Matter of Facts: Don't Forget

[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 and Nick are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show.

[00:00:30] Yep, welcome back to the shit show. Nick is with me. Andrew is not. Last I talked to Andrew was the other night. He told me he joined a hippie commune, gave away all of his guns, and I think they said they were going to promote him. to the head Kool-Aid mixer, whatever that is. Must drink a lot of sugary drinks in that little hippie commune. But yeah, he seems like he's doing what he's doing with his night vision. Only in this... Hey, look, the other hosts got discount night vision.

[00:00:59] It wasn't that much of a discount. It never is. It never is. No, if that, that, that deal was a, tell me what you, tell me what you think is fair and I won't complain about it. And that'll be that. Mm-hmm. Oh yeah, for something like that, especially with the hours he had on him, that was... Either way, it was gonna work out good. Oh yeah, and I mean, it let him upgrade to duels, which made him incredibly happy. So you know, I'm always happy to help a friend.

[00:01:27] But let's do the admin work really fast. We have one little mini debate because we started in the patron chat. I'm curious how me and Nick are going to come down on probably the exact same side of that issue. Maybe, maybe. And then we'll get to the topic, which is don't forget. Because, you know, we've all had that experience of forgetting things. And then later on down the road, we realized we forgot things and sometimes feeling pretty fricking stupid for having forgotten the thing.

[00:01:54] So I'm hoping the listeners can appreciate the fact that we're like being very vulnerable and open and saying, hey, we screwed up. Learn from our mistakes, not your own. It's much less painful to do it that way. And less expensive. Yeah, less expensive, less painful, less unfortunate. Doesn't always make for the best stories though, to hear about, oh yeah, my friend told me don't do that. So I didn't like doing it anyway is usually a better story. More entertaining. Especially for the friends.

[00:02:23] Oh yeah. Yeah, there's a, there's a video somewhere of me getting lit on fire on YouTube. If you guys dig around deep enough. We were, so we were having a bonfire at my parents' place and I had just learned how to mix thermite. Holy Jesus, Nick. Oh yeah. It was great. You just, it just goes from like rainy, dark shot to a silhouette of me in pure white. So nowhere near that entertaining.

[00:02:51] But before I get to the admin work, you'd since now you've made me think about it. Me and a bunch of idiot friends on one particular holiday that I don't recall which one, but it's one that involves lots of fireworks. And in this case, it involved lots of fireworks, me and three stupid friends. Oh, no adult supervision. Well, we were all over the age of 18, but no responsible adult supervision. No adulty adults. And a quite a bit of alcohol.

[00:03:17] And we got the bright idea to buy a firework stand out of sparklers. That'll do it. And then we duct tape them all together so that they were like, I don't know, two feet in diameter about the size of a small tree trunk. And we dug a hole in my friend's front yard. And we made a sparkler bomb. Hold up a second. Don't be even to the punchline. We weren't smart enough to make a sparkler bomb. Oh, good gosh. So we put them in the hole. We pulled the one in the middle out, lit it on fire. And then we took several steps back.

[00:03:46] And once the fireworks started, we took several more steps back. But yeah, that what happened wasn't a bomb because in order for it to be a bomb, you need like to contain the pressure. And we didn't really do that because we left the top open. So what happened was that sparkler burned out a little bit, then it lit the ones around it. And those lit the ones around that and so on, so on, so on until you have like a two foot diameter, like rack of sparklers all burning at the same time.

[00:04:14] It made a flame as tall as the roof of my friend's house. It sounded like a jet engine firing. It was fantastic. It was equal parts amazing and terrifying. Like there was a brief moment in that where I just looked at that and sheer terror was like, oh, Christ, what have we done? You know, you can light dirt on fire if you get it hot enough. Yes, Nick, I actually do. Oh, my wife just commented it was New Year's Eve. Oh, yeah, it's perfect time to do something like that.

[00:04:44] Yeah, she she saw the video of it, which I thankfully don't think is on YouTube anymore. But yeah, as soon as they finally burn its way out, some idiot friend of mine was shouting, put it out with gasoline. We stopped him. We stopped him. But make it so much better. Yeah. If there's a way to make that entire tragedy any better. Oh, there's always a way to make it better. But anyway, so patrons, if you'd like to be a patron, support our insanity.

[00:05:15] I'm not promising you any more fireworks related mayhem, but you might hear a couple of stories here and there. And that's always fun. If you're interested in merch, those links are in the show description. You know the drill. You hear this at the top of every show. You probably ignore it and you're ignoring me right now. So I don't know why I'm bothering Cypress survivalists. Our first event is March 8th. It is next freaking weekend.

[00:05:36] So if you're in the vicinity of Southeast Louisiana or you don't mind a drive to listen to a knucklehead rant and rave about preparedness and a couple of this family members, you should consider coming. Those links are also in the show description. And if you're coming, like, say hi, don't be don't be a weirdo. Just show up and then show up and hide out the back of the class and then leave. Like, I'd like to say hi. I get to know you. Actually, I tell you what, if one of you manages to stand in the corner in a trench coat and creep fill out the entire thing.

[00:06:06] If you're in the entire time, I will find something to send you. Okay. First of all, you have to understand that a few of our patrons who are probably listening to this right now are going to be in the class. And I don't encourage any of y'all because I know what y'all look like. I encourage all of you. I don't encourage any of y'all to try to creep me out. I will not be the only one armed at the event. Just behave yourselves. Control yourselves for this one moment. The chat is blowing up.

[00:06:36] Gillian said she was there for the mayhem. I must have blanked that out because there was a lot of alcohol involved at the time. It's forgivable. Yeah. Yeah. Raggle Fraggle. I sent you an email. Did you get scared with Matt? So yeah, I talked to your friend, Matt. He said that he'll keep us in mind. He's not looking to fill a schedule right now. So I said, cool beans. And if he reaches out, cool. And if he doesn't, then that's also cool. Mm hmm.

[00:07:06] I mean, I know how it is with content creators. Like you get shows like this where we don't usually have a guest. So I could usually like drop somebody in whatever week we want to and move the schedule around. But for for shows that are run like his is where it's him and a guest every single time he has probably booked out months in advance. He has to be just just just from this side of the from this side of the camera.

[00:07:30] He has to have months of people stacked up and then he has alternates for all those people just in case. And I know because that's how I used to do things with Sean Heron from Farms Radio Network, because like I was an on call alternate for him for several months, because whenever somebody would flake out on the last minute, sometimes I get 45 minutes notice. Sometimes I get a day, but he would just be like, hey, dude, are you free?

[00:07:55] And if I was, I'd jump in. But yeah, you you have to do it that way when you're a content creator running that format of show there. There's no way to fly that by the seat of your pants. Yeah, it will burn you down every single time. Yeah. Even if I think even if you prerecord, you know, if you do it live, you absolutely have to do it that way. But even if you prerecord, if you've got a week or two prerecorded, I mean, if you end up with an open week now, suddenly you're scrambling for two weeks later.

[00:08:24] Yeah. Yeah. But me having done prerecorded shows like, you know, y'all notice it's not something that we this podcast has done terribly often. And there are lots of good reasons for that. But probably the best ones are, you know, if you want to talk about anything that is like pertinent time sensitive, even show announcements get really, really tricky when you're trying to do when you like if you if you prerecord a show, you can't just sit on it in a vacuum for months.

[00:08:53] Right. Because sooner or later, the content goes stale. Sooner or later, something goes something happens to make that show not make sense if it gets released too late. So like I usually don't resort to it unless it's like I know for a fact we're going to be out of pocket next weekend. We put a show on, we get it scheduled and then it's going out within a week. But I digress. Also, you miss out on all this back and forth and this fun with all the with everybody in the chat. Exactly.

[00:09:22] OK, so since this started getting debated quite passionately in the signal chat with all the patrons, you bunch of sociopaths. I love you all so much. Is the president pro Second Amendment? Now, there are lots of big feelings around this issue. And I don't I just want to encourage you all down this road with me for just a minute. I'm not saying he's more or less pro Second Amendment than an alternative.

[00:09:52] I'm just taking that at very face value and saying, is he pro Second Amendment? And I would go so far as to say, I don't think anybody in politics at any at any level today is pro Second Amendment. OK, I would agree with that. Yeah, no, there might agree with that. Not like you and I are.

[00:10:12] I will give you there's probably five people in politics at the federal level today who are my my definition of pro Second Amendment, which means I can build pipe bombs in my backyard and cash carry machine guns out of my local gun shop. Like that is that is my metric for pro Second Amendment. And I understand there's probably people in the chat that's already lighting up saying, well, he's better than so and so in this and the other. I'll give you that. He might.

