The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: 2025, Ready or Not

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

http://www.mofpodcast.com/www.pbnfamily.comhttps://www.facebook.com/matteroffactspodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/mofpodcastgroup/https://rumble.com/user/Mofpodcastwww.youtube.com/user/philrabhttps://www.instagram.com/mofpodcasthttps://twitter.com/themofpodcasthttps://www.instagram.com/cypress_survivalist/https://www.facebook.com/CypressSurvivalistSupport 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, Nic Emricson, or the Matter of Facts Podcast*New Years resolutions inbound. Will the boys turn over a new leaf? Or be the same sarcastic, santimonious, unapologetic heathens they were for all of 2024???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, tactical 

Welcome back to the Matterfacts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping, guns, and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mofpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Ravele. Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to Matter Facts Podcast. I am just realizing I didn't have everything in this interface quite ready for y'all, but I was close. So, you know, happy New Year's. New Year's, same half-ass podcast producer.

I would say it's better than half-ass i mean we've got a very nice looking intro role and outro role i mean that's that's more than i would have done here actually i was talking to some other podcasters recently the guys from um com syndicate nice i was talking to them recently and they posted an article that I've seen floating around for a while that pointed out like if you post if you start a podcast and you make it past episode 21, you were in the top 1% of podcasts in terms of episode length. Like there's there's that many podcasts that like started and flamed out in 21 episodes. Well, you know, if you do a weekly a weekly podcast that's five months you know that's that's a considerable time commitment and and frankly most people just can't keep up that level of consistency i mean hell i'm a i'm a fan of dnd and i've been running

dnd games for the last 10 years you know how hard it is to get people to meet up once a month, even if you're doing it on computers? It's like pulling teeth, man. Yeah, I mean, honestly, my daughter got us into playing and we haven't touched. The battle board is sitting over there in the corner of the room behind the door because we haven't gone back to finish the dungeon we were in

for a couple of months you need to get back on that horse man pick a sunday it's it honestly though it's more it's more her and like okay her interest and things kind of comes and goes like the other day she got a wild hair but played minecraft for four hours she hasn't played minecraft in in weeks me and my buddies go through that phase where we'll uh we'll get tired of the so we play uh uh it's a like an open world survival game called daisy it's a zombie apocalypse game andrew would love it you end up eating your neighbors. Oh, that's fine. Yeah, cannibalism is a core mechanic. We go through a phase where we'll just get bored of that, and we'll play Minecraft every other day for like two straight months, and then we'll ignore it for another year and a half.

It's a good fallback game, man. It's, it's just enjoyable and relaxing. No, I, I guess everybody kind of goes through seasons. The, the one thing I've tried to encourage people that say they want to get into

podcasting is two things. I tell everybody, I'm like, pick a subject that's broad enough. It can never get old, which is also why when Gillian one started podcasts, I told her, I'm like, you think you're going to talk about this. You're going to wind up talking about your everyday life. Cause like that's, that gets, that gets to be what podcasting really is.

It's like, it's the conversation, it's the window into your life. It's the, it's the relationship between hosts and, or the content creators and the audience youth. Like I started off thinking I was going to talk about me clear my throat. Cause I've been awake for 40 minutes, max. I haven't fished my first cup of coffee, but like I started this off thinking I was just going to talk about like, you know,

tourniquets and guns and preparedness stuff. And then we've, we've weaseled in all these weird little directions over the years about just all sorts of stuff. Because that's where it went. But yeah, 21 episodes is all it takes to make it in the top 1% of podcasts. And I think if my count is correct, this is episode 409. So we're a bit past 21. Yeah still not joe rogan famous so you know let that merit hey man i do do not want do not want i got i got no interest in being that guy

man that can you imagine you could never go anywhere you could never do anything without without the public harassing you so i i will say that like it is nice to be like a small relatively unknown content creator and be able to hide in the masses but when i would go to prepper camp because you know when in past years when we would go to prepper camp you you kind of have a target-rich environment because you've got all these preparedness people in one spot, and a lot of them listen to podcasts. I had that experience a couple years in a row that

I'd be walking, and people would just step in front of me. They'd be like, you're Phil! And I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ. Whoa, bud. Mini panic attack. My happy little introvert is waving all the red flags and turning on all the alarms right now. But it was fun. It was great to meet fans. But thank Christ it was only in that one little annual event that couple of days out of the year and any other day, I just like walk down the street in my hometown and nobody has any freaking clue who i am it's well

i was gonna say apparently apparently i'm known in the town because i'm a very large guy with a very large beer and i just kind of stand out in a crowd you're the beard guy literally meet gillian and i's favorite taco place for years before we changed to another one they the waiters and the waitresses all used to refer to me as the guy with the beard nice that's a quality beard right there yeah nobody sponsored me like i you know i pay for my own beer products and everything so i'm not doing something right. There are worse things to be known for than an excellent beard. Yeah. So, uh,

admin work, we're seven minutes into the show and this is already like way off the rails. Let's get, let's see if we can take the pennies off track, get the train back on. Um, thanks to the patrons. We actually just got a new patron,

Scott. And, uh, one of these days I'm going to be prepared and I'm going to thank all the patrons by name or possibly nickname. Some of them might get referred to as, you know, dumbass, but that's a term of endearment around here.

Can always do a credit roll. But yeah, Scott recently came into the fold. I think y'all have been welcoming slash abusing him in the patron chat, which for anybody who is a patron, who's not aware, we do have a, a, a close patron chat on signal where everybody can get to know each other and

pass information and occasionally, you know, be the cause of everybody's therapy bill that happens on occasion. But the patrons have been, they've been breaking Scott in somewhat gently. Yeah. It's, it's,

you know, the usual Eddie's being Eddie. Yeah. All right. There's links for immersion, the show description. I'm not wearing merge cause I have to throw on a button up shirt and run ahead of the door.

