The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Prepping For Comfort

Episode Date: September 16, 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*Preparedness always seems to center around surviving austere environments. We spend a lot of time focusing on minimums, on how to make it for as long as possible with the least possible. We get stuck in the mindset of having to do without, of having to suffer. What if, on the other hand, we focus on being COMFORTABLE when everyone else is doing without? What happens when the prepper passes the threshold of enough, and begins to explore preparing for not having to do without?Matter of Facts is now live-streaming our podcast on our YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Rumble. See the links above, join in the live chat, and see the faces behind the voices. Intro and Outro Music by Phil Rabalais All rights reserved, no commercial or non-commercial use without permission of creator prepper, prep, preparedness, prepared, emergency, survival, survive, self defense, 2nd amendment, 2a, gun rights, constitution, individual rights, train like you fight, firearms training, medical training, matter of facts podcast, mof podcast, reloading, handloading, ammo, ammunition, bullets, magazines, ar-15, ak-47, cz 75, cz, cz scorpion, bugout, bugout bag, get home bag, military, tactical 

Welcome back to the Matterfacts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping, guns, and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mofpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Ravely. Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. So, welcome back to the MatterFacts Podcast. Let's get some administrative work out of the way. For those of you who are watching this on stream,

this is pre-recorded. It's not live, so if you're welcome to leave us a comment, but it's not that we're being jerks at ignoring you. We're not here right now when you're watching this. And if, on the other hand, you are listening to this in audio podcast, then you're probably wondering what the hell I'm talking about because you don't listen to it anyway. It's always pre-recorded. But you should consider jumping on our YouTube channel or our Rumble channel. The links are in the show description. You can watch the two of us talk about this if you

care enough to. So there was all that. But I have to thank the patrons for supporting the show. Y'all make sure that this show does not eat a substantial portion of my whiskey and cigar budget, which would be crippling to me emotionally and physically. Y'all support

the show. Y'all let us have some fun, and for that we're eternally grateful. Merch store is online at the Southern Gals. Links in the show description. And I promised our merch provider I'd be better about wearing the shirts. I'm actually wearing the Apocalyptic Warlord shirt today. Now Andrew has to run off and go grab one. I still need to

send you my address so you can send me one of those. I think I have your address. You just need to tell me what shirt size is and which one or two you want and I can make those things happen. That is an excellent question. I will have to consult my wife for the shirt size. But yeah.

The merch is up on the store. It's fun and it's cheeky and it's things like, you know, which apocalyptic warlord do you want to be? Do you want to be a benevolent one or do you want to be like Lord Humongous? You know, the Ayatollah of rock and roll. And then we have shirts like

Feral But Free with Tactical Raccoon. You're too tall. There you go. There you go. Fantastic go fantastic the feral but free and then uh we have another one that's another tactical raccoon that i'll wear on uh the next time i record i choose violence it's definitely a vibe it's a great one so andrew since you're the tactical raccoon was kind of your idea how did that come up in the first place? Well, so when we were talking about merch, we were brainstorming with Gillian.

And we were coming up with stuff about... Because we were coming up with stuff... Because I remember you and I were talking about... We had a bunch of ideas like... What was it like the tactical clam and like all kinds of different ideas of like different like things that just with nods and guns and rifles and vests like what would look funny and uh the raising values podcast has a shirt with a possum that i believe that's the one that says i'm always a delight i think it is first of First of all, I'm a delight. Yeah. First of all, I'm a delight. So we, so we're talking about that.

And, uh, you, you mentioned something about, Hey, let's do a possum. And I was like, well, possum, I'm like, I really don't want to like do with that. Or, you know, I don't want to like take away from raising values or anything or what she did. So I don't know. Like, I just like the type of the raccoon just popped in my head. I'm like, dude, raccoons are freaking cool. from raising values or anything um or what she did so i don't know like i just like the type the raccoon just popped in my head i'm like dude raccoons are freaking cool like trash pandas are amazing first off and just the ability that like just their skills in general about how they can figure stuff out and how smart they are and then like you know uh uh what is it? Ratchet from Galaxy. Ratchet's

the game character. Yeah, Ratchet's the game character. Yeah, Rocket. I'm like, man, I said that would be a cool freaking thing. I don't know. I went into Photoshop and Photoshop has really cool AI.

I just was like I I just put in like tactical raccoon and then like it spit out a bunch of stuff. And I go tactical raccoon wearing plate carrier, nods, rifle. Like I actually I can't say rifle. Photoshop would not allow me to put rifle in. uh, Photoshop would not allow me to put rifle in. Um, oh, uh, so yeah, so I put like, yeah, I just put a bunch of different things and it popped out like, and it spit out a crap ton of images and I saved a bunch of them. Um, and so, yeah, so that's where, like, that's where these came from. And then, um, I think it was this one. Uh, there's one of them that if you look really close uh on the plate carrier uh i tried to uh get back with my photoshop roots and basically photoshop the mof logo onto the plate carrier to make kind of grunge it up a little bit make it make it look like it was like part of it

um so if you look really close that's kind of that's kind of in there um But no, it's AI. I have one of my really good friends. His name's Chris. He's really big into AI, utilizes AI at his job and all kinds of stuff. I mean, he's got a couple certs in AI and stuff like that. And so I've been really, me and him have been, uh, how to utilize it better day to day. And yeah, I like for disaster coffee for the raising values, I was kind of pumping stuff in for this. I will every once in a while, like I'll put something in, like I'll put different parameters

in and stuff, but yeah. So it's really interesting what, uh, the AI art will spit out. So, um, yeah, it yeah, it's pretty cool. But yeah, that's where the Tatsuka Raccoon came from. I still want to do one with... I can't get it to spit out the right image for a bump helmet and nods. It doesn't... I did do Tatsuka Raccoon wearing night vision, all kinds of stuff.

And it spit out some gnarly fricking stuff. Like it was weird. So I might have some Photoshop work and maybe take a picture of like my bump helmet and nods and stuff like that and see what I can't Photoshop. But, or you could always like capture a neighborhood raccoon and train it to wear a bump helmet nods. I mean...

