Matter of Facts: 10 Myths of Preparedness

[00:00:03] Welcome back to the Matterfacts podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MWFpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners.

[00:00:17] I'm your host Phil Rabbley and my co-host Andrew Bobo is on the other side of the mic and here's your show. And welcome back to the Matterfacts podcast. I have absolutely no idea where my train of thought was going.

[00:00:30] I usually have something funny to say right at the head of the show, but it totally borked that all up. So Andrew and I instead are going to talk about Myths of Preparedness because I came across an

[00:00:40] article that for whatever reason wound up published at the National Library of Medicine of all places. But you know I read through it and some I agree with, some I disagree with and I thought

[00:00:52] it would make for interesting conversation. I mean it's got a dot gov after it so it's got to be full of knowledge and truth and everything. Well it's on the internet first and foremost. Everything on the internet is true. Did you find this on Facebook?

[00:01:10] I found this through Google. Well if it's not on Facebook, if you didn't find it on Facebook then it's not real. What about Reddit or TikTok? TikTok's just Chinese propaganda. Where are all the Zoomers getting their information from these days?

[00:01:26] I'm an old millennial, almost Gen Xer so I have no earthly idea. I get all my information from CNN. That's probably for the best. And MSNBC, they're accurate. Okay that's enough BS to start the show with.

[00:01:41] So this is the article. I'm just going to throw it up here for a minute and then we're going to switch over to banners because I really don't think y'all want to go through every bit of this nonsense scrolling through a page. Lord knows I don't.

[00:01:56] But this was it. It's published at the National Library of Medicine. Looks like it originally came from Delaware Journal of Public Health. Some of these bullet points are very, very specific to Delaware. I've generalized them a little bit.

[00:02:10] But it's disaster and preparedness myths and I thought that warranted a discussion because like some of this stuff you and I have talked about before, some of this quite frankly is stuff that like you and I have kicked back on several times.

[00:02:23] Like these are things that keep coming up in the preparedness world and some of them I just laugh at and some of them I not meant very sage ones again. That sounds legit. But let's start with the very, very first one because you and I

[00:02:40] are going to have a field day with some of these. It couldn't happen here. Inevitably there's that person that says well that disaster couldn't happen here. So there's no point getting ready for it. Even though when we dig back through recent history in our friend group,

[00:02:56] you know we had the Valentine's Day Snoke Pocalypse that took over Houston, Texas. Buddy of ours was stuck in the middle of all that and I have to think that, you know, Blizzard was not on the bingo card for Houston, Texas that particular week. But that's what happened.

[00:03:13] And then you talk about, you know like you and I talk about how down here in Southeast Louisiana, like once every 10 years we actually get snow. Like you know maybe only an inch or two of snow, but an inch or two of snow down here is like

[00:03:27] the apocalypse. Like we don't know what to do with ourselves. So we shut the entire state down and wait for it to melt because we don't do any of that stuff. And this kind of gets me thinking that like inevitably there are those people that

[00:03:41] they discount the possibility of an emergency because the possibility is low or they tell themselves this can never happen here so there's no point preparing for it. And this is moments in time where I love to say that you know Mother Nature giggles every time you say that.

[00:03:57] Yeah. So I mean is there a version of this up where you live? Because I mean I know we're going to talk about flooding later because you and I've talked about how everyone around you is just shocked to death when the Grand River floods every stinking year.

[00:04:10] But is there some kind of disaster that happens up in your part of the world that everyone kind of shrugged the shores and says that can never happen here? I know you mentioned you all had some tornadoes up in that area. I don't know if those are common.

[00:04:25] Well it I mean as far as common occurrences I would say like the most common that we don't get that we don't get that you guys do is hurricanes. You know we don't deal with that but this year I feel like we've seen more tornadoes this

[00:04:43] year than I can remember. Like I mean at work I've worked where I work I've been there for going on six years and I have we've set off the tornado alarms the sirens and stuff on complex twice now this year and that's like crazy.

[00:05:09] I mean I said it off we set it off one time last year that we had a hurricane. We had a tornado passed by pretty close to us but this year we've had we've done it twice now

[00:05:22] and so the tornadoes I mean obviously if you look at the weather and stuff it's interesting I mean go down that conspiracy rabbit hole as much as you want for the reason but no we're seeing an uptick in tornadoes this year across the Midwest.

[00:05:39] The western states I mean Ohio is getting hammered pretty hard Texas, Oklahoma, Michigan has gotten hit pretty good a few times so yeah I mean tornadoes yeah obviously hurricanes we really don't deal with I mean obviously we've you know according to the

[00:05:57] national weather service there was that one back in like 1932 or something like that that it was just like hey I'm gonna come visit you guys I'm gonna start in the Caribbean but

[00:06:07] I'm gonna come say hi into the northern states but a true definition of a hurricane we really haven't seen but yeah no I mean other than that yes snow I mean yeah obviously we get snow

[00:06:19] and you guys kind of deal with snow a little bit. I mean you guys deal with freezing rain and we deal freezing rain here so yeah I mean that's the thing is like the myth number one the you know basically the only only certain natural disasters happen

[00:06:36] where you're at they can happen anywhere I mean yeah obviously in certain areas they're gonna be more prominent and they're gonna they're definitely gonna be stronger you know but I would still say

[00:06:53] you should like down in the south you should prepare for a really cold day just as much as I prepare for a really cold day because it could happen it could very well happen and Murphy's law

[00:07:06] is gonna be like Murphy's gonna come back and smack you in the face when you sit there and you're like nah it's uh it's Texas we can never get cold weather and then they're like hey not only

[00:07:17] we're gonna give you guys a blizzard but we're also gonna knock out power for a week or more you're gonna really wish that you prepared for a natural disaster of some kind

[00:07:27] that involves some cold weather gear and to take that one step further like it was a it was a handful of years ago now where our our gas furnace went completely out and we might have

[00:07:38] to rip out the entire HVAC system and replace it but that was a couple of weeks we didn't have a working furnace which wouldn't have been a problem except that that coincided with the

