Matter of Facts: Prepper Mythbusters

[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] How about that? Proper intro music, got the frickin' audio file with Nick and Andrew named in it. It's almost like I'm a freaking professional for the first time.

[00:00:39] You've been doing this a minute.

[00:00:43] Eight years I still have managed to make this look like a complete amateur operation. That's how you know you're doing something right.

[00:00:48] Hey, you still work for a living, so we gotta cut you some slack.

[00:00:52] Yes, yes, yes. And as I have pointed out to several other, you know, prospective amateur podcasters over the years who were always like, how do I get into podcasting?

[00:01:02] The first thing I tell them is don't. And then right after that, when they insist they want to, they say, how do I make money at it? I'm like, start with a lot more money. And then you can make a small pile of money if you start with a big one.

[00:01:12] How did Joe Rogan make all of his podcast money? By being famous.

[00:01:16] Yeah. I'm gonna tell you the ugly little truth of, and this isn't just podcasting, this is like content creation across the board.

[00:01:24] Name recognition counts for a whole heck of a lot. And eight years ago, nobody but my mom and dad knew who the hell Phil Radclay was.

[00:01:32] So I had none of that. And I just got on the internet and start talking about weird stuff that no one cared about.

[00:01:40] And eight years later, there's actually a small group of people that give a damn. So, you know, here we are.

[00:01:45] Right. Working out pretty well so far.

[00:01:49] It keeps me entertained, if nothing else. And I made some good friends along the way, but no money.

[00:01:55] All this is funded by a day job.

[00:01:57] There you go. One of these days, maybe. Who knows?

[00:02:01] I hope not. My dad told me a long time ago.

[00:02:03] That sounds like a real pain.

[00:02:05] My dad told me a long time ago that if you try to turn your passion into a job, you'll live to hate it.

[00:02:11] Mm hmm. And I've taken that to heart by working for people that I can't stand on a good day and doing a job that drives me absolutely nuts.

[00:02:21] But there's no chance that it will ever be my passion. It's just a job.

[00:02:26] Well, that'll happen.

[00:02:28] That's all right.

[00:02:29] Hey, I get to do what I like every day. I like it so much. I brought work home.

[00:02:34] But.

[00:02:36] If I did what you did for a living, I'd probably enjoy it, too. But, you know.

[00:02:39] Oh, yeah. I you definitely would.

[00:02:42] A hundred percent. If you like mechanics stuff at all, you love machining.

[00:02:47] Most people, most people that like mechanics stuff, if they get a touch of a bridge board or a lathe.

[00:02:53] They get they get hooked.

[00:02:55] Yeah.

[00:02:56] Raggle Fraggle just said sounds like the gun industry.

[00:02:58] How do you become a millionaire?

[00:02:59] Be a billionaire and start a gun shop gun business. That sounds like most things, to be perfectly honest.

[00:03:05] Or nail a government contract first try.

[00:03:08] Yeah. Let me know how that's working out for everybody out there, because I mean, it's really easy if your uncle is a congressperson.

[00:03:16] Otherwise, it's a little tricky.

[00:03:18] There you go.

[00:03:19] But the topic is not nepotism and government, even though it'd be a very funny one.

[00:03:23] It's prepper myth busters, because I am hoping that in the over the course of the next 57 minutes, give or take that Nick and I can put some of these myths to bed finally and forever, because dadgummit, some of these things aggravate the hell out of me.

[00:03:44] Agreed.

[00:03:45] And the funny part of it is, is like, these are the myths I hear from people that are not in the preparedness community.

[00:03:51] And it colors all of us in a weird light.

[00:03:54] And these are even myths some people that purport to be part of the preparedness community continue to chirp, which aggravates me even more.

[00:04:02] Yeah.

[00:04:04] So I guess let's start with the first one on the list, because I put mine in, Nick put his in.

[00:04:09] We tried our best not to look at each other's and then he scrambled them.

[00:04:12] So I have no earthly idea what order they're coming up in.

[00:04:15] First off, you skipped merch.

[00:04:18] Oh, I did skip merch.

[00:04:20] I'm not even wearing the merch.

[00:04:21] They will throw things at you next time they see you.

[00:04:25] They probably will.

[00:04:26] And that's OK.

[00:04:27] But our merch is for sale at the Southern Gals Crafts.

[00:04:31] The links are in the show description.

[00:04:33] If you would like a fun cheeky shirt that my wife put a lot of time and effort into designing with some assistance from me and Andrew, they are available and there's koozies and there's cups and there's various things.

[00:04:44] We did our best with the merch to not make the podcast logo super duper prominent because I thought that the shirt should just kind of stand alone and be funny and be cheeky and then have a little bit of mention to the psychopaths that dreamt it up.

[00:05:02] So it's not like you're going to be asked by 10,000 people.

[00:05:05] What is this goofy podcast?

[00:05:07] It'll be hopefully a oh, that's hilarious.

[00:05:10] Or have you talked to a shrink lately that that might come up?

[00:05:15] But I'm not I'm not responsible for that.

[00:05:19] I'm clicking on buttons and things are not working.

[00:05:23] Raggle Fraggle don't beat me to the punch line.

[00:05:25] He asked if.

[00:05:26] Oh, yeah, I was just going to type a response that it's probably why your buttons weren't working.

[00:05:31] So you're saying I don't need a concrete reinforced steel bunker to be considered a prepper?

[00:05:35] Absolutely not.

[00:05:36] So let's start with.

[00:05:39] EMP nukes, Red Dawn and Mad Max.

[00:05:41] Mm hmm.

[00:05:42] I'm not going to say that a person who is preparing for any of these scenarios is not a is not a prepper.

[00:05:49] I'm going to say that there is so much more to preparedness than your favorite dystopian, sci sci fi movie.

[00:05:58] Like there are so many things that are so much more likely to happen to you.

[00:06:02] There's so many more things to prepare for that.

[00:06:05] If this is your entire concept of preparedness is like I'm getting ready for the literal end of the world for like the day after judgment day from Terminator.

[00:06:12] I'm dating myself with the references.

[00:06:14] But oh, sure.

[00:06:16] But like if that's what you're preparing for cool beans, just please stop telling people that's all preparedness is because there's a lot of us who don't live in bunkers who don't have rooms full of ammo ammunition.

[00:06:27] MREs who are still vibrant members of the preparedness community.

[00:06:31] We just prep for I don't know.

[00:06:34] I want to I don't want to say more realistic things Tuesday, but.

[00:06:38] Well, OK, but let's let's look at the last.

[00:06:42] Let's look at the last two weeks in the last two weeks.

[00:06:45] In the last two weeks, Florida got its teeth kicked in by a hurricane.

[00:06:48] North Carolina, basically the whole Appalachians got their teeth kicked in by a hurricane.

[00:06:53] There's a massive solar flare that either is coming to Earth or has already washed over the Earth.

[00:06:59] Like there's stuff that happens, like Nick said, on a Tuesday that we should probably be preparing for before we get ready for the Chinese or the Russians or whoever the latest boogaboo is to paratroop into our backyard or for all the gasoline to disappear.

[00:07:13] And we'd have to deal with Lord Humongous in the front yard.

[00:07:16] I mean, I'm not saying those aren't scenarios, but I don't think they're likely scenarios.

[00:07:21] And I think if you tell people that's what you're preparing for, they're going to give you a little bit of a funny look.

[00:07:28] As a thought experiment, they are valid.

[00:07:31] I will give them that as a thought experiment.

[00:07:35] But you need to move past that thought experiment and take a broader look at things.

[00:07:41] For that matter, you could say the same thing about zombies.

[00:07:44] Oh, yeah.

[00:07:44] Zombies.

[00:07:45] Uncle Randy.

[00:07:47] Yeah, perfect.

[00:07:48] And zombies are an analogy.

[00:07:49] But and Uncle Randy is very quick to point out we're not getting ready for literal dawn of the dawn of the dead zombies.

[00:07:56] Zombie is the stand in for the thing you're preparing for.

[00:08:00] Sure.

[00:08:01] So talk us through this one, because this is not one of mine.

[00:08:05] All right.

[00:08:05] So people talk about.

[00:08:07] Oh, we have to.

[00:08:09] OK, we have to make sure otherwise Stuart will scream at us when we put a banner up on the screen for the audio only listeners.

[00:08:17] We have to read it out loud.

[00:08:19] Otherwise, Stuart will become irrationally angry.

[00:08:22] That's fair.

[00:08:22] That's very fair.

[00:08:23] So this one's mine.

[00:08:25] Becoming a prepper.

[00:08:26] I people talk all the time about how do you get into preparedness?

[00:08:29] How do you become a prepper?

[00:08:32] I don't think you become a prepper.

[00:08:35] You're not joining the Marine Corps.

[00:08:37] You're not becoming an FBI agent.

[00:08:39] You're not learning to be a doctor.

[00:08:40] All you're doing is taking the basic fundamental steps of adulting to the next logical conclusion.

[00:08:48] All right.

[00:08:48] Your bills are going to come due next month.

[00:08:51] All right.

[00:08:51] You're going to have to pay those.

[00:08:52] So why would you not try to have money set aside to pay those bills?

[00:08:57] You're going to have to eat tomorrow.

[00:08:59] So why would you not set aside a little bit of extra food?

[00:09:02] You know, it's not so much as a of a new thing that you're doing.

[00:09:08] You're just applying a structure to what you should already be doing.

[00:09:16] Because you always need to eat.

[00:09:17] You always need water.

[00:09:19] You always need whatever tools to repair your house.

[00:09:22] Tarps in case the tornado or a hurricane takes your roof off.

[00:09:26] You're going to have to have some of these things eventually.

[00:09:29] So why not get them ahead of time when they are cheap, easy and available?

[00:09:35] So that kind of echoes something I've been saying about preparedness for a year, even before you and I first met, which is like we need to tear down this dividing line people put between their normal lives and preparedness and just make preparedness like the mindset that extends.

[00:09:51] Exactly.

[00:09:52] Normal thing.

[00:09:52] Like, you know, when I first got into preparedness eight years ago and a little more than that now, I had prepper food and I had regular food.

