The Prepper Broadcasting Network - After the Disater, Virgis Ch 36

Episode Date: February 11, 2024

How do you rebuild after a disaster? Special guest Phil Rabalais joins us to discuss the personal and community considerations.

Welcome back to the Changing Earth Podcast with author Sarah F. Hathaway and co-host Chen Gibson. Blending survival fiction and fact to bring you entertaining education that will help you dream, survive, and thrive. And now, here's your hosts, Sarah F. Hathaway and Chen Gibson. Chapter 36. The sergeant at the gate was a dark-skinned man whose name tag was labeled Walker. Sir, Sergeant Walker greeted him. Can you direct me to where the people from Peach Springs are being housed, Cole wondered. They're still over at the welcome warehouse, sir. They'll be given work assignments and housing from there, Walker informed him. It's inside on the left, sir. You can't miss it. Thank you, Sergeant, Cole replied, watching the colossal metal gate slide open. The people inside looked down and away from Cole as

he walked down the street, and the tension grew thicker as he approached the welcome warehouse. Cole moved towards the massive concrete building. Soldiers on catwalks approached him as he progressed through the gate to the desk. He was directed to a large courtyard where he found Barry King chatting with a group of refugees. Virgis, there you are. Are you getting us out of here? Barry asked eagerly as Cole approached. I can only take one, Cole admitted. Barry looked at him dumbfounded. Are you serious? One? Cole nodded, looking him in the eyes. Barry looked down in a way lost in thought. He finally looked back at Cole. You have to take Rydell or Ginger. Cole's voice was so cold it frightened him as he responded. We've already

decided. We're taking Ginger. Barry nodded. Good. She needs a chance at life. She might have more of that here. You know what it is we do cole answered flatly i know are you looking for the people that stole our food i'm sending out two teams in the morning cole assured him when you find them you make them pay for what they did don't worry they will do you know where we can find ginger cole ass looking around she's already been given housing in Tent City. It's number 240. Thanks, Cole replied. He shook Barry's hand. Even though his heart was breaking, he remained stoic. He could do nothing more than that for the man now. Ten minutes inside the welcome warehouse had been more than enough. The soldiers circled like hawks and the place was barren and

sterile. He stepped back into the camp. Soldiers were the most numerous occupants on the street and they directed him to Ginger's tent. You ready to get out of here, Cole asked, pulling the flap to her tent back. She was folding clothes and jumped at the sound of Cole's voice. Her eyes grew wide with joy and she ran to him, throwing her arms around him. It's about damn time you showed up, Ginger declared, her red wavy hair bouncing about her face. Cole grinned widely, holding her tightly. You can't believe this place. Rydell and Barry will be so happy, Ginger said, letting him go. I can only get you out, Cole declared officially. Ginger looked at him dumbfounded, asking, what? I don't have jurisdiction over the refugees.

I could only get one of you out, Cole explained. Thinking about his statement, Ginger was confused. You chose me? I did, Cole replied. But I'm not a fighter, Ginger responded. You're going to be. You can start as a communication specialist, Cole told her. But Ginger began to say, Cole cut her off. You're not staying here. Get your stuff. I'm with Tim now, Cole.

I love him, Ginger admitted. This is not about me and you or you and Tim. This is about you, and you're not living here. So get your shit and let's go, Private. Ginger smiled widely, answering him, yes, sir. First Private Darryl Guthrie, a young soldier with deep brown eyes, met Major Verges as he and Ginger exited the refugee camp. Major Verges, sir, it's an honor serving under you, sir,

Guthrie declared eagerly. Hold your flattery for a commander that cares. Show me how honored you are by performing, Cole snapped, turning to walk towards the soldiers' barracks. Just tell me what you need, sir, Guthrie answered him. A group of about 15 refugees left Peach Springs, headed for Mexico. Last we knew, they had two trucks with an unknown gasoline supply. I need you to find them.

Guthrie looked at him curiously. Yes, sir, I'll try. But do you have any way to identify them further? There's a woman in the refugee camp, Barbara Grissom. She'll be able to give you descriptions. Take your squad and Alpha Squad, Cole ordered. Do you have a place pick for your headquarters? Where will we find you? Guthrie wondered. Bring the refugees here and then meet us in Reno, Cole directed. Yes, sir, Guthrie declared, heading off to fulfill his mission. Reno? Monroe asked, smiling widely at Ginger as he approached with Chappie. We going for a visit with Dolores? Chappie asked. It makes sense to put our base there. It has the infrastructure. The feds are controlling the Arizona border and Vegas. We will need to focus our efforts in Reno, Monroe chuckled, thinking out loud. Thanks for your permission, but it's not needed, Cole interjected, amused by his analysis. We're going to need more soldiers,

Chappie added. He's right. We've got a lot of ground to cover and not enough people to do it, Monroe agreed. One step at a time, boys. I'll get in touch with General McClintock. Maybe we can send refugees to Minnesota to get them trained. Or we can set up our own, Monroe suggested. I think this territory is going to keep us plenty busy. We'll be better off keeping our focus there. In the meantime, let's get a home base set up and go to task getting these areas stabilized. Well, I'm not complaining.

I've been missing Dolores's place, Chappy teased. Is it a restaurant? Does she have good food there, Ginger wondered. Monroe shook his head, not sure how to respond. He smiled, answering, more or less. Come on, I'll teach you how to inventory gear for the road. You promised shooting practice, too. I'm not going out there in this uniform without more training with this rifle, Ginger insisted. Don't worry, we'll have you dialed in before you know it. Sure beats living in that camp. Curious about what happened, Cole asked. Was it that bad? Go take a tour and see for yourself, Major Virgis. They treat those people like cattle and they're starving in there,

Ginger replied. Cole thought about her words, disgusted with the situation. But he had only one way to help now. Then let's secure more provisions, Cole declared, walking towards the truck. Monroe stayed by his side explaining, Alex was telling me about a distribution warehouse 30 miles north of here. A large group is securing it, we could relocate the refugees and secure provisions for ourselves in the camp. We're headed that direction anyhow.

