The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: 10 Myths of Preparedness
Episode Date: June 3, 2024http://www.mofpodcast.com/www.pbnfamily.comhttps://www.facebook.com/matteroffactspodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/mofpodcastgroup/https://rumble.com/user/Mofpodcastwww.youtube.com/user/philrabh...ttps://www.instagram.com/mofpodcasthttps://twitter.com/themofpodcastSupport the showMerch at: https://southerngalscrafts.myshopify.com/Shop at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ora9riPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mofpodcastPurchase American Insurgent by Phil Rabalais: https://amzn.to/2FvSLMLShop at MantisX: http://www.mantisx.com/ref?id=173*The views and opinions of guests do not reflect the opinions of Phil Rabalais, Andrew Bobo, or the Matter of Facts Podcast*Phil's WWW travels took him to an article discussing the myths of preparedness. The boys discuss their thoughts.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8352359/Matter of Facts is now live-streaming our podcast on our YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Rumble. See the links above, join in the live chat, and see the faces behind the voices. Intro and Outro Music by Phil Rabalais All rights reserved, no commercial or non-commercial use without permission of creator prepper, prep, preparedness, prepared, emergency, survival, survive, self defense, 2nd amendment, 2a, gun rights, constitution, individual rights, train like you fight, firearms training, medical training, matter of facts podcast, mof podcast, reloading, handloading, ammo, ammunition, bullets, magazines, ar-15, ak-47, cz 75, cz, cz scorpion, bugout, bugout bag, get home bag, military, tacticalÂ
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Welcome back to the Matter Facts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network.
We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify.
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I'm your host, Phil Rabelais, and my co-host Andrew Bobo is on the other side of the mic, and here's your show.
And welcome back to the Matter Facts Podcast.
Bobo is on the other side of the mic and here's your show. And welcome back to Matterfacts Podcast.
I have absolutely no idea where my train of thought was going. I usually have something funny to say right at the head of the show, but totally borked that all up. So Andrew and I
instead are going to talk about myths of preparedness because I came across an article
that for whatever reason wound up published at the National Library of Medicine, of all places.
But,
you know, I read through it, and
some I agree with, some I disagree with,
and I thought it'd make for an interesting conversation.
I mean, it's got a.gov
after it, so it's gotta be
full of knowledge and truth
and everything, so.
Well, it's on the internet, first and foremost.
Everything on the internet is truth.
Did you find this on Facebook?
I found this through Google.
Oh, well, if it's not on Facebook,
if you didn't find it on Facebook, then it's not real.
What about Reddit?
Or TikTok?
No.
TikTok's just Chinese propaganda.
Where are all the Zoomers getting their information from these days?
Like I'm an old millennial, almost Gen Xer, so I have no earthly idea.
I get all my information from CNN.
That's probably for the best.
And MSNBC.
They're accurate.
Okay.
That's enough BS to start the show with.
So this is the article.
I'm just going to like throw it up here for a minute and then we're going to switch over to banners because I really don't think y'all want to go through like
every bit of this nonsense scrolling through a page. Lord knows I don't. But this was it. It's
published at the National Library of Medicine. Looks like it originally came from Delaware
Journal of Public Health. Some of these bullet points are very very specific to delaware i've generalized them a little bit but it's
disaster and preparedness myths and i thought that warranted a discussion because like some of this
is stuff you and i have talked about before some of this quite frankly is stuff that like you and
i have kicked back on several times like these are these are things that keep coming up in the preparedness world and some of them i just laugh
at and some of them i nominate in various stages again that sounds legit but let's start with the
very very first one because you and i you and i are going to have a field day with some of these
it couldn't happen here.
Inevitably, there's that person that says, well, that disaster couldn't happen here, so there's no point getting ready for it.
Even though, when we dig back through recent history in our friend group, you know, we had the Valentine's Day snowpocalypse that took over Houston, Texas.
A buddy of ours was stuck in the middle of all that. And I have to think that, you know,
Blizzard was not on the bingo card for Houston, Texas that particular week, but that's what happened. And then you talk about, you know, like you and I've talked about how like down here in
southeast Louisiana, like once every 10 years, we actually get snow. Like, you know, maybe only an
inch or two of snow, but an inch or two of snow but an inch or
two of snow down here is like the apocalypse like we don't know what to do with ourselves we shut
the entire state down and wait for it to melt because we don't we don't we don't do any of that
stuff and you know this kind of gets me thinking that like inevitably there are those people that
they discount the possibility of an emergency because the possibility is low.
Or they tell themselves, this could never happen here, so there's no point preparing for it.
And this is moments in time where I love to say that Mother Nature giggles every time you say that.
Yeah.
So, I mean, is there a version of this up where you live because i mean i know we're going to talk about flooding later because you and i've talked about how everyone around you is just shocked to death when the grand river floods every
stinking year but is there is there some kind of disaster that happens up in your part of the world
that everyone kind of shrugs towards says that can never happen here i know you mentioned torn
that y'all had some tornadoes up in that area. I don't know if those are common.
Well, I mean, as far as common occurrences,
I would say the most common that we don't get that you guys do is hurricanes.
We don't deal with that.
But this year, I feel like we've seen more tornadoes this year than I can remember.
Like, I mean, at work.
I've worked where I work.
I've been there for going on six years.
And we've set off the tornado alarms, the sirens and stuff, on complex twice now this year uh and and that's like crazy i mean
i set it off we we set it off one time last year uh that we had a hurricane we had a tornado
passed by pretty close to us uh but this year we've had uh we've done it twice now uh and so
the tornadoes i mean obviously if you look at the weather and stuff, it's interesting.
I mean, go down that conspiracy rabbit hole as much as you want for the reason.
But, no, we're seeing an uptick in tornadoes this year across the Midwest, western states.
I mean, Ohio is getting hammered pretty hard, Texas, Oklahoma.
Michigan has gotten hit pretty good a few times uh so yeah i mean uh tornadoes uh yeah obviously hurricanes we really
don't deal with i mean obviously we've you know according to the national weather service there
was that one back in like 1932 or something like that uh that uh it was just like hey i want to
come visit you guys.
I'm going to start in the Caribbean, but I'm going to come say hi into the northern states.
