Gear that Actually Gets Used

Pack the truck, bring your boot child, where the pines her truth got a place for you and me? Learning how to live free. Sixty classes on the board from the Garden to the Forge, expert voices and one by one, all day long to work is done, Rick Austin and the Last Survivor Jane, all day and night the weed, docky j too, Greg New is something new. Reverer Camp twenty twenty said never camp one. Every one says come on down, come join this biggest one, and that's all Miss six twenty fouteen we brown Biggas, Yeah we're bread again home. Breper can't for that. Funny says, can't for that. Funay say homestead hands and ready minds, every answer you can't find, see the shelf and fenced the gate. Come learn now, don't beat the. Rick Onuson and the live Survivor Jane all day and night the. Weed donkey day to bring new and something new. Premper can't for it. Funny say I can't for that. Funny say come on down, come join this biggest one. And that's no thiss Since. Twenty fourteen week prom biggis, Yeah, We're bringing whole. Proper can't for it. Funny says can't want it? Fun says. If you've been waiting for a sign, baby, this is your time. Bring your questions, bring your plans, come build it by hey. Fripper, can't fly it, twa can't fly one say come on down. I'm joing this biggest one. And that's os since twenty fourteen, Reprowl beggin. Yet they're bringing all can't one a one. Say, can't want it? One say. What is up? Everybody? Welcome in gear that gets used. The guilty guilty, guilty, guilty cringe because we all have a bunch of gear that does get used, and some things we purchased that never really does anything. Here's a great one. Here's a great one I've never used. I'll just admit it right off the top. I think it's a great thing to have, great thing to have in the bug out bag. But it's a frog gig in theory. It's one of these things that, like, you know, you think to yourself, in the situation where I have to get food and I have very you know, few means of doing it. I got this three pronged metal thing that can go on top of a stick. An old broom or whatever, and I could use it to stab fish, frogs, whatever carp you know, I could definitely see like slow moving carp getting getting gigged and eaten in a real rough survival situation. But it's one of those things, you know, if you compare it to like your fixed laid knife, eadc knife, hell, even your folding saw. Things like that, like next to nothing, next to nothing hand pump, water filter, on the other hand, something you get a lot of use out right, something that you get a lot of use out of if you go out into the wild. Right beardless James in chat j already asked, Yeah, it might be might be beardless James for a while. I don't know. I'm glad you joined us though. Today from Port cool Europeans are suffering a bit of a heat wave. It's not not even a laughing matter. It's become deadly. It's become deadly over there. Yeah, i'd have to show you the uh cooler build out for a air conditioner unit geor eight if you're interested. If you can get your hands on ice ice cooler, USB powered fan intakeing out outflow or just outflow, you don't even really need the intake. I mean it probably helps with airflow. But if you can imagine putting a hole in a cooler filling it with ice. I got these great little square USB fans. You'd use a whole saw and drill a hole in it and sit the fan in there. You can duct tape it in there if you want to move it around and not have it, you know us be powered so you don't even have to use house you know, power necessarily right off the back. Plug it into a It was a creation for off grid air conditioning right or or emergency air conditioning type of thing, and it works. It'll blow cold air. And believe me, if it's eighty eight degrees in your house, like because the EU doesn't want you to turn the air conditioner on for fear that, you know, every animal within a thirty mile radius will drop dead. Then something to consider today, though, I want to talk about gear that gets used, and in that conversation we're gonna talk about I'm gonna show you an ugly piece of gear that has uh. I gotta zoom out a little bit so you can see it. And it is a beautiful piece of gear, but it has been made ugly by use by my use of it over the years along with this. So this is called the pressurized jerry can from hydro Blue. Are sponsor, Okay, sponsor, sponsor, sponsor. Go to hydroblue dot com. Go to hydro blue dot com. This thing's amazing. It's got a pump and it pressurizes the water inside, which runs it through a filter. Right here. Mine has the attached virus filter. Right. I didn't open my hand to be followed AI. The AI camera I think has overstayed. It's welcome. We might have to upgrade or downgrade. I've been considering a downgrade on the camera actually, But anyway, it pushes the water through a filter