Matter of Facts: Learning From Doomsday Preppers

[00:00:06] Welcome back to the Matter of Facts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MWFPodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Ravelet, Andrew, Nick are on the other side of the mic and here's your show.

[00:00:30] Welcome back to Matter of Facts Podcast. There's lots of people asking me questions in the comments section and Nick asked me one right before I clicked the button. So, no, we haven't been banned from Facebook yet.

[00:00:40] There's two people watching on Facebook and I checked right before while the show rolling was going on. So, we haven't been nuked off social media yet. So, that's cool.

[00:00:51] Uh, Raggle Fraggle and Andrew was on a business trip. I was texting him earlier today. He's just now getting back into town.

[00:01:00] So, I believe we'll get him back maybe in a week, maybe two. He's been adulting and I can't, I can't give him-

[00:01:07] He was talking about going on a hunt as well, wasn't he? Yeah, I think he was doing, I think, so, I know he had work and I know he had an elk, I think it was an elk hunt with his dad. And, I mean, I can't begrudge a person one spend time with their family. I'm just not wired that way.

[00:01:24] Or hunt elk. I mean, elk could be tasty. Okay, on second thought, I do begrudge the fact that he's going elk hunting and I'm not. So, you know, damn him.

[00:01:34] Yeah, I'm, I'll be honest with you. I keep in touch with him as much as I'm able. I miss him too. I mean, he's, he's, he's a fun guy. He's just been busy as hell.

[00:01:44] But maybe I should, maybe I should, maybe I should start every show with, you know, like some variation of like, yeah, Andrew, Andrew is like, you know, handcuffed to a toilet in a Mexican prison or the CIA gagged and bagged him and we may never, we may never see him again. Or, um, we enlisted.

[00:02:02] We are currently banking Patreon funds for the ransom.

[00:02:04] Yeah, we, we enlisted him in the Ukrainian army. God only knows if he'll ever come home. Like, you know, just that's what we were going to do from now on. So that's going to be an action item for me is to invent a new reason why Andrew is not here every single show that I might have some fun with that.

[00:02:21] That'll be good.

[00:02:24] The classic hot mic bit. Yeah, it might come to that.

[00:02:31] I guess let's get through the admin work. Thanks to all the patrons as usual.

[00:02:36] The merch is available at the link in the show description and it's on sale through the end of the month.

[00:02:42] So if you've been holding out on buying a shirt from your favorite autistic idiots, now might be a good time to do that.

[00:02:50] I want to say it's 15% off site wide, but I know the minute I say, I believe so.

[00:02:54] I know the minute I say that out loud, I'll be wrong.

[00:02:58] So I believe you are correct.

[00:03:00] And I believe for the patrons, there was a special discount code sent out in the Patreon chat.

[00:03:05] So I must have missed check back.

[00:03:08] I must have missed that.

[00:03:09] Honestly, like I've spent the last.

[00:03:10] I can send it to you.

[00:03:11] I've spent the last four days up to my freaking eyeballs in work.

[00:03:16] Matter of fact, I was literally like rushing through traffic trying to get home today so I could join y'all.

[00:03:22] Hey, we appreciate your presence.

[00:03:23] Yeah.

[00:03:24] And Cypress survivalist.

[00:03:27] This is the nonprofit my wife and I started to try to do some readiness and some community readiness and preparedness events here in Southeast Louisiana.

[00:03:36] I will tell y'all if y'all watch and if y'all are local, like in the vicinity of Southeast Louisiana, maybe in Mississippi, depending on how far of drive you want to make.

[00:03:46] I mean, I don't think it's worth driving cross country for.

[00:03:48] But we're looking at March 8th and that date is going to be pretty hard because I've already rented a venue.

[00:03:55] So I'm going to be there smoking cigars and drinking bourbon, whether any of y'all show up or not.

[00:04:00] But I think it'll be a fun thing.

[00:04:03] I mean, you know, Gillian and I were talking about it because she's been beating me up for social media posts to try to like get the word out about Cypress survivalist.

[00:04:11] And honestly, I went through like because I built all the classes I was going to teach and bull point them all out.

[00:04:17] And I was like, I mean, I've got like six or seven weeks worth of post right here because I've already built the curriculum.

[00:04:24] And it's most of the stuff I don't have to look up.

[00:04:28] I mean, if anyone's been in the preparedness community for any length of time, some of this stuff is going to be kind of like no duh.

[00:04:34] But a lot of what we're trying to do with this course is we're trying to we're trying to make it accessible to brand new people.

[00:04:43] So we have to kind of start at square one and still offer something for the people that have been around for a little while and maybe say maybe this is something you haven't dabbled in, but maybe you should think about it.

[00:04:54] So we're trying to we're trying to have like a good prepper base layer and then some some subjects that are specific that not everybody will have knowledge of.

[00:05:04] So what you're saying is grab your nonprepper friends and a six pack and show up, grab your nonprepper friends, grab your spouses, grab your boyfriend, girlfriend,

[00:05:13] partner, grab your neighbors.

[00:05:15] I mean, to me, it really just comes down to like the whole idea of this is that and we will talk about in this article because it was one of the bullet points from it.

[00:05:24] But like I feel like a lot of us in this community, we make a habit of like keeping to ourselves and not letting on to our neighbors what we're into.

[00:05:34] And I feel like for those of us who are comfortable doing it, we have to kind of like we got to start to let it out a little bit.

[00:05:42] We got to start talking to people.

[00:05:43] We have to start trying to influence the communities around us because if things ever go bad enough, your neighbors are going to be right there with you eating the shit sandwich.

[00:05:53] So it's a question of do you want them to be hungry and scared and freaked out or do you want them to be part of the part of the plan and be like, hey, you've got a month worth of food and you've got a month worth of food.

[00:06:05] So you two are not going to try to steal my food, you know?

[00:06:11] Perfect.

[00:06:13] Anyway, OK, admin work out of the way.

[00:06:16] So I left the audience with homework, which I guarantee you none of you lazy SOB is actually read that article that we left.

[00:06:24] We left linked in the last show or that we linked in this show is down the show description.

[00:06:30] But it was an article that was I believe it was titled Learning from the Doomsday Preppers, which before we get started, can I just get Nick?

[00:06:39] Can you and I realize like gagging and bagging and deporting anyone that refers to people in the preparedness community as Doomsday Preppers?

[00:06:49] Like the very term aggravates the hell out of me.

[00:06:53] It's catchy.

[00:06:54] It's catchy, man.

[00:06:55] And with the show being out there, I get it.

[00:06:58] They were writing a blog post.

[00:07:00] They're trying to get clicks.

[00:07:01] I can't fault them for trying to monetize their themselves.

[00:07:07] It's catchy.

[00:07:08] But how many preppers do you know that are Doomsday Preppers that are actually looking, that are actually planning for a fixed idea of Doomsday?

[00:07:21] Like how many have I met in my lifetime?

[00:07:25] Yeah.

[00:07:26] How many that you've actually met?

[00:07:27] Less than five.

[00:07:28] Rick and Jane don't count because they're not preppers.

[00:07:32] They're homesteaders.

[00:07:33] I will allow.

[00:07:34] And they were on the Doomsday Prepper show.

[00:07:36] I will allow that there is some bleed over between homesteader and Doomsday Prepper.

[00:07:42] Because there are a lot of people.

[00:07:43] I don't think so.

[00:07:44] I'd argue there is.

[00:07:45] Only because there can be.

[00:07:49] But I don't think it's like a guarantee.

[00:07:52] No.

[00:07:52] Okay.

[00:07:53] That's fair distinction.

[00:07:54] But I guess I'm saying it's like.

[00:07:55] Because your hippie leftists on a farm.

[00:07:57] The Venn diagram does this.

[00:08:00] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[00:08:00] For sure it touches.

[00:08:02] But.

[00:08:02] Just like there's Doomsday Preppers with nothing but guns.

[00:08:05] They're idiots.

[00:08:06] But they are.

[00:08:07] But I guess like the reason why the term Doomsday Prepper frustrates the devil out of me is like.

[00:08:13] I think first of all, I don't like the connotation.

[00:08:16] Because people get an idea in their head.

[00:08:18] But it's also more the fact that like to me like preparedness is so much more than being a Doomsday Prepper.

[00:08:24] Like preparedness is.

[00:08:26] It's like it's this idea that like I'm getting ready for anything that might come into my world and screw it up.

[00:08:33] And that's there's miles of that before you get to the end of the world.

[00:08:38] Like peak oil, you know, societal collapse without rule of law, like the extreme end of preparedness.

[00:08:47] But you get into things that are really basic.

[00:08:49] Like I blew a tire and it's two days to payday.

[00:08:52] Do I have enough money in the savings account to like go put a tire in my car so I can drive to work for the next two days?

[00:08:57] It sounds like that's a really like it sounds like that's a really basic scenario, but it's a likely one.

[00:09:06] Yeah.

[00:09:07] And it's ones that it's one that I have had friends that were not ready for.

[00:09:12] You know, blown tires happen to everybody.

[00:09:15] I mean, yeah, you know, it's like those iceberg videos you see.

[00:09:18] You see people do on YouTube every now and then.

[00:09:21] Well, in reality, the very, very bottom of that iceberg should be Doomsday Prepping.

[00:09:26] Once you've covered all of your other bases, can you begin to entertain things like that, in my opinion?

[00:09:32] But you kind of got to get through the basics first, because if you don't and you go to that extreme, number one, you're probably going to get discouraged and just stop.

[00:09:42] Because the financial investment is massive on some of that stuff.

[00:09:46] Yeah.

[00:09:47] Number two, you're probably going to do it wrong because you haven't learned any learned any lessons along the way.

[00:09:53] And you're jumping into something, say, buying 30 years of of food and storing that up all in one one year or six months.

[00:10:02] Great.

[00:10:03] It's 30 year shelf life food that's all going to expire at the same time.

[00:10:06] Yep.

[00:10:07] It's going to do you a heck of a lot of good when it all goes bad at once.

[00:10:10] Mm hmm.

[00:10:13] So, yeah.

[00:10:14] So thank you for indulging me in my rant.

[00:10:16] Like, I personally detest the term Doomsday Preppers.

[00:10:19] I hate it when someone refers to me as a Doomsday Prepper.

[00:10:23] And OK, so full.

