The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Everything Is LARPing Until It Isn't

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

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/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*Holidays are over and the MoF boys are back to talk about the fine line between LARPing and training (full credit to the comment section of Brass Facts for that nugget), and what's on the horizon for 2024 in the world around us.Matter of Facts is now live-streaming our podcast on 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 Rabelais, and my co-host Andrew Bobo is on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to the of Facts podcast. I just dropped a little message into our chat to go out to everybody that's listening to say where you at. So get your butts in here and give us crap and talk smack to us and whatever else you're into. Hello, raggle fraggle. So the rules of engagement for today's show is we're going to

talk about LARPing. We're going to shill. I'm going to shill a lot. And then we're going to talk smack. And then maybe somewhere in the middle of all that, we're going to have like a really thoughtful conversation about something that's kind of pertinent to the firearms community. What do you think, Andrew? Sound like maybe a good path forward? Sure. Okay.

So do we do the administrative work first or do we get straight to do we just skip the entree, go to the dessert first? No, I do the administrative because it's important. Okay, so Prepper Camp is coming up in 2024, last weekend of September. Salute to North Carolina. Go to PrepperCamp.com if you need details or information. Unfortunately, you've already missed the cheapest the tickets were going to get. That ended yesterday at midnight, or December 31st at midnight. However, the price has only gone up, I think, $5 a ticket for adults.

So I advise you go get them now and start your arrangements before the tickets go even higher in price? And just to understand up front, Orchard Lake is probably already booked from one end to the other. So you're either going to be staying in Tent City or you're going to have to make some other arrangements. But if you haven't gone to Prepper Camp in the past, it is absolutely really worth considering. Andrew and I will be there with Mrs. Matter-of-Facts and with Little Princess. worth considering. Andrew and I will be there with Mrs. Matter of Facts and with Little Princess and with the whole Matter of Facts

crew, best I can tell, is going to be coming back out, so it's going to be a good time. If you're within driving distance of North Carolina, it's worth considering. It's a fun time. Nick said we're deep in the nerdery doing some modeling on the AR-1850,

and I don't know what you're referring to, but I'm curious. I've heard of the AR-15, I've heard of the AR-180, so if this is something in between the two, I'm curious. It's the love child. Boy, would that be a weird freaking system, though. It's the love child. Boy, would that be a weird freaking system, though. Anyway, so let's start off with... Hang on, he just commented.

Told you. Oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's their bestie child. So since Nick has brought it up in the comments, he's on YouTube for anybody that's watching this somewhere else. So there's been a little bit of a side project going on amongst some of the patrons of the MatterFacts podcast where they are basically trying to tactical a muzzle-loading black powder arm.

And so far it is shaping up to be about the cringiest thing you've ever seen on Instagram. As soon as it's done, I'm having both of those psychopaths on this show to talk about what exactly they cooked up and why. With the understanding that we've been feeding them bad ideas pretty much since the word go. I think recently they were having a conversation about muzzle device and I said make a breaching end for it. Why?

Because. I mean, it was either that or make like, you know, a Noveske flaming pig that was just plus size to go on the end of a muzzleloader why because it's a bad idea why not how many other how many other reasons do you need to try it because reasons yes nick so i recently saw this little nugget get dropped and full credit this happened in brass facts here on youtube this happened in his comment section and and it was something that was like super insightful to me everything is LARPing until it's not and this this came about because he was having a conversation in

one of his midform horma videos about like what is what the difference is between LARPing and training and about some of the misconceptions and the aspersions that are cast towards people who train with kit with rifles and that showed up in the comment section I dropped on Andrew and I was like you know this is like amazingly insightful like we could build a whole talk around this because it's something that I don't know if he's encountered it but I certainly have encountered it where there are people in the firearms community that they look at a person training wearing a plate carrier or a chest rig or training with an AR and they immediately go to this idea that, well, that's not training. That's LARPing. You're just, you're live action role play. You're just playing around.

You're goofing around. It's like, you know, summer camp for gun nerds. But it's not a serious thing. And that's always really confused me. Well, the thing is, though, is you have, apparently you have a select group of former military. I'm not going to name names because I really don't want to give them any credit. But if you do some research, you'll find out that, yes, they were in the military. And, yes, they actually promote companies and everything that are for sheepdogs, quote-unquote,

and stuff like that. But when they get behind the mic with certain uh other people they promote uh gun control they promote uh civilians should not own body armor they promote civilians should not have ar-15s and and all this stuff and when they've been in a country where they see what happens when a populist they do not have the form of protection or a way to protect themselves and uh they see what happens with uh with government and all that stuff and but yet they they push the narrative of the anti-gun group and uh it's all fun and games it's all great uh i completely respect them for their service and i thank them for that but they completely lose my respect really when they start pushing

an anti-gun agenda an anti-self-defense agenda. The fact that they believe civilians should not own night vision. They believe that civilians should not even own body armor. That's where my line, and that is where I lose any kind of respect for anybody, really. And I just kind of want to throw this out there, because according to Webster's Dictionary, LARPing, it's also known as live-action role-playing game in which a group of people enact a fictional scenario such as a fantasy adventure in real time, typically under the guidance of an organizer. Sorry. Or a fickilator, I think is what it's called. Yeah, that's LARPing. Uh, it's fantasy when you are picking up a firearm and you're going to a class and you're training,

