The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Oh The Weather Outside Is Frightful...

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

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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 Ravely. Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to the Matter of Facts podcast. We all survived Christmas. No one got murked by their spouses, which means you at least did an acceptable job of delivering presents. So congrats for that. I know, right? It can be a tough one sometimes. I mean, yeah.

Every, not to sound extraordinary or stereotypical, but I doubt any of you men are going to find me on this, but sometimes we husbands have our hands absolutely freaking full of trying to find a gift for our wife that is not going to get us banished to the doghouse for at least until their birthday. Oh, man. Mine sets me up for success every time she gives me a list in prioritized order and i start top down mine did that for me this year and like i'm gonna tell you i am the i and i i deserve i need it because

i am the worst gift giver on earth i'm really good about like planning ahead i'm really good about ordering stuff well in advance i'm good yeah it will be there all in advance so yeah all of like the logistics of get the gift under the tree i am on top of all that the whole under the under all of the things under the sky that i could possibly get my wife that'll make her happy you might as well ask me to color picasso with crayons because it's just not within my immediate skill set. But my wife gave me a list and then gave me the wife look. You all know what the wife look looks like. And said, Phil, I love you.

Do not deviate from this list. And I said, yes, honey. I can work with those requirements yes those are requirements that I could certainly like I can work with that so yes my wife spared me the indignity of getting her something

that she would have to give me the smile like oh Jesus Christ I'm not going to yell at you in front of your child but but oh, it's coming. Oh, yes. Yes, Joe, I have a storm coming my way. You know, it's winter in the south, which is really no different than fall or spring or summer.

Yeah, it's kind of like, oh, it's a storm. Another one, another kind of storm. Instead of this one coming up from, oh, it's a storm. Another one. Another kind of storm. Instead of this one coming up from the Gulf, this one's coming over from Texas. So hopefully our hopefully our redneck friend

in Houston, like, you know, took the edge off. It sweet talked it a little bit, so it'll come through here and not tear anything up. Maybe.

Maybe. But admin work. Thanks to the patrons for keeping the show running thank you all for tolerating and i would say tolerate y'all encourage our sociopathy so if anybody doesn't like the show and doesn't like what we talk about you can blame about 30 of those people because i am not responsible for my actions i need adult supervision at all times and i have that we have that group of people that are constantly like you constantly provoking more bad behavior and bad decision making, so it's not my fault.

I mean, you lock a drunk in a brewery, what do you think is going to happen? Fun. Fun, mayhem, same thing. Merch, the links are down in the show description for the merch. This is actually not merch. I'm wearing my first ugly Christmas sweater. I've never had one before. Oh, dude, I got one from one of the patrons for Secret Santa.

Okay, so that is like the first topic. So let's say Cypress Survivalist. The link's in the show description. First event will be March 8th in southeast Louisiana. Enter about the Mandeville area. And we will start advertising for that very, very shortly. My wife has been taking the Christmas break off of school to work on promotional materials, which will be forthcoming very, very soon.

Now, we were not nice. We were extremely naughty but somehow santa has a sick sense of humor because we still got gifts that we did so like i said this is my first ugly christmas sweater that's fantastic yes this was this was for my younger brother and now i'm just wondering if i can get away with wearing this at the office a hundred percent yes i mean i mean i wore this one to my in-laws christmas party oh i definitely got some disapproving glares from the ants it was fantastic that is freaking awesome so there was that that. I got a camping, a solar-powered camping lantern, which, like, you can never have too many of those because, come on, solar-powered camping lantern. My wife got me an S-TAC shotgun card and then immediately announced how aggravated she was to find out that I already had five of them.

And I had to explain to her, I'm like, honey, that's like, well, but, but like that's like saying oh phil already has bourbon in the liquor cabinet i can't get him any more bourbon yes you can there's no such thing as too much bourbon in the liquor cabinet i will go buy another cabinet if necessary to make room for more bourbon like another bottle of really good booze it doesn't go bad it doesn't go bad i mean they're shotgun cards it's's like magazines. I literally told her, if you have no earthly idea what to get me, go find a sale for AR-15 mags.

I would say CZ mags, but that can get a little funny. They're never on sale. You can pretty much go buy AR-15 mags with impunity, and I will find a way to use them. But she could buy about four different kinds of CZ magazines that I don't have a gun to fit,

which wouldn't be a horrible thing, because then I'd have to go buy the gun. That's the wildcat rule. If you have more than three rounds for any cartridge, you now have to build a rifle for that cartridge. Remember that, boys. That might come in handy for later. Oh, and so so as is traditional, Stuart Keith, one of our patrons, ran a sneaky secret Santa for the Matter Facts patrons.

And I have to admit that no offense to anybody in past years, but our favorite little Irish lass outdid herself. She sent me one of her challenge coins, which I was like, I, having been enlisted, I know what it means to get one of these. And usually you get it for doing something really, really stupid. Or you get it for being really, really reliable and usually from a fairly high-ranking officer or dignitary. So, like, the fact that she

sent me this, I told my wife, I'm like, this has to go in a shadow box. Like, this can't be a stash it in a drawer or something. Like, it's got to be displayed. It's noteworthy. And she also sent me, like, three bags of Irish coffee.

Nice. Irish coffee. Coffee is always a win. Yeah. Coffee is always a win. Yeah, coffee is always a win. Like, I don't know. I'm sure there's some sad, sad person out there that doesn't drink coffee, and I don't know what to tell you. Like, my heart breaks for you. My brother, he's, I love him, but I'm worried about the boy.

I mean, does he chase women or drink booze? He's getting married this spring, and he drinks very rarely. He's incredibly stray-laced. It's a wonder we're related. Well, okay, but to get married, you usually have to do some women chasing to a point. So he has at least one redeeming quality to him. He did chase at least one womaning quality to him. He did chase at least one woman. I can confirm that, yes.

Okay. So what was your haul like? Was it, were you nice this year or were you naughty? I don't even have to ask. Actually, it was pretty fantastic. My wife got me some sweet clothes, which I'm actually really looking forward to because I trash

95% of my clothes with my occupation, having metal chips flying everywhere. And all of my hobbies involve metal chips flying everywhere or firearms. So having some nice clothes to be able to wear and not look like a hobo is fantastic. And one of my in-laws, they got me some miniatures for $40,000, some transports for my guard, some chimeras, which is awesome. My brother will regret this, which is fantastic. And we haven't had Christmas with my family yet.

That's coming up this Sunday. Got to spread it out, man, because all the grandparents are still doing Christmas. And my God, it just makes for like a whole two week affair which is fantastic but exhausting doesn't sound i'm not hearing the downside any of this though no no the amount of pie and cookies i have eaten makes up for all the lack of sleep yeah uh my uh so my funny story my half sister got me a uh she got me a cook, but it's all baking recipes because I'm a baker. And yeah, it didn't even make it home before my daughter claimed it as hers and spent the next two days baking cookies out of that book. Nice.

She has also informed me that she doesn't want me to be super involved in the process. She wants me to stand back like, super involved in the process. She wants me to, like, stand back and, like, let her do the baking. Nice. So, you know, she's 12, so we're finally at the age where she doesn't need my constant assistance. And I can, like, pour a drink and sit there at the island and just stand up and let her do things. It's pretty cool. Make sure the house is not on fire and taste whatever comes out. let her do things. It's pretty cool. Make sure the house is not on fire and taste

whatever comes out. Yeah, I get to be the spoon licker and the fire guard. Hey, nothing wrong with that. That's a very relaxing job with small periods of extreme excitement. Thank you for that, Nick. Hopefully

not a lot of excitement. Look, who hasn't set their kitchen at least mildly on fire at least once in their life? I haven't yet. I attempted to deep fry things in a not deep fryer. It was only a small fire. It stayed on the stove. But I am way too much of a rule follower, so...

