TACTICAL TUESDAY: Suburban & Rural Security on The Next Generation Show

Supper the Pepper Broadcasting Network. We have to hit the reset, but to create a true culture preparedness, starting at a very young age and filtering all the way up. Hello, everyone in Welcome to the Next Generation Show where we delve deeper into the little things in life. Here we explore the lost art of fatherhood, parenthood, and fundamental preparedness for the world. Today, I'm your host, Ryan Buevert along with my co host, Young Master Colin, and today we're broadcasting from the heart of the Pacific Northwest. We thank you for joining us, and there's not a moment to lose, so let's dig right in. First off, couple of quick announcements for those of you out there listening to the podcast, we do thank you for that support. Coming over and join us during the live show by going over to Pepperbroadcasting dot com. Our shows are live every Tuesday night at six pm Pacific time I'd be nine nine pm Eastern time US. I think only is GMT plus eight I believe. 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If you find me on social media, do say hi, and I'm happy to respond back, assuming I'm on that social media platform at the time, or if you want to reach out to me directly, you can always just shoot me an email at Prepper Dad at mail dot com. So into the show for today, we're talking about home security in suburban and rural settings, and I think it's I mean, now, this is a timely topic. This is one thing that James over at the I'm Liberty Show kind of mentioned that we might want to consider covering as show hosts on our shows, and there's been a couple of great episodes already regarding security and you know what what people are doing to try and ramp up on their own home fronts. But you know, we kind of put it out to all the show hosts to give a little bit of perspective on you know, where you are with it and what kind of things, uh, you know you perceive as as threats, things united to need to be aware of. And recently so I've I have since moved from a suburban area into a rural setting, and the threats here are different now. I remember when I was living in a suburban area. And we're covering this in this way tonight because Colin and I are physically in two different regions, two different types of locations. Calms in a more suburban area. I am in a more rural area, and you know, when he's down here at the homestead, there's you know, there there are different things that we watch out for versus things that he might need to watch out for where he is, and there there is value to that to be able to see the differences in what constitutes security and what constitutes the things need to watch out for now. When I lived in this suburban area, we would always take the dogs on walks. You know, we had at the time, we had three dogs, larger dogs, you know, one two larger dogs, and one medium sized dog. And we would usually go on walks either early in the morning or at night when we would get home from work or whatever. Sometimes on the weekends during the day whenever we could catch a break between the snow and rain or whatever. So but we would try and go on several walks a week, sometimes a couple walks a day if we could manage it. And during these walks there were you know, there was an ulterior motive obviously, to get the dogs some exercise and get them worn out so that they would sleep well and stuff like that, not keep us up all night. But the other side of it, and because they were usually pent up all day during you know, while we were way at work, but during these walks, there was also a secondary motive where you know, we had the ability to essentially patrol our own neighborhood to determine what was happening in our own space, you know, maybe within the couple of blocks of where we lived, or the couple housing developments down or whatever, and kind of see what kind of cars are in the neighborhood, see what kind of activity is happening in different areas. You know, sometimes we would meet people you know and have a conversation in the street. Other times, you know, we'd be out and maybe night we wind up in a school yard, you know, basically a grassy area, and you know there might be some suspicious characters down the way, you know, and we just make sure that we were going a specific location or taking a specific path, or getting into areas that had more light or you know, watching the areas in the shadows. And from the urban perspective, it was a little bit different. You know, we were watching for the human threat in most cases, sometimes even the vehicular threat, you know, drunk drivers and people driving around like crazy. People you know, popping wheelies on their motorcycles at fifty miles an hour, going downhill of a straightaway, things like that. And that changed when we moved to a suburban area. We still go on walks with the dogs, but we don't have our dogs on a leash that you know, there's a potent. There's one thing with a rural area versus a suburbinary and a suburbin area, and more often than not, you have to have your dogs on a leash. That can cause problems when you're approaching another person with a dog, or if you're walking along a fence line where another dog is in there, because of course they do their thing and they bark at each other and cause all kinds of chaos, right, And if you're doing that at night, you're waking up the owners and you've got lights coming on and people screaming at each other and all that kind of stuff because they're doing what they're supposed to do, right there, sounding the alarm. Right. Well, here in a rural area, that perspective has changed. We still go on walks with the dogs, and while there's not a ton of other people around, there's still other forms of threats that can exist, you know, large farm equipment, people driving by, blind corners, in some cases, wildlife and just recently I had a strange experience. So we've been this time of year, we wind up seeing a lot more wildlife coming out because as the farmers till the soil, they wind up scaring up, you know, rodents and making the wildlife move. So you'll see a lot of activity with deer, coyotes, waterfowl like ducks and geese, things like that, And as their food sources start to migrate, they start to migrate right along with them. And I'm used to seeing trace of deer around the property. But recently, and I dropped this photo into chat earlier, I want to drop it back in there because I thought it was pretty significant. Recently, I wound up coming across a set of tracks that I had never seen before. And I'd seen moose tracks and elk tracks, and I can tell the difference. I have had elk the property in the past, so when I've seen them, you know, it's kind of like, Okay, we need to keep our guard up. This is totally different. You know, this is not a human threat. This is not something that you can really control by shouting at him, by sending the dogs out after him, by pulling a firearm on him. This is totally different. When you see the level of wildlife threats that exist around you, you kind of have a different perception. And you know, walking in an urban environment, you might conceal carry if you're just walking your dogs, you might not. The same applies in a rural environment and this particular event definitely was enough to put the hair up on the back of my neck. I'm