Hello and welcome to Live Like the World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. This is your weekly news segment, This Week in the Apocalypse, which used to be This Month in the Apocalypse, but then things got a little too apocalyptical. So now you get the news weekly. Da da da da da da da da da da da. But before we get into that, we are gonna toss to a little jingle from another one of our friends on the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts, of which we are also a member. Yay, Channel Zero! And that jingle's gonna go right here.
Welcome to Propaganda by the Seed, a podcast about plants. and the nerds that love them. We alternate between hour-long interview episodes that usually focus on a single species or crop, and shorter episodes that focus on topics related to plants like grafting, composting, and the rest. You can find Propaganda by the Seed on the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts, at propagandabytheseed.com, or most podcast platforms. I'll see you deep in the weeds.
And we're back. What a great jingle. I am joined today by the wonderful, lovely, and brilliant Inmin once again. Inmin, say hi to the folks.
Hello! I'm here to talk about so many good things today.
Yeah, I think Inmin might be lying to you folks.
I'm lying.
Oh, damn.
No, they're not.
I hate it when I break it.
They're not good.
So this week we're going to talk about news, climate news, and the apocalypse and what's happening. And originally our good friend James was going to join us, but our good friend James has started their own new podcast about going outdoors or something like that. I don't know. So they're going to join us next week to talk about what's happening with the news. And this week we get— we're lucky and we get to have Inman come back. And Minnie, do you want to hear any headlines before you talk about the world being on fire or underwater or in a tornado or whatever it is that we're doing this week?
Yeah. And I just want to say that I'm really glad that James is doing like an archival podcast about the great outdoors because we're really going to need it when that doesn't really exist anymore. You know?
Yeah.
This is a grim joke. It's not— the great outdoors still exists. It still exists and you can go there.
Yes, this will be for the future generations. generations and they can come back and listen to what it was like. But yeah, for those of us who still get to enjoy the outdoors, go outdoors with James. Yeah.
One of my friends has this bit about like, she's absolutely kind of a doomsday prepper, which is no stranger to us or the people who listen to the show. But she talks a lot about like, she does a lot of stuff outdoors. I think she works It's botany. Botany is probably the actual field. But watching a lot of species just slowly die off or just change, it's like the move upward effect, which totally has a name that I don't know, of plants in mountains where they just keep moving up and up and up until there's nowhere for them to go.
In elevation to get to cooler climates.
Yeah.
Right? Yeah. And they can't all outrun it. I remember this from high school science, actually. I don't remember what it's called though, but I know what you're talking about.
I also don't remember. But she talks about how in our lifetime, she really doesn't think— she thinks there'll be a time when we can't really go outside without extreme kind of weather protection from the sun.
Wow.
having like basically needing to like live in air conditioning, which is not like a— not a viable thing.
Right. Oof, wild. Okay, so maybe really do go outside while you still can. Stop listening to this podcast. No, wait, it's a podcast. You can take it outside with you. Go outside and listen to this podcast.
Go to the outdoors.
If it's safe and healthy to do so.
Well, while you still can.
Um, okay, other things that are happening in the outdoors. Uh, this isn't— I don't know if this really counts as a headline because it's been the thing that's going on forever, but We're sort of in this warlike thing with Iran going on, and that continues to be sort of the top of the news somehow, even though it feels like it's the same story all over the time, all over again, all of the time. So Iran has said recently that they feel like they've been in defensive posture, meaning they've been reacting to the things that have been happening, and they feel like they might be at the point where they need to start going on the offensive. actively attacking. I don't know how much that really lines up with what's actually been going on. Just, I don't know, the latest round of threats of, we're no longer just going to defend ourselves, we're now going to actively be attacking everyone. This is very annoying. But at the same time, the Iriana is very worried about the economic impact of all of this and their own internal stability and sustainability of being in this prolonged State of war? Battle? Besiegement? I don't even know what we're calling this thing. Conflict? Conflict might be the best word for it.
I mean, it's, it's, it's just a war. It's just, it's just, it's just a war. An unofficial war. Which, it's weird that, it's weird that that can happen.
Yeah, I guess that's, you know, we don't need to wait for like Congress to come along and do the official it's a war declaration for us to be able to look around at the world and say, oh, this is a war.