As soon as this is over and Cypress survivalist, uh, March 8th, Southeast Louisiana found blue state park of any of y'all are in the area and looking to figure out where it is or where to make, you know, reservations. Um,

I don't know what else to say. I mean, at some point we will have to do more of a deep dive into like specific classes that are going to be taught. I can tell you that like the curriculum I'm teaching is like 98% already built. Like, well,

but I, I did that. I did that the day we decided to do this. Like I sat down and I was, I, to me, like before you even had a name for the organization, before we filed paperwork to make it a thing,

I sat down and built out all the curriculum. At least, and like I bullet pointed out all of my curriculum, the curriculum that Gillian and my sister and my brother-in-law are teaching, I just kind of said, this is what I'd like you to teach, but you tell me what fits in this bucket. Like this is the vein. But for my stuff, I went ahead and just built the whole, built the entire coursework in an afternoon or two.

Sometimes it's easier to backron him something like that. You know what you want to do, and then you can build a structure for it easier, I think. Yeah. Well, I mean, a lot of it for me was just, I'm very focused on the meat and potatoes. I'm very focused on like the content potatoes. I'm very focused on the content being there because if that's not, then the cool logos and the pretty names and all that stuff is useless. Right.

You need all that stuff to get people to the event. You need all that stuff to hook people and bring them in, but the meat and potatoes has to be there. the meat and potatoes has to be there. So I put together a lot of this curriculum, a lot of things I'm teaching, like from direct experience, from secondhand experience, from subject matter experts. I mean, bear in mind that over the eight years I've been podcasting over the, over probably the 10 years I've been in the preparedness world, I've been learning the whole time. Like I didn't, I didn't come into this and decide I am God's gift or preparedness. I need to educate the masses. It was like, no, I know a little bit more than the average person. I need to share what I know. But every step of this way has been

learn more, get better, do better because, you know, for purely selfish reasons, I have a family I'd like to be able to take care of. So every time we would have a guest, every time we bring somebody on the show was an opportunity for me to learn more so I could take care of them better. And the audience gets to come along for the ride. I mean, for purely selfish reasons, most people get into content creation because we're interested ourselves. And if you were an expert, you wouldn't be a content creator necessarily you'd be teaching and having somebody pay you for your knowledge yeah or be the person being interviewed for it at the very least in which case you'd be trying to sell something true true but hey

gotta pay the bill somehow right yeah i do it by working for the man, unfortunately. Oh, God. Autograph booths will be set up March 8th. I'm not doing autographs, Kyle. Kyle has already said he's planning on coming down, which he's not. He's within a day drive of me. But yeah. That should be fun. That's all the administrative work.

Now, 2025, ready or not, you and I decided to talk about goals for the year and reflect on last year before we found out about all the nonsense that happened this morning in New Orleans. Yeah. I don't know how deep we're going to get into because Gillian is literally watching the news on the other that happened this morning in new orleans yeah i don't know how deep we're going to get into because like gillian is literally watching the news on the other side of this wall like we're still trying to figure out what in the world happened i think it would be wise to hold off on that until next thursday and maybe we can do at least at least do a better job of covering it because we will have better information. Cause as of this morning, while I was getting my coffee made for,

for hopping on here, there was new information coming out, correcting prior information. So yeah, it might be doing a bit of a disservice to talk about it today. I wouldn't, I wouldn't advocate for talking about it today or then just to mention it to say,

you know, like I'm praying for the victims and their families. For those that aren't aware, we're talking about the terrorist attack that happened in New Orleans last night. Yeah, about an hour and a half away from me, give or take. I mean, this is fairly close to home. Scott, by the way, the new patron, lives about two miles that direction. He's local to me, very local. But yeah, Benji, we had to crank it a little bit early because I have some New Year's Day festivities

to take my family to in a little bit. But like I said, we're not going to discuss the terror attack. We don't know anything yet. I did just want to mention it and say that I hope the perpetrator burns in hell for all of existence yes hopefully their end is slow and painful if they are not already dead i guess it won't be slow and painful enough for my liking but that's probably not but you know it it just goes to show you that these large social gatherings around any holiday are there to be frank they're an ideal

target for anyone that is looking to do bad things yeah and we can't always avoid being in those situations all we can do is try to minimize our risk by bringing appropriate emergency medical equipment with us you know call it a tourniquet. Maybe it's a full blowout kit. Uh, if you're in your car near your car, that can, that can be possible. I know Andrew carries a pretty extensive medical kit in his truck. I keep a, I would say much smaller kit than that, less capable kit than that in my truck, just because the number of times I've rolled up on accident scenes at four 30, five 30 in the morning, uh, has been far more often than I've ever needed any other of my kit. So, you know, fortunately, from the limited amount of video that I was able to see this morning, it seemed like first responders were on the scene immediately.

And they were doing their job in an expedient and aggressive manner, which I very much like to see props to them. Yeah. I mean, I have no doubt that there were, that there were first responders very close at hand when this happened, because it's new year's bourbon street. It's bourbon street.

Like, you know, but they, they are needed there. I assume regularly. Yeah. but um they they are needed there i assume regularly yeah uh the one thing that i would correct because i i happen to be walking past the the mainstream media which i still think 80 should be shot but that's a different discussion but like i was walking past it on my way back here to start podcasting and i heard somebody say like this has never happened here and i looked gillian and i'm

like that's not true a truck driving down bourbon street maybe i'll give you that has never happened before but like there are gang related shootings up and down bourbon street literally like every month in this city it's not this is not a this is not maybe a bombing attack on mayberry this is bourbon street this happens all the time down here like wasn't there something that happened a few years ago where somebody drove a truck into a restaurant on bourbon street it might not have been a terrorist attack i think it was targeting a specific people but i seem to remember hearing about that on the news years ago. Well, they didn't even want to admit this was a terrorist attack when it initially happened. Well, who would want to? No mayor wants a terrorist attack on their city.