[00:07:47] first cold snap of the year yeah so it was down in the high 30s outside and I have no heat in this house so we were we were running the fireplace we were bundling up in the house we had space heaters in

[00:07:59] the bedrooms like you know we pivoted we made we did what we had to do to keep ourselves comfortable and call it is like high 30s outside the the temperature in the house as much insulation

[00:08:10] as I have in here if I think it got down to low 50s it was uncomfortable but it wasn't dangerous but the point still remains the minute you get that in your head about I don't need that because

[00:08:23] that's never gonna happen like mother nature and you know mother nature and probability are going to conspire to screw you over at exactly that moment mother mother nature and murphy are

[00:08:35] going to be like hey let's have a kid and they're just gonna bang it out and like you're gonna get hammered that's a t-shirt idea we need we need mother nature and murphy's law and they're holding

[00:08:48] maybe government in the middle by the hands ooh that'd be a hell of a thought wouldn't it because government screws everything up but uh yeah no it's uh yeah it's interesting so number two is wait for help like this was the the myth was that you're better off

[00:09:04] like calling 911 and staying at home and waiting for waiting for the professionals to show up and help you and this like I was glad to see the author push back against this I push back

[00:09:15] against this I think this is the the most asinine idea humanly possible to quote unquote call the professionals and wait for captain sabah to show up on your front doorstep to dig you

[00:09:27] out of trouble because my experience with the natural disasters is when a cap for cap five hurricane wipes out five zip codes first of all cell phones probably won't work second of all if

[00:09:39] they do work those police have a lot bigger problems to deal with then you don't have any food in your in your pantry and you're out of water like the idea that we should have

[00:09:49] our default position should be to fall back on public services and fall back on like the graces of the state to take care of us just drives me nuts because I don't I don't

[00:10:02] understand how people even think this works like you're one person out of hundreds of thousands that have been affected and I don't I'm thirsty is so far down the priority list behind all

[00:10:16] the people that have to get evacuated out of rising flood waters all the people that need medical care all the people that are dying that you're gonna sit there and just be hungry or thirsty for a while

[00:10:27] like I don't know I know a preacher the choir I just I don't I don't understand this this thought process but I see it every time we have a hurricane well yeah we see it every time anything

[00:10:39] bad happens I mean you have Michigan you have snow storms and and everything and you have people that are like they're snowed in their house and it's what do I do I don't know what to do

[00:10:48] and it's just like you guys don't have food or water stored up or a way of actually making food besides your stove your electric stove you know so like yeah I mean and the word I

[00:11:02] honestly the worst the worst sentence you could ever hear is I'm from the government I'm here to help like that's probably one of the worst sentences that you could ever hear because

[00:11:11] they're not here to help and so you know they're gonna bring in certain amounts of food maybe certain amounts of water but it's not going to be enough to go around to everybody and

[00:11:22] and everything so uh but no I mean that's the thing is don't rely on 911 I mean we're in good times right now and 911 the cops can't get to some people under 30 minutes after calling 911

[00:11:36] because of a maybe rule if you live in a rural area where it's just dirt roads and you're always away from out of town and stuff like that but I mean what is it Philadelphia or something like that

[00:11:47] like they don't have a police force after at night and they are asking people not to call 911 and report emergency unless it's like something completely tragic like really really bad uh I

[00:11:59] mean that's good times right now and they can't provide basic services let alone uh when a when a major natural disaster happens such as a cat 345 hurricane or an f345 tornado uh people like

[00:12:16] you got to take care of yourself I mean yeah it's a little bit different because the flooding and the disaster and the wind and I mean everything like that but the people like you got to get

[00:12:27] out you got to get out start sawing the tree off your house you got to start clearing brush you got to start getting things going you got to have a generator you got to have certain things

[00:12:35] set aside and if you don't uh then that's your own fault that's not the fault of your neighbor and honestly it's not the fault of the government uh because the government's not here to protect

[00:12:45] you they're not here to take care of you you should take care of yourself and so having even if it's even if it's a week of water and food for each person in your household

[00:12:57] okay that's a good start uh but you think about certain natural disasters especially I mean honestly like snow storms or I'm at you know you might lose power for a week uh and everything but

[00:13:11] for the most part after a few days after about a week or so usually it's back on and everything and hopefully uh you can go back to uh the way things were and what's nice about winter and

[00:13:22] that's what what I like is uh we have the outdoor fridge raider so you have you have things that are you have food that might be going bad or whatever you stick it in the snow I mean I don't know how

[00:13:32] many times that growing up we've had uh get-togethers and family events and stuff and the the case of beer the bottles of wine all the like some of the food it's all in the snow banks

[00:13:43] and basically you just reach outside from the sliding door you grab another beer just because it's just you know it's the outdoor fridge so in that case it's great I mean right now

[00:13:53] I mean it's getting hot out so obviously now if the if because of the strain on the the power grid with all the AC units and stuff like that going uh you you just something happens and you

[00:14:05] run out of power well hopefully you know I don't have a generator it's on my list of stuff to get but hopefully you have the means of uh taking care of some stuff um you know I got power I got

[00:14:16] some battery backups and stuff like that I got my I got means where I can take care of some stuff but still I mean having that generator and everything like yeah having it ready to go and being able

[00:14:25] to power up so you can at least power a freezer if anything uh is um is is needed uh and so yeah it's don't wait for help don't wait for 911 uh get off your butt and start taking care of

[00:14:41] yourself now mm-hmm only worry about yourself I have mixed feelings about this one because on the one hand I am emotionally at peace with the person who says my neighbors didn't plan ahead

[00:14:56] they ignored me when I tried to help them screw them they're on their own like I understand that point of view I I'll give it to you I'm not even going to argue with anybody that feels that way

[00:15:06] you're well within your rights to feel that way however I know now from personal experience having dealt with this during Hurricane Ida my wife is going to have a very hard time turning somebody down like there are there are limits to her generosity but if we can legitimately

[00:15:25] spare it she's gonna want to spare it and I can understand that we also frankly we have a neighbor we're really close with that if it comes down to feeding her out of our out of our