[00:10:25] I'm not that rich.

[00:10:26] Thank you.

[00:10:26] No, I'm not either.

[00:10:27] But in the name of full disclosure, like at my work, I've there are people that know about this show and the things I'm into because, like, my last name is not hard to Google.

[00:10:39] No.

[00:10:39] And let's be honest, your co-workers probably have you on social media, at least one or two.

[00:10:44] I try my best not to allow that.

[00:10:47] But yet probably.

[00:10:48] I mean, even even by you live in the same general area, chances are a friend of a friend is also a friend of yours and they see posts or whatever.

[00:10:57] It happens.

[00:10:58] Yeah.

[00:10:58] But all that being said, like.

[00:11:01] It I cringe when someone first says, oh, I didn't know you were a Doomsday Prepper.

[00:11:05] And it's like, I'm not.

[00:11:07] I'm not getting ready for Doomsday.

[00:11:09] I really don't like like my my game.

[00:11:12] My hope is that if there is a rapture, I go out on the first wave and the rest of y'all just get to figure your lives out.

[00:11:17] So just saying.

[00:11:18] Congrats on my cash.

[00:11:19] You guys can have it and I won't need it.

[00:11:21] Yeah.

[00:11:22] But like to me, it really just comes down to this idea that like, you know, like I understand preparedness is a big, big tent.

[00:11:30] And the Doomsday Preppers are the ones that get a lot of the attention.

[00:11:34] But I it frustrates me to see like the entire preparedness community associated with getting ready for Doomsday or zombies or any of that nonsense.

[00:11:42] Because to me, it's like, OK, that that almost trivializes the fact that this is a really big tent and there's a lot of people in it.

[00:11:49] And we're not all getting ready for Doomsday.

[00:11:52] But I digress.

[00:11:54] Yeah.

[00:11:56] But this article was written and Nick and I read through it.

[00:12:01] I actually read through it on my breaks today.

[00:12:03] So like it's fairly fresh on my mind, even though I had to speed read it.

[00:12:07] And there was got some notes.

[00:12:08] I thank God one of us wrote notes.

[00:12:10] I was I was horribly underprepared for this.

[00:12:14] This given the week I've had to work.

[00:12:16] That's all right, man.

[00:12:17] We'll manage.

[00:12:18] Yeah.

[00:12:19] So the people that wrote this article, they it was the show or the feature TV special film, American Blackout.

[00:12:28] So if anyone has seen that these people went through a whole bunch of government documents to determine what they think would actually happen if there was a nationwide blackout in the US and they based their movie off of that government information.

[00:12:46] So take that for what it's worth.

[00:12:49] Trust the government for what it's worth.

[00:12:51] Give the film a watch.

[00:12:53] I was entertained.

[00:12:54] I was entertained.

[00:12:55] It wasn't world class acting.

[00:12:58] But, you know, give it a watch.

[00:13:01] Yeah.

[00:13:02] Anyway, let's see there.

[00:13:05] You brought this one up.

[00:13:06] There are more preppers now than there used to be.

[00:13:09] I will wholeheartedly agree with this.

[00:13:11] Can't disagree.

[00:13:12] And and here's the thing of it.

[00:13:13] Like I can I can remember bearing in mind that like I'm 42 and I can remember a time when like survivalists were a thing, but they were mostly like, you know, the crazy old guys with the 22.

[00:13:28] You live in a cab living in the middle of nowhere.

[00:13:31] Like the preparedness community was a very.

[00:13:36] It was a very narrow hallway at the time, if that makes sense.

[00:13:39] Like everyone kind of fit in between these two walls and they were not anything even approaching mainstream.

[00:13:47] If you could say preparedness has become mainstream, although I would argue that during COVID it kind of did.

[00:13:51] I mean, I saw I think and I don't know if it's like I don't know whether to attribute it to that slow march of people kind of waking up or if I attributed to the fact that like COVID was a huge wake up call for a lot of people that very abruptly had the the wool ripped off of their eyes.

[00:14:12] And like, hey, look at how look at how dependent you are on these systems that are way outside of your control.

[00:14:17] And if they shut down, it screws your life up.

[00:14:20] I don't know if it was because the cracks in our society were exposed.

[00:14:24] I don't know.

[00:14:25] I don't know what to attribute it to.

[00:14:26] I only know that, like from my perspective, I've met more people in the last five years curious about preparedness that never would have asked before that.

[00:14:37] Never in a million years.

[00:14:39] My sister is the furthest.

[00:14:41] You know, my sister, who, by the way, is one of the founding board members of that nonprofit who's going to be teaching a class at the event that we have yet to name.

[00:14:51] Um, she five years ago thought I was a nutcase because I was a prepper.

[00:14:58] During COVID, she came to me and was like, um, so I don't want to be mocked, but how do we start like a food stock?

[00:15:07] And I was like, uh, just like this, like, this is what I think you need to do.

[00:15:11] And I just walked her through it.

[00:15:12] But like five years prior, she never would have come to me with those questions.

[00:15:15] But during COVID, it was kind of like, uh, all of a sudden that crazy older brother I have is starting to make a lot of sense.

[00:15:22] I think we've got three things that really led into this.

[00:15:26] The financial crash of 08.

[00:15:28] That was painful.

[00:15:30] Where a lot of my generation watched their parents struggling really hard for a variety of things.

[00:15:38] Not going to rehash what happened.

[00:15:40] You all probably know if you don't look it up.

[00:15:43] Financial collapse.

[00:15:44] Financial crisis, I should say.

[00:15:46] Yeah.

[00:15:46] Um, I would say that if you're like, if you're, I would say before you go to number two, like if you are like 25 years old or younger, you should really do some research because like you weren't, you should, you weren't old enough.

[00:15:59] No offense to have lived through that at the level.

[00:16:02] Like I graduated college in 09.

[00:16:04] My wife graduated in 08.

[00:16:06] So like we saw that face first as a lot of people in our age, rough age range did.

[00:16:12] But if you're like 25 years old, you've probably heard, you may have heard of it, but you didn't live through it.

[00:16:17] So I digress.

[00:16:19] No, it's all right, man.

[00:16:20] Uh, number two is the internet.

[00:16:22] Number two is the internet.

[00:16:23] Unless you were involved in one of the communities that was big into survivalism or one of the people that really bought into the news around Y2K and whatnot.

[00:16:36] Um, you probably didn't have any resources.

[00:16:40] You probably didn't have any people to contact.

[00:16:42] But nowadays, Reddit, Facebook, podcast, you name it.

[00:16:46] You can get this information fairly easily.

[00:16:49] I mean, when I started getting into prepping, I found a message board that had a list of, hey, if you live in the Midwest, here are a list of stores that stock bulk items that store really well long term.

[00:17:02] Fantastic.

[00:17:03] I didn't even have to do any research.

[00:17:05] All I had to do was a quick Google search.

[00:17:07] Wonderful.

[00:17:08] And number three, I agree with you, COVID.

[00:17:10] The COVID pandemic.

[00:17:11] Whatever you want to say about it, whatever you want to say about the government response, it proved the fragility of the system at a scale that could not have been anticipated.

[00:17:21] And I mean, can't really be argued with.

[00:17:23] Right.

[00:17:24] Exactly.

[00:17:24] There, there's no arguing away what happened there.

[00:17:27] There's no naysaying it.

[00:17:30] We have, we have the data.

[00:17:32] And I think that's the thing that makes COVID like that big watershed moment for our generation is like, if you fall into the camp that thinks COVID was severely overblown.

[00:17:41] And it was the pandemic.

[00:17:42] If you fall into that camp, then the fact that government shut the country down based on that, you know, based on that proves that we should all be self-reliant.

[00:17:50] And if you're on the other side of the fence and you think, oh no, it was, you know, like it was whatever it was, it was really deadly.

[00:17:58] It killed a lot of people.

[00:17:59] We were all in mortal danger.

[00:18:01] Then it proves you should be self-reliant because I tell, I've told this story before the first week, the first week of the lockdowns, nobody had any data.

[00:18:11] Nobody knew what was going on.

[00:18:13] Would nobody knew nobody could because there wasn't any data.

[00:18:16] All the information we were getting was coming from China and nobody believed them.

[00:18:20] So we were kind of going into this pandemic blind.

[00:18:22] And my wife asked me, what do we do?

[00:18:25] And I literally told her, I'm like, for the next week, five to seven days, we're going to stay home.

[00:18:31] We're not going to go out.

[00:18:33] We're not going to visit friends.

[00:18:34] We're not going to go do anything.

[00:18:35] We're going to self-isolate.

[00:18:37] And we are going to watch the news because in the next seven days, either New York City and Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago, but I was mainly looking at like the big, the big port, the big international hubs at either end of the country.

[00:18:56] I'm like, either those cities are going to implode because if you have a pandemic with a high enough kill rate, those cities will implode.

[00:19:04] They will, it will turn into the third world.

[00:19:06] The hospitals be overwhelmed immediately.

[00:19:09] Yeah.

[00:19:10] Those are going to be our canaries in the coal mine.

[00:19:12] And in seven days, if they haven't burst into flames and fallen into the ocean, then we have data we can operate on.

[00:19:19] But the only reason we had the ability to do that is because we had enough food and water that you could have shut off our utilities.

[00:19:25] And we could have stayed here.

[00:19:28] But if you, if you only have like three days worth of food, you can't stay home for seven days.

[00:19:33] If, if you're, if your default method of nutrition is to go to Chick-fil-A every day, you can't stay home for seven days.

[00:19:41] So that's why I always go back to this idea that like, you know, if, if you have resources at home, if you are self-reliant, it gives you options you don't have otherwise.

[00:19:51] So there's no downside to it.

[00:19:54] And now I have to go back to something I saw raggle fraggle drop in here.

[00:19:57] Cause you, we were talking about the 2008, uh, housing, 2008, uh, financial collapse.

[00:20:03] The big short is a good one.

[00:20:05] And margin call is another, they kind of show very different perspectives on what happened, but they dev, they both definitely like drive home.

[00:20:15] Um, the causes as simply as you can make it into an hour and a half long movie because the financial system is complicated as hell by design.

[00:20:25] But those two movies, margin call and the big short, great movies to watch.

[00:20:32] And then you can just go down that rabbit hole to your hearts to contend.

[00:20:37] But yeah, I mean, I feel like I agree with this part.

