CZM Book Club: The End, Like Sand, by Margaret Killjoy

Summary

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It Could Happen Here – CZM Book Club: "The End, Like Sand" by Margaret Killjoy

Date: May 31, 2026
Host/Reader: Margaret Killjoy (with production from Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts)

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Episode Overview

In this special Book Club episode, Margaret Killjoy reads her own didactic fiction story, "The End, Like Sand, or How I Joined the Muppet Babies in a War against the Cannibal Nazis from the Suburbs." The episode offers both a gripping speculative narrative and an exploration of how fiction can communicate lessons about community, collapse, and preparedness more effectively than nonfiction. Drawing inspiration from classic didactic authors, Killjoy weaves together metaphors, practical thought experiments, and revolutionary optimism against a backdrop of post-apocalyptic struggle.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. On Writing and Didactic Fiction

• Margaret reflects on her challenges expressing preparedness and collapse through nonfiction, arguing narrative forms (memoir, fiction) have historically communicated such ideas better (02:58).
• She notes the “out of vogue” nature of didactic fiction but defends its value, referencing her influences:
  • Robert Heinlein: “Heinlein just straight up has entire chapters that are philosophy lessons...” (03:37)
  • Ursula K. Le Guin and Cory Doctorow: praised for transparent ideological storytelling.

2. The Slow, Uneven Apocalypse

• The story posits that societal collapse, like sand, falls unevenly—some regions, people, or communities experience it sooner (04:45–06:22).
• Key refrains include:
  • “The collapse was slow. Until it wasn’t. Of course it was.” (03:09)
  • "The apocalypse is here. It's just not evenly distributed."
  • The story’s protagonist references the famous William Gibson quote, rewriting it as: “The apocalypse is here. It's just not evenly distributed.” (06:22)
• The initial signal of apocalypse for the protagonist is personal eviction, echoing broader systemic failures (08:00–10:00).

3. Community and the Birth of the Muppet Babies

• Eviction is interrupted by “30 Muppet Babies”: a diverse mutual aid group described as “a bunch of weirdos with AR15s and armor,” in pastels and all-black, with whimsical flags (10:20).
  • “You should have like one flag per 10 people, tops... Half these motherfuckers were carrying flags.” (11:00)
• Their arrival and method embody the power of organized community defense over individual vulnerability.
• Notably, the protagonist didn't know neighbors well—emphasizing the disconnect of modern urban life and the need for new community bonds (09:17–10:00).

4. Survival, Organization, and Mutual Aid

• After the eviction is thwarted (without violence) by the Muppet Babies, the protagonist joins and describes their organization:
  • Democratically run, not a cult or gang (“If we’re a gang, we’re a nice gang. Or a mostly nice gang.” 17:54).
  • Decisions made collectively, structure includes administrative, productive, and strategic wings, with working groups beneath (29:26).
• The Accord:
  A set of inviolable core principles. Highlights include:
  • Full democracy and equality
  • Non-exclusion
  • Voluntary membership
  • Need-based provision, ability-based contribution
  • Emphasis on reconciliation over conflict, without pacifist dogma (29:26–31:30)
  • “There are all sorts of bylaws and they change month to month... because the three things revolutions are built on are meetings, shit work, and terrifying action in descending order of time commitment.” (30:30)

5. Meta-Narrative and Structure

• Killjoy explains her choice for a loose, vignette-driven format:
  • “This piece doesn’t really fit conventional story beats and there isn’t really a plot or main conflict...” (33:00)
• The story self-consciously references its own instructional purpose—how to build an inclusive, mutual aid-driven society in collapse.
  • Balances playfulness (“strap dolls to our armor” and pastel flags) with the reality of violence and survival.

6. Antagonists and Utopian Struggle

• The cannibal Nazis, self-named “the Survivors,” represent fascistic, exclusionary forces vying for power amidst chaos (31:30).
• Mutual aid societies must defend against such threats, leading to literal confrontations.
  • “All it takes to defeat evil in this world are love, respect, and plenty of 5.56 by 45-millimeter ammunition.” (33:13)
• Emphasis remains on building federated, bottom-up councils to nurture a new, just world (34:00).

7. Reflections & Closing Thoughts

• Margaret reiterates the story is fiction, not a blueprint, but hopes it sparks conversation on organizing, preparedness, and solidarity (36:15–39:00).
  • “I really mean it as fiction. I’m not saying y’all should cut and paste this and go do it, although I do think…” (36:30)
• She admits some details are left unexplored (e.g., group outreach) and acknowledges this is an evolving, dialogic process.
• Encourages listeners to take small actions in the real world:
  • “Take care of each other, do something you’re bad at and talk to someone you don’t know. Especially if you’re the organizer of the event or you’re kind of in the in-crowd…” (43:50)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the apocalypse's shape:
  “The apocalypse looks more like grains of sand dropping through an hourglass. Or the grains of sand, in case my metaphor was too subtle. People dropped one by one, ten by ten, through the cracks of society.” (06:55)

• On community defense:
  “I figured this eviction might be the end of me until about 30 Muppet Babies marched up the street... Bunch of weirdos with AR15s and armor...” (10:20)
  “My apartment was saved by the Muppet Babies. And now I’m a Muppet Baby too.” (17:54)

• On foundational protocols:
  "The accord is simple. [...] Our group operates under democratic procedures in which all members have an equal say regardless of seniority, popularity or productive capacity..." (29:26)

• On embracing play amid apocalypse:
  "If the work is insurmountable, turn to play."

