Survival By The Book: Survivor Borneo

Welcome to the Fourth episode of Survival By The Book, the podcast series where local librarians learn about how to prepare for emergency situations because being prepared shouldn't be complicated. 

When emergencies strike, preparation can make all the difference — and your local librarians are here to help you turn information into action.

In this episode of Survival by the Book, we talk about the very first episode of Survivor to provide you with a bit of relief from thinking about all these stressful situations. We talk about everything our survivors got right and wrong while trying to be the last man standing in Borneo. From shelter building and water concerns to group dynamics and resource management. Join us as we talk about  how their choices would hold up in an actual emergency as we separate survival fact from reality show fiction. 

Resources: 

Survivor, Season One. Borneo

Florida Museum, Bluespotted Ribbontail Ray, https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/discover-fish/species-profiles/bluespotted-ribbontail-ray/

Created by the Podcast Team at the Harris County Public Library.
www.hcpl.net

Podcast Team Members include: Beth Krippel, John Harbaugh, Mary Mink, Dylan Smith, Sadina Shawver, Alinda Mac, John Schaffer, Jennifer Finch, Katelyn Helberg, Darcy Casavant, Darla Pruitt and Nancy Hu 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Have you always been curious about survivalism? Wanted to take a trip outdoors or into the wilderness, but didn't know what you need or how to prepare. Or maybe you're just someone who wants to be prepared for an emergency situation, but have no idea where to start. If any of these things sound like you, then you've come to the right place. Welcome to ACTL's new podcast, Survival by the Book. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Survival by the Book. This week we're calming it down a little because we know that thinking about all these emergency situations, how to prepare for them, how to get your family prepared for them, and how you're gonna buy everything that you need, it can be a little stressful. So we're gonna kick it back to the early 2000s and talk about one of the most popular reality TV shows around. Survivor.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

If you don't know, Survivor is a long-running American reality TV show where contestants are dropped into a remote location and they have to compete with different challenges to get down to one person who wins one million dollars. So they either have an immunity challenge or they survive getting voted off. Be the last man or woman or person standing.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Starting off in the in 2000, its first location was Borneo. Unlike the real like survival aspect that we're talking about, this is gamification. When this came out, my mom was obsessed. Uh, she has seen all 50, well, except for this one, all 49 currently running seasons. Back in the day when they switched the night from Wednesday to Thursday, and she had to pick me up from civil air patrol meetings. She would record the last 15 minutes, and then she would rush over there, pick me up as fast as possible, and we would rush back so she could watch the last 15 minutes that was recorded. And she learned how to use the VCR for this, which is kind of a big thing.

SPEAKER_03 2:00

Yeah, I have very, very like very visceral memories of watching these first few seasons of Survivor Live on TV as a kid. I think I would have been like 10 when this season one was aired, and I watched it on a little, we had a tiny, this was apparently, I don't know why. It must have been the only TV we had at the time. A nine-inch T combo TV VCR. We had that in the kitchen. I don't know why. But this was when I this is where I watched it. I watched, and I remember vividly when it was on Thursday because I would watch Survivor and then CSI, the original, in Las Vegas. Now as a parent of a seven-year-old, I'm like, why did I do this? They made them different back then. Exactly. But yeah, no, I loved Survivor. It's like the the original competition reality TV show.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

I wish I could have been like you guys and watching TV.

SPEAKER_03 2:58

Were you born yet? I was born.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

I was born when I was only like two.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Let me decay now.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

That's fine. It means his birth year begins in a 19. Not that old you guys.

unknown 3:14

This is true.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

I didn't watch Survivor growing up, but I didn't watch many reality TV shows. So this was me going back. I didn't know. Um, my mom kind of has this thing. If we wanted to watch TV, we had to watch like the history channel or the discovery channel.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Ah, aliens, Nazis. Yeah, aliens and more aliens.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