[00:10:01] And then I came around to this idea that, like, there's really no reason why these the pantry and the other pantry shouldn't blend in and merge with each other.

[00:10:10] There's no reason that this pantry shouldn't feed this pantry.

[00:10:13] And then I rotate my stuff through like there's no reason to have there's a reason to have things segregated in the name of like break in case of emergency, like bare minimum.

[00:10:25] We don't touch this for any normal kind of situation.

[00:10:28] There's a valid argument to your seeds for next spring or it like in my case, when I, when I, again, when I first started ammunition, I had X amount of ammunition that was segregated from the pile that was used for training.

[00:10:41] And it was breaking case of emergency.

[00:10:44] These are my last, however many rounds of all these different cartridges.

[00:10:48] And it was non-negotiable unless I am literally defending my home.

[00:10:53] These cans don't get open.

[00:10:54] That still exists.

[00:10:57] But I've, I've, I've, you know, grown that pop.

[00:11:01] I've grown that pile so much that the breaking case of emergency ammunition will likely never be open.

[00:11:07] Good.

[00:11:08] That's fine.

[00:11:09] It ammunition doesn't expire.

[00:11:11] I mean, I, I know firearms collectors that regularly shoot pin fire ammunition.

[00:11:18] And sometimes it's successful.

[00:11:21] The old stuff.

[00:11:22] And heck, I can't remember when the last time they made pin fire ammunition was, but it was before the 1900s.

[00:11:28] So you can't tell me that your ammo is going to expire.

[00:11:31] Well, there, there's, there's a large segment of the AK community that has existed prior to more modern times when back before there were U S manufacturers, when every, every AK in this country.

[00:11:44] It was either.

[00:11:44] Yeah.

[00:11:45] It was your Soviet surplus or there were parts kits.

[00:11:47] It's ever coming in the U S and being reassembled on domestic, uh, like node X buds and domestic receivers.

[00:11:53] But the cheapest source of ammo was spam cans coming from overseas.

[00:11:58] And all that stuff got boxed up in the forties.

[00:12:01] God.

[00:12:01] And I had some lead line spam cans.

[00:12:05] I never had a lead line, line spam can.

[00:12:07] I had a, I had a spam can and I popped it open foolishly cause this was years ago.

[00:12:13] And if I could go back and do it again, I would have opened up the, not in a spam can ammunition first and kept the spam can in reserve.

[00:12:23] But I'm still sitting on like, I don't know, 17, 1800 rounds of seven, six to about 39, which doesn't sound like a lot.

[00:12:30] But at this point, the AKs just kind of arranged way to me.

[00:12:33] Like it's not a, it's not something I would press in service to defend the family unless I was in a really weird situation.

[00:12:40] Yeah.

[00:12:41] But you know, it's effective, but no, it just, that just goes back to my point is like, everybody has a rainy day.

[00:12:47] Well, everyone should have a rainy day fund, rainy day fund.

[00:12:52] Everybody should have enough food for the next couple of days in their house just because they're going to have to eat and you can't get to the store every single day.

[00:13:00] Not here.

[00:13:01] Some Italians can, but that's basically what it comes down to.

[00:13:06] So right on the back of us talking about ammunition, can, can we all please agree with each other that the.

[00:13:15] You're going to read the title.

[00:13:17] I am, but I'm trying to think of how I get, how I dodge.

[00:13:20] Stuart inevitably thrown this back in my face.

[00:13:23] You can't.

[00:13:24] It's too late.

[00:13:24] How much ammo?

[00:13:25] I've seen it now.

[00:13:26] So the thing of it is, is that like, I, I wholeheartedly endorse people having more ammunition than most people would consider reasonable.

[00:13:35] Like I wholeheartedly endorse that, but it's not because I think every preparedness minded person needs like 10,000 rounds and a rack of ARs and all that stuff.

[00:13:47] Like, I don't think you need that.

[00:13:51] I think you need several thousand rounds of ammo if you're going to continue to train.

[00:13:57] Mm hmm.

[00:13:58] And like every, every four years, we're about to have another one.

[00:14:02] There's a major ammunition shortage in this country because everybody thinks this is the one where they're going to ban all the frigging guns and you cannot get ammunition for a reasonable price.

[00:14:13] So I have always, I've been a huge proponent for years now of have a big pile of ammunition, not because I think you need 10,000 rounds to shoot zombies within the front yard, but because I don't want to have to buy ammo for the next two years while I wait for all, all the crazy people to finally realize that, you know, the Supreme Court exists.

[00:14:34] We still have a second amendment, so on and so forth.

[00:14:36] We're probably not going to see ammunition banned today.

[00:14:40] And then for the panic buying to die off and for the ammunition stocks to come back and then for the quality control of the frigging ammunition plants to improve because that's scary as hell to see.

[00:14:49] Like anybody's bought Winchester white box around at election time.

[00:14:52] You know what I'm talking about?

[00:14:53] The QC goes to the floor.

[00:14:57] The number of squibs per box goes up exponentially.

[00:15:02] Yeah.

[00:15:03] Raggle Fraggle just says, so the thing is you really need is primers and powder brass can be turned and lead can be cast.

[00:15:10] If you're here now, here's the thing Raggle Fraggle.

[00:15:12] I agree with you because I reload my own ammo comma.

[00:15:15] However, comma, I've been saying for years to people who are in the preparedness community who say, oh, I want to get into reload mode ammo.

[00:15:23] I've been telling a lot of them don't don't because at this point, like it's harder to get a hold of primers and powder and components for anything outside of your most common rounds.

[00:15:35] It's harder to get a hold of them than it is to get a hold of loaded ammunition.

[00:15:39] It can be.

[00:15:41] The cost differential isn't there for those really common cartridges.

[00:15:46] Now, if you're reloading something kind of esoteric or off the beaten path and it doesn't have to be much like three for seven Magnum.

[00:15:52] I can reload it for less than half what it costs to buy it off the store.

[00:15:55] Sure.

[00:15:55] And I can and I can load it infinitely hotter than what you're going to find on the store shelf.

[00:16:00] And I know for a fact it won't blow my gun in half.

[00:16:02] So, like, there's an argument to be made for certain cartridges.

[00:16:05] Reloading is a thing you do to support certain cartridges.

[00:16:09] But if your whole battle plan is I'm going to invest in nine millimeter and five five six, you could save the cost of the reloading press and all the nonsense and all the time you spend looking for powder and primers and components.

[00:16:21] And just go buy that amount of ammunition and be done with it.

[00:16:25] So I just want to kind of dispel the myth that we all need 10,000 rounds.

[00:16:29] You don't need 10,000 rounds for the apocalypse.

[00:16:31] You need nothing ammunition to defend your family, however much you think that is.

[00:16:35] I don't think it's 10,000 rounds.

[00:16:37] I do think you need enough ammunition to continue training for the next two years, let's say, without having to buy any more.

[00:16:45] Because whatever that amount is, like if you go out and you pop two magazines a month, then you need two magazines a month times 24 months.

[00:16:53] If you burn down 500 rounds a month, you need a whole lot more ammo.

[00:16:58] But I would just say you need, like, a two-year supply of ammunition for training.

[00:17:02] Because when the prices go through the ceiling and when the availability goes to crap, you still want to be able to train.

[00:17:08] Or you do what I did and you buy a whole bunch of stuff from Manus Technology and you, you know, you do, you turn all of your range time in a dry fire time to keep the skill set up.

[00:17:17] Which isn't a perfect tradeoff, but it helps.

[00:17:21] It's definitely better than not training.

[00:17:24] It's definitely better than not training at all.

[00:17:26] But I agree, you know, there is a bare minimum quantity of ammunition that I will keep around the house per caliber.

[00:17:33] Now, for me, that's rather high because when I go to the range, I'll go for quite a while and I will shoot quite a lot.

[00:17:40] It's not nearly as much as it used to be when I was competing a little bit.

[00:17:45] I wasn't good.

[00:17:47] But I was going to the competitions and I was training on a every other week basis.

[00:17:54] And you go through an awful lot of ammunition for that.

[00:17:56] And I was taking classes.

[00:17:58] I was taking classes where it was three, four, five, six hundred rounds in a class of five, five, six or nine mil.

[00:18:05] Or sometimes it was 500 of each or 400 of each on an eight hour class because you're doing a lot of pistol rifle work.

[00:18:13] For that, that was arguably an insane quantity of ammunition to go through.

[00:18:20] But.

[00:18:22] Personally, there I think there is a bare minimum number, and I think it comes down to around for semi-automatic rifle or semi-automatic pistol, a thousand rounds each.

[00:18:31] In training ammunition and then whatever you're going to have for your home defense loads.

[00:18:35] Yeah.

[00:18:36] And I think that's a reasonable number.

[00:18:38] Some people will argue what's reasonable, but like you've seen the meme, right, of like the garage that's like the walls are lined in ammo cans.

[00:18:48] I just.

[00:18:50] If you have the value of I was about to say the value of a small car, but depending on the cartridge, that wouldn't be that hard to do.

[00:18:58] If you have, let's say, half the value of your house tied up in ammunition, I think you need to prioritize a little bit, especially if you have any kind of debt or an unfunded retirement.

[00:19:09] So Raggle brings up a good point that ties into this, Phil.

[00:19:13] Kit or no kit?

[00:19:15] Like to have, to own?

[00:19:17] Yeah.

[00:19:18] Does he.

[00:19:18] Okay.

[00:19:19] Do you think it is worthwhile to have?

[00:19:22] In your opinion.

[00:19:22] A hundred percent with one caveat.

[00:19:25] I recognize and encourage a person to think about kit in a multifaceted way.

[00:19:32] So like if your definition of having kit is having a literal like crossbody bag that you just have magazine shoved into and that's enough kit for you, then cool.

[00:19:43] If you want to do the chest rig or the battle belt or the armor plates, if you, no matter what, what degree you want to go into this with.

[00:19:51] But I would only say this much.

[00:19:55] The people who have carried firearms for a freaking living being military law enforcement, you could argue like, you know, personal security and so on and so forth.

[00:20:04] They don't hold the magazine.

