Matter of Facts: Destigmatizing Preparedness

[00:00:06] Welcome back to the Matter of Facts 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. I'm your host, Phil Ravelet, Andrew, Nick are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show.

[00:00:30] Welcome back to the Matter of Facts Podcast. I've already been accused of being a professional once this evening, and I'm going to do everything possible to not let that stand.

[00:00:39] So to convince everybody that this is really amateur hour, I have the talking stick. Drew and Terrence are joining us from their respective YouTube channels. They're all part of a group I believe called the Com Syndicate. Straight me out of that, Terrence.

[00:00:52] Correct.

[00:00:53] Yep. And I figured tonight would be a fun little meet and greet, get to know them, get to know their content, and in the process we'll tackle a group topic with, this is arguably, I think the most people we've ever had on this show in eight years.

[00:01:06] So if it all goes down in flames, I will have once again proven that I'm an amateur doing this. But real quick...

[00:01:16] So far so good. You haven't gone down in flames yet, so...

[00:01:20] Yet. Yeah, there's always time to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

[00:01:26] Always.

[00:01:27] Always.

[00:01:28] Real quick, I do want to thank the patrons who support the show. Y'all encourage my autism and support it, and y'all keep this from being a financial drain, which keeps my wife happy.

[00:01:37] So thank you, all of you, for all that. And if you don't like the show, blame them, not me. Or don't blame me too, but you know.

[00:01:45] Don't blame them, they incentivize you.

[00:01:50] I mean, I would say encourage. Most of them are in the chat right now, probably already talking smack.

[00:01:55] Let's see here. I see dumbass Texas redneck, we're here, you were early, for once.

[00:02:02] I know when you get to a certain age, it's hard to be on time for things, but you did good this time.

[00:02:06] You did.

[00:02:08] Black powder therapist, the resident taint connoisseur. If you don't know what I'm referring to, you have to get to know him in the patron chat to truly understand the psychopaths that I deal with on a daily basis.

[00:02:23] And I see Jeff Jag, and I see Raggle Fraggle, and Brian. It's always my fault. I mean, you sound like my wife now.

[00:02:30] To be fair, you started this.

[00:02:33] Yeah, technically I did start this. And eight years later, I haven't gotten sick and tired of it yet.

[00:02:40] There you go.

[00:02:41] Okay, enough smack talking. So introductions first, and we'll start with our guests.

[00:02:47] And then I guess we kind of need to introduce ourselves, because even though the listeners know who we are, y'all don't know us very well.

[00:02:54] So, 123 Rochambeau. Terrence, Drew, who wants to go first?

[00:02:58] I can take it.

[00:02:58] You're up, Drew.

[00:02:59] I'm Drew. I'm Drew. I have a YouTube channel called The Terminal Element.

[00:03:03] I'm a paramedic in North Idaho, and I also make videos about radios for fun and as a creative diversion.

[00:03:09] And I tell some stories every now and then that get about zero views.

[00:03:11] But anyway, if you like what I have to say here, stop on by my channel.

[00:03:16] Thanks.

[00:03:16] God, that was hard to follow. I should have gone first.

[00:03:18] I'm Terrence. I have a channel called the Part of Suncoms Group.

[00:03:21] And I'm a project manager by trade, but I also have a channel that discusses radio topics and things like that.

[00:03:30] And we're also missing one other guy, Jared from 2AlphaSolutions, who usually joins us on another channel called the Comm Syndicate.

[00:03:41] Yep.

[00:03:43] All right. And I guess we'll just go left to right.

[00:03:47] Sure.

[00:03:47] I'd say ugly to pretty, but I'm not going to let Andrew and Nick fight over who gets to be who.

[00:03:52] But my name's Phil. I'm the host of the Matter Effects podcast.

[00:03:56] Eight years ago, I was taking a day off of work, sitting at home because we were dealing with massive flooding across southeast Louisiana.

[00:04:03] And I was literally watching the freaking news, trying to figure out what was going on around me.

[00:04:08] And about 70 miles away from me, a river dumped its banks and like cut off a whole bunch of motorists on the interstate.

[00:04:16] And they were stuck out there for, I think, five or six hours waiting for the waters to recede.

[00:04:21] And as that situation unfolded, I noticed that like, you know, they were literally airdropping these people water because they were stuck out there on the interstate in August heat.

[00:04:30] And these people had no supplies. They weren't prepared for an emergency situation.

[00:04:34] I'm surprised they all had shoes.

[00:04:37] And I had this thing click in my head where I thought to myself, like, you know, there's lessons about we didn't even call it preparedness back then.

[00:04:44] We just call it life that like I learned from my family about how to deal with emergency situations and how to plan ahead for things that people obviously didn't learn somewhere along the way.

[00:04:54] So eight years ago, I started this podcast to try to try to take like some of that old school preparedness knowledge and teach it to the generation that didn't get the message.

[00:05:06] And also try to make it normal, because to me, preparedness should be a normal thing.

[00:05:10] It shouldn't be weird, crazy people living in bunkers eating MREs all the time.

[00:05:17] Andrew, you look bored.

[00:05:21] My name is Andrew.

[00:05:23] Been with Phil for eight years because he was desperate for a co-host and he basically crashed the bottom of the barrel and I came out.

[00:05:32] So basically, I like to make Phil have bad financial decisions, whether it's buying night vision from me or whatever.

[00:05:42] I like to try to be a bad influence.

[00:05:43] So, yeah.

[00:05:45] You also occasionally get me ranting and raving and put on government watch list, but we won't go into that this show.

[00:05:51] Well, you never know.

[00:05:52] It's still pretty early.

[00:05:56] If you've downloaded on the watch list or two, you're not doing it right.

[00:05:59] True.

[00:06:00] I collect on my trading cards at this point.

[00:06:04] Nick?

[00:06:05] Nick?

[00:06:05] Yeah.

[00:06:06] So I'm Nick.

[00:06:07] I'm a tool and die maker by trade, raised by a family of largely blue-collar tradespeople, machinists, toolmakers, heavy diesel mechanics, and stuff like that.

[00:06:17] So my background is mostly in the trades.

[00:06:19] You can see a little bit of what I do behind me.

[00:06:21] I like my job so much I bring it home.

[00:06:23] That's a 1920s engine lathe.

[00:06:28] I'm not what people would think of as a doomsday prepper at all.

[00:06:33] I'm more worried about how do I make my life as convenient as possible when bad days happen?

[00:06:41] You know, I don't have a bunker.

[00:06:44] I don't have a year's worth of food.

[00:06:47] I've got a generator.

[00:06:48] I've got enough food for a couple of months.

[00:06:50] But, you know, nothing insane.

[00:06:53] No law enforcement experience.

[00:06:55] No EMT here.

[00:06:58] Not a soldier.

[00:07:00] Nothing like that.

[00:07:01] Just a tradesman.

[00:07:04] Just the background of America.

[00:07:06] We don't come to your house.

[00:07:08] Hey, man.

[00:07:09] There's a lot of fun stuff in my basement.

[00:07:11] So the lathe behind you, I know you, I guess in a previous episode, you challenged Phil to figure out which levers were needed to operate it.

[00:07:20] Did he figure that out yet?

[00:07:23] He guessed correctly that he guessed that you needed all of them to cut threads.

[00:07:27] But he's incorrect.

[00:07:28] You need all but one.

[00:07:31] Well, one day you're going to have to demo that for us.

[00:07:33] So we all know.

[00:07:34] Yeah, I could probably maybe one of these days kick a video together about that thing once I get it all totally tuned and running.

[00:07:40] Right now, I'm making on it some replacement parts to get it back to what it was.

[00:07:45] Brand new.

[00:07:46] Where did you find it?

[00:07:48] I actually inherited that.

[00:07:50] I'm the third generation of my family to own that lathe.

[00:07:53] Cool.

[00:07:54] All right.

[00:07:54] Yeah.

[00:07:55] I don't have anything that cool in my house.

[00:07:58] It's, well, you know, the only reason I'm down here is because the sun comes in through my office light, my office window, and just made the video look terrible.

[00:08:08] So I thought I'd throw it down here.

[00:08:10] Oh, come on.

[00:08:10] We're all in our respective areas so we can hide from our wives.

[00:08:13] Exactly.

[00:08:14] Yes.

[00:08:15] I'm not doing a good job, though, because she's on the other side of this wall.

[00:08:18] And matter of fact, she jumped in the chat a second ago and said, I'm here.

[00:08:22] So you best watch yourself.

[00:08:25] What's the worst she's going to do?

[00:08:26] Wouldn't spoon me to death?

[00:08:27] I mean, come on.

[00:08:29] She would.

[00:08:30] My wife.

[00:08:31] My wife just texted me on a radio system behind me here and told me now that she wants a bunker.

[00:08:35] So you have now affected my financial decisions as well.

[00:08:41] So I will say that ever since Andrew's encouraged my own financial malfeasance, the tube has been working really hard on several friends to encourage more bad decisions.

[00:09:22] I say bad decisions.

[00:09:22] And, you know, stuff you don't hear a lot about in the preparedness community.

[00:09:26] But to me, I always go back to this idea that, like, you know, I have a 401k in case the world doesn't end and I make it to 65 and I don't want to work till noon on the day I die.

[00:09:37] I have money in a savings account because as long as cash has value, the savings account and having liquid cash is a good idea.

[00:09:44] You know, it's like this.

[00:09:46] To me, it's this natural cross section of I'm applying preparedness principles to, I say, real life.

[00:09:53] But you do get a lot of people in the preparedness community who they don't their mind doesn't go there because they're like, well, Social Security is not going to exist.

[00:10:01] And, you know, the dollar is going to collapse.

[00:10:03] And it's all it's there's no point saving for retirement because we're not going to make that far anyway.

[00:10:07] And then I retort with, but what happens if we do?

[00:10:11] What happens if we do?

[00:10:13] I don't want to work until I'm 80.

[00:10:14] I don't think any of y'all do either.

[00:10:17] So, like, that's my bat.

[00:10:19] My background is, you know, classic bit classical business degree.

[00:10:23] But it's also the fact that, like, I'm a military veteran.

[00:10:25] I've worked in the trades and I've worked in HVAC and I've worked in auto mechanics.

[00:10:30] I mean, I worked blue collar jobs all the way through college before I started working more white collar office jobs.

[00:10:35] So I have this weird cross section of experiences where, like, when Nick puts me on the spot and says, how do you get this lathe turn threads?

[00:10:43] I have no freaking clue.

[00:10:45] But if you leave me alone with it long enough, I'll probably figure it out.

[00:10:48] Oh, yeah.

[00:10:50] Yeah, I guess it depends on if you're naturally curious or not.

[00:10:53] And, you know, that that kind of happens with I guess, Drew, you probably run into people all the time that are interested in radio and you try and help them out.

[00:11:02] But they don't really have that natural curiosity to take it to the next step.

[00:11:07] Yeah.

[00:11:07] They have their priorities.

[00:11:09] Yeah.

[00:11:10] Well, and I mean, and that's kind of the thing of it, because I know that radio is kind of a big cross section for the two of y'all.

[00:11:15] But like my whole thing about radio is like I know people that enjoy it for the hobby.

[00:11:21] But then I know people who it's a tool in a toolbox.

[00:11:23] They just want it to work.

[00:11:25] You know, their whole thing of it is like I don't care how to build antennas and I don't care what frequency it is.

[00:11:30] I just want to be able to press a button and talk to someone on the other side.

[00:11:33] But so I look at it as, you know, my chat.

[00:11:36] Our challenge is content creators.

[00:11:38] Then is making content that covers both like that person who does want to take the next level.

[00:11:43] And then that person who wants to just use it as a tool in the toolbox.

[00:11:48] Like if my wife, if my wife has to learn antenna theory, she's the radios have no use in this family.

[00:11:55] I have to.

[00:11:56] And it's not that she's stupid because she's not.

[00:11:59] She's a freaking genius about a lot of things.

[00:12:01] But that's not something she's going to spend hours upon hours studying like I did.

[00:12:06] Just because I'm curious about it.

[00:12:08] Yeah.

[00:12:09] Yeah, there's some different things within radio.

[00:12:12] I mean, Drew, I don't know.

[00:12:14] Do you fall more?

[00:12:15] You fall more in the emergency comms camp than, say, a hobbyist.

[00:12:19] I think I do, too.

[00:12:20] Well, it's certainly a fun diversion.

[00:12:22] It's a fun activity.

[00:12:23] But it's a tool that I use.

[00:12:24] Our cell phones go down here all the time.

[00:12:27] And I don't have the money for Starlink plus a mobile Starlink setup and a sat phone.

[00:12:32] And so this was just a very economical way to, you know, occupy my attention deficit syndrome

[00:12:39] and then also have a functional tool that we can use to communicate.

[00:12:43] Phil, I really like what you said about the 401k.

[00:12:45] In that regard, everyone who has a retirement plan is a prepper already, right?

[00:12:49] Yes.

[00:12:49] But people have been predicting the end of time since the beginning of time.

[00:12:52] And really, the world hasn't stopped spinning yet.

[00:12:55] So in all likelihood, it's not going to in our lifetime.

[00:12:59] So we should be preparing for as if the world is going to continue moving on just as much

[00:13:03] as if we're preparing for storms and services interruptions and just building our own resiliency.

[00:13:11] Yeah.

[00:13:12] I mean, like I said, to me, it's just the idea that, like, preparedness is a mindset.