[00:20:40] There's a lot more preppers than there used to be.

[00:20:42] This, this went from being a very small tent to a very, very big tent in a couple of years.

[00:20:47] I've met people I never would have thought getting into prepping.

[00:20:50] Some of which won't even, won't even call it prepping, but that's what they're doing.

[00:20:55] Oh yeah.

[00:20:56] And, and if you look back in the past, yes, there were probably a higher percentage than there are now, but it wasn't called that.

[00:21:03] That's just how you had to live.

[00:21:04] There was, there was no other option.

[00:21:07] Well, I mean, you and I've talked about the fact that like going up, growing up here on the Gulf coast or growing up where you do, where you get blizzards every so often, like there, there is no reasonable option to not be prepared.

[00:21:19] Because if that, if you roll the dice enough times, you're going to, you're going to, you're going to nat zero, you're going to nat one.

[00:21:27] And the minute that happens, you're screwed.

[00:21:30] Yep.

[00:21:31] Yeah.

[00:21:32] Yeah.

[00:21:33] Yeah.

[00:21:33] Fortunately, we've been, we've been very fortunate for the last.

[00:21:36] Few years.

[00:21:38] Yeah.

[00:21:40] I'm going to, I'm going to take my hands off of the banners and let no, no, only one of us can do it.

[00:21:46] Cause otherwise I'm going to wind up.

[00:21:49] Cause you, you hit a good pause there.

[00:21:50] Yeah.

[00:21:51] Uh, no, I'll let you do it.

[00:21:52] I'll watch the, I'll take care of the comments then.

[00:21:55] Uh, so the, your government is prepping too.

[00:21:58] There was an interesting line in there that I want to, I want to read.

[00:22:01] If you got a minute, Phil, go for it.

[00:22:04] Uh, let's see.

[00:22:05] Uh, these government and university studies, uh, also had modeled timelines for the collapse

[00:22:11] of civilization from day one to day 30 and pinpointed the exact moment at which the military

[00:22:17] must seize control to take over and enforce martial law.

[00:22:20] And these were case studies from a number of different nations.

[00:22:24] Yep.

[00:22:24] So what that tells you is there are fixed timelines that the government has established for, or probably

[00:22:31] fixed red lines based on various things in association with the timeline before they are going to implement

[00:22:38] martial law.

[00:22:39] Yeah.

[00:22:40] Yeah.

[00:22:40] Even if they're not fixed timelines, they're definitely like hallmarks to keep on the, on

[00:22:44] the lookout for.

[00:22:45] But like, you know, it's not exactly a state secret that like most of like, even if you want

[00:22:52] to, even if you want to like equate this to your most basic level, Nick, most people are aware

[00:23:00] that there is a contingency plan in effect for if the country were to get invaded or nuked,

[00:23:05] you move the entire cabinet to a secure location, probably NORAD.

[00:23:09] There's several others around the country.

[00:23:11] It just depends on which one air force one can get to the quickest, but they literally

[00:23:15] load the entire executive branch into a bunker or better yet, multiple bunkers so that they're

[00:23:20] separated.

[00:23:20] And you know, you don't have all your, you don't have your entire military chain of command

[00:23:24] in one place, but like they have those plans in place already.

[00:23:29] Now, yes, you could make the argument that is like to protect the president and protect

[00:23:33] the cabinet, yada, yada, yada.

[00:23:35] But the point remains that your government has plans in place to deal with all sorts of

[00:23:39] emergencies.

[00:23:40] And among them is having enough food and water and provisions to take care of themselves

[00:23:48] for a period of time.

[00:23:49] I know multiple agencies that do that, that have squirreled away somewhere in the back

[00:23:56] storeroom.

[00:23:57] They have food and water just in case.

[00:24:00] So if your own government is preparing for a really, really bad day, what's your justification

[00:24:07] tonight?

[00:24:10] And well, realistically, they have a responsibility to do so.

[00:24:14] I mean, a crisis only gets worse if you have a political collapse on top of it.

[00:24:20] That doesn't make the situation better.

[00:24:24] As much as we might not like the government.

[00:24:26] I was about to say, I might have to fight you on that one.

[00:24:29] I can think of a couple of situations that a complete government collapse would definitely

[00:24:33] not make worse.

[00:24:36] Not many.

[00:24:37] It'd be entertaining.

[00:24:39] Entertaining's not better.

[00:24:41] It is for me.

[00:24:42] Look, anything that entertains me makes my life better.

[00:24:47] That's not the kind of entertaining I want.

[00:24:50] Yeah.

[00:24:51] Some of us, when something's on fire, can't help but come along with a bucket of gasoline

[00:24:56] just to see what's going to happen next.

[00:24:58] Well, there's that.

[00:25:01] So one of the things they mentioned in this section was positive feedback loops.

[00:25:05] So things like, you know, a power grid collapse in one area leading to strain on a power grid

[00:25:13] in another area causing a further collapse, causing a cascade failure.

[00:25:17] And kind of how these positive feedback loops can kind of add on to each other.

[00:25:21] That kind of reminds me of the stuff you see down south with the hurricanes, Phil.

[00:25:25] You know, you see you've got the damage from the hurricane in the affected zone, I'm going

[00:25:30] to call it.

[00:25:31] And then zone one, so call that zone zero.

[00:25:34] Zone one outside of that.

[00:25:35] All right.

[00:25:36] You didn't get damaged by the hurricane, but everybody who did is now coming to you to

[00:25:41] get gas and plywood and tarps and food and everything else.

[00:25:45] So that impacts your supply chain.

[00:25:47] And then outside of that area, you're having to deal with a very similar phenomenon of people

[00:25:53] now having to move further out to get those supplies.

[00:25:56] Mm hmm.

[00:25:57] And you also have this in regards to like trying to get materials into zone zero, because like

[00:26:04] one of the things we deal with post disaster down here for a hurricane, because again,

[00:26:07] a hurricane wipe a hurricane will wipe out five zip codes.

[00:26:11] You know, it's not saying that a tornado is nothing.

[00:26:14] But the thing about a tornado is that a tornado can like wipe out this street and leave

[00:26:18] this street completely untouched.

[00:26:20] But a tornado says all y'all, all y'all.

[00:26:25] So the problem becomes like you need materials into zone zero to try to stabilize things.

[00:26:31] You can't get stuff into zone zero until you get fuel close enough that people can make

[00:26:37] the return trip in and back out.

[00:26:39] Right.

[00:26:40] So it becomes this, I refer to it as the snake eating its own tail.

[00:26:44] It's like I need I need to get stuff in here to unwind this situation, but I have to get

[00:26:50] fuel here so that the trucks can get from here to here and back out because of the if

[00:26:55] the trucks can't make it all the way in and out on a load of fuel, then they can't get

[00:26:59] stuff into zone zero.

[00:27:00] So the trucks are first at first have to stabilize zone one.

[00:27:05] And if they can't stabilize get to zone one, they have to stabilize zone two.

[00:27:08] And the problem just cascades out from there.

[00:27:12] And this is why things like positive feedback loops are so damning because it really turns

[00:27:17] into a situation very quickly where like the goal is a but I before I can get to a I got

[00:27:25] deal with B, C, D, E and F in that order because these things have to be done in that order.

[00:27:30] There is no A is the point of the highest need.

[00:27:33] So I have to get there first.

[00:27:34] It's like I can't get there.

[00:27:36] I have to do all these other things first.

[00:27:38] You get into situations where you need to clear debris so you can get the fuel truck in

[00:27:42] to refuel the fuel station so you can get the supplies in to clear the debris to get

[00:27:48] the fuel truck in to fuel the.

[00:27:50] Yeah.

[00:27:51] You want to know what it was a damning situation in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina?

[00:27:55] So you're you're you as I'm sure some of the audience are aware, like New Orleans

[00:28:00] is an average of like, I think, one to three feet below sea level.

[00:28:04] Right.

[00:28:04] It's a punch bowl.

[00:28:06] And when you get a lot of water in the city, like a hurricane, we have these huge pumps

[00:28:12] that pump the water from the city back out to the other side of the levee.

[00:28:16] Right.

[00:28:17] They're electrically driven.

[00:28:19] Oh, that's problematic.

[00:28:20] What happens?

[00:28:22] What happens when the power goes out and you have and the places where these pumps are are

[00:28:28] flooded?

[00:28:29] You have to pump the water out to get power restored.

[00:28:33] You have to get power restored.

[00:28:35] Turn on the pumps.

[00:28:37] And there's your positive feedback loop.

[00:28:40] Like it's literally like it's which came first, the chicken or the egg?

[00:28:44] Yes.

[00:28:44] Both at the same time.

[00:28:45] Because yes, the answer is yes.

[00:28:48] Yeah.

[00:28:48] But it is really one of those situations where like, you know, the government has contingency

[00:28:53] plans for all these different things.

[00:28:55] But the one thing I've always noticed is that those contingency plans don't usually include

[00:29:00] you.

[00:29:01] They include the government.

[00:29:03] It's for continuity government.

[00:29:04] Someone in the comments correctly pointed out like their goal is to maintain order.

[00:29:09] It's not to maintain every single citizen.

[00:29:14] So I'm not saying that government is evil and doesn't give a damn about you.

[00:29:18] I'm just saying that if they have to pick between feeding themselves and feeding you, you're

[00:29:22] going to be hungry for a while.

[00:29:24] Well, it's a physical impossibility for the government to stockpile enough food for 300

[00:29:28] million people.

[00:29:31] Like it's it's an organizational nightmare that's probably not solvable.

[00:29:36] Real realistically, it's the problem is just too large.

[00:29:41] But if every individual or every individual family takes a little bit of that burden, it

[00:29:48] way lightens the burden on emergency services and on the government and the whole situation

[00:29:54] becomes a lot easier, which is why FEMA recommends two weeks of supplies on hand.

[00:30:00] Uh huh.

[00:30:02] And as we proved a couple episodes ago, um, I think our prices for like a week's worth of

[00:30:09] supplies for a single person range from like 150 down to 105 bucks.

[00:30:13] So it's not, it's not a sum of money that is impossible, you know, like it's just not.

[00:30:22] No, no, it's really not.

[00:30:24] I felt this next item.

[00:30:26] You will always miss one item on your list.

