How to Survive 2025 Episode 2 Mindset Part 1

How does one get into the preparedness frame of mind? How do you overcome anxiety, Doom Scrolling, and the “what if” spiral? Understanding panic and what to do when it sets in.

Listen to Episode 2

Mindset Part 1

Mindset Part 1

Transcript

Brian Keene: And welcome back to How to Survive 2025. I’m Brian Keene.

Dacia M Arnold: I’m Dacia M Arnold.

Jim Cobb: I’m Jim Cobb.

Brian Keene: Guys, good to be back here with you today. We are going to be, this is going to be part one of our two part discussion on mindset. What we mean when we talk about mindset, we’re talking about getting into the preparedness frame of mind, dealing with the the what if spiral that can happen, understanding panic and what to do when panic sets in. Are we qualified to talk about that? Guys.

Dacia M Arnold: I am.

Jim Cobb: yeah, yeah.

Brian Keene: All right. Dacia just jumped up and volunteered. Jim, I say we let her take the lead.

Jim Cobb: Absolutely.

Dacia M Arnold: Oh my goodness. The what if spiral who cannot relate to staying up all night long wondering what if what if, what if what if a check bounces? What if I lose my job tomorrow? What if my pipes freeze? What if all day long? There’s only. There are a few things you can do. You can freak out, man. Or you can plan and prepare for crazy things to go wrong because it’s life.

Jim Cobb: Yep. One of the things that I try to stress to people, like in classes and that is prepping, can lend you a very, it is a calming effect because you know, that if X happens, you’re ready for it, at least to some degree. You know, there there’s there’s a strong psychological component here with preparedness that I think a lot of people overlook.

Brian Keene: So let’s talk about some common things that people sit there and stress about and get into the spiral about and, and how to avoid that spiral. You know, I myself, I, I’m a huge news junkie. I’m not a political junkie, per se, you know, following one party’s dogma or the other. But I am a huge news junkie. Always have been. So for me, the the spiral, really kicked into gear when Russia invaded the Ukraine. You know, all the what ifs. What if, there’s an accident in a nuclear reactor and it melts down? What if Putin uses a battlefield nuke? What if Ukraine uses a dirty bomb inside Russia? You know, all these all these possibilities? To stop that spiral, it’s. It’s easy enough to remind myself. Well, that’s the other side of the world. And even if it does impact something here, I’m prepared. And basically, just get the hell off the news for a while, go read a book or play fallout or something like that. What are some examples from your own lives that you can think of?

Dacia M Arnold: I did freak out, about the Ukraine and Russia were my. My stepmother’s from Russia. So that that cost a little, like, a little closer to home stress. And then. Let’s say. What about you, Jim?

Jim Cobb: Well, being firmly in Gen X, I was born and raised on global catastrophe, the, you know, threat of nuclear annihilation and all that kind of stuff. At last count, I have survived 87 predicted ends of the world. So what what’s interesting is for me, you know, with the situation in Ukraine or, you know, any of the saber rattling that goes on, I, I pay attention to it, but it doesn’t really concern me a whole lot because for me, it’s like the boy who cried wolf over and over and over. So from my perspective, one of the things that you know, I get worked up about is my personal finances, you know, losing a job or getting hurt and not being able to work or being the editor in chief of a magazine that gets canceled and losing 30 some percent of your income in an instant. Or, you know, any, any number of what we might call mundane disasters, you know, things that it’s going to be the end of the world for me and my family. That’s what it’s going to feel like if one of us gets hurt in a catastrophic accident, but it’s going to have zero impact on anybody outside my home, you know? And preparedness to me, I think there’s there’s this stereotype that preppers and survivalist, they’re only looking at the long term, the, you know, the the end of the world as we know it, where realistically, we’re a lot more likely to be impacted by these local disasters, these more mundane events, and we can prepare for them at the same time that we’re preparing for the larger stuff. And like I alluded to earlier, prepping can be calming. It can give you a sense of confidence that, okay, yes, it’s going to really suck if I lose my job tomorrow, but we have some money in the bank. We have food, we have other necessities set aside that can get us over that hump until a new job can be acquired. Stuff like that.

Dacia M Arnold: Thanks  Jim for saving my butt.

Jim Cobb: You know.