Oh, God, no. Yeah. Well, okay. So this is what I tried to explain to my wife one time because my wife bless her heart she cannot she she has a difficult time baking she can cook like a maniac but baking can't follow the recipe and that's what i explained to her i'm like okay so like my personality bear in mind that like my hobbies are like reloading ammo and doing things that involve like you know very specific recipes and measuring and following instructions and following a process

and that kind of nerdy OCD thing and coffee roasting, which is like reloading but you get to drink your results, which I guess you could do. You could do that with reloading ammo, but it wouldn't work out as well. Small calibers. Yeah. But like I explained to her, if you have that really nerdy ocd rule following you know behavior embedded in you then that baking baking's your thing because it's all very precise and very measured and very time sensitive but my wife is a cook so she just grabs the salt and shakes it

over the pot until her ancestors say that's enough and you can do that and do things by taste and like you know just kind of like figure it out as you go you could do that with cooking but that does not work with baking because you end up with a thing that probably isn't what you set out to make so my daughter i'm learning that my daughter now somehow between me and my wife my daughter has wound up dead center in the middle of the two of us. She can bake. She can cook. So she's going to end up a totally functional adult.

Impressive. Impressive. I don't know how I feel about being able to help raise a totally functional adult because I'm barely a functional adult at 42. Hey, man, it means you didn't make her worse. You didn't make her worse. That's the best a parent can hope for, right? Your wife is tattling on you nick doesn't follow the rules i'm the yeah but see she is absolutely correct i i season with my soul and uh sometimes we get a bit aggressive but you see that's what i don't get about your personality is because like as a machinist it's all about like fine measurements and rules and procedures and

sometimes sometimes well okay so you got to remember phil with machining you can follow the rules perfectly and get the good results yes you can also use your ability to hear how the material and color are reacting and feel positive feedback in the case of manual equipment like what's behind me here and you can push things considerably harder than the rules allow get the same results faster and just as good okay but it requires the artistry so i was about to say this sounds like the collision point between art and science which is what a little bit which is what i tell everybody all the time about like uh roasting coffee beans to roast a single batch of coffee beans to a desired result is not science no it is it is pure art it It is. You are looking at the beans.

You're listening to them. You're literally listening to them because of the noises they make. Yeah, absolutely. As weird as that sounds for anybody who's never tried to roast coffee, like they make noises while they're roasting. It's like popcorn. Two degree, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But you're listening for the certain sounds.

But there's different kinds of noises they make at different points in the roast. It's interesting. But anyway. So like you're looking, you're're the the volume of smoke coming off uh how even the roast is it's very much an art now the science of coffee roasting comes in when you try to make like 2 000 pounds of coffee 100 pound 50 pounds at a time and every one of those badges is exactly the same that's when the science comes in you're missing that's that's the i think the key difference you're missing from my profession okay machinist yes technically i am a machinist what i am though

is a specialist in machining i'm a tool and die maker which means i make one. Sometimes I make up to like 16. That is such a small quantity a production shop would never touch it. Production is when you're starting to get into the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. Those are the guys that are the scientific machinists that can tell you to the minute when their cutter is going to go out of spec. I can't do that. that's not what i do i do the artistry side of machining a little bit yeah it's still a lot of science because you got your feeds and speeds material science absolutely but i have the luxury of pushing things a little bit harder a little bit faster or a little bit closer tighter tolerance than they do because i'm only making

one or two or 16 but i also don't get any spares that actually makes a tremendous amount of sense now okay so before we get to the topic this is a. Can I just say? Now, Nick, how... I'm not sure where you're going with it because I've been out of the loop. Okay, so you try to stay off of social media as much as humanly possible, I assume?

Okay. Man, I hit it for the memes. And Facebook Marketplace because some of the deals, man. Okay, i i also indulge in social media mostly for the memes and the stupidity but in my travels i've come across some absolute freaking like just high school drama in in the the gun tuber pewtuber space in the last, like, couple of months. Oh, man. Apparently, apparently, like, there's this big thing going on right now where, like, Grantham may or may not have, you know, hung the horns on his wife, and they're splitting up,

and she's insisting that there was no infidelity, but there's other people that are insisting there was. And, like, the internet has bifurcated into all of Grantham's little pee-pee riders and all the people that can't stand him, and they've lined up like a scene out of Warriors from the 1970s where it's like the two gangs that are just squaring off with each other. And somewhere in the background is the guy with the the bottles on his fingers like it's it's it's just it's insane and then in the midst of all that going on you know who lucas botkin is right t-rex orbs yes okay i i know i know him as lucas i wouldn't

have known his last name yeah so same kind of thing he apparently like the internet is split between him because you have the guys who the you have the guys diehards well yeah you have you have his fans and then you have people i think that are like looking at him as a he's a great technical shooter he's a you know he he does a lot of training this and the air blah blah blah and then he's got skills he does and it's hard to debate that but then on the opposite side of things you have the people who are who are saying he wasn't in the military therefore he's not an authority which i don't know why the hell that's a requirement um the military but i out shoot a heck of a lot of military individuals jerry mitchell like to the best of my knowledge has never been on a two-way range but i don't want to get on the other side of him he makes me look like a toddler with a bb gun

yes and then you get the people who like get rubbed the wrong way because like he's very outspoken christian and i'm also a christian i'm not super outspoken about it but a lot of people get really rubbed the wrong way by you know his his kind of brand of christianity the way he advocates for it and recently he had some comments to make about mr thumb and then iraq veteran 8888 came in over you know jumped over the top rope in the middle of the ring and forgot about that guy yeah i forgot about him too thankfully but he jumped in i mean they made some good stuff back in the day when i was watching YouTube for that kind of thing. Yeah. Well, he decided to throw his hat in the ring and offer to fight Lucas in an MMA match to defend Grand Thumb's honor.

It's just, it has been absolute. Because the guy needs someone else to fight for him. Well, but it has been like okay so i i just i have in the name of full disclosure i don't consider myself to be a gun tuber i've made a couple of freaking youtube videos but i did as a hobby i'm not serious about this i don't care i am so far removed from all this freaking nonsense i don't have a dog in the fight for anybody i i genuinely do not care the number of people any of y'all have ever met on social media that i would die on the hill of their honor is about this many i don't care well i don't i don't first off i don't know those people yeah like even great but even the ones i do know even the ones i do know really even the

ones i've met like look sean heron and i've talked a good handful of times and sean doesn't need me to freaking ride his pp or defend his honor if someone comes out of the woodworks mad at him he's a grown man and he's freaking unapologetically hilarious by the way so like i just i don't i just i don't know where all of this nonsense is coming from i do not understand this weird cult of personality that's grown up around some of these social media personalities where people feel the need to make themselves look like retards. And I'm using that word, and I don't care if it's not socially correct anymore. I don't care. Retards. I don't understand why all of this drama and nonsense is getting vetted out

in the court of public opinion over these people. I really don't. Well, it's the standard, man. It's just like celebrities back in the day and people being, oh, I'm hard for X politician and never for Y politician. It's people want to feel like they are a part of something, which is understandable. All of us want to feel like we're a part of something. But a lot of people don't have positive things to attach themselves to i have my family my work and my hobbies and guess this podcast now this is a fantastic part of my week i enjoy doing this i enjoy communicating with the patrons i have for a long time i don't feel the need to attach myself to a celebrity I've never met who has no idea who I am who couldn't care if I

was dead I have positive things in my life to attach myself to I don't think a lot of people do unfortunately and that's terrible so they latch on to these things I don't know maybe the fact that that I'm as hyper-independent as I am

just makes this all very weird to me. It could be your personality type. There are some people that don't attach to causes. They just don't. Well, but you have your cause. Causes I do attach to, but I guess my thing is I have this personality where the minute there is drama around anything, I want out. Like, push the eject button.