[00:30:29] So those was it have gone to prepper camp multiple times, as I'm sure anybody that's

[00:30:34] gone camping before can attest to.

[00:30:36] We always wind up playing prepper bingo or, uh, yeah, prepper, prepper bingo where somebody's

[00:30:43] like, oh, I left my something at home.

[00:30:46] Um, and then everybody's like reaching into their pack, seeing who can come up with the

[00:30:49] item first.

[00:30:50] And somebody has it.

[00:30:52] Usually everybody has it except for the one SOB that left it at home.

[00:30:56] But you will always miss one item on your list.

[00:31:00] If Stuart's watching chainsaw, I'll save you the trouble.

[00:31:04] But the point remains like, you're not going to think of everything.

[00:31:06] You're not going to have everything.

[00:31:08] You're going to miss something.

[00:31:10] You're going to overlook something.

[00:31:11] It's inevitable.

[00:31:12] But this is also where like, I try to shift that focus and preparedness away from just

[00:31:17] having stuff to learning skills, to learning how to build things, learning how to improvise

[00:31:24] things, things that have multiple uses.

[00:31:26] Like Nick, if you give me some hand tools and a pile of scrap wood, it's really hard to

[00:31:31] keep me down because I'm going to figure out how I'm going to figure out how to build

[00:31:34] whatever it is I'm trying to make.

[00:31:36] Like if I don't have it, I'll make it.

[00:31:39] Exactly.

[00:31:41] I'm going through that right now with the lathe behind me.

[00:31:44] I'm building a steady rest.

[00:31:45] I'm building a radius turning device.

[00:31:47] I'm building a vice attachment so I can do millwork on my lathe.

[00:31:51] If you give me the materials and the tools, I can probably make it happen.

[00:31:55] But this is why you need to practice with your preps.

[00:31:59] That's the big thing that you and Andrew have always preached.

[00:32:01] And I'm not going to be changing that on here.

[00:32:03] You have to do trial runs of this stuff.

[00:32:06] I'm not saying shut your power off and shut your water off for two weeks and see how you do.

[00:32:12] I mean, you can.

[00:32:13] It's not a bad idea to test it, but you can get.

[00:32:16] So I forget who was telling me about this, but a buddy brought this up to me before.

[00:32:21] It's like I can't remember the exact numbers, but you can do.

[00:32:25] You can get most of the benefit of doing something with not quite as much effort as you would think.

[00:32:33] Is this like the 90-10 rule?

[00:32:35] You get 90-10 rule.

[00:32:36] That's what it is.

[00:32:37] 90% of the results with 10% of the effort.

[00:32:40] Right.

[00:32:40] So if you can shut your power off for a day and you can work yourself through a day

[00:32:45] and make a list of what went wrong and what went right and how to change it, great.

[00:32:51] Now just multiply that over two weeks.

[00:32:54] I mean, that gets you most of the way there and you can do it fairly easily.

[00:33:00] Try your generator when it's not 3 a.m. and raining.

[00:33:04] And the thing I usually encourage people to do is just good old-fashioned wargaming.

[00:33:08] Like I did this with a coworker recently because we were talking through her game preparedness.

[00:33:14] And we started going down that road of like, oh, yeah, I've got this.

[00:33:19] And I was like, I think she said, you know, she cooks a lot.

[00:33:22] So she has a lot of like raw ingredients.

[00:33:24] I was like, well, that's great.

[00:33:25] I'm like, how are you going to cook it if the power goes out?

[00:33:27] She said, well, you know, I've got a Coleman stove and I've got some propane.

[00:33:29] I'm like, okay, how much propane?

[00:33:30] She said, like 10 or 11, like with a little one-pound green cylinders.

[00:33:34] I'm like, okay.

[00:33:35] She should cook forever on that.

[00:33:36] Yeah.

[00:33:37] I'm like, okay, I like where this is going.

[00:33:38] I'm like, do you have water?

[00:33:39] And she was like, well, I mean, I've probably got like two or three gallons.

[00:33:42] I'm like, that's not going to be enough.

[00:33:44] Like the point of the exercise is to go down this road of I've got this.

[00:33:50] What about this?

[00:33:51] I've got this, but what about this?

[00:33:52] And you continue to what about until you find the link in the chain that breaks.

[00:33:57] And then you're like, that's the next thing for you to work on.

[00:34:00] But a lot of times this is where like having that community of prepare of preppers around

[00:34:06] you or having people that are in that mindset can help because they can help you find the

[00:34:10] things you're not thinking of.

[00:34:12] I give full credit to my wife that when I first started prepping, I had way too much

[00:34:19] time and effort invested in ammunition and literally rice and beans, which I was content

[00:34:25] to eat red beans and rice pretty much until the day I die because I mean, it's my birthright.

[00:34:32] But also because I'm just like, I don't care.

[00:34:34] Like it's food.

[00:34:35] It'll keep me sustained.

[00:34:36] It's whatever.

[00:34:37] But when I brought this up to my wife, she was like, um, you better plan for a couple other

[00:34:42] menu items unless you want a very unhappy wife and daughter on your hands.

[00:34:46] So that's when the prep started expanding.

[00:34:48] And yes, we still have a ton of rice and beans because why wouldn't you?

[00:34:51] It's dirt cheap and it works.

[00:34:53] But we also have like.

[00:34:54] And it lasts forever.

[00:34:56] But now we also have like a chest freezer full of meat, you know, with like lots of ground

[00:35:00] beef and chicken and sausage and bacon put back because bacon and sausage make everything

[00:35:04] better.

[00:35:04] And we've got.

[00:35:05] It does.

[00:35:05] You know, we've got lots of canned goods.

[00:35:08] We have lots of we have a whole five gallon bucket that is all baking supplies.

[00:35:12] I can literally go into my preps and I can make cookies and sugar cookies and brownies

[00:35:17] and all that.

[00:35:18] I've got powdered milk if it comes down to it and we don't have regular milk for baking purposes.

[00:35:23] Like I can do all that stuff.

[00:35:25] But it was my wife that said, hey, dummy.

[00:35:28] If you don't start thinking about something or the rice and beans, I'm going to be upset.

[00:35:33] So sometimes you're going to die of a stabbing, not starvation.

[00:35:37] So sometimes sometimes you need that extra.

[00:35:40] Sometimes you need that extra set of eyes that that other that other your background.

[00:35:46] It makes sense.

[00:35:49] Military, military mindset.

[00:35:51] You need food for sustenance.

[00:35:53] It doesn't have to taste good.

[00:35:55] You just need to be alive.

[00:35:56] Yeah.

[00:35:56] The problem is I like red beans and rice.

[00:35:59] So it's like threatening me with a good time.

[00:36:01] Me too.

[00:36:02] But come on.

[00:36:04] Some people can't stand to eat the same thing for 45 days in a row.

[00:36:08] Yeah.

[00:36:09] I think they're called spouses.

[00:36:10] No offense to lives out there.

[00:36:12] Amen.

[00:36:12] They make our lives better that way, don't they?

[00:36:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:36:16] Well, I can't argue with the results, but I guess what I'm saying is like it is definitely in your best interest to have an outside perspective to help you like round the corners off of your prepper plant.

[00:36:30] And yes, raggle fraggle, I agree.

[00:36:32] Bacon is to men.

[00:36:32] What's up with this?

[00:36:33] Women.

[00:36:35] However, if I put bacon in my air fryer right now and that smell starts wafting through the house, I will have two women that follow their noses straight to the kitchen.

[00:36:45] Can't blame them.

[00:36:47] Yeah.

[00:36:48] So this was something that really resonated with me.

[00:36:50] Not that I think I've ever been.

[00:36:51] I was probably guilty of this when I first started, but now I feel like I've kind of like broadened my perspective.

[00:36:57] But beware apocalypse swapping, which if you think about it, you probably know somebody that's guilty of this.

[00:37:04] Like, you know, today they're all freaked out about, I don't know, like EMP or nuclear war, because that seems to be the hot button thing right now with everything that's going on in Ukraine and Russia.

[00:37:16] But I digress.

[00:37:18] But a couple of years ago, the hot button was pandemic.

[00:37:21] And a couple of years before that, it was financial collapse.

[00:37:23] And a couple of years before that, it was something else.

[00:37:24] And this is the person that you know who is constantly switching from one emergency to the other to justify the thing they're doing instead of what I think is a healthier way to approach preparedness, which is like this cohesive idea of I need food, water and shelter or I'm not going to live very long.

[00:37:43] So I should do what I can to ensure those needs are met, as opposed to I'm getting ready for this black swan event, which is something I really want to sneak in here right now, because anybody that's not familiar with the term, a black swan event is by definition unpredictable, cannot be predicted.

[00:38:02] So when people start talking about these one-off events that like crater the whole world and we are all back to Little House on the Prairie days, I don't believe those events can be predicted.

[00:38:15] And I believe that their onset would be so sudden, there is no getting ready for them.

[00:38:20] And the reason I go down that road is because like I'm a business guy by trade, but in a far off time, I used to, I was an engineering student.

[00:38:29] And the first thing they tell you about engineering is that all systems seek balance.

[00:38:34] They seek stasis.

[00:38:35] So if you have a scenario where like there's an oncoming financial collapse, inflation's going up, currency's being devalued, yada, yada, yada, things naturally swing, the pendulum swings this way.

[00:38:50] And then eventually it starts trying to come back this direction.

[00:38:52] It might overcorrect, but all systems seek balance.

[00:38:56] If there's a pandemic, this was something I pointed out during COVID.

[00:39:00] If there's a pandemic and the mortality rate is above X percent, you don't have to force people to stay in their homes.

[00:39:09] They'll be too damn scared to go out in the streets.

[00:39:11] Oh, absolutely.

[00:39:12] Because the system seeks balance.

[00:39:15] People will apportion the risk they're willing to take based on the perceived risk.

[00:39:20] And that's all systems.

[00:39:21] That's all systems, no matter how complicated.

[00:39:25] So when people talk about, oh, well, my worry is financial collapse.

[00:39:31] I'm like, okay, financial collapse happened in 2008.

[00:39:35] If you want to go back even further, the Great Depression was worse than 2008.

[00:39:39] And we're probably looking forward to another one in the near future.

[00:39:41] But it wasn't like 1920s and 30s Germany.

[00:39:49] It wasn't a barrel of Deutschmarks to buy a loaf of bread.