Brian Keene: I mean, you’re you’re absolutely right. You know, the apocalypse, particularly for for us in the field we work in, you know, we make our living, destroying the world, as it were. But, you know, the apocalypse doesn’t have to be this big global event. It can be, a very personalized, individual thing. It can be the, you know, illness or loss of a family member. It can absolutely be the loss of a job. And, you know, dire, economic circumstances, you know, I myself, I live along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. I’ve lived here nine years, and in that time I’ve gone through seven floods. It’s. The river’s going to flood again. I know this that’s that’s something that I can absolutely prepare for. In fact, it just happened last week. As the remnants of Tropical Storm Debbie blew through. And there is, a strange comfort in knowing I’m prepared for that. And then, you know, when the flood happens and it’s over and the water recedes, getting everything ready and prepping for the next one, it’s it’s the same as changing the oil in the car or getting the garden ready when spring comes. It’s just something that I know to do. So, Jim, let’s talk about economic preparedness and and panic in that moment when you, when you lose the job or your hours get cut at work or you get laid off because that’s something right now, given the economy here in August of 2024, that that’s something a lot of our listeners can probably identify with. And, you know, keeping in mind that this week we’re focusing on on that initial panic. What do you do.

Jim Cobb: The first thing you can do is stop and breathe. You know just stop what you’re doing. Sit down and take 3 or 4 deep breaths. And I mean in all the way down into the belly, hold it for a second and then blow it out very deliberately and through the nose, all through the mouth. Do this 3 or 4 times. And I mean, it sounds so silly, but it really works. It really helps kind of center yourself and, you know, take a beat and understand, okay, this sucks, but it’s not the end of the world. Your record for surviving catastrophe is unmatched. You you’re you know, every day is a new day that you break the record, concentrate on that and and realize that you’ve made it through all these other things in your life. You can make it through this, and ideally, you’ll have some preps to fall back on again to get you over that initial hump. You know, whether it’s having, a small amount of savings in the bank, having established some type of network in your field so that when you lose that job, you have people you can reach out to and say, hey, do you have any openings there? You aware of anything? Can you suggest my name for different things that come up? Things like that? You know, here’s a real life example. And I mentioned this before. I was editor in chief for Prepper Survival Guide magazine. And literally out of nowhere the publisher decided to cancel it. There was no warning. There was no hey, you know, sales are a little soft. It was one day just boom, we’re not doing this magazine anymore. And I’m in a I’m very blessed to be in a position that this isn’t a catastrophic loss, but it’s a big deal. It’s 30 some percent of my annual income gone in a heartbeat. Within 24 hours, I had reached out to my network of people. I had established two different ongoing writing gigs that are going to make up about 95% of what I lost. And I was able to do that because over the years I had made a conscious, deliberate effort to connect with people in my field to, you know, partner with them on various things so that, you know, not primarily in a situation like this, but as an added bonus, is if something happens, I have people I can reach out to who might be able to help me line up new work.

Dacia M Arnold: Has this ever happened to you before? Jim? Have you ever been in a situation or can you think of a situation where it was like ten times worse.

Jim Cobb: When my wife and I were younger, when our kids were very little. We and this is going back about 20 years. Okay. Just to give you a rough time frame, it was rough. It was really, really bad for us financially. We were subsisting on less than $12,000 a year. And our house payment was $1,000 a month.

Brian Keene: In there.

Jim Cobb: I can tell you that. Well, yeah. And that that is a constant robbing Peter to pay Paul. You know, that’s scrounging spare change to buy a gallon of milk. You know, and I have to give credit where credit is due. My wife is responsible for 95% of our recovery from that because she is a financial genius as far as I’m concerned, when it comes to personal finances, she was able to balance everything and dig us out of that hole. You know, we’re both working our tails off trying to get money to come in. That’s only part of the equation when it comes to finances. It’s not just a matter of having the money coming in. You have to be able to do something constructive with it. And that’s where she really, you know, she worked magic. It was like sorcery to me. To this day, I don’t know how she did it, but, you know, 20 years later, we’re both sitting at, you know, credit ratings well above 800 and we would have never done it without her.

Dacia M Arnold: That’s awesome.