I'm done. I'm out of this. I want nothing to do with it. I have, there is enough crap in the world. There's enough heartache, enough aggravation. There's enough stress. Every one of us has a nine to five. Okay, almost every one of us has a freaking

9 to 5 that most of us don't like that much. I love my job. First of all, screw you. I'm a sociopath. It's fine. First of all, screw you. I love you death dick, but screw you. Most of us don't care for our job

in the best of times and detest it in the worst of times that's normal you freaking sociopath but anyway so i get to cut steel and play with robots man come on don't make me hate you i like you don't screw that up like tell me tell me you have an annoying co-worker or something something that like lets me like sure but he shuts himself in his office all the time i don't have to deal with him if only i could get my annoying co-workers to lock themselves in their office if we had offices that'd be a nice chair in front of the door yeah cubicle hells don't work that well no they don't but i digress i i just i i just had to get it off my chest because, ooh, that was fun.

That was weird. Anyway, but I had to get it off my chest because, Jesus Christ, there's been a bunch of people fighting like teenage girls on the Internet over who their favorite autistic knucklehead is, and it's just freaking ridiculous so if you are one of those people fighting over who your favorite autistic knucklehead is on social media unless i'm your favorite autistic knucklehead that's a different situation we will take your weaponized autism that's fine no i No, I'm just saying, like, just knock off the nonsense.

But also, I kind of lay a lot of this, honestly, at the feet of gun tubers themselves because so many of them, they take themselves entirely too seriously. They portray a character on their channel. And whether or not any of them will admit that, a lot of them will not. They portray a character in front of the cameras. I think it's arguable that you and I even portray a character on here. I'm going to be honest. There are aspects of our personality we would not bring to this stream because it's unacceptable for whatever reason. No, seriously.

There is probably something in our lives that would offend our audience or is not relevant to what we're talking about. Hmm. Let me chew on that for a second. Think about it. I mean, it's just like oppo research against a politician, man. This is Irish whiskey and Coke, by the way. So, like, I've had enough of this.

I finished my whiskey before we went on. Fairly well lubricated i don't know like i guess i guess my whole i guess my whole thought process is like as far as like whether or not we quote unquote play character on this show it's just like first of all i just don't i don't want to say i don't care because i love this show and I love talking to the audience. I don't care enough about popularity, fame, money, or anything to put myself through the aggravation of being anybody I'm not. I refuse. Oh, I'm not saying we're being something we're not.

I'm just saying there are portions of our lives, I'm sure, that are not relevant to what we talk about i mean just the parts and i think that's any channel just the parts that my wife tells me not to ever discuss on the show sure those are fair i can't go any further down that road or she'll kick the door and then beat the crap out of me that's still that's still to some extent playing a character i i guess my thought process is like it's one thing to say that there are parts of my life that need to stay private because like that was one thing i i really respected from like um demolition ranch matt character and i've never met the guy never even

talked to him he doesn't know i exist but like i really respect the fact that he in in the course of all the content he created he intentionally intentionally kept his family separate from it because he didn't want them to be super recognizable to a huge group of people. And I totally understand that. Totally get it. Respect it. I'm cool with that. But I feel like that's a different thing than I am portraying a persona. I'm playing a part and then they get so invested

in that part that gets them the attention the clicks the money they become that caricature of who they really are and that's fair i suppose i was thinking about it from a different angle you i think you were thinking about it like if i'm not like wide open pedal to the metal that i'm playing a character i'm saying that there saying that there are people in social media land that the person that they are when the camera turns off is not the person they are when the camera turns off. Oh, I see. Okay. Yep. I was thinking about it a little sideways.

Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. No, that makes a lot of sense. But in any case. Just freaking high school drama, dude. It's been ridiculous. Well, you're always going to get some people that are going to be my team good, your team bad.

Because you're not my team. And they have nothing else to occupy their time or energy. And I think that's a shame because there's plenty to do. Just saying, guys. Please don't make your entire personality about defending somebody else's entire personality that is made up to get them attention, clicks, and money off the internet. Just don't do that. Turn off Instagram for like a week and go touch grass,

and you'll be so much of a happier person. I can't even tell you. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Undoubtedly. touch grass and you'll be so much of a happier person i can't even tell you oh yeah oh yeah undoubtedly so nick is going to talk to the audience about something that i know very little about because it doesn't get that daggum cold down here and like i told nick it's plenty cold no no no i've heard numbers come out of y'all that start with the word negative and none of that is none of that is okay like my winter preps include don't move to places where it is negative anything because negative is

bad i learned that in school negative is bad i don't negative negative can be bad yes negative can be dangerous negative no no you let's take to us come on nick meet me in the middle negative is bad like it's been in the teens one time i can remember down here in louisiana and that was catastrophic that was damn they're apocalyptic the idea that it would be below zero it it it man you get used to it and yeah clothing in your house baloney no you do no no no you you get used to it. And you have clothing for it in your house. Bologna. No, you do. No, no, no, no.

You do get used to it. Listen, I have used that line. I have lied to people with that exact same line about the heat. Is that what you're talking about, the mosquitoes and the humidity? Yes. Whenever I talk about the mosquitoes the size of chickens that will carry your kids off if they're not fed well enough, I am lying to you. of chickens that'll carry your kids off if they're not fed well enough i am lying to you whenever i talk about that you'll get used to the heat when it's 95 degrees and 200 relative humidity i am lying to you so when nick tells me you'll get used to the winter he is lying to me i have heard that those words and that tone he is a liar a liar well look man it's a liar i don't know anything different so i just

i dress for it i prepare my vehicle for it our houses are insulated so much better to some extent than you guys down south especially our our attics okay so it's massively different so i will say that home construction i i would say that insulation-wise, our houses are probably insulated fairly similar because at the end of the day, well, energy conservation is energy conservation. And down here, our big problem is keeping the houses cool in the summer and not letting the air conditioning leak out of your house i will say one thing that is noteworthy before we get to like what winter hazards are is i didn't realize this until i started venturing further north i started seeing air conditioning vents i call them air conditioning vents because that's what comes out of them down here all the time but i started seeing hvac vents on the floor and they're not on the floor down here they're all in the ceiling and that was weird to me and

i started asking people like why are the vents on the floor that's weird and everybody was like because we use the heater more of the time and hot air rises and i'm like well that makes perfect sense y'all live up here where it's hell i live down south where the air it's a different kind of hell yeah where the air conditioning cold air falls the air conditioning comes out of the top and then comes down. But seeing the heater vents on the floor, I was like, why in the hell do they put those crazy things there? Anyway, culture shock. It's easier to work on a heater in a basement than it is in an attic. Yeah, although for the same reason, like, I didn't know what snow chains looked like for the first half of my life.