I will say I I did I did watch other seasons of Survivor when I was in like college or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 3:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Um do I remember which season? I was gonna say they're on 49 now, so I probably watched like 38 or something like that. Um I am familiar with the TV show and everything like that. And I did watch at least two or three seasons. But it was pretty interesting to go all the way back to the very first episode and see just how far we've come into the diversity of the media. Yeah, everything that we're seeing in against the show now.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Yeah, if you go back and watch it, just be uh just be prepared. Some things don't age well. We'll leave it at that. Running down like a list of you know, like the different things that you need. Um, one of like shelter was the first thing that they got to working on. So both teams built a shelter and they kind of built them in the title zones. Because on one team, you had uh Rudy, the former Navy SEAL, saying, No, we need to build further up on the beach, and then the rest of the group being like, No, no, no, it's fine. And then on the other team, there the older gentleman, Bibi, was saying, We need to be further in. And then everyone was like, Oh, no, no, no, it's fine.

SPEAKER_02 4:51

There's actually something I wrote down at at the beginning was these people who have more experience and kind of like seem to have that kind of like builder knowledge and stuff like that. They just completely brush them off because absolutely like the cla most of the cast is a is a little bit younger and everything like that.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

And I found that super interesting about just the communication between everyone was yeah, I mean Bibi was a real estate developer, I think, so he'd know where to build something and where not to build something. Uh Rudy, hopefully being a former Navy SEAL, would have an idea much like that of knowing where tides are since you know he was in the Navy and where not to build things.

SPEAKER_03 5:29

Yeah, no, but Bibi Bibi admitted he was wrong though, because he was pushing for the beach.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 5:34

And it was a woman, I don't know if it was Gretchen or or another woman that wanted to be in the trees, and he shot her down. Oh, yeah. And he apologized for that.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Yeah, because there was a big tropical storm and everyone was wet and miserable. And she pointed out that the tree canopy were acts as like the first shield in case of rain. So that was kind of a big fail right there.

SPEAKER_03 5:57

So is that where you would have gone if you were building your shelter in this scenario? In the tree trees? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, because if you're on the beach, you're exposed to all the waves, the tides, also the sun versus being further inland where it could also be possibly cooler.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

But you don't have the reflection of the sun, which would cause more heat. The reflection of the sun on the sand, which would also create more heat. You'd want to be in a cooler environment under the trees. I was thinking of when I was like, that seems like a bad idea.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Don't want to sunburn your eyes.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Exactly. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

One thing that they did, I think, or one of the teams did write was building the shelter above ground. So it's like up off the ground, so away from the scurrying rats, away from the bugs. Kind of like the lodge house effect, where it's a communal building, it's all in one place, it conserves body heat, but you know, the only thing you kind of have to be aware of is like easy disease transmission as well as fleas and lice. The other team did like a spread-out like sleeping area where it was like more spread out, less disease transmission. Everybody was kind of independent, and there was like more need for more resources. I this is kind of like the first hurdle that they had because it was like if as an observer, it was too many cooks in the kitchen. Everyone's shouting and trying to get everyone to do what they want to do. And as someone who has formed teams multiple times over for various occasions for various things, you need a clear chain of command or a clear communication method to make decisions for something like this to happen. And I feel like all of them were just basically just yelling and shouting at each other.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

Okay, so I have a question then, because I remember I don't remember his name, but I do remember there was like a I guess like a manager person. He was sitting down or he was sitting down and telling his team like, hey, we should all come together while they were all building and stuff. I wrote down that maybe it was like a little bit of a negative on his part because instead of trying to help, he was really just letting everyone do anything and was just kind of sitting there for like hours. And his whole team was getting mad at him for that.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

I made note of that too because I thought he had a really good point where he's like, We're all working against each other. We need to work together. What I thought was the negative is he was sitting there watching them work while he was making these good points.

