When Water Systems are Contaminated

Welcome back to the Changing Earth Podcast with author Sarah F. Hathaway and co-host Chen Gibson. Blending survival fiction and fact to bring you entertaining education that will help you dream, survive, and thrive. And now, here's your hosts, Sarah F. Hathaway and Chen Gibson. Chapter 29 All right, so I told Chin, I'm drinking sparkling water tonight. It's like the worst thing I could have done for this podcast. But I was craving one so bad. So if you hear me, pause for a minute. I'm just trying not to be rude. So after a disaster, so disasters cause all this damage. We're dealing with it ourselves in the United States tonight. Lots of people around the world are dealing with this. Massive amounts of flooding happened. on the rise, like South Africa, you know, and just Southern African continent, not just South Africa, but like Southern African continent is really getting hammered with flooding. So not only did it match with our story today, it was very, very timely. We talk a lot about water purification. You can find all kinds of articles on my survival basics and the survival guide regarding water purification and But water is so essential that it's something that we touch on all the time because you've got to have a lot of methods and know this stuff through and through. So we're going to hit it again. I got some different information today. Always learning. Always learning. So after a disaster, especially a flood, if you have any question about the quality of your water, or you've been told that it's unsafe to drink, do not, you know, wash dishes, brush your teeth with it, wash with it, use it for food prep, wash your hands, make ice, or make baby formula. That's literally coming from the CDC. I was like, who would, what, do they think that the baby formula is going to purify it? You know, but I guess it needs to be said that, um, No, don't use it for any of those reasons. At this time, you should be using bottled water or stored water or you got to treat it, okay? So even when it comes to your well, do not use it if you think there's a chance it's been contaminated. Your well is literally just water from the ground. And if it just got a big deal of, you know, it could be a mess. Livestock waste, human sewage, chemicals, that kind of thing on top of it, do not drink from it. Wells that are less than 50 foot down are most likely to be contaminated. So you've got to get it tested before you drink from it again. Really, really important. Some of the other things. Well, we talked about traveling to foreign countries. But water, don't use water from radiators or boilers. I can't believe that needed to be said out loud as well. Like, I'm just going to pop my car radiator. Yeah, no chemicals or heavy metals in that, huh? Right? Some of the times that water is horribly disgusting. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And I've never actually seen a boiler. We had a hot water system in our house in Michigan that heated it. But I was under 16. It's not like I was working at it. And then out in Cali, there's not really that kind of thing. But yeah, water from boilers or those types of hot water systems where it's used to heat your house. Don't take it from there. There are lots of good sources of I gave the commercial for the Waterful. That's 30 gallons of drinking water that's filtered, that's constantly good, that's stored at your house, ready to go. The system is a little thrifty, but in my opinion, worth it because it puts a lot of peace in your mind. It's not going to go anywhere. It's a good deal. I like the Waterful. Water heater, always a good source. Ice cubes, right, that are in your freezer? Already, yeah. Yeah. When the disaster first hits, empty that ice bin into, you know, a clean container. Not only are you going to save yourself a mess, if your freezer were to dehydrate or dehydrate, defrost, your freezer is just. Where'd all the water go? That'd be perfect scenario, actually. How can I make that happen when I'm trying to defrost my freezer? Um, um, but you know, all those ice cubes are going to be made beforehand. So that's a great idea. The toilet tank, not the toilet bowl. No, not the bowl. Not the bowl. Not the bowl. The tank, the water behind. Yeah. Um, canned fruit and vegetable liquid. Yep. A lot of times we break them open and we throw that liquid out, right? That's what we're used to doing. So stop that. You can save that and actually drink that, which, I mean, you know, if you're hard up against it. The swimming pool or the spa. And that's one of the reasons why I like to have, I have like one of those little, you know, thousand dollar outside pools. It's one of the reasons why I love to have that is because it's like thousands of gallons of water there. You wouldn't really want to drink that water, but for cleaning and to have a gray water, perfect. Garden Girl says, just let the dogs drink from the bowl. Yeah, my dog is like the slobber-o-matic and he, yeah, it will be everywhere. It will be everywhere. So I don't even let that