Yeah, I feel like we are in— and this is just me being a doomsayer, but I feel like a lot of people— I feel like we're gearing up for a world war, or there's sort of already a world war going on. It's just a very different war than we're used to.
Yeah, that's kind of— I feel that, and I felt that way for a while. Like, it just kind of seems like the world is all at war in some way or another. It's all conflict.
Yeah, new war just dropped. New kind of war just dropped.
In the end of days, there will be wars and rumors of wars. I'm pretty sure that's almost the right phrasing from the Book of Revelation. So if you're, if you're out there waiting for that version of the apocalypse to come, you might be happy that everyone's at war because it means Revelation is coming and then Jesus will be back. I don't know. Us Mormons didn't believe in that the same way. other Christian religions did, so maybe I'm speaking out of turn.
I don't know nothing about it.
Okay, other things not related to Christianity. That wasn't a good pivot at all. Professional podcaster here, great at pivots. Tariffs. We mentioned them in our, in our last This Month episode at the end of July. We talked about tariffs a little bit, and if you're listening to this podcast episode on the day that it comes out, which would be Tuesday, August 18th, The United States is set to impose tariffs on Canada starting tomorrow, that being Wednesday. And it's going to be not on all goods that come in from Canada, but on the goods that it will impact, it's a 50% tariff. So making everything cost half again as much if it comes from Canada. And they're using a Depression-era law from, from 1930 to try and get around this because as we talked about previously, other tariffs and justifications for tariffs have been shot down by the Supreme Court. And so the administration is just finding other laws and loopholes that it can use to continue imposing tariffs, saying, okay, we weren't allowed to do it for reason X, so now we're going to try doing it for reason Y. We'll see how those tariffs play back— play out and report back on that if they do in fact get imposed and what impacts they have on, uh, the economic situations here in the US and Canada.
The war, economic war, it's happening.
You know, you're not wrong. I mean, tariffs could be, especially the way they're being employed right now or deployed right now, it is, yeah, sort of an economic warfare kind of a thing going on.
It's like a I feel like it's like a Cold War kind of posturing tactic. I don't understand why. I don't get it for a lot of places where I'm like, why are we trying to stress international relationships?
Yeah.
Especially against like— I don't know, which is a complicated— I'm just saying this in terms of historical, not about how I feel about it. But like, Like traditional allies. Like why try to further alienate traditional allies of your country?
Right? Yeah. Who needs enemies when you got friends like the U.S.? Yeah. Oof. Yikes. That's okay. But at least our planet is beautiful and you can go outside.
You can go outside. I just or I'm gonna talk about wildfires and it's gonna paint like a pretty terrifying. picture. But you— I promise you can still go outside. I was just outside in the great outdoors for like a week in the Sierras, and it was like one of the most beautiful and magical experiences of my life, and it was just wonderful.
I love that.
Yeah.
I'm happy for you that you got to do that.
Yeah. But a lot of the world is on fire right now in ways that a lot of people are describing as like very apocalyptic. I think it's something like 300 million acres across like 80 countries this summer have burned, and that's all over the world.
Yikes.
And it's being caused by extreme heat waves and extreme drought. We talked about the heat waves in June, I think, leading to an utterly extreme amount of like heat excessive heat-related deaths, like all across Europe and India, and I mean really the whole world.
Yeah.
But I was trying to come up with a really grim rhyme. You know, there's like April showers bring May flowers.
Oh, God. Oh, no.
June heat brings— nope, I can't say it. Can't say it. But there have been an utterly extreme amount of fires across the entire world this year. One of the kind of strange tolls of it is like, Not— there have been a lot of deaths and evacuations. In 2024, there were 1.5 million deaths worldwide from smoke inhalation from wildfires.
Oh, okay. Yeah.
And, like, these are deaths that aren't necessarily happening, like, on the day that the wildfire happens, I think.
Okay.
And 2026 is shaping up to be a similar year so far.
Oof. Yikes.
And fires are being reported as more intense, more frequent, and more extreme. And a lot of systems in Europe, in the US, and worldwide are just completely overwhelmed. There's even fires spreading to places where you're like, I thought that place was cold and wet all the time, like Norway. There's wildfires in Norway.
No way!