Still don't own a set. Thank Christ. I don't either. I own a four-wheel drive with rugged terrain tires. So, you know, it all helps. You know, it's, yes, you know, you don't have as cold as I do, which is fantastic for you. Love it.

Glad to hear it. My face hurts when I go outside for multiple months of the year, not just because of the heat, but is fantastic for you. Love it. Glad to hear it. My face hurts when I go outside for multiple months of the year, not just because of the heat, because of the cold. I mean, one of the things I wanted to bring up, you know, a few years ago, we had that polar vortex where you had wind chills in the, I think, negative 40s, negative 50s for about a week. What a lot of people did not realize was just how dangerous how quickly those temperatures can be and even down by you guys you got into that i think in the teens there and in fact i i found this little handy dandy chart here as you guys who are watching on video can see this

chart has one to four different colors ranging from purple, which is super bad, to a nice light blue, which is not so bad. And for the audience listeners, I will do my best to include a link in the show description so that y'all can view this chart. But if I don't, then you can yell at me because I forgot. Yeah, and if he doesn't, it is basically a NOAA windchill chart giving you approximations of when you can expect frostbite on exposed skin at various temperatures and various wind speeds okay so for instance fills in the teens temperature call it uh let's say the the lowest i have degrees no no the lowest i have

ever ever ever seen in southeast louisiana 19, and it was for one hour. Okay, so 19 for one hour. You don't have to worry about frostbite at all within an hour. I didn't have to worry about frostbite at all because I was inside underneath heavy blankets with the heater running. It was glorious. That's snow shoveling weather. That's balmy.

Oh. So, you know, even if you had a 60 mile an hour wind according to this chart at 19 degrees we'll call it 20 for rounding sake you're only in a 60 mile an hour wind experiencing negative four degree temperatures so you will not get frostbite within 30 minutes fantastic but you move on down the chart towards the middle here at zero. So not negative, not positive, zero. At a 15-mile-an-hour wind, which is not uncommon, within 30 minutes, you could experience frostbite on exposed skin.

Now, some of the temperatures we had a few years back, negative 48, negative 55, it was bouncing between negative 20, negative 25 on the thermometer with about a 20 to 25 mile an hour wind, depending on the day. So at that point in the chart, you're at, you're getting towards the higher end of danger zone. Within 10 minutes of being outside, having exposed skin to that wind, you could experience frostbite. That is freaking stupid. 10 minutes. So a walk down

the block or a couple blocks over, depending on how fast you walk, you can experience frostbite. Now, we've never had into the purple zone over here weather is not gun chat no but your guns will stop working when the weather gets cold enough ask the germans um you know i've never seen it into the purple where you can get frostbite in in under five minutes so you're talking like negative 15 with a 45 mile an hour wind,

stuff like that. That is Alaska. That is North Canada. That is all the terrible places even I would not want to visit in the winter. It's called hell. It is frozen over hell. Technically, you live in hell as far as I'm concerned, but you know. It's fine.

It's fine. It's warm today. It's like 33 33 35 degrees oh it's not a problem it's it's foggy and kind of pissing rain i'm sure it's going to freeze overnight and it's going to lead to a spicy commute dude i was i was smoking my pipe on the back porch in short sleeves earlier yeah no no we will we will not be doing that for a while now but i just thought this was an interesting chart to bring up. If you're out shoveling snow and it is cold, you should take this into account for how cold it is. Take breaks, warm your skin up.

Frostbite can be pretty severe and it can lead to gangrene and skin death. And amputations if you're really unfortunate and you happen to let it go too far. But, you know, a lot of us were doing some travel in December. I know December's haven't been super cold, but a lot of us are going to be traveling, probably seeing family for New Year's. Car breakdown in extreme cold with wind, especially with wind. You're you're not going to want to leave your vehicle and this is a perfect example of why because say you're a few miles from say the gas station where you need to get gas to get your car that's on the side of the road if it takes you more than 30 minutes and you're in the negative 20s including wind chill you could be experiencing frostbite.

You could end up with some medical complications from that. You know, it does not take as long as people think. And this doesn't take into account hypothermia. Yeah, if your skin gets exposed to moisture, or if you get dunked and your clothing is wet, that's just a whole new level of can't keep yourself warm i was going to say like fortunately most of these temperatures if i ever see most of these temperatures in my part of the country like we're humanity has ended we're all dead new ice age but like you and i were talking about before

the show like one of the thing one of the winter hazards that we have to be on the watch for down here is ice on is black ice because in in in the in the peak of the winter it does get cold enough especially overnight that you can get down to you know the frost point or freezing point and yet it's still warm enough for most of the day that it will legit rain for a lot of the day or sleet and especially in southeast louisiana like anybody from down here knows that like i literally cannot drive to the next town east or west from me without going over a bridge it cannot be done no back road will get you there without going over at least a short bridge right because of the the incredible volume no pun intended of lakes and rivers in this area and swamps and everything else it's just a thing so like one of the things we

have to be very cautious about when it gets really cold is black ice on elevated roadways and you'll see those signs on every single one of those bridges warning bridge is before the roadway, because the interstate highway, because it's over land kind of like heat sinks and it will, it will maintain its temperature into that cold part of the night longer than the elevated roadway. Well,

so I've had that a lot around here. Yeah. So I've had a black eyes experience one time in my life where and then to tell you the story it was wild when i left my house in slidell for anybody that's down here i was heading to hammond to take a final at college that tells you how long ago this was it was 40 degrees and raining when i left Slidell. Before I got to Hammond, the temperature dropped 10 degrees because a front was coming in and the rain turned to sleet. And then I drove over one of those dozen bridges you have to drive

going over the interstate because that's where I live. And halfway across this little bitty bridge, the truck started yawing to the left. Like, it was the weirdest experience of my entire life because it wasn't like I was changing lanes or touched the brakes or did anything to provoke this. The truck just started pivoting on its axis towards the guardrail. And doing what I did, I started to countersteer the slide like you're supposed to. Now I had an old 94 Toyota pickup without power steering. A full manual rack. When I turned that wheel, even at highway speeds, you'll feel some resistance.

I could have turned the whole wheel with my pinky. The tires were just gliding across black ice. Oh, absolutely. And as soon as I twist the wheel, I was like, oh, shit. Oh, absolutely. And as soon as I twist the wheel, I was like, oh, shit. So I literally just, nothing I could do except just, you know, literally press the back of my head against the seat back and just wait for the bang because I was going to hit the guardrail, and I did.

And thankfully nobody was around me to hit me after I hit the guardrail. And fortunately I had a crowbar in my toolbox so I could pull the bumper off of the tire and not slice my tire. And I continued driving along my way to go take my final and got stuck in traffic for three and a half hours because two 18 wheelers also hit black ice and then spun off the interstate. But anyway, long story made short. Hey, you know what, man? That is why it is a time-honored pastime up here.

Anytime you don't see people in a parking lot, in a big parking lot, and you've got a teenager you're teaching how to drive, you take them in there before the plows, and you put them in a spin. Put them in a spin, throw them across an icy patch. They're going to slide to a stop before they hit anything in all these big parking lots. Heck, a big Walmart parking lot is perfect for that when they're closed. On the rare event that they're closed, but, you know, your farm and lawn stores, that sort of thing. Let them slide the car.