that's attached here and then comes out of this end, and you can pressurize it so much that you can. There's also an attachment for a sprayer. I'll show you how that works one day. That guy's been with me since twenty eighteen, Okay, and uh, it's never failed. It's never if. I've taken it into the woods, I've taken it to camping trips to drink. I've taken it to prepper camp to filter drinking water. I've taken it, uh, and I've used it here at home. Just this past winter, we had a really bad storm. We thought, uh, water pipes are gonna freeze, right, so we filled a bunch of containers with water on top of the water storage we already have, but we filled a bunch of containers with water. And the first one that I filled up was the jerry can. Right. I was like, let's do this jerry can business because I know it works. I know it works, I know it will work. And uh, for a long long time I wanted to be sponsored by Hydro Blue. I did, you know. I believed in their products. I used them and I was like this this stuff works. And now it's you know, all these years later, there are sponsor. So we're gonna talk a little bit about some of their products, but we're also going to talk about things that work and get use in the prepping bag of tricks, you know what I mean? Jeys says, back to the heat wave, already had to use the evaporative power of water and ice to cool down the house. Air conditioning only works with electricity, and with huge heat waves, blackouts happen. Oh that's right, that's right, Yeah, I forget about that blackouts. Is that the future for us all I don't know, ask meta. I did a quick announcement for Red Beacon Media. Red Beacon Media website is going to go live July fourth, twenty twenty six. We will light the lamps of the Red Beacon July fourth, twenty twenty six. Don't miss it. There's a lot to talk about, a lot to announce over on that how that platform is going to work. Go listen to the announcement when it pops up on the podcast. It's an evolution, it's a navigation tool for humanity in twenty twenty six. That really fundamentally is what it is. And I think you're gonna dig it. I'd love your input guys out there listening live. What's some gear prepper gear, not like eighties Pardy, not like DC you know what I mean, Not like not like your EDC flashlight, knife, handgun, possible handgun is one of the most unused pieces of prepper gear of all time, right or is it? Or is it? See when we talk about gear that actually gets used, what are we talking about? Because there is an element of prepping that creates something called peace of mind, and peace of mind is highly valuable and the crazier things get the more valuable. Peace of mind becomes right, and we all can agree that, yeah, like, yeah, certain things peace of mind. Right, carrying a firearm is is ninety nine point about peace of mind. That's what it is, you know what I mean. It's not go lower you, it's not a it's not necessarily about like using it. It's fun to train with it, fun to shoot, of course, but the reality is your day to day carrier this thing. It's about peace of mind. So there are some preps that I think get quote unquote used, but they're there for peace of mind. And the value there is immense. Food storage. Food storage actually gets a lot of use if you do it right. But that's not necessarily gear, is it. No, not necessarily gear? So yeah, yeah, what are things I'll tell you A piece of gear that gets used very often is anything that provides a backup power. Right, even even the big investment of the three thousand watt solar generator, it's still a thing that gets a lot of use, right, It's still it still gets a lot of use. It's it's the first thing I go to in a power outage. I don't rush downstairs to yank the uh the pool cord on the gas generator. No, there's a convenience level here and in that kind of thing, it's it really works. And then the other thing about it is it's a it's an easy six six outlet power source. If you're doing something in a certain room in the house where it's like, do I want to run we're doing a temporary thing, do I want to run a go find a cord, or do I want to use one of these power stations? Right, you can never have enough fully charged power banks, and power banks get you all the time. We use them on trips, we use them in camping, We use them in situations where we're gonna be you know, maybe not necessarily a road trip, but a place where we're gonna be, you know, maybe like family house or something along those lines. Anytime we're in a situation where power is you know, not as accessible. These things are great for that. Man. Water parks, you know what I mean, you have a good day out at the water park. You got a little charger, a little power bang. Amazing, absolutely amazing. When I first saw hydro Blue, one of the things that really blew me away. It was the age of the