Before we start little bit of admin.
err
a little bit of admin
Basically this is footage that I've kind of edited together.
It was filmed in 2016, um, for a taster for an idea I'd had, that was ...
I don't know one of these
I found all these files.
Apparently I did a brochure.
I don't think I actually wrote much of the story because I focused more on the logo.
Um, cause I mean that,
that took ages
and probably wasn't worth it in the end.
Yes I do want to open 34 items.
There were loads of episodes about different ways the world could end
like Solar Flares
Aliens
I was basically knee-deep in Shutterstock for quite a long time.
Okay.
So the reason I'm saying this is because the first, the video you're about to,
if you are going to watch it basically (you've probably stopped by now)
but the thing was shot was about a Viral Pandemic.
And I didn't want you to watch it thinking that I'd, like, filmed it yesterday
'cause that'd just be a really strange thing to do.
Anyway.
I just wanted people to see it because I had all this footage
on my hard drive for ages.
I've edited it together.
This bit's gone on for way too long, but it's strange to watch
and I wanted to put out there.
So that's the preamble.
And if you haven't stopped watching. here is the thing
I've made
that I've uploaded to YouTube.
I don't want to die.
I mean, I know none of us want to die, but I mean, I really don't.
I can't die.
I have too many things to do.
I have to read all the books that I've said that I have read.
When people, tell me that I worry too much.
I'm always like, "no, no, you worry far too little" because there are so many things to be worried about.
Climate change
Solar Flares
a Viral Pandemic
Asteroids
Meteors
Nuclear War
Zombies
Aliens
Artificial Intelligence.
Dark
matter
I don't even know what that means.
If the apocalypse isn't going to happen then I don't need to worry.
And if it is going to happen, I can prepare.
That is what I'm talking about.
Lipstick on my cup.
That is a pandemic waiting to happen.
I'm going to investigate this.
I am James Veitch.
I'm petrified.
And I'm making a TV show.
I'm never coming here again.
It's all very well just being afraid, but we need facts, and that is why I have come here.
To the University of South Carolina.
During that whole bit, there was just direct sunlight in my eyes.
I don't want to be like a backseat driver man but I just don't ...
is this...
Is that profesh?
Better safe than sorry
Yeah, let's get this bad boy into the lab.
You know what I mean?
[coughing]
I'm okay.
It's nothing. It's nothing. Sorry. Sorry.
What do you think the chances are of a much worse flu
being able to take out the world, I suppose, before we have time?
The chances are minute.
Really?
Yes.
But I have some articles here:
"Ebola Scare in City."
"Killed by Swine Flu"
or "Swine Flu Spreads."
You know what I mean?
Those are
And it is The Sun and the Daily News.
And it sort of says it all doesn't it?
I've got one from the New York, New York Times.
It says "Deadly Viral Pandemic Imminent: This is 100% Legitimately The End."
Uh huh
I mean, I
I'll be honest with you.
I made that one.
A friend of mine has a friend that works at the center of disease control
CDC
CDC. I was saying "I'm speaking to a virologist.
I think we're going to be okay."
And she said, "Well, I have a friend who works at the CDC and she says, all she does all day is,
and I quote:
"test salmonella on beansprouts."
What do you think about that?
That's a direct quotation.
How is that helping?
I don't know how this helps.
First of all, we're talking about salmonella, which is not a virus.
And beansprouts.
Obvs I wanted a second opinion.
So I set out in search of another virologist.
Virologist?
Another doctor.
Unfortunately, it was, it was quite a big building and I got lost for about 45 minutes.
What was the point of having a hospital?
Where's the point of having all these rooms if literally, no one is...
Oh
But eventually I found Dr Paula Cannon
and I explained to her what I was worried about
...a random mutation can happen somewhere in the world ... and suddenly that, that is something that our
retroviral drugs don't work on ... and it's ... let's say it's airborne ... it spreads very very quickly.
Right. It's like a Doomsday Virus.
What, what would it take to be like a world-wiping-out virus?
It's a numbers game isn't it?
It's like every so often a nine comes up on the roulette table.
Let's focus on the good news.
Soap and water works really well.
And the other thing that works really well is keeping your hands away from your face.
Okay?
Wash your hands.
Don't touch your face.
How long would it take?
Like, a brand new virus?
This is the pure virus.
How quickly could you find a vaccine?
So normally this takes many years because you know, science moves fairly quickly, but there's a lot of regulation
you've got to go through and you've got to test it
But when people are dying.
When people are dying, I think.
Yeah.
We should probably destroy this.
[the same musical sting I keep on using]
So Dr Kast thinks that the next kind of pandemic is going to be flu-based.
