All right, welcome to season four of Inside My Canoe Head, a daily podcast about individual emergency preparedness, rocking an incredible life, and learning to do the things to make yourself more self-reliant in a chaotic world. Sit back, grab a beverage, and take charge of your life. All right, welcome back to Ottawa Studios of Inside My Canoe Head. Listen, this week we want to talk about some pretty cool stuff, but first, it's really interesting when you find yourself as a social media creator of some type.
Listen, you're a social media creator if you make one YouTube video a year, right? You're part of the ecosystem. And when you do this, you find it awfully interesting how the world reacts. So Monday's episode on Inside My Canoe Head was a serious, what I thought was a serious and a good deep dive into some significant issues that are happening around the world.
A little longer, 40 minutes, et cetera, got next to no listens. But this happens when you create something. You're never sure how the world's going to react. I had a post up on LinkedIn this week about taxation.
We complain a lot about how the government asks us for money or just takes it, and they're spending it like a drunken sailor, and everybody's calling for changes. But very few people actually understand how the government raises revenue and then what exactly it does with it. So I spend, you know, these things take time to research, probably a week researching it and a day to write it, and next to nobody picked up on it. So you just got to understand that at times, you're never sure exactly what the world needs.
You try to get your finger and your pulse on what seems to be clicking in the news, what's clicking on other social media. What do you think you can add value to the conversation in the preparedness realm, rocking a good life realm, current issues realm, public policy realm. Like, how can I drop something that is going to add value to people's lives, will be helpful, will be worth listening to, and it just won't be a waste of my time and your time. So today what we're going to do is we're going to talk about, are you feeling stressed and broke?
What do you do in a world environment where if you are living close to that financial precipice with, you know, I run out of money before I run out of month, where you used to have a problem where you ran out of month before you ran out of money, and you're sitting here and you want to live a prepared life. Like, you want to have better control of your outcomes, you want to be better insulated against life's disruption. So what does your world look like when everywhere you go on social media, whether it be TikTok, whether it be YouTube, here on a podcast, everybody is telling you, here are the top 10 things you should buy, here are the five things you should stock up on, and you're screaming at it saying, but I don't have five bucks, how am I supposed to stock up on these 10 things to be prepared to be a prepper, whatever you want to call it, survivalist, whatever you want to define it as, and everybody is telling you, just get an emergency kit, just do this, just, you know, have $1,000 set aside in your emergency fund, and you're trying to figure out what type of plain noodles are going to make it through to payday. So today's job is to just do that.
Let's talk about preparedness on a zero budget, it's free, and let's get to it. So the purpose of all of this, the purpose of doing preparedness on a zero budget is we're here to counter those that say there's an economic barrier to becoming prepared, and we're going to counter, like I said, those who say, here's a list of things to buy. Number one thing in emergency preparedness is attitude. I say this over and over again, you hear me throughout the podcast, it's an attitude of adopting responsibility for your outcomes.
Are you an individual who accepts that there are lots of things that happen in the world beyond your control? There are things that you cannot stop or influence, all that you have the choice to do in this world is to choose how you respond to them and how you choose to react. And so the attitude of preparedness is just that. It's an attitude.
It's you deciding that I'm going to become responsible for my outcomes, and therefore I'm not going to turn around. And number one, I'm not going to blame the world for my situation. I'm not where I am in life because of a whole bunch of exogenous events that were beyond my control, and the world's out to get me, and I'd be doing great if I just didn't get the poopy end of the stick. You don't take on a victim mentality.
You adopt the idea that life is throwing me maybe a disproportionate level of disruptions. I'm starting from a different point than everybody else, because maybe I started with significant socioeconomic barriers, but I'm in control. The outcomes are up to me. It's not somebody else's responsibility to feed and house me.
It's my responsibility to do that. So let's get at it. So the first thing that you have to do is accept that attitude. The second thing you do if you're broke is assess your situation.
This is where we say the no-poop analysis. You look at that awesome person in a mirror. All this takes is a piece of paper and a pencil, and if you're too broke to have that, then you just talk to yourself out loud. Psychology tells us that you will remember stuff in the most efficient and effective manner by saying stuff out loud.
So if you're broke and you don't even have a pen and pencil, I'm laughing, but it's not funny because I know people out there are. Then just say this stuff out loud, right? So number one, where do you live? Location.
Geography matters. Number one thing that we study in international politics should be geography, not the goons in charge or militaries. So look at geography. Where do I live?