  • Expressed in Sasha's transformation of the group's warehouse into a dollhouse train town, as a method of psychological and communal support (20:00–25:00).

• On resisting cynicism and nurturing hope:
  “We co-rule ourselves through love and respect. We're winning. All it takes to defeat evil in this world are love, respect, and plenty of 5, 5, 6 by 45 millimeter ammunition.” (33:13)

• Meta-reflection on the format:
  “I wanted to be really clear. Although I’m providing a fictional blueprint, I really mean it as fiction.” (36:30)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Introduction & Didactic Fiction: 02:58–05:10
• Collapse Metaphors & Personal Apocalypse: 06:22–08:00
• Eviction & Muppet Babies Arrival: 10:00–13:00
• Joining and Structure of the Mutual Aid Collective: 17:54–25:00
• Bylaws and The Accord: 29:26–31:30
• Antagonists & Ongoing War: 31:30–34:20
• Meta-Narrative Reflections & Closing: 36:15–43:50

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Conclusion

In this episode, Margaret Killjoy delivers a story that doubles as both a speculative tale of post-collapse resistance and a meditative framework for real-world mutual aid and organizing. By blending anarchic humor, practical detail, and a refusal to despair, Killjoy opens space for serious, creative engagement with how we might build communities that survive—even thrive—through crisis. The episode, rich in self-awareness and literary play, challenges listeners to continue the conversation about community, preparedness, and hope amid ruin.

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Find “The End, Like Sand” in written form at margaretkiljoy.substack.com.
Production support from Hazel, Eva, Sophie, and Ian.

Final call to action:
"Take care of each other, do something you’re bad at, and talk to someone you don’t know." (43:50)

Transcript

[Margaret Kiljoy]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. This is George Taveras and Sam Taggart from Stradiolab. Let's be real Home comes with a lot of odors. Cooking, pets, everyday life. That's where Febreze comes in. Febreze helps fight household odors and leaves behind freshness that lasts. And with over 30 scents to choose from, you'll always find one that feels like you. Febreze Freshness that fits your life, your space, your style. Febreze is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy, and unwavering commitment to equality. You won't want to miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast, available on June 1st on the iHeartRadio app. And everywhere podcasts are heard. Mom, can I have Lingokids?

[Dad]

Dad, Lingokids, please.

[Mom]

When did we become the Lingokids house? No idea.

[Jenny Garth]

Last week it was Dinosaurs.

[Dad]

This week it's Lingokids.

[Margaret Kiljoy]

Why Lingokids? Because it's the best thing ever. We can play games with astronauts, wild animals and superheroes. With more than 4,000 interactive games, songs and shows, LingoKids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids. So no dinosaurs and dinosaurs.

[Mom]

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[Dad]

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[Jenny Garth]

Media.

[Margaret Kiljoy]

