The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Redundancy

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

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Welcome back to the Matterfags Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MWFpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host Phil Raveley. Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic and here's your show. So I don't know how late we were. I don't think we were very late, but Nick and I were literally just sitting here BSing.

And then Nick suddenly looked up and said, oh crap, it's time. We get caught up in things now and then. So to be fair, I won't blame it on my co-host. I'll blame it on this whiskey and cream soda, which as much as I'm not a big fan of, as much as I'm not a big fan of like really sugary drinks, y'all should all try whiskey and cream soda. It's, it's a vibe.

Oh yeah. It's good. Yeah. This actually was born out of my misspent youth because there was one night when I was drinking some of my dad's whiskey and God loved the man, but he was a big fan of Jim Beam at the time, which is the most abominable fricking whiskey on earth. I swear to God he's watching this. He's going to know where that bottle disappear to, but anyway,

it's whiskey by technicality alone. Yeah. Well, let's just say that I was not in a position to be able to drink Jim Beam by itself, and I still will not. So the only thing that was happened to be in the house to cut the god awful taste of that rubbing alcohol, why not being cream soda? So the creamy Kentucky was born on that night, and it's been kind of a rabble a family staple ever since it's freaking delicious Yeah, it's pretty good way to go But anyway, so I

Guess let's do the admin work super super quick one these days I'm just not even gonna do admin work work and it's gonna really confuse all y'all Nick while you were gone I tried to get away without doing admin work and my wife stopped me. Thank You Gillian So thanks to the patrons if you're not a patron you should be one you should consider supporting our sociopath And you should those links in the show description one of these days I might even do some legwork and assemble a list of all the current patrons and dime all of y'all out on on the podcast. That's fair. And you can't even say it's a violation of your privacy

because the FBI knows who all y'all are anyway. So, you know. There's that room. We do kind of dime ourselves on the Patreon chat, too. Yes. Merge. There's Merge. There's merge. There's links in the description. Smores support a small business, support the show.

And they're cute, funny, cheeky t-shirts and koozies and that sort of thing. Plus, they all come in black. So if you are one of the men and women in uniform that needs a black t base layer, you can have sassy base layers. Mm hmm. Had even thought of that angle. Oh, yeah, I got I got a family member black tee base layer, you can have sassy base layers. Hmm. Hadn't even thought of that angle. Oh yeah. I got, I got a family member who's a Leo that, uh, some of, some of our shirts have made their way onto duty.

Excellent. And Cypress survivalist, Cypress survivalist is the non-profit. My wife and I started together. It is still going on. We're still doing things right now We're mostly licking our wounds from the first event But honestly, I've already been talking to my wife like non-stop like a meth head Just will not shut up about all the changes

I'm gonna make and how to make the event better and changing all of my all of my individual topics that I teach Because I just see so many ways to make this whole thing work so much nicer But I didn't know any of that until we tried it once. So, you know, there's that That will actually end up being the The topic of a future podcast episode because I just ordered all the stuff I need for to get into a software defined radio Ordered all the stuff I need for to get into a software defined radio So that's gonna make it appear. It's on the podcast and probably why I'm going into that combo class that I teach It's probably a good call. It's very useful and it's really affordable

Yeah, I mean the thing of it is that Your average full analog scanner is like 200 bucks I mean frankly you think one of those UHF radios back there and run that thing in VHF and said scan it It'll just stupidly scan from 100 megahertz up and works that Technically will work But it only works if there's like a nice long signal for it to lock on to the the better scanners can ski and jump frequencies faster, but you're still limited to can you catch a frequency while someone's transmitting on it?

And then you get in situations like, excuse me, like a lot of the like here in Louisiana, we're on LN, which is a trunked digital radio system That's what all your first responders use and you can't listen to that on an analog receiver So that's where you need either a four to seven hundred dollar digital capable trunk capable Scanner or you need a couple of $3540 dong, you know USB dongles and some software and some patience and Probably some bourbon. Well, you know, there are some projects bourbon does not help with There are few and far between and mostly involve power tools challenge accepted

We're gonna chainsaw with bourbon Challenge accepted We're gonna chainsaw with bourbon No, no chainsaw scare the hell out of me, but I'm willing to tackle electronics and computer. Oh, yeah. Yeah Systems yes low voltage systems are very fine Toxicated if anything it tells you when you're doing it wrong faster Let the magic smoke out Somewhere out there. There's an electric probably Josh, who is just like gritting his teeth, listening to this. I'm not a licensed electrician.

Do not follow any of my advice. Yeah. I've never been a licensed electrician, nor should you ever take my advice where, you know, the voodoo of electrons are concerned. Look, it's a series of tubes. It'll be fine. It's just like plumbing. Don't cross the streams and

you're fine. And suddenly every electrician and every plumber was angry at Nick all in one voice. Good, I'll get concrete crews next episode. So let's talk about the mini talk before we get into the big topic. A couple of days ago, you and I and our patrons were actually talking about how the DOJ was just had pissed off the entire gun community by saying that the Second Amendment did not protect silencers. I think you could have just stopped with the DOJ pissed off the entire gun community. And just look, look, any Tuesday, they've probably done something to make us upset. I mean, fair. Yeah.

But then this afternoon they pulled a, wait a minute. And no way. Ask for a 30 day pause to reconsider their position. And you and I were talking about this right before we went live. We did. This is part of what we got caught up in. Yeah. So first of all, Right before we went live, we did. This is part of what we got caught up in. Yeah. So

first of all, I individually and personally feel like this is possibly a good sign, not because I think anything substantial is going to come from it, but mostly because I think they're asking for this pause because they're actually listening. Like when they did what they did on Tuesday, the entire community freaked the hell out. And apparently someone in the DOJ pays attention and grabbed Pam and said, listen, dumb ass. You are pissing off our entire like the the bosses voting block with this nonsense, you need to reconsider. And I think that on the face of it is a positive.

Like the fact that they are actually, someone in the agency is dialed into the idea that we need to pay attention to the people who scream the loudest because they are leading, they're leading, they're leading the, they're the opinion leaders. You know what I'm saying? They're the people who have the podcasts, have the blogs, write the articles, who inform the masses. And if we piss them off, we're going to have a whole lot of heat crawling up our bosses behind. Well, look, 2016 was a podcast presidency, 2024 even more so. New media is what is driving politics more than old media has. And new media, the gun tubers, the gun podcasters, the prepper channels.

The meme creators. The meme creators. You know, a lot of it, a lot of them are more often now I'm noticing more and more pro-gun. Oh, you know, I know you've listened to Tim pool in the past Do you remember what he was like 15 year 10 12 years ago? Not 15, but 10 12. I've been around the time Yeah, he was not pro gun original. No, the dudes got 50 cows now and talks about guns all the time on his show. And, and understand that since you brought up Tim Pool, I still view Tim Pool as like

left of center. The problem is, the problem is, the problem is when you, when you look at this weird like sociopolitical spectrum, what the quote unquote left is, has moved so far to the left that you have guys like Tim pool who are who were not originally pro gun, who are very much like in favor of you know, like they flirt with the idea of UBI, they're in favor of the idea of universal health care. They're, they're very like antsy about restrictions on abortion. These are very, very traditional left of center views. And yet he is now considered to be on the right because the

center line is moved so far to one side. He has to be on the right because if you're not mouse a dog, you have to be. It's a weird timeline. We slipped into Like I don't know who fired up the large, you know who fired up the large head ring collider But they split us off into a really weird timeline. It's all I gotta say. Oh My god our

Third co-host our third musketeer is in the comments. He managed to snag wifi at the hippie commune. You know, but you are not forgotten and you are still welcome to have that third seat anytime you want it. Just saying. Anytime and every time, man. You know, here's the thing. I don't think that you can apply the title of leftists to the modern Democrat party. I think that they are more authoritarian statists than traditional leftists.

Yeah, the problem is you could apply that same standard to like 30% of the GOP. Yeah. Oh yeah, I would absolutely say the same thing. Most of the GOP, at least our elected representatives, are not traditional conservatives. They are right-wing authoritarians. To be fair, the currently elected president is not what I would consider to be a traditional conservative. Oh gosh, no. He's a 90s Democrat. Yeah. He's Bill Clinton with a shitty haircut. And okay I was gonna make a joke about getting BJs in the Oval Office but you know. Look if

you're the president of the United States and you're not getting some in the Oval Office you're doing it wrong come on. Yeah but. Keep it to your wife and not the interns. But yeah I was about to say at least get it from you know You're your your ex supermodel hot-ass wife and knives act you know from and from a to be fair Clinton was not working with the kind of quality Jesus Christ in heaven oh My god in heaven. Oh my god. Thank you, Nick. You are gonna get this podcast scrub from the internet and probably me, Clinton, in the middle of the night just on the back of that

joke. It's fine. She has more important people to murder. It's totally okay. Well, I think you're right. I think that the sea change that you're seeing with this administration, especially compared to the last administration, is when the supporters of the administration disagree charge and the government agencies they control reacts to the public will, that's a net positive for democracy in my opinion because they are, you know, supposed to be agents of our will, at least to some extent. That is very, very aspirational of you to think that our governing officials are supposed to listen to the people. Well they are. I mean in reality they are at least supposed to bend towards the direction

of the populace as well. Whether or not they do it totally, yeah of course they're never gonna do it totally because we don't have perfect information and the general populace is pretty dumb, myself included. Well, they are. We don't have perfect information. We all have very busy lives. I don't know about you, but I was doing 14 other things today other than this podcast and talking about the Second Amendment here.