Jim Cobb: During that time, though, what I, what I refer to as the dark time, it was bad. It was really, really bad. I mean, financial problems caused an unbelievable amount of stress. You know, and it bleeds into every aspect of your relationships with people. Absolutely. Somebody invites you to go along to a movie or to go out for drinks or whatever, and you’re like, I can’t because I have to buy groceries. You know, one of the things that I insisted on when we were going through all that was any time we got some money coming in, like, bonus money, like we had a rummage sale, or we found a $20 bill or something like that, I insisted that half of it, when it went towards bills or whatever, and half that we had to spend on something fun. Because you need that release, you, you, you know. So, for example, you know, in this again, this is 20 some years ago. If we got an extra 20 bucks, okay, the play with we would get pizza or some other kind of takeout and we rent a movie or two. It’s cheap entertainment. But it was a release. It was you know for that 2 or 3 hours we didn’t have to think about money. We didn’t have to think about bills. We could just enjoy being parents and playing with our kids and everything else. And all of this ties into this mindset where you can’t be all doom and gloom. You can’t go through that 24 over seven. You can’t just sit and ruminate over how bad the world is. Instead of doing that, take steps to make it better.

Dacia M Arnold: That’s awesome.

Brian Keene: So what if, what if there’s somebody listening right now and they suffer from just crippling anxiety or maybe not even crippling anxiety, just run of the mill anxiety. You know, that is that is certainly on the rise. Low here in America. How do they avoid that, that panic, that doom and gloom? Because that can that can be a mobilizing really. You know, you lose your job and, you sink into depression and anxiety and and instead of job hunting, you just sit there on the couch or, or probably more likely under the covers in bed. What are some, some simple, non-judgmental steps? They can take little incremental steps to get out of that mindset.

Dacia M Arnold: So the biggest thing that someone can do when they’re kind of sitting, sitting in their dirty bathwater is be very, very, very careful about what you are putting into your body. And I mean this physically and I mean this like emotionally and entertainment wise and not entertainment wise. But are you are you clinging to vices that are not, you know, helping you out at all, or are you stuck on Twitter Doomscrolling. The the latest debate, be very, very careful of of what you put into your body and when you do take things away. So if you are going to and I go lighter on, on smoking weed or drinking or alcohol or whatever, replace it with something can instructive and healthy and helpful. So if you’re not doomscrolling Twitter, maybe you pick up a paperback, or maybe you are meditating instead listening to some music that that really speaks to your soul, even if it’s, you know, that music that that we rock out to when when things are shit, definitely replace them with things that are much better.

Jim Cobb: Yeah, that’s a great point. You know, one of the biggest arguments my wife and I ever had, and we don’t fight that off. We’ve been together over 30 years, and I can probably count on two hands and have fingers left over the number of times we really, really have bad arguments. But one of the things we went back and forth about for years was I was a smoker, and even when we were at our broadcast, I still managed to come up with money every day to buy cigarettes. And that drove her nuts because she would say, you know, if we can’t afford milk, you can’t afford tobacco. And eventually I did quit and I have not turned into the type of smoker that I feared I would be. I’m not, you know, militant about it. But at the same time, I can tell you from experience that it helps to not smoke. You know, I’ve never been a drinker. I never got into weed or anything like that. Tobacco was my advice. And at at my worst, I was, you know, almost two packs a day. I always found that money every day, you know, but the benefits of quitting go far beyond financial. You know, my lungs are a lot better. Granted, I replaced it with eating, which wasn’t the best choice.

Dacia M Arnold: You gotta replace it with something.

Jim Cobb: Yeah, yeah. But at the end of the day, I’m healthier. I don’t have that stress of how am I going to afford this. I mean, I was walk through Walmart the other day and happened to go past their tobacco where I don’t know where it what it’s like anywhere else in the country. But here in southern Wisconsin, cigarettes are damn near $10 a pack.

Dacia M Arnold: Yeah.

Jim Cobb: I think that I lost it. I mean, there were like six when I quit and I thought that was a lot. That’s a lot of money to be throwing away that you could be putting towards something more positive, more constructive and freeing up your budget a little bit. Another point I want to make is perspective. So you were talking about how recently the magazine just completely shut down. But having like that in the back of your head like this is not the worst thing I have ever been through, is, is really what keeps you like you take that breath and you’re like, okay, at least it’s not that one time when I was, you know, in the shit, you know, and perspective is really, really important. And that’s not to say that you need to diminish your circumstance because other people have it worse. Now, these the fear, the anxiety, those feelings are extremely valid. Normal people have these feelings, when faced with hard times. But you also have to know that if you’ve gotten through worse before that, you can get through what you’re facing now.

