Matter of Facts: Redundancy

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

[00:00:30] So I don't know how late we were. I don't think we were very late, but Nick and I were literally just sitting here BS-ing and then Nick suddenly looked up said, Oh crap, it's time. We get caught up in things now and then. So to be fair, I won't blame it on my co-host. I'll blame it on this whiskey and cream soda, which as much as I'm not a big fan of, as much as I'm not a big fan of like really sugary drinks, y'all should have a lot of fun.

[00:00:59] I'll try whiskey and cream soda. It's, it's a vibe. Oh yeah, it's good. Yeah, this actually was born out of my misspent youth because there was one night when I was drinking some of my dad's whiskey and God loved the man, but he was a big fan of Jim Beam at the time, which is the most abominable freaking whiskey on earth. I swear to God, if he's watching this, he's going to know where that bottle disappeared to. But anyway, it's whiskey by technicality alone.

[00:01:25] Yeah. Well, let's just say that I was not in a position to be able to drink Jim Beam by itself and I still will not. So the only thing that was happened to be in the house to cut the god awful taste of that rubbing alcohol wound up being cream soda. So the creamy Kentucky was born on that night and it's been kind of a rabble a family staple ever since it's freaking delicious. Yeah, it's pretty good way to go. Yeah.

[00:01:54] But anyway, so I guess let's do the admin work super, super quick. One of these days, I'm just not even going to do admin work and it's going to really confuse all y'all. Nick, while you were gone, I tried to get away without doing admin work and my wife stopped me. Thank you, Gillian. Yeah. So thanks to the patrons. If you're not a patron, you should be one. You should consider supporting our sociopath and you should, those links in the show description.

[00:02:19] One of these days, I might even do some legwork and assemble a list of all the current patrons and dime all of y'all out on the podcast. That's fair. And you can't even say it's a violation of your privacy because the FBI knows who all y'all are anyway. So, you know, there's that. That's true. We do kind of dime ourselves out on the Patreon chat too. Yes. Merge. There's merch. There's links in the show description. Support a small business.

[00:02:48] Support the show. And they're cute, funny, cheeky t-shirts and koozies and that sort of thing. Plus, they all come in black. So if you are one of the men and women in uniform that needs a black T base layer, you can have sassy base layers. Hmm. Hadn't even thought of that angle. Oh, yeah. I got a family member who's a Leo that some of our shirts have made their way onto duty. Excellent.

[00:03:17] And Cypress Survivalist. Cypress Survivalist is the nonprofit. My wife and I started together. It is still going on. We're still doing things. Right now, we're mostly licking our wounds from the first event. But honestly, I've already been talking to my wife like nonstop, like a meth head. Just will not shut up about all the changes I'm going to make and how to make the event better and changing all of my all of my individual topics that I teach. Because I just see so many ways to make this whole thing work so much nicer.

[00:03:48] But I didn't know any of that until we tried it once. So, you know, there's that. That will actually end up being the topic of a future podcast episode because I just ordered all the stuff I need for it to get into software-defined radio. So, that's going to make it appear on the podcast and probably wind up going into that combo class that I teach. It's probably a good call. It's very useful. And it's really affordable. Yeah.

[00:04:16] I mean, the thing of it is that your average full analog scanner is like $200. I mean, frankly, you can take one of those UHF radios back there and run that thing in VHF and set scan. It'll just stupidly scan from 100 megahertz up. Which works. That technically will work, but it only works if there's like a nice long signal for it to lock on to.

[00:04:42] The better scanners can scan jump frequencies faster, but you're still limited to can you catch a frequency while someone's transmitting on it? And then you get in situations like, excuse me, like a lot of the, like here in Louisiana, we're on Elwin, which is a trunked digital radio system. That's what all your first responders use. And you can't listen to that on an analog receiver.

[00:05:12] So that's where you need either a four to $700 digital capable trunked capable scanner, or you need a couple of 35, $40 dong, you know, USB dongles and some software and some patients and probably some bourbon. Well, well, you know, there are some projects bourbon does not help with. They're few and far between and mostly involve power tools. Challenge accepted.

[00:05:42] You're going to chainsaw with bourbon? No, no, no. Chainsaws scare the hell out of me, but I'm willing to tackle electronics and computers. Oh, yeah, yeah. Low voltage systems. Yes. Low voltage systems are very fine to play while intoxicated. If anything, it tells you when you're doing it wrong faster. Don't let the magic smoke out. Somewhere out there, there's an electrician, probably Josh, who is just like gritting his teeth listening to this. I'm not a licensed electrician. Do not follow any of my advice.

[00:06:11] Yeah, I've never been a licensed electrician, nor should you ever take my advice where, you know, the voodoo of electrons are concerned. Look, it's a series of tubes. It'll be fine. It's just like plumbing. Don't cross the strings and you're fine. And suddenly, every electrician and every plumber was angry at Nick, all in one voice. Good, I'll get concrete crews next episode.

[00:06:38] So let's talk about the mini talk before we get into the big topic. A couple of days ago, you and I and our patrons were actually talking about how the DOJ was just had pissed off the entire gun community by saying that the Second Amendment did not protect silencers. I think you could have just stopped with the DOJ pissed off the entire gun community. And just look, look, any Tuesday, they've probably done something to make us upset. I mean, fair. Yeah.

[00:07:08] But then this afternoon, they pulled a wait a minute and asked for a 30 day pause to reconsider their position. And you and I were talking about this right before we went live. We did. This is part of what we got caught up in. Yeah. So, first of all, I individually and personally feel like this is possibly a good sign.

[00:07:35] Not because I think anything substantial is going to come from it, but mostly because I think they're asking for this pause because they're actually listening. Like when they did what they did on Tuesday, the entire community freaked the hell out. And apparently someone in the DOJ pays attention and grabbed Pam and said, listen, dumbass.

[00:07:59] You are pissing off our entire like the bosses voting block with this nonsense. You need to reconsider. And I think that that on the face of it is a positive, like the fact that they are actually someone in the agency is dialed into the idea that we need to pay attention to the people who scream the loudest because they are leading. They're leading the they're the opinion leaders. You know what I'm saying?

[00:08:27] They're the people who have the podcast, have the blogs, write the articles who inform the masses. And if we piss them off, we're going to have a whole lot of heat crawling up our bosses behind. Well, look, 2016 was a podcast presidency, 2024 even more so. New media is what is driving politics more than old media has. And new media, the gun tubers, the gun podcasters, the prepper channels, the meme creators, the meme creators.

[00:08:55] You know, a lot of it, a lot of them are more often now I'm noticing more and more pro gun. Hell, you know, I know you've listened to Tim Pool in the past. Do you remember what he was like 15 years, 10, 12 years ago? Not 15, but 10, 12. I've been around the time. I've met it. Yeah, he was not pro gun. Originally. The dude's got 50 cals now and talks about guns all the time on his show.

[00:09:25] And understand that since you brought up Tim Pool, I still view Tim Pool as like left of center. The problem is he's absolutely a leftist. The problem is when you when you look at this weird like sociopolitical spectrum, what the quote unquote left is has moved so far to the left that you have guys like Tim Pool who are who were not originally pro gun,

[00:09:52] who are very much like in favor of you know, like they flirt with the idea of UBI. They're in favor of the idea of universal health care. They're they're very like antsy about restrictions on abortion. These are very, very traditional left of center views. And yet he is now considered to be on the right because the center line has moved so far to one side. He has to be on the right because if you're not Mao Zedong, you have to be.

[00:10:22] It's a weird timeline we slipped into. Like, I don't know who fired up the large, you know, who fired up the large Hedron Collider, but they split us off into a really weird timeline. That's all I got to say. Oh, my God. Our third co-host, our third musketeer is in the comments. He managed to snag Wi-Fi at the hippie commune.

[00:10:50] You know, but you are not forgotten and you are still welcome to have that third seat anytime you want it. Just anytime and every time, man. You know, here's the thing. I don't think that you can apply the title of leftists to the modern Democrat Party. I think that they are more authoritarian statists than than traditional leftists.

[00:11:19] Yeah, the problem is you could apply that same standard to like 30 percent of the GOP. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I would absolutely say the same thing. Most of the GOP, at least our elected representatives, are not traditional conservatives. They are right wing authoritarians. To be fair, to be fair, the currently elected president is not what I would consider to be a traditional conservative. Oh, gosh, no. He's a 90s Democrat. Yeah.

[00:11:47] Which is he's Bill Clinton with a shittier haircut. And OK, I was going to make a joke about getting BJ's in the Oval Office. But, you know, look, if you're the president of the United States and you're not getting some of the Oval Office, you're doing it wrong. Come on. Yeah. But to your wife and not the interns. But yeah, I was about to say at least get it from, you know, your your your ex supermodel hot ass wife and not exactly, you know, from and from a. To be fair, Clinton was not working with the kind of quality.

[00:12:18] Holy Jesus Christ in heaven. Oh, my God. Thank you, Nick. You were going to get this podcast scrubbed from the internet and probably me Clintoned in the middle of the night just on the bed joke. It's fine. She has more important people to murder. It's it's totally OK. Well, I think you're right.

[00:12:38] I think that the sea change that you're seeing with this administration, especially compared to the last administration, is when the supporters of the administration disagree with them, this administration reacts. And I think that is a net positive, whether or not the suppressor thing turns out to be a net positive for the gun community.

[00:13:01] If the administration in charge and the government agencies they control reacts to the public will, that's a net positive for democracy, in my opinion, because they are, you know, supposed to be agents of of our will, at least to some extent. That is very, very aspirational of you to think that our governing officials are supposed to listen to the people. Well, they are.