life straw Here at PBN. We had a falling out with Life Straw, not like falling out, not like they contacted us and we were unhappy and they were unhappy or something like that. But there was a use case that was largely a failure, and that means something, you know. One of the reasons that we do the prepper exercises that we do, right, We run around in the woods, We run around in the urban areas with backpacks on, hiding from cameras, hiding from flock cameras, spending overnights in the freezing woods, starving ourselves eating only survival food. The reason we do these crazy stuff is because the world is so comfortable that you'll never actually be in a position to learn things unless you do things, unless you do things that are uncomfortable and related to the gear that you have packed. And in one such scenario, then the breaker of the bankster has lost his canteen on the Appalachian Trail and a night hike event right in the summer, dying right, I hiked the Ablation Trail in the summer. It's I was covered in sweat. There's not nothing pretty about it, and heat was dehydrated, you know, and in fact The key to the night hike from me and keeping pace was hydration, and I mean not just water, but hydration, hydration powders, right, they make a difference. I'm gonna make my own. I just haven't had time to sit down and figure it out yet. And then I'll see. I'll share the recipe with you guys, because they make a huge difference. I work out in the summer tremendous heat. I just love it. I just love working out in super hot, superhumid weather. These next few days, what will either launch Red Beacon Media on July fourth or I'll be dead? You know what I mean, one or the other, because these next few days are gonna be like heat and indexes that are unmanageable for humans. And to me, there exists no better time to get out and push yourself right than in that kind of heat. Joe aiden Chat says, I ditched some bigger power banks for portable solar generators. I had splendid results from the fossy Bot solar generators, better than Anchor or Eco flow fozzy Bot. Hmm. I'll reach out maybe a new sponsor. Thanks. Never heard of them actually, which is rare for me. I still use the American assembled, American tested point zero energy solar generator. They don't exist anymore. This is a lesson to you Americans out there. This is a very hard lesson. One of the reasons I keep this thing well it works. Number one, but number two is a reminder, right, we say America first. Here in the United States, we say America. This America, that support the American worker. YadA YadA, YadA, stars and stripes. And for years I told everyone about the point zero inner solar generator, and they weren't that much more expensive, and in fact, they were pretty pretty damn competitive in price to something that was made in Shenzen, China by the enemy. If you are not paying attention right yet, the company went out of business. The company was not selling enough units. The company went out of business. Now they didn't have the marketing dollars I think to compete with Anchor and Jackerie and those China made units. But at the same time, like I think, what companies like Point zero Energy depend on, companies like Hydro Blue depend on. Is you saying to yourself, I want to support this company because they're right here in the United States? Right? So, in other words, the allure, not necessarily the marketing campaigns and the always in your face, but the allure of the fact that while they sure as how say they love America a lot, they sure as hell say we need to buy American products a lot. But when the wallet meets the road, a lot of times you see these American companies go belly up. You see these American made clothing producers and electronics producers and all that kind of stuff, they go out of business. No, we buys their stuff because they're like, I can save one hundred bucks on a Chinese one. I can save ten bucks on a Chinese one. And that's the reality. That's the truth. You might not like it, but it is what it is. We had a falling out with a life straw. Okay, this is not a pen. Okay, the life straw really struggled to pull the water through the fibers. I don't know why. I guess it's just the design. It's big, right, so it would make sense to me that, like the large opening, you get more water through it. Now, Ben was starting from dry, so maybe he had a struggle with it that way, but it, you know, it was one of those things. It was okay, it did not work though, right, it did not work as well as we'd liked. So what we decided was we needed to find something different. And I remembered years ago watching a young man play around with this device right here at Prepper Cohn. I don't know if you can see the logo. You can't really see it, but this is called the Sidekick, and it is basically it's the same tech largely as a