Jim Cobb: Yep, yep. And I wanted to circle back to something you had talked about. You know, you’re you’re just sitting there in your your bath just. Running and going over in your head. And you, you know, one of the most important things to do, I think, is, you know, in the self-defense world, they call it get off the ax, okay? Where you need to take action. You need to do something. Now, here’s a story. Years ago, when my kids were in elementary middle school, there was this program called Destination Imagination. It was one of these academic teams competitions where think, okay, we’re going to drop the eggs from the top of the building, and we need to make sure it doesn’t break you and you come up with a solution for that. But then there was also an element of theater, and it was an interesting program, but I was a coach for it briefly. And one of the parts of these, regional and national competitions was what they called an instant challenge, where you would take the team, which was anywhere from like 4 to 6 kids, and you put them in a room with a couple of adults, all the windows are closed and the door is closed. And nobody can talk about what happens in that role, which sounds awful. What it really was. Oh, what what would happen is the team would be presented with a small tray of props, like pipe cleaners, paper cups, tape, thumbtacks, things like that. And they would be presented with a challenge. You need to build the tallest tower you can with these supplies in three minutes. Go. Okay. And as the coach, I could sit in the room and watch them, but I couldn’t see anything. I could give them no feedback. They had to do this all on their own. And I’ll never forget this. The team that I was coaching, they they pull the the cover off the tray and look at the supplies. They start the clock and these kids froze. They just stood there staring at these things. And they have like a four minute time frame and for three solid minutes, they didn’t speak. They just looked at each other and looked at the tray, looked at each other, looked at the tray, and finally one of them started to pick something up and start fidgeting with it. And that’s when it started. And all of a sudden they’re like, oh wait, we can do this, we can do this, we can do this. And they they cobbled something together very quickly. It didn’t do well score wise. But the takeaway was.

Dacia M Arnold: You know, effects.

Jim Cobb: Nothing happened until they took action. And they picked it up and started playing with it. And that’s what started the gears going. When you’re faced with a situation where you’re sitting there, you’re you don’t know what to do. You’re depressed, you’re anxious. Whatever it is.

Dacia M Arnold: Something.

Jim Cobb: Do something. You’re going to do nothing.

Brian Keene: Right? That, that leads me to another part of our discussion. We mentioned that we want to talk about panic this week. In addition, Jim, you both mentioned that that feeling that that spiral, that helplessness is normal. It’s a normal human emotion. So is panic. And so is shock. Our body’s going to shock for a very specific reason. The key is to recognize when that’s happening, recognize when panic is happening and sort of short circuit that or get yourself out of that. We had talked off the air, Jim. You had asked if I’m comfortable telling this story. I am comfortable telling it. I’ll warn our listeners. It might be a little disturbing for, let’s say, children under the age of 14. So maybe ask them to leave the room for this part. But, several years ago now, we mentioned flooding earlier in the show. I was cleaning up after another flood, specifically at my my second ex-wife’s house. Her place just got destroyed in the aftermath of this flood, and, I said, well, you know, I’ll I’ll come over and take care of it because she was, to use this metaphor, sitting in her dirty bathwater. And I don’t blame her. She was in shock, you know, and I said, you know, I’ll I’ll get it taken care of for you. So I had, a a fire going to burn all the debris, all the logs and trees and telephone poles and tires and everything else that was through her yard. And, I had used kerosene. Did not realize that I had gotten some on my arm. And, when the wind shifted, the fire blew towards me, and I went up like, like a human candle. Second degree, second and first degree burns on my forehead and scalp. Second and third degree on my left arm to the point where my elbow, you could see the bone. Now, a caveat to our listeners who maybe don’t know me as a writer, here’s a little fact most writers do not have a 401 K, and we also do not have health insurance. I’m lucky enough to have a partner, who has health insurance through their job. So in the immediate aftermath, I stop, drop and roll in the flood water, okay? And I pop up, and I, I this is exactly my thought process. I’m fine, I’m fine. I don’t have health insurance. I’m not going to go to the hospital. I’m going to take care of this myself. I’m a country boy. I can do this at this point. I’m now walking towards my ex-wife’s house. I’ve been in the flood water, so bacteria and infection or concern. So I hope she has Neosporin and hydrogen peroxide in there. And then I see my ex-wife and our son come running out of the house because, of course, they had heard me scream. And in my shock state, I’m trying to reassure that. Michael, it’s fine, I’m fine. I’m going to be okay. And our son, who’s a little guy at that point, has never said a curse word in his life. That’s fine. Dad, your arm is coming off all right.

Dacia M Arnold: We’re baby. Baby.

Brian Keene: I looked down, and sure enough, the skin around my elbow looks like dripping candle wax. Yeah. And I’m like, oh, yeah, that’s not good. At which point I realized you are in shock. You are panicking. You are not helping anyone by insisting that you’re not going to a hospital. Sit your ass.

