Matter of Facts: The Dark Side

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

[00:00:30] So unfortunately, I am not even going to attempt to do a Darth Vader impression. You know, I have the gravelly voice, but I don't have James Earl Jones tone. So y'all just gonna have to kind of bear with us on this. The title is The Dark Side because we're going to talk about the dark side of preparedness and where I've seen some people go in this lifestyle in this mindset that I wouldn't count as really healthy places. That sound fair, Nick?

[00:00:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know it. I wonder often how much of it is a facade they're putting on, you know, like how some people play up their personality online and whatnot, and how much of it is actually how they are. Because I run into very few people that are that are actually like this in person, but some some of them, yeah, some of me do find in the reels.

[00:01:26] Yeah, but even the ones that are like playing of playing it up and putting on a facade like they fall into this too. Absolutely. Because they're still putting on a facade, not just being who they are. Yeah, but anyway, admin work. If you want to be a patron support the show, you should be those links in the show description. If you like cute cheeky t shirts, merch is also in the show description.

[00:01:47] And if coming to meet me and my wife and a couple other people in person sounds like a good time, Cypress Survivalist, March 8th, 2025 at Found Blue State Park at the Big Pavilion. You have to pay to get in the park. You don't have to pay anything to come see us. You should highly consider it. And if and that is admin work over and done with. And we have Raggle Fraggle and Jeff Jag in the.

[00:02:15] In the chat, when do you get stuck in the LARP? I'm pretty sure we're going to cover that in one of these groups. Yeah, there's definitely there's definitely some LARPers out there. I mean, hey, man, I love LARP as much as the next guy, but sometimes you got to do real. Yeah. But the thing of it is, is that like you can LARP and not take it too seriously.

[00:02:38] You know what I'm saying? Like, it's like the guys that go out on the weekend and they play airsoft and they goof off with their friends like they're not taking it that seriously. It's it's a game. It's supposed to be fun. But then there's those guys that take it way too seriously. Way, way, way too seriously. They're like the ones that show up to a D&D play party, like fully dressed up like their character with a staff. And, you know, so it's like, OK, dude, you'd believe you would believe how rare that actually is.

[00:03:09] But it happens in the D&D community. Yeah, yeah. We get those every once in a while. Some people really get into it, man. And, you know, if that's your thing, that's your thing. Go for it. As long as it's not getting in the way of what you're looking to do. But, you know, those you mentioned the airsoft guys that take it way too seriously. Some of those guys. They actually know a thing or two. And if you were to take a squad, say a squad of those guys that works together all the time and takes it seriously,

[00:03:37] they're probably going to outperform a team of individuals that have not done all the training together. Because the very least coordination is on point. So let me redefine when I say take too seriously. I mean, the ones that like initiate like generational feuds over getting shot with a little plastic. Yeah, yeah. I'm talking about the guys who like they treated like life or death. And it's like, dude, it's not quite on that level. No, it's not. But you can't.

[00:04:06] You can't take that sport seriously enough that it becomes quality training. True, true. But this show is all about the dark side of preparedness because I would count myself as having been like really hardcore in the preparedness community for getting on to about nine years now. You know, we could expand that if you want to expand the definition a little bit. Like a lot of these principles, a lot of this stuff like I kind of picked up on in my youth.

[00:04:35] Nick, I'm sure you kind of bit. You said in the past, like you've been in this mindset pretty much since you became a homeowner when you got home with keys and were like, oh, God, there's certainly a lot of responsibility for me. I was sitting on a floor of a completely empty house with a six pack and one of my buddies trying to figure out how the hell anybody let me do this. I cannot believe a bank just gave me a house. This is terrifying. Right?

[00:05:03] It was incredibly, I mean, at the time it was incredibly simple and it seemed way too easy. But heck, man, sometimes we all pull the wool over the bank's eyes. One of the few times you might actually agree there should have been more controls in place. I mean, probably. Give it my God, given the amount of money they were willing to throw at. How old was I?

[00:05:29] That a 24 year old kid that maybe I was even 23. Yeah, I might have been 23. But yeah, they they were willing to qualify me for like, good God, like four times what I make in a year in a mortgage. It was insane. There's no way I would have been able to afford that and eat. Oh, let's see here. My wife and I bought this house when I was 26. Hmm.

[00:05:56] And bear in mind that, you know, we got kind of a delayed start because I had some things to do overseas before I could come home and finish my education and start my career. And, you know, things anyway, extracurricular activities, extended vacations. There you go. But. All right. So I guess we'll just take these in order. Sure. These were not in any particular order. I just pretty much did what I normally do and said squirrel and start writing stuff down as it came to me. And that is the best organization.

[00:06:28] But let's start with the ones that like the ones I laugh at the hardest, the marauders. These are these are the people in the preparedness community that say, I don't have to prep. I'll just come take your stuff. Yeah, that's a mindset. Oh, it's a mindset. I don't know if it's a good plan. I mean, I kind of hear the that's a bold strategy. Let's see if it works out for me.

[00:06:52] Let's see if it works out for him in the back of my head whenever I hear that, because like, you know, the things that I tend to look at is, is that most of the time when you get onto a two way range and you start initiating hostilities with another person or another person initiates hostilities with you that there's there's there's high velocity left flying in both directions. So the chance of you getting injured is never zero. Correct. And the chance of you being critically injured is never zero.

[00:07:19] And the chance of you having medical care in an SHTF situation is pretty close to zero. So it seems to me like the smart money would be stay my little Caucasian behind at home and not go fooling with anybody else trying to take their stuff. Do you remember the doomsday prepper episode?

[00:07:38] The guy had a bunker full of automatic weapons who was a multi time convicted felon with weapons charges who who admitted that his plan was to just take everything from everyone else. So, Nick, let's start this conversation off by saying that I have only watched a tiny, tiny little fraction of doomsday preppers. And I lament the fact that the show ever existed because it portrayed this entire community in an awful way. I think that let's set expectations here.

[00:08:06] I think that that so the guy essentially was running drills with his family, jumping in and out of vehicles, doing mobile gun work and stuff like that. Cool, fun guy training. Yep. Jump out of the back of a pickup truck, engage targets, engage targets, jump into the back of a pickup truck, shoot out of the back of a moving pickup truck. Well, a lot of the guns he showed off. Some of them had had I think it was switches on them. Some of them were ARs with three holes and you could see them in the video that Nat Geo posted.