People interested in telling people the truth because they work for their constituent? I don't know. Really idealistic that I would dare say that the anointed work for the unwashed masses, but I'm an idealist. That's the way this is supposed to work. It is. But really, I mean, this happening on anyone's watch, no one's going to want to admit that because it makes them look bad. It does. Frankly, it makes them look bad.

Not that it's preventable because a lot of these things just flat are not preventable. You can't have perfect security. Because a lot of these things just flat are not preventable. You can't have perfect security. Well, going back to what I was saying before, though, like the violent crime rate in New Orleans is such that if Latoya Cantrell thinks this makes her look bad, then she's a freaking grade A blithering idiot. Because this is just icing on the cake. That is a failed city run by morons. i would agree it'd be the same as it happening in chicago this is this is the least of our problems yeah and kyle yes it is shocking

kyle hit the nail on the head at this point we have no idea who the hell is in our country anymore correct and i i brought it up in the patreon chat and i'll bring it up here is uh uh i dropped it in the comment of in before the fbi says that he was known to the fbi on the terrorist watch list came through the country at the southern border from a middle eastern country like come on i mean we can't be surprised that these terrorist attacks are happening on U.S. soil when we're not controlling the people that come and go from this country in any kind of reasonable way. But can I just say that the part of this that boils my blood the worst

is that I have little doubt that we're going to get that little footnote and was known to the FBI because that's been the attempt at assassination on Trump and the other attempt at assassination on Trump. And that's been all these school shootings. So can I just say between me and the audience, at this point, y'all know me, I'm a libertarian, which means I think government should be about that big and do the bare minimum humanly possible as constrained by the constitution will leave everything else the hell alone but i'm not an anarchist that says no government period like i have friends that are anarchists i'm not there i'm like no no i'm still clinging to this idea that maybe just maybe like we can treat government like fire and as long as it stays in the fireplace it warms the

house it doesn't burn to the ground so i'm i'm clinging to my idealism here, but can I just say that every time I see known to the FBI on the back of one of these fricking, these terror attacks or these, these mass shootings, that angry little ACAB anarchist that I keep locked up in, in, in the cell in the back, he starts scratching at the walls walls trying to get out because i just i go my brain goes to these places where it's like okay if we fund this enormous organization that doesn't have clean hands as far as committing acts of atrocities against americans if we're prepared to tolerate that organization because they do good and they serve a purpose but they don't if they do all the if they missed all these frigging things that result in lives lost, then how far do I have to go emotionally before I'm like, you know what? Screw the FBI. Wipe them off the board. Be done with the whole organization.

By the way, why don't we just get rid of cops as a general rule to hell with all of them? Because from my perspective, I'm not trying to shoot people because it's not nice. I'm not trying to shoot people because it's not nice, but I generally have, but there are generally, but there are quite some people need shooting sometimes, but there are quite a few places I can't carry a firearm because I'll go to prison. So if the people enforcing the laws that disarm me weren't there, I could care wherever I want to be responsible for my own safety and my family's. And the people who are taking away my ability to carry firearms wherever I want aren't doing the job properly either.

I think what we need to have and now I hate saying the government is the solution to this, but there is a reasonable point here. The FBI and all these departments have been, I would say, not justifying their own existence of late. I would like to see a congressional investigation on a massive scale. They don't need to release all the information to the public because ways and means, yep, we don't want to release to the public how we're catching the terrorists before it happens, because I'm sure they are catching some people before it happens. But I would like to see

justification for why these people have the budgets they are having and the powers that they have if they are still unable to stop most of these unless they are stopping most of these in which case perfect prove it to us prove it to congress at the very least okay so on the back of that i'll entertain that for a moment nick let's say hypothetically you you work in manufacturing, right? I do. Let me make this analogy.

Let's say you get told to do something by your boss and you fork it all up. Happens. I've been known to throw a part out of a vice. I'm sure it does. And, you know, you're human. The things you do are very, I don't want to say very like mechanical but like oh they are the things you do are such that even that even the most experienced operators are going to screw it up once in a while because it's very hands-on it's very one-to-one it's not

like you just push a button on a machine and let it run like there's going to be accidents stuff's going to go wrong it's going to happen there. Stuff's going to go wrong. It's going to happen. There is, there is, there is machine error. So there is an acceptable level or rate of error that is just expected in manufacturing. Yes.

But even that being said, do you and your boss and your supervisor and your subordinates not go back and ask yourselves, what could we have done to prevent this? Was there anything that could have been done to prevent this? Like, should I have tightened the vice up a little bit more? Should I have made sure this was square? Was this made of the right material? Was the program for the mill correct? Like you go through this exercise of, yes, like we know we're going to scrap one out of every hundred or thousand or 2000 or whatever. We know we're going to scrap one every now and then that happens. But the goal is always to get it to zero,

and you ask yourself questions like, why did this go wrong? Or as close to zero as possible, yeah. Yes. The goal is to get to zero, not the expectation. Exactly, yeah. So in this vein, if I'm going to accept that the FBI cannot get the rate down to zero,

and I don't think it's rational to expect that. Oh, I agree. But I would like to see them justify their success rate at the very least. I want to see them justify their failures. True. When they fail, I want to see what happened, where they went wrong, and I want some corrective action. Because I feel like what we get in a lot of these congressional debriefings is,

