Community Emergency Response Teams

[00:00:02] Hello and welcome back to the Changing Earth podcast. This is episode number 456 and if you didn't notice today we are launching right into the show because I am not saying hey Chen what's up I am welcoming Rick Austin to the show how

[00:00:20] you doing today Rick? I'm doing good I feel special. Yeah yeah we're just we're just having ourselves a live finale here with Rick because you got into the CERT program. This is something that I heard of years ago I mean gosh it has to

[00:00:37] be like five six years now that I heard about the CERT program for the first time was like wow that'd be really cool and then learn like it really wasn't happening in California and I knew about it from a gentleman James Hart that I

[00:00:50] used to interview and he had a crew out here in Texas that was going you know putting these CERT teams together so you have already started doing this and I am so proud because one of the biggest things that I think is lacking

[00:01:06] especially in the preparedness community so many people want to just hold up to themselves and it does it takes a village right it takes a village to do everything if you the minute you have a major medical

[00:01:20] emergency you're gonna realize like man I wish I had this this and this as part of my community when it happened to Brock with his kidney stones it was like holy you know holy crumb you need your community so I'm really big on communities

[00:01:34] protecting communities and you've put this group together so go ahead and welcome yourself I'm just gonna say hi I'm just gonna say hi I'm just gonna say hi I'm just gonna say hi I'm just gonna say hi I'm just gonna say hi

[00:01:49] welcome yourself I'm sure the prepper broadcasting community and the changing earth community are very familiar with who you are but for anybody who's listening for the first time go ahead a little intro and then let's jump right into it

[00:02:01] all right I'm Rick Austin I've been a prepper before they called them preppers literally all my life Boy Scout on up and I've been doing sustainable gardening and living off-grid for the last 17 years grow

[00:02:17] all our own food etc raise our own livestock so they call me the survivalist gardener and recently in the last couple of years the folks at prepper broadcasting have given me the the nickname the godfather of prepping and

[00:02:36] I wear it proudly yes so yeah I went and my wife and I survivor Jane put on prepper camp every year and this is our 11th year biggest event yet we are the number one preparedness off-grid living homesteading event in the country

[00:02:54] 11 years running and bigger than anything anywhere and we get people coming from all over the United States to the Appalachian Mountains where we hold it for the three days 64 classes a day three days of the event one

[00:03:11] charge for everything no extra charges no up charges no extra charges for classes no materials fees none of that stuff so one price for everything and it's we have the I think the premier professionals teaching each class in

[00:03:30] their their subject knowledge area so you know yes people everything from how to make soap to you know home and we even have classes that are more geared toward what I think we're heading toward so we've got a lot of classes that are

[00:03:53] really civil unrest oriented and potentially military threat on our soil oriented so we've got got one guy who is who's teaching guerrilla warfare which you know may sound kind of crazy but this guy actually teaches guerrilla

[00:04:14] warfare in foreign countries so it's pretty cool to know how to do it and you know there's a there's a book an old book out called War of the Flea and it's really how you fight a much stronger force and it's kind of hit and

[00:04:34] run hit and run hit and run hit and run until the enemy just concedes and gives up so if anybody remembers the movie red dawn that's what it is that's all that's what it's about that's old school you're going back there well

[00:04:47] there's a newer red dawn but you know what exactly so yeah so it we you know we teach everything from just general homesteading skills growing your own food sustainably and livestock to all kinds of different stuff and put in

[00:05:07] solar panels in your house etc so it's it's a great great thing and I'm really happy with all the classes that we got this year we we try to have about 20 new classes every single year with new instructors just to keep things

[00:05:19] fresh for people that come year after year and we've got a really really good really good lineup this year well I'm absolutely honored to be a part of that lineup yep I've been able to take the anti kidnapping and you know

[00:05:38] anti sexual assault myself defense classes and teach them classes around here locally and hopefully I'll have the ways and means to do that a little bit more nationally given that the problem seems to have grown exponentially again

[00:05:52] well we had a little change of presidency so Trump was doing such a good job of knocking back the human trafficking but 100,000 missing kids at the border you know yeah it's um yeah big problem sick big problem so I am tickled

[00:06:11] absolutely to be a part of prepper camp very honored but also honored that you kind of encouraged me you know hey what do you got new this year Sarah and I was like well I've always wanted to do this class and you were like yeah do that

[00:06:23] class it's really forced me on my comfort zone into exactly where I wanted to be you know so it's just great yeah exactly yeah people come up to me all the time saying I don't know I'd really like to do I really like to

[00:06:37] do this I you know I know you probably don't like the won't like the idea but you know case in point the guy that that played the national anthem each morning you know who is who is you know in the military and he played for

[00:06:55] the Arlington National Cemetery and he just he just approached me in the middle of the year and just said I just feel called to do it he said if you don't want to do it that's fine you know I'm that's okay I'm not

[00:07:06] going to be offended or whatever and I said I think that's a pretty cool idea let's figure out how to schedule it so we could do it like five minutes before the first class starts and it was it was absolutely amazing because I'm

[00:07:18] back and I'm watching the usual you know people talking before the classes and they're discussing what they're going to go see and it's just all kinds of hubbub and everything else and the second he started playing the

[00:07:31] national anthem everyone turned toward the flag and put their put their heart over the hand over their heart and James get pictures from up above and you can see literally every person in the event basically a mile long all facing

[00:07:51] toward the flag and this guy playing and it was just it was it was just amazing everything just time silence yeah the silence is just deafening it goes from like the hum to just nothing like you can hear the pin drop yeah it was really

