The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Pocket Dump Time

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

http://www.mofpodcast.com/www.pbnfamily.comhttps://www.facebook.com/matteroffactspodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/mofpodcastgroup/https://rumble.com/user/Mofpodcastwww.youtube.com/user/philrabhttps://www.instagram.com/mofpodcasthttps://twitter.com/themofpodcastSupport the showMerch at: https://southerngalscrafts.myshopify.com/Shop at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ora9riPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mofpodcastPurchase American Insurgent by Phil Rabalais: https://amzn.to/2FvSLMLShop at MantisX: http://www.mantisx.com/ref?id=173*The views and opinions of guests do not reflect the opinions of Phil Rabalais, Andrew Bobo, or the Matter of Facts Podcast*The boys turn out their pockets for an EDC dump, and compare what they carry on body to what they keep in their vehicle. Travel season is coming fast, and a lot of people will be on the road. How many will be prepared?Matter of Facts is now live-streaming our podcast on our YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Rumble. See the links above, join in the live chat, and see the faces behind the voices. Intro and Outro Music by Phil Rabalais All rights reserved, no commercial or non-commercial use without permission of creator prepper, prep, preparedness, prepared, emergency, survival, survive, self defense, 2nd amendment, 2a, gun rights, constitution, individual rights, train like you fight, firearms training, medical training, matter of facts podcast, mof podcast, reloading, handloading, ammo, ammunition, bullets, magazines, ar-15, ak-47, cz 75, cz, cz scorpion, bugout, bugout bag, get home bag, military, tactical 

Welcome back to Matterfacts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mofpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Rabelais, and my co-host Andrew Bobo is on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to Matterfacts Podcast. Andrew and I thought we'd sit down and do a pocket dump talk about everyday carry and unfortunately this glass of um Gentleman Jack and Coke is not part of my everyday carry. This has to be an

occasional treat. Oh I have water. I mean I did tell you before the show started like oh dang I forgot my drink. I thought you were talking about water or coffee well okay coffee was a reasonable coffee was a reasonable assumption but like drinking straight water just seems like a waste of perfectly good coffee grounds you know like i get all my water intake by converting it into coffee and no one can convince me otherwise my wife yells at me all the time about how I drink enough water. But then I point out to her that water's in coffee, so that should work. Sure. Good afternoon, A. Smith.

Don't think I've seen you on the stream before. Hi, Andrew. I think, is that you? Do you know who that is? It might be. Should we use your witness protection alias, or? No, no, I, well, I know Sweet Tea, he says. Okay, I will recant my former statement.

It is perfectly acceptable to convert water into sweet tea or coffee, but drinking just straight water just sounds like a sad existence to me. Personally. I mean, it's good for you though, depending on what country you're in and what city, I guess, as long as you're not in Flint.

Oh yeah. It's definitely safer to drink, you know, battery acid than the water in Flint. Yeah. So yeah, no, I i uh i just i don't know i was thinking we were sitting down to record and i was just thinking of a uh oh yep that's yeah that's my buddy my friend andrew another andrew damn it there's two of them there's two of them you should have seen it when we were because i went to college with him you should have seen it when uh we were in a college and i finally convinced him to be my best friend and uh did this involve like coercion or bribery

well he was a guy that he kind of stuck to himself and i bugged him like every day because he was awesome at what he did and then um i finally just like we just started talking and hanging out and i think yeah i think he felt sorry for me he was like i guess i you know like a puppy dog you find on the side of the road so in other words you wore him down yeah basically that's what i do persistence is a good trait though i know right but uh yeah no we're just talking about uh everyday carry um and if we we can get into it if we want to we can get into what we have in our vehicles as well kind of uh i mean we don't have to get into exactly what we have in our vehicle because mine ever since i uh expanded to my deck drawer system that grew huge like pretty by a large number

uh but um but yeah so i don't know i mean you want to jump right into it or yeah maybe housekeeping at all that we got to do well i, I mean, housekeeping wise, I'll tell the listeners that I have recorded the first non-podcast streaming YouTube video in God knows how many years. Like years and years ago, you know, I was dabbling in YouTube videos and short form and mid form stuff. And it was mostly gun reviews and things like that. mid-form stuff, and it was mostly gun reviews and things like that. And then, frankly, YouTube pissed me off so bad with constantly jerking us around about, like, what they would monetize and what they wouldn't allow in channel strikes. I just said to hell with it and just quit. You know, it really reached a point very quickly where it was not worth my aggravation to put in the time it takes to do even the most basic YouTube video.

And the production quality I am willing to indulge in and capable of pales in comparison to what the big channels will pull off because I just don't have the budget or the technical know-how or the software to do it. But it just, it wasn't worth the hours of time investment for put up a 10 or 15 minute video and then have it get kicked straight back in my face by YouTube. So I quit. And more recently I started looking at, you know, like I started looking at a lot of things we've been talking about and I'm like, some of these things could be expounded upon outside of a podcast in something like a Ted talk type of format. You know what I'm saying?

Where I can just like sit down with the audience and do a show and tell and explain like not just what has what I've done, but why, why I did it this way to see that makes sense to them. So the first one is like, it ended up being a 45 minute video about off-grid communications and it's not all inclusive. about off-grid communications and it's not all inclusive. It's just kind of like explaining the progression of where I started, why I started where I did and ending up at like where I'm at right now,

which you and I were talking about right before the show started, like me testing the, the man pack that I've been building. And you know, it's, it's going to be a little on the dry side, but I don't know. Somebody out there might find it useful. And when it comes to man-packed radios from the civilian world, most of them are ham. Not a lot of guys have taken it upon themselves to build something like this for a GMRS radio and then document it. So maybe somebody out there will find it, you know, somewhat useful. But that's what I've been working on. It's a work in progress.

I will probably release it in the next couple of days. So if you're listening to this on the audio stream, it might already be out and you should go check out our YouTube channel. And if you don't know how to find that, it's in the show description. So I've tried to make this as easy as I can for you all. I guess the other thing that we should probably talk about is Prepper Camp.