Maybe they know something I don't and that causes them to react differently, but they should take our wishes into account. Yeah, and I am just that weird person that believes that like the whole point of a representative republic is that people represent the will of the constituents. So even if your constituents want stupid stuff, your job is not to do what's best for them. It's to literally act as the representative of your constituents. And hopefully by collective trial and error, we can make it work all right. I mean, that sounds like really stupid. Like, why would you do something that you know is stupid? But I'm like, you have to understand that like your job as a politician is to literally go to your people and say, what do you want me to do?

If they say, we want you to push for a law that makes it illegal to wear green on a Monday, okay, that's my people are morons, but that's what they're asking for. Right. Yeah. What are you going to do? I mean, is it a net positive? At least it leans me in the direction of thinking that this administration is listening to the people that voted for them, which means if they do something really insane,

like, say, I don't know, start trying to get involved in the land war in Asia and we all rally against that. Perhaps they will listen Yeah, and from my perspective this really just comes down to you like you know, I I Personally individually my beliefs on gun rights are not hard to figure out at this point I think you should be able to buy a rocket launcher out of a vending machine Which still scares the hell out of a lot of people and gives me a chuckle, but that's okay I want privately owned warships. I

Mean technically there's nothing illegal about mounting a 50 cal on the bow of your boat That I'm aware of actually there's some DNR regulations about firearms and fishing that you should read what? there's some DNR regulations about firearms and fishing that you should read. What? Yeah, certain states do have regulations on what on having semi-automatic and fully automatic firearms and fishing craft. Okay. People have have used the cover of fishing to poach. Okay. Which do I even ask what states those are or is it pretty much like very states? I know I have heard that. Is it any state that doesn't that is not touching a body of water, by the way, because that would be hilarious to me if they enacted that law and there was

nowhere you could literally break that law in the state. Oh, well, I mean, if you're talking about ocean going. Yeah, I'm sure because Illinois has regulations on some firearms with fishing boats and whatnot. So what I'm hearing is if you keep your 50 cal in a box and see around international waters, you should be OK. Yeah, I mean, international waters, I mean, they can't prosecute. But, you know, I dig it. Yeah. It should be fine. I just need a boat and get over my seasickness and a 50 cal

and a shitload of money for ammo. That shit ain't cheap. Yeah, like 250 around if you buy the surplus stuff, which I mean you're gonna. Yeah. Okay. So to topic, we are 17 minutes and that's why you shouldn't let me drink whiskey before I podcast. Two is one, one is none, and three is better. So the whole topic's about redundancy. And this shouldn't be that hard for us to make the case for. If there's something that your life relies upon, you should probably have more than one of it.

Even if it's something that's more of a convenience item or a morale item, you should probably have more than one. I get it. Basic, proper thing, but hey, we got to cover the basics now and then. Yeah. At some point in all this, are we going to get into the argument of do you buy one really good one or two halfway ones?

Because that's an interesting argument to get into. Yeah. We could talk about that right now if you want. So like me, personally, I don't Let's talk about the age-old you you got it Let's say you got two thousand dollars give you a nice round budget. Sure. You got two thousand dollars. Your goal is to buy Home defense you need an AR 15 unless you live in Godforsaken communist state, and I'm sorry if you do But let's say for a moment you live in a nice freedom loving place like I do $2,000 who would buy you a help a nice AR-15

But you also need some magazines and some ammo and you know other things to go along with it So and if you want to get if you want to get up on most of our level, you also need something like a chest rig or something to carry your ammo things. tape mags. So the question is, do you blow a grand on that AR 15 or do you buy two $500 AR 15 so that you have one spare? I would argue you buy one $500 AR 15 a $70 replacement parts kit and spare bolt carrier group, six mags, a training class, and as much ammo as will fit in the rest of your budget. Now I, you guys know before my state went and became communist,

I had a really Gucci AR. I went all out Geissele everything Santan match receiver said, Oh, yeah. Oh, I went I went who ultra match custom profile barrel Lantak dragon muzzle break. It was expensive. But I did some favors for a gun dealer. And so I got most of that stuff at dealer pricing, which was they involve knee pads knee pads? Very nice. Holy Jesus. No, actually it involved custom engraving a bunch of Glock 19 slides for some friends of his. So almost it involved machinist knee pads.

But here's the thing. First AR I ever bought, all right, I went down to my local gun store and I bought a, I think it was a PSA RAC AR. It had a detachable carry handle, no fancy sights, no red dot. I bought that, I bought two cases of ammo, and I bought, I think it was 10 magazines. And then the next thing I did

was I registered for a training class because I had never owned a semi-automatic rifle before. I had shot them before, but I'd never owned one. And I ran that rifle into the ground. I beat the absolute crap out of that thing. And it took everything I gave to it. And eventually I did upgrade it. And I got myself a really nice Gucci setup, competitive AR with a red dot sight

and all the fancy toys and the silent capture buffer tube and all that stuff. Was it a better rifle? Undoubtedly, yes. Accuracy wise, reliability wise, the $2,500 AR was better than the $495 AR. Was it good enough to justify the price difference to someone that was not trained with it? Absolutely not. Because even with that, my split times, shot to shot split times, did not improve all that terrible much.

The ergonomics were better, the comfort was better. And yeah, it malfunctioned slightly less than the PSA Rack Grade AR. But instead of that, I spent the money on training. And I think that was a far better investment because I was able to get at the very least reasonably competent over the two training classes I did go to get at the very least reasonably competent over the two training classes I I did go to right off the bat well

and I like my experience has been that the fastest way to turn a 3m away rifle into a 6m away rifle is to hand to somebody that does know how to shoot mm-hmm and by and it works in the opposite direction too, by the way because Because I enjoy shooting, like I inherited a 308 Ruger Hawkeye. So it's the skinny, skinny hunting barrel, 308 caliber, it's nothing special. It's not a Ruger precision rifle,

even though that's not like the greatest precision rifle on earth. It's not a Bergera, it's not a really nice 308 rifle that you would expect to be able to stack rounds on top of each other. Agreed? Agreed. It's a hunting rifle. It's a two and a half three, you know, three inch group at 100 yards with the right ammo. Yeah, absolutely. But through some very careful judicious hand loading and with a lot, lot of polishing on the trigger to get that

trigger pull down from like six pounds down to like two and three quarters of a pound and not changing the ramp angles or doing anything crazy it's still drop safe it's just got a really really smooth let off now good i was able to get that rifle to the point where it'll stack four rounds on top of each other, 100 yards. Most bolt guns are capable of that with judicial reloading. But most shooters are not. Absolutely not. And there is not. And there lies the trick like you can have a 500, a $500

rifle or a $5,000 rifle to a novice shooter, and they will perform approximately the same Yeah, and that's not this that's not like a humble brag like I am the greatest shooter on earth I'm not I I am an above average shooter based on the people I shoot with sure but I would happily say that like I was able to put in the work and I had a day where I had my you know Just right amount of caffeine in my brain to make it behave itself and not be jittery And I like I went out there and I shot four rounds and somewhere. I've got a picture of it It's literally four holes that look like a clover leaf like they're all touching in a hundred yards, and it's beautiful

No, but it is but you take that rifle you hand it to like some knucklehead who's never shot anything bigger than 22 It doesn't even shoot that very well and they're gonna make a six inch group with it It probably with the same ammo with the same rifle. So like I I agree with what you're saying My thing is is that I think you happen upon the right the right recipe the recipe that I personally recommend most upon the right recipe. The recipe that I personally recommend most people get is if getting two decent ARs is going to mean that you have to sacrifice buying ammo,

buying mags, getting training, burning the ammo to go do the training, then you're better off getting one decent AR and then an oh shit kit. Get a whole bolt carrier group with the bolt, everything ready to rock and roll. That's not histrionically expensive. Getting an oops kit so you have spare springs, spare followers, spare everything, that's not expensive. And between a bulk carrier group, throw in a gas tube if you really wanna like bulletproof your setup, throw in a gas tube.

I have put many thousands and thousands of rounds through both of the ARs I had owned. And I have never blown a gas tube and I have gotten it hot enough to burn the anodizing off my hand guard. But here's my question, have you ever burned out a barrel? On the $500 AR, yes. Okay, was that from heat or from round count? Both. Okay, the reason I bring that up is because... I'm certain it was a little bit of both because I was

doing a lot of high volume fire classes at the time. The reason I bring that up is because the way the AR-15 was designed by Stoner, if you just burn down an AR-15, the gas tube should fail. It is the fuse in the system to fail ahead of the barrel or the bolt or something that holds pressure in places you want it to stay. Oh, then yeah, it was getting was over, you know getting the barrel hot and high round count probably but no no I didn't melt the barrel. Yeah. Yeah So what I'm suggesting is that if you want like spare parts to put an AR-15 back in service If you just abuse the hell out of it Yeah an entire bolt carrier group a gas tube and an oops kit and when I say yeah

An oops kid usually includes like every spring in the rifle, your detent, all that kind of stuff. And if you want to go like one step further, I guess you could get a whole nother barrel and just put it up on the shelf just just when you eventually wear out the throat. But like, everything I'm talking about is like, three 400 bucks at the max. You know, yeah, you can, and you can actually do it even cheaper than that.