happen. He just slobbers it all over the house. Outside sources, this is where, you know, it's just lame. Rainwater, duh. Streams, duh. Like moving water, lakes, ponds, natural springs. If you're in a flooding situation that could possibly have just contaminated your drinking supply, I probably wouldn't trust any of those outdoor sources that they suggested. Go ahead. Did you see the one about the trees? Oh, I did. But talk to us about that one. So they were saying, you know how like you tap trees for like maple syrup and stuff. That's another source. And like cactus. I've seen that too, where people get water out of cactus. Yep. They have grape vines. I never even thought about a tree, you know, tapping the tree for the. Yeah. Yeah. They have these like grape vines that grow over the oaks in Cali that you can actually just cut the bottom of them and it's. Get the water out. Yeah. Water supply right there. Yeah. So know your wild foraging as well. Mm-hmm. I mean, I always think about all the filters and tablets and all that kind of stuff. I'd never thought about the tree. Yeah. Lots of good natural sources. The dew, right? You can put, like, wrap your legs in material and just go walk through dewy grass and then wring that stuff out. I mean, dude, if you need. What do you do with there? If you need the water... I mean, it's true. I want to see you do a video on that, Sarah. We all want to. Not in Texas. Do a video for us. I'd have to be in a wetter place than here, that's for sure. At Prepper Camp, the fields in the morning, man, you could harvest some water. Yes. Yes. Holy smokes. Right? That's what I'm talking about. I wear my buck boots in the morning, and then I switch over at lunchtime. It's so wet. Yeah. The grass is so wet. I put my boots on in the morning for sure, too, out there. But not really here. No. Boiling. So boiling water for decontaminating. How long? Right? That's always the question. How long? I know. It's like every time I read an article, it seems like I get a different time. Yeah. So the CDC says one minute. Mm-hmm. Elevations above 6,500, three minutes. You know, if you have the fuel, go three minutes. Yeah, I've heard three minutes. Right? If it's not, like, if you're not concerned about fuel, then why wouldn't you just do the three minutes anyway? But the other thing is, the more you boil, the more you're boiling off, too, so... That's true, but... The longer you boil, so if water's hard to come by, if you have a tough source... To me, um.... Doing the distillation is really the cleanest method for getting clean water. Oh, yeah, yeah. So if you're going to be distilling it anyway, you're going to boil it off and collect. So three minutes. You could do both, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. So that's great. That's a great deal. Like I said, if you have the fuel. So when you first start out with it, say you collect the water from the lake and it's disgusting, right? Yeah. So you want to put a cloth, clean cloth, paper towel, coffee filter over the top of whatever and then pour it through that. Cheesecloth would work, you know. to just take off any of the big chunky type stuff yeah and then they say to let it like settle right after you pour it through the cloth let it settle and then take the water off the top of that and that's going to get you your cleanest water yeah that makes sense um. As much as a It's a particular toe. Right. So most of the time, like when we collected lake water and did all that stuff, it tasted nasty. Okay. It was like, and we treat it with iodine. It was so disgusting. Yeah. So ways to make it taste better. You can aerate the water, you know, blow bubbles literally into it. Put a kid on task, you know. Now you get to blow bubbles. I still want a water purification video from you, sir. Walking out through the field with the plastic on your legs and then blowing bubbles. Yeah. Well, you can pour it from container. To container, too. I want to see this video. Please make it. No. It's so disgusting. Like the iodized water. Ew. I would think I would much rather go with the chlorine. Your fans demand it. We'll see. If my fans demand it, then maybe. But, you know, I'm not really one for peer pressure either. The other thing you could do is put a pinch of salt for each quart or liter of water and put some salt in there and it helps out, I guess. So, I don't know. It was really, really gross. Disinfectants. So, the iodine, obviously. But chlorine, chlorine is where it's at. It does the best. It kills the most organisms, the most resistant ones. I'm a firm believer in the chlorine tablets because it's just going to store longer than the liquid. However, much harder to know what your concentrate is. You literally have to make your own batch of water with it. And then... You know, hope that you have the concentration right. So that's going to be trickier. Make it into a liquid chlorine and then use that substance to treat your water. Exactly. And that's going to be a lot more difficult with the tablets. But, I mean, they store so much longer. They're so much easier to store than any kind of liquid chlorine. So. Oh, you buy yours when it's on sale to flavor the filtered water if we need it. What's that? Salt? Garden girl, tell me. So, yeah, I will go. Mayo? What? Mayo, is that that little stuff that comes? Oh, yeah, the mayo. Uh-huh. The little flavor drops. Yeah, that's what I've heard people do is they bring some kind of powder, some kind of sports drink kind of powder to put in to kind of take some of the edge off. Uh-huh. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, like maybe a little Kool-Aid. Yeah. Yeah. That's totally. Actually, that's what we ended up doing. We had Gatorade powder. And we put that in there. People just put some of that in there. Yeah. But then we had to like, we put the Gatorade powder water in our camel packs and then it dyed it all blue. But that's okay. Live and learn. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Live and learn. Okay, so know the concentration of your liquid bleach. In the United States, most household liquid bleaches are going to be a 5% to a 9% chlorine amount. They usually have directions on the bottle for purifying water, but if they don't, the CDC suggests one-eighth teaspoon per gallon. or eight drops to about 0.5 milliliters. So two drops per each liter or quart. So if you had a quart jar, two drops of bleach in there. Stir it up and let it stand 30 minutes before drinking. And the reason is because chlorine will dissipate, right? And it's already done its job. It'll dissipate out of the water. Yeah, the sun. Yeah. Yeah. It's so crazy to think about all the stuff they do to our water to make it purified and whatnot, and then what we're actually drinking in that cup. I use my filter anyway. Yeah, we do. My Alex Beer. I can literally taste the difference in my water. If my mom uses our water to make coffee, I know it's from that tap. But So I was drinking like a lot of sodas and stuff like that. And I went just all water because, you know, that's what's better. And just have a little soda as a treat or whatever on the weekend. That's what we do. Right. And the minute I did that, I got really, really bad stomach aches. And the only thing I could figure out was that I switched to like drinking that much tap water. And so I put it back through my Alexa peer and was. Like, nope. Yeah, we got one of those, the countertop ones, because you prefer it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, our old house had the well, and we had, like, a large amount of sulfur and stuff like that in our water. So we used it religiously. And then when we moved to city water, we were like, oh, not that big deal, right? Oh, I wanted to do all the chlorine and all that. Mm-hmm. I don't know. Exactly. All the nasties that they put in there. So. One thing is if you're going to use the filter as your water purification method, you should be doing, so this is if you had dirty water, like you're not taking your city tap water, you know, and putting it through there. If you have like really dirty water, you want your filter to be one micron or less. Most of them are nowadays. But it still won't remove viruses and stuff like that. So it still suggests that you do like a chlorine disinfectant after you filter it. And that's what I was really curious about. It was like, can you get away with just using your filter? I mean, you can't. It's going to be better than drinking nothing, right? But you should still be doing a disinfect after. So. Maybe in the go bag, you want to throw one of those chlorine tabs in your bag or something like that. Like I said, the liquid bleach just doesn't store very long. So if it's a situation where you're not going to be changing it out a lot, I would opt for a tablet. Yeah, I've got tablets and a commercial water filter thing. Do they make smaller chlorine tablets for... Um, water purification. Cool. Yeah. I'll have to go look for that. Have some of that thrown in my go bag. So what else did you learn? What kind of like new stuff did you pick up today from? Well, the biggest new thing was, I said, was tapping the tree. Yeah. Um, and we've talked like solar stills. I mean, I knew about them, but doing this to like the dig a hole, put the plastic with the rock in the middle and put a char underneath, um, to the, you, You can make water, kind of make water, but if you put green foliage in there, the plant vegetation gives off the water. It evaporates onto the plastic, and then because you have a rock in the middle of the plastic to make it drip down, it drips into whatever container you have in the middle. If you don't have a lake nearby, you can kind of make water by doing stuff like that. That's a really good one for ocean water as well. Yeah, because you write the salt water, you put a container of salt water in there off to the side, and then it evaporates, you know, because it uses energy from the sun through the plastic. The water gas evaporates up, hits the plastic, cools, turns into particles, you know, droplets of water. Same as when you. Plastic into your. As when you