Throwback Thursday: Getting Caught Off Grid with Reality Check

Well, I will go ahead and get started proper. Then, good evening, folks, Welcome through reality Check. My name is Michael Klein, and I am back. We are live tonight and on the air. And if you don't believe me, you could post something in the chat room. I prove it. However, seeing as that y'all say that you can hear me, we'll think that. I think that we're good. So, speaking of the chat room, hey, you know, if you're listening to us on blog talk radio or iHeart or some kind of other streaming service, we invite you to switch over to Prepperbroadcasting dot com and actually join our chat room. And I know I say this every show, seriously, man, we got a real time chat room that runs during the live shows. It's live daring every one of the shows. And I just want to say special thanks to everyone joining us tonight. So you know, elk JAFERGI that NUB appreciate y'all joining me in. I would also like to welcome and thank everybody listening on the podcast. So if you downloaded the podcast after the fact, dude, I appreciate you. I also like to welcome our international audience. You know that we've got several people that listen to us from abroad. Man, y'all people are awesome as well, And don't forget you know that if you can't get online, or if your internet's not reliable, or you know, for whatever reason you can't get on proper broadcasting, you can actually call a phone number and listen to us. And we have a lot of people that do that. But here's our number, so get ready to write it down. It's three four seven two zero two zero two two eight. Again, that number is three four seven two zero two zero two two eight. If you have a question or want to talk about something, you can actually press the number one. You get dropped into the queue and you can talk about the live topic or your question on the air. But remember, you know this is a uh yeah, listen from the People's Republic of Washington. Yeah, I know that. I hope that's the people of the Republic of Washington State instead of the District of Columbia or that nub But either way, I have a special treat for you tonight. If you haven't already heard, or if you if you didn't catch it, e K is joining me tonight, so say hey. K hey, everyone, I mean and you know what we're fiting to talk about not having introt at music. It just kind of goes with the them of tonight show. Yeah, it's uh, it's getting caught off grid. So there's kind of a play on words there, you know, the the getting caught off guard and you know, something happens and you're like, whoa, wow, that kind of really caught me off guard. Well, yeah, we got we got caught off grid, and uh it wasn't fun. So anyway, all right, good evening there, Gray Fox. Appreciate y'all joining us in see al prepping. Appreciate you joining this al prepping. So all right, well this week we're discussing the reality of the electric grid going down. And this is kind of a personal story about me and e K being caught somewhat off guard. Uh. We've actually been out of town with family for the past few weeks and we were really close to the path of tropical storm by Belto. So as a Belto was forming in the Gulf and it was still a subtropical storm, I was looking at the forecast maps and I knew we were going to be getting some of that weather. Oh, by the way, a really good weather page is called Mike's Weather page. This is the one that I follow if I'm going to do any kind of weather forecasting, hurricane models, sea surface temperatures, anything, even the coronal mass ejections and stuff. I tracked them at Mike's weather page. His page is spaghetti models dot com, like spaghetti thepasta spaghetti models dot com. He's got you know what, Let me just post that in the chat for y'all. Yeah, yeah, I know, YadA, Yeah, there you go. I invited you on to talk about the problem, not shied me over stuff. Tonight. Hey, good tonight, I'm here. Hey, yeah, you go. All right. Well, anyway, so that's I know Gmavin here, so I can see. That now I saw him get in there. But anyway, okay, there's another good one, tropical Tidbits. I can check that one out. But I really like Mike's weather page. You know, he links a lot of Noah content on his page, And if you don't know where to go, navigating Noah and like weather dot com can be a little daunting. So there's a ton of info on weather dot gov, the government site, but unless you know where to go and you know how to get there, it can be kind of wonky. So Mike's done a really good job. He's put his site together and there's a lot of a lot of links that link over and so it's like a one big long dashboard. So you just go to Spaghetti Males and you can just like see everything on one page and you don't get all the videos and the bloat wear and the junk content. That's some other mainstream weather sites, you know howk you know the ones I'm talking about. You load to them, and you know, the first thing does it starts playing a video and it's got you know, things on people that are trucking and whatnot. So anyway, if you just if you're like me and your weather geek, you know, check them out. And apparently tropical tidbits. I need to check that one out. So all right, anyway back to the story. So I knew we're going to be getting some strong weather off the storm and as we were going to be well within the con So when the track was coming through, I knew that we were going to get the weather where we stay in because we were in the we were in the cone. We were on the northeast side. Some people call that the right front quadrant. But that's the worst side. So if you have hurricane or if you have a tropical storm passing you by, you want to be on the left side of the storm, not the right side, and especially not the northeast side of it, because that's where most of the wind and the rain are going to be. Aside from the eye wall, that's where you know, that's where the weather is at. So anyway, so like a good little prepper, you know, we were sitting there talking like, hey, you know, we're going to get this storm. We're gonna have to bring some of our stuff. And I'm like, yeah, I'll bring the I'll bring the mobile kitchen, you know, our camping kitchen, and I packed a small propane stove, I brought my DC bag, I brought my camping cook set. We brought a big, old family size power battery powered lantern. You know that. Everybody can you know, take a flashlight off of it or a torch for those of us listening across the pond. And it's just a really big battery powered lantern that light up an entire room and it's you know, it's not gas, so you can use it indoors. So anyway, well, and we got there and everything was good for a few days, you know, eating good. Everything was great. Well, Monday morning, we