[00:13:29] I mean, in reality, they are at least supposed to bend towards the direction of the populace as well. Whether or not they do it totally. Yeah, of course, they're never going to do it totally because we don't have perfect information. And the general populace is pretty dumb. Myself included. Well, they are. I mean, we don't have perfect information. We all have very busy lives.

[00:13:51] I don't know about you, but I was doing 14 other things today other than, you know, this podcast and talking about the Second Amendment here. Yeah, maybe they know something I don't. And that causes them to react differently. But they should take our wishes into account. Yeah. And I am just that weird person that believes that, like, the whole point of a representative republic is that people represent the will of the constituents.

[00:14:19] So even if your constituents want stupid stuff, your job is not to do what's best for them. It's to literally act as the representative of your constituents. And hopefully by collective trial and error, we can make it work all right. I mean, that sounds like really stupid. Like, why would you do something that you know is stupid? But I'm like, you have to understand that, like, your job as a politician is to literally go to your people and say, what do you want me to do? Yeah.

[00:14:46] And if they say, we want you to, you know, like, we want you to push for a law that makes it illegal to wear green on a Monday. Okay. That's my people are morons. That's what they're asking for. Right. Yeah. And, you know, what are you going to do? I mean, is it a net positive? At least it leans me in the direction of thinking that this administration is listening to the people that voted for them.

[00:15:14] Which means if they do something really insane, like, say, I don't know, start trying to get involved in the land war in Asia and we all rally against that, perhaps they will listen. Yeah. And from my perspective, this really just comes down to, like, you know, I personally, individually, my beliefs on gun rights are not hard to figure out at this point.

[00:15:40] I think you should be able to buy a rocket launcher out of a vending machine, which still scares the hell out of a lot of people and gives me a chuckle. But that's okay. I want privately owned warships. I mean, technically, there's nothing illegal about mounting a 50 cal on the bow of your boat that I'm aware of. Actually, there's some DNR regulations about firearms and fishing that you should read. What? What? Yeah.

[00:16:05] Certain states do have regulations on what, on having semi-automatic and fully automatic firearms and fishing craft. Because people have used the cover of fishing to poach. Okay. Outside of season. Which, do I even ask what states those are? Or is it pretty much like all the usual suspects? I know I have heard that. Is it any state that doesn't, that is not touching a body of water, by the way?

[00:16:33] Because that would be hilarious to me if they enacted that law and there was nowhere you could literally break that law in the state. Oh, well, I mean, if you're talking about ocean going? Yeah, I'm sure. Because Illinois has regulations on some firearms with fishing boats and whatnot. So what I'm hearing is if you keep your 50 cal in a box since you're out in international waters, you should be okay. Yeah, I mean, international waters, I mean, they can't prosecute, but, you know, I dig it. Yeah.

[00:16:59] Now I just need a boat and to get over my seasickness and a 50 cal. And a shitload of money for ammo. That shit ain't cheap. Yeah, like 250 around if you buy the surplus stuff. Which, I mean, you're gonna. Yeah. Okay, so to topic, we are 17 minutes and that's why you shouldn't allow me to drink whiskey before I podcast. Two is one, one is none, and three is better.

[00:17:27] So the whole topic is about redundancy. And like this shouldn't be that hard for us to make the case for. Like if there's something that your life relies upon, you should probably have more than one of it. Even if it's something that's more of a convenience item or a morale item. You should probably have more than one. I get it. Basic prepper thing. But hey, we got to cover the basics now and then. Yeah.

[00:17:50] At some point in all this, are we going to get into the argument of do you buy one really good one or two halfway ones? Sure. Because that's an interesting argument to get into. Yeah. We could talk about that right now if you want. So like me personally, I don't. Let's talk about the age old. You got. Let's say you got $2,000. Give you a nice round budget. Sure. You get $2,000. Your goal is to buy.

[00:18:20] Home defense. You need an AR-15 unless you live in a godforsaken communist state. And I'm sorry if you do. But let's say for a moment you live in a nice freedom loving place like I do. $2,000 would buy you a help and I say AR-15. But you also need some magazines and some ammo and other things to go along with it. So and if you want to get up on most of our level, you also need something like a chest rig or something to carry your ammo. Things.

[00:18:50] Tape mags. So the question is, do you blow a grand on that AR-15 or do you buy two $500 AR-15s so that you have one spare? I would argue you buy one $500 AR-15, a $70 replacement parts kit and spare bolt carrier group, six mags, a training class, and as much ammo as will fit in the rest of your budget.

[00:19:17] Now, you guys know before my state went and became communist, I had a really Gucci AR. I went all out. Geissele everything. Santan matched receiver set. Oh, yeah. Oh, I went. I went. Ultra match. Custom profile barrel. Land tack dragon muzzle break. It was expensive. But I did some favors for a gun dealer. And so I got most of that stuff at dealer pricing, which was. They involve knee pads. Holy Jesus.

[00:19:45] No, actually, it involved custom engraving a bunch of Glock 19 slides for some friends of his. So almost. It involved machinist knee pads. But here's the thing. First AR I ever bought. All right. I went down to my local gun store and I bought a, I think it was a PSA rack AR. It had a detachable carry handle. No fancy sights. No, no red dot. I bought that.

[00:20:12] I bought two cases of ammo and I bought, I think it was 10 magazines. And then the next thing I did was I registered for a training class because I had never owned a semi-automatic rifle before. I had shot them before, but I'd never owned one. And I ran that rifle into the ground. I beat the absolute crap out of that thing. And it took everything I gave to it. And eventually I did upgrade it.

[00:20:41] And I got myself a really nice Gucci setup, competitive AR with a red dot sight and all the fancy toys and the silent capture buffer tube and all that stuff. Was it a better rifle? Undoubtedly. Yes. Accuracy wise, reliability wise, the $2,500 AR was better than the $495 AR.

[00:21:07] Was it good enough to justify the price difference to someone that was not trained with it? Absolutely not. Because even with that, my split times, shot to shot split times did not improve all that terrible much. The ergonomics were better. The comfort was better. And yeah, it malfunctions slightly less than the PSA rack grade AR.

[00:21:34] But instead of that, I spent the money on training. And I think that was a far better investment because I was able to get at the very least reasonably competent over the two training classes I did go to right off the bat. Well, and I like my experience has been that the fastest way to turn a three MOA rifle into a six MOA rifle is to hand it to somebody that does know how to shoot. Mm-hmm.

[00:21:58] And it works in the opposite direction too, by the way, because I enjoy shooting. Like, I inherited a 308 Ruger Hawkeye. So it's the skinny, skinny hunting barrel, 308 caliber. It's nothing special. It's not a Ruger precision rifle, even though that's not like the greatest precision rifle on earth. It's not a Rugerah.

[00:22:23] It's not a really nice 308 rifle that you would expect to be able to stack rounds on top of each other. Agreed? Agreed. It's a hunting rifle. It's a two and a half, three, you know, three inch group at 100 yards with the right ammo. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:22:39] But through some very careful judicious hand loading and with a lot, lot of polishing on the trigger to get that trigger pull down from like six pounds down to like two and three quarters of a pound and not changing the ramp angles or do anything crazy. It's still drop safe. It's just got a really, really smooth let off now. Good. Good. I was able to get that rifle to the point where it'll stack four rounds on top of each other at 100 yards.

[00:23:08] Most bolt guns are capable of that with judicial reloading, but most shooters are not. Absolutely not. And there lies the trick. You can hand a $500 rifle or a $5,000 rifle to a novice shooter and they will perform approximately the same. Yeah. And that's not like a humble brag like I am the greatest shooter on earth. I'm not. I am an above average shooter based on the people I shoot with. Sure.

[00:23:35] But I would happily say that like I was able to put in the work and I had a day where I had my, you know, just the right amount of caffeine in my brain to make it behave itself and not be jittery. And I like I went out there and I shot four rounds and somewhere I've got a picture of it. It's literally four holes. It looked like a clover leaf, like they're all touching at 100 yards. And it's beautiful. No, it is.

[00:24:00] But you take that rifle, you hand it to like some knucklehead who's never shot anything bigger than a 22. It doesn't even shoot that very well. And they're going to make a six inch group with it at the same range with the same ammo, with the same rifle. So like I, I agree with what you're saying. My thing is, is that I think you happen upon the right, the right recipe.

[00:24:25] The recipe that I personally recommend most people get is if, if you're, if getting two decent ARs is going to mean that you have to sacrifice buying ammo, buying mags, getting training, burning the ammo to go do the training. Then you're better off getting one decent AR and then an oh shit kit. Get a whole, a whole bolt carrier group with the, with the bolt, everything ready to rock and roll. That's not histrionically expensive.

[00:24:55] Getting an oops kit. So you have spare springs, spare followers, spare everything. That's not expensive. And between a bolt carrier group, throw in a gas tube. If you really want to like bulletproof your setup, throw in a gas tube. I have put many thousands and thousands of rounds through both of the ARs I had owned. And I have never blown a gas tube and I have gotten it hot enough to burn the anodizing off my hand guard. But here's my question. Have you ever burned out a barrel?

[00:25:27] On the $500 AR? Yes. Okay. Was that from heat or from round count? Both. Okay. The reason I bring that up is because... It was a little bit of both because I was doing a lot of high volume fire classes at the time. The reason I bring that up is because the way the AR-15 was designed by Stoner, if you just burn down an AR-15, the gas tube should fail.

[00:25:52] It is the fuse in the system to fail ahead of the barrel or the bolt or something that holds pressure in places you want it to stay. Oh, then yeah. It was over, you know, getting the barrel hot and high round count probably. But no, no. I didn't melt the barrel. Yeah. Yeah. So what I'm suggesting is that if you want, like, spare parts to put an AR-15 back in the service, if you just abuse the hell out of it. Yeah. An entire bolt carrier group, a gas tube, and an OOPS kit. Spring kit. Spring kit. Spring kit. Yeah.