I mean, an oops kit plus a spare bolt carrier group, you're probably looking at like 75 bucks for the spare bolt carrier group to go with a moderately quality one. At least the last time I priced them, my carrier, the carriers I use, they were running about 100, 110. Really?

They've gone on that much Well, I mean that was tool craft but that was tool craft so I've got tool craft nickel boron bolt in that AR and my other one and then my backup is actually a It's not nickel boron coated is essays. That's in price to look at phosphate. I think Your phosphate or manganese I don't remember looking at PSA's website right now nickel nickel boron bolt carrier group and 10 P mags for

156 bucks so you might as well buy that and stock up on mags yeah but all that being beside the point like to me ragel fraggle just said just buy a whole other complete upper and you could tell you I've I Personally, I have handled some very very raggedy Raggedy for your fit, you know in a or 15 is mostly m16s my military rack I'm 16 are notoriously bad, dude. I'm gonna tell you that the m16 I had in basic training Was so freakin old that the lower had m16A2, the two was stamped over a one. If that gives you an

idea of how old that lower was, that was the most that was the most raggedy freaking M16 I have shot. I this is why every time somebody says it's milspec, I start laughing hysterically because I'm like You don't know you think that that's not the flex you think it is, sir You know, I think this applies to more than guns though There is a certain level of quality that is good enough to be functional the vast majority of the time like Let's let's go for Knives is an easy one. You could go to Benchmade $400 fixed blades and folders.

You could go to Gerber $20 folders. IEDC a Gerber $20 folder. What's that one? Gerber? Emerson. Emerson, okay. About the same level as like the mid rangerange, upper mid-range Gerbers. Totally mid-range, very soft steel actually, not the greatest knife on earth, but I'm gonna

tell you that I've beat on this damn thing hard enough that there's chips taken out of the blade. Still works. I'll take slightly softer steel over too hard steel that is difficult to sharpen. Yeah, I've actually got knives that are on both ends of that spectrum The really hard ones are fun to beat on because you can't kill them Yeah, then Jesus you really you like that is a though. You can never get them sharp again Well, you can it just requires like It requires a whiskey and a two-hour movie and a day in front of the you know a day on the couch You just sit there with a land ski going over and over and over.

It does, but I mean, there's really no incentive in, in let's, let's just talk base performance wise. Your Gerber, your Emerson, your, uh, I think Caterpillar even makes a fairly decent knife. Um, and I think there are actually the Caterpillar knives are made by Gerber Swiss army knife, man, 2025 25 30 bucks It's a pretty good knife, you know, it's gonna cut just about as well. Can you baton with it? No, but it's a folder. You shouldn't baton with your folders. Anyway challenge accepted

You probably can and get away with it too. Those knives are actually surprisingly durable but the the Jeff's right, bringing it up here, the the 90, 90, 20 or 80 20 rule, you where you can get 80 or 90% of the benefit out of doing 20 or 10% of the work, or paying 20 or 10% of the cost a lot of times. 110%. And I'm gonna tell you sometimes 80% is good is absolutely worth an 80% cost savings. Yeah, it can definitely be, especially if you're on a limited budget. Well, I mean, hell, even if you're not.

OK, so let me just in tone for you a little bit of rabble a family logic. My dad told me a long time ago Bill Gates lives on a budget. His budget just got a lot more zeros in than yours does. Correct. Everyone, everyone lives on a budget his but she's got a lot more zeros in than yours does correct everyone Everyone lives on a fixed income because sooner or later their money runs out It they might have to buy the frickin moon before their money runs out the sooner or later their money runs out So everybody's on a fixed income. There's no one that can spend money, you know past the zero That's just the way the world works.

So I wholeheartedly believe that like, if you see that opportunity to get 80% of the value for 20% of the money, jump on that and buy two of them. Yeah. I mean, and maybe not even buy two of them. Buy the spare parts that are known to break on this item. My generator for my house is a Duramax generator. Is it as good as a generac? No, it's not. It also cost a quarter of what

the equivalent generac would cost. So theoretically, you could have bought two of them and still have money left over to spend on our stuff. But instead, what I did do is I had my entire house rewired for 200 amp. I had the a professional electrician come in and do my generator hookup. I bought the I think it's three brushes that go in that thing, a carburetor kit, a full set of seal kits, kit, a full set of seal kits, a hose and a spare regulator for the propane. And I still had 50% of the budget for the

Generac left over set aside to do other things with. So I got all of the benefit of the Generac except for the Generac warranty. Yeah, that's really the only thing you're losing out. So I have to be my own warranty. So I went out and bought the spare parts Yep pretty much same decision I made when I didn't have it in the budget to go out and buy a second chainsaw I was like I better have a whole service kit and a spare bar and a bunch of spare chains and a bunch of spare Stuff so that this thing goes down. I can fix and get it back in service. Mm-hmm. Absolutely

So short mid long term, okay I can fix and get it back in service. Absolutely. So short, mid, long term. Okay, so explain this one since you added it. Yeah, we are really kind of just talking about like backups for ourselves, right? All right, so in the short term, power goes out. Great, stark in the house. Your flashlights are your short-term fallback, right?

Your flashlights, your candles, your easy access stuff. Exactly, I got one in my pants upstairs. I actually don't have it with me. So, your midterm is your generator. Do we have a long-term plan? Maybe it's solar. So you know, short-term for me is anywhere under half a day, you know, half a day to a day.

Midterm is, okay, this might last more than a day. So now we break out the generator, keep the freezer and fridge cool and stuff like that. Long-term for power, I don't have because around me longer than two weeks is unheard of for power loss. I have enough propane and gasoline to run my house enough to keep my fridge and freezer cold and keep my hot water going for a month.

Actually, it's a little over a month with gasoline. But so for me, there's no, I don't see the need for that long of a long term power backup. But I just thought we could, when we're going through these, these things we've got listed here, these other headers, maybe we could just break down. What do you recommend for short term? What do you recommend for in the midterm? And What do you recommend for short term? What do you recommend for in the midterm? And what do you recommend for extended? Yeah, extended might be a better way to put it.

I was going to say renewable because to me, renewable is good too. There is a certain point at which if the event you're preparing for it lasts beyond a certain point, there is no prepping for it. You have to have renewable. True. I mean, even if you have a year worth of preps, if the event lasts 13 months. You have to have renewable. True. I mean, even if you have a year worth of preps,

if the event lasts 13 months, you have to have renewable. You've exceeded what you prepped for. Like there will just be a point. Now I have to say before we start, the long-term and even mid-term is going to be a different calculus for every person. Everyone's gonna define that differently. What you prepare

for is going to depend on you individually. Absolutely. And whether or not you think it's even rational, like me, like for, for like my, my take as an example, like my, um, my water, I have a 28 day supply of bottled water on the shelf. That would be considered a long term for a water supply to me But see for me that's a midterm Because it's not renewable once it's all used up. That's done My long term is I have a rainwater catch and I have ways to filter it I have all the stuff I need to build basically a huge frickin burkey

Mm-hmm, and I have another rainwater catch that'll hold 110 gallons that I'm in the process of building. I've got about 80% of the stuff I need. I just need a couple couple of things and that'll be on that'll be on the docket to start. But the point is to me, it's not long term unless it renews itself refills itself replenish self. So when you get to the long-term point for me, you're talking about like, I don't have a long-term food supply. I think that's fair.

That has to go to, I grow my own food, I homesit, I whatever. I'm not there, I live in the suburbs. Right, yeah. Even me out in the boonies where I am, I do not have enough property for long-term sustainable food growth. I don't.

So let me just grab guy that comments my vision is cheaper and I can charge it with solar. So yes, comma, however, comma, the first thing I did when I bought my PBS 14 was I immediately started buying the very, very expensive like $4 per battery, the lithium ultimate the the Energizer ultimate lithium's That are crazy freaking expensive for two reasons. First of all, it's what the Department of Defense specs for the dagum thing and second of all letting a really cheap battery ruin a $4,000

Optic is not in my budget. Yeah. And I mean, quite frankly, if you're talking about digital night vision, that's a different scenario. But if you're talking about like PBS 14, PBS 31s, BNVDs, that kind of stuff, it's so power efficient. Just suck it up and buy the expensive batteries.