[00:10:39] Yeah, it's pretty easy to be better than insert politician here. There's a lot of really shitty politicians. Yes. But is is our president currently Trump? Is he pro Second Amendment? No, he is pro Trump. Yeah. And if he thinks appointing or doing or signing something that is slightly pro Second Amendment will help him in some way, he'd probably do it. Yeah.

[00:11:08] But even he's going to do the exact opposite if he thinks that's going to benefit him. Yeah. Let's be realistic here. That's the kind of that's the kind of politician he is. But even if we take this out of that out of that vein of like, is Trump pro Second Amendment? His son is at least seems to be more leaning. You know what? I don't I don't even again. Again, I don't even know that.

[00:11:31] I don't even know that most of the people that are in y'all's heads right now are pro Second Amendment, because to me, pro Second Amendment means we get rid of every single every single law, every single regulation at every level that has any impact on the right to keep and bear arms. Period. Period. And discussion until we get down to people can put cannons on private warships again. Like you have to understand what pro Second Amendment means in my vernacular.

[00:11:59] It means there are no restrictions. It doesn't mean stop screwing with gun rights. It means unravel this apparatus that's been built for 200 years to continue to chip away at gun rights. It means if I want to if I want to put an AR-15 on my back and walk in through the front of the White House on a tour, that's OK. Now, I don't think there's more.

[00:12:24] I don't think there's more than three political figures at the federal level in our entire country that would tolerate that. And I'm being generous by saying three. Like if I said, hey, Second Amendment, right to keep and bear arms, I should be able to open carry an AR-15 through the front door of the White House on a tour as long as I don't hurt anybody with it. Most people will not tolerate that. So that's why I go to that. Right. And this isn't me trying to be like contrarian or argumentative. This is just me saying, see, he's not on that level.

[00:12:54] And I don't think he is. Now, I will happily admit it doesn't take a lot of work to be better than the alternative or better than what we've tolerated in the past. Undeniably. Any positive movement towards gun rights and away from gun control is a win in my book. Mm hmm. I'm just I'm very wary of hero worship and I'm very wary of the community at large, the gun community, the preparedness community, the whatever you think you fall into.

[00:13:23] I'm very wary of people saying we won the war. We can sit on our butts for the next four years or two years or whatever you think you can, because my point of view is, is I'm like, no, we haven't won a war. We haven't even won a battle yet. Like, show me these laws getting struck down. Show me these judges who are still trying to stand behind these laws get chucked on their butts out in the street. Show me where police are getting fired for enforcing gun laws. Show me real movement on this issue.

[00:13:51] Don't tell me, well, Trump's better than Harris would have been, because that's no duh. That's not good enough, though. That's not that's not enough for me to like notch a win and say, OK, we can chill for the next couple of years. Yeah, great. He's better than the alcoholic wine aunt. I mean, really, it's not a high bar. Oh, great. He's better than than another elderly man suffering dementia. Bully for us. We've done a fantastic job. Yeah.

[00:14:19] Honestly, we deserve better as a country. Well, we deserve better as a country. But we're not going to get it until we start acting like it. But see, for that reason, I don't think we deserve better as a country. Because in order for us to I you have to understand where I'm coming from, Matt. I firmly believe you get the government you tolerate. True.

[00:14:41] And while I am very quick to admit that I wasn't even a voting age before most of these laws were signed in where most of these laws were signed into law. Mm hmm. I'll even go. So, I mean, even even the assault weapons ban of 94. I was 12. Yeah, I was four. So, yeah, it's one of those situations where it's like now since.

[00:15:07] 2001, when I could legally vote like I have been very consistent in my beliefs, I have been very consistent in my activism. Even when that got me lots of weird looks from people when I'd say, yeah, we should be able to cash carry rocket launchers and everybody would freak out. But like I've been very consistent and I feel like the gun communities made huge strides in the right direction since then. Comma, however, comma. We ain't there yet. It ain't time for the victory lap. It's time to double down.

[00:15:36] It's time to double down, put foot to butt and start really making some headway in my humble opinion. I agree. Yeah. I agree. But, yeah, Trump not. Trump is not a pro Second Amendment guy. Trump is a pro Trump guy. Yeah. Now, that being said. Unfortunately, that's what you get with national level politicians. The politicians are pro themselves for the most part. That's really what it is. You just have to pick. Well, you just have to vote for the one that you think pro them aligns best with your interests.

[00:16:07] Beat me to the punch. But, yeah, that's the truth of the matter. You pick the one that you think is going to most advocate for the things you think are important and is going to screw up the least. Which I think is exactly what I said the other day when somebody posted something about him and Pam Bondi and everything. I was like, Jesus, can he just please not screw this up for a couple of months? Yeah. But, hey, we're all human. We all screw up. Yeah.

[00:16:39] Now, speaking of screwing up, to forget is human. Now, we started talking about this yesterday. And, you know, at this point, Nick, like you and I are, I would say, more than just casually in the preparedness mindset. We do have a podcast. Well, but even if we didn't have a podcast about it, like we've both been doing this for quite long enough to recognize some shortcomings in our original thinking. Yep.

[00:17:09] I would agree with that wholeheartedly. Yeah. So, I thought it would make an interesting discussion to go through, like, some things that the two of us just dug out of the brain box. And we'll probably think of other things as we go through this list. Things that we didn't originally think about and then realize down the road, oh, that might be important. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's easy. It's easy to overlook, you know, little things. Like the first one I think you've got up here is batteries. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:37] Now, somebody out there is going to be like, well, of course you have batteries, but hear me out here. So, you know, 20 years ago, I feel like most people's firearms collections didn't live and die by the battery operated things that were attached to them. Like most people were still using iron sights. Thank you, Raggle Fraggle, you freaking smart ass. Yeah. Raggle Fraggle and Phil about not having a chainsaw.

[00:18:04] I have a chainsaw and I have a spare bar and I have like seven chains and four or five gallons of freaking like, you know, sealed up fuel and not. Yeah. You can learn from your mistakes. That's exactly what this is about. I learned from my mistakes and none of y'all let me forget it. Thank you. Gosh, no. Gosh, no. That's what you keep us for. Anyway, batteries. So like 20 years ago, you know, if your average firearm owner had no firearm that depended on batteries, everything was still iron sights for the largest part.

[00:18:34] You know, like flashlight mounts were largely DIY stuff. Yeah. And and even even like the idea of like having the idea where the average firearm owner actually had a flashlight attached to their firearm. Even that wasn't really, I would say, the mainstream yet. And if 20 years isn't far back enough, go back 30 years.

[00:18:58] My point is like there was a point in the past where the biggest thing you had to be concerned about with your firearm collection was mags and ammo and keep it rust off of them. Yeah. But now in the modern era, that thing behind me lives and dies off of three battery battery operated items. The red dot takes a CR2 and I understand that's a weird battery for a red dot, but, you know, stick with me. That's what it eats.

[00:19:23] And the light takes a rechargeable 16650, but it can also eat off of a pair of CR123s. And then the lamb eats off of a CR123. And if you want to talk about the night vision that runs with that gun, because it's pretty much built out for night vision, that thing eats double A's. Nice. And then the strobe eats a CR123 and the hearing protection eats a pair of triple A's.

[00:19:48] Like, my point is, is that all of a sudden in 2025, we have a lot of firearms related stuff that all eats batteries. And at one point, this was the only thing firearm related. My little EDC light. This was the only thing I had that I carried all the time that ate batteries. But now we're in a situation where, like, it's not enough for your farm collection to have.

[00:20:16] Actually, the next thing on this list after batteries, but like to have magazines and ammo and cleaning supplies and yada, yada. Now you need all the freaking batteries to run all of it. And you better have them stacked up pretty deep because some of these damn things eat batteries quickly. Yeah, they do. You know, my little point on batteries here is that I'm starting to make the switch over from just disposable batteries to rechargeable batteries.

[00:20:42] It's like the rechargeable double A's, triple A's, lithium ions for my different lights, lasers and all that sort of thing. Just because the, you know, the duty cycle on those, if I recall correctly, is like five or six thousand charge cycles, full charge cycles. Now, that's an awful lot of time. You know, my EDC flashlight, I charge it every two months and I use it every day at work. You, not for a long time, but just it's an inspection light for me at work. Yeah.

[00:21:11] And I have two batteries for that, lithium ion rechargeables. If I recharge them once a month, five thousand charges each, that's ten thousand months. I'm probably going to break that flashlight well before those batteries die. And I can charge those flashlights off my, I think it's called a Nomad foldable solar panel. Mm-hmm. So, you know.