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You're listening to PBN. You're playing back the stability here. Hello and welcome back to the Changing Earth podcast. This is episode number 434, season 3. No, no, wrong show. Season 15, episode 36. I was switching over to audio drama hey chin what's up hey chin's up y'all and we have phil rablay in the house hey phil how's it going hey sarah hey chin thanks for having me yeah we don't really have a um a set task on the changing earth podcast anymore we've been going so long we just come and hang out with everybody and and uh get her done so we're just gonna roll with the

punches i do have some clearing house stuff first though um end of april the 26th to the 28th i'll be up in um uh illinois at Patriot Homesteading Conference. So if you guys are in the area, you've got to check that out. Phil, who's with us, I was just on your podcast this morning. That was a blast, by the way. I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. Yeah, that was good. And Gillian, let me know that she is doing the Women Who Prep Conference, which is an online conference.

So if you guys want to hang out in your jammies and still learn a ton of prepping information, that's where it's at, Women Who Prep. When is that? It's April. Oh, Jesus in heaven. I couldn't tell you to save my life. Gillian has all those dates. I think she said April 20th to something. I think it's the weekend before i'm

there yeah that sounds pretty close i i think so i i'm you know i'm i'm clicking along there i think it's pretty pretty right on anyway look that up women who prep that is for the ladies in the preparedness realm um that is ironically enough the same time as the la book fair i just know because my book's gonna be out there so that's kind of ironic um but then we got prepper camp coming up in september of course and uh that's just like it's like my christmas every year really is prepper camp we'll just let's go there so yep and this year i'll have uh gillian and my daughter in tow last year they skipped out this year they last year me and andrew cone was kind of a last minute decision and she was butting up against being able to find substitute teachers

and everything so she declined to come and then after she said she wasn't coming she spent the next like six weeks bemoaning that so literally the day when tickets went on sale i had everything all signed up and you're you're coming like it or not we gotta get the intrepid commander's family to actually come with him one time make it a family affair right i know we got boys the same age so intrepid commander if you're out there this is the psychological message bring the family the brow beating will continue until you comply yes that's right that is right we'll just have to keep when he doesn't give me his lines for the audio drama, I just keep sending him emojis of like line,

street line, line, line. I seriously just hammer him like every day till I get those lines because he's like the worst with it. I got to just drive him nuts. So he's like,

okay, I didn't even know so many emojis existed that you could communicate line through i'm like so all righty we just heard virgis last week he got to choose one person from his group phil actually plays virgis so way to go phil dave dave's always like, when I listen to Phil now, all I can hear is Virgis. Well, but I still marvel at the fact that you specifically picked me because I don't have an accent, so I can kind of slip into that role really nicely. But for all these years, I thought that my accent was just this mangled mishmash of half Cajun and half Southeast Texas. So I don't know. Maybe in the midst of all the deployments and everything I lost it.

Yep. Yeah, you did. I'm telling you I'm in East Texas and I don't know. Say, say the Sabine river for me. I can't say Sabine. It's Sabine.

There you go. See, no, lots of them around. It's like Sabine river. I'm like, whatever. Yeah.

That's a different part of Texas, apparently. That's what I'm talking about. All right. So, yeah. So, he's going into the FEMA camp. His first glimpse kind of behind the gates. And at the FEMA camp, everybody comes into the welcome warehouse first, which is just like a giant observation containment center and if you do well

you get released into general population and if not well you get to hang out in the welcome where well welcome warehouse for a little bit longer and uh it's kind of a harsh reality for him when he sees this because like one hand he's all pissed off because the refugees just robbed them but on the other hand it's like oh this sucks in here you know kind of sees the desperation of their situation i guess right yeah it hits home instead of being hidden behind a wall and then uh you know he's off to set up base how to feed everyone how to ensure that these free towns that exist are going to stay free towns, how to work with the federal government

while also trying to, you know, he's kind of under the radar for the militias on letting them know what's going on. So he's walking many, many ethical lines right now. I really liked bringing his character to life it's it's been a lot of fun to do so thank you for stepping up into that role i knew you were going to be perfect for that role i just thought like oh that's phil one unique voice right there boom Right there. Boom. So I'll take it. You've actually been involved in a lot of cleanup situations, both personally and through your employment. So I thought you were the man

to come on and talk about, you know, what happens after the storm. And I'd like to start on the personal level in like a micro level and then kind of build out from there. So everybody, you know, my podcast listeners should know who you are, but if they don't, go ahead and introduce yourself and then let's kind of jump into it. So I guess the short version, because Lord knows I could talk the ears off a brass monkey, is, you know, I am a 41-year-old husband and father. I've been kind of into prepping in some way or the other basically since I was a kid. I mean, growing up on the Gulf Coast, we get chased around by hurricanes pretty much from birth. So you learn the lessons of rice and beans and peanut butter and bottled water very, very early because it's just a part of life down here to be ready to deal with an extended power outage and be prepared to deal with whatever mother nature is going to throw in your lap.

Because it's never a matter of if, it's when. It's how long until the next time y'all get hit. Right. When I was 17 years old, I enlisted in Louisiana National Guard. So I was on 9-11. I was at Fort Eustis, Virginia, up in Newport News, and literally like there in a break room in one of the hangars, watched the second plane hit the tower. So it wasn't until about the end of 2003, I got the call that my unit was going to deploy to Iraq. We went in for OIF-2, and we were there from late January, early February of 2004, came home the very beginning of February 2005. And, you know, Hurricane Katrina was right on the heels of that. So the end of that August, I was still in Louisiana National Guard.

We got hit by Hurricane Katrina down here in this area. the National Guard. We got hit by Hurricane Katrina down here in this area. And I spent from the end of August until December 31st on orders with the state assisting in the relief effort. So you got deployed as a member of the National Guard over to Iraq? Yes. Interesting. Okay. Yep. Well, I mean, for the buildup and for the numbers and the manpower they needed, like I know that my unit went to Iraq. Another unit that a bunch of friends of mine were in that was an engineer battalion, they went to Afghanistan. So like they – during OIF and OEF fighting a war on two fronts, the DOD was not shy about tapping National Guard and even reserve assets left and right. So there's a whole lot of us that are like age 30 to 40 who had a very interesting time in our teens and 20s in combat zones. Interesting.