attempted to cook breakfast and the electric stove just pretty much gave out. It had power, it came on, but it just wouldn't get hot. And much of a chagrin of VK of cursing and screaming it under her breath because of all the nieces and the nephews. I don't know exactly what you were saying, but you levitated off the floor a few times. We we kind of just looked at each other and there was kind of like a collect the thought, you know, the brain waves collected, and it was like, hey, we have a propane stove in the kit and. I can get away from everybody on the back porch. Could Yeah, we'll just set up on the back porch and pretend like we're cooking under a giant wooden tarp instead of the blue ones. So and in all, honestly, that was actually pretty cool, you know, it did. It was raining, It wasn't bad, It wasn't humid, it wasn't foggy. You know, it was in the low seventies where we were at, so it was just you know, just a good gentle rain run off the porch and we had everything set up, and you know, Monday was Monday was actually pretty good. We stayed inside, we drank, we played games, and you know, it was pretty much a decent day. And then on Monday night, around eleven thirty pm, we lost power. And that brings us to the main part of the show tonight. So if you don't get anything else from the show tonight, here's your tidbit. Being off grid sucks, especially when you're not fully prepared for it. So a small claimer. As much as I preach preparedness, I was not prepared for this and I really got caught off guard on it, you know, hence the play on words for the show title. So you know, I always think of myself as a good prepper. I always think of myself as you know, I've prepared for the worst, and we've got everything squared away, and we pretty much did. I mean, we could have hacked it. We did. But from a mental standpoint, the power going out is different from camping, and even you as preppers, you are not going to be fully prepared to deal with it. Here's why when you go camping, you are planning to be off grid. You pre planned to bring all that you need. When you go camping, you have the psychology of preparing your mind to be off grid, and it's something that you want to do. You know, when we go camping, our minds are in a certain state. It's nice to be without the phones and the TV. We all relax, we all relive the darkness and the quiet of the night. But it's not all quiet, and it's not all dark. And even when you go camping you think, hey, I'm completely off grid, the stars of the moon are still providing some light. There's still glow of cities reflecting off the clouds. So you know, even if you're out in the middle of nowhere, if there's a little bit of cloud cover, those clouds are going to be lit up because there's light reflecting off of you know, from a nearby city. There's frogs, there's insects, there's animals, you know, everything out in the night. The night is actually not quiet. The woods are not quiet. The woods are very much noisy, and the ambient background noise of the woods is not dead steel. And that's kind of what helps us to reset and reground our minds. And that's why we all enjoy going and camping and getting out, you know, going off grid and the getting away from society and going into nature. However, when the power goes out at home, it's a different ball game because there is a very real, unnerving stillness and that's what got me on our vacation and that's what I wanted to make a show about. So you know, it's in a normal grid up situation. You know, you're lying in bed. Let's just say you've vetted down for the night and you're laying there, the air conditioner's running, the ceiling fans turning. Even though you may not be conscious of it, there is a small amount of airflow that's blowing across you. There's a small amount of ambient noise that you're actually hearing. You may not be consciously hearing it, but it's there and your mind is processing it. And we become accustomed to hearing the constant white noise in our lives, you know, even just the background of the house. You know, like I said, the air is running in a different room, Well, the air's coming through the vents, or there's something happening outside. You know, our minds are accustomed to hearing white noise. We are used to hearing noise no matter what. It doesn't matter where we're at, we hear stuff. But if anybody has access to noise canceling headfune, then you kind of know what I'm talking about, because when you turn on noise canceling headphones, the ambient background noise disappears. And when you're lying in bed and suddenly the power cuts off, there is a vast and deep stillness that your conscious mind instantly picks up on, and it is freaky. I mean, you are suddenly aware of the absolute nothingness that you hear because it is dead still. I mean, your house is naturally, you know, quiet from from everything side, but when that house goes quiet, man, it is weird. So lying there in bed, you know, it was complete darkness and complete stillness because the storm would rain, but it was like waves of rain. It was the the outer bands kind of thing coming through. So it was just it was it was unnerving of you when I'm lying there. You know, we were lying there in bed and the power went out, and when it wasn't raining, man, it was just it was mentally it was jarring. And I think that when when an EMP hits or when the power goes off or whatever happens for the power grid to collapse. This is gonna be something everybody has to deal with. And you may think, I'm you know, I'm completely prepared for it. I've got candles and I've got lanterns and stuff. Well we did too. I mean I had I had my tablet that I was using, and so I had light. I had. You know, everything was perfect as far as you know, kneeding light or needing power to do stuff, because we had flashlights and stuff. I had planned on all of that, but it was just the noise, the lack of noise, the quiet. You know, I didn't have anything but my wristwatch and a very very incessant TikTok TikTok TikTok. And it's just like wow, and that is maddening how loud that thing becomes when there is nothing else. So, anyway, any thoughts from you there ek for a continuing I I'm sitting there just Randy for I'm just like, man, I'm freaking out here. No. I mean you think, oh, okay, we know the power might go out, We're good to go. But yeah, it's the quietness, and then you hear everybody in the house actually breathing. That's kind of oh, my lord ignoring in the next room. Realize that, yeah, there's people gnoring, there's people rolling over. Its interesting enough. We pretty much knew right when the power went off, but everybody else, I guess. Actually it was a blessing take about an hour before they realized the