The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Household Emergencies

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

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Welcome back to the Matterfags Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MWFpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host Phil Raveley. Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic and here's your show. Yeah, welcome back to MatterFacts Podcast. Phil and Nick are back behind the mic. Andrew joined the commune, gave away all of his guns

and last I checked he was smoking pot in a field with a bunch of hippies. So he's living the good life these days and he has an open seat waiting for him back when he his life frees up a little bit. Soon as he's ready. Yeah, somebody asked about him recently. And I realized I've fallen short of my duties as host to come up with, you know, completely outlandish BS reasons why he wasn't able to attend.

I mean, it's not that outlandish. There's a hippie commune near him. Really? Pretty sure. Are they like anti war hippies? Are they armp Really? Pretty sure. Are they like anti-war hippies? Are they armpit hair hippies? Are they don't bathe hippies, pot hippies? There's different kinds of hippies. I didn't look that in depth into it. I just noticed on the map that it said commune

when I was looking at his place when I went up there for the shotgun class. Do they serve- Something commune. Do they serve Kool-Aid there? Probably. That would be concerning. Actually, I think it was Kool-Aid there? Probably. That would be concerning. Actually, I think it was Flavor-Aid, wasn't it?

Jim Jones, I'm pretty sure it wasn't Kool-Aid. It was one of the off-brand ones. Kool-Aid gets a bad rap for that. That's how you know somebody is really half-assing things is when they murder their entire following with off-brand Kool-Aid. You can't even serve them the good stuff for their last meal. Right? Of course, I mean, it wasn't exactly like... I mean, it was in the middle of the jungle and the supply line had to be atrocious. Well, I don't want to give them that. But as far as my own personal members of my cult, I would happily serve you all the good stuff on your last on your last meal, which is a

Sweet tea, which is a good segue to who talk about the patrons one of you One of you sociopaths recently Told me that on the podcast I should go through the list of the patrons And you in particular, Seward, were curious and you in particular, Stuart, were curious who had been the longest-standing supporter of our our general psychopathy here. So I kind of thought it was gonna be Stuart and I was wrong. Tommy is actually our longest-standing patron since January 22nd 2018. Wow. Nice.

Thanks, dude. Which makes him an incredible Glenn for punishment. Raggle Fragle. This is what I have named years ago, a creamy Kentucky. It's cream soda and whiskey. And if that sounds gross, like you should try it. It's actually it's a vibe. Yeah, it's pretty good.

Yeah. But so there's Tommy, there is Stewart, the dumbass Texas redneck, Brian, Eddie, Simon, Thomas, David, Kyle is in here since 2020, Ben Garcia is since 2020, Craig,

Andrew, I'm not trying to like dime people out with their last names unless you're already on a watch list. You know, trying to be kind. We are. Trey-Mark. Daniel. Josh. He's definitely on a watch list. He's probably right underneath me. Holly. Stacey. Chris. Nicholas Emmerichsen. Who is that freaking weirdo? Turns out you can buy your way on a podcast. And cheaply, apparently.

Oh yeah. Brian, Randy, Olivia. Okay, so this is one of our newer, not too new, but since 2023. Kentucky Chicken One Papa Drinks Whiskey. I love this. No earthly idea, but glad everything in that name. Stephen, Kevin, Nathan, Josh. So it actually says Cowboy Josh here, and I know exactly how he got that. I'll leave it to y'all's interpretation.

Mark Joe, Joe Holly Leonard Wisconsinite I've got a fair idea of who that is because Wisconsin isn't a huge state and there's only a couple of y'all up there I mean like in general not just patrons. It's a Population density is the thing. It's it is largely bars in churches Yeah, and the same people and have it both of them. Well, yeah, I mean, how do you think you'd come up with a good sermon? I was thinking what's a good reason to go to the bar? Organized religion will put you there sometimes. It can. Anyway, John Chain, Hatter Ken, SH, and Jason. So, there's 39 of you

knuckleheads and I appreciate every last one of y'all. Y'all allow me to operate this podcast and have Nick on and invite guests on. And best of all, it doesn't turn into a line item in the Rabelais family budget, which means that my main co-host, Mrs. Rabelais, doesn't gripe me out about it.

So thanks. That's fair. And merch, merch also supports the podcast. If you're interested in that, it's hats, shirts, koozies. The link is in the show description. The link to become a patron is also in the show description. And the link to Cypress Survival is Meet My Wife's new nonprofit is also in the show description.

Now. How do you wanna handle this, Phil? Okay, so let me just get this out of the way. Yep. The reason, the reason that this emotional modulator is here in my glass to this evening is because five justices on the Supreme Court are morons. Absolute morons. And somehow, somehow they've gotten in their heads that if you have a thing

that's legal and another thing that's also legal and you put them in close proximity together not even touching each other Suddenly it becomes illegal unless you put a number on them yes, and You know I was talking in the patreon group right before the show venting just trying to let the pressure off because to me like the Second Amendment make this issue phenomenally clear and Justice rabble a would have said is the thing you are trying to regulate a firearm? And if they would have said yes, the Second Amendment says you can't, stupid, go back to square one.

And if they would have said no, then my answer would have been, why are you trying to put a serial number on it, stupid? I mean, I understand where they're getting at in the technicality. It's not a firearm. You can serialize whatever you want. The law can require you to serialize all kinds of things. But it is clearly intended to be made into a firearm or be a really, I guess, awkward paperweight. I don't know you know it's I think it's like we said when we were talking about gun control on a

recent episode of ours. Gun control is dead they are puppeting a corpse but the way we are going to win this is with culture not the courts. The reason why we are winning as much as we are in the courts is because the culture has shifted and the culture is going to continue to shift. This is not going to be fast. It is not going to be easy. It is going to be full of tomfoolery and idiocy. My state chiefly among the tomfools and idiots. But you know what are you going to do? What are you going to do? I mean we knew this was probably going to happen with one of the Second Amendment cases that are coming up before the bench.

You know, they kind of threw us a bone with Heller. They kind of threw us a bone with Bruin. We disagree on that. But go ahead. Well, I'm not saying it was perfect. I'm not saying it was the decision it should have been per the cut and dry reading of the Constitution. But what I'm saying is these people have no enforcement arm other than the goodwill of the rest of the government. Mine is expired. But go ahead. Oh, well, clearly. I mean,

I think most people are getting very fed up. Well, most people that are in our sort of circles are getting very fed up with this. But I would rather see them make this decision here and the correct decision on the assault weapons ban cases that are coming before them next. But see, I guess my issue is, since you brought up Heller and Bruin, like, I've been a contrarian in the Second Amendment community For a very long time even some sure you want to regulate notes. You have to amend the Constitution, right? Pretty much I mean, you know, I then again like I've words is written I've been I've been the guy who in polite company has said I should be able to buy a

RPG out of a vending machine and you know tax stamp my ass and all sorts of things. With a bulk discount. Yeah. And those sentiments were not well received amongst the broad gun community 10 years ago. People literally lost their... Guys that have more guns than I've ever seen in a room together would flip out over those things and say, oh, just buy your tax stamp out of this in the air. And these weren't fud, by the way.

These were guys that had NFA items and freaking giggle switches and all kinds of stuff. These were guys that still had faith in the government. Yes, and I am very, very delighted to say that most of those people have come around to my way of thinking over the years and realized that 98% of the government is basically controlled opposition at this point. Especially on

the second amendment because like I said if I can't buy an RPG out of a vending machine it ain't the daggum second amendment yet. If I can't mount a 50 cal in the back of my freaking pickup truck and go pick my kid up from school it ain't the second amendment. That this is not a complicated, it's not complicated. I mean, you drive into coma, it's required equipment in certain parts of the world. Yes, it is, but I digress. But the point is, it's not complicated

to figure out where I'm coming from on this. The Second Amendment says, you government can't F with anybody's right to have any dagum gun they please, period in discussion. Now I am not interested but I'm willing to hear an argument that it shouldn't be that broad and maybe we should go through the constitutional process of amending it to put some guardrails in place. I will entertain that as a thought exercise with anybody anytime anywhere any day because I like to debate I like to argue those things in good faith, but the amendment as written does not allow that and that's what

pisses me off so badly about this and about Bruin and about Heller is that with Heller, it was okay you can have guns but we still get to infringe upon the right and then in Bru Bruin, it was, well, you know, if you're going to infringe upon the right, it has to be historically based, but you could still have licensing and this and the other. It's like, it's always... Yeah, sure. Slaves can't own guns.

