Matter of Facts: When is LARP not LARP?

Welcome back to the Matter 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 mofpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Ravele. Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. You know, every time we run that intro, I question myself if it's too long, if it's too short... I love that intro. No one's complained too loudly yet. I have to listen to the full thing every time, and I don't mind. The real question is the outro, because the outro is like a full three minutes long at this point. But I'll be honest, I kind of feel like it's an awesome song and y'all should stick around for it. And if you don't, that's your own fault. Your life is sad. Yeah. I don't know what else to tell you. Do what you want, but I'm judging you. Yeah. You are not being detained in the interest of the Libertarian show. All right, I see a Raggle, a Dr. Scary Guy. I see a Rachel Emrickson. She must be a complete glutton for punishment. Definitely. And Jeff Jags. Thank you all for joining us this evening. The topic is, when is LARP not LARP? And this is not just us saying LARPing multiple times in a topic, but this is kind of driven by some situations that, like, some things I saw on social media, some situations some friends of the show wound up in, and some situations the two of us have been in. Yeah. That kind of drives home the point of, like, you know, sometimes all this stuff we're doing that we say tongue-in-cheek is LARPing, it suddenly becomes not LARPing all of a sudden, you know, as tends to be the case. Yep, yep. All right, so let's do admin work, and then let's hop to it. If you'd like to promote Bad Decisions Black, you can become a patron. That link's in the show description. There are patrons in the chat. There are patrons in the Signal chat. And they're all feeding us bad ideas. Or good ideas. It kind of depends on your perspective. Or sometimes really baller intro songs. Really baller intro songs. But the ideas usually involve me spending money. That's fine. It's you spending money. Yeah, it's only fine because it's me spending money. If you'd like to buy merch for The Vibe from the Southern Gals, that link is also in the show description. Supports a small business, supports a small show. Everybody makes out like a bandit on that deal. And if you'd like to prevent war crimes with disaster coffee, use code MOF. This is your weekly reminder to buy coffee because we had to kill off the subscription deal. The last of the pecan pie that I bought is in this cup this evening, and I gotta admit, I'm not mad. I have thoughts about the s'mores. Okay lay it on me i i i. Have i have tried it i have not tried the pecan i have to say the s'mores the first day you make it's pretty good it is however if you leave the coffee pot on for about four hours why ignore it until four o'clock the next morning microwave the absolute hell out of it nick it can get a little bit better nick that's probably a me problem. Okay, first of all, if you're the type of sociopath that abandons coffee for four hours without drinking it and then microwaves it, for God's sakes, I'm not mad at you. I'm just disappointed. No, I mean, when it's fresh, it's extremely good. But I did notice if you torture test the coffee over a prolonged amount of time that you're not supposed to do, while it still caffeinates and it's not bad, it's just a little more bitter than I. than, like. Right out of the brew. Did you drink it black or did you try a little bit of creamer? I don't do creamer. Okay. I don't do creamer. I have to be very cautious about what milk or milk alternatives I ingest due to anaphylaxis. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Occasionally they put preservatives in that stuff and they're supposedly hypoallergenic. which means only one out of every 100,000 people will be allergic to it. Not that no one is. Can you do half and half or heavy whipping cream? You know, it's just to the point where. Well, first off, when I started drinking coffee, it was in a work environment at 13, and the options were black and burnt and black. And I just kind of like black coffee now all the time, but my wife really likes the s'mores. With a dash of creamer. Mm-hmm. I didn't notice the smokiness. That's why I'm recommending it, because I, and again, taste is in the tongue of the beholder, but when it comes to the s'mores, just a splash of coffee creamer really does perk it up, in my opinion. It's not even a sweetness thing. No, I imagine not. It's almost like If you go into it thinking this is going to taste like s'mores and you add a little bit of creamer to it, it almost tricks your brain into tasting marshmallow with the chocolate taste. I actually thought it tasted closer to a French vanilla than s'mores, but I had no creamer in it. Yeah, Rachel's saying she likes it with caramel coffee creamer more than a dash. I like light coffee. I mean, not here to judge. It's all an individual taste, but please, for God's sakes, don't. Don't microwave your coffee anymore, Nick. Look, the Uncle Randy's 24 to 48 hours later and extremely hot microwave is delicious. Still, it tastes exactly the same as the fresh day you. Made it, as far as I can tell. So disappointing, you. You should be. I also still drink the Folgers coffee at work, and I think that's pretty. Just for that, I'm going to use a Dremel and call myself a gunsmith. You're more than welcome to be wrong. It'll hurt your feelings, though. I know it will. It does, though. It hurts my soul, especially because I now have a mill in my garage that will be under power, hopefully, in about two weeks. Yeah, I made reference to using a hacksaw to shorten a barrel, and I'm pretty sure I saw Nick develop a facial tick. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. You really shouldn't use... Well, okay. A hacksaw is a perfectly fine way to shorten a barrel. It is not The end of the process that needs to be squared, trued, deburred, and stress-relieved after that most of the time. So hack it off. Especially if you use a saw instead of a hacksaw hacksaw. So hacksaw it, shoot it in the backyard multiple times, raise hell, scare the neighbors, and then buy an armor vest for your dog. Pretty much, yeah. Also your wife's forehead. Yes. All right. Anyway. So, yes, when is LARP not LARP? Now, this kind of came about because all within the span of the same week, I saw a topic get batted around on Instagram of all places that kind of got my thought process going. And I don't know the answer to this question. So it's going to be an interesting thing for me and Nick to kind of unpack and debate. And then I saw a friend of the show, Terrence from Partisan Comms Group, go through his second close call with a wildfire in recent memory. And yeah, got real close to him. Yeah. But the thing that I find cool about his situation, I mean, it's only cool because his family and his property are safe. Like let's start there. He's fine. He's cool. Last time I'm waiting to hear back from him, like final word, no damage whatsoever, but I'm pretty sure he's good. I know at least him and his family are safe. So I count that as a win. Honestly, man, that's, that's. Really what it's all about is, is keeping your family safe. I mean, we all, we all should have insurance, but, And that insurance should cover everything but your deductible. Yeah. But you should have an emergency fund to cover your deductible. But I get it that it won't pay for everything. But but insurance doesn't cover pets, loved ones and family members. It absolutely does not. Yeah. Not in a way that matters. But like I was saying, like the cool thing about his situation is that like I was kind of following around along on Instagram and like what he did to kind of like respond to the ongoing emergency is 10 out of 10, what he preaches, what he practices, what he preps for. And I, that kind of, again, the same time we're seeing this, everything come in. That's when I brought this Nick and Nick said that, that when is a LARP, not a LARP, when you actually use all the things that you were LARPing with and they work exactly as intended. I would agree. There's two different times when LARP is not LARP. I would say that. Yeah. When it's purposeful training, First off. So, look, I've got an apprentice at work. There's some stuff we have those apprentices do that is not what we call pay work. We're not going to bill anybody for that. What it is is purposeful training so that when he does fuck up, when he messes up something, when he junks that part, he does it in a way that's constructive learning and isn't costing us a bunch of money. Fair. And as they prove themselves, you move them on to more and more higher and higher percentages of pay work and lower and lower amounts of training. Now, for some kids, this kid we've got now, he was on pay work all day today. And he did a fantastic job. Excellent. Really good. Some people need more time than that. But