Well, yeah, you and both Chin, you guys are both more used to the hurricane type events where we really got sacked. You know, when I lived in Michigan, it was the winter. Obviously, ice storms, things like that, that would take you out for extended periods of time. And then in Cali, the wildfire risks. So I can tell you after a wildfire, the process of rebuilding is slow. Because if it's just devastational, I mean, you're just down to concrete. Now you're looking at rebuilding homes, all the demand for supply goes up, demand for contractors goes up, demand for everything goes up. So you're just looking at really extending those times where you're trying to put life back on track. And we've lost like whole communities now, you know, where the whole town,

paradise, the whole town was wiped out kind of thing. So really what I'm thinking, you know, personally, I don't want to run, I don't want to focus on the basics, but if you guys have a couple tips for like just kind of unique things that you found, we talked this morning about kind of the holes in your plan every time it's a disaster scenario you got to get to test out

what's going on you know so just some like tips that people can really take away as far as you know things maybe they haven't thought about beyond what we normally talk about as far as like your 72-hour food supply your water water supply, that kind of thing. Yeah, well, usually when we're talking about post-natural disaster preparedness specifically, and I don't draw distinctions between what kind of natural disaster we're talking about, like everybody has the same base needs. We all need food. We all need water.

We all need shelter. If you don't have those three things, bad things start happening very quickly. What exactly we use to fulfill all those needs is going to be drastically altered by what type of scenario we're talking about. In the event of a wildfire or a flood, staying in your home is no longer an option. Your home is no longer a safe, secure source of shelter. You have to be able to pick up and move. And as a result, if those are the emergencies you're thinking about, your preps all have to be mobile. On the flip side of things, if you're talking about hurricanes, like a hurricane by the grace of modern meteorology, we know those things are coming within a margin of error several days, maybe even a week out. So you have sufficient time to make a decision on whether or not you need to leave, you need to hold where you're at. But at the end of the day, like, we all have the same base needs. So that's always what I try to

explain to people is if you live in an area where, let's say, a wildfire is your greatest worry, then you need to have your preps mobile so that they can move if the wildfire is going to threaten your home. If your biggest worry is, say, a big tornado, like what some of my in-laws up in North Louisiana have to deal with, you probably need to look at a tornado shelter. You need some kind of way to batten down the hatches and live through that storm. And in that tornado shelter, which will be your shelter, you also need to have your emergency food, emergency water, and so on and so forth. On the flip side of things, if you're talking about a hurricane, now I'm in kind of a unique situation where my preps, it helps if they're mobile because if I have to evacuate my family, I need to be able to take some stuff with me to take care of everybody. But if I'm going to choose to stand my ground, I have to be prepared to be without – I tell everybody modern anything for at least a week, bare minimum.

The exercise I always give to people is I'm like, okay, imagine if I walked up to your house and I shut off your main water valve and I flip your main breaker. What do you have to do in that situation to survive? Because that potentially is what you're going to have to suck up and deal with for the next one to two weeks after a major hurricane. There's no power, no running water, no gas, nothing. So if you don't have it bottled up, stored up on the shelf or ready to rock and roll, you're going to learn to do without very quickly. Yeah, or setting those lines at the store.

Yeah, 0% chance of that happening. If you've got lines at the store, it might not be... Yeah, because even they can't run, right? As far as it goes. After the event, they won't be able to. Before the event, they run quick.

Yep. Well, and I can't speak for everybody else who's dealt with hurricanes, but I know that Hurricane Ida, which was only a couple of years ago down here, it was a very strong cat 4 hurricane. Some people argue it was a cat 5 when it made landfall. I don't care. All I know is the weather station a mile and a half away from where I live clocked 130 mile an hour winds when that thing went past us. So it was spicy.

But in the time immediately before that storm, you know, we had the typical lines at the grocery stores, lines at the gas pumps. All the people that w wave the last second. We're freaking out over it. But in the immediate time following the hurricane, some fuel stations were able to bring in generators because they had fuel in the ground. They just had to get power to pump it out. But there was a severely constricted supply. A lot of these places were only, they were prioritizing first responders. So like if you had a police cruiser or if you had an ambulance, they divert the rest of the line

and let you come fuel up. Well, that happens often enough, then the guy who's trying to get five gallons to feed his generator to keep his food from spoiling doesn't get fuel. So that's why I keep going back to this idea that like, you know, the idea that, well, the hurricane passed yesterday. I can go out, I can get stuff. You got, you got to let go of that. Like, not only may you not be able to, but you don't want to be on the road when there's tree limbs and there's power lines down. You don't want to be in these lines full of angry, irritable people where things can pop off and things have been known to pop off. You don't want to be in

any of those situations. You want to be at your home, taking care of your property, securing your family, your loved ones. That's where you need to focus your energy. If you have a good relationship with your neighbors, you need to be focusing on making sure that everybody's productive and everybody's taken care of and everybody's in a good place. And if you don't have a good relationship with your neighbors, you might want to work on that just a little bit, because I'll be the first one to say, you know, that the next morning after Hurricane Ida, when we were all in the front yard, it was a real quick assessment of who's in bad shape, who's staying, who's leaving. Right. Yeah. And, Chin, you talk a lot about this, too,

like helping your neighbors back in the townhome days. Yeah, and that's when I met my neighbors the most, was pre-storm, helping everybody get their shutters put up. People didn't, you know, in a townhome situation, a lot of transient people coming in, people going out, rental units and stuff. And they didn't know. It was the old hat there. So I was always out there with the ladder trying to help people get organized, get stuff put up.