Hello and welcome to the Cool Zone Media Book Club. The only book club where you don't have to do the reading because I do it for you. And this week the reading I'm doing for you is my own story. That's right. This week we're reading one of my stories because I wrote a piece over on my newsletter on substack, margaretkiljoy.substack.com and I wanted people to hear it. So I thought I'd read it to you because it's a very book club type story. And I mean that both in the it fits with Koulzan Media. It fits with sort of the original incarnation of It Could Happen Here. But also it's the kind of story that I hope y' all give a good thinking about, like in a book club. And what I have to say about this story is that I've been struggling to write down some of my ideas about current events and preparedness through nonfiction, because nonfiction has never been how I get my grand ideas about what we can do as people and how we can improve the world. I've gotten those ideas from friends telling stories, and I've gotten those ideas from reading narrative like memoir and fiction. So I've been thinking about trying to write a series of vignettes about collapse. And I don't know whether I'm going to weave this into some post apocalyptic novel or turn these things into zines or, you know, just run it as a kind of serial in my newsletter where this first appeared. But we'll see. I've always been interested in writing didactic fiction. It's out of vogue to just say this story is supposed to teach you something, which is what didactic fiction fiction means. But some of my favorite fiction has been pretty transparent in its aims to do just that. I grew up reading a ton of Heinlein and Le Guin, two masters of didactic fiction, though they go about it in essentially opposite ways and have more or less opposite political positions. I'm not going to defend Heinlein's politics, but I will admit I read a lot of his books as a kid. In his book Starship Troopers, Heinlein just straight up has entire chapters that are philosophy lessons in the essentially fascistic military academy that the protagonist attends. Le Guin builds novel length, transparent metaphors books with ideas like what if gender was fluid? And what if anarchy but on the moon? Cory Doctorow, another favorite author of mine. Sometimes in his books he just has long asides that say, and this is how you use encryption. Or this is how capitalism works. Some of my books are more didactic than others, but I suspect this how to Survive the Apocalypse series will be among my most transparently didactic work. I hope you'll forgive me. I hope you enjoy it. Hope you never have to strap dolls under your armor and raise a pastel flag to go to war against cannibal Nazis in a disintegrating Rust Belt city. Because that's what this story is about anyway. Here's the end. Like sand or How I Joined the Muppet Babies in a War against the Cannibal Nazis from the Suburbs by Margaret Kiljoy, which is me. This piece was written by our beloved friend and comrade Cristiano Mudd Alves, who was murdered during the assault on the butcher shop by shrapnel from a fragmentation grenade. That day's battle was lost, but the Muppet Babies prevailed against that location eight days later, saving uncountable lives. May mud live eternal in our hearts. The collapse was slow. Until it wasn't. Of course it was. We've all read Parable of the Sower by Butler, not the one in the Bible. I think most people who say they've read the Bible are lying. We all knew it was going to be a slow collapse. We've all read that tweet, that famous one. Even if you came of age after Twitter became X and say you never had Twitter, you read the tweet by Pershiremags, the one that goes, climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it. Well, it turns out to no one's surprise that this is true about pretty much every type of collapse, not just climate collapse. One more quote for you. This one intentionally rewritten. William Gibson once wrote, the future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed. My corollary is that for years we've known that the apocalypse is here. It's just not evenly distributed. Which means I can't tell you the specific day that society collapsed, because it depends on where you're looking. Syria, Iran, India? Or do we mean suburban America? I feel like we always mean suburban America when we're talking about the collapse, even though I was born and bred well inside the limits of my Rust Belt city, and the only thing I've ever gone into the suburbs for was cheap food at Trader Joe's, Rest in peace, or more recently, in sorties against the cannibal Nazis. When the apocalypse came to America, it came in fits and starts, and it's hard to say what kicked it off. Did it start with the 2024 election? That's where most people put the beginning of the end. But we'd been ignoring climate change for decades or a century or some shit at that point. Hell, the first apocalypse that happened where I live happened hundreds of years ago to the eerie people. And I'll tell you that some of the first dominoes that led us to the today were tipped over when the Haudenosaunee were conquered by a bunch of Protestants from England. And you know what? The Haudenosaunee people are still around. The English bastards, including a couple of the less savory among my ancestors, to be real, didn't manage to kill them all. There's that other quote, this one from someone who survived the collapse of the USSR that I hope will apply to us. Most people survive the end of their way of life. If most of us survive the current collapse, though, it's going to be by a generous reading of the word most. I made it through the first 36 years of my life having only seen three dead bodies that weren't already in coffins. And in the past year I've seen a few hundred and made two of my own. Okay, one more quote for you. I must miss the old Internet because I still think in memes and screenshots. This one I can't find you the source for, but it basically boils down to, if it's the apocalypse, why do I still have to go to work and pay rent? And this quote is particularly important because if you want to know when the apocalypse started, well, it started for most people when they were laid off and evicted. The apocalypse looks more like grains of sand dropping through an hourglass. Or the grains of sand, in case my metaphor was too subtle. People dropped one by one, ten by ten, through the cracks of society. When did my apocalypse start? I wasn't the first grain of sand to drop, and I wasn't the last. I guess my apocalypse started last spring when some private security showed up to evict our whole apartment building. Our faceless corporate landlord, the bank, was clinging desperately to some semblance of normalcy and thought words like rent and lease and litigation still held power, and they had convinced some mercenaries with rifles to try and enforce those dead words. Which means that around eight months ago, some guys tried to rip me and my cats and our neighbors out of our building, even though society was pretty solidly collapsing and almost none of us had work. The cell phones still had service back then most of the time, but half the apps were either dead or location locked for the gated communities, and I hadn't been on Instagram for almost a year already. Maybe a more interesting metric by which to measure the apocalypse isn't do I have to work and pay rent? But am I still addicted to social media, or has that been yanked out from under me? When the mercenaries came, almost none of us knew what to do because we didn't really know one another too well in that building. We were mostly millennial and Gen Z, and our communities were online or were built out of friends scattered across the city who shared our niche subcultural interests. I mostly hung out with other bartenders from my job back when I had it, plus a few of the people I went birding with. I didn't know most of my actual direct neighbors. I didn't want to be evicted. I've got three cats, and all of them used to be alley cats. And frankly, I used to be an alley cat too, for a little while as a teenager. And none of the four of us were looking forward to sleeping outside again. And food was getting spare enough that people weren't throwing much out, so I wouldn't be able to live off of dumpster bagels again, even if I wanted to. I figured this eviction might be the end of me until about 30 Muppet Babies marched up the street. That's what they called themselves. Bunch of weirdos with AR15s and armor. And half of them were in pastels and half of them wore all black. And they had a bunch of flags. Too many flags. Just an altogether inappropriate flag to marcher ratio. You should have like one flag per 10 people, tops. Half these motherfuckers were carrying flags. There was a pride flag and some other kind of pride flag and a Palestinian flag and a pirate flag and an anarcho syndicalist flag. But most of the flags were those cringy Boomer yard flags. You know, those ones that you can buy at Walmart or loot from Walmart these days that just say like springtime or snow day or have an illustration of a pumpkin or whatever. Most of the flags were those kind of flags. And probably the smallest person in the crowd A short king who I have learned since does not like being called a king because he'd cut his teeth in those no Kings protests that started getting spicy once it was clear fair elections were the thing of the past. So no kings was practically his identity. But also he was a short king. That guy was right in you of front front with a megaphone. And he shouted, you want us to clear out this rabble? But he was talking to us, not the mercenaries the bank had hired and my neighbor Youssef, like the only person in the building whose name I knew because we used to date. But that was years ago and by that point we were friends, but in quotes, because we didn't actually hang out. We just said hi awkwardly in the hall. He was out on his tiny balcony and he cupped his hands over his mouth and said, yes, please. And do you know what else you can say yes, please to dear listener products and services or, you know, hitting the forward 15 seconds through the ad breaks. It's okay, no one is going to come to your apartment building about it.