dropping a photo into Chat now. I dropped it in earlier as well, and I kind of challenged the folks who were in Chat already to guess what that print was, and Volcanic got so. Shout out to Volcano for catching that one. But it turned out I thought it was a bear track at first, and it turns out it was actually a mountain lion, and a fairly good size one, if I had to guess. The photo that you see is the print of this mountain lion's paw, and my hand is right next to it now. My knuckles span about four inches across, and I could easily fit like a closed fist inside the footprint of that paw. And I thought that was kind of impressive and a little bit scary really to think about it, because this thing was walking just maybe thirty or forty feet from the edge of my property. I don't know when. I don't remember seeing it. Obviously I didn't hear it, and it was probably at a time when the dogs weren't necessarily were either I wasn't around or the dogs weren't aware of it, but more than likely that bugger was chasing down the deer that were falling following my property and you know, going after the the fruit trees that are in bloom. So the deer chasing down the fruit trees and trying to get some of the good stuff off the you know, off the top, and this mountain lion must have caught their scent and tracked them down and next thing you know, I've got tracks in my backyard. Mountain lion are strange that way because you don't see them. You might see their prints, but very rarely do you actually see the mountain lions themselves. And to me it really was eye opening because moose are one thing, you know, and I've, like I said, I've had them through my property. It's the kind of thing where you just take a step back, you slowly back up, and you get it into your vehicle or you get into your house and you basically wait it out. You let them leave. Mountain lions that's a different story. That's something where you know you'll see the footprints before you see them, and in most cases they'll see you before where you see them. So it definitely put the hair up on the back of my neck when I saw that and realized that it was something that was a little bit more of a threat. Now, was I carrying Was I packing any sort of firearm? No? I mean, my defenses were absolutely gone. At that point. I had just gotten home off of work. We decided let's take the dogs out for a walk. Started walking up a particular path that we hadn't normally taken, and here we see these tracks that are pretty fresh, probably within a day or two old. And it kind of got me to thinking about what types of security I have to have here on the rural side of things compared to the urban side of things. And some of the backstory of this has to do with, you know, some of the activity that is happening around the world, and in some cases here in the United States, where you know, we're seeing triggers to push for more gun control, we're also seeing other nations that like in Sri Lanka where you have the hordes of people that are basically going into mobs to attack people because of the the absolute lack of food. You know, they're they're they're to the point where the people are starving and they're getting violent. And with some of the things that are happening now with food security, you know, supply chain issues, or fuel issues, all these kinds of things. They have a compounding effect. And even though I live kind of in the middle of the of nowhere, and even though my biggest threat might be a two hundred pound mountain lion, that could change in an instant if we start seeing people on foot going door to door to assess neighborhoods, to assess situations, to find out who lives where, what they have, what kind of dogs they have, what kind of security systems they have, and all these kind of things. And it's the thing is is it's vastly different on the type of security and how you need you might need to defend yourself, depending on who you are and what your situation is. What if any of this, what does any of this have to do with prepping? Well, there is no one size fits all answer to home security. I can't tell you go out and buy a bunch of security cameras, especially if you live in an apartment and you can't install stuff around your apartment right or you know, it doesn't make sense to have a bunch of you know, dogs or firearms if you don't have access to them, or if you're not home at the time. Right, So it's not a one size fits all kind of thing, but it is something that you can assess and reevaluate based on the threats that you discover along the way. And while you can use certain forms of equipment to kind of aid yourself in that self defense scenario and what could be happening, you'll still need to kind of muddle through those hypothetical scenarios, those bad scenarios to determine what's gonna work best in your neck of the woods. You know, whether it means having a firearm at the ready or having it on your person, or if a firearm is even necessary based on what your threats realistically are. Today, we're gonna approach this from two different perspectives, both the rural and the suburban settings, and I'm gonna let Colin talk a little bit more about the suburban settings kind of from his perspective and what kind of threats he might be considering on his side, and some of the things that I might have seen in the past. But first, before we get on with today show, Colin, would you like to share your fun fact of the week? Oh, hold on one second. There you go go ahead? All right, all right, what's going on? Everybody? My name's Colin. I'm the co host here at the Next Generation Show Prepperbroadcasting Network dot com. We've already got a pretty good head start on this topic of you know, urban versus rural home security, but I might as well kick it off with a statistic. This comes from a Safehome dot Org, but it says, after adjusting the population differences between these two years, the prevalence of property crime has fallen an even more forty one point two percent decline between nineteen ninety eight and twenty eighteen. So what is that like, nineteen years? That's pretty that's pretty darn good. Forty one point two percent decline. And I mean, granted, property crimes aren't the only, you know, security threat that we have to consider, but. Property crimes alone is also a big part of it. So they're actually on a decline, So they've been reduced over the past twenty years. Yeah, yeah, So between nineteen ninety nine and twenty eighteen, the twenty eight and that statistic comes from the FBI, because the FBI their most recent public data is from twenty nineteen. So between nineteen ninety nine or sorry, twenty eighteen, So between nineteen ninety nine and twenty eighteen, that's what they're basically data shows. That's what that's what their data shows is a forty one point two percent decline. Which is kind of a lot. That's that's a lot, amos, that is a lot. I mean property crimes, So we're talking smashing grabs, you know, people pulling stuff out of cars and CD players and stuff like that. Yeah, correct, Yeah, and that's obviously going to be more prevalent in urban areas. Yeah, and I could see that being an issue. You know, if you're like, as the value and accessibility of things changes, the demand for those things is going to drop. I mean, people don't steal radios out of cars anymore. People don't steal