well, we don't know what happened. We get all this stone-facing nonsense, like the Babe Lost in the Woods look on their faces. We're like, well, I mean, I filed a report. It was like, your job's to friggin' enforce the law and stop people from doing bad stuff. Whoopsie-daisisy's not really enough when people i mean there there are there are times when whoopsie daisy is the answer

where human error caused by whatever misfiling or a guy went to take a leak you know and then something happens spilled coffeeilled coffee on the computer, the information gets destroyed. There is room for whoopsie-daisy. I get it. It should be minimized, and there should be data redundancy and maybe some process redundancy to a point. Yeah. But I guess what I'm saying is I would appreciate and demand some honest retrospective analysis of what went wrong so it doesn't continue to happen and maybe they do that but well but here's the problem nick the very fact that you said in before known to the fbi tells me it's happening way too mother effing much for me i mean every

single time this last year i don't i can't think of any mass shooting that's happened in the last year where known to the FBI was not a sentence that I heard on the news. Yeah, I mean, like Kyle, that is fair. And Kyle, if if the answer is officer is overworked and hasn't slept, cool, then the problem has been identified. We need to hire more officers. We need to friggin retain them better. We need to hire more officers. We need to frigging retain them better. We need to do something. But whenever the problem is, whatever is causing all of this nonsense to slip by the FBI needs to be

addressed and fixed. And if, or at the very least, if it was a novel technique used by whoever, okay, great. We've now, we've now implemented a process to look for this novel technique.

Yeah. And the other thing I would say is that- They don't have to tell us what the process is in order to protect agents and effectiveness. Well, but if they're not going to tell us what the process is, then I have to have some faith that there is actually a process and it is working. Well, I mean, telling us like telling you and I, perhaps they should justify it to Congress. I mean, they can talk closed sessions you know it's i realize it requires some trust but look we have a government we have to exercise a little bit of trust in them or abolish the government those are

our only two choices don't don't tease don't threaten me with a good time nick don't do that hey man well let's be real here those are are the only two choices. Either we have to trust that the processes they are doing are what they tell us they are, or we have to dismantle it, because we can't go in and prove that those are the actual processes without dismantling it.

I'm going to leave that whole train of thought alone we're going to put it back on the track send it on its way I will just say that that is where my mind goes at moments like this when the same government

with a big G tells you at the same time we're here to look out for you and protect you. And that's why you don't need to carry a firearm everywhere. But we knew about this guy before he did bad stuff and we didn't do anything about it. When the same government apparatus does both of those things at the same time, I get this look on my face, like, if you're not going to be responsible for the self-preservation protection of the people and get out of people's way and let them do it themselves now i don't i don't think it's

reasonable to expect police officers police officers of any stripe to be everywhere simultaneously and protect people 100% of the time i don't think it's reasonable oh it's impossible but then there should be some honest admission of we can't do it, so you should. It's not just the guns are bad, you don't need to carry a gun everywhere that aggravates me. It's that in tandem with we can't protect you. And the lack of the admission that they can't. Yes. I mean, look, let's be honest i mean it's the reason

why i've tried to teach my wife and daughter so much of the things i know about like i try to teach my daughter how to shoot i'm my wife and i were actually just talking the other day about how the two of us need to go to the gun range because she needs to put rounds into the burp like i'm trying to teach the two of them some of the things I know because I'm not always going to be by their side. And they have to know how to think and how to react. So I just wish that we had the relationship with our government where they could admit, we can't protect you 100% of the time, so maybe we should do away with some of this nonsense that prevents you from carrying a firearm where you want to so that you can protect yourselves.

That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. Look, Bourbon Street is filled with people every freaking day, and anybody that says nobody on Bourbon Street has a gun already is full of it because there's a gang shooting down there like every other weekend. So there's plenty of people down there that have guns, but the people who are peace-loving and trying to mind their business

don't because they can't. Wow. Or they're not supposed to because right you know nopd would put them under the jail forever in a day but i digress so that was not on my bingo card talk about today but you know i woke i woke up an hour ago to that. Yeah. So unfortunate. Hopefully we'll have some more information and we can go into it a little bit more, kind of AR it a little bit, maybe next Thursday. We'll see what comes out. It might be two, three weeks before we actually get the realistic information out there. But we meant to talk about today.

what we meant to talk about today. So, Phil, do you want to cover retrospective on last year first? So, I mean, looking back at this past year, like I remember because Andrew and I did this a year ago and I started off with goals and some of them. How 50 50 hey man life gets in the way for us all let's let's talk successes man what went well well uh okay so i will i will start off by saying that um i did um i did invest a lot of time fair amount of did invest a lot of time, fair amount of money, but a lot of time, like beefing up that family, uh, back of communications plan, uh, got a lot of the equipment started frigging program has started learning it really well. Um, I picked a radio system, be a GMRS. That's like very, very easy to teach the lay person so that my wife and daughter are fully capable of operating all the equipment.

so that my wife and daughter are fully capable of operating all the equipment. And, you know, I've even encouraged my dad to get into GMRS, which he's an old-school ham operator. Oh, so he'll pick GMRS up like nothing. Oh, he already did. Like, already did. He has an extra class license, and he's been a licensed ham operator since before I was born. Nice. He would be a fun person to get on the show but he's a very private person but um he he tells me stories

and i remember this like hundred foot tower in the backyard when i was growing up and he tells me he was telling me stories the other day about how him and a friend of his on the other side of town, they were bridging together a repeater net across the, the Southern half of the country that was kind of paralleling I-10, I-12. So my dad had a directional antenna pointed West, and then it was paired with a unidirectional antenna. So he would catch the signal from the repeater towers. Cause in ham,

you can link. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. As long as the tones are set up and your equipment can handle it. Yeah. Yeah. But it,

it is permitted by the FCC to link repeaters using RF frequencies. It is not permitted under GMRS, but he had a, but he was using a directional antenna and then a unidirectional antenna to catch that signal from the West and rebroadcast it. And then a friend of his who I knew growing up, cool guy, but he was on the opposite side of town and had the exact opposite setup with a directional antenna pointed east to kind of catch that signal from my dad and shoot it east across the state line to Lake Charles. Nice. So these two radio nerds were the bridge in the Beaumont area to get that signal from Houston all the way to Lake Charles.

