Matter of Facts: Household Emergencies

[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] Yeah, welcome back to the Matter of Facts Podcast. Phil and Nick are back behind the mic. Andrew joined the commune, gave away all of his guns, and last I checked he was smoking pot in a field with a bunch of hippies. So he's living the good life these days, and he has an open seat waiting for him back here when his life frees up a little bit. As soon as he's ready. Yeah, somebody asked about him recently, and I realized I've fallen short of my duties as host to come up with, you know, completely outlandish BS reasons why he wasn't able to attend.

[00:00:59] I mean, it's not that outlandish. There's a hippie commune near him. Really? Pretty sure. Are they like anti-war hippies? Are they armpit hair hippies? Are they don't bathe hippies? Pot hippies? There's different kinds of hippies. I didn't look that in-depth into it. I just noticed on the map that it said commune when I was looking at his place when I went up there for the shotgun class. Something commune. Do they serve Kool-Aid there? Probably. That would be concerning. Actually, I think it was Flavor-Aid, wasn't it?

[00:01:29] Jim Jones. I'm pretty sure it wasn't Kool-Aid. It was one of the off-brand ones. Kool-Aid gets a bad rap for that. That's how you know somebody is really half-ass in things is when they murder their entire following with off-brand Kool-Aid. You can't even serve them the good stuff for their last meal. Right? Of course, I mean, it wasn't exactly like... I mean, it was in the middle of the jungle. The supply line had to be atrocious. Well, I don't want to give them that.

[00:01:58] But as far as my own personal members of my cult, I would happily serve you all the good stuff on your last meal. Sainite sweet tea? Which is a good segue to talk about the patrons. One of you, one of you sociopaths recently told me that on the podcast, I should go through the list of the patrons.

[00:02:20] And you in particular, Stuart, were curious who had been the longest standing supporter of our general psychopathy here. Nice. So, I kind of thought it was going to be Stuart, and I was wrong. Tommy is actually our longest standing patron since January 22nd, 2018. Wow. Thanks. Thanks, dude. Which makes him an incredible Glenn for punishment.

[00:02:49] Rattle Fraggle, this is what I have named years ago a Creamy Kentucky. It's a cream soda and whiskey. And if that sounds gross, you should try it. It's actually, it's a vibe. Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah. But, so there's Tommy. There is Stuart, the dumbass Texas redneck. Brian, Eddie, Simon, Thomas, David. Kyle is in here since 2020. Ben Garcia since 2020.

[00:03:19] Craig, Andrew. I'm not trying to like dime people out with their last names unless you're already on a watch list. You know, trying to be our, trying to be kind. Trey, Dash, Mark. Daniel, Josh. He's definitely on a watch list. He's probably right underneath, not me. Holly, Stacy, Chris. Nicholas Emrickson. Who is that freaking weirdo? Turns out you can buy your way on a podcast. And cheaply, apparently. Oh, yeah.

[00:03:52] Brian, Randy, Olivia. Okay, so this is one of our newer, not too new, but since 2023. Kentucky Chicken One Papa Drinks Whiskey. I love this. No earthly idea, but glad. Everything in that name. Stephen, Kevin, Nathan, Josh. It actually says Cowboy Josh here, and I know exactly how he got that in the game. I'll leave that to y'all's interpretation.

[00:04:21] Mark Joe, Holly, Leonard, Wisconsinite. I've got a fair idea of who that is because Wisconsin isn't a huge state, and there's only a couple of y'all up there. I mean, like, in general, not just patrons. It's the population density is a thing. It is largely bars and churches. Yeah, and the same people inhabit both of them. Well, yeah, I mean, how do you think you'd come up with a good sermon?

[00:04:49] I was thinking, what's a good reason to go to the bar? Organized religion will put you there sometimes. It can. Anyway, John Chain, Hatter, Ken, SH, and Jason. So, there's 39 of you knuckleheads, and I appreciate every last one of y'all. Y'all allow me to operate this podcast and have Nick on and invite guests on.

[00:05:11] And best of all, it doesn't turn into a line item in the Ravely family budget, which means that my main co-host, Mrs. Ravely, doesn't gripe me out about it. So, thanks. That's fair. And merch. Merch also supports the podcast. If you're interested in that, it's hats, shirts, koozies. The link is in the show description. The link to become a patron is also in the show description.

[00:05:36] And the link to Cypress Survivalist Meet My Wife's New Nonprofit is also in the show description. Now. How do you want to handle this, Phil? Okay, so let me just get this out of the way. Yep.

[00:05:56] The reason, the reason that this emotional modulator is here in my class to this evening is because five justices on the Supreme Court are morons. Absolute morons.

[00:06:12] And somehow, somehow, they've gotten in their heads that if you have a thing that's legal and another thing that's also legal and you put them in close proximity together, not even touching each other, suddenly it becomes illegal unless you put a number on them. Yes. And, you know, I was talking in the patron group right before the show, venting, just trying to let the pressure off.

[00:06:39] Because to me, like the Second Amendment make this issue phenomenally clear. And Justice Rabelais would have said, is the thing you are trying to regulate a firearm? And if they would have said yes, the Second Amendment says you can't, stupid, go back to square one. And if they would have said no, then my answer would have been, why are you trying to put a serial number on it, stupid? I mean, I understand where they're getting at in the technicality. It's not a firearm.

[00:07:08] You can serialize whatever you want. The law can require you to serialize all kinds of things. But it is clearly intended to be made into a firearm or be a really, I guess, awkward paperweight. I don't know. You know, I think it's like we said when we were talking about gun control on a recent episode of ours. Gun control is dead. They are puppeting a corpse.

[00:07:36] But the way we are going to win this is with culture, not the courts. The reason why we are winning as much as we are in the courts is because the culture has shifted. And the culture is going to continue to shift. This is not going to be fast. It is not going to be easy. It is going to be full of tomfoolery and idiocy. My state chiefly among the tomfools and idiots. But, you know, what are you going to do? What are you going to do?

[00:08:04] I mean, we knew this was probably going to happen with one of the Second Amendment cases that are coming up before the bench. You know, they kind of threw us a bone with Heller. They kind of threw us a bone with Bruin. We disagree on that. But go ahead. Well, I'm not saying it was perfect. I'm not saying it was the decision it should have been per the cut and dry reading of the Constitution. But what I'm saying is these people have no enforcement arm other than the goodwill of the rest of the government.

[00:08:33] Mine is expired. But go ahead. Oh, well, clearly. I mean, I think most people are getting very fed up. Well, most people that are in our sort of circles are getting very fed up with this. But I would rather see them make this decision here and the correct decision on the assault weapons ban cases that are coming before them next.

[00:08:55] But, see, I guess my issue is, since you brought up Heller and Bruin, like, I've been a contrarian in the Second Amendment community for a very long time. Sure. You want to regulate nukes? You have to amend the Constitution. Right. Pretty much. I mean, you know, then again, like, I've been the guy who in polite company has said I should be able to buy an RPG out of a vending machine and, you know, tax stamp my ass and all sorts of things.

[00:09:25] With a bulk discount. Yeah. And those sentiments were not well received amongst the broad gun community 10 years ago. Like, people literally lost their guys that have more guns than I've ever seen in a room together would flip out over those things and say, oh, just buy your tax stamp of this in the air. And these weren't FUDs, by the way. No. These were guys that had NFA items and freaking giggle switches and all kinds of stuff. These were guys. They were guys that still had faith in the government. Yes.

[00:09:55] Yes. And I am very, very delighted to say that most of those people have come around to my way of thinking over the years and realized that 98% of the government is basically controlled opposition at this point. It is. Especially on the second amendment. Because, like, like I said, if I can't buy an RPG out of a vending machine, it ain't the daggum second amendment yet. If I can't mount a 50 cal in the back of my freaking pickup truck and go pick my kid up from school, it ain't the second amendment.

[00:10:24] This is not a complicated – I mean, you drive a Tacoma. It's required equipment in certain parts of the world. Yes, it is. But I digress. But the point is, like, you know, like, it's not complicated to figure out where I'm coming from on this. Because the second amendment says you government can't F with anybody's right to have any daggum gun they please, period, end discussion.

