The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: What Did The Preppers Forget?

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

http://www.mofpodcast.com/www.pbnfamily.comhttps://www.facebook.com/matteroffactspodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/mofpodcastgroup/https://rumble.com/user/Mofpodcastwww.youtube.com/user/philrabhttps://www.instagram.com/mofpodcasthttps://twitter.com/themofpodcastSupport the showMerch at: https://southerngalscrafts.myshopify.com/Shop at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ora9riPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mofpodcastPurchase American Insurgent by Phil Rabalais: https://amzn.to/2FvSLMLShop at MantisX: http://www.mantisx.com/ref?id=173*The views and opinions of guests do not reflect the opinions of Phil Rabalais, Andrew Bobo, or the Matter of Facts Podcast*A random spin across the world wide web led Phil to a short blurb published regarding what most preppers forget when prepping. The MoF boys sit down to unpack it, for better or worse.https://www.quora.com/What-have-most-preppers-not-considered-when-preparing-for-SHTFMatter of Facts is now live-streaming our podcast on our YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Rumble. See the links above, join in the live chat, and see the faces behind the voices. Intro and Outro Music by Phil Rabalais All rights reserved, no commercial or non-commercial use without permission of creator prepper, prep, preparedness, prepared, emergency, survival, survive, self defense, 2nd amendment, 2a, gun rights, constitution, individual rights, train like you fight, firearms training, medical training, matter of facts podcast, mof podcast, reloading, handloading, ammo, ammunition, bullets, magazines, ar-15, ak-47, cz 75, cz, cz scorpion, bugout, bugout bag, get home bag, military, tactical 

Welcome back to the Matterfacts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping, guns, and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mofpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Ravele. Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. I'm not Andrew. I swear to Christ, I'm going to fix you, Andrew. I say that every time. I'm going to literally put a note in my freaking phone

to do it this weekend and re-record. It's all good, man. Anyway, Andrew's not with us. He was otherwise detained. Nick is with us. This is the Matter of Facts podcast, and for those of you, the three of you that are watching this streaming, we have finally stabilized a date, a day we're going to be streaming this on Thursdays at 5 p.m. Central, 6 p.m.

Eastern, so if this is a good convenient time for you to come listen to a couple of knuckleheads ramble about crap, this is a good time for us, and this is when it's going for you to come list to a couple of knuckleheads ramble about crap this is a good time for us and this is when it's going to kind of have to be to make three disparate schedules click together at this juncture across two different shifts it's like cross-threading two things together but i've been told by many professional mechanics cross-threading beats loctite every day of the week. Once. I didn't say it'd be removable. I just said that it would work.

And yes, raggle fraggle. Yes, raggle fraggle. Finally, a schedule of no more 8am rando streams. So, Nick, I don't think you've ever caught any of the rando streams before you came on as a co-host when you were

a patron, but there was a time or two where andrew and i literally had to get together on a friday morning at eight o'clock in the morning so i could hurry up and post the thing for friday morning fantastic yeah that was that's exactly the kind of forward planning we endorsed on this show yeah that that was um that was usually like me freshly rolled out of bed beard going in three different directions andrew coming off of a night shift both of us sucking down coffee like we were trying not to not to die and usually i don't know we had a couple of good shows that came out of that but it was usually like you know dude i'm so

free and exhausted dude i'm exhausted too well let's put the key of the ignition and put some bourbon in the coffee and make this work. Gotta do it, man. Gotta do what you gotta do. Yeah. But speaking, speaking of patrons,

I have to thank the patrons as I do who frequently thank you for supporting the show. It makes the, uh, it makes this insanity possible. So if you don't like this insanity, complain to the people that fund my habit. Cause you know, it's like given, fund my habit. Because, you know,

it's like giving... Jesus, I'm drawing a total blank. What do you give kids with ADHD? Caffeine or Ritalin? It's like giving Ritalin to an ADHD kid for y'all to fund this habit of mine. So thank y'all for that. Probably not socially responsible, but

thank you anyway. And merch. The merch store has been updated the link is in the show description if you'd like to get a shirt like what would bert do or any of the other shirts that we've recently put up they are for sale they are on there the southern gals is a small is a small whole small business run by another patron of ours and his wife. And they make really good shirts with really cheeky nonsense on it, like, you know, an outline of Burt Gummer. And if I have to explain to you who Burt Gummer is,

you either didn't grow up in the 90s or your childhood was awful, and I apologize. Yeah, wouldn't you have to work with their parents? I mean, I'm willing to make some exceptions. Like, if you were raised by Mormons, I kind of can't be too mad at you about that. Yeah, that's not your fault. If you're like a really, really young millennial or a Zoomer way before your time, but we got to catch you up on some good culture, but there's still time left. So for sure, before we get to topic you said you forgot

something when we were talking about canning the other time the other day i did and one of the patrons called me on it thank you for that by the way i don't remember who it was was it stewart it might have been it probably in fact it probably was he's fantastic for calling people on their show which is i love it i'm gonna get i swear Christ, I'm going to con Stuart or bully him into coming on this show one day. Cause like, so for, for those of you who are not in the, in the, in that, that like that insanity, that is our patron only group on signal who haven't had the pleasure of meeting Stuart yet, or aren't in the matter of facts, like the Facebook group. Stuart is a grumpy old fart that has forgotten more about prepping than i know an encyclopedic knowledge of minutia yes and the wacky part of it is is like you have to understand that like so useful he's been well but he's into preparedness since before it was called preparedness

since he was a teenager and he is about this close to retirement age so that gives you an idea he's been doing this longer than i've been alive and very frequently he is he's my guru so when i can't figure something out he's usually the person that has the uh he's usually the person with the uh the correct answer or at least know somebody who does. But in this case, it was about the difference between water bath and pressure canning and why the difference is important. So botulism.

Just about everybody's heard of it. Bad. It's the bacteria that can cause paralysis and kill you kind of thing. So there's two things about it. Low acid foods is where botulism can grow. That's your biggest risk factor right there. The reason being is the botulism spores can survive the temperature of boiling water.

So just boiling water alone is not enough to kill those spores so So it doesn't start producing, reproducing in, in the anaerobic environment. So you pressure can it to get a higher temperature and hold at that higher temperature to, to handle the botulism spores. And that's really the key difference for that. So if you don't want to, um,

die horribly, well, I was going to say, turn your toilet into modern art and then die horribly. Oh, it's worse than that. Yeah. It's not great. You know, it's...

It is a... We'll file that under what not to do. Because I know we had a whole section on what not to do when canning. Yeah. Don't can low- low acid foods in the water bath. Just don't do it. But for today,

I was searching the internet, as I do sometimes, and came across this article I shared with you, which I thought actually had some kind of good points. It did. Actually, some very good ones. So the topic of that article, which is down in the show description, was something to the effect of, what did my

prepper friends forget? And it's really, I thought it was, you know, some of it was kind of like, no duh. Some of it was a little bit cheeky. One or two things I don't totally agree with, but the majority of it was like, I thought like really good cautionary tales for not if you've been in preparedness for five minutes. If you've been in preparedness for five minutes, there's a whole bunch of stuff you need to do before you even get to the point of introspective, what do I need to go back and cover down on? But that being said, this would probably be good, useful information for most people just so that as they put together a preparedness plan, they can think about, oh, I hadn't thought of that, but I probably should now. preparedness plan they can think about oh I hadn't thought of that but I probably should now instead of doing this the way I did where I'd been into preparedness for several years and then turn around look back and I was like oh there's a couple of things I forgot and I need

to go back and cover up yeah for sure so I guess let's start off with like number one you can't trade with unprepared people which this has kind of been something that's been like very hotly contested in the preparedness world. Because there's that school of thought that says you need extra stuff so you can trade. If you don't drink vodka, you should still have vodka so that you can trade with people that do drink vodka. That's sort of methodology. Or, you know, you should have extra ammo so you can trade with other people and yada yada but the thing that was pointed out by this person that i find hard to disagree with is you can't trade with unprepared people like the majority

of the population isn't going to have a pot to pee in when things go really really really bad so all this stuff you have to trade with there's no one to trade with you because they don't have anything. Like, if a person's already struggling to put food on the table, what could they possibly have that you're going to want unless you're going to trade, like, jet skis for bags of rice, you know, something crazy like that? Labor's going to be the number one. You ever try to plant a garden by hand? No. It sucks. It's a lot of work.