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. And I think it's like hitting a lot of places in Europe, I think, particularly hard because it's places where they don't have, I think, have not had to traditionally deal with as much dryness and hot, or like dry heat and like drought and fire conditions. We think of like Northern Europe as this place that is like perennially like dark and cold and wet. And a lot of places are experiencing the opposite of that.
Hmm. Okay.
In Europe alone, there have been over 1,500 wildfires, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the US, where there have been 48,000 wildfires.
Oh my gosh.
Burning more than 7.2 million acres. Is that like in...
In the US this year, you said? Okay. All right. And note that you said 7 million acres. About 2 million of those were in Oregon the end of July, beginning of August.
Yeah.
It's pretty intense.
Yeah. Yeah. I read this article about— I'm not going to talk about the Sand Creek Fire in Montana. And the article was written like Montana Came in late but came out swinging.
Oh, no.
And I was like, why are you— it's like the article is like talking about the wildfire season. I was like, I think it's this like kind of dark irony, but I was just like, this is fucking weird.
Yeah, that's like a weird like glorification of joining fire season.
We crushed fire season. Oh, came out of the cages swinging.
Oh my gosh.
But a lot of the numbers that I was seeing about averages for acres burned and amount of fires was like at least 125% of the averages. So meaning kind of across the board, fire burning and amounts are up by at least like 25% than they usually are.
Okay. So 25% over the averages, not necessarily 25% from last year specifically.
25% over the 10-year average, I guess.
Okay, okay. Still, that's a lot.
Yeah. A 25% increase in fire.
Whew. You know, any percent increase in fire I think is like, not good, let alone a 25% increase.
Yeah. And here are some kind of, I guess, like, blurby, like, whatever things from different countries. France has recorded its driest year ever right now. In total across Southern Europe, including France and Spain, there have been over 250,000 people evacuated.
Wow, that's a massive evacuation.
Yeah. In the UK, London has recorded its hottest day of the year at 100.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and England and Wales have marked their driest year ever recorded since 1836 when they started keeping records.
Ooh, fun extra fact about that hottest day of the year in London is it almost reached their hottest day ever in London. It was up near that record as well, in addition to being the hottest day this year.
In Spain— these are kind of weird ones, but as in a lot of places where there's just a lot of old stuff monasteries, artifacts, very old things. A lot of monasteries in Spain are having to relocate artifacts, including the remains of 3 kings that were being threatened by a wildfire.
Oh, wow.
Personally, I would be fine with those 3 kings' bones getting burned up in a wildfire.
I was gonna say, how damaged are the bones really gonna get? Because they've gotta be bones by now, right?
I mean, yeah, they're bones from, like, I think it was like the 11th century or something.
I mean, they're just bones.
They're just bones. Let those kings be gone forever.
Burn the bones! We're terrible people. I'm here for it. Yeah.
In Los Jaladros, fires engulfed 20 buildings in the span of a day.
Oh, wow.
Also in Spain. And Portugal has had kind of like the largest fire size-wise at 13,000 hectares.
Oh my God.
Destroying 8,744 buildings.
Oh my gosh.
And France and Germany, I think, have kind of had, like, the brunt of the fires so far. In Germany, 1,800 residents of Gay were evacuated as a fire raged in the Hürtgen Forest. And Here's— this is a really strange part of the wildfires. Guess what there's a lot of in— all across France and Germany?
I mean, people. There's a lot of people.
There's a lot of people. There's also a lot of unexploded ordnance from World War II.
Shut the front door. Seriously? Like out in the forests and stuff?
Yep.
Oh my—
Tons of— Tons of unexploded landmines, tons of unexploded shells, just like a ton of ordnance that has been left behind and completely forgotten about. That's—
it's just sitting there. What's the problem with that?
The problem is that when really intense fires burn through those areas, all of those things can explode.
Oh. Fire, make it go boom.
Fire, make it go boom. And it's like unexploded landmines have always been a huge problem across war-torn areas of the world. And these aren't just landmines, these are kind of like projectile munitions.
Oh my gosh, that's terrifying. Yeah.
And so bomb squads have had to accompany fire squads in a lot of forests, including the Muretz National Park. And in Gironde, France, a fire revealed a lost catch of shells after one of them exploded and burst through the walls of an evacuated house.