[00:39:52] It never got that bad.

[00:39:53] And even if that is your high watermark, it wasn't the complete irrevocable permanent destruction of the financial system in the economy.

[00:40:02] So I guess what I'm saying is no matter what you look at, all these systems seek to self-correct.

[00:40:11] Absolutely they do.

[00:40:13] The only time they don't self-correct is when something happens so fast the system cannot balance itself back out.

[00:40:20] And I don't think those scenarios are really predictable.

[00:40:24] I got to throw this one up there.

[00:40:25] That was what was making me laugh.

[00:40:27] That's a good one, Jeff.

[00:40:28] Black Swan event.

[00:40:30] You know when you're driving along and collide with a black swan that comes through your windshield.

[00:40:34] Yes, I would say that is a black swan event.

[00:40:37] But, you know, I do have a little bit of a problem with this one, Phil, with the apocalypse swapping.

[00:40:42] I think that, yes, when taken too far, it's a bad thing.

[00:40:48] But I don't think there's anything wrong with, and I think people really should do this, they need to do a risk analysis, a rolling risk analysis.

[00:40:57] So right now, we're getting into winter.

[00:41:00] All right.

[00:41:01] I don't have to worry about tornadoes right now, probably.

[00:41:04] But damn sure I have to worry about blizzards.

[00:41:06] Yep.

[00:41:07] Ice storms.

[00:41:09] Power outage.

[00:41:10] Stuff like that.

[00:41:11] Yeah, sure.

[00:41:13] I can see why people would be more worried about World War III nuclear war right now.

[00:41:17] We got a ground war in Europe.

[00:41:20] That always goes well for pretty much everyone involved.

[00:41:23] I think I read about this in a history book.

[00:41:26] Right, exactly.

[00:41:27] There was a movie about it.

[00:41:29] Definitely don't get involved against a Sicilian when death is on the line or a land war in Asia.

[00:41:35] Well, we've got a land war in Asia, so it's probably not going to go well.

[00:41:40] But I do believe that taking a rolling risk analysis for your area could change over time.

[00:41:49] If it is a rolling risk analysis and it's anchored in some kind of like rational thought.

[00:41:56] Absolutely.

[00:41:56] Like I said, this is a go too far.

[00:41:58] Yeah.

[00:41:59] This is my most likely threat.

[00:42:01] This is the thing I should be prioritizing.

[00:42:03] I am emotionally at peace with that.

[00:42:07] But when a person swap, when I hear apocalypse swapping, and this was kind of what I got from the article, I'm talking about the person who goes from one highly, highly, highly unlikely fantasy scenario.

[00:42:20] To another highly, highly, highly unlikely fantasy scenario.

[00:42:24] And understand when I say fantasy, I'm not saying impossible.

[00:42:28] I am saying so improbable.

[00:42:31] I'm not going to put a lot of time or effort towards it.

[00:42:34] Or at the very least, so damaging of an event that you're probably not likely to survive, even if you put your entire income at it.

[00:42:44] But I mean, there are some events you just cannot be ready for.

[00:42:48] You can't.

[00:42:49] Well, call it what it is.

[00:42:51] If we had like the big one, the lights go out and they're never coming back on.

[00:42:56] Understand that like it will kill 90% of the population of America within 30 days.

[00:43:03] Within 30 days.

[00:43:05] I think it was three months, wasn't it?

[00:43:06] Three months.

[00:43:06] I'd have to go back and look.

[00:43:08] I thought it was 90 days.

[00:43:09] I thought it was 90% of the population in 90 days.

[00:43:12] Yeah.

[00:43:12] But understand, it's going to be that level of devastation.

[00:43:17] So you have a one in 10 chance, no matter how prepared you are, that your name's on that list.

[00:43:22] And I'm not saying this to discourage anyone from being into preparedness.

[00:43:27] I'm only saying this because like, if you are point of order, if you are not preparing for retirement because you're trying to dump all your money into seeds and everything in case, in case of World War three, you're missing a step.

[00:43:43] Because I always tell people, I'm like, that's my justification for having a 401k and a retirement plan is I have these things in case all hell breaks loose.

[00:43:52] I have these other things in case it doesn't.

[00:43:55] Because that's the tenet of preparedness.

[00:43:57] It's more terrifying than being an elderly person that can't afford care.

[00:44:02] I'm literally watching it right now with some people that I know.

[00:44:07] And it is horrifying.

[00:44:09] It is all the motivation I need in my life to ruthlessly save for retirement.

[00:44:16] Like I've told my wife, I never promised her we'd be rich.

[00:44:21] Not in the cards.

[00:44:22] There are things I could do for money that I'm just not willing to because they take away from my family and I prioritize things differently.

[00:44:28] But I have promised her we will retire comfortably.

[00:44:33] And I do not care if that means I have to drive that truck in the driveway for 10 years.

[00:44:38] I don't care if that means we have to forego the toys and the boat and the vacations and the crap that I see so many people my age indulging in.

[00:44:46] We will save for retirement and the discussion is over because I am not going to be the person who has to make my daughter drop her family and rush to their aid all the freaking time.

[00:44:59] I'm just not willing to do it, I guess.

[00:45:01] Hey, sometimes things go wrong.

[00:45:03] Sometimes things also go just fine.

[00:45:06] And you live to 75 or 80.

[00:45:09] Sometimes things do go wrong.

[00:45:11] But I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that when things go wrong, I'm able to deal with it because that's preparedness.

[00:45:20] It's a hell of a concept.

[00:45:21] It's like I do things to prepare for things to go wrong.

[00:45:24] And then when things go wrong, it's not the end of the world because I've already got a plan in place to deal with that.

[00:45:30] You got to prepare for things to go okay too.

[00:45:32] Yeah, exactly.

[00:45:33] Well, and like –

[00:45:35] Or at least not terribly.

[00:45:36] Well, but let's call it what it is.

[00:45:37] It's like given that – what is the average life expectancy right now?

[00:45:42] It's like 79, 81, 73.

[00:45:45] Is that low?

[00:45:45] I thought it was 73 for – 73 or 75 for men.

[00:45:48] Yeah, it went down again.

[00:45:49] It was 78.

[00:45:50] Call it 75 years old.

[00:45:52] The odds are you are going to live long enough to retire.

[00:45:58] Yeah.

[00:45:58] Would you like to pass away sitting on your stoop as a Walmart greeter because you can't retire?

[00:46:06] Or would you like to have the last 10 to 15 years of your life be comfortable and provided for and happy and be able to spend some time with your loved ones before you kick off this mortal coil?

[00:46:16] I say that the likelihood of us making it to old age is infinitely greater based on statistics than of having an apocalypse.

[00:46:28] But that's just me.

[00:46:29] Yeah.

[00:46:30] I agree.

[00:46:31] But then again, I also have beans, rice, and ammo just in case I'm wrong.

[00:46:36] Amen.

[00:46:37] Y'all can all tell me when we get there.

[00:46:39] Exactly.

[00:46:40] I'll take that hit of having lost some money in my 401k or my IRA if it means that on the off chance I live to 75, I do okay.

[00:46:50] Yeah.

[00:46:52] Preppers are not panic buying.

[00:46:54] They're buying what no one else is thinking about.

[00:46:57] So this sticks with me a lot because like during the great toilet paper pandemic or the great toilet paper apocalypse of 2020, which I will forever call it the great toilet paper pandemic, you know, apocalypse.

[00:47:11] It was set off by one stupid internet video.

[00:47:16] Yes.

[00:47:16] And every stampede is started by one scared animal running the wrong direction.

[00:47:21] Oh, it is.

[00:47:21] That's how that's how her dynamics work.

[00:47:23] But I digress.

[00:47:24] That's just a perfect point for why you should have some of this stuff because one dumb internet video of one guy that saw unstocked shelves caused a cascade failure.

[00:47:34] But here's my question.

[00:47:36] Were you at a toilet paper when that happened?

[00:47:38] No, God, no.

[00:47:39] Were you fighting with Meemaw and Jack and John and everybody in the store trying to get that last case of toilet paper?

[00:47:46] We were cracking jokes about which wine pairing we were going to do with dinner since it was, in fact, trying times.

[00:47:55] Yes.

[00:47:56] See, Andrew has told the story several times on this podcast about how there was a blizzard coming in and him and his friend were like, um, we're kind of low on bourbon.

[00:48:05] We should probably go on bourbon.

[00:48:07] So, yeah, so they went to the store.

[00:48:09] I believe it was a Myers, but he can correct me when he comes back.

[00:48:12] But I believe you're right.

[00:48:14] He went to the store and people are freaking the F out, fighting each other over like, you know, bread and milk and toilet paper and tampons or whatever the hell else you people.

[00:48:24] Tombstone pizzas, I think he said, is a common one, too.

[00:48:27] Yeah.

[00:48:27] Whatever y'all fight over when there's a blizzard coming.

[00:48:29] I don't know.

[00:48:30] We don't do those down here.

[00:48:37] Because he was like, we got everything we need, like what we're fine.

[00:48:41] Exactly.

[00:48:41] But this really resonated with me because not only, yes, were we in that boat of we don't need toilet paper so we're not getting into fistfights with idiots over it.

[00:48:49] But I can also think of times during COVID where like things showed up on my radar, like sudden supply shortages that the average person wasn't buying.

[00:49:01] Like there was a point at which I saw the ubiquitous, like the five gallon mountain house buckets.

[00:49:08] Sold out.

[00:49:09] I saw those sold out nationwide.

[00:49:11] And as soon as that happened, I told my wife, I'm like, some something is fixing to pop off because because somebody who knew something bought a whole bunch.

[00:49:21] Somebody that knows something bought a whole bunch or, you know, occasionally like within our friend group, the patrons, somebody who's in a certain line of work.

[00:49:30] Or certain certain people in the know will say, hey, guys, you should probably do this right now.

[00:49:36] And everybody listens.

[00:49:37] You may want to stock up on X, Y, Z.

[00:49:39] Yeah.

[00:49:40] But I guess what I'm saying is like rappers are not the people running around fighting each other over toilet paper.

[00:49:45] They're the people buying the stuff nobody else is because they're ahead of the game.

[00:49:50] Like our default or base layer is I've got toilet paper.

[00:49:53] I don't need more toilet paper.