[00:15:36] stash like that's gonna have to happen because we just she's she's like an adopted member of the family at this point and we just can't let her sit over there and go hungry so to me it all depends

[00:15:48] on how how it goes about so for context this was basically saying that like you only need to plan for yourself and I would only hedge that by saying that if you're only going to plan for yourself

[00:16:03] plan for yourself but if you if you believe if there are people close to you that you cannot you don't have the heart to sit there and watch them starve to death you have to plan for them too

[00:16:14] does that make sense like I think that's the context is if these people are going to be in your group you have to you have to plan for them too because you can't depend on them to

[00:16:23] plan for themselves no I get that I can tell you right now where I live where I live currently the neighbors that I have I will turn them away at gunpoint I will not give them a single ounce of

[00:16:36] food I will not give them water I wonder if they watch this if they do then they're warned there are a bunch of drug addicts meth heads and it's it's pretty disturbing to see the amount

[00:16:50] of drugs that are in the neighborhood and you know what they can't take care of themselves and they can't take care of them kids I'm not going to take care of them I will gladly turn them away

[00:17:01] and but like such as the neighbor with you guys and yeah I mean I can understand having that person especially if they're elderly or anything like that you know trying to take care of them a

[00:17:11] little bit also I mean if someone comes to me and honestly like I do have that I did just say that but if someone came to me and was like hey I got a wife kids and stuff like that

[00:17:22] and they're and they're pretty cool like they're they're not violent they're not threatening anything like that uh and they're it's like okay I'll try to spare a little bit here you go this

[00:17:30] is all I have uh you guys gotta you know you guys got to make it to a shelter you guys got to make it somewhere and find some different food but here's you know here's a couple of

[00:17:39] days that should get you by if you if you ration it now if they get violent and they say well I'm coming back and all this stuff and then no it's gonna you're not gonna get anything from me

[00:17:50] and I'm sorry for your kids like that's the biggest thing is I I'm sorry for your kids uh it's it's gonna suck and I mean obviously people you and that's the one thing I say like some of the post apocalyptic books that I've read and

[00:18:03] some of the shows uh they've captured pretty well I think about some of the parents what parents would do to um if they have a starving child uh what they would do and unfortunately

[00:18:14] yeah unfortunately I I'm afraid for that but uh but that's the thing is if you can't if you'd rather if you'd rather do drugs and spend your money on drugs and uh be high in all this crap

[00:18:26] versus stocking some food and water and supplies you know what that that's your own downfall um you unfortunately you're not you know you might not die as soon as as fast as some other people but

[00:18:39] uh you you cause trouble with the wrong people and it's not going to go well for you so yeah I mean I'm gonna worry about myself uh and I might try to help out some of those people that that I know

[00:18:50] need some help um but for the most part uh what's mine is mine and yeah I you know if I I'll give you a little bit but you can't keep you know that but that's the other thing too is you you help

[00:19:01] out some of the people especially just random people random neighbors you help them you help them they're gonna keep coming back you helped them once they're gonna keep handing out I mean we all we

[00:19:12] have experience with homeless and beggars and stuff like that on the street you give them some money you see them you pass them by it you pass by them again they're still begging

[00:19:21] they're still gonna do it so you it is what it is I mean and that's a thing though is like some of these things some of these scenarios I mean you gotta think on your head when do I say no

[00:19:33] and you gotta be able to stick to your no you gotta be able to stick to it and your reason why and I don't know it it's one of those things where you know you got your neighbors like you

[00:19:43] you and the wife and uh your kid I mean everything that you give out is essentially food out of your child's mouth that's one less meal out of hers out of her mouth and out of your

[00:19:55] wife's mouth so it's where do you where do you draw that line where do you say no now is it something that you can say okay you know what I got the I got this much food set up I know I know this much

[00:20:06] food will get me through six months of six months all right this much food here that's an extra month but six months we should be okay this this food here let's let's ration it out and we can get

[00:20:18] we can divvy it up and and give it out after that we're done you know something like that but that's the thing is and that that's the one thing that reading these books and some of the movies and

[00:20:28] the shows and stuff like that it's really got me thinking is how do you tell those people no it's gonna be hard I mean especially as a Christian it's gonna be hard so but you gotta say no

[00:20:40] you gotta you have to say no if especially if you have a family yeah well I'm gonna fall back on the idea that like those people that I feel are my responsibility I will be responsible for and the

[00:20:51] people I'm not I won't be and in the case of this one neighbor I mean to give you an idea of the relationship involved like she lives by herself she's divorced older lady really real sweetheart

[00:21:07] though like she's she's practically my like another grandmother to my daughter like that's the relationship they have and I've gotten the phone calls from her like in the middle of the night because like

[00:21:20] her her you know she had a leaking toilet needed to know how to shut the water off and we're the people she reaches out to when she needs help and I am not shy about running over

[00:21:30] there with a a sack full of tools at eight o'clock at night and my PJs to help her out you know it's just that's the relationship so because that relationship I feel a certain

[00:21:39] my responsibility towards her but for the rest of my neighbors that like especially after Hurricane Ida when I watched them all mull around and goof off while I was you know cutting cutting limbs

[00:21:52] off my garage with a pole saw on a bow saw because I didn't have a chance all yet I have a long memory and I remember who was there to help me and who wasn't and the ones that weren't

[00:22:02] that's going to come back around eventually but this is a short cautionary note I think we can go through this pretty quick because I imagine flood insurance works the same in most states but

[00:22:14] typically rising water meaning if it rains or a river jumps its banks or whatever if that floods your home that's covered under flood insurance and you don't all not everybody has flood insurance if you get a hole in the roof that's covered under your homeowner's policy so

[00:22:32] a lot of people assume well I have homeowners insurance I'm covered for flooding but you may not be so go find your homeowner's policy and if you need additional flood insurance if you need separate flood insurance please go get that I'm fortunate where I live

[00:22:47] like this house has never flooded knock on wood this whole area has never flooded we are three feet away from the highest point in the entire town so if we flood here we got really bad problems