They'll last a little bit longer. They'll store longer They're fine and the last you a really long time under use. Yeah, but I got gross So I think that's fair change long term to renewable then yeah, if if it applies like for data, it doesn't really apply No Guy he hear me out though. So data my immediate backup is stuff that's super light like so I have I have my I have this desktop backing up to a one terabyte drive sitting over here on the side every night and I have in addition

to that the really important stuff which is pretty much just like, you know family pictures and this 400 and I forget how many podcast episodes because we've been doing this for a while sitting in cloud storage Okay now stuff that is sensitive my tech, you know our taxes Stuff that SPI stuff that can be used to steal our identity, that doesn't go into the cloud because I have trust issues. Don't we all? That stays on this hard drive and it goes into a thumb drive every so often that I maintain physical custody of. I don't think that there is a quote unquote long, so don't think that when if you're strictly looking at this in terms of electronic data I don't feel like there is a long term because if an event if

if a grid down event lasts for so long frankly why do you care if you maintain all your vacation pictures from 10 years ago you have other problems to deal with if the event lasts too long. You do. Yeah. But consider the fact that data can also be stored in physical form. We got to go back to the old days when people used to have to like, you know, pick up these funny little stacks of paper, paper, paper books, paper manuals, take all your stuff and print it out and stick it in a, you know, sticking in a three ring binder. If it's something that's really important you have physical pictures as anti-millennial as that sounds well you know to some extent though the physical pictures make it more difficult to me to to maintain them because they take up a shitload of space oh yes the the amount

of physical photos that my grandparents and parents possess, there is no way on this earth I can maintain them outside of digital storage in the house I have. You know, as they pass those things down because people do pass those things down and do you wanna throw away pictures of your great grandparents?

I mean, personally, I don't, cause I like looking at them on occasion, but if we're talking about we're at the point of like leather leather studded cod pieces and hockey masks, there's no do we so that that's, that's kind of what I'm suggesting is that for this is all very usability. Okay. And this is all like really open to interpretation to be honest, because like most people are going to say, Phil, it's Mad Max is never going to happen.

And I agree with you, it's probably never going to happen. Probably not. No. So since we agree that most most problems fall into the short term or mid term, point less than months, months or less. Yeah, well, I mean, quite call it what it is. If any kind of major grid down event lasts for 90 days, that is functionally gonna be really bad. Yeah, it's functionally the end of the country. I personally do not anticipate myself having to deal

with an emergency lasting longer than 90 days. No, it's I don't. It's not within my capacity to pick up. Most will last a week, two weeks, four weeks at the most. Two weeks. Not uncommon. Six weeks, six months at the extreme edge of reality. Sure. Like, say, a third World War or a pandemic.

Yeah. Yeah. Covid was an emergency that lasted for two years It really wasn't it was a two to three week emergency before we had good data on what to and not to do Well, I mean call what it is If they're let's say there was something that caused the powers to be to shut down the internet That would mean that all of your cloud storage is now offline until they flip the switch back on. True. So that's to me, that's why, I totally understand the argument

about short, mid, long-term event, but I also understand the argument about just having things in layers. Like I have this stuff on my hard drive, I had it on a backup hard drive, I have it in the cloud, I have it on a thumb drive. I have the data that is most important to me in multiple places. So that if one place goes down, I go to plan B and I still get hold of my stuff.

Agreed. I mean, I have a very similar setup. I have a small external drive that stays unpowered in my safe in a fire box inside the safe that has all of our financial data our mortgage our I think it I think it has our marriage license all of our Scans of all of our IDs all that important stuff on a drive in a fire safe inside of a fire safe Odds are if I can get into this safe chances are those that thumb drive will have survived or well the hard drive will have survived probably okay exactly like it's it's mostly in there for theft reasons because those fire safes those little little bitty fire safes they're not that uh hard to break into but this safe is more difficult to break into and it's bolted to a concrete wall than floor so you're not removing it from the house

without removing bits of the foundation. But, you know, cloud storage, excellent place to go. Personally, I have a system that's like Backblaze. We use Backblaze at work, but I've got to, I have to look up exactly what the name of it is, but it's a relatively inexpensive cloud storage solution that you can use. A lot of people use Dropbox because you can buy their storage pretty cheap. Storage from Google and Amazon is actually pretty cheap.

If you don't mind Amazon and Google having your photos, they probably do already if you have an Android phone. And if you don't have an Android phone, then Apple has all of your photos. But if you trust something like Proton a bit more. Yeah, Proton's good. Proton's what I like. I have Proton VPN, I have Proton Mail, and Stuart is actually one that turned me on

to the fact that Proton started offering Proton Drive. And because I have a paid account, I get an absolutely ridiculous mass storage space for Proton Drive. Give you a couple of paid account, I get an absolutely ridiculous mass storage space. Give you a couple of terabytes, don't they? I don't remember. I know that I have 400 and something podcast episodes in there for backup. Yeah, well, I mean, they're 50 megabytes each. So do

the math. I think Google gives you almost a terabyte of storage if you have just their free email. So I mean, if you if if you, if you have non-sensitive information, and even if you have sensitive information, you can store encrypted files on those cloud storage systems. Just know that if you ever lose the encryption key, you have now lost the files. Yes.

And also realize that if someone is hardheaded enough or industrious enough, there's no encryption that is foolproof. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's a matter of time and effort. And realistically, most of us are not worth the time or the effort. It's like putting your guns in a gun safe. It is. It will 110 percent keep curious and even mildly mischievous people out of your stuff. But if somebody really wants your stuff, they go and get in. Oh yeah, you can probably get in this safe behind me in under an hour. I'm certain you could. 20 minutes or less. Probably.

As long as I'm willing to make some noise. Yeah, exactly. If you're not willing, if you're not being cautious about it, and you've got power tools, probably under 20 minutes. Yeah, exactly. If you're not willing, if you're not being cautious about it and you've got power tools, probably under 20 minutes. Heck, you could probably get into it in an hour without making a terrible amount of noise. I don't know. YouTube that if you really want to scare the hell out of yourself.

Yeah, this safe isn't to keep dishonest people out, it's to keep the curious and inept out. So let's talk food, water. We kind of already talked about this when we're talking about short, mid long term. Like I personally, I don't even keep track of like how much, quote unquote, prepper food I have. Same. Because I just don't keep track of it. Like it to me, it's like I think I can fit in our bucket or two

or there before Gillian gets pissed at me. Let me know. Let me do that. They haven't rolled under the car yet Yeah, well, you know when it when it when when the the leaning tower of food starts teeter-tottering That's when it's time to dollar back a little bit, but pretty much to the wall, man. You've got a kid Yeah, I'm talking about the the five gallon buckets that are stacked up that are just about just about chest high Oh, that's fine. You can go at least one more up. Yeah, but anyway So like food, I don't know like it's a lot of rice and beans and a lot of baking supplies like to me It's more the idea that if we couldn't go to the grocery store tomorrow ever again

If we couldn't go to the grocery store tomorrow ever again, how long can I dig back into this cabinet? And we still be able to get the stuff we want, bake the stuff we want, cook like we want. So that's why I believe in like, you know, in a short-term event, frankly, we don't even like change course like we Well, not just that but like as a default our fridge is so stocked I I personally I keep Usually have five gallons of milk in the fridge That's a lot if I have time out there It'll make sense in a second if I have less than five gallons of milk come grocery day I go by enough to get me back up to five gallons. The reason why it's five gallons is because we buy half gallon containers. There's a space in that fridge that will hold five half gallons stacked,

you know, one from the front to the back and two rows of them. So it's really easy to figure out do we need more or not. The reason why is because I make my own coffee creamer from scratch. And that's nothing but sweetened condensed milk and milk. I make my own cappuccinos, my own lattes. I make all that stuff from you know, at the house, I do all my own, we do all of our own baking from scratch. A lot of that takes milk. So it's not that I drink a ton of like, oh, I just feel like a glass of milk and you know, drink, you know, drink a half gallon a day. It's more of a we use a lot of

milk to make other stuff. And for that reason, five gallons of milk is about a two week supply for us, maybe two and a half, maybe up to three, if we stretched it. That makes sense. Yeah. So to me, I always look at it as my primary primary food source, my fridge and my main pantry. I want to have at least two weeks of groceries sitting in there at all times. Sure. Once we get past that we have a can rack and a second pantry. That is overflow to back up the primary pantry.

And then if I get past the secondary pantry, then we're getting into opening up five gallon buckets and breaking the seals and having to like replenish, restock things from the quote unquote prepper stuff. Right. So this all comes back to the idea that like, this is a multi level tiered thing where this refills this, this refills this, this is what we're eating out of as a primary, but my primary is good for about two weeks. That makes sense. We might have to say, I can't make that tonight because I don't have this one ingredient in me, but

I can make something that's pretty implies something. Yeah. Yeah. So to me, like, in the answer is in the short term, we don't even change course, we just say, I feel like making a bunch of cappuccinos for my family tonight. And I can do that because I'm a spoiled spoiled as hell, bougie coffee snob. And I'm going to make that I'm just going to do that that home roasted cappuccinos 40 green beans on the show. Oh, I know I'm not judging man. That's the way to go if you like coffee that much. That's the way to go I mean, yeah me I I like a good cup of coffee, but coffee is more of a means to an end to me

It's a feeding an addiction. I know you're gonna to guilt me into home roasting and I'm going to become an absurd coffee snob. It's not going to be a guilt thing. What's going to happen is that I'm going to sneak my roasting pan, my roasting set up into the back of the Jeep and bring to summer camp. Oh, God. And then you're going to my you're going to roast coffee. You're going to roast your own coffee and grind it and drink it all in an hour.