Yeah, if you've got a gas rototiller, you can do it a little bit faster. But if you have to manually till and plant and weed a garden, your biggest shortfall has always been and will always be labor. That's why farmers always had so many kids yeah that's also an option well it no it's you know it's it's not it's not colorful it's not glamorous it's not great nobody likes that but i mean that's what they did. And even not that long ago, in fact, my grandpa's mother was one of those kids out of the inner city that was jobbed out to a farmer to be a nanny for his kids when his wife died. They ended up getting married. That's where my grandpa comes from my uh my grandma's sister was a like suburban city kid that was quite literally jobbed out to a wealthy couple in chicago that needed a house care person these things happened all the time two and three generations ago and they go on right

now in the third world and they will happen again if it gets bad enough so there is some things you could trade them for yeah sure you could trade them some food for some labor you could trade them some ammunition for some labor though i don't recommend trading away ammunition to people you don't know very well it tends to return at high velocities yeah i mean that that kind of seems like the reason why every every third world dictatorship is very hesitant to arm the rabble it's like it's like when ukraine started passing out ak-47s to just like granny and teenagers and everything that's when you knew things were at another level because they're giving out guns to normal people all of a sudden as many as possible well you know what at a point when you're a small country um trying to hold the line against a larger, more, at least bigger economic and larger population country, you have to make those tough calls.

The tricky part is going to be making sure you stay in power after you've armed your entire populace. Well, a government that just won a war tends to be more popular than one that lost one. I find it hard to argue with that. So now I'm just hearing you want to make sure you win. Yeah. Because if not... And if you're at that point, which they were and they still are, what do you have to lose? Because Putin's probably not going to be very

kind to your opposition party. Putin won't be kind to anybody. But, you know. So, this article also pointed out the good old-fashioned, you won't make it without community. Which,

this is like the hard, this is like one of those things that's extraordinarily difficult though because like i find that if you live in certain areas finding your community is extraordinarily difficult and there's actually another the very next item after this kind of goes with this but um finding your community can be difficult knowing who you can trust can be difficult um i don't know why but this seems like the venn diagram around prepared people Finding your community can be difficult. Knowing who you can trust can be difficult. I don't know why, but this seems like the Venn diagram around people into preparedness tends to have a lot of overlap with people they kind of like to keep themselves and be kind of solitary. So there might be a certain amount of emotional, I don't want to deal with other people, but you kind of have to because you need the support of the people around you. Like, you know, like that's, that's a tricky thing. That's why during times, that's why during good times, to the best of my ability, I try to be, you know,

on speaking terms with my neighbors. My wife's better at that than I am, but you know, she's better at anything social than I am. You know, it, it goes to what we were talking about with Rick. You need to have at the very least open lines of communication with the people around you. If for nothing else than advanced warning, if that's the bare minimum that you can get because of the political situation of where you are, I mean, Illinois, not exactly a bastion of preparedness. Not exactly a bastion of classical liberalism either. But if you can do better than that, if you can find a few neighbors that are at least on the same page enough that they have, say say a generator two when the next winter ice storm

rolls through or the next hurricane i forget which the hurricane that hits you i know uh hurricane ida comes through that's if you get two of those well that's two more houses assuming they don't get a direct impact and are destroyed that you won't have to deal with as much not having their own supplies yeah i mean at the at the very least if you can convince them to have two three days worth of anything to get themselves through that solves 95 of emergency situations is a well-funded savings account two or three days of food well and the other thing that's difficult is and this isn't so much like the political social leanings of the the state you're in but like down to where we live like I live in the suburbs I'm going to tell you that the majority of the people and that live in the subdivision with me do not have you know like night vision equipment and a generator

and fuel and six months of food like i live in i live around a lot of people who are more concerned about i need to make a boat payment or i need to make a jet ski payment or you know silly stuff like i don't have enough money for groceries left that too so i guess what i'm saying is like more common in some cases the problem is not the problem is not so much like this next this next bullet point points out, left or right, your worldview is costing you allies. I'll admit that in today's day where we have this hyper-polarization going around politics, this person's point was you're going to need to set that aside to find allies. I don't know that I totally agree with that. Really don't know that I totally agree with that. Really don't. And this isn't, because understand, like, for me, this

isn't a left versus right thing. This isn't whether you're conservative or you're progressive. That's not my concern. My concern is more of, do I believe other people can put aside their opinions, their whatever's, to be allies with me. So to me, it's like I'm willing to make bedfellows in bad situations with people who are willing to help me and my family survive, and I can help them survive. I'm willing to do that. But I'm always going to wonder if I'm then going to have to worry about that person when I take an action and

they begin to judge me through their lens. You see where I'm going with this? I think that the type of personality that gets into preparedness really heavily does lean a little bit to the paranoid. And I've said that about myself a lot. I have enough plumbing supplies to rebuild almost every bathroom in my house. Because, God forbid, at 3 a.m., there's water running across my floor because it's never at 4.30 before the hardware store closes. And that's an episode we'll have to do later.

It's talking about basic homeowner, home improvement, maintenance stuff you you should have around i've got that on the list to hit as a topic yeah that's good we're gonna need to talk about that but you know yes you always could have that person like we all i'm sure you guys in the patreon group remember me talking about my less than neighborly neighbor next door to me, who no matter what you do, will not be on good terms with anyone. She is currently in dispute, in very angry disputes with everyone that has a property boundary with her, including the state and county road commission. She sounds fine. Because she believes she owns part of the road. She's not a stable

individual. She's not a mentally healthy individual. She has had a very hard life, and I can't blame her for seeing people as enemies. But that doesn't change the fact that she is going to be there one way or another, good or bad. So you got to find a way to, if you can't get along with them, at the very least, be indifferent passers-by to each other with people. I think that the biggest reason why we can't do that now is people are, number one,

not hungry enough, and number two, not desperate enough. There's probably some truth to that. Like I said, I guess a lot of my... For the vast majority of people. Look at the gamification and the there's probably some truth to that. Like I said, I guess, I guess a lot of people, I mean, look, look at the gamification and the team sportification of politics lately. Why did politics get so popular?

Because COVID everything was shut down. People didn't have any of their normal distractions. So what did they turn to? They turned to the next greatest team sport, which is politics, bread and circus, huh? Bread and circus, huh? Bread and circus.

Yeah. The circus was gone. And the bread was, you know, not your favorite brand anymore. Yeah. And that's what it did. Yeah. Like I said, I guess like just me personally, like my biggest assert will always be that, again, coming from the military background that I do, I know that if things get bad enough, I am willing to embrace a level of viciousness most other people would be uncomfortable with. Until it gets bad enough. Yeah.

But I have faith in my wife and daughter to understand that if dad and husband is going there, it's because I deem it necessary to protect my family. But as I brought in that group out, I'm then going to have to deal with person A or person B that says, whoa, that was a little over the line. And at that point, I know my default reaction is going to be, I didn't ask your opinion. This is not a democracy. And at that point, I know my default reaction is going to be, I didn't ask your opinion. This is not a democracy. We're not voting on how things get done here. You're in my group because you came to me because I had stuff you needed. You can buzz off just as fast as you came here.

I think there's going to be an interesting thing there with those people probably will not stick around very long. If a person is not willing to collaborate with the group and with the authority structure that has been built in the group, historically what happens is exile. Not saying that you want to do it because they've probably got family, they've kids and they could come back and they could be mad but that's why again community is important because if the entire neighborhood is saying look this is the way it has to be and you're the odd man out peer pressure is a terrible thing until you need it agree to disagree. I think peer pressure is a wonderful tool that should be applied in most instances.

Right. Well, that's what I'm saying is like, it can like any tool, it can be applied destructively or beneficial. True. If you need 40,000 rounds of ammo, your strategy is suboptimal.