[00:22:59] all over the place but I mean even that being said for Hurricane Ida I say in bag the front and back doors just in case and the water got higher for that than I've ever seen it before

[00:23:13] but you know to be fair like we had a cat through we had a cat three strength hurricane went within 20 miles of us when it passed by so we kind of got hammered but I digress let that

[00:23:26] be let that stand for flood insurance if you need it you should go get it and if you don't know if you have it go find out quickly it only floods around the coast god I wish I could slap a person

[00:23:38] for saying this I mean but that's the thing is kind of going into the the last the last one about flood insurance I mean look at your floodplain when I was when I was house searching

[00:23:50] we have the Grand River here in Michigan I mean we have a lot of rivers but the Grand River people are always shocked and people are already shocked when it floods and it pretty much floods

[00:24:01] every single year it depends you know sometimes it doesn't it doesn't flood every as bad every year but it but it floods but it floods there's been a couple times where yes they it flooded so

[00:24:14] frickin bad I cannot believe like there was a house I remember where I live there was a house I was looking at and I could see and and I looked it up and it wasn't the floodplain and it was like

[00:24:27] it was it was within like the like the tour it was like a one like the 100 or 200 a year flood like hey every one or 200 years we might get this kind of flood well I'm like well I know

[00:24:40] not long ago like I don't know 10 years or so if not if not less we had some major flooding and a lot of places got flood the grand flooded out and I remember going down the basement and

[00:24:53] on unfortunately this particular house had basically the furnace the water here everything was in a crawl space underneath the house so it's like I I popped the storm doors walked downstairs

[00:25:04] and I could see I could see a lion on the wall in the in the in the stone and I'm look I look at the real triangle that's from the flood from whatever you know such such date and she goes

[00:25:16] yeah I go huh yeah I'm probably pass on this house and this was the first floor of the basement this was the the bay it was only one floor but it was the the crawl space okay basically like

[00:25:29] it was there was no basement it was a it was you go outside you go outside you open up some storm doors and then you walk downstairs and then the furnace was actually on its side

[00:25:40] on a stone wall and then the water heater was tucked in a corner and that was and that was it so forgive my ignorance you're describing things that like physically cannot occur down here because

[00:25:51] our water table is so high like if I had a furnace if I had a furnace under my house it would need a snorkel right but yeah and but that's the thing is like you live in a pit I mean you live in a

[00:26:02] the Louisiana I mean especially New Orleans they I mean it's under this it's under sea level I push back against that my my elevation in my house right now I can look it up is like 22 feet

[00:26:14] above sea level oh the problem is the water table is only like eight feet down right and that and that's a thing is like when I get that close to to the river yeah the water table is a little bit

[00:26:26] higher but when you have a river that floods I mean you know it's it yeah when it when it when it we're a river that comes up you know 30 to 40 feet you know even 60 feet or so

[00:26:39] I mean it's still it's it's a lot so uh so yeah I mean definitely look at your area look up your floodplain the floodplain map and find out where you're at if you're on the edge of it okay but

[00:26:53] again it floods so you're gonna want going back to the flooding and the insurance and stuff like that you're gonna want to just you're gonna want to look into that kind of insurance but

[00:27:03] the idea that well it only floods on the coast that's false I mean it can it just look at just look at rivers and all kinds of stuff I mean it any kind of

[00:27:13] any river can flood geography is your friend yeah uh so that and that's a thing though is you you know especially if you if you're in an area where especially if you live uh maybe downhill

[00:27:26] or if you live it up towards the bottom of some hills I mean think about flash floods especially when it rains when that water comes off of those hills if you live in a river it sometimes those

[00:27:38] rivers come up and and it might not be massive flooding like that we see in the news and stuff like that but I don't care I don't care who you are I don't I don't want my basement wet

[00:27:50] if it's not meant to be wet I don't want it to be wet yeah and as far as like talking about rivers and everything the earth thing to be nervous about with rivers and we were talking about

[00:27:58] earlier when we were talking about you know like up the potential for snow uh I can't speak for everybody everywhere else in the country but down here every time like it seems like every

[00:28:09] 20 feet you approach a sign and the sign says warning bridge ice is before roadway and that's because an elevated bridge especially over a small body of water like a river will tend to ice over

[00:28:22] faster than everything else so down here that happens like I mean you'll run across there's so many little rivers all over the place that like you need to be really really concerned and

[00:28:35] that is really the bigger concern when we get into like you and I've talked about like when we get into sub zero temperatures and it stays at or at or below freezing for a while the whole state

[00:28:46] just goes into emergency mode we shut down it's not always because I like bursting pipes is a concern the additional strain on the power grid because so many of these houses still use

[00:29:01] electric strip heaters that's a concern um sometimes you know hail or snow might be a concern but the biggest worry is always when those bridges start icing over you can you can develop traffic jams

[00:29:15] and you can develop serious accidents very very quickly and down here because there's so many rivers all over the place therefore there's so many elevated roadways that's why when the temperature drops below zero and stays that way for a while we just close everything down

[00:29:29] because we know what's going to happen first the first thing that happens is you're going to have black ice on every one of these little bridges that's if you go fast enough over the bridge you

[00:29:36] won't be affected don't take even bite on that driving faster doesn't seem like it's going to make the problem better might make it worse man you just coast over the ice disasters cause epidemics apparently this was this was an interesting talking point because they

[00:29:58] they said that disasters do not necessarily cause epidemics but disasters can give right can like present the right set of circumstances for disease to spike in the short term so i don't know that the article was really good about taking a firm stance on this like i personally

[00:30:17] believe it's not necessarily that that disastrous cause epidemics that's the worrying part to me the problem is always in the middle of a disaster things that normally wouldn't be that big of a deal are suddenly much more difficult to deal with well like after hurricane ida every

[00:30:34] bot every member of my family had closed-toed shoes long pants work gloves on while we were working out in the yard because i knew if you get a wasp sting if you get you know like a cut

[00:30:48] or if you get if you get an infection like there are problems that normally would only be an annoyance but given the situation around us it was the wrong time to add personal injury on