powers off, and at that point because they were hot. And then they were complaining to us wanting the air commission to be turned down. Yeah, which we're like, the powers off, we can't turn on the air condistrict. But I did realize some relatives can snore like a freight drink. Yeah. Yeah, they always take a break real quick before we jump on this next topic because I'm gonna get into some more rents. So, g man, if you're in the chat, which doesn't yeah, it looks like you're there, let's go ahead and go the commercial. If I don't hear anything in the next few seconds, and I'll just pick it back up. The Trading Post in the Woods is a team of disaster response and survival experts responding to over twenty major disasters, ready and standing by for the next disaster when it happens. Trading Post in the Woods dot Com created the Survivalists' Natural Remedies Kit and the American Heritage Kit for those preparing on their own to survive any disaster. We can help you learn the remedies your great grandmother used effectively and train you in what to do when disaster strikes. We've encountered needless death, helped masses of the unprepared, people frozen in fear, people lost, separated, and afraid. Be informed, Share our simple survival products and learn the lessons we've learned in the aftermath of disasters. Be prepared for the unthinkable. Don't be the victim. Visit Trading Post in the Woods dot com. That's Trading Post in the Woods dot Com. Hi. I'm Joe Aldmandee, also known as Doctor Bones of the award winning survival medicine website Doom and Bloom dot Net and co author are the best seller The Survival Medicine Handbook. As a medical doctor, I know how important it is to have knowledge, but you'll need supplies if you're going to save lives and a disaster. We've got an entire line of medical kids for every homestead retreat, workplace, vehicle, church, school, just about any purpose you might imagine, and they're all put together by a real MD and nurse practitioner. Other kids are fine when the ambulance is on the way, but when you're the end of the line with regards to your family's well being, you'll be a more effective medical asset. With kids and supplies uniquely designed for tough times and. Packed in the USA. Prepare your family for any disaster with medical kids and supplies at store dot doom and bloom dot net. That's store dot doom and bloom dot net. Make medical Kids by doctor Bones and Nurse Amy a part of your medical storage. You'll be glad you did. So I'm reading the chat room and I have to be I'm curious, So, Melinda Lee, did you have a visitor that you were not expecting or did you have a crazy person? I'm actually curious what that that? Okay, what that uh that question is? And I'm just like, did she get in the house? Was she was she rumming around upstairs while you were downstairs. I'm just I'm just sitting there watching this and I'm like, what the heck? So no, I'm just I'm just watching the chat and I'm you know, I'm not reading reading my show, but I'm not reading the chat. And it's like, I don't know what that is, but that sounds actually pretty cool. What's not? So? Okay? That makes sense? All right? Well, anyway, so, as he was saying before the chat room about the air conditioner, I like sleeping cold. I mean, I'm I'm a I'm a polar bears, she calls it. I always sleep with the fan blowing on me. I always have the AC set to about sixty nine or so at night. You know, the granted is there in the day, I play the good little green person, and you set the A C a little bit, a little bit warmer. At night. I wanted to be cold. So the room was already cool, and I knew I could just kick off the sheet and be fine. And so I was just laying there and I could hear the rain bands coming in. It was no big deal, you know, I'm just like, you know, the fan cut off, the ace's cut off, but it's nice and cool. I just flipped the sheet off, No big deal. I'll go on to bed. You know, as long as it was there was a little bit of rain there was a little bit of noise on the roof. You know, I could sleep. And the problem with though, is, like I said, with the rain bands coming through, is when the rain stopped, my mind began to start churning. So I'm slaying there in complete silence, like a like a sensory deprivation chamber kind of thing. And this is a problem that we as preppers are going to have to deal with, and it's what I want you all to practice. So at the end of the show, I'm going to challenge you with something. So you have to listen to the very end of the show to get the challenge. But there's something I want you to try. So even if everything was fine, and even if everything was set and I was one hundred percent safe, you know, I knew everything was fine. I knew, you know, I had the can not candles, I had the lantern. G Man put candles in the chat room earlier and had candles on my mind. I had the lantern, I had my tablet. You know, we had our phones. We still had cell signals, so it was not like we were like, you know, one hundred percent you know, unconnected, But my mind was already like freaking out and so I looked over at the clock when the power went off, and eleven thirty one. I was like, all right, the storm is blowing. It's probably just a limb. The power we'll be back on in a few minutes. I'll just lay here and I'll listen to the rain. And I laid there, and I laid there, and it's just like, wow, this is really taking a long time. There's the power is really not coming back on. This is starting to be a problem. So I reach over and I look at my clock. Well it's eleven thirty five. Hmm, it's only been four minutes. But I feel like I've been laying here an hour. And now the rain has stopped, and so there's nothing going on. And now I begin to realize, oh, there's a lack of air circulation. And now I begin to fear of the unknown. You know. Then this my mind really starts churning. Is it just a small limb that has tripped a breaker down the road? Was it just a tree that has bumped the wire? And reset it and you know the system will come back on a minute. Did a tree actually fall, you know, did a tree fall on the wires? It was a giant limb that has taken down the power poles. What if the tree is falling across the road. What if it brought down the wires? You know, what if the tree is blocking the road and we're trapped and we can't get to where we're going, you know, we can't get into town. We were we were planning to be here a week and it's only Monday, and we were going to go into town after the storm and by groceries, you know. And then my mind goes, well, what if it's really a cyber attack? You know what if they were actually planning a cyber attack to coincide with the storm. You know, people are not going to know the difference. They're sitting