What a wonderful way of saying that you can't shoot your way out of the apocalypse despite what Hollywood has tried desperately to teach us over the years. And I say that as I'm wearing the What Would Bert Do shirt. Kill it with fire. Kill it with fire, make bombs,

shoot it with an elephant rifle, and then I'm saying you don't need 40,000 rounds of ammo. Well, you really don't you really don't and i'll tell you honestly like i've had this conversation so many times people over the years where they they do what most people do and they look up at the top of the mountain from the base of it and they're like how do i get up there and then i point out to them i'm like to be more prepared than you are today, you need 200 rounds of ammo, a reliable firearm, and enough food and water for three days. Bing, bang, boom. You have already upgraded yourself dramatically more than what you're at today for not a huge money or time investment, not even

like learning skills or getting deep into this, not planting crops in your backyard. Just go to the grocery store, spend a little bit more than usual. Go spend three, four hundred bucks on a nine millimeter handgun and 200 rounds of ammo and maybe a spare magazine for feeling really, you know, really enthusiastic. And I'm not saying that's that's it. You're prepped. I'm saying that you are now more prepped than you were yesterday. And that's kind of the goal. It's not how do I get from here to the top of the mountain in one step? It's a journey up the mountain. And how do I get, how do I get to the

next ledge by walking? Yeah. Just to put it, just to put it in perspective here, 40,000 rounds of ammunition. I don't know what you feel. I used to do a little bit of competitive shooting, not a lot, little bit. I trained a lot. I shot about 4,000 rounds a year out of my 9mm. That is 10 years of semi-serious competition training. You're not going to be doing that. Number one, just because of the time investment. Absolutely raggle-fraggle.

Avoidance, de-escalation always your best benefit even today if you see more so today and phil did you see that stupid video i don't remember what state it was on guy come guy gets out of his car with a handgun comes up on somebody's truck and starts hitting the truck with the gun changes hands and then brings his dominant hand and got smoked yeah got smoked got domed with two rounds yeah all right what possible reason could you have to number one get out of your vehicle during road rage and number two start smashing on someone's car with a handgun because you're not intending to use do you know why because he was stupid yeah stupidity that's the only outcome there is prison time in the best case because everybody's got a video camera nowadays and you know that shit's going on tick tock or number two

the other idiot in the car smokes your ass and i'm glad that the guy in the car won who was the victim that's how it should end but you know what now that guy's family is down either a husband a father or a son yeah because he could not manage his temper and deal with the fact that he was probably cut off in traffic and yeah this is also why like in the past whenever we've had conversations around like concealed carry or being the armed citizen and all that, like I have always gone back to this two ideas. Every fight you avoid, you win by default. If it can be avoided. If someone's threatening my wife or daughter, I don't count that as fights I can avoid because if I have to lose my wife or child to avoid the fight, it's not avoidable.

Sorry, guys. We're about to go to DEFCON 1. But if it's somebody bites their thumb at me or calls me names or whatever, I can't even begin to tell you how low down Phil's totem pole of things I give a F about. Phil was ordered for several months straight. Phil doesn't give a shit about swear words. Well, okay. I grew up passing my dad tools while I worked on cars. There's nothing you can say to me that is going to hurt my feelings that bad.

My father hasn't already said. Exactly. My dad wasn't too bad. But, as a matter of fact, you'll get a kick out of this. You weren't blue-collar growing up. My daughter was cruising the internet the other day and the next thing i know i hear arlie ermy's voice coming out of coming out of the house it was the drill sergeant scene from full metal jacket fantastic and after my and instead of like shutting it down

real fast because i knew where it was going i was just like let just let him cook and then after after my daughter was done i was like hey babe the first i was like the first eight out of ten weeks i spent in base training that's how i got talked to in that tone at that volume by people just like that who were also throwing stuff at me the whole time and she's just looking at me like and i'm like yeah now you understand why i am the way i am so yeah like to me if you can avoid a fight avoid the fight you you won because you avoided it because your gun stayed holstered you didn't waste ammo and you didn't have to go deal with people in not in

polyester uniforms that's a whole bunch of lawyer that's a whole bunch of wins all right there because you just you know shelved your ego ego walked away from the fight but the other thing i tell people all the time is you know like phil's this this is not legal advice but phil's personal metric for am i prepared to unleash hell on someone is am i prepared to spend the next three to five years in jail and or spend 25 to a hundred thousand dollars to try to stay out of prison right and if the answer is no i'm not willing to go through all that then i'm going to find another way to solve my problem that doesn't involve a handgun and if my immediate answer to that that simple metric is 100 worth it let's go to war then we're going to war and

the consequences are whatever they are at that point. But that's the mental... Because the alternative consequences are worse. Exactly. So that's like the mental ledge I put in front of people and I tell them, are you prepared to deal with the fallout of using your firearm in defensive or offensive capability? And if they say, whoa, I'm like, you could probably find a way to deal with a problem that doesn't involve shooting it. Yeah. Most problems I find that doesn't involve shooting it. Yeah. Most problems I find can be solved without shooting them. Yeah, because I don't know about y'all.

I don't know about y'all, but I've heard that in prison the physical affection you're getting is not to most people's liking and orange is not my color. So I don't want to end up in prison. I mean, I'm sure there's a guy in there that would just love to make this beard into a pair of handlebars, but I'm not trying to go there if I can help it in prison. I mean, I'm sure there's a guy in there that would just love to make this beard into a pair of handlebars,

but I'm not trying to go there if I can help it. Yeah. I mean, look, it basically comes down to two things. One, can you live with the consequences? I can live with the consequences of some random drunk guy on the street thinking I'm a pussy. What do I care? I don't know who he is i'll never see them again and besides what the hell i mean come on who hasn't been called worse things by a 12 year old on minecraft or call of duty y'all have been through this before i did

just deal i i was not a gamer at that point in my life, so I never played Minecraft or Call of Duty, but, you know, basically... Xbox Live got banned back in the day. I think I scarred Raggle Fraggle with Turn My Beard Into a Set of Handlebars, but, you know... Yes, Kyle.

Some of us do win at prison. So, cleaning supplies. And this hits close to home for me. Because here's a question I have for you. During COVID, what was the number one thing that was starting fistfights in grocery stores? Toilet paper. And why? Well, because it is a bulk item that they cannot stock a lot of, and you can't go without it unless you have a bidet.

And because, yeah, well, and because toilet paper, above and beyond being like, you know, the most memeable thing of 2020, it's a sanitation item. Tiger King. It is, yeah. So it's one of those things where- But bleach was the same way. The Clorox wipes were the same way.

Antibacterial soap. The hand sanitizer. Yeah. Antibacterial soap, same thing. Matter of fact, my wife found this out. She actually got some just to support a local company, but it was somebody she knew that their family owned a distillery. Yeah, my favorite distillery did that too.

So they started making alcohol-based hand sanitizer during covid because like you know it well it kept them open and it was selling like hot cakes so and it's really easy to make yeah well i mean if you're already spun up to freaking make whiskey then the hard part is distilling yeah so it's one of those things where it's like you know cleaning supplies were in such short order but i didn't find that we were really in bad shape. I mean, like, yeah, we had to restock over time, but everybody does. But I agree. I think that there's probably a whole bunch of people out there that like they've got the beans, the bolts and the band-aids.

But things like cleaning supplies, they might fall a little bit short. I mean, you kind of gave your example of having a bunch of plumbing supplies, but it's the same philosophy of at 4 o'clock in the morning, at 4 o'clock in the morning is the wrong time to run out of stuff when you need stuff. It is, especially nowadays, post-COVID, when the 24-hour Walmarts are closed. It's now a 12-hour or a 16-hour store. I mean, how many people here knew that bleach had a shelf life before they started prepping? I didn't. Six months, six months to a year.