[00:08:38] He was a if memory serves, he was a convicted, violent felon and his parole officer happened to see it. Nice. Nice. So first first thing he did was he admitted that he wanted to kill a bunch of people if things ever went wrong. Second thing he did was he showed that he had the tools to kill a bunch of people and the motivation to kill a bunch of people. If something like that were to happen and he showed off. Was he married? Yeah, he was married with kids. Oh, Jesus Christ. Married with kids.

[00:09:07] And he had his kids in on it, too. So first and foremost, ladies out there, and this goes for gentlemen, too. Please stop procreating with crazy people. Just knock that off. Stop it. Stop it. Second of all, boys stop procreating with crazy people. Like if we just stop procreating with crazy people, then there won't be any crazy people in a generation or two. Because trust me, you cannot fix him. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:38] And, you know, third, if you're going to violate multiple federal laws, especially as a known felon, don't do it on national television. Like, oh, really? Where's your sense of adventure? I mean, come on. I think it just the mindset. Number one shows off the kind of level of intelligence we're dealing with here. Because, Phil, you're a military guy. You know this better than I do.

[00:10:02] What is the offensive versus defensive ratio that is required to take a prepared entrenched position? Uh, it's commonly accepted that you need twice as many as the entrance position, although that has been debated by some people. But it's at least two to one bare minimum. Yeah. Two to one bare minimum, assuming you have the logistical capacity of the U.S. military. Yeah.

[00:10:31] Which, number one, you're not going to. And assuming that you have a level of arms that are on par with your assailants. Like, if they have... Near-peer adversaries. If they have half as many people, but they have a huge technological advantage or, you know, not the supplies in this case, but like air power or something like that. Or a range advantage. So, the movie 13 Hours, the... That depicts the events in Benghazi.

[00:10:57] That is a perfect analogy for what it looks like to try to take an entrance position that has every advantage in the book. Like, if they have spy satellites, if they have, you know, night vision, if they have long-range weapons, you are going to expend a whole bunch of skinnies trying to get at them. Have fun with that. You know, I just...

[00:11:19] And, you know, realistically, so that three to one is assuming that you're probably going to lose, or even two to one, you're probably going to lose some of your people every time you do one of these engagements. You're not always going to have 100% success rate. Which, sure, yeah, that applies to the defenders too. But, as a marauding group, you're not making more friends. In fact, you're going to be whittling through your friends at an accelerating pace.

[00:11:46] Because the average family home is, what, like three and a half people right now? So, okay. Yeah. Two adults minimum. Let's assume this is America here. One in, what is it, one in four households or one in every three households has a firearm that the government knows about. I'm betting it's closer to one in two. I love how you phrased that. Well, let's be realistic here.

[00:12:10] How many families have granddad's shotgun that's been sitting in a closet for 60 years? And it was sitting in granddad's closet for 20 or 30 years before that. I mean, you know, you're really looking at, okay, Joe says it's probably a three to one advantage. Yeah.

[00:12:32] I mean, two to one is like the absolute barest possible minimum to even think about having a remote chance of success. But what it really, I guess what it really boils down to is like, you know, the movie Wyatt Earp jumps out at me because there's a line in there where, you know, like the cowboy gangs get ready to rush Wyatt Earp. And by the way, Kurt Russell, best freaking person to be cast in that role. Fantastic. You could ever think of that.

[00:13:02] No, it wasn't Wyatt Earp. That was Tombstone. But anyway. Oh yeah, you're right. And Kurt Russell's character draws down on the one in the front, puts the revolver right between his eyes and says, your voice might get me in a rush, but not before I turn your head into a canoe. Right. And that's the thing you have to be, you have to start thinking about when you make Marauding. Your go-to plan is how many times are you going to roll this die before you come up nat one and wind up smoked?

[00:13:30] Or before you happen to come up upon, it's not just the one house, but it's an organized neighborhood or even a semi-organized neighborhood. Or consider the fact that these types of groups tend to attract people of a certain moral flexibility and you might just get smoked by one of your own guys.

[00:13:48] It's like, to me, the whole idea of I'm going to run around and take people's stuff in SHTF is probably one of the more boneheaded ideas for a great variety of reasons. And you notice I haven't even brought up morality in all this. This is just strategic, tactical. This is a dumb way to try to get your needs met. Right. You know, I agree. Completely immoral way to do things. No question.

[00:14:14] But it's also from a practical level, completely not feasible in the long term. You may help you out temporarily, but it's going to end up costing you more in the long run. Yes, Joe, that's Tombstone. I call it myself. You know, the same goes for looters. Yeah. Well, I mean, all looting is is marauding. It's just it is. It's just marauding with less. Right.

[00:14:41] It's just marauding with less violence on the front end. Yeah. So this is another one. And so in the name of full disclosure, my wife, my wife and daughter enjoy a little bit of trash TV. And they were watching me and my wife, too. They were watching the show Hoarders the other the other day. I have to leave the room when when that get when they start watching that, because I get so.

[00:15:07] So anxious and so frustrated watching these people like, you know, like they tunnel through their homes and all their junk like rats. And it just it stresses me out. I mean, anybody that's looking behind me right now, I think it's right. I think that's hilarious because I'm in my office and I've got like a whole equipment rack behind me. But like, trust me when I tell you that there is a certain amount of organization to this organized chaos that I call my home. Don't look at my garage right now. I need to do some cleanup in there. Maybe they'll have this weekend.

[00:15:37] It'll happen. But in any case, no, it's going to happen right now, unfortunately, because it's been it's. So my problem is like certain areas of my home turn into workspaces and then the work they they stay cluttered until that job gets done. And that's kind of where my garage is. But anyway, but hoarders. So I've seen more than one person in the spirit of that whole two is one. One is none. Buy cheap, stack it deep. Like there's merit to that.

[00:16:06] There is. But I've seen but I've seen more than one person take that to such an unhealthy degree that they literally they like their homes are overtaken with this idea of I have to have. And it gets to the point where they're living. They literally are living in a bunker because they're just surrounded by their reps.

