This is How We Die

This is How we Survive: Dispatches from the Pandemic

An infrastructure podcast on disasters and survival, during the most alarming global event, and everyone is stuck at home anyway? It must be This is How We Die hay making season! Except it has not, because as two emergency professionals, Megan and Meghan have been working endlessly since March. Our goal has always been to make sure you survive, so let's get through COVID together. 

The Urban Chaos: Coronavirus and Pandemic Panic

He's clingy, follows you into every public place you visit and tries to hook up with all your friends--Bad boyfriend or deadly pathogen? We talk coronavirus as Season 2 of This is How We Die kicks off with Meghan and Megan's first exploration of The Urban Chaos season: Pandemics!

Hurricane Katrina: Inept Inertia and Quicksand (Mini-Episode)

Hurricane Katrina didn't even hit New Orleans; so how did it become the city's most notorious natural disaster? Meghan and Megan dive into what went wrong with Hurricane Katrina--the arrogance! The infrastructure! The failure to plan!--and how natural disasters aren't always the result of nature, but are instead a failure of policy. 

Build a Kit: Survive, Thrive, Wanna Stay Alive (Mini-Episode)

Meghan and Megan slide-in between seasons to talk preparedness. With recent earthquakes on the west coast, including a small rocker in the Seattle area that most of us slept through, the questions have been streaming in--what goes in a kit? What is a must have and what's just nice to have? Why do you have all this water stored down here? In this mini-episode, we break down everything you need in your emergency kit. 

Kansas City: The Nexus of All Disasters

Megan and Meghan close out Season 1 with the nexus of all disasters, Kansas City, where you're as likely to freeze as to burn, to flood as to parch, and to be blown away as to sink into the ground. Follow us on Instagram @thisishowwediepodcast

Chicago: Polar Vortex, the Best Party of Your Life

Hurricanes, earthquakes, very cold days? One of these things is just like the others. Megan and Meghan address polar vortex and deep freeze and why it's a mistake not to consider our extreme cold a natural disaster. Explored through the lens of the Windy City, what will cold mean for us in the future and how can we build our way out of it? 

Los Angeles: Let Them Drink Almond Milk

Los Angeles, a city on the water without a drop to drink. Sourcing its water from hundreds of miles away, and providing drinking water to millions--what could possibly go wrong? Meghan and Megan talk how to survive in LA during a super mega drought and inferno.

Johnstown Flood: A Tsunami Without an Ocean (Mini Episode)

Something bad happens, and then something worse, and then another something bad. Are Meghan and Megan just dramatic worriers? Maybe! Or maybe we're right that one bad thing can lead to another. Gather round for a tale of dams, fishing clubs, robber barons, and barbed wire! Finally back in the studio after an unexpected break, we explore how cascading failures make a bad situation much, much worse--a story about the May 1889 Johnstown Flood.  

New York: When Nuclear Material is the Least of Your Worries

New York, New York: It's a hell of built environment. Meghan and Megan talk New York City, where it's sometimes hard to believe nature ever had a hold. Removal of natural barriers, infrastructure built right up to the seawall and 8 million people: what could possibly go wrong? 

Seattle: See you in hell, Viaduct!

Seattle: Our home, the Emerald City, treacherous swampland of potential death. Meghan and Megan talk Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquakes, our slow progress on dangerous infrastructure and getting to know our neighbors in the place we are most likely to die.