[00:26:22] An OOPS kit usually includes, like, every spring in the rifle, your detents, all that kind of stuff. And if you want to go, like, one step further, I guess you could get a whole other barrel and just put it up on the shelf just when you eventually wear out the throat. But, like, everything I'm talking about is, like, $300, $400 at the max. You know, yeah. And you can actually do it even cheaper than that.

[00:26:47] I mean, an OOPS kit plus a spare bolt carrier group, you're probably looking at, like, $75 for the spare bolt carrier group to go with a moderately quality one. At least the last time I priced them, the carriers I use, they were running about $100, $110. Really? You've gone up that much. Well, I mean, that was Toolcraft, but that was Toolcraft. So I've got Toolcraft Nickel Boron Bolt in that AR and my other one.

[00:27:14] And then my backup is actually a, it's not Nickel Boron Coated. PSA is up in price, too. Phosphate, I think. It's your phosphate or manganese. I don't remember. Looking at PSA's website right now, Nickel Boron Bolt Carrier Group and 10 PMAGs for $156. So you might as well buy that and stock up on mags. Yeah. But all that being beside the point, like to me, Braggle Fraggle just said, just buy a whole other complete upper end. You could.

[00:27:44] I'm going to tell you, I've, I personally, I have handled some very, very raggedy, raggedy frigging AR-15s. You know, AR-15s, mostly M-16s. Military rack M-16s are notoriously bad. Dude, I'm going to tell you that the M-16 I had in basic training was so freaking old that the lower had M-16A2. The two was stamped over a one. Nice. If that gives you an idea of how old that lower was.

[00:28:13] That was the most, that was the most raggedy freaking M-16 I have shot. I, this is why every time somebody says it's mil-spec, I start laughing hysterically. Cause I'm like, you don't know. You think that that's not the flex you think it is, sir. You know, I think this applies to more than guns though. There is a certain level of quality that is good enough to be functional the vast majority of the time. Like let's, let's go for knives.

[00:28:43] Knives is an easy one. You could go to Benchmade $400 fixed blades and folders. You could go to Gerber $20 folders. I EDC a Gerber $20 folder. What's that one? Gerber? Uh, I don't know. Emerson. Emerson. Okay. About the same level as like the mid range, upper mid range Gerber's. Totally mid range. Very soft steel.

[00:29:09] Actually not the greatest knife on earth, but I'm gonna tell you that I've beat on this damn thing hard enough that there's chips taken out of the blade. I'll take slightly softer steel over two hard steel that is difficult to sharpen. Yeah, I've actually got knives that are on both ends of that spectrum. The really hard ones are fun to beat on because you can't kill them. Yeah. Then Jesus, you really hate you. Like that is it though. You can never get them sharp again. Well, you can.

[00:29:34] It just requires like it requires a whiskey and a two hour movie and a day in front of the, you know, a day on the couch. You just sit there with a Lansky going over and over and over. It does. But I mean, there's really no incentive in, in let's, let's just talk base performance wise. Your Gerber, your Emerson, your, uh, I think Caterpillar even makes a fairly decent knife. Um, and I think there are actually the Caterpillar knives are made by Gerber Swiss army knife, man.

[00:30:04] 20, 25, 30 bucks. It's a pretty good knife. You know, it's going to cut just about as well. Can you baton with it? No, but it's a folder. You shouldn't baton with your folders anyway. Challenge accepted. You probably can and get away with it too. Those knives are actually surprisingly durable, but the, uh, Jeff's right. Uh, bringing it up here.

[00:30:26] The, the 90, 90, 20 or 80, 20 rule you, where you can get, uh, 80 or 90% of the benefit out of doing 20 or 10% of the work or paying 20 or 10% of the cost. A lot of times, 110%. And I'm going to tell you sometimes 80% is good is absolutely worth an 80% cost savings. Yeah. It can definitely be, especially if you're on a limited budget. Well, I mean, hell, even if you're not, okay.

[00:30:54] So let me just intone for you a little bit of Rabelais family logic. My dad told me a long time ago, Bill Gates lives on a budget. His budget just got a lot more zeros in it than yours does. Correct. Everyone, everyone lives on a fixed income because sooner or later their money runs out. It, they might have to buy the fricking moon before their money runs out. But sooner or later their money runs out. So everybody's on a fixed income.

[00:31:20] There's no one that can spend money, you know, past the zero. That's just the way the world works. So I wholeheartedly believe that like, if you see that opportunity to get 80% of the value for 20% of the money, jump on that and buy two of them. Yeah. I mean, and maybe not even buy two of them. Buy the spare parts that are known to break on this item. Yeah. Yeah. My generator for my house is a Duramax generator. Is it as good as a Generac?

[00:31:49] No, it's not. It also costs a quarter of what the equivalent Generac would cost. So theoretically you could have bought two of them and still have money left over to spend on our stuff. But instead what I did do is I had my entire house rewired for 200 amp. I had the, a professional electrician come in and do my generator hookup.

[00:32:11] I bought the, I think it's three brushes that go in that thing, a carburetor kit, a full set of seal kits, a hose and a spare regulator for the propane. And I still had 50% of the budget for the Generac leftover set aside to do other things with. So I got all of the benefit of the Generac except for the Generac warranty. Yeah.

[00:32:40] That's really the only thing you're losing out. So I have to be my own warranty. So I went out and bought the spare parts. Yep. Pretty much the same decision I made when I didn't have it in the budget to go out and buy a second chainsaw. I was like, I better have a whole service kit and a spare bar and a bunch of spare chains and a bunch of spare stuff so that this thing goes down. I can fix it and get it back in service. Absolutely. So short, mid, long term. Okay. So explain this one since you added it.

[00:33:09] Yeah, we are. We are really kind of just talking about like backups for ourselves. Right. All right. So in the short term, power goes out. Great. It's dark in the house. Your flashlights are your short term fallback. Right. Your flashlights, your candles, your easy access stuff. Exactly. I got one of my pants upstairs. I actually don't have it with me. So your midterm is your generator.

[00:33:42] Do we have a long term plan? Maybe it's solar. So, you know, short term for me is anywhere under half a day, you know, half a day to a day. Midterm is, okay, this might last more than a day. So now we break out the generator, keep the freezer and fridge cool and stuff like that. Long term for power. I don't have.

[00:34:05] I don't have. Long term power backup.

[00:34:33] But I just thought we could, when we're going through these things we've got listed here, these other headers, maybe we could just break down. What do you recommend for short term? What do you recommend for in the midterm? And what do you recommend for extended? Yeah, extended might be a better way to put it. I was going to say renewable because to me. Yeah, renewable is good too. There is a certain point at which if the event you're preparing for lasts beyond a certain point, there is no prepping for it. You have to have renewable. True.

[00:35:03] I mean, even if you have a year worth of preps, if the event lasts 13 months, you have to have renewable. You've exceeded what you prepped for. Like there will just be a point. Now, I have to say before we start, long term and even midterm is going to be a different calculus for every person. Everyone's going to define that differently. What you prepare for is going to depend on you individually. Absolutely. And whether or not you think it's even rational.

[00:35:32] No, like me, like for like my take as an example, like my water, I have a 28 day supply of bottled water on the shelf. That would be considered a long term for a water supply to me. But see, for me, that's a midterm. Right. Because it's not renewable. Once it's all used up, it's done. My long term is I have a rainwater catch and I have ways to filter it.

[00:35:57] I have all the stuff I need to build basically a huge freaking Berkey and I have another rainwater catch that will hold 110 gallons that I'm in the process of building. I've got about 80% of the stuff I need. I just need a couple of things and that'll be on the docket to start. But the point is, to me, it's not long term unless it renews itself, refills itself, replunge itself.

[00:36:22] So when you get to the long term point for me, you're talking about like I don't have a long term food supply. I think that's fair. That has to go to I grow my own food. I homestead. I whatever. I'm not there. I live in the suburbs. Right. Yeah. Even even me out in the boonies where I am. I do not have enough property for long term sustainable food growth. I don't. So let me just grab guy that comments. My vision is cheaper and I can charge it with solar.

[00:36:51] So yes, comma, however, comma. The first thing I did when I bought my PBS 14 was I immediately started buying the very, very expensive, like $4 per battery. The lithium ultimate, the Energizer ultimate lithiums that are crazy freaking expensive for two reasons. First of all, it's what the Department of Defense specs for the daggum thing.

[00:37:14] And second of all, letting a really cheap battery ruin a $4,000 optic is not in my budget. So yeah, and I mean, quite frankly, like if you're talking about digital night vision, that's a different scenario. But if you're talking about like PBS 14, PBS 31, you know, BNBDs, that kind of stuff. It's so power efficient. Just suck it up and buy the expensive batteries. They'll last a little bit longer there.

[00:37:44] They'll store longer. They're fine. And they'll last you a really long time under use. Yeah. But I digress. So I think that's fair. Change long term to renewable then. Yeah. If it applies like for data, it doesn't really apply. Yeah. Hear me out, though. So data, my immediate backup is stuff that's super light.

[00:38:11] Like so I have I have my I have this desktop backing up to a one terabyte drive sitting over here on the side every night. And I have in addition to that, the really important stuff, which is pretty much just like, you know, family pictures and this 400. And I forget how many podcast episodes because we've been doing this for a while sitting in cloud storage. OK.

