Matter of Facts: The Last Prepper Standing

[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Matterfags Podcast on the Prepping Broadcasting Network.

[00:00:06] We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Ditter and Spotify.

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[00:00:17] I'm your host Phil Rabley and my co-host Andrew Bobos on the earth side of the mic

[00:00:21] and here's your show.

[00:00:23] Welcome back to the Matterfags Podcast.

[00:00:25] There is nobody in the audience, which is probably my fault because I think we forgot And then you piggyback into the financial crisis of 2008, kind of all those events together, plus just kind of growing up how I grew up. You have the background chatter about, you know, your freedoms and UN troops and all that stuff. And as I got older, I just kind of finally put all the pieces to the puzzle.

[00:01:40] Those three big events kind of really woke me up

[00:01:42] to start preparing.

[00:01:44] And I've been on that journey kind of ever since.

[00:02:43] I was living in California at the time, but just getting close to just over 18

[00:02:47] or just turning a little past 18 at that point.

[00:02:50] So that's kind of a freaky moment

[00:02:52] when you're thinking, man, I might get drafted

[00:02:54] into some sort of war, especially the way

[00:02:56] they were ramping it up at the time, right?

[00:02:59] And then Katrina, I was not impacted by it initially

[00:03:05] just watching it unfold on TV, but my mother, 20, I always referenced Katrina as, you know, your current modern world playbook about how things are going to unfold from the way they responded to coming to confiscate guns that people thought they had lawfully. Everybody's worried about gun confiscations and that happened during Katrina.

[00:04:20] It's just some amazing stuff that you could break down just from that one event that

[00:04:25] could should and could convince them to high ground. And then my guys would grab them from high ground and move them further out of the area. And just kind of do a Chinese fire drill to get people out of the city as fast as we could.

[00:05:40] And then we stood up on orders until December 31st.

[00:05:44] Wow, yeah.

[00:05:44] And you know, I think you look at Katrina too.

[00:05:47] There's obviously some stuff that you just It was like that two year span, a lot happened, but when I was in Iraq, I got a really up close look at like what a truly broken country looked like. Like, you know, no police, no fire department, no friggin hospitals, like, you know, the department of events did what the department of events does. We turned that entire country upside down, trying to get after Saddam, and then rebuilding it,

[00:07:02] it took time.

[00:07:02] So for that period of time, the people that were stuck there,

[00:07:06] because where the hell else, where they're gonna go, Like coastal Mississippi got hit worse than New Orleans did in some places and I looked at the devastation that was caused and it hit me I'm like This is what a war zone looks like on my own soil and I can't I can't get on a C 130 and fly out of here So like if this happened again, and I was stuck here and I wasn't wearing an American flag on my shorter

[00:08:20] What would I do?

[00:08:21] And that was what got me into prepping

[00:08:24] Yeah, and that's a good perspective. I mean, that's probably the best perspective because

[00:09:25] anarchist and everything in between and like, you know, like politically, I'm about this far away from I'm an I'm an anarcho libertarian in most respects like leave me alone. Let me do what I

[00:09:29] want to do as long as my hurt and somebody else and we're gonna get along just fine. But the one

[00:09:34] place I break really hard away from my friends that are hardcore like classical anarchists is

[00:09:40] this idea that we have no state no police because I'm or illegals, I want to say, and they got let go. And then they one of them just got arrested in Phoenix. Yeah, again. And so one, it's like one, how in the heck are they getting across the country

[00:11:02] so frickin fast? Who's funding that? Besides, I mean, Democrats and Soros and all that stuff, here legally served in the US army. Like he went through the whole process to to immigrate here and he went a step further. He didn't even allow the kids in the house to speak Spanish because he wanted them to assimilate versus trying to subvert the culture. If that makes sense he wanted him to assimilate to the culture and be proud to be where you're at now because he went through it the

[00:12:23] right way so there's a lot of pride that comes along myself type. But I've also tried to encourage the preparedness community like you have to at a certain point become an advocate for the lifestyle you preach. Like that's the whole reason we started this show eight years ago, seven and a half years ago, because I was looking at the world around me and I was saying there are people that apparently

[00:13:41] didn't get the memo I did when I was your entire life? I've lived on the Gulf Coast 41 years. This is not news. It's like Andrew always jokes about because he lives up in Michigan. Every year, Andrew, there are blizzards and the Grand River floods, right? Every single year. Yeah, especially right now because it's crazy because right now it's, it's

[00:15:00] February and we just hit like 60 if not, I think close to 65 today.