[00:21:35] Now, the only thing I will give you as an aside to that, based on some personal experience and some personal concerns. Mm-hmm. I will never fully convert over to rechargeable batteries for a couple of reasons. Yeah, there are definite downsides to them. Well, and it's not most of the ones you're thinking of, probably. My worry is, I have a PBS-14. It's a $4,000 piece of equipment. Sure. It runs on double A's. Yep.

[00:22:04] Have you ever had anything with a leaky double A in it ruin the electronics and the contacts? Yeah. I refuse to allow that to happen to a $4,000 piece of equipment. So... It's less of a problem with rechargeable lithium batteries than the old lead acids, but... True. I know what you're saying. But the only thing I'm willing to run in that, specifically, is Energizer Ultimate Lithiums, and only that because that is exactly what the DOD specs for their PBS-14s and their double A rated night vision.

[00:22:34] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. If you have a piece of equipment like that and you want to run factory recommended whatever, do it. The investment... I mean, like, how many double A's are you going to go through in a year in your night vision? I mean, I forget how many hundreds or thousands of hours they're rated for per double A, but I've got like two dozen of them. Right. But... And your hour rating is in the hundreds to low thousands of hours per battery.

[00:23:03] I want to say it's a couple of thousand, but I don't honestly care. Your exposure, like, the amount of money you're having to spend to cover that is pretty limited. True. You know, the old mag lights, those things burn through double A's in a couple of weeks of everyday use. Yeah. But that'll be in the case.

[00:23:23] Like, the weapon light I have that takes 16, 650s, I got that specific body from Arasaka specifically because I can run CR-123s in it. And at this point, every time I buy anything that eats CR-123s, I buy another bulk 10-pack of Streamlight CR-123s. I couldn't honestly tell you how many I have lying around the house. I think I've got one in the truck and two in the safe and probably one in the wall safe and two or three on this back shelf.

[00:23:53] I've got frickin' CR-123s everywhere. And I admit, they have a shelf life. That's a thing. I am happy to admit that, you know, they are... It's been decades for lithiums, isn't it? Because I think my rechargeable lithiums, when I bought them, they had an expiration date on them that was at least 10 years out. Yeah. But at this point... Expiration, I mean, I don't know if they actually go bad. They probably just lose efficiency. Yeah.

[00:24:22] Well, I mean, at this point, like, I burn through X amount of them just keeping my EDC light, you know, charged up. And I use that thing daily. So, it is what it is. But, you know, I will say I was doing some testing with some 1632 rechargeables that Stewart had provided to me. And I'm not quite ready to, like, report on that yet. But I don't think I'll be playing with those for EDC use. Not as...

[00:24:52] Not as... Time or energy... Not as energy dense, you think? Well, that's a given. The worrying part to me is... See, I had one loaded in... I had one loaded in the optic on my Swamp Fox. Or the Swamp Fox optics that's on my Scorpion. And that has Shake Awake. Right. So, I left... So, for the longest time, I was always turning it off after use, turning back on when I wanted to use it. And that seemed to be working just fine.

[00:25:19] And then I thought to myself, it had Shake Awake, so why not just leave it on? You might as well try it out. Well, I verified that it was indeed turning the emitter off after it sat still for a while. I loaded it up in the safe. I left it. I didn't touch the... Didn't touch it for several months. I went to take it out to the range. And I'll be damned if that friggin' battery wasn't deader than a doornail. Fortunately, I carried a spare. So, I swapped it out right there at the fire line. Did what I had to do.

[00:25:49] Brought it home. Charged it back up. Put it back in the friggin'... Put it back in the red dot. Turned it off this time. Put it back in the safe. Pulled it out a couple months later. Dead again. Interesting. So, now... Parasitic charge. Well, but it was turned off. So, do I have an issue with parasitic charge that I never saw using disposable batteries and I only see with this lithium rechargeable? Or do I have an issue with the lithium rechargeable that is not holding a charge?

[00:26:19] I'm not there yet. Is it a smart battery? You're thinking like after it zonked itself, it didn't come back alive? No, I'm thinking like... So, there are some lithium batteries nowadays. When you charge them, they have a little microprocessor in them. It might be not a microprocessor. But it's like a little computer in there that stops itself from charging when it hits full. So, like overcharge protection built into the battery.

[00:26:47] That overcharge protection, it does draw a small amount of current out of the battery to keep itself functional. I'm wondering if maybe that was enough parasitic drain on the battery to drain it over a couple of months. This is a 1632 size battery, so I'd be shocked. If it had anything too sophisticated in it. But still, if it has anything in there at all like that... I mean, maybe it's just a bad one. I mean, I don't know how many you sent you.

[00:27:14] That's why I'm not ready to damn it yet. I just know that like I had trust issues and now I have more trust issues with it. So, it will be a very long time before I am willing to trust life-saving equipment to things I'm not intimately familiar with. That's fair. Well, this is why you have to test your equipment. Test it, test it, and test it to failure. I mean, if you don't manage to break it, congrats, you bought something good.

[00:27:43] But if you do, at least you know where it breaks. Yep. So, the other thing is spare parts. Now, we've talked about this on this show before many, many moons ago when we were talking about like mostly firearms. I think it's reasonable that if you have any piece of what you consider to be emergency equipment, and this extends to like chainsaws, for example. No, I don't have a spare chainsaw. I think Raggle Fraggle dropped that one on me. I don't have a spare chainsaw yet.

[00:28:14] It's on my to-do list. But for the one chainsaw I do have, I have quite a collection of spare parts, extra chains, a spare bar. I got everything I could think of. If I was like in the middle of using it, stuck the freaking bar in the, you know, in a tree. And I've got, I don't know, seven or eight extra bar nuts. I could literally just like spin the bar nut off, leave the whole bar in the tree, go get the spare, put the chainsaw back together, and then free, you know, free the first bar. Carb kit?

[00:28:45] Not a car, not a whole carb kit. I have like fuel filter and fuel line and spark plug, air filter, basically a tune-up kit. Get a carb kit for it. Because the one thing that always goes wrong on small two-stroke engines is if it's not the spark plug being fouled out or the spark arrestor being full of crap from the oil, it is, it is your carburetor. Yeah.

[00:29:08] And then fuel line, of course, because the fuel line, because those things, they sit for three to five years and then you end up using it and there your fuel line's dry and cracked. Yeah. I will, I will say though that Stuart had given me some advice to, before I put it away every time, like before I put it away for any length of time. Mm-hmm. To always put some, some, what do they call it, the engineer fuel, the stuff you get in the cans that's like. Oh yeah, the ethanol free fuel. Yeah.

[00:29:32] I always run some of that through it and then, you know, dump whatever's left out and then sit there, run it, you know, run it pretty, pretty good until it just purges the lines and everything out. And since I've been doing that across the border to Wisconsin and buy the ethanol free fuel they have up there for off-road ATVs and stuff. The only reason I like the engineered stuff though, is that supposedly as long as it's sealed, they say it's good for like X number of years in storage. So I've got several gallons sitting there in storage.

[00:30:00] And now I use it because I don't use my chainsaw super often. I mean, I've got plenty of like, you know, the steel, steel, two-stroke oil and everything if I had to mix my own, but I use it sparingly enough that I just use the engineer fuel and don't worry about it. I mean, I have, I, my yard is quite large and I have 40 or so large trees on my property. So I'm having to fire up my chainsaw a couple of times a year to deal with something.

[00:30:27] Or if it's not in my property, it's not one of my family's properties because a lot of us live on large lots with, with big old trees or near places with big old trees. And then storms knock them over into our yard and make them our problem. But yeah, that's, that's part of being out in the boonies. Whereas you're in the suburbs. Yeah. But spare, spare parts is just a given to me. Like, you know, if you have, if you have AR-15s in your collection, spare magazines is a no duh moment.

[00:30:54] But you should also have like an oops kit and springs and a whole, whole spare, whole spare bolt carrier group is a really quick fix for most problems. It is. Like any, anything you count as a mission essential piece of equipment that if it goes down in emergency, you are screwed. If it's not rational to have an entire spare other thing because of cost or whatever else, it makes sense to have parts. Absolutely. So that you can, you can deal with the immediate problem as best you can.

[00:31:23] And then you can go fix the, the thing that is causing you headaches. Like after the issue we have with Hurricane Ida, where my generator was misbehaving, I bought two set, two full sets of a carburetor, fuel on fuel filter, air filter, spark plug. And I bagged up one whole set in a vacuum bag and it's sitting back there in the shed with the generator. So if I ever have another problem with that thing, I don't have to sit there fooling around with it, trying to run carb cleaner through its throat or anything.