training, whether it's at work, at the range, at your medical class, when you're out in the field doing your comms work with your buddies... When you're hanging out at the ham group and you're actually doing radio stuff, not eating sandwiches and bullshitting, which is 70% of my experience with the local ham club, that's not LARP either. So I think it is important to point out at this point that, like, because... I find that very often when you and I don't agree it's because we don't agree on terms or definitions could be I say LARP very tongue in cheek because like that is what is constantly hurled to this community it's like oh you're just LARPing and I've made the argument before I'm like well everything's LARPing until it's LARPing like You can train with full intention of doing this as a prep, as a way to respond to an emergency. You can do all of this with all of the intent in the world. Like when I go to the range, I'm very upfront with people I meet out there about the fact that I'm not out here for sports shooting. I'm not out here for competition. I'm not out here deciding a hunting rifle. The only thing I ever intend to have to hunt with any of my guns is two-legged predators. That is my perspective, right, wrong, or otherwise, whether you agree with it or not. That's your own journey in life. But that is what I am out there doing is practicing to make myself a more lethal protector of my family. Sure. And it's all LARPing. Until the day it's not. Because that is what someone would say is that, oh, you're just LARPing. You're never going to use an AR-15 to defend your family. You know, you have a better chance. God, I hope so. God, I hope so. But you know what? I will lean into that very tongue in cheek and be like, you're right. I'm just out here LARPing. Until the day I'm not. So I think the reason why we look at that term differently is because I've actually done LARP. I've actually done live action role play, like the fantasy stuff, sword and shield and all that stuff. It was all right. It was like for goofs with the boys. It was fun. So for you, LARP means leisure. Yeah. It's more of like, so. LARP live action role play is you are going there purposefully playing a role in a game. It is. It's, it's just a giant game. It's no different than football. Uh, Except for the fact that there's a lot more dudes. Like a lot. So the point remains that. Women on an NFL team than you usually find at LARP. So the point remains that in, in your, in your personal life experience, LARP is leisure. LARP is game. LARP is fun. LARP is not training. And for me, I use the word LARP almost as like a self-deprecating, almost as self-deprecating because to me it's like, it's not, it's not fun. It's not leisure. It's not, for funsies. It's not because I enjoy going out there and blowing my little bit of hearing left out. It is out there for a purpose, but if someone wants to call it LARPing to poke fun at it, I'm going to lean into their joke and take the steam out of it. Like, yep, I'm just out here LARPing, guys. All of this stuff is just for the LARP, just to look cool on Instagram. I don't care. And, you know, that's pretty fair, and that's how a lot of the community uses it, and that's how a lot of people use it, but I think I would probably fall in that same camp if I didn't actually use the phrase or the acronym LARP to mean what it was originally intended to mean. That's fair. But I think it's a fair distinction to make in either case because as long as you're doing purposeful, skills-driven, and skills-focused training, that's not role-playing. That's fair. It's not play by definition. I think Raggle is using my definition in what his question is. Is LARPing a means to an end or is it just another rabbit hole to go to? And it depends because there are people like, okay, let's be honest with ourselves and each other. There's a group of people out there that have no intention of ever using any of these skills to harm another human being, even in a defensive manner, period, end session. Sure, yeah. They go do training classes because they just enjoy it. It's a thing. It's a hobby. It's like going to the golf. It's like going golfing to them. I know more than a few competitive shooters who they are. Well, at least two in particular that I'm thinking of are pacifists. They view ballistic sports and I say ballistic sports because I'm including archery in this because some of them are very good archers as well. They view it as a skills-based competition at distance. That's not unfair. They do not view them as defensive weapons. They do not view them as weapons of aggression. They view them. As a sport purely and only for the enjoyment of the sport. Like golf clubs. Mm-hmm. And that is why my answer to Raggle is it depends. For that person that views a long-range or a PRS rifle like a set of golf clubs. A much cooler set of golf clubs, in my opinion. But like a set of golf clubs, for them, it's another rabbit hole. It's another hobby. It's another sport they enjoy. And it will become its own kind of rabbit hole for them to continue to go down and see, like, how much better can I get? They're chasing a goal or they're trying to be who they were yesterday. And that's fine. But to me, LARPing is a means to an end. It is the activities I engage in so that if the day ever comes when I don't have any choices left in my life other than fight or watch my family be harmed, I intend to give a hell of a good account of myself. Yeah, you know, there's an Instagram thing. trend i see going around every now and then and i say instagram because that's the only social media i have other than facebook marketplace to buy used stuff off of dead people. Instagram has better memes. Sometimes some of the machinist stuff the machinist forums on facebook are actually pretty hilarious the autism meme. Use of video you sent me the other day oh yeah i was crying i showed gillian and i got this i showed my wife and i got this look Um, where was I? Oh, um, it's, uh, it's a lot of the like workout influencers and stuff like that post this. Um, uh, somebody, somebody out there in the world is training to kill you today. Why aren't you training to defend yourself today? It's a good point. It's, it's a very excellent point. Um, and you know, I've heard people like, I don't know, I think it was Jocko and it or it might, it was either Jocko or it was one of his other buddies, but it was on his, his show. And he, he said that something to the tune of, uh, if violence, if you ever decide to commit violence, know that I'm in, that I am, I've spent my entire life training to be better at violence than you. I've heard kind of a version of that where a person says like, basically like I'm trying to go through life peacefully and, But if you decide to resort to violence, just remember, I'm probably better at than you are. Coming from the perspective of like, like you and I've talked about. Arguably, one of the more better people at violence. You mean, Jocko and his friends? Oh, by all means. I would bet on them over me any day. But I would still put your average, chunky, out of practice GY vet up against your average normie 10 days out of 10. Yeah, definitely. Just because at least one of these human beings has been psychologically programmed to use violence, not out of anger or not out of fear or not out of reaction. As a deliberate response. Yeah, like, I have decided this situation merits violence, and I am now engaging it. And that is a very, very, very different place to be in versus... oh God, I'm scared and I react and I might hurt you by accident. So I got to try to explain to somebody one time. I'm like the average person, I call them normies now, but at the same time, at the time I just said average person. The average person hurts or kills someone out of anger or out of fear. Like I reacted and I bumped into you and knocked you down or I lost my temper and I harmed this person. I'm like, Your average combat veteran has been trained to use violence as a deliberate, conscious decision. Not because they're angry and not because they freak out. And if you meet a person that exhibits those characteristics as a combat veteran, they were already outside of control before that situation arose. But your average person, like a GWAT vet, because that's the generation I'm from, can literally make a decision, flip a switch, and go from zero to 100 because it's the way we're trained. And realistically, that's the way the military should train people. It is. It's there's a reason why every military on every modern military on the planet that I know of trains people to do that that way. Yeah. Kind of becomes effective. Well, it does. But look, you know, what are the odds that in, say, a self-defense scenario, you're going to be wearing your body? Zero. Zero. Okay, call it one. Approaching zero. I mean, virtually nothing. Virtually none. I mean, for you, I would rate your likelihood higher than me because