Bribe it with food. That might work. They're not hard to bribe. Well, nah. I just don't want my face scratched off. That's what the cage is for. Oh, Jesus. That is the beginning of a whole set of really bad ideas.

So, the topic of the show today is prepping for comfort, which I'm struggling to remember how this came up, who threw this into our lab. But like it's something that like we have discussed along with the prep, the patrons quite a few times, because like usually when people first get into this the idea of preparedness you know they're focused on minimums it's beans and rice and it's like what's the bare minimum because i have to get there as fast as possible and then once they get there there's really kind of two avenues one is i need to i need to do these things in a greater amount so i'm prepared for a longer period of time, but still at that bare minimum sustainment kind of quality of life. Or they start branching out into, well, I've got these things, but these things would be cool to have too. And then they start looking sideways at, I can hold out for, say, three months, arbitrary number.

But I don't just want to barely survive for three months. I want to be comfortable. I want to have things that I want. I don't want to have to go through the apocalypse without coffee and cigars because that would suck twice as bad. You know, it's that idea. And so I thought that would make an interesting topic to unpack and kind of talk about like, you know, like what's feasible, what's not, what's our personal go-to prep for comfort? I mean, I will personally give a lot of credit to my wife for this because when I first started prepping, it was pretty much just on me. And then when she came into this world, too, that's when she was like, I love you dearly, but you're a dummy because you forgot this, this, this, this, and this.

And I was like, oh, that's why i'm more smart than i am in many ways it's good to have them around yeah they definitely make you think of things just a little bit different but that difference can be massive i mean just you know yeah your background as a soldier comfort notfort, not really a thing. What's comfort? When you're doing soldier things, right? So, of course, naturally, your mind went to sustainability and survivability first. Makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. And I think my mind and a lot of people's mind, because like, you know, call it what it is. There's a big Venn diagram of preparedness where there's like preppers and then there's military and first responders. So you're talking about a large group of people who are very used to austere environments and doing without. And like people who, when,

when there's an emergency, whether it's a flood or a tornado or a hurricane or a blizzard, they just know things are going to suck for a while and there's no way not to make them suck. So you might as well just, you know, to borrow the old military phrase, embrace the suck. But then when you start bringing civilians into this world, which preparedness has become more and more mainstream over the years, and a lot of us have spouses and kids and they don't appreciate austerity the way some of us do then they start saying uh but does it have to suck quite this bad and i feel like that's kind

of where we wound up that's the difference in people between type one and type two fun if you're familiar with uh uh jocko willink's podcast i am not. Type 1 fun are things that are fun to do while you're doing them. Type 2 fun are things that are fun to look back on, but that suck while you do them. That's my military experience. Yeah, type 2 fun. All right, so how do we conduct this? I mean, do y'all just want to kind of go around around toss something in the hat talk about it or sure i mean or we can just talk about what we've

done over the years to just to make i mean prepping for comfort if you think about it it falls in the same aspect of just camping i mean uh the kind stuff to make your camping experience a little bit comfortable so you know like what have you guys got what have you guys bought recently or what have you upgraded to or what what things have you changed to make your your camping life uh which then can translate to the prepping uh side of stuff like what did you guys change or upgrade? Like I said, to, or by,

to make your, make that life easier or more comfortable. Well, I mean, I can tell you that camping wise, I mean, like over the last two years, you know,

we, we got the Jackery, we made the jump to a 12 volt fridge. And for anybody that's in the camping world or in the preparedness world, a 12-volt refrigerator, God, it opens up so many freaking doors. I like it. It turns camping out of the back of a truck into truly more glamorous than you feel like you deserve.

Because, like, you know, you're not fishing your food out of a bucket of pink water. You're not constantly worried about ice. You just open the lid and shut the lid and get your food out when you want it and you can it makes things so much nicer but more recently up to this time like my wife and i and my daughter we've always slept on sleeping bags on sleeping mats on the floor. And that was okay for me. It's become less okay as I've crested 41 and I'm heading towards 42, to be honest.

But my wife was the one that really put her foot down and said, hey, babe, we're not getting good sleep laying on the floor. So she was the one that pushed us towards eventually getting cots. And we sized those cots perfectly in our six-man tent so that we can put one up against each one of the three walls that doesn't have the door we're using. And we have a big open area in the middle of the tent so you can stand to get dressed. And those cots have changed the calculus as far as where we can set up the tent,

how much ground prep we have to do because we don't have to make sure we have every little rock and every little stick out of the way. You know, we use a double floor covering. So we use a tarp that's quartered on the ground and then a ground cover and then the tent. So even if there's something on the floor, it's not going to punch a hole in the floor. But making the move to cots has definitely improved the quality of sleep. And I cannot tell you that when you're sleeping in the middle of the woods without air conditioning, anything you can do to make you get better sleep is a blessing.

And the thing of it is that is that like our normal emergency situation is usually like hurricanes. So in that situation, we're usually bugged in, we have beds we can sleep in. But as we learned during Hurricane Ida, you know, I don't know if anybody's aware of this, but those beds, those mattresses, they hold a lot of body heat. So if you're all, if you have like one little window unit struggling to cool down the house, or if you don't have air conditioning, having a cot that will not trap your body heat and will allow some breathability around you, that can be a huge help in keeping cool and keeping comfortable. Man, what's a serious upgrade to that even? Take a little box fan and blow that under all three of the cots. So even on a low setting, it'll cool you down.

So interestingly enough, that same camping trip or the camping trip before we got the cots, we got a small, I want to say it's like a nine or a 10 inch little battery powered box fan with an LED light on it. And that has now become our ceiling fan so when we're in the tent we throw that up in the top of the gear loft and you can either blow air down or you can pull air up towards the vent but that's our air circulation and i did the power calculations on it on medium air it will run for eight and a half hours so yeah, yeah. So, I mean, like when we're in the tent, you know, and the other thing it does is it's just white noise. Like for any fan sleepers out there, that's me and my wife. Like I can get to sleep listening to bugs chirping and it's fine, but my wife really needs the white noise of a fan. So with that thing, I just, you know, click it on, click it on to leave the light on while we're getting ready and everything at night.