life straw. But look at the size of the thing. You know what I mean. If you never I should have brought the life straw, but it's huge. The life straws about this thick. It's about this big, right, This guy does the exact same thing. The filter's on the bottom. You can change out. What I like about this when you talk about use in gear that gets used, here's a change out filter. The bottom screws out boom. Not the only filter. Okay, there's also fiber filter inside the length of this thing, but there's charcoal in that small piece, the first stage filter. So what I like about this is in a pocket, in a fishing vest, in a fishing bag, in a cargo pocket, whatever, Right, it fits everywhere because it's a pen. Basically, I mean, you could probably just put it right in the shirt. Now, if you're like in questionable around questionable water sources, chemical contamination, those kinds of things, then you don't want to pull water with this thing, right, But if you're fishing the mountains, hiking in an area that's not dominated by agriculture, you can drink from a water source using the sidekick. I attest that the reason that I've never used a LifeStraw, even though I own them, is because they don't fit. And it can be that simple with gear that you use or don't use. Right, Actually, it's not only that simple. I think it's like that is the deal, Like that's probably the main deal. Here's a good example ready for years and years and it's still in my vehicle today, But for years and years, in the bag that I carried every day, I had a silcock key and eleven and one silcock key would like the ability to unlock everything, it felt like, right, I never use I never even used the water key ones. But I carried it more reliably than even a firearm because the gear was easy to carry. You get it. It was small. It's like this size easy fits in all kinds of pockets. And all kinds of places nice and easy to carry. So on the road to gear getting used, it has to be you have to be able to carry it and you have to be able to use it. It has to be functional, you know what I mean. There's a lot of examples, a lot of examples of flashlights that are not functional. A great example is the O Light headlamp that was put out years ago. I was given one to review by a guy I was writing articles and making videos for at the time as a freelancer, and it was a wonderful light amazing, you know what I mean. Amazing. It was really weird design where you the headband was separate from the flashlight and the flashlight actually went into into the headband. Uh. And then you broke it all down and put it in a nice little carrying case when you weren't using it. But problem was, there were companies that made lesser quality, cheaper headlamps in like three and four packs that were powered by you know, watch batteries or not watch batteries. What are they? You know, the ones that power your red dots and stuff. And every time I needed a headlamp, the reality was I was going for one of those. I wasn't going for the O light. I wasn't gonna sit there because in a disaster, in an emergency, when you're really gonna use stuff, you want the quickest solution, right. That's why I always tell people use lighters to start fire. I mean, know how to use a parao rod to start fire. And there was a time in my life where the pharaoh rod's got a lot of work and got a lot of use when I was learning, when I was teaching my oldest how to throw sparks and that kind of thing, they got a lot of use. Now largely, I mean just sitting here on my desk, I have two lighters, you know what I mean. And I don't smoke anything. I don't use them for that, but they're just they are the quickest way, and they are the gear that gets used for starting fire in our house. Why wouldn't they be you know what I mean? Why would I take a flint and steel out to start a fire in the fireplace. If you want to learn the skill, you can learn the skill and you can practice it from time to time. But the gear that gets used is the gear that's convenient to carry, and also the stuff that works and works fast. Right. One of the reasons this thing gets used so much is also because of all the things it can do for me. It can hold the water, it can traverse water from one place to a next. This is the it's called the pressurized jerrycan by hydro Blue. This is the one with the with the top that I showed. You can get them all this stuff at hydroblue dot com. But yeah, the reason, right, it's a that's another element of it. What all can I do with this thing? How many problems can this thing solve for me at once or in different settings? Right? The go Flow by hydro Blue is a water gravity bag. That is, I've never used it, so I can't attest to it being a thing that I will use or a piece of gear that I won't use. But I'm you know, gravity filters are phenomenal. They're kind of a set and forget