[00:16:26] And it just it gets to a point where like I'm I am very particular about the fact that like, yes, we we in this family, we are we're we're in the preparedness community. But we're also normal people like my daughter has friends over to sleep over. We have friends in the house like we don't live in a bunker. We don't I don't have a machine gun pointed at the front door like there has to be a balance point between.

[00:16:55] Normal, big N in air quotes, big normal and preparedness. And I just I've seen I've seen people go down this road where like their whole home, their entire living space is overtaken to such a degree that like the home isn't a home anymore. It is absolutely living in an equipment shed, you know, and that's that's an excellent segue into the next one. I moved up a little bit here. Prepping as a mask for anxiety and mental illness. Not is really kind of this.

[00:17:24] From what I understand of hoarding, that's kind of the what the feeling I get from people. And we've watched those shows on occasion. And man, you do see some people on those shows talking about how they're well, but we'll need this when such and such happens or when whatever happens. And you saw that a lot with people from the Great Depression, the Great Depression era folks when we were cleaning out their houses as they all died off and are continuing to die off.

[00:17:51] They have some of the wildest shit stacked away and piled up in the corners of rooms and in the backs of closets. And eventually it's it starts to no longer be helpful and it becomes a hindrance on your life. Yeah. And that's the point where you need to reevaluate and take a step. And if you need it, get some therapy. I mean, some of these problems is you can't work through on your own. Yeah.

[00:18:21] And and where when I put this up or I think you're actually one that originally recommended or originally put this in the basket. And what I was thinking of was, you know, like I'll be the first to admit that preppers kind of have a reputation. Some of it, some of some people have caused it to be deserved, which annoys me of being paranoid, of being very anxious or being very worried over things.

[00:18:47] And constantly obsessing over where's the next threat coming from. And I feel that there there is a group out there that use preparedness and prepping as a mask to cut to justify their anxiety. Like they can point to they can point to very real threats and say, you see, that's why I do this. Yeah.

[00:19:10] And then they also point to then they also point to things that are like a point zero, zero, zero, zero, one percent chance of happening. And they also use that as a justification for their preparedness. And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if that works. You know, like I think that I think that there's a risk because my point of view has always been with preparedness because I've had people levy this at me and at the community is like, oh, you're always scared of stuff. And I'm like, no, no, no, no.

[00:19:40] To you, I identify a thing that has a possibility of affecting my family. I have put some kind of a mitigation strategy together, employed it, and I am no longer concerned about it. Exactly. Because it's dealt it's dealt with. Right. If something happens, if something happens, it causes plan A to fall apart. We rolled plan B. There's no anxiety. There's no worry. There's no oh, my God, what do we do? It's just push the button, go to plan B and move. Yep.

[00:20:09] So it's the opposite of, oh, I prepare because I'm anxious. It's like, no, no, no. I prepare. Therefore, there's no reason to be anxious. There's no reason to worry. The problem has the problem hasn't been solved, but it's already been mitigated. Exactly. In my opinion, and this is just my opinion, preparedness shouldn't be a shouldn't be a response to anxiety.

[00:20:35] It should be a forward thinking prevention of anxiety. Yesterday came home from work. Went to take a shower. Shower drain was plugged up. Okay. Happens. Shit goes down the shower drain. Sometimes they plug up. I live with two girls. Tell me about it. I know the hair. It's everywhere. Don't wash your dog in the shower. It's a terrible idea. So finished up my shower, popped downstairs, grabbed a couple of my plumbing tools.

[00:21:05] I happen to have one of those drain snakes that you can run down for like 25 feet. They're like 35 bucks at your local hardware store. You'll use it maybe once every five years. But instead of having to call a plumber and spend $500 or $1,000 or whatever it would be for a call out after business hours on a weekday, I was able to solve the problem in 15 minutes. And, you know, notice the problem. All right. Well, that kind of sucks. I didn't want to do that this afternoon.

[00:21:34] Guess I'm going to have dinner ready a little bit late. Problem solved. There was no anxiety around that problem. You know, and the same can be said for small hurricanes down by you guys when it's not serious enough for you to evacuate. It's okay. Great. It's going to suck for a couple of days, but we have food. We have water. We have air conditioning. Yep.

[00:21:58] So these next two, I kind of almost wish I had to put them in the same slide, but we'll bounce back and forth. I think to some extent they can they can kind of dovetail into each other. They can. So I guess let's talk about let's just do this one first. The black pill. For the benefit of people who are not familiar, white pill is like everything is fine. Everything is great, you know, but it's not like everything is fine. Like the meme of the dog that's in the house is on fire.

[00:22:28] Everything. Everything is actually fine and getting better. Yeah, everything's fine. It's optimism. Black pill is the exact opposite. So I've seen people in the preparedness world eventually get to the point because of actually. Two slides from now is another thing I think leads to this, but they end it leads to the next one to anyway. I should have put all three of these together. I suck as a host. Yeah, we can always talk about them as we talk about them.

[00:22:57] But I've seen people get to the point in preparedness journey that eventually they become so overwhelmed with the next crisis, the next threat, the next thing, or they become so overwhelmed with I'm at zero. I have to get to 100. I'm never going to get there. And they just quit. Or they stop taking care of immediate life needs and defer all of that, assuming that the world is going to end.

[00:23:27] Yeah, it's another great point. But it literally ignore their health, their physical health, their mental health. They ignore their financial health and put off retirement. Worse than put off retirement. I have known a person who was literally trying to advocate that I don't put money into a 401k because, you know, we're not going to be alive by the time it gets here.

[00:23:52] And I just kind of look at them with this look on my face like, what happens if we do? Do I need to start checking for a note? All I'm saying, Nick, is like, I don't think that working until noon on the day I die and dying on the Walmart floor is an appropriate retirement plan. But I do know people that like that is that that becomes their mindset at a certain point.

[00:24:20] It is everything is broken. There is no point. And they quit. The future will never get here. Yeah. Yeah. They can quit in a variety of ways. It's either I am going to do nothing but prep because the world's going to go to hell in a handbasket before we, you know, in the extremely near future. Or they quit and they say the world's going to go to hell in a handbasket. I can do nothing about it. So I'm just going to quit.

[00:24:46] I'm just going to like I've seen this a lot recently with people doing what was it? It was a phenomena where people mostly my age and younger, which really depresses the hell out of me. They were like loading up credit cards and spending money and putting nothing in retirement because their point of view was like houses are unaffordable. Everything's going up in price. I might as well have like five, ten years of fun. Right. And then it's never going to pay off in the end anyway.