[00:31:51] I literally just take the frigging carb off, throw it into the woods, put the new one on, prime it, rip it and go. You will want to check that every few years though. Cause sometimes the carb seals in those kits can dry out and crack. That's just a part of. You think even if it's been, you think even if it's been vacuum bagged or you're talking about the one that's on the generator. Uh, talking about the one that's vacuum bagged. Cause I've seen them just, I don't know how yours came. I've had them where they've come vacuum packed and the seals been bad in the vacuum pack.

[00:32:20] Now, granted, who knows how long that's been sitting there, but, and I've only seen it one time and that was on a carb kit for Yamaha three wheeler. So once is enough, that carb kit should be from the night could be from the nineties. He is. He is. So now if I have to explain to people why you need tools and diagnostic equipment, I think we need to go back a couple of steps.

[00:32:44] And like, I'm not professing that everybody needs to have, needs to go and put their local snap on dealer through, you know, their kids through college. But I'm saying that like, as a, as naive, this isn't even homeowner. This is like basic adult stuff. You should have bare minimum tools. Yeah.

[00:33:03] I mean, if you're a homeowner, even more so if you're living in an apartment, yes, it's good to have some limited stuff just so that you can correct catastrophic problems and prevent them from becoming worse. Um, set of channel locks, screwdriver, set pipe wrench, dead blow pipe wrench. Um, strap wrench is a good one to have a good solid strap wrench. One of the chain ones better than the rubber ones.

[00:33:31] They don't, they, they will damage things more often, but they tend to grip a little better. Um, one thing I really recommend people have that I don't see people talk about too often is a circuit chaser. I don't know if that's the proper name for it. It's a little plug. You mean like a test light? No, the circuit chaser, you plug it into your wall and then you've got a wand end that takes double A's and you can follow that back to your breaker box and to the breaker that that outlet is hooked up to.

[00:33:58] So if you have an electrical problem and you're not sure what's going on, you can find out what breaker it is and flip the right breaker the first time just for saving yourself some hassle. You know, hacksaw, raggle. That's a very good one. Bolt cutters is meh. Hacksaw do the job of bolt cutters. Plus in some places carrying around bolt cutters is suspicious. They call it, uh, evidence of mischief is intent.

[00:34:27] Just like carrying around lockpicks. If you're not a locksmith, your local laws, you're going to need to look into on this one. Some States and some localities have mischief laws where if you're walking around with things like a crowbar and you're not going to and from a job site, or bolt cutters, lock picks, uh, sledgehammer, you know, it basically just trying to catch burglars before they burgle, which I don't know if you can do that.

[00:34:54] Cause you've not committed a crime, but multimeter. Multimeter is a good one to have. And here's the thing. I'll be the first to say that, like, I understand not everyone is going to want to like get hardcore and electrical work, but I'm telling you just a reasonably priced multimeter from your local hardware store can be such a freaking lifesaver because I'll be the first to admit that electrons are voodoo and black magic as far as I'm concerned.

[00:35:19] And it's really helpful to have the little, the little, you know, demon machine tell you what's going on before you get shocked by it. Yeah. And a lot of times you can find how to's for how to check all that stuff online on YouTube. I mean, YouTube university, man, you can, it, while we have it, use it. It's heck. I use it at work for diagnosing some of our machines. We have a lot of Haas machines and Haas. They put out YouTube videos on how to diagnose and troubleshoot their machines on YouTube. It's fantastic.

[00:35:49] It saves me a ton of time. Probably because it saves their customer service line a hell of a lot of effort. It can. Yeah. And you know what? All the better for it, man. There's they have, they have to give you the free diagnostic talk anyway. So they might as well skip a step and have you call them knowing what the problem is. Mm hmm. Is there anything else we could put in here? Tools, diagnostic equipment. I mean, you could go down this rabbit hole for literal ever and say you should have plumbing supplies. And everything. Safety gear.

[00:36:19] Oh, I thought we had that in here. I don't think you have safety gear in here, but I'm talking. We can lump it in our tools. Safety glasses. If you've got a chainsaw, face shield and chaps. Gloves. Gloves. Gloves, gloves, gloves. Listen, I'm going to be the first to, I'm going to be the first to say, everyone of y'all can line me up and call me everything under the sun you want. I have gloves in my tool. I have three sets of gloves in my toolbox. I have another set of gloves that stays with the chainsaw.

[00:36:47] I've got a set of gloves that stays in my truck at all times. I like gloves. I, I currently work in a nice little air conditioned white collar office job. You can all, you can all goof with me as much as you want about it. I don't care when it's raining hot or cold outside. I'm nice and comfortable and you can all kiss my lily white behind about it. But I put myself through college working in trades. I put myself through college working on active flight lines as a flight line refueler.

[00:37:16] I did it working as an HVAC guy. I did it working as a pool guy. I did it working in, in a NTB shops and mechanic shops doing tires and oil changes and alignments and all that kind of stuff. I have in the same day, Nick cringe with me about this sliced myself right here through this web between a finger thumb and on both hands in the same day. Actually, no, no, no. I think it wasn't the same day. One hand was on a Sunday.

[00:37:46] One hand was on a Monday. I distinctly remember that though. Sunday, a buddy of mine came over and we were doing something with his car. It was a sharp edge on a piece of the engine subframe. I didn't see the sharp edge or the little boogered up end and it went right through the web between my thumb and forefinger. Then Monday, I was doing a BBS brake upgrade on a Ford Mustang.

[00:38:15] Something that was sharp went right through this part of my hand and I'm sitting there looking at my two hands. It's going to take forever to heal. Oh, it's going to take, whoa. And I was still working. So I had to get the job done. So, you know, that was like, that was already, I already had this hand wrapped up. So then I'd literally like piece of gauze out of my toolbox. And by the way, you should have medical supplies. That's I'm sure that's on here someplace where we talk about that. We talked about that just a couple episodes ago. You know, medical supplies, I see get talked about a lot more than safety equipment, to be fair.

[00:38:43] You know, the safety equipment can keep you from needing the medical supplies. It can. Yes. With gloves. If you are working with rotary power equipment, take the gloves off unless they are the blue easy tear nitrile ones. You know, the really thin ones at half the time when you put them on, they break open anyway. Yep.

[00:39:06] Those are the only gloves that are acceptable around rotary power equipment because nothing will ruin your life faster than wearing gloves and screwing up on rotary power equipment. Lathes, mills, drill press, table saw, anything that's got a spinning motor that you are going to be around. You know, I hate to say it, but angle grinder, you should not be wearing gloves because that thing can grab that glove and suck your hand into it. Yeah.

[00:39:34] You're going to get your finger cut once in a while doing that stuff because you're not wearing safety gloves. But gloves are the reason why I watched a kid hamburger his hand in our apprenticeship classes back in the day. He got confident. He got cocky. He went to wipe chips away from a vice on a bridge port with a moving cutter and the bridge port roughing end mill. I don't know if you guys know what that is. Imagine a corn cob, but made of hardened steel.

[00:40:00] Well, the finger of his glove got pinched between the work piece and that cutter and it pulled most of his hand through that mill before it got shut off. Yep. It's the only time I've ever seen a tourniquet used near a mill. And here's another thing that will not apply to most of y'all, but it most certainly applies to me.

[00:40:20] If you have a beard that is longer than one inch, you better get really familiar with the little pack of the cheap rubber bands that your wives and your girlfriends and your daughters use. Any long hair. I keep one permanently with the gloves, with all the safety gear for my chainsaw. And on top of that, I always take my beard and bunch it up and tuck it down the front of my shirt anytime I'm messing with anything that is spinning.

[00:40:50] Because I have this intense fear that one day something is going to grab hold of this luscious, beautiful beard and yank my face right into it. So I would like to avoid that if at all possible. Yeah. I really hope that none of you guys have been exposed to the Russian lathe accident video. If you've got a weak stomach, don't go looking for it. Don't look that up. You'd be better off looking up.

[00:41:17] Exactly why you should not wear gloves and long sleeves while working with a lathe. You'd be better off Googling blue waffle than that horrible experience. Yes. You psychologically. Yes, you probably would. But yeah, you got to be really careful around spinning objects. Stuart wants us to start over. Buzz off. Oh, Stuart, you missed me telling everyone to dress up in creepy trench coats and stand in the corner while Phil talks at his little event coming up. You also missed everyone giving me crap for the 11,000th time about not having a chainsaw.