The one thing that I had happen, it didn't affect me because I was good to go. But we had a Walmart that was probably three miles from the house, so I drove by it all the time. It closed up about four days out from landfall, predicted landfall. So if your game plan was to go to Walmart, you know, the night before the storm or two days before the storm, you were screwed. It was boarded up. I'm surprised at how early they boarded that store up interesting yeah and like following the snow storm here when we actually had that crazy snow storm um they couldn't get any trucks in to walmart like that was done you know so people that were like oh well i need this that the other well no

it wasn't happening in charleston they would direct all traffic going out. So, I mean, the interstate, all four lanes were going outbound instead of coming in. Gotcha. And that was also something I was going to mention since y'all brought up the trucks. Sarah, earlier when you were talking about wildfires and how they just march across a landscape and devastate everything. But the other thing I don't think a lot of people think about, and this is a little bit more of a macro perspective, but when you're talking about disaster recovery, you're talking about stretched supply lines at a certain point. Like after Hurricane Ida, I found out just from like local word of mouth, apparently there was a man who he had a two-axle trailer. He had several large commercial fuel tanks

on it he was filling up about an hour east of us out in like gulfport biloxi mississippi and he was taking fuel with a manual transfer pump down to a family he had in new orleans and he was running back and forth every day to keep them stocked with fuel for their generators and everything. But the reason he had to go that far was because where I was, there were only a couple of gas stations at this point that were really open and you were not going to sit there and get 200 gallons when everybody else is trying to get five gallons to keep your generator running. Somebody would have started a fistfight over that. So like were having to go 100 miles in some cases, 50 miles in a lot of cases to go get fuel and go get food and go get water and then bring it back into the area. And that's something that I think people need to bear in mind is that the supply lines get

stretched very, very quickly. Building materials after a major hurricane become very difficult to get in the local area because before trucks, like your local Home Depot or your local Lowe's or whatever, wherever you normally get plywood, for example, before they can get a truck full of plywood into that store to refill it so you can get whatever you need to fix your house, they have to get the power stood back up. They have to get fuel trucks in. They have to get fuel because if those truckers can't get fuel, they're not coming. So it turns into this situation where you have all these tasks that have to be done, and they cascade on each other. You have to get A done before you can do B, and then you have to get C, and then you have to get D.

And there is no putting them in a different order. It has to get done in the order it has to get done in. Like that was part of the situation we had post-Hurricane Katrina down in New Orleans. And I only know this because my dad at the time worked for Energy. He worked for the major power company, which one day I will get him to come on my podcast and talk about Hurricane Katrina because he can tell some stories. But part of the situation Energy had was they were trying to get power restored because you kind of needed to, but they had trouble doing that because so much of these areas were underwater. Well, they had to get the pumps back on to pump the water out of the streets. They had to get the

levee breaches fixed before they could do that. And before you could turn the pumps on, you need the power. It was this weird situation where it's like, okay, we have three things. It's like watching three dogs chase each other around in a circle. Yeah. And even during COVID and all that, back in California in the area that I'm from or that I lived in, when the supply chain started going down heavily, lived in when the supply chain started going down heavily like you could already see the movement from people in the city driving an hour out to the country stores to the country grocery to the country grocery stores because those were the ones that still had food left as opposed to like those inner city grocery stores and that. And they were just totally,

I would almost argue that the urban areas need to think food more urgently than people in the country because there's so many more people vying for those supplies that are in the store that if you don't have that ready to go somewhere and you're thinking you're going to be able to keep shopping on a daily basis well that's just not going to happen i think they most of them are on a one-day supply now like you say it's this very delicate dance of supply chain

that we do and it can easily easily be shaken extremely easily i mean but this is also the reason why like you know since you brought up covid like when covid first first came to this country and i'm talking like the i'm talking about the days immediately preceding two weeks slow the spread when no one no one legitimately knew what the hell was going on because we weren't getting any reliable information from anybody who could have possibly known anything. Like I sat down with my wife and we had a very, very serious discussion about how bad do we think this is? What do we think is going on? Because, again, there's no reliable information source.

So I told my wife, I'm like, you know, bear in mind that at this point, the decision has been made. Send everybody home. Everybody's going to remote work. That's how this is going to be. And I told Gillian, I'm like, we have enough food and water and everything in this house to nail that front door shut and wait this out. I don't care if it takes three months or six months. Like, we can figure this out. We don't have to go to the grocery store.

We don't have to have contact with the outside world. But I can tell you what's about to happen in the next two weeks. And that's the feeling, like that's security. That's like going, okay, I can weather this storm. I'm going to be all right, you know? Yeah. But what I told Gillian was, I'm like, in the next two weeks, one of two things is going to happen. Either the entire New York City metro area and at least two major metro areas in California where you have that high population density are going to literally implode because this will prove to be so devastating and so communicable, it will just wipe out whole metro areas in a matter of two weeks. Or that's not going to happen. And then now we know something we didn't. We don't know

today. We'll know something in two weeks. So for the next two weeks, we didn't go to the grocery store. We didn't do without. We had everything we needed. Hell, we were eating tacos and baking and stuff. Literally, our preps are built around the idea that if I want it, I better find a way to have it and put some back on the shelf. So we didn't feel the pinch. But once that two-week period passed and we realized, okay, we now have some data coming in. We have a pretty good idea of who this is impacting worse than others. And two people in their late 30s in pretty good health I feel like will be okay.

So from that moment forward, my wife and I adopted a plan of we're going to go to the grocery store regularly, just like we do now. And we're going to continue to buy food whether we need it or not. You know what I'm saying? Like the store shelves, the stores operate on this just-in-time system where they, when the, in optimal usage, the truck will show up and bring you the widget right after you sell the last one. Like that's how just in time supply chains work. So what I told Gillian was, I'm like, to stay ahead of a potential supply chain deficit, we're going to continue to buy stuff whether we need it or not. We're not going to eat into six months worth of preps. We're going to continue to buy stuff so that the period

in time where we would run out of food every week gets backed up another week. And we've continued to do that for the last several years. I mean, we put a lot of effort into our food stock and into long-term, into mid-term, into a chest freezer full of meat. And now we're at a point where we're trying to kind of like pull back on the range just a little bit, be a little more strategic with what we buy. Cause like I didn't realize until I went into that chest freezer a week or two ago, I have probably 40 pounds of ground beef in the chest freezer. Had no earthly idea how much I had, didn't care. Every time I went on sale, every time, every time it went on sale, go buy a bunch, vacuum bag it, shove it in the freezer. We'll eat it eventually.