Right. I get that. Yeah. It's always... Yeah. Why would you let a slave own a gun? It's always, here little mouse, have a cookie, but I'm going to take part of it back because heaven forbid

any of these freaking bureaucrats, these unelected jerk-offs, who sit on the bench for their entire life, get to rule over and lord over us with private armed security paid for by our tax dollars, all the time explaining to us what freaking simple English says and that's the part that aggravates me the worst. These amendments were not written so that you had to have a law degree to figure them out. They're not that complicated. The common man was expected to be able to read these things and figure out what they mean and I'm a pretty common simple person. They mean what they mean mean shall not be in French requires no further explanation or understanding it's clear I can understand evaluating

the wording in the context of the linguistic use at the time and that can be a problem for some modern people because if you go back and you read the original Federalist papers there's some use of language there that most people that some a lot of people today are going to have a hard time with some of that use of language. But point of order, Department of Education has been doing a bang-up job for about the last 50 years, right? Yeah, yes. I'm not blaming. Well, but here's the thing though. The use of language drifts. It does. The use of language drifts. I the use of language drifts, I mean

Most you people on here know what yeet means That word didn't exist when I was in high school Wasn't in high school that long ago Yes, except that most of our you you would agree with me that our founding documents were not written in slang They were written in very prominent English Parolines, but well-accepted slang. Common speech is just slang that has been around long enough that everyone understands it. Yeah.

I mean, it is, all language is made up. So we do have to evaluate the document in the lingo of the time and alongside other documents at the time. I mean, there's multiple letters that ship captains wrote to the early US government asking if they could arm their warships based off the Second Amendment with limited arms.

And the person responding to them, I can't remember if it was Jefferson or Jack, think was Jefferson wrote back and said you can arm your ships with whatever you want and can't afford there is no limitation to the Second Amendment so to me that says there is no limitation to the second amendment. Period. End of discussion. Now, do I think that I should be in possession of nuclear, biological, or chemical warfare agents? No. I do not. I have no idea how to fucking use those things responsibly.

Not a goddamn chance. So we need to amend it. Yeah. To ban nuclear, biological, or amend it. Yeah, to ban nuclear biological or chemical weapons. Hey, I can get behind that. I don't need VX gas sitting next to my lathe. And you know what? I would be amenable to having that conversation. But in the same breath, the amendment process, but in the same breath, I would be demanding that all these other infringements go

away. They have to. I'll give you ground on the we shouldn't have personally owned nuclear weapons. I will give you We already do have personally owned nuclear weapons. Do? Yes. No I'm saying private companies. I would give you ground. But I would say I would give you ground that no individual citizen has a right to have a nuclear weapon. I would be interested to hear that argument. I would say that we can't define rights, but companies have been ruled as people. Yeah, and then some anarchist or strict, like hard, hardcore, strict libertarian is going

to say, but then how do we fight the government if we don't have parity of force? I mean, I would argue that I have been more responsible with my arsenal than the US government has. So I, based on the current trend of my responsibility, would be better off in charge of the nuclear arsenal than the federal government. I've never lost any of my weapons. How many hundreds of thousands of weapons

have the US government lost? How many? Seven or eight nukes now? Seven or eight nuclear bombs they've just lost? Don't know where they are? Have you ever had a negligent discharge while doing a backflip in a nightclub? I have never had a negligent discharge, period.

Okay, well you are already- I have had a fire bottom failure on the range. I've had a mechanical failure-'ve had already doing better than a certain FBI agent. So there's that. That's accurate. I also can't do backflips. I cannot do a standing backflip. Seriously impressed with the guys with the guys athleticism. I am not at that level. Not really. He kind of looked like but bro should have had a retention holster. Come on now. Bro should have not acted like like a moron. But anyway, look, it's you're asking an awful lot for an FBI agent not act like a moron. I mean, thank you. Based on their I needed one more government. I needed one more government watch list to be on. Thank you for that.

It's fine. It's probably already on it. Probably am am honestly. So here is the other thing I wanted to talk about before we get to our main topic. The the United, the European Union is asking its citizens stockpile 72 hours of supplies. And then you added FEMA agrees for what it's worth. Now there's there's two parts to Phil's reaction here. My first reaction was, wait, the government is telling people to be responsible for themselves? What witchcraft is this? You know, there was the sarcasm, Phil, that pretty much took over at first.

And then immediately behind that was skeptical, Phil, because would it be a stretch for you to think that I have a hard time trusting government in general and most forms of authority? No, no, I would say that's quite a reasonable take. Yeah, well, it's certainly within my deck of cards. That's within my wheelhouse. So when the government starts telling people to act like the crazy tin-full hat wearing preppers and stockpile supplies, I don't know, I get a weird feeling. Like there's this first part of me that's like, see, see, even the government agrees with me. Look, y'all should be, y'all should be doing what you've been doing all this time. Oh, good God, the government agrees with me.

Oh, Jesus Christ, the government agrees with me or I agree with the government. One or the other. I'm not sure which anymore. It's kind of terrifying. Like, I don't know how to. We got here first. Well, okay. So this is, this is like the situation of like, okay, so this is the situation of like, you meet a girl and you really like her and you bring her home to your mom and dad and then your mom and dad really like her and you start questioning wait my mom and dad really like this girl. What's Matt? What's the matter with her? You know what I mean? Yes, so I'm in this weird place where I'm like the government's telling people to be preppers and that's cool And yes, but why?

Now to be fair, the European unit is kind of looking at a very angry large neighbor saying, you idiots might want to be preparing for some Shiite to pop off because if that dude over there starts sending troops over these borders, we're going to have problems that we have to deal with and taking care of y'all is not going to be within our wheelhouse anymore.

I think it would be comical to watch how fast an offensive by Putin into Europe went entirely contrary to his goals. Because you're not talking about a neighbor that is one thirtieth your size or whatever the difference is between Russia and Ukraine. I know it's quite comically smaller than them, but you're now talking about states with modern militaries, U S led NATO training, which Ukraine had some U S led training, but not a lot, a little bit. And a lot of, and you're not talking like

15, 20, 30 year old tech, you're talking about modernized militaries and Russia's using what it's using now. At the beginning of the Ukraine war, they had no good quality tires for a lot of their vehicles. They were running out of fuel. They were running out of food. At the beginning of the offensive,

when their supply lines were the strongest. You're overlooking the greatest, the greatest danger Russia would face. And if they invade Europe, they're going to cross right into Finland and Poland. And I don't know how well y'all know y'all's history, but the Poles absolutely hate communists. And even though Russia is not communist, they're still pretty communist. I got to have a very Polish co-worker and the only thing he hates more than Russians is paying taxes. He and I would be very good friends probably. You two would get along. He's retired army. You'd get along pretty well.

Oh yes, I like him already and haven't even met him yet. But yeah, I mean, so they would have to screw with an entire country full of Polish people and they don't like anything about Russians to begin with. And then they would have to invade Finland and I don't know how well y'all are aware of your history, but the last time Russia invaded Finland, a quiet little farmer boy friggin murdered like 300 of the sons of bitches and they shot him in the face and he still killed a bunch of them after that. Yeah, I think he's still one of the most killing snipers in the world.