[00:30:58] top of everything else yeah so i guess that that's like my thing is that i don't think it's that you have disaster you have a disaster you're merely going to have like a measles outbreak

[00:31:09] or anything crazy but i do think that things that normally wouldn't be an emergency like a cut on the arm or cut on the leg getting affected those can become an emergency because

[00:31:21] medical care is not as available as it normally would be yeah i mean obviously disasters disasters increase the probability uh in the risk of minor minor instances of something becoming larger problems such as a cut on the hand sliver uh something like that something that could easily

[00:31:42] be taken care of before might become an issue now but what the article is saying and i and i can see where they're coming from is what they're saying epidemics is especially in major catastrophes

[00:31:57] i mean you look at what was a hurricane katrina and then they were packing people into the into the stadium super dome yeah you got there are packing people in there

[00:32:08] uh you have a chance of disease spreading just due to the fact that more people are packed together uh they're tighter they're packed together a lot tighter uh the thing i don't really care for about

[00:32:21] this is the the push that they do for hey make sure you get your vaccines and you're up to date in your vaccines uh i mean to me vaccines i don't know i it is what it is uh that you're

[00:32:34] you know everybody's got their own thoughts but the fact that but i do agree with them that you know that uh to the point of uh when you have a tighter group of people together

[00:32:46] the fact that the disease a disease such as cholera or even the flu or cold or whatever can spread through that entire group of people that's where you see it all the time you see

[00:32:56] it happen you see it you've seen it in the past all the time uh and everything so it's just one of those things where you just gotta be careful and that's where having um having stuff to combat uh fever combat diarrhea to uh to push against

[00:33:13] vitamins and stuff like that uh making sure that you're keeping cuts clean and uh and everything because you get someone running a fever that spikes the fever because of a cut hand uh it just

[00:33:25] you know necessarily not saying that's gonna spread but i mean you don't want that person to die just because of that you know so if you have stuff to fight a fever and and that just fighting that

[00:33:36] fever you can fight other stuff and yeah it's i would definitely say look at your medication and see what you have so i think this is also a case of an ounce of an ounce of

[00:33:45] prevention is better than a pound of cure like you brought up you know having vitamins on hand and everything just so you could try to like boost your natural immune system and award

[00:33:54] things off and like i say that in this vein the best things you can do you do before the accident happens like closed-toed shoes and long pants and work gloves to prevent a cut or prevent an infection

[00:34:06] like maintaining your health the other 364 days before this started to suck so that when you're in the situation and your nutrition's off and your sleep schedule's off and all these things are piling up that would normally make your immune system take a dive you're starting out at a

[00:34:23] higher level of health at least i mean things like just having an appropriate amount of strength and being relatively limber and flexible can prevent injury when you're out in the yard working

[00:34:35] and doing stuff like this is all just a game of if you do the work before you get hurt you might prevent getting hurt and if you don't then there are not many worse times for life to start

[00:34:49] sucking than in the middle of a disaster and in that vein first aid and property are your only concerns the uh when you are when i drill down further into the article they talked a lot about

[00:35:03] mental health they talked a lot about post-mortem stress disorder they talked a lot about the the mental emotional effects of disaster and of emergency situations and about how like people go into these situations thinking as long as everybody's alive and the house is standing we're

[00:35:21] good and they don't think about like the fact that like it's been this august will make two years since hurricane i had a flat in my house my wife to this day gets very nervous whenever there's

[00:35:34] a bad thunderstorm outside because we rode that hurricane out right here in the hallway like my daughter seems to have bounced back from it fairly well and she was not having a

[00:35:44] good night at night i just kind of took an in stride because you know after spending a year getting mortared i don't know i've just learned to like turn part of my brain off when things are

[00:35:54] dangerous but like there there are aspects to having dealt with the time from hurricane ida in terms of my wife's anxiety in terms of like my guilt for the fact that i'm the one that made

[00:36:07] the decision let's stay let's ride it out will be okay and we got a lot more than we bargained for and i have to carry that around there's aspects to all this that like a lot of people don't

[00:36:18] think about going in but then on the way out they realize oh there's a whole lot more things to worry about than what i then you know the basics than first aid and property yeah but i guess to argue

[00:36:30] that point i mean i can understand uh gillian like her the idea that hey there's a storm coming in and then like her concerns but you you having the idea that you're carrying around something

[00:36:43] guilt or something i think that's just i i think like you just that's not your fault so i mean in in a way of being not so sensitive just get over it you know i mean just because like the fact and

[00:36:58] i mean i know i know it sounds harsh but the same time you you look at i mean you you look at when you were overseas uh you look i mean i know you didn't necessarily you did a lot over there

[00:37:09] but as far as like teams and stuff going out you look at you look at your the information that you were given and based on the information that you're given you made a choice uh the information

[00:37:19] turned out to be false just because of freaking nature decided to say hey look what i can do hold my beer that's not on you so you you really don't have any guilt to hold because you made

[00:37:32] based off the decision that you had and this is what i and at work i make this i talk to the guys and stuff like that too is uh if something comes in based on the decision that you or be based

[00:37:41] on the information that you have make the best decision that you can that you can make and don't look back on it you made that decision hey this is what happened and we learned from it yeah

[00:37:51] with the hurricane decided turned out to be a lot worse than what uh than what the information said but the same time it's like you have now if it said hey this is a cat five and you were like

[00:38:03] nah we're gonna stay here and it's like no this is coming right towards your house and you're like nah we're gonna stay here and then they're like nah you guys should probably leave

[00:38:12] and you're like nah we're gonna stay here and then this all happened okay cool like i'm gonna probably help guilt i'm gonna probably help guilt you into some stuff but with information

[00:38:23] that you were given you you you made your choice and it ended up being not the right information that was given so but that and so that's not on you um but like what this is saying basically

[00:38:35] a first aid and prevention of property are the only concerns during the disaster i mean yeah i would say that's a myth because obviously first aid but uh what happens to my property that can be fixed