If you are going to Prepper Camp or you want to and you have not bought tickets yet, buy tickets. Because they're only going to go up in price as the event gets closer. If you are trying to go and you have not gotten and you want to stay at the location at the area, good luck getting a spot. There's probably no spots left. If anything, there might be tent city, but I doubt it. So yeah, I would get your tickets and go. We're going to be there with a booth. We'll be sitting next to James with Disaster Coffee and probably a bunch of the other people from PBN,

the cadre there from PBN. Yeah. Well, Jane and Rick have made a pretty solid commitment that since I believe all or most of the PBN crew have booths, a lot of them are doing sales. Our intention has never been to do sales out of our booth. We're really using it like a mobile recording studio. So I think our intention is to go in there and do pretty much what we did last year.

Try to row people in for interviews, you know, set up the webcam, set up the laptop to record. I have totally and completely given up on streaming from that location unless somebody wants to drop Starlink on us for free because the bandwidth is just not stable enough. And even with Starlink, I'd be worried about weather or something screwing with it. So I think the best solution is what we've done, which is to, you know, set up out there fully self-contained, running off a jackery and solar panels record come home edit and then let it out afterwards and like last year i'm struggling to remember i want to say we put out something like 12 videos with the with the i said i don't remember it it was a lot i mean we did three four we we did about four interviews a day all three days we were out there. So we pumped out a lot of content from showgoers, from like friends of yours, friends who became friends of mine over that trip and other PBN hosts and just people that were walking by like, hey, you want to come on the show? So it was a great experience and I hope to be able to do that again.

And this year we will have my wife and daughter with me to help. You know, my wife will be there to help herd the cats, which I need desperately. I need a cat herder. But, um, yeah, I mean, if, if anybody wants to come to Prepper Camp and you can't get a spot at the campsite, it's, it's a little late in the year to try to pull that hat trick off, asheville is not far away um there are bed and breakfasts all over the area so like you may not get the stay at camp experience but you can still come to prepper camp you're just gonna have to find a spot off site to stay but that those those those things exist you're just gonna have to do some digging to find them. But anyway, on the topic,

pocket dump time, you know, like we've talked before about everyday carry and the concept of like you're carrying things on your person to be able to address needs. And when I like the first thing I want to say as we go into this topic is that I don't believe there are many wrong answers here. It really is, you know, down to like the way you dress, how much you can carry, what you're going to carry, where you're going. This is a highly, highly individual decision. The only wrong answer when it comes to like, what do I include in my everyday carry is I never thought about it. That's the wrong answer. But if you've thought about it and you've weighed your options, I kind of say, okay, well, Asalaamu alaikum, you know, go with God.

You made your decision. Hopefully the stuff you bring with you is what you need. But it's just another outgrowth of like everything else we talked about preparedness. It is this might happen. I want to have this thing to address that need. And I tend to start with like really mundane things. A lot of people go straight for like the really crazy things and I go for mundane.

This is a wallet. Most men carry a wallet, right? Most men don't carry an RFID blocking wallet so that your cards and all your stuff inside your wallet can't get, you know, snagged. If somebody has a an electronic device handy to be able to read these magnetic strips through the leather, which does happen sometimes. I also make a point of carrying cash because if anybody's never been in a situation where you whooped out your debit card and it didn't work i have several times cash helps cash just helps grease gears so i make a point of always keeping an rfid blocking wallet always keep some cash inside and you know like very very common sense things like driver's license and concealed carry permit.

I figured that was a given. It should be a given. But insurance cards. This should be a given for most people. Like if you have health insurance, you have your card in your wallet. But I'm going to tell you that I've met... I don't carry it. Why not? Because it's on my phone.

Okay, let's say hypotheticallyetically you were found at a scene unconscious by medical personnel no i guess it wouldn't matter i mean they'll get your medical they'll get your insurance information before they release you no well when i go through mine um yeah we'll we'll compare but uh anyway yeah keep Okay, so very mundane thing, wallet. I like RFID blocking wallets for obvious reasons. Car keys should be self-explanatory. I've got house keys on here. I've got keys to gun cases and various things that I don't leave these.

It's not that I am not comfortable leaving these keys at home. It's that these keys are always in my pocket. So if I walk up to any variety of locked cases in this house that have firearms in them, I don't have to think about, well, that key is over here. That key is on the mantel. That key is in my freaking pocket right next to my truck keys. And I can pop it and get into it anytime I need to. So again, when I wake up in the morning, the wall goes in the back pocket, these go in the front right pocket. Then flashlight and

knife. And this is pretty self-explanatory except that, you know, this is the knife I carry when I can carry what I want. When I can't, I actually have another pocket knife I carry at work because I work at a place where if you carry a big knife like this, people freak out. And I am allowed, per the regulations, to have a knife as long as the blade is less than two and a half inches. So I have a very, very small Gerber paraframe that has a blade that is just barely short enough for me to get away with it. And that's what I carry just so that nobody give me crap about it. And then I've got this little Surefire, this, uh, little Surefire ProTac 1L is like the perfect, is the perfect size for an everyday carry light. In my opinion,

it fits in the back pocket. It runs off a CR123 or off of a AA in a pinch. I always have batteries close by if I need to swap this thing out. And I actually have a procedure I go through every morning because this is one of those lights where like on the first tap, you get 80 lumens. And on the second, and if you double tap it, you get 300. So I go through a procedure every morning where I point this thing to the floor and I double tap that tail cap because if the battery is getting too weak to run at the higher power level, it'll default back down to the first level. So the first time I double tap this cap and I see that dim light come on, I know the battery's about to die. So it's just a way for me to function check the light every day. And if you can't tell from the amount of anodizing that's been worn off of this thing, this thing is a freaking war horse. It's been in my back pocket for years.