[00:25:15] So why not just enjoy it now while I'm young and have fun? Yeah. You see that spending. Yeah. Trauma spending. That's what they were calling it. Okay. I could see that. And I and I see this a lot the same way because there are people that say, well, I'm just I'm just going to, you know, pour thing into my preps or or they say I'm not going to prepare at all because there's no point. Like it can't be done. Well, I mean, it can be, but it's not useful to do so. Yeah.

[00:25:45] And the other. Go ahead. No, go ahead. I was going to say that's this leads you right to this can lead you right to burnout, too. You know, where you go so hard and so fast into it that you just you just fry your brain for a while and you you abandon it. And I do.

[00:26:03] I've I've known a handful of people in the preparedness community that they get burnout and it's kind of hard to blame them because, you know, once you've been doing this for a length of time and Stuart, I can hear you right now screaming from the comment section. I'll address you tomorrow when you hear this.

[00:26:28] If you don't know who Stuart is, you should be a patron and then you can introduce yourself to him and he'll scream at you, too, like he does. You, too, can be corrected by Stuart with essays. And I do mean essays. Yeah. And the only the only reason I can't even get upset with the old jerk, though, because he's so frickin knowledgeable. He's genuinely nice. He does want a nice person. He really does. Yeah, he's doing it. He's doing it out of the goodness of his heart to try and help you better yourself. That's really where he's coming from. But, you know, yeah, I burn out.

[00:26:58] A lot of that burnout can come from the people you surround yourself with. That seems reasonable. I also think it becomes I also think sometimes it's a matter of perspective, because like if you if you view preparedness the way I do, which is like, you know, it's a lifelong journey. There is no such thing as, quote unquote, prepared enough.

[00:27:25] And this is why I say Stuart's going to scream because like Stuart has been in the preparedness community since he was a teenager, basically. And he's not too far away from retirement age at this point. So he's been doing this longer than some of us have been alive, which is why we tolerate being yelled at by him frequently, because he's usually right. It's usually worth being yelled at. Well, it's not that he's wrong. We just don't like to admit that he's right. Correct. But anyway.

[00:27:53] But it's one of those things where it's like there are people who think I have enough. I can just maintain this. I can quit. And I don't agree with that, but it's kind of hard to blame a person for thinking that because like you you've you've your mitigation strategy is X. You've achieved it. You're maintaining it. I don't think you're making the right. I don't think that's the right call, but at least you're thinking this through.

[00:28:18] But I've also seen people who like just because they've been doing it for so many years and let's call it what it is, the financial and the time sacrifices start to pile up at a certain point. And some people just get tired of dealing with it. And eventually they say, you know what? I'd really like to have a boat. I'd really like to go on a European vacation. I would really love to let all this nonsense go and go do what everybody else is doing because it looks like more fun than what I'm doing.

[00:28:47] This is why I argue for balance in all things. You know, not moderation, balance. You need to live your life in such a way that you do get enjoyment out of your life and you are taking care of yourself now and in the future. Yeah, you can also kind of. Yeah. It also goes back to the thing I was saying earlier about like we we we look like normal people on the surface.

[00:29:15] Like, you know, we have we have friends of ours come over to our house and I don't have AR-15s and M60s and everything hanging up on the walls. Like, you know, we look normal on the face at least. But it's just the idea that like we're trying to have some balance. I mean, like look at the way we deal with my daughter. You know, she has a cell phone. She talks to her friends. She gets on. She watches whatever in the world she's into right now on Netflix. I think Arcane was her thing most recently, although she did start binging another series.

[00:29:45] But, you know, like it's just one of those situations where it's like we don't I don't have my daughter in here spending two hours a night strapping tourniquets onto her legs. Like there's got to be a point at which I am not willing to complete. I'm not willing to trade 100 percent of a normal upbringing for my child for this lifestyle. If she decides as an adult to commit to this, that's fine. But I'm not going to put her on a pay.

[00:30:13] I'm not going to try to force her to it because it's not my place. My place is to say if you did. I mean, what's the first thing that especially because your daughter is going to be a teenager here? What's the first thing a teenager does when you try to force them into anything? Rebellion. They run the other way as fast as humanly possible. Oh, Jeff, you are right on target. It is.

[00:30:36] Jeff Jag just said preps are just a line item in a budget like a bill, just like a bill, just like retirement, just like savings, just like every other freaking thing. Like, you know, that's just the truth of the matter is that preparedness is a line item. And it's also not just a line item in a fiscal budget, but in a time budget. Like if you if you try to dedicate 100 percent of your available time to this kind of stuff, it will drive you freaking crazy and it'll probably get you smacked by your spouse.

[00:31:06] More than likely. I mean, anything you try to devote 100 percent of your time to is eventually going to run in. You're going to run into a wall. You can never you can never devote 100 percent of yourself to anything. It just doesn't work. You know, one of the things that I've noticed that tends to lead to burnout in people is exactly what you had on the next slide here. Crisis trading. So I when I was first getting into this community, I was speaking with a gentleman.

[00:31:33] Not going to name him, not going to discuss his past military veteran like yourself. That's that's all I'm going to say. Older guy. He was very much into we have X number of months and it come out to like three years. OK, this was back when I was 23, 34 now he has been saying we have three years. We have three years. We have three years. We have three years.

[00:32:01] We have three years for 11 years or 11 years. And I would joke with him every once in a while that, man, I must have survived like three apocalypses by accident by now. And he'd get kind of salty with me. But it was either this president's going to end the country. This congressperson is going to do this, that or the other thing. There's a there's going to be a world ending pandemic that comes out of Botswana or whatever. And he always it was it was never.

[00:32:31] Yeah, we were looking like we're probably gonna have some nasty weather this fall and this winter. Probably gonna have a blizzard. You know, maybe it's nice storm. Economy's looking rough. Maybe we should all, you know, stack up a little extra in our in our retirement account or our savings account. It was always world ending event after world ending event. And I had to distance myself from him for my own mental health because it was like, dude. If it three years, well, that's you know, what am I going to do?