[00:41:47] Thank you, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Well, hey, you know what? We live and we learn. And actually, no, I don't braid it because you should for Halloween dress up as a dwarf. I do. Okay. I have braided it for Halloween a couple of times. The problem is, is like braiding it invariably leads to a lot of hair getting pulled out and broken hair. I mean, it's fine for every now and then, but seriously, if you're trying to grow a beard long, like it constantly falling out and getting yanked out by the braids is problematic.

[00:42:18] Yeah. That would, that would probably not be ideal. It's also a thing. If you like keep it braided for like semi permanently, that's one thing. Yeah. But if you're braiding and unbraiding, you're just, it's like taking a piece of metal and folding it back and forth. It's going to weaken it. Yeah, absolutely would. All right. Garage supplies, vehicle fluids, filters, and oil.

[00:42:38] I make a habit of having everything I need in the garage to service every single fluid, almost every single fluid in either one of our vehicles and do an oil change. And I also keep spare air filters and cabin air filters for both vehicles just sitting on the shelf. The only thing I don't keep around is transmission fluid because I don't know enough to do my own transmission flushes. It's just something I am not going to do.

[00:43:08] And it's not something I would need to do very often at that, except on my lawnmower, that hydrostatic fluid needs to be changed out every couple of years. So that I did have to learn how to do. Yeah. Not a lot of clearance in that motor. I'm actually, that's actually one of the things on my to-do list for Gillian's Jeep is to figure out how to change the transmission fluid in her Jeep. Because I mean, on the one hand, there's a fairly good mechanic that literally is at the very front of this subdivision who could do the work. Or I could just buy the stuff and do it myself.

[00:43:36] The problem is that I need a scan tool that will interface with her Jeep. And my scan tool is from the early 2000s. And it has no freaking idea what the hell Daimler Chrysler put into that ECU. So it's... Yeah, that might be one of those where the investment you would have to do in a new scan tool might outweigh the benefit there. Yeah. Now, on the other hand, because Toyota doesn't believe in doing anything new ever...

[00:44:05] The engine control module is identical. Yeah. That ECU is literally the exact same one from 2005. And it probably isn't that dissimilar from anything from the 90s. So... It might be. All I know is I plugged in that old scan gauge from like 2002. And it just... That Toyota... And it started talking to each other immediately. So when I had to do my... I always wonder if there's not some codes it's missing. But it can do all the basics kind of deal.

[00:44:34] I mean... The newer codes say like the next gen codes. But... I will say that it's happy enough with the data that like I can read the transmission temp sensors and everything. I have the transmission in real time. Like it doesn't seem to be having any problems. Well, that's good. Then it's probably fine then. Yeah. Maybe they just left it the same. But that's the reason why I changed the transmission fluid in my own truck. Right. And also because I wanted to like do a full flush on it. Get all the old stuff out.

[00:45:01] Put in a full synthetic that was from Redline. So I have extra fluid because it's not something I can just go to a local auto parts store and get. And that... Yeah, that makes sense. That sometimes becomes the problem. Although I will say that this whole extra filters, extra oil thing came in super freaking handy during COVID. Yeah, it did. Because when we started seeing the supply chain and start to stutter everything. Like you would think towards coma. There's 5 million of the stupid things on the road.

[00:45:31] And there's got to be 10 million 1, you know, 1GR V6s in existence. And finding an oil filter for one wouldn't be that difficult. But I'm going to tell you, I went to the local auto zone several times and they didn't have them on the shelf. Same problem as 9 mil ammo. Everybody needs it. And that turned out to be the problem because it was so common. They only had so many on the shelf and with the supply chain stuttering, they kept running out. Now, it wasn't a problem for me because I always had one, sometimes even two sitting on the shelf.

[00:46:00] So, I just got into a mode, honestly, for a while where every time I've drive by there, which it's not far from home, so that was fairly often, I just pull in. And if they had a filter on the shelf, I bought it. I bought another 5-quart jug of oil and then an extra quart because I need about 5.5 quarts to do my oil change. And I would just buy that and put it away. And if I already had enough to do two full oil changes on both vehicles, then I was good for a while. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[00:46:27] But I made the point of doing that for a good year during COVID when the supply chain started stuttering. And I'm going to tell you, I never missed an oil change. I never had to stretch one out. I didn't have to play Russian roulette with my engine and say, well, you know, it's only been 6,000 miles. Maybe I can go a little bit further because I just don't. I came from a generation of 3,000-mile oil changes. So I'm already a little leery of the 5,000-mile oil change, even though, judging by the oil, it's not hurting anything.

[00:46:55] Look, man, if you don't make time for maintenance, maintenance makes time for itself. Yep. Either you handle it before it becomes a problem or it will become a problem to handle you. Yep. Every time. Yeah. And while we're on this, while we're going through this, things like shop towels, break clean, RTV, silicone, dry film lube. I mean. Seafoam. See, I don't play with seafoam. I've never liked seafoam.

[00:47:21] You know, I have used it on small engines and it has been surprisingly effective at cleaning crap out of carburetors and stuff. But that was for like light-duty lawn equipment. So if it screwed it up, okay, not a big deal. It's not my daily driver. Riggle fraggle. If that's 10,000 miles on a diesel, I'll give you that. But if that's a gas engine, you and I need to have a discussion.

[00:47:48] Because I'm going to tell you, that Jeep out there, the owner's manual swears that's an 8,000 mile oil change. I did that one time. And when I pulled that oil. How weird was that oil? Huh? How weird was that oil? It was screwed. I'm going to be polite in case somebody's got kids around. Riggle Fraggle just said, yes, it's a diesel. Okay. That makes sense. That's fair. Yeah. That's not out of line. I'm just saying like I did one 8,000 mile oil change on that Jeep Grand Cherokee.

[00:48:17] And that was the last one I'd ever saw. I've done them 5,000 miles like clockwork ever since. Oil's coming out much, much cleaner now. But I'm just, I'm just, I'm just telling you. The cost for an oil change is so inexpensive compared to engine problems. You might as well do it slightly more often. I'm just saying I don't give a damn what the manufacturer squares up and down that you can stretch an oil change interval out to.

[00:48:42] If the first number doesn't start with a 5, I'm going to start giving you a weird look. I just don't, I don't, I don't care. I don't care what the salesman says. I don't care what the tech say. I don't care what the engineer says. They're not going to be there in 100,000, 200,000 miles when I still expect that thing to not poop its piston rings out. Yeah, that's fair. Here's a weird one that some of y'all probably didn't see coming. Needle thread, webbing, buckles, and patch material.

[00:49:10] Does anybody here play tactical tailor and play with your own web gear? Yup. Well, I will happily admit that I probably do the ugliest stitching out of any of y'all. Any of you out there can probably run a nicer, cleaner, prettier stitch than I can. And if you think you can't, you can come down here. We can, we can compare, but my stitching is ugly. It looks like... But does it work? It freaking works.

[00:49:46] Not meth. Caffeine is my drug of choice. This was coffee at the top of the show. But... I ran out of mine. That's... Why did you do that to yourself? Who hurt you? Caffeinated water. Oh, okay. I got, I got Sarah Plus. It'll be fine. But I'm just telling you, like, you know, there's somebody out there that is going to be thinking to themselves, well, you know, when the S, when the S hits the HTF or whatever, we're all going to have to do this out of the other. And it's not even about that.

[00:50:12] To me, it's more like, how many of us have been inconvenienced because we ripped a stitch? Or we ripped a seam? Or how many... Austin, you two laces in the middle of the day. Yeah. Or I'll give you a perfect example. The man purse, thank you, Stuart, back there on the shelf. That's highly modified from a factory, from just an off-the-shelf product. But, like, I'm the one that did all the sewing. I'm the one that affixed all that stuff in there.

[00:50:41] The thigh strap on my battle belt, the holster for that, that's me. That's me getting the webbing and the buckles and sewing it all together and everything in double and triple stitch. You get to make sure it wasn't going to let go. So, like, I've got an old ChaiCom chest rig. Think Vietnam era. You stick with me on this? As a goofing around project, Nick, I got the wild hair up my ass to take all the little toggles and everything off of it.

[00:51:09] And sew that entire thing back together with, like, one-inch little nylon buckles instead of just tying it back together like you're supposed to. All the flaps now have Velcro affixed, so it's semi-modern. Like, you can actually rip it open. It's got little pulls and everything on the tabs. Like, I did all that on a lark just to see how it worked. I took one of the grenade pockets and sewed a stitch down the middle of it to turn it into a twin pistol mag pouch.