of tornadoes or hurricanes around you. If you take a major Cat 5 hurricane hit across the Gulf Coast, you could be in a functionally without rule of law situation for months. Do you know how many times I put on my body armor during Hurricane Ida? Once. Zero. Zero. What about Katrina? Zero. Really? Well, during Katrina, I was in the National Guard and our entire armory went underwater. So we had a... little bit of a special situation. You didn't have armor to put on. Yeah. But the point remains, during... You probably wished you had it, though. But during Ida... I had my plate carrier sitting by the front door with a rifle that was locked and loaded and ready. You had it staged, yeah. But I didn't. I mean, what I was carrying every day was just my 9mm and an outside of the waistband holster because I was running chainsaws and hauling brush and fixing stuff around the house and, you know, getting tree limbs off the roof. And that's kind of the point I make to relate that back to my time in the military. In the military, I was an aircraft mechanic. I wasn't wearing body armor while crawling around on Blackhawks because my job was to fix the Blackhawk, not to die of heat stroke. That's also true. So it, to me, like body armor is a tool in the toolbox. If it's the right tool, you put the tool on, you let it do what it's supposed to do. But for like a without rule of law or like a hurricane, a cat five hurricane, Body armor every day? Not a thing. No, I'm not saying every day. I'm saying if the odds of you encountering a situation where there is, one, a diminished ability of law enforcement to react to a situation, and two, a not insignificant chance of roving looters or gangs in the area relocating from their current area, more likely than what I deal with up here, because... Look, our major weather events are usually winter-related. You don't... Even if we had a blizzard bad enough to shut down power for a couple of weeks, which we have had, even if we've had ice storms which shut power down for a week in some areas, nobody is out, even if they needed to, going to deliberately steal things because it's so hard to move in those conditions. No, I mean, I hear. Down by you, yes, the debris is in the way, but you don't have two to three feet of snow plus, say, negative 20. No, I understand where you're going, and I hear you. I say zero because it's practically zero. Yeah, practically zero. I mean, look, there are probably situations in which I would put my body armor on. Not likely out where we live. Because it would take an awful long time for them to get to where we are, and it would probably be solved well before they did. But it's a nice option to have, and it's a really low dollar amount investment compared to the just absolute tonnage in lead that I've sent downrange. This is fair. Let's dial up this first little thing that might be an argument, and it might not be. I like it. So is a home invasion CQB or is it reacting to an ambush? And I can kind of go either direction on this, which is why I'm conflicted. Okay. The idea here being like a home invasion is a common thing. a common potential scenario that a lot of people in the preparedness community specifically cite as the reason for their firearms training and the tactical training to be able to respond to, but it kind of... You ever had a home invasion? No. I've had an attempted one. You have. But it raises the question. Like, you see people that use the argument of, well, I go to all these CQB classes and we learn how to pie corners and everything because that's what I'm going to do if I have a home invasion. And then you see somebody else, in this case, a person opposed to this, say, CQB has nothing to do with a home invasion. You're reacting to an ambush. Well, okay. Could kind of go either direction. I don't necessarily like the term ambush. What would you... Typically, an ambush is something you. Walk into or drive into. I thought about a moving element. I thought about that stationary element laying in wait. I thought about that because that is, that, that is a reasonable contention. However, ambush is also the term we use for like, if you're on a, if you're on say a fob and an outside element attempts to overrun the fob. Oh, well then definitionally. Yeah, sure. So, so it, it, it, I understand what this person was getting at, though. It's like whether you stumble into the ambush or the ambush stumbles on you, the point is that you were sitting in your living room minding your business, petting your dog, and hanging out with your wife, and the next thing you know, the door's off the hinges and people are coming in hollering. That's not CQB. CQB is an intentional act to clear a structure to make sure that no assailants are behind you and to either search and destroy or just clear and secure the structure. I understand the author's point that this is more like reacting to an ambush. This is an opposing force that is suddenly forcing you into a sudden defensive posture. I will argue, and this may be where we come to agreement on the topic, Phil. I would argue that while every home invasion starts as an ambush, it can end as CQB. Because you have a child in the house. If your child is on the north side of the house and you are on the south side of the house. I am now going to have to clear the house. Correct. It has now become CQB because look, I don't have kids. But if I had, say, my niece staying at the opposite end of the house in our spare bedroom because we just happened to be. Watching her that day. If your dog was on the other side of the house, you would mow through the house. Congratulations. It's become CQB where it would have been great. You have been ambushed. And now you are holding the nastiest angle in your house humanly possible, waiting for them to make a fatal error. Now. I think they make a very good point in how we need to think about this. Because, look, I have argued for a long time. Phil, I know I've made this point on the show before, so stop me if I go too far. CQB is for people on government-funded health care. I'm going to invoke Clint Smith, who said that the only way to clear a stairwell is to exit the house and call a JDAM strike on it. Fair enough. I mean, look, I don't have hand grenades. 12 other guys, and a medic on call. I'm not doing CQB. Jeff Jag is offering, instead of using the word ambush, use react contact, which is kind of a more general... It's a military term, but it's a more general term. But he's not wrong, though. Either one. I mean, they're functionally not that different. They're not functionally that different. And what I would say is. You have to make a deliberate choice to change it from an ambush to a CQB. Because my wife makes a good point. Her dog would not be on the other side of the house if someone came through the front door. No, she'd be next to my wife. Wherever my wife is, that's where the dog will be. So if your wife is on the other side of the house, you have to go to her and the dog. Correct. It has now become CQB. Yeah. With a very loud dog in the mix. No, and that is a perfectly fair point, but, like, that was the thing I wrestled with was, like, you know, at least from a military perspective, like, CQB is something you intentionally engage in. Like, you interject yourself into the situation to conduct a CQB operation. Whereas reaction to an ambush or reacting to contact is, like, I did not, no one pre-scheduled this with me. I didn't get like a polite little mailer in the mail that said, hey, on this day at this time, I'm going to kick your doors off the hinges. Do you mind being involved in a gunfight? That's why from my perspective, it feels much more like reactive contact because I have to now immediately shift from a white posture where I am not in any way, shape or form expecting to be assaulted in my own home. I've shifted to a defensive posture very quickly. And then to your point, Potentially shifts into an offensive posture if I need to move towards a family member to secure them. Look, if you do not have to do that, if you do not have to go secure a child, a loved one, a person that cannot secure themselves, because let's be fair, some of the wives that are watching this show now, they can definitely secure themselves. There's more than a few of them that listen to this show or that their husbands listen to this show. they can definitely handle themselves. I'm thinking of a couple in particular that have a few very large, very well-trained dogs. Those dogs are going to secure something. Yeah, like a leg. Exactly. Probably permanently. Now, look, in a CQB situation, you are taking a massive risk. Is that risk justified or say perhaps by a child on the other end of the house, a hundred percent. You are now, you are now the one moving potentially towards a defended position. That's incredibly hazardous. It is far safer to be in the defensive position, holding that nasty angle, ripping rounds into a guy that's trying