 in the studio. I'm your host, Vanita Domeyer, and today our guest is the tireless community activist and volunteer extraordinaire, Rita Montes-Martin. Rita will be discussing Ted Copper's latest book, It's Called Lights Out, and it's about the aftermath of a cyber attack on Americans' vulnerable power grid, and that plunges the United States into darkness, maybe for weeks, maybe even for months. And what do we do about that? How do we come up with responses to that? So here's Rita today, and she'll be talking about our vulnerability and our response and our preparedness. Welcome, Rita. Well, thank you, Vanita. Thank you for inviting me today, because I feel this is such an important subject. And I started about in April learning about EMPs, and I didn't have the slightest idea of what an EMP was, electromagnetic pulse. And as I researched through the internet, I found that if the bad guys exploded an EMP over us, our town, or our community, it would knock out all of our electricity. And then there's, the more I researched, I found there's solar can be preventative of that, but it has to be off the grid. Now a lot of people have solar, but if they have it on the grid, then they would be affected. So that started my quest of information about disaster. And then I heard about Ted Copper's book. So it was very timely. Yeah, absolutely. Well, his voice is much more well known than mine. And when he says something and he's researched, there's so much technical information in there, but technical information in that he interviewed various strata of communities. And he went to our leaders that have homeland security and to the people in Washington DC that are supposed to have the answers, and they don't have the answers. And he asked them if Los Angeles or Sacramento was without any electricity for months or weeks or whatever. How would you feed the people, get water to them, house them if they needed housing? And no one has the answer. And in reading his book I found that every time there's an issue, they come up with a no agency. And we've got CIA, FBI, NSA, DHS, the Coast Guard, immigration, and there's more and more agencies. And they each look to the other one to have an answer. And so I've been doing a lot of research and I found these other books that have survival techniques. And those can be good even if you're out on a camping trip and get lost. Some of those things can help you. So there's a great deal of information on the internet. And then there are many books as I've started doing further research. The Harbinger is a book that relates the Bible scriptures to 9-11. It's very interesting. And it shows that we are vulnerable and everybody needs to take responsibility in their own community and be prepared. And I happen to have done this a number of years ago that the Fire Department in Woodland had this course. And I'm a cert now and that means community emergency response team. And I had to put up my hand and swear that I was going to protect my community and help. And it was a wonderful program and it was sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security. Well, we definitely feel safer knowing there are more people like you out there certified to help us and have gone through a disaster mitigation program, I guess, I would call it. What else can we do? I know in the book he talks about the moments having holding food and some sort of catastrophe or disaster. What can we as a community or even as individuals do besides taking training? What else can we do? Well, I think the first thing each family should, and this is usual, it's not my idea, but they should have a designated meeting place because all our families, my family that's here in this community, two of them are on campus at the university. My son-in-laws in Sacramento, one granddaughter's in San Pablo. So if there was any kind of a disaster, how would we all get together? So that's, I think, the prime thing. The second thing is for everybody to go online, look at all the disaster things, the possibilities, the remedies, the instruction of how we can take care of ourselves, even for a week. I mean, I think the Rancho Yolo with 200 residents there, they were without power for a week. And that means even they come on the television with the emergency designation. Well, if you don't have, if there's no electricity, there's nothing, no television, you wouldn't know about it. How would you know? Well, that's why I guess everybody's supposed to have a battery-powered radio and a phone that plugs into landlines as opposed to just cell phones or wireless phones. Well, but even that, no, they do say a emergency radio is the next thing. But I think that a little community and neighborhood like you live in or like I live in, I live where there's 70 other apartments. Now all of those people are vulnerable if they wouldn't know where to go, what to do. And so that's why it's very important to me to get some information out and not from a scare tactic, but when people like Ted Koppel with his background, he was 35 years as a reporter and announcer and host of Nightline. Yes. So on Nightline. And so when people like that have researched and, as you said, he went to the Mormons and he said, what are you doing? What have you done? And then he went into Montana and to the survivalists. And there's quite a few of them. I think they are called. Some of the people, yes, they just went out and bought a few acres and they live like that. And they have been canning their food and raising food in the garden and know how to catch a rabbit. I mean, to be out in the wilderness, I