And that means what are the additional concerns that I may have based upon where I live? If I live in high-density housing, which is normal for most people at the socioeconomic, vulnerable, marginalized end of society, there are certain benefits to being in high-density housing, and there are certain drawbacks. I.e. your idiot neighbor can light a fire in his kitchen, and all of a sudden you're out of a home.
So there are things to concern yourself with, but number one, think about your location. So you've got to understand where the heck I am and the problems of that. Then you've got to think about who am I responsible for. So I'm broke and stressed, but do I have a family?
So if the shizzy hits the fizzy, is it just me against the world, or am I going to have to grab a couple of really cool people and bring them along in this journey with me? That's important to know. And then you've got to think about if I have to leave my home, and this is important for those people that live in high-density housing. If I have to leave my home, where am I going?
The answer can't be nowhere. You're a smart individual. You're still alive in today's world. You've got to figure out where am I going.
It's free of charge. Figure it out. Whose house? Whose couch are you going to land on?
On a very rare occurrence where you have to abandon your residence in some form of evacuation, you need a couch to land on. For you. The thing here is think about your timeline, right? So you hear all these proper channels, right?
Stock up two years of food in the basement. I'm like, really? Let's talk to somebody who runs out of money before they run out a month and tell them they need to put two years of food in their basement. They're like, dude, I don't have some more nights supper secured.
And it's hilarious when you think about it and sad when you think about it, because there's a lot of people in our developed rich society that live like that. There's no need to have that. That's a podcast on public policy on a separate manner. So the whole idea here is you're just taking an assessment of how long do I want to be able to take care of myself on my own?
So this is where the 72-hour kit comes in. Are you happy with one week? And I hate to be like a teacher and respond to a question with a question, but everybody has a different level of personal risk tolerance. Risk perception, which means how you view risk in the world, your self-efficacy, your self-confidence, how you believe your ability to navigate difficult situations.
All of this informs your risk tolerance profile. It's actually a big complex profile that you can figure out. But the end result is you've got to answer the question, how long do I want to be able to take care of myself? And you have to be reasonable about it based upon your economic and realistic resources, right?
So think about it. Are you happy with a couple of days? If you're a smart individual and you think you can figure stuff out, then maybe you only need to have about a week's worth of stuff, right? You want to be able to handle a week.
And a week's worth of stuff doesn't mean supplies. A week's worth of stuff means a preparedness plan that handles a week, which means that coach that you're planning to go to, the individual said, yeah, dude, no worry. You can hang out here for a week. That's the preparedness plan timeline.
It's not a week of canned food. It's, you know, this is not what we're trying to get to. We're trying to get to how far out do you want to push that timeline where you've made the coordination free of charge that you're going to have a space and time to be taken care of. So figure that out.
The next thing, we're going to go right to what we talked about in this podcast. It's animalistic requirements, right? Preparedness is all about you as an animal in the environment. And the environment may be an urban, suburban environment.
So think about it. You're broke. You have no money. You're in precarious housing, potentially, which means you need to be a fairly mobile individual.
You can't get yourself tied down to two years of supplies in a kitchen that you can't grab in 15 minutes and run. And that's not really good when you're, you know, your idiot neighbor lights the apartment on fire and you've got, you know, three months worth of prepper stuff all packed up and all of a sudden you've got four minutes at three o'clock in the morning to grab one bag, throw some clothes on and head down the stairs with a wet cloth over your mouth. Yeah, good luck with your three months of supplies. So let's think about that logically.
First thing is shelter. You live somewhere. Fair enough. If you're homeless and listen to this podcast, well, I hope somebody helps you.
But the point being here is you probably got shelter. You have clothes because you haven't been arrested for running around naked. If you live in a cold weather environment, you probably have cold weather clothes. They're probably not the best, but you have them.
If you live in a warm environment, you have clothes. So you are far better off than you actually think about it. So as long as you're not outside exposed to the weather elements for extended period of time, you have sufficient shelter and you have a place to go to in time of evacuation and you have appropriate clothing for the weather. It may not even match.
It may not be the best in the world, but you're not going to die wearing it. So you have the clothes and the shelter to figure it out. And when you think about water, I live in Canada, right? We're the largest holder of fresh water in this freaking world.
We flush our toilets with fresh water. It's ridiculous. We have fresh water everywhere. We have potable water in all the taps.
Water is readily and freely available in Canada. You may have to walk 500 meters to a pond to get it. So really, in the end, all you need to do is have a pot. And you can get them at Value Village or Frenchies.
It's just a pot, man. And you have one probably that you cook your ramen noodles or your pasta. That's your preparedness plan right there. You got a pot?
You can boil water. You need a skill set of how to build a fire, right? So learn it. It's free of charge.
