Foreign.
Hello, and welcome to Live like the World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Miriam. I use she or they pronouns. And today I'm going to be interviewing our very own Inman about holding outdoor gatherings. But before I interview Inman about that, here is a little jingle from another proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcast. Pew, Pew, Pew. Kite Line is a weekly 30 minute radio program focusing on issues in the prison system. You'll hear news along with stories from prisoners and former prisoners as well as their loved ones. You'll learn what prison is, how it functions, and how it impacts all of us.
Behind the prison walls, a message is called a kite. Whispered words, a note passed hand to hand, a request submitted to the guards for medical care. Illicit or not, sending a kite means trusting that other people will bear it farther along until it reaches its destination. Here on Kiteline, we hope to share these words across the prison walls.
You can hear us on the Channel Zero Network and find out more at kitelineradio.noblogs.com Inman, how am I doing? How am I doing at being you?
Great. I don't know. That was too succinct.
Okay, well, could I suggest you interrupt me more? Because in my experience, being on the other end of this, interrupting Inman is usually my job. And since I'm being Inman, you must be being Miriam, so you better interrupt me a lot.
Whether this makes it into the episode or not, a funny anecdote is that we used to have to. We had to have a conversation once about the this Month in the Apocalypse segments because people were interrupting too much. But they were only interrupting me.
I was part of that conversation, which I think means.
Okay, okay, I have this funny thing, okay, this is tangent on a tangent, but I'm, you know when you're like in a space, like a physical space, and you're like, maybe you're walking, maybe you're like in a crowded room and like someone walks past, is trying to like navigate through people and there's like the. Are you the person who's gonna move and do you project as that? And I project as the person who's going to move. Like people. Like there could be like a huge room of people, so many ways to go. And people are like, nah, that person's going to fucking move. And I'm just, I'm just interruptible is what I'm saying. I'm very interruptible.
Well, I'm gonna do my. I almost interrupted you to say that. I would be doing my absolute best not to interrupt you today. That's where we're at. So, Inman, without further interruptions, what are we talking about today?
So the thing that I want to talk about today is kind of some of the basics of how to host an outdoor gathering. And I'm not going to get super in depth into a lot of these systems because we could do entire episodes about each one of these systems. I'm going to be talking about big infrastructure and just like, what different systems you might want to consider when doing an outdoor gathering. And this is like, coming from someone who, like, I think like one of the first times I went camping by myself when I was like 15 or 16, I, like, just didn't even consider bringing, like, I was like, like sitting there like, I have. How do I shit or wash my hands? And then I was like. And then I, like, had a problem about it, you know.
Whom amongst us.
Yeah. So just kind of some big brain things about, like, systems to think about, but also some fun things I have some fun things to say about to add into outdoor gatherings, because fun is also a key logistical factor, in my opinion.
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Then let's get into this.
What?
First of all, why are we doing this? Why. Why might we want to organize an outdoor gathering in the first place? Why not an indoor gathering? Why not? No gathering.
Yeah, well, you can do no gathering. That's perfect. That's perfectly valid. But if you want to do no gathering, then there's maybe a different episode or you can listen to this episode and say, no, I'm good. No gathering. This is. This is not as good of a joke as I thought it would be. So there's a lot of reasons to do. To do a big outdoor gathering, and one of them is maybe you, Miriam. I have a confession.
Please.
I'm a burner. I'm not a burner. I'm not a burner. I'm sorry.
Look, I mean, I. I love and accept you for who you are. And. And also I have spent a lot of time at parties nodding my head and looking desperately for an exit when I encounter burners. Not all. Hashtag. Not all burners.
Yeah, I. I have a weird soft spot for. For burners because I think they're like, it's like. Or specific kinds of burners, you know, not like techie burners. Like, I don't think anyone likes techie burners.
No, the old art burners.
Yeah, old art burners who like and. Okay, so old. I haven't answered your Question yet. I'm on a tangent, but yeah, old art burners or even rainbow gathering, like kids, family, whatever.
Ooh, controversial.
I know, controversial. But they set up some pretty cool fucking outdoor gathering systems. And I know people who are like such fucking nerds about like, I'm going to go to the rainbow gathering because I want to talk to this one person about permaculture setups for like reusing wastewater for like four hours. And I was like, that's fucking cool.
Yeah. There are actually a lot of very cool people who do this stuff. And I do want to say the first burner I ever met was former train hopping kid who did. Who I met working on tall ships and who did like rigging to rig giant art projects in at, you know, at Burning Man. And shout out Devo if you're listening. You are actually awesome. And I take back what I said about burners. I was talking about the tech bros who are also burners and not burners in general.