[00:38:39] Now, stuff that is sensitive, my tech, you know, our taxes, stuff that has PIs, stuff that can be used to steal our identity that doesn't go into the cloud because I have trust issues. Don't we all? Well, that that stays on this hard drive and it goes into a thumb drive every so often that I maintain physical custody of. Mm hmm. I don't think that there is a quote unquote long.

[00:39:01] So I don't think that when if you're strictly looking at this in terms of electronic data, I don't feel like there is a long term because if an event, if a grid down event lasts for so long. Frankly, why do you care if you maintain all your vacation pictures from 10 years ago? You have other problems to deal with if the event lasts too long. You do. Yeah. But consider the fact that data can also be stored in physical form.

[00:39:29] We got to go back to the old days when people used to have to, like, you know, pick up these funny little stacks of paper. Paper, paper books, paper manuals, take all your stuff and print it out and stick it in a, you know, stick it in a three ring binder. If it's something that's really important, you have physical pictures as anti millennial as that sounds.

[00:39:49] Well, you know, to some extent, though, the physical pictures make it more difficult to me to to maintain them because they take up a shitload of space. Oh, yes. The the amount of physical photos that my grandparents and parents possess, there is no way on this earth I can maintain them outside of digital storage in the house. Yes, I have, you know, as they pass those things down, because people do pass those things down.

[00:40:18] And do you want to throw away pictures of your great grandparents? I mean, personally, I don't because I like looking. I like looking at them on occasion. But but if we're talking about we're at the point of like leather, leather studded cod pieces and hockey masks, there's no do we. So that's that's kind of what I'm suggesting. Is that in a for this is all very usability. Okay.

[00:40:44] And this is all like really open to interpretation, to be honest, because like most people are going to say, Phil, it's Mad Max is never going to happen. And I agree with you. It's probably never going to happen. Probably not. No. So since we agree that most most problems fall into the short term or midterm point. Less than months or less. Yeah. Well, I mean, quite call it what it is. If any if any kind of major grid down event lasts for 90 days.

[00:41:12] That is function is going to be really bad. Yeah. It's functionally into the country. I personally do not anticipate myself having to deal with an emergency lasting longer than 90 days. No, I just I don't. It's not within my capacity. I expect most will last a week, two weeks, four weeks at the most. Two weeks. Not uncommon. Six weeks. Six months at the extreme edge of reality. Sure.

[00:41:39] And like, say, a third world war or a pandemic. Yeah. Yeah. COVID was an emergency that lasted for two years. It really wasn't. It was a two to three week emergency before we had good data on what to and not to do. Well, I mean, call it what it is. If there let's say there was something that caused the powers to be to shut down the Internet. That would mean that all of your cloud storage is now offline until they flip the switch back on. True.

[00:42:08] So that's to me, that's that's why, you know, I totally understand the argument about short, mid, long term event. But I also understand the argument about just having things in layers. Like I have this stuff on my hard drive. I had it on a backup hard drive. I have it in the cloud. I have it on a thumb drive. I have the data that is most important to me in multiple places. So that if one place goes down, I go to plan B and I still get hold of my stuff. Agreed. I mean, I have a very similar setup.

[00:42:37] I have a small external drive that stays unpowered in my safe in a firebox inside the safe that has all of our financial data. Our mortgage are I think I think it has our marriage license, all of our scans of all of our IDs, all that important stuff on a drive in a fire safe inside of a fire safe. Odds are, if I can get into this safe, chances are those that thumb drive will have survived or while the hard drive will have survived. You're probably OK.

[00:43:07] Exactly. Like it's mostly in there for theft reasons, because those fire safes, those little little bitty fire safes, they're not that hard to break into. But this safe is more difficult to break into and it's bolted to a concrete wall and floor. So you're not removing it from the house without removing bits of the foundation. But, you know, cloud storage, excellent place to go.

[00:43:34] Personally, I have a system that's like Backblaze. We use Backblaze at work, but I've got to have to look up exactly what the name of it is. But it's a relatively inexpensive cloud storage solution that you can use. A lot of people use Dropbox because you can buy their storage pretty cheap. Storage from Google and Amazon is actually pretty cheap. If you don't mind Amazon and Google having your photos, they probably do already if you have an Android phone.

[00:44:02] And if you don't have an Android phone, then Apple has all of your photos. But if you trust something like Proton a bit more. Yeah, Proton's good. Proton's what I like. I have Proton VPN. I have Proton Mail. And Stuart is actually one that turned me on to the fact that Proton started offering Proton Drive. And because I have a paid account, I get an absolutely ridiculous amount of storage space. They give you a couple of terabytes, don't they? I don't remember.

[00:44:30] I know that I have 400 and something podcast episodes in there for backup. Yeah. Well, I mean, they're 50 megabytes each. So do the math. I think Google gives you almost a terabyte of storage if you have just their free email. So, I mean, if you have non-sensitive information, and even if you have sensitive information, you can store encrypted files on those cloud storage systems.

[00:44:55] Just know that if you ever lose the encryption key, you have now lost the files. Yes. And also realize that if someone is hard-headed enough or industrious enough, there's no encryption. That is foolproof. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's a matter of time and effort. And realistically, most of us are not worth the time or the effort. It's like putting your guns in a gun safe. It is.

[00:45:21] It will 110% keep curious and even mildly mischievous people out of your stuff. But if somebody really wants your stuff, they go and get in. Oh, yeah. You can probably get in this safe behind me in under an hour. I'm certain you could. 20 minutes or less. Probably. As long as I'm willing to make some noise. Yeah, exactly. If you're not willing, if you're not being cautious about it and you've got power tools, probably under 20 minutes.

[00:45:48] Heck, you could probably get into it in an hour without making a terrible amount of noise. I don't know. YouTube that if you really want to scare the hell out of yourself. Yeah. This safe isn't to keep dishonest people out. It's to keep the curious and inept out. Mm-hmm. So let's talk food, water. We kind of already talked about this when we're talking about short, mid, long term. Like, I personally, I don't even keep track of like how much quote unquote prepper food I have. Same.

[00:46:17] Because I just don't keep track of it. Like, to me, it's like, I think I can fit another bucket or two over there before Gilling gets pissed at me. Let me, Leo, let me do that. They haven't rolled under the car yet. Yeah. Well, you know, when it, when it, when, when the, the leaning tower of food starts teeter tottering, that's when it's time to dial it back a little bit, but pretty much. Hold that shit to the wall, man. You've got a kid. Nah, I'm talking about the, um, the five gallon buckets that are stacked up that are just about, just about chest high.

[00:46:47] Oh, that's fine. You can go at least one more up. Yeah. But anyway, so like food, I don't know. Like it's a lot of rice and beans and a lot of baking supplies. Like to me, it's more the idea that if we couldn't go to the grocery store tomorrow ever again, how long do I, how long can I dig back into this cabinet? And we still be able to like get the stuff we want, bake the stuff we want, cook like we want.

[00:47:14] So that's why I believe in like, you know, in the, in a short term event, frankly, we don't even like change course. Like we, as a default, well, not just that, but like as a default, our fridge is so stocked. I, I personally, I keep usually about five gallons of milk in the fridge. That's a lot. If I have timeout there, it'll make sense in a second.

[00:47:40] If I have less than five gallons of milk come grocery day, I go by enough to get me back up to five gallons. The reason why it's five gallons is because we buy half gallon containers. There's a space in that fridge that will hold five half gallons stack, you know, one from the front to the back and two rows of them. So it's really easy to figure out, do we need more or not? The reason why is because I make my own coffee creamer from scratch. And that's nothing but sweetened condensed milk and milk.

[00:48:10] I make my own cappuccinos, my own lattes. I make all that stuff from, you know, at the house. I do all my own. We do all of our own baking from scratch. A lot of that takes milk. So it's not that I drink a ton of like, oh, I just feel like a glass of milk and, you know, drink, you know, drink a half gallon a day. It's more of a we use a lot of milk to make other stuff.

[00:48:34] And for that reason, five gallons of milk is about a two week supply for us, maybe two and a half, maybe up to three if we stretched it. That makes sense. Yeah. So to me, I always look at it as my primary, my primary food source, my fridge and my main pantry. I want to have at least two weeks of groceries sitting in there at all times. Sure. Once we get past that, we have a can rack and a second pantry.

[00:49:04] That is overflow to back up the primary pantry. And then if I get past the secondary pantry, then we're getting into opening up five gallon buckets and breaking the seals and having to like replenish, restock things from the quote unquote prepper stuff. Right. Right. This refills this. This is what we're eating out of as a primary.

[00:49:34] That makes sense. We might have to say, I can't make that tonight because I don't have this one ingredient I need, but I can make something. That's pretty close. Or I can improvise something. Yeah.

[00:50:13] Yeah. I mean, for me, I like a good cup of coffee, but coffee is more of a means to an end to me. It's a feeding and addiction. I know. Eventually, you're going to guilt me into home roasting and I'm going to become an absurd coffee snob. It's not going to be a guilt thing. What's going to happen is that I'm going to sneak my roasting pan, my roasting set up into the back of the Jeep and bring it to summer camp. Oh, God. And then you're going to roast coffee.

[00:50:40] You're going to roast your own coffee and grind it and drink it all in an hour. There is no going back. Green coffee I buy. There is no coming back from that experience when you can literally go from green beans to roasted to ground to drink in under an hour. You will never get that experience of that freshness out of your brain. You'll be stuck. That's fair. Zeus made a comment here. There's a lot of wasted space under beds.

[00:51:10] And he was thinking about maybe putting putting buckets under those. Here's the thing about five gallon buckets. They are incredibly tall. All right. Your bed is going to be insanely tall. So I mentioned in the comments to him that they do make these like rollaway tubs that are designed to fit under a standard bed frame. You don't have to change anything about your bed frame and you can use it for storage. Plus, so wheels.