It's never given up, never quit. And in case it does, I have a whole spare light only been taken out of the package. It doesn't even have a battery in it sitting in my wall safe just for the day this thing finally quits on me, but it hasn't yet. Andrew pointed out to me before we started streaming, I cannot show you the handgun I carry everywhere because YouTube and or Facebook will pee their pants about showing firearms outside of a gun range. So whatever. Pull up a picture of it. I don't have pictures of it handy

unfortunately. Dang. But it's a double stack 9mm and 99% of the time that is the smallest firearm I'm willing to carry. Like I've heard every argument for these really really small subcompacts like the Glock 43 or the Sig

P365 I think it is. The little bitty tiny one. I've heard every argument in the world for those. I don't like tiny little mouse fart guns, even if they're chambered in nine millimeter, even if they hold 10 rounds, I don't like them. I, I prefer, I prefer a compact size, not subcompact double stack nine millimeter. And I am willing to dress around that gun. So if that means I can't get away with wearing gym shorts and a tank top, I am emotionally at peace with that.

I want to carry the gun that I know I shoot well. Because I subscribe to this very different method of thought where, you know, there's the idea that you carry a gun because it's comfortable to carry, but you understand you're going to carry it probably for your entire life and never have to actually use it. I subscribe to a different philosophy where I say, I'm going to carry the gun I know I operate the best because on the day I'm in a fight, I don't want to be thinking to myself, damn, I wish I had the better gun that I left at home because it weighed another four or five ounces. So that's what I carry. The only exception to that is if I'm wearing dress clothes, because if I'm wearing like, you know, slacks and a jacket,

and I know I'm going to take the jacket off, I can't conceal, I can't conceal this double stack nine mil. So in cases like that, I have an ankle holster and a five shot J frame, and it disappears under a pant leg. And then I'll usually pack a Bianchi speed strip with me just to have some extra ammo. So that's pretty much like... Oh, and this is something I wanted to get on camera. Cell phone. Almost everybody today carries a cell phone.

If you don't, I envy you. But everybody carries a cell phone, and nobody really thinks of these things as being part of their everyday carry. It's a cell phone. It's not a piece of prepper prepper gear, right? But let me tell you what this thing is to me, from my way of thinking. This is my primary communications device. If I want to talk to my wife, I pick this thing up, I punch a magic button on it, and my wife answers sometimes when she wants to. On the flip side, I think, this is also my secondary communication device. Because if the data circuits are up, but the text message and voice circuits are down, or if they're overloaded because there's a local emergency, but I can still get data. I can peg her on signal,

or I can get her on Facebook Messenger or whatever. I have purely data-based ways to contact my wife through this thing. And it's also an intelligence gathering device because if there's something weird going on, I can get on this thing and get on this thing called the internet, and I can start punching stuff in to try to get information. So don't discount the fact that this is a communications and an intelligence, an intelligence gathering device. It's not just for posting pictures of your technical stuff on Instagram. You know what I'm saying? It's in your pocket anyway. You might as well figure out a way to make it useful. That is, that is my everyday carry in a nutshell. You know, knife, gun, the usual nonsense, flashlight. That's what I carry every day. That's all?

That's it. Dang. That's every day. I might supplement that depending on a situation, but that's the base layer. What about you? And don't include anything in here that you want to carry every now and then this is every day well uh well i mean i'll i'll start from head to toe um so i mean i know i wear it a lot on this show i mean well so my ball cap that i'm wearing

um i usually i'm always wearing a hat the only time I'm usually not is usually at work. Usually at work I'm not wearing a hat. And then, I mean, I'll take it off occasionally, but I like wearing hats. But this hat I wear the most. It's from a company called Eagles and Angels. It's basically a veteran-owned company that the guy actually takes uniforms from, special operations, guys who have seen some crap and done some stuff. I think he did stuff from like the Robert O'Neill who smoked bin Laden allegedly. He takes their uniforms and he slices them up and he makes patches, American flag

patches and stuff with them. And so, yeah, I've had this hat for, I don't even know how many years I've had this hat and it's actually started to wear. I've never washed it. Uh, it's a flex fit, uh, American flag hat. I love it. And I actually was just on their website, uh, and they actually have it back in stock. So I might buy another one so that I can retire this one. I don't know. It's broken in and comfortable and sweat stained and it's been through a lot. So, uh, but then the other thing I have, uh, next thing I have is my Gators, uh, the Gators ballistic sunglasses. Um, yeah, there we go. Anyway. Uh, they're the Gators Marauder ballistic rated OD green sunglasses. And then I have dropped down to my waist. I have a, I'm wearing the tier one concealment, the X-Core EDC belt.

So I like it because it actually, when you first buy it, you buy it and it's a little bit bigger, but you actually can cut it. And then you, so let's see if i can get this to so basically it it um can it has it's a latching system so it basically kind of it has a tooth right here that kind of grabs and it latches in um and then you just undo it but what's nice is you have these screws these set screws right here to where you just undo it. But what's nice is you have these screws, these set screws right here, to where you just undo those two things. This whole thing, this slides off, and you can actually cut it down if you need to. And you put it back in there, put the set screws in, and then it holds. It's thick, it's rigid, very stiff.

I've never had any issues. I love it. Actually, you can see on the side that I carry my pistol on that it's actually pretty worn on that side just from the nylon and stuff so I just trim it up every once in a while the pistol I am currently carrying I usually carry all the time is my M&P 9c 2.0 version it's a 13 round mag nine millimeter but i actually have a hive technologies uh base plate um on it so it's a plus three base plate uh which i like it just it and honestly it doesn't really print all that much that it doesn't really print that much bad or much worse sorry i don't speak english i should carry a dictionary if you EDC.