uh, you're actually preparing yourself for a worst day, uh, basically the worst day in your life. Uh, I mean, there are a lot of worst days that you can come up with, but basically if you have to draw your firearm on somebody, it's a bad day. And so that's why I completely disagree with the whole larping, civilians are larping and stuff like that when they're trying to train. If you want to train and you want to take your classes, that's great. Do it. Be more proficient with your firearm. want to take your classes that's great do it be more be more proficient with your firearm be a well-educated member of the second amendment and someone who carries a gun and if you just so happen that you want to carry a or you want to run your chest rig you want to run not you know you want to do a class where you're running a helmet and nods like if you want to do all this

stuff by all means do it because it's it's training you're training for the worst day of your life and you can call it fictional if you want uh as far as the idea that some of us are preparing for but it's if you look at it if you look at the history of empires and how they rise and fall and you look at the united states currently we are not far from falling we are we are being invaded in our southern border every single day i mean i just saw a report that december saw the largest number of illegal immigrants this uh, this is, uh, last year. Uh, and, and within like a three month time period, I believe it was 700 something thousand illegal immigrants were, uh, were seen or basically crossing the border, if not more. Uh, so we are being invaded, uh, at our border. Um, and then on top of that, we have, uh, mean, the Ukraine war, which is funneling money like crazy to that country.

We have China, which we do under the guise of reunification between Iran and, again, like the proxy war with Russia and everything. So there's a lot of crap going on, and the United States is not getting stronger. Uh, I, I hate to throw it out there. And I mean, if I'm wrong, I guess you can, we can agree to disagree, but the United States is not getting stronger. Um, and I'm seeing it every day. I mean, what was it? The some, uh, Oh, who was it? It was a space force, transgender, uh, who was it it was a space force transgender uh officer and they're pushing inclusiveness is pretty much is what is in danger right now the united states is you don't want to illegals no not like whatever you want to call it whatever you could think of the drug whatever's going on like human trafficking all this crap that is way more

dangerous and is more of a threat the idea of inclusiveness is what is at the forefront is what they're pushing uh and i believe that is actually false they're pushing it for a reason um but uh but yeah uh but to kind of circle back around to larARPing, this is why we're training. It's not LARPing. To me, you're training for the worst day of your life, and the worst day of your life could really be a political economic collapse. I mean, we can get into BRICS Plus and all that stuff. I mean, the dollar is not going to stay on top forever.

So you're training for something bad, and that's not LARPing. LARPing is you're having fun and you're playing games and stuff like that. Yeah, training is fun, but you're training for something bad. You're not training for something fictional, not something that's coming down the pipe. I mean, to me, what this really comes down to, as you put it, the fine line between LARPing and training is it's intent. It's like, what are you doing this thing for like when I was

in base training and you know we were on the rifle range we were learning how to use M16A2s if you're doing that and you're shooting at those those plastic green vaguely man shaped things out there on the horizon with the red stars on their helmet

and they're vaguely man shaped for a reason but if you're doing that with the with the intention of like let's see i have a score i can get and this is fun it's fun shoot rifles then yeah that's that's that's LARPing that's for leisure that's for fun but if you're doing it for the reasons why we were taught in base training, which is the understanding that you're learning a combat skill to shoot living, breathing people and take them out of this world, then it's not LARPing. It is legitimately training for, admittedly, a pretty low likelihood event, I hope, but it's training for something. It's training with intent. It's intentionally

learning a skill set so that you can use it if you ever have to. And that's why I kind of bristle at this idea when people call training LARPing, because to me, it's, it's, it is a lot of, it's set in a lot of the same tone as when people look at the prepping world and you say, if I say I'm prepping for a hurricane, literally no one down here bats an eye. Because, like, why the hell wouldn't you? You get smacked with a cap for a hurricane every couple years. It just happens down here. So there's a certain level of preparedness you really should do if you just don't want to wind up screwed.

But when I say I'm prepping for other things, people get funny. People get a little weird all of a sudden. That's when they start saying, well, you're prepping for something that's never going to happen. That's just crazy. And I'm like, but if I'm prepping for a hurricane, that's normal. If I prep for a tornado, that's not that far out of the box. If I prep for a flood, that's normal. If I prep for a tornado, that's not that far out of the box. If I prep for a flood, that's pretty acceptable. But the minute I say I'm prepping for like a pandemic where the government might shut the whole country down for two weeks, all of a sudden, pre-2020, people would have given me a funny look.