But a true definition of a hurricane we really haven't seen.
But, yeah, no, I mean, other than that, yeah, snow.
I mean, yeah, obviously we get snow, and you guys kind of deal with snow a little bit.
I mean, you guys deal with freezing rain uh and we deal freezing
rain here so yeah i mean that's the thing is uh like the myth number one the you know basically
the only only certain natural disasters happen where you're at uh they can happen anywhere i
mean yeah obviously in certain areas they're going to be more prominent
and they're definitely going to be stronger.
But I would still say down in the south you should prepare for a really cold day
just as much as I prepare for a really cold day because it could happen.
It could very well happen.
prepare for a really cold day because it could happen it could very well happen and murphy's law is going to be like murphy's going to come back and smack you in the face when you sit there and
you're like nah it's uh it's texas we can never get cold weather and then they're like hey not
only we're going to give you guys a blizzard but we're also going to knock out power for a week
or more uh you're going to really wish that you prepared for a natural disaster of
some kind that involves some cold weather gear.
And to take that one step further, like it was a handful of years ago now where our gas
furnace went completely out and we wound up having to rip out the entire HVAC system and
replace it.
But that was a couple of weeks we didn't have a working furnace, which wouldn't have been
a problem except that that coincided with the first cold snap of the year. Yeah. place it but that was a couple of weeks we didn't have a working furnace which wouldn't have been a
problem except that that coincided with the first cold snap of the year yeah so it was down in the
high 30s outside and i have no heat in this house so we were we were running the fireplace we were
bundling up in the house we had space heaters in the bedrooms like you know we pivoted we made we
did what we had to do to keep ourselves comfortable and call what it is like high 30s outside the the temperature in the house as much
insulation as i have in here i think it got down to low 50s it was uncomfortable but it wasn't
dangerous but the point still remains the minute you get that in your head about, I don't need that because that's never going to happen, like Mother Nature and, you know, Mother Nature and probability are going to conspire to screw you over at exactly that moment.
Mother Nature and Murphy are going to be like, hey, let's have a kid.
And they're just going to bang it out and like you're going to get hammered.
That's a T-shirt idea.
We need Mother Nature and Murphy's Law,
and they're holding maybe government in the middle by the hands.
Ooh, that'd be a hell of a thought, wouldn't it?
Because government screws everything up.
But, yeah, no, it's interesting.
Number two is wait for help.
Like, the myth was that you're better off calling 911 and staying at home and waiting captain sabaho to show up on your front
doorstep to dig you out of trouble because my experience with natural disasters is when a cap
four cap five hurricane wipes out five zip codes first of all cell phones probably won't work second
of all if they do work those police have a lot bigger problems to deal with then you don't have
any food in your in your pantry and you're out of water.
The idea that
our default
position should be to fall back
on public services
and fall back on
the graces
of the state to take care of us
just drives me nuts because
I don't understand how people
even think this works
like you're one person out of hundreds of thousands that have been affected and i don't i'm
thirsty is so far down the priority list behind all the people that have to get evacuated out of
rising floodwaters all the people that need medical care all the people that are dying
that you're gonna
sit there and just be hungry or thirsty for a while like i don't know i know i'm preaching to
the choir i just i don't i don't understand this this thought process but i see it every time we
have a hurricane well yeah we see it every time any anything bad happens i mean you have michigan
you have snow storms and and everything and you have people that are like they're snowed in their house.
And it's what do I do?
I don't know what to do.
And it's just like you guys don't have food or water stored up or a way of actually making food besides your stove, your electric stove.
You know, so like, yeah, I mean, and the, I honestly, the worst, uh, the worst sentence
you could ever hear is I'm from the government.
I'm here to help.
Like, that's probably one of the worst sentences that you could ever hear, uh, cause they're
not here to help.
And so, you know, they're going to bring in certain amounts of food, maybe certain amounts
of water, but it's not going to be enough to go around to everybody and, and everything.
So, uh, but no, no i mean that's the thing
is don't rely on 9-1-1 i mean we're in good times right now and 9-1-1 the cops can't get to some
people uh under 30 minutes uh after calling 9-1-1 because of a maybe rule if you live in a rural
area where it's just dirt roads and you're a ways away from out of town and stuff like that
uh but i mean what is it it, Philadelphia or something like that?
Like they don't have a police force at night,
and they are asking people not to call 911 and report an emergency
unless it's like something completely tragic, like really, really bad.
I mean, that's good times right now.
And they can't provide basic services,
let alone when a major natural
disaster happens such as a cat 3 4 5 hurricane or an f3 4 5 tornado uh people like you got to
take care of yourself i mean yeah it's a little bit different because the flooding and the disaster
and the wind and i mean everything like that but the people like you got to get out you got to get out start sawing the tree off your
house you got to start clearing brush you got to start getting things going you got to have a
generator you got to have certain things set aside and if you don't uh then that's your own fault
that's not the fault of your neighbor and honestly it's not the fault of the government uh because
the government's not here to protect you.
They're not here to take care of you.
You should take care of yourself.
And so having, even if it's a week of water and food for each person in your household, okay, that's a good start.
But you think about certain natural disasters, especially, I mean, honestly, like snowstorm storms or I'm at, you know, you might lose power for a week, uh, and everything, but, uh, for the
most part, after a few days, after about a week or so, usually it's back on and everything. And
hopefully, uh, you can go back to, uh, the way things were and what's nice about winter. And
that's what I like is, is uh we have the outdoor refrigerator
so you have you have things that are you have food that might be going bad or whatever you
stick it in the snow i mean i don't know how many times that growing up we've had
uh get togethers and family events and stuff and the the case of beer the bottles of wine
all the like some of the food it's all in the snow banks. And basically you just reach
outside from the sliding door, you grab another beer, uh, just because it's just the, you know,
it's the outdoor fridge. So in that case, it's great. I mean, right now, I mean, it's getting
hot out. So obviously now if the, if, because of the strain on the, uh, the power grid with all
the AC units and stuff like that going, uh, you, you just, something
happens and you run out of power. Well, hope, you know, I don't have a generator. It's on my list
of stuff to get. Uh, but hopefully you have the means of, uh, taking care of some stuff. Um, you
know, I got power, I got some battery backups and stuff like that. I got my, I got means of where I
can take care of some stuff, but still, I mean, having that generator and everything like, yeah,
having it ready to go and being able to power up so you can at least power a freezer if anything uh is is is
needed uh and so yeah it's don't wait for help don't wait for 9-1-1 uh get off your butt and
start taking care of yourself now. Only worry about yourself.