But I like it. That and then when you're mag changing, I just like it also because you can easily just hit the mag release, drops the mag really quick, and then you go for a quick reload if you need it. But it's topped with a Steiner MPS red dot. It used to have the sro on it but um unlike phil i believe in multi-gun depending on your situation um i am currently waiting on i have a i have the mmp9c the first gen uh subcompact pistol i'm actually waiting on i sent the slide off to get milled and, uh, I'm actually going to put the Steiner or not the Steiner. I'm going to put the Trijicon SRO on that. So I'm just waiting

on that one to get back. Cause that's going to be my summer carry, uh, just because it doesn't, it's a little bit, it's smaller than the, the, the compact that I carry right now. Um, but it's just a little bit more comfortable, um, in the summer and it's better for shorts and stuff like that but can i point out because you bring up this whole summer carry thing that down here in south louisiana it's always summer well we all we have this summer like the winter is not long enough to merit a whole nother gun to carry it's just it's summer a little bit of winter more summer no i mean i know a lot of people that and i mean i've carried this gun for for a long time i've carried this gun every day uh in the summer in the winter spring fall whatever uh but i don't know i mean i've had this

pistol sitting around and i decided to do something with it and it's one of those things where i might carry it you know i don't know if i'll carry it every day during the summer but it's just definitely another option to have that i like so and i like options you've kind of you've kind of gone in the same philosophy i have just i guess different steps where i'm like i want the double stack nine millimeter but in a pinch i'll drop down to the ankle carry j frame. Well, I mean, they're both double stack. That's the thing, is both my 9, the 9C, the 2.0, and the 9C, the subcompact, they're both double stack. I guess my question then is that do you have a firearm you carry when neither one of those can fit? Or do you ever find yourself in that situation?

No. I dress around it. I dress around either of them. So, I mean, yeah. I mean, like right now i usually i'm always wearing a button-up shirt of some kind uh i just i find that it's just easier uh to conceal uh because i like to appendix carry and uh the the the holster i'm carrying currently with it is it's a holster co uh made in michigan um so uh they i their, uh, their holsters. I've been

rocking this one for, I don't know, a number of years now. I don't remember how long, but, uh, yeah, I mean, I like to appendix carry. And so I found, uh, with appendix carrying, I found that, uh, yeah, I'll wear just a normal t-shirt sometimes, but, uh, I wear, I wear a button up quite a bit, uh, just to help with the printing and just that security of, you know, it's just not going to print, not going to ride up or anything like that. Yeah. But basically, I mean, because I work a lot, if I'm not working, generally, sometimes I'm in shorts. But generally, when I'm working, I'm always wearing 5'11 ridge pants. And I wear them outside of work,, because just because they're comfortable.

But if I'm not wearing those, then I'm usually wearing like Wrangler blue jeans normally. And so, so one of those two things in my left side, where is it at? Usually I'm rocking the Leatherman Rev multi-tool and then with that I actually have the Stiletto Pro 1000 lumen flashlight so what I like about this is it's rechargeable so I don't have to deal with batteries or anything like that but oops what's nice is if you hit the right button it actually has a if you can see that it's yeah it's got a green light so it's got a green light you just hit it and it's got a green light um if if it's green you know it's good to go it'll be yellow and then it'll turn red and then obviously as it dies it'll go down to a lower lower setting but what i like about it it's got a button on the side

that you can hit it and it it goes low medium and then high lumens and then it has the programmable button in the back here that you can either do press and hold and you can determine the kind of how program it what you want for lumens or you can click on click off kind of thing so i have that one set to a thousand and then um my first click on this one is like 300 350 or something like that um funny story tsa has no idea what to make of this um and also also security uh security at events don't know what to make of this either i was going to a ball game uh baseball game and i was carrying this and the guy looked at it he goes is that a knife and it was facing up like this and i just simply i i clicked on the side and it flashed him right in the eye and he goes that's a flashlight i said yep it's a flashlight he's like okay you're good to go yeah so they don't know what to make of it because it's

it's just thin i mean it looks like a knife i don't know it people are if they don't know what they're looking at but it kind of has the profile of an out-the-front knife. Kind of. I can understand how somebody would make that mistake. But you would think that, you know, the glass like that would just be a giveaway of, hey, it's a flashlight. Now you're giving people way too much credit. I do want to latch on to one thing you mentioned, though. Having selectable power levels, like, I cannot emphasize.

Like, and you and i have also we've debated this i wouldn't say vigorously we've debated this back and forth whenever we talk about pistol mounted lights because like on my everyday carry i don't have a pistol mounted light first of all i won't take one neither one of them will and that's why i carry this but the other thing that the other reason I'm such a big proponent of having like quickly selectable power levels on your everyday carry light is because this light gets used mostly to say, hey, there's a puddle of water, honey. Don't step in it. Or my daughter drops something on the floorboards of the truck at night when it's dark and I'll pass her my flashlight so she can find it. pass her my flashlight so she can find it.

And I'd much rather have 80 lumens shining on the floorboards than 300 or a thousand lumens shining on the floorboards, blowing up my windshield. So I can't see where I'm going. So like, well, to me, when you have that low power level, it gives you the ability to make this more of a utility item and less of a

dedicated burn retinas down when i'm trying to shoot somebody i you know type of item but yeah i mean whether it's a thousand or not i mean it's still utility but i get what you're saying because i find myself actually like you know i find myself hitting just the front button right here which is like low lumen the lowest level then i find myself hitting the thousand, the thousand. But yeah, I see what you're saying. Well, not just that, but if you have a, if you have a mounted weapon light, that weapon light is good for one thing and one thing only. And that shining things, you don't mind shooting because you can't, you can't pull your gun

out and then, you know, wave, wave it around to use the light, to look for stuff in a parking lot. Like it's just not, there's a reason why reasonable. There's a reason why the Detroit Police Department can no longer have weapon lights on their pistols. Oh, Jesus Christ, Andrew. Did you have to put that in my head right now? Because now I'm imagining a police officer shining a light in a dark parking lot,

walking around, muzzling the hell out of everybody. Oh, no, it gets better. They were checking IDs, and they were like, No. Okay, yep, that's you. No. Yep, that's you. No, no, no, no, no. I don't know. No, no, no, no, no. Okay. Yep. No. That's you. Yep. That's you. No. No. No. No. No. I don't know.

No. No. No. No. Moving on. Tell me somebody didn't use a weapon mounted light to check somebody's ID. Okay. I'll tell you that someone did not use a weapon mounted light to check someone's ID. So anyway. From this day forward if anybody

ever tells me only police are well enough trained to be trusted with guns i am not responsible for what happens next it might involve fiscal violence it will definitely involve ridicule though so back to topic it's off too far uh then i carry a CRKT M16 Tonto knife folder. Got it from a buddy of mine for being in the wedding, so that's kind of cool. I carry a lighter. I think everybody should carry a lighter on you, even if you don't smoke. But lighter.