[00:13:16] Preparedness is a set of principles.

[00:13:18] And if you apply this set of principles to finances, then you're going to do things in

[00:13:22] a way that makes sense as a prepper.

[00:13:26] But to say that something has a 0% chance of happening, therefore I'm not going to prep

[00:13:32] for it when there is a likelihood that, yes, the world will continue and the dollar will

[00:13:37] not collapse and things will stumble along in spite of themselves.

[00:13:41] Then to me, it's like, okay, that's a scenario we should prepare for in the same vein that

[00:13:46] I prepare for hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, because those things all happen around here.

[00:13:50] I just can't get on board with the idea that, like, something that has a less than zero

[00:13:56] chance of happening doesn't get any attention paid to it.

[00:14:00] I mean, to me, it almost it sounds more to me like doom spending, if you're familiar with

[00:14:06] that term, where a person says, like, it's all going to burn anyway.

[00:14:09] So I'm just going to rack up the debt.

[00:14:10] Who cares?

[00:14:11] Oh, yeah.

[00:14:14] Yeah.

[00:14:14] All right.

[00:14:15] You know, I'm unfortunately.

[00:14:17] I was going to say, you know, finances aren't necessarily a sexy thing to talk about.

[00:14:21] You know, the Mad Max scenarios are.

[00:14:24] And I think that's unfortunately what people kind of gravitate to.

[00:14:28] And, you know, I think one of the best topics that basically reframes prepping from a fringe

[00:14:35] conversation into a practical one is finances.

[00:14:39] And, you know, I was watching several of your episodes and I think you guys do a really great

[00:14:46] job of frequently mentioning things like building financial security.

[00:14:52] And like you said, you know, that is a form of prepping.

[00:14:55] People already do it.

[00:14:56] They just probably don't think of it in that context, basically.

[00:15:00] Exactly.

[00:15:00] You know, I've said it before on the show and I'll say it again.

[00:15:04] Most problems in my life have been able to be quickly solved by chucking money at them.

[00:15:09] Yeah.

[00:15:10] Seriously.

[00:15:11] I mean, it's true.

[00:15:13] It's so true.

[00:15:14] That's why I'm laughing.

[00:15:15] Truck breaks down.

[00:15:17] Okay.

[00:15:18] Stroke that check.

[00:15:18] Throw money in it.

[00:15:20] Exactly.

[00:15:20] I mean, we live in a capitalist society and why not use, why not benefit from it?

[00:15:29] Well, you don't have to worry.

[00:15:31] You don't have to hunt and gather every single piece of food you need.

[00:15:35] So, you know, take advantage.

[00:15:38] I don't know if you guys saw this a while back.

[00:15:40] It may have been, oh, I don't know, a couple of years now.

[00:15:44] Um, but there was an article that I read and I think it was repeated a few other times,

[00:15:49] um, through other news outlets, but basically people don't have enough money, like 500 bucks

[00:15:54] for an emergency.

[00:15:56] And, um, you know, it's like when you talk about things like financial prepping and stuff,

[00:16:02] you know, it's like, do you have enough savings for several weeks or months?

[00:16:07] Uh, should you lose your job?

[00:16:09] Can you maintain your lifestyle?

[00:16:11] Um, you know, while you look for a new job.

[00:16:13] And I really do wonder how, you know, like what percentage of the population can, uh, can

[00:16:19] do that?

[00:16:19] You know, should they use their job?

[00:16:21] Can they continue on like they are right now?

[00:16:23] The statistic I saw the other day was that 40% of us households have exactly $0 in savings

[00:16:30] right now.

[00:16:32] And your eyebrows going up was exactly my reaction.

[00:16:35] It was because like, because of the content, we all know how the algorithm works.

[00:16:40] The more you watch, the more stuff you get like that.

[00:16:42] And because of my background, I do watch a lot of economics and finance stuff because

[00:16:46] it's my wheelhouse.

[00:16:47] And my wife knows that look on my face where I will, something will crawl across my feet

[00:16:53] and my jaw will just fall.

[00:16:54] And I'm like, oh my God, it's worse than I thought it was.

[00:16:58] Like, I feel like my family is blessed to have put in place the things that we have so that

[00:17:05] we're not in those situations.

[00:17:07] But to read that, that percentage of the U S households, it's worse than they don't

[00:17:14] have six months, six month emergency fund.

[00:17:15] It's worse than they can't deal with a $1,000 emergency.

[00:17:18] They have nothing in savings.

[00:17:21] That's terrifying to me.

[00:17:25] Yeah.

[00:17:26] And then I think to myself, how many of those people are in the preparedness community where

[00:17:29] they've got three or six months worth of food stacked up.

[00:17:33] They've got, you know, 10,000 rounds of ammunition.

[00:17:35] They've got more guns than they need to arm the whole neighborhood.

[00:17:38] But if their car broke down tomorrow, they couldn't pay anybody to fix it.

[00:17:42] You know what I'm saying?

[00:17:43] It's like that kind of weird, short-sighted thinking that they did all these other things

[00:17:48] that were preparedness, but then they missed the simplest thing, which was a savings account.

[00:17:54] I used to read a blogger who would frame these things in terms of, are you worth less than

[00:17:59] you were when you were a baby?

[00:18:00] Because when you come out of the womb, you have zero debt.

[00:18:03] Seriously.

[00:18:05] And so if you have racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and credit card bills, you

[00:18:13] are worth less than you are when you were a baby.

[00:18:16] So it's just an interesting way to frame that.

[00:18:21] Knowing how much I owe in my house, that makes me feel worse.

[00:18:25] Thanks for that.

[00:18:25] Right.

[00:18:28] You know, when they say stuff like 40% of Americans, it's kind of hard to conceptualize

[00:18:35] how much that is.

[00:18:36] So I did some quick napkin math.

[00:18:38] That's 48 million households.

[00:18:40] Yeah.

[00:18:41] Because aren't there like 330 million?

[00:18:44] 330 million people figuring three people per household, 40%, somewhere in the neighborhood

[00:18:49] of 48 million households have zero savings.

[00:18:52] Which probably also implies not only do they have zero savings, but they probably have

[00:18:57] reoccurring debt that they are holding of some kind.

[00:19:02] You know, not even say credit cards.

[00:19:05] Sure.

[00:19:06] Yeah, probably.

[00:19:06] But probably student loans could be a mortgage, could be a car payment rent.

[00:19:11] Probably for sure.

[00:19:12] If they don't have a mortgage.

[00:19:14] Medical debt.

[00:19:15] Yeah.

[00:19:15] Medical debt.

[00:19:15] So not only do they not have a single dollar to their name, they technically have negative

[00:19:21] dollar to their name every month, assuming, you know, assuming they can't work.

[00:19:28] So they have even less time than that.

[00:19:31] Because their credit cards are probably also carrying a balance.

[00:19:33] Yeah, right.

[00:19:35] You know, it's...

[00:19:36] Bill, I know you brought this up on the show before.

[00:19:39] There are some YouTube channels that go into this really in depth.

[00:19:42] And Caleb Hammer is one of them.

[00:19:46] I don't know if you guys are familiar with this stuff.

[00:19:48] He does audits of people.

[00:19:49] Like, has a person come and sit down and does a financial audit with them.

[00:19:52] And the spending these people have is just absolutely insane.

[00:19:57] And I'm sorry, I missed the channel.

[00:19:58] What did you say it was?

[00:20:00] Caleb Hammer.

[00:20:01] Caleb Hammer.

[00:20:02] Okay.

[00:20:02] Yeah.

[00:20:02] I'm not familiar with that one.

[00:20:03] He's a very interesting guy.

[00:20:05] He's, you know, he's probably, I think he's mid-30s.

[00:20:08] And he walks through people's finances and tries to find ways to get them out of debt.

[00:20:13] Because the fastest way to build wealth is to get out of debt first.

[00:20:17] You know.

[00:20:18] Is there like a pattern that you've noticed in watching these episodes with how people spend their money?

[00:20:23] Convenience spending.

[00:20:25] Yeah.

[00:20:25] I mean, one of the...

[00:20:26] Convenience spending.

[00:20:27] One of the things that I think is, I don't know, I guess kind of predatory.

[00:20:32] And I'm sure you guys have seen this too, but, you know, there's people on YouTube that have channels.

[00:20:37] I'm not going to name any names because I don't want to start any shit or anything.

[00:20:40] But I've seen some that, you know, encourage other people to go out and max out their credit cards on preps.

[00:20:47] Yeah.

[00:20:49] Well, you know...

[00:20:50] And, you know, I think it's kind of the reason I say it's predatory is because, you know, oftentimes those content creators have a product to sell for the emergency they're warning you about.

[00:21:02] Oh, yeah.

[00:21:04] Or a class they're pushing or...

[00:21:07] I've seen...

[00:21:07] I think I've seen some of those and, you know, you're robbing Peter to pay Paul.

[00:21:15] You know, unless your country is developing into a war zone rapidly, such as Ukraine, where pretty good odds your city's about to be overrun by a foreign country.

[00:21:27] I mean, I'm sure there's a situation where it could be worthwhile, but long term...

[00:21:32] I mean, if the comet's coming...

[00:21:33] Right.

[00:21:34] You know.

[00:21:35] Right.

[00:21:36] I mean, I just...

[00:21:38] That's...

[00:21:38] That seems...

[00:21:39] That does seem in poor taste, at least.

[00:21:42] I think the risk there, though, is that, like, if you're the person that's going to advocate that...

[00:21:47] And, like, we were having almost this same conversation in our little patrons chat several weeks ago.

[00:21:53] And the consensus was, if I knew with 100% accuracy that on this day money's going to have no value, I'd rack up the credit cards because who cares?

[00:22:02] But the problem is you can never have 100% certainty, and everybody agreed that doing that with anything less than 100% certainty was financial suicide.

[00:22:11] Because, like, you would never, never dig yourself out of it.

[00:22:16] And that is, like, one of the things I see on Caleb Hammer's show a lot when he gets into people's personal finances and how they dug themselves into debt.

[00:22:24] And I don't know that I would call it convenience spending.

[00:22:27] I call it...

[00:22:29] There's this general philosophy where it's always, I will defer that...

[00:22:36] I will defer paying for that until I can pay for it.

[00:22:39] You know what I'm saying?

[00:22:40] Now, there is an argument to be made for, like, opportunity costs where it's like, I can go into XMAP debt, I can leverage myself, I can take the risk, and it pays off within a certain amount of time with a certain amount of likelihood.

[00:22:52] But at the same time, I saw person after person develop this trend where people were eyeball deep in credit card debt, eyeball deep in student debt, you know, bought expensive cars.

[00:23:04] The rule was always, I want stuff now.

[00:23:08] I'm going to finance it now.

[00:23:09] And by the time the bill comes due, I'll be able to pay for it.

[00:23:12] And the first time that gamble didn't pay off, they were screwed.

[00:23:15] And now they're screwed on for years.

[00:23:18] Yeah, and depending on, you know, when they took those loans out, you know, they're probably paying a variety of different interest rates.

[00:23:27] So the credit card rate might be 24%, whatever your student loan is, and then whatever the other credit card, you know, you took out, you know.

[00:23:38] Yeah, for the audience, if you really want to nauseate yourself, go online and like just Google how credit card debt is actually calculated or how credit card interest rates actually work on a given principle.

[00:23:53] Google that, apply that formula to like $10,000 in carried principle, and then look at how many hundreds of dollars a month you're spending just to carry that balance.

[00:24:06] That will be all it takes to convince you to shred your credit cards for life.

[00:24:09] Well, it's an interesting topic because, you know, you're mentioning this guy that does audits.

[00:24:13] And, you know, it makes me wonder, do you think that people's style of prepping is influenced by, you know, how they view the, I don't know, social and economic systems they think they live in?

[00:24:26] Or do you think that it's influenced by other factors?

[00:24:32] Both.

[00:24:34] Both.

[00:24:35] You know, you see like Rick and Jane, for instance.

[00:24:42] They went, they got burned out on the rat race.

[00:24:46] You've heard that Rick and Jane Austin.

[00:24:49] What is, what does Jane go by?

[00:24:52] Survival Jane.

[00:24:53] Survival Jane.

[00:24:53] Thank you.

[00:24:54] Survivor Jane.

[00:24:55] Survivor Jane.

[00:24:57] They got burned out so bad on the corporate rat race that they went 180 opposite direction.

[00:25:03] Rejecting that.

[00:25:05] And built themselves a giant homestead.

[00:25:07] Which, fantastic.

[00:25:11] I think some of it is driven by geolocation.

[00:25:15] Bill's got to prep for hurricanes.

[00:25:17] I don't have hurricanes.

[00:25:19] So I don't have to do any of the traditional hurricane prep seasonally.

[00:25:25] Yeah, I get tornadoes here in Midwestern Illinois.

[00:25:27] We get some blizzards and some snowstorms.

[00:25:30] But we don't have that like geographic region shattering events happening yearly.

[00:25:37] If that makes sense.

[00:25:41] Yeah, it does.

[00:25:42] I can see being influenced by that.

[00:25:43] Sure.

[00:25:46] Honestly, though, thinking about it, at least in my experience, I think the people's style of preparedness is largely governed by what, right or wrong, what they believe the most likely scenario is, if that makes sense.

[00:26:00] Because, like, I've talked to quite a lot of people over the years.

[00:26:04] And you find this big bucket of people that are like, they're in the, we're heading to the rapture or the world is going to end.