[Jenny Garth]

This is Jenny Garth from I Choose Me with Jenny Garth. You know, history is full of surprising little details. And laundry. Turns out it's got its own fascinating story too, because not all detergents are created equal. Tide liquid laundry detergent isn't just clean, it's boosted clean for cleaner, whiter, brighter and fresher results compared to Tide simply. And those stubborn stains that always seem to show up at the worst times. Tide tackles 100% of common stains for every load, every time. Now, if grease is your nemesis, think food spills, cooking splatters. Tide's got 10 times grease fighting ingredients compared to bargain brands. And it works in a machine, in any water condition, on all your machine washable fabrics. It's no wonder Tide was America's number one detergent in sales last year. So if it's gotta be clean and it's gotta be fresh, it's gotta be Tide. Shop now at your local retailer. Tide is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry at advocacy and unwavering commitment to equality. You won't want to miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast, available on June 1st on the iHeartRadio app. And everywhere podcasts are heard.

[Margaret Kiljoy]

Mom, can I have Lingo kids?

[Dad]

Dad, Lingo Kids, please.

[Mom]

When did we become the Lingokids house? No idea.

[Jenny Garth]

Last week it was dinosaurs.

[Dad]

This weekend, Lingo Kids.

[Margaret Kiljoy]

Why Lingokids? Because it's the best thing ever. You can play games with astronauts, wild animals and superheroes. With more than 4,000 interactive games, songs and shows, LingoKids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids. So no dinosaurs and dinosaurs.

[Mom]

Lingokids everything kids love. Download it for free.

[Inner Balance/Oestra Advertiser]

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[Dad]

your therapist, your perfect match. It's easy to love them. It's easy to protect them, too, with pet insurance coverage from Pets Best because it's all fun and games until they chew on something they shouldn't and you get a vet bill to match. With perfect timing, Pets Best helps protect your furry friend and your budget from this imperfect world. Get up to 90% cash back on eligible vet bills from less than a dollar a day. Pets Best has plans to cover accidents, injuries and more, from puppies and kittens to seniors. Find your Perfect match plan and get a [e-mail] Pet insurance products offered and administered by Pets Best Insurance Services, LLC are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company or Independent Services American Insurance Company for terms and conditions, visit www.petsbest.com. policy products are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company, Independence American Insurance Company or Ms. Transverse Insurance Company and administered by Pets Best Insurance Services, LLC. $1.00 a day premium based on 2024 average new policyholder data for accident and illness plans. Pets age 0 to 10.