My wife's going to be so upset with how much green coffee I buy. There is no coming back from that experience. When you can literally go from green beans to roasted to ground to drink in under an hour, you will never get that experience of that freshness out of your brain. You'll be stuck. That's fair. As Zeus made a comment here, there's a lot of wasted space under beds. And he was thinking about maybe putting buckets under those.

Here's the thing about five gallon buckets. They are incredibly tall. All right. Your bed is going to be insanely tall. And so I mentioned in the comments to him that they do make these like roll away tubs that are designed to fit under a standard bed frame. You don't have to change anything about your bed frame

and you can use it for storage. Plus wheels. If you have a fairly decently sized bed frame, Walmart actually sells the Sterilite brand bins that are only about 4 or 5 inches tall and they're pretty large. They'll fit standard cans in them. You can fit cans, bags of rice, bags of beans, you can fit all kinds of stuff and just slide

them underneath the beds and you're right, there's a ton of wasted space. There is a ton of wasted space. He's absolutely correct. The only thing I would say is if you are going to put food stuff under there, keep it canned, keep it long-term storage because I have seen mice and rats chew through sterilized bins. It doesn't happen often, but just be aware. Yeah, fortunately I think being in a high traffic area like a bedroom would help keep them at bay to a degree, but man, I had I live out in the country house. I had mice running across the floor of my master bathroom this this winter.

I caught him in my master bathroom. But you would think me and my wife are in and out of there multiple times a day. There's a dog that stays in our master bedroom most of the day and all night and the door is open to that bathroom. You would think the mice would stay the heck out of there because of the dog if nothing else but man, I have seen him in the weirdest places. My wife would pee her pants if she saw a mouse in this house Yeah, she's never lived out in the country. I

Mean you just get them Yeah, I should be living in an older house like mine was built in the 60s I have to go all the way around the house again and check all of the things this spring because we got mice in again This year, it's never a couple of years scenario because we got mice in again this year. It's an every couple of years scenario. Fun. I feel like we also talked about this already, weapons and spare parts. We kind of already covered that. Well, I mean, there is a difference though here that we didn't mention. Your short term is probably going to be your EDC pistol. Now, I'm not saying everybody has to go out and get a concealed carry license.

I strongly recommend you do if you are comfortable doing so. I strongly recommend, and if you're not comfortable, I strongly recommend you go take a class and figure out why you're not comfortable. Exactly, and I find a lot of people, as soon as they go through a class and show themselves that they are competent with it and safe with it

They're far more likely to get to give a concealed carry license I will I will also say that one time I've had the experience where someone told me like they were really uncomfortable They wanted to carry a firearm to protect themselves and their family, but they were just uncomfortable with it So I literally took my carry gun, took the magazine out, racked the gun open, showed them that it was clear, made them verify it was clear, dropped the slide, and then handed to them and said, make this thing, make that hammer drop without touching the trigger. You can do whatever you want. You need it on the edge of my workbench. Throw it across the street. Have a party.

You want a hammer? I'll let you hit the hammer with a hammer and see if you can get it to jump the sear. Do whatever you want. Now, fortunately, they didn't call me on my BS and like get really crazy with it. I mean, eventually you're going to blow out something and damage something.

But the point remains. They take an awful lot of damage. I'm'm gonna tell you like he was, he got a little aggressive with whacking it on the edge of my workbench and hammer never dropped. And I just point out to him like this gun will not unless it's a P three 20. Yes, I went there. This gun will not drop the hammer if you don't touch the trigger. That is the exception. And that is why it is the meme. Because look, every handgun in my safe, of which there are several will

not go off unless you pull the trigger and have the safety turned off. If you have if you have an issue with carrying a loaded gun without a safety being turned on by a gun with the safety, there's a block of steel between your fight between you with carrying a loaded gun without a safety being turned on, buy a gun with a safety. There is a block of steel between your trigger and the ability for it to let go of the sear or let go of the firing pin, however that gun happens to be designed. But you know, try to bring us back here a little bit. Your short term self-defense weapons are going to be your EDC

pistol or your EDC knife more than likely or your EDC pepper spray. Pepper spray is great. Your midterm is probably going to be whatever is your home defense gun that is probably in your master suite or your, what is it? What it called? The the main quarters anymore now they want to be master bedroom. Yeah. Yeah. They've got a new fancy name for it. It's it's stupid. It's the master bedroom. I'm not new or fancy. So I'm going to call it the master bedroom. My name is on the goddamn mortgage. I'm the master of the house. That's the way it works. Oh, Jesus Christ. Is that why they don't like the

word master bedroom? Yeah. Yeah Jesus Christ is that why they don't like the word master bedroom yeah yeah that's exactly why they don't like it my wife is also the master of the house her name is on the goddamn mortgage too I couldn't even make my brain go there because it was just like there's no way there's no way on earth right um but I fucking hate this timeline right your midterm your mid your midterm weapon is gonna be the one that you have Probably in the house not necessarily on your person But is going to be around you while you're asleep while you're in the house You know some people like an AR some people like a shotgun. My state is really gay

Therefore mine is a 12 gauge semi-auto Which is not not really hurting the NBA's feelings to be honest. I'd rather have 30 rounds than five. Oh, I agree with you, comma, however, comma. 12 gauge slaps. And you and I have talked about this, dude, like since since I bought my first 12 gauge and really started like looking at it As a home defense implement. I'm I'm kind of a fan. I mean dude pretty hard There is a one ounce slug. There is something to be said about throwing nine 30 caliber

BBs at somebody all at the same time I mean the fact that you can take a breadreda A300 and load it with a literal half a freaking pound of ordinance if you ghost load the SOB. Yep. And then you can drop half of a pound of ordinance on someone as fast as you could pull the trigger is the most arousing thing I've thought of next to my spouse in a very long time. There are very few vehicles on the road today that would survive that, let alone living, breathing creatures on this continent.

Yeah, I mean, eight, eight loads of 12 gauge buckshot would drop pretty much anything this side of a tyrannosaurus rex on is behind. So I personally, I understand your aggravation about your politicians and I share it. And if the day ever comes that they get hard and feathered, I want pictures. I hope so. But in the meantime, 12 gauge, not giving up much. Yeah, it's not. It's not. It's not bad, but it's in my opinion. It's not ideal because I'm be honest with you. If it if it was my wife having to handle the 12 gauge,

she's not going to handle it as well as I do. She's not until I until I can cash and carry a tripod mounted and you know, Ma deuce as a home defense gun, then we're not where I want to be so Correct. Let's call it what it is Cash and carry my deuces the is the vibe So communications like we've talked commos stuff. I see this not short term cell phone Yeah, I mean quite, you know quite frankly

you're very the very first aspect of your communications plan should always be your cell phone because They're kind of reliable most of the time and they're like crack I mean who doesn't have one right next to them right now? Yeah, and I mean my 12 year old can use a cell phone better than most adults can a laptop at this point like They're ubiquitous. They work reliable reasonably reliably Why not? Dick shots if they got armor on, but if they're with 25 yards they're sending frags your way, or Wally with C4.

Fair. All I'm gonna say is- Dick shots are effective. No, no, no. This is kind of like the military says you can't use a 50 cal on a person because it's an anti-material weapon and it's frowned upon. So you're not shooting at the person's genitalia. You're shooting at their belt buckle. And that's within bounds because that's a piece of equipment. As my pistol instructor said, the pelvic girdle because it's awful hard to walk with no pelvis.

Yes, kind of like you don't aim at a person with a.50 cal because turning someone into baloney mist is apparently frowned upon at a war. But if you're shooting at an AK-47, they're holding that is apparently within bounds. I mean, yeah. you audio listeners are missing the full force of my sarcastic face right now because I'm like, like, it's pretty great. I was in the military when that BS got thought up and the quote unquote workaround was also thought up. And it's still the stupidest thing on earth to be like, we can't shoot in a person with 50 cal. Can I shoot at the rifle they're holding?

Yes, because that's military equipment. I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ. Just makes me want to stab all freaking. It just it makes me want to stab all think tank workers and politicians all at the same time. Just skewer them all. But anyway. So, you know, mid midterm comms, maybe you've got yourself a ham

radio, maybe you've got yourself the GM RS that Phil and his family are using. Maybe it's just an alternate messaging system on your smartphone, because maybe the cell system is down, but maybe the internet isn't and you can get your your snapchats your your Google chats if that's still around I don't remember yeah your signal chat that sort of thing I will say that the the the one thing that your midterm has to be contingent upon we're talking about communications is first of all an effective way of recharging yep now I mean that that that kind of takes back into the hole you should have a generator you should have a jack or you should

Have whatever well, maybe I don't have a necessarily should have a generator because some places don't see power outages Lasting longer than battery banks battery banks. Yeah battery banks are perfect I mean easy the these GM RS radios charge off USB C so I can take any of Several, you know USB recharging banks I have lying around and use any one of those to include the jack your 1000 with the 200 watts worth of solar panels To recharge all those things, but what I was gonna say was the thing that's important is that whatever your mid-tier communication solution is Everyone has to have. So like if you're gonna use a messaging app,

that's contingent upon either everybody being on the same Wi-Fi, which is range limited, or everybody being on the same cell tower, which has to have backup power. If that's gonna be a radio, everybody has to have the radio. They all have to be charged. You have to have a com plan in place and yada, yada, yada.