Turn the light off, click the fan on medium, and when the fan runs out in the morning, it's time to wake up anyway. Well, the other thing, too, is how you can translate this into the preparedness stuff is if you guys have to bug out for whatever reason, the hurricane or something, if you guys have to leave the area, you better throw the, I'd throw the cots into the truck because if you go to a hotel and it's first come first serve, and if you get a hotel where you have one bed, uh, it's okay. I'm not going to make my kid, my wife or myself sleep on the floor. You know, I don't really want to do that. And when there's a bunch of other families around, if they, the, I know the hotels usually have cots, but they don't have hundreds of them. So having your own cot to where you can throw it in the room and either get one of the other people, somebody up off the floor, then that says a lot too. That helps. Oh, absolutely.

And one of the big changes we made when we moved out to this house, in fact, well, two big changes. One, we gained a natural fireplace, a full Mason's fireplace. So there is off to my right here, there's a big brick column that goes all the way up out of our house. This is a fireplace, I don't know if you guys are familiar with it, that has what's called heatulators. I'd never heard of it either. Essentially what it is, is there's two vents on the left, on either side of the chimney. There's two on the floor to about halfway up to the ceiling. And that brick, once it all heats up, it starts naturally drawing air in through the

bottom vents, bringing it up along the heated flue and out into the room. Now it will keep my entire house. Now this was obviously not the coldest day, but we had that ice storm last year that knocked out power for about four days. We were able to keep our house at 74 degrees when it was 25 and windy outside with just that fireplace. Now we also have a generator and the generator panel is right over there. That was another big upgrade that we did that allows us to have hot showers, water from our well. And if we want to, we can have the boiler running. That's also in this room here. It's a big 220, 10,000 K generator. So it eats a lot of fuel, but know i've it's one of the dual

fuel ones and i'm looking at there's a there's a uh an upgrade that you can put on it that'll make it a tri-fuel but i'll have to get a bigger gas meter put on the outside of the house for that so that's a little bit down the line but what it allows me to do is i built a little trailer in fact i should probably write up a little article on that trailer I built once I get the charger, charger bank put on it. Um, generators mounted on the trailer. There's two, uh, 40 pound propane cylinders on it. That's enough to run our house, uh, basically an hour, every four hours for like three weeks off those two cylinders. It's, it's not bad not bad you know so you can just hook it up hook it up to the lawnmower because i i had to pull that generator through a couple inches of

snow that sucked it's it's it's only a few hundred yards from my garage to our hookup but still icy slushy snow it'd be a lot easier with the tractor so well yeah so that was a couple of big upgrades we well you also got a thing too is when you if you if you have your fireplace that does that how much load not running the furnace that takes off of your your generator so it's 60%. Right. 60% of our total household load would come from that boiler. So the generator now runs running the well, the fridge, the furnace, lights, wifi,

all that runs at about like just over idle, about 15 to 20%. Right, that's what I'm saying. It's so like you not having to worry about the furnace or the boiler, that right there makes it so that you can take hot showers because a hot water, I mean, depending on if it's electric or gas and stuff like that. Yeah, it's a gas. It's a gas. So the only thing you're doing for the hot water heater is turning on and off the electronic valve for the gas in it. Yeah. But then, yeah. So, I mean, but what I'm saying is basically you, you having the load off of the, the boiler like that allows you to actually run more things and actually be more efficient when it comes to the house. It cuts our fuel consumption by, like I said, about 60%. Yeah. So no, that's good. Yeah. You know, it's, it's pretty big.

One of the, one of the really key things we were looking for when we moved out here, and this is a little bit prepping for comfort too, was we were buying a ranch house instead of a two-story. It's a bit of a luxury around here. Most of the houses built around here are two-story houses. It costs a bit more money per square foot to have a ranch house because for one, there's more roof. But we've been watching our grandparents kind of age lately. My grandparents are mostly in their 80s. My wife's grandparents are a little bit younger than that, but not much. And stairs are getting to be a problem for them.

My grandfather was recently hospitalized because of a fall. He's doing fantastic, so no worries about that. He'll be back home next week, I think, or yeah, mid next week. But we wanted to have a house that if this was our forever house, for whatever reason, couldn't move, didn't want to move, whatever, we could age here well into our 80s because getting into the house is two short steps. That would be very easy to throw a ramp on. Just about everything we need is on one floor except for the laundry, but that'd be easy to relocate. The house has got a spare bedroom, so we can put a spare bedroom actually functionally above my head. Put the laundry room in the spare bedroom above my head, I should say.

And without having to do major renovation work or move again to a smaller house, we could care for this place long-term, even if one of us were to become injured or infirm in some way. Which, yeah, is that a little bit prepping? To me it is. To me it is because I'm going to probably get old bar and getting hit by a bus or some kind of heart attack or something. I can tell you from experience it's going to happen to you whether you wanted to or not. Right, yeah. I'm 34, and before I lost a bunch of weight,

my knees hurt walking upstairs. So I could see it coming down the road and I wanted to not be forced into it. You know what I mean? So, yeah, unfortunately, my wife and I are, I mean, we could stay in this house if we, if somebody put a gun to our head, but we just don't want to.

Because like you and I were talking about before the show, like, you know, we're in the suburbs and don't want to, because like you and I were talking about before the show, like, you know, we're in the suburbs and we desperately want to be further out in the country. And this house is like, we could, there's no functional reason why my wife and my,

my wife and I, and even my daughter, if she chose to stay with us, you know, for a couple of years, get herself established, couldn't fit into this house. Oh, for sure.