CDs out of cars or you know, stuff like that. How people I mean, you might lose a cell phone, but you know, most people can. There's a level of affordability to where if you lose your cell phone or something like that, you can replace it. And the ability for someone to steal a cell phone or some sort of laptop or something like that and actually be able to hawk it, that's gonna that's going to impact their ability to make any money off of it. So, I mean, if property crimes usually have to be there are things that are valuable in the moment, something that can be obtained and sold quickly for cast and. I kind of feel like I feel like that that the value has probably decreased a little bit with the the measure, like the security measures that take place between vehicles and like home surveillance, and like the inability to just access any computer or phone you want. You know, you could steal a phone, but it's rendered useless if you can't get into it. So what's the point. Correct. Yeah, there's a comment and chat about people stealing catalytic converters right out from our cars. Yeah, that's been a big deal lately, at least in this area. Yeah, turning them in for scrap metal for the platinum. I believe that's inside of them. So kind of an odd one. But again it's like, hey, well we're not going to ask questions. You know, as soon as you get a certain thing that has value to someone else and intrinsic value, well they'll pay cash for it. All of a sudden, those things start to disappear, so you know, there might be some security things that you need to consider, like, oh am I going to have Do I need to park my car inside my garage? Or is it safe out on the street or in the car boarder or whatever? Is it worthwhile to protect those things? So, and that's kind of the things that I wanted to get into. So, you know, when we talk about security, you know, and for the folks who are looking for tactical components of this, that's that's not really what Tonight's gonna show is going to be about. Really, you know. The idea of home security, in my point of view, is more of a holistic component, a holistic side of things. So some of the things that you need to consider on your own level when it comes to home security is why does it even matter in the first place? Right, So, if you have home security, what are you trying to protect? If you're trying to protect your family, then in those instances, you might want to make sure that you have the right tools and equipment on hand to be able to do that when you're not around, or make sure that you have the skills and abilities to handle that when you are, whether it's a firearm, martial arts, or you know, hell a cane even for that matter, you know, making sure that you have the right tools or equipment to defend yourself and protect your family. But that's only a small part of it, because the why of home security helps to guide the rest of your decisions. If you're a single guy living in a trailer park or an apartment, or even a house or a bungalow somewhere, you know, your your level of home security might be a lot less than someone who has a wife and kids. And I don't mean that in a negative way. What I mean by that is that when you wind up building a family, wind up having children, getting married, you start to find out that the things that are of value in your life grow exponentially with the people that are in your own home or in your you know, in your circle. So you tend to want to protect those things. And protecting those things can come, you know, in all different shapes and sizes when you do start to recognize the value. Because I never really considered, you know, when I was a single guy, you know, in college or whatever, I could care less, you know, I'd leave the door unlocked, leave the keys in the car, leave things. I mean, it didn't really matter to me. You know. But you know, once you start having kids, you realize that, well, I can't really leave the kid in the car by himself, or I got to make sure that this thing, this other human being is kept safe because they can't do it for themselves. Then all of a sudden, that home security and that home defense really starts to take hold. And I noticed this with my brother when his daughters were young. He started asking questions like, hey, you know, what kind of tools or equipment should I keep in the house. You know, what kind of things can I do? I've been looking into this or looking into that, and you know, it's kind of it's eye opening because when when you're single, or when you don't have kids, when you don't have a wife or husband for that matter, you really you think of home security in a different way. And I'm approaching this from a male perspective. A female perspective is going to be different, obviously. So if you're a female, your security by yourself is probably you know, pretty well tuned up. You know, to try and make sure that you are aware of what's going on around you and the people you hang out with, and you know, leaving with friends and making sure that you come home with friends or safely or whatever. So it's going to vary depending on why your home why your security matters exactly right. One of the other components about this is, and really this is almost a two part thing, but what are you willing to lose and what are you willing to die for? Because in a home invasion or something like that, you might need to put your own life on the line to make sure that something is protected, whether it's your family or whatever. And this is important because if you are feeling the need for home security because you want to protect your food, or because you want to protect your car, or because you want to protect your firearms, or because you want to protect your cat, it doesn't really matter. The thing is is you have to be aware of what you're willing to lose and really what you're willing to die for, Because if you were to put your life on the line for a bucket of food that's five years old, that might be a bit of a stretch depending on the scenario. You know, sometimes it's better to just say no, it's worth it, you need it more than I do, take it and get out, or you know, whatever it might be, and not put yourself in the scenario where you're trying to protect something that's not worth dying for. I guess that's kind of what I'm getting at. There's no need to protect something that's not worth dying for. I used to do a lot of home inspections for various reasons, and the ones, the one homes that I always was a little bit more hesitant on approach were the ones that would have a sign on the door that would say simply, nothing in this house is worth your life, right, and it usually had a picture of a firearm with a guy holding it. That alone is a pretty good deterrent, and most people will take that and realize, Okay, if I cross the threshold of this house, if I go into this window, there's a good chance that I will be met with some level of firearm by someone who is aware that, hey, look, you know, I'm not willing to sacrifice anything for your life. So you need to be prepared to lay down your life if you are that interested in the CD player or the iPad or whatever it is that you're after within this household, and whether or not that's you know, if you decide to cross the threshold and do that on your own that's up to you, but you've made that decision on your