The wallet that I carry is I carry this. It's called the Xter card holder basically card sleeve um it is the rfid protecting uh what i like about it is um i had a wallet like yours before and it just got so big like my hips like i'd be driving and my hip would just ache so i found it i'd take it out and put it in the, in the glove or in the, like the, the tray, the center tray or whatever it is. And I found that I would actually hop out and I would leave it. Um, and as you're, I mean, as I got older and stuff like that, it was like, okay, I need to grab it. So I would do that, but I got, I've got this and I've liked it. Um, I like it cause it only holds like four or five cards. You hit the little button on the side,

it pops them up. Uh, it actually has, uh uh the sleeve on this side here or this side here or this side so you can actually put money uh you can fold up some money in there you can fold up uh extra i have cards in there i mean i got my cpl i got some other some other cards in there uh but i found uh trying to be just trying to be a little bit more i mean i, I say minimalist and I mean, look at all the crap that I carry. But when it came to my wallet, I was trying to slim it down. And one of the things I did was I don't carry my insurance card on me. I don't carry credit cards on me. I don't carry, I carry, I'll have, I have some cash on me and I have my debit card on me.

And then I have some corporate cards on me and that's about it. But I don't carry, I don't have any personal credit cards. Actually, I closed them all because I don't want, I just trying to get out of debt. And so I just closed all, I basically don't have any of that stuff now. So, uh, but like my HSA card that I have, um, a bunch of my like range cards that I have for with codes, I took pictures of it all. I put it on my phone and it's in a secure folder. It's a secured encrypted folder on my phone. and I found like I just I don't need it I don't need to carry a uh my blue cross blue shield card with me everywhere I go like I the only time I really need it is if I need to go to the hospital if I have an appointment of some kind and I'll

grab it um and honestly I've used my phone and that's when I was actually, I'm, uh, when I was at the hospital a couple of weeks ago, um, the lady, she was like, yeah, she was actually, companies are going digital now. So they're not even sending cards out. So she's like, if you have it on your phone, I can take it. And so I was like, here's, here it is, you know? So, so yeah, so that's kind of like the reason for that. And it goes into my front pocket versus my, my back pocket. So, uh, that's not bad. Um, so yeah, moving down. I mean, I know I got a lot of crap. I got more crap than what Phil does, but, uh, uh, ankle, um, I carry every single day, I guess, unless I'm wearing like flip flops or something like that, which is not very often.

Uh, I am wearing a, it's called a Riker, not Riker nylon gear. It's a, um, ankle, uh, med kit. Uh, so I carry that every single day. Uh, inside of that, it has a soft, uh, soft tactical tourniquet, uh, quick clock combat gauze, a hyphen, um, twin packet chest seals, trauma shears, uh, inside of that, I um stream light micro stream flashlight i added inside of that just uh because you know you need light uh so yeah i wear that every every single day at work um all everywhere and again i get some funny looks at when i go to events and my ankle buzzes uh when they want when they wand me and it buzzes at my ankle and they're like what do you got and I said ankle kit you're you're scanning you're hitting my tourniquet and so they you know

freak out and stuff and wanted to look at it so whatever but boots wise I'm either wearing Victos Taculus boots or I'm wearing the Salmon Forces the Forces 2 Quest 4D GTX boots, which are waterproof and they're comfortable. So, and then besides that, I got my phone and my keys. So. So that's your base layer. Is there anything that like you add to that situationally? What I've described so far is kind of my base layer, but I, I make a lot more amendments to this, I feel like, depending on what situation I'm going into. No, I mean, depending on the situation, I mean, like, that's where my backpack comes into play. But I generally, like, I carry all of this on me all the time,

and it sounds like a lot, but it all packs down. And I've gotten to where I've moved stuff around to where, like, my around to where like my wallet will go into my front pocket and i might put my keys in my back pocket uh my you know my my truck keys uh i'll put those like maybe in my back pocket uh but other than that uh no i don't i really don't scale it up or down this is kind of just everything that i grab i mean obviously it goes into different places depending on what I'm wearing because of my pants. Like if I'm wearing jeans, obviously wranglers and stuff, I don't have pockets down at the knees, like cargo pockets, like I do my five 11s or the Victos shorts that I wear. So if I'm wearing jeans, yeah,

things are more in my pockets and stuff like that versus my 511s you know my extra the extra wallet is down in my left side on the left cargo pocket uh and so that kind of frees up along with my keys and stuff like that so yeah well from from my perspective like i've already talked about how like i'll swap out my gun based on the based on the environment like you know quite frankly lately my wife and i've been invited to several different weddings and how I'll swap out my gun based on the environment. Quite frankly, lately, my wife and I have been invited to several different weddings, and at a wedding, I'm in a unique situation with regards to how I usually dress. Because normally when I dress, it's T-shirt or it's a button-down shirt, and I can conceal a double-stack 9 under either one of those very easily.

I'm almost exclusively wearing like Wrangler, um, work pants. And they do have some very low, not the big poofy cargo pockets, they have some very low profile, like thigh pockets. And I don't even usually carry much in them, but, um, with what I normally wear, I can conceal double stack nine, no problem whatsoever. But if I'm at a wedding or something like that, or something where it's very dressy, shirt being tucked in is going to be mandatory. Dress slacks is going to be mandatory. And in those types of situations, I just don't have a way to conceal double stack 9 millimeter that is concealable enough that I am comfortable with

it. You know what I'm saying? Especially given the environments that I'm in. Like, gun at a wedding would set off alarm bells for some people, even though I don't think it should. I mean, hell, there were people armed at my wedding and I was emotionally at peace with it, but that's neither here nor there. So in those situations, I'll swap out my gun and I'll ankle carry a J-frame because I can carry that as long as I wear long pants, period, end discussion. I have found myself in the situation several times recently of having to be in hospitals a lot and not for myself, thankfully. Usually it's for aging family members that I've had to take to appointments or I've had to accompany or whatever.