[00:20:06] They don't put the magazines in their pockets and they don't carry them in their teeth.

[00:20:10] So like understand that if you're going to carry a weapon, you need to have a way to carry extra ammunition.

[00:20:16] It'd be in your best interest to have a way to carry things to plug holes if you're carrying stuff to make holes.

[00:20:22] And all those things get much more difficult if you don't have some minimum level of kit.

[00:20:28] And I've I've kind of run the full spectrum of like I built that bag that's sitting back there on the corner, which is, you know, like PCC magazines for my scorpion.

[00:20:37] And it's a whole blowout kit. It's actually got two mags for my daily carry gun, my daily carry handgun.

[00:20:42] Like that is everything you'd put into a chest rig in a very nondescript looking package.

[00:20:47] And it's it's kind of built to just wear cross body, kind of like you would an old cartridge box from muzzleloader days.

[00:20:54] And it works perfectly well.

[00:20:56] It's something I can throw over my neck and I can jump out of a truck and I can go.

[00:20:59] It works.

[00:21:00] I also have chest rigs.

[00:21:02] I also have an armor.

[00:21:03] I also have an armor set up.

[00:21:05] And each one of those things have their place.

[00:21:07] So I would just say that like having kit is not LARPing.

[00:21:12] Having kit is, in my mind, a necessary extension of having a firearm.

[00:21:18] Like you'll never see me run a rifle or shotgun without a sling.

[00:21:22] Why not?

[00:21:23] Because if you want to do anything with your hands but hold the stupid thing, you need a sling.

[00:21:27] It's like having a handgun without a holster.

[00:21:30] Every handgun in the house has a holster because if you can't holster it, it's useless to me.

[00:21:35] Agreed.

[00:21:35] Some of that might come from like, you know, military perspective, but that was a lot of my indoctrination in the firearms.

[00:21:42] Even take out of account the military perspective of it.

[00:21:48] I would say this.

[00:21:50] Having kit is the next level after you've taken care of your basic needs.

[00:21:56] It's the next step.

[00:21:57] Just like what we call prepping is the next step of being a responsible adult, in my opinion.

[00:22:04] If you have an EDC pistol, like myself and Phil, carry a pistol every day, you're not waistbanding that thing, or you better not be, or I'm going to be pissed at you.

[00:22:14] You better not be just shoving that thing in your pocket without an appropriate holster because number one, that's a danger to yourself and others.

[00:22:20] You're not being responsible.

[00:22:23] Your femoral artery would appreciate it if you not do that.

[00:22:26] Yeah.

[00:22:26] And so would the cleanup crew.

[00:22:30] But if you have, say, you've started investing in your retirement, you have yourself an emergency fund, you have two weeks of food.

[00:22:38] All right.

[00:22:39] Now you're looking at how to defend your house in case something bad happens to you because that can happen in a non-prepping situation.

[00:22:46] Crackheads break into houses all the time and sometimes people are home.

[00:22:54] Crackheads break into house.

[00:23:21] Home defense because that's still not very many rounds of 12 gauge.

[00:23:26] I will offer small cross shoulder warm bag, fill it full of the cards that are there, have shotgun shells on them so you can rip the card off your stock, stab a new one on.

[00:23:38] I'm going to tell you that I got a lot of good nature ribbing about my man purse, but I've run drills with it.

[00:23:46] Oh, yeah.

[00:23:47] And I ran drills with the shotgun cards in my battle belt that I used to run with my AR before they made that thing no fun anymore.

[00:23:55] Yeah.

[00:23:56] I guess what I'm saying is, like, I've run drills with the thing and I know I can get magazines out of that carrier every bit as fast as I can out of an AR chest rig.

[00:24:06] Oh, yeah.

[00:24:07] It's just a different form factor.

[00:24:08] Exactly.

[00:24:09] You just have to train with it.

[00:24:10] You just have to train with it.

[00:24:11] And it's like anything else.

[00:24:13] You know, the kit is only as important as the level of training you do with it.

[00:24:17] Yep.

[00:24:19] So explain this one to me.

[00:24:21] I'll see Redbro.

[00:24:22] So this is the thing.

[00:24:24] Is this the person who says they never want to carry a gun because they'll just lose control of themselves?

[00:24:29] No, no.

[00:24:29] This is this is the guy that refuses to ever take any self-defense training, refuses to take any training in particular.

[00:24:36] I'll see Redbro is the guy that that, you know, your your buddy that you had in high school that thinks he's a badass because he got into one fight in high school and he won.

[00:24:47] This applies to everything.

[00:24:50] People that think they're going to rise to the occasion and be John McClane in Nakatomi Plaza.

[00:24:56] That's not going to happen.

[00:24:58] You never rise to the occasion.

[00:25:00] You fall to the level that you have mastered your training.

[00:25:04] Mm hmm.

[00:25:07] And just like what we were talking about with you got to have your training ammo, you got to train in your kit.

[00:25:12] You have to train in everything.

[00:25:14] If you have equipment in your house that you have never used, that you have never taken the time to figure out how to use in a calm situation.

[00:25:23] Do you think you're going to be able to do it at three o'clock in the morning?

[00:25:26] Oh, yeah, of course.

[00:25:28] Yeah, absolutely not.

[00:25:29] Totally.

[00:25:30] Absolutely not.

[00:25:31] I mean.

[00:25:33] Bill, basic training.

[00:25:36] They taught you how to fight, I assume.

[00:25:39] A little bit.

[00:25:39] OK.

[00:25:40] So the army has decided that every single person that they bring into the military, they're going to train in hand to hand combat.

[00:25:48] Yeah.

[00:25:49] And there's a reason.

[00:25:51] And one thing I'd love to point out at this juncture is, is that the crash course we got in hand to hand combat in the army was kind of laughable.

[00:25:59] Sure.

[00:26:00] It was something.

[00:26:02] The two and a half years I spent in martial arts as a teenager taught me infinitely more.

[00:26:08] But you know the one thing I learned in all that that was the most important?

[00:26:12] I learned what it feels like to get punched in the face.

[00:26:15] Yep.

[00:26:15] Which sounds funny, but anybody out there that's ever had any kind of like martial training, boxing, martial arts, wrestling, anything like that, you know what it feels like to get punched in the face.

[00:26:28] And that means that when the day comes and you get punched in the face again, you're not going to sit there and stare, you know, stare at the person like, you know, I don't even know what analogy to use.

[00:26:40] But like the first thing, the first time everything happens, it's a shock.

[00:26:44] The first time anything happens, it's a shock.

[00:26:46] First time you went to the gun range when you were a little kid, I'm sure that round popped off.

[00:26:50] You jumped.

[00:26:52] I don't remember.

[00:26:53] I was probably like eight.

[00:26:55] Sure.

[00:26:56] I was, let's see, the first time I shot a gun, 14.

[00:27:02] I remember it pretty distinctly, 12 gauge.

[00:27:05] Hmm.

[00:27:06] Yeah.

[00:27:07] 12 gauge slugs in the side by side.

[00:27:09] My uncles were amused.

[00:27:11] Learned to swim in the deep end.

[00:27:13] They were very amused.

[00:27:14] But, you know, it's the same for anything.

[00:27:18] First time somebody gets hit in the face.

[00:27:21] It's going to take them a second to process what happened.

[00:27:25] Third time you get punched in the face, it's still going to take you a second to process what happened.

[00:27:29] Until you get used to being in scenarios like that through martial arts training or, say, using your generator in the pitch black when the wind is blowing.

[00:27:42] It's going to take you a few minutes.

[00:27:44] Ooh, yeah.

[00:27:45] That's an experience.

[00:27:49] Oh.

[00:27:51] Jesse commented, a seven mil scope in the eye is a learning experience.

[00:27:55] It very much is.

[00:27:57] I hope nobody takes away my gun guy card.

[00:28:00] I have never been scoped in the eyeball before.

[00:28:03] Neither have I.

[00:28:03] But I was always very diligent about setting up my scope so that it wouldn't happen.

[00:28:08] Well, that's like.

[00:28:09] Because I learned from other people's failure.

[00:28:10] And at least the way I was taught to use a scope.

[00:28:13] Like, you know how if you back away to just the right point, you'll see that tiny little bit of shadow all the way around.

[00:28:19] That's where you should be.

[00:28:20] Well, but that's how I was trained to use a scope.

[00:28:23] So, I'm always.

[00:28:25] My eye is always as far away as I can get in and still have full visibility through the scope.

[00:28:29] So, like, when I see somebody that chokes a ball and gets that thing touching their eyebrow, I'm just.

[00:28:34] I don't go there because it's not the way I was taught to shoot.

[00:28:38] So, I guess it means I was taught right.

[00:28:40] But.

[00:28:41] Yeah, taught right.

[00:28:43] And you were probably taught by people that knew how to set up a scope for a person your size and shape.

[00:28:47] I mean.

[00:28:48] Or I was taught by people who had been scoped and didn't want to see me repeat their error.

[00:28:53] That's true.

[00:28:53] That's possible, too.

[00:28:54] Makes a horrible mess.

[00:28:57] So, I'm going to once and for all dispel this rumor that the lone wolf prepper that is going to go at it in the apocalypse by himself is going to come out on top like a champ.

[00:29:10] Because I'm going to.

[00:29:12] I will be the first to admit my wife and I are much better prepared than the average person, especially given this soft white underbelly of suburbia hell that we live in.

[00:29:21] But the day after Hurricane Ida, we were up to our eyeballs and problems.

[00:29:25] We could not get out of it by ourselves.

[00:29:27] We were like doing everything we could to try to deal with two oak trees that fell in the front yard and one of them hit the front of the house.

[00:29:33] And we had more problems than we had things to fix problems.

[00:29:36] What fixed the problem was some in-laws of mine coming down from North Louisiana with chainsaws and strong backs.

[00:29:44] And we had that yard cleared in two days.

[00:29:47] An oak tree is a crew job.

[00:29:51] Two of them.

[00:29:53] Yeah.

[00:29:54] Well, that's what I'm saying.

[00:29:55] Like you said, you cannot take care of problems that size alone in a reasonable time frame.

[00:30:00] You just can't.