[00:08:07] cool great addition for sure for sure so yeah so guys if you don't have your prepper camp tickets you're crazy you need to get out there you need to come see us it's a wonderful event and just great people all across the board

[00:08:22] from everybody who helps out to the wonderful individuals who run it to everybody who's teaching there and just there to talk and share and you learn as much just from you know there's such a breath of people there from every walk

[00:08:38] of life so you learn just as much from them as you do from everybody else because everybody's there and sharing stories and it's so open and welcoming it's really a very special event that you it's a very good tone that you

[00:08:55] sat in a very good culture you created you know and I really there there's something beyond me there you can feel it and what what made me realize that it wasn't me doing it was that the first year I think it was we had these

[00:09:17] terrible thunderstorms that were coming toward us just black black clouds and lightning everywhere and we watched as the clouds literally parted around the event and then continued on and I told Jane I think we're doing something right

[00:09:35] yeah yeah I don't disagree I don't disagree yeah and then first year I was there those clouds didn't part though I was I got flooded I'll tell you got you got a chance to see you know the patriotism and the

[00:09:54] type of person that comes in action because everyone is there to take care of you it wasn't like oh you're an idiot for getting wet you know take care of yourself

[00:10:04] oh well figure out what the die of pneumonia yeah no for sure for sure so and just the way the family to you know the boys all rallied everybody just comes together to turn the

[00:10:15] bat into a good situation and just laugh and giggle all yeah so it was great great everything right the hand of lord working all the time through us if we will just quiet our minds and listen yep absolutely all right so let's get into

[00:10:30] the cert stuff cert community well before I before I stop let me say preppercamp.com oh yeah I say preppercamp.com like every week if they can't find it at this point like yeah

[00:10:43] all right they need to figure it out we talk about it every every day at the start of the show and that's why if you're in my audience and you've been thinking about going you don't

[00:10:51] have your tickets yet well let me just provide a hands-mack for you because get her done preppercamp.com there are 20 dollars off right now so there'll be 20 bucks more in like 15 days I know we're getting close it's like Christmas

[00:11:11] I love the end of September even more than like Christmas time this is the family reunion you want to go to so fun fun all right you were asking me a question yes so let's rip it up about the

[00:11:26] community emergency response team and what I love the most was when you said this was just a bunch of country people who hardly knew each other and now we're working together as a unit that is special

[00:11:41] that is hard to do I've tried to set up groups before honestly I never really went for the cert stuff because I was a little leery of having any kind of government oversight but you know when it

[00:11:56] comes down to it we are the government and if we don't stand and make a difference yeah nobody is let's hold that thought because there's there's some really good I mean let me put it this way

[00:12:07] the guy who was doing our our training said there are three human beings total that manage the cert program now cert is CERT stands for community emergency response team under FEMA there's only three people and so basically what they do is they create materials training materials

[00:12:29] and stuff and vests and shirts and that sort of stuff and then they distribute them so they really don't keep track of people and names and I because that was something I was concerned

[00:12:42] about too is you know I don't want to um and I really want my name on another list that the government has right so so yeah and and there's um there's ways around that but I'm getting ahead

[00:12:54] of myself here too so um so just just to give you why and how this all happened I was just like every other guy out there and in in particular probably even more because of who Jane

[00:13:07] and I are and we don't really want people in look community knowing you know that we grow our own food and that we are who we are you know on an international basis because I don't need 2000

[00:13:20] people showing up at my doorstep when the shit hits the fan so um so we you know we've always kept kind of a low profile but um myself and a couple of neighbors were doing a lot of stuff

[00:13:32] where we were trying to think about comms and you know looking at an area study kind of like what Mike Shelby does and you know trying to see what we got for resources and then looking at um

[00:13:48] the neighbors because we really didn't know who the neighbors were because it's a very rural area and it's all spread out and different people you don't know anything about them but um you know we we looked at a GIS tax map and started took taking names and creating

[00:14:07] you know this this uh this google map overlay of all the different properties and where the people were and what roads they were on and then looked at their voting records um

[00:14:18] and that told us kind of who might be like minded and so we were looking at that for our own defense and then started thinking you know if we really think about this strategically the more

[00:14:32] we reach out and the more information we gather the further out from us we are they are the more time we have to react to a situation coming in and also um you know you've got buffers

[00:14:46] between you and them or people that you can can defend so right we kind of started a neighborhood watch which was pretty innocuous you know it was it wasn't like a crazy prepper militia group that

[00:15:00] we were starting and I don't really want to be part of that it was just it was just a neighborhood watch look you know we we can look out for each other we can keep in touch with each other you

[00:15:10] know when we see something you know we can tell you when something's coming and in a short period of time we were able to alert the people within you know four mile radius of us of a home

[00:15:25] invasion down the road of escape convict of a bear in somebody's yard of a wildfire and we were able to just send all of that out on the signal app because we created this group for our neighborhood

[00:15:42] watch yep so and anybody that saw anything they could post something to the the neighborhood watch and so suddenly we're having interactions with people we've never had interactions with before and then they start sharing political stuff yeah because we're all like wait wait wait

[00:16:00] before you go further so um so this is just an idea of the neighborhood watch so you just approach their house or how did you um approach them to suggest like hey we're going to put

[00:16:11] together this app but everybody's going to sign up to it we're going to have this neighborhood how how did that happen I would contact people on the street like if I was leaving or something like that

[00:16:21] and there were people that I knew okay you know because there were farms around and and we had in the past kind of said hey there's a coyote head in your way or a pack of coyotes head in

[00:16:31] your way you got livestock you know we got livestock and they would return the favor when there was stuff like that going so there was some kind of conversation there but nothing