Dacia M Arnold: Down.

Brian Keene: The opposite of Jim’s place. But then I sat down. I waited for the paramedics. I focused on breathing for those minutes, folks. I just focused on breathing. I shut down, worrying about how the hell I was going to pay for it. I focused on staying conscious and breathing. When the paramedics got there, I didn’t have to focus so much on breathing anymore. I just focused on staying conscious and communicating. When they got me on the ambulance, and they got a morphine drip in me, the shock abated, to the point where when my my current wife, Mary, showed up because my ex-wife called her and said, you need to get over here. There’s been an accident when she showed up, I waved at her and said, I’m fine and gave her a thumbs up. You know.

Dacia M Arnold: With your good hand?

Brian Keene: Yeah, with my good in and shocker, normal. Depression and stress and anxiety. These are. These can also be normal reactions. What you have to do is learn how to react to them. Let them rule you. You recognize that they’re they’re, What do you guys have to add to that? What what do you do? And I mean, with your background, what do you what do you do when someone’s in shock?

Dacia M Arnold: Well, it’s different for me. So I’m not a normal human. I have very specialized training in dealing with the most grotesque, gory, outlandish injuries and and illnesses that you could possibly think of while being shot at and still being able to function in in some helpful way. So there is training for that. Paramedics and EMTs, they they also know that that fight or flight that they have to fight and they don’t have the flight or else they wouldn’t have made it through training. But it’s a lot different when it’s someone close to you. It’s someone, that you care for, but they’re still like this. And we’ve talked about this a few times, this disassociation. It’s it is in the long term. It is not a healthy coping mechanism. That’s why a lot of people don’t become EMTs and paramedics.But disassociation from the person being your person. This summer, my husband fell and and I again, I guess no kids are listening, but snap to his wrist look like at a question mark. And we have two very small children. And so I was it was later in the evening, you chase the dog into the neighbor’s yard, stepped on mud that was covered by leaves, took all his weight on his right wrist. And so I’m already in my nightgown. We’re getting ready for bed. The kids are on their tablets and stuff, getting ready for bed. Well, husband is screaming in the yard. I think he wants to show me something cool. I mean, being, like, having a medical background. It was pretty cool. It’s not for anyone else. So the kids, I’m like, go to your room. I felt bad normally in my training I would have splinted the injury and then treated and and gotten stable. But I really just needed to get dressed and take his ass to the emergency room. So kids went to their room. I went and got ready. He’s breathing into a bag on the porch. You know, we get pile up, pile everyone into the car, and we get him to the emergency room. My kids did not freak out because I did not freak out.

Brian Keene: Great point.

Jim Cobb: Yep.

Dacia M Arnold: The whole time Greg’s screaming and crying, all every bump, every turn in the car was excruciating. I’m talking to my kids and telling them how they’re doing such a great job. And also I’m sick to my stomach because I’m worried about did. I didn’t check for blood flow? What if there’s no blood flow? It’s 20 minutes to the emergency room that’s too long to go without. It’s not. And go probably about an hour. Tourniquet. But anyway, I digress. You have to keep your cool. You have to. If you know that you are a flight person, designate somebody else beforehand. This is part of that preparedness. Yep. It’s it’s go ahead and identify like this is not my role. I cannot do this. You are going to be the one that takes charge. So when crap hits the fan, someone falls, breaks their leg. Everyone knows their roles. Your your job is to freak out and their job is to act.

Jim Cobb: 100%.

Brian Keene: But what if, it’s me? What if you’re a single mom listening right now? It’s you and your kid, and she knows she’s flight, not fight. How does how does she overcome that?

Dacia M Arnold: This 911, I would I would just you when in doubt, you call somebody else. You call, call an audible. I don’t care you if you can’t do it yourself. And you know that you can’t do it yourself. Make a plan. Make a plan.

Jim Cobb: Well, and on top of that, one of the things that you can do is learn to recognize when you’re starting to spiral, when you’re starting to get that flight, emotion. And when you start to feel those alert signals, do something, you know, try to try to head it off with the past, so to speak. You know, we talked about breathing. We talked about, you know, trying to alter your thinking a little bit. Try these little tips and tricks to center yourself a little bit and understand that, like you’ve mentioned, your kids are going to mirror what what you do. And if you start freaking out, they’re going to freak out and you’re just going to feed off of one another. You know, I, I firmly believe that there are people who are kind of genetically predisposed to the flight. Yeah, okay. But that doesn’t mean you you can’t change that. You learn coping mechanisms for dealing with it in a crisis.