wouldn't know what plants are out there that I could eat or not. I'd probably starve today. We are too industrialized modern people now. Well, I'm used to going to the market and picking out what I wanted. And so these are things. And it doesn't have to be a disaster of terrorism. It can be, we were worried about germ warfare at one time. And then it can be an earthquake. We know I'm from Southern California and there was an earthquake. It can be a pandemic where there's, you know, like they had a lot in back in England when they had everybody had the bublonic plague. And recently, well, last century was a Spanish flu in 1918. Yes. So all of those things are, we should be able to take care of ourselves and not just sit back and say, well, the government's going to do it because the government might not be there. So that was going to be my follow-up question. We can prepare, as individuals in community, how about, how prepared is the government to handle some major catastrophe like no electricity for months on end or weeks on end? Well, Ted Koppel's book, when you read it, he went and interviewed all of the heads of the departments. And most of them don't have an answer. And he asked him, if you had to evacuate people from a community that had some kind of a disaster, where would you put them? Well, now we're talking about bringing 10,000 refugees from another country, from other countries in. And we don't know where to put them now. So we all need to look into these things. Ted Koppel even brings in the Bible scriptures. And there's two Bible scriptures that say, as in the days of Noah, that's the way it'll be again when there's, when, of course, the Christians believe Christ second. And the scientists would say the El Nino, something similar to, you know, so much rain and a lot of information. And I only know a little bit of it. But I was so impressed. I know Ted Koppel's, what he puts there is something that he has really researched. And he's talked to the various people. It's a book that everybody should read and then decide for themselves of how much they want to do to prepare for any kind of a disaster. And here in Davis, we've talked about the trains with the possibility of a train explosion. And we know that has happened in other communities. So that if that happened, I forget how many miles from an explosion like that. But I don't live too far from. Right. And it depends on how many of those cars were carrying and how. That they would blow up and they come right in back of the co-op market and in back of, well, downtown. And very close to populated areas. Right. So those are all things that we just need to pay attention to. So do you think we have pretty vulnerable to stuff like this happening? Is it better just to be prepared in case? Well, I think what we've seen in Paris just last Friday. I mean, I'm sure that they were as prepared as they could be to not have the carnage that has happened over there. And so I think that we bring so many and some of those people were local people. They weren't even necessarily from out of the area. Right. So we can have the same thing of people who are discontented with our government or with whoever and do any kind of harm. And they do it to innocent people. And they can go on campus and blow up a building. And we know in the past, like the guy that blew up the building in Oklahoma City. Yeah, he was a typical American guy. Right. He'd been in the service and everything. So that's why the message that I want to get put out to my friends and family and everybody I can contact is first of all, have a plan for your own family, your own neighborhood, and then have a plan part of the community to know what's happening. And because that's important. I know that in my own family, most of them know the stats of the baseball players and so forth more than they know what's happening in our city council and so forth. So the takeaway message is be prepared. Absolutely. Be ready for whatever and be prepared and don't rely or expect other people to come and help you. Absolutely. Begin at home and living in an earthquake country in California. I think it's been drummed into us, but I don't know how many of us actually follow. How many of us actually have a three day to a week supply of water and food, but it is again very good reminder for all of us to be prepared. And the things that we can do learning CPR, learning a little bit about medical things. First aid. First aid and having a first aid kit. And getting certified like in the community disaster. Right. So this is great. What a lot of information. And I think our time is up. So thank you, Rita for discussing. This is a very important topic. I agree. And we've just barely touched on it. Absolutely. And you've given us a lot to think about. So thank you. Everybody are free to contact Rita. If you want more information and email address is R-I-T-A 1215 at aol.com. And as I said, this is wonderful. It should get us all started. You know, I'm going to go home and check my emergency supplies, my batteries and water and canned food. And of course, a can opener. If you could have canned food with our can opener. And so again, thank you very much, Rita. This is great. And we all need to be prepared. Be prepared. And you can watch this show on the Davis Community Television Network or at www.davismedia.org. And thank you for joining me. I'm Vinita Domeyer and my host. I'm sorry, I'm the host and my guest, Rita Montes-Martin, today in in the studio. And thank you to all our studio staff for helping make this a great program. Thank you and have a good day.