It's all over the internet. Go for a walk in the woods on a reasonable day where there's no fire ban. Try lighting a couple of small ones. Big lighters are dirt cheap.
Even if you don't have one, learn to rub two sticks together. Listen, you can do it anywhere. Learn to light a fire, and you have a pot, and you just solve the water crisis, right? You boil it.
You kill anything bad in it. You drink it. You're perfectly fine. You're going to survive.
And you have all the stuff that you need to do that at home. Again, again, you're not as bad off as you think you are. You have your preparedness stuff. Food.
Now, listen. This is the one that always is the detractor when it comes to people in socioeconomic class. Now, I get into fights all the time with people because I view food cost as something completely different. It's actually really cheap to eat healthy.
And I start, you know, what's that tag on YouTube or, sorry, Instagram or TikTok? What's the one sentence that'll start a fight? Well, here's mine. It's really cheap to eat healthy in Canada right now in 2022 in the middle of this inflation.
That's going to light a whole ton of people up. But it is. When you look at human diets from a singular perspective of trying to meet the food serving requirements that are in the Canada Food Guide, set aside that it's a political document. But if you look at that and try to feed based upon that, which a lot of food professors do and a lot of experts that you see on TV are all about trying to feed off that, well, good luck to you.
It's going to be really expensive. The human body needs three macronutrients, which are fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. And we can argue about the balance. So let's go one third, one third, one third.
You need roughly 2,000 calories a day. And there's a profile of about seven to nine micronutrients that keep you alive. If you examine food from that perspective and you buy pulses, raw grains, and some basic vegetables, you eat dirt, bloody, cheap. Like I'm talking, you can feed yourself quite happily and joyfully on $2 Canadian a day.
Yeah, I know you're going to argue with me, but you're wrong. Trust me, I researched this stuff. So you can eat, if you eat pulses, if you eat grains, if you eat long grain rice, if you eat what 95% of the non-Western people eat in the rest of this world, you can do that on $2 a day. Okay, so if you've got a timeline, you want to be, you just want to have an extra week's worth of stock.
I'm talking $14. Ask yourself, can you do $14? If you can't do $14, okay, then let's bring it down from two weeks. Let's go one week.
That's $7. You can stand on a street corner with a cup and get $7 in a day. So don't tell me you don't have $7, right? So $7 will get you a week's worth of basic, basic, non-happy tasting food that will keep you alive.
Now, once you've got that food sorted out, so listen, if you want 30 days, we're talking $60, and it may take you a significant amount of time to build that up. That's perfectly fine, right? So that's the idea of when you eat to what you want versus you eat to what your human body needs as an animal in the environment, you can meet that on almost next to no money in today's modern environment. So if you're feeling broke and stressed, there is a solution to feed yourself, very, very simply.
So you know what? Once you have all of that basic stuff met, right? If you live in a Western society, you have free healthcare, try to get it right now in line clinics, et cetera. If you've got access to the internet, which you do because you're listening to me, or you go to the library, you can get a book on first aid, right?
You don't need to take a first aid course. You need to watch YouTube videos on first aid, and you need to read a book that's free to borrow from the library on first aid. And by the way, that's another thing, eh? Remember, any skill you need to learn, as Elon Musk says, you don't need college, you don't need school.
Everything you want to learn and know how to do is available free on the internet or free in a book on the library. The only barrier to you learning all of the skills you need to be successful is that incredible person in the mirror. It is you that is the barrier, not society, right? This is about the attitude and accepting responsibility.
If you're broke and you need to earn more money, or you want to earn more money, then it's the only barrier to earning more money is you, right? Now, we can argue how much spare time you have, all of your commitments, blah, blah, blah. But you can't argue that all of the materials necessary are free of charge and free for you to access, for you to learn the new skill that you desire to earn you more money, right? That's available.
It is you who's making the conscious choice not to do that, right? So back to feeling stressed and broke power. So when your power goes out, and this is a big calamity that we look at in modern urban and suburban environments. If you're socioeconomically challenged, like I said, you probably live in high density housing, you live in an apartment building or something similar to that, maybe a multiplex, triplex, quadplex.
But what you're considering is your greatest threat is probably a power outage. So there's a whole bunch of other threats in the world, but think about it. When the power goes out and your heat turns off or your air conditioning turns off and your refrigerator turns off, that's probably your biggest concern that you want to work about. So you got to figure out where can you get free sources of power?
And I've said before, it's something that you got to consider. What is your minimum acceptable power profile? Like for your world to carry on and to continue, what amount of minimal power do you need to be able to generate on your own or find access to, to meet those needs? That's what you have to determine.