[00:51:35] If you have a fairly decently sized bed frame, Walmart actually sells the Sterilite brand bins that are only about four or five inches tall. And they're pretty large. You can fit cans in them. Yep. You can fit cans. You can fit bags of rice, bags of beans. You can fit all kinds of stuff and just slide them underneath the beds. And you're right. There's a ton of wasted space. There is a ton of wasted space. He's he's he's absolutely correct.

[00:52:00] The only thing I would say is if you are going to put food stuff under there. Keep it canned. Keep it long term storage because I have seen mice and rats chew through Sterilite bins. It doesn't happen often, but just be aware. Yeah. Fortunately, I think being in a high traffic area like a bedroom would help keep them at bay to a degree.

[00:52:27] But man, I had I live out in the country house. I had mice running across the floor of my master bathroom this this winter. I caught him in my master bathroom. But you would think me and my wife are in and out of there multiple times a day. There's a dog that stays in our master bedroom most of the day and all night. And the doors open to that bathroom.

[00:52:54] You would think the mice would stay the heck out of there because of the dog, if nothing else. But man, I have seen him in the weirdest places. My wife would pee her pants if she saw a mouse in this house. She's never lived out in the country. I mean, you just get them. Yeah, I should be living in an older house like mine was built in the 60s. I have to go all the way around the house again and check all of the things this spring because we got mice in again this year. It's an every couple of years scenario.

[00:53:25] Fine. I feel like we also talked about this already. Weapons and spare parts. We kind of already covered that. Well, I mean, there is a difference though here that we didn't mention. Your short term is probably going to be your EDC pistol. Now, I'm not saying everybody has to go out and get a concealed carry license. I strongly recommend you do if you are comfortable doing so. I strongly recommend.

[00:53:52] And if you're not comfortable, I strongly recommend you go take a class and figure out why you're not comfortable. Exactly. And I find a lot of people, as soon as they go through a class and show themselves that they are competent with it and safe with it, they're far more likely to get a concealed carry license. I will also say that one time I've had the experience where someone told me like they were really uncomfortable.

[00:54:18] They wanted to carry a firearm to protect themselves and their family, but they were just uncomfortable with it. So I literally took my carry gun, took the magazine out, racked the gun open, showed them that it was clear, made them verify it was clear, dropped the slide, and then handed to them and said, make this thing, make that hammer drop without touching the trigger. You can do whatever you want. Beat it on the edge of my workbench, throw it across the street, have a party. You want a hammer?

[00:54:47] I'll let you hit the hammer with a hammer and see if you can get it to jump the sear. Do whatever you want. Now, fortunately, they didn't call me on my BS and get really crazy with it. I mean, eventually you're going to blow out something and damage something, but the point remains. They take an awful lot of damage. I'm going to tell you, he got a little aggressive with whacking it on the edge of my workbench, and hammer never dropped. And I just point out to him, this gun will not, unless it's a Sig P320.

[00:55:17] Yes, I went there. This gun will not drop the hammer if you don't touch the trigger. That is the exception, and that is why it is the meme. Because, look, every handgun in my safe, of which there are several, will not go off unless you pull the trigger and have the safety turned off. If you have an issue with carrying a loaded gun without a safety being turned on, buy a gun with a safety.

[00:55:45] There is a block of steel between your trigger and the ability for it to let go of the sear or let go of the firing pin, however that gun happens to be designed. I mean, there are, but, you know, this, try to bring us back here a little bit. Your short-term self-defense weapons are going to be your EDC pistol or your EDC knife, more than likely, or your EDC pepper spray. Pepper spray is great.

[00:56:15] Your midterm is probably going to be whatever is your home defense gun that is probably in your master suite. Or your, what is it? What are they called? The main quarters anymore now. They want to be PCA. Yeah. Yeah. They've got a new fancy name for it. It's stupid. It's the master bedroom. I'm not new or fancy, so I'm going to call it the master bedroom. My name is on the goddamn mortgage. I'm the master of the house. That's the way it works. Oh, Jesus Christ.

[00:56:43] Is that why they don't like the word master bedroom? Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly why they don't like it. My wife is also the master of the house. Her name is on the goddamn mortgage too. I couldn't even make my brain go there because it was just like, there's no way. There's no way on earth. Right. But I fucking hate this timeline. Right. Your midterm, your mid, your midterm weapon. Is going to be the one that you have probably in the house, not necessarily on your person,

[00:57:13] but it is going to be around you while you're asleep, while you're in the house. You know, some people like an AR, some people like a shotgun. My state is really gay. Therefore, mine is a 12 gauge semi-auto. Which is not really hurting the NBA's feelings, to be perfectly honest. If you're 30 rounds, then five. Oh, I agree with you. Comma. However, comma. 12 gauge slaps.

[00:57:41] And you and I have talked about this, dude. Like, since I bought my first 12 gauge and really started, like, looking at it as a home defense implement, I'm kind of a fan. I mean, dude. Pretty hard to argue with a one-ounce slug. There is something to be said about throwing nine .30 caliber BBs at somebody all at the same time. I mean, the fact that you can take a Brata A300 and load it with a literal half a freaking pound of ordnance if you ghost load the SOB. Yep.

[00:58:11] And then you can drop half of a pound of ordnance on someone as fast as you can pull the trigger is the most arousing thing I've thought of next to my spouse in a very long time. There are very few vehicles on the road today that would survive that, let alone living, breathing creatures on this continent.

[00:58:35] Yeah, I mean, eight loads of 12 gauge buckshot would drop pretty much anything this side of a Tyrannosaurus Rex on its behind. So, I personally, I understand your aggravation about your politicians. And I share it. And if the day ever comes that they get hard and feathered, I want pictures. I hope so. But in the meantime, 12 gauge, not giving up much.

[00:59:03] Yeah, it's not bad. But in my opinion, it's not ideal. Because I'm going to be honest with you, if it was my wife having to handle the 12 gauge, she's not going to handle it as well as I do. She's not. Until I can cash and carry a tripod mounted, you know, Ma Deuce as a home defense gun, then we're not where I want to be. Correct. So, let's call it what it is. Cash and carry Ma Deuce is the vibe.

[00:59:29] But so communications, like we've talked commo stuff. I see this not short term cell phone. Yeah. I mean, you know, quite frankly, you're very the very first aspect of your communications plan should always be your cell phone because they're kind of reliable most of the time. And they're like crack. I mean, who doesn't have one right next to them right now? Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, my 12 year old can use a cell phone better than most adults can a laptop at this point.

[00:59:59] Like they're ubiquitous. They work reliably, reasonably reliably. Why not? Dick shots if they got armor on. But if they're with 25 yards, they're sending frags your way. Or Wally with C4. Fair. All I'm going to say is. Dick shots are effective. No, no, no.

[01:00:20] See, this is kind of like the military says you can't use a 50 cal on a person because it's an anti material weapon and it's it's it's frowned upon. So you're not shooting at the person's genitalia. You're shooting at their belt buckle. And that's within bounds because as my as my pistol instructor said, the pelvic girdle, because it's awful hard to walk with no pelvis. Yes.

[01:00:47] Kind of like you don't you don't you don't aim at a person with a 50 cal because turning someone into baloney mist is apparently frowned upon at a war. But if you're shooting at an AK-47, they're holding that is apparently within bounds. I mean. Yeah. You audio listeners are missing the full force of my sarcastic face right now because I'm like, like, it's pretty great.

[01:01:10] I was in the military when that BS got thought up and the quote unquote workaround was also thought up. And it's still the stupidest thing on earth to be like, well, you can't shoot at a person with 50 cal. Can I shoot at the rifle they're holding? Yes. Because that's military equipment. I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ. Just makes me want to stab. What was I freaking? It just it makes me want to stab all think tank workers and politicians all at the same time.

[01:01:39] Just skewer them all. But anyway. So, you know, mid midterm comms. Maybe you've got yourself a ham radio. Maybe you've got yourself the GMRS that Phil and his family are using. Maybe it's just an alternate messaging system on your smartphone because maybe the cell system is down, but maybe the Internet isn't. And you can get your your Snapchats, your Google chats, if that's still around. I don't remember.

[01:02:10] Yeah. Your signal chat, that sort of thing. I will say that the one thing that your midterm has to be contingent upon when we're talking about communications is, first of all, an effective way of recharging. Yep. Now, I mean, that that kind of tags back into the whole you should have a generator, you should have a jack or you should have whatever. Well, maybe not necessarily should have a generator because some places don't see power outages lasting longer than battery banks. Battery banks. Yeah. Battery banks are perfect.

[01:02:39] I mean, easy. These GMRS radios charge off USB-C, so I can take any of several, you know, USB recharging banks I have lying around and use any one of those to include the Jacker 1000 with the 200 watts worth of solar panels to recharge all those things. But what I was going to say was the thing that's important is that whatever your mid-tier communication solution is, everyone has to have.

[01:03:05] So, like, if you're going to use a messaging app, that's contingent upon either everybody being on the same Wi-Fi, which is range limited, or everybody being on the same cell tower, which has to have backup power. If that's going to be a radio, everybody has to have the radio. They all have to be charged. You have to have a comp plan in place and yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. And they need to know how to use the equipment. Yes. And that all goes into your communications plan because, like, call it what it is.

[01:03:32] When the minute you get to the point past short-term and you're in a mid-term emergency, you don't necessarily want to have everybody walking around with a little murder screen staring at them and playing on, you know, goofing around on TikTok and playing video games and stuff. That's now a piece of emergency communications gear, which means you want to have a plan that says, okay, we're going to check in, like, every hour, every two hours. We're going to turn the phone off when it's on use to conserve battery. We're going to do something.