[00:10:45] Now, I am not interested, but I'm willing to hear an argument that it shouldn't be that broad and maybe we should go through the constitutional process of amending it to put some guardrails in place. I will entertain that as a thought exercise with anybody, anytime, anywhere, any day, because I like to debate. I like to argue those things in good faith. But the amendment as written does not allow that.

[00:11:10] And that's what pisses me off so badly about this and about Bruin and about Heller is that with Heller, it was, okay, you can have guns, but we still get to infringe upon the right. And then in Bruin, it was, well, you know, if you're going to infringe upon the right, it has to be historically based. But you could still have licensing and this, that, and the other. It's like, it's always. Yeah, sure. Slaves can't own guns. Right. I get that. Yeah. Why would you let a slave own a gun?

[00:11:39] It's always, here, little mouse, have a cookie, but I'm going to take part of it back. Because heaven forbid any of these freaking bureaucrats, these unelected jerk offs who sit in a freaking, who sit on the bench for their entire life, get to rule over and lord over us with private armed security paid for our, by our tax dollars all the time explaining to us what freaking simple English says. And that's the part that aggravates me the worst.

[00:12:07] These amendments were not written so that you had to have a law degree to figure them out. They're not that complicated. The common man was expected to be able to read these things and figure out what they mean. And I'm a pretty common, simple person. They mean what they mean. Shall not be infringed requires no further explanation or understanding. It's clear. I can understand evaluating the wording in the context of the linguistic use at the time.

[00:12:35] And that can be a problem for some modern people. Because if you go back and you read the original Federalist Papers, there's some use of language there that most people, that some, a lot of people today are going to have a hard time with. Some of that use of language. But point of order. Department of Education has been doing a bang up job for about the last 50 years, right? Yeah. Yes. I'm not blaming. Well, but here's the thing, though. The use of language drifts. It does. The use of language drifts.

[00:13:04] I mean, most of you people on here know what yeet means. That word didn't exist when I was in high school. Wasn't in high school that long ago. Yes, except that most of our, you would agree with me that our founding documents were not written in slang. They were written in very proper English. It is common parlance, but well-accepted slang.

[00:13:30] Common speech is just slang that has been around long enough that everyone understands it. Yeah. I mean, it is. All language is made up. So we do have to evaluate the document in the link in the lingo of the time and alongside other documents at the time. I mean, there's multiple letters of that ship captains wrote to the early U.S. government asking if they could arm their warships based off the Second Amendment with limited arms.

[00:14:00] And the person responding to them, I can't remember if it was Jefferson or Jack, I think it was Jefferson, wrote back and said, you can arm your ships with whatever you want and can afford. There is no limitation to the Second Amendment. So, to me, that says there is no limitation to the Second Amendment. Period. End of discussion.

[00:14:27] Now, do I think that I should be in possession of nuclear, biological, or chemical warfare agents? No. I do not. I have no idea how to fucking use those things responsibly. Not a goddamn chance. So we need to amend it. Yeah. To ban nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. Hey, I can get behind that. I don't need VX gas sitting next to my lathe. And you know what? I would be amenable to having that conversation. But in the same breath. If you go through the amendment process.

[00:14:57] But in the same breath, I would be demanding that all these other infringements go away. They have to. I'll give you ground on the we shouldn't have personally owned nuclear weapons. I will give you ground on- We already do have personally owned nuclear weapons. Do? Yes. No, I'm saying- Private companies. Private companies build nuclear weapons for the U.S. government. But I would say I would give you ground that no individual citizen has a right to have a nuclear weapon.

[00:15:24] I would be interested to hear that argument. I would say that we can't define rights. But then some- Companies have been ruled as people. Yeah, and then some anarchist or strict libertarian, like hard, hardcore, strict libertarian is going to say, but then how do we fight the government if we don't have parity of force? I mean, I would argue that I have been more responsible with my arsenal than the U.S. government has.

[00:15:53] So I, based on the current trend of my responsibility, would be better off in charge of the nuclear arsenal than the federal government. I've never lost any of my weapons. How many hundreds of thousands of weapons have the U.S. government lost? How many? Seven or eight nukes now? Seven or eight nuclear bombs they've just lost? Don't know where they are? Have you ever had a negligent discharge while doing a backflip in a nightclub? I have never had a negligent discharge, period. Okay.

[00:16:21] I have had a firearm failure on the range. You are already doing better than a certain FBI agent, so there's that. That's accurate. I also can't do backflips. I cannot do a standing backflip. Seriously impressed with the guy's athleticism. I am not at that level. Not really. He kind of looked like he did. Bro should have had a retention holster. Come on now. Bro should have not acted like a moron. But anyway. Look, you're asking an awful lot.

[00:16:52] For an FBI agent to not act like a moron? I mean, thank you. Based on their ask your instructions. I needed one more government watch list to be on. Thank you for that. It's fine. You're probably already on it. Probably am, honestly. So here is the other thing I wanted to talk about before we get to our main topic. The European Union is asking its citizens to stockpile 72 hours of supplies.

[00:17:20] And then you added, FEMA agrees for what it's worth. Now, there's two parts to Phil's reaction here. My first reaction was, wait, the government is telling people to be responsible for themselves? What witchcraft is this? You know, there was the sarcasm, Phil, that pretty much took over at first. And then immediately behind that was skeptical, Phil.

[00:17:44] Because would it be a stretch for you to think that I have a hard time trusting government in general and most forms of authority? No. No, I would say that's quite a reasonable take. Yeah. Well, it's certainly within my deck of cards. That's within my wheelhouse. So when the government starts telling people to act like the crazy tinfoil hat-wearing preppers and stockpile supplies, I don't know. I get a weird feeling.

[00:18:12] Like there's this first part of me that's like, see, see, even the government agrees with me. Look, y'all should be doing what you've been doing all this time. Oh, good God. The government agrees with me. Oh, Jesus Christ. The government agrees with me. Or I agree with the government. One or the other. I'm not sure which anymore. It's kind of terrifying. Like, I don't know how to do it right now. We got here first? Well, okay.

[00:18:33] So this is like the situation of like, okay, so this is the situation of like you meet a girl and you really like her and you bring her home to your mom and dad. And then your mom and dad really like her. And you start questioning, wait, my mom and dad really like this girl. What's the matter with her? You know what I mean? Yes. So I'm in this weird place where I'm like, the government's telling people to be preppers. And that's cool. And yes, but why? Why?

[00:19:04] Now, to be fair, your European Union is kind of looking at a very angry, large neighbor saying, you idiots might want to be preparing for some Shiite to pop off. Because if that dude over there starts sending troops over these borders, we're going to have problems that we have to deal with. And taking care of y'all is not going to be within our wheelhouse anymore.

[00:19:24] I think it would be comical to watch how fast an offensive by Putin into Europe went entirely contrary to his goals. Because you're not talking about a neighbor that is one 30th your size or whatever the difference is between Russia and Ukraine. I know it's quite comically smaller than them.

[00:19:48] But you're now talking about states with modern militaries, U.S.-led NATO training. Which Ukraine had some U.S.-led training, but not a lot, a little bit. And you're not talking like 15, 20, 30-year-old tech. You're talking about modernized militaries and Russia's using what it's using now.

[00:20:14] At the beginning of the Ukraine war, they had no good quality tires for a lot of their vehicles. They were running out of fuel. They were running out of food at the beginning of the offensive when their supply lines were the strongest. You're overlooking the greatest danger Russia would face. If they invade Europe, they're going to cross right into Finland and Poland. And I don't know how well y'all know y'all's history, but the Poles absolutely hate communists.

[00:20:42] And even though Russia's not communist, they're still pretty communist. I have a very Polish coworker, and the only thing he hates more than Russians is paying taxes. He and I would be very good friends, probably. You two would get along. He's retired army. You'd get along pretty well. Oh, yes. I like them already and haven't even met them yet.

[00:21:04] But yeah, so they would have to screw with an entire country full of Polish people if they don't like anything about Russians to begin with. And then they would have to invade Finland. And I don't know how well y'all are aware of your history. Winter War went poorly. The last time Russia invaded Finland, a quiet little farmer boy friggin' murdered like 300 of the sons of bitches, and they shot him in the face, and he has still killed a bunch of them after that.