[00:32:59] I don't have a million dollars to spend on this. And you're telling me that what I'm doing is worthless because I'm not doing enough fast enough. Yeah. But, you know, this sounds very much like the guy I met at prepper camp who proclaimed quite loudly and repeatedly that if you were not growing your own food today on 20 acres right now. Mm hmm. Like if you were not prepared to live like little house on the prairie, you might as well quit prepping.

[00:33:29] Just give it up. And. OK. Yeah. Yeah. You've just eliminated ninety nine percent of preppers that I know. Yeah. Well, he was also talking very loudly about that. You had to have a year of food saved up to, you know, for the rapture, to which I kind of replied. I'm like. But if you believe in the rapture, then shouldn't you be getting right with God so that you don't have to survive for that year afterwards?

[00:33:56] Because like you've already gone up north unless he knows something about himself that you don't. Well, unless he's just trying to help the poor, dumb heathens that are going to be left behind. I don't know. I didn't get I didn't talk to him too much because. Yeah. Something about that whole mental my way or something about that whole do it my way or don't bother kind of rub me the wrong way. Yeah. It's you know, it's like they say there's more than one way to skin a cat. Right.

[00:34:22] You know, there's a million ways to do anything correct and probably ten times as many ways to do it wrong. But still, there's never just one way. Yeah. But crisis trading is something I see people fall into. And it kind of goes with that whole anxiety, mental illness thing we talked about earlier, because like it. It gets to be very chicken little at a certain point when every time you meet this person, it's a new. It's a brand new thing.

[00:34:50] And it's usually the brand new thing that the TV is talking about, if you notice. Yes. Yes, it is. The TV is talking about or the you or pick your flavor of YouTube content creator catastrophist because there's plenty of those out there. Catastrophist. Catastrophists. I could not have cooked that word up if I'd have tried. Oh, that's a real word, too. Really? Yeah. Catastrophist. Catastrophist. Yeah. I'm pretty sure it is. I have an extensive vocabulary. That's a new one for me. Yeah. I think.

[00:35:19] But yeah, I mean, I just, I think crisis trading is really, first of all, I think it's unhealthy as hell. Like there's, there's a reason why they talk about the effects of constant stress and constant anxiety and how, what absolute hell it is on the body and your heart and your brain and everything else. It shortens your lifespan faster than smoking. Yeah.

[00:35:44] And I just don't, not only that, but like, I, I've always kind of skewed this idea that like, I think, I think it can be helpful when a person initially joins the preparedness world to think through, like, what am I preparing for? Like, you know, that goes to like Sam Culper's area study that goes to a catastrophist as a person who destroys the theory of catastrophism. Who supports the theory of catastrophism. Oh.

[00:36:14] Which is the idea that the earth's surface and species have been shaped by sudden violent events. Thank you, Morgan Hurd. I, um, I know words, big ones. Yeah. It's just, but you know how that is when you have like a really extensive vocabulary, you know, a lot of words, someone drops a brand new one on you and it's like, it's fun. It's exciting. I got a new one. I just had the, I just had the metal gear solid on the exclamation point pop up over my head for any of y'all that are of that generation. Nice.

[00:36:42] I even heard the noise in my head. That's fantastic. But yeah, I just, I think, I think crisis trading is just, I think it's damaging and I think it's not just damaging to the individual. I think it's really bad for the community because it, it, it builds the expectation that when the current crisis has passed, we have to find another crisis to justify the preparedness. When my point of view, you know, to your point earlier where you were talking about the guy

[00:37:12] you knew who was like, the world's going to end in three years, but he wasn't worried about the winter storm that was going to hit next week. 36 months was always his, was always his deal. We've got 36 months to, to establish a compound of at least a thousand acres. And I guess to my point, like, I think to myself, I'm like, you know, there's, there's a whole bunch of stuff that's going to pop off in the next 36 months that has nothing to do with the end of the world.

[00:37:36] You know, I, there's no end of the things that could, you know, in the next 36 months, we, this family are probably going to get schwacked with at least one major hurricane, just playing the odds. Oh yeah. And probably at least two minor ones. Yeah. Um, we are almost certainly going to have to dip into like our emergency savings two, three times over the next 36 months, you know, something, some, some appliance will misbehave.

[00:38:06] Something will start clicking something, something will do something unpleasant and will require a sudden injection of money to make it shut up and behave itself. But there's all these things that are very likely almost a sure thing that we should be preparing for before we start preparing for like Y2K in the end of the world and COVID 2.0 and everything else. It's like, you know, but people get stuck on these black Swan events, like the big one.

[00:38:35] And then they, which by definition you cannot. Yeah. I know that. I know that. Don't, you know, we know that. Don't try to convince them of that though. Yeah. There are some people you're never going to convince anything, man. All right. So now let's talk about the overly confident and then that's going to bleed very, very quickly into the next one. Somebody out there is going to get their feelings hurt.

[00:39:03] And the best thing I can tell you is sit down and shut up for five seconds. Just hear me out. Just listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, Lindo. So I like my odds against most things that would threaten my family because we have done a lot of thinking ahead, a lot of putting plans in place. Comma, however, comma.

[00:39:29] Um, you know, like we had this conversation when hurricane Ida put my family on notice. We didn't stay here because I was just so excited about getting hit with a cat for hurricane that I just was about to pee my pants. We made a judgment call based on the storm track and then the effing thing changed tracks very violently when it made landfall. And we thought we were far enough inland to be pretty well protected from it.

[00:39:58] And we were wrong. And we wound up getting 130 plus mile an hour winds, which was a fair bit hotter than we were expecting. Had I known then what I know now, if my crystal ball had not been in the shop and had been operating within normal parameters at the time, my family wouldn't have been here. We'd have packed our crap and we'd have left. Take the cats and the dog, take a couple of days worth of stuff.

[00:40:25] We'd have blown out of here because I just because I can sustain my family through a really bad time doesn't mean I want to be here for the really bad time. Why take the risk? Why take the risk? We had two, we had two trees hit the house. It was worse. And it could have been way worse. Yeah. Could have been worse. You guys were very fortunate. You know, as much as it sucked, you were very fortunate. Yeah.

[00:40:52] And I think because of the level of preparedness we maintained, we were well equipped to deal with the problem we had. But it still would have been better to not be here for it to happen. Absolutely. But I see people who they get this in their head like, I can do, I can do it. I can handle it. Like I'm going to charge headfirst into danger. And they get this in their head that because they're in this community that they have to prove what they're capable of weathering.