[00:16:40] nothing any more than just neighborly hey I'm a farmer you're a farmer if you hear some shots I'm not going to shoot in your direction you know um but there's a reason for it right so um

[00:16:51] you know there was that kind of thing and so we moved from you know phone conversations to texting to hey let's try this this the signal app which is end-to-end encrypted and you know

[00:17:08] nobody can see what we're saying that we don't want to have see and the only people that can see what we what we're saying are people that have are essentially in the group and you can right you can

[00:17:21] allow people in the group or you can not allow people in the group so it really was a good way for us to get started and then suddenly people are sharing political stuff and that kind of information

[00:17:33] as well as you know weather and criminal and you know those kind of things so now you're getting people who are talking to each other thumbs up doing whatever so they're really feeling more like a community and they're like-minded and as we brought people into this neighborhood watch

[00:17:54] somebody would say well I know two other people that would be interested in this so I would go with that person and I would go meet them so they would see us see me and we'd start talking about communications and we'd start talking about the signal thing and

[00:18:11] you know we've we've got into GMRS radios which have about a five mile range and you know there you can set up separate channels on those things so you can have radio to radio yep so radios

[00:18:24] and we talked about communications in the worst possible scenario and what can we do and we we've got people who now understand what mesh-tastic is and for those that don't know it's it's basically you're using a radio a tiny little radio that you carry on your person

[00:18:48] and your phone just becomes a keyboard and a screen that you can see stuff so in the worst possible scenario that the grid is down the cell phones the towers run out of battery and or

[00:19:03] their generators die there's no more cell service and GMRS is only going to get so far so these these little radios are bluetooth to your phone so even though your phone is absolutely useless

[00:19:16] as a phone you can still text people and you can do the same thing you do in signal you have you create little groups so you know your neighborhood watch group has it has a signal as a mesh-tastic

[00:19:30] group and also there's a um a feature on it where it's kind of an ATAC military feature but you can see the location of every one of your people in your group and you can see them

[00:19:44] as they move in real time so it's really cool because you're looking at a google earth type map and you're seeing the location of your people so if some for us it's it's great because you know

[00:20:00] when you're on the farm and you're in 55 acres and something happens is like rick's not responding yeah where is he um you know you can you can basically see on the map where i am because

[00:20:11] i got that radio on me all the time and um but then even beyond that if you had any kind of defensive situation exactly who you had where exactly yep exactly and and also one of the great things about

[00:20:24] this is every single little radio is also a repeater so if you've got some obstacle in your way or something like that or there's your people are a little too far apart if you've

[00:20:38] got people between you that have that little radio that are also on mesh tastic even if they're not in your group that signal will go through their radio bounce off their radio and to the person that

[00:20:49] you're trying to reach so it it was a great idea for us to also want to get more and more and more people on this whole community um neighborhood watch unity watch thing and get them on the mesh

[00:21:02] tastic because we really wanted to cover the county so i had a conversation with um one of them just for one second what how can like other people tap into your network though like so

[00:21:16] that then they could see where your people were they can't unless we invite them okay so you you know you're going to invite the people that you want to they can all have their

[00:21:27] own little groups and we can still be using and bouncing off their repeaters because that message will go through their repeater but they will never be able to see it because it's encrypted

[00:21:38] so only the people that that are allowed that are part of your group will see it so if somebody is in town uh 20 miles away and there's a bunch of people that are on mesh tastic between that

[00:21:49] aren't necessarily in our group we can still communicate with them um okay yeah that's way better than you know it's it's yeah just look up you'd be able to hear everybody um s2 underground

[00:22:02] has a really good video on mesh tastic and attack um so that's that's on youtube but yeah check that out because i don't kind of give you the whole overview what it is but uh you know that's kind

[00:22:14] of the the end of the world as we know at communications so as long as you've got some little solar panel that can recharge your phone that was going to be my next question yeah recharge

[00:22:24] your phone and recharge that the little radio um it doesn't require a lot of a lot of juice at all so it's um so uh you know i've been actively involved with some political stuff and one of the

[00:22:39] mayors in our county got a bunch a bunch of little towns and you know he's like minded and we were talking about you know what happens if and looking at really what's going on in on the

[00:22:51] nation and the world and the border crisis and the imminent threats and you know there's over 30 thousand over 30 000 chinese nationals of military age that have come across the southern border all wearing the same clothing all having the same kit all wearing the same backpacks

[00:23:13] understand that the chinese communist party does not allow people to leave their country without permission so they have their permission they're coming into the country and you know they are creating a lot of cells now that's 30 000 30 000 of them think about 9 11 that was 19 guys

[00:23:37] that brought the united states to its knees for weeks um you know what kind of habit could these guys reek and um you know i think we're seeing some of it now i think we're seeing some some hacks

[00:23:52] going on and some things going down and i think they're doing a lot of testing right now and the chinese communist party whether we care to believe it or not whether we want to keep their eyes

[00:24:02] closed to it they have declared war on the united states they've declared unrestricted warfare in the united states that their intention is to be the dominant power in the world and in

[00:24:13] order to do that they got to knock the united states down so and they like to take our farmland while they're at it yeah well they do and they're you know there's a lot of um politicians that

[00:24:25] are captured by the chinese basically you know they're they're um paid off or they're black mailed or whatever yeah and um so these guys are serious about trying to destroy the united

[00:24:40] states so if you got 30 000 people in and you're a prepper like you and i and you kind of know what happens if there's an emp or grid down situation the ideal scenario for them would be

[00:24:56] take down the grid which is antiquated infrastructure which is really in bad shape right now and very easy and very susceptible to attack all you have to do is shoot out a few