That's fantastic. Yeah. So when I told Dad about GMRS and how it works and the crossover with FRS because the gun range that he volunteers at a lot, they use FRS radios. So once I got him set up with GMRS, he was like, I can just use my own radio because I'm on the same frequency as all of them are on. So it's been interesting to kind of like get that whole thing stood up because that was a goal of mine for 2024 was to to figure out backup communications, because it's one of the places where like we really got kicked in the teeth during Hurricane Ida that we hadn't quite dealt with yet. Lessons learned.

I had kind of a thing where I wanted to be able to radio coverage across my town so that if I were away from home and Gillian was home or vice versa, we'd be able to talk back and forth. We were kind of pushing in the direction of building a, a, like an ammo can radio for her so that she'd have more range than she would with handheld. And then the local amateur radio club in slide L,

they have a tower at 600 feet in Lacombe and they reprogram that, that repeater from UHF ham frequencies to GMRS. Nice. And it's been impressive. Like I, I was able to talk on that tower from Ponchatoula, Louisiana, all the way down into New Orleans East. We've had contacts as far down as bell chase. It's been, it's been impressive so far. It's seeming likeing like 30 30 if you're within 30 35 miles of louisiana you can hop up there with impunity well it's not like you're going to have horizon issues down there i mean you don't have hills to block no lots of well and here the thing we have worse than anything is trees yeah but when the tower is 600 feet off the ground you're a line of sight over all the trees

anyway yeah well that and oddly enough you you say that about how you don't have any line of sight or horizon issues down here but one of the reasons one of the reasons i found that i was having so much trouble talking to the new orleans repeater was um i'll talk about on the show at another time there's a tool i found online that lets you look at what the uh what the elevation is between you and a known point on a map there is a hundred foot elevation hill between me and new orleans it's in the middle of the state park i have no idea how that's a hundred foot hill because i've been all throughout that state park but apparently it's high ground it's probably just an extremely

gradual slope yeah very i mean a very well it's yeah it's not like a a mountain peak or anything but like right but 100 feet that's a that's a significant line of sight block if you're talking about man pack radios or handhelds yeah the only way i was able to get over it was by standing up my antenna like 20 to 30 feet up off the ground and the fact that the new orleans repeater was 200 feet up and we could like just skim over the top of it but this thing here in the comb is it's a game changer like i might be able to 600 feet's a lot of line of sight i might be able to talk to my dad in hammond with with him on a handheld it's it's got that kind of legs to it um other than spending like way too much

freaking time on that um oh there is something else i mean i had some i had some things i want some preparedness stuff i wanted to upgrade that kind of got pushed by the wayside because some of y'all bullied me into buying a 12-gauge. That's a preparedness thing. It is a preparedness thing. There's no game, two-legged or four, or winged on this continent you cannot take with a 12-gauge. I will agree with that. There's something

about friggin' hitting a person with a one-ounce slug that just says, get off my lawn. Right? I mean, there are very few vehicles, if you had to interdict in the vehicle, that are going to do well after a one-ounce slug into the engine block. I mean, most of these modern ones are half plastic anyway, so you just... True. Half plastic with aluminum blocks. Yeah. But yeah, I mean,

so yeah, there was a reprioritizing of things. The one big fail that I had, I told Gillian the other day, like I, I am really serious about wanting to sure this up for 2025. I've just got a, it's just, you know, the time, the money and everything else, everything

else is going on. But I told her I had set a goal for myself to get it myself into a professional firearms training class or 2024. Okay. That did not happen. Not between understandable, not between like it, just everything going on. It just, it always kept getting pushed down the priority list until it went down too far. And we got to the end of the year.

But this year, I'd really like to do that. There are some pistol and some carbine courses within striking distance of me. Honestly, though, since I just got this Beretta, I would really love to get into a shotgun class. That's not two days of driving to go to MDFI. Yeah. Well, I mean, you don't like the idea of coming to Illinois. We got a patron that runs some classes up here that are shotgun. I like the idea better of like getting him a plane ticket. I haven't come down here.

I mean, if you put together enough enough students, I'm sure you could go rope him into doing here. I mean, if you put together enough, enough students, I'm sure you could go rope him into doing it. I mean, yeah, I just, you can, you can bribe Trek with enough money and cigars.

I mean, I can, the, the, the problem I face down here. And the reason I think that classes are so sparse is because the majority of the, the majority of the customer base for firearms

training down here is law enforcement sure that's all that's a lot of areas of the country i mean i'm lucky enough to live next to a major metro where there's a big interest in shooting surprisingly enough for our gun laws we've got a plethora of training companies yeah but i guess what i'm saying is the hard part is finding a good one i think the problem has been bugging me to come to his so we'll see the problem i run into down here is that like the average person that's just not there there's not a lot of interest in professional firearms training classes and there's not by extension there's not a lot of like, I don't want to say high profile or well known, but there's not a lot of firearms training courses available out there because there's not a huge market for it outside of law enforcement. I mean, there's only so many different agencies you can farm your services out to before that winds up drying up.

