Were already falling off the knifes edge here in britain and he joins me now from london gul thanks so much for coming back on as i said 10 days ago you said were falling off the edge of the knife since then Boris Johnson as an active new policies are closing bars at 10 pm instead of 11 satisfied with his response. Yes i think thats a very understandable response it was predicted by our modeling studies it reflects one of the 3 leaders that the government has access to. As described i think in terms of changing or reducing the contact rates 3 specialists and saying look like the rule of. The curfew and the 2nd kind of leader is clearly the cooperation immunity which hopefully will be substantially augmented by vaccination but thats something for the future but theres a 3rd really. Which is Contact Tracing so when you ask me would i be satisfied with curfew. And censorship absolutely there is another way i do it i think i have to interrupt you there because johnson has claimed in parliament understand that the circo socalled n. H. S. Jesson trace has quote very little or nothing to do with the spread of drugs mission of corona as compared to what you were just telling me. That it yes. That is a lot for you to say testing and surveillance and Clinical Management are all intimately related so. If he meant the testing isnt a way of measuring and measuring things does not change the thing that is being measured them that substantially true but the i think the sort of more pragmatic and natural way of looking at this is testing it isnt an very important tool that enables us to monitor the responses of viral transmission to our interventions now your own independent sage maybe this is a long way from a Statistical Analysis of neurons but some of said is it wise to punish poor people with 10000 pound fines for a covert infection because some of said were only as strong as the most vulnerable and if someone is faced with a jail sentence for not being a 10005 with who has a covert and a roof over their head theyre obviously going to go out and infect unwittingly but certainly go out into the community with a covert infection yeah absolutely. I mean common sense would argue that if you had. Money to spend and you wanted to use that money to underwrite isolation of those people who have been in contact with infected people if you want to get on top of the. The current upsurge in new reporting cases they need to support people in isolation if theyre finding it difficult so most people ive spoken to throughout the spectrum are academics to through to politicians appreciate that the only way that were going to really elude or mitigate peak deaths in the secondary wave is to contact trainees and support people in isolation so there could be many people who just cannot isolate either because they have dependents or they dont have sufficient space in the house so these people need supporting so thats an important aspect of Contact Tracing this is you know i think one of the main messages that know a 3rd lever that the government has yet to pull in order to prevent a 2nd wave of morbidity and mortality is to get out there and empower and enable Public Health teams not just to identify the contacts infected people but also to monitor them and to help them if theyre having difficulties in that in their sort of isolation so thats where the resources should be closed thats a matter of cause for a circle any british viewers watching this the 10000 bone vine does stand as the law states at the moment im assuming you dont envy the position of the chief scientific officer of englands a budget balance what did you make of these emails of freedom of information request as revealed to the b. B. C. That anything you can do to call more academic friends down over herd immunity would be greatly appreciated this herd immunity. Concept. If its never ending since since it was 1st mentioned by Patrick Valens and chris witty you might have to just tell them why is it early munity is not a policy for plague measles mumps yellow fever all these other diseases for which we have a vaccine. Right its a great question. They do the arguments and debates i think have become an usefully polarized and out of the scenario so youre absolutely right i do not and its a patrick bounces position more or chris witty. Simply because its the factors that play into the way that an epidemic develops include both social distancing and population immunity and herd immunity so you cannot deny are either as key mechanistic factors that are going to shape the course of the endemic over the over the next few months however the herd immunity become politicized and its now that is into a somewhat added say ariel approach which may be a false dichotomy i think most people do appreciate the pulse dichotomy but from the point of view of the public in the media and the political debates the premise here its either one thing or another we can either go for lock downs and social distancing and pursue a Mitigation Strategy with a suppression at the end of the road or we can. Aspire to accumulating sufficient protective immunity also then as herd immunity so much of the social distancing or lockdown procedures are not necessary i think thats a false dichotomy its a false premise both herd immunity or population meter to at least. Social distance and not down are can work hand in hand one that makes the other work better both make contact tracy. Easier very quickly ask you because were about this week or someone about bunkers and people who are getting away from all this you get adversarial some Conspiracy Theory is pouncing on your modeling showing 80 percent covert resistance in germany 50 percent go with resistance here what are we to make of the resistance modeling youve been doing very briefly. Briefly its an important aspect of the model of his heterogeneity sort of variability in our exposure to our susceptibility to on the ability to transmit the virus most of the Scientific Evidence now points to a substantial edge an 80 or 3 levels its important because it means that we may be in a better position otherwise in terms of being able to