Hi everyone, and welcome back to geek time with Brad. 欢迎回来【极客时间】.

Hi, Brad.

Hi, lulu. How's it going?

Yeah. I mean it's going and it has been some time since last time we actually talked about geeky stuff.

Yeah. I don't remember.

Yeah, I hope life's treating you well.

Life's treating me pretty good, no problems.

But have you seen some of the latest news? I mean that is actually a topic that I would like to propose today.

Have you seen people like Zuckerberg and all those tech gazillionaires in the world? It seems like there's now a trend among these people to build some sort of underground bunkers.

就是现在做那个地堡, 什么像扎克伯格他们都开始做那种好像是末日地堡那种感觉. Have you been following these news?

Of course I know about the lizard people on their underground bunkers.

Guys, if you don't remember the lizard people, Brad and I were actually talking about this whole conspiracy theory, or maybe not. 原来我们说那个阴谋论里面就说有一个谈到 lizard people, reptilian people that are actually in control of the world.

So I thought let's talk about bunkers.

That sounds very good. Yeah.

First of all, what is a bunker? Bunker. I thought bunker was first used in, I don't know, in some sort of shelter during wartime.

Aha. Like a lot of times during war, leaders would be in bunkers if there was any issues, really any like front lines near them, they would definitely hide in bunkers, because that's how they would make sure to stay away from being bombed basically.

So initially was like anti bombing.

Right.

I see. Because if you read history or if you watch some historical films or documentaries, you see like Hitler in bunker in his bunker and also Churchill in his bunker.

Yeah.

Like a lot of people they wanna have a bunker could be for something crazy like a nuclear fallout if there's ever a World War III that includes nuclear weapons, you can see that in the video game series that's really popular, the fallout series.

The fallout.

Like lizard, yeah, in the series everyone is going to live in bunkers, and then after decades, people escape to the surface, and that's basically how the game takes place.

Fallout是一个挺老的游戏叫辐射. I think some of you, if you're older, you probably have heard of that, but they're bringing a new TV series in... this year, based on that game, I think. Yeah. So that whole premises is all nuclear apocalypse核末日这种, right?

Yeah. It's either like a nuclear apocalypse or it could be something related to any type of worldwide catastrophe basically. If there's like a super volcano that went off, that not just scorch the earth, but change the temperature of the surface drastically, you could live underground, and if you're near a volcano or something like that, you could stay warm a little bit better that way.

Okay. So, basically, any type of apocalypse or catastrophe like nuclear or biochemical or maybe just climatic.

Yeah.

What does this bunker keep you away from? Like radiation首先核辐射, and disease may be?

Aha. Definitely, like if there's disease on the surface, as long as you have access to some sort of filter, then you could still get air from the surface. Or if you have a good enough bunker, you could basically just recycle the air that you have in there, and that could prevent disease from entering into the bunker.

And also you can create basically like a radiation shield. So if there were... if there was nuclear fallout on the surface, you could keep yourself safe. Most rock will shield yourself from a lot of the radiation. And you could just add in like a layer of lead and that would stop the rest.

I mean it's alarming that it seems like you really thought about this.

Well. It's something that you could see a lot in movies back in the 80s, or early 90s. There's like Mad Max, you see all these roving bands of people stealing from each other and killing each other. And the people who are really safe are the ones who could get into bunkers and hide.

Yeah, to find a shelter. I suppose that's another thing. Apart from keeping you away from disease, radiation, climatic catastrophe, it's also the people. Right? It's other people that you're guarding yourself against so to speak.

Yeah.

I mean it's a really grim picture, but I guess people are buying into that.

But now let's talk about some of the basics, because I would really like to obviously explore more in the advanced episode, but in this episode, let us talk about the basics. What about food? Where do you get food? You can't just live on canned food forever.

Well. It depends on how long you're gonna be in the shelter, but a lot of canned food could last for several decades. Some... my grandmother had canned food that was in her closet for decades and she would still eat it. Nothing really wrong with that. But, you could say that's only going to be a limited supply. You're going to be limited to how many cans you can have. Whereas with if you're really going to be in a bunker for a long time, you definitely would want to have your own farm within the bunker. So you have to have something that's big enough to grow food.