That is too, listen to me, that is two countries full of people that have been telling bedtime stories to their grandkids about murking Russians. Putin wants nothing to do with crossing those borders. It is not in his best interest. It is a bad freaking idea. He has already sent an entire generation of young boys into the meat ride or trying to take Ukraine back. You think for a split second he's gonna try to cross the border in the friggin Europe That man would have to have his head checked I would personally take up a collection to have a psychiatrist go over and have a discussion with him because I want to document Whatever is going on inside of his head now, you know

That doesn't mean it won't happen doesn't mean it couldn't happen doesn't mean that the European Union isn't looking at the threat analysis Worldwide and seeing something else happening. I mean, the recent leak with China's landing ships. I'll bring it up again. It looks like their ship works when nobody's shooting at it. So, we'll see how that goes when there are angry people trying to destroy their stuff. But, I see this as kind of a good thing. I think it would be great if everyone in the EU had 72 hours of emergency

supplies in their house. I think it would be great if everyone on the world had 72 hours of emergency supplies in their house, because that means one, they all have houses and two, they all have enough food to have 72 hours of spare food. So yeah, but but that's the part that worries me Is that the minute start talking? Do you know what 72 hours is Nick? That's three days It is who doesn't have three days of food in their house already Shocking amounts of people in Europe because they live in walkable cities. Oh, Jesus Christ They go to the grocery store daily Stop stop. It's true. No, no, no, no, Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.

Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. I need a moment. Why are people so freaking stupid? Why are they so stupid?

I'm just saying that for a freaking, for a group of countries that like within the living famously peaceful countries, people that are still alive got invaded by a crazy little bastard from Germany and you all had to freaking, you know, all of you that were alive at the time had to freaking deal with that freaking problem. And you bunch of morons have to be told to freaking stock 72 hours worth of freaking food in your houses. You know what? Well, I recant everything I said five minutes ago about Putin being, would have to be stupid to invade the European Union.

If you have to be told you need 72 hours worth of supplies in your house, you freaking deserve to get invaded. You deserve it. I have spoken. Well, I don't know about deserve to get invaded, but you will reap the consequences of your choices, if anything at all ever goes wrong. This is why angering topics and whiskey don't mix. Nonsense. That's the best time to have angering topics. We can't be sober and upset. Well, for those of you who have been waiting patiently for a Phil rant, there you go. I will have to remember to clip these parts out for Instagram later, just so I can remind

myself of the moments where I temporarily lost my patience. I think that it's good that FEMA is putting that out there again. I thought it was better, or the EU is putting that out there. I thought it was better when FEMA started recommending two weeks, but I saw they're back at 72 hours again. I really do think that they should recommend two weeks because I think two weeks is a good bare minimum because very few places in the continental US and continental Europe has natural disasters where the fallout lasts longer than a couple of weeks.

And if they do, it usually affects a limited area and supplies are getting to you within that two-week window. What do you think, Phil? I just... I'm glad. I'm glad that some... that I'm glad the TV is finally telling people to do things that make sense for a change. That's a welcome experience. But then I just think to myself, I'm like, I guess the TV is going to have to remind people to wear clean underwear every morning because apparently they're too freaking stupid to exist otherwise. I mean, there are people I'm sure that need that reminder. Okay, that's enough of all that. Phil's had enough of getting aggravated. Now we're going

to talk about something useful-ish for the next 35 minutes. Hey, the EU has been useful in propping up Greece. I think your definition of useful needs a tune up, Nick. Sarcasm, bud, sarcasm. Sorry, I didn't see the sarcasm flag behind you. Should have left it. I should get a flag. I should just get a cup that says sarcasm and then everything I'm drinking is sarcasm that would be on break

Oh, ooh merch idea Chris that's actually great idea Chris Tiffany if you're listening. I need a coffee cup. Just the word sarcasm It yes. Oh, I promise you. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I would definitely need one for work. Oh, this just further reinforces the fact that all of my best ideas happen when moderately buzzed. So yeah, that's always the topic for today is household emergency. So in the vein of what we've been doing recently, which is lots of like really mundane stuff that most people say, no shit, Phil and Dick,

I thought we should talk about household emergencies. Under the guise of like, you know, it occurred to me while I was thinking about this topic, I was like, you know, Nick, let's use you as an example. Sure. I'm assuming you work on average eight hours a day. Yep, right about eight and a half. Half hour commute each way. Say an hour if we're being really generous.

14 minutes. Okay, let's say an hour commute just so we're kind of like throwing a big wide net. So 9 hours away from home. Yeah. Add in another say hour a day we're going to advertise like a week's worth of air and running. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay. So that means you spend 14 hours a day at home. Whether you're asleep or awake, 14 hours. That's all about right, yeah.

Obviously well more than half of your life is going to be spent at your home. I mean, ideally, I do pay the mortgage, so I'd like to get some benefit out of it. So where do you think you're most likely to have an emergency situation happen? Oh, very clearly at home. I mean, in the statistics bear that out. I mean, most accidents happen within one mile of your residence. Yeah. So. You know, I want to probably means most accidents happen in your house.

I was going to say I want to say I saw a statistic that was like something like 60% of all accidental deaths happen at or near your home for residents. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Usually within like your your neighborhood. Yeah, you go over help the neighbor on the ladder ladder slips falls over crack head on the ground, that sort of thing. But believe it or not, step

ladders, kitchen table chairs and bathtubs. I can believe it. Because everybody grabs that stupid chair with the wobbly leg to go get something off a high shelf and then that leg finally gives out. Grandma's got a broken hip now. I feel personally a technic. I like that. Have you fallen off of a kitchen chair, Phil? No. You have. I have. This is why I holler at my wife. I have not fallen off the chair. The ball went a little bit scared the shit out of me. But I did not fall. Well, you know, it's a good thing to point out. Look. Most accidents are going to happen in the places you are at the most, which is either

work or home. Jeff in the comments said, change the light bulbs. Absolutely. Light bulb goes out, smoke detector starts beeping and pissing you off in the middle of the night. You're probably not going to go get the stepladder on the other side of the house. You're going to grab the chair that is closest to you and take care of it. That's where you fall. I'd secretly remember some but what, Hutching a family member use a TV dinner tray

to smack the crap out of a smoke detector like multiple times till it stopped working. That's great. I'm just so upset you don't even go get a chair. Well, it was two o'clock in the morning. So yeah. Well, 2am will do. You don't always think the clearest when you're first woken up at that time. That's why I'm glad mine's within arm's reach. Like I don't have to jump forward, get a chair, I just reach up and just click. Benefits of a house with a reasonable ceiling height. Yes. Also cause because we like to cook inside the house and I keep saying one of these days I'm going to invent a smoke detector that silences itself if you yell out it's not a fire I'm just cooking. Yeah I mean that would be great. I'd be a millionaire, billionaires. Yeah, so what we did was we found a list

of like the top few emergencies that happened to people in their homes, not including medical because we kind of already covered that. The only thing about medical that we haven't said that we probably should is know where your local ER is, know where your local urgent care is, the basics, because sometimes it takes a while for an ambulance to get to you. local ER is, know where your local urgent care is, you know, the basics because sometimes it takes a while for an ambulance to get to you. I'm outside of town. It's probably going to

take 20 minutes. My local ER is 23 minutes away. Yeah, I can probably beat the ambulance. Well, and I feel like it's also important just to know where the ambulance is because like, let's let's say hype it to your point if you can get to the ambulance faster than they get to if you can get to the emergency room faster than the ambulance can get to you then unless there's no unless there's some reason not to move you or transport you there's no right there there are times when that's not going to be an option. Yeah.