[00:51:39] Perfect. I do all this stuff, most of it just goofing around to see if I can make it work because I'm just curious and I like to fool with stuff. But there is something to be said for being able to keep your clothing and your gear intact and be able to fix it when things go bad. I mean, this is no different than the tools and the spare parts and everything else because unless you're going to resort to, like, you know, spiked cod pieces and loincloths, we're going to need our clothing. But you're going to have to stitch those anyway.

[00:52:09] Yeah. Sooner or later, you're going to have to be able to fix the stuff that you're wearing or it's going to be a bad day. Now, this is one thing I know I did text you and it's not really on the list here, but it is. In this same category, spare boot laces. Spare boot laces. Keep them in your truck. Keep them in your toolbox at work. Keep them in your go bag. Because, yeah, you can use paracord to make yourself a pair of boot laces. I've done it when I forgot or I welded something and the slag cut through my boot lace.

[00:52:38] But they don't stay tied quite as well as a purpose-made shoelace. Because shoelaces are, they're a little more rough than, like, your paracord or your nylon cordage. I'm not too proud to admit, I have tied, when I've broken shoelaces, I've tied the two broken ends back together. You can only do that so many times before you start running on the length of the shoelace. That is not a permanent solution. That is a stay laced till I get home problem. But, you know, like sometimes...

[00:53:05] When you're playing around with cutting torches and you've got hot slag dropping on them, you go through a lot of boot laces. Ugh. Raggle Fraggle said leatherworking tools. I mean, that's a fair point. If you do a lot of leatherworking, you should probably have the stuff you need to, you know, mess with leather. I don't. Well, you know, belts. But for that same reason, I mean, like, you know, most of my gear that isn't nylon, it's Kydex. Well, guess what?

[00:53:35] I've got spare Kydex and spare rivets and all the stuff to basically... I mean, like, I built the sheaths for a pair of knives. And I basically just got all this stuff lying around to, like, build a handgun holster if I really wanted to. Yeah, it's not terribly difficult to do. I mean, it can be... It can be... If you don't have the right gloves, rather painful to hot form that stuff manually by hand. Be a man. Yeah, I mean, you can do that. Or you could, like...

[00:54:03] I don't know, have the right gloves. And just not burn the shit out of your hands. Yeah. I don't have the right gloves. You just had to work very... You had to work very quickly. Yes, you do. I mean, I had gloves. They just weren't the right gloves. But I got the job done. Yeah, a leather glove will do.

[00:54:24] So, I will be the first to admit that for more years than I am proud of or would like to admit, my food preps did not include spices or seasoning. And that omission now... That is an oversight. That is an oversight. But you know what? That kind of falls into the heading of a lot of things that my wife pointed out that, like, hey, dumbass, you better go get the stuff you need so that our food doesn't taste like butt.

[00:54:52] And now I have, like, literally an entire bin of just baking supplies. Actually, I have an overflow bin that has every seasoning and I can think of. And then I have a five-gallon bucket that is all baking supplies. And that also has more baking supplies in it. And seasoning and spices are kind of included because someone out there is rolling their eyes thinking that's not a necessity. But I'm going to tell you, life is too short and life is too hard sometimes for you to be eating crappy food.

[00:55:21] And seasonings are way too cheap right now for the value they add to your life. And salt is very, very, very important. More important than most people realize. Your body needs salt. And it never goes bad. Yeah, it literally doesn't. It's literally a mineral. So, you know, it's one of those things like toilet paper. It doesn't expire. So why would you not keep extra around? Yes. Do seasonings expire? Some of them do.

[00:55:49] They get less flavorful, less potent. Double the amount you put in there and figure it out on the fly, man. It's not that difficult. Sam's Club sells one-pound containers of most of your spices for about the price of two of the little grocery store McCormick's containers. And those are like a couple ounces. And this is 16. So, you know, spend your money wisely. If you want, vacuum pack it and put it away.

[00:56:15] But, I mean, I think on average we go through, we cook a lot at home. So we go through about one of those, depending on the spice, one of those one-pound containers every six to eight months. But that's also worth pointing out, like, you don't have to buy a one-pound container of something you only use sparingly. But, like, in my kitchen, if I was doing nothing but buying the little bitty chinchy things of black powder and salt and Tony Sacheris, yeah.

[00:56:44] I mean, we use Tony Sacheris like it's freaking oxygen around here. Same for oils. So fats and oils. Beef, tallow, Crisco, whatever you want to use. Please don't. Crisco's bad for you. Same with vegetable oil. That's bad for you. Try to use good fats and store good fats. This is why I cook lots and lots of bacon and sausage because pork is a gift from God. Yes, it is. So is the tallow.

[00:57:11] And I salvage all 100% of the bacon grease and the sausage grease and, you know, try to, like, not pour a bunch of the crap from the bottom of the pan. But I keep at least two big old huge jars of that stuff in the fridge at all times. And that's what I season my cast iron with. That's what I cook with. I mean, anytime I don't want stuff to stick to a pan, I just take a finger, run it around the rim, and throw a lump into the pan. Yeah. And it makes everything taste like bacon. It does.

[00:57:41] One word of caution. If you are going to render your own tallow, do it in the garage. Do not do it in your house because all of your soft fabrics are going to smell like beef tallow for the next eight months. Is that the voice of experience? Yes. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. How mad was your wife? Some of my T-shirts still come out of my closet smelling like beef tallow. I mean, that doesn't sound like the worst thing on earth. It's just alarming.

[00:58:10] It's been a long time. And that smell sticks around. Yeah. Beef tallow is amazing. Beef tallow fried steaks, fantastic. Using it in baking, wonderful. But do it outside or in the garage. And it does take all day. So, you know, plan accordingly. Cleaning supplies. Now. Yeah, you don't see that one discussed a whole terrible lot online. It's one of those.

[00:58:39] Oh, everybody knows to keep soap around. Yeah, but how much soap do they really keep around? So, like, my thoughts are, again, like, leaning back on, you know, COVID times. Because at least in the last 10 years, that was definitely one of the weirder experiences of my life. It definitely wasn't on my bingo card. But, you know, it was what it was.

[00:59:03] But I can tell you that for that period of time, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one, things like Clorox wipes, alcohol, Lysol, antibacterial soap. But all that got really thin on the ground super, super freaking fast. It did. Especially, like, my wife, she works in childcare. Your wife's a teacher. The schools didn't have any of the Clorox wipes and stuff because that stuff got used up really fast.

[00:59:33] Yeah, they were buying it as fast as they could, but people were going through it even faster. Supply and demand, man. Yeah. I mean, laundry soap doesn't go bad. Keep that on the shelf. Bleach does go bad over time. So you do need to rotate them. But, you know. Yeah. Have enough for a couple months of use. It doesn't take up that much room on the shelf. Yeah.

[00:59:57] And, I mean, thinking about cleaning supplies, like, you know, we could also get out of the realm of just, like, cleaning and start thinking about, like, cleaning our bodies. Like, what personal hygiene products are you going to use? Eminent products, another good one. Yeah. After the great toilet paper scare of 2020. 2020. Yeah. 2019, 2020. Yeah.

[01:00:21] After the great toilet paper scare, like, I think most people would understand intrinsically that you need toilet paper and paper towels and things like that. But, like, how much deodorant do you keep around? How much toothpaste? Do you keep spare toothbrushes under the sink? Like, I make a point every single time my wife or daughter tell me, oh, I'm out of this. I go buy two. Yep. And then the next time they tell me they're out, I give them the one that I held in reserve and I go buy two more. Because, you know, like, I went to the store not too long ago.

[01:00:51] My daughter needed toothpaste. I had an extra tube under the sink. She wanted a different kind of toothpaste. I was like, okay. So we went to the store. She picked up one off the shelf. And I said, no, no, get the two pack. And she was like, but I only need one. And I'm like, you only needed one this morning. Get the two pack. Yeah, you're going to go through it. So, and a lot of times when you buy them in those multi-packs, they're cheaper anyway. But even if it's not, to me. Even if it's the same price.

[01:01:21] Yeah. And you got to understand that, like, if you are still at that base level of preparedness where you are fully in the mode of, I need to cover the basics. I need to deal with the mission critical stuff. I'll deal with the, it'd be nice to have later. Then that's one thing. But once you get to a certain point in this game, it's no longer about how do I keep from starving to death? And it becomes how do I not be inconvenienced by life?