And in those cases, obviously gun and knife stay behind. It's a hospital. They're a little sensitive about that. But in those situations, bear in mind that like my cell phone is my primary and in some ways my secondary communication device. I carry a little charging brick and I carry a rolled up charging cable for my phone. a little charging brick and I carry a rolled up charging cable for my phone. And usually I'll even include a USB battery pack purely for the fact of I'm going to be someplace for potentially the next four to eight hours. I don't know if I'm going to have a wall outlet available to charge my phone. I don't know if I'm going to have to resort to the battery pack, but I know that battery pack from experience will charge my phone from zero to max several times over. And it's just a, it's

just a way to bear in mind that like in the environment I'm in, I'm going to be stationary. I'm going to need to keep in touch with my wife. I'm going to need to, you know, be reachable. So having extra power on tap to make sure my phone stays charged, that becomes more of a priority than it would be if I were at home or if I were vehicle bound. Because if I'm at home, I've got all kinds of things here to charge my phone. And if I'm in my vehicle, I have all kinds of ways to charge my phone on my vehicle. But if I'm in an unfamiliar environment where I don't know how long I'm going to be here and I don't know exactly what situation I'm walking into. Is there going to be a wall outlet available for me to charge my phone or not? So having those, just that extra step of, I know the, I know enough of the environment

I'm going into that I don't know everything about it. So I'm going to make sure I have some things take care of myself. I don't always carry like a bag in if I'm going to be at a hospital. Like if I'm going to be staying, if I know I'm going to be there all day, I will always make a point of carrying a small bag with me. And in that small bag is like bottles of water. It's, um, usually I'll throw a liquid IV into it. I always make sure because I've talked about on the show before, but I'm hypoglycemic. My dietary changes have made that much less of a problem than it used to be. And that might be a whole show all by itself. We can never get a nutritionist to come on the

show and talk about like high fat, high protein diets for people to manage their blood sugar. But you know, like I always make a point of having water and I always make a point of having some kind of snacks, peanut butter crackers, something with protein in it, because I know that if I don't manage my blood sugar, it's going to make it impossible for me to manage the situation. So again, if I'm going to be someplace all day, I'm going to make sure I have something to eat with me because I'm not, I'm, I'm one of those people that because of my blood sugar, if I skip a meal, I might just feel crappy. I might pass out. I don't know. It kind of depends on what my body feels like doing that day. So I have to manage those things. Um, other than that,

I can't honestly, like, I understand all the arguments for carrying a med kit on your person. It's not something I'm usually willing to indulge in simply because, you know, we'll talk about truck EDC here in a minute, but it's one of those things where like, I am weighing out the likelihood of necessity given the environments I'm in. And I judge that the bulk and the weight of carrying it every day is probably not warranted. Given that I, given that I do have that available to me wherever my vehicle is, which is usually not that far. Yeah. No, I don't know. I mean the, the, the, uh, the ankle kit that I wear, uh, you'd never know you even had it on. It's, it's super light. So I guess that's why that's,

it's easy to carry. Um, I mean, yeah, the only thing that I really change, uh, like I said, with my backpack is I usually carry a backpack everywhere I go. Uh, it's got, yeah, I'll have some snacks in it, uh, food or, you know, some extra water if needed. Uh, but yeah, I have a, uh, mobile, um, charging kit that I put together. So basically it, it just, uh, it's, I have a mobile charging kit that I put together. So basically, I think it's like three or four. It rolls up, but you unroll it, and it's got like three or four. I think it's got three compartments. And I have a vehicle.

I have a little vehicle for a cigarette that has two USB plugs built into it. I have two wall chargers. I have multiple cables for my phone. I have a portable battery brick for recharging stuff. And then, yeah, so that's basically that. And then inside the backpack, I carry more medical. So I actually have an IFAC from Dark Angel Medical in there. And then I actually have some extra med supplies in there.

And sometimes I even have, I'll throw some ibuprofen in as well, depending on where I'm going. But in my backpack, I have a sleeve, a couple of sleeves of batteries. So a thyrum, I believe it's called, they have their couple of different battery packs that you can buy. So I have those, I have a headlamp in there, spare mags for my pistol. If I have, once I get it finished, put, put together, I was carrying a folded AR inside of my backpack as well. But again, that different depends on where I go because obviously I can't go into a hospital or something like that with that. So when I was, just recently when I was staying with my uncle in the hospital, I basically, I had my work laptop. I had, you know, all kinds of, you know, enough stuff in there to charge and all that stuff.

So now let's have that conversation about what we carry in our vehicles to the degree of which we are willing to share with the world what all we carry in our vehicles. Funny thing is a lot of things you just mentioned keeping your backpack is what I keep in my truck because you know right now my truck's parked down front of my house and most places we go we're going to go in my truck if we go in my wife's jeep I have a lot of the same things in her jeep just for that redundancy and not having to think about it um in the truck I keep first and foremost I keep a complete pack of CR123 batteries. Take a wild guess why. Because this thing runs on CR123s. The light that stays in my truck at all times, which is a two-cell version of this thing, runs on CR123s. If anybody needs to wonder why you would keep a flashlight in your

truck, it's because human beings don't see great in the dark and things usually break when it's dark outside. So if you want to start fumbling around inside your engine bay in the dark, have a party, but I don't. So that's why I keep lights, but I digress. I keep a complete IFAK strapped to the roof of my truck, which is like tourniquet, quick clot, gauze, co-bang, you know, friggin' Israeli bandage, 4x4s, ab pads. The whole thing is so stuffed that if you manage to make that bag regurgitate its contents, you might never get it all back in there. But it is everything I can think of to deal with massive trauma. And that stays glued to the roof of the truck at all times. I have a tourniquet separate from the med bag, sitting right next to it.

And there's another tourniquet inside the med bag. What else is in there? it inside the med bag. What else is in there? Charging cable. I have USB ports in the, I have the little dongle that plugs in my cigarette lighter port, has twin USB-As, and I've got charging cables for me and my wife and my daughter's phones all in there, just because you never know when somebody's going to need one, especially on a long trip, it always comes up. need one especially on a long trip it always comes up um i because i recently made the jump into um gmrs radios and off-grid comms i have a whole gmrs mobile 20 watt sitting in the truck i thought you hated radios what the heck you know i'm radios tickle that nerdy part of my brain but you know from a perspective of having a way to talk to people independent of – it's not that talking to people independent of cell phones is my biggest concern.