distill it. Same basic concept. Except you're using sun power. Yeah, sun power, exactly. So. Yeah, and that's good stuff. Because if you only have salt water, you're in trouble. Or, alternatively, if you need salt. That's a way to be able. To harvest salt. Yeah, because you have that left in the container that you had salt water in originally. The salt would be left behind. Yeah. Yeah, that's the one when we were close to ocean water and stuff. I was like, hmm, okay, that makes sense. Yeah. Because what do you do if all you have to drink is nasty, Bill? Bottom line is. No, that's a dehydration. What? You can't drink just salt water. Yeah, I know. You can't drink just salt water. Yeah, I know. Yeah. But that method, even if you're like stranded, if you can get something over it while it's evaporating, you can get good water to drink. Yep. Yep. That's a good method. Bottom line is, have many different systems. Know how to do this stuff in many different ways because what if you can't start a fire? What if you can't produce heat to boil it? Then you're going to have to have an alternate method. What if you don't have chlorine? You're going to have to be able to use all of these different methods because water is so important. Yep. Is it? Besides air. Three days, right? Three days. Isn't it like three days? Yep. That's why I like to use the three-minute rule, too, because the rule's a three with survival, right? Three minutes without air. Social media? No, definitely not. Facebook is like, you have messages. I'm like, I don't care. Three minutes without your social media. No. Three minutes air. That's what it seems like society's gone to. Yeah. No, it's true. It's true. Three. No. Yeah. Three minutes air. Three hours of extreme weather. Three days of water. Three weeks of food. And that's it. The rules of three. It's what you need. Yep. Okay. Let's bust into the change in Earth news because I got a lot to talk about. Let's go ahead and do that. Roll that beautiful weather music. All right, Changing Earth news, news, news. Our sun, we had some huge activity going on last week. Nothing like that I needed to tell you, you know, to like break in on the week about. It's kind of calming down the past couple days. We do have a coronal hole that's inbound again. So that means earthquake watch. So we're back on earthquake watch. And we had some intense earthquake activity last week. So we definitely want to keep an eye on that. Some plasma filaments popping up there. That kind of thing. The climate people, I guess, came out with a new study. Uh-oh. Yeah. And they're saying... that the wildfires from just the past two years have completely erased like 20 years of us trying to get emissions down. And the wildfires have just wiped out everything we did. It's like, do you realize what a small speck you are? The volcanoes could just be like, burp, and, you know, total game changer. So, yes, I want to protect our planet and not pollute and do all those things. But in the grand scheme of things, I don't really think we're the ones in charge of that. So, yeah, that was the big news from the climate freaks that just want to panic about everything. They're having cases now of, like, teenagers with PTSD because their parents have, like, push this climate change BS so far down their throats their whole life. They're like, Oh my God. And then they're like, you prep, you preppers are the fear mongers. Uh-huh. Okay. It's ridiculous. Right? Big storm yesterday across the Midwest. Prayers going out to everybody affected from the storm, Tennessee, Kentucky, Literally, we were watching it. It didn't hit our house. It was just east of us, but I was watching it on radar. The ribbon of storm activity literally stretched from Houston to Toronto last night or yesterday during the day. It was insanity to watch it, and it did some damage. Lord, just reach out to everybody who needs your help today, and please, Make sure they're safe in your arms or wherever they need to be. Alrighty. On December 4th, we had 642 earthquakes that were 2.0 or bigger. That's a big number. I think the most we've seen is like 800 in one day. So that's up there. Biggest of which was a 5.7 in the Philippines. Yes. They're literally still getting earthquakes like daily over there. It's crazy. I couldn't imagine living on that island right now. So prayers to everybody over there. It's got to be a nightmare. The day before that, they actually had a 6.8 in Mindano in the Philippines. Three people dead. And that was their third quake in just two days. And then they got hit by a 5.7 the next day. Cyclone, I have no idea how to say this name. It's Machung, M-I-C-H-A-U-N-G. It was over there giving India a big time walloping. The Chennai airport was affected. There were runways. Everything was completely flooded. So they had flight delays. There was also a 5.1 earthquake in Bursa, Turkey. In the UK, Little Hampton, a tornado touched down. 136 mile an hour winds left a three mile trail of destruction over there. The UK has just really been getting walloped this week, this