But when everybody else was fighting over toilet paper in the stores, guess who was sitting here at the house with a highball glass of whiskey in my front yard, just chilling because I had everything we needed for the next six months. It's, it frustrates me, Andrew, because it is this, I don't view it as anything less than a genuine attempt to shame people from training. And that frustrates me because I feel like, you know, like we've looked back through this country's legal tradition over the years and the Militia Act lays bare in front of all of us the fact that we are all supposed to be able to be at minimum a barely effective rifleman combat troop. combat troop. That is clearly laid out in our founding documents. Every man, every woman, everybody who's of fighting age is expected to be able to defend their family and defend themselves and defend their community. So why wouldn't you encourage the people in your community to train to be able to take care of themselves? And yet we have these idiots, like the ones you mentioned earlier, who sit there and try to say, well, I was in the military, so I should be doing this, and you weren't, so you shouldn't. When the truth of the matter is that our founding documents made it abundantly clear that if you were literally an agent of the state, if you were

a politician, and I would say in that same vein, again, reinterpreting the earliest Militia Act for current times when we have a standing army, I would argue that it makes pretty clear that people in the military are not considered to be in the militia. The Militia Act and the Second Amendment was not written to preserve the ability of a person to have arms who was serving the military or was a police officer. It was meant to protect everybody else's right to have a firearm because they were the militia.

So, you know when tim kennedy or some stupid asshole starts running his mouth about how civilians shouldn't train i get a little indignant yeah you just dropped his name which no i didn't i cleared my throat okay no uh yeah it just i'll sneeze dakota myers here in a second too while we're at it. I don't – Well, before I turn you loose, let me just say this. Like I'm a military veteran. But serving – like wearing a freaking uniform with a flag on your shoulder does not make you immune from criticism for being a moron for the rest of your life.

So if ever somebody says I was a veteran, therefore, I discount everything on the first half of your life. So if ever somebody says, I was a veteran, therefore I discount everything on the first, the first half of that sentence, because it doesn't, it doesn't make you immune from criticism. It shouldn't, it can't. Well, but stupid, stupid ideas are still stupid. But it also doesn't make you any higher than anybody else. I mean, you served in the, you served in the military like that. I mean, that was your choice. That was a volunteer that you did. Again, highly respected. But that does not give you the right to come back to the country that you defended and fought for and bled for and saw friends die for. To spread the idea of you trying to take away people's freedoms or wanting to take away people's

freedoms. You're basically going against what you fought for. I mean, you enlisted in the military to fight for the freedoms of the American people. So, you know, yeah, it's something that it just aggravates me when I see these, uh, the vets and stuff like that. Like they should be, they should be doing it completely the opposite. They should be promoting, uh,

body armor for civilians. They should be promoting people to get training, to get AR 15s, to get, uh, to get everything. So, so yeah,

but, and to be fair, there are a lot, there are a lot of veterans out there who do promote that and they do encourage civilians to train. And a lot of them have gone on to, I mean, Trek from MDFI and a lot of his cadre, a lot of them are military veterans. And they've gone on to train probably hundreds if not thousands of civilians in skills that hopefully they'll never need to know. In skills that hopefully they'll never need to know. But that, to me, is like the truest expression of what being a member of the militia is.

It's the truest expression of what the Second Amendment is, of what this country was supposed to be. It is, I am teaching you these skills so that you may stand up and defend yourself if, God forbid, you ever have to. I just get frustrated when somebody, some fuddy knucklehead in the gun community calls it LARPing to try to shame other people into not doing it. Right. But that being said, so I thought we'd take a moment to shill because I love shilling, but only for companies that I really like. So as much as I would love to send every person out to the gun range every single weekend and punch holes in paper and take training classes, the fact of the matter is it's

not always within everybody's wheelhouse to do it as often as we would like to. So whether you dry fire, whether you get a Mantis training aid, or you do anything else to keep your skills up between those training classes or between those range days i highly encourage you to do it andrew i know for a fact you and i haven't touched any of our manna stuff in months yeah it's been a while uh but uh but yeah no that's uh it's great training aids uh the the idea of mantis is is on, is onto something great. I mean, I know there's a couple other companies, uh, that are out there that, uh, are pretty similar. Uh, but, uh, Mantis is the one that I'm most familiar with and I've used the most, uh, exclusively really. Um, but yeah, I, I mean, hands down, uh, uh, just great material and dry firing in general is good.

Uh, but if you can get that instant feedback, instant feedback of what you're doing wrong or doing right, then that's what builds positivity in your training. Because, I mean, that's why everybody likes to go to the range, and that's why everybody likes to, if they do take training classes, that's why they like to do it because you get that instant gratification of, okay, I pull the trigger, gun goes bang. My hole was where I aimed it at. Like that is best case scenario.

Worst case scenario is I pull the trigger, gun goes bang or goes click, but goes bang. And okay, I was aiming at the center of this target and I'm off to the right. Okay, am I shooting iron sights, red dot, whatever? Okay, I need to correct this. So what can we do and uh this just helps you especially with the price of ammo going up this year uh this is even more detrimental so if you are interested in the mantis any mantis products uh please um again please go to uh Again, please go to mofpodcast.com.