[00:21:33] Yeah, I think he's still one of the most killing snipers in the world. That is two, listen to me, that is two countries full of people that have been telling bedtime stories to their grandkids about murking Russians. Putin wants nothing to do with crossing those borders. It is not in his best interest. It is a bad freaking idea. He has already sent an entire generation of young boys into the meat grinder trying to take Ukraine back.

[00:22:02] You think for a split second he's going to try to cross the border into friggin' Europe? That man would have to have his head checked. I would personally take up a collection to have a psychiatrist go over and have a discussion with him because I want to document whatever is going on inside of his head. Now, you know, that doesn't mean it won't happen. Doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Doesn't mean that the European Union isn't looking at the threat analysis worldwide and seeing something else happening. I mean, the recent leak with China's landing ships. I'll bring it up again.

[00:22:33] It looks like their ship works when nobody's shooting at it. So we'll see how that goes when there are angry people trying to destroy their stuff. But I see this as kind of a good thing. I think it would be great if everyone in the EU had 72 hours of emergency supplies in their house. I think it would be great if everyone in the world had 72 hours of emergency supplies in their house. Because that means, one, they all have houses. And two, they all have enough food to have 72 hours of spare food.

[00:23:03] But that's the part that worries me is that the minute you start talking. Do you know what 72 hours is, Nick? That's three days. It is. Who doesn't have three days of food in their house already? Shocking amounts of people in Europe because they live in walkable cities. Oh, Jesus Christ. And they go to the grocery store daily. Stop. Stop. It's true. It's true, though. No, no, no, no, no. I will take my freaking headphones off and walk off. You mean to tell me these freaking people don't have three days of food in their freaking house?

[00:23:30] The only two Europeans I'm in regular contact with stop every evening on the way home from work. I'm turning my volume down. You can just go without me. I need a moment. Why are they so freaking stupid? Why are they so stupid?

[00:23:52] I'm just saying that for a freaking, for a group of countries that, like, within the living country of people that are still alive, got invaded by a crazy little bastard from Germany. And you all had to freaking, you know, all of you that were alive at the time had to freaking deal with that freaking problem. And you bunch of morons have to be told to freaking stock 72 hours worth of freaking food in your houses. You know what? Well, I recant everything I said five minutes ago about Putin being it would have to be stupid to invade the European Union.

[00:24:21] If you have to be told you need 72 hours worth of supplies in your house, you freaking deserve to get invaded. You deserve it. I don't know about deserve to get invaded, but you will reap the consequences of your choices if anything at all ever goes wrong. This is why angering topics and whiskey don't mix. Nonsense. That's the best time to have angering topics.

[00:24:50] We can't be sober and upset. Well, for those of you who have been waiting patiently for a Phil rant, there you go. I will have to remember to clip these parts out for Instagram later, just so I can remind myself of the moments where I temporarily lost my patience. You know, it's I think that it's good that FEMA is putting that out there again. I thought it was better or the EU is putting that out there.

[00:25:18] I thought it was better when FEMA started recommending two weeks, but I saw they're back at 72 hours again. I really do think that they should recommend two weeks because I think two weeks is a good bare minimum because very few places in the continental U.S. and continental Europe has natural disasters where the fallout lasts longer than a couple of weeks. And if they do, it usually affects a limited area and supplies are getting to you within that two week window.

[00:25:48] What do you think, Phil? I just... I'm glad. I'm glad that some... I'm glad the TV is finally telling people to do things that make sense for a change. That's a welcome experience. But then I just think to myself, I'm like, I guess the TV is going to have to remind people to wear a clean underwear every morning because apparently it's too freaking stupid to exist otherwise. I mean, there are people I'm sure that need that reminder.

[00:26:18] That's enough of all that. Phil's had enough of getting aggravated. Now we're going to talk about something useful-ish for the next 35 minutes. Hey, the EU has been useful in propping up Greece. I think your definition of useful needs a tune-up check. Sarcasm, bud. Sarcasm. Sorry, I didn't see the sarcasm flag behind you. I should get a flag.

[00:26:45] I should just get a cup that says sarcasm and then everything I'm drinking is sarcasm. That would be on break. There you go. Ooh, merch idea. Chris, Tiffany. That's actually a great idea. Chris, Tiffany, if you're listening, I need a coffee cup. Just the word sarcasm. It will sell, I promise you. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I would definitely need one for work. Oh, this just further reinforces.

[00:27:14] It's the fact that all my best ideas happen when moderately buzzed. Dude, that's always. The topic for today is household emergencies. So, in the vein of what we've been doing recently, which is lots of really mundane stuff that most people say, no shit, Phil and Nick. I thought we should talk about household emergencies. Under the guise of like, you know, it occurred to me while I was thinking about this topic. I was like, you know, Nick, let's use you as an example. Sure. I'm assuming you work on average eight hours a day. Yep. Yep. Right about eight and a half.

[00:27:43] Half hour commute each way. Say an hour if we're being really generous. 14 minutes. Okay. One way. Let's say an hour commute. Sure. Just so we're kind of like throwing a big wide net. Mm-hmm. So, nine hours away from home. Yeah. Add in another, say, hour a day if we're going to advertise like a week's worth of air and running. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So, that means you spend 14 hours a day at home.

[00:28:13] Mm-hmm. Whether you're asleep or awake, 14 hours. That is. That's all about right, yeah. Obviously, well more than half of your life is going to be spent at your home. I mean, ideally, I do pay the mortgage, so I'd like to get some benefit out of it. So, where do you think you're most likely to have an emergency situation happen? Oh, very clearly at home. I mean, and the statistics bear that out. I mean, most accidents happen within one mile of your residence. Yep.

[00:28:39] So, you know, probably means most accidents happen in your house. I was going to say, I want to say I saw a statistic that was like something like 60% of all accidental deaths happen at or near your home of residence. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, usually within like your neighborhood. Yeah. You go over, help the neighbor on the ladder, ladder slips, falls over, crack your head on the ground, that sort of thing.

[00:29:03] But believe it or not, step ladders, kitchen table chairs, and bathtubs. I can believe it. Because everybody grabs that stupid chair with the wobbly leg to go get something off a high shelf, and then that leg finally gives out. Grandma's got a broken hip now. I feel personally attacked, Nick. I like that chair. Have you fallen off of a kitchen chair, Phil? No. You have. I haven't.

[00:29:33] This is why I holler at my wife. I have not fallen off the chair. It wobbled a little bit, scared the shit out of me. But I did not fall. Well, you know, it's a good thing to point out. Look, most accidents are going to happen in the places you are at the most, which is either work or home. So, Jeff in the comments said, changing light bulbs. Absolutely. Light bulb goes out, smoke detector starts beeping and pissing you off in the middle of the night.

[00:30:00] You're probably not going to go get the step ladder on the other side of the house. You're going to grab the chair that is closest to you and take care of it. That's where you fall. I'd say to remember something about what, hutching a family member use a TV dinner tray to smack the crap out of a smoke detector, like multiple times until it stopped working. That's great. I'm just so upset you don't even go get a chair. Well, it was 2 o'clock in the morning. So, yeah. Well, 2 a.m. will do that.

[00:30:30] You don't always think the clearest when you're first woken up at that time. That's why I'm glad it's within arm's reach. Like, I don't have to jump forward and get a chair. I think I just reach up and just click. Benefits of a house with a reasonable ceiling height. Yes. Also cost because we like to cook inside the house. And I keep saying one of these days I'm going to invent a smoke detector that silences itself if you yell out, it's not a fire. I'm just cooking. Yeah.

[00:31:00] I mean, that would be great. I'd be a millionaire. Billionaire. So, yeah. So, what we did was we found a list of like the top few emergencies that happened to people in their homes. Not including medical because we kind of already covered that. The only thing about medical that we haven't said that we probably should is know where your local ER is. Know where your local urgent care is. You know, the basics. Because sometimes it takes a while for an ambulance to get to you. I'm outside of town.

[00:31:30] It's probably going to take 20 minutes. My local ER is 23 minutes away. Yeah. I can probably beat the ambulance. Well, and I feel like it's also important just to know where the ambulance is because like let's say hypothetically. To your point, if you can get to the ambulance faster than they get to you, if you can get to the emergency room faster than the ambulance can get to you, then unless there's some reason not to move you or transport you, there's no reason. Right.