Oh, thank God the house was evacuated, but holy cow.
Yeah. And this was like a— these weren't landmines. These were like projectile munitions, or I guess artillery. And no one in the town had any record that these things existed, because a lot of this stuff gets buried in fields or in forests.
Mm-hmm.
And the fire burning out a lot of the vegetation kind of reveals a lot of it. And like I said, like, a simple fire couldn't do this. Like, if it's like some leaf litter or whatever, like a small fire, it's probably not gonna, like, explode a shell or a landmine or something. But it can reveal those landmines, which I guess could always get triggered. But if they get— I don't know this, but it's like they kind of get brought to the surface and therefore are more dangerous.
Okay.
But it's kind of these building ambient temperatures that can set them off. So it's kind of sustained extreme heat. It's not just like a fire burns through the brush. It's like there's fire heating up the ground all around it for a prolonged period of time.
Wow.
Which was really proven— and this wasn't in 2026, but as an example of how this kind of ambient temperature thing works— in Iraq and Jordan in 2020 and maybe In Jordan, it was 2020. I don't remember when it was in Iraq. There were many munition facilities where munitions just exploded.
The desert got so hot that it made the munitions buildings explode.
They were just— it was so hot for so long that a lot of these munitions just exploded, which is also what we saw in, I think it was in Phoenix, Arizona, it was prolonged 120 degrees or something, and some large propane tanks at the airport just exploded due to extreme heat.
Wow. Wow.
Yeah.
I had no idea of that potential— well, and I guess not even potential, like real additional problem of the forest fires and The warming climate, for that matter.
Yeah, yeah. A lot of the fires in Europe and across the entire world, it's no surprise to say that these are caused by human-driven climate change. And it's like a lot of the world is fully aware of that and fully recognizing it. It's just becoming a problem that— and this is me speculating— that no country, no single entity can deal with or manage. Like, one of the problems even to just the fire response in Europe has been that, like, the systems are completely overwhelmed. There are these kind of, like, unified systems, but it's like they're used to responding to, like, one major fire, not, like, 6 or 7 major fires all at one time.
Yeah. Wasn't France at least, and maybe also Spain, calling for international firefighter help, for people from other countries to come? and assist because literally personnel was one of the things, trained personnel was one of the things they lacked.
Yeah, I think that's happening. And it's also happening in the US and it's historically happened in the US. I think I remember some fires from 2020 or something where there was this international call for help and a lot of people came from countries that were like, where immigration relations were extremely stressed between. And I was kind of annoyed about it.
Oh, really?
Okay. In the sense that I'm like, don't help us. Our immigration policy with your country is fucking bullshit. Don't fucking come help us.
We don't deserve that. Yeah. Okay. Well, I live in the place that was on fire really badly in 2020. No, but I see what you mean. That is a really good point. Why come help us when we treat you like shit? We don't deserve that.
Which the answer to that is that mutual aid across borders is the only way any of us are getting through this because borders are fucking dumb. Nation-states are fucking dumb. These are the reasons why we can't respond to a lot of things is because we are hampered by the institutions and corporations and nation-states that are creating all these problems instead of being able to actually form meaningful relationships. But in the US, another thing that's up is firefighter entrapment.
Oh, like them getting stuck by fires?
Oh no. Yeah, people getting stuck. Which leads to these really dangerous situations. And it's like part of that is intense— the intensity of fires, and part of it is also like lack of resources.
Okay.
Famously, in 2025, the Forest Service lost like 6,000 jobs, a lot of whom were firefighters. And although the Forest Service has claimed that it has like more than its goal of firefighters this year, which was like 11,000, like a little over 11,000, and there's like close to 12,000 wildland firefighters in the US.
Holy cow.
It is still just not enough to meet the continuing kind of like, continuing like widening crisis of fires. And yeah, I don't know. It's just this like, it's this It's this continual thing that is just bad. It's just bad. And I didn't do a lot of digging into stuff in Canada. I know Canada has also recorded like a very— I think one of its worst, if not its worst fire season, which included the evacuation of over 10,000 First Nations people across Canada who are like, a lot of the people who are deeply affected by these fires, as we've covered previously, because of where people live, living in places that are more affected by wildfires. And when folks get driven out of those areas, it's very hard for people to get back.