[00:38:47] yeah mental health is big but at the same time if you think about it and i mean this goes into a lot of disasters that's going that happens it's like hey what's your meds what are if you're on meds what

[00:38:58] does your med supply look like i know because of insurance and stuff like that sometimes people can't get the the proper amount of meds or you know a stash of supply that they can get there's other

[00:39:09] means out there to get medical like there's a lot of websites out there that you can actually buy stuff off of that's not the most it's not necessarily uh the the government pretty much frowns on it but

[00:39:20] if you can get it and supply it and keep that supply then i save more power to you and the people should be able to do that uh but yeah that's the thing is i mean it's going to be

[00:39:30] interesting because yeah mental health i know a lot of people that are on some mental health pills and if something were to happen where it something were to happen where that goes bye bye

[00:39:41] um there's going to be a lot of people that are either a eat a bullet or they're gonna just fight through it and you got to deal with them uh and so so yeah mental health is definitely

[00:39:52] a you gotta have some people that are strong mentally um but uh it's just one of those things like i mean like you know gillian it's like that whole idea of hey there's a storm coming and

[00:40:03] you know she's panicking it's it's like hey look at the bright side if you look at all the if you look at the weather you look at the information that we're given it's not nearly as

[00:40:12] bad as this and so we've rolled this bad thing out we're gonna be fine and look at all the preps that we've made like the the reassurance for mental health is big uh in my eyes you got

[00:40:24] someone who's freaking out you can you know you sit there and you tell them look at all the look at everything that we've done look at everything that we've improved this is what happened

[00:40:32] and we need you know we moved on so you know stuff like that so um but yeah i don't know i think the other thing to point out a moment like this like from my perspective is

[00:40:43] i feel like based on my own experience like the human mind has a pressure relief valve and you have to find what that pressure relief valve is for you as an individual

[00:40:54] and you need to know you need to find a way to pull it every now and then like that's not even post-disaster advice that's just navigating life when it sucks advice but in a disaster situation like i'm not gonna lie i am a creature of habits and chemicals

[00:41:11] and i really like cigars and coffee if i'm having a really bad day but i can sit on the bag porch light up a stogie and have a cup of coffee it is going to improve my mental health i know

[00:41:23] that sounds really really flippant and silly to some people but just trust me it's going to like bring my stress level down it's going to give me my my moment to kind of like decompress

[00:41:33] and work through things and that's me so having pipe tobacco and having cigars and having you know like an emergency breaking case of emergency the stash of cigars and having coffee on hand

[00:41:47] those are all just parts of me knowing that if i'm having a bad day i have to have access to those things and the worst you could do is put me in a situation where i'm stressed out

[00:41:58] and we run out of coffee and cigars at the same time but if your stress relief is coloring then you need coloring books if your stress relief is bourbon then have a bottle of whiskey like up on

[00:42:09] the top shelf out of your reach and it's not there for fun it's there for emergencies like whatever your mental health moment is you need to figure out what it is and you need to be

[00:42:19] ready to hit it because if you can't release that pressure every now and then it's going to pile up in a bad time when there's already a lot of stuff going on and you're not going to be able to release

[00:42:29] it and it's just going to make it worse and if that if your pressure relief valve is medication oh my god please go talk to your psychiatrist and figure out a way you can put like a 30 days

[00:42:39] pie back on the shelf like i don't care if you have to pay for out of your own pocket there's got to be a way gotta be who got banned or did you you're just telling stewart he's telling

[00:42:50] yeah i told story he's banned oh we can't ban stewart do what i want i like stewart though he's aggravating old ass i thought i thought you didn't have electricity no he has electricity back you've been out of touch yeah i haven't yeah i looked at the uh

[00:43:08] i looked at the signal chat and it said like three or four hundred and i'm like yeah i'm not going to catch up yeah he got his power back he was in the group that it was at a

[00:43:18] power for a week he was not in the group that's going to be at a power for another week because the high-ted the high power lines went down in some parts around houston well i'll teach him so he was in the moderately screwed pot not the highly screwed

[00:43:31] dude but yeah only one disaster at a time which boy would be nice if we could only have one bucket of suck it once but you know i don't feel like mother nature doles it out like that

[00:43:44] like quite frankly you could get oh and matter of fact i'm digging i'm digging into the back of my uh i'm digging in the back of my disaster memory so we talked about hurricane katrina right

[00:43:58] but nobody really remembers hurricane rita do you remember that one she was mean hurricane i'm 99 i'm sure it was rita if not somebody will fact check me but hurricane rita hit southeast louisiana

[00:44:14] i want to say it was a week after hurricane katrina did now it was much smaller it did nowhere near the damage but it was another hurricane right on the tail of hurricane katrina

[00:44:27] and for the people who like who had just gotten the the blue roofs on they tarp their roofs they stabilize their homes some of these people had started tearing out carpet because of flooding and here comes hurricane rita right behind it rip everything else up all over again

[00:44:43] i want to say it hit further west though but yeah only one disaster at a time don't plan on that i mean hell just a hurricane can bring hurricane force winds trees down and flooding

[00:44:55] all in one nasty little ugly package i mean any of these murder any of these natural disasters we're talking about can have second and third level or second and third level or order problems

[00:45:08] where the event causes something else to tilt can you think of any other examples where like you get one thing drives multiple problems or oh yeah i mean snow i mean you got you got uh you

[00:45:25] you got snowfall here icy roads whatever have it wherever you're at i mean you look down there now you have people that are trying to drive go to work go do whatever

[00:45:35] down there i'm sure hey the whole city just shut down well someone's like nah yolo i'm still going to my freaking yoga appointment and and then they sit there and they get into a car wreck

[00:45:46] they get in a car wreck that they smack into a power line and now they just now they send they have power that goes out to you know a whole entire block so you have a natural disaster

[00:46:00] or one disaster of some major snowfall or whatever that just now it just snowballed no pun attended into something bigger to where someone decided to drive they hit a they hit a substation or the earth not substation but like a power line whatever knocked out power now for

[00:46:18] the block and now you have who knows what's in that block is it an elderly is there an like an assisted living home in there is there something is our hospital granted you know