One of the interesting things that Chin brought up to me last week that I didn't think about because I've been living country so long was the road infrastructure. So you want to share that story there, Chin? What was that? share that that story there chan what was that about uh having when the rain's coming in and all that like your roads just slipping and uh you're the one who's responsible for caring for that um oh i'm private yeah right most people are like urban setting you don't think about like that's not your job but in a disaster right yeah i'm like totally rural so i'm like there's a country road and then there's a small paved road which you basically have to pull over to let another car go by and then there's a road that goes up to

my driveway road so i mean i'm like and from the end of the pavement all the way up to my house, it's just me and a few neighbors that have to get out there with shovels, rakes. And I mean, I bought a tractor. So we are the road crew, you know? Yeah. And I've started this thinking about it because we did the same thing when we lived off Penobscot Road. It was the same way. Like you're literally out there filling potholes, taking care of that road. But urban setting, like in my current house,

it would be like, that's not even something you'd think about as an individual. What if your roadway is damaged? Who's going to take care of that? Are you going to be sitting there waiting for help to come in? Or do you have any kind of skills to be able to tackle that you know i mean i know phil's got some mad chainsaw skills now i'm sure after going through some hurricanes um but that's something that a suburbanite might not think about but to have a chainsaw know how to use it have the oils bar oil and everything so you can actually run it uh might be might be your way out right some essentials that we don't um necessarily focus on when you're in an urban setting as compared to a country setting so just driving in town a year ago and we had a thunderstorm and like the next day we're driving into town and a tree had come

down across it across the road and there wasn't a road crew there was just two guys to pick up trucks with chainsaws cutting the tree in two spots and then pushing it out of the way with their truck i mean it was just they had to get by so they had what they needed in the back of the truck and they moved it right the road crew wasn't there yet. It's definitely a different personality. Yeah. But since you brought up chainsaw skills, I'll be the first to admit that Hurricane Ida, when that hit my house, I didn't even own a chainsaw. Yeah.

I had never needed one. I live in the suburbs. You know, like, I wasn't a complete moron, thankfully. So, like, I had an axe, and I had a bow saw and a pole saw and, you know, typical homeowner stuff. Like if I needed, if I had a, one time we had a tree, like a little, little bit spindly thing, maybe about four inches around the trunk, but it was leaning over my yard from the wood line next to my house. So I went out there with the ax and took a notch out of it and cut the backside of me. I felled a tree with an ax with the axe and took a notch out of it and cut the backside of me. I felled a tree with an axe because I had an axe. I needed the tree down. I dealt with the problem. But when two oak trees

land on your house and one squashes your front yard, there is no amount of axe and bow saw that's going to fix that problem. I needed it. So fortunately, we had some family come in from out of town. And my brother-in-law called me up that like the morning they showed up at our house, he showed up, they got there that afternoon. They called me up. He said, Hey, how much do you want me to spend on your first chainsaw that I'd like you to reimburse me for? And like, that's, that's when I learned how to use a chainsaw at age, I don't know, what was I? 38, 39. When I was, we were cutting, cutting up all the junk in the front yard and figured it out. I mean, that's when I got, that's when I learned that skill.

Those types of things are coming to my mind because, like in my books, it's not just a local disaster, right? It's a national disaster. on that level where you have multiple impact areas and you can't just shift forces, you know, and shift resources around as fast to be able to help people in those zones, that's when it could get really problematic. And so you as an individual, you have to be ready to go out and be your state, whatever road crew, there's nobody to call, right? If the tree's down, you're going to have to take care of it. How are you going to do that? Like you say, with your axe or with a tool that fits the job. And so sometimes I think we need to even, that's why I say,

like expand beyond the basics. So we're thinking about, okay, there is road infrastructure here. There is serious infrastructure. And if people can't, mean everybody's like oh the government's gonna come help me like no they're not you know especially if it's not oh if it's a nationwide something right now they're talking about a coordinated attack that might happen to our country everybody should be prepared for this type of thing, you know. So if it is something that's affecting multiple areas, now we are the response team and people really need to step up to that plate, be ready to step up to that plate, to go out with your neighbors and take care of it. But even on that level, I mean, a disaster on the scale of what you're talking about, no one is coming to save you.

You are going to figure your own life out, and that's just the way it is. But I tend to take a little bit different point of view, even when we're talking about a localized disaster, like, for example, Cap 4, Cap 5 hurricane, because those things don't hit a neighborhood. They wipe out like seven zip codes. Right. But I take the point of view of even if I know our neighbors to the east, our neighbors to the west, you know, God bless Texas and Mississippi can send or send aid to us. I take I got into preparedness because I feel like I have a duty as a husband and father to provide for my family. And I'm sorry, honey, the powers out is not an acceptable answer when your kid is hungry or your wife is

hungry. You're going to have to, you know, at a certain point, I take the point of view of, even if I know help is coming, I want to be able to self-aid because I want help on my terms. Right. I want to be able the day after the hurricane, because like this is exactly what we did after Ida, but the day after the hurricane, my daughter flew tight in the front yard. She needed a little decompression time after, you know, the hell on earth we dealt with that night. And I stood up a 10 by 10 pop-up tent in the front yard to give me and my wife some cover from the sun and get us out of the hot house and did some ventilation. It was August. Pulled out a couple of lawn chairs, you know, grabbed some bottled water off the shelf, started a pot.

I think I started a pot of something outside on the camp stove to get us fed. But I did not want to have to wait for the parish or for the state or for God Almighty FEMA to show up to feed us and take care of us. That's a level of helplessness I'm just not willing to tolerate. So my point of view is, whether we're talking about help is not coming or help is simply not going to be here in the next five minutes, I think everybody has a real obligation to assume that help is not coming. Because if it does show up and you're taken care of, you've alleviated a burden that could go to someone less fortunate. But if help's not coming, you have alleviated your own burden.