Yeah, yeah, but there's a lot of reasons that you, you might want to set up a gathering outdoors and it might be that you're setting up a regional burn. It might be that you're setting up some cool art thing. It might be that you're LARPers and you want to go larp in the woods with your friends. It might be that you just want to go camping with a bunch of your friends and it's no longer just you camping by yourself. Like some of the logistics and structural systems get a little bit more complicated. So, you know, it might just be fun. It also might be because you want to do like a kind of like I've been, I've been going to a lot of like, kind of like regional, like, like lefty gatherings this summer and I think they're really cool. And we're gonna do an episode about like my thoughts on like these kind of like regional gatherings and how fucking cool I think they are. And this is kind of like a precursor to that. Or you might just be doing. Maybe you're hosting workshops. I've seen places where it's like, okay, we want to do this workshop. We don't have a venue for it. Or the workshop is climbing trees. So it's like we need to go out and be amongst the trees and there's no indoor venue for it. So then it's suddenly, oh, we have to figure out how 200 people are gonna eat and shit for a week. It also might be that, I don't know, maybe there's a future or Preparedness reality where people gotta live in the woods. And it's good to think about and build infrastructure around that kind of stuff now because we live in an increasingly terrifying world. So, yeah, those are kind of my big whys. It could be fun. It could be for location. It could be purely logistical because you don't have an indoor venue for housing a bunch of people. And this could be out in the woods, or it could be in an urban setting, or it could be because you have a new lifestyle that has been forced upon you. Who knows?
Yeah, I mean, there are many things about doing an outdoor event that are logistically harder, but one thing that is way logistically easier is Covid safety and respiratory illness safety. It is way safer to do outdoor gatherings still and want to encourage people to do that also.
Yeah, totally.
What kind of outdoor space do we need for this? You've talked about doing this rurally and urbanly, but what kind of spaces are we looking for? How do we pick out a space?
Yeah, so picking out a space, this. This is so situationally dependent that I'm going to be a little bit vague about picking out spaces. If you're outdoors, if you're doing this rurally, one really cool thing is depending on where you live, maybe there's national park or national forest, and there's a lot of these kind of like, I actually always forget the difference between national park and national forest. I think what I'm thinking of is national forest, but there's these. You can essentially, like, do free, dispersed camping for like up to two weeks before you, like, have to air quotes, move to a different place. And there's so many of these kind of like, dispersed camping setups that are, like, usually free, depending on where you live. And the thing about them being dispersed camping is that it's like, there's not, like, amenities that are already set up. You know, where there's like a lot of campgrounds that there's like a bathroom and there's water. Sometimes there's like RV and electrical hookups and there's like, you basically drive and pull up. So, like, these campgrounds, these like, dispersed campgrounds are generally, like, not necessarily places like that and something that you want to look for when you are looking for places like this are like, you do want to have some kind of judge for how big your gathering might be. Is it 30 people or is it 200 people? And thinking about logistically, like, okay, how much space does 200 or probably not 200, but like 100 tents take up? And this is A really big one is parking. Finding a place that has enough accessible parking might be the biggest determining factor for where in the outdoor realm you do your gathering. And I've seen that be the main logistical concern for gatherings before is just like, where the fuck are this many people going to park a car?
And once parked, how do we get people from where they have parked to where the gathering is?
Yeah, which is an alternative. If you have a spot that's a really good spot in general, but you can't fit 50 cars there, then finding kind of off site parking and setting up little shuttles is a perfectly fine alternative, albeit logistically demanding. This can also be a really big consideration when you're thinking about safety and security. And that would be the next thing with when you're looking for a spot is how much do you have to consider safety and security. And safety and security in this sense. Meaning how out in the open do you want to be and how tucked away and completely under the radar do you want to be? Um, whether that's because, like, of your new lifestyle or because maybe your gathering has a lot of things that other people would consider obscene and you just don't want them to see it.
You know, like human bodies.
Like human bodies just existing. And so doing like, kind of like off site parking is like a fun way to have not necessarily the exact location of your gathering be as findable, because there isn't just like a large mass of cars there.
Well, it makes it less likely that people who don't want to see human bodies existing will accidentally stumble upon human bodies existing, which is safer for them, I guess, since they're so bothered by human bodies. But safer for you in case they call the cops.
Yeah, because they are fed up with your human body existing. It started as funny and it got grim because it's just real, because human body having a fucking body is just becoming difficult to have. And that's really sad. So another thing that you want to consider for space and location is just, is it a densely wooded area? Are there places where the amount of people that are coming to your gathering can kind of gather in one space? So it's like finding places where there's open clearings or where the topography isn't going to make it impossible for people to actually gather or do things comfortably? I've also seen, like, I've seen outdoor gatherings in the woods where like, the organizers, like, paid a lot of attention to just like, parking and like, like elevation and like clearings and things like that. And there were people who Were with relative with relatively not complicated logistics like booping around in wheelchairs and like other mobility devices. And it was really fucking cool to see like out in the middle of the woods. Yeah, those are my kind of big things for where to do something. Another thing you want to think about is water drainage where you're setting your thing up. If it's a place where it is likely to rain, is it in a place that's just gonna get fucking washed and flooded out by that rain, or is it a place where there's enough kind of drainage and topography working in your favor that a small or even moderately sized rainstorm isn't going to like turn your gathering into a fire fest.
Right. And like nothing, nothing makes a space like difficult to navigate and get around. Like, oh, it was, it was accessible to people using wheelchairs until it became mud, you know.
Yeah.
So, okay, we've got all these people, they're gathered. We have an outdoor space. They're in it. Inman they're all hungry.
Well, that's their problem.
Oh no, we are the fyre fest.