Let them learn what it feels like to be out of control of the car and how to recover it. Or at the very least, how to make it less bad when they when they do stop yeah because unfortunately on ice there's nothing you can do there's really not no i mean i'm gonna tell you that at the time i had this accident i mean i'd been autocrossing road racing for a couple years i was you understood how to how to handle a slide i was very there and also because like you know a lot of times so like a lot of people don't understand that like when you do like road racing like at at the big tracks they'll close if it rains autocrossing scca doesn't give a damm

at all if it's raining or not so if you show up to an autocross and it's raining you're going to autocross in the rain and you're going to get very very familiar even at a front wall drive car you're going to get super familiar with what it feels like for the back end to slide out and you're going to learn to live with it because that's just the way it is which by the way it should be which by the way masamiatas get really really fun on a wet on wet pavement just gonna leave that 1500 pickups yeah well needless to say i had spent a couple years understanding exactly what it felt like and how to deal with a sliding car but i'm going to tell you this was the first time i'd hit black ice there was nothing to be done nope there literally there was no input i could make to the truck to make it do what I wanted it to do.

Once that truck twisted on that road at 70 miles an hour, I was just along for the ride. Well, you were on a near zero friction surface. Yeah. And none of the controls of your vehicle work without friction against the roadway. That's the reality of it. And unfortunately, black ice is very very smooth and i mean to top it off hell i was in a 94 toyota pickup actually had really good friggin like all season tires like i i don't know what i could have done differently to have not hit the to have not encountered that problem other than to just realize there was black

ice on that road. But, you know, like I said, that's it. Yeah. But like I said, when, when I, when I left, when I left home, 40 degrees and raining in 20 minutes, the temperature dropped 10 degrees. Like that's how, and then by the way, this was the, the end result of this front was that eight inches of snow fell in Hammond, Louisiana. It was the apocalypse as far as we were concerned. It knocked power out. It shut down interstates. I was going to take a final for 8 a.m. in the morning. I never made it to college because the campus closed.

I found that out while I was stuck in traffic. And I didn't get home until 12.30, 12.45 in the afternoon. Like it took that long. It was supposed to be a 45-minute drive. It took that long to like double back and make my way on the back roads back home. It was a situation. But anyway.

Well, that can happen up up here even where we have plenty of snow plows i mean it uh was it three or four years ago and it might have been five years ago uh new year's eve we were coming home from my wife's uh family's houses and there was 12 inches of snow that came down fortunately i have a high ground clearance pickup and I live in an area with fantastic amounts of snow plows because we get 12, 14 inch snow falls at least once a year. So yeah, the roads were shit, but you know, between having a high ground clearance vehicle with better tires and them plowing intermittently it wasn't a problem for us as opposed to down here where i've never seen a snow plow my entire life right there are no snow plows because why would

there be because the two times in a decade that it snows that much it melts within three days yeah joe nick nick is in illinois illinois we get we, 14-inch snowfalls fairly regularly. I mean, it's pretty rare to have a year where we don't have at least six or eight-inch snowfall multiple times. It doesn't always stick around. Before we move on to winter preps, I wanted to ask, I know you get legit blizzards. On occasion.

Do you also get ice storms where you're at? Yes. Okay. Yeah, we do. I asked because three years ago, I know we get those in North Louisiana. I know those are not uncommon at all in like Arkansas in that area. I wasn't sure if you got them as far north as you are.

We can. They're more rare. We tend to get more snow than that. Or if we do get rain, it tends to be like light freezing rain but we did get i think it was a half to three-eighths inch of ice build up a couple three years ago uh fortunately i had just that year gotten my generator panel installed and uh we had a very cozy three days next to our fireplace so you know um it's it's rare but it does tend to take out power pretty much everywhere oh yeah uh there were there were some areas let's

see it was so it was three days for us uh some of the other people out of town near me, it was seven days. I know for a couple of neighborhoods by us, it was a week and a half. Sounds about right. My wife, my wife. So ice storms were actually like one of her principal, one of her family's like principal preparedness scenarios growing up. And again, my wife didn't grow up in a prepper family neither did i we we did the stuff we did because it's hurricanes down here and they did stuff they did because it was ice storms up in north louisiana but like a lot of the things they did like having extra food in the freezer and you know being able to kind of

like shut up in your house keep warm and live off what you had like that was all based around the fact that when you get a snowstorm up there in rural north Louisiana, you're going to sit at your house and live off what you have for probably anywhere from 7 to 14 days. Yeah, like 10 years ago, we had the – well, it was more than 10 years ago. No, it would be about 10 years ago. In 2014, we got like 36 inches of snow or something like that overnight 36 inches of snow with i believe it was 35 to 45 mile an

hour winds with gusts up to i think 55 was the peak yeah i had a snow drift against my i had a red chevy pickup at the time and when i woke up to go to work i was told i i saw a text that said hey we're not going to work today fantastic excellent because when i looked out my bedroom window i could not see the cab of my pickup because the drift had covered my pickup why haven't you moved down here to louisiana yet oh because it's only happens like i think it's happened like twice in my life oh you know only know, I didn't have twice in my life. Have I not been able to find my truck in the front yard because there was so much snow on the ground? Yeah, but, you know, I mean, I was born and raised here, man.

The whole family's here. You know, it's it's interesting when that happens because you get to you get to watch the entire landscape around you change over the course of like an hour and a half you know you used to I don't know how many of you guys are interested in history but that's another reason why I do not move right there so so Nick

my wife loves the snow I don't want you or your wife to take this the wrong way but has she she have like a history of mental illness in her family like you know unfortunately several of her family members i'm pretty our democrats oh well i had to make the ron swanson job i'm sorry well that that tears at your wife is insane lovely woman but nuts yeah she's a good kind of nuts she's fun but um you know yes we do get blizzards we do get ice storms and you are not going to leave when you get one of those uh for instance in our small neighborhood it's less than half a mile from my house to the

highway and we had three different power lines down across the road from the ice storms, from trees taking out power lines. You're just not going to travel. And so you need to be reasonably self-sufficient for that. And fortunately for us, at least for our area at the time, it stayed in the upper 30s for the entirety of that ice storm a couple years ago so it wasn't as bad for people their houses only got down into the upper 40s to upper 30s depending on how bad your house insulation was my neighbor up the hill for me said her house got down to about i think 39 or 38 degrees inside so they didn't have to worry so much about pipes freezing. But at that point, you're well into temperature zones where even under blankets and in coats,

you can get into hypothermia territory, which is getting very dangerous. That's one of the things I wanted to bring up, just the symptoms of hypothermia. Shivering, slurred speech, clumsiness, weak pulse, lack of coordination, memory loss dizziness uh redness of the the skin and face and then you know obviously eventually loss of consciousness i mean the worst thing you can have if someone is cold is they're no longer shivering because you

know they they burn through their body's reserves of glucose, and their body cannot keep themselves warm anymore. You know, that can happen indoors if your power's out and your heat is off. It's also worth pointing out that it happens at much higher temperatures than you would believe once you get soaking wet, once immersion happens. I've seen someone get hypothermic on a 75-degree day with a light wind. Yeah. I was going to say, I've seen people have trouble maintaining their core temperature as high as, like, the high 50s. Yeah.

