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Oct 3115 min read

The Next Pandemic: From Bunkers to Bird Flu

In this episode, we explore three potential pandemic threats through very different lenses. We dive into antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the "silent pandemic" that could rival COVID-19's impact; investigate the booming $11 billion emergency preparedness industry, including luxury bunkers; and track H5N1's concerning spread from birds to cattle. Drawing from our lived experiences during COVID-19, we question whether individual solutions like bunkers make sense for collective challenges. Our conversation weaves together modern health paradoxes, food systems, and community resilience, ultimately asking: how do we better prepare ourselves and our communities for future health challenges?





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Episode Transcript:

Lana: Welcome to Signal Shift, by Horizon Shift Lab. We're your hosts, Lana Price, Raakhee Natha, and Sue Chi. Each episode, we explore the latest signals in technology, culture, and society, uncovering insights that will impact our daily lives in the future. Join us as we shift perspectives, explore possibilities, and delve into real changes in our world. Curious to learn more? Go to horizonshiftlab.com.


Lana: Hello, everyone. This is Lana Price. And welcome to today's episode, where we will be exploring the next pandemic.


So my commitment, really, to this futures thinking and this practice that we do together came from my personal experience with COVID. I was living in New York City during that first devastating wave. And like so many others, I felt completely unprepared. And I mean, like the toilet paper thing, that’s like the tip of the iceberg. I mean, I did not have toilet paper. But I also didn't have enough food on hand. I didn't even have a car at that time. And so as someone who was a very decorated Girl Scout growing up, it was like a very vulnerable feeling to be so unprepared.


But beyond kind of these feelings and initial hardships, the true cost of that pandemic is that so many people died. It is one of the significant global mortality events in modern history over a pretty short period of time. And people continue to be impacted. It hasn't gone away. 


And so not just by the loss of lives, but just the continual effects of a laundry list of things, including long COVID, including profound changes to how we work and live. 


And so this is all just a reminder that a pandemic isn't a moment in time. It can be an event that reverberates through years. And so today, we're really looking ahead, not out of fear, but really from our lived experience. We'll be exploring signals of potential future pandemics, who's impacted, and then really turn our discussion to what should we be looking out for, and how can we better prepare ourselves and our communities. So with that, curious to hear what we have found.


[3:02]


Raakhee: When it comes to pandemics, we do, or COVID has certainly maybe left the impression that it's something that's sweeping and sudden, and it hits us, and oh my gosh, right? But the truth is that they have roots and they have histories. And this particular pandemic is one that is, I would call slow and I would call silent. In fact, it's known as the silent pandemic. And that is antimicrobial resistance, AMR. And it's something that's actually been with us for the longest time.


So yeah, let's take a step back. So antibiotics, right? We all know of them. We've probably used them at some point in our lives. They're a good thing, a great invention, because what they do is they kill germs that cause infections in our body. 


But what happens is that there are always antibiotic-resistant germs that will find a way to survive. So every time we are sick and we take that antibiotic, something, basically, you're almost making the germs a little intelligent because they find a way to survive, right? And so this has happened throughout history. 


I mean, the truth is that AMR was already there from post-Penicillin's invention. So once Penicillin was invented and used, this started happening, right? So it's been there for the longest time.

Is it growing? Is it getting bigger? Is it pretty big? Is it a big thing? Yes, that is definitely happening.


So what the American Society for Microbiology actually says is that AMR is expected to kill about 39 [million] people over the next 25 years. That's about 1.56 million people per year. So to look at this in context of something like COVID, COVID killed over 7 million people across the last four years, right? If you had to average that down to about 1.75 million people per year. Pretty close in numbers, pretty close in numbers, right?


So if you look at numbers like that, if this continues for the next 25 years, the death toll will be overall like five times the number of the current COVID death toll. So it is slow and it is very silent. And that's one of the interesting things is that it is a pandemic. You could look it up. It's understood as that. But it's just not spoken about in that language in those terms.


Part of the challenge is that, where it is a bigger issue. It is, of course, a lower income. What some might refer to as developing countries, it affects different populations differently. Of course, somebody who's recovering from cancer or has cancer is twice at risk for something like this. So it is happening. People actually do experience it. And when they do walk away and they survive from this, there's an interesting phenomenon that they don't want to talk about it. Because it's typically something else gets you sick. Then you go through this and you've survived this. And you typically might talk about the original thing that made you sick. You just don't end up talking about AMR.