So if it's non-concentrated bleach, six months, if it's concentrated bleach, it's one year. I will also say that. Yeah, Gregor, you're right. Cleaning supply, bleach it's one year i will also say that you're right cleaning supply uh wholesale clubs are your friend but again shelf life yeah some of these things do have one i will also say that go go a step beyond like personal cleaning cleaning items or home cleaning items but also just really basic stuff like you know do you have extra toothpaste do you have extra toothbrushes do you have extra deodorant do you have extra deodorant? Do you have extra body powder, foot powder? Do you have extra medications? Which is the very next bullet point. You can get, what is it, two years supply of deodorant on Amazon for about the same cost as a few months supply of Walmart, if you're willing to buy by the case. In case of deodorant does not

take up much space. Laundry detergent and dishwasher detergent.odorant, it does not take up much space. next six months were golden and that's when my wife started reading me into this saying hey dummy if you don't put together a bucket full of baking supplies so you can make me and my daughter cookies when we're having a bad day you're not gonna make it you're not gonna make it through the apocalypse so you know that's when i my my idea starts shifting away from just barely making it to how do we maintain normalcy for the family for as long as possible like when they're when it's covid and my wife and I we used to go get tacos like every other week we have a little couple place in town we're both Mexican food nights also sushi nuts but that's a very expensive habit to be involved that's yeah that's it's one of these things is more expensive than the other but tacos was pretty reasonable at the time

but for a while there we had stacks and stacks of tortillas and we had tons of ground beef and we made our own seasoning we did taco night here at the house because you didn't know if you could go out anywhere and get that stuff so I guess I always go back to the idea that

the whole point of cleaning supplies to me is because a clean house I always go back to the idea that like the whole point of cleaning supplies to me is, is to maintain, because a clean house is directly adjacent to your health. Yes. If you can't keep your house clean, if you can't keep your toilets clean,

if you can't keep your clothing clean, sooner or later, that's going to come back to bite you square in the behind. So it's, it's preparedness. It's preparedness. Like everything else is. I think my wife... I think Gillian...

I don't know. Was that comment you morale boosters? Yes, it was. That's why they put Skittles in the MREs. Yes, raggle-fraggle. That's why they used to put cigarettes in the C-rations. Not great long-term. But short-term.

But I will say that my wife and daughter are very slightly spoiled because I'm a baker. So like, yeah. Literally, I've gotten the request at like 8 o'clock at night be like the last time my daughter I think had friends over for a uh yeah for a sleepover I got the request eight o'clock at night

like we kind of want some cookies or brownies or whatever it was and I'm like okay come on you're you're coming to help and I had all I had three teenage girls in the kitchen with me you know throwing flour around and making stuff from scratch. Cause that's just how we're going to do it in this house. And you know what? That's a memory. If nothing else, that is a memory they will carry well into adulthood of how much fun that was. Apparently,

apparently it got that story has traded around in my daughter's class. Like everybody's like, you know, Piper Piper's dad made us cookies from scratch when we were over there. So first aid supplies. And this is, Piper's dad made us cookies from scratch when we were over there. There you go. So first aid supplies. And this was specifically to get past tourniquets and, you know, the big stuff. Man, the little stuff is huge when you don't have it.

Dude, I went to the grocery store recently. So I have this weird philosophy when it comes to making medical kits where, like, I just got through building just a little bitty shoulder bag, kind of an EDC bag specifically for Prepper Camp because I had an easy EDC bag, and then it turned into something else. It turned into, yeah, that magazine carrier that's on the shelf back there. And then I had another EDC bag, and it turned into that man pack down there. So I have a problem where I have a bag for a reason. And then when I start building something, I'm like, I need a bag. Oh, this will work. So I had to buy another bag, but in the process of that problem,

but in the process of doing that, I'm like, I mean, I'm not going to have an EDC bag and not put something medical in it. So I'm putting in cohesive bandage and four by fours and, uh, Oh, where is it? A whole whole bunch of these the little individual use super bottles those things are fantastic because i'm going to tell you that as bad as it will suck if you have to pour this into an open wound it will seal the wound up it's not that bad i'm a machinist i do it on the weekly man let's say it's not that bad you get used to it. Let's say pain tolerance is an individual thing, and some people would say that sucks.

I would probably say it stings a little. It's worse than getting an infected wound on your arm or your hand from skanky coolant in the machine bottom. True. But my point is, so as I'm putting this kit together, I'm like, oh, I'm getting a little bit low on 4x4s so the next thing you know I go to the store and like reach into the shelf grab all the 4x4s on the shelf shove them all into the basket

time to go to me it's like if I look underneath my sink I've got 4x4s and Cobang and I've got a whole box of the little individual wrapped alcohol swabs. Yeah. Because you can get them on Amazon for like practically nothing.

But that's my point. It's like $5 or $10 for a 100 pack. Why would you not? Yeah. I mean, well, and actually, here's the thing too. If you have a local farm supply store, you can get that same alcohol in a gallon jug for about 10 bucks so yes those individually wrapped prep pads fantastic but for home first aid use denatured alcohol oh yeah in a

gallon jug you'll never go through it all i use it to clean my 3d printer beds i've had that same gallon for three years see my, my problem is I wind up using the bulk denatured alcohol for filling little alcohol burners and stuff in camping kits. Fantastic. Parts degreaser sometimes. If I want something that's not going to... I don't want to use

brake cleaner or anything really aggressive. Isopropyl alcohol is usually pretty mild. Yeah, it's not going to take a finish off. Yeah. Well, not to mention, if we're talking about putting it into a medical kit, the little prepackaged stuff is just super convenient to rip a few of them off and chuck them in there. It is convenient. And I would never tell somebody not to use it because it's guaranteed to be sterile. But so are most things you soak in alcohol. True.

But specifically here, you got the thing, anti-diarrheals. but specifically here you got the thing anti-diarrheals anybody here that was a boy scout knows how quality boy scout cooking is the boys are doing the cooking and 13 year old boys don't pay too terrible much attention to the temperature of that chicken nothing's more miserable than a three-day camp out when you got the runs i I will also say that, like, bear in mind that what is – when the S – if the SH ever really TFs, what's going to kill an overwhelming majority of people? Once we get past everybody that's on daily medications that can't get MA more, once we get past everybody that's in ICU, you know, like, once we get past about three days, what's going to kill the majority of people is eating food that's bad or drinking water that's bad, and you're

going to evacuate your soul. And then your life. So, yeah, like that. And I'm just, I'm speaking from what kills people in the third world. It's starvation, it's pestilence, and it's usually drinking bad water because when you get desperate enough you'll stick your tongue into a puddle and then bad

things happen immediately after that parasites parasites that is a huge one that you can't really treat not not effectively yeah there are antibiotics and anti-parasitics that you can get if you do find a hospital that does have them in stock. But if you look at, say, I don't know if anybody in our chat or if our patron has been to Africa or the Middle East recently on a civilian trip. They recommend you bring all that yourself. Tommy was down in Central America, I want to say a couple of years ago, doing medical mission work, basically. Yeah, mission trip. We should actually talk to him about that in detail. His preps for going to a third world country, because I tell you what, man, there's nothing better for emergency disaster relief preparedness than understanding what you need to be prepped for a third world country.

what you need to be prepped for a third world country. Yeah. Well, either that or like, I look at it very analogous to like what the military brought in for us when we went to Iraq. Like, we were fully self-contained. We brought everything in. Because you had to.

If your plan is longer than three months, you need farming supplies. Yes. I want to hedge this and say six months, but I know why he's saying three months because like I've got a six month food supply, but by the time you get to get to the end of the six months, you better have crops in the ground or you're going to have a problem. Well, here's the problem is that, you know, six months.

No, I got to disagree with you three months, because if you are coming out of winter or you are going into winter, it takes three months to grow most crops. Yeah, I know. That's a ballpark and it's wrong. And there's about 20 other crops you can grow within six weeks. Whatever. Don't care. other crops you can grow within six weeks whatever don't care a sustainable amount of food to keep your family fed through a year is going to take most of the growing season which for most people

is three to five months to harvest so you will have nothing if if you're say going into the winter coming out of it coming coming out in the spring having used up all your supplies you've got nothing to harvest except what you can hunt or gather and that's not going to be much yeah and even like down here on the gulf coast where i kind of have like somewhat of a cheat code because our growing season is so much longer than the rest of the country i mean we're subtropical here yeah but even here you get an extra month? Yeah. Maybe two months, one on the front end, one on the back end. Yeah, maybe. But it really depends because, like.