[00:15:05] And, and that's why I sound River flooded. It frickin' floods every single year. Some years are worse than others. Just like we get snow. It's that first snow of the year, I try to stay off the road if I can,

[00:16:20] but I'm not watching the road.

[00:16:22] I'm watching people around me

[00:16:23] because they forget how to drive.

[00:16:27] And it's nuts. always there to and then you add on the hardship of just trying to survive through the inflation that's going on all the Job market economy all that stuff people start back burnering that because they feel like oh I've got through before It hasn't been a problem before I don't need to prioritize it And then you look up and the whole problem ends up being way more catastrophic

[00:17:41] Than it ever needed to be because you didn't incorporate

[00:18:42] against and want to talk about? Well, and the thing that I really push back against

[00:18:44] what you just said, like I understand like that's

[00:18:47] what people are saying, but I don't buy it.

[00:18:50] Just because I know in my own lifetime,

[00:18:54] I grew up in a lower middle class family,

[00:18:57] dad worked, mom stayed home, we never had a lot

[00:19:00] of extra money, but we always managed to make money

[00:19:03] available for the things that were necessary.

[00:19:06] And like my wife and I now, who have been shoestring. It's been shoestring budget. It's been figure stuff out as I go. It's been do it the cheap way because that was what the money will allow for. And some of it failed when we had to start over. But I don't know. I just I kind of kicked back at this idea that like you have to have X amount of money to be prepared because my point of view

[00:20:20] is is I'm like the canned food aisle. Nothing in there is expensive. Bags are riser dirt cheap.

[00:21:23] That's kind of where my mind's going when I relaunched the YouTube channel. It's just some simple stuff like, hey, today I bought four cans of soup and I bought five

[00:21:30] pounds of rice.

[00:21:31] It's going to go in this closet right here.

[00:21:33] Look how much I got over the last two months.

[00:21:36] So people don't have that overwhelming feeling because that's one thing I went through, especially

[00:21:40] being young when I first started prepping and it turned me away for a little bit and

[00:21:44] I just kind of more focused on the to equate like the preparedness stuff too i mean saving up for something

[00:23:01] especially like if i don't have the cash that i want to drop on it right away

[00:23:04] uh... like

[00:23:05] so for example the uh... for my truck uh check, if you want to, and you, and you're dedicated to it, just put a little bit of cash aside every so often, and it'll add up. And before you know it, you'll have it. And yes, some weeks you might not, you might be able to put 100, some weeks you might be able to

[00:24:22] put 20. But you know, every time you put money yeah, it's just a little way at it And I really like what you said because that that's that to me is like a great thing to talk about for Kind of living that preparedness lifestyle is that delayed gratification So and then giving people some ideas about go the bio life. I never thought of that idea before

[00:25:44] That's a great idea. I might eventually it just showed up in the mail a couple weeks later, which is like, there's little nuance things out there between delay gratification, little side hustles. To me that would be like, you know, shoestring prepper or something on YouTube. And you walked them through every single trip if you go in through the bio life.

[00:27:00] And then at the end of it, you could do the install video

[00:27:02] of the deck, which I'm good luck.

[00:27:04] Are you going to do that on your own?

[00:27:05] You're going to pay someone to do that because that looks crazy. And that's good discipline. I mean, you're kind of sacrificing something for another thing. But yeah, it's the prepping community, the prepping mindset, I guess it's just give and take. Obviously, I would love to be on 15 acres and a small little miniature farm and raising chickens and have eggs and all kinds of stuff. Unfortunately, I'm not there yet.

[00:28:21] Do I want to be there yet?

[00:28:22] Do I want to be there yet?

[00:28:23] Is it a goal of mine?

[00:28:25] Yes.

[00:28:26] Is it something that I'm kindoring that towards, okay, I want a filter. I want a burky water system. Like I want this kind of stuff. So now I'm putting money aside for it. So I'm pretty happy with my guns and ammo. And I guess you could always use more ammo. But it's just one of those things where you just try to strive to be better and you look at what's going on.