I have mixed feelings about this one.
Because on the one hand, I am emotionally at peace with the person who says,
my neighbors didn't plan ahead.
They ignored me when I tried to help them.
Screw them.
They're on their own.
Like, I understand that point of view.
I'll give it to you.
I'm not even going to argue with anybody that feels that way.
You're well within your rights to feel that way.
However, I know now from personal experience, having dealt with this during Hurricane Ida,
my wife is going to have a very hard time turning somebody down.
Like, there are limits to her generosity, but if we can legitimately spare it, she's going to want to spare it.
And I can understand that.
We also, frankly, we have a neighbor we're really close with that if it comes down to feeding her out of our stash, like that's going to have to happen.
Because we just, she's like an adopted member of the family at this point, and we just can't let her sit over there and go hungry.
Well, to me, it all depends on how it goes about.
For context, this was basically saying that you only need a plan for yourself.
And I would only hedge that by saying that if you're only going to plan for yourself, plan for yourself.
that if you're only going to plan for yourself, plan for yourself.
But if you believe, if there are people close to you that you cannot,
you don't have the heart to sit there and watch them starve to death,
you have to plan for them too.
Does that make sense?
Like, I think that's the context is if these people are going to be in your group,
you have to plan for them too because you can't depend on them to plan for themselves.
No, I get that. I can tell you right now where I live currently, the neighbors that I have, I will turn them away at gunpoint.
I will not give them a single ounce of food.
I will not give them water.
I wonder if any of them watch this.
If they do, then they're warned.
Watch this.
If they do, then they're warned.
They're a bunch of drug addicts, meth heads,
and it's pretty disturbing to see the amount of drugs that are in the neighborhood.
And you know what?
They can't take care of themselves and they can't take care of their kids.
I'm not going to take care of them.
I will gladly turn them away.
But, like, such as the neighbor with you guys, then you guys and yeah i mean i can understand having that person uh especially if they're elderly or anything like that you know trying
to take care of them a little bit um also i mean if someone comes to me and honestly like i do have
that i did just say that but if someone came to me and was like hey i got a um wife kids and stuff
like that and they're and they're pretty cool like they're they're, and they're pretty cool. Like they're, they're not violent.
They're not threatening anything like that. Uh, and they're, it's like, okay, I'll try to spare
a little bit. Here you go. This is all I have. Uh, you guys gotta, you know, you guys gotta make
it to a shelter. You guys gotta make it somewhere and find some different food, but here's, you know,
here's a couple of days that should get you by if you, if you ration it. Now, if they get violent
and they say, well, I'm coming back and all this stuff,
then no, you're not going to get anything from me.
And I'm sorry for your kids.
That's the biggest thing is I'm sorry for your kids.
It's going to suck.
And, I mean, obviously people, and that's the one thing I say,
like some of the post-apocalyptic books that I've read and some of the shows,
they've captured pretty well, I think, like some of the post-apocalyptic books that I've read and some of the shows, they've captured pretty well, I think, about some of the parents and what parents would do if they have a starving child, what they would do.
And unfortunately, yeah, unfortunately, I'm afraid for that.
if you'd rather do drugs and spend your money on drugs and be high and all this crap versus stocking some food and water and supplies, you know what? That's your own downfall.
Unfortunately, you might not die as fast as some other people, but you cause trouble with the
wrong people and it's not going to go well for you. So, I mean, I'm going
to worry about myself and I might try to help out some of those people that I know need some help.
But for the most part, what's mine is mine. And yeah, you know, if I, I'll give you a little bit,
but you can't keep that. But that's the other thing too, is you, you help out some of the
people, especially just random people, random neighbors.
You help them.
They're going to keep coming back.
You helped them once.
They're going to keep handing out.
I mean, we all have experience with homeless and beggars and stuff like that on the street.
You give them some money.
You pass them by.
You pass by them again.
They're still begging.
They're still going to do it.
So it is what it is. mean that's the thing though is
like some of these things some of these scenarios i mean you got to think in your head when do i say
no and you got to be able to stick to your no you got to be able to stick to it and your reason why
and i don't know it's one of those things where you know you got your neighbors like with you
you and the wife and your kid.
I mean, everything that you give out is essentially food out of your child's mouth.
That's one less meal out of hers, out of her mouth and out of your wife's mouth.
So it's where do you where do you draw that line? Where do you say no?
Now, is it something that you can say, OK, you know what? I got this much food set up.
I know this much food will get me through six months.
All right, this much food here, that's an extra month.
But six months, we should be okay.
This food here, let's ration it out and we can divvy it up and give it out.
After that, we're done, you know, something like that.
But that's the thing is, and that's the one thing that reading these books and some of the movies and the shows and stuff
like that, it's really got me thinking is how do you tell those people? No, it's going to be hard.
I mean, especially as a Christian, it's going to be hard. So, but you got to say no, you got to,
you have to say no, if, especially if you have a family. Yeah. Well, I'm going to fall back on the idea that those people that I feel are my responsibility, I will be responsible for, and the people I'm not, I won't be.
And in the case of this one neighbor, I mean, to give you an idea of the relationship involved, like, she lives by herself.
She's divorced.
Older lady.
Real sweetheart, though.
Like, she's practically like another grandmother to my daughter.
Like, that's the relationship they have.
And I've gotten phone calls from her, like, in the middle of the night because, like, her, you know, she had a leaking toilet and needed to know how to shut the water off.
And we are the people she reaches how to shut the water off.
We are the people she reaches out to when she needs help. And I am not shy about running over there with a sack full of tools at 8 o'clock at night in my PJs to help her out.
It's just that's the relationship.