[00:30:01] There is a number of man hours required even with the right equipment.

[00:30:06] Four people takes a quarter of the time.

[00:30:09] Yeah.

[00:30:10] And in that case, that was me, my brother-in-law and my 18 year old nephew plus my wife.

[00:30:19] And intermittently, like my sister-in-law and my two nieces were also out there helping because they were I mean, all three of the kids were teenagers at that point.

[00:30:28] And I mean, it, it was, it really did take a village dig us out of that problem.

[00:30:33] So like I, I, my heart breaks for the person who's by themselves because like they don't have that community of preppers around them.

[00:30:41] But I get irrationally aggravated at the ones who say they don't need or want that community.

[00:30:46] Cause like I desperately want a Rolodex full of people I could call in my local area.

[00:30:53] Not that I don't love the friends I made through the podcast, but Nick, if I call you in Illinois and say, Hey dude, I got problems down here.

[00:31:00] It's not going to do me a ton of good immediately.

[00:31:03] At the very least, it's not going to do you any good for the next 12 to 24 hours because whereas that's how long it takes to get there.

[00:31:11] Yeah.

[00:31:12] Whereas if I have friends that live in the local community, I could have an army in my front yard in an hour, 12 to 24 minutes.

[00:31:19] Yeah.

[00:31:20] So like that's, that's this whole idea of like the lone wolf prepper who can just do it all by himself.

[00:31:25] Doesn't need a community.

[00:31:26] Doesn't need a mag.

[00:31:27] Doesn't need to be able to rely on his neighbors.

[00:31:31] That aggravates me.

[00:31:33] It does mostly because I'm worried that someone is going to hear that and buy into it and think they also don't need the community that they can do this by themselves.

[00:31:43] And then you have the blind leading that you have the stupid leading the blind.

[00:31:47] Yeah.

[00:31:48] Yeah.

[00:31:49] It's, it's like the old saying, no man is an Island.

[00:31:52] You know, nobody can survive entirely on their own.

[00:31:55] I mean, there might be some people that could in theory back in the day, mountain man style live out there for a year, but guess what they did every year.

[00:32:04] They came back, they bought supplies.

[00:32:06] They traded with other people.

[00:32:08] They still did need people for some small things.

[00:32:12] And that was at a time when there was arguably very few people in those areas.

[00:32:19] And you know what the death rate was among mountain men?

[00:32:23] Very high.

[00:32:24] Extremely high.

[00:32:25] I think in the first year, better than three quarter of them would die.

[00:32:30] But this was also in a time where like the skills necessary to do that were so much more commonplace and better understood than they are today.

[00:32:39] I'm not so certain that they were that much more commonplace because still three quarters of them were dead in the first winter.

[00:32:46] But three quarters, I would, so I'm going to argue that three quarters of them were dead, not because of a lack of knowledge, but because the, the bridge to jump over to survival was that long.

[00:33:00] It's steep.

[00:33:00] That even with all the knowledge and the skills, that hill is still very steep to climb.

[00:33:05] That could be.

[00:33:06] What I'm suggesting is that back then people built structures, you know, built shelters with their hands much more commonly than they do now.

[00:33:15] True.

[00:33:15] People naturally under, people much more commonly now knew how to harvest game.

[00:33:19] They knew how to scrat, you know, they knew how to forge out of the land.

[00:33:21] And I'm not saying that the, the, the, that knowledge is totally gone, but I'm saying that if, if I go get a hundred people from suburbia where I live, I will, I will bet you a obscene amount of money.

[00:33:34] All 100 of them do not know any of those things.

[00:33:37] That's very possible.

[00:33:39] I will bet you a very obscene amount of money.

[00:33:41] 99 of them don't know.

[00:33:42] But, you know, I would also say that even then, back then, depending on where you're pulling that population from, do you think the residents of New York city in the 1800s had that skillset?

[00:33:58] Probably not.

[00:33:59] Probably not.

[00:34:00] But I don't think there were a lot of New Yorkers trying to go mountain man and out of the woods.

[00:34:04] But that's exactly it is even though, though the people that went, went, were probably people that had all of the requisite skills, even with having all the requisite skills, still 75% of them were dead.

[00:34:19] You know, it's just that difficult.

[00:34:22] But I hope the two is going to agree that like today, if you have a quote unquote prepper whose whole idea of preparedness is I have all these MRAs and all this ammo, but I live in, I live in the suburbs and I have air conditioning and, you know, I'm 40 pounds overweight.

[00:34:37] My blood sugar is triple what it's supposed to be.

[00:34:40] He is not going to go live out in the woods and forage for himself tomorrow.

[00:34:44] And it's not happening.

[00:34:46] Not a chance.

[00:34:47] I'm just going to, I'm just going to take these out of order because we basically covered this already.

[00:34:50] Go, go to live in the woods.

[00:34:53] I'm going to tell you right here now that if I ever have, if I ever tell my wife that we're going to live in the woods and use fistfuls of leaves for toilet paper, she is going to skin me for fun.

[00:35:04] It will be wooden spoon and flip flop weather at the Rappley household.

[00:35:08] Like something bad is going to happen to me.

[00:35:11] I'm just saying like that whole idea that like, I, I, I totally get it.

[00:35:16] I've known people in the preparedness community who are bushcraft experts, who are primitive skills experts, and they truly can go out into the woods with a puck, a buck knife and a lighter and like 20 bucks.

[00:35:28] And there'll be perfectly fine for a week.

[00:35:30] I get it.

[00:35:31] I get it.

[00:35:33] I get it.

[00:35:38] I get it.

[00:35:43] I get it.

[00:35:47] I get it.

[00:35:55] Yes.

[00:35:56] Yes.

[00:35:57] You want to know what happens the second the game wardens stop being a threat?

[00:36:02] Every hillbilly, their brother, and every bumpkin in the city and their brother starts taking shots at squirrels and rabbits with 22s, starts hitting deer with their trucks on purpose, starts spotlighting rabbits and deer.

[00:36:16] The game is going to be gone.

[00:36:19] Well, I mean, look what happened in Venezuela.

[00:36:21] They were breaking it.

[00:36:22] They were breaking into zoos to eat the zoo animals and eating people's pets that are unsupervised.

[00:36:27] I mean, that's what happens when things break down.

[00:36:31] Absolutely.

[00:36:32] And that's why I think when you make a plan, when your plan hinges on, I'm just going to go out in the woods and figure out my life.

[00:36:42] You remember that conversation you just got through having about, I'll see Redbro?

[00:36:46] Mm-hmm.

[00:36:47] Same exact thing.

[00:36:48] Same exact thing applied in a slightly different direction.

[00:36:51] Figuring your life out is going to happen at full speed and full contact, and it's not going to end well.

[00:36:57] No, not at all.

[00:36:59] Roving bands of the hungry.

[00:37:02] Yeah.

[00:37:02] So you know how every once in a while you'll read one of these prepper novels and you'll have the horde of starving townsfolk coming out of the city to eat the country, to eat all the food in the country?

[00:37:13] Because that's where the food comes from.

[00:37:16] So you ever watch those YouTube shorts, the Instagram things, the TikTok things, whatever you're on?

[00:37:23] I try not to.

[00:37:24] Yeah.

[00:37:24] Well, they pop up and every once in a while they get sent to me.

[00:37:27] And one of them was they were interviewing people on the street trying to figure out if they knew where the food in the grocery store came from.

[00:37:35] Oh, Jesus Christ.

[00:37:36] I have seen this.

[00:37:37] Yeah.

[00:37:38] Pretty bad, right?

[00:37:39] It was the moment that I completely lost all remaining faith in my fellow man.

[00:37:45] All of it, all of it gone at once.

[00:37:48] Oh, Jesus.

[00:37:49] Thank you for this little trip down memory lane, Nick.

[00:37:51] I so wanted to be reminded of the fact that 90% of my countrymen are blithering idiots.

[00:37:57] I don't know if it's that many.

[00:37:59] But here's the thing.

[00:38:00] Look at starving people in places now.

[00:38:04] They don't have the energy to go wandering town to town, number one, because they're hungry.

[00:38:13] They don't have necessarily the time because they're too busy trying to get food, get water, whatever they can where they are.

[00:38:24] And most of them wouldn't know where to go to begin with.

[00:38:29] You know, you may get some people previously organized violent groups, for instance.

[00:38:40] I mean, look at what happened in Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia during those wars, any of the other civil wars, the Spanish Civil War.

[00:38:47] You will have gangs that come from wherever they are to wherever they think the resources are to come grab them.

[00:38:55] But you're not going to have the 100,000 person town's worth of people moving from one to another.

[00:39:05] It's without a car.

[00:39:07] First off, they're all out of shape to begin with.

[00:39:10] And now they're starving, so they have even less energy.

[00:39:13] I just I don't see that being a reality.

[00:39:15] You don't ever see it unless it's incentivized by a governmental organization or an NGO.

[00:39:22] And in case of Hungary, it's more like economic refugees.

[00:39:26] So what you're saying is once the.

[00:39:30] I'm such a jerk, but I'm going to say it anyway.

[00:39:32] Once the tank divisions battery runs out on their mobility scooter, that's it.

[00:39:37] They're not they're not coming to the country.

[00:39:40] God, no food.

[00:39:40] God, no, there's not a chance.

[00:39:43] No, absolutely not.

[00:39:44] Especially if you're talking about, say.

[00:39:48] Middle aged office worker.

[00:39:51] That's hey, now, you know, seriously overweight.

[00:39:55] Hey, man, I spent a lot of time in my office, too, and I'm in my I'm 34, I think.

[00:40:01] Pretty sure.

[00:40:02] And I know that middle age, some more weight, too.

[00:40:05] But middle age, middle age hurts, though.

[00:40:08] I'm not walking 100 miles in a week.

[00:40:10] I'm not doing it.

[00:40:11] I mean, I like going for hikes and all that.

[00:40:13] We went for a very nice hike last weekend while we were camping.

[00:40:16] But a 10 mile hike with a backpack on that was that was rough.

[00:40:21] I'm not going to do that unfed.

[00:40:24] I'm not doing that.

[00:40:26] I mean, OK, 10 miles.