[00:46:28] now they're on generator power but depending on the mess they have to get the power lines all back up and all that stuff and if it's snowing out like yeah i mean it can definitely catapult

[00:46:40] and go into uh i guess pick your disaster book what you know pick your path of what you want to do but but yeah and i mean that's the thing is going back to having the supplies having another way of cooking

[00:46:53] food having another way of power in your phone having just other ways other means of doing something besides just the normal grid is huge well and the other thing is that by having all

[00:47:08] those things in place it precludes you having to leave your home at a time when there might be ice on the roads or there might be down power lines or down tree limbs like right that's why

[00:47:20] we're saying like half food and stuff like that because you know if we got food and we got enough food it's like okay cool well hopefully the whiskey supply holds out because i have enough

[00:47:30] food and water for four months well you know in four months uh hopefully the snow melts but we're gonna go from there and hopefully they have the power back on by then if uh hopefully that's

[00:47:41] kind of crazy if they don't but uh like i said before there's been times where we've had massive snowstorms again i say massive snowstorms called for uh we end up getting like four inches and it's

[00:47:52] nothing bad but uh we've had where there's a snowstorm my old roommate and i we'd go to the store and we're walking around and we're laughing at people who are getting all the essentials and there's lines out the freaking door and people are panicking and we're like well

[00:48:09] we're low on whiskey so let's just get two fifths and you know let's get a gallon this time instead of a fifth uh just to hold us over or something you know what i mean so uh so yeah i kind of wish

[00:48:20] i'd reorder these things because number nine really breaks the flow flow from number number ten but really quickly all reation is harmful decontamination is hard we've talked about NBC stuff before like if you think there's if you think there's nuclear fallout outside just

[00:48:36] stay inside well i i mean yeah and i'm not i'm nowhere near an expert but having the having the ability to detect radiation uh is pretty big i know there's multiple uh things that you can buy

[00:48:49] and do your research because some of them are just a gimmick and there's some of them that if you do if you buy the right thing they'll come with an iodine tablet uh or you know like a radioactive

[00:49:00] tablet that you can actually test it and make sure that it is uh reading correctly and all that stuff so do your research and make sure and honestly if this is a fear if this is something that you're

[00:49:12] prepping for as far as like a uh nuclear fallout or i don't know i mean something anything nuclear if you're worried about it make sure you do your research and make sure you're

[00:49:24] you know that you're getting the proper things as far as okay i need to cover my vents the hvac the door like cracks in the door and all that stuff because radiation if you look into it

[00:49:37] it's not a uh it's not as easy as the tv and stuff make it out to be to protect from so if that's something i mean i yolo i mean i if something happens if it's a nuclear blast and

[00:49:51] i'm in the center of it then freaking take me out because uh i'm not duct taping myself in my house and doing all that crap so i'm just i know if it starts snowing in june through if it starts

[00:50:03] snowing between june and august i'm gonna stay inside and i'm gonna watch what happens with my neighbors protap so but going back to number eight we were just talking about like if you can

[00:50:15] stay at home you can wait out an event you can wait out the after effects of an event the last myth is that everything will go back to normal in a few weeks now i can't speak to everybody else's

[00:50:27] personal preparedness journey and disaster experience but i can tell you that the longer the event lasts the longer the bull crap from the event lasts and i can tell you that like down here

[00:50:42] like to again hurricane i'd be in the most recent example you know it came through in the evening the roads were let's call them you shouldn't drive on them not i won't say they were

[00:50:58] undriveable but you really shouldn't have been out on the roads the day after the roads were largely cleared within a couple of days and that's mostly because like you know arborists from

[00:51:09] all over the state had poured in there trying to clear the road so that we could get power restoration crews installed and the power was out for i want to say seven days but even once

[00:51:21] the power was stood back up for the majority of the area and the roads were clear and by this point you know the the traffic lights had gotten blown down we're getting put back up

[00:51:31] we were still at a deficit for things like building materials um you couldn't get you could not get a roofer for anything other than emergency i have a hole in my roof i need patching work

[00:51:42] you couldn't get a roofer lineup for any amount of money for months you couldn't get gutters done for about six months because again because everybody's gutters were jacked up everybody who could throw gutters on the side of the house was working you know six and seven

[00:51:58] days a week trying to catch up behind backlog work didn't you have didn't you have a hole in your roof for like six months almost a year uh it wasn't a year so we had the the gutters took a year to

[00:52:11] get fixed yeah but the roof we got fixed i want to say we got a fix in january the in january so that was yeah right around six months yeah although to be to be fair it wasn't as if i

[00:52:26] had a big gaping hole in the roof i mean by that point we had you know we had tarped it we had tucked the tarp underneath the shingles well yeah yeah you've tarped it and stuff like that i get that

[00:52:36] but i'm just saying like you had a tarp on your roof for six months uh to where if it rained and stuff like that you still had to watch out for leaks after her because katerina there were

[00:52:47] blue roofs we call them blue roofs around here i don't know what they call everywhere else but there were whole roofs that were covered in blue tarps and some of those stuck around for literally

[00:52:59] three four years yeah in that case it was because the property owners just you know got their insurance payouts rented the property and walked away from it but the point still remains like

[00:53:10] the the downstream effects from a major disaster last for weeks and for months yeah and the idea well in a week everything would go back to normal it's like no like for weeks after

[00:53:26] hurricane ida i used to tell my wife i'm like do not let your fuel tank get below half do not because you know like at that point fuel fuel delivers into the area had resumed power restoration

[00:53:40] it could been completed but i was telling my wife i'm like but the problem still is like there's so many extra construction crews running around there's there's so much activity in this

[00:53:51] area right now that is not normal it wouldn't take a lot for a misfuel delivery to result in inteperate fuel shortage so just like we were on our guard for several weeks afterwards just in

[00:54:04] case something happened didn't they have um fuel robberies down there too not during hurricane ida i thought i thought i thought ida i thought maybe i thought maybe somewhere else i could have swear i heard uh during one natural disaster they had uh during hurricane katrina they absolutely

