts that, (laughs) that make sense, that you know, that you can, you can write up clearly. And, and what she was telling me was something that was a little bit more... It was more nuanced. It, you know, it was difficult to pin down. It was more, you know, qualitative, right? And so I had to, I had to grapple with that, and that was a, that was a big learning lesson for me.

    27. JR

      So in this... But when you're dealing with things that are more nuanced, you, you still need to kind of know what happened and when it happened. So how were they keeping records of what happened and when it happened?

    28. BG

      Well, they had oral histories, but I could or-

    29. JR

      Oral histories.

    30. BG

      Yeah. But I could also go to, um, uh, the, uh, Bureau of Reclamation, the Forest Service, you know, they were... I w- I wa- I was actually working for the Bureau of Land Management at that time.

  8. 58:43 – 1:05:11

    The bunker economy: dread merchants, Bible buckets, and apocalyptic branding

    1. BG

      But there's also a, a kind of, uh... we can think about, about, like, people who are prepping on the everyday, like, the... you know, uh, the person who just cares about taking care of themselves and their family, and maybe they're interested in building community, right? Um, but then there are the people who are selling the antidote to their fears. I ca-... in, in the book, I call these people the dread merchants, right?

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. BG

      The people who are gonna sell you the bunker, you know? For-

    4. JR

      Like Jim Baker and his, uh-

    5. BG

      Oh, yeah, Jim Bak-...

    6. JR

      ... his food.

    7. BG

      Oh, man. His survival water.

    8. JR

      Yes. How, how amazing are those-

    9. BG

      (laughs)

    10. JR

      ... buckets of food that you could use as the base of a table?

    11. BG

      Oh, dude, ha-

    12. JR

      Have you seen that whole video?

    13. BG

      I love those, and he, and he talks about using them as Porta-Johns-

    14. JR

      Yes. Yes.

    15. BG

      ... and, uh, yeah. He sells the Bible buckets as well. Have you ever se-

    16. JR

      (laughs) Bible buckets? What's a Bible bucket?

    17. BG

      It's just a bucket full of Bibles-

    18. JR

      (laughs)

    19. BG

      ... you know, just, just in case, right?

    20. JR

      Why do you need more than one Bible?

    21. BG

      I know. Yeah, well, maybe you got a big family. And-

    22. JR

      Maybe you'll want to go Old Testament if shit gets really weird. (laughs)

    23. BG

      (laughs) Have you ever seen the, the Vic Berger remixes of the Jim Bak-

    24. JR

      Yes, I have. Yes.

    25. BG

      Oh, man. They are so much fun.

    26. JR

      Yes, yeah.

    27. BG

      I got really addicted to those when I was working on this project. It was kind of my... it became almost like a, um, a, a mantra, you know?

    28. JR

      Yeah, it's like-

    29. BG

      Just having these running in the background.

    30. JR

      It's so strange that he was the guy that was attached to the Jessica Hahn controversy back in the 1980s. I mean, I... You remember that?

  9. 1:05:11 – 1:10:15

    Luxury survival: the Kansas missile-silo ‘Survival Condo’ and the power of fake windows

    1. BG

      I met this one... I met one guy in Kansas. I'm sure, I'm sure a lot of your, your listeners will have run into this place, a Survival Condo in Kansas.

    2. JR

      Oh, never heard of it. What is it?

    3. BG

      Dude, it's awesome. So they're, so there-

    4. JR

      Survival Condo?

    5. BG

      Survival Condo.

    6. JR

      Is it actually a condo?

    7. BG

      It's a condo. So the, the-

    8. JR

      One condo?

    9. BG

      This guy, listen to this, this guy... So there's, there's two kinds of, um, uh, nuclear missile silos from the Cold War that are in the Midwest. The first kind is a kind of, uh, horizontal one where they would lift the missile up to fire it. And then the later ones they built, the Atlas F silos, are vertical. So they're di- 200 feet deep and they had a, you know, nuclear-tipped ICBM-

    10. JR

      There we go.

    11. BG

      ... intercontinental ballistic missile in there.

    12. JR

      Jim, you found it.

    13. BG

      Yeah, so, so I meet-

    14. JR

      Bunker home with a price tag of two million. Oh my God.

    15. BG

      Well-

    16. JR

      Two million bucks?

    17. BG

      So it's fi- it's one and a half million for a half floor inside this thing, or three million for a full floor.

    18. JR

      Why is this?

    19. BG

      But dude, dude, this guy converted the entire missile silo into a subterranean condo complex.

    20. JR

      So those are like LCD screens that make it look like you're outside?

    21. BG

      Yeah.

    22. JR

      Oh my God, that's so nuts.

    23. BG

      (laughs) So, and then what he told me- Wait, wait for it. Oh.

    24. JR

      Hold on. (gasps) He's got a pool.

    25. BG

      Yeah, he's got a pool. With a waterfall. A beach.

    26. JR

      Actually looks pretty dope.

    27. BG

      Dude, there's a rock wall. It's fantastic.

    28. JR

      It's got a theater. Yeah. Pool table, rock wall-

    29. BG

      We watched, we watched 007 in there.

    30. JR

      ... gun range. Wow. What is that? That's where they melt the bodies. They pour lime in there.

  10. 1:10:15 – 1:25:18

    Bug-out rigs and Mormon disaster response: the vehicle becomes the bunker

    1. BG

      I, I went to another place in Utah called Plan B Supply, and they're ... This is all they do, is they build these kind of bulletproof, armored, uh, four-wheel drive, sometimes six-wheel drive trucks. Like, they are crazy rigs. So they buy them ... A lot of them, they buy from the government, you know, the government retires equipment, and they'll just buy, you know, 30 Humvees or whatever, and have them delivered to the shop, and then they'll put bulletproof plating on them.

Episode duration: 2:42:30

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