[00:41:21] And my answer to that is always, always, always. I can't stomach the idea of intentionally inserting my family in a harm's way. It is one thing. I agree. If harm comes to us and we make, we either respond to it or we make a calculated decision based on our ability to weather the danger here where we have all of our preps or we get out of its way. That's one situation.

[00:41:48] But to actively insert myself and my wife and daughter into harm's way is just not a smart idea to make. But I see people make that. I see people start making that calculus. Like you can see the crazy dancing in their eyes when they see this opportunity to like punch their prepper card and show everybody how badass they are. And I'm just like, I just, that worries me. You saw it with prepper camp last year. Yeah.

[00:42:15] There were people that said online and to other people, they were going to stay to quote, test their preps. You're going to stand in the path of a hurricane to test your preps. There are better ways of testing things in a fail safe environment. Yeah. Well, I mean, the first thing I tell most people whenever they come to me, because we're also avid campers.

[00:42:44] And the first thing I tell everybody when they say, I want to go camping for the first time, what do you recommend? I tell them state park, state park within walking distance of the bathrooms and go with someone who goes camping a lot. Because I promise you the first time you go do this and like the rubber meets the road, you're going to break a tent pole or your, your brand new gas stove. Isn't going to work. Something's going to go wrong.

[00:43:12] And you don't want the thing that goes wrong to ruin your weekend. We're not talking about life or death because at the end of the day, you go a freak, you check into a hotel if it gets that bad. But the point is you don't, you know, something's going to go wrong. Like somebody told me a long time ago and it stuck with me for years. NASA never had a single space mission without one fault. So let's stop and do some math here.

[00:43:39] Every single thing we ever shot into space from the first satellite to man on the moon, there was one fault. Every single mission. You just hoped it wasn't Apollo 13. You wanted the fault to happen on the ground and be a little bitty problem. And we get over the hump and we get the rest of the mission done. But NASA, all those freaking nerds couldn't make one mission go off without one problem. So you and me are going to screw something up. Yeah.

[00:44:08] I'm a, I like to think I'm a fairly, you know, at least averagely intelligent guy, but I don't hold a cat, a candle to room full of NASA scientists. And actual rocket scientists. Admittedly doing something very, very complex, but the point remains. Oh, for sure. So, so, so is survival in an ad in adverse conditions. But they have all of the best minds that the federal government can afford, I guess.

[00:44:37] Working on the problem and they still run into snags. Yeah. So I guess like that, that's, that's one group I see in the preparedness community that like. I really, really hope that their, their, their exuberance gets a little bit of a check. I really hope it's not an aggressive one though, because like in the middle of a bad situation is a really bad time to find out that something you thought you had nailed down. Didn't work the way you planned on it working.

[00:45:07] You know, look at all the people that you see practicing those really obscure fire building techniques, fire bows and stuff like that. You know what? Every single one of the people that's seriously good at those also has with them all the time. A cigar torch. Yeah. Yeah. A cigar torch. A cigar. Because it's so much better. It's so much faster.

[00:45:32] So I've lost touch with him over the years, but years and years ago, I, we had a listener and he was a guy I talked to a handful of times. And he taught a, um, primitive survival school over on the East coast. Prior army. Sure. Sure. And one of the things he taught was like primitive survival one Oh one, how to build a fire. And he had people out there rubbing sticks together and bow drills and the whole nine yards using barrel rods.

[00:45:59] And at the end of that day, you know what he would always do after he had let all these students like break their freaking backs and rip their hands open for an hour trying to start these freaking fires. And 75% of them couldn't get a fire lit with a bow drill. Cause it's not exactly easy. No. Ooh. He would walk over to every one of those birds nests and light it with a big out of his pocket.

[00:46:21] And that was the, that was the conclusion of that class was if you are serious about survival, every one of you better go out into the woods with a big in your pocket. Cause knowing how to do this is cool, but having a big is a lot better. And he did the exact same energy it saves.

[00:46:39] And he did the exact same thing with the, um, he did a class on, um, shelter building where you literally like you go out in the woods with nothing and you build a shelter out of like sticks and pine straw and stuff like that. And after he would get through doing all that, he would pull out of this little baggy hip on his back. He'd pull out a tarp and say, every one of you should have brought one of these with you.

[00:47:03] And that was, that was the thing he constantly like pounding there by his head was knowing these primitive survival skills is helpful. It's useful, but you are, you would be much better served by carrying a tool that does the job. Like this is a, this is a safety net underneath the tool you should have brought with you so that in a worst case scenario, you can make do with what you have, but you should, this should not be your primary.

[00:47:31] I'm going to go out in the woods and live like a caveman. Like that's not the point. Yeah. You see that in defensive circles too. You know, the guy that goes to the range shoots once a year, I'll be fine. Defending myself has never shot under stressful conditions, not even a timer and thinks that they're going to be able to perform as well as they do shooting bullseye static on a range with no time constraints.

[00:47:57] Would this also be the guy that was like a soldier or Marine 30 years ago that thinks that he's still, you know, 13% body fat and can, you see it a lot. I mean, look, everybody gets older. We all do. Thanks, Nick. I like being reminded of that fact, but yes. Hey man, I get, I'm getting older too. Like I'm not seeing the negative side effects quite so fast, but like, dude, I gotta wear glasses all the time now. Didn't have to when I was a teenager.

[00:48:27] A couple more years. I'll be able to save money on haircuts at the rate I'm going. There you go. Yeah. I'm not far behind you. Yeah. But look, it's, we all need to check our confidence levels back in with reality every now and then. Yeah. And I put this one in here and I feel like this might just be another way of saying the overly confident, the thrill seeker, you know? I don't know. Maybe that's the exact same thing as the overly confident.