But anyway this was the first one on it like, I can hear now someone's gonna say this is not an emergency. But you know, tell that to get locked out can be an emergency. Well, I'm going to tell you that it's happened more than once, where somebody has like not that this is a household mercy, but like somebody has like had a vehicle lock the doors. And there's church isle this inside. That's child is inside. That's that is absolutely an emergency. I'm going to tell you that if that is not an emergency,

like if the engine's running, the air condition's on, the kid is not going to die. I don't give a damn. My kid is in there. I'm out here. They're upset. I can't get to them. It is an it is officially an emergency. Absolutely is Nothing elevates Phil to the emergency point faster than his wife or daughter crying. Fair enough. It is your job to care for your family. Yeah. That's priority number one. But being locked out of your house, I mean frankly that happens sometimes, you know? Like. Oh, it does. I had a dog that used to do it to me all the time. You had a dog

that used to lock you out? Oh yeah. Yeah.. So what she would do, I had a hound and when she would come in the house, she would come in and spin a circle and she'd hit the door with her ass. And if I didn't have the handle unlocked, she'd hit it hard enough to swing the door shut and lock me out of the house. Oh.

Yeah. See, I do this thing where like, first thing in the morning when I put on pants, I put my keys in my pocket and they stay there until I'm literally getting in the shower that night I refuse to walk outside of my house when I'm gonna go like do yard work or work on the truck By the way, I take my watch off. Sometimes I'll take my phone off my work I'll take my room the only time this wedding band comes off is if I'm working on working on a truck or the Jeep,

because I am terrified of like getting hooked on a bolt head and then gloving myself. But that's another. The silicone ones are the way to go. This thing will rip before it de gloves your hand. Yeah, fantastic. Silicon gloves, silicon rings weren't a thing back when I got this. This is titanium, by the way. So if ever this gets on my finger,

I have a whole new set of problems to deal with. I did a tungsten carbide one. Turns out that hospitals have a really hard time taking those off, so I try not to wear that one. Yeah. Well, I mean, if I was still working with my hands a lot, working in the trades, I'd probably have a silicon band for when I was at work,

but I work in an office these days, so. Yeah, you're reasonably safe. But you know, that's kind of what got me to wear my keys all the time too, is the dog locked me out twice at 4.30 in the morning, and I didn't feel like waking my wife up because she's not an early riser like I am. That is the nicest way of saying

you don't want to get griped out by your spouse for waking her up. Hey man, if all it takes is me breaking into my garage to get a spare key out of somewhere, I'll take that over letting my wife sleep in. Sometimes it's better that way. That's fair. Getting locked out can be an actual very serious emergency. Phil, you remember a while back I was telling you guys that it gets down to negative 30 regularly where I live. Sometimes we've had it down in the negative 50s. Phil is going to need a space heater and three sweatshirts after this conversation. But at negative 30 or negative 50,

you could get hypothermia incredibly rapidly outside of your home. I'm kidding. I'm just listening to you. Jesus. I know. I'm telling you. Well, it just goes to show that in some areas of the country, it could be an emergency. Let's take the opposite. Phoenix, Arizona, 115 degrees. Oh, I'll do you one better. Mm-hmm. Louisiana in mosquito season. Mm-hmm. You'll need a first- Die of blood loss before you get back in the house.

You'll need a blood transfusion if you're outside for more than 15 minutes, wrong time of day. But seriously though, you guys get it where it's over 100 degrees there, don't you? I mean- With near 100% humidity? Well, okay.

If you did, the short answer is not, usually we'll get all the way up to 100 unless you're talking about like the real feel and everything else. But I mean, it gets into the friggin mid to high 90s and it's like, you know, 65, 70% relative humidity. That's a cooker, dude. Like I've been. Oh, it is. I've been in Iraq. I've been in Iraq.

A hundred degrees in Iraq feels like a nice, warm, sunny day over here. It didn't get, it didn't start to suck until it was like Up over a hundred five. Yeah, and no this is not the heat It's the humidity that kills you so it and it can as much as that as much as I think that statement is BS I will just give you this personal anecdote. I Came home on leave from Iraq in very very early July I was home for July 4th, which was a really bad idea, by the way, when you just spent six months

getting mortared all the time, to come home for the 4th of July, but that's a different story. But I came home to Louisiana into July heat. Felt I was the only person that was outside, like perfectly comfortable. it enjoying it because of where I just come from. If that gives you an idea of like, now it was like a good 10 degrees cooler back here, even though the humidity was

higher. But that's that's just my point about the whole heat humidity thing is that yeah, there is something to that whole humidity hurts. Oh, it does. It absolutely does because your body can't self-regulate. Yeah. So, you know, getting locked out of your house can be an emergency. And you know, the recommendation I saw in the article you sent me was to have a hide

a key somewhere. I don't like hide a keys. I don't like them either. They are, to me, the ones that are supposed to look like rocks don't look like rocks and maybe it's because I don't see colors like normal people but it looks like a giant chunk of plastic. I'm like that's either a key or a Bluetooth speaker. One of the two.

Like a giant chunk of plastic. Right. So what a lot of people do and I kind of recommend is if you do have an external garage access That you can put one of those multi those combination key pads on that opens up your garage door At least then there's a lock between your key and everyone else Not just a fake plastic rock that you can slip open get in steal all your shit lock the door and leave Make your insurance company sort it out. Key hidden in the garage,

if you don't have that, trusted neighbor. Trust the neighbors the way I would go. This way I have the watch. This is a huge benefit behind networking with your neighbors, getting to know your neighbors. You're gonna find somebody that at least, you know, that's a guy that you wouldn't mind having around the house or old gal across the street

that you know is always home because she's 96 and doesn't go anywhere. She also doesn't sleep because, well, she's 96 and why bother at that point? So, you know, find somebody that you can trust that is relatively local, ideally within an easy walkable distance for you, which that's gonna vary person to person.

Give them a key, give a family member nearby that's within short driving distance a key to your house, also useful if you have pets and go on vacation, or in your garage. Yeah. Simple, cheap solution. Spare keys cost, what, a couple of blocks? I haven't had a spare key made in a while.

I need to get a couple made and they're not super expensive. Yeah, it's walking around burger money at the very most. Yeah. So right behind that is PowerEdge, which I feel like we've talked about quite a bit, especially recently. We have. But you know one thing we didn't talk about, Phil, was sump pump backups during a power outage.

That's a good point. It doesn't apply to me because I'm on city water, but it's a good point. Sump pump is for groundwater coming into your basement. You don't have one of those either because your groundwater is a foot and a half below your foundation. Yeah, I was about to say, if I had a basement, it'd be a below ground pool.

It'd be an in-house swimming pool. So, you know, around us, basement's extremely common in Illinois. Just about every house has one. If it doesn't, it has a crawl space, but most of them are basements. Almost all these basements, even in the older houses, have either been retrofitted or came built with sump pumps in them.

So when we have heavy rains, you can collect the water around the foundation into a drain tile and pump it up, out, and away from your house. When the power goes out, your sump pump doesn't work because they're all electric. So they make these little battery powered backup pumps super handy, really great to have. They do only last like 24 to 48 hours, depending on how heavy your use is.

But for most intermediate power outages, it solves the problem. Yeah. And I think what's important for most people to realize is like, even if you don't go to the point of having like a generator or a whole home generator or whatever, like at a bare minimum to me, the things that demand back a power is at a certain point. You're going to have to worry to worry about food spoilage in your fridge. Sure. Simplest way to deal with that though, and this is the dumbest thing ever. It is a very old dumb trick, but I swear to God it works.