So because of that relationship, I feel a certain amount of responsibility towards her.
towards her but for the rest of my neighbors that like especially after hurricane ida when i watched them all mull around and goof off while i was you know cutting cutting limbs off my garage with a
pole saw and a bow saw because i didn't have a chainsaw yet i have a long memory and i remember
who was there to help me and who wasn't and the ones that't, that's going to come back around eventually. But this is a short
cautionary note. I think we can go through this pretty quick because I imagine flood insurance
works the same in most states, but typically rising water, meaning if it rains or if a river
jumps and spanks or whatever, if that floods your home, that's covered under flood insurance and
you don't all, not everybody has flood insurance. If you get a hole in the home, that's covered under flood insurance, and not everybody has flood insurance.
If you get a hole in the roof, that's covered under your homeowner's policy.
So a lot of people assume, well, I have homeowner's insurance, I'm covered for flooding, but you may not be.
So go find your homeowner's policy, and if you need additional flood insurance, if you need separate flood insurance, please go get that.
And if you need additional flood insurance, if you need separate flood insurance, please go get that.
I'm fortunate where I live, like this house has never flooded, knock on wood.
This whole area has never flooded.
We are three feet away from the highest point in the entire town.
So if we flood here, we got really bad problems all over the place.
But, I mean, even that being said, for Hurricane Ida, i sandbagged the front and back doors just in case and the water got higher for that than i've ever seen it before but you know
to be fair like we had a cat three we had a it was a cat three strength hurricane went within 20
miles of us when it passed by so we kind of got got hammered, but I digress. Let that be,
let that stand for flood insurance. If you need it, you should go get it. And if you don't know
if you have it, go find out quickly. It only floods around the coast. God, I wish I could
slap a person for saying this. I mean, but that's the thing is kind of going into the last time,
the last one about flood insurance. I mean, look at your floodplain. When I was, but that's the thing is kind of going into the last one about flood insurance.
I mean, look at your floodplain.
When I was house searching, we have the Grand River here in Michigan.
I mean, we have a lot of rivers, but the Grand River is big. People are always shocked when it floods.
And people are always shocked when it floods.
And it pretty much floods every single year.
It depends.
And it pretty much floods every single year.
It depends.
Sometimes it doesn't flood as bad every year, but it floods.
There's been a couple times where, yes, it flooded so freaking bad,
I cannot believe. There was a house.
I remember where I lived.
There was a house I was looking at, and I could see.
And I looked it up, and it was in the flood plain and it was
like it was it was it was within like the like the two or it was like a one like the 100 or 200
a year flood like hey every one or 200 years we might get this kind of flood well I'm like well
I know not long ago like I don't know 10 years or so if not if not less uh we had some major flooding and
a lot of places got flood the grand flooded out uh and i remember going down the basement
and unfortunately this particular house had uh basically the furnace the water heater everything
was in a crawl space underneath the house so it's like i i popped the storm doors walked downstairs and i could see
uh i could see a line on the wall in the in the in the stone and i'm look i look at the realtor i
go that's from the flood from whatever you know such such date and she goes like yeah i go huh
yeah i'm probably pass on this house and this was the first floor of the basement
this was the the it was only one floor or the basement? This was the basement.
It was only one floor, but it was the crawl space, basically.
There was no basement.
It was you go outside, you open up some storm doors,
and then you walk downstairs,
and then the furnace was actually on its side on a stone wall,
and then the water heater was tucked in a corner and that was and that was it
so forgive my ignorance you're describing things that like physically cannot occur down here because
our water table is so high like if i had a front if i had a furnace under my house it would need
to snorkel right but yeah and but that's the thing is like you look you live in a pit i mean
you live in uh louisiana i mean especially new in Louisiana. I mean, especially in New Orleans.
I mean, it's under sea level.
I push back against that.
My elevation in my house right now, I can look it up, is like 22 feet above sea level.
Oh.
The problem is the water table is only like eight feet down.
Right.
And that's a thing is like when I get that close to the river, yeah, the water table is a little bit higher.
But when you have a river that floods, I mean, you know, it's when it when it when a river that comes up, you know, 30 to 40 feet, you know, even 60 feet or so.
I mean, it's still, it's a lot. So, yeah, I mean, definitely look at your area.
Look up your floodplain, the floodplain map, and find out where you're at.
If you're on the edge of it, okay.
But, again, it floods, so you're going to want, going back to the flood insurance and stuff like that,
you're going to want to look into that kind of insurance.
But the idea that, well, it only floods on the coast, that's false.
I mean, just look at rivers and all kinds of stuff.
I mean, any river can flood.
Geography is your friend.
Yeah.
And that's the thing, though, is, you know,
especially if you're in an area where,
especially if you live maybe downhill or if you're in an area where uh especially if you live uh maybe
downhill or if you live at towards the bottom of some hills uh i mean think about uh flash floods
especially when it rains when that water comes off of those hills if you live in a river it
sometimes those those rivers come up and and it might not be massive flooding like that we see in
the news and stuff like that,
but I don't care who you are.
I don't want my basement wet.
If it's not meant to be wet, I don't want it to be wet.
Yeah, and as far as like talking about rivers and everything,
the earth thing to be nervous about with rivers,
and we were talking about it earlier when we were talking about the potential for snow.
I can't speak for everybody everywhere else in the country,
but down here, every time, like, it seems like every 20 feet you approach a sign,
and the sign says, warning, bridge ices before roadway.
And that's because an elevated bridge, especially over a small body of water,
like a river, will tend to ice over faster than everything else.
So down here here that happens like i mean you'll run across there's so many little rivers all over the place that like you need to
be really really concerned and that is really the bigger concern when we get into like you and i've
talked about like when we get into sub sub-zero temperatures and it stays at or below freezing for a while.
The whole state just goes into emergency mode.
We shut down.
It's not always because, like, bursting pipes is a concern.
The additional strain on the power grid because so many of these houses still use electric strip heaters, that's a concern.
Sometimes, you know, hail or snow might be a concern but the biggest worry is always when those bridges start icing over
you can you can develop traffic jams and you can develop serious accidents very very quickly
and down here because there's so many rivers all over the place therefore there's so many
elevated roadways that's why when the temperature drops below zero
and stays that way for a while,
we just close everything down.
Because we know what's going to happen first.
The first thing that happens is you're going to have black ice
on every one of these little bridges.
If you go fast enough over the bridge, you won't be affected.