own. And what I find interesting is that there are two things that happen in that scenario. One, you are alerted to the intent of the homeowner that they are not afraid to back down. And then two is that you are aware that there are firearms in the home that could be something good or bad. You know, if you're able to sneak past someone or go there when they are away from home or something like that, then that's something whereas like, Okay, you've just advertised that you have firearms. For someone who has nefarious intentions, they could wind up finding your firearms or your gun safe or whatever and steal the whole safe and cut it apart and get the firearms out or whatever it might be while you're gone, right or know that that's the time to go and smash and grab and do the whole thing. So there's kind of a double edged sword there. You're protected while you're home and your things are protected while you're there, but when you're not, then that's a whole nother side of things. We're talking human threats here for the most part, and that's kind of where the larger threats lie, especially in my opinion, a suburban area. What happens if people come knocking at your door. I mean, whether it's neighbors or friends, family, strangers. You know, We've been in situations where I've had strangers enter my house to use the bathroom and come to find out that they were actually searching for drugs in the medicine cabinet. You know, here I am trying to be a nice guy and let this person use the restroom, and all of a sudden they're taking too long. I'm not hearing water running, and all of a sudden, I'm knocking on the door finding out what's going on. And you know, there there's a lot of suspicion, a lot of red flags going up. Well, that turned into a whole nother long story that I'll tell maybe some other day on the podcast. But the thing is is, you know, you you never know what's really going on, what the intentions are of someone anyone who enters your house. You know, it could be a salesman, it could be someone who's dressed up as a Jehovah's witness. It could be a someone who's dressed up like a Mormon. It could be someone who's dressed up like a cop or an inspector of some kind, throwing a hard hat and a clipboard. Next thing you know, you got someone roam around your house and they can see every access point to your house. So really be mindful of that. What it means when other people start knocking around your property. This was something that happened recently. I've got another property up north in the Panhandle of Idaho, and there was kind of a little bit of an alert. There was a voice message that was left behind saying, Hey, I'm going to be at the house to take measurements for the uh the rain gutters here next week, so I'll be there blah blah blah, and uh. I had not made any sort of orders to do that. You know, I hadn't requested that be done. And so pretty much the advice that I gave was do not let anyone on the property. Don't let them, don't let anybody set foot on the property. I did not ask for it. And you know, unless it's someone who shows up in a marked vehicle from a known utility company that the bills are actually coming from, you don't let them on the property. Right, So this is kind of where you start piecing together the outside components, what are the outside threats that could potentially happen? What kind of things did you come up with on your side of things calling for the suburban side of threats, Like, what kind of threats do you think you might face where you live? Well, I mean, right off the bat, I think close quarters is something that that is the threaaten and of itself because uh what you we? I mean okay, so like what you see on the daily uh, in an urban environment where people are uh, where people reside so close to one another and people go about their daily activities so close to one another, there are a lot of there's there's a lot more action going on. There's a lot more things that are considered to be normal. You know, people walking their dogs in front of your house, I mean so close to your property. That's a normal thing, right. But I mean with that comes, I mean there's there's a I mean on a weekly basis, there's some type of like market like marketing team or something like that where they have where they have people like walking around strolling around the neighborhoods, knocking on doors, you know, and that's just a normal thing. You see and every I mean every. Time we have that around around my house, we basically just tell them that we're not interested because I mean what I mean, in what scenario do we really need whatever they have to offer. And a lot of times it is there are religious folks, but other times they are businesses, you know, or people who portray themselves as businesses. And I mean that's just the kind of thing you. See on the daily basis, people walking around your neighborhood, you know, eyeing your house, asking to inspect certain parts of your property. That is a normal thing that people do, and you kind of have to you have to consider the idea that that in and of itself is a threat, but it's also what you see on the daily. So yeah, you kind of have to keep your guard up all the time. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then you've got your neighbors. Your neighbors are you live close to one another, So you either got to know your neighbors and get to trust your neighbors or you're going to have to live with the fact that you need to keep your guard up to them as well. Yeah, that's a big one. I mean you can't really you kind of glazed over it. But that's a huge deal. The last thing you want is a neighbor that's a threat. Right. You want to be able to turn your neighbors into allies because every set of eyes out there is a point of security. It was a point of surveillance, right. You don't need a bunch of security cameras if you've got you know, even if it's you know, an old lady down the road that you you know, help shovel their driveway or something. You know, if they see something, they know who you are, and you got they got strangers coming up to your house when you're not around. You know, you get their phone number and next thing you know, they're they're calling you up saying, hey, someone's at your house. I mean that phone call is priceless. And that is the type of security that you can get without paying a dime. Right, So what about So here are some of the threats in a rural area. I've talked about them already. We do, on occasion get some folks who are you know, like trying to pedal stuff or whatever. Do you remember when the guy came to try and sell us asphalt? Yeah? I do remember that. Yeah, what do you remember about that? That incident, it called them a gypsy. Yeah. So yeah, yeah, yeah. So he basically rolled up in his nice truck, hit his fancy watch on, and he tried, he really tried selling us some assphalt. Yeah, has fancy lasering equipment that'll laser level the whole property and lays this perfect thing of asphalt. Yeah. And do you remember the conversation that I had with you about that at all during before? I mean I recall that, I recall that you gave him wait between you and. I, Yeah, not entirely. I just remember when you when when we walked away, you called them a gypsy. That was pretty much it. Well, and there was a reason for that. I wasn't saying that to be negative