[00:25:07] you know substations they've already tried that and um you take down the entire power grid well you know the department of defensive ward gamed this out years ago if there was an emp or their

[00:25:19] grid goes down 80 of the population will be dead in two months because of lack of resources or people killing each other yeah and the ones that are left will be the ones that are prepared

[00:25:32] and in a place where they can defend what they have and the other ones that are left are going to be the really really bad psychopaths yeah so um so you know this is a scenario that we're concerned about

[00:25:48] and the mayor and I met and talked about this and said we need to develop a plan you know for the county and i'm like well yeah we should so we got together with the sheriff who is the

[00:26:01] highest constitutional officer in the county um and said hey you know this is what we're concerned about we need to do something and he's like totally all over it and you know he's let he he's got

[00:26:19] at most at any one time he's got seven deputies that have to cover 600 square miles and it's not 600 flat square yeah it's 600 mountainous square miles you got to go up and down hills and around

[00:26:32] around corners and around hills and craggly stuff and you know so he's like yeah yeah you know if something like this happens we need the citizens because there's no way we're going to be able

[00:26:44] to handle it yeah so um and i'm sure like they have families too and stuff you know that's always the big question you know are you gonna leave your family to protect your community or stay

[00:26:54] you know stay with your family and when we talked about this mesh statistic thing he says oh my guys are all using signal right now and they're all are using their cell phones and he said you know a new

[00:27:08] radio cost me two grand he said how much are these i said 65 bucks huh he's like 65 bucks and yeah we could put one on the tower that you're using now you know that kind of sends out the

[00:27:20] broadcast signal and he's like oh man this is great so he's going where do you buy him so he's online ordering it while we're in the meeting nice and so so um so he's like sees it and then he realizes

[00:27:35] the more people the more citizens we have on that network um the the more sustainable it is for everybody and the more that his deputies have a way to communicate with home base and everybody

[00:27:49] else and he can use it to send a mass um info text out to everybody if there's something or if there's a grid down or if there's you know whatever the thing is the more people that are on it the

[00:28:02] more they're gonna be able to share information yeah they can be like we're looking out for this guy you know give a description over it and yeah now you got your whole community working in unison

[00:28:12] yep and the sheriff already does that to people who are subscribed to a text thing so yeah you know that would be that's so he's like he's getting it he totally gets it and plus he lists he confessed

[00:28:26] that they listened to a lot of prepper podcasts so yes like okay this guy this guy's got it yeah he's in the know it was most of most of them contrary to what i expected where most sheriffs

[00:28:37] are like i don't want you guys running around doing stuff you know hey wait wait wait a minute this is i'm i want to hold my power yeah so um he really is you know community oriented so it was you know

[00:28:50] so that was good so we have actually expanded this way beyond our own neighborhood and we have expanded it with the sheriff into other neighborhoods into different precincts like voting precincts within the county we've got i don't know 17 precincts or something like that

[00:29:10] so we're really expanding it out all over the place and he's bringing in people and we're bringing in people and the people that we brought in are bringing in people so we had a meeting actually on

[00:29:23] so we've been talking about doing this community emergency response team the cert thing and should something happen should we have a one second after scenario and should you know the the huge city of charlotte head our way because they're heading for the hill because you know there's

[00:29:47] total civil unrest and it's a totally unsafe place to be um we need to stop them before they get here and you know there's there's a way to do that or even if we don't have that kind of scenario and

[00:30:01] if people want to feel a little less like this is like i can't handle this sort of thing just a hurricane just right yeah any of your natural something whipping through yeah you know um

[00:30:16] a nice storm you know power outage for three days and you know there's been plenty of that going on in texas too absolutely um so it's you know those kind of things where you can help

[00:30:27] and you can be like a first responder before the first responder gets there um you know you you are you help until the professional help gets there so all kinds of stuff like that and

[00:30:42] and it's it's good too because the individual people go i'm gonna protect my family and my loved ones first and foremost but if i'm part of this thing this is a way for me to protect my

[00:30:56] family right and and i can give back too so it's it's a win-win for everybody and um well that's what that's what i was telling everyone like okay so you're a family of four like mom and

[00:31:08] dad are protecting and growing food and doing all this stuff it's impossible it's impossible to do that way even a military unit is typically 13 people you know you've got to have that group

[00:31:20] and uh so i like the cert aspect of it because people that maybe aren't as on board they're not thinking like oh i'm joining a militia or something right but they understand the relevance of

[00:31:31] there's natural disasters there's things that could befall our community and this is our team that's prepared to handle that that i can call on if needs be right so i love how it kind of

[00:31:41] bridges that gap i'm all about bridging the gap there's so many people waking up right now it's amazing we're in a fantastic time you know jesus saved trump and i just the awakening that's

[00:31:55] been happening since that incident oh my gosh if the good lord doesn't know exactly what he's doing so right now we've got to really be prepared to bridge that gap and welcome a bunch of new

[00:32:05] people into the understanding so we can have these prepared communities and there's there's all kinds of learning experiences from a preparedness standpoint that you can get by being part of it because you can assert group can volunteer now you know fire departments have to have ongoing training

[00:32:27] police departments have to have ongoing training hospitals have to have mash casualty exercises every year by law yeah so you volunteer to be a victim and you get to learn while people are working on you you know hey this is what this this guy is and

[00:32:47] you know um and here's how we do the triage stuff and oh you know we would pack this wound i mean you're you're doing it firsthand you're watching it firsthand yeah so that you can learn how to