No, it's not their problem. But feeding people is a really big question. And there's a few different models that you can do. And it's kind of like the models that you can do are kind of like a little bit based on what is logistically possible or feasible to do. And so I kind of think of them as these little tiers. And so one model that I have seen for this was for a smaller gathering. There was like, I don't know, maybe like 30, 30, 40 people there. And there wasn't a lot of like big kitchen infrastructure that people had access to. And so a limiting factor for the organization of the gathering was, okay, well we want to do this thing. We don't have the resources currently to create this big kitchen infrastructure. And so they used this model that I'm going to talk about, which is the come self sufficient and bring something to share. So for gatherings of a certain size, you can do stuff like this. And sometimes it's more convenient, sometimes it's less convenient. The idea being that if you don't have access to kind of big kitchen infrastructure, you can have people come prepared to basically just be camping for however long that time is. And that cuts out something that the organizers of the event have to think about in terms of food. Where I see this kind of get funny or complicated is it's like this is not necessarily preferable for a lot of situations because then you have. Hopefully people are coming in small little Groups. And so it's these little pods of people who are being self sufficient together. But you're potentially recreating a lot of systems like 5 to 15 or 20 times. And everyone's bringing the same things to reproduce the same systems for their little pods. And that takes up a lot of space. And that also takes up a lot of time in people's days. But it works for a lot of situations. If you can't do the logistics for larger food infrastructure, then you can do this model, and I've seen it too, where it's like people did basically become self sufficient, bring something to share. And what one person had to share is that they brought these two big turkey burners and big pots. And then at the end of the gathering, everyone threw their shit together and there was a giant soup. And that was really cute.
That's beautiful.
But you can, and I think this works better for larger gatherings, is that you can set up these kind of like large camp kitchens. And it takes a lot of logistics. We could spend episodes just talking about building these little kitchens. So I'm gonna kind of do a rough overview of them. So doing like an outdoor camp kitchen, you need to set up a space to do that. And I've seen people do a bunch of pop up tents and I've seen people set up elaborate tarp structures or advanced tarpology as I like to call it. And depending on where you're camping or where you are, tarpology can be a really great solution to creating these little structures. I've seen people take either many smaller tarps or just one giant tarp and turn them into these beautiful outdoor hangout and whatever structures to keep the weather and the sun off of people. And yeah, I've seen some absolutely marvelous tarp structures that I wish I had like a photo gallery of because they were beautiful. And then you need. So then your main things that you're gonna need are large cooking surfaces. You know, like a Coleman 2 burner stove is not gonna be the best thing to cook for a hundred people. And one thing, an apparatus that I really like is basically these. They make these like two turkey burner like stands.
This is the second time you've said turkey burner. And the first time you said it, I pretended I knew what it meant. But I can't do that. I can't do that the second time. Inman, what is a turkey burner?
Oh yeah, sorry. I grew up in the south and so a little bit more common nomenclature, a turkey burner is a large propane Powered cooking surface. It's like a propane burner, kind of like a Coleman 2 burner stove, but enormous. And they were really mass produced for deep frying turkeys.
Oh, this is that thing that people use to burn their house down near the end of November. Got it, Got it.
Yep. Yeah. And so like, it's like a large. It's like a metal thing. They make them with like, they make like single ones that people use for deep frying turkeys. And then they make these like taller ones that are like double and they're kind of like counter height. And they have two burners and you hook a regular like barbecue grill propane tank up to them and they create these two very large, very powerful heating surfaces that you can use to heat very large pots and pans. Like on one of these things you can like boil. Like my brain can't do volume very well. Like 10 gallons is the 10 gallons of water pretty easily. I feel like. I don't know if that's a lot or a little.
I think it depends on context. It's a lot to drink.
Five gallons.
It's not very much for a lake.
Yeah, five gallon pots. Five gallon pots. So they're these really cool things and they kind of allow for big pots and stuff like that, or large cooking apparatus for feeding large quantities of people and kind of like big pots and pans. It's like you can get a lot of big pots and pans from thrift stores. You can get a lot of big pots and pans from like Asian import grocery stores often have a lot of giant pots and pans for really cheap. And a giant wok is a great thing for cooking for large amounts of people.
It's the kind of thing that people tend to not always take with them when they move. So you can also have pretty good luck dumpster diving or garage sailing. Giant pots, I have found.
Yeah, yeah. And then another thing you're going to need is prep surfaces. You're going to need tables, more folding tables than you think you need. The more folding tables in a kitchen, the better. If it's 90% table, that's great. That's a little bit hyperbolic, but you get my, you get my point. You're going to need all the other regular kitchen apparatus, you know, cooking utensils, cutting boards, knives, containers to store food in. And I think this is like a big one that people overlook is just like what to then like. So you've cooked food, what are you then storing it in besides the pot that it was cooked In.
You're storing it in the hungry people.
You're storing it in the hungry people. But you know, in between the pot and the hungry people or like leftovers, they make these like giant, like food storage totes that get used in kitchens a lot. And they're plastic, they're sealable, they're big, they're really useful for a lot of things. And I could get into more nitty gritty about kitchen stuff, but I'm not going to. Oh, spices. Bring spices to your gathering. Bring things to flavor food. Please, for the love of God, bring things to flavor food. And then you're going to need food itself. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Sorry. Before we move on from kitchen setup, I would just like to put in a shout out for thinking about the placement of your kitchen setup in relation to your sanitation setup.