toward gypsies or anything like that, but I was saying that because that sales tactic was actually something that was It was like verbatim on a show that was called like My Gypsy Wedding or something like that. The guy rolled up in asphalt truck and was ready to pour and said, oh, yeah, I'll give you a discount. It's all cash and all this kind of stuff. Well, you know, those things do happen, and that guy would have been able to make a pretty penny. The problem is the concept of where we live and why someone would be driving so far out of their way to be able to spend at any kind of additional time on my property. And if I remember right, I told you to head inside or to stand back, basically because I didn't know what was going to happen. I didn't know who these people were, I didn't know what was going on. I wasn't personally armed, and I wasn't ready for an altercation. But sometimes a conversation like this can open doors to things that are far more violent, and these are the things where you need to be aware of. Like, hey, sometimes if someone's trying to sell you a vacuum cleaner, they might actually be scoping out your property. They might be scoping out access points or security systems or things like that. I didn't let this guy get much much farther than the first few feet of my driveway, and I've got a fairly lengthy one, so it was kind of a it was kind of off putting, to say the least, and eye opening because we were we weren't doing anything. We were just working on a vehicle in the garage. It's this is not an area where people drive by and stop to say hi or stop to sell stuff. People drive by all the time, but they drive by and keep going. And there's about a dozen cars, and I know each and every one of them roughly when their schedules are when they drive past, and I know the ones that stand out, and the ones that stand out are the ones that tip me off that hey, look, this isn't right. There's something weird going on. And you've got to trust your gut when it comes to those kind of things. Those are the kind of threat assessments that I have to contend with. Is the one offs, the weird ones that I'm not familiar with. You know, the farmers and stuff. They'll stop in the street and we'll talk and I'll go up there. They don't cross into the driveway, you know. The only people that come into the driveway or FedEx ups, people pedaling religion, or people pedaling products. So if I didn't buy it and order it and have it waiting to show up, then I don't allow it on my property, and neither do the dogs there. There's a reason why I keep dogs here. And you know what, nobody steps out of their vehicle when they enter my property without my permission. Essentially, it is it's it's something, it's a it's a point of security having the dogs around because of that. So the other side of this are are the hidden threats, the things that happen at night. Here, some of the things that might happen at night are outside. You know, if I'm inside the house, people aren't going to come knocking on the door. But I could lose chickens, I could live with the livestock. I could even potentially lose my own dogs if they get it in an altercation with the mountain lion, for example. So there are threats that exist outside. The thing is I'm not going to spend my time or energy worrying and dwelling on those threats and trying to find ways to defend myself against those particular things. I want to be able to defend myself on the realistic threats, the things that are feasible or plausible, things that could actually happen. So how do you defend yourself against these types of things if there's actually someone that shows up at your doorstep? I mean, is this kind of an actor shooter kind of thing where you run, fight, hide, Do you try and find out where you can go, where your nooks and crannies are in your house. What would be something like if somebody forced their way into your house calling, what would be some of the things that you might have access to to be able to defend yourself? Uh? Well, it's not necessarily something that I could offensively defend myself. I mean, you know, if you know what I mean, there's there's defense and then there's offense. But honestly, going out of my way to defend myself. Physically, I would be pretty bare. But I also have the knowledge of like three different ways I could get out of my house from my front door. I mean, well four different ways. And I mean I think that would be pretty valuable and of itself, because even though I wouldn't necessarily have something readily available under my pillow, if somebody was at my door, I would at least be able to put myself in a better situation than. Right there. You know where the threat is basically, And. Get it's not like we're a bunch of Jason Bournes wrotting around here, right, I mean we're real people. Yeah, And if someone makes an active move to answer your property, sometimes the best thing to do is to get out, to get out, to get to safety, and your knowledge of your own floor plan is a critical tool in making sure that you know how to evade an attack. You know those you know, those who are able to get away or able to live and fight another day. Right, so in that instance, you you're kind of one up on whatever's happening. You don't necessarily need to fight. In fact, in my house, there's actually four access points, and so there's the main door and then one, two, three other doorways that I can go out of or get back into the house. And really, from my perspective, if there was something happening, if it happened at night while I was in my bedroom, I'd be fine because I have firearms in the in the bedroom. But if it was something that just happened in the living room and I couldn't get to the bedroom or something was happening, I could, you know, escape out of another area. And I have a much better view of my own property because I've walked the acreage around my property to know that my vantage points around the property are far more effective than being in my property itself, or being in my house or being in this structure. So. It's it's useful to know those kinds of things. If you have to retreat, how are you going to retreat? And where you're going to go? Is there a neighbor's house that you can go to? That kind of stuff. Gipper drops one that's pretty good. I want to shout out this one because he says I was a state prison guard, which is I mean, geez, I can only imagine the stories coming out of that. But criminals are experts at manipulation, you know, just saying but yeah, that's that's absolutely right. And sometimes the things you need to worry about are the people who talk their way into your house, not the people that force your way into your house. Right, what were we gonna say, buddy. Oh, I was just gonna say. I actually think about this quite often, the idea of retreating, mostly because I don't have anything on me that I could, you know, John Wick somebody with But. And realistically, we're not We're not the people that do that. I mean, you might have some tactical skills, but the average Joe mom and pop kid mom, you know, grandpa grandpa aren't gonna be there ready to just you know, like you say, John Wick or or what's his name, Jason Jason Bourne or I'm thinking along the lines of Clint Eastwood. You know, it's not realistic, right, If you're gonna defend yourself, you're gonna