[00:49:55] You ain't going to see me fighting anybody over a bag of rice and a bag of beans.

[00:49:58] Because if I got to fight somebody over a bag of rice and a bag of beans, we are like months and months and months into whatever situation we're in.

[00:50:06] You're just you're not going to see me and my family indulging in any of that because we're ahead of everybody else.

[00:50:12] We've already done all those things.

[00:50:14] We've already put all that back.

[00:50:15] I'm right now.

[00:50:16] My big my big squabble with my wife and daughter is feminine products.

[00:50:20] I got I intentionally went to the store and I bought I think two or three extra like cases of their stuff and put it on the shelf.

[00:50:29] There's no reason not to.

[00:50:31] It's like toilet paper.

[00:50:32] It doesn't go bad.

[00:50:33] Well, but here's the thing.

[00:50:35] You remember there was a port strike a couple of months ago, right?

[00:50:38] Yep.

[00:50:39] Guess when that agreement runs out?

[00:50:41] Hmm.

[00:50:42] Hmm.

[00:50:43] January.

[00:50:44] It does.

[00:50:45] Guess what?

[00:50:46] Phil is going to have all kinds of stuff loaded up in his garage before January because if.

[00:50:52] Anything you need.

[00:50:53] If.

[00:50:53] Oh, well, okay.

[00:50:54] So paper goods.

[00:50:57] I'm going to have a bunch of that put away.

[00:50:59] I mean, really?

[00:51:00] Oh, the other one, the big one.

[00:51:01] And a matter of fact.

[00:51:02] Consumable medical supplies, consumable meds, over the counter meds.

[00:51:06] Coffee beans.

[00:51:08] Mm hmm.

[00:51:08] Those are one 100% of coffee in this country is imported.

[00:51:13] It is not grown locally anywhere in North America.

[00:51:16] Prove me wrong if you don't believe me.

[00:51:18] I'm a coffee nerd.

[00:51:19] I can tell you where most of it comes from.

[00:51:20] We don't have the right climate to grow this stuff in North America.

[00:51:24] 100% of your coffee is imported.

[00:51:26] If you don't have at least a couple of weeks supply of coffee put back on the shelf come January and that port strike happens, we might have a set of problems on our hands.

[00:51:35] Because it's not as if on that day, all coffee will disappear.

[00:51:40] It is the fact that when the big roasters like Folgers, which is right down the road from my house, when they can't get green beans imported sooner or later, they're going to stop.

[00:51:49] And then that means the stock that's on the shelves is eventually going to run out.

[00:51:53] And if this situation, if this situation lasts long enough, y'all are going to have some problems on your hands.

[00:51:59] But I'm sitting here with 20 pounds on that shelf and I'm probably going to order another 20 pounds because 40 pounds of beans will keep my little roasting operation going for a very long time.

[00:52:12] So, yeah, I think panic buying annoys the heck out of me.

[00:52:16] I think I just scared your wife.

[00:52:18] No, she was saying we weren't fighting for toilet paper, I think.

[00:52:23] Oh, I thought that was like, no, because I said something about coffee going away.

[00:52:27] Oh, no.

[00:52:28] She, yeah, she is a fan of coffee as well.

[00:52:31] No, we keep a pretty healthy stock here.

[00:52:35] But look, any consumable good, any over-the-counter medication.

[00:52:40] I mean, look at what happened in the wake of COVID.

[00:52:42] How many over-the-counter prescriptions were hard to get for a little while there?

[00:52:46] Especially cold and flu.

[00:52:47] We're going into cold and flu season.

[00:52:49] Do you guys have enough to get through a couple people?

[00:52:52] Maybe all the people in your family catching a cold for a week or the flu for two weeks?

[00:52:58] And that's not even, to me, that's not even a prepper thing, though.

[00:53:01] No, it's a basic thing, but it's a good time to check.

[00:53:04] Well, but what I mean when I say it's not even a prepper thing, that's a common sense thing,

[00:53:08] is because the flu is highly communicable.

[00:53:12] We'll all agree on that, right?

[00:53:13] So if one person in a household gets it, the rest of them are probably not too far behind.

[00:53:19] And let me tell you, there's nothing on earth more miserable than y'all having to play Rochambeau

[00:53:24] for who's the least sick to go to the store to get more NyQuil when everybody's down with the flu.

[00:53:29] We had one person at work that went on vacation, and when he came back, he came back with influenza B.

[00:53:36] Within four days, all but two people were sick at work.

[00:53:41] He had two people left in the building.

[00:53:44] Not shocked. Not at all.

[00:53:46] No. No, highly communicative.

[00:53:49] And like we started, I started off saying this at the very beginning of the show,

[00:53:53] preppers are secretive, and I agree with this wholeheartedly.

[00:53:56] And there's two reasons for that.

[00:53:58] I think, first of all, a lot of it comes from, you know, this idea that, like,

[00:54:02] I don't want everybody to know that I'm the door you need to knock on when you're hungry and, you know, scared.

[00:54:07] Things are blowing up.

[00:54:09] But I think there's also an element of this where, like, a lot of people,

[00:54:12] I don't want to say they're ashamed of it,

[00:54:14] but, like, we all acknowledge that there is a certain stigma around preparedness.

[00:54:20] And most people are, I want to call it sensitive enough to social stigma that they will avoid it where possible.

[00:54:31] Then you have people like me who are like, don't care.

[00:54:34] Don't like me.

[00:54:34] Don't like me.

[00:54:35] Piss off.

[00:54:36] You know, my front, my door, my door swings both directions for a reason.

[00:54:39] You can leave just as easy as you came in.

[00:54:41] But, like, most people are not wired like I am.

[00:54:43] Most people aren't wired like a lot of us are.

[00:54:45] Like, we are naturally going to be very coy with other people about topics or about activities that they would take a dim light on

[00:54:53] because human beings are social creatures and we don't like being part of the outgroup.

[00:54:59] There's, you know, and I think some of that stigma comes from there is always going to be the person in the group or in your town that if they see someone doing something and they're not doing it and they're not sure why.

[00:55:14] But they don't want to be wrong.

[00:55:16] So they're going to mock you regardless of what it is.

[00:55:19] Everybody knows that person.

[00:55:21] You're like, well, it's wrong because I'm not doing it.

[00:55:23] If it was right, I'd be doing it.

[00:55:24] Yeah, those people are pretty loud and they're irritating.

[00:55:28] But I think a good portion of where this this secrecy of preppers comes from is a holdover from the survivalist doomsday days.

[00:55:40] The Soldier of Fortune magazine days.

[00:55:43] I saw somebody bring up in the comments.

[00:55:45] Not our finest moment.

[00:55:49] Hey, it's we all do cringe stuff, man.

[00:55:53] Well, it happens, especially when we're younger.

[00:55:56] But if some of the prepper media, too, doesn't make this any better because every single one of them is, oh, the second they find out I've got this now I've got to end up killing people.

[00:56:07] Probably that's not going to happen because more than likely it's not the total doomsday.

[00:56:13] Probably what's going to happen is like what happened when we had a blizzard here.

[00:56:16] I texted my neighbor to see how she was doing.

[00:56:19] She said they didn't have any water.

[00:56:21] And I was like, well, do you want me to bring you some?

[00:56:24] I've got some five gallon jugs.

[00:56:27] And I took her over some water.

[00:56:28] She was grateful.

[00:56:29] Now she has she's buying a generator for her house for when we have storms.

[00:56:33] Right.

[00:56:34] That's the more likely thing that's going to happen.

[00:56:36] But that's not what our media portrays.

[00:56:39] That's not what these prepper books portray.

[00:56:41] I mean, some of the authors you guys have had on this show, their books don't portray.

[00:56:47] Don't portray that.

[00:56:48] Granted, it doesn't sell.

[00:56:49] You know, your neighbor coming over and borrowing five gallons of water doesn't really sell a book.

[00:56:53] But gunfights do.

[00:56:56] I mean, having published a book can confirm.

[00:56:59] Yeah.

[00:56:59] I mean, hey, right.

[00:57:00] I read your book.

[00:57:01] It was a good book.

[00:57:02] I enjoyed it.

[00:57:02] I recommend it.

[00:57:04] Yeah.

[00:57:05] But sometimes see, sometimes books are written purely to like sell themselves.

[00:57:11] Sometimes books are sometimes books intentionally blow things out of proportion because they're

[00:57:15] trying to like point something out via the absurdity of it.

[00:57:19] Absolutely.

[00:57:19] But you're right.

[00:57:20] I think that there's I think there's a lot of I think there was a time in the preparedness

[00:57:25] community did not do a good job of policing itself or a good job of its own, like public

[00:57:30] image PR, if you want to use that terminology.

[00:57:32] And I would like I would like to think that there have been a lot of efforts more recently,

[00:57:39] say within the last 10 years to really make this more mainstream and more common.

[00:57:46] And I don't like to use words like more rational, more realistic, but really just to like bring

[00:57:52] this, take this down a level.

[00:57:55] Because there are people that I can convince to get into preparedness.

[00:58:00] Eddie had the best example for us not too long ago.

[00:58:04] Eddie's spouse is like was not on board with preparedness until she drew the link between,

[00:58:09] hey, if we had if we were more prepared, we could help our friends in the situation they're

[00:58:13] in right now.

[00:58:14] And the minute the minute that link got drawn, she's on board.

[00:58:18] And that's awesome.

[00:58:19] Yeah.

[00:58:20] And I think I think it's standard community building.

[00:58:23] Yeah.

[00:58:23] But I think it's that PR element that was missing from the parents community for a lot

[00:58:27] for a lot of times.

[00:58:28] I think we a lot of time the preparedness community portrayed itself or people within

[00:58:33] the community portrayed themselves as being like very anti-social, very standoffish, very

[00:58:38] braggadocious in ways that just did not market well to potential preppers.

[00:58:44] And I think that as the tent has gotten bigger and we've brought in, you know, we've brought

[00:58:51] in more people, we've brought in millennials, we've brought in Gen Xers, we've brought in

[00:58:55] Gen Z, we've brought in women, we've brought in minorities, we've brought in all these different

[00:58:59] people with all these different ideas about what preparedness should be because they've

[00:59:03] made it individual to them.

[00:59:05] And we've continued to market the community as, hey, we're normal people.