So I don't know, like there, there's, there are a handful. I will, if I cannot do anything or that, uh, a pistol course that I'll probably just submit myself to that. But it's like a tall galley. And I'm like the last time I was at a professional hands-on firearms training course, uh,

I was spinning up to go to Iraq. Like that's how long it's been. It's been 20 years. And I would say that I probably, it to go to Iraq. Like that's how long it's been. It's been 20 years. And I would say that I probably too long. I probably shoot far better than the average person does, but there's something to be said for like putting myself in somebody's hands and being like, treat me like I treat me like I can't spell Glock and like, you know,

start me over from scratch. Teach me. Yeah, Ben. Unfortunately, like, I know Enzi, and here's my curse, is like, if I was just looking for a shooting buddy, I got a Rolodex full of

people I could call that we could go out to the gun range and, you know, put lead into the berm. That's not the problem. The problem is, of the people I know, I would say we are all above average, you know, I would say we are all above average, you know, marksmen. We're all above average with a firearm,

but every last one of them is kind of in the same, all every last one of us is kind of in the same boat of, yeah, we're, we're pretty good, but there's no one there that is like their bread and butter is teaching. Hmm. And that's the, that's the problem i'm

running into i know a couple of instructors in the area i haven't really been able to make an inroad with any of them there's one in particular who actually uh i found out recently when i went to order this shotgun one of them works part-time at the gun store that my friend owns oh so that so that and he And he's been teaching mostly concealed carry courses, but he does teach pistol and carping, but he's been teaching this area 20 years.

Sounds like you need to get introduced. Yeah, I'm starting to kind of get that feeling, because literally when I walked in, I recognized him, and I was like, I didn't realize you worked here. He's like, yeah, I've been when I walked in, like I recognized him and I was like, I didn't realize you worked here. He's like, yeah, I've been working here part time for a couple years.

And I was like, oh, small freaking world. And, you know, we got to talk and because I deploy, I deployed Iraq with the one of the owners of the gun store. That's why I spent all my money with them. I mean, you know, I might as well put his kids through college while I'm making sure that mine will never go. I'm joking.

I'm joking. My kid is going to college if she wants to. She's far smarter than her father. She deserves an education. So anyway, that's kind of the retrospective into what I really want to sure up for this year because it didn't happen last year. And I could make a million excuses, but the simplest, honest, most honest one is really just like it was in the priority list and then things got shuffled. And the more things got shuffled, the more I came back to this inescapable conclusion of like, it's kind of like some of the stuff I wanted to upgrade from the preparedness standpoint. I have it.

It works. It's not what I would like. It's not modern. It's not the best available. It's something that should get replaced and upgraded because it needs to be. But I have it and it works. And there were other things i did not have so every time i did that reshuffle the firearms training went down the list because it's like phil be honest you shoot better than 80 of people i'm not a grandmaster i'm not an upset guy i'm not going to win a three gun competitions. I don't care to, but I know,

I know from reading the tea leaves and looking at people and shooting with a lot of people, I out shoot a lot of people. So it's like, where do I, where do I put this thing in the priority list when it's like, I want to improve this skill that is already way above average. Sure. And it would go down the list.

That's fair. And you know, I think that now you have a new weapons platform. Really? That has to go up the list. That's fair. And you know, I think that now you have a new weapons platform, really that has to go up the list. And that's kind of why that's kind of why I'm It's so different. It is so different shooting a shotgun well.

And really, shooting a shotgun well 100% comes down to reloading a shotgun efficiently. And snapcaps? Yeah. So let, let me take this as a, my opportunity to do a PSA for everybody.

This is, this is a snap cap. So that's a little bit of rubber. This is a weighted snap cap. So it's about the weight of a fully loaded slug. Um, I highly recommend. And by the way,

like I do this for every fire, every new farm I get, I have snap caps, but then again, I have a reloading press. I can usually just make my own from components, and I usually do. Yeah, for centerfire components, I usually knock them out myself. Yeah. But all that being said, as a general rule, I make three to five snap caps for every cartridge. three to five snap caps for every cartridge.

And then I use those a lot of times. I use them if I'm doing magazine change drills or anything like that where I don't want to have to hit the slide release to drop the slide. Like if I'm doing administrative reloads where you assume you have one in the chamber, there's just different drills where it really helps to have a snap cap so you don't activate the slide lock. I got those six before I even before when the shotgun was still on order. And from the moment it came in, I've spent an inordinate amount of time doing nothing but just reload, reload, reload, reload, download, download, download, download over and over and over and over. and over and over and over out of, out of my pocket, off of a desk, um, out of the side saddle, teaching my fingers and developing that dexterity of this is what these things

feel like. This is what they feel like when they're upside down. This is what they feel like when the right side up, because I was given some very heartfelt advice from someone when I talked to them about getting into shotguns and they told me, given that I'm already a reasonable marksman with a rifle, they said, the thing I recommend you do is invest literally 10 times more time learning to reload than you do to how to shoot. Because if you can shoot a rifle, you already understand side alignment. You already understand how to shoulder it.

You already understand all those things. side alignment, you already understand how to shoulder it, you already understand all those things. You need to learn how to reload this thing quickly because you are going to be reloading it all the damn time. The way he put it was, he said, what's the old self-defense adage? If you're not shooting, you should be moving. If you're not moving, you should be reloading, yada, yada, yada. He said, with a shotgun, if you are not shooting, you should be reloading yada yada yada he said with a shotgun if you are not shooting you should be reloading while doing anything else like if you're moving you better be moving while topping the gun up if you are not literally sending lead down the barrel you better be you better be hitting that that loading port constantly because you're going to run out of ammo real fast otherwise

oh yeah so i took that to harden five rounds six rounds eight rounds goes quick yes anybody that thinks otherwise load seven rounds in ar-15 and tell me how fast that goes but that but that's the game with a shotgun like you you know going into it that's what you're going to get you have a very a very capacity limited weapon and you are going to be working the loading port like a bar winch on two dollar nine i mean it's going to be you're going to be hitting it constantly yep it has to be has to be has to be has to be but that being said yeah i mean i i would love to get if i can find one within drive distance i'd love to get into a shotgun class, if not shotgun, just because that's the new platform for me to learn. I would take handgun because I shoot rifles better than handguns and I carry handguns

more than rifles for obvious reasons. So like I really want to be in a professional, a professionally taught class this year. It's a great idea. You know, for me last year, the one the one big goal I fell short short of was improving my fitness as much as I was hoping to. Oh, Nick. I haven't lost ground. I have maintained, which is good. But, man, it's not as easy to improve my fitness as it was.