[01:01:47] I would argue that cleaning supplies are as important as not starving to death. Because disease will kill you faster than starvation. I mean, there is merit to that idea. But here's the thing. Is it the end of the world if you don't have your preferred kind of toothpaste? Like, if you would have to substitute whatever for whatever, because this is all they have at the store, is that the end of the world? No. To an adult. Is it annoying? Yeah.

[01:02:15] So then to avoid annoyance, go buy two of the stupid things and put one underneath your sink. Or if you have picky children, it could be the end of their day. Yeah. But this comes back around to the idea that, like, there are things I do in the house not because it's going to kill us if it doesn't get done, but because I want to insulate my family from the aggravation of things not going the way we expected them to. So if it's something as simple as, like, this is the kind of underarm deodorant I like to have, I want to have more than one of them.

[01:02:45] If this is the thing that would make my wife and daughter's day a little bit nicer, I want to have that thing. I don't want to have to say, oh, the store doesn't have any. Because Phil is going to look at himself in the mirror and say, dummy, you should have bought two and put one under the sink, and then we wouldn't be in this situation today. Like, that's my mindset. You know, also, too, like, you know, everybody talking about the government layoffs that are going on. What happens if you lose your job?

[01:03:13] Would sure be nice to not have to go to the store and spend that $6 on whatever if you already had it sitting at home. Yeah, maybe it's not much, but that frees up that money for something else that is more mission critical. I'm going to tell you, having been in the situation of being laid off for, I was laid off for three months. Right after my daughter was born. That was three months.

[01:03:40] That was three months I spent, like, taking care of her, taking care of my wife, and grilling myself job hunting. So it was a thing. Oh, yeah, man. But you know what? It'll happen to all of us at some point. But you know what made the savings account stretch a whole lot further? First of all, the fact that I had a savings account. And second of all, the fact that we had things kind of lined up where we weren't in it. We didn't immediately have to go out and spend money on non-mission critical stuff because we had things kind of at a good starting point.

[01:04:12] Now, years later, about ours 12, by the way. So it's been a hot minute since she was born. But, like, now, if it came down to, oh, we got to pull the belt as tight as humanly possible. Like, I think we could get our grocery bill down to probably, like, 50, 60 bucks a month. Yeah, cut out all the non-essentials. And just eat out of the pantry for the next six months if that's what we had to do. Yeah, fresh fruits and veggies, dairy products, that kind of stuff. Yeah.

[01:04:42] And, I mean, even then, we'd cut back on a lot of that. I mean, I'd be the first to admit, like, every time I go to the store, if I have less than five gallons of milk in the fridge, I buy up to that amount. Because we make our own coffee creamer. We do a lot of cooking here at the house, a lot of baking. Like, every time we go to the grocery store, I spend a reasonable amount of money.

[01:05:03] But it's also because, like, I stock that fridge and that pantry in such a way that we're going to be cooking with fresh ingredients a disproportionate amount of time. Well, and you're actually, so look at it this way. How expensive has eating out gotten? Oh, Jesus. You are spending significantly less money than you would be if you did not have a deep stock pantry. And you had to go out to eat.

[01:05:28] An average trip eating out with me and the girls, me and my wife and my daughter, with tip, is usually, like, 80 to 100 bucks. Oh, I believe that. And, I mean, me and my wife, it's hard to get out of a restaurant for 50 bucks. And an average grocery run for the three of us, for everything we're going to need for a week. And that's usually, like, I mean, that'll usually run us about 100, maybe 125 a week. Yeah, I think for me and my wife, we're, like, 200 for two weeks. Yeah. Something like that.

[01:05:58] But that's also... 180 for two weeks. But that's also with the understanding that we're buying, like, lots of milk, lots of butter, lots of meat, lots of meat, eggs. Like, I've told my wife and daughter many, many times, and this is totally off subject, but here we are. Of all the places we would try to save money if we had to save money, I'm not going to compromise on the quality of our food. Agreed.

[01:06:22] I, right, wrong, or otherwise, you can argue about it in the comment section, I wholeheartedly believe that the things you put into your body have a direct impact on your health. And if I would like to not be stuck on a daily medication in my old age, I better be treating my body a little bit nicer now and eating the right things and not stuffing my body full of processed crap. Absolutely.

[01:06:45] So all that being the case, if that costs me an extra $100, $200 a month at the grocery store to buy more fresh stuff, I am emotionally at peace with that because it only took one... It's an investment in the future. It only took one peruse through my dad's medicine cabinet after he had open heart surgery to realize all the daily medications that he had to take at that time and start doing the math in my head about what all that was costing. Thank God he has insurance, but if he didn't.

[01:07:15] And immediately I was like, okay, if I have option A or option B in front of me, I will take the hit at the grocery store. Yeah. And you're setting your daughter up for success too, because if you teach her those healthy habits and get her hooked on that healthy food, her life is going to be better. And it's going to be easier for her to make those decisions in the long run. Unfortunately, I've also gotten her hooked on espresso. So, so... Well, you know, everybody has to have their vice.

[01:07:44] And if it's espresso or meth, I choose espresso. Yeah. It's just not a cheap vice, unfortunately. Cheaper than meth. Keep all your teeth too, thankfully. There you go. And this is the last thing we have in here. And I think this is one you dropped in. Some kind of an inventory system. Yeah. It doesn't have to be anything extravagant. So, put a whiteboard. Stick some magnets on the back of a whiteboard and put it on your fridge or freezer.

[01:08:11] And every time you pull something out, write it down. Then you have your grocery list pre-made for you. You know what's not in the fridge. If you keep a deep store of canned food, flour, rice, that kind of thing like me and Phil do, heck, honey, whatever. Keep a list of what you have and what you've used. Even if it's just a rolling list in like a Google Doc or Google Sheets or a notebook that you keep at the kitchen counter.

[01:08:39] Some way to manage what comes in and what goes out so that you don't have things going bad on the shelf. Because that's just wasted money at that point. Yes, things are good past their expiration dates a lot of the time. But some things aren't. And it would sure be nice to know that you have two flats of green beans before you buy the third flat of green beans at Sam's Club that you're not going to eat in the next six months. Grocery stores do it. Businesses do it.

[01:09:09] If you're going to keep a deep pantry, you should do it too because you're never going to keep track of it all in your head. At least I can't. I'll be the first to admit we recently did a clean out on our pantry and we found some things that have been expired for longer than I was comfortable with. Yeah, it happens. So emergency energy source. I mean, I have a 5K generator and I have a Jackery. So I have some methods available to me to keep the fridge and the freezer from falling immediately.

[01:09:39] Immediately, I was actually toying with the idea and I'm just – I'm not totally there on whether or not the next chunk of preparedness money needs to go to this or something else. Because you know how my brain works. Like I have a list of projects and it's always about what's the next thing to get money spent on. Priority list, yeah. Yeah, and my wife keeps throwing home improvement projects in that list which bumps some of my stuff down to the bottom, which – That's all right. You know, that's a thing. Your home is your biggest investment.

[01:10:09] But one of the things I've been thinking about or looking at is basically building a Jackery from hell. Like get a reasonably sized rolling toolbox or like a rolling – you know, like a rolling equipment box and drop into it a 400 amp hour 24 volt battery – lithium iron phosphate battery. So yes, a very big 60 pound battery.

[01:10:34] Probably get something like a 3K combination inverter, charger, and solar charger. The one I kind of have in mind, if I recall correctly, will take 800 watts worth of solar panels. That's a lot of panels. Yes. Well, my thought process for this is build – again, thinking about the fact that like I have a Jackery 1000. It'll spit out 1,004 watt hours of power.

[01:11:01] It'll surge to 1,500 watts and it'll run 1,000 watts continuously on the AC inverter. It will run my fridge and my chest freezer. It'll run them both comfortably. Okay. The problem I'm going to have with that is that it is charge limited on the solar charge circuit and it's only 1,004 watt hours of power. So it's really at its happiest running a campsite for a camping weekend.

[01:11:28] It's not really meant for what I've pressed in service for occasionally here. So what I've been fighting with is do I invest the money in like a 13K tri-fuel generator, which would run about 10,000 watts on propane or natural gas.

[01:11:48] Spend the money to have a natural gas pipe to the – I already have natural gas pipe to the back of the house, but take the cap off, put a valve on, and be able to run the generator on natural gas. Or get a pair of 60 or 100-pound cylinders, chain them up to the back of the house so they can't fall over, and then run the damn thing off propane. That's another option. Propane will sit back there quite happily for years, and it's not going to go bad like gasoline will.