And they need to know how to use the equipment yes, and that that all goes into your communications plan because like call what it is when The minute you get to the point past short term and you're in a midterm emergency You don't necessarily want to have everybody walking around with a little murder screen staring at him and playing on you know, goofing around on TikTok and playing video games and stuff. That's now a piece of emergency communications gear, which means you want to have a plan that says, Okay, we're going to check

in like every hour every two hours, we're going to turn the phone off when it's on use conserve battery, we're going to do something that all goes into the communications plan and everybody has to know that ahead of time. Absolutely Because otherwise it just doesn't work very well and as far as like long-term communications, I mean if frankly if you have a I'm doing what I usually do which is rearranging things in the middle of a show because it's fine if your power solution if you have have a long term power solution,

which almost has to be solar or like hydrodynamic, something that's constantly replenishing, then it allows you to do things like we can run ham radios indefinitely, or we can run the GMR radios indefinitely, so we can recharge them indefinitely. Yeah, the power requirements for those things is extremely minimal. It's very easy to set those up on solar, which I really need to get off my ass and do. I mean, I'll be honest, my wife and I were having a whole conversation about power the other day, which probably bears talking about right now.

So I go for it. I talked to her recently about the fact that like when we look at our power situation, you know, we have several USB power banks. I don't have as many as I would like but there's not a reasonable number that will ever accomplish that I like having lots of the smaller ones because You know, like I've got I've got one sitting right back here. Actually, I've got one that's back there in the Jackery box I've got one that lives in my work backpack in case I'm at work and the power goes out and I need to recharge my phone. I have several of them. They're kind of dispersed. I know where they're at. I can go put hands on all

if I have to, but they're kind of like spread out at different spots. So that way wherever I think I might need one, there's one close by. My midterm solution is I've got fuel and I have a 5k generator. Yep. And then long term, I have a Jacku 1000. I've got 200 watts for the solar panels. So I had to keep your comms gear going. Well, it's certainly it's it's frankly, it's enough because I know I've done the I've done the work. I've tested it. It's enough to continue to keep our chest freezer from thawing basically indefinitely. Perfect. I would eventually lose what's in the refrigerator. Yeah. But you're going to eat that pretty quick. Yeah, you're going to eat through that. And quite frankly, if like tomorrow the lights went out and we're

never coming back on, I would take everything in the freezer and I'd shove it in the chest freezer Max it out to the top I'd let what's in the fridge just go who cares that makes sense. We do have a good question here Phil. I Think it's a sarcastic question. His this is asking what's more important caliber or training and I think rain and I yes are in total Agreement on that. I tried to make the comments on that but YouTube wouldn't let me. Training is always and forever more important than caliber because a round on target beats the best round off target any day. Okay, so I have to answer a couple of these. What's Phil drinking? This is a cream soda and soda and tulamore do oh, yeah, tell him or do that's a good one Tell him or do is good stuff and it's soda and very important soda and whiskey is freaking divine cuz like I

Mean cream soda is very sweet and I don't like very sweet things But what I like about is that when you put in a not inconsequential amount of whiskey You can still taste the whiskey through the cream soda, but it's not even the sweetness. It's that ginger type of taste. It totally knocks so much of the edge off the whiskey that it'll take cheap whiskey and smooth it out, and it'll take smooth.

There's not much edge to tell them or do anyway. There's really not. I mean, at this point, like you could take one of these and just hammer it down if you want to. It just it's a it's nice. It's a vibe and CZ compact clone. Still have my scorpions. So I have my PO9. I'm actually getting ready to take my PO9 and send it down a primary machine in Morgan City, Louisiana, to have it milled for a Holosun 507k. Nice. But was that the one you oops and ordered the wrong red dot?

Yeah, that's when I oops and ordered the wrong red dot. I wanted a five. No, I legitimately meant to order a 507 I ordered a 507 K and that would not fit on the mount for my My bread a 300. Oh, no, I don't only have a red dot for my pistol Yeah, so instead I have So inside ordered a 507 comp which has an even bigger window for the shotgun, which by the way Ordered a 507 comp which has an even bigger window for the shotgun which by the way Listen Linda. I'm looking at that one that that I'm telling you right here now Like if you're if you're a tridge con guy get the frickin RMR

I don't blame you, but that 507 comp is not a bad looking red dot it's several hundred dollars cheaper than the RMR and It fit on that freaking that Scalar Works mount for that A300 like it was made for it. So so nice. I've yet to find you know as much as I would prefer to buy US made optics when I can I've yet to find somebody that's been able to demonstrate that hollow suns are not a quality optic. So I will I will just say I have talked to a couple of guys, not me personally, because I'm not I'm not what I would consider to be a high volume shooter. Sure. I have talked

to guys who run training schools, who have literally shot the glass out of a 407 and a 507. Okay, it's the exact same It's the exact same optic just different emitter. Exactly. They have literally not for beating on it Not from abuse not from drop tests They have shot for seven and five or seven equipped pistols until the glass popped out the front of the red dot. I Have never heard of that happening with an arm arm. No, that's fair. So now but now here's the flip side of that Do you think rationally you or I are ever going to put the tens of thousands of rounds through a red dot equipped pistol? Necessary to make the glass fall out of the front of it. I did shoot the barrel out of my XDM

Fair point, but the gentleman that I spoke to has literally like he runs a training class and I don't even remember how many tens of thousands of rounds he estimated he had down this barrel over the course of three years. Yeah, I think you're right. I think that's very fair. I mean, I don't shoot as much as I used to when I was doing competitions monthly. Um, because I no longer belong to that range. So I don't shoot as much as I used to when I was doing competitions monthly. Cause I no longer belong to that range. So I don't get into the competitions for free anymore. I don't see myself shooting my way through a 507 or a 407. I really don't.

Raggle, Fraggle, when I'm gonna get on the Canock train? The answer is never. Agreed never I have a co-worker that has one of the canic TP 9. I Want to say da's that doesn't matter It doesn't matter. I'm gonna tell you nines. They're all the same that TP 9 Occasionally will fire if you hit that D cocker occasionally will fire if you hit that decocker. Nice. Yeah, every once in a while it will fire around

when you hit that decocker. Now, I don't know about you Phil, but a decocker is supposed to decock the pistol not fire around, that's the trigger's job. But, but hear me out, Nick. Did the de-cocker not lower the hammer? It did. So it did its job. It just did a little too enthusiastically for liking is is the firing pin

block did not actuate. But that's not the de-cockers fault. It's a fireman it's a core safety function of the firearm I'm sorry but I'm not look I I get it not everybody can afford to buy high quality American made firearms or high quality CZ firearms. I get it. There are affordable, safe firearms that you can buy. M&P, Glock 19. Hell, a secondhand Glock 19 is still better than a Kanek. So are we going to have to have... What's wrong with the Kaneks is sometimes they fire on their

own, just like the Sig P320. All I'm going to say is between a canik and a cz you're in difference you are not going to you are not going to be able to convince me that the the canik is on the same playing field my dad was looking for a fun gun to get to because he's a range officer I wanted to like the tp9 I really wanted to like it, especially at its price point I don't care. I'm very agnostic when it comes to guns. I like what works well and what's built well But when my dad asked me don't fire rounds But it's not the decocker's problem. It's the firing pin block is a little lazy

Come on Nick stick with me on this still attached to the cocker. I'm not letting that one go. But my dad was back and forth between a canic or a CZ shadow too. OK, I told him, go get the shadow too. He will never regret it. He has not. And he has since handled this a canic and came away from it with the conclusion that just this one time his son might have been right. That's a win. Even if part of the reason why I made the suggestion was because I'd really rather inherit a CZ Shadow 2 than a

Kinnick. Just saying. You know, but if he's gonna spend my inheritance he might as well spend on stuff I want to get eventually. Exactly. Regal's got a point here. Kinnick is affordable. Yes, can it is affordable but there there is no Almost the same price But far better. There is no level of affordable that overrides it not be a dagger it Do you know your but you're gonna say that but they've been having issues with PSA daggers have they I have not heard that if if they have then I will retract that I have heard a couple of ancillary anecdotals

which you can't hang an entire firearm on but you know hmm all I'm gonna say is is that when when I personally buy firearm, the bare minimum standard is it has to go bang when I want it to and not go bang when I don't want it to. Agreed. We can argue about accuracy. We can argue about field serviceability. We can argue about longevity. Those are all things that are kind of on a spectrum about how much do you want to spend

to get those things. But those two things are non negotiable It's got to go bang when I want it to and not go bang when I don't because if it doesn't do those two things Reliably it ain't it doesn't matter how cheap it is Yeah, you know and really a quality handgun is not that much more than a cheap handgun Right now I mean problem is there's too many there's too many cheap firearms out there that are That still meet that standard for you to accept any firearm that doesn't yeah there there really are I mean I'm looking right now Online and you can get an M&P 2.0

For under 600 bucks dude high point High point. Yeah, What's a high point not a couple hundred bucks 200 bucks last I checked they were like 240 last I checked they were like $240 and Anybody that just wants to go careen through the the internet can go look up Iraq veteran 88 88 even though I don't want to trying to ruin a high point Well, don't so let me preface this by saying I don't watch any of his content. He's made in the last several years He's kind of turned into another Gun to where that I don't I don't like his content but way back in the day when he did some cool stuff

He did him and Barry who God rest his soul passed away several years ago I've been here the old the old man with the beard halfway down. Yeah, I didn't hear about that. Oh yeah, he passed away. That sucks. He was cool. Yeah, he was really cool dude. A Vietnam vet I want to say.