you're gonna grab the first thing that you have access to. One thing that was dropped into the chat is like a baseball bat or some kind of club, even a knife. More more people die of hammers and kitchen knives than they do with firearms. The reason is because of if in a home invasion scenario, you're gonna grab the first thing that you have access to, and if you have access to a hammer or if you have access to a knife, you can do sometimes more damage than a firearm can. So, you know, neutralizing a threat doesn't necessarily have to be with the use of a firearm. So just kind of keep that in mind. I mean, you don't when it comes to fighting, you know, defensible tactics, Your defensive equipment doesn't have to be a firearm. It could be something else, something that's readily available. Hell, you can, you know, throw a chair over someone or even I don't know, people don't really have phones, but man, those old touchtne phones, we're pretty heavy back in the day and those could do some serious damage. What about perspective, so like lighting, what kind of how do you see lighting as being effective or useful in a home security scenario. Well, I think my situation is a little better off than you are because there's a street light at every corner, so you can't really get far. Unless you're walking, you. Know, unless you're creeping in the shadows, which. I mean you gotta be. You gotta be pretty stealthy to be able to do that. But yeah, there's unless. There are certain neighborhoods that were that are a little older, or that stray away from the busier roads, the busier streets in the area I'm from that don't have street signs, But for the majority of my area there are streets there. For the jorty of my area there are lights. And I mean we have a light out front by our or like most folks, there are lights out back that we don't usually keep on just for sake of privacy. But but yeah, I think lighting is definitely I would call lighting at an advantage when it comes to home security because especially in the where light is shorter in the year, because around here it gets really cold and really dry, and around that time between you know, fall and in. Spring, the days get shorter. So that's a bigger window for you know, your house to be a threat, you know, but having that light around could definitely be handy. Yeah, and you know so Colin, you kind of mentioned it earlier on. You know, you've got you've got a little bit easier than we do here, and that is something to keep in mind if you live in a rural area. Yeah, you're not gonna have street lights, folks. You're gonna have to provide lighting. You're gonna have to have, you know, some sort of lighting for either detection, movement or whatever. And if you're you know, if you've got a house that's just absolutely surrounded with trees or dense foliage or whatever, you're gonna be fighting to be able to see what's happening beyond those areas. And that's one thing that I wound up stumbling across as an effective form of home security is something as simple as string lights. And we use string lights year round. We keep them lit, and we keep bulbs in them all the time. The reason is because those particular string lights put out a low level light that is not like super bright, like a spotlight that is focused on one area. This set of string lights is capable of up three sides of my house with very little electricity, runs off of one ten and if I had to, I could run them off of a generator and still be able to maintain some level of security at least at night, and be able to see beyond. And what's the need about these types of things is that they're not blinding. There's no shadows, and you're able to see what's happening even if you're inside, which in some cases, if you're looking inside to the outside, a spotlight is the only area where you're going to be able to see. And if you move just one side or the other of that spotlight, you can get around dark corners and hide up close to buildings or whatever. So I've kind of stumbled across this, but I found it to be not only a nice ambient light that is able to be something that I can leave up and be like, oh that looks nice, doesn't that house look nice? Or whatever kind of curb appeal, but it really doubles as an effective form of security. James joining us in chat, he mentions a two thousand limit flashlight why a two thousand women flashlight Because they're blindingly bright something like that. If you keep it on hand near a door or something like that, or near your bedstand, that alone is enough to blind someone temporarily because of the fair amount of power that that has to and just getting those couple of seconds sometimes might be enough to where you can reach for a firearm and really change the tights, or even not even a firearm. If that's the case, you can grab a lamp or something else. If you're in a hotel. The number one thing that I have on my bedside, especially if I'm traveling, is extremely light, extremely bright frat flashlight. Excuse me, wow, I can't get that one out of extremely bright flashlight For just that reason, I might not be able to hurt someone with it, but I can buy time, and that in itself in an event where you have someone who's you know, breaking and entering or someone who's being a threat, can stall them, you know, once their hands are trying to you know, cover their eyes and get their eyesight back, then you have the ability to either fight or take flight. Right. So a couple of other cool things coming into the chat room trees with the problem with solar as far as lights. Oh yeah, and another story looks like Gipper drops another one in chat from his time as a prison guard. The one of the most nerve racking nights when they lost power with no lights. Yeah, and no outside windows. I'm sure in a concrete cinder block building that that can be nerve racking to say the least. So definitely some home security issues to consider there when the when the lights do go out, you know, what are you going to do to be able to provide some level of secure already be on that because you know, if you if all of a sudden the power goes out, uh, and you've got folks around you, or if you've got people who are around you who are mob in your place or whatever and decide to cut power, then you have to have something on the backup to be able to at least maintain and get going. So one last thing that I wanted to talk about was some of the defensive responsibilities that we have as human beings. Do you want to I know, as I'm kind of dropping this on you, but do you know what I'm talking about when I say this, calling. The defensive responsibilities? Yeah? Are you calling back to the first part, were you, you know, sent out. The value of your security is and you know, it goes up when you have other people to consider, other people's lives to consider, yes, or you're talking about something else. But there's also the other part of that, and that is the repercussions if you cause harm to someone else. So you need to know and understand the laws in your areas. I can't tell you, you know. I mean if someone approached me on my property and something bad went down, you know, And this is a conversation that we had kind of on the back channels with some of the other show hosts, is what would happen if something did occur on your property and some went down? How would you handle