Setup. Yes.
Because if you don't do that, you will be learning just how many pathogens follow the well trodden path known as the fecal oral route, which is no good. You don't, you don't want a norovirus or cholera outbreak or whatever. Noro is norovirus. Fecal oro. I don't remember. Anyway, you don't want that. You don't want that. Please, please, please practice good hygiene in general. But part of like it begins with where you put the poop and where you put the kitchen. And they should be far apart. And logistically think about, you know, which way water runs and stuff like that.
Yeah, yeah. Think about your drainage and. Yeah. Actually, before I get into food, let's talk a little bit about this. So like one big part of hygiene is just being able to wash all of your cooking stuff. And so like setting up some kind of three compartment sink essentially, which you can do in just like giant plastic tubs. And that's how I see it get done a lot. These kind of like big restaurant bus tubs can really easily get turned into a DIY three compartment sink with just hot water for rinsing compost accumulation, the actual Soap, washy water, etc. And then you, for large gatherings like this, like even though you've washed stuff with soap, it's good to sanitize stuff.
And it's really good. It's really good to sanitize. I looked it up. Norovirus is fecal oral. Please, please sanitize.
Yeah, I got norovirus once and it was terrible. It's terrible.
Yeah, it sucks. It sucks. Nobody wants it. Nobody want. And you don't want your outdoor gathering to be the one where Everyone got norovirus?
Yeah. Yeah. So use a sanitizer compartment in your sink setup and it's as easy as using bleach and water. And you know, I'm gonna say it here, I wasn't planning on getting into specifics, but a half an ounce of bleach per gallon of water makes a really good sanitizing solution.
Saves lives. Literally saves lives.
Yeah. So don't skip on sanitizing stuff and like sanitize dishes, cooking utensils, cooking surfaces, all the tables that you've set up. Just sanitize everything, you know? And I bet you're gonna. I bet some really excited restaurant worker is gonna come to your gathering and like be happy to take care of that shit. Literally. Cooking for 100 or 200 people could also be its own episode. So we're gonna go over some pretty basics. Acquiring food. There are so many ways to acquire food. From dumpster diving from food banks, to buying food, to getting large amounts of dry ingredients from like wholesale places like, or wholesale ish places like Costco or Restaurant Depot. You can get really cheap, large food and it's really cool. It's like the place to go if you're like suddenly like, like I've had to do many times like I don't want to buy 501 pound bags of beans, I want one 50 pound bag of beans. Where do I get it? And it's at places like Restaurant Depot. You can also get a lot of big stuff from Asian grocery stores. Asian grocery stores are really wonderful little treasure troves for a lot of food infrastructure that often gets siloed into these membership only places, which I think is really, really cool. And as far as what to feed people, I'm not gonna really get into that a lot, but get creative and make sure that you have sources of protein. I would say that's one of the bigger ones, is making sure that you have sources of protein that everyone can eat. And think about common allergens and not buying a ton of not basing your food around a thing that is probably a common allergen for a lot of people.
And if you are cooking something containing common allergens, please put a little sign up or maybe even a big sign up next to that pot when people are getting food.
Yeah, and I'll say like a big thing is like a lot of people with complicated food stuff are gonna probably bring a lot of their own stuff to be self sufficient because they are them and they know how. They probably have some experience with food and large gatherings being Difficult to access for them for various reasons, but the joy on people's faces when they go to the gathering, and I've seen this because I do a lot of food serving at these things, is when someone comes up and is like, okay, but is there something without alliums that's also gluten free, that is vegan and is protein? And I'm like, there is. And they're like, the look on their face that they get to partake in the communal food experience is just so wonderful. So go the extra mile with that stuff because it's important to include people and because it takes a lot of the burden off of people to have to figure out all that stuff themselves.
Yeah, it's really nice to do that. It's an extra step in organizing. But if you ask people to send in dietary needs, that can be a part of the planning. When you're thinking about what you're going to do, or you can just ask people to let you know when they get there. That's another thing you can do.
Yeah, yeah. A big thing I want to talk about, which is a huge logistical constraint, especially for large gatherings, is water.
Oh, yeah. People need that to be alive.
Yeah, people need that to be alive. And camps like this need a lot of it for other things like washing dishes or cooking or sanitation and hygiene. And water can be complicated depending on where you are and where you're doing this and where your nearest potable water source is. You might be camping in a place where there are wells set up that have potable water. And that's incredible. But that's not going to be most places where you can set up camps like this. And so I see a lot of people having to kind of like truck in a lot of water. And you can do this in a variety of ways. There's groups that just bring in their milk crate after milk crate of gallon packaged water. And that's one way to do it. It's not the most efficient way to do it, but it's a way to do it. They also make large water storage containers, these five and seven gallon water cubes, as they call them.
Yeah.
And that's how I see. That's more often how I see a lot of camps get set up is like someone is just committed to going and filling up these container, these water cubes with potable water and are using it for. And are like bringing it into a thing. You might notice that there's a lot of systems and if you're organizing a thing like this, it's really great to kind of. If you have like a group of people that are organizing it, it's really great to of have little departments or whatever. So. And so your only job is in the organizing or not only job, but your main job is to do water. You get to be the water czar or the. As I live, we would always call them the shitter czar, which we'll get to shitters soon.