But the problem really is it's not what we want. Like, Gillian and I have some long-term plans to kind of have a house built from the ground up to our specs that would be potentially a home that we would never, we'd never retreat from. Like, if there's a, if there'd be a hurricane, bring it, you know, kind of situation. But this ain't it. First of all, it's in the middle of a tri-city area. But I digress. I was talking earlier about one of those hey dummy moments my wife dropped on

me. So when she first got into not long after she got into the preparedness mindset and the subtitle under my name says the baker, and this is, this is pertinent. So I, I do bake. I learned to bake and I learned to cook from my mother when I was very young. And it's something that I've kind of passed along to my daughter, taught her how to bake. And my wife pointed out to me, she was like, hey, babe, if all hell breaks loose, you and I both know that me and your daughter are going to want some morale boosters at some point. So you probably should put aside some baking supplies. Now, this is bearing in mind that like I already have in the in the go to pantry in the kitchen,

stuff in the, in the go-to pantry, in the kitchen, flour and sugar and chocolate chips. And in the, the other pantry is like baking powder. I've already got all this stuff. I need to whoop up cookies or fudge or, you know, brownies or whatever, pretty much spur of the moment. I mean, if I don't have what I need to make what you want, I can probably make something pretty close to it just because that's the way we keep the kitchen stocked but then i went behind myself and put aside an entire five gallon bucket of nothing but baking supplies nothing but baking supplies because again it's one of those situations where it's like in a two or three day we can't go to the grocery store kind of thing we can tough it out for two or three days but my wife was. Like sooner or later, the beans and the rice are going to get old and somebody is going to want a morale booster. And that's when you have dad who can bake,

who just needs the tools of this trade. And then on my side of things, I started making a much more concerted effort to bulk up on things like whiskey and cigars and coffee. I mean, I've got 15 pounds of green beans sitting back there on the shelf, and I need to order more because I have to fill up another five-pound bucket full of it. But the point is, like, you know, it just goes back to this idea that, okay, we've got enough red beans and rice, we're not going to starve for a very long time. And while I can quite comfortably eat red beans and rice we're not going to starve for a very long time and while i can quite comfortably but you might kill each other well i get quite comfortable eat red beans and rice almost forever i mean well past the rapture if they if i end up not you know

getting my ticket out of here on that train but yeah my wife might kill me in my sleep if i try to feed her red beans and rice consistently for too long. My daughter would get, I don't know, my daughter's wired like I am. She'd get a little grouchy eventually, but I think my wife would be the one that does me in first. Lack of time. Yeah. But that's another thing. You know what? We actually don't friggin, we don't have I was about to say we don't have, I was about to say we don't have tortillas on him, but we can make tortillas.

Those aren't hard. You can make tortillas, but what about bulk seasonings? Yeah. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Because that's, that's one thing that my wife brought up to me when we started, when I started putting back larger quantities of food was having more than just the spice rack in the cabinet kind of going on. Yeah. Cause I cook a lot at home. Well, and I mean, do you think of it like this? Like if you need, if you look at the proportion of things in most recipes, you're talking about

teaspoons or tablespoons of baking powder and seasonings and sugar to cups of flour. So you can kind of get an idea just looking at a recipe book, like what your proportions are. Like if you have a big old huge, like 10 pound bag of flour, you probably need a small extra can of baking powder or something to just keep things balanced out. But I mean, it, it all comes back to the idea that like, we just, we don't want to have to eat, you know, beans and rice every day in the apocalypse if we can help it. I mean, you know, if you guys have a Sam's Club around you, I'll just pull one at random here.

Taco seasoning, 23 ounces of taco seasoning for seven bucks. Granted, that's probably a ton of sodium and you could probably make it better for you for less, but you're going to go through, I don't know, a tablespoon, maybe two or three to a pound of meat. So you can get quite far for a few bucks. bucks you know just um you know even if you don't figure it for um like each individual meal you know just picking up your generic garlic salt garlic powder onion powder stuff like that andrew what do you what do you normally cook around your house? I know you fed me pretty much exclusively meat while we were there, which was fantastic by the way. Yeah. Um, I mean,

I, I swear by the, uh, the Traeger, like I don't have any Traeger, but, uh, I swear by their,

the rubs that they have. Um, so like there's Saskatchewan rub, which is like black pepper, garlic. I don't even know what's all in it, but it's, uh,

it's fricking amazing. It goes great on everything. It looked like a pretty coarse sea salt on there too. Yeah, but I have yet to find something that doesn't taste good with that. I put it on fish. I put it on fish. I put it on chicken. I mean, I put it on turkey, everything. mean i put on turkey everything i literally put on everything

so i i have that and i actually need to buy a few more because i like to have one in my pantry one in my truck and then one on there you go uh and so i actually took the one out of my truck to make some stuff the other day so i need to actually buy another one but uh but yeah i mean i like to buy the uh like the salt and pepper in bulk obviously I go through pepper a lot faster than salt. Um, just, I'm not a big salt person in general, but yeah, I, it's crazy how much, how fast I go through pepper versus salt. So, uh, so yeah, so stuff like that. Uh, I mean, taco seasoning, uh, I don't necessarily make tacos all that often or I mean from home or at home rather. But but yeah, I mean, it's definitely I could probably eat tacos every single day in the apocalypse as Phil could eat red beans and rice probably. But right. If you could sort of reverse engineer that Saskatchewan seasoning so that you could maybe go to whole dry ingredients. So like dry peppercorns, whatever the peppers are that are in there, whole dried peppers and just get a grinder to crush those up. Because I don't know how long that Saskatchewan stuff lasts.

last but i know that like the the burger seasoning blend that i used to use it would get like in a in a hardened mass if you left it all pre-mixed for too long yeah well that's the thing is i mean this here it i mean but honestly like i really i look at the humidity and stuff like what yeah my salt the salt that i because i have salt and pepper sitting on the back of my stove and the salt will uh kind of start sticking and pepper sitting on the back of my stove and the salt will uh kind of start sticking together and i just gotta i gotta shake it and break it up yeah yeah once you bust it up it's fine again but i was just thinking for the for the um so like the peppercorns and i mean you could definitely crush peppers and yeah you could definitely re-engineer it and uh and i mean even make something of your own uh depending on what

you want to add because like that's that's the thing i like about the saskatchewan rub is it has a knife of a kick that i like uh and but it doesn't like murder me because uh or worse when it comes to anything spicy and like hot whatever but yeah so i mean you definitely uh i mean but that's basically a lot of stuff. And I mean, I like some Italian stuff. So like I'll have some Italian seasoning sitting around garlic. Garlic. I like garlic salt on eggs is actually something that I've grown fond of.