it? Like, what would be the outcome? Well, there are laws that differ from state to state. You have to be aware of what is considered self defense in some states. And I'm not an expert on this, but in some states, if you pursue someone who is trying to leave your property and you wind up hurting or killing them in the process, you might be held liable and you might go to jail. You might go to prison for that, You might lose your gun rights, you might, you know, lose your whole family, which does tie into what are you willing to lose. You have to be able to recognize what happens in the event that you take someone else's life and what conditions that is acceptable in the state that you live, and you know the situation that exists, because I would say almost every case, and I'm not speaking from as from a professional experience, but in general, with all the crime shows that my wife watches, if you are the person who wields the gun, wields the firearm, you are going to jail, whether it was in self defense or not. And you have to recognize that if you're going to be firing on someone or acting in self defense, that you have to prove self defense. It's not your guilty until proven innocent. In that instance, you have to prove that it was self defense. You can't just claim that it was self defense and walk away. There are castle doctrines in every state depending I should say that I take that back. There are laws in every state that determine what level of castle doctrine exists, So you need to be aware of that state and sometimes down to the county, what is acceptable when I reached out to the state regarding this firearm or excuse me, regarding this mountain lion for example. I asked point blank because I was like, okay, I just wanted to report this mountain lion. It's in my area, so other I wanted to know if other people need to know about this or what you guys usually do. Do you track them? What's going on? And they were like, yeah, we do track them. Do you have a photo? And I said, well, I got a photo of the pop print. That's the pop print that I put in chat. Well, do you have a photo of the animal, like a night vision camera or a trailcam or something like that, which is another great you know, security tactic is to have trailcam set up on your property. No, I don't have any photos like that. Well, we can't report it. I can't report it as a sighting because pop prants, unfortunately, do not count as a sighting, which to me is weird. But anyway, that beyond aside from that, one of the. Things that I actually do want a touch on that that's a little bit weird because it is weird. When when I last. Week, when I was looking for a fact, it was about dogs, and dogs nose prints and pop prints are as accurate as the human fingerprint to their DNA, So that's bizarre. Yeah, I'd believe that. And this thing, you know, to me, it was kind of like, Okay, this is a threat. You know, it could be a problem, But is it really a threat? Is it going to come after me? Is it going to come after my dogs? Maybe? But there is that potential, you know, if my dogs chase after it. What are my rights? What is my ability to do anything? And I didn't put it this. I kind of just asked the person on the phone it was with the watching the Department of Ficient game. Basically, they said, well, you do have the right to defend your property from imminent threat. So if, for example, the lion was to approach me or a family member or something else, then I would be able to put it down. That doesn't necessarily mean that I wouldn't have to face the consequences for not having a tag or for firing a gun, because even in that regard, there are still laws on whether or not you can even discharge a firearm in certain areas. Now I live out in the county, so I don't I don't see that as a as an issue. But if I were closer to town and that mountain lion was in my backyard, I would have no qualms with putting it down if it was going after me or my family. But I would still have to face any sort of litigation that would come as a result of me discharging a firearm in within city limits, for example. So this is where you need to weigh the differences between life and death and whether or not you need to defend yourself if at all. Go ahead, buddy, what are you're saying? Oh, it's just gonna say that's a good point. So I would recommend brushing up on your Nindu star skills because that that's that's a little too complex, I think for forties too yeah to touch on. I think they'll be like, well, I mean he did not use it nindustars, so m this time. But I think you know and and all reality, Uh, I would feel more comfortable with firing a pellet gun at an animal like that. And here's why are or even a person honestly because of a person, because you could like that's it might be less threatening, but it's just as like repelling Oh yeah. I mean you'll wake them up, you realize, hey, you're not messing around. And if you have a larger firearm with you, if they pursue, then that's different. But you know, if you have a pellt gun and you you shoot a mountain lion in the ass, you're gonna have You're gonna have a mountain lion on the run. Same with the moose. You know, they'll they'll see it as something that is that they don't want and they'll start running. Right, you don't necessarily need to to take down the threat. Sometimes you just need to deter it and get it out right, you know, be ready for it to come back. You know, I'm always ready for that moose to come back, but I'm not and I've seen tracks of that same moose to come back, and now I've got to be ready potentially if we're even a mountain lion. So you know, the thing is is whether or not I want to spend my time or energy or put myself at risk defending myself for other people against this thing. Instead, I'll tell you what I did do. I let my neighbor know I sent him the photo and I said, hey, look, this thing was just outside the tree line. You might want to keep your kids on a tighter leash at night, have them, you know, let them know what to watch for, you know, keep some lights out, keep them, keep them from taking advantage of an opportunity to take down a week link. If that thing's hungry and it goes after a little kid, which they usually would do, then that's different than you know, coming after a grown man. They're not necessarily going to do that. So, uh, what else did you want to add on this, buddy, this topic in general, anything that I missed out on. No, I mean, I don't know. I did want to say, like, there there are definitely bouts of. Like like vehicle robberies, not not robberies, not robbing the vehicle, but like, I don't know, there's a vehicle theft where they just burglaries. Vehicle burglaries where people just you know, they leave their door unlocked, people open it up and take it in. So I think, I mean, they kind of just helped themselves to whatever they want basically if they have access to it. And so I think. Even if it isn't even if we're not talking about a vehicle, I think the level at which you make your valuables accessible is probably another important aspect of home security because because your chances of having that security threat goes down when you you know, remove things from site or you know, take things out of the you know, out out of your vehicle that you might. You know, find valuable. Don't flaunt it making sure Yeah, yeah