[00:26:13] It's going to be Mad Max.

[00:26:14] So their whole push is for 100% sustainability.

[00:26:18] I need to plant crops.

[00:26:19] I need to grow my own food.

[00:26:20] You know, it's everything in that vein because the idea is, because of the likely scenario, a savings account and a 401k and all that stuff that still depends on the industrialized food system to some degree, it doesn't.

[00:26:34] It's not going to pan out.

[00:26:35] And then you get people that are kind of on the other side, but kind of where I am, where it's like, I'm not prepping for Doomsday and Mad Max.

[00:26:42] I think the likelihood of it happening is fairly limited.

[00:26:45] I think it is near certainty that I'm going to face another Cat 1, 2, or 3 hurricane in the next couple of years.

[00:26:53] And within 10 to 15, we're going to get whacked with another Cat 4, Cat 5 that's going to wipe out seven zip codes.

[00:26:59] Because I live on the Gulf Coast.

[00:27:01] That's what we deal with down here.

[00:27:04] I mean, hell, Andrew, he and I looked it up a while back.

[00:27:07] He had a hurricane up by him in Michigan.

[00:27:10] I don't remember which one it was, but it was one that like cruised all the way through the middle of the country and actually made it all the way to Michigan.

[00:27:17] Oh, yeah.

[00:27:17] I think that hit us, too.

[00:27:19] It's just a lot of rain, though.

[00:27:21] So you see, hurricanes could happen up where y'all live.

[00:27:24] Yeah.

[00:27:25] Wow.

[00:27:27] The storm surge of the ocean joining us here in Illinois is going to have to be a hell of a storm surge.

[00:27:34] Looks like we got Jared popping in.

[00:27:36] Hey, Jared.

[00:27:37] Jared from Two Alpha Solutions joined us.

[00:27:40] Jared from Two Alpha Solutions.

[00:27:41] How you doing, sir?

[00:27:43] I'm well.

[00:27:43] How are you?

[00:27:45] We're doing good.

[00:27:46] We have already done introductions, so I'll go ahead and loop you in, and then we'll just keep on rolling.

[00:27:53] All right.

[00:27:54] Sounds good.

[00:27:54] So I apologize for being late.

[00:27:56] I got held up at an appointment and got home, and I had to get cleaned up.

[00:28:00] I was covered in blood from a horse and everything else.

[00:28:05] Better than your blood.

[00:28:07] Exactly.

[00:28:08] Exactly.

[00:28:08] Exactly.

[00:28:09] So my name's Jared.

[00:28:12] I have a small YouTube channel called Two Alpha Solutions.

[00:28:18] Hi, Jared.

[00:28:19] I'm so sorry.

[00:28:20] I punched a button by accident.

[00:28:22] That's all right.

[00:28:23] I have a small YouTube channel called Two Alpha Solutions.

[00:28:27] Do some calm stuff and some gun stuff on there.

[00:28:31] I pretty much have junk content on there right now.

[00:28:34] But let's see.

[00:28:37] I'm retired law enforcement, retired fire department volunteer, and now I shoe horses.

[00:28:47] Shoe horses.

[00:28:48] It sounded like shoot horses.

[00:28:50] Everybody says it sounds like I shoot horses.

[00:28:53] Especially when you just come on talking about being covered in horse blood.

[00:28:57] I mean, we have to...

[00:28:59] Right?

[00:29:01] No.

[00:29:02] So...

[00:29:03] Jared, this one didn't even have a broken leg.

[00:29:04] What are you doing?

[00:29:06] What's that?

[00:29:07] I said this one didn't even have a broken leg.

[00:29:09] What are you doing?

[00:29:10] I had a broken foot.

[00:29:12] What?

[00:29:13] Yeesh.

[00:29:14] That's harsh.

[00:29:16] So, amateur radio since I got my license in 94.

[00:29:22] And here I am some...

[00:29:25] Almost 30 years later, I guess.

[00:29:27] Nice.

[00:29:29] All right.

[00:29:30] So, somebody remind me where we were before we had to welcome Jared in.

[00:29:35] We were talking about finances.

[00:29:38] Oh, yeah.

[00:29:39] Financial...

[00:29:40] Financial preparedness is a key pillar.

[00:29:43] No, we were at Hurricane in Michigan.

[00:29:45] Oh, yeah.

[00:29:46] Hurricane in Michigan.

[00:29:47] There you go.

[00:29:47] That too, yeah.

[00:29:48] I can now remember.

[00:29:49] And we got the shooting horses.

[00:29:51] Yeah.

[00:29:52] Which, honestly, is probably a better mix-up than when you tell people that you're a farrier.

[00:29:59] Yeah.

[00:30:01] Anyway.

[00:30:01] Most people don't know what that is, and they come to their own conclusions.

[00:30:04] Yeah.

[00:30:05] That's all right.

[00:30:06] I'm assuming somebody that operates a ferry.

[00:30:09] That'd be a ferryman.

[00:30:11] Okay.

[00:30:12] That's a horseshoe.

[00:30:14] Blacksmith.

[00:30:14] The horseshoe.

[00:30:16] Yep.

[00:30:16] Okay.

[00:30:19] Very cool.

[00:30:23] Eddie is talking smack in the chat.

[00:30:25] No, we're not just letting anyone in.

[00:30:27] This was our third guest that we were waiting for.

[00:30:29] You mouthy little SOB.

[00:30:31] That's all right.

[00:30:32] He just wants to come back on and talk about what's going on down south one of these days.

[00:30:37] You know how many different contexts I could have when we're talking about Eddie?

[00:30:41] Oh, I know.

[00:30:42] You do know.

[00:30:43] I'm setting him up for that one.

[00:30:46] No, the...

[00:30:48] So, what we were talking about before was whether or...

[00:30:53] What was it?

[00:30:54] World...

[00:30:55] Was it worldview or location?

[00:30:57] Well, it was basically along the lines of...

[00:30:59] Well, you were mentioning what people choose to invest in as far as preps are concerned.

[00:31:05] That's right.

[00:31:05] That's right.

[00:31:06] Is location.

[00:31:07] And then, you know, I guess kind of the subtopic is just that, you know, like, are the differences in people's economic statuses, you know, individually?

[00:31:20] Is that what, you know, influences their decisions as well?

[00:31:23] So...

[00:31:25] Which I guess it's probably both, right?

[00:31:28] I mean, how do you explain, you know, like, the toilet paper purchases during COVID?

[00:31:37] Oh, Jesus.

[00:31:37] You know, like, how do you rationalize?

[00:31:39] Like, there's no other way.

[00:31:40] There's no other way to wipe your ass.

[00:31:42] Parents, there's no other way.

[00:31:44] Well, I've asked a few people...

[00:31:46] I blame social media.

[00:31:46] I've asked a few people that have done it because I was very curious about it.

[00:31:51] You know, this was after the fact.

[00:31:54] And basically, it was people that...

[00:31:57] The couple people that I asked, and I know that's a small sample size, but, you know, they bought things like toilet paper as well as ammunition.

[00:32:05] Um, because those are things that they thought they could trade with later on.

[00:32:11] Well, hmm.

[00:32:13] You know, people were also...

[00:32:14] And I mean, I know that sounds crazy.

[00:32:16] Maybe it is.

[00:32:17] But that was the answer that I was given by a couple of people that were stacking toilet paper to the rafters.

[00:32:25] Yeah.

[00:32:25] But people were also used to living in excess, too.

[00:32:29] Yeah.

[00:32:30] You know, and it's a panic thing for them.

[00:32:34] Oh, I can't get toilet paper.

[00:32:35] I can't get this.

[00:32:36] So, for me to...

[00:32:39] Or for somebody to continue living life, they...

[00:32:45] In their realm, in their world, they're going to need all this excess toilet paper because they don't know when they're going to get it.

[00:32:53] And they don't know how to ration or they're not willing to ration.

[00:32:59] Well, I think there was quite a bit of buzz on social media about that.

[00:33:03] If I recall correctly, there was either a Facebook or an Instagram story of a guy going into Walmart and there being no toilet paper left on the shelf in just this one Walmart.

[00:33:16] And that went viral.

[00:33:18] And that triggered a bunch of other people in a bunch of other places to go in and start clearing stuff out.

[00:33:23] Have you guys ever worked in a grocery store?

[00:33:27] I haven't, no.

[00:33:29] No.

[00:33:29] No, but I hear stories about the FOMO whenever there's a storm coming, all the milk and bread go away.

[00:33:36] I believe that as an explanation more than somebody who tells themselves a wonderful story that they're going to use it as post-apocalyptic currency.

[00:33:45] I believe that that person said that, but I don't believe that they believe it.

[00:33:51] That just sounds like a wonderful face-saving story.

[00:33:54] They were scared and they didn't know what to do, but they knew they wiped their ass every day.

[00:33:58] And so that was the thing.

[00:34:00] Oh, there were people that panic bought toilet paper for sure.

[00:34:03] I mean, I remember going into my grocery store and, you know, the frozen pizzas were all sold out.

[00:34:10] And I'm like, we're going to frozen pizza our way out of this or what?

[00:34:14] And, you know, you're right.

[00:34:16] Like it's people that probably some of them didn't know what to do.

[00:34:20] Oh, I'm sure it's some of them didn't know what to do.

[00:34:23] They're probably scared.

[00:34:24] Yeah.

[00:34:25] I mean, honestly, I think I'm kind of withdrew on this.

[00:34:29] I think the whole we're going to barter with it was probably a story they concocted after the fact because like when COVID first started and I see a version of this every time we get a hurricane in the Gulf.

[00:34:39] Like the level of absolute insanity down here as people scurry around like cockroaches when the lights come on trying to get the last minute stuff you should have got weeks ago.

[00:34:51] It never fails and it never gets any better.

[00:34:54] Like I've told my wife, I told my wife years ago, I'm like the moment there's a disturbance, it doesn't, not even in the Gulf.

[00:35:03] As soon as it looks like something might go into the Gulf, go get your gas tank filled up.

[00:35:07] Don't let it drop below three quarters of a tank.

[00:35:09] And like you're going to ride that because the last thing situation I want to be in is from my wife and I a day before the storm gets here or two days before the storm gets here to be sitting in a gas station when a fist fight breaks out between two guys at a gas at a gas pump.

[00:35:25] It's like I know that the minute you get that many freaked out people in one confined area, someone's going to do something dumb and I don't want to be stuck in the middle of it.

[00:35:34] So I always go back to this idea that like if you were waiting in line for stuff, you should have done this earlier.

[00:35:41] You know what I'm saying?

[00:35:43] Like we, we, it's not, it's not just a factor of I need enough X to outlast the emergency, but I need enough X to outlast the panic right before the emergency happens when everybody's running around trying to get it.

[00:35:58] And the supply chain disorder for sometime thereafter, right?

[00:36:01] Yep.

[00:36:02] Yes.

[00:36:03] That's, that's actually something I point out about.

[00:36:05] And again, hurricanes is just my thing is where we live, but like it's something I point out about hurricanes.

[00:36:10] It's like when a tornado, not saying the tornadoes are fine, but when a tornado hits like your home, you can go three blocks and it's still civilization.

[00:36:20] You can get gas, you can get groceries, you can get stuff.

[00:36:23] But if you're in the middle of where a cat four cat five hurricane went, you might have to drive 150 miles to get things like gas and plywood and tarps.

[00:36:33] It's like there's just, there's no way to properly explain to people the fact that the devastation is so widespread in some of these situations.

[00:36:40] Or like you said, in a, in something like a pandemic where it affects the entire nation, things get bought out so quickly.

[00:36:49] You might not be, if you don't have those things by the time the flag goes up, you ain't going to have them afterwards.

[00:36:54] It just goes back to the idea that like, you got to keep some of this stuff on hand.

[00:36:58] I mean, there's a reason why I just finished ordering like 20 pounds of green coffee beans and I've got 10 more pounds in the mail.

[00:37:06] Cause I'm trying to bulk up.

[00:37:07] I don't, I don't plan to go through the apocalypse without the coffee.

[00:37:10] And I want to have a lot on the shelf because you know, there might be a port strike in a couple of months.

[00:37:17] Yeah.

[00:37:18] This is one of our patrons who is down in Western North Carolina.

[00:37:21] He lives down there and he's confirming they had no supplies within 150 miles.

[00:37:27] So just goes to show you what happens.

[00:37:29] Eddie, what's the outlook on how long it will take before roads get reestablished and cleared and you can even travel that 150 miles.

[00:37:39] We'll see.

[00:37:40] I'll let him definitely get back to you.

[00:37:42] Yeah.

[00:37:44] No, I mean like once, once things in that area have calmed down enough that he's comfortable coming on the show.

[00:37:50] Like I'd love to, I'd love to have him on to talk about from his perspective, what's going on in that area.

[00:37:55] But it's one of those things where it's like, I don't want to push him onto the show when he's still in the middle of dealing with it.

[00:38:03] You know what I mean?

[00:38:04] That's good.

[00:38:05] Absolutely.

[00:38:06] Right.

[00:38:07] I do consider him a friend.

[00:38:09] He refers to my wife as mom.

[00:38:13] Forgot about that.

[00:38:15] Yeah.

[00:38:15] This looks like.

[00:38:16] Do you call him son?

[00:38:19] Jokingly, yes.

[00:38:21] Which is weird because he's not that much younger than I am.

[00:38:25] At least.

[00:38:27] Years for major highways, months for smaller roads.