Depending on weather and hurricane season. Yeah. Well, but then you have to think about it. Like, I was trying, and I suck at it, by the way, but I was trying to grow potatoes in my backyard just to see if I could. And they died. But that's another story. Well, I was asking my wife, like, what do you think I did wrong? And she said, honestly, you planted them too late in the year,

and it is 100 and FU outside, and potatoes like cool, dry weather. So, like, it's one of those things where it's like, okay, lesson learned. If I planted them earlier in the year, I could have harvested. Later in the year, I could have harvested. But, like, you know, that long-growing season kind of has this little problem child in the middle called august yeah august in the south she's a cruel mistress yeah like i said 100 and f you outside but i i will happily agree that like if you're but this is also why like i tell people like preparedness isn't always I'm trying to outlive the end of the world. No, it's not.

A lot of preparedness is a hurricane is going to happen sooner or later down here. And when it does, I would like to have food and water to eat and drink because reasons. So a lot of preparedness is can I stay in my house and feed myself for three weeks? If you can make it three weeks, you're probably going to be okay. Huh? Did I ever tell you what really triggered me getting into preparedness? Blizzard. I bought a house.

Okay? First time I ever bought a house. All right? I was barely an adult. I was like 23, 24. I went on. I signed the mortgage on like a Thursday. It was September 11th. I remember it very clearly because of the date. Not the September 11th, but it was a September 11th. I went on vacation a week later. I came back to being unemployed.

Oh, fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 23, 24 year old just signed a deed for a house and a mortgage attached to it. And the bank,

the bank doesn't allow takesies backsees. No. And I had 30 days to figure that, that out. Thankfully I had money set in a savings account. Which is also preparedness. It is the key. It is the base and backbone of preparedness. Name me a problem in modern society that cannot be solved by throwing money at it it's probably medical government yeah but that's not a problem that happens to an individual you know what I mean

not true I mean but if you have enough money the government's irrelevant look at Elon Musk he does whatever the hell he feels like because he's got so much money who's gonna stop him he just walks off somewhere I mean you do have a point the the whole um with like money every problem is solvable most of the mobsters in the 1920s just bought free and police and judges and made those problems 20s uh i was thinking i was thinking like you know bought the uh supreme court of illinois That must cost a pretty penny. Two million. But it's all fiat currency anyway, so who's paying?

Exactly, what does it matter? But still, the point stands. Your transmission goes out on your truck. Stroke a check. Fix is on the way. It might take a few days to a week. Rental car. Stroke a check.

Problem solved. Roof got tore off your house by a hurricane. Got to wait for the insurance to pay out? Fine, stroke a check. Get that ball rolling. Your roofer knows that the insurance company is going to pay. So you stroke that deposit check. All right.

Fix is on the way. No, that is an excellent point. Totally off the topic, but, you know, it's a good point. It is, but no, it's never off the topic because preparedness at its base in a modern society does largely depend on your finances. And if you can get your personal finances in order, at least to the point where you're not paycheck to paycheck, everything is easier. Yes. I'm going to have to bully Andrew and let me get on my personal finance kick. I restrict myself to one show a year because it's painful for me to sit there and watch Andrew's eyes slowly cross as I just talk about personal finance and budgeting for 55 minutes straight.

Hey, man, we all hate and love budgeting at the same time. I'm going to tell you honestly. No one lets me have my Warhammer addiction and all of the prepping gear I've got downstairs, a properly budgeted system. I'm going to say that not having personal debt, not having credit cards, and especially paying off two cars is a frigging cheat code. It is. I mean, my wife's car, we just bought her a new car.

$600 a month. If you had two, two cars is more than my mortgage. I was watching a YouTube video before we get to this next bullet point where it was just one person after another. It was a compilation video of people talking about what their car payments were. Oh, disgusting. Nick, the one that made me throw up in my mouth was $1,435 a month. For what?

$1,435 a month. For what? I want to say it was like, I don't remember what it was, but it was something very expensive. Of course it was. But wait, it gets better. It was something very expensive at, I want to say the interest rate was like 14, 15% and they negative equity into it. Oh, good Lord. Oh, yes.

Like the more of the story I heard, the more I thought to myself, Jesus, we need to- Burn the car. Molotov the car. This is your only way out. Not that I'm advocating for insurance fraud, but holy Christ. We don't have insurance fraud on the show. But I totally. Do not do insurance fraud, but dear Lord.

Well, but I mean, $1,400 a month. Dude, my mortgage and my truck payment when I was still making it were only a little bit more than that. Yeah. I'm on an acre with a 1,600 square foot ranch. So I'm in a pretty nice house, I think. Pretty nice for me anyway. And it's not even $1,150. me anyway. And it's not even 1150. I just, it is these kinds of terrible decisions that people willfully make knowingly or unknowingly, they did make the decision, they signed the paperwork,

just like student loans. But it's these kinds of decisions that stop people from building any wealth or any emergency savings for themselves. And then they have to have their in case of emergency credit card. And that's a 30% interest rate. The thing that I can't work out is like, see, maybe like five, six years ago now, I could understand, I could at least rationalize. I didn't agree with it, but I could rationalize the person that didn't look at the interest rate, didn't look at the principal, didn't look at the purchase price of the vehicle. The only number they were focused on was that monthly payment.

Can I make the monthly payment? Does it fit into my monthly budget? Yeah, 2%, sure. But see, I can rationalize that. I'm not saying I agree with it. Every dollar you pay in interest is a dollar you're lighting on fire in your front yard for fun for the bank. Quite literally. Comma, however, comma.

I can at least rationalize that. The people I cannot figure out are the ones who got the damn paperwork. And it says $1,435 a month. And there wasn't like a moment. There wasn't the briefest of moments where something in their soul jumped up and said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And they just John Hancock that SOB and rode off into the sunset of poverty. I can't. I don't think they're entirely to blame.

I don't think they're entirely to blame there has been a willful and intentional not teaching of students and young people either by their parents or by the school system the effect of compound interest or by the school system the effect of compound interest and the effect of debt to income ratios did you take a personal finance class in high school because i did you want to know what they taught us how to balance your checkbook four weeks of how to balance a checkbook four weeks i think my only saving grace is right to your point about people's parents not teaching them, is my dad did teach me. My dad has

been very open with me about the fact that bear in mind, he's 70. He's retired. But he's been very open with me about the fact that if he knew at 40, which I'm 41, but if he knew at 40 what I know about finance and how economics works and all this stuff, my dad's 41, but if he knew at 40 what I know about finance and how economics works

and all this stuff, my dad's already told me, he said, I'd have three times what I do in my IRA. If I knew what you know now, I would be set, he's already set for life. Like, he would have to do stupid stuff to put himself

in a bad position because he's been very diligent about saving and controlling his dad and so on and so forth. He's lived a very financially conservative life and profited from that. But he looks at what I know and he's like, if I knew that at your age, I'd have blown this out of the water.

I'd just stumble. I'd just, you know, did the best I could. So, I don't know. Still, no. To be fair to the people that make these decisions a lot of them are entirely uninformed and to not to plug another channel but caleb hammer go watch some of his videos see the effect not just you the audience see the effect, not just you, the audience, see the effect of these decisions on a day-to-day basis, even if it's $15 at Starbucks. I am just going to tell you one thing though. I was subscribed to Caleb's channel. I had to unsubscribe to it after a while.

Not because his content is not amazing, because it is. Not because the lessons that are illustrated don't need to be learned. But I have a personality where when I swim in somebody else's grief for too long, it starts to eat at me for sure. And after watching day after day, after day, after day, people who are,

have screwed their lives up with bad financial decisions. It just got, it, it got to the point where I was like, I it's like watching the news every day. And it's always bad news. I got to the point where I was like, it's like watching the news every day and it's always bad news. I got to the point where I had to turn it off because it was dragging me down. For your own mental health. But I will also say that if you think that you have lessons to be learned from personal finance, that's a good place to go. And if you think

you're in really bad shape, watch a couple of those episodes and you'll learn what a really bad shape really looks like. Even if you think you're in good shape, watch a few of them. You might pick up some tips. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with educating yourself. The thing that I picked up from watching that show was, damn, we're doing pretty good. Yeah, better than you think, right? Better than you think.