Okay, I'm not going to even bite on that.
Driving faster doesn't seem like it's going to make the problem better
might make it worse yeah you just coast over the ice disasters cause epidemics apparently this was
this was an interesting talking point because they they said that disasters do not necessarily
cause epidemics but disasters can give right can like present the right set of
circumstances for disease to spike in the short term so i don't know that the article was really
good about taking a firm stance on this like i personally believe it's not necessarily that
that disasters cause epidemics that's the worrying part to me. The problem is always in the middle
of a disaster, things
that normally wouldn't be that big of a deal are
suddenly much more difficult to deal with.
Like after Hurricane Ida,
every member of my family
had closed-toed shoes, long pants,
work gloves on while we were working
out in the yard because
I knew if you get
a wasp sting, if you get a wasp sting if you get you know like a cut or if you get
if you get an infection like there are problems that normally would only be an annoyance but given
the situation around us it was the wrong time to add personal injury on top of everything else yeah
so i guess that that's like my thing is that i don't think it's that you have a disaster, you're immediately going to have like a measles outbreak or anything crazy.
But I do think that things that normally wouldn't be an emergency, like a cut on the arm or a cut on the leg getting infected, those can become an emergency because medical care is not as available as it normally would be. Yeah, I mean, obviously disasters increase the probability
and the risk of minor instances of something becoming larger problems,
such as a cut on the hand, a sliver, something like that.
Something that could easily be taken care of before uh might become
an issue now uh but what the article is saying and i and i can see where they're coming from
is what they're saying epidemics is uh especially in uh major catastrophes uh i mean you look at
what was it hurricane katrina and then uh they were packing people into the stadium.
Superdome.
Yeah, they're packing people in there.
You have a chance of disease spreading just due to the fact that more people are packed together.
They're tighter.
They're packed together a lot tighter.
The thing I don't really care about this is the push the push that they do for hey make sure you get
your vaccines and you're up to date on your vaccines uh i mean to me vaccines i don't know i
it is what it is uh that you're you know everybody's got their own thoughts but
the fact that but i do agree with them that you know that uh to the point of
uh when you have a tighter group of people together, the fact that a disease such as cholera or even the flu or cold or whatever can spread through that entire group of people.
That's where you see it all the time.
You see it happen.
You've seen it in the past all the time and everything.
So it's just one of those things where you just got to be careful.
uh, and everything. So it's just one of those things where you just gotta be careful. And that's where, uh, having, um, having stuff to combat, uh, fever, combat diarrhea to, uh,
to push against, uh, vitamins and stuff like that. Uh, making sure that you're keeping cuts clean
and, uh, and everything. Cause you get someone running a fever that spikes a fever because of
a cut hand. Uh, it just, you know it's just not saying that's going to spread.
But, I mean, you don't want that person to die just because of that.
So if you have stuff to fight a fever and just fighting that fever, you can fight other stuff.
And, yeah, I would definitely say look at your medication and see what you have.
I think this is also a case of an ounce of an ounce of prevention is
better than a pound of cure.
Like you brought up,
you know,
having vitamins on hand and everything just so you could try to like boost
your natural immune system and ward things off.
And like,
I say that in this vein,
the best things you can do,
you do before the accident happens,
like closed toe shoes and long pants and work gloves to prevent a cut or prevent infection, like maintaining your health the other 364 days before this
started to suck so that when you're in the situation and your nutrition's off and your
sleep schedule's off and all these things are piling up that would normally make your
immune system take a dive, you're starting out at a higher level of health, at least. I mean, things like just having an appropriate amount of strength and being
relatively limber and flexible can prevent injury when you're out in the yard working and doing
stuff. Like, this is all just a game of, if you do the work before you get hurt, you might prevent
getting hurt. And if you don't, then there are not many worse times for life to start sucking than in the middle of a disaster.
And in that vein, first aid and property are your only concerns.
When I drilled down further into the article, they talked a lot about mental health.
They talked a lot about post-traumatic stress disorder.
They talked a lot about the mental, emotional effects of disaster and of emergency situations
and about how, like, people go into these situations thinking, as long as everybody's alive and the house is standing, we're good.
and the house is standing, we're good.
And they don't think about, like, the fact that, like, it's been,
this August will make two years since Hurricane Ida flattened my house.
My wife to this day gets very nervous whenever there's a bad thunderstorm outside because we rode that hurricane out right here in the hallway.
Like, my daughter seems to have bounced back from it fairly well,
and she was not having a good night that night.
I just kind of took it in stride because, you know, after spending a year getting mortared, I don't know.
I've just learned to, like, turn part of my brain off when things are dangerous.
But, like, there are aspects to having dealt with the time from Hurricane Ida in terms of my wife's anxiety, in terms of, like, my guilt for the fact that I'm the one that made the decision.
Let's stay. Let's ride it out. We'll be OK. And we got a lot more than we bargained for.
And I have to carry that around. There's aspects to all this that like a lot of people don't think about going in.
But then on the way out, they realize, oh, there's a whole lot more things to worry about than what I – than the basics, than first aid and property.
Yeah, but I guess to argue that point, I mean I can understand Gillian, like her – the idea that, hey, there's a storm coming in and then like her concerns.
You having the idea that you're carrying around something, guilt or something,
I think that's just, I think, like, just that's not your fault.
So, I mean, in a way of being not so sensitive, just get over it.
You know, I mean, just because, like, the fact, and, I mean, I know it sounds harsh, but at the same time, you look at, I mean, you look at when you were overseas.
I mean, I know you didn't necessarily, like you did a lot over there.
But as far as like teams and stuff going out, you look at the information that you were given.
And based on the information that you were given, you made a choice.
The information turned out to be false just because of frickin' to say hey look what i can do hold my beer
that's not on you so you you really don't have any guilt to hold because you made based off the
decision that you had and this is what i and at work i make this i talk to the guys and stuff
like that too is uh if something comes in based on the decision that you're based on the information
that you have make the best decision that you can that you can make and don't look back on it you made that decision hey this is what happened and we
learned from it yeah with the hurricane decide turned out to be a lot worse than what uh than
what the information said but at the same time it's like you have now if it said hey this is a
cat five and you were like nah we're gonna stay here and it's hey, this is a Cat 5, and you were like, nah, we're going to stay here.