SPEAKER_03 8:22

I don't think you're doing this right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

He's like, we need to work towards a common goal or else we're just gonna be pulling at each other, however, he phrased it, as he sits in his little throne.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Yeah, exactly. I mean, you need to have a clear plan and a clear direction so that no effort is wasted. In a survival situation like this, you have to think about energy. How much energy do you have? Um what is it? Outlast or no. Yeah, outlast out when Alaska in Alaska, different survival show. They get nothing. They basically get like a a crate of supplies, which consists of some food, some water, and a knife, and that's it. They don't have water purification, they don't have anything like this. So energy is a big deal. So them spending half a day, most of a day trying to create shelter and not working together without a plan is just a waste, huge waste of energy.

SPEAKER_03 9:21

Doesn't the survivor experience feel a little bit more true to like if you were in a real life situation, not like you'd get marooned, but like in some sort of crazy situation where you're on the road and you get trapped or stranded somewhere and you're with people you don't know, say like a lost scenario. Like exactly, like lost scenario.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Well, typically leaders do emerge.

SPEAKER_03 9:47

That's true. Is it the right one?

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Well, in this is gamification. So everyone's out for a million dollars. So there in a system in which you are all trying to survive, where something would be a universal goal, this one doesn't always apply because of the gamification, because there's prize money on the line.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Yeah, and also because there's a safety net, like there's a whole crew there, no one's actually going to die. No one is actually going to starve to death, whatever. So I think that also made people go in being like, I'm gonna win, I'm gonna be the survivor because they were gonna technically survive no matter what. Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

So, yeah, one of one of the things is the the former Navy SEAL in a very, very, very navy way, basically said, we want to build here for where we're gonna live, and we want to build way over there for where we're gonna need to do our potty business. Like CBs and things like that. The first two things CBs usually establish is we're living here, we are using the latrine over there, and make sure that those two things are separate. One of the things that I kind of thought was funny was soap was kind of like a bonus crate item. And soap is very, very, very important, um, especially for sanitation and lack of disease transmission and things like that. There's no real mention of anyone doing any potty business, as well as toilet paper was also a bonus item. No talk of showers, no talk of shampoo or anything like that. They kind of just like jumped in and out of the ocean. Susan, who was one of the contestants, was using a knife to like comb knots out of her hair. That was really scary, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

And it's also, I guess, like you were saying, like insanitation-wise, I feel like that's pretty gross too, because you can use that knife for a lot of different things and stuff like that. Like ideally, you use it to like, I don't know, get fine fruit, use it to skin different, I guess, like berries or other stuff that you would normally cut with that you need a knife for. So now you have and they don't have soap, they don't have a way to clean it. Now whatever you had in your hair that day of is now just growing on that knife.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Well, I mean, you can use the sun 10 minutes in the sun kills most bacteria, most bacteria. So you can use UV to help kill things that are in water or on objects. It's why putting your laundry out in the sun to dry in the sun is a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 12:21

Since we just talked about the 10 essentials last episode, we there aren't really sanitation, it wasn't really mentioned in the 10 essentials, was it?

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Oh, let's go back to the no no uh Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

No, sanitation is not something that is immediate. Um, you can use a trench knife or something like that to make a place to bury potty business. What what is an emergency essential and what is a good sanitary practice? Like in my my kit of bug out stuff, there is a specific kit of bug-out items that are all sanitation, my garbage bags, my soap, my toilet paper, all of those things, the wet wipes and stuff like that, uh, disinfecting wipes and things like that. All of those live in my kit for sanitation. Once you get into like bug out bags and things like that, then yes, sanitation does play a part. But 10 essentials, like the things you can carry on your person. Sanitation wasn't one of those things, but do you carry um like hand sanitizer?

SPEAKER_03 13:24

Well, I do not because I'm a savage, but I know that is a thing people carry.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

I do, but it's uh Bath and Body Works because I feel like the glitter really kills every germ. I think about constantly, actually, like this isn't even probably.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

So I have hand sanitizer in probably about I got one in my bag, one I have antiseptic wipes in my first aid kit, then I've got at least one other bottle in my car. While it's not in the 10 essentials, one can prepare beyond the 10 essentials if they like.