[00:38:31] Asheville still does not have water.

[00:38:33] So what's that, three weeks now?

[00:38:37] At least.

[00:38:38] Yeah.

[00:38:39] Not great.

[00:38:41] But, you know, that's just it.

[00:38:42] This can happen probably anywhere.

[00:38:46] Is it going to be a hurricane?

[00:38:47] No.

[00:38:48] Could be an earthquake where you are.

[00:38:50] Could be a tornado.

[00:38:51] Could be a blizzard.

[00:38:52] I mean, not that long ago, I think it was 2010, northern Illinois had a blizzard.

[00:38:57] We got two and a half feet of snow.

[00:38:59] That's a lot of snow.

[00:39:00] My aunt and uncle's house outside of town was out of power for a week and a half.

[00:39:04] Because you just can't get crews through a foot and a half, two feet of snow.

[00:39:09] You know, it takes some serious time to move all that.

[00:39:12] I mean, knowing all.

[00:39:13] I mean, we're talking about tornadoes and hurricanes, earthquakes, all that stuff.

[00:39:17] These are all things that happen on a frequent basis.

[00:39:20] And knowing that, why do you think there's still such a stigma about prepping?

[00:39:28] Someone was peeking at the banners.

[00:39:30] Hey.

[00:39:31] They're there for a reason.

[00:39:33] I think it's because people don't like to admit that they are not in a good place.

[00:39:41] Regardless.

[00:39:42] You see it.

[00:39:43] You see it with people that are in big debt.

[00:39:45] You see it with people that are in the middle of a bad situation, an abusive relationship, anything like that.

[00:39:52] Admitting that you are in that terrible place or that you're in a not great place is really hard.

[00:39:58] Because you have to admit that you have been wrong up until now.

[00:40:01] I think a lot of people are complacent, too.

[00:40:05] They forget very quickly of catastrophic events that have happened.

[00:40:14] A lot of the people, I mean, if you're decentralized from a catastrophic event, you'll think about it.

[00:40:23] You might talk about it for a couple days.

[00:40:25] But after that, life goes on for you, even if it's still affecting somebody else, like the North Carolina hurricane thing going on down there.

[00:40:36] You know, just like you guys were talking about earthquakes and blizzards.

[00:40:45] Two years ago, we had a blizzard come through here in central Virginia.

[00:40:51] It knocked out power to the entire county that I live in.

[00:40:57] And there were parts of the county that were without power for upwards of about four weeks because they just could not get it fixed quick enough.

[00:41:06] We were without power here at our house for three to four days, if I remember right.

[00:41:12] And we have a backup generator.

[00:41:14] It's not a standby that kicks on.

[00:41:16] I have to take it outside and gas it up and turn it on, plug it in.

[00:41:19] But it runs the entire house.

[00:41:21] And I had just enough gas to get us through that four days.

[00:41:26] It goes through about 10 gallons every 12 hours.

[00:41:29] So it uses quite a bit of gas.

[00:41:32] And we were able to get out on the fourth day to go out and get more gas.

[00:41:38] We had to go outside of the county to get it because our local town still did not have power inside the town.

[00:41:45] And there was no Internet.

[00:41:47] Internet, the gas station there actually had to bring in one of their emergency response generators on a tractor trailer, one of the big ones to run the gas pumps there.

[00:41:59] But then they were only taking cash.

[00:42:02] They didn't have any Internet to be able to take credit cards or debit cards or anything like that.

[00:42:08] And then going back to the earthquake of 2011, I live right now pretty much right on top of the epicenter of where that earthquake was in 2011 that affected Virginia and Washington, D.C.

[00:42:22] I did not live here at the time.

[00:42:24] I was still living in Pittsburgh.

[00:42:27] But that was widespread damage around the county here.

[00:42:30] And it was kind of intermittent.

[00:42:33] Some places had a lot of damage around the county.

[00:42:36] Some had none.

[00:42:37] But it was still, I mean, we got two brand new schools out of it, the high school and an elementary school that had to be completely demolished.

[00:42:48] So just my take on localized disasters.

[00:42:53] Jared, how long did it take for school to get back in session after that?

[00:42:56] Do you know offhand now, being that you live in the area now?

[00:42:59] I can't remember.

[00:43:01] I think it was, I think the earthquake happened right around the first part of August in 2011.

[00:43:10] And I think they went back to school once they got kind of reestablished.

[00:43:15] FEMA brought in a lot of trailers for the students.

[00:43:19] You're going to trigger Drew by saying that.

[00:43:22] Right.

[00:43:25] Yeah, the government's going to be spending their money.

[00:43:27] Drew has very strong opinions about FEMA.

[00:43:30] Maybe we'll hear something from FEMA.

[00:43:30] I've never noticed.

[00:43:32] Did you hear me screaming internally?

[00:43:34] I did.

[00:43:35] I could see it on your face.

[00:43:38] Did you see how intently he was looking at the camera just waiting?

[00:43:44] Let it out, Drew.

[00:43:45] It's okay.

[00:43:46] I saw the scene.

[00:43:47] It was a family podcast.

[00:43:50] This is a safe space, Drew.

[00:43:52] And we'll probably, I'll get shadow banned, but it's okay.

[00:43:55] It's fine.

[00:43:56] I think it was at least a month, maybe two months.

[00:43:58] But like I said, I didn't live here at the time.

[00:44:00] So I really can't speak on that.

[00:44:03] I'm surprised it was that quick.

[00:44:06] It was.

[00:44:06] I think they had to take a lot of the students and put them into other schools across the county.

[00:44:15] And they worked pretty diligently on getting them back into school as quickly as they could.

[00:44:22] Nice.

[00:44:23] Yeah, I mean, that was.

[00:44:25] I was just going to say that.

[00:44:26] That's a lot of what they had to do in this area after Hurricane Katrina was they had so many students that lived in, whose families lived in areas that flooded.

[00:44:36] That they displaced up to the north side of Lake Pontchartrain, where I live.

[00:44:41] And they ended up filtering into all of our local public schools.

[00:44:44] So like very, very quickly, we had to open up enrollment mid-year.

[00:44:48] And then we had to like just influx all these kids.

[00:44:53] And it was like, I was at a high school by that point.

[00:44:56] I was actually in Belchase with Louisiana National Guard at the time, but my younger brother was still in high school.

[00:45:01] And it was chaos.

[00:45:03] I mean, it was.

[00:45:05] And that's not to say that like my town didn't get hit by Hurricane Katrina.

[00:45:09] We were just above sea level instead of below it.

[00:45:11] So we didn't take it on the chin quite as bad.

[00:45:16] But, you know.

[00:45:21] Sorry.

[00:45:22] Go ahead.

[00:45:22] I didn't see who was talking.

[00:45:24] I'm going to posit that there is no stigma against prepping.

[00:45:28] Okay.

[00:45:29] I'm interested.

[00:45:31] Here's why I say this.

[00:45:32] How many conversations have you had with people who then say, I'm coming over to your house when something happens?

[00:45:39] Right?

[00:45:39] If you're talking to somebody who's not quite dialed in, they say, I'm coming to your house.

[00:45:42] We can discuss whether that's going to be welcome or not.

[00:45:46] But they don't say, ew, you creepy weirdo get away from me.

[00:45:50] They are actually intrigued by it.

[00:45:51] So there are, I think there's a widespread interest, curiosity about it, even amongst people who aren't interested in preparing themselves.

[00:46:00] What I think we're seeing is not a stigma that prevents people from preparing.

[00:46:05] I think we're seeing more of the face-saving excuses that we were talking about with the, I'm going to be a toilet paper dealer in the apocalypse.

[00:46:16] That's not a real thing.

[00:46:18] It's not a real thing.

[00:46:20] It's a beautiful story that they tell themselves.

[00:46:23] So my friend Jeff, who's a huge fan of your podcast, by the way.

[00:46:28] Let's talk after the show.

[00:46:32] How much did you buy there, Drew?

[00:46:36] Speaking of face-saving excuses.

[00:46:41] Well, anyway, I think we're seeing face-saving excuses.

[00:46:47] I don't think people are not preparing because of this stigma.

[00:46:54] So my friend Jeff, who's a huge fan of your podcast, he sent me a podcast of Jack Spirko last year.

[00:47:00] And he was asking me what I thought of it.

[00:47:01] And he was talking about amateur radio.

[00:47:03] And one of the things that Spirko was talking about was that no normal person can pass the amateur radio exam.

[00:47:10] And that real people have lives and jobs and kids.

[00:47:13] And so you're not a normal person if you take and pass that test.

[00:47:16] And that's absurd.

[00:47:18] I have children and a job.

[00:47:21] And I have obligations.

[00:47:22] I have professional certifications I have to upkeep.

[00:47:25] Somehow I was able to take that test.

[00:47:26] And my wife, who was feeding our infant daughter in the middle of the night while she studied for the test, was somehow able to pass the technician's exam.

[00:47:36] Hamstudy.org.

[00:47:36] I passed the test after a week of dicking around on the internet.

[00:47:40] Right.

[00:47:41] It's really simple knowledge that most adults should probably have anyway.

[00:47:46] So if somebody doesn't want to do that, that's fine.

[00:47:47] But what I believe I was seeing there with a guy who makes it his living to distribute information about preparedness came up with a really beautiful excuse for himself about how he's a normal person.

[00:48:02] He's a more normal person than any of those ham weirdos who take that test that no normal person can pass.

[00:48:08] And so I think it's endemic.

[00:48:12] I think it's a false premise to say that there's a stigma that prevents people from prepping.

[00:48:17] People who value it, who see value in it, who want that, they're going to investigate that.

[00:48:22] And they're going to learn and prepare.

[00:48:25] A lot of people still rely on the government, whether it's local, federal, or county government, or state government, I mean.

[00:48:33] Well, that's a separate issue, that normalcy bias.

[00:48:35] It is.

[00:48:36] It is.

[00:48:37] I don't think those are the same people going, oh, those weirdos.

[00:48:39] I'm not going to do that weird thing.

[00:48:41] But see, Drew, I agree and disagree because I hear what you're saying.

[00:48:46] I'll allow for normalcy bias.

[00:48:48] I'll even allow for the person that says, I pay taxes.

[00:48:51] The government should be here to help me.

[00:48:52] Like, that's a bold strategy, Cotton, but I'll let you have that one.

[00:48:56] But I have personally, individually encountered stigma around preparedness.

[00:49:03] And to my perspective, I think a lot of what has really, like, screwed the preparedness community.

[00:49:09] And I'm going to make an analogy to back when I was still in, like, the car community.

[00:49:14] When the Fast and the Furious came out, overnight, everybody, every freaking high school kid had a wing slapped on the back of his Honda Civic.

[00:49:23] And they were driving like morons all over town.

[00:49:25] So all of a sudden, everybody that modified a car or, you know, like, legitimately street raced, all of a sudden was lumped into that crowd with all the morons with the shopping cart wings on the back of their Honda Civics.

[00:49:36] And it took a decade for the perception in that community to change from neon lights and fiberglass body kits back into modifying cars for high performance use for race on the track or in Mexico or Minecraft.

[00:49:53] And I see a lot of the same thing that happens in the preparedness community sometimes, where sometimes the loudest voices are the nutcases who live in bunkers or in, like, abandoned missile silos.

[00:50:04] And they have rooms full of MREs and cans of ammo, but then they don't have a 401k and a retirement plan.

[00:50:11] You know what I'm saying?

[00:50:12] It kind of sounds awesome, though.

[00:50:13] I mean, it kind of sounds like an awesome man cave, if I'm being honest.

[00:50:18] Like, I would love to have a friend who has stuff like that so I can be invited over.

[00:50:22] But I guess what I'm saying is, like, I do think that there is some stigma cost sometimes because sometimes, like, we may not do the best job possible policing our own community and saying that guy might be preparing his way, but I don't think that's the most rational way to do it.

[00:50:37] That's why a lot of times, like, I try to wrestle these topics back down to earth and say, you can prepare in a way that makes sense and doesn't make you, like, you know, the bearded weirdo living in the woods ready for the apocalypse or the zombies.

[00:50:53] Well, I think, too, is like, like I said before, there are people that are afraid to be wrong and offended by anyone who points who points it out just by their existence.

[00:51:04] Hmm.

[00:51:05] And I will allow I know someone exactly like that.

[00:51:09] Like, yeah, I bet you've all met somebody like that.

[00:51:11] Well, my put it this way, my wife literally unfriended somebody that we knew because every time we would go hang out with this husband and wife, that wife would start chirping in my wife's ear about stupid husband doing prepping, yada, yada, yada, wasting money, wasting time.

[00:51:29] And my wife eventually was my wife.

[00:51:33] Even in your area where people like thousand people drown in Hurricane Katrina and the whole towns go underwater when the levee breaks.

[00:51:40] And even in your area where they have that pain so up close and personal.

[00:51:45] Yep.

[00:51:45] Yeah.

[00:51:46] They still behave that way.

[00:51:47] And as a matter of fact, like this, this family lives in a house that had to be raised, I think, 10 feet because they live in a floodplain.

[00:51:56] I think what you're saying ties into a video you guys did, I guess, about six months ago.

[00:52:01] And it was you were talking about basically people shaming others, which is kind of what you're saying, you know?

[00:52:10] Yeah.

[00:52:10] Like this particular husband's talking about shaming you for being a prepper, essentially.