[00:59:12] We just see the world around us a little differently and we plan for things differently.

[00:59:17] But we're, we're still pushing that idea that like, we're very open and we're very outgoing

[00:59:23] and we're very willing to talk to other people in a reasonable way that doesn't start and end

[00:59:28] with don't come to my house or I'll have to shoot you.

[00:59:31] Garden girl 84.

[00:59:35] So you don't plug it enough.

[00:59:37] I don't plug it enough.

[00:59:38] And part of the, there's a, there are reasons for that.

[00:59:41] Like I'm, I'm not, it's not like I'm unhappy with the book I wrote.

[00:59:43] Y'all have to bear in mind that I wrote that book was 2018.

[00:59:49] I think it was 20.

[00:59:50] I think it was 2018.

[00:59:52] Anyway, I wrote a book, American Insurgent back in 2018 at a time when my career path was

[00:59:58] kind of going down one road.

[00:59:59] And I had, I had lots and lots and lots of extra time and energy at the end of every

[01:00:06] day to devote to different things.

[01:00:08] That was a time when I was, I was hosting this podcast and producing it.

[01:00:13] I was co-hosting another podcast.

[01:00:14] I was doing regular guest spots on a third podcast.

[01:00:18] I was writing a book.

[01:00:19] I was doing YouTube content.

[01:00:21] I was, I was invested in so many different things because I was bored at work and it was a,

[01:00:27] it was a job that just involved lots of financial calculations, which sounds horrible to most

[01:00:32] people.

[01:00:32] But for me, I can do it with my eyes closed.

[01:00:34] It's my talent.

[01:00:35] You can power through it.

[01:00:36] Yeah.

[01:00:36] I mean, sit me down in front of it in front of Microsoft Excel and I'll just like zen out,

[01:00:41] go brain dead and do my job for eight hours.

[01:00:43] It doesn't bother me.

[01:00:45] And that's, that was the time at which I was invested in all these little passion projects

[01:00:49] and side projects.

[01:00:49] And my intention was write this first book and then immediately pivot to writing a sequel.

[01:00:54] And I was, I, I had been mentored by a couple of other authors in potentially making authoring

[01:01:02] a kind of a second career.

[01:01:05] Yeah.

[01:01:06] Yeah.

[01:01:06] And then my day job resulted in me getting a promotion at work.

[01:01:10] And I went into a career field that was literally double my compensation.

[01:01:16] Like I'm, I have, I'm infinitely better able to take care of my family now that I was then.

[01:01:22] We have far more access.

[01:01:24] I'm putting away a ton more for retirement.

[01:01:25] Like it's all positives, but the downside is I am so exhausted at the end of an eight to

[01:01:31] nine hour day because it is so mentally taxing.

[01:01:35] I didn't have the extra energy to devote to any other things.

[01:01:39] I stopped co-hosting their podcast.

[01:01:41] I hung up writing.

[01:01:43] I held onto this podcast by the skin of my teeth because I love it and I didn't want to

[01:01:49] let it go.

[01:01:49] And it has taken some years to like get, get to a place where like starting this nonprofit

[01:01:56] is viable.

[01:01:57] But even that's been a lot of work on my wife and a lot of work on my brother-in-law and

[01:02:01] my sister, because I can't do it all by myself anymore.

[01:02:05] I am, my job is taking too much from me.

[01:02:08] So that's the reason why I really don't promote the book.

[01:02:12] And maybe I should, but it's just the idea that like, you know, it has become this one

[01:02:17] book that I wrote that a lot of people really enjoyed, but it was supposed to be the first

[01:02:23] in a series of books.

[01:02:24] And I feel like that book kind of just left everybody hanging because I've got maybe maybe

[01:02:29] in a few years you can come back around to it, man.

[01:02:32] I mean, never, never close that door because realistically, if you wanted to pick it up and

[01:02:36] start writing again, I'm sure you could given the time and energy.

[01:02:41] I've got two thirds of a sequel written.

[01:02:44] There you go.

[01:02:45] I mean, no one's, I mean, Hey, look at George R.R.

[01:02:48] Martin.

[01:02:48] Everybody likes his work, but the book comes out every, every 10 years or so.

[01:02:52] Yeah.

[01:02:53] I don't know.

[01:02:54] It's, it's, it's not like books expire.

[01:02:57] No, I know it's, I don't know.

[01:03:01] It's one of those things that like, I haven't thrown away the manuscript I started.

[01:03:04] I could probably pick it up.

[01:03:06] Part of my problem was that I started writing it.

[01:03:08] And then because it took me so long to write it, I got, I got to a point where like, you

[01:03:14] have to bear in mind, I write books that I enjoy.

[01:03:17] And if I don't like the book, I'm not letting it out because I'm not going to expect anybody

[01:03:21] else to buy it or read it or anything else.

[01:03:23] If I don't, if I, the author don't like it myself.

[01:03:27] And I got about halfway through writing the sequel and then I put it down for a little

[01:03:31] while and I came back to it and I hated the way the book was going.

[01:03:34] So I literally like ripped it apart and start all over from scratch again.

[01:03:39] And that time I got about two thirds of the way through it.

[01:03:42] And then I got sidetracked at work.

[01:03:44] I put it down and I picked it back up and lo and behold, I read it and I was like, this

[01:03:49] is not believable anymore.

[01:03:51] Like part of my frustration is that at the time that American Insurgent was originally

[01:03:58] published, I could kind of see, I was looking down a road at, you know, like if the gun control

[01:04:06] movement continues the direction it's going, I could see it ending up here eventually.

[01:04:11] One day we've turned a different corner.

[01:04:14] And that's part of the problem is that after like my, my, my, oh crap bingo card, after

[01:04:20] a pandemic and after everything else has happened is like the last four years have been so freaking

[01:04:25] wild.

[01:04:25] I don't know how to write fiction anymore because things in the real world keep happening.

[01:04:31] You're, you're telling me that the apprentice host running for president three times and

[01:04:37] winning twice was not on your bingo card.

[01:04:41] Bro, the last four years have not been on my bingo card.

[01:04:44] So I guess what I'm saying is like the last 12 haven't been on mine.

[01:04:48] I mean, Jesus.

[01:04:49] Yeah.

[01:04:50] But the last four have been even wilder than the previous eight.

[01:04:53] That's true.

[01:04:54] Yeah.

[01:04:55] Jeff brings up a good point here.

[01:04:57] He'd rather stay quiet and not be the outsider because if something happens, he doesn't want

[01:05:01] to be known as the outsider with all this stuff.

[01:05:04] And, and that, that is a fair point.

[01:05:06] That's really valid.

[01:05:07] That's a valid point.

[01:05:09] That's hard to argue with.

[01:05:10] I understand.

[01:05:11] I have one argument against it.

[01:05:12] Well, I didn't say I didn't have an argument against it.

[01:05:14] Just, I understand the argument, but I also have to like, I have to kind of, and I might

[01:05:20] steal your thunder on this Nick, but like, I have to, I have to couch this in, in the

[01:05:25] same language of like the nonprofit that my wife and I are starting in the same language

[01:05:31] that in the same conversation that she and I had eight years ago when I started podcasting.

[01:05:35] I feel as though the, the message, the tenants of preparedness are so important and so vital

[01:05:43] and so, so life-saving to other people.

[01:05:46] I don't, I feel as though some of us are going to feel driven or compelled to try to share

[01:05:53] it, even if it means outing ourselves, even at our own personal risk.

[01:05:56] I mean, I won't fault anyone for not feeling that, but that's the whole reason why I started

[01:06:01] podcasting eight years ago, because I looked around me and I said, these people are freaking

[01:06:05] screwed if they don't start learning some of this stuff.

[01:06:08] And now I'm looking at the podcast and the podcast goes out into the world and then it

[01:06:14] reaches, I don't know.

[01:06:15] I did the numbers the other day and I think 300, 400, I mean, you could say 800 to a thousand

[01:06:23] people a week is not unreasonable per show, by the way, because raising values and matter

[01:06:27] of facts, one of those two shows a week basically doubles the reach.

[01:06:32] But I'm sure there's audience overlap.

[01:06:35] There has to be because, because I know I listened to it.

[01:06:38] Yeah, I'm sure.

[01:06:39] Because I'm not on it.

[01:06:39] But it's one of those situations where it's like, it goes out on the internet, it reaches

[01:06:44] those people, but then there's all these people.

[01:06:48] There's my neighbors, there's people in my community, there's people 15 miles away from

[01:06:51] me and it doesn't reach a lot of them because it goes out in the internet.

[01:06:55] And so that's why I decided, okay, we, we have to be willing to blow our own cover and

[01:07:03] start talking to people in this community.

[01:07:05] And yeah, there's probably going to be people with a, with an opinion and you know, F them,

[01:07:11] feed them fish eggs.

[01:07:11] I don't fish heads.

[01:07:12] I don't care.

[01:07:13] Right.

[01:07:14] The message is more important than my anonymity.

[01:07:17] I don't, I just, I feel that way and I don't blame anybody for making a different calculus,

[01:07:22] but like that's, I feel that some of us have to be willing to speak up.

[01:07:30] Otherwise this community will never grow.

[01:07:32] This never information will never get out.

[01:07:35] Nick muted himself.

[01:07:36] And, uh, I did my furnace just kicked on.

[01:07:39] I don't know if you can hear that.

[01:07:40] Oh, I was about, Hey, oh no, I heard it loud and clear.

[01:07:44] I was just, let me know.

[01:07:46] I was just about to ask if, uh, the black Tahoes had shown up outside your house.

[01:07:49] No, the, uh, so my, my big counterpoint to Jeff's, I suppose, is that what if you don't

[01:07:56] have to be the outsider?

[01:08:00] What if we can make this so normalized that your average, say city block, 50% of the houses

[01:08:08] have two weeks or a month worth of supplies?

[01:08:13] Now you don't have to worry about that.

[01:08:15] Now you're not the outsider.

[01:08:16] Now you're just Jeff down the block.

[01:08:19] Who's one of half of the people that do this.

[01:08:22] I mean, I would say, I mean, granted, given the economic outlook we have right now, not

[01:08:30] half of people have a retirement savings.

[01:08:32] That's fully funded, but it'd be great if we could get everybody to that point.

[01:08:37] I mean, I would like to see prepping as normalized as a 401k or an IRA.