[00:48:57] I don't know. I don't know. Because there are people that while they, there are people that admit that they don't know if they have the capability to do something and then go attempt to do it anyway. So they, they try to go play in the circus with no safety net. Correct. You see it every once in a while. Like the, what was the name of the guy that went off to live in Alaska that died in the bus? shoot I don't know I wanted to go try and live off the land

[00:49:26] they made a movie about it recently I'll find out and I'll text you but essentially what the guy did was he read a bunch of survival manuals you know wanted to go try and try his hand at living like a mountain man out in the wilderness and he died because he did not have the knowledge or experience yes Joe is correct dumbass also bear bait no he didn't die by bear I believe he starved to death

[00:49:56] starved to death combined with poisonous plant toxicity I think is what they figured was his cause of death combined with illness that's a wonderful way to go yeah apparently there are oh my wife is saying that it's called alone that may be what the movie was called I can't I'm trying to think of the guy's name doesn't doesn't matter we'll find out later and I'll I'll drop it in one of our next shows there are my there reminds me my wife and I were talking a bit of talking the other day we have to get the wives

[00:50:26] on this show ah and that's what was will be candlest we'll just put chris mccandless we'll thank you morgan rachel and gillian together and then you and I can just bug bugger off and go like drink bourbon while they talk yeah we can do that we could probably get them on when we do the when we get together for the patron trip well yeah I mean that's a given yeah well we're gonna have to record on the trip anyway so yeah might as well get them to to phone in

[00:50:56] we'll voluntold them I don't know how your relationship works I can't voluntold my wife crap I can ask her very politely and promise her chocolate and belly rubs and might get might get some cooperation out of her bribery is super effective bribery is super effective chocolate tacos and sushi and I can motivate her to do many things there you go and I guess this is the last one this was the one you added the opportunist

[00:51:27] which is the category that's going to piss me off the absolute worst because I've talked before about how absolute little tolerance I have for people that take advantage of other people because they use their their position or their supposed knowledge as to influence other people into doing or spending money on things that really don't work well yep uh so Jeff's time uh chiming in here

[00:51:57] best timeline for uh Chris McCandless is that he ate poisonous berries got too sick to move and died of dehydration that sounds like a terrible way to die so let's not do that let's not do any of that let let's not go out into the woods of Alaska with on a wing and a prayer and just try to you know try to handle it yeah

[00:52:21] so I wanted to add this one in here the opportunist because I see this a lot and it came up kind of in a different episode we were talking about those those really um the really shitty bug out bags the pre-made first aid kits that kind of suck that are basically just you know they they claim to be like a advanced first aid kit and the most advanced thing in there is a triangular bandage and an extra roll of gauze one roll of gauze and 99 band-aids yeah you see that all the time

[00:52:46] now granted there are some quality first aid kits out there and there are is probably though I have not seen it a quality pre-built bug out bag I haven't seen one but that's you know that's not to say it wouldn't exist I mean it's it's entirely possible that somebody's made one that is good quality and if you're a manufacturer out there that thinks you have send us one I'll critique the hell out of it and break all your shit it'll be fun I like breaking things um

[00:53:15] so this is also like your your guys that are claiming to be the guru with the secret knowledge you know the uh the jeff kondo guys that are going to teach you the ultimate secrets to self-defense and it's really just like a basic hand-to-hand combatives class or a really shitty version of like a taekwondo or something like that that is neither effective nor cost uh what it should

[00:53:42] uh you know it's survival trunk on ebay that was very good says morgan uh send me that link or send the link to the show somehow what phil we still have that uh that contact box on the website so there is a contact form on mofpodcast.com comma however comma if it's easier you could send that to um like if you're on instagram you could send us a message through there and I'll forward it to Nick

[00:54:12] that's yeah I'll take a look at it those are probably going to be the two simplest ways the contact form I warn everyone if you send me something through the contact form it is supposed to go to my email box but sometimes the website is a little bit bitchy and it sends it to Mars or somewhere I'm not sure where but it does not go to my mailbox and if I don't get a notification through my email box

[00:54:39] then I'm not going to log in to the back end of the mother effing website like you know but every now and then and I'll realize I have a message sitting there for the last three months that I didn't answer because the website was being an a-hole about it so that's happened to a few of y'all and I apologize I always respond I just can't promise you that if the internet doesn't cooperate with me it's going to be a prompt one but if it goes to Instagram that's usually pretty quick and pretty foolproof yeah that should ping your phone

[00:55:09] yeah no no no not much pings my phone if it's not my wife or daughter because that's wise I uh yeah I have a strict prohibition on uh social media being able to notify my phone about squat because I like to be able to unplug that's fair man that's fair but I do check it often enough so that's probably not a bad way to get it over to us but yeah back to the opportunist yeah you know it's

[00:55:37] this is like the guy that puts on the trade show in the convention hall and all he's trying to do is sell merch all he's trying to do is sell you on his survival book that is 69.95 when the boy scout manual that is 1995 has all the same information he just puts some different graphics on it this sounds a lot like the guy that was selling like the cd-rom of survival knowledge and it's all freaking like it it's it's literally all old like fms and tms from the military that are public domain

[00:56:06] that you could get if you just google search and it's it's it's the snake oil salesman it's the person who's it's the person who's either selling junk or they're selling legitimate stuff that is horribly marked up or their quality yeah or they're they have they have the the secret sauce the new knowledge the thing that's going to revolutionize everything and it's just something that they invented that's never been battle tested or never been you know like it's never been proven to work but they think it's a really cool idea

[00:56:35] I draw the comparison to like the guys that run like these these boot camps to like teach you how to be a man and everything and it's a bunch of guys who like get henpecked by their wives every night like you know like it is it is preying upon it's people that prey upon a community that as we've already discussed some people in that community are very prone to crisis trading they have they're very prone to anxiety and it uses that

[00:57:03] in an attempt to like con and extort them out of money and I find that personally reprehensible annoying yeah I agree you know people in this community are trying to do in at least in their mind they're trying to do the best they can to protect themselves and their family they may go off the rails but predatory people are making it harder and it's

[00:57:32] it's not good well and the hard part of it is is like from from from the content creation side of this there's nothing about there's nothing about anything we're doing here that is that is free the website costs money the domain costs money the podcast the audio podcast bandwidth costs money the you know the accounts to stream this live cost money

[00:58:02] all of this costs money so let's get that out of the way up front and there is a baked in incentive for people that either want this to pay for itself which we do because of our patrons or people that eventually thanks again by the way oh yeah huge thanks because I ain't gonna lie if I had to if I had to shout out that cash every year to keep the show running probably wouldn't be I can't say that I genuinely enjoy doing this but it would definitely make it a little bit more