winter. So, you know, prayers to all of them over there that are dealing with this rugged weather. Not anything unlike our coastlines right now, though. We had the Pacific Atmospheric River come through and hit the northwestern end of the United States and into Canada. So Highway 101 was closed in Oregon due to flooding on the 4th, and that situation is just going to ramp up from there. In Tanzania, there was 47 people killed, 85 injured in flooding and landslides in their country. And also Sumatra, one person has died, 11 people are missing and flooding over there. So the rain is just continuing to hit that South African continent. Queensland, Australia was hit with 87 mile an hour winds and hail the size of tennis balls. Damaging cars and farms. So they've been taking it on the chin. They get a little bit of a reprieve this week. But they are kind of gearing up for this tropical cyclone. They've named it Jasper. And it was predicted to be a Cat 4 by the time it comes in to hit Queensland. although it did downgrade a little bit and it hasn't hit yet. It might be hitting today, actually, and we won't hear news of it till tomorrow. So we're keeping our eyes on that one during the week. On December 5th, there was 538 earthquakes that were 2.0 or bigger, still a pretty big number. We're still up there. 5.8 in the Philippines, again, biggest earthquake of the day. There was a 5.1 on the big island of Hawaii. Michang, the cyclone Michang, left 17 people dead there in India due to flooding. The death toll in Tanzania increased to 63. Remember last week I was talking about on Mount Merapi in Indonesia, the volcano erupted. There was 11 hikers that were dead, and then they were still looking for the other 12 that were out there. They've called off the search now and just increased the death toll to 23 because they haven't been able to find them. And I don't know if they actually found bodies yet or not, but they searched for, you know, pretty much all week and haven't been able to find them. So they're assuming that they perished in that as well. So death count from that one's up to about 23. Okay. So another study that they've been doing is showing that more natural disasters are happening, but less deaths are actually happening because of these natural disasters, thanks to the early warning systems we have in place. So it seems to me I know a book series that kind of goes along those lines, like massive amounts of damage, and then we have no infrastructure and a lot of people. We have to figure that out. You know, you should. Put that up on the chat. Probably a bunch of people would like to read it. Right? I know. I've read them a couple times. That would be the Changing Earth series if you guys seriously don't know. I'm just going to spell it out for you at this point. December 6th, there was 446 earthquakes that were 2.0 or bigger, the biggest of which was a 5.4 in Qinghai, China. In Southern California, there was a 3.5 magnitude earthquake that shut down 20 rides at Disneyland. Oh, poor Disneyland. Disney. Japan, thousands of tourists were stranded as a cold snaps engulfs Asia. So it was getting so cold, they couldn't fly the planes and stuff anymore. So all the tourists were trapped there. In Washington, we had homes, roads flooded. I did hear from Uh, JB up in Washington, she's doing okay. Working too much, but doing okay. And, I didn't talk to Ryan though. I'll have to check in with him. In Iceland, the tremors continue, but no eruption of the volcano as of yet. So interesting situation there, right? So there's all these tremors. You live in the city. Your city is literally getting ripped apart by earthquakes and whatnot. So they evacuate the whole city because they're, you know, eruptions imminent, but then like no eruption. It's like, do you go back home when they're still having like, you know, tons of earthquakes, 120, something like that a day? Or what do you do, you know, in that circumstance? Take a breath. Yeah, right? It's like 9-11, the people evacuated the building and then were told to go back in. Right. I think a week. Yeah. I think, yeah, I just don't know. But, like, that's your house. And what if you have a mortgage on it? You're paying for that house that's in that area. And then you've got to, like, pay to live someplace else. I mean, that's a total insurance question. And, of course, that's where my insurance brain goes. But, you know, I'm just saying. It's got to be an interesting situation for those people. Speaking of insurance, the insurance journal is saying that because of the uptick of hail, that they're losing so many solar panels that it's undermining the security of having solar panels as a, um, energy source. So basically they're paying out so much on these panels all the time that they're not sure, you know, um, I mean, you don't get a discount on your insurance for having solar panels, but what if you got a penalty or something because of it? You know, what if they excluded solar panels from your insurance policy, that kind of thing. So that was one of my big concerns with