I love that point of view as well. That's a great point of view for it. Yeah, that's one thing I was going to talk about, like personal versus state versus federal response time. I mean, if you can help yourself, by all means, help yourself, right? I mean, come on now. Yeah. Tell me, after Ida, my wife walked around

and checked in on a bunch of the neighbors, found an older couple about a half a block away from us. They had no emergency water. Yeah. Now, we're on city water, but like I was telling you earlier, the holding tank that services our subdivision

got hit with a pine tree. So, like, water pressure was zero the next morning after Ida. But this couple, like they couldn't cook rice. They didn't have anything to drink. They were dead in the water. And my wife was like, can we help them out? And I was like, yes. Like I know I have a 28 day supply of water bottled up on the shelf. Yes, go take some, bring it to them, call it an act of mercy. I don't want them to die in their house when we have the ability to take care of them. Right. Now, the problem would have been if that had been my last gallon of water that she was giving away, what then? Right, and that's when you get into length of disaster.

You know, length of supply chain being turned back on because you want to help. But at the same time, you can't you don't know how long that's going to continue on for. So, yeah, that would be that would be like the next big ethical question to explore. There is the time period. But no, we had one big power outage. I had just had foot surgery. It was around Christmas time.

And Brock made me eggs Benedict on the wood stove. That's a good man, right? I know he had like the stools all lined up like a counter and he pulled it off man with hollandaise sauce and everything i was just like i am so spoiled right now so it was pretty epic so i i also give you props to that point of view of like you know we got to be there for our families and we have to support them and we have to be there to take care of it not rely upon somebody else to pick up those those shreds we've kind of been beating that that horse a lot on the show

lately i hope everybody's getting the hit because um it's important right now more than ever i have a feeling so whether that's you know the is race and men versus race or versus humans versus disaster. So it's just kind of seems like the race is on. It's just snowballing. So just be ready. But I guess my point of view is like whether we are heading towards a serious systems collapse or we're heading towards another major weather pattern shift. We're heading towards another major weather pattern shift. Like I'm always very pragmatic when it comes to preparedness in the guise of we're all talking about being able to take care of your base needs.

I don't get to pick the emergency. All I get to pick is how I respond to it. So I tell people when they look at a specific threat and think, oh, I better get ready for this threat. It's like, okay, that's like saying I'm going to prep for Hurricane Katrina, but the next one in line I'm not going to worry about. It's like, no, there's a line of thought here where you are preparing to deal with the systems that you depend on collapsing. You should be prepared for that collapse no matter when it comes. The only good thing is that if you start preparing today and it's a while before anything pops off you're better prepared than if you wait to the last second and that's probably the biggest key to rebuilding after is because you were prepared for it it's just like um going

into surgery or something you want to make sure your body is as strong as it can possibly possibly be before you go in and have that surgery so that you're not too weakened by it. You can bounce back quickly. And isn't that the same thing with preparing for any kind of disaster and that you're, if you're prepared ahead of time, you can bounce back quicker on the, on the reverse. I mean, definitely, but let's throw mental and physical resilience into that discussion. Like you, you and I and Chen and plenty of the listeners, I'm sure know that like in a disaster situation, everything is harder. Right. the tap. Everything gets harder. Everything takes more effort, more time. So if your body is in better physical condition, you are better able to weather an emergency situation. And in the case of like post-hurricane, that was a lot of butt kick and work over three days to cut three oak trees,

you know, and unwind all that mess. But it was the physical resilience and the mental resilience to not look at that mess we had in the front yard and just give up, just quit, you know, just say, oh, we're never going to fix this problem. I mean, the day after Ida, before I even knew I had help coming, I was out there with an ax and a pole saw because it's what I had. Because that's what you do the best you can with what you got. Yeah. Well, that and the fact that I had, you know, one, one pretty good size lamb that was sitting on top of the garage. Everything else was, had glanced off the house, but I really wanted to get everything off the beams of the house. So I could assess the house, make sure it was safe to stay in. I wanted to clear enough of

the brush away from my wife's Jeep. So I can make sure that we had two working vehicles. If we had to evacuate, like I had tasks to take care of, and I had to man up a little bit, ruck up and deal with the problem that I had in front of me and not let it just defeat me and beat me down. I mean most – anybody that's ever read about a survival situation, like a person that's stranded in the wilderness or they're stuck, they're floating out at sea or whatever for days on end, the difference between a person that makes it and doesn't make it is very often whether

or not that person decides to give up. Because if you quit, your body quits. Yep. And if you fight, your body is going to fight like the third ape on the ramp of Noah's Ark. Like you're not going to, you're not, your body will fight as long as your brain does within reason. So I always tell everybody, I'm like, your mental and your physical resilience is up to par, if your preparedness and your preps and the materials you put back are up to par, you should get through that emergency at a minimum a lot better than you would otherwise. But if you don't take the time ahead of an emergency to put all those things in line. You're going to be fighting uphill.

Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Well, I got to get into some changing earth news. You going to stick around for it or you want to peace out? It's totally up to you. No, I'll hang out for a bit. All right.

So everybody, if you don't know, Phil is host of Matter of Facts podcast. Refresh me one more time on the one we just did this morning. All I can think of is it begins with R and I'm just spacing right now. Yep. So the other podcast is Raising Values. That's the one my wife and I started together. And I am the co-host slash producer on that one. I like to think it was like resilience.

And I was like, no, that's so wrong. That's so wrong. No, whereas matter of, yeah, well, matter of fact is really focused around like preparedness and physical threats to our wellbeing and raising values really grew more out of my wife seeing like trends that were affecting families and, you know, attempts to subvert our children and tear apart the family bonds. And we wanted to address a lot of that. So we do talk about a lot of like relationship stuff. We jokingly call it our,

our weekly marriage counseling. It's cool. It's a, it's a cool podcast. Yeah. And yeah, we, we have different styles.

