PBN News: All About Fire

[00:00:03] You're listening to PBN. You will pay us back the stability here.

[00:00:56] It's going to be great. It was an investment. Let's go with that. It was an investment and we're missing an integral piece of the puzzle to get it to work properly, which is in route. It'll give you a better look at if we're going to do this focus on gear and things like that. I don't mind being whited out and blurry and all that kind of stuff.

[00:01:24] But if I'm going to take this gear thing seriously, showing you what's what, where to get what, how to get what, then it makes sense. You know, this thing has serious capability. You'll see it. It's fun. It's fun. We should have some fun, right? Shouldn't we have some fun? You want to hear something fun? Maybe not fun. You want to hear something that you haven't heard in a while? You've heard a lot of things that you haven't heard in a while in this country.

[00:01:53] We're three days into a Trump presidency and a lot has changed. I haven't heard anything about this, though. It feels so foreign to me. To read something like this and to think that this could actually work. The nation could be made better by people doing their jobs. This from the Gray Man Brief, an alert service if you're interested. Check them out, the Gray Man Briefing.

[00:02:23] The Gray Man Briefing. Wow. The Gray Man Briefing. FISA, Major Crime, Border Security, January 2023, 20 through the 23. ICE arrested. You ready for this? Four hundred and sixty illegal immigrants with criminal histories involving sexual assault, domestic violence, drug offenses and weapons crimes.

[00:02:50] Arrests occurred nationwide in Illinois, Utah, California, Minnesota, New York, Florida and Maryland. How come they didn't get anybody out of Virginia? What's going on? This is big, guys. Four hundred and eighty. Jay Furry in the house. What is up? No camera today. Have camera troubles. Four hundred and sixty illegal immigrants. Arrested.

[00:03:20] These are the people that, you know, those on the other side would like you to think we need to protect. Sexual assault, domestic violence, drug offenses and weapons crimes. Nationals from countries like Afghanistan. Angola, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Senegal and Venezuela.

[00:03:50] Separately, one thousand U.S. Army and five hundred U.S. Marine active duty troops have been deployed to the southern border to augment another two thousand two hundred active duty troops. Ten thousand additional troops are planned to deploy. You know, it's just weird.

[00:04:13] It's one of the reasons I wanted to talk about fire today and fire making, because, you know, these sorts of things that just make sense are really nice when it seems chaotic. Do you know what I mean? Like these kinds of things that just make sense. They just make sense. Like, oh, my God, there's a bunch of bad guys streaming into the nation. What should we do? Let's put good guys with guns there. Oh, you can't do that. Oh, no, you can never do that.

[00:04:43] We spent the last four years like every common sense thing you could throw at a wall would bounce off. Oh, no, no, no. And to be honest, I was lighting the fire this morning. Early five a.m. It's like 10 degrees out. And this is uncommon for us here in Virginia, but 10 degrees out, maybe nine. And I'm lighting the fire and I'm just.

[00:05:11] Like, I'm overwhelmed because it's one of those things that once you own it. You know that you have this, you know, this technology that has been used for a very long time to heat to cook to to sanitize. Right. Right. It's. I mean, to do all kinds of things, to heat metal, to bend metal, to bend wood. Right.

[00:05:40] To close wounds, even. Not not a fun thing, I imagine, but to close wounds. And it occurred to me that, you know, this is one of those basic skills that people don't really get. And the reason they don't get it is because they don't do it. And they assume that. And the other thing is because flame is cooler than fire. Right.

[00:06:09] Like like making a flame is cooler than sustaining a fire. If you watch bushcraft content, if you watch survival content, hunting, camping, that kind of stuff. The focus is on how the fire is started. Do you know what I mean? What people suck at is the sustaining aspect of fire.

[00:06:32] Well, some people suck at starting fires, too, but what what really matters is sustaining the fire, building the fire properly. And sustaining the fire, having the fuel to sustain it, having the patience to sustain it. Right. And then having the ability to manage it if it starts to go out or if something happens where it starts to smother and all these kinds of things can happen. Right.