there, you know, the storm comes through, the power goes off, They're going to go, oh, the storm caused the power to go off. But if it was really a cyber attack, people are not going to know the difference, and so they're not really start freaking out. And I'm like, okay, time check quip math. It's eleven forty pm here. That means it's one ten pm in Pyongyang, it's six forty am in Moscow, and it's eleven forty am in Beijing. Now, the North Koreans would be coming back from their lunch break, the Russians would be just getting to work, and the Chinese would be getting ready for lunch. So I know that I don't bring down a major power grid as soon as I get to work or anytime around lunch. So I'm going to rule out a cyber attack. And then I thought, well, crap, what if it's an isolated EMP. What if it's an EMP or a CMME you know, what if the sun's flipped out and we have a localized outage? And I thought, no, no, no, no, no, that's not it. My cell phone is still working and it's nighttime. You know, we're facing away from the sun. It must be a limb. It's it's got to be a limb. It could be you know, it can be anything. But it's like, you know, it's just I just need to lay here and chill out. It's no big deal. And then I think, oh, crap, we don't have any water stored. If the power is still off in the morning, we're not going to have any drinking water because the well's going to be off. You know, we were on a we were on a well we're pretty much we're not isolated. We were, you know, a little off the beaten path, and we have a community well that all the houses around me were we're going off of. So then I think, well, crap, now I have to actually get up. So I get up, e K and I go into the kitchen. We start filling containers with water. Now I don't have any containers of water. I didn't bring gallons of water because we're you know, we're pretty much still in the city and we've got facilities, and so, you know, we drag ourselves out of bed, we put on clothes. We're carefully stepping over sleeping cousins and nephews in the living room. We're trying to creep into the kitchen, you know, without turning on the lights because we don't have any lights. So we got the flash lights and we're, you know, we're trying to whatnot. And I find the ice cream bucket that holds about a gallon of water. E K grabs the coffee pot. You know, that's three at thirteen cups. We found three clean solo cups from beer pong. So all right, so three clean solo cups. We have the water picture shut up just because you lost. We have the water picture that you were using to filter water, and there was an empty bottle of whiskey that we had already cleaned out, so you know, all total, we have about three or four gallons of water. And so then Eka and I we go back to the bathroom. We're like, hey, our bathroom. You know the sinks in the bathtub. So we fill up the bathtub and we're filling up the sinks and you know, we're for the two of us. We're like, you know, hey, we're doing pretty good here. You know, we're nowhere near having the one gallon per person per day, but it's a decent start. So after we had filled everything and we've played a game of mine Sweeper avoiding the children, and we all get back to bed. We're laying there, and I laying there, the rain starts falling again, and all is well and I can drift off to sleep. But wait, there's more. There are people in my party that have a Steapat machine. They have sleep at in you, and they need that machine to sleep. And so then my mind goes into overdrive. And e K will tell you this that I'm just I was just sitting there going and I'm just I'm just like grunting, going, oh yeah, you just please shut up and go to sleep. But anyway, so I'm wondering if this dude is okay. And I'm wondering, Okay, have they woken up? You know, did they did they realize their machine switched off and they can't breathe and they've actually woken up and taken the mask off? Or are they quietly suffocating the death laying there in their bed? You know? Should I should I go down the hall and wake them up and make sure they're okay? Or should I just leave it in the lord's hands to deal with in the morning, you know whatever. You know, if he's he's lived a good life, maybe it was just his time. So I needed to know. So once again, this time I left k in the bed. She's like, whatever, you just you get up and go do your thing after I told you what you would have to do. Yeah. So anyway, Yeah, and Elks has got it right there. Elks is talking about the battery pack, and you had been talking about that very thing about you know, he should have had the battery pack, you know, but yeah, those things are expensive. So yeah, I press them up in the refiner. But anyway, so I get dressed and she's like, you know, you just go deal with it whatever. I don't care. I'm going to bed. So I get dressed, I go stumbling in the dark, and you know again, mind you, I have a small flashlight. I carry a very bright led light in my edec and I had planned to bring my bag. I had it and had everything I needed to in it. I had it on the lowest setting and I had my fingers over it to cut down the light. And as I'm heading down the hallway, I run into my relative with the seapap and I ask him, you know, hey, are you okay? And he proceeds to inform me that he is going to go get a drink and sit outside since he can no longer sleep. And you know what, I completely agree with him, and I said, you know, may I join you? And he says sure. So he heads to the fridge. He opens the freezer. He grabs out, you know, a big old handful of ice. I grab out a big old handful of lots. We're putting you know, ice in the in the drinks. And then again my mind completely loses it. Yeah, I start thinking crap, temperature, temperature of the food, the frozen items. The power went off at eleven thirty ish, and now I'm worried about if the power is off in the morning, is our food going to be okay? You know? Then it's like, oh, well, spilt milk. So for the next hour hour, so we sat on the back porch and we're watching the storm in complete darkness. We're having a quiet conversation about sports and the weather, and we're interesting sit there enjoying a glass of bird on the rocks, and you know, it was wonderful, you know, like I said, it was raining, but it wasn't you know, bad. It wasn't like the blowing tropical storm rain. It was just you know, heavy downpours. And then after we have finished several rounds of grain based fermented liquids, both of us are quite tired, and we both decide to return inside and attempt to sleep. And we, you know, we're sitting there and it's, like I said, it's been an hour or two and we've had several bourbons at that point, and so we're going to go walk back inside and we're walking on the back porch