[00:31:58] There are times when that's not going to be an option. Yeah. But anyway, this was the first one on it. And like I can hear now someone's going to say this is not an emergency. But, you know, tell that to get locked out can be an emergency. Well, I'm going to tell you that it's happened more than once where somebody has like not that this is a household emergency, but like somebody has like had a vehicle lock the doors and their child is inside. That's that is absolutely an emergency.

[00:32:27] I'm going to tell you that if that is not an emergency, like if the engine's running, the air condition's on, the kid is not going to die. I don't give a damn. My kid is in there. I'm out here. They're upset. I can't get to them. It is an it is officially an emergency. Absolutely. It is. Nothing elevates Phil to the emergency point faster than his wife or daughter crying. Fair enough. So it is your job to care for your family. Yeah. That's priority number one.

[00:32:54] But being locked out of your house, I mean, frankly, that happens sometimes, you know, like. Oh, it does. It does. I had a dog that used to do it to me all the time. You had a dog that used to lock you out? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So what she would do, I had a hound and when she would come in the house, she would come in and spin a circle and she'd hit the door with her ass. And if I didn't have the handle unlocked, she'd hit it hard enough to swing the door shut and lock me out of the house. Oh. Yeah.

[00:33:20] See, I do this thing where like first thing in the morning when I put on pants, I put my keys in my pocket and they stay there until I'm literally getting in the shower that night. I refuse to walk outside of my house. When I'm going to go like do yard work or work on the truck, by the way, I take my watch off. Sometimes I'll take my phone off. I'll take my work.

[00:33:48] The silicone ones are the way to go. This thing will rip before it degloves your hand. Yeah. Fantastic. Silicon rings weren't a thing back when I got this. This is titanium, by the way. So if ever this gets in front of my finger, I have a whole new set of problems to deal with. I did a tungsten carbide one. Turns out that hospitals have a really hard time taking those off. So I try not to wear that one. Yeah.

[00:34:16] Well, I mean, if I was still working with my hands a lot, working in the trades, I'd probably have a silicon band for when I was at work. But I work at an office these days. So yeah, you're reasonably safe. But you know, that's kind of what got me to wear my keys all the time, too, is the dog locked me out twice at 430 in the morning. And I didn't feel like waking my wife up because she's not an early riser like I am. That is the nicest way of saying you don't want to get griped out by your spouse.

[00:34:42] Hey, man, if all it takes is me breaking into my garage to get a spare key out of somewhere, I'll take that over letting my wife sleep in. Sometimes it's better that way. But, you know, getting locked out can be an actual very serious emergency. Phil, you remember a while back I was telling you guys that it gets down to negative 30 regularly where I live. Oh. Sometimes we've had it down in the negative 50s. No. I know.

[00:35:12] Phil is going to need a space heater and three sweatshirts after this conversation. That is gross. But at negative 30 or negative 50, you could get hypothermia incredibly rapidly outside of your home. I'm kidding. Even if you're properly dressed. I know. I'm telling you. Well, it just goes to show that in some areas of the country, it could be an emergency. Let's take the opposite. Phoenix, Arizona, 115 degrees. Oh, I'll do you one better.

[00:35:42] Mm-hmm. Louisiana in mosquito season. Mm-hmm. You'll need a... Die of blood loss before you get back in the house. You'll need a blood transfusion if you're outside for more than 15 minutes. Wrong time of day. But seriously, though, you guys get it where it's over 100 degrees there, don't you? I mean... With near 100% humidity? Well, okay. The short answer is not usually we'll get all the way up to 100 unless you're talking about the real feel and everything else.

[00:36:07] But I mean, it gets into the frigging mid to high 90s and it's like 65, 70% relative humidity. That's a cooker, dude. Oh, it is. You can get heat stroke. I've been in Iraq. 100 degrees in Iraq feels like a nice, warm, sunny day over here. It didn't start to suck until it was like up over 105. Yeah. And even then... No, they say it's not the heat. It's the humidity that kills you. And it can.

[00:36:33] As much as I think that statement is BS, I will just give you this personal anecdote. I came home on leave from Iraq in very, very early July. I was home for July 4th, which was a really bad idea, by the way, when you just spent six months getting mortared all the time to come home for the 4th of July. Yeah. But that's a different story. But I came home to Louisiana into July heat. Mm-hmm.

[00:36:59] Felt I was the only person that was outside, like, perfectly comfortable... Enjoying it. Enjoying it because of where I just come from. If that gives you an idea of like... Now, it was like a good 10 degrees cooler back here, even though the humidity was higher. But that's just my point about the whole heat-humidity thing is that there is something to that whole humidity hurts. Oh, it does. It absolutely does because your body can't self-regulate. Yeah.

[00:37:29] So, you know, getting locked out of your house can be an emergency. And, you know, the recommendation I saw in the article you sent me was to have a Heideke somewhere. I don't like Heidekes. I don't like them either. They are, to me, the ones that are supposed to look like rocks don't look like rocks. And maybe it's because I don't see colors like normal people, but it looks like a giant chunk of plastic. I'm like, that's either a key or a Bluetooth speaker. One of the two. It looks like a giant chunk of plastic. Right.

[00:37:59] So, what a lot of people do, and I kind of recommend, is if you do have an external garage access, that you can put one of those combination keypads on that opens up your garage door. At least then there's a lock between your key and everyone else, not just a fake plastic rock that you can slip open, get in, steal all your shit, lock the door, and leave. Make your insurance company sorted out.

[00:38:30] Key hidden in the garage. If you don't have that, trusted neighbor. Trust neighbor is the way I would go. And this is a huge benefit behind networking with your neighbors, getting to know your neighbors. You're going to find somebody that at least, you know, it's a guy that you wouldn't mind having around the house, or your old gal across the street that you know is always home because she's 96 and doesn't go anywhere. She also doesn't sleep because, well, she's 96 and why bother at that point?

[00:39:01] So, you know, find somebody that you can trust that is relatively local, ideally within an easy walkable distance for you, which that's going to vary person to person. Give them a key, give a family member nearby that's within short driving distance a key to your house. Also useful if you have pets and go on vacation or in your garage. Yeah. I mean, simple, cheap solutions. Spare keys cost, what, a couple bucks? I haven't had a spare key made in a while.

[00:39:31] I need to get a couple made, and they're not super expensive. Yeah, it's walking around burger money at the very most. Yeah. So right behind that is power outage, which I feel like we've talked about quite a bit, especially recently. We have. But you know one thing we didn't talk about, Phil, was sump pump backups during a power outage. That's a good point. It doesn't apply to me because I'm on city water, but it's a good point.

[00:40:00] Ah, sump pump is for groundwater coming into your basement. You don't have one of those either because your groundwater is a foot and a half below your foundation. Yeah, I was about to say, if I had a basement, it'd be a below ground. It'd be an in-house swimming pool. So, you know, around us, basements are extremely common in Illinois. Just about every house has one. If it doesn't, it has a crawl space. But most of them are basements.

[00:40:26] Almost all these basements, even in the older houses, have either been retrofitted or came built with sump pumps in them. So when we have heavy rains, you can collect the water around the foundation into a drain tile and pump it up, out, and away from your house. When the power goes out, your sump pump doesn't work because they're all electric. So they make these little battery-powered backup pumps. Super handy. Really great to have.

[00:40:54] They do only last like 24 to 48 hours, depending on how heavy your use is. But for most intermediate power outages, it solves the problem. Yeah.

[00:41:07] And I think what's important for most people to realize is like, even if you don't go to the point of having like a generator or a whole home generator or whatever, like at a bare minimum, to me, the things that demand backup power is at a certain point, you're going to have to worry about food spoilage in your fridge. Sure. The simplest way to deal with that, though, and like this is the dumbest thing I've ever – it is a very old, dumb trick, but I swear to God it works.