[00:06:59] Until you get that well established bed of coals under your fire where it's like, you know, I could cook an elephant in here now. Over the last couple of years, two, three years, something like that, I've heard more than a handful of grownups, adults, men and women tell me that they go out back to their fire pit and they can't make a fire.

[00:07:24] You know, like they use all kinds of different methods and they struggle and I just and then they just give up. They're like, yeah, we got a little flame going and it went out and we worked on it, worked on it, worked on it. And then we just, you know, just gave up. And that's a crazy thing, man. That's a crazy thing because, you know, this is human. This is human technology. It's like the earliest human technology.

[00:07:54] You know what I mean? Like it's one of the first and most important things. I'm putting up on our screen right now a kit from our sponsor Lima Tango Survival. It's a twenty five dollar kit. Oh, my God, you guys can buy all of them. Why don't you buy all of them? Do me a favor. I don't ask this ever. Why don't you buy every fire starter that's in stock? There's plenty of you out there listening.

[00:08:23] It looks like there's only 18 of these left. Why don't we make their day today and just buy them all? 18 of you buy a fire starter. Twenty five bucks. It's really cool. I have one right next to me. And my favorite thing. And this might surprise you. But my favorite thing in the whole fire starter kit is this cool little. Lima Tango Bic lighter. I love it. Why do I love it?

[00:08:52] Because I'm beyond the point in my life with making a fire starter kit. Making fire where I have to prove something to myself through friction. You know what I mean? If you've been making fires a long time and practicing bushcraft and playing with ferro rods, there was a long time, man, where I was always starting fires with ferro rods, ferro rods, ferro rods, ferro rods, ferro rods, showing my kids how to do it, all that kind of stuff.

[00:09:18] And then I got to a point where it was like, I can start a fire with a ferro rod. I can start a fire with char cloth and an ember, a single ember and a bird's nest and all that kind of stuff. Like I feel good about it. You know, I know I could do it. And then it's like, give me a bad ass lighter. As number one. Right? As numero uno. What do you want? You want a bad ass light. The only thing better than than a Bic lighter is a butane lighter.

[00:09:48] The butane lighters are so sweet. Sure. I'd love. Uh, I don't think my, I don't think my youngest could pull it off yet, but I'd love, I'd love for everyone in my house to be able to start a, a light, a fire with a ferro serum rod if they needed to. But what's ideal is for everyone to know where the butane lighters are with the long. I've showed them to you here. I could show them to you again, but they're not, they're nothing special.

[00:10:16] They're cheap butane lighters with a long barrel on them. And they shoot fire out with tremendous force. And like that, that's the fire starting implement that you should have packed and that you should use matches are the second. All of that has to fail before you pull out a ferro rod. Just keep that in mind when you're packing a bug out bags and, you know, get home bags and whatever.

[00:10:43] Or maybe, you know, caches fire kits and caches at your alternate locations, bug out locations, whatever. Just remember, like, go through the things that work first before you get to the survivalist thing. Go through the Zippo lighter. Go through the butane lighter. Go through the Bic lighter. Go through the matches, the storm proof matches.

[00:11:08] Way before you wind up scraping ferro serum off of a, with a, with a, the 90 degree spine of your bushcraft knife. Don't start there. But all that said, should you need a kit? Should you need a kit to get it done? This guy's pretty sweet. You guys familiar with fatwood?

[00:11:34] So this is that, that real resinous, uh, astringent smelling pine wood, right? It can be shaved down and lit with a lighter or shaved down and struck with the ferro serum rod, right? Jute twine, another great one for catching sparks. This is probably the best product in, these are worth their weight in gold in my opinion.

[00:12:01] And in fact, Jay Ferg made something similar, uh, as her prepper tip of the day. And I also have a video version of that for the members. It's something that I use constantly and it's, it's wax. So these cotton discs are covered in wax, which means not only are they highly effective at starting fire, but they're also waterproof to a point. Uh, it comes with six inches of fire tape. I've never actually used fire tape.