And then if you go to Partners, you'll see a link. Use that link, and it's kind of like an affiliate code. It basically tells them that we sent you and stuff like that. And we do get a little bit of a kickback on it, so it helps the show. So that's pretty nice. It's also down in the show description. It makes it real easy. But the other thing I was going to point out about Manus' products is that other than the most obvious use of them, let's see here. I've been I mean frankly I've used that as a bore site which doesn't seem to doesn't seem super useful until you're trying to do a parallel hill uh a parallel board a parallel zero on a laser

emu module um I've spent a lot of time training for like hideover bore scenario because like my red dot on my 16 inch carbine is zeroed for 50 yards, but obviously it's not, my house is not 50 yards across. So I've got, you know, I've got a varying height over bore. And what that's allowed me to do is go around the house when it's just me and I verify the firearms clear, but I can take shots throughout the house and look and see where I have my red dot and look and see where the dot gets projected on the wall. And I'm building it into my brain of, at short distance, I need this much of a holdover. At a longer distance, I need less holdover.

But it gives you that training aid. And the other thing, I saw this recently, and it kind of recalled it to memory, but I saw that, I think it was J.J. Riccazza, he uses his Manus X10 Elite that the two of us have to confirm his zero on his pistols. So what he does is, because I mean, he's a competition shooter, but you put a red dot up in the safe when it's not competition season, there's always a chance something will move, right? So what he does is he puts his X10 Elite on his competition gun, goes out to the range, and then fires fires and if he hits the

center of the target but the x10 elite is telling him he jerked the trigger then he knows sums up but on the other hand if he puts if he pulls a shot and it doesn't hit center bullseye but the x10 is saying that he pulled the shot perfectly he knows the sights are off it's just it's there as a double all these things do is they double check to make sure that, you know, the most common cause for you not hitting your target is you. And it's there to help train that out of the equation. It's there to double check everything. about Manus is that they're constantly working on the app. They're constantly working on their hardware. Like, this is not a company that just fly by night, threw a bunch of stuff out

that was all made in China and just let it sit. They're constantly working to develop it. But this was the other picture I wanted to throw up. So, on the right, this is this actually, I literally did a Google search for firearms training and MDFI popped up in the search.

So I had to grab it. Hello, Trek, if you happen to be watching this. We need to get you back on sometime. But that picture on the right, most people would say, yeah, they're training. You know, they all have handguns. They're all lined up in a nice, neat little line. But then you look at the guys on the left and they've got rifles and they've got chest rigs and plate carriers and there are people that's kind of what we've been talking about there are people that would say the guys on the left are LARPing but the guys on the right

are training but I don't see a difference between the two training's training it's really just it to me like what delineates LARPing for training is what's going on up here between your earlobes. And I can't tell that from a picture. But it frustrates me that people will try to use that label because they see the rifle and they see the plate carrier. And now all of a sudden it's something weird. It's something people shouldn't be doing. It's something out of the ordinary. But I don't think it should be. I agree.

but I don't think it should be. I agree. And we're not even going to get into the whole conversation about like, you know, running around in the dark shooting stuff with night vision. People really get weird about that in a heartbeat for some reason. Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing is just get out and train.

I honestly, I could care less what I guess what people in the community, because the community is so divided. I've said that many times before. I'm sick of how divided the community because the community is so divided. I've said that many times before. I'm sick of how divided the community is and the fact that this is just one more thing that some talking heads or some people that are supposed to be for your rights and aren't, they're using it to divide the community even more. It kind of makes me think that they're being paid off by some anti-gun groups or people

with ulterior motives to divide the community even more when we should be united we should we need to unite because if we don't it's it's game over for us so yeah i mean personally i i just think the detractors in that discussion like they're not they're not on the same team. The rest of us are because it's like, it's like this weird conversation I got into with somebody who had this misconception that like there was like the gun community was this very closed off community. They didn't welcome outsiders. And maybe a long time ago that used to be the case, but I told him, I'm like, you know,

my experience has been when I, when somebody comes to me and says, Hey, I'm brand new to guns. Let me take you to the range. Let me help you shop for guns and ammo and mags. Like, let, let me, let me help you because I want you to be able to do this for yourself. And my experience in the gun community has been very opposite. Like this tends to be a very, on the whole, a very accepting community of outsiders and a very accepting community of newcomers, maybe a little rough around the edges, edges but like we genuinely want people to be able to do this and do it safely and do it right but yes there are those people out there that kind of give the rest of us a bad name being idiots in my opinion no exactly what um yeah exactly what travis said

i mean it it's yeah i mean training with the airsoft and competitive shooting, I mean, they're both, it's all training. I mean, it's all trigger time. You're learning your firearm. Airsoft is a little bit different just because you have a gun. But the thing is, though, is they make so many different guns now where you can get one basically identical to your firearm if you look hard enough. And doing that is, again again it's trigger time it's learning uh it's if you can working on your transitions and and everything like that like that that's all training so to me it's not LARPing well not just that but like most people that have most people that have trained to a certain level or people that have been in the military realize that, like,

combat, in air quotes, is maybe about 20% shooting. It's about 80% learning how to move, learning how to communicate, learning how to assess your situation, learning how to watch for ambushes. It's this whole myriad of different skills that you have to learn to be effective in that environment. And guess what? You can practice every last stinking bit of that at an airsoft event or at Mills and West that somebody at Raggle Fraggle mentioned earlier. You can practice all that. You know what you can't?