control the spread of the virus again through this lever of Contact Tracing much of the advise of the government from several months ago discounted or ignored now what is increasingly accepted as a a truth that there is this hatred actually in play and. That by presenting immunity is winning immunity. Is certainly one important so that would be noted susceptibility sort of. Mediated immediately mucosal i mean actually the kind of immunity that would not be registered by positive Antibody Test so were talking about an extended concept of immunity the includes sirrah negative people which could actually be quite a substantial part of the community and its important to quantify thats whats important to understand about proportion its there but probably more important to quantify that because it materially affects the sensitivity of our interventions and then we come back to this knife edge that you introduced at the beginning the very fact were on a knife edge means that we are very very sensitive to purge of patients and interventions and that now. I fight in supported by among other things. That you are fighting to profess a call for us to thank you. Now as the threat of covert 1000. 00 which disproportionately affects the poor is rising again and Climate Change and used natural disasters like the California Wildfires continue to cause widespread panic what are we supposed to do well the rich the elites the worlds top celebrities have a play a luxury underground bunkers here to tell me about an arguably natural neoliberal response to potential armageddon is the author of bunker building for the end times dr Bradley Garrett whos in Big Bear Lake in california dr Bradley Garrett thanks so much for coming on going on the ground before we even get to the bunkers of the rich and famous im just going to start with what on earth its like in california right now way you are whether youre in a bunker right now because we were watching the pictures transmitted all around the world of the wild over the last few weeks have been utterly apocalyptic here its been quite a struggle weve had and just near my house in Big Bear Lake california and weve had a fire burning the eldorado fire and we had ash coating all of our vehicles my partner amanda her dad is on oxygen we had to evacuate him down the mountain but you know this this didnt used to be the fire season and what were hearing from the fire service here in california is that there there is no fire season anymore this this is our reality now as a multiple number of courses being prepared for by the rich and famous arguably bill gates can go that in tom cruise they all have one how do you get to writing a book about bunkers when i started this project in 2017 and ive been working with urban explorers prior to this you were sneaking into off limits spaces and some of the spaces that they were sneaking into were old cold war bunkers and as it turns out there is. That there is a thriving private industry now where people are buying those bunkers that you know were not used for the fabled mutually assured destruction and theyre turning them into private subterranean citadels and once they realize that was happening i. Knew there was going to be a wealth of knowledge to be gained from following these people and trying to understand what they were preparing for what kind of spaces they were building in and what that means for all of us because obviously. You know its kind of a canary in the coal mine moment if if the wealthy and governments and c. E. O. s people in power are building these bunkers for themselves where does that leave the rest of us dr Bradley Garrett ill stop you there more from the author of bunker building for the end times after this break. The election only weeks away the trying to diminish ration continues his sanctions mania against cuba venezuela and iran is never explained this in advance is the national theres also no matter whos in the white house the Foreign Policy is determined to continue to avenge its defeat in. The world is driven by. Dares thinks. We dare to ask. Welcome back im still here with dr Bradley Garrett author bunker building for the end i want to get to dollar trump actually. Because in your book you say that theres one of mar a lago built by a serial magnate wrecker serial magnate and that is where he decided to assassinate irans top general because of so they mani who actually fought with us troops against isis. Some kind of something that we should take from that information. Well its no secret that trump is distrustful of the government the very government that he works for so from the beginning i mean your member at the beginning of his administration he spent a lot of time in interim tower before moving to the white house obviously when he took the job of president he inherited a number of bunkers including the one under the white house that he hit in during the social unrest not too long ago had lighted as we have a protests. Thats right you know but he he has his own bunkers he has a bunker under mara lago and apparently spent 100000. 00 fixing up that bunker which was apparently derelict when he when he bought that property. And that was where he made the decision to order the assassination and you know this is really unprecedented in American History that a u. S. President would use. You know their their private redoubts to make intense government decisions like that and there was a lot of controversy around whether he. You know had the right under his executive authority to be making those decisions from his his private residence although of course say in your book you do actually mention another president jack kennedy famously wanted to assassinate fidel castro and so many other Global Leaders and you talk about his Nuclear Bunker in florida but i think the theme in this book is is this somehow emblematic of neo liberal individualists of this idea of well things can go wrong but you can also save yourself and prevent other people coming into the bunker should be apocalypse come and then create a new society after well its its a byproduct of neo liberalism on 2 fronts because on the