Yeah, just a little bit because honestly, the or not garlic salt sorry garlic pepper uh just a little bit because if you had too much trust me i know uh if you had too much that the garlic and it definitely can be too garlicky uh but i do like yeah a little bit of garlic pepper uh stuff like that so uh no i mean those are pretty much the staples that I have, uh, in my pantry. And then, uh, the same thing kind of pretty much like in the back of my truck is, uh, the salt and pepper and, uh, the, the rub and, uh, I think a garlic pepper or stuff like that. So what about, uh, what about booze? Booze?

And you know, we all, we all like, we all like a beer. We all like whiskey. Like, do you, do you do any of that home brewing? No, not yet. I've researched it and I've thought about it, but it's something that I just don't want to put the money into right now. I did have a friend of mine. We did do a home brew years ago, many, many years ago, and it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of turn the heat up.

Okay, now sit for half an hour and wait. It has to get to this temp so okay we'll have a beer and that right okay let things cool down okay now sit and wait you know that like so that was and i would really like to get into i've been i've been really researching uh making uh homemade liquor so i've been really researching a lot of different, the kettles and I've been researching a lot of the things that I need at home to do it, even on like a small, really, really small scale. And I mean, that's really interesting, but again, I don't, I don't have the time and I don't really have the extra cash right now to get into it. So, but I mean,

What I got into for, uh, instead of homebrewing beer was making mead. Cause that's a, that's a very set and forget process. So part of what I do is I keep about five gallons of honey all the time. Cause in the winter, me and my wife go through tea, like mad, just cold and flu season. She works with young kids. So she brings home everything. Phil, I'm sure your wife does the exact same thing. If the kids have it, I'm going to have it eventually. So throat coat teas, piles of that, because there's nothing worse than just being miserable from a scratchy sore throat. But that honey, dual purpose, given a couple of weeks to a couple of months, depending on what recipe you're doing.

You throw honey and water together. If you got any other kinds of fruit, throw that in. And you can make yourself a pretty, very good, depending on the quality of your honey, honey wine. You know, and not to mention the medical uses medical uses for honey, as far as like for wound care and the fact that it doesn't go bad ever. I think at one point they recovered some from Tutankhamen's tomb that was still edible. So, I mean,

if you can store it in a desert tomb, you can probably store it in your basement or crawl space. Just, you know, find a local kid or a local guy that's got his own bees that harvest it and just tell them in the spring, like, hey, I want a five gallon bucket this summer. It's going to be expensive, but you'll have it for, well, unless you're brewing mead, you will have it for a decade or more before you eat your way through it. And when you get halfway

done ordering it, get another bucket from them. I think last time I bought it, it was like $240 for five gallons of honey. That's a lot of honey. I use five pounds of it to make a five gallon batch of mead. I would imagine buying it. Five pounds is not much. I would also imagine buying it five gallons at a time. You're probably, I would imagine you're getting a cost break someplace because they don't have to do half as much work packing it up. It's, I think last, the first time I did a batch of mead, it was like $130 worth of honey,

buying the honey from Jewel. And that was five pounds because I was buying the organic honey off the grocery store shelf. So it was surprisingly expensive. And then my mother-in-law put me in contact with this kid over in Elgin that's been making a go at being a bee farmer on his own and having some pretty good success. So I've been able to buy from him lately. In fact, that last five-gallon bucket I bought before we moved into this house four years ago is just about half empty so i bought time to order another five gallons from them and it's a good source of clean food grade buckets too once you once you empty that out wash it out a little bit and you're good to go to store whatever else yeah i will i yeah i go through honey like crazy because i do i mean coffee depending on how many cups of coffee I have it's a spoon of honey

every single coffee now and uh even with tea I started drinking a lot more tea too and I still I mix a spoon of honey in it and yeah I I've noticed I've noticed some allergies and I've noticed like some a couple things kind of clear up of clear up with me just by doing that over the summer. But yeah, it's becoming a habit to where I've, so my girlfriend and I, we've been looking at other animals to raise possible like chicken, you know, butcher chickens and all kinds of stuff. She threw out there the idea of bees. So I've been actually getting into doing some research on raising bees because, I mean, I don't know. I have no intentions of selling it, but if I can sustain the honey with bees or whatever. So I don't know. I know there's a lot to it.

There's a ton to it. Well, at the very least, too, it gives you a little bit more contact with the natural world, which can be massive for people's mental health. I mean, there's nothing funnier than watching a bunch of chickens go about doing their chicken stuff. Everybody seems to like it when they start doing it. They might not like cleaning out the coop, but they like watching the chickens. I mean, I've never seen chickens hump before, but I saw them yesterday. So I'm throwing that out there. There you go.

Learn something every day. The rooster. And like, it was sitting on top of a hen and I was like, what the heck? And she goes, you know what that I go. She,

and she, she's like, that's, this is, you know what happens? I was like, that's what animals looks like. Like,

holy crap. But, uh, no, it's, uh, you know, know obviously because i've only seen chickens with eggs i've never really seen roosters uh before are you know with in the mixed in so no it's interesting so yeah it uh yeah i mean prepping for comfort i as far as my biggest purchase would be probably my truck bed uh my truck uh camper uh or the tent that i got for my truck uh i i don't mind tenting

it i don't mind sleeping on the ground um but the idea and i mean in the truck the the the the camper that i got or the tent that i got my back my truck i mean it's not the most it's not like super like super comfortable you know whatever but i mean it's the size of a queen size bed. So plenty of room. Uh, there are, there is a mattress that I, there is an air mattress that I do want to buy for it, uh, that it actually gives it a little bit more cushion. Uh, so I might do that. Uh, but I mean, for the most part, I just like it because I like the idea of being up and off the ground. Uh,

and then I also like the idea of just being in a hard, more of a hard shelter than just a tent. This last or this last summer, this summer, when I went camping with a couple of friends of mine, we were on the we were up in the Upper Peninsula camping on the side of the lake. And it's like five in the morning morning a thunderstorm rolled through and it was blowing hard enough to where my truck was rocking and uh i looked out and i saw like their tents and stuff and their tents i mean were like i mean you could see the they held up great but you could definitely see that wind was pushing and it's it's one of those things where I felt safe, uh, just because, I mean, I have, it's a hard top, uh, the tent is a hard top, so, and it's angled, but if anything were to come down, I mean, could it close down on me?