[00:12:31] Never fire cube. Not something I've used. Um, little metal. I, this is really quality because it's a, it's an all metal pencil sharpener or tinder shaver. Right. And look, you could probably get away with using that fatwood. I think this is fatwood right here in this image. It's got a cool little ferro rod. It's not a bad ferro rod. It wouldn't be my first choice of ferro rod, but for this kit, it's small enough. It fits in there.

[00:13:00] And that's kind of what's important. We got tin foil. If we need to start fire in a wet area, uh, it gives us a dry, you know, a dry area to start it. And the fire plugs are great. There's a lot of cool stuff. Um, fire and emergency fire in the worst case scenario, quick fire quickly, effectively, right? The fire starter kit here by Lima tango. It's a big one, man.

[00:13:28] This is one of those things at 25 bucks that is well worth it. So, well, it's small. The container is great. The container is sturdy, waterproof. It has a great snap on it. Well, maybe it's not necessarily waterproof. Actually, it probably is waterproof the way it clamps down. It's pretty tightly sealed. It's, uh, what is it? About three by, maybe about four by three inches.

[00:13:58] Probably about four by three inches. So you can stick this thing anywhere, man. You got those of you out there who wear like tactical pants. This will fit in every pocket. Forget a backpack or whatever else. It easily would fit into one of those, but also fit into a, uh, into your pants pocket, you know? And then you got fire. The other cool thing about fire kits, man, um, you buy them for kids, right? You give your kids fire kits. And not only is it like, you know, now they got many different ways to make fire, but you

[00:14:27] know, they, they got something to play with. You go camping, you go out in the woods, you go out and play at the fire pit. Whatever it is you do. And now you got, uh, now you got something for them to play in. What's up fire wolf? Uh, the, the, the fire wolf, the, the forge man himself is upon us. Um, he says add an SOS pad and a jet lighter. I think that's what we were talking about earlier with the, with the butane lighter.

[00:14:57] I do love those butane lighters. Look at that PBN logo, New York city in the background. Can you imagine if, you know, like two years go by and we keep deporting monsters and kicking them out of the country? You know, the rapists and the robbers and the murderers and the people, the left are going to fight for and, uh, and the cities become something magnificent again.

[00:15:25] Can you imagine like, I'm going to take the kids to New York? I mean, there'll always be crime. It's always going to be an issue, but like, ah, to be, you know, I grew up around Philly, went to Philly a lot. And to be in a city is, is really kind of nice. It is kind of cool. It's kind of cool to be in the, uh, in the aorta of civilization. You know what I mean?

[00:15:52] Where the, where the life is just pumping through it at a, at a rapid pace, right? Good circulation in the city. So how do you get that sort of sustaining fire? You know, maybe I'll, maybe I'll find a picture of a log cabin. We got it. We got to represent with the, you know, pictures and stuff because I'm not, I'm not on there. What's this bushcraft wild.

[00:16:22] Let's see what they got. I'm going to see if I can, no, no pictures. I'm going to see if I can find you a good picture of a log cabin fire lay. It's not the only one. I mean, it's not the only thing. Here's a great one. This looks like something I made myself here. I'll share this with you. The thing about it is.

[00:16:45] Again, it goes back to the concept of when it comes to fire, unless you're playing around with like, let's see, let's try something new with fire. Like when it comes to fire, like get the fire going. You know what I mean? Like get the fire going. That's what people want. We're hungry. We're cold. It's dark. Whatever the situation is, get the fire going. So this is the Lincoln log. That's what this is. It's super simple. The Lincoln log.

[00:17:15] I've done a lot of fire lay stuff. I've done a lot of fire starter stuff. Uh, this build right here, which is as simple as it gets. The only thing I do differently is it. It, I use the larger fuel at the bottom of the fire. Whereas this is all kind of like arguably kindling size fuel. Um, I use much larger fuel at the bottom.

[00:17:40] You know, I'll use like, you know, large split wood, like you would put in a fireplace at the bottom and Lincoln log build it the same way. It's called the log cabin fire lay, but build it the same way.