one hand. Having faith in the government to protect you from situations like this is something thats been consistently eroded over many years as you know cuts have been made to Government Programs that will help their programs i mean the only thing that seems to be increasing year after year is is military spending but i think a lot of people have lost faith in the governments ability to take care of them and you see that here in the United States with the distrust around how fema responds to. Response to these sorts of situations but you know it is. Also a neo liberal ideology to think that if the government doesnt have the resources to take care of you that youre going to build a private citadel and essentially take care of yourself and your family or people close to you and that now has morphed into a multibillion dollar private industry where people are selling space in bunkers. And you know its turning into a situation where only the people who are able to buy into those facilities and then have that sense of security that in other parts of the world the state is able to provide i mean i should say that of course there are no new liberal bunker mentality used to because you mentioned russias robin key 43 center partly 15000 people for 30 is so is the claim that the russians can put them down here but i dont think most americans may even know you say in this book the department of Homeland Security advisers all households have at least a 3 day supply of nonperishable food and thats now not a jury in the cuban missile crisis yeah thats right the last 2 to stick that i found from my book was that in 20113700000 american self identified as preppers and thats an astounding statistic because it means that there are a lot of people who wouldnt necessarily claim to be preppers and also people who are prepping without knowing theyre prepping i recently had a researcher from Cornell University get in touch with me to say that he had updated those numbers pandemic and it now looks like about 12000000 americans are actively prepping or you know anything from an extinction level event down to you know every day natural disasters wildfires hurricanes blackouts or the possibility of. Infrastructural systems going down you know people are thinking more about how theyre going to be able to. Achieve some kind of selfsufficiency they were able to. Unable them to get through these these difficult periods of sure that level of fear and preparation is really reflected on news me there are good players germany though home to the birthplace of col mox has a bike cos bunker system that you talk about but in the democracies in nato nations you talk about luxury bunkers i mean you mention the privatization of these bunkers place what do they have in them depending on where you go people have a different set of motivations and ideologies and methodology that they think are going to get them through the most extravagant bunker that i saw by far was in kansas where a Property Developer developer called larry hall had purchased a Nuclear Missile silo an atlas f. Missile silo this is one of the vertical silos that would have had an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile nuclear tipped inside there now at the end of the cold war they decommissioned it larry hall purchased that from the government for 300000. 00 and then spent 10000000. 00 of his own money turning this into. What i can only describe is a subterranean condominium complex its kind of like an inverted skyscraper theres 15 stories underground half a florist sells for one and a lot of amenities down there a Rock Climbing Wall a shooting range cinema theres a bar down there and its Swimming Pool with a waterfall you know when i asked him about all the the luxury that he had built into the bunker he was very clear in telling me this wasnt this wasnt luxury it was about survival because if people are going to go into that bunker for 3 months a year 3 years 5 years. You know you can you can engineer that space technically so that people can survive you can have the food and the resources there but really what you need is to keep people occupied he said that was absolutely crucial to survival undergrad. Around the long way away from the burlington bunker of the ministry of defense is the view broken 2 of them are going for way yet what that bunker with built by the u. K. Government. Had to evacuate the capital in the event of a Nuclear Strike and they constructed that for about 300. 00 people they could stay down there for 3 months and. It was an incredible thing and it was it was a draining city and i was able to. Move through that city and and see the Radio Broadcasting stations down there and this is all top secret and all the way off to the fall of the berlin wall exactly yet and so this again comes back to that sense of frustration that a lot of citizens feel when they realize that the government had been building these bunkers for themselves during the cold war but but those bunkers were built for for politicians and their aides essentially they werent built for everyday citizens and so that you know there was a real sense of betrayal and. Its extremely poignant here in the United States where people feel that the onus of survival has been placed on them and the United States now is just riddled with apocalyptic communities people that are. Building not just for themselves and their families but large scale communities like those old government bunkers but these are completely private endeavors and its all organized the political ones i mean you mention amount whether in virginia is a blue Ridge Mountains be teams of political congressman who want the top level i suppose when the evacuation happens there all preparations are all being made you know the government. Puts a lot of thought into what they call continuity of government so if there were to be. You know a terrible calamity they split the government up into different bunkers so even. When bunker is bombed or something goes wrong in one place they have a kind of backup team to keep things running. You know that was all you know it became Common Knowledge after