Now the last flu pandemic we had was the Spanish Flu in 1918, and that killed a hundred million people.
There weren't as many people on earth.
So that was just like a significant percentage of the population.
You've got to imagine that now it would be a much larger population
particularly since airtravel, we didn't have much air travel in 1918.
Loads of air travel now.
We are, we are screwed.
And we're also much more touchy feely now so
It was clear the doctors knew what they were talking about, but I wanted to hedge my bets.
so I found a guy who could give me some tips on how to survive if the worst should happen.
Basically, the man has skills,
I don't have skills.
I can't even make an omelette
If viruses wipe out the entire, the entire world.
Then I'm going to need to know how to
... how to survive in the wilderne ... there he is.
Hey mate.
Let's go look at some of the plants around here for food medicine, et cetera,
Hells yeah, let's do it.
Is that what they say in Great Britain?
No. I don't know why I said that actually, I've literally never said that before.
But let's go. I'm excited.
[musical montage to indicate time passing in a pleasant fashion]
[I love this song]
This is actually something from your land that's invaded our land,
Errrr ...
Culture.
No,
This would be a crude form of aspirin.
Be careful for the poison oak there,
Thanks mate
You grind it into a flour.
Make a pancake.
Nobody eats it raw.
It might ... even
Somebody does.
I sometimes put plastic bags on the trees and the water evaporating out of the leaves is caught in the plastic bags,
That's clever
But it would be even easier if you're in a dry stream bed to dig down.
If you're at home...
Probably just run the tap.
Water is the most important thing that you need to have in your home?
Well, Netflix? I mean.
Netflix is irrelevant.
Hold on one second.
These are prescription glasses?
We could probably make a fire
Problem is I would I would …
I would not be able to see that fire,
Who carries tinder in their pockets that's what I want to know?
Everybody does.
It's a very different form of Tinder,
Hold this.
[High pitched yelps I am not proud of]
When all the matches ran out.
I am vital.
I am vital in the apocalypse.
Don't lose those glasses
I'm not gonna......
There you go
Oh!!! My god!
So everyone seeed to be in agreement that soap and water was basically a good idea,
but what happens when all the soap runs out?
So, uh, in light of this, I got Chris to show me how to make my own soap using just water and a plant called yucca.
I say, I got him to show me.
It was his idea and I hadn't heard of a yucca.
So the yucca is actually primarily used as twine,but I'm going to show you how also to make it into a soap.
Put some water in here.
Where have you managed to get this pure water from?
Take your leaf.
Bend it in half
And start pulling it apart like so
No pull it apart from the middle, you'll get longer strands.
Ahhhhh, it comes apart like.
It's like, it's like string cheese
It's like string cheese except it's not edible.
Don't eat this
It's like a lot of little cords and you can
To be honest is string cheese edible?
So what are you?
Hang on.
You're rubbing yours.
No I'm just pulling it apart. Just keep pulling it apart.
Ahh yours...
I'm putting mine into the thing
You could.
It's okay.
Okay.
All right.
You have your own ways.
I learned [wearned??] my ways in my village.
Stop bringing me back there.
It's too much.
Sorry.
Is this a past life you're recalling?
Well, no, it's, it's pre-apocalypse you know what I mean?
Oh I see; you're seeing it
Every night.
That's why I need to wear my passion hat,
No the passion hat will help you sleep so you don't have to worry about it.
Yeah exactly that's what I mean
There's plenty of worrying to do when it actually happens.
Yeah.
You don't need to worry now
But you feel pretty prepared I would say
You worry less you said, cause you.. you feel
I like to sleep.
Yeah.
If you're worrying, you're not doing okay.
"Living is easy with eyes closed misunderstanding all you see"
Wow, you really are a Beatles fan, huh?
I am
Please accept my condolences
What?
Are you a Stones fan?
Mate!
Come on.
You didn't tell me he was a Stones fan.
Mind you, all the Stones are gone now.
They're dead.
That's literally what it took to stop them touring.
[musical sting we're thoroughly sick of]
Here you can take some of mine.
You taking a long time to do it.
Sorry.
Thanks mate.
Take a bunch of this.
Yeah, thank you.
Take a little bit of the fiber.
Yeah.
Wet it
Yeah.
Make some soap.
[universal sound of shock]
That's incredible.
Look at this! Look at this!
So then you wash all of the, uh, you know, the plague infested bacteria or whatever virus off of your body.
You get some lather.
I'm getting some yeah I'm getting some.
Give it a little bit more water.
I have a little bit more soap than you do.
Well you're quite; you've been doing this
I'm a better soap maker huh
Oh, look, I've got, I'm getting some lather.
That is incredible.