Now, there is a recognition that we need to get this out there. We need to start educating people more and getting people to understand. I think, Lana, that's exactly to what you said, what they can do about it. And we'll probably get into that in our discussion. But there are some things happening. The American Society for Microbiology is, of course, very involved in this. They were part of a meeting that the UN General Assembly had actually a few weeks ago regarding this very issue with a lot of global leaders and state leaders to figure out what to do. And also saying that the US has to play a critical role in this and to help guide around the education. And just having conversations about the massive impact that AMR has.


Lana: Thanks, Raakhee. I did come in wondering if we were going to talk about similar things. But can already tell we're not. And so that's a great, I know we're going to have diversity in our pandemics. So really appreciate you raising that and looking forward to discussing that further. Sue, what about you? What are you bringing?


[7:25]


Sue: Yeah, you're right. Our signals are going to be a little bit different this week. So yeah, the more I was researching the next pandemic, the more anxious I was getting. And I was thinking about how prepared I am for the next thing versus how I was before COVID happened. And I'd like to say that I'm a little bit more prepared. And I think on the whole, a lot of people might say that they feel more prepared than they were a couple of years ago.


So my signal is really about the preparation that we have for the next pandemic. I mean, even the government wants you to be more prepared during the pandemic. In the US, they launched ready.gov. Earlier this year, in the UK, they launched a website called Prepare, which the media basically took to say, hey, the UK government is now telling us all to be “preppers.” 


And so you're taking something that has been historically on the fringes of being preppers, survivalists, and now really making it more mainstream, like prepper conferences, communities are popping up everywhere, and they're really, really diverse. I mean, if that's one silver lining that more people are finding this in common then they have differences. That's also interesting.


But now it's now an $11 billion business in the United States, all the things related to preparations. And everyone is in on it. And in particular, younger generations. So 39% of millennials and 40% of Gen Z spent something related to preparation in the last 12 months compared to 29% of the general population. And that was much higher than it was before the pandemic.


And so yeah, like you were saying, Lana, in the beginning, what are they spending on? Yes, for sure, like household items, emergency go bags, if they need. But I wanted to see what the big investments were in kind of pandemic or other crisis-related purchases. 


And I found these signals related to the increasing real estate market around survival bunkers. And actually, bunkers have been around for a really long time. You think of like World War II. Think about the Cold War, at least in the United States. 


But really, what happened was there were photos of Mark Zuckerberg's compound in Hawaii that got leaked at the end of last year that had this huge underground compound and just capacity to have over 1,000 people. They're like all these things.


And then the market, especially for the wealthy, just skyrocketed. And so now you have these bespoke companies that are servicing the market for survival bunkers. You have these prefab-outfitted ones. One company was saying they were building a $7.5 million bunker in Oklahoma. I mean, at that point, it's a compound, really, for one client. And billionaire celebrities are out bunkering each other what they might have to be ready for this time, the next time around.


There are also more affordable bunkers. From anywhere, they were pricing it at $2,000 to up to $20,000, depending on what you can afford, what you want. And they're even outfitting these old missile silos, these old Cold War-related bunkers, and just outfitting them like doing a whole HGTV-related renovation for them to resale to the market. And people are buying. 


I was surprised to find that one company in particular, I think they're called Atlas, they have prefab bunkers from $200,000 to $400,000. And they said that 50% of the sales they have are for women. That women are buying them. And they actually had an episode where they were featured on the Kardashians for like Kim and Chloe, were taking a tour of the bunker, which I thought was really, really interesting.


And then most recently, there was a New Yorker article that profiled just like what the real estate market looks like. And they were very secretive in how they were posting about these places, because part of the whole bunker idea is you don't want anyone to know where it is. But yeah, there were a lot of listings, a lot of agents that they went on tour with. But yeah, it just really, really talked about how all of these are really in demand now. 


So it took my idea of feeling ready for the next pandemic and just exponentially raised it, just thinking, oh, maybe I really am not prepared for the next pandemic. So that was my signal. A boom in what they're calling doomsday real estate.


Lana: I can't wait to combine these two, because seeing the, I don't know if it's irony, but what is a bunker going to do for you in the silent pandemic of AMR? So very, very interesting.