[00:32:58] do it on your own loved ones if you ever need to um so we're you know we're we're getting more integrated into the other aspects of the community like the hospital the fire departments um so

[00:33:13] and the the you know the police forces and that kind of stuff so so it's like oh these guys are good guys you know and you know we we can rely on them if we need something so it's not a

[00:33:25] us versus them thing or they look at us suspiciously it it's really all in the way that we've approached this thing and taken it step by step by step so that we are helping them and they see us not as a

[00:33:39] threat but as a help to them and ultimately you know we're creating the this group of people that can stand strong against whatever might come whether that be natural or man-made um because it's it's going to protect their families and their neighborhoods so well also there's always

[00:34:01] been the question of like okay so if something did happen and say it was a societal unrest would the police force would the military turn against the american citizens right and yeah when you really

[00:34:12] set up a partnership like that and the chances of that happening are going to go down significantly because you already have a pre-existing relationship exactly and we and we are in you know in in with

[00:34:26] and under the auspices of the highest constitutional officer in the county so you know he it's his duty to protect everybody and to follow the constitution and to make sure that everybody else follows

[00:34:42] the constitution in the county so he is the highest authority in the county higher than the than the board you know that of of then the guys that basically run the county um you know he is

[00:34:58] higher than everybody so it's um it's a good relation to have and we are lucky that we have a guy that is already prepared his mind and gets it so um so we we um yesterday brought in a uh

[00:35:15] assert trainer a guy who teaches the whole cert thing and we had literally had a five-hour class in one of our government buildings the sheriff attended he had a sheriff from a

[00:35:29] a neighboring county attend who was interested in this stuff um and we had you know 25 people in a room where we were going through this and the guy that came down uh came down from virginia

[00:35:42] and he's a guy that i know and you might know um nat cellars the preparedness guy and um he does yeah he does emergency management that's his that's his life that's his job that's

[00:35:57] training so he does cert training he is a guy that does that sort of stuff so he could tell us kind of the ins and outs and what you need to do and what you don't need to do and he basically

[00:36:08] said it's it's like this thing that fell between the cracks because you know FEMA is typically a top-down organization and you know department of homeland security under which FEMA exists is a top-down organization but because the cert set up the way it is where there's only three

[00:36:26] people that actually do anything that run the program and they're basically just sending out materials and and maintaining their website um you really can organize your community emergency response team any way you want to and you're not overseen by anyone so we don't need to be

[00:36:47] involved with the sheriff here but we want to be involved with the sheriff because he is like-minded and it does give us that sort of credibility and that sort of access to places that we wouldn't

[00:36:56] normally have um but you could do this yourself you don't need to have the sheriff buy in you don't need to have the fire department buy in you don't need to do anything but you

[00:37:05] you just go set it up uh you register one person has to register or organization just registers with with FEMA simple process and then after that um anybody that wants to take the cert courses can

[00:37:21] but you don't have to um and you can take that stuff online if you want to there's like eight little sections so one's on search and rescue one's on you know fire stuff but it's it's

[00:37:36] it's prepping stuff you know it and when you have the physical classes you know it gives time for people to get together actually talk to each other look each other in the eyes know who

[00:37:45] each other are i mean we're missing out on so much of that yeah so so in this five-hour class what i saw most important was the breaks where you got people telling stories and people who

[00:37:58] were talking to each other and you know one woman was talking about the fact that she came up on an accident and um you know she got out to see what she could do to help and the guy who was

[00:38:09] in there was pinned in there and it was really bad it was like like blood and like losing a limb sort of bad so she's trying to keep the guy calm and some woman stops her car and comes over and

[00:38:23] she goes into hysterics screaming and like oh it's so awful and it's like no she has to pull this woman aside and say get in your car close the door get out of here leave us alone

[00:38:36] you're making things worse yeah so um in a lot of ways cert training tells you that you're kind of the calming force and when people see somebody there with a cert vest or you look official or whatever

[00:38:51] okay it's like you can breathe literally breathe a sigh of relief because you don't know what to do but these people can help you and even if it's just because you're in a panic just calling

[00:39:03] the sheriff who you know to get somebody out there to do something so it's um and like I said it was it was really cool just listening to people talking to each other who had never talked to each other

[00:39:16] before uh who might have even been suspicious of each other before and it just became a great way to build camaraderie and teamwork and it's after the meeting it's like I mean just a five-hour

[00:39:30] session on a Saturday um of course I bought pizza so that helped but uh they were like okay what's next what do we want what are we doing next we're gonna train let's let's do training on a trauma

[00:39:45] thing let's let's do you know let's let's bring somebody in who's an expert that can teach us what to do they have an active shooter or yeah they have those stop the bleed classes those

[00:39:54] things are amazing yeah exactly yep so no that's exactly what we're our next class is gonna be we're and so now they were like okay let's let's meet once a month let's you know let's figure out what day

[00:40:06] we can all get together and stuff so and your story your story was an absolutely spectacular never have happened oh god yeah well that that was that would have never happened if we had tried

[00:40:23] to start a county thing instead of starting at the the neighborhood level and working out and showing that it works at the neighborhood level if we had tried to do a top-down county thing

[00:40:38] yep you don't think it would have worked no nobody would have trusted it yeah I totally agree with that and like I say your story was a perfect segue into what I was gonna say as far as like

[00:40:49] because people see the uniform and they know you have some level of training it's better than some dude out there in camos or whatever and then they're like oh what's this psycho doing or whatever you

[00:41:00] know people immediately just judge and think certain things were humans that's what happens and that really highlights that point that I wanted you to make about you know it does provide that calming force and what a good way into that because it's so important that's so