and all of a sudden we are blinded, both of us temporarily blinded by the searing one hundred watt flood lights as the power has now come back on. Yeah, you wondered why I stumbled back into the bedroom, cursing at myself. Well, this is why. Because we're walking towards the door, the flood lights come on. All the lights you know for the porch come on, and we've been sitting in the dark for the last hour. You know, we are blind and so we're both stumbling into the living room. We set off several of the sleeping land mines. They start screaming. They wake up the entire house, the whole house in a moment of wtf is going What is wrong with you? What were you doing out there? Nobody realizes that the power has been off for the past few hours, because, you know, people are turning on lights at that point, because screaming kids, everybody runs to the light switches. They flip on the lights. The lights come on. They're like, what the heck is wrong with you? What were you doing? Why did you you know, why didn't you just turn on a light? Why did you have to you know, kick the nephews and the Nieces in the in the thing. Yeah, exactly. Elk's ignorance is bliss. So you know, everybody, everybody's like flipping out over me and my friend that was doing his thing. And so anyway, so back in bed, Ace's running fan blowing the salt. The rain is softly falling on the roof e CA's path. Yes, she's passed out. I mean she's gone, you know. And then I think, okay, it's time to sleep. And so that was Monday. Well that brings us to Tuesday. So now it's Tuesday morning and all is well. Everybody minus me and my drinking partner have got a full night's sleep. I'm up at six heading off to get a hot shower. And it was actually kind of cool because the powers on breakfast is being made. You know, everybody's happy, everybody's you know, had a really good night. Nobody really realized what, you know, what all went on. A few people ask me, you know, what's all the water and proceed to pour it out, So like you. Pured out. Yeah, I think all it was poured out. I think our our two sinks and our bathtub made it because it was in our bathroom. But all of the other water that I had stored up the night before was poured out because why do you have all this water? We don't need this. The water's fine, pour it out. And then around eleven am the power goes out again, and this time it doesn't come on until three p fifteen, so you know, about four hours this time. And then you start trying to explain to the kids and the parents and the cousins that they need to conserve the water, they don't need to open the fridge. We don't know when the power is coming back on, you know. And this is where another thing with prepping, and you know, another topic that y'all need to learn to deal with, is that it is maddening as a prepper to know all the things that you should be doing and to try to explain that to someone who just doesn't get the fact that we don't know when the power will come back on. Everybody always says, you know, it's just it's just out for a few hours, no big deal. Yeah, Flushing the toilets exactly. You know, people flush the toilets and then they don't realize that the toilet doesn't refill automatically when the power's out, and so then people are like, well, I need a glass of water. We don't have one, you know. And then some people, one or two of them realized, oh, that's why you had all the water stored up. Oops, well too late now, you know, spilt milk kind of thing. So so we decided to grill out for lunch that doesn't require power. And that's kind of a hot circus with everybody in the same room and me trying to grill and prep food. And you need to realize that once the power goes out and the air stops and a bunch of hot bodies, Yeah, a bunch of hot bodies are rooming around, and you have kids, you know, even the kids are doing their thing, they're running around, They're getting hot. You get all these people in one room, it's going to raise the temperature of the room. And you may think that opening a window is a solution. Yeah, you know, you think, well, one is it gets hot, we'll just open the windows and let the breeze blow through. Well, what do you do when there's a tropical storm blowing outside and the humidity is one hundred percent outside? You know, what are you going to do when the temperature is ninety plus degrees and you're all stuck inside. This is where you're going to need to start thinking about this kind of stuff, because it may be you know, it may be really hot outside, it may be really really humid outside. It may be really really really really foul weather, and you can't go outside and you can't open the windows, and you've still got all these people breathing and running around and the temperatures are just climbing up. Yeah, you would not believe that, flying Dutchman. So you know, without electricity your house or your shelter or bug out whatever, it's gonna get warm and it's gonna get uncomfortable real quick, which is why my next show next Friday is going to be on off grid air conditioning. So it's hot inside all of the relatives. You know, it's hot inside with all the relatives. It's muggy outside with the humidity and the fog. You know. Okay, you know what, whatever, I'm grilling the food, I'm prepping the foo food. It is now time for a large glass of grain based fermented beverage. So I grilled with food. I'm finishing. I managed to step on a hot piece of charcoal and I burned my foot. Well, guess what, I have no burn cream in my ifact and I really don't want to open the fridge to get out a piece of ice. So I'm headed to the fridge and I'm asking everybody, Hey, does anybody need anything from the fridge or the freezer while I have it open? Nope, no, I'm good. Okay, Oh no, I don't need anything. Okay, So hearing nothing, I go to the fridge, I get my ice, and I go to sit and tend my foot. Oh look, somebody forgot they needed a drink, and they open the fridge again. And now the fridge has been opened about six times. The power has been off for about three hours, and you know, again, my mind is going crap. The food is going to spoil. Yeah. Thank god for grain based fermented beverages. So you know, and e K was doing real good to keep me, keep me cool. She was. She was trying to do what she could with it. She was like, no, no, no, no, you just you go do this. I'll take care of this. And it was just it was nuts. So anyway, what's your take on the situation. That was my opinion of it. Well, I have deal the children and I'm not just talking about the little one. Okay, you win. You got that when. I'm missed and you didn't ask me when you burn your foot because I was too busy. But I had something in mine, I fact, but you didn't realize that because you never resked. By