You can either do it the high tech way like I have with a couple of temperature probes and a little meter that has max min markings so that if ever my food defrosts, I'd know about it. Yeah, the simple way is you get a little cup of water, you freeze it, you put a penny on top, stick it in your freezer. If the penny ever goes to the bottom of the cup, congratulations, all your food thawed. Yep, that's a good one for a deep chest freezer. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's something good to know because- Especially if you're going on a long vacation

and you're not having somebody watch your house. Well, and it sucks to lose the food, but at least you're not eating stuff with bacteria crawling around. It's just dying to make a home in your gut. So there's- Yeah, definitely better than food poisoning. I mean, right now it would really hurt

because I've got a quarter of a cow in the freezer. And that's a hit. But nice thing about a very full freezer like that it is going to stay frozen longer. And so that's that's another little tip for power outages is the more full you keep your fridge in freezer, the more thermal mass you have in them and the slower that temperature will climb. Yep. And if you need thermal mass in a pinch like hurricane season, if you know

something's coming, I take a bunch of the water bottles out of my rack. I drain them down. I I take out like the top two inches of water out just those plenty of thermal expansion and I throw them in the chest freezer. Fill that thing up to the top. Cuz then what you can do is you can take those frozen bottles out of the freezer, stick them in your fridge, and it will cool your fridge without having to run the generator. Then you only need to run your freezer. Yeah. And I say using your fridge

as an ice box. And I'll tell you that during Hurricane Ida, like there was a moment where my generator was misbehaving pretty badly and we couldn't run the refrigerator. What we did was we took everything out of the refrigerator, put that in the freezer so that we only had to run the fridge for X amount of time. We basically turn the freezer portion of the fridge into a fridge, and then we put everything that was already frozen into the chest freezer where it was already frozen.

Yeah, that works. We made it work. There is a conversation going on in the in the chat that I think bears some pointing out. So Joe was saying he locked himself out of his house with a pizza in the oven. That's an emergency. Yeah, because I could turn into a small house fire. And then he replied it was way too easy to kick the door open. That's a good argument for door armor.

Yeah, and three inch screws aren't shit if the door jam is not strong. Yeah, most, I don't know if you guys are as familiar with me and Phil with residential construction, but for most people, if you have not put three inch screws in your door, your screw is about that long that is holding your hinges in and that are holding your, yeah, that is holding your strike plate in.

The screws that are holding all of my hinges and my striker plates in are about that long because I had extra deck screws leftover from a project and that's just what I used because I had them. Why not? You know, you can use them for that. But Phil, the trouble with that is those screws are only into at max two, two by fours. Yes, I'm aware. Yeah. So, you know, you can do things like that. Run some longer screws into your hinges, run longer screws into your strike plates. That is good But the problem is your strike plate is only spanning that distance with two three inch screws Well as those door armor plates are spanning the some two to three feet or the entire length of the door depending on what you've got

with three inch screws to be fair I Already have a huge glass pane in my front door. So oh you're screwed Yeah, the whole the whole my whole point of doing this is really just try to make it take two kicks to knock the door down Yeah, make it loud enough that you hear it. Yeah, is that first kick is gonna be game time. Mm-hmm alright Frozen pipes and I added leaking pipes in here too, because if anybody's ever had a... Because one causes the other. Well, not just that, but like, okay, so frozen pipes

is a problem, obviously, because it turns into a leaking pipe when it thaws. But even in the absence of frozen pipe, if any of your water pipes ever just start leaking, like up in your attic or your ceiling, and then all of a sudden you have, like, all the drywall cave in on you, that's a freaking problem. And that's a problem.

It can be catastrophic. Yeah, because the damage done keeps doing damage until you stop it. Mm-hmm. And once all that stuff is wet, you're gonna get mold. Mold. And the longer that mold sits there, the worse it's gonna get.

And the more damage that mold will do and that stuff is horrible for your health Yeah So like to me like the way to mitigate this honestly first of all Frozen pipes is pretty freaking simple. If you think there's a chance about if you think you have your risk of frozen pipes You should be running your pipes. Yeah you have your risk of frozen pipes, you should be running your pipes. Yeah. Or you should be running the water. A trickle of water out of every faucet. Yeah. That's pretty basic advice. I mean, that's what we do down here in the South. And like, even when it's snowed on us this past year,

trickling the pipes and keeping the heater running was all it took to keep frozen pipes at bay. For the most part, it does. But it is worth pointing out that Stewart had that experience over years ago during snowpocalypse in Texas where they had a power outage and without the central heat to keep the houses warm all of his neighbors ended up with burst pipes. Yeah, so like that is worth considering. The only way you can really avoid that if the power's out and you're losing water pressure is to drain your entire system to the lowest possible location. So if you happen to be in an area where it can get below freezing and you could theoretically

get a power shortage, which is most of the US, if you don't have a point at like near your supply down in the basement level at the lowest level of your house that you can drain your entire house, consider having a plumber put one in. Yes, it is a pain because then you have to close everything up or repressurize your system slowly, clean all the filter elements on all of your faucets and everything else, because it's going to disturb crap in your pipes. But it sure beats blowing up your water pipes,

and then having to deal with that backfill. And I would say like down here on the Gulf Coast, like all of our water heaters are up in the attics, or at least almost all of them are up in the attics. Sure, because it's hot up there. Yeah, and water heater up in the attics. Sure, because it's hot up there. Yeah. And water heater up in the attic. My main shut off is actually out at the street side. So you don't have one in your house?

I don't think it's in my house. I'm pretty sure it's outside. You should have one in your house. I've never found it. You should install one. Well, I was going to say, if nothing else, I can shut it off out there at the street side and then open up all the freaking tabs

that are here on the ground floor. And it'll- Unless it's under 10 to 12 inches of snow and ice. Yeah. Well, this is a preventative measure. I mean, once the pipe's frozen, you're kind of screwed. But the other thing is that if you have a leaking pipe, like if you have a pipe that is leaking water that is actively creating water damage, to me the first way to mitigate it is just to freaking pay attention. When

you see that little spot on your ceiling that gets bigger every day, that's a warning sign. You should be paying attention to that. You know what a good way to mitigate that is, Phil? Have you heard of these automatic leak detectors? What? You install it, well, you might if you know enough about plumbing. It's a little box that they install on your water main inside your house and it detects the flow rate of the water. If you have a toilet that's leaking, it will shut it off. If you have a pipe that's leaking, it will detect it and shut it off because there's a difference between turning a thing on and the flow of water and a slow trickle leak or a constantly on flood of water.

I've never heard of this and that's terrible. There are a couple hundred bucks. You're probably going to pay another couple hundred bucks to have your plumber install it. But if you go on long vacations and you don't have people watch the house, it's a pretty fantastic small investment. So like a friend of mine years ago, his parents had a washing machine that the fill sensor went out on it. Gal started a load of laundry and left on some errands, was gone longer than she thought, came back the entire second, first and basement of their house was flooded.

Water damage on everything because their laundry their laundry was on the second floor. My parents have a laundry on the second floor. It could happen to anybody. But that sensor would would go this is not normal operating parameters. I'm going to shut it off and if it shuts off and it is normal operating parameters, you just go downstairs and you hit the button and you open it back up and it resets itself. So, you know, you can kind of mitigate the risk of this

by having one of those systems installed. If memory serves, when I had it quoted to be done on my house, which I haven't done it yet, because I still need to rework the whole well pump and pressure head system over there. It was like 600 bucks to have a plumber install it. It was not much. I'm in the compared to like losing the house to water. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I guess that that's more of that story

is like know where your water shutouts are so you can at least stop the bleeding. You can stop the damage. Yeah. You're not letting it get any worse. Stop the bleeding. Know where your wife's hairdryer is because the best thing to thaw frozen pipes, believe it or not, is a hairdryer or one of those old halogen work lights.

That is a vibe. I was going to say I have a like legit heat gun, like not a hair dryer. Yeah. You'd want that thing cranked down as low as it can go. You want like 70, 80 degrees thought nice and slow because if you have a big blockage in the pipe and you saw the middle, great.