But the two of them got together to see if they could blow up a high point and quite frankly the amount of bull crap they had to go through to get this gun to finally blow up Bordered on ridiculous like I won't spoil it for y'all if y'all want to go find it I will go find it and make a playlist and like make it public on on our YouTube channel to make it easy You know, but just suffice to say, the bullshit they had due to this gun to get it to blow up was ridiculous. Well, I mean, the technology they based the high point on is as old as semi-automatic firearms.

It's a blowback nine millimeter. There's not much to screw up there. There really isn't. It's a fricking brick for God sakes. I mean, they're built like bricks. You cannot, you have to try. Obviously, you have to try to kill one. You do. Hey, you know, are they ergonomic? No, nope. You have to pay more for ergonomics. But are they functional? Sure. But I'm gonna tell you what,

I used to be one of those guys that used to goof on Highpoint a lot. Cause I still will. Why not? I mean, yeah. But I will, I will say the founder of the company, the designer of the Highpoint C9, he built, he designed and built exactly what he set out to do. Yeah. The cheapest you could reliably make a firearm that would go bang every time you asked it to and not go bang if you didn't ask it to. Period in discussion. He achieved his goal. Mission success. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if I want to commit blasphemy and put them on the same level as like John Moses Browning because the High

Point C9 is not a finely designed firearm. No, but in terms of the spirit of it. It is a Honda Civic of 9mm. To but in terms of the spirit of Honda Civic of nine millimeters to me It's the spirit of it. Yeah, it is, you know Samuel Colt three generations prior said that God made all men equal and and You know like the the Colt peacemaker makes Hague makes Everyone equal all over again, and I look at the high point c9 in the same way it is a firearm built to a price point so that anyone can arm themselves. Maverick88 is the same thing. Someone is vacuuming at my house. My dog is flipping a shit. So you might be hearing that as

well. But Maverick88 is the shotgun version of the high point. It really is. I mean, it's it. Is it the most ergonomical? No. Does it work every time? Absolutely. Is it nearly indestructible? I don't know about nearly indestructible, but it's pretty damn hard to ruin. I mean, James Reeves friggin did a shotgun burnout on and knocked out 500 rounds without a

failure. He did 500 rounds without a failure on a shotgun is that's pretty good. That's pretty good. 500 rounds in a row is yeah, pretty good. I mean, so this is our last item and this is totally totally an homage to you with your your conversation last week about how you already had like your exfil routes and everything planned from where you were vacationing. But one thing that I don't think gets talked about enough when we talk about having backups is travel routes.

Yeah, travel routes is an important one. So what I did and what I encourage everyone here to do is when I was younger, I made a point of trying to take a different route to get to a place I was going every time I went there. I would turn off a block earlier and see if that neighborhood like you know if I could just like hit a left and then a right get back on the get get back on the same direction I wanted to or if maybe there was a canal or a ditch or something that separated us two neighborhoods so I couldn't get through maybe I'd have to go all the way to the back and then hook around. I did all this all the time. And it wasn't even like

a preparedness thing. At that point, it really was a I'm just curious like I've never been to the area. Does that go? There is no down side restaurant that way. Yeah, well, if nothing else, I'm sure everyone's had the aggravation of like, oh, I can't go the direction I wanted to because of road construction or because there's a wreck or because there's whatever or there's a there's a truck that has Shut the road down because it's backing into a driveway There are so many good we can lower trees down on my primary route into town to get to the game sort of play a 40k Game. Yeah, and there's so many good reasons to know alternate routes to get

everywhere you're going. If for no other reason than the fact that when your primary route gets shut down, it's not a pull over on the side of the road, get the map out. It's just say, Oh, I know, I know exactly what to do. We hang left, right here and go, you know, go around. Yep. Exactly. And that, and I feel like that becomes even more important when you start

talking about being out of your home area. Yeah. It's hugely important. Now I didn't have my exact route planned when we when we had to evacuate. I had a few areas north, south, and west of us that I knew I could go to 24 hours a day and stop there safely for gas. The reason why I didn't have specific routes planned is because there are very few routes in mountainous areas that you can go place to place. And I was fairly confident that I would have GPS and my road Atlas that I keep in our vehicle

whenever we're going out of town in order to plan a route, short-term notice. But what I didn't know if I would have was time to find a 24-hour gas station or a 24-hour rest stop. Personally, if I'm going on a vacation in an area that I've never been to before, I will try to find a few places within an hour

that at any time of day I can go to and get number one, a bathroom, number two, gas, and number three, food. Because if you had to evacuate for whatever reason, great, it's three o'clock in the morning, okay, you're gonna drive an hour, you're gonna hit the bathroom when you get there, you're gonna gas up your car,

what's the next thing you're gonna drive an hour, you're gonna hit the bathroom when you get there, you're gonna gasp your car. What's the next thing you're gonna want? Breakfast. Especially because on this particular trip, we were traveling with a pregnant family member. And those of you who have had spouses or family members that are pregnant, what do they need? Bathrooms and food.

Constantly. Constantly, and rightly so, rightly so. Rightly so. Well, I mean, when you have a baby xenomorph, you know, like crawling around your bladder, kicking it and strangling it all the time, that kind of happens a lot. And leeching off your breakfast. Yeah. But I'm pretty sure it's the kick, getting kicked in the bladder at 4 o'clock in the morning, that aggravates pregnant women the worst. Oh, a hundred percent. But there's nothing worse than, you know, trying to, you know, because you're trying to be a normal person and use a bathroom in a bathroom.

Yes, we can all pull off and do a cornfield and take care of business when business got to be taken care of, but it's far more comfortable to do it in a heated or air conditioned gas station restroom. Yeah. I will say that I've lived with two women and I've noticed that they they greatly appreciate the presence of clean bathrooms. Mm hmm.

I mean, both of them peed off the side of the road before, but neither one of them has ever been real. It's never it's never been a highlight of their day, put it that way. Oh, for sure. But you know, if you're not familiar with the area you're going, at the very least know the major highways that go away from where you're at or it's the other major city. At least have an idea of, okay. I need to get on 63 North 32 West whatever because if you can get on that and get out of the immediate area to begin with great you're out of the danger zone if there happens to be danger in that area or

You're gonna run into a restaurant a gas station or a rest stop on those major roads, at least in the US. It also helps to bear in mind like some basic axioms like even number highways run east and west, odd numbers run north and south. That's a very simple way if you start to get turned around, start looking at your signs and figure out at least what direction you're going. Absolutely, and then always in forever if you're on vacation keep your car above half a tank of gas

God, yes, the only time I have home Keep it above a quarter. Please keep it above half so the only time I don't abide by that is when I'm making long-distance trips in my truck and that's because that Tacoma for everything it has going for it, gas mileage is not really on the list and on a good day if my right foot is not too heavy and we're not loaded too heavy it'll do about 18 and a half squeak 19 miles per gallon going downhill. My Ram 1500 gets 19 too with the tonneau cover now. Yeah, you also have probably like what,

a 35 gallon gas tank? I have a 20. I have a 20 gallon gas tank. 35, actually you know what? I haven't done my fuel economy numbers with that improved fuel economy. So it's actually like a 12% improvement over not having the tonneau cover.

672 miles to the tank. Improved fuel economy because it's actually like a 12% improvement over not having the tonneau cover Mm-hmm 672 miles to the tank. That's a significant improvement. That's 72 mile improvement over my previous So typically I will let that tank get down to about a quarter But only if I'm going into an area that I know very well like a lot of the trips we make we've made before So like I know there's a gas station I always stop at that's right here. You know what I'm saying? And I will stop right there. But then again, like anytime I've ever been in a situation where like we were, I don't want to say doing a bug out, oh quit, 100 gallon auxiliary tank, quit,

quit bragging. That would take up my entire bed. No, it wouldn't. It would probably just just about the size of a bedspanning toolbox. Probably. Just probably a double depth one. It would be a bitch on your leaf springs. I didn't tell you that I have no problems. I have helper springs already.