[01:04:01] That all goes into the communications plan, and everybody has to know that ahead of time. Absolutely. Because otherwise, it just doesn't work very well. And as far as, like, long-term communications, I mean, frankly, if you have a – I'm doing what I usually do, which is rearranging things in the middle of a show because it just makes sense.

[01:04:23] If your power solution – if you have a long-term power solution, which almost has to be solar or, like, hydrodynamic, something that's constantly replenishing, then it allows you to do things like we can run the ham radios indefinitely or we can run the GMRS radios indefinitely because we can recharge them indefinitely. Yeah, because the power requirements for those things is extremely minimal. It's very easy to set those up on solar, which I really need to get off my ass and do.

[01:04:51] I mean, I'll be honest. My wife and I were having a whole conversation about power the other day, which probably bears talking about right now. Go for it. I had talked to her recently about the fact that, like, when we look at our power situation, you know, we have several USB power banks. I don't have as many as I would like, but there's not a reasonable number that will ever accomplish that. I like having lots of the smaller ones because, you know, like, I've got one sitting right back here, actually. I've got one that's back there in the Jackery box.

[01:05:21] I've got one that lives in my work backpack in case I'm at work and the power goes out and I need to recharge my phone. I have several of them. They're kind of dispersed. I know where they're at. I can go put hands on all if I have to, but they're kind of, like, spread out in different spots. That way, wherever I think I might need one, there's one close by. Yeah. My midterm solution is I've got fuel and I have a 5K generator. Yep.

[01:05:48] And then long term, I have a Jackery 1000. I've got 200 watts worth of solar panels. It's enough to keep your comms gear going. Well, it's certainly, it's, it's frankly, it's enough because I know I've done the, I've done the work. I've tested it. But it's enough to continue to keep our chest freezer from thawing basically indefinitely. Perfect. I would eventually lose what's in the refrigerator. Yeah. But you're going to eat that pretty quick. Yeah. You're going to eat through that.

[01:06:18] And quite frankly, if like tomorrow the lights went out and were never coming back on, I would take everything in the freezer and I'd shove it in the chest freezer, max it out to the top. I'd let what's in the fridge just go. Who cares? That makes sense. We do have a good question here, Phil. I think it's a sarcastic question. Jesus is asking what's more important caliber or training? And I think you and I, yes, are in total agreement on that. I tried to make the comments on that, but YouTube wouldn't let me.

[01:06:48] Training is always and forever more important than caliber because a round on target beats the best round off target any day. Okay. So I have to answer a couple of these. What's, what's Phil drinking? This is a cream soda, cream soda and Tullamore Dew. Oh yeah. Tullamore Dew. That's a good one. Tullamore Dew is good stuff. And it's very affordable. Cream soda and whiskey is freaking divine.

[01:07:13] Because like, I mean, cream soda is very sweet and I don't like very sweet things. But what I like about it is that when you put in a not inconsequential amount of whiskey, you can still taste the whiskey through the cream soda. But it's not even the sweetness. It's that ginger type of taste. It totally knocks so much of the edge off the whiskey that it's, it'll take cheap whiskey and smooth it out. And it'll take smooth it out. There's not much edge to Tullamore Dew anyway. There's really not.

[01:07:41] I mean, at this point, like you could take one of these and just hammer it down if you want to. It's just, it's a, it's nice. It's a vibe. It's dangerously tasty. I am still a CZ guy. I still now carry my, my Canix C100, which is a CZ compact clone. Still have my Scorpion. Still have my PO9.

[01:08:05] I'm actually getting ready to take my PO9 and send it down to Primary Machine in Morgan City, Louisiana to have it milled for a Holosun 507K. Nice. But. Oh, is that the one you oops and ordered the wrong red dot? Yeah. That's when I oops and ordered the wrong red dot. I wanted a five. No, I legitimately meant to order a 507. I ordered a 507K and that would not fit on the mount for my, my Beretta A300. Oh no.

[01:08:34] I accidentally have a red dot for my pistol. Yeah. So instead I have a, so instead I ordered a 507 comp, which has an even bigger window for the shotgun, which by the way. Listen, Linda. Yeah. I'm looking at that one. That, that I'm telling you right here now. Like if you're, if you're a TridgeCon guy, get the freaking RMR. I don't blame you, but that 507 comp is not a bad looking red dot. No, it's not. It's several hundred dollars cheaper than the RMR.

[01:09:04] And it fit on that freaking, that Scaler Works mount for that A300 like it was made for it. It was so, so nice. I've yet to find, you know, as much as I would prefer to buy US made optics when I can, I've yet to find somebody that's been able to demonstrate that hollow suns are not a quality optic. So I will, I will just say I have talked to a couple of guys, not me personally, because I'm not,

[01:09:33] I am not what I would consider to be a high volume shooter. Sure. I have talked to guys who run training schools who have literally shot the glass out of a 407 and a 507. Okay. It's the exact same, it's the exact same optic, just different emitter. Exactly. So they, they have, they've literally not from beating on it, not from abuse, not from drop tests. They have shot 407 and 507 equipped pistols until the glass popped out the front of the red dot.

[01:10:01] I have never heard of that happening with an RMR. No, that's fair. So now, but now here's the flip side of that. Do you think rationally you or I are ever going to put the tens of thousands of rounds through a red dot equipped pistol necessary to make the glass fall out of the front of it? I did shoot the barrel out of my XDM. Fair point.

[01:10:24] But the gentleman that I spoke to has literally like he runs a training class and I don't even remember how many tens of thousands of rounds he estimated he had down this barrel. Over the course of three years. Yeah, I think you're right. I think that's very fair. I mean, I, I don't shoot as much as I used to when I was doing competitions monthly. Because I no longer belong to that range. So I don't get into the competitions for free anymore.

[01:10:51] Uh, I, I don't, I don't see myself shooting my way through a 507 or a 407. I really don't. Raggle fraggle. When am I going to get on the Canik train? The answer is never. Agreed. Never. Uh, I have a coworker that has one of the Canik TP9. I want to say DAs. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I'm going to tell you right now. TP9s, they're all the same.

[01:11:18] That TP9 occasionally will fire if you hit that decocker. Nice. Yeah. Every once in a while, it will fire around when you, when you hit that decocker. Now, I don't know about you, Phil, but a decocker is supposed to decock the pistol, not fire around. That's the trigger's job. But, but hear me out, Nick.

[01:11:47] Did the decocker not lower the hammer? It did. So it did its job. It just did a little too enthusiastically for your liking. Is, is the firing pin block did not actuate. But, but that's not the decocker's fault. It's attached to the decocker, man. It's, it's a core safety function of the firearm. I'm sorry, but I'm not, look, I, I, I get it.

[01:12:15] Not everybody can afford to buy high quality American made firearms or high quality CZ firearms. I get it. There are affordable, safe firearms that you can buy. M and P. Glock 19. Hell, a secondhand Glock 19 is still better than, than a Canik. So are we going to have, what's wrong with the Caniks is sometimes they fire on their own. Just, just like the Sig P P320.

[01:12:43] All, all I'm going to say is between a Canik and a CZ, you are not going to, you are not going to be able to convince me that the Canik is on the same playing field. My dad was looking for a fun gun to get to, because he's a range officer. I wanted to like the TP9. I really wanted to like it, especially at its price point. I don't care. I'm very agnostic when it comes to guns. I like what works well and what's built well.

[01:13:12] But when my dad asked me, don't fire rounds. But it's not the decockers problem. It's the firing pin block is a little lazy. Come on, Nick. Stick with me on this. Still attached to the decocker. I'm not letting that one go. But my dad was back and forth between a Canik or a CZ Shadow 2. Okay. I told him, go get the Shadow 2. He will never regret it. He has not.

[01:13:38] And he has since handled a Canik and came away from it with the conclusion that just this one time his son might have been right. That's a win. Even if part of the reason why I made the suggestion was because I'd really rather inherit a CZ Shadow 2 than a Canik. Just saying. But if he's going to spend my inheritance, he might as well spend it on stuff I want to get eventually. Exactly. Regal's got a point here. Canik is affordable. Yes.

[01:14:07] Canik is affordable. But there are guns that are almost the same price, but far better. There is no level of affordable that overrides it not being. PSA Dagger. It. Do you know your but you're going to say that, but they've been having issues with PSA Daggers. Have they? I have not heard that. If if they have, then I will retract that.

[01:14:31] I have heard a couple of ancillary anecdotals, which you can't hang an entire firearm on. But, you know, all I'm going to say is, is that when I personally buy a firearm, the bare minimum standard is it has to go bang when I want it to and not go bang when I don't want it to. Agreed. And we can argue about accuracy. We can argue about field serviceability. We can argue about longevity.

[01:14:58] Those are all things that are kind of on a spectrum about how much do you want to spend to get those things. But those two things are non-negotiable. It's got to go bang when I want it to and not go bang when I don't. Because if it doesn't do those two things reliably, it ain't it's it doesn't matter how cheap it is. Yeah. You know, it really a quality handgun is not that much more than a cheap handgun right now.

[01:15:24] I mean, the problem is there's too many there's too many cheap firearms out there that are that still meet that standard for you to accept any firearm that doesn't. Yeah, there really are. I mean, I'm looking right now online and you can get an M&P 2.0 for under 600 bucks. Dude, high point. High point. What's a high point now? A couple hundred bucks? 200 bucks? Last I checked, they were like 240. Last I checked, they were like $240.

[01:15:55] And anybody that just wants to go careen through the internet can go look up Iraq Veteran 8888, even though I don't watch the content. Trying to ruin the high point. Well, don't. So let me preface this by saying I don't watch any of his content he's made in the last several years. He's kind of turned into another gun tuber that I don't I don't like his content. But way back in the day when he did some cool stuff, he did him and Barry, who God rest his soul, passed away several years ago.