[Margaret Kiljoy]

And we're back. The mercenaries? Well, they were probably just a bunch of guys who didn't want to fall like sand through the same hourglass everyone else was falling through. So they'd taken jobs with one of the only institutions that still believed in business as usual and paid enough money to support yourself. But they weren't dumb. They'd shown up ready to push other people like sand down through the hourglass. They hadn't shown up ready to deal with a couple dozen queers and anarchists and pirates who'd named themselves after an ancient children's cartoon and armed themselves with rifles. So they fucked off without a fight. Cops were still a thing at that point. They hadn't just given up and admitted they were just another gang, but they'd retreated to the downtown core and the wealthier suburbs. They weren't coming. If the cops had been available to run tenants out of buildings, the bank would have sent them first. Mercenaries are expensive. Capital will always try to leverage the state for free services before they rely on hiring someone themselves. Just like how the state always relied on nonprofits to fill in the gaps for social services that should have been provided for by tax money. I used to work for nonprofits, and I'm still a little bitter. Since the cops weren't coming, we knew we were safe, at least for a while. And that's when my apocalypse started. And I got to keep living in that apartment till it caught a mortar round over the summer. All my cats were okay. Wish I could say the same about all my neighbors. But on the day that my apocalypse started, not a single shot was fired. Not a single person was killed. My apartment was saved by the Muppet Babies. And now I'm a Muppet baby, too. And I don't know if we're a gang or not. We call ourselves a mass, a mutual aid and solidarity society. We're honestly sort of one of those warlord groups all the apocalypse movies warned us about, Though we don't do a lot of roving, and we make our decisions democratically. And anyone can leave at any time, which is a detail I haven't seen included in any of those movies. If we're a gang, we're a nice gang. Or a mostly nice gang. I've been in too many gunfights now to think I can claim a pure moral high ground. Actually, two of those guys who'd shown up to evict us. Two brothers named Hammer and Henry. They're with us now, too. We don't pay anyone anything, but we also don't charge anything. We just take care of each other like a family, like a community, like a culture or a solidarity society. We've been strapping dolls to our armor when we go into battle, though, which is honestly kind of culty or warlord gang ish. But we don't have a warlord, and we don't have a charismatic leader. And look, yeah, most of the people under the age of 40among us are polyamorous, but we're not a cult. I feel like a lot of people's accusations of us being a cult are already answered by the were not a cult flag that Tracy hung up outside her warehouse recently. I appreciate my generation's commitment to Internet humor, even though we don't have the Internet anymore. Most of the founders of the Muppet Babies are dead now, despite the group being only a year old. Only Sasha is left, and if I'm being honest, Sasha had a pretty major break with consensus reality about half a year ago, and they spend most of their time converting the second floor of the Muppet Theater, the warehouse most of us live in, into a dollhouse village with an elaborate public transit system built out of model trains that we've scavenged from garages and basements across the city. The trains always run on time in Makhnovia, the village Sam is building, and there's a whiteboard with the train schedule right by the stairs. If you try to make a joke about Mussolini and the trains running on time. And Sam will lecture you for about 30 minutes about the anarcho syndicalist unions in pre fascist Italy who got the trains running on time, a punctuality inherited by the fascist dictator. I don't know if that's true or not, because the answer isn't on our Wikipedia backup. Sasha is kind of a seer now. That's what they call themself. They're at every meeting, but they never directly express any particular opinion. They just offer us stories out of history or out of their imagination. And those stories are occasionally disruptive to the meeting process and are occasionally remarkably insightful. Organizing with disparate people means accommodating the disparate ways that people are going to participate. And I love Sasha's stories. Sasha used to be an organizer. They've done it all. Political campaigns, nonprofit work, direct action, environmentalism. They helped stop a bunch of data centers through good old fashioned above board legal grassroots organizing. And they were a person of interest in the federal government's investigation into that string of data center fires that picked up once the feds stepped in to overrule local prohibitions on their construction. You might not remember that particular string of arsons, because once in a lifetime events were happening every week during the last 10 years or so before collapse. But those data center fires happened around the same time as that National Guard mutiny that wound up splintering everything into state guards, which you probably do remember. Sasha used to be an organizer, and they were good at it, and they helped start the Muppet Babies, though they'd argued against the name. They'd wanted to call it the Rust Belt Mutual Aid and Solidarity Society, which they'd wanted to shorten to RB Mass because organizers are obsessed with acronyms, and Sasha figured every region could set up its own mass built on the same model. But Vivian and Hatchett and Oak and the rest of the founders were insistent that there shouldn't be buzzwords and there shouldn't be acronyms, and instead they should pick something so ridiculous that no one would ever accuse them of taking themselves too seriously. And Sasha went along with it, and about 10 of them started them up at Babies and it was, you know, a mutual aid and solidarity society, because buzzwords or no, that was what the group was designed to be. Occasionally travelers come through Talon and tell us about other mass groups, most of which also eschew the acronym and have absurd names for themselves. And hopefully sometime soon we'll get a much larger federation put together with all the masses around North America so we can really start getting shit done. And knowing us, we'll wind up called, like Rugrat Nation or something. God forbid we just become the Federated Mutual Aid and Solidarity Societies anyway, the Muppet Babies. The founders knew that society was collapsing and fast. They were a mix of organizers and preppers and community defense practitioners, and they figured their skills were going to be in demand soon, and they'd been preaching community focused preparedness for a while. I've actually got their old meeting notes, which I'm supposed to use to cobble together a How to Build a Mass pamphlet now that we've gotten some old letterpresses running off of a water wheel in the river. I used to write grants for nonprofits, so somehow that qualifies me to write a How to build the new world in the shell of the old instruction manual. It seemed like an overwhelming task, but Sasha suggested that when work is too serious, too insurmountable, just treat it like playtime instead of work. And maybe I could write the whole thing out in some kind of narrative form first. Maybe that's why he's building a village out of dollhouses. When the work is insurmountable, turn to play Much like Dear Listener, we must now ourselves turn to the products and services that support this podcast, insurmountable as they may be.