[00:54:20] had maybe that's when i heard about it or i remember about it because it was like yeah they they actually had like fuel trucks with armed support because like people were actually gangs

[00:54:31] and stuff were actually stealing the uh they're robbing the uh the fuel trucks i know for a fact during hurricane katrina that uh fuel was being bused into some of these more southern areas

[00:54:43] and you gotta understand that like at this point this wasn't even fuel to go in gas stations to support civilian restoration efforts this was fuel purely to support the national guard and the law enforcement

[00:54:56] activities in those areas and they were having to bring that fuel into these forward i want to call them forward operating bases because that's my military term but like it really is like the southernmost distribution points the closest to the desire to play at the point of the

[00:55:10] disaster but yes they were absolutely having to bring those in with armed guards basically to a fob in the middle of no man's land that's that was the nature of that situation we didn't really see

[00:55:21] that during ida and i think a lot of that is down to the fact that you know ida because the levies didn't breach for hurricane ida and that caused the majority of the hell on earth that is her

[00:55:31] that was hurricane katrina i feel as though ida wasn't as severe of a storm in a lot of ways and it certainly wasn't as widespread if you look at the footprint of hurricane ida it was a much

[00:55:43] smaller storm than hurricane katrina was so what it went by it tore up really badly but it didn't it didn't have the girth that hurricane katrina did so i feel like because of that the affected

[00:55:56] area was much narrower and resources were able to pour in from other areas much more readily than hurricane katrina i mean they're just very different storms but at the end of the day

[00:56:06] like the message holds true that i would say that like if if if you think the event's gonna last a day you better be ready for three if you think it's gonna last a week you should be ready for a month

[00:56:17] like you need to respect the fact that they're going to be downstream effects of the event they're going to linger and might drive third order effects it just comes down to like the idea

[00:56:31] that like you can't just let's guard down the day after the storm the storm is over say okay everything's back to normal because it might not be anybody's ever tried to buy plywood a week after you know

[00:56:43] like a day after a hurricane let me know how that worked out for you hell try to buy try to buy fuel the day before a hurricane hits same problem there's only so much supply it's all gone everybody's

[00:56:53] run around freaking out like you have to think ahead and you have to plan for those kinds of things we would not have been tarping our roof after hurricane ida except that i had tarpsit in the

[00:57:02] garage didn't have roofing nails but now i have plenty you know you live and you learn thank you stewart point of distribution i couldn't i couldn't get the um i couldn't get the military term

[00:57:16] to go away long enough to think of a another analog but those were those were the 10 myths of preparedness that i saw in this article that is linked down the show description if anybody

[00:57:29] wants to read it for yourself like i don't know like i didn't feel like there was a lot of i didn't feel like there was a lot of those myths that i grossly disagreed with the author about

[00:57:39] i feel like some of it comes down to a perspective shift you know i'm saying like some of the things they were talking about i was roll my say well of course there's nobody dumb enough to believe

[00:57:49] that but then again there was a couple of things that are hotly debated even within the preparedness community like people that live this lifestyle and they're they're in this mindset and two people

[00:58:00] won't agree on the same thing i think some of it just comes down to the fact that like we're all very individual people we all have our own mindset we all have like we might agree on big

[00:58:09] principles but we're not necessarily going to agree on like specific implementation of those principles if that makes sense i don't know i don't want to belabor the point i thought it

[00:58:20] was a good chance to sit down kind of rapid fire go through some of these different myths and maybe get somebody's gears turning on this yeah it's always good no i think it's always good to

[00:58:30] kind of more monday morning quarterback somebody else's opinion yeah force force you to challenge your own all right well since we didn't do the admin work at the very beginning of the show

[00:58:40] admin work um i put a video on youtube it ended being about 45 minutes long talking about off-grid communications i owe the audience a shorter video i hope talking about the manpack bill that's sitting in that bag back there to talk about like specific components how it's

[00:59:00] constructed so on so forth because i don't think it merits like a whole hour long show to sit here and hold something up in front of the camera so that'll be another youtube slash rumble video or other than that

[00:59:14] matter of fact camping trip is coming up soon yep i'm looking forward to that look forward to seeing everybody again yeah it should be good um i have one tea time probably make another one

[00:59:27] it'll be fun golfing down there so are any of the other hooligans golfers i have no idea not that i know i'm just going by myself so but uh no it'll be fun uh yeah it'd be a few days

[00:59:41] definitely break in the old uh the tent on the truck there i've been using it got out another time but yeah no i'm looking at i'm looking forward to using that some more probably i'm thinking

[00:59:53] Tuesday after after this trip i'm i'm thinking about i probably will be doing another video on my youtube channel uh discussing like pros and cons uh what i would maybe change or what i don't

[01:00:07] necessarily like but i'm adjusting uh what i might change stuff like that so bobo fits misadventures yeah i'm in advertised form if you want to advertise for himself i mean shameless promotion

[01:00:19] is encouraged on this show yeah no it's uh yeah bobo fits misadventures but uh i need to i need to make sure i cross-platform it uh with the mf podcast as well with the youtube channel and

[01:00:33] stuff like that but uh but yeah if you're going to the uh if you're going to the mof camping trip look forward to seeing you if you are not going um and you uh if you want to know how to do it

[01:00:47] basically you have to be the basically the only thing you have to do is be a patreon member uh be a patreon member and uh yeah so yeah if you're even if you are a patreon member and

[01:01:00] you're not going um hopefully we see you another time um and then if you are going to prepper camp let us know uh be nice to see you guys uh nice to see everybody uh at prepper camp as well

[01:01:13] and there's a dirty little rumor circulating that 2025 the mof summer camping trip might move to michigan good luck thank you andrew i knew it could depend on you to help height me up

[01:01:30] i mean yeah it's coming to michigan in january too late you already ruined it yeah hopefully we'll see we'll try work something out all right well we've turned this into an italian goodbye which

[01:01:39] you always curse at me about doing so we're gonna wrap this up kick it out the door matter of fact's podcast is going bye everybody goodbye