[00:52:14] And I think that, you know, in that episode, I think you guys mentioned, you know, there's people in the 2A community that will shame other people, basically.

[00:52:24] And I think that's where part of the stigma comes from as well as people just, you know, doing that, unfortunately.

[00:52:30] And that's part of what's wrong with amateur radio right now is we do, unfortunately, have some people that will crap all over you because they don't like the gear you have.

[00:52:40] Or, you know, they don't want to share certain pieces of knowledge with you, for instance.

[00:52:47] And, you know, I don't think it's as prevalent as everyone thinks, but, you know, it's certainly out there.

[00:52:53] And I think that also exists with what you're talking about.

[00:52:56] It doesn't take many people, though, that act that way.

[00:53:00] I mean, you could have one guy at your local ham club, for instance, that just shits on the new guy because the new guy can only afford the $30 radio or the $150 base station.

[00:53:14] Same, I'm sure, happens in car racing and everything else.

[00:53:18] Well, and you guys mentioned people who are perceived as LARPers, for instance, in that podcast episode I was talking about.

[00:53:26] And, you know, it's like I think you mentioned it's LARPing until it isn't.

[00:53:31] It's always LARPing until it isn't.

[00:53:33] Right.

[00:53:34] It's like five seconds after all hell breaks loose, the crazy prepper looks like the smartest guy in the entire parish or county.

[00:53:41] Right.

[00:53:42] But five seconds before the flag went up, he looked like a nutcase that spent way too much money on freeze-dried food and ammunition.

[00:53:48] But five seconds after all hell breaks loose, he looks like a genius.

[00:53:51] Well, everyone in the preparedness community gets lumped into one bucket, you know, frequently.

[00:53:57] So you've got, you know, homesteaders and preppers and just all kinds of different little factions within that, I guess, community, if you want to call it that.

[00:54:05] And, you know, they've all but they all in reality have, you know, basically their own agendas and varying ideas as to, you know, the world that they live in and how they should prepare for it.

[00:54:17] You know, like with the hurricane down in North Carolina, Tennessee and all that, no amount of prepping would have done a lot of those people any good because it just all washed away.

[00:54:29] True.

[00:54:30] Literally the entire, their entire life washed down the hillsides down there.

[00:54:37] And it just, it's just a sad situation in that even the ones that were prepared weren't prepared.

[00:54:46] Yeah, I think that's, that's true.

[00:54:49] There are some situations that are not possible to prepare for if you get hit at ground zero.

[00:54:55] Exactly.

[00:54:56] But that being said, there is one aspect of preparedness that would have saved some of those people.

[00:55:02] And I hesitate to say it because like Eddie knows where I'm coming from because he and I've talked about this offline.

[00:55:08] Like my worry is that I never want, I never want to look at a group of people that went through a disaster and then Monday morning quarterback from the perspective of like you idiots, you should have done what I said and you would have been fine.

[00:55:18] Cause that's not it.

[00:55:19] It's more of a hindsight's 2020.

[00:55:22] We can learn lessons from what happened and we can apply that so we don't get caught in the future.

[00:55:27] But the one thing that a person could have done in that situation was not be on the X.

[00:55:34] Like that's, I think it came so fast and, and out of nowhere that they didn't even, they didn't even know what hit them at first.

[00:55:44] For some.

[00:55:45] Yes.

[00:55:46] But I will say, but I will say this, like my wife and I go through this every year for hurricane season, every hurricane that gets into the Gulf.

[00:55:53] We have to flip the coin in the air and decide, are we going to stay here where we have a hardened structure?

[00:55:59] We have, you know, we have preps, we have a community, we have a support system.

[00:56:03] We have all these things stand stacked in our favor here.

[00:56:07] Or do we load this family up with what we can take into two vehicles and we get the hell out of the way.

[00:56:11] And we have to flip that coin every time a hurricane gets into the Gulf because the wrong decision means we're here for hurricane Ida and a cat for hurricane slams in here and wipes out five zip codes.

[00:56:22] And we're stuck in the middle of it with eight days with no power.

[00:56:26] We made it, we survived, the house survived, but we had a big old bucket of suck to frigging deal with for eight days.

[00:56:35] And for weeks afterwards, because the supply chain was so screwed up.

[00:56:41] I have questioned myself for years since then about, did I make the right decision to stay?

[00:56:46] Should we have bugged out and then come back after it was unwound?

[00:56:49] I don't know.

[00:56:50] Like, it worked out.

[00:56:51] We got away with it.

[00:56:52] We got away with it if it was a bad decision.

[00:56:54] But that is, that is the only thing I can look at that situation and say, like, you're right.

[00:56:59] There is a point where a person, all the prepping in the world will not save you except to admit that this position is not defensible.

[00:57:08] Therefore, we need to relocate.

[00:57:10] Well, wasn't a lot of the damage up in the hills with this hurricane?

[00:57:13] Kind of the area that you would think that you would leave the coastline and go to?

[00:57:17] Might have been pretty difficult to predict.

[00:57:19] Well, it was in areas where historic flooding has occurred.

[00:57:24] Oh, okay.

[00:57:25] Unfortunately.

[00:57:27] Yeah.

[00:57:27] And I'm sure we'll talk more about this when Eddie, the local that we know in that area comes on.

[00:57:33] There were a number of locals and a number of people in that area, even government officials, that were saying, hey, the flooding could get bad if this does get here.

[00:57:43] Now, nobody predicted 25, 30 foot walls of water because that is a serious anomaly.

[00:57:52] But they did predict severe flooding and severe wind damage.

[00:57:57] Yeah.

[00:57:58] I mean, I know that like as early as Tuesday, as early as that Tuesday, they were already predicting like 30 inches of rainfall in Asheville.

[00:58:09] And like I used to, like I was telling people, I'm like 30 inches here where I live is a problem.

[00:58:15] 30 inches in the mountain is a catastrophe because water doesn't stay on top of mountains.

[00:58:20] It goes down into the valleys and then you wind up with like six feet, seven feet, eight feet of water flowing where there were no rivers before.

[00:58:28] Like it's, it's a catastrophe.

[00:58:30] It cannot be mitigated.

[00:58:32] There's no amount of drainage.

[00:58:34] There's no amount of preparedness that will save you from it except to get out of its way.

[00:58:38] It's the only, especially given that the, all the settlements in the area, all the towns in the area are not built on the highland.

[00:58:44] They're built on the low valleys in between.

[00:58:48] Yeah.

[00:58:50] I mean, I'm sure there's probably people that can't escape in certain situations as well.

[00:58:55] You know, and one of the things that you guys have talked about in the past was physical fitness.

[00:59:01] And I think that, you know, if you're into prepping, that's probably got to be one of your top priorities because that could make a dent in whether you survive or not in a situation like that.

[00:59:12] Yeah.

[00:59:14] I have a question for you, Phil.

[00:59:15] Hmm.

[00:59:16] Um, being that you live down in the Gulf and I've never really had to deal with hurricane evacuation.

[00:59:23] With the amount of traffic that is trying to evacuate from an area, how long are you looking at being on the road, trying to evacuate an area with millions of other people doing the same thing?

[00:59:36] So there's not a direct answer to that question because it is dependent upon when you, like how far out from landfall the hurricane is.

[00:59:46] Like if you evacuate, you could have maybe a 10, 15% increase in your evacuation time, time on road.

[00:59:56] If you leave 24 hours earlier, or if you leave 24 hours later, it could double the time you spent on the road.

[01:00:03] Like I know for Hurricane Katrina, my, my entire family and at the time my girlfriend, now my wife, we evacuated ahead of the hurricane.

[01:00:11] But even by the time we left, like it took us, it's normally about a four and a half hour drive to get from where I lived to Southeast Texas, where I had some family.

[01:00:23] And we were on the road for 10 hours.

[01:00:26] And that, that was not unexpected.

[01:00:29] I mean, it took us, I don't even know how many hours just to get across Baton Rouge because you had this huge intersection of like everyone that was on I-12 coming from the east side and everybody from I-10 coming up from New Orleans and it all funneled into Baton Rouge and just turned into a gridlock.

[01:00:44] Right.

[01:00:45] So, I mean, it's, there is no straight answer to that because it depends.

[01:00:51] It depends on when you get on the road.

[01:00:52] If you get on the road early enough, you can, you can make great time and you can get out of the way.

[01:00:56] And, you know, that, that's kind of the, that's kind of the, that coin flip I was talking about earlier with hurricanes is that there is a certain point where if you haven't already gotten on the road and got out of this thing's way, it's too late.

[01:01:09] You will be stuck on the interstate when it comes through.

[01:01:12] So at that point, you're just kind of committed.

[01:01:14] And that was kind of where I was, what I was getting to is, you know, not, not ever being in that situation for having to evacuate for a hurricane there.

[01:01:25] I don't think I would want to be stuck out in the interstate with millions of other people whenever the hurricane hits that, that specific area, because now you are just literally stuck and nowhere to go.

[01:01:37] So raggle, raggle, raggle, sunset bridge and Donaldsonville.

[01:01:44] I actually was coming from, from Slidell at the time.

[01:01:48] So I was nowhere near Donaldsonville.

[01:01:51] Raggle, raggle round is a valid shape.

[01:01:54] Indeed.

[01:01:56] Yeah.

[01:01:58] Terrence, you're right.

[01:02:00] Fitness is huge.

[01:02:02] You know, like I've said before, like I said earlier about being able to stroke a check.

[01:02:08] Well, sometimes that, that check might be just your ability to endure the situation long enough.

[01:02:15] You might not have, you might have to move fast or you might have to move for a long time, but you should try to make yourself capable in either aspect.

[01:02:24] You know, I'm not telling you guys to be an Olympic athlete.

[01:02:27] Look, I'm, I'm as out of shape as most people here.

[01:02:29] I recently dropped like 60 pounds just because I got tired of feeling like crap all the time.

[01:02:37] And you know, it, you will be amazed at how much better you feel on a day to day basis, let alone the benefits in an emergency.

[01:02:48] It's, it's, it's an investment in yourself, just like retirement is an investment in yourself.

[01:02:54] Just like having a couple of weeks or a month worth of food laid up is an investment in yourself and your future.

[01:03:01] Yeah, I totally agree.

[01:03:02] I mean, you're right.

[01:03:04] And, you know, I didn't bring it up to, you know, um, give anyone a hard time or anything.

[01:03:09] It's just, no, no, absolutely not.

[01:03:11] It's just, I, I know that as I get older, you know, it's harder for me to recover from injuries and things.

[01:03:16] You know, I'm, I'm 44.

[01:03:18] So, um, you know, I worked a long time in construction and, you know, I, I don't think I could go back to doing that as a profession.

[01:03:27] And, uh, you know, even if I gotten, you know, killer shape now and I, I just bring it up because it's like, you do need to take care of yourself as you get older.

[01:03:37] Uh, just like you need a savings account and a 401k and you need to, you know, make those adult preps basically.

[01:03:47] And your physical health is certainly one of them because if you, if you die or something, God forbid, you know, you're going to leave your wife and kids and it's going to be it.

[01:03:57] Right.

[01:03:59] You know, and then everything gets harder when your health is worse.

[01:04:05] Especially if you've got like insulin dependent diabetes, something like that.

[01:04:09] Perfect.

[01:04:09] Which can, which can in some cases be reversed by paying attention to fitness and losing some adipose tissue and, or at least, you know, maybe, maybe no longer have to take insulin anymore.

[01:04:21] You can take a different medication potentially by lessening that insulin resistance.

[01:04:25] So if not completely reversed, at least mitigated a little bit, how did you lose 60 pounds?

[01:04:30] What did you do?

[01:04:32] Honestly, all I stopped doing was eating candy and drinking soda.

[01:04:36] Ah, that was it.

[01:04:37] That was really it.

[01:04:38] Well, yeah, dude, sugar is the worst.

[01:04:41] And the cravings for that stuff is nuts.

[01:04:45] And then, you know, got me and my wife were doing a little bit more outdoors.

[01:04:49] Of course, that's all it really was.

[01:04:51] A lot of hiking, a lot of kayaking, stuff like that.

[01:04:53] It wasn't a big change.

[01:04:56] Cut down from two pieces of toast in the morning to one with my eggs and corned beef hash.

[01:05:01] I mean, I still eat a rather extravagant breakfast every morning, but.

[01:05:04] Now, has it shifted into another vice?

[01:05:06] Like, have you taken up smoking?

[01:05:08] No, no, thankfully not.

[01:05:11] But no, it's, it's one of those things that small changes over time can compound into excellent things.

[01:05:17] Just like with finance.

[01:05:19] Just like with learning a new skill.

[01:05:22] Small incremental steps.

[01:05:24] I mean, how many calories are in a can of Dr. Pepper?

[01:05:27] Greg brings up.

[01:05:28] I don't know, probably 220 or something like that.

[01:05:31] That's a tenth of what you need in a day.

[01:05:33] How many people are drinking three to five a day?

[01:05:36] That's actually shockingly, shockingly good estimate.

[01:05:39] I was thinking 240.

[01:05:40] Yeah, just, just a guess.

[01:05:42] 240, 260, something like that.

[01:05:44] But the other thing.

[01:05:46] Go ahead.

[01:05:47] Well, I was going to say, but like the other thing that I think a lot of people discount about paying attention to your fitness and pay attention to what you eat is staying out of the damn doctor's office.

[01:05:56] Yeah.

[01:05:56] Because like that's, that's something that, that's what motivated me personally because like I've been fighting with hypoglycemia since like my late twenties.