[00:40:28] I was about to say I wouldn't do that for fun.

[00:40:30] But that does kind of sound like fun to me.

[00:40:32] But you would like the hike is beautiful.

[00:40:33] I'm a I'm a little twisted.

[00:40:35] We have to catch up on some some nonsense in the comments.

[00:40:39] Go for it.

[00:40:43] Well, first of all, Mrs.

[00:40:45] Embrickson agrees with me about the whole fistfuls of leaves for toilet paper.

[00:40:49] Yeah, that's a hard no flush.

[00:40:51] That's our requirement.

[00:40:53] That's a hard no.

[00:40:57] I see big digs caught alive one.

[00:40:59] So for those of you who are tuned in, we decided to standardize the show.

[00:41:03] It's going to be on Thursdays at 5 p.m.

[00:41:05] Central.

[00:41:06] So I know a lot of people commented that you're not getting notifications.

[00:41:09] And that's because somewhere along the way, we really pissed off like, you know, YouTube

[00:41:13] and meta and all the alphabets and all that.

[00:41:16] So, you know, our notifications apparently don't work.

[00:41:19] But 5 p.m.

[00:41:20] Central on Thursdays, that that should be fairly consistent.

[00:41:24] It should.

[00:41:24] Yeah, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be.

[00:41:27] Yeah.

[00:41:27] Ground.

[00:41:28] No, Jesse.

[00:41:28] Ground beef does not come from a tree.

[00:41:31] Depends if there were tornadoes and the cow hit the tree.

[00:41:34] Thank you for that, Nick.

[00:41:35] You're welcome.

[00:41:36] We have to think about Florida in a time like this.

[00:41:42] All right.

[00:41:43] Well, since we just got through talking about roving bands of the hungry.

[00:41:47] Same thing I said about going to live in the woods.

[00:41:49] If your whole preparedness plan is I'm going to be a marauder and I'm going to take from

[00:41:53] the I'm going to take from people.

[00:41:54] I came up with a really cool analogy for this, by the way, because you and I are both kind

[00:41:57] of nerds.

[00:41:58] So you'll appreciate this.

[00:42:00] Let's say, hypothetically, if I want to give you the best possible chance of this little

[00:42:04] plan working out.

[00:42:05] So you are a level 20 fighter in D&D and you can critical on an 18 or a 19 or a 20.

[00:42:12] Sure.

[00:42:14] And let's say you your your unsuspecting quarry is an armor class of five.

[00:42:20] Nice low bar to clear.

[00:42:22] Right.

[00:42:22] Sure.

[00:42:23] How many houses do you think you're going to hit before you roll a one?

[00:42:27] Technically, the odds are always one in 20.

[00:42:30] So and you know how statistics works.

[00:42:33] The more times you don't roll a one, the greater the chance that sooner or later your

[00:42:38] luck is going to run out.

[00:42:39] So this is always the thing I tell people when they're playing is like, oh, I'm going

[00:42:42] to all I need is this much ammo and I'm going to go take all the rest of it.

[00:42:46] I'm like, let me tell you something about being let me tell you something about disaster

[00:42:50] situations, which I've lived through a couple.

[00:42:53] Every single fight I can avoid is a good fight to avoid because every fight you get into, there's

[00:43:00] a there's a not zero chance you go and get shot or hurt or whatever.

[00:43:06] So sooner or later, you keep rolling the dice, you're going to roll one and it's going to

[00:43:11] be a really bad day for you.

[00:43:12] And if your plan was to steal somebody's tourniquets, it's going to turn into a really bad and probably

[00:43:18] really short day after that.

[00:43:20] Yeah.

[00:43:20] So I'm just please let me put this to bed.

[00:43:23] And if you meet a person who claims to be in the preparedness community and they tell you

[00:43:29] with a straight face, not joking, but with a straight face that their whole plan is to

[00:43:35] take from their neighbors.

[00:43:36] I would love to know that person's home address because if he lives around me, I'm going to

[00:43:40] put him on a list.

[00:43:41] Look, here's the thing.

[00:43:45] Trained military troops.

[00:43:48] Seizing an objective, Phil, that is actively defended.

[00:43:51] What is the attacker to defender ratio that you require?

[00:43:56] Typically.

[00:43:57] And in place defense with firearms.

[00:44:00] Well, okay.

[00:44:01] So the circuitous answer for this is as many as possible because overwhelming force makes

[00:44:05] the minimum absolute bare minimum.

[00:44:08] You need two to one, two to one.

[00:44:10] And that's considered the absolute bare minimum.

[00:44:13] But you know what the average they usually try to aim for is?

[00:44:16] At least three to one.

[00:44:18] Yeah.

[00:44:19] At least three to one against the prepared position.

[00:44:24] Guess what?

[00:44:25] We're not talking about high ground.

[00:44:29] We're not talking about hardened defenses.

[00:44:30] We're not talking about countermeasures.

[00:44:33] Things like tank traps or trenches or whatever.

[00:44:35] Infantry to infantry.

[00:44:37] There's so many ways to make, and this is why typically, like in, okay.

[00:44:44] Fights favor the defense.

[00:44:46] In the military world.

[00:44:47] If you have your opponent on the run, the last freaking thing you ever do is stop advancing

[00:44:54] and let them dig in because that's how World War I turned from a bad situation into

[00:45:00] a really bad situation is because both sides dug in.

[00:45:04] And once that happened, neither side could get enough people on your side of the wall

[00:45:07] to break the stalemate for freaking years.

[00:45:10] So like, so let's say you have a marauder group.

[00:45:14] Say you got five people together that you think you can trust to not stab you in the

[00:45:18] back.

[00:45:19] Okay.

[00:45:20] Well, let's go down that little fun road.

[00:45:22] Yeah.

[00:45:22] Cause if they're willing to kill everybody else to take their stuff, what's to stop them

[00:45:26] from doing the same to you.

[00:45:28] But say you got five people.

[00:45:29] Okay, great.

[00:45:30] Average family size is like what?

[00:45:33] Four people, 4.25 people, something like that.

[00:45:36] Fantastic.

[00:45:37] You do not have even a two to one advantage against the standard size family.

[00:45:42] Okay.

[00:45:44] Let's talk just adults.

[00:45:45] Yes.

[00:45:46] You have a two to one advantage against the first family.

[00:45:51] What happens if the homeowner gets lucky the first time?

[00:45:54] You've now lost your two to one advantage.

[00:45:57] What happens if the homeowner sees you coming?

[00:46:01] Your two to one advantage now needs to be a three or four to one advantage in order to

[00:46:06] have a hope of success.

[00:46:07] And at that point, you're expecting serious casualties.

[00:46:13] Yeah.

[00:46:14] So that's the thing I always try to point out to people is like, if you dare the devil enough

[00:46:20] times, sooner or later, he's going to fill your dance card.

[00:46:23] Oh, absolutely.

[00:46:23] Like there are people I know, retired military people in the community that terrify me because

[00:46:31] I know for certain if they decided to be aggressive, I am going to lose.

[00:46:38] Flat out.

[00:46:39] I am going to lose.

[00:46:40] One of my shooting instructors lives not very far away from me.

[00:46:43] He's a retired Marine who was very good at what he did and is still very good at what

[00:46:48] he did.

[00:46:50] I don't want that guy ever upset with me for any reason.

[00:46:54] And you don't know that the house you're kicking into is not the angry, extremely well-trained

[00:47:00] and aware vet with night vision goggles.

[00:47:03] Congratulations.

[00:47:05] And let's just say that after the global war on terror, there's a very not small group

[00:47:11] of people here in the US who fit that bill these days.

[00:47:14] Right.

[00:47:15] Because like, you know, there was that maybe it's Jerry Michalik.

[00:47:19] Well, but let's call it what it is from from about what's 1972.

[00:47:25] When was the fall of Saigon?

[00:47:27] 72.

[00:47:27] Yeah.

[00:47:28] Don't don't look it up.

[00:47:29] It's it's roundabout there.

[00:47:31] So from like the early 1970s, really until about 19 the early 1990s when we had Desert

[00:47:37] Storm, you have this huge span of time where even people that served in the military, if

[00:47:42] they weren't special forces or if they weren't on a handful of deployments, they really don't

[00:47:48] have combat experience.

[00:47:49] Right.

[00:47:50] And then after 2001, almost every single member of the active duty and a hell of a lot of

[00:47:59] National Guardsmen, by the way, because I was losing a National Guard.

[00:48:01] Not that they asked me when they gave me moat orders.

[00:48:04] But like a lot of the military wound up with real legitimate combat experience in Afghanistan

[00:48:11] and Iraq.

[00:48:11] And now most of those are chubby old bearded guys who are, you know, paying taxes and holding

[00:48:16] down a day job here in the US.

[00:48:18] So, yeah, you kick in enough of them doors.

[00:48:21] Sooner or later, you're going to encounter somebody who is not what you were expecting.

[00:48:25] You're going to get a mouth a lot fuller than you were planning for.

[00:48:28] Oh, yeah.

[00:48:28] Or one of our patrons and world class marksman.

[00:48:35] I got to have him on the show again.

[00:48:37] You do.

[00:48:38] You do.

[00:48:38] You really need to.

[00:48:39] Yeah.

[00:48:40] Especially once he gets everything settled down by him, we'll have him on at least to

[00:48:45] talk about his perspective of the whole event.

[00:48:48] Yeah.

[00:48:48] I think that would be.

[00:48:50] I think his insights would be good.

[00:48:52] I think so.

[00:48:54] Especially knowing what he's dealt with lately, you know, up in the Appalachians.

[00:48:59] Because he was.

[00:49:00] He got rolled by Hurricane Helene.

[00:49:02] Thankfully, didn't have.

[00:49:03] I don't think he had any damage to his home.

[00:49:05] Him and his family are fine.

[00:49:06] But yeah.

[00:49:06] Him and his family.

[00:49:07] And I believe his friends, he said, were okay too.

[00:49:10] They did fine them.

[00:49:11] Yeah.

[00:49:11] Yeah.

[00:49:12] But he's still up to his eyeballs and problems.