I call it the minimum power profile, call it whatever you will, but figure it out for yourself, right? So if you don't have money for a generator, you live in an apartment and you don't have money for a Jackery power bank or a solar power generator, et cetera, I completely get it. Got it, right? You got to figure out where.
there would be free sources around your city within a reasonable walk of your house, a center set up during a major power outage by your local municipality where you can walk up and plug in your cell phone charger and charge her up, free of charge. Have charger, will travel. It's a great saying. And you know what?
Your transport in life is probably going to be your feeder public transit, right? That's how a lot of people get around and a good bike. You know what? Cheap used bikes are not hard to find.
They're really not. I mean, no, you're not going to have a Giant or a Trek, but you're going to have a Canadian store, Canadian tire brand bike that's 15 years old. Watch YouTube, learn how to do bike repair, right? You got to figure out a way to get around.
It's not everybody else's job to give you free or cheap public transit because you have no money. It's your job to figure out how to get around, right? So get good exercise, a good pair of feet, good pair of shoes that you can get from Value Village and a bike that you can pick up on the free cycle or on Facebook re-purchase places. Now listen, basic, simple stuff, right?
This is not complicated. This is not overly complicated. You're actually far better positioned for preparedness than you realize when you listen to this. Hopefully at this point, you realize that I'm actually really, really well off compared to what I thought I was.
I'm stressed and broke. But when I look around with sitting in my apartment or sitting in my bedroom and things I have access to, I'm actually really far better off than I am. And if you're not stressed and broke and you're a working middle or middle-upper-class individual, I'd say do the same thing. Have a look around your house.
Consider your animalistic requirements, your minimal power profile, and your basic transport needs. I'm thinking you're probably well off for probably several weeks, if not a month, based upon simply what you already have in your house. Preparedness is free, right? It's taking the time to do these little assessments and have a look around.
But the most important thing that you can do, the most important thing, other than your attitudinal change, is community. Social capital and the people around you are the freest, greatest resource that you will ever get. I tell people all the time, don't buy a single piece of crap for preparedness. Spend your time investing in your community.
Build a village. Pool resources amongst your friends. Set up communication networks in your high-density housing in your building. Who's going to talk to who?
Knock on your neighbor's door, you know, 18 hours into a power outage. Know that there's somebody in your close proximity who is a marginalized individual, has some challenging needs, is elderly, and may need some assistance, but has no family in the area to help them out. Plan how to react to your normal situations and normal expected disruptions. Understand, you know what, what are you going to do when an earthquake happens in Ottawa?
Because we have them once every 10 or 15 years, and they can be pretty significant earthquakes, right? So if you live in the city of Ottawa, you've got to figure out what you're going to do when an earthquake happens. That's free of charge on the internet. I got ShakeOutBC as the best place to go.
Some of my very good colleagues and mentors work on ShakeOutBC. It's on the internet. It's free of charge. It doesn't cost you anything.
Go listen. Go watch. You'll know what to do in an earthquake, right? Get to know the vulnerable in your neighborhood.
Find out what your government, their intent is. If you, like, I live in the city of Ottawa. It's free of charge to go read the city of Ottawa's emergency plan, right? They don't do a very good job, and recent disasters are what they are, but at least you understand what your municipality is going to intend to do when the shizzy hits the fizzy.
It's all free. It's all freely available to you. It costs no money. So hopefully today at this point in this episode you realize that preparedness on a zero budget is a real thing.
It's 100% achievable. You can go to the moon with a whole bunch of Gucci crap. You can. But I'm here to tell you, preparedness is free.
If you're feeling stressed and broke, listen to this again, and it'll get you to where you need to be. So thank you very much for joining us this week on Inside My Canoe Head. We've got some great things coming out. We're now on Facebook, so look for the page Inside My Canoe Head.
We're going to start off on the reels and videos and TikToks in the coming weeks. On my YouTube channel, I have started a series on my Churchill River, Northern Saskatchewan canoe trip. Those are going to be coming out. We're going to periodically put out a couple of preparedness videos.
The first few are just going to be narrations about preparedness, and then we're going to get into some examples of some equipment that you already have around your house that is already free. And then we're going to do the Gucci episode, which is, hey, if you've got a whole bunch of spare cash, you can do this. So if you're interested in individual emergency preparedness, go over to my website at www.insidemycanoehead.ca. All our links are there.
Thank you very much. Drop by my Buy Me a Coffee page. Thanks for the comments on preparedness tips. And have yourself a great weekend, and stay safe.