exactly. I mean that's kind of part of the whole preparedness recluse mindset. Definitely an important aspect of security. And you know that kind of goes with you know, especially food storages. You got people coming at your door. I've heard someone sent me a link, might have a chin or Ron Foster, somebody sent me a link basically how FEMA and the FEDS have been tracking preppers essentially to determine where they might need to go to source food supplies and stuff like that. So you know, yeah, and I wouldn't put it past any one of them. But the thing is is, you know, if you got someone from the FBI knocking on your door saying, hey, we want to see your pantry, that ought to throw up some red flags, like hey, you know that, show me your warrant. Let's let's you know, you need to know what your rights are, but also you need to be aware that as preppers, if we are being targeted by FEMA and the FEDS for for being self sufficient, for taking care of our own family, you need to be aware of that that there is an existential threat there potentially and that threat being like being one of being tracked, is different than being outward like going, you know, showing every person that you know that you've got all this food, or you've got all these firearms, or you've got you know, all this material that you're working with, or whatever it might be. You've got all this pile of silver or you know, these these different things. You have to fit within the framework of the place that you were you live in and make sure that you don't flaunt those other things. Right, if food become the next car stereo, we're in a world to hurt, and I think if the big thing is to make sure that you keep that stuff under wraps and be mindful of what you have going back to the whole stuff with Sri Lanka or you know, potential food shortages or being neighborly, you know, you you might need to be aware that, hey, now's the time to get people prepared with regard to food. But also, you know, be mindful of the people who are actively doing nothing or relying on you to be their source of food in times of need. So yeah, so I think basically what I'm hearing right now is it's time to make some underground bunkers. Yeah. Absolutely, dig up the whole bunkers, bury a sea can and go to town. So we're probably gonna hold off on doing a project this week. I think the overall takeaway here when it comes to security, it's kind of weird because your home is probably one of your most vulnerable locations. We didn't talk about school in today's show. We didn't talk about work in today's show. We didn't talk about grocery stores. We didn't talk about theaters, we didn't talk about concerts, we didn't talk about public events. All these different things. There are different places where you might be out of your element. The reason why we're talking about home security especially is because this is where your guard drops. This is where you want to be able to just let go right. You want to take your worries from work and be able to relax. You take you if you carry every day, then you take your firearm off and you put it away for the night. You put it away during dinner, right, so that you can be with your family and not be feeling like the world is closing it around you. This is your place, this is your castle. This is a place where you should feel most secure. So being mindful of what your options are help to increase that level of security. Knowing where your exits are, knowing what your vantage points are, knowing what your lighting systems are like, knowing what your neighbors are like. This is all part of home security. None of that has to do with what type of firearm you have. It doesn't have to do with what type of martial arts skills you have. It has everything to do with what you're willing to protect, how you're willing to protect it, and what you're willing to do in the event of some sort of altercation or invasion or something like that. Like mentioned in chat Kalluk says, always be vigilant right. Pay attention to the neighbors that come by, Pay attention to the salesman, the folks who are trying to promote something or get access to your property, because you don't necessarily know what the ulterior motive is, right, It could just be something as innocent as a deer walking on your property, but it could be a very real threat, like a mountain lion waiting for an opportunity to get a free meal. So when it comes to security, prepare for the mountain lion. Prepare for the things that you might not be necessarily aware of in your everyday life, the one offs, the things that might be a little bit off in the night. But at least that way, you have a plan. You know, oh, what you're going to do in that particular situation. You know, if I see something, if I see this particular threat, I'm not going to fire at it with everything that I got. You know, I want to pull everybody inside, pull all the dogs inside, and we're gonna wait. I'm gonna wait it out, wait till the threat leaves. In other instances, if there's a threat at your doorway, there's someone working into your house, working into your property, something like that, time to put the guards up right, time to send send the letters up, Send send they're not the letters, Send the signals up and let people know, Hey, look it's time to be ready. Uh this this could go down in a very bad way. But whatever you do, consider your scenario when it comes to security, based on where you are, where you are in life, and where you are regionally. Nothing that we talked about today had anything to do with urban environments, apartments, high rises. These are going to be completely different in scope and perspective than what we covered today. But whatever it is, stay vigilant and keep your head on a swivel. I mean, pay attention to the surroundings that you have, Pay attention to the tracks, pay attention to those little fleeflets that wind up on your doorstep. Lastly, in case you missed it, on last week's show, we did a special on Randy Weaver and Ruby Ridge where we turn the cameras back in time to really take a look and see how we fit within that construct of being an extremist quote unquote by definition just three decades ago. Remember, if you missed out, you can always check out our previous episodes on the show page or on your favorite streaming service, and while you're there, be sure to leave us a five star review. It does help to boost our presence and it allows us to share this message with others. Next week, we I'm gonna leave that to be determined because I'm not sure what we've got going on next week, we might do a pre recorded show. We will see. I'm off on a new chapter in my life with regard to my career, so we're gonna see how things go on Tuesday. But I think that's gonna be it for today. Everyone. Thanks for joining us on the Next Generation Show, and don't forget to tune in next time, where we explore another aspect of the little things in life that make all the difference in the world. This is your host, Ryan Buford and you're a co host, Colin Buford, reminding you to stay informed, get involved, and be prepared. Have a great night, everybody, and make it a great week. Thank you for listening to the Prepper Broadcasting Network, where we promote self reliance and independence. Tuning in tomorrow for another great show and visit us at Prepper Broadcasting Dot comm.