[00:41:35] You can either do it the high-tech way like I have with a couple of temperature probes and a little meter that has max-min markings so that if ever my food defrosts, I'd know about it. Yeah. The simple way is you get a little cup of water, you freeze it, you put a penny on top, stick it in your freezer. If the penny ever goes to the bottom of the cup, congratulations, all your food for the food thawed. Yeah. That's a good one for a deep chest freezer. Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:42:03] Well, I mean, it's something good to know because – Especially if you're going on a long vacation and you're not having somebody watch your house. Well, and it sucks to lose the food, but at least you're not eating stuff with bacteria crawling around. It's just dying to make a home in your gut. Yeah, definitely better than food poisoning. I mean, right now it would really hurt because I've got a quarter of a cow in the freezer and that's a hit. But nice thing about a very full freezer like that, it is going to stay frozen longer.

[00:42:33] And so that's another little tip for power outages is the more full you keep your fridge and freezer, the more thermal mass you have in them and the slower that temperature will climb. Yep. Yep. And if you need thermal mass in a pinch, like hurricane season, if you know something's coming, I take a bunch of the water bottles out of my rack. I drain them down. I take out like the top two inches of water out just so there's plenty of room for thermal expansion and I throw them in the chest freezer. Fill that thing up to the top.

[00:43:02] Because then what you can do is you can take those frozen bottles out of the freezer, stick them in your fridge and it will cool your fridge without having to run the generator. Then you only need to run your freezer. Yeah. And I'll tell you using your fridge as an ice box. And I'll tell you that during Hurricane Ida, like there was a moment where my generator was misbehaving pretty badly and we couldn't run the refrigerator.

[00:43:26] So what we did was we took everything out of the refrigerator, put that in the freezer so that we only had to run the fridge for like X amount of time just to – we basically turned the freezer portion of the fridge into a fridge. And then we put everything that was already frozen into the chest freezer where it was already frozen. Yeah, that works. We made it work. There is a conversation going on in the chat that I think bears some pointing out.

[00:43:56] So Joe was saying he locked himself out of his house with a pizza in the oven. That's an emergency. Yeah, because that could turn into a small house fire. And then he replied it was way too easy to kick the door open. That's a good argument for door armor. Yeah, and three-inch screws aren't shit if the door jamb is not strong. Yeah, most – I don't know if you guys are as familiar with me and Phil with residential construction.

[00:44:22] But for most people, if you have not put three-inch screws in your door, your screw is about that long that is holding your hinges in and that are holding your – yeah, that is holding your strike plate in. The screws that are holding all of my hinges and my striker plates in are about that long. Because I had extra deck screws left over from a project and that's just what I used because I had them. Why not? You know, you can use them for that.

[00:44:50] But, Phil, the trouble with that is those screws are only into, at max, two 2x4s. Yes, I'm aware. Yeah, so, you know, you can do things like that, run some longer screws into your hinges, run longer screws into your strike plates. That is good. But the problem is your strike plate is only spanning that distance with two 3-inch screws.

[00:45:14] Whereas those door armor plates are spanning some 2 to 3 feet or the entire length of the door, depending on what you've got with 3-inch screws. To be fair, I already have a huge glass pane in my front door. Oh, you're screwed. Yeah. The whole – my whole point of doing this is really just try to make it take two kicks to knock the door down. Yeah, make it loud enough that you hear it. Yeah. Because that first kick is going to be game time. Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

[00:45:43] Frozen pipes – and I added leaking pipes in here, too, because if anybody's ever had a – Because one causes the other. Well, not just that, but like, okay, so frozen pipes is a problem. Obviously, because it turns into a leaking pipe when it thaws. But even in the absence of frozen pipe, if any of your water pipes ever just start leaking, like, up in your attic or your ceiling, and then all of a sudden you have, like, all the drywall cave in on you, that's a freaking problem. And that's a problem that – It can be catastrophic.

[00:46:09] Yeah, because the damage done keeps doing damage until you stop it. Mm-hmm. And once all that stuff is wet, you're going to get mold. Mold. And the longer that mold sits there, the worse it's going to get. And the more damage that mold will do. And that stuff is horrible for your health. Yeah. So, like, to me, like, the way to mitigate this, honestly – First of all, frozen pipes is pretty freaking simple.

[00:46:37] If you think there's a chance about – if you think you have your risk of frozen pipes, you should be running your pipes. Yeah. Or you should be running your water. A trickle of water out of every faucet. Yeah. That's pretty basic advice. I mean, that's what we do down here in the South. And, like, even when it snowed on us this past year, trickling the pipes and keeping the heater running was all it took to keep frozen pipes at bay. For the most part, it does.

[00:47:02] But it is worth pointing out that Stewart had that experience several years ago during snowpocalypse in Texas where they had a power outage. And without the central heat to keep the houses warm, all of his neighbors ended up with burst pipes. Yep. So, like, that is worth considering. The only way you can really avoid that, if the power's out and you're losing water pressure, is to drain your entire system to the lowest possible location.

[00:47:28] So, if you happen to be in an area where it can get below freezing and you could theoretically get a power outage, which is most of the U.S., if you don't have a point near your supply down in the basement level at the lowest level of your house that you can drain your entire house, consider having a plumber put one in.

[00:47:56] Yes, it is a pain because then you have to close everything up, repressurize your system slowly, clean all the filter elements on all of your faucets and everything else because it's going to disturb crap in your pipes. But it sure beats blowing up your water pipes and then having to deal with that backfill. And I would say, like, down here on the Gulf Coast, like, all of our water heaters are up in the attics, or at least almost all of them are up in the attics. Sure, because it's hot up there. Yeah.

[00:48:25] And water heater up in the attic, my main shutoff is actually out at the street side. So... You don't have one in your house? I don't think it's in my house. I'm pretty sure it's outside. You should have one in your house. I've never found it. You should install one. Well, I was going to say, if nothing else, I can shut it off out there at the street side and then open up all the friggin' tabs that are here on the ground floor. Unless it's under 10 to 12 inches of snow and ice. Yeah. Well, this is a preventative measure.

[00:48:55] I mean, once the pipe's frozen, you're kind of screwed. But the other thing is that if you have a leaking pipe, like, if you have a pipe that is leaking water that is actively creating water damage, to me, the first way to mitigate it is just to frickin' pay attention. When you see that little spot on your ceiling that gets bigger every day, that's a warning sign. You should be paying attention to that. You know what a good way to mitigate that is, Phil? Have you heard of these automatic leak detectors? What? You install it.

[00:49:23] Well, you might if you know enough about plumbing. It's a little box that they install on your water main inside your house. And it detects the flow rate of the water. If you have a toilet that's leaking, it will shut it off. If you have a pipe that's leaking, it will detect it and shut it off. Because there's a difference between turning a thing on and the flow of water and a slow trickle leak.

[00:49:51] Or a constantly on flood of water. I've never heard of this, and that's terrible. There are a couple hundred bucks. You're probably going to pay another couple hundred bucks to have your plumber install it. But if you go on long vacations and you don't have people watch the house, it's a pretty fantastic small investment. So, like, a friend of mine years ago, his parents had a washer machine that the fill sensor went out on it. Gal started a load of laundry and left on some errands.

[00:50:20] Was gone longer than she thought. Came back the entire second, first, and basement of their house was flooded. Oh, jeez. Water damage on everything. Because their laundry was on the second floor. My parents have a laundry on the second floor. It could happen to anybody. But that sensor would go, this is not normal operating parameters. I'm going to shut it off. And if it shuts off and it is normal operating parameters, you just go downstairs and you hit the button.

[00:50:48] And you open it back up and it resets itself. So, you know, you can kind of mitigate the risk of this by having one of those systems installed. If memory serves, when I had it quoted to be done on my house, which I haven't done it yet because I still need to rework the whole well pump and pressure head system over there. It was like 600 bucks to have a plumber install it. It was not much.

[00:51:16] Compared to like losing the house to water. But yeah, I mean, I guess that's the moral of that story is like know where your water shutouts are so you can at least stop the bleeding. You can stop the damage and not let it get any worse. Stop the bleeding. Know where your wife's hairdryer is. Because the best thing to thaw frozen pipes, believe it or not, is a hairdryer or one of those old halogen work lights. That is a vibe.

[00:51:43] I was going to say I have a like legit heat gun, like not a hairdryer. Yeah. You'd want that thing cranked down as low as it can go. You want like 70, 80 degrees, thaw it nice and slow. Because if you have a big blockage in the pipe and you thaw the middle, great. You've changed the pressure in the pipe without relieving the pressure on either end. Oh, great. And you can create your own problems again.