You've changed the pressure in the pipe without relieving the pressure on either end. Oh, great. And you can create your own problems again. So I guess this just kind of goes along with that overflowing or show up or an overflowing sink. Not just that, but like, this was written from the article I cribbed some of this from,

like this was really thinking about like if you had a block drain. Oh yeah. And- A block drain or a backflowing drain. I guess this kind of, let's see, Nick, this is where my blinders come out because like, is there a high proportion of people that live in homes and apartments that don't know how to plunge a sink or a toilet?

You would be shocked. Nick. You would be shocked. Nick. You would be shocked. Nick. I get called by people that know me on occasion saying my sinks backed up, what do I do? I have been called by people that have said, there's water on the floor around my toilet, what do I do?

We're talking about a small group, right? Like two percent? No. Two and a half, three, three max, no more. I would say out of the people I know, 5%, but most of the people I know are also in the trades. I have had adults- I'm rubbing my temples again.

I have had adults who are retired, all me, and ask what do I do when there is sewage coming out of my toilet sink, bathtub, whatever. So since Jeff Jag brought it up, if you are a homeowner, not so much if you live in an apartment because that's kind of the property owner's problem. It is, yeah. But I had all these things when I lived there because if I have something not flowing that should be, I wanted to fix it myself immediately and not be inconvenienced.

But you should go buy a little snake. You can get the little cheap plastic drain snakes that are like a foot and a half long. You can. and listen to me I live with two ladies with long hair those freaking things are lifesavers like most of your clogs you Jig that down in the in the drain and pull it out problem solve that fast Yeah, most of the time it's it's less than a foot, but you have that and a freaking plunger Is that is part of your I I just bought a new house shopping list. Personally, I recommend people go for like the 10 foot

stainless steel coil snakes that are powered by your cordless drill or corded drill. Just because that, I have yet to have that 10 foot stainless steel coil snake, I've never had that not solve a clogged clogged anything. Yeah, see, I usually go straight for the plunger and sure that works even in the case of like a bathtub or shower like where you where you have the overflow drain like, pull that freaking

cap off the top, get yourself a wet rag, stick it in there with like two fingers and use the use the wet rag to kind of plug up the top of that overflow drain. Don't get yourself a wet rag, stick it in there with like two fingers and use the use the wet rag to kind of plug up the top of that overflow drain. Don't shove yourself a little pressure going. Don't don't shove it in so damn deep. You can't get it back out dummy. Like you only got to go in a little bit. You're just blocking the air out that way. Yeah, all you got to do is just like put a little bit of hit of pressure in there to stop stop the air from going back and forth and just get that plunger going to act like a water hammer. You will knock that clog loose quickly.

Yeah, the vast majority of the time you will. I mean, most of this stuff is not expensive either. I think the stainless steel snake I bought at Menards was like $19.95 plus tax. None of this stuff is really expensive. It's just, Jesus Christ, the number of people that don't think about it. And they're not difficult to use no they're really not I mean I don't yeah if it's your shower you pull the little shower grate up it's probably two Phillips head screws you hook the snake to your to your cordless drill you unlock the lock and you hit

the trigger and it kind of does all the work for you. Yeah, you're gonna have to clean up a mess because it tends to throw shit just about everywhere, but them's the brakes, bud. Yeah. So broken HVAC system can get a little touchy unless you know enough about them to try to service them yourselves. And I'll be honest, I know how to fix a lot of things and crack and open an HVAC system is not something I'm going to do all willy-nilly, but I will say that the one thing every freaking homeowner had better know how to do, and it's freaking simple, and there's no reason for you to not know how to do it, and if you don't, I want you to think about your life decisions for just a minute, and then go you look it up on YouTube because ain't that hard. Change the son of a bitching filter.

look it up on YouTube, because it ain't that hard. Change the son of a bitching filter. If you do that one thing consistently, you will save yourselves a lot of pain and aggravation down the road. Just that one little thing. But the other thing- We have a different one thing. Huh? Okay.

We have a different one thing. All right, on your heater, on your water heater and on your furnace, if you have gas equipment, there is a thermocouple. Carbon will build up on that thermocouple and block its temperature regulating and reading results. That is true. Find your make and model, go on YouTube,

look up how to clean that thermocouple. If your furnace will ever not turn on and you have gas and you have power, turn off the gas, turn off the power because don't be dumb. Open it up, clean that thermocouple, close it up, start it back up. That has solved my problem two separate occasions. What do you typically use? A little bit of an emery cloth or some sandpaper or... Honestly man, whatever I have that is a mild abrasive. Scotch-Brite, the purple stuff or the green stuff seem to work pretty okay.

It is carbon fouling. So what I did was I threw a little Hoppies on the Scotch-Brite pad and just cleaned it right up. Paper toweled it off because Hoppies is flammable. And then closed everything back up and started it up. And it went just fine. It took about four minutes and I had the heat back on. Yeah and that just goes right to the point of like again could you and it might be necessary to call in a professional certainly

but if you can fix it yourself cheaply and quickly and not be inconvenienced why not? Well it just goes to show you that it's just another perfect argument for an emergency fund Yeah, I know you and I bring it up all the time We live in a capitalist society Money will solve a lot of your problems. Yep, and a properly funded emergency fund is Critical if you're a homeowner you put it quite succinctly when you said that there are a few problems that cannot be solved with a large injection of cash. So now, these next two kind of go hand in hand, but I separate them because they have

different remedies. Oh, yes they do. But these are most people's personal hell. It's kitchen or house fire. Now kitchen fire, grease fire is like, most people have probably had one. I mean, to be fair, I can't remember. I don't think I've ever lit anything on fire

because like if I'm cooking anything. I'm sure I have. I mean, I've had a couple of things that like the oven smoked a little bit because something splattered and you know Did that or I? Do a lot of cooking on cast iron with a lot of butter, but usually I can get smoky You try to cook that outside though because it like when I'm cooking steaks or burgers or whatever It's a it's a chimney out there now

But I can happen but like I'm not gonna I'm proud to admit, but like there have been times where my range top is probably a little bit juicier than it should have been and you get a good bit of heat going and a little bit of a splatter and next thing you know, your whole freaking range is lit up. My dad, uncles and grandfather were making glug, for those of you that are of Swedish descent, you know what that is it is fruit brandy and liquor That you cook over the stovetop light on fire for a minute and then put the fire out

They had the Kleenex box too close to the stovetop when they were doing the light it on fire bit glug GLG Uh-huh. I'll make you some I will Google this later. It is a it is a very thick, fruity, nutty, and seasoned winter drink. You drink it warm. You drink it at like just just like halfway between hot and cold. It's like tepid or a little warmer. And which of God's special children thought this up? The Swedish. The Swedes. Think of like a highly alcoholic syrup. Yes.

It's very sugary. It's very fruity. And it's served warm. Brandy, wine, moonshine, or Everclear most of the time. Oh yeah. It is flammable and it is served at above room temperature. Usually like, if you're just making a little bit of it, you'll microwave it up to warm it up a little bit,

but a lot of people warm it up over a stove top. It is phenomenal. Jeff Jack has barely heard of it. Oh yeah. Okay, it is. Sorry to interrupt, but I was listening to this and I'm like, I don't think I've ever heard of this. Oh, it's a thing. It is a cold weather drink. It is meant to warm you both body and soul. Probably why I've never heard of it before. Yeah, you're too far south for glug. But you know, kitchen fires, you've got your basic baking soda. Great to have close by, it'll put out a small fire. Everybody, if you're listening

to this podcast, if you're a Patreon of this podcast, have a fire extinguisher in or near your kitchen. That is rated for kitchen fires. It's cheap insurance, you can buy them for I don't even know it's been a while since I bought them. I need to have mine recertified. But I want to say the one I keep in the kitchen was probably 70 bucks 60 70 bucks yeah, but It's cheaper than burning your house down a lot of things are cheaper than burning your house down. I

Mean and just think of the inconvenience you say but you know a lot of things a lot of things like this fires in general You can mitigate that without even a fire extinguisher by practicing You know, a lot of things like this, fires in general, you can mitigate that without even a fire extinguisher by practicing good habits around heat sources. Don't have, like your clean Xbox right next to the stove. Don't have a bunch of rags next to the stove. If you've got a bunch of grease all over the stove, clean that shit, man.