Well, because you only see what you and yours are doing. you only see what you and yours are doing you only see what you and yours are doing you you don't see everybody else comparison is the joy of the is the thief of joy thief of joy yeah it can be but it can also make you feel a little bit better if you see somebody that's twice your age that's staring down the barrel of retirement in three years and they're you know half a million or more in debt. No assets. Knowing when to wear body armor is as important as having it. And oh my dear God in heaven, can I just tell everybody? Can I just tell everybody? Even though I did just tell my wife the other day that this is on my list

before the end of the year. Like your body armor? Well, no, no, no. I've got a body armor set, and I only have one. I'm not going to buy enough to outfit the whole family because I think I look at body armor as tool in the toolbox. If you need it, you need it. If you don't, you don't.

And most of the time, you don't. It's a goddamn bad day if you do. Yeah. So, but the set I have is very old, and it was very cheap, and it's steel, which see, here's the thing. I told you it's very old. At the time

I bought this body armor set, composite body armor was comparatively very expensive, very fragile at the time. I mean, I don't know if you can call it like generations, but like you and i both know that like modern ceramic body armor it's amazing it's freaking amazing multi-hit it is it

is night and day difference from what it was 10 years ago but what it was 10 years ago was if you drop it on the floor you gotta you gotta throw the plates in the trash and buy new ones and i was not i was not prepared to go through that much aggravation because again, my experience from body armor was when I was in the military in 2003, when we first moved to Iraq. And they were paying for the x-rays. Yeah. And those, those plates, like they literally told us, if you drop your plate carrier on the floor, you have to replace your plates because that's how fragile they were. Sure. So you know what? It was better than carrying steel in the desert yes but now that body now that's now that ceramic plates have gotten to a point where i'm comfortable buying into them i really want to get rid of those old steel plates turn that entire vest

into like a workout with just a weight vest because that's about what it's good for sure and maybe if i go run a class and i need it i'll swap out the ceramic for steel just because if i bang them around, who gives a damn? It's training. Even then, I've beaten on my ceramic plates, and I sent them out for x-rays a little while ago, and they're just fine. In fact, I kind of cheaped out on mine. I bought the RMA ones. I didn't even buy the fancy Heskos.

Yeah, but there's Hesk's in the upper tier and there's like rma which is very good quality do not get me wrong love their product line and then there's chinese ali aliexpress plates you know there's different grades to answer raggle fraggles question yes they are coated but i don't care. They're still steel plates. Yeah, but I've shot at coated plates because I had a spare. I had a pair of AR500 plates too. And that coating comes off really fast. Yeah.

And it's actually not that easy. It's not that hard to punch through them. My 20-inch AR shooting green tips will punch through a level 3 AR500 plate. But to my point was, as I'm about to say how little you're going to use body armor, that is on my list of stuff to upgrade this year is body armor and war belt because I'm using an old USGI pistol belt from the mid-90s because it works. But again, trying to update towards more modern stuff, more comfortable, yadda yadda yadda. But again, you have a funded emergency fund, you have a

funded 401k or other retirement plan, you have your food lined up, you have your medical care lined up, body armor's on bottom tier priority. Which, you're there. Yeah. Well, I mean, i don't know most people would argue that night vision's bottom tier priority but yeah but you know what a lot of fun that's

that's the thing too is but you've you've got your baseline established for the most common threat in your area hurricanes hurricanes it is in my area it's tornadoes and ice storms on occasion maybe a blizzard once a year or in a heat wave you've got your bottom line handled now you can handle the exotic cases yeah but to this bullet point about knowing when to wear your body armor i'm gonna tell you that during so here's the thing during hurricane katrina i was still in uniform i was in the new world's metro area uh we actually didn't have our body armor because it was at the facility in the vault underwater but that's a different fantastic yeah fantastic thing we're evacuating that in the basement we're evacuating a facility that is literally literally a runway away from

lake ponch train there's a cat-bore hurricane cruising through that's going to make a bunch of storm surge. Let's make sure we get the toolboxes for the helicopters so we can work on them, but let's leave all the son-of-a-bitchin' M-16s and body armor and nods and all that stuff locked up in the vault to get flooded.

Good job, supply guys. Fantastic. I can't even be mad at the i can't even be mad at the supply guys because i guarantee you it was some idiot officer that made that freaking decision but whoever you are out there i would love to have a beer with you and tell you about yourself because that was let me tell you about the random guns that were going off in katrina uh i can just tell you that when they sent us down the New Orleans metro area, we were literally bringing like personal, personally owned weapons in uniform, driving personal vehicles because our motor pool, our motor pool was also underwater. Different aggravating story.

Turns out Humvees don't run well in six feet of water. No, not unless you put the snorkels on. But even then, they're not happy. But I digress. No truck is truly happy with the snorkels on, but even then they're not happy. But I digress. No truck is truly happy with a snorkel. No. But what it boils down to is that, like, in that situation, I would have kind of liked to have body armor because they were taking random shots at people. But during Hurricane Ida, when I'm just Phil homeowner, I wasn't standing in the front yard with a plate carrier on.

First of all, I don't want to scare the hell out of my neighbors. Well, second of all, that shit is uncomfortable. Yeah. Now, what I did do was I had my body armor and a rifle by the front door of this house, like literally reach in through the front door and grab it, and I was carrying a handgun underneath my shirt the whole time. Absolutely. If there had been a serious

situation, the gun, you know, the rifle and the plate carrier being by the front door was to run in the house, slam the front door shut, grab the stuff and be able to defend the home because in the situation we were in, you didn't know what police response time was going to be. You had to be prepared to fight your way out of trouble. But what I'm not trying to do

is scare the hell out of my neighbors by marching up and down the street in body armor looking like a moron. And not to mention the fact that you probably wouldn't have been able to evac even if you wanted to at that point. So, you know, just from trees down, power lines down, debris in the road, whatever, you are kind of, in the case of a hurricane, correct me if I'm wrong you're locked in to where you are for the most part for a period of time, yeah, depending on how bad it was and really how close it hit to you

because like, where the storm Katrina, people were in their houses, were on their roofs for a week and Katrina is kind of an outlier just because of course it is, but it's a perfect example. Yeah. It happened in New York not that long ago. Yeah. You just have to remember that the majority of the street flooding we saw during Katrina was the levees breaking.

Right. It wasn't the storm surge and it wasn't rainfall. It was the levees breaking, which let the river go where it wasn't supposed to go. That's what caused the problems. wasn't supposed to go. That's what caused the problems. Fine. But that was due to nepotism, government incompetence and corruption. So what screws everything up? Has that gone down or up?

Yeah, pretty, pretty steady, I'd say. Yeah. So it's not gotten better. Pretty good odds it'll happen again. Yeah.

But yeah, I would agree with this. Knowing when to wear body armor is important. It's having it because body armor isn't just protecting your vital organs. Body armor is also a show of force. It's a message of intent.

It's like the difference between... I am going to be here to fight you if you come for me. Now, I will happily say there was a point several days after the hurricane that we had to go to uh the next town over to check on my in-laws and make sure that they were okay and do a little bit of quick home repairs and when we were loading up the truck yeah i loaded mres i loaded water i lo i i literally i loaded up like we were going to live out of the truck for three or four days just just in case and i also

had that plate carrier and that rifle in the pasture floorboards of the truck at my wife's feet because i told her i'm like if something pops off like i need you to dive over the back seat and i need you to dive into the back of the truck and i'm going to grab this i'm going to do what i have to do but like right it's just one of those situations where it's like, you know, we have the mentality of, if we get into trouble, we have to fight our way out of trouble. We don't know if we're going to have cell signal to be able to get a hold of anybody.