[00:52:10] So I guess this just kind of goes along with that overflowing toilet or an overflowing sink. Not just that, but like this was written from the article I cribbed some of this from. Like this was really thinking about like if you had a block drain. Oh, yeah. A block drain or a backflowing drain. I guess this kind of, but see, Nick, this is where my blinders come out.

[00:52:33] Because like, is there a high proportion of people that live in homes and apartments that don't know how to plunge a sink or a toilet? You would be shocked. Nick. You would be shocked. Nick. Nick. I get called by people that know me on occasion saying my sink's backed up. What do I do? I have been called by people that have said there's water on the floor around my toilet. What do I do?

[00:53:02] We're talking about a small group, right? Like two percent? No. Two and a half. Three. Three max. No more than three. I would say out of the people I know, five percent, but most of the people I know are also in the trades. I have had adults. I'm loving my temples again.

[00:53:23] I have had adults who are retired call me and ask, what do I do when there is sewage coming out of my toilet sink, bathtub, whatever? So since Jeff Jag brought it up, if you are a homeowner, not so much if you live in an apartment because that's kind of the property owner's problem.

[00:53:46] But I had all these things when I lived there because if I have something not flowing that should be, I wanted to fix it myself immediately and not be inconvenienced. But you should go buy a little snake. Like you can get the little cheap plastic drain snakes that are like a foot and a half long. And listen to me. I live with two ladies with long hair. Those freaking things are lifesavers. Like most of your clogs, you jig that down in the drain and pull it out. Problem solved. That best. Yeah.

[00:54:16] Most of the time it's less than a foot. But you should have that and a freaking plunger. That is part of your I just bought a new house shopping list. Personally, I recommend people go for like the 10 foot stainless steel coil snakes that are powered by your cordless drill or corded drill. Just because that I have yet to have that 10 foot stainless steel coil snake. I've never had that not solve a clog, a clog to anything.

[00:54:46] Yeah. See, I usually go straight for the plunger. And sure, that works. Even in the case of like a bathtub or a shower, like where you have the overflow drain, like pull that freaking cap off the top. Get yourself a wet rag. Stick it in there with like two fingers and use the wet rag to kind of plug up the top of that overflow drain. Don't shove it in. Get yourself a little pressure going. Don't shove it in so damn deep. You can't get it back out, dummy. Like you only got to go in a little bit. You ain't trying to get the clog out that way.

[00:55:17] Yeah. All you got to do is just like put a little bit of a hit of pressure in there to stop the air from going back and forth and get that plunger going to act like a water hammer. You will knock that clog loose quickly. Yeah. The vast majority of the time you will. I mean, most of this stuff is not expensive either. Like I think the stainless steel snake I bought at Menards was like $19.95. None of this stuff is really expensive. It's just, Jesus Christ, the number of people that don't think about it. And they're not difficult to use.

[00:55:46] No, they're really not. I mean, I don't feel like. If it's your shower, you pull the little shower grate up. It's probably two Phillips head screws. You hook the snake to your cordless drill. You unlock the lock and you hit the trigger. And it kind of does all the work for you. Yeah, you're going to have to clean up a mess because it tends to throw shit just about everywhere. But them's the brakes, bud. Yeah.

[00:56:11] So broken HVAC system can get a little touchy unless you know enough about them to try to service them yourselves. And I'll be honest, I know how to fix a lot of things. And cracking open an HVAC system is not something I'm going to do all willy-nilly. But I will say that the one thing every freaking homeowner had better know how to do. And it's freaking simple. And there's no reason for you to not know how to do it. And if you don't, I want you to think about your life decisions for just a minute. And then you look it up on YouTube because it ain't that hard.

[00:56:42] Change the son of a bitching filter. If you do that one thing consistently, you will save yourselves a lot of pain and aggravation down the road. Just that one little thing. We have a different one thing. Huh? Okay. We have a different one thing. All right. On your heater, on your water heater and on your furnace, if you have gas equipment, there is a thermocouple.

[00:57:07] Carbon will build up on that thermocouple and block its temperature regulating and reading results. That is true. Find your make and model. Go on YouTube. Look up how to clean that thermocouple. If your furnace will ever not turn on and you have gas and you have power, turn off the gas, turn off the power because don't be dumb. Open it up. Clean that thermocouple. Close it up. Start it back up.

[00:57:34] That has solved my problem two separate occasions. What do you typically use? A little bit of emery cloth or some sandpaper or... Honestly, man, whatever I have that is a mild abrasive. Scotchbrite, the purple stuff or the green stuff seem to work pretty okay. It is carbon fouling. So what I did was I threw a little hoppies on the Scotchbrite pad and just cleaned it right up. I paper toweled it off because hoppies is flammable.

[00:58:01] And then closed everything back up and started it up and it went just fine. It took about four minutes and I had the heat back on. Yeah. And that just goes right to the point of like, again, could you... And it might be necessary to call in a professional? Certainly. But if you can fix this yourself cheaply and quickly and not be inconvenienced, why not? Well, it just goes to show you that it's just another perfect argument for an emergency fund. Yeah. I know you and I bring it up all the time.

[00:58:30] We live in a capitalist society. Money will solve a lot of your problems. Yep. And a properly funded emergency fund is critical if you're a homeowner. You put it quite succinctly when you said that there are a few problems that cannot be solved with a large injection of cash. Mm-hmm. So now these next two kind of go hand in hand, but I separate them because they have different remedies. Oh, yes, they do.

[00:58:59] But these are most people's personal hell. It's kitchen or house fire. Mm-hmm. Now, kitchen fire, grease fire is like... Most people have probably had one. I mean, to be fair, I can't remember. I don't think I've ever lit anything on fire because if I'm cooking anything... I'm sure I have. I mean, I've had a couple things that like the oven smoked a little bit because something splattered and, you know, did that.

[00:59:28] Or I do a lot of cooking on cast iron with a lot of butter. Yeah, it can get smoky. Usually I cook that outside, though, because when I'm cooking steaks or burgers or whatever, it's a chimney out there. Wow. That can happen. But I'm not too proud to admit, but there have been times where my range top was probably a little bit juicier than it should have been. And then you get a good bit of heat going and a little bit of a splatter. And next thing you know, your whole freaking range is lit up.

[00:59:57] That can be terrifying for people. My dad, uncles, and grandfather were making glug. For those of you that are of Swedish descent, you know what that is. It is fruit, brandy, and liquor that you cook over the stovetop, light on fire for a minute, and then put the fire out. They had the Kleenex box too close to the stovetop when they were doing the lighted on fire bit. Glug. Glug. G-L-U-G. Uh-huh. I'll make you some. I will Google this later.

[01:00:25] It is a very thick, fruity, nutty, and seasoned winter drink. You drink it warm. You drink it just halfway between hot and cold. It's like tepid or a little warmer. And which of God's special children thought this up? The Swedish. The Swedes. Mm-hmm. Okay. Think of like a highly alcoholic syrup.

[01:00:55] Yes. It's very sugary. It's very fruity. And it's made with. Served warm. Brandy, wine, moonshine, or ever clear most of the time. Oh, yeah. It is flammable. And it is served at above room temperature. Usually, like, if you're just making a little bit of it, you'll microwave it up to warm it up a little bit. But a lot of people warm it up over a stovetop. It is phenomenal.

[01:01:26] Jeff Jack. Jeff knows what's up. I've barely heard of it. Oh, yeah. Okay. Sorry to interrupt, but I was listening to this and I'm like, I don't think I've ever heard of this. Oh, it's a thing. It is a cold weather drink. It is meant to warm you both body and soul. Probably why I've never heard of it before. Yeah, you're too far south for glug. But, you know, kitchen fires, you've got your basic baking soda. Great to have close by.

[01:01:56] It'll put out a small fire. Everybody, if you're listening to this podcast, if you're a patron of this podcast, have a fire extinguisher in or near your kitchen. That is rated for kitchen fires. It's cheap insurance. You can buy them for, I don't even know. It's been a while since I bought them. I need to have mine recertified.