You can't practice that at a flat range. You can't practice movement. You can't practice any of that. I mean, call it what it is, bub. Every time I get the opportunity to throw my night vision on my melon and just walk around and goof around, you know what I'm doing? I'm teaching myself to move around under night vision because you and I both know it's a little bit weird

when you're looking through a toilet paper tube and you have no depth perception. You have to learn how to do all these things. And like my – okay. So everybody that's been listening for a while knows that Mrs. Matter of Facts about six months ago decided that we were both fluffy enough and it was time to get our big butts in gear and start doing some real work trying to get our health in check. And we've lost a reasonable amount of weight and we got more to do. get her health in check and we've lost a reasonable amount of weight and we got more to do more recently she told me that it was time for fat boy prepper here to start doing crunches and sit-ups

and stuff and get this body back into fighting shape and i'm going to tell you that after being out of uniform for 16 years no after being out of uniform for 18 years, and after not having worked out in a very long time, every time, everything I do hurts. Yesterday I did legs and I couldn't stand up out of my chair when I was done. It's embarrassing how out of shape I am. But I know if I keep pushing at it, I'll get better. But the point of all that is, if I were in the shape I am now, when I was in the military, a drill sergeant would have drug me by the collar and I would have deserved it. It's just, it's, you know, there's so much that goes into being ready for some kind of a combat or quasi-combat situation, and just shooting at a flat range ain't it. There's a lot of stuff that's involved.

There's a lot of mental work that's involved, and a lot of health that's involved, a lot of physical conditioning that's involved, and a lot of other skills that are involved. So, yeah, somebody says Milsim or Airsoft is LARPing. Yeah, sure, call it that, but I'm going to tell you right now, you give me 10 guys that do airsoft all the time. And I would be willing to bet that they're more combat capable than a guy

that goes to the range once a month, flat range once a month. I would take that bet. Yeah. I mean, but we're all doing this to me, honestly, I think we're, a lot of us are doing

this for a reason and that reason is uh i mean self-protection in case the day comes where in case the day comes where someone decides to kick my door and for some reason if i'm sleeping or whatever uh and i got to go through and uh clear clear my house or something using the training that I've taken. Whatever you got to do. Or I don't know. The list is huge on why for reasons. But at the end of the day, if you want to just take it to take it, whatever. You don't have to have a freaking reason unless you just want to.

Did Joe seriously say it's only LARPing if you're running around yelling fireball and magic missile? I think that's a different kind of LARPing. Yeah, I mean, that's LARPing. Well, it is currently, the day we are streaming this, the 2nd of January. So what's on the horizon for 2024, Andrew? I mean... A lot of crap. A lot of crap. And it's on the horizon for 2024, Andrew? I mean... A lot of crap. And it's not all doom and gloom.

There's a lot of good stuff that... It's mostly doom and gloom. But no, I mean, one, we have an election. This is an election year, so get ready for the political ads to ramp up and the bashing going back and forth.

And get ready for them to probably push something involving. I foresee, hey, it's too dangerous to go stand in line and vote. I see that happening again. So, which honestly, I see that happening again. So. Which honestly I'll vote before mail in. I mean. Again. If you're into the whole mail in ballot stuff.

Whatever. But to me it's a crock of crap. There should be only a select few individuals. That can vote by that way. Including military members who are deployed. But yeah, you should not. They need to do away with mail-in ballots. But anyway, no, what's on the horizon for 2024 around the world, really, if you and also if you have not subscribed to Forward Observer, highly, highly suggest you go to forwardobserver.com and um sign up they i've been i've been subscribed

to them for probably three or four years now i believe uh it's good stuff um and just i mean like today uh just in the you get a daily uh daily situation uh report uh and it's it's pretty packed with some information and today's actually lines up pretty good with what we want to talk about because we've got stuff going on as far as Ukraine and Russia, if you have not been at all in the world or if you've had your head in your butt. You've got Ukraine and Russia, the proxy war that the U.S. is fighting, using Ukraine. You have Israel now that's plowing through Palestine and dealing with that.

You also have Iran and what's going on right now in the Red Sea. So we actually just had a U.S. helicopter sink three is it houthi i don't know how to pronounce that uh i think it's i don't either but i know you're talking about uh basically they are uh some people that are it's a rebellion group that is associated with iran uh we sink a few of their ships and uh killed uh i think around 10 members of it. And I just actually was googling it here just kind of reading up on it and I just found a report saying Iran

is deploying warships to the Red Sea now. So that's escalating. You know, and that's the thing. And then you have China basically in the year address there, the new year address, Xi Jinping, or not Ping. I think you're right.