Dacia M Arnold: Some techniques that we use in the military we call muscle memory. So muscle memory is just a task that you are able to mindlessly do no matter where your brain is. It’s kind of hard to have muscle memory to react to something like an injury or a fire duration. But but maybe practice. Practice. I don’t know how you would practice muscle memory.

Brian Keene: Well, that is actually an excellent segue to a homework assignment that I want to give to our listeners. Because, yes, on occasion we will hand out homework assignments here on how to survive 2025. You know, we talk about getting into the preparedness frame of mind so that maybe when it happens instead of like you are fight. Now we’ve got listeners everywhere in all kinds of different socioeconomic situations, living conditions, geographically. Take a good look around while you’re listening to this. And think of some reasonable things that could happen that you can prepare for. I’m not talking about an asteroid hitting the planet. I’m not talking about a black hole. Suddenly being spotted outside, right outside our solar system. I’m talking about reasonable things. If you live in an apartment complex, maybe a fire. If you live along the river like myself, maybe a flood, a blizzard.

Dacia M Arnold: Power outage.

Brian Keene: Power outage? Absolutely.

Dacia M Arnold: Power pipes freezing. Because that happens. That happened to us over Christmas.

Brian Keene: Yeah, well, you know, if you’re in the city, maybe think about, political protest gone awry or, you know, some sort of civil unrest. Think about one of those scenarios this week, listeners, and then, you know, come up with a simple plan that encompasses yourself, any loved ones you may have, any pets you may have, and and what you will do in that situation and, and really think it through and kind of start exercising that muscle memory gym Daysha what are some things to consider when they’re planning for these scenarios? For these someone who’s never prepped before? We’re trying to teach them to get into the preparedness mindset.

Dacia M Arnold: Yeah. So something really easy. We did, my local our electric company decided on one of the coldest days of winter to, do some work and have a power outage for X amount of hours. And my husband and I went back and forth about, what are we going to do? Or are we going to go to my father in law’s house down, you know, just to take the kids and hang out? And finally I was like, let’s stay home. Let’s stay home and just figure it out. And just just in case, because maybe one day it’ll happen and then two months later, no kidding. We lost, our radiator pipes froze over Christmas. And because we had already experienced not having the electricity and not running heat in the house, we knew what our wood burners capable of, and we knew how far our kerosene heaters would go. Use very responsibly. But like over Christmas, we stayed home. We weathered it out. It was cold. This was 2000, 22. It was freezing over Christmas. The kids didn’t even notice. They they don’t even remark about it to this day. We kept our cool and they got to enjoy Christmas at home instead of going to grandpa’s house. So.

Jim Cobb: And those type of, practice runs or drills are very important, no matter where you are on your preparedness journey, whether you’re at day one or you’re at year 40. It’s it’s critical to do these test runs so you can fill holes and find gaps and find things that you’ve overlooked and take care of them when the stakes aren’t really high. You know, one of the things that, we talk about and we’ll get into this at some point down the road, are things like wild edibles and foraging for food. If you’re going to do that, it makes a lot more sense to do it in your backyard first, so that if you have a bad reaction, you can get help or at least get to the nearest toilet rather than it being day five. In a grid down scenario, and you decide to break out your book of wild edibles and let’s see what we can find in, you know, and that, you know, after you start to have a reaction, that’s when you remember that your indoor plumbing isn’t working anymore. You know, some people will go so far as to, you know, shut off the main breaker to the house and shut off all power to the house for a weekend and just, you know, test their gear and their plans and all that. You can do that, but you don’t have to go that far now. And I say that because when you shut that breaker off, you’ve got a refrigerator, you’ve got a freezer that you know you’re going to impact the food that’s inside of it, of an easier way to do it is just, okay, we’re not going to access the refrigerator freezer for the weekend where no TV, no lights. We’re just pretending that there’s a power outage. And that’s a really good way to start out. You know, you don’t have to go full bore with it right out of the gate. You’re going to lose people, you know? I remember when our kids were little, we started doing practice runs for evacuating the house. We’d say, okay, you know, I’m going to hit this timer and I want to see how long it takes for each of you to get your bag, get out of the car, yada, yada, yada. And you know, the first time we did it was like ten, 12 minutes and nobody’s packed anything that they really needed. And, you know, it was just it was it was a comedy routine. You know, but we learned from it, you know, and we were able to say to the kids, okay, you don’t need all of these stuffed animals. You know, you don’t need, you know, seven pair of shoes. No, you know, things like that. And if you particularly if you start with the kids are young, they develop these habits early to a large degree. It becomes what you talk about muscle memory. You know, and that’s important.