[Jenny Garth]

This is Jennie Garth from I Choose Me with Jennie Garth. You know, history is full of surprising little details. And laundry turns out it's got its own fascinating story too, because not all detergents are created equal. Tide Liquid Laundry detergent isn't just clean, it's boosted clean for cleaner, whiter, brighter and fresher results compared to Tide simply and those stubborn stains that always seem to show up at the worst times. Tide tackles 100% of common stains for every load every time. Now, if grease is your nemesis, think food spills cooking splatters. Tide's got 10 times grease fighting ingredients compared to bargain brands and it works in a machine in any water condition on all your machine washable fabrics. It's no wonder Tide was America's number one detergent in sink sales last year. So if it's got to be clean and it's got to be fresh, it's got to be Tide. Shop now at your local retailer. Tide is a proud sponsor of the Elton John Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world with their artistry, advocacy and unwavering commitment to equality. You won't want to miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast, available on June 1st on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere podcasts are heard.

[Parent Narrator]

With my mom and dad living in Orange county, when we bring my five and seven year old to visit, we are sometimes in for a two hour drive that could feel like ten.

[Mom]

Oh, as an avid camper, I know all about this. We'll pack up the RV and know this is either going to be the trip of a lifetime or a complete disaster.

[Parent Narrator]

Which is why we load up the iPads with Lingokids before we even pull out of the driveway.

[Mom]

It's what dreams are made of. Lingokids keeps kids engaged and quiet with over 4000 interactive games, songs and shows that kids simply cannot get enough of.

[Parent Narrator]

You can pack whatever you think you'll need, but Lingokids is the only entertainment you'll need for a stress free car ride.

[Mom]

Or really any ride, plane, train, hovercraft, whatever.

[Parent Narrator]

Download Lingokids for free today or unlock

[Mom]

even more amazing content with LingoKids.

[Parent Narrator]

Plus, choose the yearly plan and save up to 60%. Search LingoKids in the app Store or Google Play.

[Mom]

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[Margaret Kiljoy]