And, I mean, that's why, like, and again, very different climate down in southeast Louisiana. And I'm slurring my speech, but it's whiskey, not hypothermia. Blame the wassail yes but like it's worth pointing out that like that's why in most in any situation where a person's self-preservation is called into question like you have to keep them warm you have to keep them dry those two things come ahead almost come ahead of everything except like you know severe arterial bleed or something that's going to take you out of the next 45 to 40 seconds to two minutes like you have to be hyper concerned and aware of a person's core temperature because if it gets too low nothing else you do is going to offset the fact that they're hypothermic their

body will start shutting down and their internal organ damage will accelerate faster from blood loss if they are also cold yeah i mean that was an interesting thing that we learned in g watt from a lot of the a lot of the trauma care if you could keep and believe it or not in the desert it does get freaking cold if you could keep a casualty warm while you were evacuating them you could keep their core body temperature up they stood a much higher chance of survival even with like multiple limb loss well and you and i have traumatic injuries and you and i talked about this in in central iraq where i was like in the winter i can remember the lows being in the high teens. And because I worked the night shift, I was out on active flight line in the teens.

And in the desert. With 10 to 15 mile an hour winds. I'm going to tell you that the coldest I've been in my life was when I was trying to service a de-icing ring on the top of a rotor head. So on top of the fact that I'm on a flight line, it's like midnight. It's dark outside. I'm holding a flashlight in my teeth. I'm standing on top of an aircraft, so I have no freaking cover whatsoever. It is so godforsaken cold outside that I cannot feel my fingertips.

But the thing I am trying to fix is so tiny and fiddly, I can't do it with gloves on. So I took my gloves off put my hands down the front of my pants to warm them up too much information i know but just stick with me on this until i had enough heat and feeling in my fingertips to pull my hands out and do as much as i could before my hands went numb again and back down the pants they went and i repeated this until i eventually got everything like threaded in and torqued and tight. I swear to God, it's the coldest I've ever been in my life.

That is an average weekend snow shoveling in the winter. I would just die. I'd light myself on fire to not be that cold again. Unfortunately, that is a real danger up here, especially with homeless populations

uh in chicago it happens every once in a while you guys will see it on the news rockford illinois it happened a couple times last year an abandoned building with some homeless individuals they set a fire in a burn barrel and it got out of control and it led to a structure fire and a couple of people died well and i don't know if you count this as a winter hazard but i mean how many how many times has a person friggin given themselves carbon monoxide poisoning from running a heater in an enclosed area it happens propane heaters kerosene heaters firing up your stove and opening the door or firing up your oven and opening the door to heat your house can can lead to carbon monoxide poisoning we see it all the time we see it all the time it is a real shame and it is something that they talk about on the news up here fairly

regularly that you cannot heat your house with those things and that's part of where the winter preps come in i mean making sure you have at least up here enough blankets jackets uh snow gear to keep yourself warm inside your house or even inside your car one of the things i insist for my wife because we drive country roads coming home and you could slide off into a ditch is that she keeps a pair of insulated winter boots insulated coveralls and heavy gloves and a heavy hat in addition to whatever else she's bringing with her for the day in her car just you know it you leave for work in the morning the weather might be just fine we could have had 10 inches of snow while you're at work and now you're driving down some roads that are less plowed nine so well and like winter preps down here is pretty freaking simple because it's like two things that i always try to impress upon people because there's not a lot of winter to

prep for down here relatively but the two things i always lean on a person about, and one of these will probably resonate really heavily with you. First of all, I keep a poncho in my vehicle at all times. Because again, for down here, for the weather we have, my bigger worry is not necessarily snow. Because if it's snow, the whole state shuts down. I stay home for a day. Getting what? I turn on the fireplace and pour myself a drink

and we ain't going anywhere until it's done. But the thing I'm much more worried about is if it's cold and raining, because that happens a lot. And if you get wet and cold, hypothermia is right around the corner. So like I would rather even if I and by the way, like I usually make a habit in the in the colder months of keeping a jacket in the truck at all times. Even if I don't keep it in the truck, I'll I'll never go anywhere without having a jacket in the truck at all times, even if I don't keep it in the truck, I'll never go anywhere without having a jacket in the truck just to be on the safe side. But the poncho stays in there year-round.

Yeah. Because you would not believe how often you think you're just going across town and the next thing you know, like, you catch a flat or something happens and you're out in the elements and you're getting rained on. So poncho, like, rain gear is mandatory and it doesn't sound like it'd be a winter prep but it turns into that really fast when it's on by you it absolutely is when it's like 40 50 degrees and you're soaking wet and the other thing is i don't go anywhere without twice as much fuel as i expect to burn. If I'm driving to New Orleans and back, I know that that round trip is 100 miles.

I will not leave my hometown with less than 200 miles worth of fuel. Period. End discussion. Because if you are in that situation like I was when I was driving to college. And you're going to be stuck on the interstate for two and a half hours at a standstill waiting on the roads to get cleared and it's freaking 30 degrees outside and it's snowing the truck becomes a lifeline because it has a heater in it it has a heater and it's a fantastic wind blocker yes you really don't feel the wind when you're closed up inside of a car yeah but and having to be mindful of if you're going to run that heater and there is snow make sure that your exhaust stays clear because you can get carbon monoxide coming into the cab

and you can asphyxiate yourself fairly rapidly that way no i mean and that that's a fair point but i guess i'm saying is like i it never fails when i watch the news and i see people that get stuck in a snow drift and they've run out of fuel and now like the thing that could have been a survival shelter just turned into a casket because it's very quickly i mean we were talking earlier about how homes are fairly well insulated cars really aren't because unlike unlike a home see a home all it has to do is keep keep keep a roof over your head and keep walls around you it could weigh friggin a hundred thousand pounds as long as the earth underneath it doesn't shift cars have the weight is irrelevant yeah cars have competing priorities and the heavier

they are the worse their gas mileage and the more their emissions so auto manufacturers have to ride this weird line of it's got to be insulated enough to be energy efficient but not so insulated that it weighs too much so if the heater stops that vehicle is going to get outside room temperature very very quickly. Yeah. So, like, that's just the only – The biggest benefit you'll have then is you won't have the wind chill. Yeah, but even then, I mean, it's not going to be a huge – And the other problem is that if you run out of fuel,

now you're forced out of the vehicle to go find help. Or you're forced to wait there and hope help comes to you. I mean – Well, I can tell you this. If you do find yourself in a vehicle out of fuel and it is sub-zero temperatures or blizzard conditions, your best chance is to be in that vehicle staying right there. Because you are on the road where the plows and EMS are going to be coming.

Eventually. Because they're not going to leave your car sitting in the middle of the road. They just won't. Conscious or unconscious, they're going to find, conscious or unconscious or dead, I suppose, they're going to find your vehicle when they attempt to clear the road. And not being out in that wind chill or not being out in a blinding blizzard may be the difference.

Because people have survived in unheated cars for days. They have. It's miserable miserable i wouldn't wish it on anyone but it is survivable if you have extra clothing in your vehicle and if you keep a blanket in your vehicle you know which another thing i like to recommend to people around here is a blanket in their vehicle and have speaking of winter preps having a mechanic you trust look over your car before you go into winter make sure all your fluids are topped off make sure your tires are in good enough shape to make it through the icy snowy conditions and your your summer your summer street tires are not going to do in four inches of snow when you have a

four inch ground clearance coupe well that and i can tell you that if you haven't checked your tire pressures in six months the first the first freeze you get those tires are going to be below well below operating pressure because absolutely like if you think now again i hate to say it this way because most people when i say this kind of stuff, they're like, no shit, Phil. But you wouldn't believe how many people don't think about it until I mention it. But you do understand that, like, air expands and contracts based on temperature. So when you drive your vehicle and the tires are running over the interstate, they heat up and your tire pressure will increase a little bit. And when you leave it parked in front of your house and it gets freaking cold outside,

the temperature comes down, the pressure goes down. And tires, a completely perfect tire with not a hole in it, not a nail, will lose about a half a pressure, a half a pound of pressure per month on average. And that's normal. That's not a problem with the tire. No temperature fluctuations.