Yeah, Ping. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, he was addressing saying that 2024 is going to be basically the year that reunification with Taiwan is going to happen. So that's what we got to look forward to. And honestly, the United States came out and said, no, we do not support Taiwan. reunification with taiwan is going to happen so that's what we got to look forward to and and honestly the united states came out and said nah we do not support taiwan and we are fine with this so uh that's interesting uh but uh the biggest thing that and the big i mean besides all of this besides the possibility of war with china the war with iran uh war with Iran, uh, war with Russia, stuff like that. Uh, the idea that, uh, our economy, how fragile our economy is, our U S dollar, uh, is our largest

export that we, that we put out. Uh, if, if countries band together, uh, and decide now we don't want the U S dollar, We're going to trade in something else. To me, that's going to put a hurtin' on our economy and who knows what could happen with that. And honestly, there's a thing, if you haven't heard of it, it's called BRICS Plus. According to the Ford Observer report here, BRICS Plus is expanding. So, I mean, they have right now about 10 or 11 uh countries that are signed on with another 30 invites out to other countries to join in and russia and iran just finalized an agreement to uh basically do away with the dollar 100 completely they are now trading in other stuff and they are no longer trading in the dollar so that's two countries now which i don't know what well our current output is to them

uh but uh yeah i mean if more countries follow suit i don't know what's going to happen uh if our u.s dollar basically just goes to crap um even more than what it is since it's lost the inception of uh what was it the inception of the uh federal reserve it's lost since the inception of the federal reserve yeah it's 93 of its value yeah like yeah it's up in the high it's up in the mid to high 90s of our value our dollar of our value has depreciated so um again not trying to throw this out there to depress anybody to upset anybody to but i'm trying to get you guys thinking uh of one why we train and what we are training for so it's it's kind of scary stuff because if you look at everything that's up against us and and that's not even including

the open border that we have uh our southern border is just it open. And we have, if you look at the, I think I saw in Mexico now, there's 6,000, 7,000 caravan of people making their way up to the border. And what's interesting is the idea that you don't see many women and kids. Fighting age males. It. Fighting age males. It's fighting age males. And the videos that I've seen of these males that have gotten captured, when they're asked where they're going, they have clear instructions. I'm going to New York.

I'm going to California. I'm going to Chicago. They have destinations of where they're going. They know where the sanctuary cities are. Yeah, pretty much. But the thing is, though, is they know, like, that's what's scary. But if you look over what's happening in London right now, over in the UK and Ireland and stuff like that,

they just, I just put a, I just, was it Germany? I think I just saw 7,000 women have been attacked slash raped by immigrants. That is a number that has skyrocketed. So again, this goes back to training and self-protection.

Refuse to be a victim. Get training. Be able to take care of yourself and your family and anybody else because things are on the horizon the 2024 is going to be pretty crazy i mean we saw the summer of love uh from a couple years ago i've been seeing some reports that uh it's going to be summer of love 2.0 uh and it's going to be ramped up um with uh with the protests going on with, uh, the free Palestine protests and all that kind of crap. Yeah. It's going to get interesting.

And again, goes back to training. Yeah. I did want to circle back around to Jim's comment about, uh, his nerves are in for a workout and he's dreading it. You know, him for a workout and he's dreading it you know it is very easy to fall into the doom and gloom personality when we start talking about these things especially when you start look when you start feeling like you're tied to the train tracks and you can see it coming but there's nothing you can do about it but like these are moments in time where i kind of counsel other preppers and i tell them that in moments like this in moments in my life where there's been a problem I could not affect, there was something, something was coming at me and my family. There was nothing I could do to stop it. I focused in on what I could affect. Andrew, to your credit,

three foot world, right? If it's within three feet of you and you can touch it and you can hold it, then you can have directly affected. That's what you focus on. And that is, I admit my failing is that I have a lot of difficulty, like narrowing my focus down to those things. I tend to look at, I tend to let my mind kind of run after all the, it tends to chase all the squirrels, just the way my personality works. But I try to force myself down to like, what are the things I can actually control in this situation? I cannot secure the southern border. Nothing I can do about it. I can advocate for the things I can believe in. I can try to help put people into power that I think might affect some change, though I don't think anybody will at this point because I'm pretty

sure all the politicians are on the same team. But what can I do about it? I can make sure that my family's financial situation is in the best shape humanly possible. I can make sure that we have plenty of expendable income, minimal to no debt. I can make sure that we have a fully stocked emergency fund. I can make sure that I'm planning for the future as best I'm able. I can make sure that I have enough ammunition and enough food and enough things that if suddenly the supply chain goes to hell in a handbasket, I have already amassed the things I need to care for my family for a period of time. Those are the things I can do something about. So that's what I focus on. And I don't let my mind worry about that thing way over there I can do nothing about because that does me no good except worry me and cause anxiety and stress me out.

And none of that helps. But I can do this, this, this, and this, and it's all right in front of me. So that's what I focus on. And, like, it's like this whole conversation my wife and I have been having about my health, about our health. I've been having about my health, about our health. There's, you know, there's like a limited amount of things I can do about me knowing that in my genetics, there's a lot of stuff just waiting to kill me in my old age. Like that is, I've, I've looked at that. I've looked at the family tree. It's all there. It's all nasty. It's all bad. It all sucks. There's nothing I can do about it. But if my weight is higher than it's supposed to be,

that hurts. If my blood sugar is higher than it's supposed to be, or my blood pressure, or if any of those things I control over are jacked up, it makes everything else worse. So then why focus on, damn, I've got this genetic predisposition to whatever, but I can do something about it by fixing me by controlling me so that i'm mitigating the risk as much as i'm able and once you've done that work you just have to kind of let it go just say i've done what i can i've planned for what i can i've done the work i gotta let it go i've done everything i can roll the, and hope you don't wind up snake eyes. As far as Jim's comment about there's immigrants and there's invaders, like, I agree with him. When you invite people to come to your country and to assimilate into the dominant culture, that is called immigration.