I don't know why everyone's always gotta be czars. I know we had, you know, globally. I think we've made our point about czars pretty effectively. Whether we're pro or anti. I don't know why we keep assigning people to be czars.
I don't either, but it's the most common phrase and it's even in anarchy spaces.
Exactly.
Yeah. It's funny.
And I don't want the person assigned to fill up the water tanks to be sure. Shot to death in a basement in Yekaterinburg. So, like, maybe we just start calling them something else.
The shitter. I don't know how to pronounce.
Oh, well, we love commandants. We could say coordinator. We could say guy. You could say person.
I've also. I think I've also wrangler.
I like wrangler.
Mmm.
Fairies are good. We are pro fairy.
Yeah, pro fairy. Pro fey. I'm gonna move off of. Already moved off of food. We're on water. Oh. So another thing with water, depending on, like, where your sources of this water are, like, you determining the potability of the water is also very important. Like maybe you're somewhere where the most convenient thing to do is to, like, there's a river and so it's like the most convenient thing to do. I don't actually know if it's safe to treat water from rivers. This is where I actually don't know a whole lot about. A lot of stuff is like water sources and water treatment. So I'm not going to actually get into a lot of it, except to say that, like, make sure that the source of your water is actually potable and whatever system you're using to treat that water is well researched.
So.
So that people don't get sick and sometimes that can. Whatever. I'm not going to actually get into water treatment because it's a thing I don't actually know a lot about. Isn't that a great thing? You know, just rant about something that you actually don't know a lot about. Isn't that most podcasts?
Listen, I just learned that it's potable and not potable.
So wait, is it potable or potable? I don't know. I said potable, but maybe it's potable. I don't know words. Whatever it is, make sure that it's the correct one, that it needs to be. I'm very credible.
It's less important that you pronounce it correctly than that you do it correctly.
Yes, I want to talk about shit. I got.
I was hoping you would. And moving from food to shit is the correct thing to do, both in terms of, like, biologically how that happens, but also in terms of high hygiene. You should go in that direction and not the other direction.
Yeah. So going out into the woods and shitting just by yourself can be a logistical conundrum. As I've said, figuring out how 200 people shit for, like, four days, that's like. That's potentially like eight to 1600 shits. Wait, did I just do bad math? I don't. I don't know.
I don't know. I mean, you did do bad math.
2 times 4, 8. Maybe people are shitting once a day. Maybe people are shitting every other day. Maybe people are shitting twice a day. I'd say, yeah, okay, 400 to 1600 shits.
You're doing bad math in that. You're making me think about how many people shit how many times a day. And I don't care for that. But we're holding an outdoor gathering, and we're going to make it safe and pleasant, so carry on.
And one good reason to make it safe and pleasant is because a lot of people, when camping, especially if they're not the most accustomed to camping, is that they get shit anxiety, and then they don't shit. And then that can cause some health complications if someone's not shitting for days at a time, especially out of anxiety. And, yeah, shitters, there's a lot of fun ways to set them up. I saw this really beautiful thing recently, which was like a. It was like a trench shitter, but not a normal trench shitter. And so it's like, a lot of times people dig these, like, long trenches, like, long, deep trenches for shitters.
Familiar. Familiar with that genre of shitter?
Yeah. And, you know, you squat and you shit, and then you, like, kind of bury the trench as you go, and it's pretty efficient, you know, and it gives people a thing to, like. You don't have to, like, squat over, like, a large pit. You don't have to worry about falling into the pit. It's just like a nice narrow trench, you know, and sometimes to go the extra mile, people set up these. You can get them at a lot of like medical supply places. There are these like portable toilet seats. They're like made out of like plastic or aluminum or whatever and it's like they're. They're very lightweight and it's basically like a toilet seat on a movable portable frame. And a lot of times people bring those to places like this because it makes it a lot more convenient for a lot more people to ship.
Yeah, not everyone can sustain a squatting position for the length of time it takes them to shit.
Yeah, and I saw this one group go the absolute extra mile and they took one of these and basically built with a five gallon bucket and some plywood, built a platform for it and a chute.
Okay, well now that's just a bathroom. That's. That's just a. They've just created an actual bathroom, a.
Room, but it was on a trench. And so you like could just slide it down the trench. It was beautiful.
That rules.
It was absolutely beautiful. It was a poop chute.
I should have asked you this before we started recording, but are we going to be mature about this or.
No, we don't have to be.
Okay, great. Good to know.
Am I being mature about it? So far?
Too soon to say.