[12:44]


Yeah, OK, well, I went with bird flu, right? So H5N1, which has just made the jump from, quote, unprecedented, which we know. If we hear that word, that's like the first warning sign. So the unprecedented jump from birds to dairy cattle in the US. 


And so it's also a thing that's called bird flu, but now it's actually quite adaptive. So it's not, it isn't just an agricultural issue, because bird flu has now infected over 320 cattle herds across 14 different states and 27 humans, right? So all the people who were infected were dairy workers so far, but virologists believe that we're really undercounting the cases.


And so I think it's this, the real issue seems to be the ability for the virus to adapt and spread across species, because it's from birds to different types of mammals that include sea lions, bears, cattle. So it is evolving. And even though it hasn't developed the mutations that would make it transmissible between humans, it's sort of, it's on the watch list.


And so the other thing, the more recent signals, so this is like an ongoing thing, but more recently in The New England Journal of Medicine, said that H5N1 has been detected in wastewater of 10 Texas cities across the state. And so before March 2024, they had tested, they're regularly testing wastewater, and they had tested over like 1,300 wastewater samples, and they found zero traces. But from March to July, they have now started to find it in almost every test site.


And so there is a discrepancy. It does not correlate with, so they're finding it in the wastewater, but people are not, they're not finding the bird flu-related hospitalizations. So there's a huge discrepancy. And so they don't think that it's human illness that's in the wastewater. They believe that it's coming from animal sources. But it is just a, it's an emerging situation that highlights why it's important to monitor. Like things like wastewater can be a very critical early warning system.


And so it can help us detect viral adaptations before they become a larger problem. And, you know, they want to, the researchers want to expand this surveillance. It's like, so it's not just wastewater systems, but we're also, you know, surveilling livestock and products. Obviously, agricultural workers, migrating birds, et cetera. So if we have like a more comprehensive monitoring system, it can help us identify and mitigate potential pandemic threats.


So that's, you know, in terms of the bird flu, I think for right now, it seems like, you know, anyone who's working with animals, especially dead or sick animals, are of higher risk. And so maybe for otherwise, the threat might be low. 


But one way that it can impact consumers is raw milk. And so the thing is that there's all these people out there who are like promoting raw milk, influencers and celebrities. And I don't even want to name them, because I don't want to give them any credibility. But they're espousing the benefits of raw milk. But now is not the time to get on the raw milk bandwagon. The CDC has said very clearly, like, that that is a, that's one of the ways they believe that it's going from cattle to cattle is through the milking machines. And so that this seems like a good time not to do that.


[17:38]


But so yeah, so that's the thing about bird flu. And yes, I guess I'd love to turn it over and talk about, you know, as we're kind of digesting this information between AMR, the bunkers, bird flu, and thinking about sort of who's impacted. But what is that- what do you think that means for you? Like, how are you processing this information? What's coming up as you think about… What are things that we should be worried about? And what are things that we may not need to be?


Raakhee: Yeah, I think it's so interesting. And the raw milk, that's really funny, because yeah, all the grocery stores here, you know, “raw” is a big trend, one of the latest trends, of course. 

Yeah, and it actually links to AMR, right? And I get where they're coming from with wanting to do that. So for example, with AMR, one of the things that we should all be doing is not be taking antibiotics very lightly. You should only be taking them if you really, really need them and you're really ill, because we have got to get into the mind and understanding. Every time you take an antibiotic, you are now increasing your risk of something like AMR, right? You're making those germs more able to learn how to be resistant in the future.


So the best defense is always your own body, but we have to be able to make our bodies be that much stronger, right? And I think that's where the gut health stuff and in Europe, they don't pasteurize their dairy goods as much. They're much more cleaner and purer, but hopefully don't have these diseases lurking in them. And I think that's where the raw movement emerged from, saying, why do we over-pasteurize in the US? 


But pasteurization was created from the need to protect us from exactly these kinds of things, right? So there's this vicious cycle here. And I think for me, the underlying thing is about we created these modern lifestyles, and we got so deep in them that the very solutions have caused problems, right? 


We’re also deeply populated now. We have a very high population number. That's the other challenge, right? It just changes everything. But there's something around changing how we, again, that relationship with nature and the cycle of production and how things are created and how we work with nature. And I think not pushing modernity away. It's too late to do that, and we don't want to do that. It was there for a good reason. But I think really changing a lot of things at the fundamental systems level of how we do things and our relationship with nature and with the natural environment, I think there's some disconnect and dysfunction there.