[00:49:15] Damn straight he is.

[00:49:16] I'm not going to pester him to come on this show until his life has calmed down a little

[00:49:20] bit.

[00:49:22] Oh.

[00:49:23] Circle back through the comments before we grab another banner.

[00:49:26] Mm-hmm.

[00:49:26] Riggle Fraggle.

[00:49:27] Tell us about Katrina, Grandpa.

[00:49:29] You smart aleck.

[00:49:31] I like that guy.

[00:49:32] I love it how Hurricane Katrina has, has, is so old now that like I warrant the grandpa

[00:49:41] conversation.

[00:49:42] I'm 41 years old.

[00:49:43] I turned 42 in four days.

[00:49:44] Like, it's not like I'm that old.

[00:49:47] I just had a really, I just had a really exciting early 20s.

[00:49:52] I was like a sophomore in high school.

[00:49:55] Thank you for that, Nick.

[00:49:57] Thank you.

[00:49:58] I don't know.

[00:49:59] I might've been a junior.

[00:50:00] I don't remember.

[00:50:00] But it's, it's been, it's been quite a while.

[00:50:04] You know, Katrina, it was a defining event in, in our generation.

[00:50:09] One of many, apparently, that we got to experience.

[00:50:12] Really appreciate all those.

[00:50:15] Yeah.

[00:50:16] Yeah.

[00:50:17] All right.

[00:50:17] Next one.

[00:50:18] Those, those defining events are becoming a little bit too frequent.

[00:50:21] Like if, you know, if, if the next 20 years of my life could just be nice and quiet and

[00:50:26] boring, that'd be fricking prime.

[00:50:29] Yeah.

[00:50:29] That's not going to happen.

[00:50:32] So this one's another one.

[00:50:33] Oh, Jesus Christ.

[00:50:35] Buying preparedness.

[00:50:36] You had to go here.

[00:50:37] I did.

[00:50:38] I have to go here.

[00:50:39] I have to go here.

[00:50:40] Everybody talks about.

[00:50:41] Is this the one you thought was going to give me a headache?

[00:50:42] Yes.

[00:50:43] Because I've, I've got one.

[00:50:45] Everybody talks about gear lists and focuses and focuses and focuses on what's in your bug

[00:50:53] out bag.

[00:50:53] What's in your EDC.

[00:50:54] What's in your IFAC.

[00:50:56] I saw a video on YouTube today that was a thousand dollars worth of preparedness.

[00:51:01] Like the whole show was you have a thousand dollars spending on these things to get prepared.

[00:51:08] I made it through about two minutes.

[00:51:10] Yeah.

[00:51:10] I believe that.

[00:51:11] Look, you, you cannot buy the most important things.

[00:51:17] And that is the mindset that you require.

[00:51:23] And that is the time investment in training.

[00:51:26] Yeah.

[00:51:26] You can buy the training, but you can't buy the time.

[00:51:29] You have to spend the time.

[00:51:33] Because dehydrated buckets of food don't do you any good if you don't know how to make them.

[00:51:38] Your generator doesn't do you any good if you don't know how to hook it up or you realize halfway through that.

[00:51:43] But, oh yeah, I bought the generator.

[00:51:45] It'll be great.

[00:51:45] I bought all this.

[00:51:46] I bought that.

[00:51:46] I bought that.

[00:51:48] Didn't buy the cable.

[00:51:50] Chainsaw doesn't get you very far if you don't know how to sharpen a chain.

[00:51:53] Yep.

[00:51:54] Chainsaw chains.

[00:51:54] You can, you can dull a chainsaw chain in about an hour and a half.

[00:51:59] I counter that.

[00:52:00] You can dull one in about three minutes if you don't know.

[00:52:02] Oh yeah, if you run it into rocks, sure.

[00:52:04] But I mean, even if you're using it right, you only get an hour and a half or two hours of real use.

[00:52:10] Yeah.

[00:52:10] You know, I actually, I've worn half the teeth off of the first chain that ever went on.

[00:52:16] Because like, so when I got my chainsaw after Hurricane Ida, I have bought, I don't even know how many chains, spare chains, and I have a spare bar for it.

[00:52:24] Like I've got parts because if something breaks, you want to put it back into action.

[00:52:28] I don't know how many spare chains I have.

[00:52:30] I have not taken the first chain off the chainsaw.

[00:52:34] I use it, I sharpen it, I use it, I sharpen it.

[00:52:37] I've worn half of the teeth off of this thing.

[00:52:40] Good.

[00:52:41] From constant, and not even like I use it that much, but every time I use it, I go back and sharpen it.

[00:52:46] You should.

[00:52:47] And to me, it's like, first of all, having a sharp tool just, you know, makes your life a lot simpler.

[00:52:53] There is nothing more dangerous than a dull cutting tool.

[00:52:57] But the other thing of it is, is that to me it was practice.

[00:52:59] Because if I sharpen that chain until the teeth are completely smooth on the SOB, I've got four, five, six other chains sitting in the shed.

[00:53:08] Exactly.

[00:53:08] But if I know how to sharpen, but if I don't know how to sharpen a chain, when that chain gets dull and I pitch it in the trash and put another one on, sooner or later, that's going to run out.

[00:53:20] Yep.

[00:53:21] Absolutely.

[00:53:23] Oh, God, the comments just dropped another one that I totally forgot about.

[00:53:27] Precious metals.

[00:53:28] There's a point to precious metals.

[00:53:31] And it's limited.

[00:53:33] Let me read these, and then we're going to have to slip this one in.

[00:53:36] Go for it.

[00:53:37] So, invest in precious metals.

[00:53:39] It's hammered into people prepping for the dollar collapsing.

[00:53:42] But when SHTF, you can't eat a bar of gold, a bar of silver or a gold coin.

[00:53:47] Instead, buy chocolate.

[00:53:49] It can actually be eaten.

[00:53:51] Will be worth its weight in gold during SHTF.

[00:53:53] To sum it up, chocolate gold coins are better than regular gold coins.

[00:53:57] Chocolate is greater than gold coins.

[00:53:58] So, let me just say, I think there's an argument to diversifying your, how do I put this?

[00:54:10] I think there's an argument to be made when it comes to diversifying your accumulation of wealth.

[00:54:16] Yes.

[00:54:16] Absolutely.

[00:54:16] Like, if you have money in savings, if you have money in a 401k, if you have all these other things taken care of, then having money in precious metals, I totally understand.

[00:54:25] I get it.

[00:54:26] Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

[00:54:27] Have things diversified.

[00:54:29] Statistically and historically speaking, every time the stock market goes to hell in a handbasket, precious metals tend to hold their value.

[00:54:37] An interesting little footnote.

[00:54:39] You can buy the same amount of gold that it took to purchase the average home like 100 years ago.

[00:54:46] That same amount of gold has appreciated enough that it'll still buy the average home today.

[00:54:51] Yep.

[00:54:52] Just interesting little tidbit.

[00:54:53] So, like, there is certainly that argument to be made that precious metals hold their value over time.

[00:55:26] But the problems are twofold.

[00:55:28] There is a situation where, like, I need water and you're trying to give me cash.

[00:55:32] I don't need cash.

[00:55:33] I need water.

[00:55:34] You know what I'm saying?

[00:55:34] Like, the cash has what value people assign to it.

[00:55:37] And in a weird enough situation, food, water, and ammo are always going to trump cash and gold and silver.

[00:55:46] They will.

[00:55:46] So, I always go back to this idea that, like, I don't begrudge a person who invests in precious metals.

[00:55:55] I would only say that don't put all your stuff into precious metals because, as you pointed out, you can't eat it and you can't live in it.

[00:56:05] So, it's just one of those things.

[00:56:06] The other thing is that even though it's proven historically to be a good store of value, the one thing it does not do is appreciate.

[00:56:15] And I understand, like, fiat currency, you know, like, you know, liberal economic order, like, don't get me started on that whole conversation again.

[00:56:24] I get it.

[00:56:26] I get it that it's all ones and zeros in a bank and it's all fiat currency.

[00:56:30] I understand.

[00:56:31] But if you put money in the stock market, kind of, sort of, it does, you know, gain interest over time and hopefully it beats the rate of inflation and so on and so forth.

[00:56:42] And gold and silver will not do that.

[00:56:45] They will hold value.

[00:56:46] They will not appreciate in value.

[00:56:49] One thing that does always appreciate a value is land because they're not making any more of it.

[00:56:55] So far.

[00:56:59] I mean, I got to be, you got to be realistic about it.

[00:57:01] There will come a point where we will have more land available than we have right now on the planet.

[00:57:09] Assuming humanity doesn't kill itself.

[00:57:11] We'll get to the point where there is.

[00:57:13] Bold of you to assume that.

[00:57:14] Hey, man, I'm all about the future.

[00:57:18] As a kid, space travel, wildest thing ever.

[00:57:22] Love it.

[00:57:23] Would love to see us do more of it.

[00:57:24] It's not happening right now.

[00:57:26] Hey, people are working on it.

[00:57:27] Elon Musk is claiming he's going to set up a thing on Mars, set up a thing on the moon.

[00:57:31] Whatever.

[00:57:32] Would love it if they did it.

[00:57:33] Fine.

[00:57:34] It is possible they could do it.

[00:57:36] It is possible we could end up with more land than we have now.

[00:57:39] But like Phil said, balanced portfolio.

[00:57:45] As far as I'm concerned, if you do not have a emergency fund, a properly funded emergency fund, you should not be investing in gold and silver.

[00:57:56] You probably shouldn't be doing a lot of things we've discussed here this afternoon.

[00:57:59] You should be taking your finances as seriously as you do everything else.

[00:58:03] If you don't have two weeks of food, you should not be investing in gold and silver.

[00:58:08] What is a savings account but preparedness?

[00:58:11] It is.

[00:58:12] It's the barest minimum of preparedness.

[00:58:15] Because, hey, my air conditioner broke just this summer.

[00:58:21] I threw money at the problem.

[00:58:22] The problem is gone.

[00:58:25] Bill had a tree land on his house.

[00:58:27] He had bought insurance.

[00:58:28] He didn't have to throw money at the problem because he had insurance.