[00:41:16] the trust issue is a big problem that we're gonna have to tackle and it's in a and if you're in a rural area and people just people are there because they want to be there they don't necessarily want

[00:41:28] contact um you know anybody walks up my road they're likely to get shot it's just uh right you know it you don't you have no purpose on being here if less it's negative so um

[00:41:44] and you had to work hard to get up my road because it's steep it's two miles long and you end up at my driveway I got four vicious dogs that are going to take you out maybe before I can so yeah um

[00:41:58] no and that that's yeah and so you and that's and that's not just me that's everybody that lives here because that's what they want they want to be left alone you know they want to

[00:42:07] take care of themselves they're self self-reliant so this was a way to say hey you want to take care of yourself you want to take care of your family this is a way you can leverage everyone

[00:42:19] around you to help protect you or to see trouble coming long before you would see it yourself to light up a network and get that community togetherness because yeah yeah because it's hard it's really difficult I've talked about like community gardens in the past um I've tried

[00:42:37] to talk to city people about you know what if you had one floor of the apartment building that was like you know hydroponic systems for everybody within the apartment and they're like

[00:42:46] you know that's great except my neighbor is a whack job and it's like man yeah you guys there has to come a point where we stop like calling each other names and start like having

[00:42:56] a little patience with each other so we can't communicate. The biggest problem with community anything community garden community whatever is the word communism that's in community. Fair it off. And it's if you know anything about history and let's say the pilgrims that landed on

[00:43:17] Plymouth Rock they had a communist basically a commune when they first started and they almost all starved to death because there only a few people did the work the rest of them were like

[00:43:31] you know I don't feel like doing it more I'm gonna watch a soap today or you know we're we're gonna see an Indian play you know it's like I don't want to so what saved them was what has

[00:43:46] made this country great after that happened and it's the governor said hey this ain't working we're gonna starve to death so he divvied up the land and gave a plot to every person and said

[00:44:01] you can work that land you can do what you want with it if you have a surplus you can sell it you know what you can buy from other people but no one's gonna feed you you have to feed yourself

[00:44:13] and when that happened people took responsibility for themselves and they weren't relying on someone else to do it for them so you know we that's really what happened and and that was the perfect example of the difference between capitalism and communism so

[00:44:36] you know that far back in the 1600s that makes a lot of sense it does there's so many stories about you know the school teacher that gave out all you know bees or whatever well the people that were

[00:44:46] getting a's quit trying hard because they were going to get a b anyway and the people that were you know not doing well did even worse because they were going to get a b anyway so what did they care

[00:44:58] and uh yeah you have to you have to have a real reward not just a participation award so really cool I spent some I spent some time in the former Soviet Union and you know we were

[00:45:10] being taken around by these people and they were saying look at our look at our wonderful you know apartments and they had row after row after row after row street after street block after block of these kind of cookie cutter five-story six-story buildings that were apartment type

[00:45:30] complexes and I guess you could buy them or whatever and I'm looking at them we were driving down I said these things are pieces of crap they're falling down you know the concrete's fallen

[00:45:42] off and they were so proud of them they were only five years old they look like they were 30 40 50 years old yeah it's because nobody cared because it was a communist thing it didn't matter if they did a good

[00:45:56] job they had no pride in workmanship it didn't make any difference I'm not going to work any harder than the next guy so you know you get crappy quality stuff and um that was an eye-opener

[00:46:09] to me too like wow how did this happen they're five years old and they're so proud of them these these are crap buildings such a dance the American pride the American exceptionalism but yet the

[00:46:21] humbleness you know just a constant dance that uh that has to be constantly maintained throughout history you know you can't go overboard with your pride that's not a good thing either you know

[00:46:34] but uh it has made us exceptional as far as you can achieve what you want to and that's why people still want to come here um yeah they just don't see it in other places well the some of the people

[00:46:45] that's why they want to come here right now there's a lot of them that are looking for for you know for the communist they can't yeah yeah and then they're like oh these sandwiches

[00:46:53] aren't good enough why don't you you know figure out how to make it work you know you could have done that and a lot of those places are beautiful they're coming from these tropic areas and stuff

[00:47:03] I mean some of them not so much I don't blame you I hatey areas like that but you know a lot of them those are great countries you're leaving behind for to do what you know so absolutely well Rick

[00:47:15] that was bomb that was exactly uh the talk that I think I've been looking for on my show for a while because I've been you know trying to give some everybody all the listeners a game plan for

[00:47:26] how they can roll out and really start making a difference in their community um without having the real ticket on how to do that this is a nationwide program anybody can get involved

[00:47:38] like you said you can involve your law enforcement if they're great people you don't have to if they're not on board so um this is truly something that you can do and like I say I think if it

[00:47:49] bridges those gaps so people are like well I don't want to be a prepper I don't want to be one of those quote unquote crazy whack jobs or whatever this really bridges the gap and um like I'm

[00:48:00] like I opened up with I have I was like a government program you know I don't trust anything these days so um too but when you start like you say take your responsibility for your own land

[00:48:15] right then you realize that that government is owned by us it has to be managed by us so we better get off our our dinkies and do something about it right right well I'm gonna

[00:48:29] the whole cert thing there's so much valuable info that you can get for free you know that that's that's just great I mean all for free because we're paying for it exactly right you know yeah

[00:48:42] and it is great info I've looked into it before they got the uniforms you know you get the hats vests shirts everything um so it's definitely a great program all right well I've got to jump

[00:48:54] into my change in earth news one out um it's been like I say I've been looking that's why I was like oh we're throwing the one more week of not reading the the verges chapter I promise everybody