And we're back. If you're reading this version of this story though, then something has gone terribly wrong and someone has decided to publish my narrative instead of my finished, polished nonfiction essay that will magically teach everyone how to build a new and better world. Maybe I never finished that essay. Maybe I didn't live to see that better world. Maybe this is my main written contribution to that effort. Thoughts of death will never be far from my mind in times like these. The basic idea that the first Muppet Babies came up with was a return to an older era of mutual aid organizations. Anarchist workers in Europe used to build mutual aid societies that you actually had to be a member of to take advantage of fully. Some of the first Muppet Babies they were preppers with deep stashes of all the classic stuff, dried and freeze dried food, guns and ammos, gas masks, medical supplies, armor, seeds, radios, solar panels, Oak straight up had a bunker under her house and the Styx though we lost contact with her months ago now and she's presumed dead, which is why bunkers were never the best plan for most apocalyptic scenarios. Not to victim blame, I hope we'll clear out the proudest boys who've been organizing in her area and find her safe and sound in her damn bunker. But yeah, the founders, they had all this stuff and they'd been organizing together for a few years, putting on preparedness workshops and distributing supplies and trying to build connections between various groups of people. When they sat down at one of their meetings and realized that the end was nigh, they were like, alright, what's our plan when shit hits the fan? Do we just set up on the street and give away our stuff? Do we hole up and defend what's ours? What do we do? What they decided was that most of what they had they would keep within their group, but the group itself would be joinable by anyone and democratically controlled by all members. If someone was hungry, they could become a Muppet baby and eat as well or as badly as everyone else and be part of the decision making. But they had to commit to participation in the collective well being in whatever capacity they had. And that's a mass. How am I supposed to write a whole pamphlet about an idea that I can get across in three sentences to make sure that rapid expansion wouldn't fundamentally change the nature of the group. They agreed to what they called the Accord, which were immutable agreements at the core of the Group's bylaws. Bylaws can be amended or removed or added to, but the Accord is eternal. If the Group ever wants to change the Accord, they would simply have to disband the group and become a different group. The accord is simple. 1. Our group operates under democratic procedures in which all members have an equal say regardless of seniority, popularity or productive capacity. 2. Our group will not exclude members on the basis of ethnicity, race, gender, sex, sexual orientation, age, national origin, documentation status, prior incarceration, level of ability or disability, or productive capacity. This list is non exhaustive and is to be understood in the spirit of inclusion rather than exclusion. 3. Our group provides to its members according to their needs and each member will endeavor to provide for the group according to their ability. Members still have a right to maintain personal property such as but not limited to a residence, weapons, media and small scale supply stashes. 4. Membership in the group group is voluntary. 5. Our group prefers to build more bridges than it burns. Our Group prefers to seek reconciliation whenever possible. Our Group does not perceive people as disposable, nor is our group a pacifist organization. There are all sorts of bylaws and they change month to month because we meet about them all the time to discuss what is working and what isn't working and because the three things that revolutions are built on are meetings, shit work and terrifying action in descending order of time commitment. The bylaws discuss things how to become a member currently there's a one month provisional membership. How to remove members currently a 3/4 majority vote, but we're discussing making it harder to remove members as we expand and become a larger portion of society. How decisions are made currently by simple majority for low impact matters, 3/4 majority for high impact matters and the empowerment of temporary, recallable, accountable positions of authority for immediate crises and military situations. How we are structured we are currently organized into three administrative, productive and strategic with individual working groups inside those wings how we interact with other groups Full cooperation with all groups that are democratic Respect diversity and respect political pluralism Limited cooperation with groups that respect diversity and political pluralism Situational cooperation against common enemies with any group that is not tyrannical or otherwise monstrous. Look, it's the apocalypse and there are people out there doing some pretty wild shit. Meeting structure I'm really not going to bore you with this think Occupy era meeting culture, but with more Emphasis on autonomy for both individuals and for working groups. How we distribute food equally and how we distribute weapons selectively through a war council, although individuals often possess and maintain their own weapons. Conflict resolution, our most contentious bylaws, which we will probably never truly perfect. We've grown a lot since the Muppet Babies marched on my apartment building and saved me from becoming another grain of sand. But we've lost a lot of people too. Our let's take care of each other and treat each other as equals and make decisions together thing wasn't too popular with some of the other factions in the city, especially the cannibal Nazis from the suburbs. Those Nazis call themselves the Survivors, and they're a sort of fascistic oligarchy with pretensions of meritocracy. Most of their leaders are former cops. To be fair, there are three ex cops in our ranks as well, which was a contentious decision. But none of our ex cops are active Nazis. The Survivors call their teachings the harsh truth and believe the new world will be built of the true Survivors, the strongest of the strong. The fascism came first. The cannibalism came later. Sasha likes to say we would have added no eating people to the accord if we knew then what we know now. But that's the kind of thing you'd like to imagine goes unspoken. The Survivors rule through fear. We co rule ourselves through love and respect. We're winning. All it takes to defeat evil in this world are love, respect, and plenty of five 5, 6 by 45 millimeter ammunition. I don't like to call them the Survivors because they aren't going to survive, not if we have anything to say on the matter. I like to call them the cannibal Nazis from the suburbs because it's more accurate and because when I call them that, I get to feel like I live in a bad 80s movie. Despite that war, or maybe because of it, since it spurs us to build bridges with other communities in our region, we're growing fast. I think soon enough we're going to break apart, but intentionally into local councils. Sasha keeps calling the proposed councils the Soviets, but I think he's joking because I read a book about Makhnovia, which he named his Dollhouse town after, and that was a country of anarchists who fought tooth and nail against the Bolsheviks and the founding of the ussr, Though Soviet just means council, basically. It turns out we're going to set up councils and we're not going to call them Soviets. The councils will be formed by individual apartment buildings and by city blocks and by working groups and by school and by workplaces. We've taken over a few factories already, and those councils are going to make their own local decisions, then come together in a bottom up federation to discuss bigger topics like defense and like food distribution. Which means we probably won't be called the Muppet Babies much longer. Most of the new members don't like that name anyway. I think a core of us are going to hold on to the moniker, but for a unit in the territorial defense, we need that territorial defense. It's the apocalypse. People are dying. We're trying to build this wild, desperate utopia, but at the current rate of disease and famine and disaster and conflict, most of us won't live to be old. And I go into battle these days, something I never would have thought I would do, but it feels oddly good. Good to strap dolls to my plate carrier and fly a pastel flag with the Easter Bunny on it and sing Muppet Babies will make our dreams come true. Muppet Babies will do the same for you As I go to war against the cannibal Nazis who are pouring in from the suburbs. The end. Hazel, who helps out behind the scenes, says this piece rules and I think it's really funny how you manage to write a different fictional character sub stack. This piece doesn't really fit conventional story beats and there isn't really a plot or main conflict, but you still get this window into a different world with equal parts weird and familiar. It reminds me of everything For An Oral History of the New York Commune 2052-2072 by Emmy O' Brien and Iman Abdulhadi, which is structured as a series of interviews between the actual authors and characters they've created to tell a story about a utopian communized New York City, which is a really inventive way to do that kind of didactic fiction. As for me, what do I have to say about this? Well, I embarrassingly haven't read everything for everyone yet. I've been meaning to for quite a while. I honestly couldn't tell you why I haven't done it, but I'm excited too. I'm excited to read that book. And what else do I have to say about it? There's a lot of meta stuff going on in this writing. For all of the things that I'm not doing traditional structure wise in terms of plot and pacing and things like that, there's still a lot of writers tricks and things I'm playing with in here. And one of them is the meta ness of it, right? The protagonist is told that if he can't figure out how to write this piece in a traditional nonfiction structure, then why doesn't he just write it as a narrative? And that's what I'm doing. And also, the fictional creators of the Muppet Babies decided to name it the Muppet Babies because they wanted to pick something so absurd that no one was thinking that they were taking themselves too seriously. And I wanted to do that with this story. I wanted to be really clear. Although I'm providing a fictional blueprint, I really mean it as fiction. I'm not saying y' all should cut and paste this and go do it, although I do think setting up things like a mass is a really useful idea. And so I just want people talking about those ideas. But obviously, the immutable chord I wrote, there's no part of me that thinks that's the specific thing that everyone should do. And I worry a lot about what isn't written in this piece. Right. Like, it doesn't talk about their outreach. You know, most of their stuff they're saving for members, but also, like, it doesn't get into, like, how they would probably be going out and helping communities that aren't members or going to become members in a, like, broader mutual aid that's not just internally focused, you know, But I really just wanted to explore the idea of how we can make individual and community defense and preparedness, individual and community preparedness, how we can make them work together. And I think one of the ways we can make them work together is by this sort of organizational system by which we say, all right, look, our stuff in the Apocalypse might be for us, but it's a really broad us. And I think that you might run into a broader. Well, my group will help your group as if you are us, because you're part of this larger group, even if you're not this specific thing. Anyway, what I'm trying to tell you is I haven't solved how to build a better society in the collapse of society. That is an unsolved thing. But I am drawing on all of the history that I read and all of the stories about revolution that I read, and this idea of building local councils and then federating them up and taking care of each other is really promising to me. Anyway, that's it for this week. I might do more of these stories in the near future. I don't know. If you want to read this in a written form, you can find it on my newsletter, which is margaretkiljoy.substack.com and, yeah, Hazel helps behind the scenes, Eva does the audio editing, and Sophie and Ian are our producers. And thank you so much to everyone who helps make this show happen. And until next week, fuck ice. Take care of each other, do something you're bad at and talk to someone you don't know. Especially if you're out at an event. If you're out at an event, and especially if you're the organizer of the event or you're kind of in the in crowd of the event, find somebody you don't know. Talk to them. Alright, bye.