SPEAKER_03 14:00

Yes, I think I was conflating the 10 essentials with more of a go bag kind of a thing in my head. So, yes, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Another thing that they didn't have to worry about is water. They had potable water that would that they had to like hike away from the camp to get. So they had a map to get there. They all knew where it was, they didn't have to filter or purify anything, uh, which is actually, in my opinion, kind of a good thing since the majority of them would be out just on like waterborne pathogens, jardia, bacteria, other things that could stay in their gut.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

Which is another reason you could argue it's not even real survivalism, because they had so much provided to them.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

So I'm not gonna argue with that one just because water purification is not easy. Depending on your devices and things like that, you can make it easy, but in this situation, in the gamification with the amount of people that they had on that island, it's better that they provided water. Yeah, another kind of a bone of contention in this for me is the food sources because they had rice to eat on a regular basis. Now, one team was eating rice and then also eating coconut, which was plentiful, which is good because coconut has the fats and the oils that they can take in. You know, they may lose a couple pounds, but isn't going to be so extreme. They wouldn't have any negative effects. They had to catch other things, so no one really knew how to forage any of the plants. And plants are always more plentiful than meat running around. You would think that someone who has been accepted onto this show would have done a little bit more research about different things in the wild and different climates that you could eat.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Yeah, I figured I was kind of also thinking, like, what would I do if I was on this show? And I was like, one, I would never be on the show because I would never apply. But I think that I would try to prepare as much as randomly as I could. Like, what are how do you identify the plants that you can eat that aren't going to be poisonous? And what is the best I'm assuming they were allowed to bring some sort of clothing because they were all wearing clothes that I assume wasn't provided to them from the show. So what's the best show uh clothes to bring, shoes to wear? Even if I already have an idea of it, if I was going in and a million dollars is on the line.

SPEAKER_02 16:19

Research, research, research. Speaking of things that people brought, something I had written down here was that there was a there was a lady that was on the team that was a musician. She chose to bring her instrument with her. The ukulele, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Yeah, she was out on the first day, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:34

Yeah, I think so. And I just found that super interesting. Though I will say I do think they were a little harsh on her just for the challenge that they did, because it was like water-based, and you know, people of varying heights had different struggling abilities and stuff like that, and she was a little older. And basically, for people who don't know, what ended up happening is that during the challenge, as they were climbing out of the beach, out of out of the water to get onto the beach, she had basically slipped and fell, and that caused her team to lag behind a little bit because they all had to basically keep their hands on whatever thing they were carrying, and so that obviously caused them to slow down and caused their team to lose. But in my head, I'm thinking, well, she is shorter than a lot of the taller guys up front that were just kind of dragging the thing forward. So inevitably she was going to fall because again, they were able to have their feet on the ground because they weren't in like too deep water, so most of the guys or the taller people were able to constantly walk while she had to be more swimming and crawling, and so I think they were a little harsh on her in that aspect.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

And after she lost her footing, admittedly, it probably would have been very hard to get back up because you're holding on to this raft and everybody's moving forward. And if you slipped, it's hard to get your feet under you again as you're kind of being dragged forward. And I say that as somebody who actually has pretty good balance, because I had a lot of years as a dancer. I think even I would have struggled to get back up. So I would have been voted off the island.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

But anyway, back to the survival back to the survival, the survivalism of it. Something else we talked about in the previous episode was just kind of like the community and how important that is to any short-term, long-term, depending on how well you thrive in those survival situations. Is something I wrote here was like BB was not pacing himself when he was building the house and the shelter, like he just wanted to be he just wanted to be done instead of relying on other people or delegating tasks. Yeah, and then someone on his team was trying to tell him and help him, hey, you need to pace yourself, you need to pace yourself.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

You need to get into the shade.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

Yeah, he just was not listening to her, and and same thing that I kind of wrote about Richard was that he was just so focused on trying to tell people what to do rather than actually doing things himself, and that's where he was also reaching a little bit of like tension rather than trying to, I guess, work within the group, he wanted to be outside and then telling the group what to do as a in that sense.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

I Richard was interesting because he was a consultant, so he is paid for people to give them advice, so he's used to being listened to automatically because people are paying him to do that, and that just wasn't the case. It's it isn't until a few people are kicked off the team that people really started to gel together, then therein lies the gamification where then they start creating alliances who are who are we voting off as a block vote?