[01:08:44] I think that that's a reasonable, reliable, reasonable, achievable goal.

[01:08:48] Whether or not you and I can achieve this, Phil, I don't know, but we can definitely show

[01:08:54] off that it is an achievable goal for everyone.

[01:08:58] I mean, I guess my perspective really just comes down to like how many people changed?

[01:09:06] How many people, how many people in history can we say change the entire, the direction

[01:09:10] of the entire world in a positive or negative way?

[01:09:13] Like let's preface it that way.

[01:09:15] Maybe a dozen, you could say truly change the course of world events on their own.

[01:09:21] Oh, a dozen, maybe, maybe two dozen at most.

[01:09:26] Hitler, Marx, Caesar.

[01:09:29] The con.

[01:09:30] The con.

[01:09:31] I mean, yeah, again, in a negative or positive direction, but in a great way, in a great,

[01:09:36] in a huge way, change the course of world events.

[01:09:39] But I'm going to tell, but I'm going to share with you a, a little known fact or a little

[01:09:44] thought of fact, but like, I believe in making huge changes in a small way.

[01:09:49] So like, if I can make my community, if I can raise awareness about preparedness in my

[01:09:54] own community, that may not impact Illinois.

[01:09:59] It may not impact our friends in Michigan.

[01:10:01] It may not impact our friends in Wisconsin or Texas or anywhere else.

[01:10:04] But what it will do is it will ensure that these people in this community are prepared

[01:10:09] to take care of themselves and therefore prepared to help each other.

[01:10:14] And that is worth more to me because of proximity, if nothing else, than changing the course of

[01:10:20] the entire world.

[01:10:22] Because if I can influence-

[01:10:23] If nothing else, it improves your safety in the short term.

[01:10:27] But the other thing of it is, is that if I can make that influence in this community and

[01:10:30] you can make that influence in your community and everyone else can make that influence in

[01:10:34] their community, it's like the old, it's like the old analogy of like the light in the

[01:10:38] dark room.

[01:10:39] Light a candle in a dark room.

[01:10:41] It's really bright.

[01:10:42] Everybody can see it because it's one candle in the dark.

[01:10:44] So I guess my point of view really comes back down to like the idea that if you can alter

[01:10:49] that demographic in your own community, that is a great change in that community.

[01:10:55] And if everyone takes it upon themselves to advocate for the lifestyle and the things

[01:11:00] they believe in, and I've made the same argument about like gun rights.

[01:11:04] If you advocate everywhere you go for gun rights, no matter how uncomfortable, no matter

[01:11:09] how unpopular, if you are a constant, reasonable, eloquent voice for the right to keep and bear

[01:11:16] arms for self-defense and the preservation of liberty, then that eventually does move

[01:11:21] the needle.

[01:11:22] You may not move it all by yourself, but if you and a million other people advocate for something,

[01:11:27] it does move the needle over time.

[01:11:29] So I think that's like my appeal to all of you out there who are like, I don't want to

[01:11:34] be the outsider.

[01:11:35] I've been the outsider for a lot of years now, and I just don't care because I think that

[01:11:43] this juice is worth the squeeze no matter how painful it ends up being.

[01:11:48] Right.

[01:11:49] Absolutely.

[01:11:49] I couldn't agree more.

[01:11:50] You know, it's even if the only thing that you can do is be that helpful neighbor in a

[01:11:59] minor emergency, maybe all you do is, is, is change one person's opinion or give them

[01:12:06] an idea they never would have thought of.

[01:12:09] And then, okay, great.

[01:12:11] And if they do that to the next person that moves into your house or the next person in

[01:12:16] the neighborhood they moved to, I mean, there's no downside to it other than maybe looking

[01:12:21] a little weird.

[01:12:22] Hell, I, I go play Warhammer and D&D at my local game store.

[01:12:26] I look a little weird all the time.

[01:12:29] So come on, it's not that bad.

[01:12:32] Yeah.

[01:12:33] But like I said, I mean, I, I felt like the article on the whole wasn't, it wasn't awful.

[01:12:39] I kind of, it was, it was, it was well-written.

[01:12:41] I thought.

[01:12:42] Yeah.

[01:12:42] I think if I had one criticism of the article as a whole, I just, I continue to push this

[01:12:48] idea that like the way to make preparedness more mainstream is to make it more approachable.

[01:12:54] You know, it, it is to, it is to, to lean away from the discussions about, oh, we have

[01:12:59] to homestead because World War III and the supply chain is going to break down or the

[01:13:03] lights are going to go out and they'll never come back.

[01:13:04] And, you know, yada, yada, yada.

[01:13:05] And we have to lean more into this idea that like, you know, it's probably, we're probably

[01:13:10] going to get it.

[01:13:11] We're probably going to catch a hurricane down here because you can't argue with that

[01:13:14] because it happens every freaking year or Nick, you're probably going to catch a tornado

[01:13:17] or a blizzard.

[01:13:18] You probably should be ready for that.

[01:13:19] You know, Andrew is notorious for saying every year, the Grand River floods and every

[01:13:25] year people in Michigan freak out like they've never seen the river flood before.

[01:13:29] And it floods every freaking year.

[01:13:32] Near me.

[01:13:32] It's the Fox river every spring, but that is your, but that is your gateway drug to

[01:13:37] convince people to get into this mind frame.

[01:13:39] Cause you can be like, Hey, you remember when the river flooded last year?

[01:13:41] Yeah.

[01:13:42] You remember when it flooded the year before?

[01:13:43] Yeah.

[01:13:43] You remember when it flooded the year before that?

[01:13:45] Yeah.

[01:13:45] You should probably plan for the river to flood.

[01:13:47] Cause it seems to do that a lot.

[01:13:50] And then if you get them going down that road of, Hey, do you have an alternate way of getting

[01:13:54] in and out of the area?

[01:13:55] Do you have food and water in case you get cut off?

[01:13:57] Do you have this?

[01:13:58] Do you have that?

[01:13:58] You don't have to freak them out and make them start thinking about homesteading for the end

[01:14:02] of the world.

[01:14:03] But if you can tell them, Hey, how long do you think you'll be stuck up here at home?

[01:14:06] Oh, a week.

[01:14:07] Why not have like two weeks of food and water?

[01:14:10] Congratulations.

[01:14:10] You just made that person able to frigging stay at home for two weeks without being your

[01:14:14] problem.

[01:14:15] Cause they can take care of themselves now, but we can, we can make these things approachable

[01:14:20] to the average person so that they buy in.

[01:14:23] And I have found that most of the time, once people buy into this mindset, it's, it's terminal.

[01:14:29] There's no, there's no going back.

[01:14:32] I agree.

[01:14:34] As long as they don't get thrown into the deep end of the paranoia that you can sometimes

[01:14:40] see.

[01:14:40] I do.

[01:14:40] I do believe this community unfortunately can attract people with, I would say untreated

[01:14:50] anxiety or paranoid disorders.

[01:14:52] And you'll see, you'll run into them online on the forums now and then it's the, it's the

[01:14:57] person that's all capsing you in the comments telling you that you're going to die.

[01:15:01] If you don't have enough Tyvek to seal up your entire house from the next pandemic.

[01:15:06] You know exactly what I'm talking about.

[01:15:08] The person on Reddit that is claiming that Cincinnati will be underwater within three months

[01:15:13] because of global warming or whatever, pick their apocalypse.

[01:15:17] I don't care what it is.

[01:15:18] But unfortunately, I think that that's a lot of where our negative presses come from over

[01:15:24] the years, because you didn't have say back in the early two thousands, you didn't have

[01:15:30] the guy like you and the guy like me or guy like Andrew here on a podcast saying, look,

[01:15:37] Ben, do what you can do.

[01:15:38] If you can get a week worth of food, fantastic.

[01:15:40] Now you're set for a week, baby steps, work your way into it.

[01:15:44] No, what you had was the guy writing articles in soldier of fortune or on a blog post saying

[01:15:50] everyone's going to die from peak, from peak oil collapse and having no energy.

[01:15:55] And the entire world economy is going to come to a screaming halt because those are the

[01:15:59] most motivated people to shout out to the ether, unfortunately.

[01:16:04] Yeah.

[01:16:06] I guess that's probably a good place to round this out.

[01:16:09] We did all the admin work at the front of the show, so we can just punt this one out the

[01:16:13] door.

[01:16:15] If you have a friend in your life who you think could benefit from this lifestyle, I encourage

[01:16:20] you to like slowly lean into it just a little at a time and feel them out.

[01:16:25] See if they're a little bit prepper curious.

[01:16:26] If there are other kinds of curious, I'm not an expert in any of that.

[01:16:29] You'll have to deal with that on your own.

[01:16:31] But I think you'd be surprised how many people would be at least open to the conversation.

[01:16:37] And if you feel like you're not there yet, you're not ready to be the weird one or the

[01:16:41] outlier.

[01:16:42] That's cool too.

[01:16:43] Just please, for the love of God, realize that within your friend group, the people you

[01:16:48] can truly trust, there's someone in that group who would never make you the outsider.

[01:16:53] Your family, your close friends, people that know you, and they need to know what you know.

[01:16:59] So like, worst case, point them at us.

[01:17:01] We'll be the weirdo.

[01:17:02] You know what?

[01:17:04] I've been the weirdo for about 41 and a half of my 42 years of life.

[01:17:08] It's working for me.

[01:17:09] I kind of enjoy it.

[01:17:10] It makes highly experienced weird, highly experienced weirdo.

[01:17:15] All right, y'all.

[01:17:16] Don't forget, the merch is on sale, 15% off.

[01:17:18] The link's in the show description.

[01:17:21] Cypress Survivalist.

[01:17:21] I appreciate if y'all give that a watch.

[01:17:24] Mark your calendars for March 8th, and we'll start really, hopefully in the next couple weeks,

[01:17:29] we'll have really firm details on that.

[01:17:31] I'm just not quite ready to let that miss all the way out the silo yet until we get a couple

[01:17:35] of other things dealt with.

[01:17:37] And we will talk to y'all in another week.

[01:17:40] You hoodlums, take care of each other.

[01:17:41] Take care of yourself.

[01:17:42] Stay out of trouble.

[01:17:43] And if you can't do that, then don't get caught.

[01:17:46] Bye, everybody.

[01:17:47] Bye, everyone.