[01:16:23] I didn't hear the old the old man with the beard halfway down. I didn't hear about that. Oh, yeah. He passed away. That sucks. He was cool. Yeah, he was really cool, dude. Vietnam vet, I want to say. But the two of them got together to see if they could blow up a high point. And quite frankly, the amount of bullcrap they had to go through to get this gun to finally blow up bordered on ridiculous. Like, I won't spoil it for y'all if y'all want to go find it.

[01:16:53] I will go find it and make a playlist and like make it public on our YouTube channel to make it easy for y'all. But just suffice to say, the bullshit they had due to this gun to get it to blow up was ridiculous. I mean, the the the technology they based the high point on is as old as semi-automatic firearms. It's a blowback nine millimeter. It's there's not much to screw up there. There really isn't freaking brick, for God's sakes. I mean, they're they're built like bricks.

[01:17:23] You cannot. You have to try. Obviously, you have to try to kill one. You do. So, hey, you know, are they ergonomic? No, no. You have to pay more for ergonomics. But are they functional? Sure. But I'm going to tell you what. I used to be one of those guys that used to goof on high point a lot because I still will. Why? Why not? I mean, yeah, but I will. I will say the founder of the company, the designer of the high point C9, he built.

[01:17:53] He designed and built exactly what he set out to do. Yeah. But the cheapest you could reliably make a firearm that would go bang every time you asked it to and not go bang if you didn't ask it to. Period. In discussion. He achieved his goal. Mission success. Yeah. I mean, I don't I don't know if I want to commit blasphemy and put him on the same level as like John Moses Browning because the high point C9 is not a finely designed, you know, firearm.

[01:18:21] No, what it what in terms of the spirit of Honda Civic of nine millimeters. To me, it's the spirit of it. Yeah, it is. You know, Samuel Colt three generations prior said that God made all men equal. And and and, you know, like the the cult peacemaker makes, hey, makes everyone equal all over again. And I look at the high point C9 in the same way. It is a firearm built to a price point so that anyone can arm themselves.

[01:18:51] Yeah. Maverick 88 is the same thing. Someone is vacuuming at my house. My dog is flipping a shit. So you might be hearing that as well. But no, no, no. I suddenly started hearing is the shotgun version of the high point. It really is. I mean, it's it is it the most ergonomical? No. Does it work every time? Absolutely. Is it nearly indestructible? I don't know about nearly indestructible, but it's pretty damn hard to ruin.

[01:19:21] I mean, James Reeves friggin did a shotgun burnout on and knocked out 500 rounds without a failure. He did 500 rounds without a failure on a shotgun is that's pretty good. That's pretty good. 500 rounds in a row is. Yeah, pretty good. I mean, so this is our last item and this is totally, totally an homage to you with your conversation last week about how you already had like your exfil routes and everything planned from where you were vacationing.

[01:19:48] But one thing that I don't think it's talked about enough when we talk about having backups is travel routes. Yeah. Travel routes is an important one. So what what I did and what I encourage everyone here to do is when I was when I was younger. I made a point of trying to take a different route to get to a place I was going every time I went there.

[01:20:11] I would turn off a block earlier and see if that neighborhood like, you know, if I could just like hit a left and then a right, get back on the get get back on the same direction I wanted to. Or if maybe there was a canal or a ditch or something that separated those two neighborhoods so I couldn't get through. Maybe I'd have to go all the way to the back and then hook around. I did all this all the time and it wasn't even like a preparedness thing at that point. It really was a I'm just curious. Like I've never been in the area. Where does that go? There is no downside restaurant that way. Yeah.

[01:20:41] Well, if nothing else, I'm sure everyone's had the aggravation of like, oh, I can't go the direction I wanted to because of road construction or because there's a wreck or because there's whatever. There's a there's a truck that has shut the road down because it's backing into a driveway. There's so many good reasons. There were trees down on my primary route into town to get to the game store to play a 40k game. Yeah. And there's so many good reasons to know alternate routes to get everywhere you're going.

[01:21:06] If for no other reason, the fact that when your primary route gets shut down, it's not a pull over on the side of the road, get the map out. It's just say, oh, I know I know exactly what to do. We hang left right here and go, you know, go around. Yep, exactly. And that and I feel like that becomes even more important when you start talking about being out of your home area. Yeah, hugely important. Now, I didn't have my exact route planned when we when we had to evacuate.

[01:21:31] I had a few areas north, south and west of us that I knew I could go to 24 hours a day. And stop there safely for gas. The reason why I didn't have specific routes planned is because there are very few routes in mountainous areas that you can go place to place.

[01:21:54] And I was fairly confident that I would have GPS and my road atlas that I keep in our vehicle whenever we whenever we're going out of town in order to plan a route short term notice. But what I didn't know if I would have was time to find a 24 hour gas station or a 24 hour rest stop.

[01:22:16] Personally, if I'm going on a vacation in an area that I've never been to before, I will try to find a few places within an hour that at any time of day I can go to and get number one, a bathroom. Number two, gas and number three, food. Because if you had to evacuate for whatever reason, great. It's three o'clock in the morning. OK, you're going to drive an hour. You're going to you're going to hit the bathroom when you get there. You're going to gas up your car. What's the next thing you're going to want? Breakfast.

[01:22:47] Especially because on this particular trip, we were traveling with a pregnant family member. And those of you who have had spouses or family members that are pregnant, what do they need? Bathrooms and food. Constantly. Constantly. And rightly so. Rightly so. Well, I mean, when you when you have when you have a baby xenomorph, you know, like crawling, crawling around your bladder, kicking and strangling it all the time, that kind of happens a lot. And leeching off your breakfast. Yeah.

[01:23:16] But I'm pretty sure it's the kick getting kicked in the bladder at four o'clock in the morning that aggravates women, pregnant women the worst. Oh, 100 percent. But there's nothing worse than, you know, trying to, you know, because you're trying to be a normal person and use a bathroom in a bathroom. Yes, we can all pull off into a cornfield and take care of business when business got to be taken care of. But it's far more comfortable to do it in a heated or air conditioned gas station restroom.

[01:23:44] Yeah, I will say that I've I live with two women and I've noticed that they they greatly appreciate the presence of clean bathrooms. Mm hmm. I mean, both of them have peed off the side of the road before, but neither one of them. I haven't. Well, it's never it's never been a highlight of their day. Put it that way. Oh, for sure.

[01:24:05] But, you know, if you're not familiar with the area you're going at the very least, know the major highways that go away from where you're you're at or it's the other major city. At least have an idea of, OK, I need to get on 63 north, 32 west, whatever, because if you can get on that and get out of the immediate area to begin with. Great.

[01:25:01] At least what direction you're going. Yeah, absolutely. And then always in forever. If you're on vacation, keep your car above half a tank of gas. God, yes. The only time I have home. Keep it above a quarter. Please keep it above half. So the only time I don't abide by that is when I'm making long distance trips in my truck. And that's because that Tacoma for everything it has going for it, gas mileage is not really on the list.

[01:25:31] And on a good day, if my hip, if my right foot is not too heavy and we're not loaded too heavy, it'll do about 18 and a half squeak. 19 miles per gallon going downhill. My Ram 1500 gets 19 to with the tunnel cover now. Yeah. You also have probably like what, a 35 gallon gas tank. I have 20. I have a 20 gallon gas tank. 35. Actually, you know what?

[01:25:56] I haven't done my fuel economy numbers with that with that improved fuel economy because it's actually like a 12 percent improvement over not having the tunnel cover. 672 miles to the tank. That's a significant improvement. That's a 72 mile improvement over my previous. So typically I will let that tank get down to about a quarter, but only if I'm going into an area that I know very well. Like a lot of the trips we make, we've made before.

[01:26:24] So like I know there's a gas station I always stop at that's right here. You know what I'm saying? And I will stop right there. But then again, like anytime I've ever been in a situation where like we were, I don't want to say doing a bug out. Oh, quit. 100 gallon accelerator tank. Quit bragging. That would take up my entire bed. No, it wouldn't. It would probably be just about the size of a bed spanning toolbox. Probably just probably a double depth one.

[01:26:52] It would be a bitch on your leaf springs. Didn't I tell you that I have a hundred pounds? I have helper springs already. Well, you should. No, I mean helper springs on top of the factory ones. What are you running daily in that truck? Daily? Nothing. But when I load that. Camping load. Oh, camping load, right? 650, 700 pounds.

[01:27:22] Yeah, all right. You should have bought a half done pickup. So, I mean, there's an argument to be made there, except that the Tacoma really is like the perfect size truck for me 98% of the time. Yeah. And it'll do what I want. My Ram is too big of a pickup for 90% of my daily needs anymore. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, truthfully, it's not that it's not the truck won't eat a half ton in the back. It's that I'm going to be driving like a Cholo, you know, staring up at the ceiling with my butt dragging at that.

[01:27:52] Yeah, it's that's that's what the helper springs are really still steer. It's OK. Well, the helper springs really help out with keeping things level when I'm loaded heavy. Put it that way. Oh, absolutely. And a little bit to comfort. Yeah, it helps a little bit. Yeah, a little bit. So is there anything else we can chuck in here? I mean, like, I don't feel like in this crowd we should have to beat on people too hard about the idea that like two is one, one is none and three is better.

[01:28:20] Because if it's a life, if it's a mission critical, life saving thing, I feel like you should have a backup thing or a minimum backup parts. If it's a comfort thing about was emergency fund. Oh, you're right. We did. Emergency fund is a big one. Look, guys, when it comes to redundancy, there are very few things. And well, I'm American and I think most of our audience is American.