And it's like, no, this is coming right towards your house.
And you're like, nah, we're going to stay here.
And then they're like, nah, you guys should probably leave.
And you're like, nah, we're going to stay here.
And then this all happened.
Okay, cool.
Like, I'm going to probably help guilt you into some stuff.
But with the information that you were given you you you you made your choice and it ended up
being not the right information that was given so but that and so that's not on you uh but like
what this is saying basically first aid and prevention of property are the only concerns
during the disaster i mean yeah i i would say that's a myth because obviously first aid but
uh what happens to my property, that can be fixed.
Yeah, mental health is big, but at the same time, if you think about it, and I mean, this goes into a lot of disasters that happens.
It's like, hey, what's your meds?
If you're on meds, what does your med supply look like?
I know because of insurance and stuff like that, sometimes people can't get the proper amount of meds or, you know, a stash of supply that they can get.
There's other means out there to get medical.
Like there's a lot of websites out there that you can actually buy stuff off of.
That's not the most, it's not necessarily, the government pretty much frowns on it.
But if you can get it and supply it and keep that supply then i say more power to
you and the people should be able to do that uh but yeah that's the thing is i mean it's gonna
be interesting because yeah mental health i know a lot of people that are on some mental health
pills and if something were to happen where it something were to happen where that goes bye-bye
there's gonna be a lot of people that are gonna either a eat a bullet or they're gonna
just fight through it and you gotta deal with them uh and so so yeah mental health is definitely
you gotta have some people that are strong mentally um but uh it's just one of those
things like i mean like you know gillian it's like that whole idea of hey there's a storm coming and
you know she's panicking it's it like, hey, look at the bright side.
If you look at the weather, you look at the information that we're given,
it's not nearly as bad as this.
And so we've rode this bad thing out.
We're going to be fine.
And look at all the preps that we've made.
Like the reassurance for our mental health is big in my eyes.
You got someone who's freaking out you
can you know you sit there and you tell them look at all the look at everything that we've done look
everything that we've improved this is what happened and we you know we moved on so you
know stuff like that so um but yeah i don't know i think the other thing to point out a moment like
this like from my perspective is i feel like based on my own experience like the
human mind has a pressure relief valve and you have to find what that pressure relief valve is
for you as an individual and you need to know you need to find a way to pull it every now and then
like that's not even post-disaster advice that's just navigating life when it sucks advice. But in a disaster situation,
like I'm not going to lie, I am a creature of habits and chemicals, and I really like cigars
and coffee. If I'm having a really bad day, but I can sit on the back porch, light up a stogie,
and have a cup of coffee, it is going to improve my mental health. I know that sounds really,
really flippant and silly to some people, but just trust me, it's going to improve my mental health. I know that sounds really, really flippant and silly to some people,
but just trust me, it's going to bring my stress level down.
It's going to give me my moment to decompress and work through things.
And that's me.
So having pipe tobacco and having cigars
and having an emergency break in case of emergency,
a stash of cigars and having coffee on hand, those an emergency break in case of emergency stash of cigars
and having coffee on hand, those are all just parts of me,
knowing that if I'm having a bad day, I have to have access to those things.
And the worst you could do is put me in a situation where I'm stressed out
and we run out of coffee and cigars at the same time.
But if your stress relief is coloring, then you need coloring books. If your
stress relief is bourbon, then have a bottle of whiskey like up on the top shelf out of your reach
and it's not there for fun. It's there for emergencies. Like whatever your mental health
moment is, you need to figure out what it is and you need to be ready to hit it. Because if you
can't release that pressure every now and then, it's going to pile up in a bad time when there's already a lot of stuff going on and you're not going to be able to release it and it's just going to make it worse.
And if your pressure relief valve is medication, oh my god, please go talk to your psychiatrist and figure out a way you can put a 30-day supply back on the shelf.
I don't care if you have to pay for it out of your own pocket. There's got to be a way.
Gotta be. Who got banned? Or you're just telling stewart he's i'm telling yeah i told
story he's banned oh we can't ban stewart do what i want i like stewart though
he's aggravating old so i thought i thought he didn't have electricity
no he has electricity back you've been out of touch you haven't yeah electricity. No, he got his electricity back.
You've been out of touch.
Yeah, I looked at the signal chat, and it said like 300 or 400,
and I'm like, eh, I'm not going to catch up.
Yeah, he got his power back. He was in the group that was out of power for a week.
He was not in the group that was going to be out of power for another week
because the high power lines went down in some parts around houston well i'll teach them so he was in the moderately
screwed pot not the highly screwed but yeah only one disaster at a time which boy it'd be nice if
we could only have one bucket of suck it once but you know i don't feel like mother nature doles it out like that like quite frankly
you could get oh and matter of fact i'm digging i'm digging into the back of my uh i'm digging
in the back of my disaster memory so we talked about hurricane katrina right but nobody really
remembers hurricane rita you remember that one? She was mean.
Hurricane, I'm 99% sure it was Rita.
If not, somebody will fact check me.
But Hurricane Rita hit southeast Louisiana.
I want to say it was a week after Hurricane Katrina did.
Now, it was much smaller.
It did nowhere near the damage.
But it was another hurricane right on the tail of Hurricane Katrina.
And for the people who had just gotten the blue roofs on, they tarped their roofs, they stabilized their homes.
Some of these people had started tearing out carpet because of flooding.
And here comes Hurricane Rita right behind it, rip everything else up all over again.
I want to say it hit further west, though.
But, yeah.
Only one disaster at a time?
Don't plan on that.
I mean, hell, just a hurricane can bring hurricane-enforced winds, trees down, and flooding all in one nasty little ugly package.
I mean, any of these natural disasters we're talking about can have second and third level or order problems where the event causes something else to tilt.
Can you think of any other examples where, like, you get one thing drives multiple problems?
Well, yeah, I mean, snow.
I mean, you got snowfall here, icy roads, whatever,
have it wherever you're at. I mean, you look down there, uh, now you have people that are
trying to drive, go to work, go do whatever, uh, down there. I'm sure, Hey, the whole city
just shut down. Well, someone's like, nah, Yolo, I'm still going to my fricking yoga appointment.