[01:06:05] And it's always been one of those things where it's like, I know what that progression is.

[01:06:09] It's hypoglycemia, it's prediabetes.

[01:06:11] And then sooner or later you wind up, you know, you want to go down a path that's not a good place to go.

[01:06:16] And so a lot of my dietary changes was like, cut out the junk food, cut out the sweets, cut the carbs, cut the rice, cut the potatoes.

[01:06:26] And it was never about like, I can never eat these things again because sometimes you just want pizza for God's sakes.

[01:06:31] But it was about, I know if I eat more fats and more proteins, I'll stay fuller longer.

[01:06:37] I won't get the shakes.

[01:06:38] I won't get the cravings.

[01:06:40] And I like, I started making all these small dietary changes really with the goal of, I want to control my blood sugar in a way that doesn't lead down the road of daily medications.

[01:06:50] And I haven't had what I would call like a blood sugar related issue.

[01:06:54] And probably I've had one in the last two years.

[01:06:59] It's fantastic.

[01:07:00] Yeah.

[01:07:01] But here's the thing of it is whether it's I'm overweight, whether it's I eat crap, whether no matter what the problem is, if you pay attention to your health with the simple goal of I want to stay out of doctor's offices and out of hospitals, like that pays dividends in so many different ways.

[01:07:17] Even above and beyond like the preparedness community.

[01:07:20] But just simply the fact that like, like my goal is I get into older age being I just turned 42 the other day.

[01:07:27] But like my goal is to be as capable as I am today for as many years as possible.

[01:07:34] I don't want to be that guy who's 65 years old and has to pay somebody to mow my lawn or has to pay somebody to work on my truck because I can't get out there and rip it apart with my bare hands.

[01:07:43] I want to maintain the same level of strength and endurance.

[01:07:46] I want to maintain the same level of strength and endurance I have for as many years as possible.

[01:07:48] And then I want to fall off to the smallest degree pot that I can over the years.

[01:07:52] But I see way too many people my age with twice the beer belly I have and with half the calluses.

[01:07:59] So I'm just like, I'm not saying we all have to be these blue collar outdoorsy types.

[01:08:05] I'm just saying like, you know, a little bit of attention paid to taking care of our bodies, get it to old age is it'll help a little.

[01:08:15] What do you think about the things we see from folks who I think would identify as preppers where they want to go instead of maybe focus on health and physical fitness.

[01:08:29] They want to eat cinnamon to control their diabetes or take the essential oils.

[01:08:37] I think that is the exact same kind of person that's going to embrace every get rich quick scheme out there instead of control your debt, pay stuff off early and live within your means.

[01:08:48] I think that there's a group of people out there and they branch across all different communities where it is.

[01:08:55] They want the lowest hanging fruit, the lowest effort, the lightest lift possible to do what they think will accomplish their goals.

[01:09:05] And instead of just accepting the fact that sometimes to get what we want involves some pain, involves some work and involves doing without.

[01:09:14] We were talking about finances earlier.

[01:09:16] And the one thing that the one thing that like to me really defines preparedness is this concept of what's called deferred gratification.

[01:09:24] The marshmallow test.

[01:09:26] Yes.

[01:09:27] The marshmallow test.

[01:09:28] But it is the idea that like I want X, but if I don't have it right now, I can have twice as much tomorrow.

[01:09:36] And that is finances.

[01:09:38] That is absolutely your health and your fitness because what would I rather do right now?

[01:09:43] Would I rather sit on my back porch with a whiskey and a cigar and just goof off?

[01:09:47] Or do I really need to get my big butt off the couch and go for a walk or do something productive?

[01:09:53] It is just this constant battle of I want stuff right now or I want easy or I want leisure, but I know I need to do something else.

[01:10:03] And I think that really tends to define people in the preparedness community.

[01:10:06] But like you pointed out, there are those people who they'll eat cinnamon, but they won't stop eating.

[01:10:12] They won't stop drinking Dr. Pepper.

[01:10:14] You can still have those things as long.

[01:10:17] I mean, I shouldn't speak in moderation.

[01:10:19] Well, I mean, I'll have things that, you know, are guilty pleasures, but, you know, I make sure that I earn them.

[01:10:26] You know, I make sure that I at least work out so many times a week or, and I don't mean like lifting weights heavy or anything like that.

[01:10:33] It could just be going for a walk with the dog, you know, go for a hike.

[01:10:37] Yeah.

[01:10:37] Hop in a kayak for a little bit.

[01:10:39] You know, Drew, I think that like what Phil said, there are people that are looking for shortcuts.

[01:10:45] And I think that the medical necessities of others enable shortcuts that at least in their mind for themselves.

[01:10:56] And I think that's kind of where it comes into a little bit.

[01:11:00] You know, shortcuts are like the cinnamon thing.

[01:11:03] I'm sure there's some truth to it, but it's gimmicky.

[01:11:06] It's very gimmicky.

[01:11:08] And there's always some truth or some basis in those gimmicks because it worked for somebody else or they've manipulated it into something that they can work with because it's easy.

[01:11:24] And it's not always, that gimmick's not always going to work for everybody out there.

[01:11:29] It might work for one or two people, but for the masses, it's not going to work.

[01:11:33] In an emergency, it might be a stopgap.

[01:11:36] Exactly.

[01:11:37] Yeah.

[01:11:38] Exactly.

[01:11:40] Yeah, for sure.

[01:11:42] All right, guys.

[01:11:42] Well, let's throw this one last topic.

[01:11:45] If I could just get these freaking buttons in StreamYard to cooperate with me.

[01:11:50] Let's throw this one last thing.

[01:11:51] You need to get a stream deck.

[01:11:53] You do.

[01:11:55] Please don't incentivize any more bad financial decisions.

[01:11:58] Andrew, tell me he needs a stream deck and be a bad influence on him, please.

[01:12:01] I will start harassing him in the private chat.

[01:12:06] Andrew, be nice to me.

[01:12:11] I am not a professional.

[01:12:13] I am.

[01:12:14] You have run a really great podcast so far.

[01:12:19] You haven't messed up once.

[01:12:20] But we still have time.

[01:12:23] We're not done yet.

[01:12:24] We can still lose the audio.

[01:12:27] So let's go around the horn as we wrap this up and answer the question, like, how do we destigmatize preparedness for everyone?

[01:12:35] Because maybe destigmatize isn't the right word.

[01:12:39] Maybe incentivize preparedness for everyone.

[01:12:42] But, like, how do we make preparedness more universal than I think it is?

[01:12:47] Because I even have this debate with, like, my dad.

[01:12:50] My dad would, he would never identify himself as a prepper ever for the rest of his life.

[01:12:57] He, I'd have never heard him call himself that.

[01:13:01] But a lot of the things I've, a lot of the principles, like, I grew up knowing I learned from him.

[01:13:07] Because we always had, like, the box of hurricane food.

[01:13:10] We always had the batteries from the flashlights.

[01:13:11] Like, we always did certain things to get ready for hurricane season.

[01:13:14] I learned all that from him.

[01:13:16] But then when I, when I jokingly said, like, yeah, you were a closet prepper.

[01:13:20] He's like, no, it wasn't.

[01:13:22] And it's, it's one of those things where it's like, I wonder, is it the term?

[01:13:26] Is it a stigma?

[01:13:26] Is it a preconception?

[01:13:28] But how do we, how do we make these, these principles of preparedness universal?

[01:13:33] So that, like, everybody, every household gets into this mind frame.

[01:13:40] You know, 50 years ago, 75 years ago, 100 years ago, this prepper stuff was a way of life for everybody.

[01:13:47] It's how people lived.

[01:13:50] I mean, if you didn't stockpile food 100 years ago, and you didn't eat, you know, during the wintertime, or it was very hard to eat.

[01:14:01] So a lot of this is complacency.

[01:14:06] It is, I don't want to say laziness.

[01:14:10] But technology in the times of today have made prepping, so to speak, not a necessity or anything that people really think about too much anymore.

[01:14:29] Drew, what are your thoughts?

[01:14:31] I'm just going to go, like, left to right, and then we'll loop back around.

[01:14:34] Sure.

[01:14:34] I think we exemplify the positives.

[01:14:37] There's, if somebody were interested about this and they got on YouTube and they typed in prepper, they would probably see a lot of really creepy, weird things that would turn them off.

[01:14:45] And I think we need to reject that.

[01:14:47] But unfortunately, that's what gets the clicks, right?

[01:14:49] That's what really generates the traffic, the thumbnails that are terrifying.

[01:14:53] The doom porn, essentially, is what it is.

[01:14:55] People get this dopamine hit from watching these videos that are basically useless.

[01:15:00] They don't provide any sort of real benefit.

[01:15:02] They have no educational value.

[01:15:05] But if we exemplify the positives of being prepared for, like in your situation, Phil, that hurricane that wipes out 150 miles of infrastructure and how much easier your life is going to be if you just have some basic foresight to prepare for something like that.

[01:15:22] That is a very real and repeatable situation in those areas.

[01:15:28] I think that's how we win the hearts and minds of people.

[01:15:31] We just be normal guys.

[01:15:33] And we present the positives of, you know, in my case, one of the biggest theme of my channel is communications preparedness.

[01:15:43] Constantly, the comms are down here.

[01:15:45] And I'm just a normal guy.

[01:15:46] And I want to be able to communicate with my family.

[01:15:48] And I'm not, I don't perceive that I'm doing anything particularly weird.

[01:15:51] I've just set up a really neat comms system for my family.

[01:15:56] And I try to tell stories of positives whenever we have some sort of positive use of that.

[01:16:01] I was able to help a fellow on the wildland fires this year.

[01:16:05] I was able to help him coordinate some tender response to another wildland fire by using amateur radio over HF.

[01:16:14] And so I made, I shot a really quick video about that.

[01:16:16] I did an interview with him.

[01:16:16] And we talked about it very positive.

[01:16:18] They're just normal guys getting work done.

[01:16:20] And there wasn't any doom porn thumbnail, although I'm sure it would have got a lot more clicks had I stooped to that level.

[01:16:26] But that's how I think we win the hearts and minds of people.

[01:16:30] Show them the positives.

[01:16:31] And I wish more organizations that tried to promote this would do that.

[01:16:36] I understand that there's the amateur radio emergency service.

[01:16:39] And they claim to provide a really essential service for communication in emergencies.

[01:16:44] I haven't ever seen one press release from them talking about a win.

[01:16:49] I would love to see that.

[01:16:50] Sell me on why your service is beneficial and why I should participate in this.

[01:16:57] But I haven't seen it.

[01:16:59] So they haven't won me over.

[01:17:02] Well, we hear about success stories here and there, but...

[01:17:07] Do we?

[01:17:07] I can't think of a single one.

[01:17:09] I'm really excited to hear...

[01:17:10] If you look at the ARL news feed, sometimes they'll post little stories like that.

[01:17:16] Like there was one where some guy helped save some other guy's life.

[01:17:21] But I don't know.

[01:17:22] Every time there's a natural disaster or something, you know, HF or whatever, it's all people asking for signal reports.

[01:17:32] Right.

[01:17:33] And so they have the hurricane net.

[01:17:34] Very rarely are you hearing...

[01:17:38] Go ahead.

[01:17:39] So I was listening to the hurricane net and I was waiting to hear like somebody calling for resources for a team or something of that nature.

[01:17:47] All I heard was people talking about the weather.

[01:17:50] So if they did do some positives, maybe I just didn't hear it.

[01:17:53] I'm really looking forward to the after action from that.

[01:17:55] But promote it.

[01:17:57] Promote the positive.

[01:17:58] Maybe we missed it.

[01:17:59] I didn't hear anyone calling for assistance or mutual aid either.

[01:18:04] And...

[01:18:04] Even handling resource requests, processing resource requests would have been great.

[01:18:09] And maybe a lot of that happened behind the scenes on WinLink and systems that we aren't going to see typically, but...

[01:18:15] Could have been.

[01:18:16] Possibly.

[01:18:18] But, you know, in this type of culture, we don't often just put ourselves out there.

[01:18:24] We're not often out there for self-promotion.

[01:18:26] And so a lot of people keep to themselves.

[01:18:28] So that even is a...

[01:18:30] That's a stumbling block to getting the word out there as well.

[01:18:36] Terrence, what do you think?

[01:18:39] I think you're right about normalizing it, Drew, for sure.

[01:18:42] And I think that one of the ways that you do that is make it relatable.

[01:18:49] I think, you know, you guys in the Matter of Facts podcast, you do a great job of doing that by, you know, putting it in terms of finances.

[01:18:58] And that's something that everyone can relate to or should, in theory, be able to.

[01:19:05] And I think the other part of that is probably not going outside of, you know, your experience.

[01:19:10] And so I think that's when we see things like Drew mentioned about, you know, some of the fear porn stuff.

[01:19:17] You know, they're just throwing out videos to get clicks.

[01:19:20] And they're not necessarily substantive.

[01:19:23] They're not really informative videos.

[01:19:25] They're just scaring people.

[01:19:28] But certainly...

[01:19:29] It's more of an entertainment thing than an educational thing.

[01:19:32] But certainly normalizing it through making it relatable, I think, is probably one of the keys to success.

[01:19:41] Nick, what do you think?

[01:19:42] I think a big one that a lot of people will overlook because of the push for OPSEC that you see online is helping your neighbors.