[Dad]

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Me. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us

[Margaret Kiljoy]

out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts

[Dad]

or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in Episode Descriptions.

[Margaret Kiljoy]

Thanks for listening.

[Parent Narrator]

With my mom and dad living in Orange county, when we bring my five and seven year old to visit, we are sometimes in for a two hour drive that could feel like 10.

[Mom]

Oh, as an avid camper, I know all about this. We'll pack up the RV and know this is either gonna be the trip of a life or a complete disaster.

[Parent Narrator]

Which is why we load up the iPads with Lingokids before we even pull out of the driveway.

[Mom]

It's what dreams are made of. Lingokids keeps kids engaged and quiet with over 4, 000 interactive games, songs and shows that kids simply cannot get enough of.

[Parent Narrator]

You can pack whatever you think you'll need, but Lingokids is the only entertainment you'll need for a stress free car ride.

[Mom]

Or really any ride, plane, train, hovercraft, whatever.

[Parent Narrator]

Download Lingokids for free today or unlock

[Mom]

even more amazing content with LingoKids.

[Parent Narrator]

Plus choose the yearly plan and save up to 60%. Search LingoKids in the App Store or

[Mom]

Google Play Lingokids Everything kids love if

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[Mom]

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[Jenny Garth]

This January Bare Knuckle Fighting championship takes over the ocean.

[Margaret Kiljoy]

The inaugural Bruise crew sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel.

[Mom]

Three straight days with pool deck bare

[Margaret Kiljoy]

knuckle fights in the Caribbean.

[Jenny Garth]

Massive parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila

[Margaret Kiljoy]

tastings and non stop action. The light up reveals coming soon.

[Jenny Garth]

Cabins are disappearing fast and the prices won't stay this low.

[Margaret Kiljoy]

Reserve your spot with just 200 [e-mail] this is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.