When people come to your country against your will and try to impose their own culture upon you, like attacking the women that live in your country, that's not called immigration. That's called an invasion. And like, this is where I've got to really cross ways with a lot of people. They get really wrapped around the axle about this discussion and they start trying to draw lines and say, well, you're saying all immigrants are assaulting women. I'm like, no, but I've spent enough time in other parts of the world to understand that there are other cultures, unlike ours, that do not place a lot of weight upon the rights of women. They don't believe women have a right to their own bodies. They don't believe

women have a right to say no. They don't believe in any of that. So why would we be shocked when we let thousands of those people come into another country and then lo and behold, they attack a woman because in their culture, that's not attacking a woman. They don't have a right to say no to me. But in the West, that's not a thing. So excuse me if I get a little bit pissy at moments like that. Because the truth of the matter is, when you come into my country and you refuse to accept the norms of my culture, I cry foul. I think that's bullcrap.

And for the politicians who live in ivory towers behind tall walls, whose kids go to private schools that are freaking guarded by men with guns, who will never face the consequences of the crap they're allowing into this country, I get especially pissed off. Because they will never feel the pressure that they are creating. I know, stop me when this stops sounding familiar. Like that's what politicians do is cause hell on earth for everybody that they'll never experience themselves. If I had a magic pen, Andrew, I would make a couple of changes to our laws. First thing I would do,

all of our politicians would have no retirement except for Social Security, no healthcare except for the VA, and their pay would be baselined at the median household income. You do that, and I promise you'd fix Congress overnight. I mean, that and...

And then I make it retroactive. And then I would make it retroactive. So everybody that's been in Congress for like 30 years, send those bastards a bill. Why should they get to frigging live all nice and fat on everybody else's frigging work? And this is why I'll never be in politics. Whatever, you could just be like Brandon Herrera and run for a Congress seat. You know, since you brought up Brandon Herrera, we had him on this show, God, years and years and years ago when we were a much smaller show. And quite frankly,

when he was just getting, he had a much smaller show than he does now. But I'm pretty chuffed to watch him run for Congress, dude. Like, he's doing this on his terms. He's being unapologetic about it. He's being him. And I love every minute of it. I'm here for it. Yeah. So, like, I personally wish him all the luck in the world.

The freaking raving lunatic he is. I don't know. I just, I've had people tell me over the years I should go into politics, and I continue to throw the idea off because I'm like, yeah, that's exactly what I need is for my wife and kid to watch me get assassinated on friggin' front steps of whatever office I ran for. I mean, people like me, dude, we don't get elected. We're too friggin' polarizing. We don't play the game. It's like, I believe what I believe. If you don't like it, then squat on the first thing that gives you a thrill. I don't care. And that's not how you get elected. You got to kiss the ring and kiss the button and do all the things that it takes to get elected or you have to just be such a populist powerhouse that you can be as irreverent as you want and still get elected although on the back of joe biden and donald trump getting elected i'm kind of starting to revise my theory because i might actually have a chance like if those two got elected anybody can yeah

yeah i mean as far as as far as 2024 man i don't know't know. I've got my marching orders. Like my wife and I are going to continue to prioritize our health. I really want to get into a firearms training class this year. And I'm doing some soul searching on like whether I start at like the most basic of basic, which is going to irk the crap out of me because I think I can start at an intermediate level and be pretty okay. But I'd like to sit down and take a legitimate firearms training class this year. You'll be surprised on what you learn if you take an intro class. You'll be shocked on what you learn, especially if it's a good instructor.

I mean, I've taken intro classes with Trek on all platforms, and the things I walk away from it's, it's, I've been shooting my entire life and it's interesting what you walk away with and the, what you fix or issues that you might find that come up and stuff like that. So I would not, I wouldn't discount a, a low level class. You go in there open-minded, willing to learn, and I guarantee you you'll learn something. Yeah. But like I said, that's something I would like to do. I'd like to start taking classes again.

And quite frankly, me and my wife really want to keep working on our health because if – like at my heaviest, Prepper Camp a couple years ago, you remember when Jordan caught the infamous picture of me from the side and I looked like I was in my second trimester? I was 262 pounds in that picture and I'm only 5'11". I was big. And I was, I, like, I remember that prepper camp. I had so much pain in the mornings in my hips and my knees from sleeping on the ground. I had so much pain in my back. I felt awful. And now I just got through gaining five pounds.