And even if you can, could they come? But even then, it was plate carrier and rifle down the floorboards of the truck where if you're just standing on the side of the road, we drive by, there's no outward signs that we're looking for a fight so it's just like to me it really is just kind of an idea of like you know have some freaking common sense don't don't look like you're looking for a fight yeah because well the part of the reason

why uniformed troops are always in body armor is because their job is to look for the fight and be the target yeah and you will you will be a target if you're wearing body armor absolutely it doesn't matter if you're wearing body armor you're not it's not first off it's not covering your pelvis and second off it's not covering your head or your arms or legs heads are kind of important heads are extremely important oh yeah this is a problem I need to address your family doesn't know how to use two thirds of your preps now I'm going to happily say

what I struggle with sometimes is I love my family dearly but frankly they could give a damn about some things especially your teenage daughter yes now the really important stuff like hey

if you need to cook this is where the propane is this is where the camp stove is you know where all the buckets of food are you know where the things are but once you get much beyond the basics of this is the stuff y'all normally interface with you get into here how does a radio work they don't freaking know i'm gonna have to set it up and set them up and hand it to them and say push the button to talk to me or we start talking about things like more advanced medical care my wife and daughter are brilliant young ladies they understand how to use band-aids and you know alcohol and hydrogen peroxide and all that stuff they can bandageage stuff up. They do it all the time.

But if I hand them a tourniquet, I don't know if they're going to instinctively understand how to apply that thing. If I hand them a chest seal or if I hand them quick clot, quick clot, they probably figure out to shove it in the wound no matter how bad it hurts. Yeah, that's especially the new gauze versions of it. They're very, they're very user friendly. Yeah. But no, I mean, this is a really good point, is that your family doesn't know how to use two-thirds of your preps, and I'm

going to go one step further than this. There are a bunch of you preppers out there that have stuff put away, and your family probably doesn't know where two-thirds of it is. Like, my wife and daughter know where the stuff is. They may not know exactly how to use all of it.

They might have to fumble around a little bit but they at least know where it is but i i mean if you've got stuff squirreled away in your house and nobody knows it's there like i i talked to a friend of mine who he's been involved in like going in houses like to help clear them out for estate sales and everything and the number the number of like boxes stuff with like shoe boxes full everything. And the number of boxes stuffed with shoeboxes full of cash, or the number of just guns that were hidden away in different places that they

find after someone passes away that nobody knew was even... People that live in the house didn't know it was there. I helped a widow that I was... I was friends with her husband. I helped a widow find a lot of his guns that he had hidden around places. And the reason why I knew they were there is because he wanted to show them off.

And I can tell you this much. There are a lot of elderly individuals out there that have a number, not just one, not just a couple, a large number of loaded firearms in their homes or their businesses or their cars. And that can be fairly hazardous because some of these older guns, number one, are not drop safe. Some of them don't have safeties, number two. And if number three, nobody else in the family knows they're there, what are the odds they know how to safely unload that obscure firearm from the 1930s now the ones i was helping find were largely small concealable pistols 22s 25 autos 32 autos stuff like that but you know one of them was an m1 grand that was in a closet behind the thing so what you know grandkids helping you clean out the house picks it up points it something

pulls the trigger okay there's no wall in that house it's going to stop an A6 before it hits a family member cleaning the other room or a neighbor or who knows what else but I need to give my wife a how-to on generators she knows we have a generator I've talked her through

the basics of how to use it but she has never personally hooked up and started the generator. And it's heavy. It's a 10,000 watt. I don't remember how they're actually rated. It's probably a 10K. Surge generator.

10K. That's it. 10K generator. Thank you. She knows how to hook up a propane grill. She's a very smart lady. But I'm not sure she knows how to hook up the tractor to the trailer to get the generator all the way across the property to where our hookup is because it's

a portable generator i didn't i don't i didn't don't have the funds for a permanently in place one would love to we're budgeting for that it'll get there eventually but for now i need to have her a couple of times try hooking that mower up to the trailer and dragging it around the house, backing it into place and then plugging it in. Because it's not the simplest procedure. There's stuff in the garage that has to be moved out of the way. There's a certain way you're going to have to drive it because there's only one path that'll get to that point. And backing up a short axle trailer, like a little lawnmower trailer, is not a walk in the park

for somebody that's never done it. It's tricky. It can be, especially for somebody that doesn't use those short axle trailers all the time. You know, and that's, and yeah, could she figure it out?

I'm sure she could given enough time, but do I want her to have to spend the hours or just any extra amount of time dicking around outside after an ice storm? No. I will say the persuasion to this, one thing that's been mentioned before and recommended to me, and I

really need to get off my butt. I did it years ago. I need to do it again. Yes. Literally to write up a manual for this is where this is. This is how you do stuff. This is the order you hook up the generator and flip all the switches in. Like, you know, like that's been recommended.

And I can remember years ago I was getting deployed to Shreveport for work for my current job. Sure. And it was because there was a tropical storm that was hitting the New Orleans area. It was going to be a near strike, wasn't it? Well, no. It was supposed to be a direct strike, but it was only supposed to be a tropical storm. So it wasn't going to be a bad hurricane. It wasn't going to be like a big old hurricane or anything.

But the worry was it was supposed to make landfall Wednesday night going into Thursday morning. Well, that is like critical time for us executing our biweekly payroll operation. So the worry was if this thing shuts down the New Orleans area, which was a likelihood, or if there's street flooding and people can't get into work, we have problems to deal with because we literally can't get the staff to the offices to do the thing they have to do that particular day. we literally can't get the staff to the offices to do the thing they have to do that particular day. So they made the decision to go ahead and deploy

about half of us, or not half, maybe a third of us, up to Shreveport, to the alternate work site, and I was, I drew the number. I had to go. I was leaving behind my wife and daughter with a tropical storm coming in. And we had that discussion about,

you know, Piper's still in school, I still have work, do I just tell my boss, buzz off, and we come with y'all or not? And I was like, here's the thing. Given what this looks like, it's going to be a tropical storm. I don't even think it's going to put us out, I don't even think it's going to put the New Orleans office out of work,

and it didn't, by the way. Sure. Turned out to be about what I expected, which was out of an abundance of caution, we're deploying y'all. So I told my wife, I'm like, I think you're okay to stay here, not disrupt yourself, not disrupt Piper, not have to lose a couple of days of work. I think you're fine.

If I did not believe that all the way in one side and out the other, I would tell you pack up and let's go. And we'd be packing the cats and everything else. else but i really think you're okay that being said i left behind a stack of cash and like two sheets printed of this is where everything you might need is this is where all the food is this is where all the water is this is where this is where all the stuff is that if you need to be self-sufficient for three days this is where it all is this is what everything's laid out ready to go like i had and i had i had kind of left

behind the house in the condition i thought it needed to be and if she had a power outage for a day or two i don't recall that we even lost power for that. So it was a good little exercise, but I don't remember how many years ago this was. My daughter was a little, little bitty. But I mean, like our preps have grown so much since then that that list means nothing. I would have to completely update it

just to include all the stuff we've added. So I wholeheartedly agree about like, your family doesn't know how to use two-thirds of your preps. They may not even know where all of it is. Honestly, I probably don't know where all of my stuff is. Yeah, so that's a different problem. Well, look, we all have that problem. We all have the, I know I have this. I know it is in the house.

But can you find it? I mean, organization is difficult. There's a reason why there are people whose entire jobs are organizing facilities. Hence your subtitle, I forgot where I left everything. Absolutely. If I didn't have my wife, I forgot where I left everything. Absolutely. If I didn't have my wife, I wouldn't know where anything is. This last one really hits close to home. It's going close on.

If you don't have it before your emergency, you won't find it during the emergency. And I will say that this reminds me very much of an old saying from the military, which was, when you're short of everything but problems, you're in a combat zone. Correct.