Dacia M Arnold: One more exercise that our listeners can do is try cutting your budget in half and living on that for a certain amount of time. I don’t care if it’s a week, two weeks. Just cut it in half. Really. Budget your groceries, budget your gas. Cut back on on your subscriptions for a little bit. You don’t, you know, maybe this month you don’t. You listen to Pandora with commercials. I don’t know what people are doing to, but.

Brian Keene: Something I want to recommend. In my in my daily work as a writer, I’m a big note taker. Anytime I’m working on a book or a story, I carry around a little more skiing notebook. And I’ll write notes to myself in there. You know, things I want to do with the the book. Maybe it’s a snatch of dialog, or maybe it’s a plot point that I don’t want to forget. When it comes to these preparedness scenarios and this homework, something you may want to do is, is make some notes and, and let’s go with a simple one. Let’s say I give you a scenario. You live in a three bedroom apartment with your cat sprinkles and your kid, and, you decide, okay, I’m going to get my preparedness mindset in case of a fire. Okay? So start working on the scenario and you may realize, oh, I only have one fire extinguisher. And it’s in the kitchen of my three, three room apartment. You know, so maybe you add a note, you know, get two more fire extinguishers, one for each room. Maybe you write a note to yourself, check the batteries on the smoke detector. Then you you start imagining. Okay, a fire has broken out. What do I do with sprinkles? How the hell am I going to get sprinkles and the kid out of the apartment? Invest in a cat carrier. You got yourself a note. You know, if you don’t have one of those, think about various scenarios that can happen depending on where it breaks out in the apartment. Where’s the exit? If it starts in your kid’s room, how do you get your kid out of the room? Just note all these things now. Don’t spiral. Don’t panic. This is just a homework assignment. This isn’t the class final. You know, it’s not happening for real. You’re preparing yourself for it. But when you’re done, sit back and actually take a look at those notes. And that can that can really help you. Okay. Now I have a checklist. Now, now I know what to do. And, you know, a couple weeks later you’re ready for a fire.

Jim Cobb: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything to add to that with the fire prep is not only do you need working smoke detectors, but make sure you can hear them. Oh wherever you are in your home. A girl that my, my son was dating for a long time and to this day she, we still consider her part of the family even though they broke up. This is going back a few years ago. It was Thanksgiving weekend. She and her mom had just moved into a new apartment. They’d been there maybe a couple of weeks, late at night. All of a sudden, they hear this pounding on the door. It’s the neighbor. And it was one of the. There were, like, townhomes where there, you know, just side by side apartments and the neighbor’s pounding on the door. There’s a fire. You need to get out. You need to get out. It wasn’t until they walked into the hallway that they heard just the faintest noise from the smoke detector out there. They had heard nothing in their apartment. Turns out the neighbor’s truck in his garage had somehow started on fire, and never did get the full story behind that. Lots of smoke damage, things like that. When they exited the house or exited the apartment and went out in the parking lot. And again, this is late November. Neither one of them had shoes on. I think the daughter had a jacket, but mom did not. And they were out there for hours until finally the fire department gave them the all clear to go in and just get some stuff, you know. So number one, make sure that you can hear your smoke detector from your bedroom wherever you know you have these position, make sure it’s loud enough. It’s going to wake you up. You know, another thing we can do is what I call the home cache. That c a c h e. It is not pronounced cachet like you always hear in some TV shows with hash. It refers to just, a little assemblage of supplies that you’ve got stationed somewhere. If you have a garage or an outbuilding on your property, think about putting together a small tote with a jacket, a pair of shoes, pair of socks, things like that that you can squirrel away in case you need to evacuate your house. If there’s a fire and you don’t have time to grab that stuff. Now, I understand that there’s this mindset where you should always sleep with a pair of shoes right next to the bed, in a pair of pants and yadda yadda. God, I haven’t done that since my wife was pregnant. Okay, I, I, if I’ve got out that I’m getting out and I’ll, you know, deal with it afterwards. If it’s late November, December, there’s snow on the ground. You’re going to want some type of footwear. The home cache can provide that for you.