And my life is very busy. There's a reason why the camera stops at about mid chest for both of us. True, true. But for, for like, for my family's medical history, it is,

it is extra important for me. A lot of cardiac issues in my family, a lot of degenerative joint muscle and bone issues in my family. So I kind of got to be a little more proactive about it than, than other people. Not, not saying you can ever get away from it entirely, but that's, that's where I fell short this year. And in 2025, that's one of my, that's one of the focuses i'm going to be working

on i mean i was i was able to do to get into a firearms class which was another goal of mine for 2024 um was able to take a class with andrew up at mdfi highly recommend if you're in the michigan area or anywhere within a reasonable driving distance not one of hours. Well, 18 hours, yeah. That's a lot. That's a lot to ask. But for me, it's like a four and a half, five hour drive. I forget exactly how long it took me to get up there. But I was able to leave after work, get up to Andrew's, have dinner,

go out of the class all day the next day, and then drive home the following morning. Not a big deal. Not too bad anyway and for for the value i got out of that class i would say it was well worth the six hour the five six hour drive whatever it was five hour drive one way you know for and most of that class was focused on reloading believe it or not i'm not sure i mean you spent you spent about two times two and a half or three times more time reloading that shotgun than you

did actually shooting it and towards the end of the class they do the rolling thunder drill which i'm sure andrew's brought up on the podcast before where one of the one of the rounds of that we did was you were only allowed one round in your shotgun and some of the shots were a four string a shot uh four rounds fired before you passed it off to the next guy so it was four emergency reloads in a row at all that slows you down a lot uh but it's also a lot of fun so if you guys can get out to a class it's fun uh this year for me one of the big things i gotta work on uh is actually believe it or not more of my house um in fact next week or two here i'm gonna be going over to the local hardware store and picking up a full filter setup to replace the dead filter setup that i have now which is not user serviceable uh then you'll find out i like user serviceable things i like

things that i can't imagine why yeah i don't like having to call a repair person out to tell me for 200 that oh nope it's completely shot because it was never serviceable to begin with. I don't like components that are built to function until they fail because I'd rather do preventative maintenance. It just, it's so much more worthwhile for your money in the longterm. So that's one thing I got to fix on my house. And then hopefully I can start doing the preventative changes to all of my plumbing in my house because the house was built in 64 and yes, copper pipes last a long time. They do not last forever.

And there is nothing worse than coming home after an eight hour day to find your well has been pumping eight hours worth of water into your basement. Oh, uh-huh. Hey man, it happens. It happens. And if I can take the time ahead of time and a few dollars to correct problems,

I'm seeing that have not become a problem yet, but will, I think that is a far better time investment than, than the emergency repair. So I want to try to get that taken care of this year, ideally. And to me, that's a prep. I mean, dude, if it saves you money or pain in the ass, it's preparedness. I agree.

I think one of the most important things you can do is to preventatively maintain things on your house because entropy is going to come and kick your butt one way or another. You might as well try to get ahead of it while it's not an emergency. Cause man, an emergency call on a plumber right now is like, I think it's like 150 or $200 an hour. Well, I mean, let, let, let's, let's just put this into context.

Your home is your shelter. It is almost certainly the location of a not inconsequential amount of your emergency preps. It is also more than likely your most expensive asset. If you're a homeowner. Probably your biggest appreciating investment as well. Yes. And if you have a mortgage, it's also your greatest liability so you know all those things wrapped up together so it is all of the things yeah but this this gets to like

this gets to another topic which is like i i was watching a content creator the other day saying why he he no longer considers he considered himself a prepper. And I have, I have thoughts about that, his whole thing, but that's another episode. Cause I don't want to run over and watch it. I gotta see if I can find, I, I,

it was on Instagram. I can probably find it again. Okay. But, um, in any, or no, it wasn't,

no, it wasn't on Instagram. Yes, it was. I'll, I'll have to find it. But anyway, but, um, I mean, my way of viewing things is that like preparedness is a mindset. And if it guards your wealth or if it prevents some calamity from befalling you and your family, then it's preparedness.

Like it's a big tent for a reason. It is. Like it's a big tent for a reason. It is. But before we wrap this up, like the other, the one other thing I really want to, like we're doing it,

we're in the process of doing it. Me and my wife is Cypress survivalist. Like it's the, I feel like it's the, it's the last brick in a long road of trying to get people to think about preparedness, trying to get normal people to think about preparedness. And it's taken this many years to get to the, to get to the point where I feel like we, I have enough knowledge to like actually offer something of value to a community to get to the point where, I guess, to get to the point emotionally where i'm prepared to stand up

in front of a lot of people and talk to them for eight hours which is a thing for an introvert but hey man i don't it i i think that it will be beneficial and i think that the connection the possibility for the positive connections and networking to happen in your local area is a huge upside and that that is no offense but hurricane happens i can't help you no and i mean that that's that's i'm 14 hours away by car well but that's that's exactly what stewart said and i've i i've taken it to heart because it's something i've been thinking about for a while but he said you know the day after hurricane ida said, if I would have called, I'd have had three friends with chainsaws in my front yard. We'd have had the whole problem unwound in a day.