It's more the fact that, like, cell phones – and I hit Andrew Bobo on my phone right now, that this phone connects directly to your phone and they talk to each other. There are people out here that think that's how it works. It's not most people that are, that are, you know, like their IQ is at least approaching the median. They understand it's not how these things work, but this thing contacts the local cell, the local cell tower. and that cell tower routes the call through a very complex infrastructure to call Andrew and connect from his nearest cell tower to his phone. And that whole infrastructure can go down, and it does sometimes. So the whole idea of having radios is when that infrastructure stops behaving itself, I want to be able to talk to people.

You're easily to get distracted. This isn't a comms episode. Yes, yes, yes, I know. But the point is I have ways to keep me and my wife and my daughter's cell phones running. I have a method of comms if the cell phones stop working. I have the IFAC in the truck. I also have, I call it a boo-boo kit or an owie kit, which is like a whole ass Tupperware container filled with not, not IFAC stuff, not tourniquets. It's got band-aids in it. It's got medical tape. It's got gauze. It's got Benadryl and Tylenol and Ibuprofen.

It's like, I always tell people that an IFAC is, if you don't fix this in five minutes, this person's going to die. That's an IFAC. A boo-boo kit is, if you don't fix this, it's going to suck for a long time. It's not going to kill you. It's just going to suck. Well, unfortunately, you know, if it's my wife or my daughter that need Tylenol or need Benadryl or need a Band-Aid, I don't want their lives to suck. So I have this whole Tupperware container full of frigging, like, you know, kitchen cabinet medical stuff. full of frigging like, you know, kitchen cabinet medical stuff. And I'm going to tell you right here and now, I had that kid in the truck exactly a week before I had to pop it open the first time because my daughter had a headache and needed an ibuprofen. Like having that stuff at the ready comes in handy so freaking often.

And my wife also has a boo-boo kit and an IFAC. I keep water in my truck i couldn't even tell you how much because it's all little 12 ounce bottles and they're dispersed all over the truck like when i was trying to pack water into this truck any available space that i could fit a water bottle i stuffed it in there just like instead of having a couple of big five gallon jugs, I was just like, hey, there's a little bit space right here. Put in our water bottle in there, you know. And at this point, like if you if you lift up my back seat and you fold forward my back seat, there's just water bottles everywhere because any available space I had left, I filled. I keep mainstay rations in my truck, which are little vacuum-packed, foil-wrapped emergency rations.

They actually come from the maritime world, but they're impervious to salt water. They're impervious to heat. I want to say they have a 10-year shelf life, and it's the perfect thing to keep in a vehicle because almost any other food product you keep in a vehicle, as hot as it gets, is going to go bad in about six months max. Mainstay rations don't care. They're built to be in bad environments. So I've got emergency food, emergency water. I've got medical. I've got a flashlight. I keep a set of LED emergency lights that have little bases. I can set them out on the road or they have magnetic bases. I can pop them on the side of the truck.

So if I have a breakdown, I have a way to signal to other drivers. And then I have a whole, in my bed, I have a toolbox. And that toolbox is like oil and, you know, rescue tape if I have a busted radiator hose I need to fix. And it's recovery gear. It's a snatch strap. It's tools it's everything in the bed of my truck is i am stuck someplace or i am broke down i need to get myself free everything inside the vehicle mostly is sustainment stuff and i also keep a tire inflator a plug kit and a jump box again if the truck stops behaving itself, I have the things I need to make it behave itself. Oh, and pro tip, anybody here that has a serpentine belt, the next time you

change it, throw that serpentine belt either in your trunk or your toolbox or whatever and have the tools you need to change it on the side of the road. Or even if you don't have the tools, like just wrap it in the direction it's supposed to go. Kind of get it on the pulley. Get somebody to bump your starter and it'll pop it right on. Just in case you shred a serpentine belt in the middle of nowhere and you need to get your vehicle going again. I've done it before. So like that's the stuff I can think of that I carry in the vehicle. It's mostly centered around if the truck stops, make the truck move again.

And the ability to self-recover so that my family's not stuck out there. And it's the ability to sustain us if we are truly really stuck and then ways to call for help, keep the cell phones going and have a way to have a way to talk if the cell phone stopped working. Um, about the only thing we, that I don't carry in the truck that might happen in the future would be like, I might throw one of these Beofang GMRS radios in my truck just to have like, you know, like if I have to stay in the truck and somebody has to walk away from the truck, I have a way for them to keep in touch. I don't know. I do know that at some point I'm gonna have to set up a little radio bag or a little Pelican case with a portable radio for Gillian to be able to reach me if she's in her vehicle.

Because she doesn't want a radio permanently mounted in her vehicle and a antenna permanently mounted. And like that, that's one part of my comms plan that I haven't fully fleshed out yet. But it's going to have to happen sooner or later. I think that's about it you have half of a camping outdoor store in your truck well yeah ever since i added uh my drawer system so the deck drawer system kind of uh escalated um a little bit you don't say but uh yeah uh but no so basically i mean basically yeah i have uh i have a uh road atlas uh map system uh that i i have in the back seat uh that fits right uh behind the passenger seat uh so i can i actually need to buy a new one a upgraded one because this one i think is about five or so maybe six years old uh so I need to get one that's more up to date, more current. Uh, I have, uh, extra water. Um,