SPEAKER_03 19:29

Yeah, there's so much like beauty and purity in the first season of a reality show because they don't initially understand the game mechanics yet. Right. It's like in the first two episodes, there's no talk of alliances really. You know, they're all kind of still figuring it out, and uh every season after that people go into it knowing, you know, about alliance.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

But then I also have to create alliances, then I have to create secondary backup alliances.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Yeah. I think that's every reality show too, because then you know what you're going into, uh, which is a slight diversion, but they've talked about this with like Love is Blind. Yep. Like that first season, they'll never be able to recreate the experiment. Right. But people went in the next few seasons with this idea of how they were gonna stand out and play the game instead of what the show was about, which strategies for screen time instead of like actually falling in love with someone.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Well, when they're on a show like that, they do qualify for a sag card as long as they had enough screen time. I didn't even know that. Yeah, so it's their entryway to get into the stream actors guild and become a union member.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

Here you go, Mary. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

You married too early.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Hold on. Forget what I said. My video is coming from season 50. 51. 51. Yeah, that's they're probably filming 50 right now, aren't they? Or they just wrap it's wrapped. It's about to premiere. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Jeff Professor Yeah. Well, you know what struck me too about watching it? That they never really referenced, at least I don't think they did, and I only watched the first episode, was all the men just walking around without shirts on. I just kept thinking, like, do you guys have sunscreen? You're gonna get really bad sunburned.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

There was later in, I think, episode two, they showed like two people putting sunscreen on. So it was available.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

But I don't know how, because like by episode like four or five, they've only been on the island, you know, like three, four days, and a lot of them were super tan, which means they weren't using sunscreen.

SPEAKER_02 21:47

I guess something that's also not common knowledge that I kind of acquired over the years of living on my own and being an adult as we as we established. 99, whatever. I had to learn all these things later that a lot of people may not. actually know how to properly apply sunscreen like especially like growing up to like as a kid you know you just kind of your parents really only well at least I don't want to say your parents my parents at least whenever we did go to like the water parks and stuff like that. We only applied sunscreen that one time at the very beginning and as the day went on never again. Yeah and you know technically as I've been taking better care of my skin as I've gotten older and all that stuff I've learned that you have to reapply the sunscreen yeah every three to four hours in order to keep that protection that barrier up and you have to let it soak into your skin before you immediately jump into the water you're not supposed to like apply it and then go.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

So that's why you apply before you go to the beach.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Then you apply right before lunch go wash your hands then have lunch.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Also that way the sand doesn't blow onto your sticky sunscreen skin in stay fun fact for anybody going to Galveston.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

Another thing we have written down is that we were talking about the hunting and fishing um you have there that it you felt like it was kind of a waste of time to hunt for the rats?

SPEAKER_00 23:08

Yeah I mean so like to to smack them or to put them in the little rat traps or to do any of the other like trapping aspect of of like guide wires and snares and things like that. These rats don't have very much meat on them. It's great if you're a snake and I was while looking for different like things I I came across like you know venomous snakes of Borneo and there's 14 four of those suckers swim. That's scary to me. So I may or may not be going to Borneo ever and so looking at like the rats and things like that there's a little bit of meat for a whole lot of effort. And then what did these folks do with the guts? Because anything like the guts are going to bring over scavengers and so we didn't see any other like bigger mammals like pigs or anything like that that may be on the island as well you'd be better off continuing to eat the coconut and rice versus trying to catch rats. And then after the first challenge they got like the snorkel and the spear and then so one of the contestants I think it was Richard went down and got a ton of blue spotted ribbon tail rays which I found them on the Florida Museum website to make sure what type they were and you got to be really careful because they have a venomous tail spine. So if they're not butchered properly it could be dangerous. And I didn't see many other like big fish in any of the other underwater spots. So they're eating this ray that's a lot of cartilage that's not a lot of meat that they could if they butcher it improperly poison themselves.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Yeah a lot of experts on the production team being like so this is how you're gonna cut it well and that's another thing that we don't see this this is entertainment.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

This is a TV show so you're not seeing the producers come in and tell people to like do or not do something the medics on staff to be to to fix certain things.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Well isn't it like the first episode Sonya like cut her leg.