[01:28:49] We've got one Kiwi and I don't know of anybody else. But I can pull the statistics. But last time I look like Zealand as well. Money solves most of our problems very quickly. So a well-funded emergency fund to replace your income in case of job loss or catastrophic damage or failure of your home. Not a bad thing to have.

[01:29:13] So since we're going that direction, short term, I mean, I've always got a little bit of cash in my checking account. I usually don't let my checking account get really, really, you know, built up just because if my checking account gets compromised. It's easy to do with debit cards nowadays. Yeah. But I do keep a fairly healthy liquid cash fund in my savings.

[01:29:37] And that is really mostly targeted to be like, you know, X number of months of my income or my wife's income or both of our income if jobs suddenly became an issue. And which for any of us at any point, it could be. I mean, you work in the public sector, so it's a little less likely. But furloughs are a little more likely. I mean, given what's been going on the last three months in the, you know, the public sector.

[01:30:08] I don't know. There's been a lot of people sent home from work. It can happen. But traditionally speaking, I mean, short term. Maybe keep some cash on hand in the safe enough to get groceries, a couple of tanks of gas, maybe a doctor's visit. You know. You can get a high yield savings accounts. They're fantastic.

[01:30:33] If you have enough surplus to use them and you can park your emergency fund in them, why not earn 5% instead of 0.5? Mm-hmm. And for the same reason, I mean, 401ks, 403bs can be really useful if you have some kind of a ruling that allows you to, like, make an emergency withdrawal and then pay it back. See, like, Roth's good, good, earned gain.

[01:31:00] It's a little more penalty if you have to pull it out for an emergency, but you should have a cushion of emergency fund in a more accessible location. Yeah. Now, I will happily say that, like, I will always be a proponent of having a roll of cash in your house, in your gun safe, in your whatever. And I happily admit that there are scenarios in which cash is not going to be useful. True.

[01:31:28] But those scenarios are so far outside of normal. We might never see them. That is a very good point my wife just brought up in the comments. We ran into a problem on vacation where the gas station we went to had no gas. We were in a small town outside of the tourist town of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and we stopped at a small gas station, and the only thing they had for sale was diesel. Oh, wow. Yeah.

[01:31:56] Yeah, I haven't seen that in a hot minute. So there's that. This is why I don't like getting below half a tank of gas when I'm on vacation, because I don't necessarily know when the next place I'll be able to get gas is. Yeah. In my case, a quarter tank of fuel for that Tacoma is still a good 60, 70, 80 miles. Sure. Or we had my wife's Trailblazer, which is a 12-gallon tank. Oh, Jesus in heaven.

[01:32:26] But it gets like 38 miles to the gallon, so. Well, thank God for that. I know, right? It's fantastic. We went to Gatlinburg and back on like $150 worth of gas. Phenomenal. Yeah. Toyota screwed me on both ends with the 20-gallon gas tank and 19 miles per gallon. Well, put a couple of jerry cans in back. Three jerry cans in back, and you match my truck. I do.

[01:32:55] This is why I told my wife consistently, if we ever have to evacuate for another hurricane, I'm going to have two five-gallon jerry cans with the donkey schlong. You know, with that sitting in the back of the truck. Just because. The metal and plastic ribbed for your gas-flinging amusement. Yes. I have to throw this up because I saw you try to move it out of the way. I didn't try to move it. Short Tacoma is less likely to get stuck than long American trucks. Accurate. Accurate.

[01:33:24] Shorter wheelbase trucks do tend to sink less in the mud. I will say that even above and beyond that, short wheelbase trucks, infinitely more maneuverable. I've driven some long wheelbase trucks in my day. And like. Oh, yeah. You can get in some situations where. You just can't turn that truck around. Yeah. That's what the ground clearance is for. You just mount the curb and call it a day. Yeah. Unless the thing you're trying to move around is as tall as you are.

[01:33:54] Roo. That's when horsepower wins. There is no replacement for displacement. Yeah. So, raggle fraggle. I've thought about throwing an ox tank in the truck. Me too. It's just. It's just something I can't. I cannot get my brain to want to commit the money and the aggravation to. The cost. Ahead of time is so huge compared to just sticking four jerry cans in the back of the bed. Yeah. Now, I will admit. I have given thought to maybe like a small.

[01:34:23] Like a five gallon fuel tank. Mount it on top. Mount it up against the side of the bed. On top of the bed well. And literally just run a. Put a 12 volt fuel pump into it. And put it on a switch. And then run a. Run a hose right into the fuel filler. Hose. And just dump straight in through there. I mean, it would not be a smart system. It would be a. It'd be a. Make sure the tank's below half.

[01:34:51] Because I know that means I got 10 gallons of fuel capacity in the tank. Flip the switch until. You know. The. Until the. The tank starts. Siphon. Until the pump starts sucking air. And that gives me just five extra gallons. But I just. I don't think. I would want to go through the aggravation of a large auxiliary fuel tank in there. When I've already got two five gallon jerry cans. And that. Yeah. And involves pulling over the side of the road. But. Quite frankly. Between my bladder. And my. Blown out hip. Hip.

[01:35:21] I can't sit in that truck. Long enough to drive through 30 gallons of fuel without stopping. It's not going to happen. I can tell you. I have driven through all 600 miles. On my truck. Without getting out. And. And I don't have a blown out hip. But I sure felt like I did when I got out. You got to get out and move man. You just gotta. There. There is something about being an a-hole to your body when you're younger. And it waits till. Right about this side of 40.

[01:35:51] And then it's like. Hey. Remember all those stupid things you did to me? Oh. If it is the consequences of my actions. Yeah. Not. Not having cartilage is fun. Also. Turn 42. I don't know if y'all can hear it. Nope. Okay. If I put the microphone up against my chest. When I rotate my shoulder around. You can just hear a constant grinding noise. The party noise. Yeah.

[01:36:20] Sounds like a coffee can full of old screws and nuts. But anyway. You know. That's what happens when you survive long enough to get old. Is that. Your body starts falling apart. It's fine. You had fun with it while it lasted. That. So many places I could take that joke. And none of them are. None of them are appropriate for younger audiences. It's fine. So yeah. I think that's probably a good place to cap it off, man. I mean. I will always be a proponent of thinking ahead.

[01:36:49] Of having auxiliary systems. Of having plan A and plan B and plan C. And is. The thing of it is. Is that like to me. Preparedness is a mindset. But where you go with that mindset is up to you. Like. Yeah. How much redundancy do you need. So that you feel comfortable. You've got it under control. I personally am very comfortable with a one month redundancy. For most things. Yeah. I mean. That. One month redundancy. That really does cover most people's problems.

[01:37:19] I mean. Quite frankly. It does. You know. If you have hurricane preps for two weeks. That covers a huge amount of problems. The number of times we down here have had a hurricane knock out any area for more than two weeks. Was fairly minimal. And if the. If. If your. If your town is going to be ground zero reset for longer than two weeks. You shouldn't be there right now. You probably should have left. Yeah. Yeah. I mean. Because. Especially with hurricanes. Because you do get the forewarning.

[01:37:49] Most of the time. Yeah. There are some times when you get caught. That happens to the best of us. But. Yeah. Well let me answer this before we sign off. Where's Andrew? Andrew is being an adult. He actually popped into the comment section. Very very early on in the show. He did say he was kidnapped by hippies. Uh. Yeah. But. He blinked one and a half times. So that means some level of distress. Hey from the hippie commune I am stranded at. Managed to snag Wi-Fi.

[01:38:19] From local. Come and go gas station. I mean. I don't know. I kind of think him getting. I kind of think he and he's the type to get. To enjoy being kidnapped by hippies. So. There are worse things. To be kidnapped by. As long as they're like. The armpit shaving hippies. Because the non armpit shaving hippies. Are a little. Hippie. Smelly. Yes. Soap is good. Use it.

[01:38:49] Well let's go ahead and sign this one out. Matter of fact. This podcast is going out the door. Nick. Thanks for the topic. Because I was really at a loss this week. And you dropped this one right into my lap. And maybe by the time we get together. Next time. Time. Maybe I'll be able to talk about. Software defined radio. In a semi intelligent. Format. That'll be interesting for sure. What me talking about anything. Semi intelligently. No. No. Software defined radio. I only know. Like the.

[01:39:19] Cursory top most level. Of how that stuff works. And I. I think it's fascinating. But right now. I do not have the spare brain power. To get into it. Yeah. Well for me. I'm going to. I'm going to dip my toe into it. Like I do most things. Like. I want to be able to talk intelligently about it. And communications. Has just kind of become like. My little hyper. Well it's become my hyper fixation target. For the time being. Good. It's useful.

[01:39:49] Yeah. Until I find something. I got hooked on. Which was. Gimp re Photoshop. For making fantasy maps. For D&D games. I don't. How about hearing. The last. I've spent the last. Three days. Learning how to use. Photo editing software. To make fantasy maps. It's only mildly useful. I don't know why. I needed. A map that is accurate. With plate tectonics. And geomorphology. But I have one. Because. Yes.

[01:40:20] Because my brain. Wouldn't stop. So I had to do it. One of these days. We're going to have to get together. For like a D&D game. It has nothing. It has nothing to do with. This podcast. Or anything. We talk around the podcast. Incorrect. Entertainment and mental health. It's great for both. I thought you were going to say. It entertains nerds. Which also would have been. Accurate for this show. Also true. And if any of you out in the comments. Think you're not nerds. You are.

[01:40:49] Welcome to the club. We have t-shirts. Southern Gals Crafts. Matter of Fakes Podcast. Going out the door. Good night y'all. Good night.