Well, you should. No, I mean, helper springs on top of the factory ones. What are you running daily in that truck? Daily nothing, but when I am that boat, your campaign load, right? 657 pounds. Yeah, all right. It's got about a half done pickup. I mean, there's an argument to be made there, except that the Tacoma really is like the perfect size truck for me 98% of

the time. Yeah. And it'll it might be too big of a pickup for 90% of my daily needs anymore. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, truthfully, it's not that it's it's not the truck won't eat a half ton in the back It's that it's gonna be driving like a cholo You know staring up at the ceiling with my butts right at that. It's that's that's what the whole thing So really still steer it's okay Well, the helper Springs really help out with keeping things level when I'm loaded heavy put it that way Oh, absolutely and a little bit to comfort

Yeah, it helps a little bit. Yeah a little bit So is there anything else we can chuck in here? I mean like I don't feel like in this crowd we should have to beat on people too hard about the idea that like two is one one is none and three is better because if it's a life if it's a mission critical life-saving thing I feel like you should have a backup thing or a minimum backup parts if it's a comfort thing about was emergency fund oh you're right we did emergency fund is a big one look guys when it comes to redundancy there are very few things and well, I'm American and I think most of our audience is American, we've got one Kiwi. And I don't know of anybody else but very quickly. So a well funded emergency fund to replace your

income in case of job loss or catastrophic damage or failure of your home. Not a bad thing to have. So since we're going that direction short term, I mean, I've always got a little bit of cash in my checking account. I usually don't love my checking account get really, really, you know, built up just because if my checking account, I usually don't love my checking account get really, really, you know, built up just because if my checking account gets compromised, it's easy to do with debit cards nowadays. Yeah. But I do keep a fairly

healthy liquid cash fund in my savings. And that is really mostly targeted to be like, you know, X number of months of my income or my wife's income or both of our income if jobs suddenly became an issue. And which for any of us at any point it could be. I mean, you work in the public sector, so it's a little less likely, but furloughs are a little more likely. I mean, given what's been going on the three months in the you know in the public sector. I Don't know. There's been a lot of people sent home from work it can happen

Traditionally speaking I mean yeah short term Maybe keep some cash on hand in the safe enough to get groceries a couple tanks of gas Maybe a doctor's visit, you know, you can get Ohio Yield Savings accounts. They're fantastic. If you have enough surplus to use them and you can park your emergency fund in them, why not earn 5% instead of point five. Mm-hmm. And for the same reason, I mean, 401ks, 403Bs can be really useful if you have some kind of a ruling that allows you to like make an emergency withdrawal and then pay it back. See like Roth's good. It's a little more penalty if you have to pull it out for an emergency, but you should have a cushion of

emergency fund in a more accessible location. Yeah, now I will happily say that like, I will always be a proponent of having a a role of cash in your house in your gun safe in your whatever. And I happily admit that there are scenarios in which cash is not going to be useful. True. But those scenarios are so far outside of normal. We might never see them. That is a very good point. My wife just brought up in the comments. We ran into a problem on vacation where the gas station we went to had no gas. We were in a small town outside of the tourist town

of Gallenburg, Tennessee, and we stopped at a small gas station and the only thing they had for sale was diesel. Oh wow. Yeah, yeah, I haven't seen that in a hot minute. So there's that. This is why I don't like getting below half a tank of gas when I'm on vacation, because I don't necessarily know when the next place I'll be able to get gas is.

Yeah. In, in my case, a quarter tank of fuel for that Tacoma is still a good 60, 70, 80 miles. So we had my wife's trailblazer, which is a 12 gallon tank. Oh Jesus in heaven. But it gets like 38 miles to the gallon. So thank God for that. I know right it's fantastic We went to Gatlinburg and back on like a hundred and fifty hundred and fifty dollars worth of gas Phenomenal. Yeah Toyota a Toyota screwed me on both ends with the 20 gallon gas tank and 19 miles per gallon.

Well, put a couple of jerry cans in back, three jerry cans in back and you match my truck. I do. This is why I told my wife consistently, if we ever have to evacuate from the hurricane, I'm gonna have two five gallon jerry cans with the donkey shlong, you know, with that sitting in the back of the truck,

just plastics ribbed for your for your gas flinging amusement. Yes, I have to throw this up because I saw you try to move it move it out of the way. I didn't try to work with it. Short Tacoma is less likely to get stuck than long American trucks. Accurate. I will shorter wheel. I will say you tend to sink less in the mud. I will say that even above and beyond that short wheelbase trucks, infinitely more maneuverable. I've driven some long wheelbase trucks in my day and like, oh yeah, you can get in some situations where you can turn that truck around. Yeah, that's what turn ground clearances for. You just mount the curb and call it a day.

Yeah, unless the thing you're trying to move around is as tall as you are. Rue. That's when horsepower wins. There is no replacement for displacement. Yeah. So raggle, fraggle. I've thought about throwing an ox tank in the truck and it's just it's just something I can't I cannot Get my brain to want to commit the money and the aggravation to the last Ahead of time is so huge compared to just sticking for jerry cans in the back of the bed

Yeah now I will admit I I have given thought to maybe like a Small like a five gallon fuel tank mounted on top mounted it up against the side of the bed on top of the the bed well and Literally just run a hook put a 12-volt fuel pump into it and put it on a switch and then run a run a hose Right into the fuel filler Hose and just dump straight in through there. I mean, it would not be a smart system. It would be a, it'd be a, make sure the tanks below half. Cause I know that means I got 10 gallons of fuel capacity in the tank.

Flip the switch until, you know, the, the, until the, the tank starts siphon until the pump starts sucking air. And that gives me just five extra gallons but I just I don't think I would want to go through the aggravation of a large auxiliary fuel tank in there when I've already got two five gallon jerry cans and that yeah it involves pulling over the side of the road but quite frankly between my bladder and my blown out hip I can't sit in that truck long enough to drive through 30 gallons of fuel without stopping. It's not going to happen.

I can tell you I have driven through all 600 miles on my truck without getting out and I don't have a blown out hip, but I sure felt like I did when I got out. You got to get out of the move, man. You just got to. There is something about being an a-hole to your body when you're younger. And it waits till right about this side of 40. And then it's like, Hey, remember all those stupid things you did to me? Oh, if it is cartilage consequences of my actions. Yeah. Not not having cartilage is fun. Also, um,

turn 42 and. I don't know if y'all can hear it. Nope. OK. If I put the microphone up against my chest, when I rotate my shoulder around, you can just hear a constant grinding the party noise. Yeah. Sounds like a coffee can full of old screws and nuts. But anyway, you know, that's what happens when you survive long enough to get old. Is that your body starts falling apart?

It's fine. You had fun with it while it lasted. So many places I could take that joke and none of them are. None of them are appropriate for younger audiences. It's fine. So, yeah, I think that's probably a good place to cap it off, man. I mean, I will always be a proponent of thinking ahead of having auxiliary systems of having plan A and plan B and plan C and is the thing of it is, is that like to me, preparedness is a mindset, but where you go with that mindset is up to you. Like, how much

redundancy do you need? so that you feel comfortable? You've got it under control. I personally am very comfortable with a one month redundancy for the for most things. Yeah, I mean that one month redundancy that really does cover most people's problems. I mean, quite frankly, you know, if you have hurricane preps for two weeks, that covers a huge amount of problems. The number of times we down here have had a hurricane knockout any area for more than two weeks was fairly minimal. And if the if if your if your town is going to be ground zero reset for longer

than two weeks, you shouldn't be there right now. You probably should have left yeah yeah i mean because especially with hurricanes because you do get the poor warning most of the time granted there are some times when you get caught that happens to the best of us but yeah well let me answer this before we sign off where's andrew andrew is being an adult he actually popped into the comment section very early on my hippies Yeah, but he blinked one and a half times so that means some level of distress Hey from the hippie commune. I'm stranded at managed to snag Wi-Fi from local come-and-go gas station. I

mean I Don't know I kind of think him getting I've kind of think he and he's the type to get to enjoy being kidnapped by hippies So there are worse things to be kidnapped by As long as they're like the armpit shaving hippies because the non armpit shaving hippies are a little It's smelly. Yes So alright use it hippies are a little hippie. Smelly. Yes. So, all right. Use it. Let's go ahead and sign this one out. Matter of fact, podcast is going out the door. Nick, thanks for the topic because I was really at a loss

this week and you dropped this one right into my lap. And maybe by the time we get together next time, maybe I'll be able to talk about software defined radio in a semi intelligent format. That'll be interesting for sure. What me talking about anything semi intelligently? No, no software defined radio. I only know like the cursory top most level of how that stuff works. And I, I think it's fascinating

But right now I do not have the spare brain power to get into it Yeah, well for me, I'm gonna I'm gonna dip my toe into it like I do most things like I want to be able to talk intelligently about it and Communications has just kind of become like my little hyper fit.. Well, it's become my hyperfixation target for the time being. Good. It's useful. Yeah. Until I find something. It's better than the new thing I got hooked on. Which was?

Gimp free Photoshop for making fantasy maps for D&D games. I don't... How about hearing it out? I've spent the last three days learning how to use photo editing software to make fantasy maps. It's only mildly useful. I don't know why I needed a map that is accurate with plate tectonics and geomorphology, but I have one because yes, because my brain wouldn't stop. So I had to do it. One of these days we're going to have to get together for like a D&D game

It has nothing it has nothing to do with this podcast or anybody talks around the podcast Incorrect entertainment and mental health. It's great for both I thought you were gonna say it entertains nerds, which also would have been accurate for this show also true say it entertains nerds, which also would have been accurate for this show. Also true. And if any of you out in the comments think you're not nerds, you are welcome to the club. We have t-shirts, Southern gals crafts. Matterfakes podcast going out the door.

Good night, y'all. Night. So Thanks for watching!