[00:17:54] And what I love about this fire lay is you take all your small sticks, dry bark, whatever kind of stuff you're going to start the initial fire with and stick it right in the house. It goes right in the living room. And then you set the living room on fire. And I'm telling you, man, it always works because the, the smaller fuel up top starts to burn pretty quickly.

[00:18:24] Right. The interior of all that, all of that Lincoln log would burns and starts to fall inside. And it just becomes one of those things where it's like, how many, Oh, and the other great thing is the airflow. If you look at the front, like where the guy's hands are, you look at where the guy's hands are. You can see the bottom and all the little slits up the sides, all produce, all provide airflow.

[00:18:55] I think that the airflow in this fire lay is probably one of the biggest reasons it works so well, but also the fact that you hit the, you hit the fuel on all kinds of different sides. I keep, I keep kindling to the side of this fire lay. And as that fire in the center starts to die out, I just add more kidling to it. If it starts to die out and it's, I mean, it's hard to mess up.

[00:19:24] It's fundamentally almost impossible to mess up if you set it up, right. If your fuel is dry, it's one of these things you can set and forget. Like you can start this fire and run away, walk away. Like I've done it in a variety of places. This is the one. If you have, like if you're, if you're one of these people that when I said, I talked to a handful of grownups and they don't know how to make a fire and you blushed, you know what I mean?

[00:19:53] If you got all rosy in the cheeks and warm, try this, try this, get yourself. I don't know. Get yourself a nice pile of dry sticks. You know, Dave Canterbury says pencil sized.

[00:20:19] I say like pencil sized all the way up to the big giant magic marker. You can buy sized. Right. And I lay those things in the middle TP style, lean them up. The other thing that you can do that's really cool is you can cover the top of this, not cover it, but you can lay a few larger pieces of kindling over the top of the two ones. It's going. But anyhow, lay that stuff in their TP style or leaning to one side.

[00:20:49] Just make sure that there's airflow and then boom, start your fire. If you've got the Lima Tango kit, this is you take one of those discs, one of those wax covered discs, light it and then use another stick or your knife to slide that pad that's on fire up underneath those sticks. And that little, that little cotton pad covered in wax is everything you need to get this fire going.

[00:21:14] So like I said, so long as your kindling and your fuel is dry, that thing's going to go and it's going to go full time. And once it gets rocking, I think where most people screw things up when it comes to fire is you've got to leave it alone. You've got to let it be. You'll get some big flames that will come out the top of that thing. Right. And those flames will start to die down a little bit.

[00:21:44] Fire is not going out. The initial burn off is happening. The fuel, the larger fuel is catching fire and all that. But those big, large flames will start to go down. And what guys do most of the time is they're like, or kids, is they're like, let's throw more stuff in there. Yeah, we need more sticks. We need leaves. We need what that dry, whatever we can find.

[00:22:13] And this is how you smother your fire. There's a certain point in building and sustaining a fire. It kind of like it's the kick back and relax moment. It's not the kick back and relax moment that the fires established full force. And now you can really leave it for a while. But this is a kick back moment and let nature work. Right. This is you've got to sit back. You've got to leave the damn thing alone.

[00:22:43] And let everything catch and let the cold start to form. Don't move things around. Definitely don't cover things up. Don't panic. Don't start shoving stuff down in the middle because the fire is not as big as it was. I'm telling you this from experience. You know how many fires I smothered when I started making fire? I'm like, oh, no, it's dying down. Let's throw a bunch of shit in it. Dead. Start back, back to the beginning.

[00:23:11] And what I came to realize that one of the most important things you can do in making fire is once you get it to this stage, you've got to leave it alone. You've got to look at L.A. Like fire doesn't need our help all the time. You know what I mean? We help it along a little bit. But once it gets rocking, it'll be just fine. It doesn't need you to consistently throw in more things and more tinder and more. You're right. So you just leave it be. Let it rock. And then.