That's with no temperature fluctuations. That's without a leaking leaking valve core or leaking bead or a nail in the tire that's if it's perfect it's going to lose a half a pound because the pores in the tire are bigger than the air molecules are that's just the way that's the way physics screwed us over i don't know how else to tell you but the problem is that if you haven't checked tire pressures in six in six months the first time it gets down to 30s, thank Christ for tire pressure monitoring systems these days warning people. But, like, I used to see it very regularly, that first hard freeze we would get every year, you'd see people line up on the side of the road with busted tires. Because, yeah, tire pressure got too low. They got out on the road the tire you know maybe it had it

was a little suspect was a little old and you pushed it beyond its design characteristics and a little dry rotted yeah so i mean that happens yeah and also like most people don't realize this and it's not an issue for a lot of people because like they'll wear the tread off their tires before this comes up but if you don't drive a lot um nhtsa national highway transit safety authority they've been recommending since i worked in mechanic shops when i was putting myself through college they have consistently recommended that if your tires are five years beyond their date of manufacture they be changed yeah and if you don't know when the tire was manufactured there's a day code stamped on the side of it

but the cheat code is if you bought the damn things 5 years ago it's time to put a new set on yeah with the understanding that even if you bought them 5 years ago sometimes if it's a weird size or a brand that doesn't turn over very much

those tires could have been manufactured a year before you put them on your vehicle. So you might only have four years left. And again, if you buy a tire and you drive 30,000 miles a year, you're going to knock all the tread off them before that comes up. But if you're a person who works from home like I do a lot, I mean, the last set of tires I put on my truck, I put it on because the tires were dry rotting they still had half they still had half their tread life on them it's it's a shame it's a shame but you know the rubber degrades because of uv and oxygen exposure yeah and there's nothing

you can do about it unfortunately and car batteries car batteries batteries also love to die in the winter for chemical reasons. Especially when you get down into the negatives. You can have a brand new battery, and if it gets down to negative 50 with the windshield, your car's going to struggle to start. It just is. The chemical reactions

do not work at those extreme low temperatures as well. Especially if you park outside. My chemical reactions don't work well at those temperatures. Well, that's fair, man. Humans don't really operate well in super cold temperatures or super hot temperatures. But that's why we have to take advantage of the technology we have and remember to bring with the clothing items we have

or can have with us so that we have that extra cushion. You know, it's one thing that a lot of people don't think about, especially I noticed when after Hurricane Katrina, when a lot of families moved up to the Chicagoland area from New Orleans, changing out your antifreeze and your radiator fluid. out your antifreeze and your radiator fluid yeah your guys's radiator fluid freezes at a much higher temperature than it does than the radiator fluid they put into cars up here that's a fair i mean that's fair it's i i have seen people's radiators explode in my high school parking lot because their car came from up from down south and they did not flush their radiator and put proper cold winter rated radiator fluid in i will also say that uh not that it applies to any of you stages that choose to live up in those places but for those of you who are moving to a place where it gets much colder also bear in mind

that the oil you put in your vehicle very often is dependent upon – the weight is dependent upon the ambient temperatures. Like down here, I guarantee you I probably put in a thinner grade of oil than – or a thicker grade of oil than what Nick does because down here, it gets from – I mean, on average winter, it might get as low as 30, maybe. And it'll get us 20, 30. Hmm. 20, wait, 30. 10, 30. 10, 30. Yeah, 10, 30 is okay for most stuff.

I mean, our snowblowers, we run with like 530 in them for the most part. But another thing you got to watch out for, windshield washer fluid. Windshield washer fluid. There are multiple blends, and the all-season blend is only good to about 15 or 20 degrees. I've heard this, but honestly, down here, you can't always find the winter blend everywhere around here because it just doesn't get cold enough often enough to justify it. Yeah. And personally, I have never seen windshield washer fluid down here freeze. I have watched it freeze coming out of my windshield washer nozzles with the winter blend in.

That is stupid. Yeah. It'll hit your windshield and it'll glaze your windshield solid. Yeah. yeah it'll it'll hit your windshield and it'll it'll glaze your windshield solid yeah see i use windshield washer fluid to like unglaze and unice my windshield because it just doesn't get that cold down here it makes it worse if your engine is not up to temperature and that fluid is not nice and and warm it will make it worse see that's what we call a hint. That's when you should turn. To let your car warm up. No, no, that's when you should relocate.

Come down to the land of milk and honey. It's awful hard to go snowshoeing when mosquitoes are walking off with your children. I don't see a bad, that's when you feed your kids so that they're heavy enough that the mosquitoes can't carry them off. This is when having a chubby child is a benefit. Well, there is that. It's a survival thing. It's not the fact that we eat. It's not the fact that everything we eat is deep fried and battered in butter.

Hey, that's just being delicious. But I know I brought this up when we were talking about the home improvement preps, but know where your water shutoffs are if you live in an on-air climate. Because if you do happen to lose power in the winter you're going to need to drain down all of your water lines hot cold if you have boiler heat like me know how to drain your boiler because if it gets down below 30 and your boiler freezes you will crack your heating element in your boiler and then it's a whole new system i mean this bears pointing out but our buddy stewart when they had the polar vortex in Houston.

Yeah, the big freeze. If memory serves me, he was the only person on his entire street that did not have burst pipes. So when the temperature finally came back up, he was supplying water for the whole daggum street because everybody else had burst pipes. everybody else had burst pipes well and i if i recall correctly down there their water pipes come in at grade level or above like they they pop out like a gas line and come in the side of your house yeah so that that that's not breaking out there that's not uncommon down here but again it all comes down to like you know you and me and me me and Andrew have had this conversation over the years about how, like, the way an individual or an area preps for winter is kind of dependent upon the area. And, like, down here with what our average temperature swings are, the polar vortex Texas felt, it's not an exaggeration to say it's record setting. Yes, it is and it yeah it was it reset people's expectation of what a

polar vortex could or would ever be down here it it doesn't happen i mean it's no different than like you know we the entire state shut down down here for two days because it got down to i want to say like 19 degrees and it didn't get back above freezing for 40 hours. And that was apocalyptic down here. Yeah, your heaters are just not big enough to handle that. My heater was fine. Like, we were okay. We were okay in my house.

But when I say apocalyptic, I mean, like, the state declared a state of an emergency. The parish declared a—and for anybody that's not down here, like parish is y'all's county. It's the same thing. We just call it different stuff because we're weird. But like the parish declared a state of emergency. People were told you will be escorted back to your house if you attempt to leave. Like we are serious about stay off of the freaking roads unless you're going to a hospital. Like, we are serious about stay off of the freaking roads unless you're going to a hospital.