[00:49:05] will get back to it next week but this was so important to me um to know how you guys brought it up from the ground and really made it grow I'm super impressed so um I appreciate

[00:49:15] your time big time yeah well glad to do it we need to have more people save themselves because uh we gotta do something right and once we're ready to save these ourselves then we can actually

[00:49:27] begin helping each other like our communities reach out to one another be able to assist in those times so um great stuff it's like I said you know in that meeting yesterday I can't really

[00:49:40] control what goes on in Washington DC but I can control what happens in my backyard and my neighborhood and my county so that's where we start amen amen well give Jane a hug for me we'll do thank you for coming on the show everybody

[00:49:57] you can meet rick come out say hi propercamp.com get there it's you will not regret it you will not regret it all right rick thank you take care all right have a good night all right bye

[00:50:10] you too bye all right let's go ahead and jump to some changing earth news dream survive thrive this is changing earth news all right guys today is July what is today 21st holy smokes it is just flying by

[00:50:46] July 21st 2024 um happy to have you guys with us I was like I haven't even looked at the chat all night long we've been just having a blast so um hopefully you guys got as much great

[00:51:01] information out of that as I did definitely going to be deploying some of those things in my area and uh see and see what we can do to get our community here a little bit more prepared

[00:51:14] so let's go ahead and jump into it today um we've been having lots of solar activity all week um it's minimal though hasn't been anything like huge uh so minimal solar activity um

[00:51:30] m-class flares that kind of thing but man it has really uptick our volcanic uh activity on the earth as well as some really big earthquakes going on so we are on solar flare watch this week

[00:51:46] got some big monsters on there going to be earth earth facing so definitely tune in check that out in the morning also um my guy ben over at suspicious observers he is trying to get enough money together

[00:51:59] to put a documentary out regarding the um polar what's going on with our polar caps and the solar activity and the magnetic shielding so if you guys have a little bit extra you want to go over

[00:52:12] there and help him make that dream reality that would be great you can head on over to suspicious observers and if you just watch the youtube channel you're going to find out all the information there okay on july 15th 2024 there was 373 earthquakes that were 2.0 or bigger

[00:52:28] the biggest of which was a 5.8 in the south pacific ocean near simoa there was a 3.4 earthquake in charidan illinois i'm always just watching that area because it is around the new madrid fault

[00:52:41] line i've seen a lot of things that are making me uneasy kind of this week so i would just keep eyes on the earth at quake activity and stay prepared as always there was a hailstorm in

[00:52:56] philadelphia in july that actually registered trace amounts of snowfall because there was so much hail that came down absolutely incredible to see in the middle of july so um that's definitely worth noticing you know it wasn't any big deal but uh just very unusual

[00:53:15] occurrence on july 16 2024 there was 382 earthquakes that were 2.0 or bigger the biggest of which was a 5.6 in the meluca sea near indonesia um earthquakes and tremors were occurring in nirobi kenya there was a 4.7 earthquake that hit um caused some damage out there

[00:53:36] toronto was also hit by flash flooding big storm came through flooded out um pretty much everything there's even a drake i guess he's a famous rap star and his like mansion got flooded or something

[00:53:51] so uh that was pretty funny to watch on youtube i'm sure he wasn't prepared for that for that moment um china's floods flooding situation are moving north it is getting worse um it is

[00:54:05] deadly flooding and actually today they have a tropical storm headed towards southern china as well so not looking good on that home front for china in northwestern indiana near chicago they were impacted by many tornadoes touching down it's been estimated that five to eleven tornadoes

[00:54:29] touched down in that area by chicago um it was part of this deadly derecho that moved across the midwest uh it's basically like mid summer storms that just get ripping across the plains area so those tornadoes were associated with that event july 17 2024 there was 337 earthquakes that

[00:54:49] were 2.0 or bigger biggest of which was uh i didn't mark down the number oh my gosh um i think it was a five point something in the celeb scene near indonesia wasn't very noticeable we haven't

[00:55:02] really started up taking the activity at this point yet however there was a large earthquakes swarm in southern california there was also a 3.7 earthquake in kingston jamaica nashville illinois they had a major dam failure which caused a lot of evacuations downstream

[00:55:20] due to flooding and um in yelville arkansas canza or arkans arkansaw sorry about that they had significant flooding due to storms there um and burlington vermont also had rains with flash floods happening there as well on the 18th of july 2024 there was 333 earthquakes that were 2.0 or bigger

[00:55:47] biggest of which was a 5.6 in the north pacific ocean near japan roam new york was impacted by a tornado and montana has been seeing a lot of significant wildfire activity the miller park fire in particular was now at 1760 acres now that just simply dwarfs the event that's been

[00:56:12] unfolding in brazil um southern brazil was getting all of that rain but central western brazil has the largest wetland uh tropical wetland region in the world and 700 000 hectares of that wetland the pent pent pentano wetlands has burned so 700 000 hectares is like over 1.4 million

[00:56:44] acres of tropical wetlands very very sad event that's unfolding down there and you really just have to attribute it to the changing earth and the the moisture regions changing from what they traditionally were we are on an ever-evolving planet it's not going to stay the same forever this

[00:57:02] sahara was green at one time so um it's just kind of heart wrenching to watch that happen lone rock near portland or again they were under evacuation due to wildfires farming to new york

[00:57:16] they had a hail build up that also covered um the ground made it look like it had snowed in july on the 19th of july there was 406 earthquakes or 2.0 or bigger the biggest of which was a 7.4