[01:02:22] But I want to say the one I keep in the kitchen was probably 70 bucks, 60, 70 bucks. Yeah, but it's cheaper than burning your house down. A lot of things are cheaper than burning your house down. I mean, and just think of the inconvenience you say. But, you know, a lot of things, a lot of things like this fires in general, you can mitigate that without even a fire extinguisher by practicing good habits around heat source.

[01:02:53] Don't have, like, your Kleenex box right next to the stove. Don't have a bunch of rags next to the stove. If you've got a bunch of grease all over the stove, clean that shit, man. I mean, come on. Practice a little hygiene and you can avoid these fires. Don't drop a frozen turkey into a boiling vat of oil. Oh, Jesus Christ. Looking at you, Thanksgiving. Every, listen, this past Thanksgiving, my wife and I were literally at home.

[01:03:21] And I swear to God, the fire trucks ran four times before 8 o'clock in the morning. Oh, I guarantee it. And I guarantee it was somebody dropping a frozen bird into oil. No water and no ice near hot oil. Especially in those open burner propane outdoor stoves. Anyway. But yeah, turn your heat source off, either fire extinguisher or baking soda.

[01:03:48] I mean, if it's a fire in a pan, pick it up, take it to the sink, float it with water. See, I've always been told not to do that, though, because the minute you have a grease fire and you... Yeah, well, if it's a grease fire. Yeah, if it's a grease fire, don't do that. Don't have water to do a grease fire. Just make a floating fire. Now, I will say that most people have those cute decorative little hand towels on the ones your wife tells you never to wipe your hands on. Yeah.

[01:04:18] I get in trouble with those. Bill is telling you, take that damn thing and use it to smother the flaming pan. Your wife will only be pissed about it until you point out that she didn't burn the house down. So you'll get away with it. True. And then you get rid of the towel. It depends on how flammable the towel is. Yeah. Usually, though, I mean, all you have to do is smother the fire. Yeah, but some of those are polyester nowadays, I've noticed. And if any of you have ever been around melting, burning plastics, you can actually cause yourself a lot worse injuries.

[01:04:46] Cotton towels, it's safer. Don't do it if it's polyester towels. Why on earth would you have polyester kitchen towels? Dude, I don't know, but I have seen them for sale in Walmart, so I assume someone is buying them. Walmart doesn't sell shit that people don't buy. No, they just sell stuff that idiots buy, apparently. Anyway, and the other problem, electrical fire. Now, I will be the first to admit, electricity is witchcraft to me.

[01:05:16] It is. Matter of fact, I was showing y'all this fun little tool recently. Oh, dude, those things are the best. Yeah, and then we have our resident electrician like, oh, I just lick my fingers and touch the wires to see if it sparks. Yeah, that's fine. I like playing with hot electricity, too. But if you want to know what outlet is controlled by what breaker in your house, that Klein tool or everybody else makes one. It's called a circuit tracer.

[01:05:46] Phil, would you mind unplugging the two parts? Showing the audience the back half there? So you plug that back half into a wall outlet, and then you can take the front half, push a button, and it'll make a beep when you're at the right breaker. Or at the right wire in your wall, in case you were wondering. And this came with a little accessory pack that allows you to adapt this three-prong to a two-prong. Nice.

[01:06:14] This three-prong to a screw and outlet, like for a light bulb. Oh, mine doesn't have that. I need that. I'll send you a picture of it. You can probably pick up the kit. It also includes a set of leads that has a three-prong plug at the other end. So if you just have bare wires, you plug this into the end of your probe and then tag these two wires onto the end of your bare leads. Nice. That's fantastic.

[01:06:38] That's good for if you're trying to set up your home generator, your whole home generator or your plug-in generator. Yeah. Because probably your electrician doesn't know where your outlets go either. You don't know. Your house panel doesn't know. My house was wired by a meth head.

[01:06:56] And since we're on that conversation, the last outlet in this house I had to change, I came to the annoying conclusion that somehow these freaking psychos wired this house so that the two plugs in this two-plug gang are on two separate circuits. Stop. Why? Stop. Stop. You're about to ask me why, how, why on earth was my doodad.

[01:07:25] Well, how I understand the wires are wrong. But all the questions you're going to ask me, I can only answer by saying that somebody was smoking crack when they wired this house. Because I, stop, let me get the story out. Then you can say whatever, whatever you're going to say about the electrician. And Josh, if you're listening, you can comment on this electrician too. To be fair, Josh's house was wired wrong too. Yeah. It's not wired wrong. No, he fixed that because I gave him shit.

[01:07:55] But my point is, so I have one of the little doohickeys that like, you know, you push a button and then you, you, you get your, your probe in close to a wire or an outlet or whatever. And it's like, see if it's, see if it's live. Okay. So I put that up again. Check the top, not the bottom. I, well, no, no, no, no. I checked the bottom. Oh. I had my wife check the bottom while I was flipping breakers in the breaker box. And she said, okay, it went off. And I was like, cool. That both sides of the outlet should be off.

[01:08:21] Because what fricking psycho would wire two halves of the same two gang, you know, outlet to two different circuits? Well, when I went to change the outlet, I got a nasty little surprise when all of a sudden I felt the, I felt the, the feeling all the way up past my elbow into my bicep. Yeah. It's about 120. Yeah. And then I started, I said some very unkind things about everybody and everything in the room. Yeah. And then I went and found the other breaker I had to turn off.

[01:08:51] So let's just say that beautiful little tool over there is going to help me figure out which circuits to leave on and leave off in the event we have to run our, our home generator. That's great. Because very obviously my house was wired by nutcases. So the trouble with electrical fires is you can flip the main breaker on your breaker panel. You can't. That's always an option. That is the option.

[01:09:16] But if the fires already started, chances are that's not going to do you much good. It's going to stop it from continuing to have the ignition source, which is great. The heat's already there. The heat's already there. And if the fire's already started, especially if it's like if it's in your wall, there's not really much you're going to do about that unless you can bust a hole in it and get a fire extinguisher in it. If you know exactly where it is.

[01:09:41] Plus you need a electrical rated fire extinguisher, which most of us have ABCs. Which in case you guys don't know, there's five classes of fire fire extinguisher. ABCD electrical and half a is carbon based solids, paperwood textiles. B is flammable liquids.

[01:10:07] So like diesel fuel, oil, petroleum products. C flammable gases, butane, propane, methane, stuff like that. D is like metallic fires. So unless you work in the metallics industry where you're like machining zirconia, metallic zirconia, where the chips like to catch on fire spontaneously because of the water in the atmosphere. Magnesium. Magnesium. Or magnesium, lithium, anything like that.

[01:10:36] You're probably not going to need a D class fire extinguisher. Iron fire. Electrical ones do not have the letter E on them. They have a little lightning bolt symbol. And then F is for like cooking oil. Yeah. I would also point out though that like you went straight to like wires on somebody's walls. I was honestly thinking more like appliances because north. Appliances can happen.

[01:11:00] And I, and I could be wrong, but I would be surprised if most of the electrical fires that threaten homes are not like something in your panel went berserk or something in your wall. I would suspect most of the time it's either, I would suspect something like a bad outlet. That happens. But I would also say probably cheap. Sheep. Cell phone chargers. I was going to say, I would suspect not. I would suspect probably 80 to 90% of your problems are probably what's plugged into the outlets.

[01:11:27] Or, I've got one over here right off camera I can't grab, but a, oh geez, a terminal strip. Yeah. Where you've got like 30 amps worth of stuff plugged into a 15 amp something. Like, you know. Traditionally your breaker should go before that does catch fire. Or, if you've got like four extension cords plugged in, days of chain one after the other, one of them's going to get a little upset sooner or later.

[01:11:57] There's a reason why extension cords are the length they come at the shop. And it's not because that is the length they thought you would need. It's because that is the length that gauge of wire will support. Yeah. So, I guess that's kind of my thought process. Like, I suspect a lot of your opportunities for an electrical fire in the home are going to be related to the appliance. And in that case, like, step one is always to unplug the daggum thing.

[01:12:22] And preferably, I mean, like, I don't want to tell you if something's on fire, you grab with your bare hands. But if you have an opportunity to relocate it someplace where it's not going to catch other stuff on fire, you should consider that. Yeah, that's possible. I mean, the most common I have heard of, at least in my geographical area, has been space heaters left near curtains or blankets. That will do. And damaged cell phone charger cables. Sorting out.