Dacia M Arnold:  That’s awesome. I never thought of that. And I thought I thought of everything. So along with this homework, it’s it’s a lot of fun. I, I’m known as dystopian mom, and that’s. It has a lot to do with some of the novels that I write. I write a lot of dystopian fiction where the mom saves the world, and what this comes from is my heightened anxiety and my heightened need to plan everything, to make sure that I am going to be able to be okay, and also that my children are going to be okay. So I actually do I do this exercise. I write down all these plans to get, you know, out safely. And, and whether it be a zombie apocalypse or a total societal collapse, you follow the exercise and you might be halfway to your own novel.

Jim Cobb: Yep. Absolutely.

Brian Keene: Absolutely. All right, guys, any final thoughts? Before we let our listeners go for this week.

Jim Cobb: I’m just looking over my notes quick to make sure we didn’t miss, one recommendation in addition to the homework assignment, if you’re looking for reading material, this type of thing, like we talk about with mindset, look for The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley, I think there’s a new edition that’s just coming out or just came out. I haven’t picked up the new one yet. I’m still operating off the one that’s several years old. I consider that book to be required reading for anybody who’s interested in preparedness, without getting into a full blown book review. Basically what she did was she spent a lot of time consulting with experts and looking at major disasters and how people survived and the things that mentally and physically, what changed with them as they’re going through these stressful, situations like nine over 11? You know, she talked to survivors who made it out of the building. What did you do differently? You know, it was kind of the the approach. What was your mindset like? What was going through your head? How did you react? Things like that. And you learn a lot about how we are hardwired to deal with stressful situations and how we can improve our reactions. It’s a phenomenal book and it’s not real dry. And you know, it’s entertaining as well as educational.

Brian Keene: And we’re going to talk about some of that next week as well. As I said at the start of the show, this is part one of a two part look at mindset. Next week, we’re going to talk about, the letters PTSD, post-traumatic stress syndrome. What happens to your mind and your body during and after traumatic events? We have discussed how to help loved ones cope in the aftermath. Grief survivor, survivor’s guilt. We’re we’re really going to dig deep next week. It’s going to be a fun show. It sounds like, it’s. And, you know, they said Jim’s not going to do it, so I think you and I should do it for folks. As Jim said, the magazine he’s been the editor for just went out of business 30% of his income. Now, he was absolutely right to plug the book that he did. The unthinkable is is a Bible. But maybe you pick up one of Jim’s books this week as well. You ain’t gonna learn anything from mine. Unless maybe it’s How to Kill a Zombie, and we’re not going to give it that level preparedness on this show. But but Jim has an extensive bibliography of of well-written, straight fact, no B.S. prepping books. Look him up on Amazon. Jim Cobb is holding one up right now, right.

Dacia M Arnold: Because I own it. It is mine, and not because of the show. I’ve actually had this book long before I even.

Jim Cobb: It’s, I appreciate that, I really do. And you need to get the revised second edition.

Dacia M Arnold: All right. We’ll do.

Jim Cobb: Because there’s a lot there’s a probably about 30% of the book was added on to and, new material. We changed some things, took some things out, and I didn’t really care for. And it it’s what we in the business called the author’s preferred edition. Oh.

Brian Keene: All right, guys. Well, we we I appreciate you both. And listeners, we all appreciate you. We are now on Spotify and Audible on iHeart radio, and, should be up on Apple by the time this episode drops. If you’re enjoying the show, if you’re digging it, please consider leaving a review. That really helps us out. It’s that simple. Guys, any any thing you want the audience to know before we leave?

Dacia M Arnold: You know, just come back next week and and hear what we have to say.

Brian Keene: Yeah. For that, for that lighthearted discussion about. Oh, yes. Here.

Dacia M Arnold: So I’m so excited about it.

Brian Keene: All right. We’ll see you next time, folks.

Jim Cobb: Sounds good.

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About the Hosts of How to Survive 2025

International Bestselling Author

Brian Keene

BRIAN KEENE is the author of over fifty books and three-hundred short stories, mostly in the horror, crime, fantasy, and non-fiction genres. They have been translated into over a dozen different languages and have won numerous awards. His 2003 novel, The Rising, is credited with inspiring pop culture’s recurrent interest in zombies. He has also written for such media properties as Doctor Who, Thor, Aliens, Harley Quinn, The X-Files, Doom Patrol, Justice League, Hellboy, Superman, and Masters of the Universe. He was the showrunner for Realm Media and Blackbox TV’s Silverwood: The Door.

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