And, and then they sit there and they get into a car wreck.
They get in a car wreck that they smack into a power line,
and now they have power that goes out to a whole entire block.
So you have a natural disaster or a disaster of some major snowfall or whatever
that just now it just snowballed no pun
intended uh into something bigger to where someone decided to drive they hit a they hit a uh
substation or the earth not substation but like a power line whatever knocked out power now for the
block and now you have who knows what's in that block is it an elderly is there an uh like an
assisted living home in there?
Is there a hospital?
Granted, you know, now they're on generator power.
But depending on the mess, they have to get the power lines all back up and all that stuff.
And if it's snowing out, like, yeah, I mean, it can definitely catapult and go into, I guess, pick your disaster book.
You know, pick your path of what you want to do.
But, yeah, I mean, that's the thing is going back to having the supplies,
having another way of cooking food, having another way of powering your phone,
having just other ways, other means of doing something
besides just the normal grid is huge.
Well, and the other thing is that by having all those things in place,
it precludes you having to leave your home at a time when there might be ice on the roads
or there might be downed power lines or downed tree limbs.
Right, that's why we're saying have food and stuff like that
because if we got food and we got enough food, it's like, okay, cool.
Well, hopefully the whiskey supply holds out
because I have enough food and water for four months.
Well, in four months, hopefully the snow melts,
but we're going to go from there,
and hopefully they have the power back on by then.
That's kind of crazy if they don't.
But like I said before before there's been times where
we've had massive snowstorms again i say massive snowstorms called for uh we end up getting like
four inches and it's nothing bad but uh we've had where there's a snowstorm my old roommate and i
we go to the store and we're walking around and we're laughing at people who are getting all the
essentials and there's lines out the freaking door and people are panicking and we're like well we're low on whiskey so let's just
get two fifths and you know let's get a gallon this time instead of a fifth uh just to hold us
over or something you know what i mean so uh so yeah i kind of wish i'd reorder these things
because number nine really breaks the flow from number ten.
But really quickly, all radiation is harmful.
Decontamination is harmful.
We've talked about NBC stuff before.
Like, if you think there's nuclear fallout outside, just stay inside.
Well, I mean, yeah.
And I'm nowhere near an expert.
But having the ability to detect detect radiation uh is pretty big i
know there's multiple uh things that you can buy and do your research because some of them are just
a gimmick and there's some of them that uh if you do if you buy the right thing they'll come with an
iodine tablet uh or you know like a radioactive tablet that you can actually test it and make
sure that it is uh reading correctly and all that stuff so do test it and make sure that it is reading correctly and all
that stuff. So do your research and make sure, and honestly, if this is a fear, if this is something
that you're prepping for, as far as like a nuclear fallout or I don't know, I mean, something,
something nuclear, anything nuclear, if you're worried about it, make sure you do your research
and make sure you're, you know, that you're getting the proper things as far as, okay, I need to cover my vents,
the HVAC, the cracks in the door and all that stuff.
Because radiation, if you look into it, it's not as easy as the TV and stuff make it out to be to protect from. So if that's something, I mean, YOLO.
I mean, if something happens, if it's a nuclear blast and I'm in the center of it,
then freaking take me out because I'm not duct taping myself in my house
and doing all that crap.
So I'm just going to go.
I know if it starts snowing in June through,
if it starts snowing between June and August,
I'm going to stay inside and I'm going to watch what happens with my neighbors.
Pro tip.
So, but going back to number eight, we were just talking about, like, if you can stay at home, you can wait out an event, you can wait out the after effects of an event.
The last myth is that everything will go back to normal in a few weeks. Now, I can't speak to everybody else's personal preparedness journey and disaster experience,
but I can tell you that the longer the event lasts, the longer the bull crap from the event lasts.
And I can tell you that, like, down here, like, again, Hurricane Ida being the most recent example, you know, it came through in the evening.
The roads were, let's call them, you shouldn't drive on them.
I won't say they were undriveable, but you really shouldn't have been out on the roads the day after.
The roads were largely cleared within a couple of days, and that's mostly
because, like, you know, arborists from all over the state had poured in there trying to clear the
road so that we could get power restoration crews installed. And the power was out for, I want to
say, seven days. But even once the power was stood back up for the majority of the area and the roads were clear,
and by this point, you know, the traffic lights that had gotten blown down were getting put back up,
we were still at a deficit for things like building materials.
You could not get a roofer for anything other than emergency.
I have a hole in my roof. I need patching work.
You couldn't get a roofer lined up for any amount of money for months you couldn't get gutters done for about six months because again because
everybody's gutters were jacked up everybody who could throw gutters on the side of the house
was working you know six and seven days a week trying to catch up behind backlogged work didn't
you have didn't you have a hole in your roof for like six months almost a year uh it wasn't a year so we had the the gutters took a year to get fixed yeah
but the roof we got fixed
i want to say we got a fix in january the in january so that was yeah right around six months
yeah although to be fair it wasn't as if I had a big gaping hole in the roof.
I mean, by that point, we had, you know, we had tarped it, we had tucked the tarp
underneath the shingles, we had hammered.
Yeah, you've tarped it and stuff like that. I get that, but I'm just saying, like, you had a tarp
on your roof for six months to where
if it rained and stuff like that, you still had to watch out for leaks.
After Hurricane Katrina, there were blue roofs.
We call them blue roofs around here.
I don't know what they call them everywhere else.
But there were whole roofs that were covered in blue tarps,
and some of those stuck around for literally three, four years.
Yeah.
In that case, it was because the property owners just, you know,
got their insurance payout, surrendered the property, and walked away from it was because the property owners just you know got their insurance
payout surrendered the property and walked away from it but the point still remains like
the the downstream effects from a major disaster last for weeks and for months yeah and the idea
that well in a week everything will go back to normal it's like no like i for for weeks after hurricane ida
you used to tell my wife i'm like do not let your fuel tank get below half do not because
you know like at that point fuel fuel deliveries into the area had resumed power restoration had
been completed but i was telling my wife i'm like but the problem still is like
there's so many extra construction crews running around there's there's so much activity in this
area right now that is not normal it wouldn't take a lot for a missed fuel delivery to result
in a temporary fuel shortage so just like we were on our guard for several weeks afterwards just in case something happened.