[01:12:17] Especially if you keep it out of the weather. Yeah, and this is all underneath a covered porch, so I've got a good setup there. Or do I invest what would probably end up being a bit more money and put together this Jackery from hell, and then I would have 400 amp hours times 24 volts worth of power on tap. And I would have as many solar panels as I feel like laying out in the yard and running cable to.

[01:12:46] Like, this would be something that I could take with me. It wouldn't be built into the house. But on the flip side, it's one of those things where it's like the Jackery from hell would run the fridge freezer and most of my other power requirements with impunity. It would not run – I don't think it would tolerate as well running a pair of AC units. Probably not. But you do have a generator. So you do have a small generator. It's not big.

[01:13:15] Will it run an AC unit? It would be marginal. But again, here's the thing. I could either put this money into a solar setup that I would not have to worry about fuel. I wouldn't have to worry about any of that nonsense, and I don't have to worry about, oh, I only have so many days worth of gasoline. It's like as long as I can get the solar panels out in the sun for a couple hours, we can just run with impunity.

[01:13:37] Or I put a little bit less money into a very large generator, take the 30 amp hookup on the house and redo it to a 50 amp, and then get a pair of 100-pound propane cylinders, and I'm done. And that is like all the power requirements I could need minus the central air. Now, I went with a generator as well instead of solar. I went with a 10K dual fuel because at the time they didn't have the tri-fuels out yet.

[01:14:03] It can be upgraded to a tri-fuel, which I am thinking about doing, and then setting up a natural gas hookup over there because I have the handiness enough to do that. I went with a 10K because I didn't feel air conditioning was necessary where I live. Yes, it's nice to have. Yes, it makes it easier to sleep, but it also cut the price of my generator almost in half, not needing to run a big air conditioner unit.

[01:14:28] We don't get enough sunlight, enough hours of the day in half the year for solar to make sense for me. Most of the time when I would need it, it's during a winter storm or after a winter storm. We don't often lose power for very long in the summer. If we do, it's 6 to 12 hours, but if it's in the winter, it's 2 to 4 days.

[01:14:56] For me, generator was better than solar. Down south where you're at, Phil, to me, it's kind of a toss-up. You're so far south, you've got good sunlight if you can get the panels at the right angle for probably 3 more hours a day than I do.

[01:15:16] Yeah, and when you bear in mind the fact that my single most pressing use case for this is late August, early September hurricane season. As soon as the freaking thing passes, we're going to have lots of heat and lots of sun.

[01:15:33] The only real hitch there and the only reason why something like a Jackery really comes in super handy is that I really don't want to have the generator out in a hurricane or in the rain getting jacked up. And I'm not totally comfortable with the idea of having it close enough to the house to be under the covered porch because then by definition, it's close enough to the house that exhaust could start kind of seeping in through.

[01:16:02] It's kind of... It shouldn't be enough to be a problem. You used to work there. Shouldn't be. Yeah, shouldn't be. It depends on your house. I mean, I run my generator. My 10K generator runs right actually... Right over there. Right on the other side of this wall here. And we have a carbon monoxide detector in this room in the basement. And we have one upstairs in the room next to where that generator runs when we are running it. And it's never noticed any carbon monoxide.

[01:16:32] So, you know, my house with my generator, it seems to be okay currently. But there's the beauty of having that Jackery though is that it's basically a battery and a power inverter. It is. I can plug the damn thing in indoors. It's quiet. It's like you said. There's kind of like there's pluses and minuses to either one of these situations. Raggle Fraggle. I have the model number. I don't have it handy though. But he asked what specific model generator am I looking at.

[01:17:01] It was a... I remember it was a 13K tri-fuel, which 13K is a big freaking generator. What color is it? Blue? I don't remember. Blue ones are Duramax. Yellow ones are Generac. No, orange ones are Generac. I want to say this was Westinghouse. Westinghouse is yellow? There's a green one that I can't remember. Or the green one might be Furman, I think. Could be. Anyway. And then of course there's your Harbor Freight Predator Generators.

[01:17:29] I've heard a lot of good things about the Harbor Freight Predator Generators. They're a knockoff Honda motor. I mean... I haven't heard bad things about them. My only issue is I want to do some more research into the models I'm looking at because... Is Santa Claus on your roof? My dog is going absolutely insane upstairs. I don't know if you guys can hear that, but she is flipping a shit. I heard her that time. My wife must be getting home. But... Yeah, the only reason I'm...

[01:17:59] Pretty sure he talked about a chair. The only reason I'm looking at a 13K is just because when you run it on propane or natural gas, it's like the output decreases and I want something that will comfortably do what I want to do on the lowest power setting of that fuel available. Sure. I mean, it just makes sense to do it that way. It really is just a question of like... I think it's a 30% reduction going from gasoline to propane. Because I believe it's 7K for my generator, which is a 10K generator.

[01:18:26] And so if you go with the 13K, yeah, you're looking at like 10. Yeah. I think it was like 9,500, 10,000, which is still a boatload of power. Oh, it absolutely is. I mean, I am able to run my refrigerator, freezer, my 220 heat pump, my 220 pump in my boiler, which is a natural gas boiler. And then my, I believe it's a three quarter horsepower well pump all at the same time.

[01:18:55] And I think I can even do laundry with that thing with all of the stuff kicked on at once. And I've still got over surge overhead of like 20%. But it does rev the generator up and goes through fuel faster that way. So, yeah. But this generator would fit on the trailer that I had and I could afford it. And it took propane because I did not want to deal with the hassle of a gasoline generator. I got it.

[01:19:25] I got to take some pictures and do a write-up on our site for that generator one of these days. The weather's finally turning nice. It's not minus 20 in my garage. Oh, it's the high today was 73 down here. You should move. You bastard. I know I should. Look, after all the crap you gave me when it was snowing down here, y'all all earned that. Yeah. Yeah, we do. But you know what? It's just about summertime now. So, construction season's going to kick off here in a couple of weeks. Yeah.

[01:19:54] And very shortly, it'll be 100 and screw you outside down here. Yeah. We get that here too, but less humidity. All right. Well, I mean, that's about all we really had, man. I feel like after all these years, we've had enough time to think about the things we probably should have thought about at first, but we weren't there yet. And I'm just hoping. Things we see missing. Yeah.

[01:20:17] And I mean, quite frankly, quite frankly, for everybody that was in the comments, like a lot of things you are pointing out are perfectly valid and reasonable. It's just, I think to me, this always comes back to the idea that once you've covered your bases, once you have going to kill me in five minutes dealt with, then you start branching out into what would make my life suck less. Yeah.

[01:21:08] Sometimes emergency chocolate is the only thing standing between me and a painful death. Yeah. So, you know, boys and girls out there, sometimes you need to have emergency chocolate, not because it's going to kill you, not that it might kill you, but not because it's going to theoretically kill you if you don't have it, but because it makes your life suck a lot less. Do you know why there's 40 pounds of coffee beans on that back shelf? Because if Phil doesn't have his coffee, I'm going to be a lot grumpier than I would have been otherwise, no matter how bad the world sucks. Absolutely.

[01:21:38] So this all just goes back to the idea that, you know, like if there's something we need, we should have it. If there's something we want and we can afford it, we should have it. If it's worth having one of, it's probably worth having two of, and it's worth having two of, you should probably have 10 of them. And you should do the things necessary to make sure that you and your family are well-maintained and happy no matter what the world around you decides to do with it. Absolutely. All right.

[01:22:06] Well, for the listeners who joined us, Nick is going to be out of pocket next week. I'm not 100% certain yet if I'm just going to give me and my family a bye for next week because Cypress Survivalist is running their first event next weekend. And like my wife and I are already anticipating being thoroughly down to the wire, trying to take care of last minute things and probably like hide from the world at our house on Sunday and no one's allowed to call or intrude.

[01:22:35] Because, you know, when, when you are, when you are a slightly on the spectrum introvert, the idea of standing up in front of strangers and talking is the most terrifying thing on earth. And I'm only doing it because I think it's important. It is important. Yeah. So, yeah. If, if you see me next week, I don't know, maybe I'll get my wife to come on and join me, but you won't see Nick.

[01:22:59] And I don't think you'll see Andrew because Andrew had to take a step back to deal with personal stuff and family and work and all the adulting crap. He got silly and got promoted. You know, don't do that. I mean, I got promoted and ruined my life. He got promoted and took him away from the podcast. Just getting promoted is just, it's for responsible people. Yeah. We don't want any of that responsibility in here. Nah. All right.

[01:23:27] Well, if you can't be responsible, at least be good at escaping responsibility. And if you feel the need to be responsible for somebody, be responsible for yourself starting right now. Talk to you later, guys. Bye. Night.