it. And they can withstand pretty good. I mean, I did all that research on solar panels. They can take a pretty good licking, but, you know, they can't stand up to a baseball size, and that's what we've been seeing. So. I don't know what we're going to do about that. Cover your panels. Make sure they're okay in a solar storm or in a hailstorm. I really like that flower thing. I know it was like, oh gosh, it was probably like $ 12, 000 or something. But it was this flower. It was a solar panel flower that was literally on a trailer so you can move it around. And during the daytime, it opens up like a flower and follows the sun and And then it closes down if it's a storm or whatever. So, I mean, I wonder if that's more effective. My thought was like too many moving parts to go wrong. So, but now I'm a little bit more curious. Okay. Some kind of just screen that goes or covering that would just motorized come across this traditional panel. Right. Or even a plexiglass. If you had like a clear plexiglass that would still let the sunlight through but could make like a cage for them. You know, like they use for hockey boards. Yeah. Because that stuff can take a beating. I mean, it can't take a beating from everything. Nothing can take a beating from everything. But it does a pretty good job and it probably wouldn't be too expensive to make like a cage for it. Mm-hmm. At least it would give it something to crack before it hit your panel, and hopefully the panel would still function properly underneath it, you know, if you had it set up that way. Okay, December 7th. 396 earthquakes are 2.0 or bigger. That's a little bit more of an average number there, the 396. 4.4 near Kilauea Summit, so the Big Island earthquakes continue. The biggest of the day, though, was a 7.1 in Venatu. That is due to a lot of solar activity. It usually thumps Venatu pretty hard, and then that transfers around the Ring of Fire. In Oregon, two people have died because of the flooding due to that atmospheric river activity. It was still raining. It rained all week pretty much up there. And then tropical cyclone Jasper was ramping up. On the 7th. To a cap 5. But it has been slowing down again. Like I say. Probably hitting the day. Swaths of Siberia. Went to negative. 72 degrees Fahrenheit. In temperature. That's how cold. Asia is right now. Dude. I am not living. No. No. Like, you can't even go out. You're just going to insta-freeze. Like, that's stay-inside material for, yeah, ever. Right there. Remember waiting, I don't know, did you have to wait for the school bus as a kid in Michigan? Oh, yeah. Could you imagine? No! That's what I'm saying. Like, if your hair was wet, even if we drove to school, you just got out of the shower, your hair's wet, it would break off exactly. Oh, like. And that wasn't no negative 72, like maybe a windshield, you know, windshield negative 30 or something. Right. But straight up negative 72 degrees Fahrenheit. No, uh-uh. Not this girl. I was like, I'm done. December 8th of 2023, there was 553 earthquakes that were 2.0 or bigger. Still up there, you know, just bounce right back to being up there. Biggest of which was a 5.8 in the Solomon Islands. There was a 5.8 earthquake that hit Mexico City. There was a 5.9 earthquake that hit the Philippines again. And the 7.1 from Venatu, that's from the day before. On the 9th, so this is yesterday, 445 earthquakes that were 2.0 or bigger. biggest of which was a 5.7 in the British Virgin Islands. They actually had two earthquakes that happened there pretty much in synchronization. And it's really interesting because there was a couple of earthquakes. Where is that? Okay, we're coming up to it. So right here. So there was a 2.2 in Northern Texas. There was also a 3.6 in In Utah, Totonia, Utah. And this is North American Craton movement. If you don't know what the North American Craton is, just Google it. You'll see pictures of it. But this is our actual plate that sits on top of the United States wiggling. And I think it had some kind of trigger from the Bridges Virgin Islands. And then I told you once it hits a Venatu, it kind of travels around the Ring of Fire from there. Usually hits up into the northern part. of the United States and then shoots down the Craton. So that would be a definite reason, other than fracking and oil production and stuff, that Northern Texas would have that 2.2. So that makes me watch over to the East Coast. Because once you have the earthquakes on that Craton, it's traveling around going into the East Coast. So then we're looking for earthquakes like Virginia area, anywhere along the New Madrid, that kind of thing. Looking for activity there. Santa Ana winds returning to Southern California, so we have red flag warnings down there. I saw a couple of fires that did break out. Nothing of mention, though. Nothing big. Of course, we had the huge storm yesterday. Tennessee, Kentucky got just creamed with that storm. More than 12 reported tornadoes touching down. Some of the worst hit spots were Henderson, Tennessee. North part of their town was just