that point was. Pointless because I'm a man and I don't ask those kind of things. Yeah. Well, anyway, so I got the h I got the ice and started tending to my foot the third degree hole that I had in the bottom of my foot. So anyway, thankfully, at three point fifteen, power comes back on. The fans start turning, the AC begins to cool, and you know they al, yeah, the angels have come down from the heaven and yeah, you know, the AC begins to pull all the humidity out of the air, and the water heater has come back on. And I'm fixing to go get another shower and take a nap while the family does whatever they're doing. So aintal prepping in the chat room has a really good thing, he says. As a precaution, fill two liter bottles and leave them in the freezer. When the power goes out. They're melting. Adds several hours of cold temperature. Yep, two things there. So when I know that my power there's a chance my power could go out, I actually do I fill up two liter milk jugs, the gallon jugs. Yeah, not two leaders. I fill up the gallon jugs and I feel them three quarters of the way full, and then I freeze them. If you feel them full and then freeze them, you're gonna have a mess in the bottom of your freezer because they overflow. So take sorry about that. Take a gallon jug, fill it up three quarters of the way and then freeze it. Something else you can do is you can take a small glass of water, freeze it, and then set a quarter on the top of it. And if you go away for a long time and then you come back, if the quarter is still on top of the ice, you know that the power hadn't gone out and everything in your freezer is okay. If the quarter is at the bottom of the glass, you know the power was out long enough that the water melted and what's in your freezer is probably ruined. So anyway, just two f ys there. But anyway, so now it's Wednesday. This was a normal productive day except for the tropical form. Tropical storm force rain, you know, just pouring rain. And the only problem that I had on Wednesday, or the only problem that we had e K and I I will say, yeah, I won't say the other family didn't have problems. Anyway. The only problem that we, as the preppers experienced was that with some there's air and water lines, so we can go to turn on the turn on the water. There was air on the lines and it would really really bubble when I was like, well, that's kind of odd, that's kind of weird, you know. But anyway, other than that, it was fine. So we go to bed and we're laying there and I'm hearing the rain pouring. And then now I'm like skittish. So now I'm gun shy because I'm laying there in the bed and I've got that really really uneasy feeling that the power is going to go out again. Thankfully it doesn't. Thursday morning comes. Thursday morning was normal until we decided to leave for lunch. And as we're leaving for lunch, and again, like I said, we're not we're not out in the middle of nowhere. We're kind of far off the beaten path. It takes us about ten minutes to get from where we are to a main highway. So as we're leaving, we found that our small one lane road was partially blocked by a massive pile of dirt and a truck digging a hole. And this is a pretty much like a one way street. There is no end, there is no out. It's like you go right here and if you don't go this way, then you pretty much can't get out. And so it turns out there was actually maintenance being done on the community well and the piping, and I was like, all right, well that explains the air in the lines. And I was kind of happy to see that because I thought, ah, right, great, our water is going to be back to normal. You know. Yeah, so we thought our water will be back to normal. That was the air in the lines. There is no problem, we'll have, you know, the the storm is starting to kind of lessen. We're only getting just periodic thunderstorm, so hopefully the power will stay on. And then Thursday afternoon we get back from our charade and we discover there is no water and the family loses it because nobody yeah yeah, I mean this, yeah, because everybody like we took a road trip and so everybody's kind of cooped up in the car, and again the kids are running around. So we get by back and the family. Nobody can take showers, nobody can drink of water, nobody can get a glass of water to drink, nobody can get water for their pets. And so after having all of this, I then explained that this is why I was filling up the containers with water. And it is also at this point that I point out that the containers were dumped out so that we no longer have any water stored up. Yeah, exactly, Jay Fergie, that is the absolute crux of the show tonight. Jay Fergie in the chatroom says, it is funny how you take such modern things from granted, absolutely. When we go on our own by ourselves from over there. Yeah, when we go when we go camping and stuff. Man, you know I've got I've got a small nuclear actor I bring with me, and we have the you know, we have the hot tub on the trailer. I mean we we we do good when we go camping. So that Nub and the chat room had a good idea, he says, taken inverter hook get up to the car and plug it into your fridge for every couple of hours. And you can actually do that with the generator too. You you don't have to have the refrigerator on the generator on all the time or on the the inverter. You can actually just hook it up, let it run for an hour, or let it cool things back down and pull all the moisture out of the air and do its thing, and then unplug it and it's good for another what six hours? Yeah, a fridge or the. Yeah, it also depends on how full it is. And one other thing you can do, back to like Al's idea, is take a few of those frozen jugs of water and put them in your refrigerator, because then that'll lack like an old timy ice machine where you have the ice at the top and the cool goes down and keeps all your stuff cooler. So anyway, yeah, Jay Freggie says, even if you think it's unnecessary, you could find yourself in need of it. Amen, sister, yep. But the part problem is, you know, we had other people in our vehicle, so we're having to pack their stuff in. So yeah, I didn't I didn't have I didn't I did not bring my bug out bag I brought my ed C. Shut up, y'all. I don't need I don't need chastisement from the choir out there. I brought my ed C, but I we didn't bring our bug out bags. We we brought our camping kitchen. We brought some camping stuff, but we didn't bring all of our stuff because like usually, Yeah, so hence getting caught off grid, because we were caught off guard. So anyway, let's take a break real quick. I've talked for long enough, and you know, let ek get in here for just a little bit. Gee, man, go ahead and take us to break. Well, welcome