I mean, come on. Practice a little hygiene and you can avoid these these fires. Don't drop a frozen turkey into a boiling vat of oil. Oh, Jesus Christ. Looking at you, Thanksgiving. Every listen, this past Thanksgiving, my wife and I were literally at home. And I swear to God, the fire trucks ran four times before eight o'clock in the morning. Oh, I guarantee it. And I guarantee it, it was somebody dropping a frozen bird into oil.

No water and no ice near hot oil, especially in those open burner propane outdoor stoves. Anyway, but yeah, turn your heat source off either fire, signature, baking soda. Like, I mean, if it's a fire in a pan, pick it up, take it to the sink, flood it with water. See, I've always been told not to do that, though, because the minute you have a grease fire and you, yeah, well, if

it's a grease fire. Yeah, if it's a grease fire, don't do that. Don't have water to do a grease fire. Just makes floating fire. Now I will say that most people have like those cute decorative like little hand towels like on the, the ones your wife tells you never to wipe your hands on, yeah.

Yeah, I get in trouble with those. Phil is telling you take that damn thing and use it to smother the flaming pan. Your wife will only be pissed about it until you point out that she didn't burn the house down. So you'll get away with it. And then you get rid of the towel. It's perfect. Depends on how flammable the towel is. Yeah. Usually though, I mean, all you have to do is smother the fire. So.

Yeah. But some of those are polyester nowadays I've noticed. And if, if any of you have ever been around melting, burning plastics, you can actually cause yourself a lot worse injuries Cotton towels, it's not it's safer. Don't do it if it's polyester towels Why on earth would you have polyester kitchen towels, dude? I don't know but I have seen them for sale in Walmart So I assume someone is buying them Walmart doesn't sell shit that people don't buy No, they just sell stuff. It's idiots by apparently.

Anyway, and the other problem electrical fire. Now, I will be the first to admit electricity is witchcraft to me. It is. Matter of fact, I was showing you all this fun little tool recently. Oh dude, those things are the best. Yeah. And then we have our resident electrician like, Oh, I just lick my fingers and touch the wires to see if it sparks.

Like, yeah, that's fine. I like playing with hot electricity too. But if you want to know what outlet is controlled by what breaker in your house, that Klein tool or everybody else makes one. It's called a circuit tracer. Phil, would you mind unplugging the two parts? Showing the audience the back half there.

So you plug that back half into a wall outlet, and then you can take the front half, push a button, and it'll make a beep when you're at the right breaker, or at the right wire in your wall, in case you were wondering. And this came with a little accessory pack that allows you to adapt this three prong to a two prong. Nice. This three prong to a screw and outlet like for a light bulb.

Oh, mine doesn't have that. I mean, yeah. I'll send you a picture of it. You could probably pick up the kit. It also includes a set of leads that has a three-prong plug at the other end. So if you just have bare wires, you plug this into the end of your probe and then tag these two wires onto the end of your bare leads.

Nice. That's fantastic. That's good for if you're trying to set up your home generator, your whole home generator, or your... Why do you think I got one? Your plug-in one? Yeah. Because probably, probably your electrician doesn't know where your outlets go either. You don't know my house panel doesn't know. My house was wired by a meth head. And since we're on that

conversation, the last outlet in this house I had to change, I came to the annoying conclusion that somehow these freaking psychos wired this house so that the two plugs in this two plug gang are on two separate circuits. Stop. Why? Stop. Stop.

You're about to ask me why, how, why on earth was my dude at? How I understand the wires are wrong. Stop. You're about to ask me why, how, why on earth was my dude at? Well, how I understand the wires are wrong. But all the questions you're going to ask me, I can only answer by saying that somebody was smoking crack when they wired this house. Because I, stop, let me get the story out. Then you can say whatever, whatever you're going to say about the electrician. And Josh, if you're listening, you can comment on this electrician too. To be fair, Josh's house was wired wrong too. Yeah, it's not wired wrong. No, he fixed that because I gave him shit. But my point is, so I have one of the little doohickeys that like, you know, you

push a button and then you, you, you get your, your probe in close to a wire or an outlet or whatever in it. Yeah. See if if it's see if it's live. Okay so I put that up again. Check the top not the bottom. I just wasn't I checked the bottom. Oh. I had my wife check the bottom while I was flipping breakers in the breaker box and she said okay it went off and I was like cool that both sides of the outlet should be off because what freaking psycho would wire two halves of the same two gang, you know, outlet to two different circuits? Well, when I went

to change the outlet, I got a nasty little surprise when all of a sudden I felt the, I felt the feeling all the way I passed my elbow into my bicep. Yeah, it's about 120. Yeah. And then I started, I said some very unkind things about everybody and everything in the room. Yeah. And then I went and found the other breaker I had to turn off. So let's just say that beautiful little tool over there is gonna help me figure out which circuits to leave on and leave off in the event

we have to run our home generator. That's great. Because very obviously my house was wired by nutcases. So the trouble with electrical fires is you can flip the main breaker on your breaker panel. You can, that's always an option. That is the option. But if the fire's already started,

chances are that's not gonna do you much good. It's gonna stop it from continuing to have the ignition source, which is great. You know, the heat's already there. The heat's already there. And if the fire's already started, especially if it's like if it's in your wall, there's not really much you're going to do about that,

unless you can bust a hole in it and get a fire extinguisher. If you know exactly where it is. Plus, you need a electrical rated fire extinguisher, which most of us have ABCs, which in case you guys don't know, there's five classes of fire fire extinguisher, ABCD electrical and F. A is carbon based solids, paperwood textiles. B is flammable liquids. So like diesel fuel, oil, petroleum products.

C, flammable gases, butane, propane, methane, stuff like that. D is like metallic fires. So unless you work in the metallics industry where you're like machining metallic zirconia where the the chips like to catch on fire spontaneously because of the water in the atmosphere or magnesium or magnesium, lithium, anything like that, you're probably not going to need a D class fire extinguisher. Iron fire. Electrical ones do not have the letter E on them.

They have a little lightning bolt symbol. And then F is for like cooking oil. Yeah. I would also point out, though, that you went straight to wires and somebody's walls. I was honestly thinking more like appliances, because nor- Appliances can happen. And I could be wrong, but I would

be surprised if most of the electrical fires that threaten homes are not like something in your panel went berserk or something in your wall. I would suspect most of the time it's either I would suspect something like a bad outlet that happens but I would also say probably cell phone chargers. I was gonna say I would suspect not I would suspect probably 80 to 90% of your problems are probably what's plugged into the outlets. Or Yeah, I've got one over here right off camera. I can't grab. But a Jesus terminal strip. Yeah,

you got power strip 30 amps worth of stuff plugged into a 15 amp something. like, you know, traditionally your breaker should go before that does catch fire. But if you've got like four extension cords plugged in days, chain one after the other, what I'm going to get a little upset. Sooner or later. Yeah, yeah, there's a reason why extension cords are the length they come at the shop. And it's not because that is the length they thought you would need.