Thank you, Christmas and Thanksgiving for that. But even at 235, I feel so much better. I mean, I feel like hell on earth because Gillian's been making me do squats and crunches and I feel like I want to die while I'm doing it, but it's in my own best interest. So I'm going to be pushing that, man. Like I, I don't ever aspire to like model underwear for a living. I don't give a shit. I don't ever aspire to be somebody with a six-pack abs. I just don't care. It's not in my sight line. What I do aspire to be able to do is to be able to do the things I want to do. I still want to do that hike, hike the Tammany Trace.

That's a freaking long hike to do over two days, even on flat pavement. I don't think I could have done that at 262. But at the rate I'm heading with walking two miles five times a week, I think I could probably knock it out. I want to be in the shape to be able to do the things I want to do and to be able to take care of my family. And I want to be able to freaking get up and go around and do the things I'm doing doing now i want to be able to do those things into my 50s and 60s yeah and that's only going to happen if i do the work yeah i mean no i'm on the same boat that's um i've changed the way i've been eating uh i'm more towards i'm slowly trying to transition more towards just carnivore diet uh stuff like that i mean I mean, but just with

changing, just with changing the way I've eaten and exercising, which I need to start adding more exercises in, but, uh, I mean, I'm down 15, almost 20 pounds and that's from two 70, uh, two 70 to, I floated around two 65 to 70 in between. And, uh, I i and now i just weighed myself yesterday morning and i i'm hovering around 250 and i'll go between 250 to 255 depending uh time of day like in the morning i sit at 250 evenings i'm around 255 or so uh but yeah i mean i i would love to lose another 50 pounds that's my goal is try to lose another 50. Um, but, uh, yeah, but I'm the same way as I need to, I'm working on my health. I need to look at that because I'm not getting any younger, uh, heart problems, diabetes runs on both sides of my family.

Um, and the idea of an invading army, uh, whether it's from the Southern border or whatever happens, uh, I, it's one of those things that that's what's kind of scared me into trying to get a little bit better at my stuff because uh i want to be able to take care of my family just like what you said i want to be able to take my i want to be i want to be there for my family i want to be there for friends stuff like that so if something were to happen i want to be an asset and not a liability. So, yeah. So 2024 is going to be a crazy year, both personally, I think, and, I mean, out there in the world, economically and everywhere. Yeah.

I mean, I think there are a lot of things on the horizon for 2024 that everybody needs to be aware of, a lot of things you talked about. But, you know, at the end of the day, the thing I always point out to people is, is I'm like, you know, you and I and Gillian and the PBN crew, we were talking New Year's Eve. And I think Jordan brought up how preppers get accused of being hoarders. And my point of view was hoarders do things in reaction to an emergency. Preppers do things of being hoarders. And my point of view was hoarders do things in reaction to an emergency. Preppers do things before the emergency starts. So what I would offer is that, yes, we have a lot of things on the rise of 2024. There are a lot of bad things that could be happening. But quite frankly, there's a lot of bad things that could happen every year.

You know, there's such a thing as like a blackan event, which is, in the colloquialism, if no one's ever heard that, a black swan event is something that no one could have predicted or planned for. It was just a sudden bad thing that could not be planned for. And then there are other types of events that you kind of see coming, and you have time to get ready for them. But the thing I'd always tell people is, and like if you are into preparedness, you should be preparing whether the sky is blue or the sky is black. You should be preparing whether it's good times or bad. You should be preparing whether you're poor or you're rich.

You don't prepare because there's a thing coming down the tracks at you. You prepare because you're a preparedness person. You're a prepper. You prepare for problems. And you do that all the time regardless. Like the people who, during the Trump slump, when ammunition prices were nice and low and a lot of people stopped buying guns and ammo,

the preppers were like, this is great. I can buy twice as much ammo as I used to be able to because the price is so low. And a lot of us did. And guess what? A lot of us are sitting on a lot of be able to because the price is so low, and a lot of us did. And guess what? A lot of us are sitting on a lot of extra ammo now that the price is through the ceiling. And guess what's going to happen when the price goes up? We're still going to buy it.

You're just not going to buy as much of it because we prepare no matter what is on the horizon. We prepare no matter what the outlook is. So I would say that even though there's a lot of bad on the horizon, how much is it really going to change what you do we should all be preparing regardless but i guess it's time to roll this one out i have dinner to go eat with mrs matter of facts and then see if she's going to let me off the hook for tonight or force me to get my fat butt back into shape again she might have mercy on me. We'll see. She's listening right now, so I'm waiting for her to shout through the wall, get your fat ass in gear

and quit complaining. I need that every now and then. But, matter of fact, this podcast is heading out the door. For those, for the 12 of you that were watching this live, one of y'all is on X, seven on YouTube and four on Facebook. I appreciate y'all is on X, seven on YouTube and four on Facebook. I

appreciate y'all dropping in. It's always a lot of fun. I love to see y'all talking to us during the show. We occasionally will you know, those comments find their way into the show. But I do appreciate y'all stopping by to listen and if you have any questions, comments, show topics you want to hit us up

for, anything in our space and it's a very big tent. Just drop it on us, and we'll see if we can work it in. But talk to you all in another week. Bye, everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you. Outro Music