back, everybody. Yeah, I know, I see. I see what you're saying in the chat room. And no, I didn't bring my get home bag. No, I didn't pack my bug out bag. No I I didn't leave it in the car. I took everything out to make room for luggage and stuff because we had other people that were traveling with us. So I very much committed the cardinal sin of prepping. I took the bug out bag and everything else out of the car in order to make room for luggage and stuff. I did have my DC, and my DC contains contained to most everything we need. If it had just been me and Ek would have gotten by, but it dealing with family. So anyway, to answer your question, they're that up. I never could find the water heater. I know they had one, but I have no idea where it was at. I looked in all the closets and could not find the thing. So ye, I don't know. I don't know where the water heater was. It may have been in the may have been in the roof for all I know. Dude, that would stink if you have to replace it. So oh okay, well anyway, all right, So yeah, I mean it's kind of like the same way when you're flying somewhere. You know, you have to flying the airport, you can't take everything with you, and you feel naked, and you know, we're sitting I'm sitting there thinking, you know, okay, well we're gonna be okay because we're bringing the camp kitchen where we're bringing the lanterns we're bringing, you know, and I had like my saw your water filter in the bag and that kind of stuff. So you know, if it was just me and Eka, we to made do. But but you know, we did realize. But thinking as you're brought what we did. Yeah, that we had so many people. Yeah, we were just we were just out numbered, and and we didn't do a good job of telling people, you know, hey, look this is why we did this. You know, we did it as preppers, because that's what preppers do. We're like, Okay, you gotta gotta have water, I gotta have you know, the food in an issue. Because we had plenty of food. I mean, we had little diabetes with us, you know, whole boxes of that stuff. So what we had fruit, Well, the good thing is the saving grace is because there were kids, there was fruit juice. Oh yeah, there is stuff to drink. It just wasn't work. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't like a survival situation. Don't get me wrong. It was just uncomfortable because the creature comforts were gone. And it made me realize how quickly life sucks when you don't have an air conditioner and you live in the southeast. So that's what that's what prompted my next show. Our family kind of fell apart. Like it's just been a couple of us. I think it's been okay, but once one started complaining, it just. It wasn't me either. It wasn't me. It just went downhill from there. I mean, normally we can vacation with them and do just fine, but all this scenario just made things kind of worse. Yeah. I mean it's it's fun to vacation with a family when the power's on and the gold card works. But yeah, yeah, right. Anyway, so it was pretty much at that point, like I was said that, you know, I started telling family members, you know, this is the reason why we had water. You dumped everything out. We no longer have any water stored up, and you know, e K and I kind of went back to the room we were staying in and we were like, you know what this is, this is enough. We can be home in three or four hours, So I can. I can get on the road, I can head do south. I can get on I eighty five or I twenty or whichever one of those ones that was those cross country ones, and I can be home in about four hours four and a half if I do a speed limit. So at that point in time, we were like, you know what, we're gone. So we just started packing our stuff and we didn't rent the cabin. You know, we only had brought our personal items and the family member that had come with us were traveling back with other people, so you know, no harm in just going ahead and leaving. We didn't, excuse me, we didn't have any extra gear we were gonna have to load other than ours. You know, it was like the trip there was was arduous, but the trip back was gonna be really easy. So yeah, which. Is interesting because we've left and then the power went off again. Then people realized that we were kind off the glue that was holding the little bit of what there was again. Yeah, yeah, and that nub says, you know, if you get a tarp and collect some of the rain, and you know, we could have collected rain. I mean, it was pouring off the roof. I could have collected rain if I needed to. But like I said, this wasn't a survival situation. This was just a you know, well this sucks because we can't watch TV and the air conditioners out kind of thing. But it just, you know, that night, it made me realize how psychological the uh, losing the power actually is. And then of course just you know, the well crap, I didn't think about that, you know, or you know, dang, I wish I had my bug out bag now or you know that kind of thing, and you just you got caught, you know, we literally we got caught off guard. We didn't plan. We had planned on the storm causing problems. We planned on the power going out, but I didn't plan on the water going out, Soway. So we bid the family ADO and got on the road Thursday, late Thursday afternoon. And you know, like I said, we didn't rent the cabin. We'd only brought our personal items. The family member that traveled with us was traveling back with others, so we said, you know, see ya they were going to stay till Saturday. Said they had rented the cabin through Saturday night. Yeah. They I think they left a little after we did. But anyway, I said, you know what, y'all have fun. I'm out. So we loaded up the car, We got in the car, we turned on the air conditioning in the car, and we drove down into town. We went by Pizza Hut, we ordered a pizza and a large coke, and we drove home eating pizza and drinking coke and whatnot and having a blast talking about how glad we are away from everybody and and whatnot. No, they are not that Nub. So they don't get that, and that was actually brings me to the final bit of our show tonight. So what did we learn. Well, our lessons learned is we don't vacation with relatives that don't prep because it's really hard to explain why you were doing certain things or why you're taking circuin actions. So, you know, as Ek mentioned earlier, you know, when she and I go on vacation and when we go camping by ourselves, everything's just fine, it flows smoothly. You know, she's a prepper, I'm a prepper. We both know that we need this kind of stuff. When something doesn't work, we both know what we have to do. So that Nub is asking the question, you know, are your family preppers? Now, No, they're not, because they didn't get it. They they still