[00:58:31] That's preparedness.

[00:58:34] But I think gold and silver, much like I say about body armor and kit, it's a next step you can take when you have your emergency fund, when you have your retirement money that you're beginning to set aside.

[00:58:51] It's a good step to take and it could be helpful maybe in certain circumstances, but it's by far not the most important.

[00:58:59] No.

[00:59:00] So we got two more and we're like right at an hour.

[00:59:04] So we'll go over just a little bit, knock these two out.

[00:59:06] Yeah.

[00:59:06] Opsec.

[00:59:07] All right.

[00:59:08] For anybody that doesn't know operational security or keep your freaking mouth shut.

[00:59:14] Go ahead, Nick.

[00:59:15] How do you get a community if you only ever keep your mouth shut?

[00:59:22] Hmm.

[00:59:23] You can't.

[00:59:25] Bill, you've made the decision to pretty much abandon your opsec.

[00:59:30] Oh, yeah.

[00:59:31] You put your name out there.

[00:59:32] I have very, very unabashedly eight years ago had this conversation with my wife and just said, if I do this, that's it.

[00:59:39] It's like virginity.

[00:59:40] There's no getting it back.

[00:59:41] It's gone.

[00:59:42] Exactly.

[00:59:43] Exactly.

[00:59:44] But, you know, everybody needs a community around them.

[00:59:49] What that community is, you need to decide.

[00:59:52] But your neighbors are going to know if you're running a generator.

[00:59:56] Your neighbors are going to see your solar panels.

[00:59:59] Chances are your family and friends are going to find out when you've bought a quarter of beef and have it stuck in your freezer across the room from me.

[01:00:06] These are not small things.

[01:00:09] People are going to see it.

[01:00:10] You're not running a airtight military installation or a CIA operation where you can have all the money in the world to throw around to hide these things.

[01:00:24] People are going to know that you have this stuff, especially people that are in your house, your family, your friends, whoever.

[01:00:32] I'm sorry.

[01:00:33] With the way digital security is going nowadays, your OPSEC is blown because Amazon knows all of the prepper stuff you bought.

[01:00:43] If you see advertisements for Mountain House, ReadyWise, My Patriot Supply, congratulations, your OPSEC is blown.

[01:00:56] I mean, if you have ever – so the thing I tell people about OPSEC is that I look at OPSEC, a guy that comments saying,

[01:01:06] your neighbors are going to see you eating Hot Pockets and ramen while they eat government cheese.

[01:01:09] Absolutely.

[01:01:10] People are going to know this.

[01:01:11] This was pointed out to me by somebody, and I don't remember who it was, so I can give them credit.

[01:01:15] But they pointed out to me, they said, in a long enough, bad enough situation, your neighbors will notice the person who's not losing weight, who's not dirty.

[01:01:26] You're going to stand out unless you live like everybody.

[01:01:29] Those clothes aren't trash.

[01:01:30] Exactly.

[01:01:31] So sooner or later, they're going to realize something's up over at that household.

[01:01:36] But the – I totally lost my train of thought.

[01:01:38] You need the community.

[01:01:40] You need the community.

[01:01:42] But I was going to say that I think OPSEC is like a spectrum, much like the conversation we had about a lot of things in the last hour.

[01:01:53] 100% OPSEC is impossible in the digital age.

[01:01:56] Like if you have a social security number, if you've ever had a government ID, God forbid you have a checking account, a savings account.

[01:02:04] If you've ever been on the – if you've ever surfed the internet without a VPN.

[01:02:08] Have you bought property at any point?

[01:02:11] Yeah.

[01:02:11] So like 100% OPSEC is impossible.

[01:02:14] It's – it is impossible.

[01:02:18] And 0% OPSEC is irrefriking responsible.

[01:02:22] It is.

[01:02:22] So somewhere in the middle is a happy medium where you can guard enough of your secrets to not overly expose yourself unnecessarily and yet still be able to develop a community around you, be able to live like an average human being, not be the weirdo with the beard, live in the woods all by himself with the room full of guns.

[01:02:42] Like there's a happy medium in here.

[01:02:45] One thing, like I had this conversation with my sister recently, but she's really big on documenting like trips her and her and my brother-in-law take on her Instagram page.

[01:02:57] Ah.

[01:02:58] But she's always – but he has asked her and she respects this not to post anything until they're home because you don't want to let the whole freaking world know you're five, six, seven hours away on vacation for the next couple of days.

[01:03:12] Yep.

[01:03:13] It's a reasonable step to take to guard a little bit of your OPSEC.

[01:03:17] It doesn't cost you anything.

[01:03:18] It doesn't take anything away from you.

[01:03:20] Your cute, pretty pictures with the filters will go out on the internet for all of your friends to admire later.

[01:03:25] But it's just one of those things of like I can do A or I can do B.

[01:03:29] And A doesn't take much from me, but it guards a little bit of that personal information.

[01:03:34] So like to me, OPSEC is not a binary decision.

[01:03:38] It can't be.

[01:03:38] Not in the modern world.

[01:03:39] The way it's discussed online though, they definitely discuss it as a binary choice.

[01:03:44] Either if you tell anyone, well, now you're screwed and you're going to die.

[01:03:50] Okay.

[01:03:51] Challenge accepted.

[01:03:52] Anybody out there in listener land – and there's not of y'all listening right now, so y'all have fun with this – Google your first and your last name and see what comes up.

[01:04:01] And if that doesn't –

[01:04:02] Oh, there's a lot.

[01:04:03] But wait.

[01:04:04] Let's say you have a super common first and last name.

[01:04:07] There ain't a lot of Phil Rabelais lying around.

[01:04:10] So Google my name and see what comes up.

[01:04:12] You will not be shocked.

[01:04:14] But if you have a super common first and last name, Google your first and your last name and the town you live in and start watching what happens.

[01:04:22] We, modern people in today's world have such a gigantic digital footprint and so much of these information sources are all interconnected nowadays that having 100% secure OPSEC is nonsense.

[01:04:39] And here's the thing, but even in the military, it's nonsense.

[01:04:43] There is no 100% security.

[01:04:46] It is about installing enough security to prevent the most pertinent information from getting into the wrong hands.

[01:04:53] And that's not hard to do with a little bit of common sense.

[01:04:57] Right, right.

[01:04:59] It's just the way I see it discussed online where it's like, oh, if you talk to anybody about the fact that you're a prepper at all, well, people know you have a savings account probably.

[01:05:10] I mean, I have friends over here all the time.

[01:05:12] They walk past my extended pantry into my game room in the basement.

[01:05:16] They know I have quite an extensive pantry.

[01:05:20] I'm sure if things got bad enough, they would come to me or call me.

[01:05:26] I know that.

[01:05:28] Just be aware.

[01:05:31] You cannot keep everyone out all of the time and be a social human being.

[01:05:38] Yeah.

[01:05:40] So I'm going to wrap up with this one.

[01:05:42] And this was my personal little gripe because GMRS isn't for SHTF.

[01:05:48] You should have got ham.

[01:05:49] And I even hear this about ham.

[01:05:50] I hear this about like there's some version of this nonsense about almost everything that gets used for preparedness.

[01:05:56] Dump ham.

[01:05:57] Get a mesh tech.

[01:05:58] Yeah.

[01:05:59] You don't need a radio.

[01:06:00] You need mesh-tastic.

[01:06:01] You don't need mesh-tastic.

[01:06:02] You need something else.

[01:06:04] Satellite phones.

[01:06:05] Satellite phones.

[01:06:06] So let me just take all of this and put it into a bucket and tie it up with a nice pretty little bow.

[01:06:13] Everything is for preparedness if you use it for preparedness.

[01:06:16] And if it fits a use case you have.

[01:06:20] Everything is.

[01:06:21] Yep.

[01:06:22] I know I've heard people scream very loudly that revolvers have no place in preparedness.

[01:06:28] Bolt actions have no place.

[01:06:29] You have to have a Glock 19 and AR-15 or you're not a prepper.

[01:06:31] I've heard some version of all this nonsense said about hundreds if not thousands of different topics.

[01:06:38] And it always reeks to me of stupidity, closed-minded thinking, elitism.

[01:06:45] Because everything can be used for preparedness if you use it for that purpose.

[01:06:49] Because the whole reason why I got my family in a GMRS radio set of ham is very simply because if I can't talk to my wife and my daughter on it, it doesn't do me as much good.

[01:06:59] And I don't really want to talk to weird men.

[01:07:01] I'm not on Grindr or anything like that.

[01:07:02] You know, I've got a group of men I talk to already, but they're not strangers.

[01:07:07] There's that.

[01:07:07] But like if the whole purpose of this implement is to be able to talk to people that are in my group and my wife and kid are kind of in my group by default, then I have to have the radio service that they can actually make use of.

[01:07:18] And ham doesn't do me a lot of good.

[01:07:21] True.

[01:07:22] But it's the same argument about, I mean, hell, our friend, who, by the way, is a world-class muzzleloading, long-range shooting champion.

[01:07:33] If you sit there and you look me dead in the eye and you tell me that muzzleloaders aren't for SHTF.

[01:07:38] He will kill you from so far away.

[01:07:41] I'm going to introduce you to somebody that will scare the hell out of you at 700 plus yards.

[01:07:45] He is probably better with his muzzleloader than I am with my 300 Win Mag at 700 yards.

[01:07:50] And that is not an underestimate.

[01:07:53] Yeah.

[01:07:54] So I guess that's kind of just my point is that I reject this idea that these different things are not useful for preparedness.

[01:08:05] I think the whole point of preparedness, like I've said many, many times over the years, preparedness is a mindset.

[01:08:10] It's not an activity and it's not a hobby and it's not something you purchase and it's not something you choose to be.

[01:08:17] It is a mindset and it guides all of these different things.

[01:08:22] It guides you to put money into a savings account or to plan for retirement or to invest in precious metals or to have a food pantry that's six months deep or to have more than just a box of ammo and a Glock 19, your name.

[01:08:33] It guides you down all these different roads.

[01:08:36] It's kind of like it's kind of like I'm struggling with it.

[01:08:43] I had an analogy and it disappeared that fast.