to walk in and doesn't know where you are. True. True. It's far safer. Now, I mean, what's, what, military doctrine three to six to one between three and six to one sometimes as high as 11 to one three to one and that is a best case scenario yeah best case scenario six to one is an entrenched position they know you're coming i think 11 to one is an entrenched position they know you're coming and they have artillery support yeah So, best case scenario, three to one odds are in your favor as the person acting on the defensive. Mm-hmm. I'd take three to one odds. That's good odds. That's pretty legit. Here's my question, though. Not bad odds. What do we prescribe as the LARP, the audio listeners can't see me with the air quotes flying around, the LARP, to prepare for something like this? Because to me... I don't know that CQB training is something I would recommend to the average person. Most people are having enough trouble just to get their hits on target on a flat range. I do think something like... This is where I struggle, because the average person really only has immediate access to flat range training. I'll tell you the one thing I recommend, this thing I did for years, and most people on this show either... have already done it and are rolling the rise that I suggested, or they've never thought of it and you should fix yourself, please, for the love of God. Clear your friggin' weapon and drill through how to pie the entire house from your bedroom all the way to the first reach of the house. Nothing will teach you faster where the blind spots are, where the difficult corners. As a matter of fact, I haven't talked about this explicitly on the show before, but I'm pretty sure I've talked about it with several friends, like, I've got one spot in this house I hope to Christ I never have to clear because I don't know how to do it by myself. There's no way to do it without leaving a blind spot. I have a dead spot in my house, too. There's no way to do it without leaving a blind spot. My only hope is to get to that corner before anybody else does because if they get to that corner first and they're even a little bit intelligent, they'll find the blind spot immediately. Oh, yeah. If they have any training or knowledge at all, they're going to find that blind spot. Yeah. But the point remains, like, If you have access to nothing except a flat range, spend that flat range time learning recoil mitigation, getting your hits, coming from a low ready or a high port onto target. Do your usual thing that you're usually allowed to do in a flat range. And then what you do in your house is you clear your firearm and you learn how to sweep through that house, checking all the corners, checking all the spare rooms. Not because you ever expect you're going to have to Rambo through the house, but because... If you have to leave your bedroom to secure another family member, you know how. Or at least you have, if you can't clear the entire house, you at least have a route that you could theoretically clear with the minimal number of blind spots possible. So now Jeff Jag is saying set up targets and airsoft the F out of it. I will also say. Also a great way to destroy your wife's decorations. Do not do that without her permission. Don't airsoft. It's out of my reach, so I'm not going to make a bunch of noise reaching over there. But everybody knows I'm a show for Mantis. Mantis Blackbeard X is a really cool product. You can use the Blackbeard X in your AR to reset your hammer and project a laser down the barrel. So you can use it as a dry fire trainer. And yes, I understand that it is intended to be used with targets and stuff like that, and it's intended to be used with certain drills, but you can also put this thing into basically an open training mode and practice popping lasers at targets you set up around your house and turn your whole house into a dry fire shooting gallery. You know, I think one fair point that we need to bring up here, Phil, is that while I think that does have value for the person that is already fluent and proficient at. The range, If you're not, that's where you got to start. Exactly. Start with fluency. Start with proficiency. Start with accuracy and then build up from there. But most home defense encounters, if the person enters the home, whether or not they know you're there, if they know you're there and they're entering the home, they're intending on doing you harm. So there's nothing you're going to have to fight. If they're entering the home specifically for burglary and they don't know that it has become a home invasion, Once they realize that there is a homeowner present, they tend to leave because they were there for your shit. Not you. A lot of the time when the person is entering your home intending to do you harm and they know you are there and they know you know you are there, they are there and they know you are armed. They tend to leave the home. It's pretty rare that they continue acting aggressively, especially after you pull that first trigger. Yep. Most of the time, and we see this all the time on home security footage, you see a couple of teenagers kicking a front door, bang, bang, bang. By that third bang, a couple of the guys have de-assed the situation. They are out the fucking door, and their buddy is laying bleeding on your front porch. Nothing but heels and butt cheeks. Exactly. Because most of the time, criminals are not looking to harm you. Granted, there are serial killers. There are murderers. There are rapists out there. But the vast majority are property crimes and they're they're intending to do a property crime. And that's a lot harder to do when you have a violent, angry homeowner there. They don't want to deal with that. They don't want witnesses. They don't want a bunch of noise being made. They don't want any of that. They want to come in, get your stuff and leave. Yeah, all fair points. So maybe the best reaction to practice is to practice always, always carrying inside your home. I personally do not know of any state where it is illegal with or without a concealed carry permit to carry a firearm concealed in your home. Nick, you can correct me because you live in Illinois. I think Illinois and California and I believe New York, you cannot carry concealed in your home. Can you carry open carry in your home? I know in Illinois, open carry in your home is not restricted as far as I'm aware. My preference would be for everyone to carry a firearm in their home. However, if that is not an option, then follow whatever safe storage laws you need to to stay on the side of good in your home state. Get a quick access safe. And store your firearm in such a way that small, curious fingers cannot get access to it, pretty please and sugar on top. But always have a firearm within immediate access if you need it. And know that if the door comes off the hinges... Very likely, a quick, abrupt, get the hell out of my house, followed by two or three gunshots is probably going to end the fight. More than likely. I mean, even if you look at self-defense encounters that happen on the street outside of the home, if the person is armed and they present a weapon, that tends to end the situation. Of the situations that that does not end, two to three rounds. At close range. Typically. Ends the situation. It's extraordinarily rare for you to have to mag dump somebody, unless you're a police officer. I'm not going to touch that. Because they are dealing with, what's that? I was going to say, because substantial lack of training, but go ahead. Well, no, definitely they are. It is a significant lack of training on police officers, but they are also more likely to deal with, say, a coked. Out biker on a rampage than you are. Bold assumption, Nick, but I'll give it to you. How many coked out bikers do you run into on your drive from home to work, Phil? Based on how they're driving, at least seven or eight. You don't need a concealed carry license to carry a gun in your home. Concealed might be a maybe on that one, though, hun. I don't know. It is important to point out that your state changed their mind on their own laws depending on how much they like you and whether you made political donations recently or not. It also depends on if you are of certain different racial persuasions because there are a lot more forgiving of certain minority groups doing gun crime than others. We won't go there. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? I mean, look at Chicago right now. Yeah. All right. Also prolonged grid down. Like we were talking about earlier, Parson comms group had a close brush with two wildfires within the last several weeks. The first one, I wasn't able to follow them as closely. The second one, I think it mostly happened over a weekend, so I had just more regular access to my phone. But I do remember the thing that stuck out to me that made me want to talk about it was their power got knocked out a full 24, at least 24 hours, potentially longer, if I recall correctly, before the wildfire got to the point where they thought they were going to have to evacuate. Right. So we had a multi-day grid down situation. The multi-day grid down and the damage caused in the infrastructure by the fire also knocked out cellular reception in that area. So Terrence is, I mean, if you can't tell from the channel name. Massive ham guy. If you follow or you want to follow amateur radio ham and backup comms type of content, partisan comms groups, 10 out of 10. He's my go-to ham nerd. Like, I know a lot about radio. but if I have a question, he's one of the guys I'm going to reach out to because he just, he knows. And he deals with a lot of, I appreciate the fact that he tries to push the ham hobby in the direction of more practical usage. Yeah, there's a ton of practical uses for it. But because the problem I've found with in my area, I don't know about his area in my area, the ham clubs. Sit in your basement. He's in. See how far you can call. He's in Nevada, but I don't know where. In Nevada, like at least in the Midwest. Yeah. All of the members of the ham club in my county. And there was only one ham club in my county is McHenry County ham radio club. They met in the basement of a bank on occasion. It was every three months they would meet in the basement of a bank. There was a lot of sandwich eating done. There was a lot of buying and selling of radio components done. Almost no practical use. Well, you know, I talked to so-and-so in Germany six months ago. And the other guy was like, well, I talked to so-and-so in Slovakia. And that's a little bit farther than yours. And it was basically just a dick-waving competition of who has the biggest antenna. and who spent the most money on their transceivers, but none of them had ever taken them outside of their house. Yeah. So the reason I wanted to bring this up and Jeff Jag is saying, didn't think about loss of infrastructure before during wildfires. Serious problem. So the thing that really stood out to me was, you know, Terrence was not only utilizing like really common preparedness based tactics, knowledge and gear, to sustain his family when this prolonged grid down, but he was also operating his own ham repeater to enable emergency communications in the area. Yeah. On his own backup, on his own backup power. And he was very upfront about the fact that like the cell phones are out and this is the best option. A lot of people in this area have to try to keep in touch with each other. So as long as I can keep this powered up with my gear, I'm going to. Yeah, it's I think at that point, if you have the equipment, the technical proficiencies and the ability, you have a moral duty. To do so. Yeah. But going back to the topic, when is LARP not LARP? Terrence in a wildfire. Terrence spends time, you know, like out in the middle of the friggin woods trying to make or not the woods out in the middle of the desert, trying to make contacts and everything with his ham rigs in his vehicle. He spends a fair amount of time practicing HF rigs and JSA calls to try to make contact with people all around the country. And someone could say, in response to him saying, I do this to practice the skill set for emergency preparedness use, someone could allege that that's LARPing. I suppose you could. But right here, suddenly it turned out not to be. Because with the cell phones out and with a distributed wildfire over the area that he was dealing with, The ability to communicate over long distances now becomes a lifeline for people to pass information about where is this fire and where is it going and where are resources and which roads are blocked off. Right. At least more real time than AM FM radio. I'm going to tell you that we had a situation down here in Louisiana several months ago. We had a pretty nasty thunderstorm that was blowing in from the north and And it was coming south right as I was getting ready to get off of work. So I wasn't, like, super alarmed. I looked at the weather radar. I checked a couple things out. And I decided, I'm like, okay, like, it's going to be ugly. It's going to rain. There's a chance of hail, which is not a fun thing. But, like, you know, I rolled the dice and decided, okay, I'm going to go ahead and make a rip of this. The very first thing I did when I got in my truck was I dialed on the GMRS radio, I dialed in one of the local repeaters, flipped my call sign out there, and within five minutes, I had six other guys, all had the exact same idea I did, dialed in, and all of the superfluous bullcrap rag-chewing nonsense that normally goes on on ham and GMRS repeaters ceased for that afternoon. We were calling in live on-the-ground weather situations about what was the visibility, what was the rain doing, what was the wind doing, was there hail? Constantly, all from around the area. I was given reports every five miles going over the Causeway Bridge because there were people still on the south shore that were coming in behind me and they were trying to make a judgment on, is it safe to go? I thought it was. Visibility was fairly good. I mean... Visibility, I look at it as if visibility is over 200 yards, I call that fine. Yeah, it depends on the speed you're traveling at. 65? Yeah, that's probably fine. Yeah. I mean, I do remember that visibility at one point got down to maybe 50, 75 yards, and I was calling that in. But, you know, we just went with the flow. That gets a little dicey. We went with the flow of traffic. We kind of minded our speed, and we went at the speed that was appropriate for the conditions. But the point is, we had all that going on. And then the cool part, I didn't catch the guy's call sign, but there was one person who jumped onto that impromptu net who was parked, who had his laptop in his lap, and was hotspotting into a local weather station. He was calling out live radar images to us saying, Somebody would basically say, like, hey, I'm at this location. Okay, you want to hunker down because that front end is about to get to you. And, oh, there's reports of hail, like, over here at this intersection. And the wind speed just picked up over here. And he's calling all this out to us while we're calling in live weather reports to everybody else. It was one of those moments in time where, like, I play around GMRS purely as a backup comms. It is not fun to me. It is not a hobby. It is something I engage in as a form of back-up communications with my family or other people. But it was so interesting to see the normal– It was nice to see the payoff. The normal rag-chewing nonsense just disintegrate for one afternoon, and everybody put their game face on. It was like, okay, we got a little bit of a spicy weather situation. And, I mean, to be fair, it was well in excess of an average thunderstorm. And everybody just put on their game face and started sharing information on the ground so that we all knew what we were driving into to get home that afternoon. I would be curious to know how many of those other people that were doing that are exactly like us. I know from not recognizing those call signs, at least half of them, I don't hear on a regular basis. They're not sure. They're not Joe and Bob that talk to each other on their way home in the afternoons. Like these were guys who I didn't recognize the call signs, but I'll be damned to admit the weather didn't turn to shit. These guys started lighting up on that GMRS repeater. I bet you they are some of the quiet preppers out there. Very well, maybe. I mean, I usually try to be really disciplined about calling in. I don't do it as much anymore because I'm not driving my own truck back and forth to work as much. I'm back in the van pool, but I do carry an HT with me. So I've at least got that going for me. But for me, it really just comes down to like, it's, this is backward communications, nothing more, nothing less. Right. And it's, it's LARPing and it's goofing off and it's, Hey, look at my silly man pack build. And it's, I built an ammo cam repeater with bail fangs and bubble gum. You know, it's all, it's all that fun, silly stuff until the moment you have to press into service because the cell phone towers are out. Towers are all down because they're on fire. Yeah, that's a problem. Yeah. Or at minimum, because they can't get fuel to the generators. I know the cell towers around me are on backup diesel. They're on backup diesel tanks a lot of times. Yeah. And at one point, I want to say two of the local cell towers were down during a blizzard because it had been so long without power in that area, which I think is 14 days. And the problem is they shut off. Two cell towers down. Whatever's left is going to get overloaded immediately. Actually, you know, we're densely populated enough that they have enough that the two towers that went down didn't cripple the system. But, you know, it was it wasn't ideal for the people that are immediately