[00:58:32] it would be but you know like none of that is a sob story it's just to put what I'm about to say it's just the reality the reality of the situation and even above and beyond that content creation takes time so most people in this capitalist society we live in want to be compensated for their time and they have some kind of an incentive to either accept money from an advertiser to promote to promote a thing or to produce something

[00:59:01] to sell themselves so they can compensate themselves for their time that I get that I understand all all that in play I get all the motivations there I get it what frustrates me and I I see this even in content creators that like I enjoy their content is they start going down this really dark road of like selling all the things that everybody else is selling because

[00:59:30] somebody's buying up a ton of ad space like everybody remembers oh god what was it the title NordVPN NordVPN Snorin Desert Institute which might be a phenomenal gunsmithing school I don't know I just know that every freaking pew tuber on earth shills for them at one point or another what was it the title thing where you could become like a Scottish lord if you bought like this like six square oh yeah Scotland or something like that

[01:00:00] something titles anyway but like royaltitles.com or something yeah but I see great channel legends thank you raggle yes that's another one Jesus Christ I have every gaming channel it's not even game just gaming channels though him pumping ads for Raid of Shadow Legends it's like dude dude

[01:00:30] I get it he's trying to make an income off of it but you know you get the same thing with like the fear salesman yes not gonna name names I'm sure you guys have seen channels that do this but there's there are a couple YouTube channels out there that every single video they put out it's crisis of the day crisis of the week crisis of the month this is gonna be the end the end is coming doom saying all the goddamn time and it just you're not helping anymore

[01:01:00] at one point some of these were educational channels and now it is just pushing fear to push their view numbers you know and I think you and I both and I think Andrew would would say the same thing we want to push responsible preparedness well I think what I think what we want to push is like adulthood because like you know we we yeah I know

[01:01:30] I smirk a little bit internally thinking about us acting like adults but stick with me on this but like to me it's like you know I just I can't get on board with the idea of like not not encouraging people to act like responsible adults like there has to be some balance between this lifestyle and being a normal human being there has to be some balance between I want to make sure I can take care of my wife

[01:01:59] and daughter and not acting like a nut job that scares the hell out of them there has to be balance there and I just I think that is one of the hallmarks of maturing and one of the hallmarks of being an adult is being able to find the balance point because when we're kids you know especially for like kids with a certain kind of tism and I'm raising my hand on that like something interests you and it's like 200% energy on this right now all the time

[01:02:29] I am going to eat this and only this for the next three months until I never eat it again yes but then that's part of I just don't know another way to put that but I think balance is important but I think one of the things that like we've tried to do with this show for a very long time is that you know like we've one

[01:03:12] try to offer us not inconsequential sums of money to pump products that it took me about an hour to look through their website who they were what they were selling and compare it to the market and say I wouldn't buy this and if I'm not going to buy it I'm not going to ask anybody to either and I politely told them no we're not interested now you know there are people out there that would think that is a stupid decision but like I've always very idealistically stated like I

[01:03:42] do the show because I enjoy it this is not work for me this is not payday this is not PMAG and 50 BMG money for me I do this because I enjoy doing it so if I have to start feeling dirty about taking money to pump bull crap it's not worth doing it anymore it's not fun and it makes me feel icky not interested you know I have a very hard time

[01:04:12] recommending anything to anyone for any purpose if I do not know its quality and if I do not trust its quality if I'm going to make a recommendation for anything it's something I

[01:04:43] ask or recommend any of you make that same sacrifice or more because who knows what economic situation you're in I'm not going to try and foist any of that upon anybody else without knowing it is of the highest quality quantum flux drives is there a joke there I'm not getting Nick you know I don't think I get it either so maybe that went over my head quantum flux drives I'll be the first to admit

[01:05:13] I'm a massive nerd and I could be totally missing a sci-fi movie reference but it would be an unusual day that I miss a sci-fi movie reference I mean I set the subtitle under my like prepubescent which would be weird congratulations no

[01:05:42] also geographically difficult well yes but the point remains yeah hence the I can't do James Earl Jones voice otherwise I would have started off with a Nick I am your father if you could do James Earl Jones voice this podcast would be a much better audio experience yeah sorry you're welcome this right oh can you say it's what the tic-tac

[01:06:12] UFOs use for propulsion quantum flux drives you know that's man aliens whatever it's out of my wheelhouse man I don't know anything about any of that or the Clinton's history and I'm definitely enjoying life right now and would never ever harm myself in a suspicious fashion so raggle fraggle has asked where's Andrew Andrew is joining the show when he is able and unfortunately with his work schedule

[01:06:42] that is intermittent to say the least yes he will be on when he can he'll be at the patron camp out I believe he will be at the patron camp out he did some damn fool thing about taking a promotion at work and I yeah damn fool so

[01:07:12] you know damn Andrew is doing what we recommend and taking care of real life first yeah and I'm an adult he's making the adult choice no he not at all yeah he'll be on when he can be all right well is there any other dark sides to preparedness that we missed I feel like we had a pretty all inclusive list nothing springs to mind but I am certain we will be hearing from a special someone

[01:07:42] in the patron chat about things we have forgotten that's that's what steward does every single episode he tells me all the things I misstated or screwed up or forgot or I was being a moron about something and every single time I should harass steward into coming on the show you just started it I

[01:08:12] have we're gonna now weaponize peer pressure against steward instead of you this time you do know that steward is immune to peer pressure though right so far we just haven't used enough steward have fun with it steward you can fraternity man that's he's got nothing I haven't seen

[01:08:42] before well if anyone can think of any dark side of preparedness that we missed you're welcome to drop it in the comments you're welcome to send it through the contact sheet you can jump on our Instagram page and leave us a I might hear you yeah all I'm gonna say is like I

[01:09:11] think this lifestyle is very important I think it's very necessary I would not have subjected my family to all of my autistic shrieking about it for all these years and you know spent the money and the time doing all these things nor would I have stood up in front of all you apes like a moron for all I do think it's important not to go to too much to the deep end

[01:09:41] and then you know drink the kool-aid and start mainlining it like absolutely being adult have a little bit of balance in your life go outside touch grass every now and then better yet if you don't have a girlfriend thanks for everybody that commented and if you didn't I'm not mad I'm not even disappointed just

[01:10:11] consider doing it next time bye y'all good night