And you know, there's other ways to deal with shit. There are many ways to deal with your shit and trenches is one of them. It's just burying your shit and you should look up exactly how deep and etc. Those things need to be. But another way to deal with shit is some people, especially for, you know, smaller gatherings and they might, people just might have different feelings about like kind of pack in, pack out, leave no trace stuff. But some people just set up these 5 gallon bucket humanure shitters, which are basically the poop chute, but there's no hole at the bottom. And you know, you. Whatever thing you're using for a composting toilet for like organic material, you're also doing. So it's basically setting up these little composting toilets and then that is sometimes getting packed out. And some people go to like RV septic drains to like dump it and stuff like that, which is like a weird infrastructure piece for getting rid of shit in buckets that a lot of people don't know exists. Or maybe someone has like a humanure set up at their home where they're taking it to deal with. But that is another way to deal with shit. Also, if you're doing this in a more urban environment. For the outdoor play that I organize every year, it was like we had these big bathroom issues because we were like, okay, well, the building that we're next to is not ADA accessible, which means that the bathroom is absolutely not ADA accessible. And so we just rented porta potties and these like, 88. I was gonna ask about that. And they are surprisingly cheap to rent, depending on where you are. I think also the people just liked us. They were like, what are you doing? And we're like, we're doing a play. And they were like, oh, that's cool. And they charged us, like, half of what they should have. It was great. Aww. But getting these little porta potties, you know, especially for then having, like, ADA bathrooms, I don't know how ADA friendly ADA porta potties actually are to people, but it is an option. So now that we've dealt with the shit, people are going to need to wash their hands.
God, I hope so.
Yeah. And I'm going to go out and say it. Hand sanitizer alone is not enough.
Thank you for saying.
Is not enough. And there's a lot of fun and creative ways to set up kind of like little hand washing stations. And here's a couple that I really like. I've seen. Like, so there's the, like, you have like a water container that has like a spout and you just like flick it and then water comes out. And that's a fine thing. Like, they're cheap and easy to set up. You know, it's just like a container that holds water often for drinking, but don't drink this water. And you flick the spout and water pours out with gravity and you have soap next to it, and someone washes their hands with soapy water. And then there's hand sanitizer as well. Because hand sanitizer is a sanitizer. It does not remove dirt and other toxins and waste. You need to actually wash your hands. And so another way that I've seen it, which I really like because you don't have to touch it with your hands, is these five gallon buckets with tubing running out of the bottom. And they're set up to these little, like, bulbs that get used in plumbing. Sometimes I forget what they're exactly called, but they're these little, like, rubber bladders that act as pumps. And so you have tubing from a bucket into these little bladder balls. And then the tubing then goes up and is elevated so that you Step on the pump with your foot and water shoots out onto your hands and it allows this kind of like no touch system for being able to wash your hands, which I really like. Because you don't touch it.
Yeah, I like the not touching it. That's like the motion activated sinks, except it sounds like it would actually work.
Yeah, there's also these things. I had this when I lived off grid. It's like a five gallon like water dispenser like thing. You know, like the blue plastic things with the narrow necks. Why am I not thinking of what these are called? And you put a little battery operated electric pump on them and it like has a tube that goes down and they have a lot of them that are motion activated and the charge lasts for a really long time. So this is another way that you can set this up that is a little more, a little less low tech, but it's less like a thing that you have to build. And those little pumps are pretty cheap. They're like, I don't know, like 10, 15 bucks. And a lot of them are motion activated now. So those things are really cool. There's a lot of weird apparatus that now exists because people got really into, because industry got really into selling these novelties to people who live in vans and like to go camping.
Ah, okay.
So vanlifers did do something for the world, which is that it made. I hate that I've said that. Which is that a lot of this weird like miniaturized apparatus now exists because there was a market for it. And I hate that. That's how shit works, right?
Like, what if we just made things that people need instead of waiting for like a specialized market to come along?
Yeah, exactly.
All right, well, people are here, they are fed, they have pooped and they have washed their hands after. But I'm sorry to tell you this, but the weather has turned terrible. What are we going to do?
Yes, the weather has turned terrible. And you know, we've already done some prep for this. You know, we've picked a site that has good drainage that is not going to turn into a flood, flash flood area. And we've already learned a lot about tarpology from our kitchen setup. And we've put the shitter in a place that is not going to flood into the place where people are hanging out or cooking or sleeping. You know, so we've already done a lot to remediate some of the unseen effects of weather. And so dealing with the actual weather, it's like we can't always plan for that. And shit's gonna happen. And the best thing that you can do is to have some kind of safety plan for known things like a freak accident happens. Maybe you don't have a safety plan for the freak accident. That's the giant hailstorm that hasn't happened in 200 years. Dealing with the weather can be as simple as looking at the weather, having a weather radio, having someone whose role it is to check the weather radio in case there is something developing and then just developing some kind of plan for remediating that, which that plan might be telling people, hey, we gotta leave because X is happening and we are not prepared for that or it will overwhelm the preparations that we have made. Yeah, I don't have a magic how to deal with weather thing. It's untamable.
But it's about preparedness as, as is so much else.
Yeah, exactly. And this kind of nestles into the next thing I want to talk about, which is safety and security. There's a lot of different things you can do. I've been to gatherings where people were really hyper aware of security and people were paying attention to it and participating in the secureness of the site a lot. And you know, this included like teams of people who would like essentially pull like guard duty. And it would. And it could also involve like radio communications and shit. You want to get good security for your event, Find the radio nerds. Find the people who are like just looking for an excuse to use their radios. And those people are probably great people to set up your security. I'm saying this, no other qualifications needed. Obviously I'm joking, but I found that radio nerds, as opposed to martial art nerds are probably a better choice for setting up security for your event.