So this is just yucca and water.
That's literally all it is
Yucca and water
That is lather that I've created with my own hands and a bit of help.
Wow. You're quite a guy,
You take the piss, but this is actually fairly impressive
I'm starting to be impressed, yeah!
I mean, come on, mate.
If you could dry your hands on the towels that you brought for yourself,
I didn't bring them
You're making a comment
Who needs to do, I don't need to dry my hands on the towels.
I'll dry them on the air that comes for free.
There you go. He doesn't need a towel.
I don't need white towels.
There you go.
I'm going to dump this one.
Yeah get rid of it.
You may not like a towel, but I do.
[under breath] sunnofab***h
I'm not a barbarian.
Don't you carry a kerchief to wipe your hands with?
Neeeoooooo
if there was a catastrophe in your hometown, in your hometown, do you think you'd be all alone?
I mean, there's a lot of people who live there, right?
So after some people died you'd have to put things together with whoever was around.
I would, I'd reform society.
You wouldn't be alone.
I don't know about that.
I'd been with Chris for the best part of an afternoon.
Um, but there was one question that I'd been dying to ask him, uh, that I hadn't yet.
What's in your backpack?
What's in my backpack?
A cup
Wire
Firestarter
some lights
water purifier
Flashlight
Mylar
An emergency poncho
Sewing kit.
For trade
Just a 50 cent piece but you never see them
A water key
Another Leatherman
Notebook
Another water key
See I have another pocket here
Duct tape
50 feet of cord
To be honest;
that's just a hostage situation waiting to happen
Why do I carry twine?
Because that is one of the Holy Trinity of things that you need.
And why is it the Holy Trinity of things that you need?
Because that is something that you said and have told me to remember
[frustrated laughter as he realises he's dealing with an idiot]
Can you have, do you have any ideas why I might carry this?
Well if you have a pet, you're going to need to carry it on a, on a, on a, on a leash also
Band-aids
Tape
It's camouflaged
Guys, can you see me
You can remove snake venom.
You can suck it out.
I've been bitten!
A little knife.
Call that a knife?
and a saw
Here's a
WIll you stop bringing out knives?
When you leave the house, are you like, cause I'm like always just "wallet, keys, phone."
But you're like "knife"
"knife"
..."knife"
..."article of trade"
..."duct tape"
..."knife"
The woods are full of toilet paper.
What's it called?
A leaf
Bit minging though.
This is an old computer platter.
Yeah, it's a hard drive yeah.
What do you think this is for?
Obviously in the apocalypse, you're going to have sensitive data
about the cure
Signaling mirror!
Oooohhhh!
It's always good to keep fresh breath in the, um, in theApocalypse 'cos I think like people are,
when you meet a fellow traveler, you don't want to have bad breath and
you're thinking this is Altoids?
Yeah.
See you're jumping to conclusions.
This is a mini survival kit.
Of course it is.
Problem is you have to eat all the mints first and you don't want to do that in a rush.
So just, uh, take your time.
This is just what I normally carry.
I have a shell.
Shell.
"Shell" we tell me why?
Well, it just happened to be in my pack.
But I could eat off of it.
A quasi knife for small fish
Do they need knives?
So a little knife, a fish.
Cause they've got to survive as well.
You know what you could do with one of these you could use it as a signaling device?
[Excellent whistle]
[sound of abysmal blowing]
Blow harder.
[strong whistle blow]
There you go
What do I have in here?
You know I hate to say it, but I think that's,
that's all there is.
I know it's a small, basic
It's tiny
It's lacking so much
There's very little here
Ok so it was, it was clear that I lacked almost all of the things I was gonna need to survive.
So it was, it was definitely time to get kitted up.
So that's, that's where I drove to.
and that's why there are all these montage scenes of me driving, um, to kind of connect the bits.
That was good. That was good.
I feel, I mean, I, I have a certain set of skills now.
We soaped, we lathered together.
What a lovely guy and also I want him to be my dad.
No, don't put that on camera.
Progress has been made.
Definitely, definitely.
And also
Guess who's sleeping well tonight.
I am cause of the, um, the hat.
How long has the indicator been on?
This is the shop I ended up at but before I went in the camera crew did a thing
where they shot some b-roll
er
which is a technical term for the sort of thing you're seeing now
and I then turned that into I think,
what amounts to,
an excellent intro.
What type of disaster do you want to prepare for?
We have stuff for earthquakes fires, floods, power outages.
Okay.
Mostly viral infections.
A virus, pandemic sweeping over the earth.
Let's start with water filters.
One of the things you're going to want is a filter that can do viruses and
It literally says viral.
This is your filter.