[00:57:30] earthquake in chile cisley has been hit hard by drought conditions and there was a 6.0 earthquake in the north pacific ocean off the elution islands by alaska so the ring of fire just getting really really motivated to start making some moves july 20th 2024 there was 393 earthquakes that were

[00:57:52] 2.0 or bigger the biggest of which was another 7.3 in chile uh lake taho california has an earthquake swarm going on and there was a 4.1 earthquake in new zealand there was a very rare 2.1 earthquake that happened in polaro main so we're talking the um the uh continental plate of

[00:58:16] the united states moving um so look it up online you'll see where that plate really sits and it would go up through main so that's new madrid that's talking moving west coast um so really

[00:58:33] eyes on that situation right now 11 people are in dead or 11 people have passed away in china after a bridge collapsed the rains just causing more flooding there stromboli volcano has erupted um ash is becoming a major problem there multiple fires burning in los angeles county there's been lots

[00:58:55] of little hot spots all over california and on bulgaria they're also dealing with wildfire issues as well today july 21st 2024 there was 390 earthquakes that were 2.0 or bigger biggest of which was a great big 6.2 deep earthquake in guatemala luckily a lot of these big earthquakes

[00:59:18] have been deep earthquakes but eventually that stuff's going to rattle to the surface so um we're just keeping eyes on hasn't been like really really damaging though because of the depth of these earthquakes there was a 5.3 earthquake in hokkiado japan and more flash flooding impacting rudioso new

[00:59:38] mexico so that place has not been able to get a break they had really big wildfires there and then once the monsoonal rains came in now they've just been getting flooded ever since tropical storm carina or gamy um it is impacting the philippines today also there's a tropical

[00:59:56] storm peperoon that we discussed last week that was moving in the vietnam area it has upgraded to a tropical storm and it's set to impact southern china um iwajima the new new mayan ex new mayan

[01:00:14] volcano erupts this is another brand new volcano that'll form a new island out there by japan so we're seeing a lot of volcanic activity mount etna is also getting ready to erupt again

[01:00:28] there has just been tons of ash coming from stromboli and etna into those areas of italy so it's been big problems over there as far as those volcanoes are concerned and they always impact

[01:00:38] travel as well you can't fly the planes when these volcanoes are going off also on the 21st we had 87 new wildfires start up in the last 24 hours in british columbia so that's a big problem includes the county california there is also another rapidly growing fire 50 structures are

[01:00:59] threatened and they're actively evacuating citizens there as far as our volcanic count goes there are currently are 33 volcanoes erupting that's up one from last week there's 29 showing minor activity that's also up one from last week and there are 26 showing unrest that is

[01:01:19] down one from last week we added one more to the list this week um and since we always talk about that um i wanted to look at a total number so there's currently 88 volcanoes erupting on planet

[01:01:32] earth right now that is a pretty darn high count um i could tell you i've been watching these numbers for years and to see that number steadily sitting at 33 34 volcanoes erupting that's really

[01:01:47] big usually it's down below like 28 so um just really interesting but then you know you got the one showing minor activity following right behind it as far as wildfires in the united states of america we are at a preparedness level of five which is our most heightened

[01:02:03] level possible we have 10 new large fires we have uh 63 large active fires burning right now for a total of 746 thousand acres on fire five of those fires are contained at this time the number one

[01:02:21] state for wildfires i don't know if alaska got rain or what but they went from like 400 000 acres on fire last week yeah yeah 369 000 acres on fire last week to not even being on the list this week

[01:02:38] so i don't know if alaska got rain and boom it just put out all their wildfires if that's the case awesome that's so awesome but um or again actually skyrocketed in their count so they have their

[01:02:52] numbers more than doubled they have 19 fires burning right now uh total of 474 000 acres on fire in origan this is coming from six new fires and none of them are contained or they're six new to those

[01:03:07] 19 and none of those fires are contained at this time in california they're number two on the list they have 10 fires actively burning for a total of 95 234 acres they have no new ones and one of

[01:03:20] those fires is contained monta Montana has also made the list they have five fires burning for a total of 57 120 acres they have no new fires getting added to that list but they have one

[01:03:33] that is contained at number four on our list is utah just because we don't usually see them on the list i wanted to include them they have five fires actively burning no new ones but none of these

[01:03:45] are contained and it's currently consuming 36 000 36 000 630 acres all right guys well that's all i got for you today sorry if you've been waiting on the bit to hear um burges but like i said uh we will

[01:04:01] play the book part again next week i just wanted to give rick as much time as possible to be able to outlay all that sort information to you because um honestly it's a program i was

[01:04:12] really interested in the past and then after seeing the success that they've been having with it and how they rolled that group out i think it's a great format to follow and i would highly recommend you

[01:04:23] start thinking about um you know getting one together in your community and um seeing who you can get on board for that all righty guys well chin will hopefully be back with us next week

[01:04:36] he's been having a little bit of family problems so everybody say a prayer for him that he can keep his head on straight during all of these challenging times and if you'd love to support

[01:04:45] the show i would love it if you did you can head on over to changing earth series dot com that's changing earth series dot com become a supporter over there um if you're you're not

[01:04:56] into becoming a supporter head on over to my youtube channel or just head on over there anyway i'd really appreciate that give a video um a like and uh a thumbs up i've got some pretty

[01:05:07] exciting things coming up for um what we're gonna do for the binge episodes for the audio drama and we're just about ready to release block two for season four so good things happen in

[01:05:20] all the time keep praying god bless america jesus saved trump the man's here for a reason you know it's so great to see everybody uniting and waking up and i really believe this is our

[01:05:35] moment in history so please don't let it pass you by open up your eyes get out there and make a difference where you can all right guys until next time remember dream survive thrive