And if you are, we would rather you call an ambulance and let us come get you rather than you get out on the roads. Like, it was all hands to battle stations. And by the way, at a moment like that where you would swear up and down, somebody would be screaming about how, like, the government is going to tell me what to do. No one argued. Well, it's very similar to when we had the polar the polar vortex around here and it got to negative 50 nobody argued with the travel restrictions of unless you're going to work or the or a doctor you do not travel because in your house i mean in my house i lived in a house that was built in the 1940s at the time it was a a GI special. Alright? You're familiar with that? Oh yeah. Insulation wasn't great. We had

frost forming on the interior walls of the house despite our temperature in the house being in like the 68-69 region. We had frost forming on the exterior walls. That is belligerently ridiculous.

The wind is just that cold. Yeah. So, I mean, is there anything else we can chuck in here for winter preps? I mean... You know what? Believe it or not, make sure your footwear,

even if it's not insulated boots, are rated for the temperatures you expect to experience. Summer shoes, the rubber in them is too hard for some winter temperatures and the and the rubber can crack and come apart and delaminate i've seen it happen i had a pair of uh phil you'd be familiar with these, the Danner Air Force tan boots from G. Watt, a buddy of mine. The Air Force was giving away boots like you wouldn't believe. And we had the same shoe size, and he was a chair force vet. So he kept shucking me shoes.

Well, the problem was when you wear those desert boots and it's 15 degrees or below out, the rubber inner sole is too brittle and it cracks and the sole starts to delaminate while you're walking down the street. I'm giving you this look that the, the audio listeners can't, can't, can't see because like the idea that is too cold for your shoe, for your rubber shoes doesn't compute in my brain because i've never the rubber the worst attraction in the cold

and the and the more brittle but like i'm not i'm not mentally challenged i understand physics but it's it sucks but it's what it's more of the like what do you mean it gets that cold where you live because it doesn't get that cold anywhere that i've ever lived everywhere and but really it only has to get down to like 15 degrees for it to be too cold for some shoe rubbers yeah but 15 degrees is also too cold for phil to be outside that's fair there's a terminal element that's upset with how cold my weather gets i don't remember where he from, but I'm guessing it's a place where, like, it's too cold for boots doesn't compute. Like, there's no part of that. There's no part of that that's even called for.

Somebody needs to have a discussion with Mother Nature about calming the hell down. But don't tell her to calm down. I drive a V8 pickup. I'm trying to help with the global warming. It's just not working very fast i mean i got a toyota but it's an old toyota that giggles every time you say the word gas mileage around it so like i'm doing everything i can think of right i also eat lots of red meat so like i'm doing my best to i'm doing my best guys i don't know what to tell you. To both boost and drop the cow population. Yes.

Damn it. Good point, Nick. You're helping and hurting. That's everything I can think of. But I'm making my own farts to offset the cow farts that are no longer being produced. So there is that. You're bringing balance to the force. Balance to the force balance to the force okay so yeah i mean i this was your idea to bring up and like i told you from the word go like

anytime we have a discussion about winter preparedness i'm pretty much gonna sit here and make the jokes because i have no freaking like my definition of winter preparedness is to to have to fill my viking ale horn with bourbon and Coke and sit by the fire. Because we're not going outside while it's winter. I'm not going outside until it's spring again. I'll hibernate for the winter. How about that? I'll just be a bear.

That's fair. That's probably the best way to deal with winter. You know, Idaho gets cold. Idaho gets cold. Idaho gets cold. But, yeah, like you said, Midwest cold, it really depends. I mean, we can have pretty mild winters. So far, our winter's been pretty mild. I think we've only had two or three days where we've been in the negative so far.

But we're not to the cold part of the year yet. That's coming up after the new year. Only two or three days where it's been the negatives yeah i mean sometimes in december we'll have the entire well most of the month of december will be near zero to sub-zero we've had that quite fairly often so nick not that i was ever considering moving to illinois for for a variety of reasons for political reasons i recommend you don't well i'll put it this way like gilly and i were talking about the matter of fact's camping trip and like i have already picked my route to go around your

home state no and no offense do that do that yeah there's nothing here that's worth it except for maybe the museums in chicago make a separate trip no if you want to see those i don't know there's a german submarine you can walk through it's pretty baller um let's just say that your submarine and put it on land let's just say that i don't drive across the country without taking a bag of party favors with me and um i would really rather like not be in prison until my daughter gets married yeah illinois like new york likes to flaunt the safe travel laws of the federal government so be mindful of illinois firearms laws if you are going to come here as much as i disagree with them they will try to enforce them on you and they will probably succeed because unlike us

their lawyers are paid for by millions and our lawyers are paid for by us well technically their lawyers are paid for by us too which is's true. Incredibly freaking annoying. It's a deferred cost among a lot of us. That doesn't make an A better. Oh, I haven't looked at the battle bunker. Joe makes a good point. I need to research the battle bunker. GW.

Well, let's go ahead and punt this one out the door. I'm sure I have some nonsense I should be attending to. My wife said she was going to make red beans and rice for dinner, which will be interesting because she never voluntarily cooks or eats red beans and rice. I kind of ruined it. I smell a home improvement project coming in the future. Well, it's more because I ruined her when we first got married because we were freaking poor as hell. And we had to eat red beans and rice

and expired pork chops almost exclusively and peanut butter sandwiches for about two years to get up on her feet. You'll live on it. You won't be happy with it, but you'll live on it. Unfortunately, as soon as we were no longer dirt poor, she announced to me

that she was never eating red beans and rice again for the rest of her life, which is a problem because I like red beans and rice. You're Cajun. Pretty sure that's required. Technically, she isn't, though. Joe, it's not just Chicago, man. It's not just Chicago. It's all the collar counties and the stuff around St. Louis as well, unfortunately.

I mean, those areas are getting smaller, but what are you going to do? Yeah. I mean, bear in mind that there's oddballs like Naperville in the middle of a farming community. You got goddamn Naperville with their separate assault weapon ban because apparently Illinois's infringement is not good enough for them. british assault weapon ban because apparently illinois's infringement's not good enough for them anyway i'm just going to entertain this this fantasy i have of certain politicians getting syphilis for no reason because i'm a malicious person but they deserve i mean he's looking at congestive heart failure pretty quick based on what i can see it's's not going to get it. It's not going to be as unfortunate form as syphilis would be, though. Anyway.

True. Let's go ahead and punt this one out the door. Nick, thanks for talking us through cold weather preps. The top, I didn't even, him pointed out at the top of the episode, but the episode is named, Oh, the Weather Outside is Frightful, and anytime it's in the teens or the negatives, I call it it's in the nopes for good always fine no it is the opposite of fine if it was fine you'd be able to wear a short sleeve t-shirt smoke a pipe on the back porch like we can't i am wearing a short sleeve t-shirt underneath my sweater that irrelevant

anyway so next week we are going to be doing the stream for those of you who like to watch on youtube on a wednesday because i'm gonna have to do some um i'm gonna have to do some day juggling for the next few weeks while we deal with some family things and um i will make it happen i will do my best to let everybody know when we're going to be streaming. I'm hoping we keep to Thursdays most weeks, but next week will be Wednesday. Amen. You got to do what you got to do to take care of family first. I'll be here when you need me. But for those of you who listen to the audio, it's going to come out on Friday pretty consistently, I think, I hope.

Should be. We'll see. Matter of fact, this podcast is going out the door. Good night, everybody. Stay warm. Stay inside. And if it's in the nopes, don't go there. Bye, y'all. Bye. we'll see matter of fact this podcast is going out the door good night everybody stay warm stay inside and if it's in the nopes don't go there

bye y'all bye Thank you. Outro Music