type of thing that I really like. They just they're a phenomenal little tool. Another all purpose, multi purpose is the versiflow Flow. Right, the inline water filters you've seen them, but the Versa Flow is an amazing piece of equipment. Hydro Blue packaging is so nice to look at this thing. Look at it, beautiful. Comes with your Versa Flow inline water filter, a bunch of attachments, tubes. What's all come with? Let's have a look. I've used Sawyers in the past. This this, this is gonna be the test. Right, We're gonna do side by side. See what's better. I kind of have an idea, but we'll say we'll see. Oh. It comes with the bag also, so you can get the Versi flow, the collapsible two sixty four ounce collapsible canteens, one you can place on one end that has dirty water and one that goes on the other end to put the clean water in a bucket, adapter a hose clamp, and two silicon hoses. I mean the amount of water right this this guy right here, just this one. Purchase this little Versa Flow inline water filter. Filter's one hundred thousand gallons of water, ninety nine percent removal of bacteria E. Coal Isalmonilla, cholera, Protozoagartia, cryptospirity. Right, all your parasites, all your bacteria that are gonna make you sick. Some some gear just works, man, You know what I mean? What are you gonna drop in a survival backpack? Right? The versa flow is sweet. I do like a hand pump water filter, but the versa flow is awesome. It's smaller and then for immediate use this this thing gets no play. The sidekick gets no play in the prepping and survival world. I really don't understand it. It's an amazing little little solution. What else. What other gear were talking? Oh, missus mushroom is in chat mad Cap mushroom lady is in the chat room. What's up? J ferg. She had a boon today. Found Chantrell mushrooms all like, more Chantrell mushrooms than I've ever seen in one spot crazy. I got a video of it this morning, just panning around this field. It's just full of Chantrell's. Uh you know what I mean. Awesome, But thanks for joining in. So it's time for a bit of retrospection. Introspection, right, It's time to look over your gear and to think to yourself, what of this stuff am I using? You know? The other thing is too and maybe we'll end with this. But the other thing is the activities, the light style, the activities, the things that you do. Because you may have gear that you feel like it never gets used, but you know what that could be because you don't put yourself in a position to ever use it, Like there are some things like for Ben, the Breaker of the Banksters, had we not done as your Highland, he probably never would have used a life straw for what When When in the course of going to work and coming home, going on vacation and hanging with friends on a week to week basis, and maybe a little hunting or fishing trip from time to time, do you go, let's break out the life straw. You know what I mean. You start hiking, you start spending more time out in the woods and in the heat, you know what I mean, And you'll definitely find yourself in a situation where you're like, you know what, I think, I'll see if this thing works, or maybe even better, I'll get myself something smaller and much more convenient to use, like the sidekicked by Hydro Blue. I think it's probably more affordable too. I don't know the price. You have to look at the prices side by side to see which one is more expensive. It's definitely more material that goes into a life straw, so I have to see so consider that too. We talked about the utility more than one more than one use is going to give you a better chance of things getting used right. Convenience probably probably the most critical element of what gear gets used in what does right. If it's an inconvenient, bulky, weird thing, they're not going to use it. Doesn't matter how cool there's We always talk about holsters and things like that. Right, If the holster sucks, you'll never carry the gun. If the gun's too big, you'll never carry the gun. Doesn't matter how much you like it, how cool it looks, right, just doesn't matter. You won't carry it, and you'll and you'll be mad at yourself for it, you know what I mean, You'll be like why. And then finally is what you know? What do you doing with your time that puts that gear in a position to be used or not used? So, in other words, you know, if you spend most of your time in doors, then there's a good chance your survival gear is not going to get a whole lot of use. You're not gonna know what's good about it, what's bad? Right, All right, folks, it's been one hell of an eventful morning behind the scenes, unbelievable really, and I gotta go see what's going on, So thanks for your time. Check out that Red Beacon announcement and I'll talk to you folks soon. Okay, tune into PB and spread the word. Downloads downloads