Uh, maybe. Uh, but I mean, that's pretty, that's something terrible that would. At least you have something more substantial than a tarp in between. Yeah. So, uh, so yeah, so that's basically, that's my big prepping for comfort or, you know, camping or whatever. So, it was the big purchase for that. And then just like the, just the way I've been trying to set my bed up is I'm trying to make it more comfortable, faster, just more, just easier to set stuff up, easier to cook, stuff like that. I will say that there is something to that because we're still tent camping on the ground because with my wife's ankle injury, there is a 0% chance she's going to go up and down a ladder

to get in and out of bed at night. That's not possible. But, I mean, it takes us. Once we back into a camping spot, we're probably half an hour out from having the campsite set up. You know, between unloading everything, which the soft topper is making that a little easier. And, I mean, I guess I could throw that in this conversation. Like, one of the things we did was we put a soft topper on the back of our truck to help out with camping and with hauling gear and everything,

because, you know, the thing about having a Toyota Tacoma is that Toyota thinks that those little cute little rear leaf springs that are nice and comfortable when you're bumping around the suburbs are the perfect thing to put on your truck, but when you put 700 pounds of shite in the back of it, it squats a whole bunch, and it rides the bump stops. But I digress. So if you put

a 200-pound fiberglass camper top on the back, or a fiberglass shell on the back of your truck, that truck starts to squat very quickly. And a soft topper is basically a convertible top for your truck bed, so it weighs 35 pounds. But it allows me to, and it's not 100% waterproof.

I've talked to guys who have sealed it down to the bed much better than what I do because I still like to be able to remove mine. But it's waterproof enough that you can put stuff in the bed of the truck. And the worst you're going to get is a little bit of water is going to seep into the corners. And then it will run along the bed, you know, in the low spot between the channels of the truck and the worst you're going to get is a little bit of water is going to seep in at the corners and then it will run along the bed you know in the in the low spot between the channels of your bed so yeah but then all that is all that's doing it's just okay so the water does that all right well i'm not going to put a bag a duffel bag of clothes clean clothes right on the bed i'll put totes and then i'll put the clothes and i'll put whatever fabric i'll put on top of that like that just okay that that's all you got

to do so that's not terrible but uh yeah no it's uh making things a little bit easier for yourself as far as like loading unloading or whatever i mean it to me i mean that's one reason why i got the the the tent for the truck was over the years that I've been going to prepper camp and stuff like that, it's like you see Tommy having his on his Jeep.

Watch this, guys. I'm ready to go to sleep. They're like, all right, well, we're going to keep doing this and we're finally getting set up. Holy crap, I'm tired and let's finally sit down. Tommy rolls in, dang near dark, and he's just like, all right, well, we're going to keep doing this and we're finally getting set up. And OK, holy crap, I'm tired and let's finally sit down. Tommy rolls in freaking ding near dark and he's just like, dude, dude, dude. OK, I'm done. I'm going to bed. And that's kind of like I mean, so some of it was kind of out of jealousy versus necessity kind of thing. But at the same time, taking that worry out of it it knowing that i can because like going to

prepper camp this year i'm by myself i'm driving by myself so i'm looking at possibly leaving wednesday drive halfway stay maybe stay at like a koa or something and uh and then drive the rest of the way like when we are for the tennessee trip for the mof trip i did that same thing and i drove a lot i drove for about eight or I think 10 hours. I think I drove, I pulled in, found a KOA pulled in. I was like freaking dead tired from driving. It was nice to be able to pull in at dark. I set my, I have those DeVos, uh, the lanterns that I set up. I set those up first thing. And then I pop my tent and within five minutes, like, I mean, it took me longer to like get my sleeping bag unfolded and thrown in there than anything. And so, yeah.

So like knowing that I can just do that really quick, like that is, that's nice. Like that, that made things easier. It just takes a lot off of you. So, uh, I mean, and obviously, uh obviously uh you know packing up and stuff and the downside is if you ever want to use your vehicle and you're by yourself you got to pack up and do that but with again tennessee i every single day i packed my truck up and i drove my truck and then at night i would do and so that's the thing it's five it's like literally five minutes unpacking and once you get it down it's like maybe five or so minutes packing it up and you're ready to go.

I mean, as long as everything else somewhat situated or, you know, if you don't want to leave stuff, you got to pack up the whole campsite, but still it's just, you know, just that idea of being able to like just do it really quick versus, all right, I got to turn my campsite down kind of thing or whatever. So, but yeah, I mean, that's, I would say that's like, well, that was probably my biggest thing for prepping for comfort. And then obviously the small things, as far as a better water filter, uh, then, you know, I have the Sawyers, which are nice, but a better water filter, uh, I mean, cooking supplies, like just a nicer stove,

you know, things like that, that just make it nicer, uh, that it makes it easier. So, yeah, well,

I mean, I think there's something to, I want to say organized or being more organized, being a prep, but I think there's something to like admitting like this is not a hundred percent necessary, but it's going to make my life substantially easier. And, you know, like let's call what it is when, when you're camping. Yeah. There's a lot of sitting around screwing off going on. Cause that's just what camping's for, but there's also a lot of work involved. Like every, I always used

to tell my daughter, I'm like, when you're camping, everything takes longer. It takes longer to cook. Cause you got to set everything up. You got to boil water. You got to do whatever. You know, like everything takes longer. So everything takes more effort. So anything you can install to take effort out of the equation or make things just quicker, simpler, less set up, less teardown, you can make a good justification for that. Because especially in an emergency situation,

anything that saves effort is a lifesaver. Because you're already going to be at a deficit in those situations. If nothing else, just a sleep deficit. Yeah. What about entertainment? You got a teenage girl, Phil. Yeah. How are you going to

keep her from driving you up a wall? I am trying to figure that out because when she was... During Hurricane Ida a couple years ago, the day after the hurricane, that little girl walked out the front door and was like... Or not the front door.