[01:19:54] We had a nasty ice storm last winter.

[01:20:00] We lost power for three, four days around me.

[01:20:03] My neighbor up the hill from me didn't have a generator.

[01:20:08] So I was shuttling water to and from her house for her and her daughter.

[01:20:13] Made her life easier.

[01:20:15] You know what she did?

[01:20:16] The second we had power back on, she called me up and said,

[01:20:21] Who made your generator and how do I get one installed in my house?

[01:20:25] Because it made my life and hers because I had one so much easier.

[01:20:31] Now, I don't know if she got one installed.

[01:20:33] She said she was going to.

[01:20:35] I believe her.

[01:20:35] She's a pretty honest gal.

[01:20:37] But I think, you know, similar to what Drew said, share the wins.

[01:20:43] Share the wins.

[01:20:45] Show your neighbors that it's working.

[01:20:47] You know, my neighborhood has, well, we're out in the boonies and out of the, let's say there's 16, 18 houses out by me.

[01:20:57] Better than two thirds have standby generators.

[01:21:00] So we knew when we bought this house, we were probably going to need one.

[01:21:05] So, took a look around, saw what everybody else was doing, thought, all right, I'm not going to be the idiot without one.

[01:21:11] Bought one right off the rip.

[01:21:13] Had a generator panel installed by my electrician buddy.

[01:21:18] And that helped.

[01:21:19] And that was able to help our neighbor up the hill for me.

[01:21:24] I think little things like that.

[01:21:27] I didn't give her a lecture on why she needed a generator.

[01:21:31] I didn't give her a lecture on why she was wrong.

[01:21:34] I said, hey, I don't hear a generator up at your house.

[01:21:38] Do you need anything?

[01:21:40] And I help you.

[01:21:42] And I was able to help her.

[01:21:44] It's not doomsday.

[01:21:46] I'm not going to run out of propane.

[01:21:48] My generator happens to run on propane so I can store quite a lot more than I can of gasoline, which is very nice.

[01:21:55] I approach from a what can I do to help perspective.

[01:22:00] And I think that broke through to her without a lecture.

[01:22:04] Nobody likes getting lectured.

[01:22:06] They really don't.

[01:22:08] What do you think, Andrew?

[01:22:13] The first thing that we need to get away from is the zombie shows.

[01:22:18] And, I mean, you still hear people talk about Doomsday Preppers like it was just on yesterday.

[01:22:24] That stuff was entertainment.

[01:22:26] Doomsday Preppers especially was entertainment.

[01:22:29] And I think that actually did worse for the prepping community than help.

[01:22:34] It made people look at the prepping community and have that bad idea of what it entails because you see these people.

[01:22:43] The TV show demonized pretty much did a good job of just demonizing it.

[01:22:47] Made these people look weird kind of thing.

[01:22:49] So that's the kind of stigmatism or stigmatization, whatever the freaking word is.

[01:22:55] And so the biggest thing, though, is taking, okay, like, I mean, Uncle Randy, again, my Uncle Randy, what's your zombie?

[01:23:04] He took the Walking Dead and, you know, the whole zombie show.

[01:23:09] And he's, what's your zombie?

[01:23:12] I mean, for Phil, it's a hurricane.

[01:23:14] For me, it's snow.

[01:23:14] For, you know, Nick, it might be.

[01:23:16] It's something different.

[01:23:18] And so that's the thing, and that's what cracks me up is back when I, one of my old roommates I lived with, we had an apartment.

[01:23:25] Michigan, we got hit.

[01:23:26] I mean, we didn't even get hit with it.

[01:23:28] It was just the meteorologists were like, we're going to get 17 inches of snow.

[01:23:31] And people started panicking.

[01:23:33] We looked at the coverage.

[01:23:34] We're like, what are we missing?

[01:23:37] Whiskey and Coke.

[01:23:38] So we went to the store.

[01:23:40] And while people are panic buying bread, milk, I mean, cereal, all kinds of other stuff, we walked around.

[01:23:48] I'm like, I like this whiskey.

[01:23:49] So we grabbed a fifth.

[01:23:50] He grabbed, you know, I grabbed a fifth.

[01:23:51] He grabbed a fifth.

[01:23:52] And we grabbed some Coke.

[01:23:52] And we rode out the storm.

[01:23:54] I mean, and we only end up getting, like, maybe eight inches or so, if that.

[01:23:58] But we ended up riding the storm out.

[01:23:59] And we were fine.

[01:24:03] But we, I lived with another friend of mine that we lost power.

[01:24:09] And both my roommates came home.

[01:24:10] And I'm making chili.

[01:24:12] And they're like, well, how are you making chili?

[01:24:13] We have an electric range.

[01:24:15] And I go, my camp stove.

[01:24:17] Like, I pulled my camp stove out.

[01:24:19] I was making chili.

[01:24:21] So stuff like that.

[01:24:22] And so what's your zombie?

[01:24:23] And then take that and then normalize it.

[01:24:25] And how can people relate to it?

[01:24:27] So, and it's not necessarily saying you guys need to do this.

[01:24:30] You guys need to have four years of food and water and all this stuff set up.

[01:24:33] It's, it's like, what can I do to get through and make it?

[01:24:36] Because honestly, if you look at the preparedness lifestyle, like my girlfriend and I, we've been talking about doing next year.

[01:24:44] We really want to do a garden.

[01:24:46] Get a garden installed at her place.

[01:24:49] And we were looking at doing some chickens, some meat chickens that in the spring to butcher and put away.

[01:24:56] And a bunch of stuff.

[01:24:57] And okay, well, what can we do?

[01:25:00] I'm, unfortunately, my, like my smoker, my smoker broke down.

[01:25:03] So I had to order a new panel for that.

[01:25:06] So once I get my smoker up, we're talking about taking, like buying some meats, buying all kinds of stuff.

[01:25:10] And we're going to smoke it.

[01:25:12] And then we're going to, we're going to put it away for, for over the winter and stuff like that.

[01:25:17] We're, her and I were trying to, we're looking at getting into, like, we want to get into canning and everything.

[01:25:21] And so that kind of stuff, it's just like with the groceries, the price of groceries and everything right now, you can take, that you can take somebody and say, okay.

[01:25:29] And like with the average price of groceries on a, just an average, just going to the store once for a family of two or three, it's, it's astronomical.

[01:25:40] Like, and it's crazy.

[01:25:41] And so if you're, you know, and if you sit there and you kind of break it down to them and say, well, if you guys, if you guys did this, this, and this, well, we live in an apartment.

[01:25:47] Okay. Well, you can still, you can still grow food in an apartment.

[01:25:51] It's a little harder.

[01:25:53] It might be a little harder, but you can still do it.

[01:25:54] People do it a lot.

[01:25:56] And if you, especially the community farming and stuff like that.

[01:25:59] So just break it down to them and just try to relate to everyday issues that's going on and just relate to how, if they were to do this one thing, what could it do?

[01:26:09] And how could it make things easier on them in the future?

[01:26:12] And I think that's how we kind of get through that.

[01:26:14] Yeah.

[01:26:17] And to round out the way I think we do stigmatize preparedness is why do I see Andrew big as hell on my screen all of a sudden?

[01:26:25] There goes the professionalism.

[01:26:27] There it went.

[01:26:28] It was very well lasted.

[01:26:31] It was a great illusion while it held out.

[01:26:34] So I think we beat the stigma by everyone who counts themselves as a member of this community meeting everyone who wants to join this mindset, meeting them where they're at.

[01:26:46] Like, you're going to have those people who, based on, let's say, budget constraints, they can afford this, but they can't afford that.

[01:26:54] Guide them towards the things they can actually attain financially instead of pushing them towards the things that are so far out of their grasp they just give up.

[01:27:02] If you have a person who's concerned about flooding, help them figure out a preparedness plan that accounts for that.

[01:27:08] If you have a person who, let's say, certain parts of the country, certain social circles might be a little squeamish around firearms.

[01:27:16] Rather than just write them off and say, well, if you don't get a gun, then you're not a prepper.

[01:27:21] Like, meet that person where they are and try to bring them along.

[01:27:24] You might find that over time, you might bring them more and more into your lifestyle to where they start to regard things they once regarded a certain way differently.

[01:27:35] Kind of like we were talking about earlier with the ham radio community.

[01:27:38] That one loudmouth can run off a whole bunch of newbies by telling them, if you bought a Baofang, it's junk, and you shouldn't be here.

[01:27:46] Or you need to go buy a $200 Kenwood or a Yasu or you're not part of the club.

[01:27:52] As opposed to saying, hey, just so you know, this is good to get your feet wet.

[01:27:57] Down the road, you might want to invest in better equipment.

[01:27:59] But for right now, you're in the game.

[01:28:01] Like, let's figure out how to get this program.

[01:28:03] Let's get you running.

[01:28:04] I feel like if we as a community make an effort to meet people where they are and take them from wherever they're at and bring them to where they need to be in a welcoming, non-judgmental, non-gatekeeping way, I really think we can make preparedness more universal and less of a stigma.

[01:28:23] And we don't create this really exclusive club where you have to wear the right clothes and speak the right language or you're not part of the group.

[01:28:32] Because, like, the story I tell from prepper camp several years ago was when I first went to that event, it looked like a bunch of people that were into preparedness.

[01:28:43] And then a couple of years ago, after COVID, we started seeing all kinds of people showing up that didn't seem like preppers.

[01:28:50] I sat in a class that was about small unit movement tactics taught by a former Army Ranger.

[01:28:57] I was sitting behind an older lady, probably in her mid-late 50s, looked like she was dressed to go to a PTA meeting wearing flats and a silk blouse and pearls.

[01:29:07] She was taking freaking notes on how to assemble a fire team.

[01:29:13] She stood out like a sore thumb.

[01:29:16] Good for her.

[01:29:17] No one believed.

[01:29:18] Damn right.

[01:29:19] But here's the thing of it.

[01:29:20] No one gave her any crap.

[01:29:22] No one said a crossways word to her.

[01:29:24] Everyone said, you're interested in this?

[01:29:27] Cool, let's move you forward.

[01:29:29] And I think that there were there.

[01:29:33] If ever there was that moment where someone was going to say, you don't belong here, that's an opportunity for the rest of us to smack the gun back in the head and say, everyone belongs here.

[01:29:42] Everyone belongs here.

[01:29:43] Everybody, you know, we all we all need the same couple of things to survive for the next five minutes.

[01:29:50] So let's just figure out how to get everybody those things.

[01:29:57] And we only had one booger up on this whole hour and a half long show.

[01:30:01] I think that's a win.

[01:30:04] It was good.

[01:30:05] I think so.

[01:30:06] So and I know you guys think that comms are sorcery and I'm referring to a couple of episodes.

[01:30:11] So if you ever need any help with comms, the three of us are more than happy to jump in and help you.

[01:30:17] We definitely do.

[01:30:19] Jared and Drew, I volunteered you guys along with myself.

[01:30:22] So fantastic.

[01:30:24] I have a hard time staying interested in comms.

[01:30:26] Kind of going back to the very beginning of the show is I have my I have my ham license and I have two Bay of Fangs.

[01:30:33] I think I have a Yesu somewhere in a box from when I moved like two years ago to my house.

[01:30:38] It's still somewhere.

[01:30:40] I don't know where it's at, but I know I got it.

[01:30:42] And I used to be on search and rescue and we had to have our ham license and got into it, got into it, got out of it, got my I renewed my license.

[01:30:52] Was thinking, yeah, I want to get back into it.

[01:30:54] Took a good ham class intro to ham kind of thing.

[01:30:57] And I was like, OK, cool.

[01:30:59] This is going to be good.

[01:31:00] And it's just life got in the way.

[01:31:02] And it's one of those things that got put in the back burner.

[01:31:05] So it's it's one of those things that it's like, man, it sounds really fun.

[01:31:09] And, you know, we got the license.

[01:31:11] That's the hard part.

[01:31:12] Yeah, you did.

[01:31:13] The biggest hurdle.

[01:31:14] I mean, comms can suck if you don't have anyone to talk to.

[01:31:18] But if you've got people to talk to, it's a lot of fun.

[01:31:21] Yeah, that's my biggest thing.

[01:31:22] I have nobody to talk to up here.

[01:31:24] I think there is a local there is a local ham group.

[01:31:29] I guess I mean, maybe I need to look into it or something, but it's just one of those things.

[01:31:32] I just never.

[01:31:34] Yeah, I don't know.

[01:31:35] I just don't know.

[01:31:35] One of the things that I hear a lot of people that discourages them is that, you know, I've got my license.

[01:31:41] You know, I'll get on a repeater, you know, locally.

[01:31:44] But that's it as far as, you know, it's as far as a lot of people go.

[01:31:48] And it's unfortunate, you know, that there's not enough people trying to advocate.

[01:31:55] Here's what the next step should be.

[01:31:58] And keeping people interested.

[01:32:00] And, you know, I hope radio doesn't die someday.

[01:32:04] And, you know, the few of us that are left that are actually trying to, you know, make it positive and make for a positive experience.

[01:32:12] Hopefully that'll be enough to kind of keep the ball rolling.

[01:32:15] You know, repeaters aren't where it's all at either.

[01:32:18] You know, I can't remember the last time I talked on a repeater.

[01:32:23] I use VHF, UHF, Simplex, and Sideband and make contacts all the time.

[01:32:33] So I think there's a lot of stigma that if you're, if you get your hand license that you're restricted to repeaters.