in the area of those towers because they had no coverage. No. I think it was like a day or two after that the power got restored to that. Two weeks seemed an adequate amount of fuel. That's a lot of fuel tank. It's a lot of diesel. Yeah. All right. Last but not least, and this is the one Nick reminded me of, even though I feel like I've talked about it like 10 million thousand times, water supply disruption. It's actually become kind of an issue in my hometown right now. So there's some pretty big highway reconstruction. Going on in my hometown. And the. Crews keep hitting water lines that aren't supposed to be where they are. That's suboptimal. So my town's water distribution system was largely built... after 1920, but before 1960. We had a really big boom in the town between 1920 and 1960. And then it didn't really grow a whole lot until like. 90s to early 2000s, and then it hasn't really grown since. The issue with that is most of the correct plans for where the water and sewer will run have been lost. A lot of the old water and sewer lines are the really old stuff that's very hard to detect from the surface. And nobody really bothered to ever update the plans when changes were made. Or when things were fixed, they never really updated the schematics back at the city. My co-worker's kid works for the water department, the local water department in that town. He has been working 50 to 70 hour weeks every week this summer because of how often they're hitting water mains. There's been a boil water order off and on In different sections of town, pretty much continuously for the last two and a half months. Just the different parts of town. This shit happens all the time. And there are no problems right now, except for people hitting things with tractors. As opposed to down here, where like... You know, obviously. Hurricanes jack up our water supply almost immediately. But it's not so much... They flood it with seawater. It's not even so much that. So. Oh, really? This bears a small geography lesson. The problem we have in this part of South Louisiana, and if Raggle's still on, I'm sure he will attest to a lot of this because he doesn't live that far away from me. And the topography they have there is not that dissimilar. They did it again. Oof. I think that was the day I was going to my electrical supplier for more wire. So around here, we have so much saltwater intrusion from the Gulf that that most of the water around here is actually brackish to begin with. The bigger problem we have down here is that all of our drainage in this area is gravity drainage towards Lake Pontchartrain, which from there has to drain further south to get back into the Gulf. And if you get substantial enough flooding, you start to run into issues almost immediately with the local water supply potentially being contaminated by chemical runoff and various other things. So the problem we have is like, I don't know how much of an issue flooding is where you live, but there are places around here that like if you get a fairly brisk afternoon thunderstorm, you're going to have street flooding. 10 out of 10. So we do have some areas like that. Our flooding isn't anywhere near as bad as yours typically, except for along the rivers. And even then, we have enough slope in the ground around here that the river flooding is usually done within a few days. Like you and I talked about before, though. I am 21 feet above sea level right here where I live. And this is basically like living on a mountain around here. I am several hundred feet above sea level. Yeah. In order to get several hundred feet above sea level, I would have to stick a... I'd have to be sitting on top of an AMFM tower. Oh, you would. Definitely. I mean, I. Think even. So our local creek... Not including the one in my backyard. There's a little rivulet in my backyard that runs most of the time. But the actual named creek nearby me is like 85 to 100 feet below where I am. That's adorable. For my house, I would have to get quite a significant amount of water for it to be a problem for me. But I live on top of a glacial ridge deposit of gravel. Yeah. So, yeah, while there is water within, like, six feet of the top of the hill, it's in the ground. Because of the gravel. Raggle is saying Lake Charles is terrible for that. That's on the other side of the state from me, and he's kind of in the middle of us. And downtown floods over a drizzle. New Orleans is... New Orleans is the same. Baton Rouge is the same. I mean, hell, there are parts of my hometown, like Mandeville, Covington, that if you get... If you get a pretty spicy thunderstorm, you'll get three, four inches of rain backing up into the streets. It's not going to flood houses. We get that in confined locations. There's three spots I know of in my hometown that if we get more than an inch of rain, there's going to be water sitting on the pavement. It's a low area. But when you say confined spot, I'm talking about the main thoroughfare that cuts through the middle of town all the way across. I'm talking about. The rear access road behind Dairy Queen and one particular gas station for like 15 feet is covered in water. No, this is like hundreds of yards of the main thoroughfare is under four inches of water. No. Yeah, we don't really get that here. I mean, we. All right. There was a summer about 12 or 14 years ago where we had quite catastrophic flooding for us, where we had a number of roads washed out. But even then, it was farm roads going over a creek that washed out. The flooding that started this podcast more than 10 years ago was where several rivers had jumped their banks so severely that the river was flowing over the interstate. Over the interstate highway. Over I-10. That's a problem. That is a problem. Anyway. Anyway. But the point is that water supply disruption. So you get a decent-sized hurricane. You get severe enough flooding. And that's before we even talk about your basic aging infrastructure does something crazy. Somebody hits a water main. Somebody contaminates something. Right. Which I think begs talking about because a lot of those boil water orders, there are significant inconvenience to people that you can alleviate by having a quality filtration system. Or, go even simpler than that, bottled water. A couple cases of it on the shelf. I mean, like, we have this talk, and I'll be the first to admit, like, for a person who's been in the preparedness lifestyle for any reasonable amount of time, you do kind of get to this weird thing of scope creep where it's like, well, I know I have six months worth of food, but I can have nine months with just a little bit more work. But, like, I always try to be very realistic about this and point out that, like, If you have a three-day supply of food and water in your house, you're probably okay for most minor emergencies. And if you have a bowl of water advisory and you have enough bottled water on the shelf to keep yourself from dehydrating yourself to death for seven days, you are probably covered for most emergencies. Mm-hmm. Yep. Like, that will get you through... medium hurricanes that will get you through a couple of day boil water advisory that will get you through like a surprise camping trip where you need a bunch of ball water. I mean, come on. Yeah. You know, the roofing crew comes over and it's 105 and you still want your roof done. Yeah. But look, I am fortunate enough to live in an area where I'm on a well. That's a blessing. Here's the problem with that. What happens when my well pump goes out? Which will happen eventually. It will inevitably go out at the least convenient time possible. Probably when I'm hosting people. Or in the middle of a blizzard where you are not getting that chip fixed for a while. I've actually considered hiring a well company to come out and inspect the pump, pull it up, And take a look at it and check it and see if it needs to be replaced and then replace it before it goes out. It's far less expensive to call a company for routine maintenance during regular scheduled business hours than on Sunday at 3 p.m. Let me also put a bug in your ear because this is what somebody I know did. And I'm not saying this is like the best solution for all parties, but this wound up being a pretty good solution for them. So they have, like, a traditional deep water well, okay? Sure. All the way down into the aquifer, far enough that. They, you know. Mine's at, like, 115 feet or something like that. Far enough that it should be drinkable with minor filtration right out of the ground. Well, mine's drinkable without filtration. It just leaves rust stains everywhere. They then got some pipe and a sock pipe and a hand-powered, like, you know, old-school hand pump. Mm-hmm. And they drove that into the ground themselves. Now, they were very upfront about the fact that that is not drinkable right out of the ground. They were primarily using it for watering gardens and as a non-plottable water source. But it was also a backup in case the well pump ever went out. You know, that's not a bad idea. Not plausible in all areas. Around here, my water table is so high, if I friggin' stick my toe down in the soil hard enough, I'll find water. It's crazy. But some places, it's not that. Mine is, too. Because of the gravel deposit. The water flows up through that. It creates an artesian aquifer, almost, up near the surface. I would only have to put a point well in about 12 or 14 feet to get what I would consider garden water. That's reasonable. I have not tested that water. Now, I do have to be cautious about doing that due to county ordinances. Oh, Christ. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't do this to me, Nick. We've gone at least seven shows without me advocating violence against your township or your county. I know. Whatever group of idiots is insisting that you can't build a shed because of an imaginary road that doesn't exist and never has. Don't start quoting stupid county ordinances to me like you can't stick a pipe in the ground that you own. Technically, I wouldn't even have to stick a pipe in the ground. The water table is so high at the bottom of my property, I can take a post hole digger, three scoops, and I hit water. So what's the problem? Oh, that's not a problem. I'm just saying the county might technically be upset with me if I did it. It's moments like this that test my libertarianism because I'm just like this close to being like, screw it, let's try anarchy. I mean, fuck it, burn it all down. I want to stick pipe in my ground. Why is this funny man with a clipboard bothering me? Look, I understand the reason why they did it. I can understand and disagree with something at the same time, sir. Oh, yeah. No, I heavily disagree with it. The issue is my area has heavy agriculture use of petrochemical fertilizers. Very few people really understand what it takes to pull petrochemical fertilizers out of a point well water. All right? That's called an IQ test. It is not a simple task. It is. The problem is it poisoned kids. And poisoned children tend to motivate lawmakers for whatever reason No, the only. Reason lawmakers care about kids is to friggin' touch them inappropriately. It motivates bleeding hearts that enable politicians to pass laws. Like, let's be specific. I swear to Christ, one day I'm going to get my friggin' door kicked in with the crap I said on the show. At one point, I was driving a point well in a man's shed, and I couldn't understand why we were doing it in the shed. Because one, it was 110 in the shed because it was a tin shed in the summer, and the doors were shut. And I asked him, I said, dude, why can't we do this outside where there's at least a breeze? Cause I had to go like 35 feet deep with a point. Well, Phil, have you ever pounded a point? Well, no. Okay. You know how you do it? I'm assuming with a large hammer and a lot of anger or one of those T post fence. Oh yeah. A pile drive, a little hand pile driver. It sucks a lot. It's a lot. Did you expect it not to suck? No, but I got paid a very small amount of money to do it. So I was a teenager and I did it, of course. Well, it just doesn't screws below the surface. Yeah, I probably could. I mean, I'm having a hard time caring at this point about my county's desires. I mean, far be it for me to promote bad behavior, although I owe you a couple. You do. But. All I would say is like, you know, there's, there's no laws against having the stuff to make a point. Well, sitting in your garage on standby, just in case there's a rainy day. Actually correct. Yeah. There is no laws against that, but I asked him why not. And he said, well, I'm not allowed to point well on commercial property. I looked around. This is commercial property. He says, yeah, technically I sell Christmas trees. So the shed that I stocked the Christmas trees in before I, take him down to the Ace Hardware, his commercial property, so I can't have a point well. Bruh. I said, what are you doing with the point well? He said, well, you know, my. Wife's got the flowers planted around the building, and she wants to water the flowers, and I can't be bothered to haul water that far. But you're not allowed to have point well and commercial property in this county. Yeah. I'm right back to burn it all down. Like I said, I would. I would have to either be very particular about how I installed it or at least do a little research so I know what rules I'm breaking. Or flagrantly disregard made-up authority. Look, there are some laws that I think people should ignore. I do think there are some laws that people should ignore, especially when their own safety comes into effect, like laws about using firearms within city limits. Great. If you break into my home and I live inside of city limits, I'm going to employ that firearm quite aggressively. That's a law you should ignore at that time. But you should know the consequences and understand the law. You are violating. I'll agree with that. And make a deliberate choice. I don't like. Just ignoring the fact that these regulations exist without understanding. Why they exist. Because maybe there is a point to it, and maybe I agree with that point. There might be. It's technically possible. So since you derailed us onto this topic, I don't like the idea of quietly disregarding any law. Sure. And the reason I say it that way is because I feel like there are laws that I would very happily, like flagrantly disregard because I think they're freaking ridiculous. There are some, such as women parachuting in Florida on Sundays. And I think that if an attempt was made to enforce some of these laws, they would not survive even the most cursory cross-examination in the most liberal court you can imagine. But that being said, that's why I think that there are some laws that should be disregarded flagrantly, publicly, and loudly to basically say, I am doing it, and it is illegal per your definition, and I am not questioning your authority. I am saying you don't have it anymore. Yeah, it's kind of like what we're seeing right now with the flock cameras. Oh, not the direction I was going to go, but go for it. Jury nullifications all around. Beautiful thing, ain't it? I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that in a ton of places. No, fuck you. Fuck these cameras. That's not a crime. What about Silencer Shop out of that district in Texas that started? They kind of opened the floodgates by selling suppressors with. 44- 73s, no Form 4s, and then a whole bunch of gun. Shops around the country said, screw it, we ball. Yeah, clearly they notified the federal government, hey, look, Make a rule clarification or we're going to assume this is what the. Rule is now. Yep. And this is now the rule. And now I will say this has not been universal for the sake of clarity. My local gun shop, even though several gun shops here in Louisiana have said, screw it, we ball, no more Form 4s, damn this. There's been a couple, including my local gun shop, one that I do a fair amount of business with, that has basically said, listen, we understand... But in the interest of not losing our entire livelihood, we're really uncomfortable going down this road until we get some clarification. But as a private business, they have the right to do that. They have the right to refuse service for any reason. Including the fact that their government is run by... pedophile bastards who won't hey by their own constitution if i don't. Like the thing you told me to make as a machinist i don't have to make it as a gun shop they don't have to sell you a gun they don't like perfectly fair done fair i'll take my business elsewhere but problem. For any of us but back to the point i was making before this is why i think that if you're if you're going to break the law you should do that publicly and loudly and basically be like you Be like, hi, ATF. I am transferring. I'm going to break this law. I am transferring this suppressor without a form for because a court in Texas said you can't enforce this anymore. And if you have an issue with that, come and get me so I can go get a lawyer and drag y'all to please come arrest me. Yeah, but I. Totally understand from the other direction. I totally understand from the other direction, too, where these gun shops are like, I lose my livelihood. I lose my FFL. And there's another problem that's waiting in the wings for all this. If for some reason this gets turned around, and there's still possibility that could happen. Always possible. That now not only means that that gun shop and that FFL are liable, but it means that legally they have to go and get every one of those suppressors from all their customers and bring it back into their custody before the transfer can be executed. Yeah. Which puts them in a really weird situation with all those owners. So it's like... Best of luck getting those back. Yeah. Or ATF gets to shoot a bunch of dogs and a