We couldn't walk out the front door. We had a tree in front of the front door. She walked out the back door. I was like, oh, it's really windy. Can I fly my kite? And we were both like, yes, go fly your kite. So she went and got her daggum kite and was flying that damn thing in the front yard. And my wife has a picture of her flying a kite

in front of this huge tree that's down in our yard. So she was pretty easy, but you know, at this point, like her, a substantial portion of her life revolves around her cell phone and Netflix and YouTube. And that would get troublesome in a very quick hurry.

Fortunately with net, fortunately, how long will your Jackery power your home Wi-Fi if the network was still on? Honestly, I wouldn't even attempt to power the home Wi-Fi. The three of us are on an unlimited cellular plan. Oh, okay. So you just need to recharge cell phones then, really. And because of all the time we spent camping, I mean, we've got a Jackery 1000 back there on the shelf.

We've got a couple of portable power banks that we use to charge stuff. We've got the Jackery has solar options. I mean, I don't think it'd be, I know that during Hurricane Ida, you know, the generator pretty well ran, was focused on running the window unit and the fridge and the chest freezer. And we had a little bit of surplus power even after that. So we were running things. We were doing things like, you know, unhook from one thing, hook up to like the washer and dryer and wash clothes and stuff. But, you know, that's how we got through a lot of that.

And the Jackery, I mean, honestly, at the end of like, I think by the second day or the third day, once we got the generator running, we stopped putting the Jackery and solar panels out in the front yard. the end of like i think by the second day or the third day once we got the generator running we stopped putting the jackery and solar panels out in the front yard we just plugged it into the generator and we used it as the the home power bank to basically be like a really big usb you know usb uh charger and that's what because we we only had the three of us but my wife's family my wife some of my wife's family came into town to help us deal with the problem. So we had temporarily, we had two more adults and three more teenagers in the house.

There was a lot of cell phones to charge. But yeah, I mean, entertainment is something like we've got like a couple of decks of cards. We've got some board games and stuff like that. We've got things we could do, but entertainment for a long-term period of time would become problematic eventually. You know. Well, yeah, we've got board games.

We've got decks of cards and stuff like that. This family gets very vicious around a game of Uno. Like, bites have broken out over it. Maybe you should look into um some of the the tabletop games i'm a big fan of dnd shadow dark call of cthulhu stuff like that storytelling games you know you you get the basic rules you got some character sheets heck you can put them in a in a sleeve and use wet

erase or dry erase markers on them then they're infinitely reusable well until the plastic cracks but they're reusable for quite a long time i mean heck a notebook paper you can write down the important stuff about it and you can you can play a near endless series of games at least well until you're out of the situation or you don't have the time to play anymore. D&D was something that we weren't into during Ida, but we have gotten into. I have a level two warrior and my daughter, I think, has a druid she's playing with. Nice.

See, that's perfect because that's a thing you do now. That's a normal part of your daily life that you can continue with no external input other than time. What about the two of y'all? What do y'all do for entertainment that you could continue to do if something popped off? Well, for me, right behind me. So that little lathe there is capable of being powered by my generator. So if playing around with that, working on little projects on that, board games, D&D, obviously a big fan of that, and other tabletop role-playing games,

our network is going to be soon on a battery backup, so that won't kick off necessarily when the power goes off right away, but it is hooked up to the generator system. So the generator will be able to repower that power bank and therefore keep our ethernet up because we don't have cable TV and we do all, all that stuff off of streaming. You know, we've got a pretty extensive book and book library, uh, between my wife and I, we both are big readers, as well as a fairly extensive DVD collection from back when you used to buy a bunch of those. Oh, you mean physical media? How beautifully antiquated. Yeah, physical media. And then actually this computer next to me that I just put together to podcast down here is also going to be a home media server PC for us. So there's going to be, given all the spare hard drives,

I have about 12 terabytes of digitally stored media on there. So we'll be able to stream anywhere in the house from this computer. Well, I think currently right now I've got two and a half years worth of television shows continuously played stored on it. What about you, Andrew? What are you going to do for fun? Harass the neighbors. There you go. No, honestly, like, I mean, I might have a deck of cards somewhere.

I think I've conflicted somewhere. Other than that, I don't do board games. I'm boring. I, my attention span with four, my attention span with board games is very minimal. I'm the guy that will flip over Monopoly after 15 minutes because I'm just like, this is bullshit. Same thing with D&D and all that stuff. My attention span, I can't do it. I think back in college, we had a D&D group.

I think we met twice, and then I was like, I know, I think back in college we had a D and D group and I think I met, I think we met twice and then I was like, I'm over it. It's not for everybody, but yeah, I don't know. I really, I mean, that's, that's going to be the downfall where I'm going to have to figure out something, uh, being in the city, it might be watching the chaos and the, the, the drug use and stuff. Cause that's always fun to do as of, as of now, uh, see if you can't spot a drug deal that's a fun game and or uh back when i first moved to grand rapids actually before i moved to grand rapids uh i my i came to visit my one uncle and him and i

drove down division and we said uh spot the hook we'd play so basically that and the drug deals which is always interesting to see so but yeah no I mean but I mean I guess if crap hit the fan it would be I would like it'd be nice to be out in the country and grab an axe and go cut a tree down and mess around with that or something. I don't know. Uh, but it's your plan still to, to bust out of there then, right? Oh yeah.

I'm not staying where I'm at. So it makes sense that your, that your entertainment package would be lighter. I mean, Phil and I were more of staying where we are. So we need a heavier entertainment package cause you're going to be traveling on the road. So you're not going to have time.