So when you're running out of ammo, running out of food, running out of water, running out of everything, but you've got plenty of problems, a.k.a. people trying to murder you, you're in a combat zone. And that's kind of what this reminds me of, because it's the idea that the whole point of preparedness, for those of you who didn't get the memo out in the audience, the whole point of preparedness is to do things before the emergency starts. If you are doing things after the emergency starts, we don't call that preparedness, we call that panicking, because you should have done all these things before the emergency started. It's fine to do things after the emergency starts because you're trying to, like, you know,

stretch your preps out longer or as long as you can get stuff, you want to keep getting stuff. Like, you know, that all makes sense. Sure, last-minute grocery run. Yeah. Well, I'm going to tell you honestly, every, like, me and my wife go through this every year. We have a hurricane. As soon as a hurricane enters the Gulf of Mexico, we immediately... Everything

disappears. Well, no, no, no. Usually around here, that starts about two days before landfall. But I'm talking about as soon as the spaghetti models all coalesce on the Louisiana Gulf Coast, we go straight to the gas stations and top off. We go straight to the gas stations and top off. We go straight to the gas stations and top off all the gas cans. We make a grocery run. We go

through the house top to bottom and say, is there anything we need before this starts? Because for two weeks, we're going to live out of what we have. And then the next thing that happens is every day on the way home from work, go hit the gas station again. I don't care if you need a gallon and a half of gas. Keep the gas tank filled to the brim. And then the first time you pass that gas station, you see one person at the pump and one person waiting in line behind them. Stop. You're not getting any more fuel.

Whatever we have is what we're going to have. Because now we're getting into the situation where the lines are starting to add up the crowds are starting to build up we don't want to be around all that so right but the point is that we all have to develop this mentality that like if we don't have it before the emergency starts you ain't gonna find it during the emergency because it's you and everybody else on this anthill scrabbling around looking for stuff. So take that as your opportunity to think ahead of time about what would I like to have when all hell breaks loose. And by the way, that answer should also include,

like I know Joe earlier mentioned entertainment. It should include entertainment items. It should include comfort items. Like, you know, I don't want to tell anybody to make I'm not advocating anybody go out and make crazy financial decisions to impoverish yourself

I'm just saying I'm just saying do not think oh I can put that off till later because later it's going to be you and everybody else looking for the same stuff. And you probably don't want to be around a whole...

You probably don't want to be number five in line at the gas pump. Because people start throwing punches at a certain point. They can. I've never been one, personally, to dive into the end- the world type of preparedness. I'm not. That's not me. I don't know that it would be possible for me to get to that point.

But what I can do is make every little emergency from here to there a little more bearable. You know what I mean? COVID was a perfect exemplar of this. And some of my friends have come around to having a little bit of extra things laid up. My wife didn't have to stop baking because she likes to bake sometimes. She makes pies, she makes brownies, she makes cakes, stuff like that. We didn't have to limit most of our favorite foods. Granted, a lot of that was because we cook at home and we eat at home most of the time. So we had a lot of that stuff already to go.

We didn't have to cut down on how much beef we were eating because of how expensive beef got. Because we buy a quarter of beef at a time. And that's enough for the two of us for a year. a beef at a time and that's enough for the two of us for a year so i was making some kind of jokey facebook posts if you guys are facebook friends with me that's the only social media i really do um because i'm an older i'm a millennial and facebook great i'm on there sometimes when i'm not banned for sassing the president um i was making joking Facebook posts that we had to resort to an improper wine pairing, which we did because we were a little low on certain kinds of wine. But we had to make an improper wine pairing with the steak we were making for dinner that night.

And the third week of COVID, when people were bitching about the grocery stores not having things they needed. bitching about the grocery stores not having things they needed because I had taken the time to make sure we had a few weeks to a couple months worth of stuff laying around. Let's be honest here. Deep freeze in a quarter of beef. You know, you're looking at, I think it was 500 bucks for my big freezer because I bought a very large freezer. Quarter of beef, I don't remember what it cost at the time, but I think it was like $350 or $400. I had the money in my savings to lay out for that quarter of beef, so I didn't have to go and buy meat at the grocery store every other week. I realize that's not possible for everyone, but if you take the time and take the budgeting seriously and set yourself up for

success by sacrificing a little bit ahead of time, which we do, me and my wife really don't eat out. We eat out maybe twice, three times a month. But that right there, okay, so I think, I forget what I saw the other day, but it was the average person eats out four days a week or four meals a week. Okay. For me and my wife, that's about $30 or $40 if we go out to eat. $30 or $40 times, let's call it conservatively three times a week. You know, $90 a month. Yep.

$500 a month. Yep. Very easily could get to $500, especially if you got, say, a couple of kids. Could add up even faster than that. $500 a week times 52 weeks a year. But give me some leeway here. Because for the person that says, oh, it's only $500 a month, that's $6,000 a year. Yep.

So. $6,000 a year is more than my prepping budget well but i guess my point is is like imagine being able to give yourself a six thousand dollar a year raise yep and all you and i'm not saying don't eat out ever we all do it like uh we forgot to take the chicken out early enough yesterday to make chicken nuggets at home so my wife went and picked up culvers fantastic fine whatever that's probably our one time of eating out this week so 25 bucks yeah that's better than 100 everybody has days like that where you just you do not have the fair enough, try to keep it to a minimum meal prep, eat leftovers

whatever you gotta do, set yourself up for success yeah well I have to admit usually when I see an article, especially when it's on Quora of all places this was a good one this one definitely punched above what's your dog's name

stella stella freaking out because my wife's getting home ah but um yeah i mean this article definitely kind of like it called to mind a lot of things we've talked about over the years and a lot of things one or two things that i kind of think i need to go back and address but i think what's important i think what's important to remember here is that like, you know, on this preparedness journey, when you first get into it, A, you don't know what you don't know. And B, you're going to be, you're going to be way behind the power curve on everything because you've

just started. So what I think is important is. Ignore the power curve. Yeah. But what I think is important is to remember for people to remember that like you start at ground zero prep for three days what what what am i going to need for three days and then what do i need for a week and then what do i need for two weeks and then a month and a couple of months and so on so forth and just keep on expanding out but at some point in here we're going to have to engage a little bit of a preparedness oodle-loop and think about, what did I forget?

What did I, what did I, yeah. And I will say, I will say wholeheartedly that like what I find, hi Stella, what I find very helpful to bear in mind for, for like thinking about what you missed in your preparedness journey is most people think about the stuff that they don't think of as preparedness. Like they don't think about, oh, I need extra anti-diarrhea medicine or I need extra toilet paper because that's not quote unquote prepping stuff. It's not fun either. Yeah.

But I'm going to tell you, 90% of my preps come from grocery stores or hardware stores or, you know, the CVS, the local pharmacy. or hardware stores or the CVS, the local pharmacy because if I'm going to get a tourniquet I better have a couple boxes of band-aids and a bunch of 4x4s and so on and so forth. If I'm going to buy a case of MREs

why wouldn't I go and spend an extra $30 get an extra big bulk pack of ground beef because even if I don't need it I'll bag it up a pound at a time and stuff the chest freezer with five more pounds of beef it's just the idea yeah i mean it's just the idea that like

you know we have to stop thinking of preparedness as this weird thing you do next to or ancillary to your day-to-day life and just realize that all preparedness is is taking all the everyday stuff and maybe pile up a little bit extra over time. Yeah, you know, and it doesn't have, you don't have to aim for a year supply or a three month supply or even a week supply at first. Do what you can with what you have while maintaining reasonable fiscal responsibility so that you don't screw your future self. reasonable fiscal responsibility so that you don't screw your future self.

So what I'm hearing is that sooner or later, I'm going to have to uncork the financial episode. Oh, absolutely. You know, it needs to be discussed. It does. Americans in general, if there's one thing we all have in common, at least most of us have in common, is that we are terrible at fiscal responsibility.

We're inundated with overconsumption. Yeah. Well, maybe we'll put that on the docket for next week. But we'll go ahead and punt this one out the door. I know you need to go kiss your wife. I need to go kiss mine and eat dinner. Definitely dinner. Getting hungry.

We'll talk to everybody in another week. Bye, everybody. Later, boys. Thank you. We'll see you next time.