Didn't they have fuel robberies down there too?
Not during Hurricane Ida.
I thought I heard.
I thought maybe somewhere else.
I could have swore I heard during one natural disaster they had.
During Hurricane Katrina, they absolutely had.
Maybe that's when I heard about it or I remember about it because it was like yeah they they actually had like fuel trucks with armed support because like people were actually
gangs and stuff were actually stealing the uh they're robbing the uh the fuel trucks i know
for a fact during hurricane katrina that uh fuel was being bussed into some of these more southern
areas and you gotta understand that like at this point this wasn't even fuel to go in gas stations to support civilian restoration efforts.
This was fuel purely to support the National Guard and the law enforcement activities in those areas.
And they were having to bring that fuel into these forward, I want to call them forward operating bases because that's my military term, but like it really is like the southernmost distribution points, the closest to
the point of the disaster. But yes, they were absolutely having to bring those in with armed
guards, basically to a fob in the middle of no man's land. That was the nature of that situation.
We didn't really see that during Ida, and I think a lot of that is down to the fact that,
that situation we didn't really see that during ida and i think a lot of that is down to the fact that you know ida because the levees didn't breach for hurricane ida and that caused the majority of
the hell on earth that is her that was hurricane katrina i feel as though ida wasn't as severe of
a storm in a lot of ways and it certainly wasn't as widespread if you look at the footprint of
hurricane ida it was a much smaller storm than hurricane katrina was so what it went by it tore up really badly but it didn't it didn't have the
girth that hurricane katrina did so i feel like because of that the affected area was much narrower
and resources were able to pour in from other areas much more readily than hurricane katrina
i mean they're just very different storms.
But at the end of the day, like, the message holds true that I would say that, like,
if you think the event's going to last a day, you better be ready for three.
If you think it's going to last a week, you should be ready for a month.
Like, you need to respect the fact that there are going to be downstream effects of the event that are going to linger and might drive third order effects.
It just comes down to the idea that you can't just let your guard down the day after the storm is over and say, okay, everything's back to normal because it might not be.
Anybody ever try to buy plywood a day after a hurricane? Let me know how that worked out for you. Hell, try to buy fuel the day before a hurricane hits. Same problem.
There's only so much supply. It's all gone. Everybody's running around freaking out. Like,
you have to think ahead and you have to plan for those kinds of things. We would not have been tarping our roof after Hurricane Ida, except that I had tarps sitting in the garage.
Didn't have roofing nails, but now I have plenty.
You know, you live and you learn.
Thank you, Stuart. Point of distribution.
I couldn't get the military term to go away long enough
to think of another analog.
But those were the ten myths of preparedness that i saw in this article that
is linked down the show description if anybody wants to read it for yourself like i don't know
like i didn't feel like there was a lot of i didn't feel like there was a lot of those myths
that i grossly disagreed with the author about i feel like some of it comes down to a perspective
shift you know i'm saying like some of the things they were talking about, I was rolling my eyes saying, well, of course, there's nobody dumb enough to believe that.
But then again, there was a couple of things that are hotly debated even within the preparedness community.
Like people that live this lifestyle and they're in this mindset and two people won't agree on the same thing.
I think some of that just comes down to the fact that like we're all very individual people we all have our own mindset we all have like we might agree on big
principles but we're not necessarily going to agree on like specific implementation of those
principles if that makes sense i don't know i don't want to belabor the point i thought it was
a good chance to sit down kind of rapid fire go through some of these different myths and maybe get somebody's gears turning on this.
Yeah, it's always good to know.
I think it's always good to kind of Monday morning quarterback somebody else's opinion.
Yeah.
Force you to challenge your own.
All right.
Well, since we didn't do the admin work at the very beginning of the show, admin work, I put a video on YouTube.
It ended up being about 45 minutes long
talking about off-grid communications.
I owe the audience a shorter video, I hope,
talking about the man-pack bill
that's sitting in that bag back there
to talk about specific components,
how it's constructed, so on and so forth,
because I don't think it merits a whole hour-long show
to sit here and hold something up in front of the camera.
So that'll be another
YouTube slash Rumble video.
Other than that,
matter of fact,
Camp and Trip is coming up soon.
Yep.
I'm looking forward to that.
Looking forward to seeing everybody again.
Yeah, it should be good.
I have one tee time.
Probably going to make another one. It'll be fun golfing down there so are are any of the other hooligans golfers i have no idea not that i know
i'm just gonna by myself so but uh no it'll be fun uh yeah it'll be a few days definitely break
in the old uh the tent on the truck there i've been using it got out
another time uh but yeah no i'm looking at i'm looking forward to using that some more uh probably
i'm thinking tuesday after after this trip uh i'm i'm thinking about i probably will be doing
another video on my youtube channel uh discussing like pros and cons uh what I would maybe change
or what I don't necessarily like but I'm adjusting,
what I might change, stuff like that.
Boba Fett's Misadventures.
Yeah.
I'm going to advertise for him if he wants to advertise for himself.
I mean, shameless promotion is encouraged on this show.
Yeah.
No, it's Boba Fbo fitz miss adventures but uh i need to i need to
make sure i cross-platform it uh with uh the mof podcast as well with the youtube channel and
stuff like that but uh but yeah if you're going to the uh if you're going to the mof camping trip
uh look forward to seeing you if you are not going um and you uh if you want to know how to do it
basically you have to be the basically the only thing you have to do is be a patreon member
uh be a patreon member and uh yeah so
yeah if you're even if you are a patreon member and you're not going um hopefully we see you
another time um and then if you are going to
prepper camp uh let us know uh be nice to see you guys uh nice to see everybody uh at prepper camp
as well and there's a dirty little rumor circulating that 2025 the mof summer camping
trip might move to michigan good luck thank you andrew i knew it could depend on you to help hype me up
i mean yeah it's coming to michigan in january too late you already ruined it
yeah hopefully we'll see we'll try to work something out all right well we've turned
this into an italian goodbye which you always curse at me about doing so we're going to wrap
this up kick it out the door matter of fact this podcast is going bye everybody goodbye Thank you. Outro Music