It's because that is the length that gauge of wire will support. Yeah. So I guess that's kind of my thought process is like, I suspect a lot of your opportunities for an electrical fire in the home are going to be related to the appliance. And in that case, like step one is always to unplug the daggum thing. And preferably, I mean, like, I don't want to tell you if something's on fire, you grab with your bare hands, but if you have an opportunity to relocate it someplace where it's not going to catch other stuff on fire,

you should consider that. Yeah, that's possible. I mean, the most common I have heard of, at least in my geographical area, has been space heaters left near curtains or blankets. That will do and damaged cell phone charger cables. Shorting out. I will also and I'll take this one on the chin. This is totally my screw up. So, not too long ago, my daughter got she had a she has a she had a motif for her

bedroom for a while. It was decorating, everything was mushrooms. So she got this cute little like wall ornament and it's made with neon tubes. Yeah. And it lights up, it's in the shape of a mushroom. Well, it runs off of a USB plug. And me not paying enough attention,

I just gave her a charging brick I had lying around. Don't be, it wound up being one of the old, old one amp iPod charging bricks, and that appliance takes two amps. And within a matter of five minutes, that thing started blinking on and off, and my daughter immediately unplugged it and came and got dad.

And I very quickly deduced what the problem is like you could feel the break it was warm to the touch and I was like ah this thing was getting ready to be unhappy with us. It was gonna let the magic smoke out. Yeah and you know again take it on the chin totally my fault did not pay enough attention I mean USB is USB but how many other people how I know, I'm saying that tongue in cheek, because USB is not USB. Yeah. But how many other people-

If it is an error waiting to happen is what it is. Yeah. I cringe because I see it happening to anybody. Yeah, I mean, simple things like, how much power is this device going to attempt to yank through that cable, through that brick and out that wall become super freaking important all of a sudden because if your wires are a little bit too small, bad things start happening.

And again, I come from the world of like car audio and car customization, so like we live and die by things like, oh, you're going to run DC power over this much length, and you're going to pull this many amps, your wire had better be this thick period of discussion. So like, I'm not stupid, I get how it's supposed to work. But in that moment, I was like, it plugs into a USB, not even thinking about the fact that USB is USB to most people. Yeah, and the problem becomes that like, most USB devices at this point, I think it's like what's 2.1, 2.2 amps is what they typically draw?

Yeah, I think some can draw more than that with the new USB 3.0, but not much more. Yeah, but a lot of your older devices and your older charging bricks, like- Half amp, one amp, one and a half amp. Yeah, but a lot of your older devices and your older charging bricks, like they only- One amp, one and a half amp. And there's, because that, because USB-A is so ubiquitous, there's a lot of those things in circulation

lying around houses. Yeah. And people just assume if it plugs in, it's supposed to work. No. You know, Jeff brings up a good point. This used to be a really big problem back in the day of people replacing fuses with pennies. If the fuse couldn't handle the load.

That's burned down houses, man. I mean, people do it. Throw a penny behind the fuse, close it back up just to get you through the day. And then that temporary solution became a permanent one until the house burned down. RaggleFraggle said, you know what's helping me understand electricity better?

Chat GPT. I do not trust that motherfucker for anything. Listen, I was talking to some- I caught it making shit up. I was telling somebody just the other day, we were talking about like Skynet and how AI was gonna take over the world. And I was like, yeah, but then every now and then they throw me a curveball like the the AI spits

out an image of a person with like seven fingers on one hand and I'm like okay either you are not that bright or you are sandbagging the shit out of me right now like you're thinking to yourself every now and then I'm going to screw something up really, really bad so that the squishy squishy meatbags think I'm not that bright. It's like, are you dumb? Are you playing dumb? And if you're playing dumb, you're being way too smart about it. I think the problem is, is what we call AI is really a large language model for the most part. I mean, it's,

I have to self promote. So when we eventually create true sentient AI, listen, tech industry, you are going to need a big dumb redneck who doesn't trust computers to stand there and babysit the AI with a 12 gauge in his hands, just in case it starts to get too smart. And I'm your boy. Like, I don't take a lot of vacations,

I don't take a lot of time off, and I have watched every Terminator movie there is, and I'm just waiting for my opportunity to stand up and be John Connor. So holla at your boy when you get to that point, I will be the one to save humanity by murking, you know, chat GPT if it starts to get cute just putting that out there. The problem is these large

language models what it is is a predictive text generator based on what is the most likely thing to come next. Sometimes the most likely thing to come next isn't the correct answer. There it is. I mean, yes, chat GPT has its uses. Can it get you good information on electronics? Maybe. Personally, I wouldn't trust it.

I would go directly to a verified source if you can find one. There are all kinds of manuals out there that are really good. There are all kinds of people on YouTube that are putting out very fantastic tutorials and you can usually tell pretty quick who knows what they're talking about and who doesn't. But man just be careful of what chat gpt or any of these other ai engines give you. It might be right, but if it's wrong and it's electrical, you can burn your house down. Yeah. So we are out of banners. I don't know if there's anything that's come to mind since we started this topic. I mean, my point of view is, is I'm like, you should at a minimum be aware of and understand the things that are most likely to threaten you

at your home because we spend at least half of our lives at home optimally. I mean, like you said, I paid a mortgage. I like some use of the property. Exactly. But my whole perspective is like to take that one step further than that, like this is where my wife sleeps. This is where my daughter sleeps.

This is where a lot of my fun stuff is, I would be really upset if the house burned down or like, you know, we sprung, we sprung a leak in the attic and all this drywall fell down like that would aggravate out of me. So I just think about it in terms of if this is where we spend a majority of our time and for a lot of us, like our home is probably the most expensive thing we're ever going to own. So we should be aware of what threatens us in our home and our home itself and be aware

of it and be able to protect ourselves from it. Absolutely. Yeah, couldn't agree more. If you're going to spend this much time in any one location, you should at least understand, like Phil said, what threatens it, what you can do to mitigate those threats and what you can do to get away from those threats. So I suppose the only thing that comes to mind

that we haven't talked about is, if you have a two-story home, have a method of egress out of the second story in case of any of the above. That's fair. That doesn't apply to me,. That's fair. Do you have a method of egress from your basement? I do. I have escape windows. Okay. Yeah. Forgive my ignorance. I've never had a basement for obvious reasons. So I don't know how they work. So a lot of times now,

Phil, this is an older house, so the escape windows are smaller but modern construction homes ever since like the mid 90s they will have what is the size of a first floor like double hung window that you can pop out and there is a like a culvert around the outside of your foundation and a hole just pops right up out of your house. Really? Usually on each of the walls. Yeah, and the outside of the basement. Yeah, look up basement escape windows, and you'll see what I'm talking about. If you have a deep basement, you will also probably by code be required to have a ladder of some sort coming up that culvert.

That makes sense. But maybe I'm showing off my blind spot. Like that suddenly occurred to me. I'm like, how would you get out of a basement? Me being not very flexible is probably not getting out of the escape windows in my current basement. My wife could get out of them, but I don't bend that way. So I'm going through the fire. I'll pray for you. So before we walk this one out, I do have to point out Raggle Fraggle said, apparently my name was brought up on the reloading podcast the other day, they made fun of fun of my truck again, because, you know,

two wheel drive Tacoma's lip rent free in people's heads. They do. But I have seen two wheel drives get a lot farther than idiots and four wheel drives. but I have seen two wheel drives get a lot farther than idiots in four wheel drives. All I'm gonna say is, I'm not gonna say that the Tacoma out there is gonna be doing any overlay until you're going to Moab anytime soon.

But I am prepared to stand on business and say that that truck has got more time off the pavement than a lot of four wheel drive trucks I've seen. Probably. And if you take that personally, you should take that personally because I'm aiming it directly at you. Anyway, Matter of Fact's podcast is going out the door.

I don't know what's on our docket for next week. I've got a project I'm working on that if it comes to fruition, we will talk about that. And also I might have a guest that we're gonna live in the near future. Yeah, I will tell you about him as soon as we log off. Seems like an interesting character and I think we could have an interesting conversation. Fantastic. Looking forward to it. But for the rest of you,

good night. Stay out of trouble. If you can't stay out of trouble, don't get caught getting into trouble and make sure you get out by morning. Bye everybody. Good night. So Thanks for watching!