See me and Brock, we could do sparring and then you guys do. Alrighty, let's go ahead and jump into the the weather music i'm gonna have to be like the micro machine man so let's get into it all right so changing earth news week of the 5th to the 11th we had a big solar week over the last week. A couple days ago, we had an X-class flare.

It came off the leading edge of the sun, so it was just a glancing blow as far as the CME goes. But when they go off in front of us, they love to feed. We have this little, like, proton connection line to the sun, and the particles just love to flow down that line and smack us right at the poles that happened um i'll talk

more about that but that was a big one we actually had a full halo event last year or uh last week which would have been like if that was aimed at the earth it would have been big trouble but luckily it went off the other side um lots of c class flares there was actually an m class flare today so we have that coming in um at us that's nothing's gonna be scary but you know how i love to keep my eyes on it so all of that we have coming in big news of last week is probably the atmospheric river just crushing uh southern california they're dealing with a lot of water 471 mudslides millions without power and at least seven dead because of the flooding that's going on down there um sacramento area was also hit pretty hard uh they are in catastrophic loss um it was deemed from like the third to the seventh it's all cat cat losses so uh prayers to everybody

dealing with that that has been just um one after another this year for them so all right last week on the fifth there was 378 earthquakes that were 2.0 or bigger, biggest of which was a 5.4 in the Raisins Ridge. So these are all places out on the ocean, big earthquakes that are like on the Mariana Trench and stuff like that. Interesting places this week. So we'll keep our eyes on that. I've got more to come.

Indonesia, Java just got hit again tons of rain hundreds of home three foot deep flood waters submerging those homes so they've had some major infrastructure damage to schools to hotels ecuador and that in inabora there was heavy rains those streets have turned to to rivers. Japan, Tokyo got hit with a mega snowstorm, just brought all public transportation to a halt, put power out. Hundreds of people injured there due to that snowfall. The Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico was hit really hard with the very big low pressure system, severe flooding and heavy winds there. And then on the next day on the sixth, that storm moved into Cuba and just smack them really good. A hundred mile an hour winds hit Havana. Um, the ocean swells were so high. They were bringing like jellyfish

up into town and stuff like that. And then it, the temps fell to 50 degrees in Cuba, which is also very, very unusual. So on February 6th, there was 368 earthquakes that were 2.0 or bigger, biggest of which was a 5.5 in El Salvador. Indonesia saw more rain, torrential flooding. I mean, it wasn't just a flood. The rivers were literally then going through Java. That water was ripping. 56 hectares of rice fields were lost. 2,822 homes were affected. And transportation was literally cut off. The roadways were cut off. And trains couldn't move, anything like that. In central Brazil, more so on the west side of central Brazil, they had a very strong storm come through Campo Mar. Power outages, trees down, lots of homes damaged over there, and then an absolutely horrific event in the Philippines. A big old landslide came down,

hit this gold mining village. 15 people were killed, confirmed dead. There's 110 missing as of the 6th. 31 people confirmed injured, three people seriously out of that. And there was an eight-year-old rescued two days after the event happened. So they were, you know, holding out hope for the other hundred people that are buried because this landslide hit their village. But they've seen a lot of rain. There's been a lot of earth movement. So as the days tick by, that survival rate's going to go down. There was also an M-class flare that released on the 6th. That one was just a glancing blow. It was coming in off of the incoming area of the sun. of the incoming area of the sun.

On the 7th of February, there was 467 earthquakes that were 2.0 or bigger, biggest of which was a 5.4 in the South China Sea. There was another 5.1 that hit Oklahoma. There's some home damage, property damage. So that's two pretty significant earthquakes. They were actually calling it a swarm, which is really concerning along that New Madrid fault line. So we're going to keep our eyes on that.

There was also a 3.0 near Mount Rainier volcano. We have lots of volcanoes heating up on the Ring of Fire. So we'll also keep our eye on that mountain. That's the day that the full halo ejection happened that was pointed away from Earth. China's getting day that the full halo ejection happened that was pointed away from earth. China's getting ready for the Chinese New Year. They had all travel halted because of severe blizzard conditions in China. Jamaica was hit with that low pressure system. They saw a lot of flooding in their coastal areas from it. And then the Chilean wildfires continue raging.

We have about 120 people deceased from that wildfire, about 1,600 homes lost, and just hundreds of people missing. So really, they're not going to know the extent of that damage until they start getting some of those fires out. On the 8th of February, there was 440 earthquakes or 2.0 or bigger. That's the day that the 5.1 hit the central mid-Atlantic ridge. So in the last two years that we've been, you know, hitting the changed earth news really hardcore, I don't think I've ever seen the mid-Atlantic ridge as our top earthquake of the day in that five-point slot. So that's really interesting.

A magnitude four also hit off the Florida coast. Very, very unusual place to have an earthquake. And then Nova Scotia got hit with a major blizzard, five foot of snow piling up, completely burying their vehicles there. On February 9th, there was 525 earthquakes that were 2.0 or bigger. That's a big number due to the sun activity, the solar activity that was happening. Biggest of which was a 6.2 in the South Pacific Ocean near New Zealand.

That was felt from Melbourne, Australia, all the way to New Zealand. There was also another 4.4 in there that day. So that was rocking and rolling. That is the day that the X-class flare went off just ahead of the Earth. It did cause a radio blackout in South America and Africa. They really took the brunt of it. The Iceland volcanic eruption activity is continuing. This is the third eruption more activity near grindavik and also the road to blue lagoon was um completely engulfed with

uh with um lava flows so i always laugh about the blue lagoon because like the movie but i guess it's uh like these hot springs that everybody loves to go to, major tourist attractions. So they were bummed out about that. Another round of rain comes in, hits California on the 9th. And then on the 10th, there was 501 earthquakes that were 2.0 or bigger, biggest of which was a 5.8 in the Philippines. There was a 4.6 that hit Southern California. That's one of the things with all the rain, I'm really worried about their fault lines down there. They're getting very moist, which is not normal for that area of the country.