[01:32:39] And I'm not against repeaters by any means.

[01:32:41] I just, I don't use them very often, especially here at the shack.

[01:32:47] When I'm mobile, once in a while I'll get on a repeater.

[01:32:50] If I'm bored and can't find anything to listen to on YouTube or whatever while I'm driving.

[01:32:57] But with a tech license, you can get on six meters, I believe.

[01:33:02] And also 10 meter for data.

[01:33:05] Right.

[01:33:05] I think I'd have to go back.

[01:33:07] Well, you can do voice on 10 meters with a tech license.

[01:33:11] Yeah, I think, yeah, you're probably right.

[01:33:13] Yeah.

[01:33:13] Yeah.

[01:33:14] You know, but it takes, it does take a financial commitment because there's equipment involved.

[01:33:19] And some of it's not cheap.

[01:33:21] And, and I think people are overwhelmed with the information that they're given, even if they just have their tech license.

[01:33:32] And they're really not that aware of what all they're, they're capable of doing with that license.

[01:33:39] So.

[01:33:40] I think you're right.

[01:33:41] That's why I say repeaters aren't where it's at all the time.

[01:33:43] Yeah.

[01:33:44] I think you're right, Jared.

[01:33:45] And a lot of people, when they start out, you know, their first question is, you know, what radio do I get?

[01:33:50] And it's like, well, what are your goals?

[01:33:52] What do you want to do?

[01:33:53] What are you looking?

[01:33:53] Yeah.

[01:33:54] What do you want to do with it?

[01:33:54] Who do you want to talk to?

[01:33:57] And, you know, someone that you want to talk to is pretty close by, you know, maybe talking on the repeater will work.

[01:34:04] But if they're several hundred miles away, then you're looking at like HF.

[01:34:08] Right.

[01:34:10] Or what do you think?

[01:34:11] I don't, I don't think people realize or really know how to answer that question.

[01:34:16] They're interested in it.

[01:34:17] But they don't know what the capabilities of radio are.

[01:34:22] They don't know everything that's out there, what all you can do with it.

[01:34:26] So they don't really have any answer for themselves as to what they want to do with it because they don't know what it's capable of.

[01:34:34] Andrew, what do you think it would take to get your girlfriend interested in getting an amateur radio license?

[01:34:39] Because who cares about talking to randos on a repeater about their colonoscopies and the weather?

[01:34:44] Or, I mean, really, the utility is being able to stay connected with the people closest to us.

[01:34:50] So is that something that she'd be interested in?

[01:34:54] Probably not.

[01:34:55] I'd have to talk to her.

[01:34:56] I don't know if she would be or not.

[01:34:57] But, I mean, like my parents, that's the biggest thing is, I mean, my parents are roughly two hours away, give or take.

[01:35:05] And so it'd be nice to be able to reach them if needed.

[01:35:10] Sure.

[01:35:10] And that was one of my main goals is reach them.

[01:35:14] And, I mean, they don't have, like, I mean, I'm sure they could probably get their ham license.

[01:35:18] And I know my aunt went through the whole thing and she got her ham license.

[01:35:22] And so it'd be really good.

[01:35:24] And she lives over, she lives next to my, you know, close to my parents.

[01:35:26] So it'd be really nice to get a system or do something to learn how to, you know, talk to her and communicate in case something were to happen.

[01:35:34] So I think one of the best ways to learn is...

[01:35:37] I think I'm together now.

[01:35:38] Yeah.

[01:35:39] I was going to say one of the best ways to learn is probably just getting into GMRS.

[01:35:42] And, Jared, you mentioned linking GMRS repeaters or something.

[01:35:46] Yeah.

[01:35:47] I was being suspicious because there was a big thing about linking GMRS repeaters.

[01:35:51] There was.

[01:35:52] Yeah.

[01:35:52] Yeah.

[01:35:53] Well, actually, if you go to mygmrs.com, they've got a linked system.

[01:35:58] There's, like, a map or there was.

[01:36:00] I don't know if they still have it.

[01:36:02] So the map you're referring to...

[01:36:03] I don't know if they got a letter from the FCC or not, but...

[01:36:05] Okay.

[01:36:06] So since I am very deep in GMRS, I think the map you're referring to is probably not all linked repeaters.

[01:36:12] It's just their database of repeaters that are nationwide.

[01:36:15] But I know that, like, several of the big linked systems have voluntarily taken themselves offline since the FCC is now chirping that it's not permitted.

[01:36:28] That's the thing they finally care about.

[01:36:30] Jeez.

[01:36:31] Yeah.

[01:36:31] And you're right.

[01:36:31] So there's a map where you can filter and see what repeaters are in your area.

[01:36:37] But at one time, they were touting some sort of linked system and talking about the equipment and some of the forms, you know, that you could use to do so.

[01:36:44] There were a couple of Roadkill Radio Network was...

[01:36:47] Because they operate one of the repeaters down in New Orleans.

[01:36:50] And I know before they delinked that system, like, I was talking to people all around the country.

[01:36:58] There were people setting them up on Zillow, too.

[01:37:01] Mm-hmm.

[01:37:03] Interesting.

[01:37:04] Neither here nor there, though.

[01:37:05] I mean, like I said, GMRS wound up being the radio service I bought into, mostly because if I can't talk to my wife and my daughter on it, then the utility for it for me goes down really fast.

[01:37:15] And I'm not going to convince my wife to spend the time or the effort to get a ham radio license.

[01:37:22] Especially when you consider the fact that, like, a technician class license, I can get most of the capabilities of that in GMRS.

[01:37:32] 100%.

[01:37:32] Being all UHF.

[01:37:35] Right.

[01:37:35] I mean, as it stands, I forget...

[01:37:39] I know who, Terrence, you and I talked about, but, like, I built a MANPAC radio system and I have a 40-foot telescoping mast.

[01:37:45] So I was able to sit in my backyard on battery power and tag the repeater in New Orleans 34 miles away.

[01:37:53] And you're one of the few people I've seen that actually built a MANPAC for that utility for that reason, other than people just doing it because it's a fun, cool thing to do.

[01:38:04] I mean, I like to build them, too, but, like, you actually do have a purpose for what you built, which is good.

[01:38:11] Yeah.

[01:38:11] Do you think we're going to see the FCC allow data modes on GMRS at higher wattages here in the future or even data modes over a repeater?

[01:38:21] That'd be outstanding.

[01:38:22] Honestly, I don't think the FCC is going to go down that road.

[01:38:25] And I think even if they do, I think the community is...

[01:38:28] I don't think the community is going to embrace it.

[01:38:31] Because what I've seen at the GMRS community, and we're going, like, way off topic, but y'all got me there.

[01:38:37] You're welcome.

[01:38:37] What I'm seeing in the GMRS community is this huge schism that's developed where, like, half of them want to push the radio service to do more and have greater capabilities.

[01:38:49] And the other half are continuing to trot out this line of, well, if you want to do that, you should get a ham license.

[01:38:58] And I see that big split in the community where, like, half say, why don't we push to be able to do more with this?

[01:39:05] And why don't we do more experimental?

[01:39:07] And the other half is just kind of, like, not embracing that.

[01:39:11] Well, the half that wants more, you know, features and privileges just form a lobbyist group like the ARL and go lobby your politicians.

[01:39:23] Oh, just what I wanted to hear.

[01:39:28] The idea of lobbying anybody for anything just makes my stomach twist.

[01:39:34] Even though I'm mature enough to understand that's probably how things get done in this world.

[01:39:38] But I still don't like any part of it.

[01:39:40] Being that they can't even update their website from 1942, the FCC, I don't see them ever doing anything with GMRS.

[01:39:49] Have you guys, I mean...

[01:39:51] They have their original 1942 website?

[01:39:53] Is that what I just heard?

[01:39:55] I do believe.

[01:39:57] Their website to get logged in and go through that licensing process is a little bit clunky.

[01:40:05] A little bit clunky.

[01:40:07] I'm trying to be nice.

[01:40:09] Trying to be a nice guy over here.

[01:40:10] Do you know what the joke is in the GMRS community?

[01:40:13] That the FCC's website is the test.

[01:40:17] Yeah.

[01:40:19] Like, if you can navigate their website, you can have a license.

[01:40:23] That's...

[01:40:23] Congratulations.

[01:40:25] You know, and one of the Facebook GMRS pages or whatever, I put out a while back that if you guys don't like the website, because everybody complains about it, talk to your congressmen.

[01:40:38] You know, they're the ones that are going to get the FCC to update the website if anyone is.

[01:40:45] And basically, I was just laughed at.

[01:40:48] And they said, well, we just won't get a license.

[01:40:51] We're just going to operate without a license.

[01:40:52] Their website is a deterrent.

[01:40:55] It is.

[01:40:56] To such a degree that, like...

[01:40:58] Yeah.

[01:40:58] I wrote out, and I post this on my website.

[01:41:02] There's like a blog that I did about it.

[01:41:03] But I wrote out the actual instructions on how to navigate their website because so many people were like, what do I do with this?

[01:41:10] And it could be better for sure.

[01:41:14] Absolutely.

[01:41:15] Yeah.

[01:41:17] All right, guys.

[01:41:18] Well, it's been an hour and 40 minutes, and I'm surprised my wife hasn't knocked on the door and, like, checked for signs of life.

[01:41:24] She's either ignoring me or she's watching me.

[01:41:27] Either would be well-

[01:41:29] She's studying for her ham test.

[01:41:30] There you go.

[01:41:31] You know what?

[01:41:32] If she is, I'll be impressed, and she'll probably beat me to it.

[01:41:36] But I don't think so.

[01:41:39] But anyway.

[01:41:40] Okay.

[01:41:41] Left to right, Jared, Drew, Terrence, where can the listeners check out y'all's content?

[01:41:46] Even though it's kind of, you know, for those of you who are watching, it's on the screen.

[01:41:51] But we also have audio-only listeners who can't see what channels y'all run.

[01:41:58] So my channel, 2AlphaSolutions, it's on YouTube.

[01:42:03] It's the number two.

[01:42:04] And then Alpha spelled out in Solutions.

[01:42:08] Like I said, there's not much on my channel.

[01:42:11] There's a little bit.

[01:42:12] I have grand plans of making videos, but my everyday work keeps me pretty busy.

[01:42:20] So I don't get a big chance to make videos like I want to.

[01:42:25] But I do have some videos on a crossband repeater.

[01:42:30] Some of those tactical TRI PRC-152 radios.

[01:42:34] I was doing a tutorial on them.

[01:42:36] I do have some more videos that I'm going to do on those as well.

[01:42:40] I think I have two of them out.

[01:42:43] If you want to check out my radio shack that I have here, it's on my channel.

[01:42:48] I have a, I think it's a 20 or 30-minute video of a tour of my shack and my tower setup that I have outside.

[01:42:56] I have about a 100-foot tower.

[01:42:58] Nice.

[01:42:59] With all my antennas.

[01:43:01] And then actually I built it so it can lay over flat.

[01:43:05] A friend of mine brings his tow truck over.

[01:43:08] And I made this big lifting and lowering device contraption for it that I fabricated and welded and everything.

[01:43:15] And we used the winch on his tow truck to lower it and raise it back up.

[01:43:18] So it's kind of a cool thing.

[01:43:20] But two Alpha solutions.

[01:43:24] Nice.

[01:43:26] Drew?

[01:43:27] Well, Phil, Andrew, Nick, thank you so much for having us on.

[01:43:29] This was a lot of fun.

[01:43:30] It was great meeting you guys.

[01:43:31] I'm Drew.

[01:43:32] And viewers can find me at YouTube at TerminalElement.

[01:43:38] Or you can go to TerminalElement.com and it will redirect right to my YouTube channel.

[01:43:41] I also have an X and Instagram with a small following.

[01:43:44] I make videos and tell some stories about calls sometimes.

[01:43:48] And I have a lot of fun doing it.

[01:43:50] So come check me out.

[01:43:51] Nice.

[01:43:55] Terrence, last but not least.

[01:43:57] So mine is Partisan Comms Group.

[01:44:00] You can find me on YouTube.

[01:44:01] I also have a website.

[01:44:03] It's PartisanComsGroup.com.

[01:44:05] And sometimes I'll post some blogs on there every once in a while if I find something that I think is worthy of it.

[01:44:12] And again, to echo Drew, thank you guys for inviting us on.

[01:44:18] It was a lot of fun.

[01:44:19] Yeah, I appreciate y'all joining us tonight.

[01:44:21] I really did not expect this to go an hour and 45 minutes.

[01:44:26] I expected it to go long.

[01:44:28] Yeah, I didn't expect it to go this long.

[01:44:32] I got a lot to say.

[01:44:33] You get this many podcasters, content creators together.

[01:44:37] And I guess chatting is going to come with the territory.

[01:44:40] But we'll go ahead and punt this one out the door for the eight people that stuck around to the end.

[01:44:45] I'm impressed.

[01:44:46] Y'all need therapy.

[01:44:48] But thank you for hanging around.

[01:44:50] I think one's your wife, dude.

[01:44:53] No, she probably signed off an hour ago.

[01:44:58] All right.

[01:44:58] Guys, stick around with me for just one minute while the outro and everything clears so I can make sure we get your audio.

[01:45:03] And we'll talk to everybody in another week.

[01:45:06] Bye, everybody.

[01:45:07] Later.

[01:45:08] See ya.

[01:45:08] Thanks for having us.

[01:45:09] Bye.