destroyed. Clarksville, Tennessee got it. Nashville, Tennessee got it. There's at least six people dead that they know of right now. At least two dozen injured in that event. So a lot of destruction. It was still a rainy mess today. So they're just trying to figure out, you know, like what's the damage count and just get it get a cap on what's going on right now. Pretty much asking people to just shelter in place unless you have like a severe emergency that you need, you know, assistance or something like that. If you're in that area, just, you know, hang out if you can. There's no power in those areas and stuff right now that I know of, at least this afternoon. So it's just a shelter in place type situation. One of the bigger concerns is that these towns that were hit, the small businesses there They really, really rely upon Christmas sales to be able to make it through their year. And now here we are, you know, what, 15 days out from Christmas and their store is wrecked, right? So some people are going to set up like little booths in parking lots and stuff like that to try and capture some of the sales that they would normally get. So if you are in that area, go out and support your small businesses. Go spend some money at their stores. if they're still wanting to do business because, you know, small business is where it's at and it's really an essential time of year. And that beyond having to go through the mess of your whole business just got shredded, now it's at the worst time of the possible year for that to happen. And so you're going to have to deal with the fallout from that as well. So if you can support them, please go do that. Okay, so today is the 12th. We had four, or today is the 10th. Sorry, 12-10. We had 454 earthquakes that were 2.0 or bigger, biggest of which today was a 6.4, pretty much smack dab in the middle of Russia, kind of to their southern border, but centrally located. There was a 5.8 earthquake that took place out in the ocean near Peru. There was a 3.0 earthquake outside of Jackson Center, Ohio. So again, this is that unusual activity. This would be the North American Craton Movement coming around from those earthquakes that happened on the other side. There was a 4.0 that hit Romania. And a 2.1 earthquake that hit Scotland, it is worth noting because it was only five miles deep. So it was a pretty good tremor and made a pretty good ruckus on top. You know, the shallower earthquakes are, the more you're going to feel them. So the fact that it was only five miles deep is what makes this even mentionable. There are currently 56 million Americans under a flood watch. So guys, be careful out there. You know, we got stuff happening both the east and west coast. Be safe. Be smart. Don't drive through the flood water. Still sorting the damage in Tennessee. Southwestern Alabama was hit with marble-sized hail in that event. Mississippi was hit with baseball-sized hail. So they're not going to be outdone by Alabama. And there was a tornado touchdown in Raleigh, North Carolina today. Just a little one. Just eyes on kind of situation. Not nearly the destruction we saw in Tennessee. Currently, there are 28 volcanoes erupting. There are 10 showing minor activity and 34 showing unrest. The erupting numbers are high, but we've been holding pretty steady at 28 for the last few weeks. So, um we'll have to see what happens with the coronal hole and then we had all that earthquake activity last week so if that number climbs or not and honestly we got up to like 30 once and that's like the most i've ever seen before so we'll just have to keep eyes on that currently wildfire in the united states we are at our preparedness level of one which is basically non-existent there's only 304 acres burning from two fires and that's being reported in from north carolina so not even not even out West where it's getting ready to the wind to blow out there. So, all righty. Well, that's the change in earth news for today. I hope everybody's, you know, hunkered in and got cold down here in Texas. And from what I understand, pretty cold across the rest of the country. So hopefully everybody's snuggled up and, and getting ready for Christmas and enjoying time with the family. Yeah. Huh? Did an office party last night. So that was, uh, did you, there's one thing I don't miss. It's kind of hard to do an office party when you're like 1800 miles away. Yeah. No. Yeah. Remote working. Oh, all right guys. Um, Virgis story is getting ready to, uh, work your minds a little bit. So stay tuned for next time. Check out the Changing Earth audio drama on Thursday. You guys are going to love it. Really good stuff. And until next time, remember, dream, survive, thrive. Thank you for joining Sarah and Chen for this episode of the Changing Earth podcast. Don't forget to pick up your copy of Day After Disaster, Without Land, The Walls of Freedom, Battle for the South, Dark Days in Denver, and The Endless Night at www.authorSaraFHathaway.com. If you love the Changing Earth series and podcast, become a supporter while you're there.