I got crowbar in there just in case I need to use it for self-protection or to, uh, bend something or get something on stock. I don't know. Pick your, uh, poison, I guess. Uh i guess uh i have uh let's see besides like the tire stuff and all that crap uh oh i have a rain kit so i have uh basically just a nice jacket for when it rains so i have that in there all the time i keep a wool blanket in the in the behind the seat also at all times uh a couple i keep keep extra mags in my center console, some extra batteries, stuff like that. On the passenger side, the headrest I actually have, again, from Dark Angel Medical. I actually have their, basically it's like a headrest IFAC. It has two tourniquets in it, has chest seals. I mean, all that stuff that you need

to do that. On top of that, I do have a, uh, I have a small med bag that I carry with me has, uh, it has a small tank of, uh, O2 in there. Um, I have the bag valve, bag valve mass. I have non-rebreathers, uh, everything I need to do, um, either do a, um, you know, to do an NPA or, everything I need to do, um, either do a, um, you know, to do a NPA or, you know, NPA or whatever. Um, I can do, uh, I have in that bag is multiple tourniquets. Uh, I have a, uh, IFAC that is actually in the door that I got from stop the bleed, um, organization. Uh, so it's right there. So I honestly, if it's on my driver's side and it's on my driver's side and the it's on the driver's side passenger door so i just got to jump out grab open up that door grab it and you and you just rip it open and it has everything you need stage tourniquet everything so i have that

jumper cables obviously jump pack and then you move back to the deck drawer system uh i actually need now that i've got it organized how i want i actually need to put it in there but uh i'll have a like a two ton jack um in there that i can use that folds down pretty nice uh camp stove uh food um a lot of food that i have in there uh folding chair, fuel, extra fuel for camp stove, stuff like that. So, yeah, I don't know. I know I'm missing some other stuff. Yeah, you reminded me of rain gear. Multiple pairs of gloves.

It's mandatory to keep a poncho or a raincoat in your vehicle down here. Anybody that disagrees with me, like, I know who I'm going to be laughing at when you're on the side of the road changing a flat or a raincoat in your vehicle down here anybody that disagrees with me like i knew i knew who i'm gonna be laughing at when you're on the side of the road changing a flat in a rainstorm but yeah yeah no i um one of the things that uh yeah i mean what is it i i don't know i mean i've got i've added so much in there now, especially with this drawer system and stuff. I've added a lot in there. But no, I mean, that's the thing. And my truck is actually something that's ever-expanding.

I'm always putting stuff in, taking stuff out. So it's always changing. It changes more than my actual EDC. So I guess to start i guess tying this whole thing together with a bow like the method to the madness here is that like the whole idea of like everyday carry really comes down to the idea of like you know one day potentially some situation is going to arise and there are things that could make that situation much more tolerable to you. So it just kind of pays to like have those things at the ready and be in the habit of carrying them.

And the thing that I will the thing I posit to most people is like I in all the time I've been in in this world and doing these kinds of things, I have never once had to draw my firearm down on somebody. Not even once. I've been in a situation where I thought I might, but fortunately it didn't unwrap that way. I have been on the scene of a car accident four times where there was no police officer and no EMT on site before me. That's four times. Me and that IFAC might have been the only thing keeping somebody in one piece until professionals showed up. So the IFAC to me is a good thing to keep because, again, we're zero for the gun and four for the IFAC. we're zero for the gun and four for the ifac the the boo-boo kit i keep in my truck i have lost count of how many times i've had to pull that out for tylenol or for band-aids or for benadryl or for whatever else i've lost count of how many times i i pull that out um this flashlight i mean

obviously i carry it a lot but i don't know how many times i pulled this out of my pocket and handed it to my wife or handed it to my daughter or I've used it to illuminate parking lots or the power goes out here at night and I'm in a dark room all of a sudden. I just pull this out, pop the light on and start walking around like they like telling everybody in my family, in my household, like, hey, y'all stay where you're at because I have a light. I'll bring you a flashlight or I'll bring you a lantern. Just don't go stumbling around the dark and hurt yourselves. This thing gets used constantly. This knife has been used more for cutting open mail and packages than for doing tactical stuff. So I guess the point I'm making with this little rant is like, you know, consider the fact that it's very often the most mundane things for the most mundane reasons that you carry stuff. It isn't always, I need to shank a terrorist and then, you know, perform first aid on 14 people.

A lot of times it's, I don't see in the dark very well without a flashlight. Or somebody has a headache and needs Tylenol. So like, I always go back to the idea that like preparedness is something we should be doing every day. And we should be, if you're going to prepare for an extraordinary situation, I'm behind that. But if you're going to prepare for an extraordinary situation,

at the same time, you ignore a mundane situation, I'm going to give you side eye and possibly even force Whitaker eye because, you know, if you're going to have a tourniquet but no band-aids in your house, I don't know what you're doing. Can't fix every problem with the tactical stuff. Unless you're doing it for Instagram clout, then by all means, ignore the band-aids and get extra tourniquets. Although I don't think most of the Instagram rangers are doing tourniquets.

They're just showing off. Hmm. Just saying. I'm just saying, guys. Think rationally about this. Think about what you're doing. The advice I usually give people when they first start out in preparedness and they're like, I need food, but I don't know what to get. And I tell them, go get your grocery list

and then buy like four of everything on that list. And you're going to be in pretty good shape just on that. Um, if you want to know what you should carry on yourself, start thinking about the last six months of your life and think about, oh, this would, this situation, I wish I'd had a flashlight. Guess what you should carry? This situation, I needed a lighter or I needed a pocket knife or I needed cash. Guess what you should start carrying? Or my phone died.

Guess what you should start carrying? Like a little bit of hindsight, a little bit of analyzing our situation, a little bit of looking at the situations we or people we know have been in will inform you very quickly what you should do going forward if we're just honest and smart enough to make the adjustments. Anything else, Andrew? No. That's the way to end it. This Jack and Coke has definitely started kicking.

I don't think I'm going to do any editing tonight. It would be a bad decision. Alright, well. Everybody, yeah, I mean comment below if you want to. It would be interesting to hear what everybody else has. What people carry and ammo and all that stuff.

But, yeah. So, I don't know. With that, I will I don't know. We'll get some time to record again soon. Our schedules are pretty crazy for the next couple weeks. Yes. Oh. Yes, they are.

But at camp, we'll get a chance to sit down and talk and visit and probably do something, I'm sure. Yeah, for sure. All right. Matter of fact, this podcast is going out the door. Dump your pockets, look at what's in them, and start asking yourself those questions about about am i carrying the thing as i should or am i not talk to y'all in a week bye everybody សូវាប់បានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបា Outro Music