You know what, that's a really, that's a really good point. And I think one of the struggles that I've always had with people running security is that the people who want to run security are often the people you don't want anywhere near running security. And approaching it by saying, hey, who here is great with radios and wants to play with radios all weekend Is probably such a better way to find the people that you actually want in a, in a conflict or crisis type situation than finding the people who are like. Who fancies themselves a good punching man? You know, because like actually that, that person you don't want doing security.
Yeah, there, there are, there are good punching non gendered men that I absolutely. That I would love to have do security. But yeah, as like it. But it might not be the Person who. Yeah, and I think that's like a good point to walk away from with it is like, yeah, but the key thing is to just have some kind of plan in place for different things that could happen. Whether it's weather, whether it's Nazis, whether it's Nazis. It could be Nazis.
It could be.
Yeah. And I hate to have to say that, but it could be. And just having some sort of plan in place and deciding how you as an organizing group want to respond to that is as much as I will say about that in our brief little window, but having a way for people to communicate and having a plan in place for dealing with those things, even if the plan is vague, even if the plan is like, we go here and then we figure it out, but making sure that there are people who are paying attention to those things and thinking about them so that when whatever happens, happens, there's at least someone who's like, it is my role. My role has kicked in to engage this infrastructure or whatever.
Yeah. And I think in an outdoor event, but also any event, there should be a specific plan in place for cops showing up. And that's like, separate but related to the Nazis showing up. But like, if cops show up, it shouldn't be a what do we do now? Conversation. It should be a like, ah, we now activate plan. The cops have shown up.
Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, these things might be very different. And another good kind of preparation thing into going into this is like knowing the laws around where you are and what you're doing, knowing what land designation you're on. Is it BLM land? Is it national forest? What are the rules around dispersed camping, which you can do whatever you want, but knowing what the laws are beforehand is a good idea so that you know what's at stake.
And that includes knowing things like, what are the. I mean, we mentioned before, people having human bodies? Like, what are the laws around people having human bodies? Do the laws change in regard to what organs the person is in possession of in terms of having their shirt off or things like that? Like, just know the law. So that when somebody comes up and is. Is having a conflict with law enforcement around this, you know what the situation is.
Yeah. And know what agencies you might have to interact with. Is it like a police department? Is it a sheriff's department? Is it like a park service? Is it fish and wildlife? Which my terrifying example of this is, like, I used to do a lot of border aid work, and I was driving behind a fish and wildlife truck once, and I saw the fish and wildlife truck pull over to the side of the road. And the agent got out with a giant assault rifle and just started sprinting through the hills.
Jesus Christ.
And I was like, I didn't think this is what Fish and wildlife did. Granted, I was in a border zone.
But don't you wish that when we said, you're dealing with fish and wildlife, we meant that, like, there are some fish and also some wildlife here.
Yeah. Or that, like, a helpful park ranger was gonna, like, come and, like, teach you about, like, fungus, you know?
Yeah. Come tell me about the moss Ranger Rick, like.
Yeah. Yeah.
Nope. All right, so the people are here. They're fed, they're pooped, they're washed, they're safe. And then they're bored.
They're bored. Oh, wait, Sorry. I want to say one thing before getting bored. And this is just a funny anecdote.
Tell me if. Well, that's a great way around boredom is to tell a funny anecdote. So tell me a funny anecdote.
I don't know if I'm suggesting this in your safety plan as having some way to deal with conflict. I think it's always a good idea to have some in your safety plan. Something for. What do we do if conflict arises amongst us?
Definitely.
It's good to talk about. It's good to have that in your back pocket. That being said, one time at a large GAD outdoor gathering, I was a member of the conflict mediation team. And by the end of the week long gathering, I was the only remaining member of the conflict mediation team because everyone else on it either had to abdicate because they were doing too many other things or and this was more often because they were engaged in conflicts that needed to be mediated. That's incredible.
You've told me this story before, and it is my favorite. Yeah, like, conflict comes to us all.
Yeah, it does. But fun. How to have fun. So my favorite gathering activity. And we're going to talk more about, like, what can happen at a gathering in another episode when people make bingo cards. We talk about the theoretical bingo cards that we didn't have stuff on. But where are the actual bingo cards that we do have stuff on? And bingo is just the most fun camp activity. I fucking love it. I'm addicted to, like, completing it.
Yes. No, I'm sorry I interrupted you. In my eagerness to. To agree about bingo cards. I have several times and often been part of groups that when helping out at large actions, like large street actions, make bingo cards for the types of people and experiences you have at those which actually resulted in me once running up and thanking a person who was doing homophobic heckling of a, of a queer liberation action because I had homophobic heckler on my bingo card and had not encountered one yet. So I was like, oh my gosh, thank you also. Fuck you. I win.
Oh my God, I love that story.
It makes things more fun. It's true.
Yeah. Another thing you can do to have fun, and I see this at a lot of gatherings now and I love it, is even though you're in the woods, you can have a rave.
Oh yeah, you can have a rave.