Sue: Yeah, I was thinking about that connection with the bird flu and AMR. And it's not just in people, right? If you think about the feed of major industrial places, a lot of the feed for the animals has different kinds of antibiotics there, different kinds of pesticides that are in there, all to the feed. And so it is just this cycle that starts somewhere, and then it continues. 


And I think for me, I mean, the survivalist situation is probably one extreme of where you're going. But in that, the idea is you're growing your own food. You're knowing where all your supplies are coming from. And I think that's one thing is just you always got to check where, yeah, just how all the things that you are consuming in your body, which will give you nutrition, energy, and health, where they're coming from these days, because you never know. That's definitely one of the big things that I've been trying to focus on more these days.


[21:37]


Lana: Yeah, one of the things I was thinking about with the bunkers is I think what really came up during COVID was a spirit of individualism versus doing things for the collective or for the community and public health as a, you know, you're not just doing it for yourself. You're doing it for those who are more vulnerable. We're doing it for each other, like this. A lot of those issues really came to the forefront. 


And so this bunker mentality kind of does go back to the, you know, I'm going to do it on my own maybe, or like me and potentially up to 1,000 depending on how many people you can support. So I think, I don't know, there's something about that that feels, yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's a little discouraging, I guess.


But I will say I have seen other, I saw an idea that I thought was super interesting that I would want to do, which is folks who were starting like emergency preparations in their neighborhood, kind of like different group chats or mechanisms where they could basically prepare kind of a digital community, like within a certain block radius of their home, so that like if something happened, they can like immediately have their group to, you know, communicate with each other and share resources. 


I mean, it's kind of like they have Facebook groups for certain communities, but something much more intentional and almost like door-to-door trying to get everyone into the big group chat or whatever. So that just seems to me like a counter to this idea of like, I'm going to fly away to my Hawaiian compound. See you guys later. But yeah, so that's something that came up for me.


Sue: Yeah, it's, in essence, one of the assumptions is do you stay where you are and figure out your community there, or are you assuming that's not good? You actually have to go somewhere else. I mean, some of these are being touted as like vacation home time shares until maybe one day there's an emergency. 


But there was one quote, and not everyone is like this, but there was one quote from an Australian bushcraft master who has like his classes have been skyrocketing, you know, since the pandemic. He said one thing that will help, hopefully, in the next one is this realization that you cannot do this by yourself. And he said this was, I think his quote was like, it's about survival of the collective, not survival of the fittest. And so I really like that. 


And yeah, I agree with you, Lana. I think in my vision, it's more like, how does my little village over here, how do we prepare together? Do we have everything we need? You know, if you're good on the toilet paper, can I help stock the food or whatever it's going to be? 


And definitely, you know, a nod to my own city here. They have in their resiliency goals, particularly in one of the more marginalized communities, to make sure that everybody has an emergency kit and an emergency plan. You know, and so it is that door-to-door initiative to make sure people who know you or taking care of you and vice versa. So that extrapolation, I think, you know, is definitely something I can get behind.


Raakhee: Yeah, I agree with both of you on that. I think exactly to your point, Sue, like, I get the logic around it. It's just more the ethos, right? And what, where integrity is lying behind, creating these bunkers, et cetera. 


I just had a thought in my head, as you all were talking, as to, you know, if modernity is destroying us, a loneliness epidemic, a, you know, suicide rates increasing in younger people, all those things, right? All the issues that come, mental health, everything. Maybe nature is bringing destruction, not to destroy us, but to save us. I don't know. And that's me just, you know, wanting that connection with nature. But yeah, I could imagine us evolving exactly like you both have painted to a picture of being in community and, and working to resolve this. 


And I think that's the thing when I think about like these billionaires creating these bunkers, millionaires buying bunkers, it's just like, let's focus on the things that we need to be doing right here right now, right? Which is having clean access to water. It's figuring out food and making sure no one is even going hungry on this planet, yet so many are right now, which is, shouldn't have to be that way.


Lana: Wonderful. Thanks so much. Great parting thoughts. And thanks to everyone who joined this conversation. We are starting strategies for expanding our reach and our engagement with you. So there's a particular way you want to be engaged. Now is the time because we want to expand, you know, and really involve you directly in our conversation. And so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, we're at horizonshiftlab.com. And otherwise, we will see you next week.


[27:44]

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