Right.
Due to the lack of resources and rebuilding. So, yep, that's what I have to say about wildfires is they're bad and, uh, they're bad.
Yeah, the last note I'd make on that is that we're still pretty early in wildfire sort of season. I mean, I guess it started to come earlier and earlier, right? It used to be like they'd start kind of firing up in July, August, and this would be sort of the beginning, but we've seen them earlier. But it's still kind of early in the season for there being wildfires. So the rest of this month, August and September, there could still be a lot of fires that happen yet. So if you're out there, our friends, and you're in an area that's at risk of fire, please do be sure to review your emergency plans, your evacuation plans, your go bags if you have one, put one together. Do what you can to be prepared for those unfortunate possibilities.
Yeah. And I just want to shout out Ellie from Patreon for telling us the name of the horrifying fire thunderstorms, the pyrocumulonimbus.
Wow.
So thank you for telling us that utterly terrifying word.
Sponsor of today's podcast.
But yeah, that's kind of what I got. I also want to do a personal shout out to everyone who I just went on this absolutely absurd trip into the great outdoors with The Backcountry Cook, who we had on a previous episode to talk about pack muling and cooking in the wilderness. And we did this trip together where we brought a bunch of people out into the wilderness to play D&D, and it was like one of the most utterly delightful experiences of my life. And I really want to thank— Quinn of the East, Nathan, Annie, Katie, Wyatt, Tom, Nick, Han, Hazel, and Quinn of the West. Thanks y'all so much for coming on this inaugural trip. It was such an absolute blast, and it was so fun and so successful that we have 2 more trips already on the calendar for next August. So look out this November for information about our next 2 trips for D&D and Mules, a wonderful wilderness fantasy experience.
Great. Thanks for sharing about that, Edmund. We also have some special people we like to thank on this podcast, namely some of our Patreon supporters. If you would like to support us on Patreon, you can check out our page, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. You can also connect with us on social media. We are on Instagram, we are on Bluesky. We do in fact read and respond to messages and appreciate, you know, if you hear any errors in the show that you want to help us set right. We, you know, want to be correct in the information that we send out. So always interact with us and let us know there. Hey friends, this is Brooke coming at you from a purple haze that exists somewhere outside of time and space. And I just wanted to put in a quick correction for myself. I just said in the episode that lowering the interest rate would help soften inflation, and I said that backwards, so my apologies. In fact, raising the interest rate is how the Federal Reserve can attempt to soften inflation. So thank you to the listener who sent us a note about that to make sure that we have the correct information out there. And now back to the show. Our Patreon supporters that support us at the $20 a month or more tier get a shout out on all of our podcasts that we do. We are particularly grateful for you, for all of our Patreon supporters, Because you have made it possible for us to start doing this weekly news segment in addition to our regular weekly segment about preparedness. So now we're twice a week, and that's because of the great support that we have on Patreon. We particularly want to say thank you to Please Fight Anti-Fatness, Arizona Sunsets, Bunny Bionics, Bike Smut Film and Performance, Patrick Harnett Marshall, All Wiener Dogs Everywhere, The first 2 chapters of The Eden Project by James Hollis. The Athens People's Assembly of Athens, Georgia. Your Canadian friend.
Tiny Nonsense.
A Future for Abby.
Hyunhee.
Lancaster County Chooses Love. Astoria Food Pantry. Feral and WV. Blinkcat, the Massachusetts chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association, Shulva, Jenny and Phoebe the cats, Jason, Aiden and Yuki the dog, Alexander Gopal, Sunshine, Opticuna, Portland's Hedron Hackerspace, Julia, Appalachian Liberation Library, Lord Harken, Baby Acab and her 3 great pups, Ephemeral, Princess Miranda, Janice and Odell, Boldfield, Ally, Paparuna, Milicia, Theo, SJ, Paige, Pocono Pink Pistols, Nicole and Tikva the dog, David, Community Books of Stone Mountain, Georgia, Carson, Dana, Chelsea, Amber, Marjorie, We Will Outlive Them, Kirk, Mikaya, Chris, the incredible Rena Rye, Micah, and Haas the dog. Thank you all so much. See you next time.
Bye.