You can have a rave anywhere. Anywhere. And that is another fun way to sometimes find like people who are really into infrastructure building is like find the people who like doing like not indoor raves, you know, not like club raves, like like, I'm gonna say a controversial thing, real raves, DIY raves. Because those people usually have a whole setup and know what they're doing. And there's tons of little setups that you can do for that. There's so many little like weird 12 volt systems which we'll do a whole episode about some other time is 12 volt electrical systems. But you know, it can be as simple as the age old shopping cart dance party which is some car batteries rigged up to an inverter.
Hell yeah.
That can power your rave experience. And so many other things that you can do at gatherings that we'll get into in another episode when I espouse all my feelings about why I think hanging out with your friends in the woods and making new friends in the woods is a really cool and really good idea.
I think you've made a good case for it as things currently stand.
Yeah. And I would say it's like a lot of these systems that we're talking about. These are all, this is all reproducing a lot of daily life stuff. And so if you're a group that's doing mutual aid, that's doing just preparedness in general for you or your larger community, then building and having any one of these pieces of infrastructure, like a large camp kitchen, if you have a large camp kitchen, like shed that's like in your back pocket that you can just whip out for like gatherings or any other emergencies or like things like that, then that's fucking awesome. Like similar. If you like, if you're, if you like have like the. I have all the apparatus to like allow 200 people to make 1600 shits just in your back pocket, like not there. Yeah. Don't put the shit in your back pocket.
Well, exactly. And like, we talked about why you might want to hold outdoor gatherings. And part of this is like, this is also practice, you know, not necessarily for living in the woods specifically, but like, let's say there's a hurricane and your neighborhood is without services, without normal access to things. And it's like, well, we could start from scratch figuring out how to feed people and how to dispose of waste and how to take care of people and how to entertain people. Or the like, half a dozen people who have organized large scale outdoor gatherings can be like, all right, let's do this. Let's set up a camp kitchen. I know how to do that. Let's set up a sanitation system. I know how to do that. And like, just fucking get going. Because you've done it before. And you can then teach those skills to other people when they're needed in a crisis more easily than you can figure it out on the fly, never having done it before.
Yeah. And all of these systems that we've talked about today are pretty scalable solutions for dealing with a lot of this stuff. Yeah, it's great practice. It's a great way to build organizing capacity with your local groups too. Especially if you divvy up the kind of acquisition of this stuff. It's like, find the people who are excited about setting up the large camp kitchen, find the radio nerds who are excited about setting up communication infrastructure, and then do a gathering where you can test out all these systems and see what's working and what ain't, you know?
Yeah.
But that's all I've got for now.
Well, that's fantastic. Thank you so much for talking to me about this stuff. You know what? I'm going to thank a bunch of other people too, not just you, but.
I won conflict mediation. Bingo. Which was be the last person on the conflict mediation team.
Winning at conflict mediation is such a perfect thing. A. A thing that it is possible to do.
Yeah.
And. And achievable by Inman specifically.
But.
In addition to Inman, the winner of conflict mediation, I would also like to thank our Patreon patrons. If you are not a Patreon Pat, think about your choices. Maybe you want to be a Patreon patron, we'll send you zines. And if at a certain level, we'll thank you, like I'm about to do right here. So thank you two. I'm gonna see how much of this I can do in one breath. Okay. Nicole and Tikva the dog, Micaiah Chris Kirk, Micah Dana, David Paige, SJ Theo Milica, Paparuna, Allie, Janice and Odell Princess Miranda Community Books of Stone Mountain, Georgia Lord Harken Carson Jul People's University of Palestine Violet Boldfeld Portland's Hedron Hackerspace Appalachian Liberation Library Ephemeral Amber Sunshine Aiden and Yuki the Dog Jenny and Phoebe the Cats Jason Shulva Blink Cat Farrell in West Virginia the Massachusetts Chapter the Socialist Rifle association the Canadian Socialist Rifle Association Karen Lancaster chooses Love Enchanted Rats of Turtle Island Max Hyunhi Future for Abby Alexander Gopal the Incredible Renai the Ko Initiative Jonathan the Goose the Golden Gate 26 Tiny Nonsense Mark Fail Pharoah, your Canadian friend Mr. Crafty Sarah Baby Acab and her three great pups TSNB Opticuna and the Immortal Hoss the Dog oh, and there's more. There's more. I thought I did it in two breaths, but there's more. Immortal Quiet. We also have people who have joined our acknowledgment tier through their support of the Kickstarter for the Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice. A cool new book you should read. Those people are Simone Staying Hydrated Brought to you by Hannah Potatoes Tenebris Press Arguing about what to shout Out Experimental Farm Network Accordions Dolly Parton and Edgar Meowlin Poe, who are both cats the Black Trowel Collective Groot the Dolly we.
Think that it could be Dolly Parton. It's always possible.
Honestly, it could actually be Dolly Parton if. If it's not Dolly Parton. Thank you, Dolly Parton. Anyway, thank you the KO Initiative, Nico the Waterfront Project, Tikva's Favorite Stick, Ulikse and Alder and na which could stand for Not Applicable Narcotics Anonymous Non Alcoholic could stand for so many things. It could just stand for Nah.
Nah.
But thanks to all of them and Dolly Parton also. And thank you again to you, Inman, and thank you to our listeners. That's it from us here at Live like the World Is Dying. Have a great day.