[00:29:41] I mean, like we go back to Katrina.

[00:29:43] And the idea that so many people were stranded on their roofs

[00:29:47] and stuff like that, I mean,

[00:30:43] and you've lost yours, you have a backup. And that's where the whole prep and mindset to me

[00:30:46] is having backups and having backups.

[00:30:49] I mean, I always say that two is one and one is not

[00:30:52] because it holds true in every facet of life.

[00:30:55] That's a very smart idea with sending it

[00:30:58] to other people to hold for you.

[00:31:00] They have legacy accounts for Apple and all that stuff, too.

[00:31:04] And I have a lot of my personal data in there.

[00:31:06] And I've shared that code with people. Like I said, I'm 41, so I am like among the oldest of the millennials. But like my observation of my generation at least has been that I look around on my peers and I see a group of people who grew up, you know, for the large part and I hate to say this because I know a lot of people had it pretty rough growing up. But like as an average, my generation grew up in a level of wealth and opulence that the

[00:32:25] previous generations could not have imagined. You don't have a bed. You can't, like everything when you're camping is harder. It takes longer to cook. It takes longer to do everything. You have to walk to go to the bathroom. I am teaching you how to be uncomfortable because there might come a time and there has in her lifetime during Hurricane Ida where you're going to have to be uncomfortable. And when that moment comes, you can either embrace it with a smile and get over it and

[00:33:44] move forward or you can sit there and suck how we were going to drink water because the water pressure was zero, but we had, you know, 28 days supply of bottled water sitting on the shelf. We weren't worried about how we were going to feed ourselves. We had plenty of food and water and we had propane. We had everything we needed to cook. We weren't worried about how we were going to take care of our basic needs.

[00:35:00] We had all that handled.

[00:35:01] My daughter was in the front yard flying a kite

[00:35:04] because she was like eight, nine years old at the time

[00:35:08] and she was like, feels good or what's fun and nobody wants to be uncomfortable and I get that but sometimes frankly you have to be. And that's, you know, I'm the same, I'm the same age as you too and I'm glad you touched on that a little bit about how our generation like we, we saw the pre-internet, right? We're just old enough to remember that. We're just old enough to experience that. And so we've and the other thing I think that our generation has been really, and I try to be like hogs of the fact that like, I understand that like income-wise and standard living-wise, like I'm doing a lot better than most of my generation. I think a lot of it's because of just decades of fricking hard butt-kicking work.

[00:37:41] But like, I feel like a lot of our generation

[00:37:43] is kind of given up on the idea of ever accumulating,

[00:37:47] of ever being able to retire, of ever being homeowners. how you that's how you prepare financially and outside of prep perfection you know most most periods in history where things have gone really really bad they didn't happen overnight it happened in slow motion right and you're going to have to go back and rely on those things now to say what you said about the our generation when i left northern california the

[00:39:02] san francisco bay area moved to east texas you know and thinking a little bit ahead because I'm not going to, as he's rent, rents are increasing. My brother was just telling me, I mean, he's paying $3,500 in rent for a two bedroom house right now. Oh my God. Which is about $1,500 more than what my mortgage is. So that's just mind blowing to me. And I don't know how that's sustainable for him going forward

[00:40:20] as he gets older and he's able to work,

[00:40:22] he's not able to work as much.

[00:40:23] And then the prices are just only going to increase

[00:40:26] over that time.

[00:40:27] So prepping is a lot of like came out here, but we settled for kind of like a happy medium for the time right now. But we definitely got away from the major city. We got away from the chaos of San Francisco Bay Area, and we're in this just, it almost feels like sometimes I got to pinch myself and be like, man, I actually accomplished something that really put us in a better situation, even though I'm not

[00:41:43] homesteading on the level that I want it to hom out in? So like I have a, I have a back like a pretty athletic background. I used to do personal training and I think to me that's like kind of where I want to work towards talking about and kind of create a movement within the proper community to

[00:43:00] just be a little bit more fit, take care to swallow but I mean it's something that Andrew and I have also kind of I know he's been pushing himself and I've been pushing myself. So during COVID I went to working remote and prior to that like