bunch of wives in the process. I mean, it's a really weird... Personally, I don't like the odds of that. I don't think the odds are good that that happens at this point. I think we have. Somebody started to see the end of form fours and form ones for somebody. Did write a book about that when a three letter agency decides to go kick it in a bunch of people's doors over. They did. They never got to the sequel, though. No, no, no. Well, I had a good idea for it the other day, but I just can't involve aliens. No, it doesn't involve aliens. I feel like every good sequel should involve aliens. If there's ever a sequel, this one will not involve aliens. It's really just, I need to be in a different space in my career where I can dedicate brainpower back to writing. I feel that. And that is simply not going to happen at my current workplace, because my wife knows... I come home from friggin' nine and a half hours at that place, and I'm just... I'm so blasted. I've got. I don't have any... My brain's coming out of my ears. I got nothing left to write. I don't know that it involves probing, Jeff. I don't... I don't... I don't think the first book involved probing either. It's not that kind of book. There's no probing. I mean, I understand that the whole smut genre has become a thing, but I don't do probing in my books. So a friend of mine's wife is a librarian. Oh, God. Those are the ones you got to watch for. She's great. She's great. She's fantastic. We play D & D with her on occasion. She's a librarian that plays D & D. She introduced my buddy to that genre of media. Is it werewolf smut or is it zombie smut or is it alien smut? Or Werewolf Smut. I don't think she reads it for the fact that it's Smut. I think she reads it specifically because he cannot process why Werewolf Smut is attractive. And she does it for his reactions. I gotta believe that's what it is. Because she will read passages of it out loud to him and he would get along with you and me real well. Touch of the tism in that, boy. Touch of the tism. Touch of the tism. But his reactions to some of that stuff. Cause she's brought it up on a couple of the game nights and made jokes and references to it. And you can just watch his brain hit the brakes. He'll be mid sense. She'll, she'll quote a line from one of the books and you can tell it is because of the look on her face. It's just taillights immediately. He has lost all train of thought, cannot process what is going on. Oh Jesus. It's fantastic to watch. How did we get from talking about LARPing to werewolf smite? Jeff involved probing in the conversation. I'll blame Jeff. We can blame Jeff. Okay. Is there anything else we can dovetail into the back of this when talking about when is LARPing not LARPing? You and I don't agree. I think we agree on the definition of LARPing. I'm using it very tongue-in-cheek in a self-deprecating way which is not the way it's really technically intended. I think we agree on when it is and isn't LARPing. We might use the terms differently because of our different... Background? Hobbies. Yeah. Hobbies. That's fair. I don't do LARPing anymore. There's a serious time commitment to LARPing. I only did it a couple of times. It was entertaining, but meh. I'm looking for a comment that somebody dropped earlier that was so friggin' on point. Now I wish I had started. I'm so annoyed. Who was it from? I don't remember that either. That would help me find it. The rug pull comment? Yes. Who was that? Got it. That's my man. We've just adopted the joke since it rug pulls their attempt to assert their dominance through shame. And that is the reason why I use the term LARP in a self-deprecating, you know, intentionally in really pejorative way. But I kind of mean it at the same time because I use it. I became the middle-aged balding white guy that's into too many guns. I use it. I use it in a self-deprecating way. But I also acknowledge that there are guys who go out and they literally LARP with this stuff. Like, it's... Sure. Their thing for Instagram clout or for whatever is to just put on all... The Milsim Airsoft guys. No, I'm not even talking about the Milsim Airsoft guys. They are truly LARPing. They are, like, they are truly LARPing. I'm talking about the... And those guys are good! But I'm talking about the guys who, like, they dress up in this shit and then they get a buddy of theirs to shoot stuff for Instagram... so they can look like the most operator of operator guys. I call that LARPing unironically, because that's really, to me, what they're doing is they're pretending to be something that they may or may not be. But at the same time, when I propose this topic and I say, when is LARP not LARP, I mean, that dude who dresses up in all the friggin' stuff for Instagram, that is who normies think preppers are. That's fair. Because they associate all the things we do as, oh, y'all are just, like, playing prepper or playing LARP or y'all are playing tactical guy. Maybe. And it is no longer LARPing when the very scenario you prepared for, you trained for, you geared up for, you put preps aside for, suddenly happens. And all the things you had waiting in the wings suddenly go from a theoretical bolster against a potential emergency... to an actual bolster against a real emergency. Yeah, I think that's fair. And that is when LARP is no longer LARP. You and I don't get to pick the day or the situation that happens. The only thing we get to pick is, do you want to be prepared when that actually happens? It's like my argument about being the first responder. You don't get to decide if you're the first responder to your own emergency. You're it, like it or not. The only thing you get to pick is how do you want to be able to respond to it. That's very fair. Rago brings up a good point. The reality TV stuff really ruined it. I don't know if ruined is the right word. I think that it put a bad face on a lot of it, especially considering that more than a few of those guys got arrested. Hold on. For the shit they were showing off that they shouldn't have had because they were felons. I have to put in a new topic. For reality TV? I'm not going to spoil it for y'all. I actually have a good list of topics going in here. And maybe the listeners can help me out with this. Because several of y'all have ready access to us. So I have fun topics and I have serious topics. And Nick has been insisting on serious topics lately. The last one was fun and serious. Seriously fun. Okay, but the point is, I've got several topics that I'm queuing up that are pretty fun, not very serious. I have some that are fairly serious. I mean, they can be fun too, but they're serious topics. I need some input from the gang about what do y'all enjoy? Do y'all enjoy serious topics where we have thoughtful conversation like this? Or silly irreverent stuff where I show up with like, you know, a highball glass full of whiskey and a whole host of snarkiness and sarcasm. And we just talk smack on things for an hour. I'm flexible. I'm versatile. I can do both. We should put a poll in the patron group. Ooh, that we can put a poll in the patron group for next week's episode and just do funny or serious whiskey or serious whiskey or coffee. Whiskey or coffee. I like that. Whiskey or coffee. I do serious when caffeinated and anywhere from silly to unhinged when the whiskey's flowing, depending on my mood. Both are enjoyable. Yeah, but if it's a sour mood or an angry mood, if it's an angry mood and I start dropping whiskey on it, that's when I usually get added to another government watch list. It's fine. There's only so many of those lists. Eventually, we will find the bottoms. Yeah, or they'll just make up a new one just for us. That's fine. They only have so much time, Phil. Thanks, Nick. I knew you'd be the voice of reason for us. You're welcome. All right. Matter of fact, it's going to go out the door. Remember, LARPing is LARPing until it's not LARPing. And if you think you're LARPing, but you're not really LARPing because you're using LARPing in a self-deprecating, funny way, then it's still LARPing until it's not LARPing. Have a good day. Have a good night. Have fun. Bye. Good night. Thank you. clouds are heavy on the county line signs are flashing reading in the time protecting the home locking down the block music Raising values while we watch the clock. Turn the dial, cut through the tricks. Welcome to Matter of Facts. Well, we talk prepping for the storm ahead. The iron in. The hand, the words they said. Guns, politics, and the lines they drew. We uncover what they hide from you. Yeah, lay it down. No spin, no tricks. This is Matter of Fact. Static screams through the midnight air. A lot of folks talking, but nobody cares. For the M.O.F. standing on the track. We look at the truth And we. Don't look back Well, we talk prepping for the storm ahead The iron in the hand. The words they said Guns, politics, and. 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