[01:12:52] I will also, and I'll take this one on the chin. This is totally my screw up. So, not too long ago, my daughter got, she had a motif for her bedroom for a while. I was decorating. Everything was mushrooms. So, she got this cute little, like, wall ornament. And it's made with neon tubes. Yeah. And it lights up. It's in the shape of a mushroom. Well, it runs off of a USB plug.

[01:13:18] And me, not paying enough attention, I just gave her a charging brick I had lying around. Don't beep to the punch. It wound up being one of the old, old, one-amp iPod charging bricks. And that appliance takes two amps. And within a matter of five minutes, that thing started blinking on and off. And my daughter immediately unplugged it and came and got dad. Smart daughter. And I very quickly deduced what the problem is.

[01:13:47] Like, you could feel the brick. It was warm to the touch. And I was like, ah, this thing was getting ready to be unhappy with us. It was going to let the magic smoke out. Yeah. And, you know, again, take it on the chin. Totally my fault. Did not pay enough attention. I mean, USB is USB. But how many other people, how, I know. I'm saying that tongue-in-cheek because USB is not USB. Yeah. But how many other people are waiting to happen is what it is. Yeah. I cringe because I see it happening to anybody.

[01:14:17] Yeah. I mean, simple things like how much power is this device going to attempt to yank through that cable, through that brick and out that wall become super freaking important all of a sudden. Because if your wires are a little bit too small, bad things start happening. And, again, I come from the world of, like, car audio and car customization. So, like, we live and die by things like, oh, you're going to run DC power over this much length and you're going to pull this many amps.

[01:14:47] Your wire had better be this thick, period, and discussion. So, like, I'm not stupid. I get how it's supposed to work. But in that moment, I was like, it plugs into a USB. Not even thinking about the fact that most USB is USB to most people. Yeah. And the problem becomes that, like, most USB devices at this point, I think it's like, what, it's 2.1, 2.2 amps is what they typically draw? Yeah.

[01:15:15] Yeah, I think some can draw more than that with the new USB 3.0, but not much more. Yeah. But a lot of your older devices and your older charging bricks, like, they only 1 amp, 1.5 amp. And there's, because USB-A is so ubiquitous, there's a lot of those things in circulation lying around houses. Yeah. And people just assume if it plugs in, it's supposed to work. No. You know, Jeff brings up a good point. This used to be a really big problem back in the day.

[01:15:45] If people were replacing fuses with pennies, if the fuse couldn't handle the load. That's burned down houses, man. I mean, people do it. Throw a penny behind the fuse, close it back up just to get you through the day, and then that temporary solution became a permanent one until the house burned down. Riggle Fraggle said, you know what's helping me understand electricity better? Chat GPT. I do not trust that motherfucker for anything.

[01:16:14] Listen, I was talking to some... I have caught it making shit up. I was telling somebody just the other day, we were talking about, like, Skynet and how AI was going to take over the world. And I was like, yeah. But then every now and then they throw me a curveball. Like, the AI spits out an image of a person with, like, seven fingers on one hand. And I'm like, okay. Either you are not that bright or you are sandbagging the shit out of me right now.

[01:16:40] Like, you're thinking to yourself, every now and then, I'm going to screw something up really, really bad so that the squishy meatbags think I'm not that bright. It's like, are you dumb or are you playing dumb? And if you're playing dumb, you're being way too smart about it. I think the problem is, is what we call AI is really a large language model for the most part. Although, I have to self-promote.

[01:17:05] So, when we eventually create true sentient AI, listen, tech industry, you are going to need a big dumb redneck who doesn't trust computers to stand there and babysit the AI with a 12 gauge in his hands just in case it starts to get too smart. And I'm your boy. Like, I don't take a lot of vacations. I don't take a lot of time off. And I have watched every Terminator movie there is.

[01:17:34] And I'm just waiting for my opportunity to stand up and be John Connor. So, holla at your boy when you get to that point. I will be the one to save humanity by murking, you know, chat GPT if it starts to get cute. Just putting that out there. Look, the problem is, these large language models, what it is, is a predictive text generator based on what is the most likely thing to come next. Sometimes the most likely thing to come next isn't the correct answer.

[01:18:05] There it is. I mean, yes, chat GPT has its uses. Can it get you good information on electronics? Maybe. Personally, I wouldn't trust it. I would go directly to a verified source if you can find one. There are all kinds of manuals out there that are really good. There are all kinds of people on YouTube that are putting out very fantastic tutorials. And you can usually tell pretty quick who knows what they're talking about and who doesn't.

[01:18:35] But, man, just be careful of what chat GPT or any of these other AI engines give you. It might be right. But if it's wrong and it's electrical, you can burn your house down. Yeah. So we are out of banners. I don't know if there's anything that's come to mind since we started this topic. I mean, my point of view is, is I'm like, you should at a minimum be aware of and understand

[01:19:03] the things that are most likely to threaten you at your home. Because we spend at least half our lives at home, optimally. I mean, like you said, I paid a mortgage. I like some use of the property. Exactly. But my whole perspective is, is like to take that one step further than that. Like, this is where my wife sleeps. This is where my daughter sleeps. This is where a lot of my fun stuff is. I would be really upset if the house burned down.

[01:19:30] Or like, you know, we sprung a leak in the attic and all this drywall fell down. Like that would aggravate the shit out of me. So I just think about it in terms of if this is where we spend a majority of our time. And for a lot of us, like our home is probably the most expensive thing we're ever going to own. So we should be aware of what threatens us in our home and our home itself and be aware of it and be able to protect ourselves from it. Absolutely. Yeah. Couldn't agree more.

[01:20:01] You know, if you're going to spend this much time in any one location, you should at least understand, like Phil said, what threatens it, what you can do to mitigate those threats and what you can do to get away from those threats. So I suppose the only thing that comes to mind that we haven't talked about is if you have a two story home, have a method of egress out of the second story in case of any of the above. That's fair. It doesn't apply. That's fair. Do you have a method of egress from your basement? I do. I have escape windows. Okay.

[01:20:32] Yeah. Forgive my ignorance. I've never had a basement for obvious reasons, so I don't know how they work. So a lot of times now, Phil, this is an older house, so the escape windows are smaller, but modern construction homes ever since like the mid 90s, they will have what is the size of a first floor, like double hung window. That you can pop out and there is a like a culvert around the outside of your foundation and a hole just pops right up out of your house. Really?

[01:21:01] Usually on each of the walls in the outside of the basement. Yep. Yeah. Look up basement escape windows and you'll see what I'm talking about. If you have a deep basement, you will also probably by code be required to have a ladder of some sort coming up that culvert. That makes sense, but maybe I'm showing off my blind spot. Like that suddenly occurred to me. I'm like, how would you get out of a basement?

[01:21:28] Me being not very flexible is probably not getting out of the escape windows in my current basement. My wife could get out of them, but I don't bend that way. So I'm going through the fire. I'll pray for you. So before we walk this one out, I do have to point out, Raggle Fraggle said, apparently my name was brought up on the reloading podcast the other day. They made fun of my truck again because, you know, two wheel drive Tacomas live rent free in people's heads.

[01:21:58] They do. But I have seen two wheel drives get a lot farther than idiots in four wheel drives. All I'm going to say is. I'm not going to say that the Tacoma out there is going to be doing any overlanding or going to Moab anytime soon. But I am. I am prepared to stand on business and say that that truck has got more time off the pavement than a lot of four wheel drive trucks I've seen. Probably.

[01:22:24] And if you take that personally, you should take that personally because I'm aiming it directly at you. Anyway, Matter of Facts podcast going out the door. I don't know what's on our docket for next week. I've got a project I'm working on that if it comes to fruition, we will talk about that. And also, I might have a guest that we're going to live in the near future. Yeah, I will tell you about him as soon as we log off. Seems like an interesting character. And I think we could have an interesting conversation. Fantastic. Looking forward to it.

[01:22:54] But for the rest of you, good night. Stay out of trouble. If you can't stay out of trouble, don't get caught getting into trouble and make sure you get out by morning. Bye, everybody. Good night.