Correct. But it's like Stuart said. He said, Phil, you don't need 30 friends that are 12 hours away. You need three friends that are 12 minutes away. I mean, it'll be nice if and when your daughter goes off to college out of state to have friends nearby. Yeah. I mean,

there's something to be said for like a broad, the broad preparedness community, all being networked to interconnected together. But you know, Stuart's right. We, we have to start taking the time and putting out the, putting in the effort to try to build like some local groups,

because frankly, if things ever go bad enough, we're all gonna have to rely on our neighbors. Like there's no, it's, you've heard me say before, if an emergency happens, you're automatically first, the first responder, like you don't get to pick. You're there. You're either the victim or the first responder. Yeah. You, it happened. You're there. You're it. Pick, you know, like tag, you're it. You don't get to no, no takesies backsies on that deal.

Well, if a bad of emergency happens, you're going to depend on your neighbors because they're there and the emergencies happen and there's no way around it. So the question is, wouldn't it be really cool if your neighbors thought the way you did and had their own food and their own preps and their own stuff so that not only could they take care of themselves, but they could help. We could all help take care of each other. That is what I'm trying to build through this nonprofit, because if I can make that work in this happy little suburban community, then maybe just maybe this could work in other places and it could build lots of little groups around the country where everybody has kind of like that small group, that anchor point to say, these are the people that have been in this lifestyle for a long time, but then let's grab everybody around y'all and build them up together to make a whole bunch of like little bitty mutual assistance groups. Now, is that extremely idealistic and aspirational?

Hell yes. But you know, it has to start somewhere. Well, I got to try. And if it doesn't work, then I'll just keep talking to you nerds forever and know that my neighbors aren't going to be much help.

Hey, you know what, man, if you can convince even one other person in your local area or two other people in your local area, worst case, it just makes the next hurricane less of a drain on local first responder resources. Yeah. And let's be real here. I mean, if you do have a hurricane and it takes out one of the neighbor's houses. Not if.

Well, yeah. I mean, I'm saying when you do have a hurricane and it damages one of their neighbor's houses and they're able to help that neighbor at the very least keep them from being in a food pantry line. Great. That's room for another person that financially cannot handle that. Great. That's room for another person that financially cannot handle that. It's never going to make the situation worse to have one more person that can handle it themselves. No. Again, I think it's something that has to be pursued. And we are pursuing it. That's not going to be something that at the end of this year,

we're going to say, Oh, we didn't do that. Like it's going to happen. Cause we've already, you've reserved the tent. Well, I reserved the, the event so that I couldn't back out.

And then we went and stood up a nonprofit, which for any of you that have never started a business, that the, that amount of legalese and paperwork will make you hate the IRSs even worse than you already do but at this point like we've got so much we've got so much freaking paperwork and money tied up and just standing up this organization that like it has to do something because it can't not at this point like it's not like we've invested our life savings into it but we've got our life savings into it, but we've got so much time and effort invested into this.

We're going to do this one event and come hell or high water. Even if it's like me and my wife and my daughter and my brother-in-law and my sister and Kyle and like three other neckbeards from the community. Like, I don't care. It's going to happen no matter how chinchy it winds up being. Amen. As long as a start is better than never starting even if it doesn't go perfectly you you started and now you can keep going yeah so do you have any other goals for 2025 before we wrap this up or oh yeah I've got a I've got some freelance work that I've been doing for, oh, man, it's been four or five years now. I think I'm finally to the point where I need to formalize it and probably get a DBA and set all that stuff up.

I've been talking to my sister who's got a graphics design background. She's going to help me set up a website. So we're going to see if I can't make myself look like somewhat professional. I know. Professional Nick. I know. It's a terrible thing but it's necessary i mean i've gotten i've gotten to the point now where i've got a you know a modest but you know steady line of customers coming through and it's time to start pushing and expanding that to do that i gotta i gotta put a name on it, I guess.

I have thoughts, but I'll save them for after the show, perhaps. Sounds good, man. Yeah, man. Well, I certainly think that being you brought up intro and outro clips, hang on a second. You do know that everyone scrolls past the intro and stops the video before the outro. Just so I don't, I like the music. I mean,

that's a personal decision, Texas rat. I'm not mad at you for skipping past it. And I'm not mad for being able to stick around for it. But I will say that like me personally, it's, I find it very jarring. Really nice. Well, I find it very jarring when a podcast like starts and stops like from a black screen very suddenly.

Some people, they don't care. Some people do. It's just content creation is all personal preference at the end of the day. We do it because Phil likes it. And that's really all that matters. Well, I mean, if it bothered the hell out of y'all, I'd stop doing it. But the truth of the matter is, it just, I don't know. It bothers me to not have it there.

Put it that way. Fair enough. But anyway. Well, we'll go ahead and wrap this one up. You have fun stuff to do. And I have to take my family to, I think, New Year's lunch? I don't know. We'll see what kind of mischief I'm going to get into.

You'll at least have a good meal. Perhaps. I wonder if I could sneak off someplace with a cigar. Probably. Probably. All right. Bring two, and then you can sneak off with a friend. Signed, sealed, and delivered.

All right. Matter of fact, this podcast is going out the door. Boys and girls, if you don't have goals for 2025, make some. It's not the New Year's resolution nonsense of like New Year, new me. Because I don't believe anyone gets the start of a new year and then does like this whole life turnaround and suddenly like 180 degrees. But I do believe in personal improvement so that means you have to make you have to make a reasonable goal and put a plan together and try to see it through and if not then at the end of

this year you can sit around with the two of us to say well that didn't work out the way i expected because sometimes that happens hey life do be like that sometimes, man. Yeah. Alright, MatterFacts heading out. Bye, everybody. Bye. Thank you. Thanks for watching.