[00:44:24] just my Apple Watch according to that was saying I 10 miles a week, about two miles a day, five, six times a week. And I'm down to 230 to 235, depending on what time of the day I get on the scale. And that little lady has lost 50 pounds. Nice. Yeah. And you know, it's incremental

[00:45:42] things. I myself have struggled with weight at times. Just even right now nothing to me. What I'm worried about is how many years I can run a chainsaw, how many years I can rip my truck apart and do a break job, how many years I'm physically able. Like the day that I am too sick and too fat

[00:47:00] to go on a camping trip or go day hiking

[00:47:03] is the day that I have a problem.

[00:47:04] So I always tell people, I'm like,

[00:47:05] I don't care if work now, I'm not gonna be able to do the work then. Right, and I think especially too, if you're in a position where you're trying to influence people to be prepared, I mean, you go look up prepper memes, one of the first things comes up is,

[00:48:20] the meal team six and making fun of fat preppers

[00:48:24] and this and that, like, I think if you put yourself

[00:48:26] in that area, So that he looks good in a speedo They're doing they might do the exact same thing But the reason they do it's totally different the parent this person does for one reason and the other guy does it for vanity and The prepper is gonna do a savings account So he can take care of his family and hard times when inflation's way up and the bills creep up and the person who

[00:50:44] and be in that situation, which unfortunately I know people who are insulin-dependent and they pretty well accept the fact that you know 30 days

[00:50:48] after the lights go out they're gone. They cannot live without it. It's just I

[00:50:53] guess to me it's a really sobering experience to realize like you know the

[00:50:58] old age old age that nobody's coming to save us. Nobody's coming to bail us

[00:51:02] out when everything really goes bad. Everybody's gonna have to be able to take to definitely use some refreshing and more practicing. What about you, Andrew? I'm gonna dime you well. Just probably besides, I mean, one of the things is I've been trying to build her since I got my house as food and water stash, put more of that upside, but my mag, my mutual assistance group, that's one thing that I think everybody needs,

[00:52:22] every prepper, it needs, you can't loan wolf it.

[00:52:26] There's no way you'll survive. This shout out to Eric, my buddy, he lives in Dallas, but we met each other on Instagram. He ended up signing up for the Preppers Club. We developed a little bit of a relationship online, and now we meet up regularly. We go out to his property in Oklahoma. But for a lot of Preppers, the mindsets that we have, it's really hard for us to meet and make new friends,

[00:53:41] even though we really need to be around like-minded people.

[00:53:45] You know, I met him at, I think a lot of prepper struggle on that mags But you have to make yourself uncomfortable if you want to make that mag work And you got it I think it's hard just for guys our age to probably even make new friends in general Oh, I don't know I have a very small group of people in this local area that I know I could call on and say guys I'm so I'm boned. I need help

[00:55:00] fortunately most of her family and

[00:55:03] That family is if not like-minded to my degree they're close enough that I know that

[00:56:01] you're gonna be able to get food, you're gonna be able to get building materials,

[00:56:02] like the thing that makes me nervous,

[00:56:05] and thankfully it is probably the least likely

[00:56:08] of the SHTF scenarios that preppers think about

[00:56:11] is the lights never coming back on.

[00:56:14] And I think that's a probably an outside possibility,

[00:56:16] it's not impossible, but like those are the moments

[00:56:20] in time where I feel like even amongst preppers,

[00:56:22] 90% of us are not ready for it,

[00:56:24] and probably will never be ready for it. Even for the people that are focused around sustainability, you still have to be able to hold out until sustainability kicks in. Right, that's what a challenge, right? And that's why we prep. Yes, 110%. So we're coming up on right around an hour. I mean, Lenny, do you have anything else you want to chuck in here for conversation before we start wrapping up heading out the door?

[00:57:40] Man, I just want to thank you for giving me a chance to that this is something that we live and breathe this stuff. It's every day. Like you don't get here if you don't do it every day. Yeah, I think that just, that is a good way to kind of encapsulate what I think I'm going for.

[00:59:03] All right, well, we'll go ahead and punt this one out the door.

[00:59:06] If you would like to follow Lenny,