SPEAKER_02 25:25

She's like but we have a doctor on the team where did you get those band-aids I know iodine dead iodine and like uh gauze and like actual band-aids I do feel like I remember him saying that like this is stuff like he prepared in advance being a doctor I do find it kind of maybe convenient and like oh a doctor on the team I would I wish they had like explained more of like how much they could bring and how yeah yeah that was yeah but like the fire BB brought glasses specifically for that purpose and like how how were they allowed to bring things like how much were they allowed to bring what type of things how much like first aid kit has like 27 different things in it while a pair of glasses has is a pair of glasses.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Yeah or a ukulele one item I felt like the fire aspect of things was one of the more realistic of any of the other episodes because one team used you know a lens to start the fire. They didn't show the process of this at all. They're just like oh yeah we use the lens and here we are with the torch. And then the other team used friction. Well they never succeeded yeah yeah they had to get their fire from the tribal council right yeah and so they would have eventually got it it's just they took a lot of effort doing it. Now granted they were doing it the right way I will say that they were somebody on that team actually knew what they were doing probably Rudy and they were of they were eventually going to get that fire from that methodology. It's just I think they gave up too soon.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

Yeah okay I did find it a little interesting how the team that was struggling to start a fire ended up winning the challenge to get the waterproof matches to help them start that fire later on plot plot point question well producers play a lot in these things.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

Yeah so another thing that I I saw that I didn't think was that realistic is like bugs and mosquitoes. Like this is a tropical island like malaria is a thing. So that means like bugs, mosquitoes and I don't see anyone slapping themselves as a Texan who has who lives in Houston like mosquitoes are a thing. I carry insect repellent in my car. So maybe they just edited that part out they were there's one point where they like go into the the jungle and they find like a boiling mud pot which is like a geothermal water vent into soil. So it's like warm mud. And then they cover themselves up with like the warm mud which actually is another layer of like mosquito like to you this is something you can actually do where like if you need really from mosquitoes you can cover your skin with mud and it also works as a sunscreen as well. It just creates a barrier between something that they can get through and can't. So that was smart when they covered themselves with mud probably also clean their pores got anything else to add or I mean importance of community is really you're gonna win in this in this scenario you're gonna win by coming together. In most of the scenarios that we have in our own lives um like last episode where I said if I hadn't been good with my neighbors I wouldn't have been able to get power for a fan for my wife who was you know basically just dying of heat. It's those community connections that we make that are really going to help us in times of need.

SPEAKER_02 29:14

Just a thought that just popped back into my head with it is that as I mentioned in the beginning of this episode, you know, hopefully you guys started preparing for any of these various survival situations that we've mentioned and covered that you might experience here in Harris County. But your neighbors even let's say for example like money's an issue or you're just not able to acquire or find all of these things that you need in your home you can plan with your neighbors if you are going to be in a situation be like hey I'm going to buy X Y and Z. I'm going to focus my resources on getting this this and this and you can focus your resources on getting all these other things that I'm not getting you know it doesn't have to be a big community and that we can just get the neighbors right around you with a lady across the street or obviously if you have your family nearby you can work with your family and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

You know so you don't have to feel this pressure to do everything on your own there's a lot of resources out there. The library is one of your best resources for building community so utilize us. That's what we're here for.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Harris County Public Library enriches lives to strengthen communities thanks for listening to this episode of survival by the book.

SPEAKER_02 30:25

I hope you guys had time to get your architect degrees print out some blueprints and maybe go buy some tools because next week we're talking about shelter when to hunker down and when to get out of town