don't get it. You know, even even after I kind of halfway flipped out and said, look this is why I was filling up all the containers and somebody dumped them out. You know, I filled up the water because the water wasn't reliable. They didn't get it that, oh I need to fill up water when the water comes back on. No, they just sit there and complain about it and so anyway, so that's number one of you know, if you've got relatives that don't prep, if you've got family that don't prep, just be careful about it because it's really hard to explain to someone why you're doing certain things. So we would do certain things, we would take certain actions, and some of the family members would say, well, why are you doing that, And I can't say, well, I'm a prepper and we prepared for this. It would just be you know, we'd have to go, well, we thought we might run into this problem with the storm coming through, oh okay, and so it was just a lot easier. So the one thing I learned is I'm not going to vacation with my family anymore because they don't prep. Number two is you need to always always plan on it hitting the fan while you are away from your home and all of your preps. So slap me on the wrist. Be sure that when you are traveling or a vacation that you prepare for all possibilities. I had planned on the power going out. I had planned on cooking on the propane stove. I had brought a family lantern for everybody to see by. I brought my edc bag and would have been prepared if the power had stayed on. But I was not prepared for the psychological impact of hearing the silence. And I'm dang sure wasn't prepared for having to suddenly fill water and worry about all the food in the fridge. Yes, it hits the fan when you're away. So when you're home and you've got all your preps and you've got the walls up and the dogs out and the systems armed, that's not when the apocalypse is going to happen. It's gonna be when you're flying for work and you're away from all your preps, or you're somewhere where it's going to be real hard to get back to your house. That's when it's going to hit the fan, you know. And it doesn't have to be the apocalypse or e NP. It can be whatever. It can be a localized outage or a localized thing that causes, you know, a problem in the area that you're in. You drive ten miles down the road and hey, you're back in civilization. So anyway, Number three is bring containers for water. As that nub said, even if you can catch and filter the rain, you need to have a gallon container to put it in. So you may have rain, you may have a way to catch the rain, but you need to have a storage after you filter it. So you catch the rain, you run it through a filter, you need to have a gallon container to put it in after it's filtered. So and then last, you need to make sure that you always carry a fully stocked first aid crip with burn cream or at least ask your spouse if they have burn cream in their ifact. So, yeah, put in yours. I'm sorry. Yeah, make sure you know, make sure you make sure you prep for all the possibilities, be playing on it, hitting the fan while you're gone. Make sure you have a way to catch and filter and store water, and have fire and have light. You know had the fire in the light part kick uh, taking care of it. I didn't have the water park and that that caught me. And then make sure you always have a fully stocked first aid kit because you never want to know what's gonna happen. I mean, if I could have if somebody had to cut off a limb, I could have done that. You know, we could have we could have read it. We could have reattached a finger but I didn't have the necessary tools to deal with stepping on a burning piece of charcoal. So anyway, all right, well, here's my challenge for y'all all the night sometime this summer, when it's hot, try turning off the power to your house for a few hours. Now, I'm not saying do the whole weekend. And everybody says, you know, go turn the power off to your house and try to live the whole weekend without electricity. Yeah, you can do that, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about one night, you know, when it's ninety something degrees outside, go lay in your bed and have your spouse gope, turn off the breaker to the house and just do it for a few hours, and just go back and lay in your bed and just lay there and just listen to nothing. How quiet your house is. Yeah, even solar power, golly, even the solar power. What I'm getting at, Yes, turn off the battery back up, Turn off the solar power, turn off the battery back up. Power down the nuclear reactor, tell the mule to stop. Go stop up the dam so that the hydro is off. Take the hamster out of the wheel. Power down the generator. He's messing with me. Now that note is trying to get medea is to make your house quiet. Now, if we'd had been home, we have generators, we have the solder, we have all that, and it's no big deal. Well, you can try to be as quiet. But if everybody else power cars. Yeah you're still gonna have cars on that. But anyway, the idea is just to see how quiet your house is. That's what I'm getting at. I see this, order pizza and play a game or anyway, don't worry about it on your end, we'll just all go to that nub's house. Apparently he's prepared. But anyway, so that that's my challenge. Just power the house off one night or just for a few hours. Just go lay in your bed with the power out, and listen to what you don't hear. Listen that you know, you don't hear the refrigerator coming on, you don't hear the he is. Listen to how quiet it is without having the phone on, vibrate, without playing the netflick. Funny to me because I lived old farm, so it's great. It's like quiet. Yeah, well I'm not used to just absolutely quiet. I'm used to the fans or something. But anyway, so all right, well we're all gonna go to it. Yeah, well that up. If you turn your power off, make sure after our broadcast. Yeah, drive anyway, I've only got a few minutes left, so anyway, make sure no phone, no fan, no air conditioning, no anything else. See how quiet and still your house really really is? Anyway? A creaky and whatnot. Anyway, as I always say, if anybody has any questions or wants to correct me, shoot me an email or hit me up on Facebook. Always welcome constructive criticism. Don't forget to join us again tomorrow night. Remember we got Dave, the NBC guy. He's got a live show. Remember that show is one hour earlier. That starts at eight pm Eastern five pm Pacific. Anything else, he k Nope, I'm just glad I joined it and I survived, and I want to go on that family. It was a fun and the light it was a fun and the lightning experience. But that's it. We won't do that again. So anyway, thanks everyone, have a great evening. I will see y'all later.