And you just pump this
One 4 litre pouch that holds the dirty water. One that holds the clean water.
What if I get them the wrong way round?
One says "dirty."
Oh,
How am I going to feed myself, Jeff?
That has a five-year shelf life.
That's five-year shelf life water.
This has a 12 year shelf life.
All you have to do is add water into it.
Have you tasted that?
Is this is what astronauts eat?
I'm not sure.
I trust an Italian style pepper steak that has a shelf life five years.
Oh, this is actually 12 years.
These cans here?
That's 25 years.
25 years!
Do people like bury this?
Some people bury it
Everybody's going to be after the scrambled eggs.
I have people that'll buy like a year supply of the food.
And then do you think they leave at 25 years?
And then they have to start replacing the.., you know, it's kinda like how they made Stonehenge
Let's say I I'd run through my supply or they've been pilfered or I forgot where I'd hidden them.
That's actually fairly likely.
Like in Breaking Bad where he remembers, I wouldn't remember the numbers.
I'd just be like "I've lost all the money".
How am I going to fish kill forage?
Have you got any stuff to do that?
We do.
I thought that would be the answer.
Can you do me a favor?
Can you just, can you say, uh,
that's a knife.
That's not a knife.
This is
Is that you in a younger..?
No that's Bear Grylls.
Any traps for animals, things like that?
I don't have traps.
That's alright I'm vegetarian anyway until the apocalypse happens, at which point I might begin to branch out
I think you want to stay away from a big stove.
That's not going to be portable.
Oh, I thought, okay.
I thought you were just saying, I'm just not responsible enough
Self-survival in the woods; that's one thing, a lot of our customers are thinking self survival in a house
People will probably come and invade my house cause they'll know that I have the scrambled eggs.
Battery packs that work off solar power.
You could run lighting off of it.
Some people take, uh,
Throw an end of the world party.
You probably have to play that REM song wouldn't you, if you know
A major disaster, you may not be able to use the hospital.
So
Gotta take care of yourself
Having different types of first aid kits or trauma kits,
Do a lot of people pick the pink hard hat.
Yes.
Is that a joke?
No.
We have people that come in, they're concerned about zombie preparedness.
You see what I mean?
They'll buy a machete.
They'll buy, you know, emergency kit for zombies.
Not *for* zombies.
Cause you don't want to help
How about a hazmat suit?
Eyewash, Tylenol, a black stethoscope.
That's just cool.
Do you have your own personal stash as well?
I do. I've been doing this 27 years.
I have a lot of supplies.
Where's your, where are your supplies.
Do you want to just tell me the er.
Ah no
What do you think Jeff.
You could break, pry
I was going more for protect.
People want to take my stuff?
They want to, they want to use my flushable loo?
No way Jose.
And I don't mean that in a racial way.
I mean, just that's, it's just the expression.No way, buddy.
That's actually, that's really heavy.
I'm going to get the smaller one.
This is more my, yeah.
Look at this cute little guy.
Waaaah
Ow!
Waaaah
Do you find that things you sell are based on politics?
Usually around election season it gets a little crazier
On the one hand, you're like,
"I don't want the world to end, so I should probably go with Hillary..."
"... but on the other hand..."
"... business is good."
[wicked Gorillaz music I've used to create a strong montage sequence]
[music intensifies]
[how does it keep getting even better?]
Jeff, how much is that gonna be?
What's the damage?
$3,221
Can we at least keep the flushable loo?
Let's see your pack.
I've got a jumper with a bear on it.
Now I think, at a pinch,
this might scare off another bear.
Are you joking?
People say, "YOLO", you only live once, but what does that, well exactly?
What can I do to stop, to make my chances of optimum chances of survival?
Wash your hands.
This little thing with a ...well it's mainly a bluetooth clicker
But you can also change slides with it so
Why would you be concerned about changing slides?
What if you have to make a presentation?
Oh my god
VIrologist.
Let's call the whole thing.
Sorry.
Can I have everyone's attention please?
We've got a brand new virus.
Ok I need everyone to drop what they're doing and start work on this.
And in fact, to give you an incentive
Who takes care of this?
There must be a plan?
Can we run a battery of tests on this guy?
It would take a lot of resources and money to do that.
Ok I'm taking a swab of the area.
This swab will now contain DNA
I will put it into the tube.
I will break it off, close the tube.
I have placed the cup into the bag
and I will now reseal the bag.
I mean it doesn't sound as cool as his
but you get what I mean
Everything we need, we can take from the earth around us.
Everything.
We don't need societal ...
You know what I mean?
We should probably decide if one of us
If you die, can I eat you?
No.
Okay
No, I don't want to be eaten.
I don't think I would taste very good anyway.