[01:08:45] It's like different outfits, man.

[01:08:48] Pick the outfit that fits your situation and needs.

[01:08:52] Yeah.

[01:08:53] Well, it's the simplest way to put it.

[01:08:54] I mean, yeah, I do.

[01:08:56] I have a ham radio license.

[01:08:58] Yep.

[01:08:58] Does my wife?

[01:08:59] Nope.

[01:09:00] So we have some FMRS radios laying around, too.

[01:09:03] Because tell you what, if I'm out in the garage, sometimes I forget my cell phone.

[01:09:07] Sometimes I ignore my cell phone because I get tired of all the spam calls and texts.

[01:09:11] Thank you, election season.

[01:09:13] That is the thing.

[01:09:13] What I don't ignore is a call coming over my radio that I have sitting on my toolbox when I'm out working on my lawnmower.

[01:09:21] You know, it's just it's just easier to use some of these other radios sometimes.

[01:09:27] Is it the best you could have?

[01:09:30] Probably not.

[01:09:32] But if it's a tool your family will use, it's better than the one they won't.

[01:09:38] Yeah.

[01:09:39] And I think at the end of the day, like that's kind of where I leave that whole conversation is that, you know, to me there is, I can't think of a whole ton of things that cannot be utilized for preparedness and given the right situation.

[01:09:53] So if you find yourself confronted with this person that says that's not for preparedness or this is the only right way or this, that, and the other.

[01:10:01] Like I'm notorious for telling people all the time when they ask me a very simple question, what they think is a very simple question about what is the best thing to do?

[01:10:09] And I say in what situation?

[01:10:11] Yep.

[01:10:12] That's the hard part.

[01:10:13] The why matters more than the what.

[01:10:16] The why drives the what.

[01:10:17] And I can come up with a scenario that's going to make whatever you have in your head not work all of a sudden.

[01:10:24] And I could probably come up with a scenario that would perfectly justify something that doesn't seem like it'd be that useful.

[01:10:29] It just comes down to like finding, don't try to put the square peg in the round hole.

[01:10:37] Well, ham radios and ham sandwiches, you're guaranteed to survive anything aliens, famine, or Russians, chai comps.

[01:10:43] And that's another thing about, like that is the one thing I will handily admit that I have told people before because you get the other side of this equation that the person that says, well, I have this thing, therefore it's going to help me survive.

[01:10:57] And I always ask them, survive what?

[01:11:00] Like there's people that say, I have a ham radio, so I'll be able to call for help.

[01:11:03] I'm like, who are you going to call?

[01:11:05] Like if I grab the GMRs.

[01:11:06] Do you even know your local emergency ham radio frequency?

[01:11:10] Do you have any friends that have ham radios that are monitoring the channel you were on?

[01:11:16] Or have you established a comms plan with these people?

[01:11:20] Like I think what, I think going back to the thing you had earlier about how people buy preparedness, I think people fall into the trap of, I bought this thing.

[01:11:29] It will do the thing and it will save my butt when I need it to.

[01:11:33] But the things you buy are to facilitate actions that are driven by the skill set you've hopefully trained in ahead of the emergency.

[01:11:43] So like if you, if you have a radio, it doesn't matter what kind, but if you don't have someone on the other side of that radio, who's monitoring your frequency at a certain time.

[01:11:51] So they don't have to sit there and scan through frequencies and burn their batteries up 24 hours a day, seven days a week waiting for you to call them.

[01:11:58] If you haven't pre-done any of that and there's no one on the other side of that radio or even worse, there's someone on the other side of the radio who's not friendly to you.

[01:12:06] That radio is all of a sudden freaking useless.

[01:12:10] It's just like that lathe behind me, Phil.

[01:12:12] I could sit you in front of it for as long as you want.

[01:12:15] You can figure out how to turn it on pretty easy.

[01:12:17] You're a smart guy.

[01:12:19] Bet you can't put threads on a bolt.

[01:12:22] I mean, it depends how many bits you're going to let me break what Hague trying.

[01:12:27] I bet you, you don't even figure out how to put it into the threading mode.

[01:12:32] How many combinations of levers do you think you have to throw?

[01:12:35] Oh, second.

[01:12:36] How many of those levers do you think you have to throw, Phil?

[01:12:39] Oh, let's see if I can get me.

[01:12:42] How the heck do I get me to be big?

[01:12:44] Oh, that's big enough.

[01:12:47] Hang on.

[01:12:47] I don't know how to make me big.

[01:12:49] I'm bad at this, guys.

[01:12:50] There we go.

[01:12:51] All right.

[01:12:51] So you got a lever.

[01:12:55] Well, I can't point on this thing.

[01:12:57] You got a lever up in the back.

[01:12:59] You got a lever down from the back.

[01:13:00] You got two levers in the front.

[01:13:01] You got half a dozen little feed wheels there and about four levers on the carriage.

[01:13:07] How many of those levers do you think you need to throw to bolt, Phil?

[01:13:10] All of them.

[01:13:11] Challenge accepted.

[01:13:14] Well, it turns out there's only two you don't need.

[01:13:17] So I was almost right.

[01:13:19] You were close.

[01:13:19] But that's exactly it.

[01:13:21] It's like that lathe is just as complicated as ham radios.

[01:13:25] If you understand how the levers work and what the buttons do, it can do really cool stuff.

[01:13:32] But if you don't know what they do and none of those are labeled because that thing was built in the 1920s and hasn't been refurbished, still runs like a champ.

[01:13:42] Yeah.

[01:13:42] Uh, what happens if the buttons were off your radio?

[01:13:47] Yeah.

[01:13:47] Do you know what the buttons do without the labels?

[01:13:50] Probably not.

[01:13:52] Yeah.

[01:13:53] Yeah.

[01:13:53] I guess to me, you know, like the whole point of this episode was really just trying to dispel some of these rumors because there are people in the community and out of the community that perpetuate some of this nonsense.

[01:14:02] And I really just want people to think critically.

[01:14:06] I know that's a concept.

[01:14:07] It's 2024.

[01:14:08] But like, think critically about the things that you're hearing.

[01:14:14] Be very suspicious of a person who puts himself out there to be an expert.

[01:14:17] Like I've said for years, I'm an enthusiastic novice in most subjects.

[01:14:21] The things I know very well, I'll tell you I know very well.

[01:14:24] But even then, I'm a little hesitant to give like really hard, fast advice on because I always go back to this idea that like, you know your situation better than I do.

[01:14:35] So shouldn't you make that decision?

[01:14:37] Yep.

[01:14:38] Or at the very least, when you ask the question of what is best for this situation, at least know what your situation and capabilities are before you're asking the question.

[01:14:49] Have a list of your requirements.

[01:14:52] Me personally, when I got into ham radio, I had a neighbor next door that had a ham radio.

[01:14:57] I was like, oh, cool.

[01:14:58] Oh, you cheated.

[01:14:59] Yeah.

[01:15:00] Yeah.

[01:15:00] I had a Huey next door with a ground plane antenna that he used, that he would talk on atmospheric skip with to people on the other side of the globe.

[01:15:10] So I just walked over to his house and said, hey, man, how do you talk on a radio?

[01:15:13] That looks pretty cool.

[01:15:15] So he got me into it.

[01:15:18] And around that same point, you know, when the first time you guys had me on the show, we were talking about modern day militia stuff, modern day militia activity.

[01:15:25] I was involved with the militia for a little bit.

[01:15:27] I make no secret of that.

[01:15:29] It was fun.

[01:15:30] Did a lot of firearms training.

[01:15:32] Did a lot of radio training.

[01:15:33] Those guys all used ham radios, too.

[01:15:36] That's the other reason I got into it.

[01:15:39] And you know what?

[01:15:40] Ham radios, they're kind of neat.

[01:15:42] The house I bought recently is an old school house with those old pole TV antennas going up in the back.

[01:15:48] I think one of these days I'm going to try to convince one of my younger cousins to climb that pole and mount an antenna for me because I'm a big guy.

[01:15:57] I fall and I hit the ground real hard.

[01:15:59] I don't feel like doing that.

[01:16:02] We'll see.

[01:16:03] I might try to put a ham base station in the basement here.

[01:16:07] That could be a fun project.

[01:16:37] It could be.

[01:16:38] If you have to buy a truckload of them to outfit a family, it won't empty out a bank account either.

[01:16:42] And you know what?

[01:16:43] I'll tell you one thing.

[01:16:44] We use them every year when we go up fishing to Minnesota.

[01:16:49] Every boat gets a radio.

[01:16:51] Every boat usually has a guy with a ham license in it.

[01:16:56] There's a lot of us do.

[01:16:58] And it allows us to talk five miles across the lake with a Bay of Fang UV five hour because there's nothing in the way.

[01:17:03] It's a big open lake.

[01:17:05] It's perfect for the use case.

[01:17:09] All right.

[01:17:10] Well, let's go ahead and punt this one out, man.

[01:17:13] It's 617, which means any minute now you're going to get your wife's pretty little head reach through your door and tell you it's time to quit screwing around with your friends.

[01:17:22] I'm told there's tuna salad sandwiches upstairs.

[01:17:25] Do me a favor.

[01:17:26] Leave.

[01:17:27] Stay in studio for a couple of minutes and so I can get this download done.

[01:17:31] But we'll go ahead and rock this one out.

[01:17:34] Thank you all for staying for hanging around with us.

[01:17:36] I think we got up to a total of like 11 people watching the stream, which is impressive.

[01:17:41] Maybe just maybe doing this on the same day and time every week, which is Thursdays at 5 p.m.

[01:17:46] Central may be helping.

[01:17:49] And next week we're going to I don't know yet how it's going to work out where we have a.

[01:17:54] We have a big meet and greet with a whole group of people who are on social media.

[01:17:59] I was told to expect six of them.

[01:18:03] Nice.

[01:18:03] So we're going to wait and see how that melee breaks out.

[01:18:05] It'll be all right.

[01:18:06] It'll be a good time.

[01:18:08] We'll see you guys next time.

[01:18:10] Matter of facts podcast going out the door.

[01:18:11] Bye, everybody.