There was also a big 5.7 that hit in Hawaii. It was felt from Hilo to Kauai. So eyes on that one because they keep, that's by the big island, not Kilauea. They keep their eyes on Kilauea, but the other big shield volcano that's down there. Anyway, I'm drawing a blank. Central Texas, we saw flash flooding due to heavy rains. Luckily, you know, up here in the north, it wasn't as bad.

We're kind of in the sweet spot. But they did have ping pong size hail in Tyler this morning. So that's knocking on the door pretty close. In British Columbia, Canada, the wildfires have been put out because it's been wintertime. Well, they are starting to rekindle themselves back to life. So they get to deal with the wildfires in the wintertime as well. That's going to be just so much fun. So they get to deal with the wildfires in the wintertime as well.

That's going to be just so much fun. And then in Wisconsin, they recorded the first ever February tornado in the state of Wisconsin in Evansville. So very unusual weather systems happening, guys. It's because they had just crazy warm weather, and then you got the cold just smacks into it and it's turns it into, um, tornadoes and things like that. Um, they also had a tornado touchdown in Indiana. So today, honestly, ironically enough, there wasn't a whole lot going on today. And also the earthquake resource that I use for my earthquake data didn't have any data running for today, which I've never seen before.

So that was really interesting as well. I don't know why it's not there. I'll just have to pick it up next week. So I can't give you the daily number for today. There was that M-class flare this morning. It was completely earth-facing facing it's going to be headed right at us as far as volcanoes there's currently 28 volcanoes erupting on planet earth that's up one from last week most of those are erupting in indonesia they have eight volcanoes

erupting in indonesia right now and i mean indonesia is not that big. So that is a lot of activity taking place down there. We have 17 volcanoes showing minor activity, and we have 31 showing unrest. Those numbers are exactly the same from last week. So we just added one to the list. We do have some wildfires to report in the United States right now. We're still at preparedness level of one. We have two new fires that popped up. Number two on the list was North Carolina. They had a 210 acre fire. It was one fire and it is not contained at this time. And number one on the list was Oklahoma, 429 acre fire, and it is contained at this time. So we had all that earthquake activity there and then we have some fire activity that's just kind of strange so i don't know how that fire started up

but that'd be interesting to look into all right guys so that's our changing earth news for this week sun cycle that's that's the name of the week is Sun Cycle it'll be interesting to see what happens next week as far as our earthquake activity and volcanic activity uptick on planet Earth ta-da I told you I was going micro machines

man and I made it we have faith in you yeah right I can talk quick so yeah hopefully we don't have any more um you know we could we could have a little pause for a little bit little break little little room for everybody to breathe from it's been really sock in uh the uk and all that um europe's being getting slammed with storms and you know what's happening here with the crazy weather so um it's definitely worth keeping an eye on these days all righty well phil thank you so much for coming on the show and discussing that with everybody

like i knew you were the guy for the job we're gonna have to do it again shortly because i've got more good ones coming up no and anytime you feel like me talking you're off just give me a ping and i'm sure i can make myself available right it's always such an easy night i'm like yeah i can just sit back get my barca lounger out yeah i mean you know hand a cage and a big tall cup of coffee and he'll pretty much talk until you get tired of listening Right? Yeah, I love it That's why you guys gotta come to Prepper Camp You get to sit around the fire with us, just hang out

I've already got tickets in hand, arrangements made, reservations done Yep, I come for the Phil show yep i come for the phil show yeah and uh i'm imagining we'll probably have uh down there in the vendors area we'll probably have pbn row again yeah but this time i am going to have gillian on on hand because i was telling her last year with uh yeah me and andrew trying to like record four shows a day and friggin' talk to people that were walking by. I told her, I'm like, I could have used a third person, really and truly. So, we're still

waiting. We're still kind of trying to figure out if she wants to try to horn in some Raising Values content while she's there or let Matter of Facts kind of do the recording and everything and she'd be there to support us. I don't know. Dec decisions will need to be made absolutely no that's one of the nice things about having the fam with me um you know you can walk away

from the booth and not be like oh oh we need somebody else to be watching what's going on you know um when i go to teach my classes and stuff like that, especially my self-defense class, I need to beat up on Brock. I mean, it has to be done. So, yeah, it's nice to have the family, the backup support to be able to help out with that. Mm-hmm. All right. Well, I'm going to go ahead and split.

I apparently missed a call while we were talking, so I'm going to go play catch-up catch up now all right we'll see you later everybody can check phil out while you're in the pbn community you know where to find phil on on pbn but you can definitely find phil at matter of facts you want to drop your website yep www.mofpodcast.com or you can search Matter of Facts Podcast pretty much anywhere social media takes you. Perfect. All right.

Thanks for coming on the show. Appreciate it. Thank you, ma'am. All right, Chin, you ready to wrap up? I am. I am. It's been a show.

Yeah. Great time. Anybody have any questions, of course, just fire away. I always love picking your brain about the urban experience to the country experience because I've been out in the country so long. I'm like, oh, yeah, I never really thought about that.

So it's always a good time. And we got Dave coming on the show. He doesn't know it. He's going to be on the show pretty soon. I go hog time and drag him into the studios yep yep you know me i'll be out there with my cuffs i can if he doesn't know how to get out of them it's not my problem he didn't watch my classes and um i'm gonna hit dane up too get him on um and so more great folks from the Changing Earth audio drama and yeah it's going to be

a fun show next week so I'm not even releasing topic I'm just going to hold everybody in suspense what it's going to be. Alrighty guys thanks so much for listening to the Changing Earth podcast if you want to subscribe

and help the show out I would really appreciate it You can do so at www.changingearthseries.com. Lots of great content for you over there. And that is just the hub of everything Changing Earth. So that once again, it's www.changingearthseries.com. All right, Chin, let's get out of here. Until next time, remember, dream, survive, thrive. Thank you for joining Sarah and Chen for this episode of the Changing Earth podcast. Don't forget to pick up your copy of Day After Disaster, Without Land, The Walls of Freedom Battle for the South Dark Days in Denver and The Endless Night at www.authorSaraFHathaway.com If you love the Changing Earth series and podcasts,

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