the end of the cold war what we hadnt seen at that point was private individuals using the same logic and a lot of the bunkers that i win when into you they actually had the government manuals they had manuals from fema and from the department of defense and they were using that. As models for building their private underground communities presumably some of them are classified at the moment i should just say for our International Audience as you also talk about djibouti is bunkers built by the Chinese Government i think 23000 square meters india has built 14000 bunkers in touch while village amidst fighting in kashmir countries all around the world are preparing for apocalypse well not to mention north korea which you know essentially the surface architecture of north koreas epiphenomenal the country basically exist under ground in fairness curtis lemay said the britain and the United States kill 20 percent of their entire population they probably have anyone to of course they had motivation to burrow but its not just about war a lot of these bunkers were connected to both traditional war and nuclear war now of course we face a greater range of existential threats the Climate CrisisArtificial Intelligence and this this again comes back to our conversation about about neo liberalism and globalization you know the more things become interconnected and interdependent the more fragile societies become and we saw this at the beginning of of the pandemic when supply lines began to break down and a lot of people a lot of countries which drew into themselves and are still in a state of lockdown. Even the distribution of my book into australia has been extremely difficult. Because getting packages in there is its challenging so i you know this the pandemic in terms of the threats that we face when i spoke to the preppers that i worked with for my book they told me that this is a this is a midlevel event i mean this isnt even a major catastrophe and look how its reshaped. Society Politics International trade and you know everything has been altered through this midlevel event so the range of things that preppers are preparing for includes things that are far worse than the pandemic and just finally i mean you make it clear or at least they imply that there are elites that understand the disaster capitalism will mean trouble for there are for elites children never known anyone else you may not know whats in bill gatess bunker or the car of actions what do they have in place to keep the unwashed masses out of their bunkers as the world crashes down around them. Well we have to keep in mind that the the bunker isnt just an architectural space its also a metaphor so its just you know its a its a way of thinking about. How to deal with what people see as the inevitable breakdown of culture and society and geo political systems so a lot of what the wealthy people have in place are what preppers called bugout locations theyll have multiple properties in Different Countries with different political systems and theyre essentially hedging their bets that if things go wrong in one place they can get on their private jet and escape to their bugout location and ride that out whats astounding to me is that is that weve you know reached this this new phase in disaster capitalism where people dont just see. These disasters as a byproduct of the way that we live but they actually see them as an opportunity to profit so you know as i said this is a multibillion dollar industry now and a lot of the people who are building the technologies that could lead to you know mass unemployment automation Artificial Intelligence those are the same people that are building bugout like. That are building bunkers and i think that thats something that could should concern all of us i should just all of a favor of anyone thinks theyve turned into faux news talking about and times you do mention there is an irony there that with the right that was talking about and times and doomsday now is critics of disaster capitalism. You know its right you know as an academic i spend a lot of time reading philosophy and ive actually found that what the what these preppers were telling me was lining up with what philosophers were telling me that are you know often on the radical left they were saying you know we are reaching a terminal phase because of resource extraction because of the way that were living and so you you end up finding actually a broad specter. People. Are now buying into these narratives. This is no longer the domain of survivalists and the radical right by any means dr Bradley Garrett thank you its been a pleasure thank you and thats it for the show will be back on wednesday till then keep safe and join the underground by following us when you try to Facebook Instagram some clout. Seemed wrong wrong wrong just dont call. Me. Yet to stamp out disdain. And engage with. The trail. When something is find themselves worlds apart. Just to look for common ground. Always be polite never engage with a negative baited or confrontational. Dont get into any conversation or start answering questions just ask for an attorney. Survivor. Definitely dont want to. Jump. Youre more likely to walk free if youre rich. Or if youre poor. Youve got 2 eyes and 2 ears and one mouth. So you should be seen in here and a whole lot more than youre saying if you dont take that advice easy going to dig yourself. Simply 5 lives of new communities. Over the past year as i thought was made important and often made through a fundamental to set in a Nuclear Physics and beyond and said we would like to wish all the best to us out them for future but he and accomplishments incentive because it simply 5 lives of new communities. Armenia and azerbaijan both declare martial law as a decades old territorial conflict between them flares up again with the countrys leaders laying the blame at each others door. As europe scrambles to react to spiralling covert 19 infection rates anger at the return of tougher restrictions also. I these accusations. Are just all its mind lifesaving and now theyre just taking it so im going to. Become the 1st foreigners to