You're not going to have downtime except for inclement weather. yeah yeah i mean it yeah maybe i might if something were if they have weather related oh yeah i'm obviously i'm not bugging out because weather related unless right no i mean like zero travel days if you're familiar with that term from backpacking yeah so yeah so you know put sore out of food whatever you gotta you gotta just stop sometimes yeah but if some i mean yeah but anything other than that like you know crap hits the fan or whatever uh no i'm not staying here this town is there's too many druggies there's the meth is with out of control here uh and neighbors especially like i've been picking out the neighbors that are uh drugs uh so it's definitely gonna be interesting uh but uh yeah so it's it is what it is but uh yeah no i mean it i mean yeah well that's the reality of life for a lot of people though i

think andrew like you you can't pick your neighbors sometimes sometimes you have to pick the house that you can afford yeah and that's definitely what this was uh this one was obviously it's not my forever home but uh but no i mean yeah for entertainment i mean i think i have a deck of cards and some other stuff and i mean i'm sure i'll find something else uh something else to do i mean as of the entertainment right now is trying to get my Scorpion set up for night vision use. And then basically, yeah,

cleaning, you know, I know last time I lost power, it was basically go through and just kind of clean some guns and that's about it. So we need to do a night vision episode. You too do. Well, and I need to budget a night vision episode. You two do. And I need to budget for night vision.

And Nick will show up with a pad of paper and take notes. I know. Oh, I, I replayed the previous night vision episode about five times. I have a stack of notes. I know a guy that can get you hooked up. Oh yeah. Oh, yeah.

Well, yeah. Right now we're in recovery mode from our most recent homeownership joys. Yeah, I mean. Emergency funds are there for a reason, but you must replenish them after you. They are for emergency use. Yeah, Duncan will take care of you. He just wants to commit felonious assault on your savings account. That's all. Yeah, that's acceptable. That's everyone nowadays. Just put your savings account in a nice little headlock and punch it in the face seven or eight times. It'll be

alright. You know, actually, I did reach out to them, and I was talking to them back and forth about it, and it seemed to me that for my use case, there's no hundred percent necessity to go with gen three or newer night vision, um, due to where I am and the fact that I'm going to be using positive illumination on my weapons platform.

There's, there's not really a great reason to go from two to three other than completely lights out, no active illumination performance, realistically speaking. I feel like the only, well, the only alternative I would give you to that is, yes, you could probably get away with Gen 2

in that scenario, but the resale for Gen three will always be stronger. So in other words, Oh yeah, absolutely. I don't know that now, but that's the thing is I'm not worried about resale because there's two adults in the house.

If I do upgrade from gen three or gen two to gen three or gen two to gen four, a spare pair that is mounted on my spare helmet that my wife could wear if need be. It's not a downside to me. No, I hear you. That's just the only thing I ever point out when somebody... Because Gen 2 is usable. But it's the only thing I ever point out to somebody is I'm like,

if I try to unload my PVS-14 that Andrew sold me and buy Andrew's own emission, it's a really, really, really high spec tube. I may not get back every dollar I paid for it, but I will get substantial money back for it. Not a problem. Oh, for sure. You absolutely will. Someone's going to look for a tube and they're going to pay for it.

But the minute you start talking about Gen 2, the market just shrinks. Fewer people are going to want to buy it and you're going to get substantially less for it. But then again, that's why some people buy Toyotas because they hold their value for, you know, until 300,000 miles. And some people buy our things because they're like, I don't care what it costs. I don't care what I can get if I resell because I'm not going to. Right. It's like my pickup. When the day I go to sell that pickup, there will be two people interested. A 16 year old with no money and the scrapyard. Yeah. It's like my pickup. The day I go to sell that pickup, there will be two people interested.

A 16-year-old with no money and the scrapyard. Yeah, that's going to be the only two that want that thing. I envision Night Vision the same way. If I'm buying it, I'm going to run it until it either dies or I now need to upgrade because my skillset requires that upgraded tool.

Oh, write that one down for the night vision episode. I mean, we could do that in four days. I don't want to say what day it's going to be because the people listening to this and we, I will, we'll need to make a decision about whether or not we send this out for next

Friday or for this Friday or this out for next Friday when Nick's out of town, which is why we're recording this. We'll figure it out. Either way, whatever works easier. I mean, if you get a busy day and you can't get all the editing done on the next one where you record, then send this one out. Yeah, we'll talk about that or we just yeah exactly there's no worries all right well i thought this was a worthwhile conversation because like i said like a lot of people especially people that first start out in preparedness like they're they're laser focused on bare minimums or laser focused on like beans

and rice and there's a place for that but kind of like Nick and I were talking about last week where we said, you know, once you get to a certain point, you start, you, you broaden your horizons out. You start looking at, I don't just need the bare minimums. I can flirt with night vision or I can start playing with this or I can get into this. And I feel like prepping for comfort is just one of those things that for a certain segment of is kind of falls by the wayside because we're just so used to austere environments. We don't count them as austere anymore. But for a lot of us, you know, we have girlfriends and wives and kids and none of them seem to tolerate, you know, eating bugs and sleeping in the dirt the way some of us do.

So you call it prepping for comfort. I call it keeping my spouse from slitting my throat in my sleep. That's just a security prep. I'm going to give you boys out there a pro gamer tip. The only person on Earth

you should be scared of is the person you sleep next to. Because everybody else on earth has to get through, through locked doors, past security systems, past dogs, past all that stuff to get to you. And all your spouse or girlfriend has to do is wake up in a bad mood and she's right there.

And I tell that to everybody all the time. Like my wife is the only person on earth I'm scared of because if she decides to end me, I'll be, I'll wake up staring at St. Peter and won't know how I got there. But yeah. Huh?

Said, write that down. Yep. Write it down. That is, that is life advice, but let's go ahead and punt this one out the door. Matter of fact,

podcast going out the door. Don't discount comfort because it will be comforting when all hell has broken loose. Talk to you in another week. Bye, everybody. Bye. See you.