Today you know we have a lot of modern farming techniques that can help us, you know, make sure we can maintain and a sufficient regenerative farming ecology. But the issue is a lot of people probably don't really know how to do that well. There's... you have limitations, but livestock would be terrible. You'd probably not wanna do a lot of livestock. And so you'd probably have to find protein from other ways. But if you could do livestock, because livestock would be beneficial for maintaining using the manure to help plants grow and stuff like that. There would be some benefits to having plants and livestock, but you have to choose which ones you do.

Yeah. It means it's going to be very difficult to keep cows and pigs and chicken and in underground bunker.

For sure.

Yeah. I've also heard about hydroponics like the many layers of plantation of growth.

I mean like if you have a room that hundred square meters, and you put like ten layers of hydroponics in there. You know. Not all plants could be layered that close. But if you... there's a lot of plants that could be, and you could really have close to 100,000 square meters in just 100 square meter room. And so it can really transform the amount of food you can grow within that area, especially if you get a really tall room as well.

Yeah. Hydroponics被翻译成无土栽培法或者水栽法, 就是你可以有很多层很小的空间, 可以最大化的去种植一些你要种植的这种农作物.

Actually hydroponics before I was inviting my friend Simon from New Zealand on to talk in the studio on the show, and he is already practicing that, he's already got a hydroponic garden, then he actually is trying to build like a off-grid, not really bunker, but sort of like shelter-like place. And he is very much into the whole idea of some type of apocalypse.

Yeah, I think aside from just having food in the bunker, you also have to kind of think about electricity.

Yes, of course.

You know. We have power issues these days already and if you're living underground, you have to do something to keep yourself sane. You have to watch TV, but you also have to have light for your plants and light for you to see everything. So.

And just for your sanity really.

Yeah. It's difficult for being in a bunker, because if you're in a bunker, you wanna be hidden, and so having a bank of solar panels outside of your bunker would definitely... Yeah.

Oh, you cannot have solar panels.

You could, but they'd have to be hidden. Right.

Because it gives away your position.

But, yeah. So you could possibly use solar panels depending upon how you did it. But that’s definitely not something you’d want to do if you had another source, any other fuel source, whether it’s liquid fuel like gasoline or other type of oil, that’s only gonna last a certain amount of time. And when you burn it, you also have to get rid of the exhaust. So that also creates a problem.

You want some renewable energy source. I’m thinking about hamster wheels.

Yeah. You could ride a bicycle, you could hook a bicycle up to a battery and you could charge it. But there's only so much power you can generate by bicycling.

Sure.

Lights wouldn't be a big deal, but if you wanna have like a TV or something like that, then you're looking at a lot of power, a computer, especially a TV, but like listening to music wouldn't be too difficult. Most iPods or something like that can be recharged relatively easily. But anything bigger would definitely take a lot of power.

And so if you say you were on the Hawaiian islands with Zuckerberg, you could actually power based on geothermal. And so that could actually be a benefit, if you're near a volcano, you do have a problem that the volcano could erupt, but you also could be very helpful with the fact that you'd have a power supply.

Have a renewable energy source. Yeah. I mean you win some, you lose some. When you're talking about bicycling to power your electrical appliances. I'm just picturing people in the bunker like you have like different groups of people, now group one, now go on the bikes, so power up, the group two now can watch TV. That sort of thing.

If I remember right. I had an episode of Black Mirror where people were powering the society by riding bicycles and people got money by riding bicycles.

But there's also a Rick and Morty episode of an entire universe like a miniverse. They were just powering one car battery in like a much bigger universe. It's really scary to think about. I know Rick and Morty is crazy, but if your entire universe people are working, people were generating power, but you are actually just inside a car battery of a much bigger society, that is a alarming thought.

Now before we confuse people even more, I think we're gonna wrap up here. This is our basic episode about bunkers.那我们地堡这一集的basic episode就到这里. I'm sure many of you have heard the news. So if you have anything to share about bunkers or if you had the means and resources, would you like to build a bunker? Leave us a comment in the comment section. Let us know. And thank you, Brad, for coming to the show.

No problem. See you in the next episode.

We're gonna see you in the advanced episode. Bye.