[00:23:42] And then from there, you know, it begins to build, like I said, that that giant bed of coals. And once you get that glowing bed of coals, I'm the type of guy that like once I get a fire that's really well established, it hurts me to put it out. Like it physically, it's like, oh, I don't want to do it right when you get that really well established fire going and it's warm around the campfire.

[00:24:10] Or the fire pit outside that you, you're just like, the last thing I want to do is spoil this. I want this thing to just rock because it's here now. It's a real fire. Like it's a warming fire. It's a cooking fire. It's a drying fire. It's all capable of it's capable of all these things now until then. It's not right. It's a water boiling fire. It's capable. And I hate putting them out. I really do.

[00:24:35] So, listen, if you're not, if your fire craft game isn't up to par, I would highly recommend you get started in the ASAP. Not because, not because you're going to be outside living around the fire. And that's going to be your only heat source. You know what I mean?

[00:24:57] Like if you're stuck in the woods and you're living by fire and like a frame that you built with your folding backhoe. Everything's gone wrong for you. So many things have gone wrong for you. You've lost count. Right? Like, it shouldn't be, oh my God, there's a calamity. Honey, let's run to the woods and build an A-frame or a lean to and house the family in it.

[00:25:26] Like this is not prepping. This is video game stuff. And you're going to die. You know what I'm saying? It's going to be miserable. Still, you're human. And your red flower is part of, it's part of your whole thing. Did you see Jungle Book, the live action? And they called the fire the red flower. I like that.

[00:25:57] So whether in fire pit or fireplace or grill or campsite or whatever it is, like start making fires. You know what I mean? It's been shown, I talked about this on Surviving America on Wednesday, that splitting wood raises testosterone. Gentlemen, paying attention. Get yourself some wood rounds. Split them. Sit them out in the sun. Keep them dry. So that you have the ability to, you know, make a fire when you want to make a fire.

[00:26:27] And you can play around with the great, with the ferrocerium rods. You can play around with the bow drills and all that kind of stuff. It's fun. But also get real good at making fire with matches and lighters. And know that if you're canoeing in November, October, and your family all fall in the water, and it's 40 degrees out. Like, they want a fire now.

[00:26:57] They don't want you to go, well, let's gather up these grasses and let's search around for some fluffy, what are they called? Bullrush? No. What am I thinking? You know, the fluffy seed tops out of the spiny, what the hell is that thing called? I don't know. I don't have my forge head on. Let's gather all these things perfectly and put an ember inside of the bird's nest and blow it into a flame. And you know what I mean? It's like, we're cold. We're getting hypothermic.

[00:27:26] Make a fire fast. Get good at that. All right, PBN family. It's been cold these last few days. So naturally, I've been drawn to fire. Use the link down below to the Lima Tango fire kit. Okay? There's 18 units left. 18 brave souls out there. 25 bucks. Get yourself a Lima Tango kit. Sell out the inventory. Give the guy a good day. He would love it.

[00:27:53] He would love, I'd love to get a call from him telling him that we sold all 18 of our fire kits. Why not? Why not? It's cool. If you don't want one, if you have one, buy it for your kid. Give it to your kid here. Here's your fire kit. Play with it. Go burn your fingers off. Go catch your hair on fire. Don't tell mom. I'm just kidding. All right. Oh, cattails would have been a great substitute. Jay Ferg. That's not what I was thinking though. I was thinking of burdock.

[00:28:22] Is that what it is? Burdock? Burdock top. Yeah, burdock. Burdock puts off the men's. It's like something out of Mario. Burdock's got that crazy spiky plant with the beautiful purple like filament flowers. And once it gets dry, it starts to grow old and go to seed. It puts off that great cottony kind of fluff. But to your point. Yeah. Cattails would be great too.

[00:28:53] All right, folks. I will talk to you later. I can't believe it's Thursday already. It's crazy. All right. Visit PBN family.com and become a member today. Right. Sign up for membership. Great way to support the network. And you will have a just a treasure trove of prepping knowledge and information over there at PBN family.com. I'll talk to you guys soon. Enjoy the outro. I switched it up a little bit. But I know Jay Ferg is going to enjoy it. All right. See you guys. Bye.