The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: What Do You Wish You Knew About Prepping When You Started?

Episode Date: March 4, 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*Phil and Andrew are joined by a couple of familiar friends from PBN to talk about what the MoF Minions answered to Phil's recent question; 'What Do You Wish You Knew About Prepping When You Started?'https://pbnfamily.com/Matter of Facts is now live-streaming our podcast on 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 Matter Facts 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 mwfpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Rablis, and my co-host, Andrew Bobo, is on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. And welcome back to the Matter Facts Podcast. Phil's sitting here with Andrew and Jordan from Phoenix Survival and the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We might

have a fourth seat if he can make it in. We'll just have to wait and see. But if so, we're going to give him plenty of crap about being late. There is. Oh! Perfect timing! Hot seat! Just in time for the abuse for being late.

I deserve every bit of it. I was waiting out the family to leave, and they're not, have not left yet. Why you gotta say the F word? Now I feel bad about abusing you. James, I loved you until I just looked at that. Wait, what? Really? What does that mean?

What are we talking about? Look underneath his icy. Oh, his? What does that mean? What are we talking about? Look underneath his icy. Oh, his icy? Oh, yeah. I can't believe, I didn't even have to enter that, you know, that saved it from like a podcast long ago. Listen, the only pronouns acceptable on this

podcast are he, him, she, her, and age, 64, attack helicopter. Those are the three genders on the Matter of Facts podcast. Pick one. That was from years ago. That might have been from like four years ago, that his, them, they, zim. Yeah, I can't believe that's even on

here. That's pretty cool of StreamYard to keep that stuff. Yeah, very inclusive. Is there chaos behind in the microphone? Can you hear all the background noise everybody's getting oh there's some background noise but you guys can do your thing nah you're more work for phil but uh no the my job um we we had to do some um inclusive the you know whatever the training is

and uh they were going over pronouns and everything and uh they i wish i could have been a fly on the wall for that also it's funny because like a couple of the guys that i work with are a little bit more outspoken uh than i am and i'm like just whatever it's just do it because let's just get it over with and then i got but i got them going because i said hey do you guys are you guys done with it are you guys done with it yet and they're like no i said well when you get to the very end um one of the requirements is we have to put pronouns in our email and the one dude was like what and i go yeah i said uh so when you get done with the whole thing like they want you like you you have to send the email to basically like hr or whatever and confirm that you did this and you're

supposed to have pronouns in your email um or there's discipline interaction and like they just were all man it was so funny the one dude's like i'm i'm gonna do like i can't remember what he said he was gonna do but yeah they it was so funny i and i let him go for like a few minutes and i was like i was just kidding so what did you do you should have sent him one with a person that would have been that would have been the kick. He would have been like, oh, God, we're really doomed. But, anywho. So, before we get to the talk today, I do have to take a brief second to brag, because I just found this out recently. But, Louisiana has joined those states that believe in constitutionally protected freedoms and doesn't believe in making people, you know, beg for government permission slip before carrying a firearm hallelujah about hallelujah i'm getting used to barely just yeah now i do have to say like bear in mind that like i've been an advocate of constitutional

carry in this state for a great number of years i have harassed several politicians about this. Several politicians. Not you. Well, I might have called one or two of them some very unkind words like cuck and sellout and, you know, rhino. I might have said some pretty... I see one tied up in the back there. Yeah, I might have said some unkind things here and there. But, you know, we finally got... Wow, that's a pretty fun idea for your baby! It is a family show.

But, you know, the thing of it is, I'm just glad we finally got the right mix of reasonable semi-intelligent people in the halls of congress in our state and we got a governor that is a complete douche canoe that would finally pass constitutional carry to do something that should have never required a law in the first place so i just have to say to all of our state lawmakers. You're probably one of the lay states in the South, are you not? Yeah. Because Mississippi became constitutional carry and open carry probably about six years ago. And we thought we were one of the last states. Now, to be fair, Louisiana has been an open carry state for a lot of years. But concealed carry required a permit. And the problem is every time this got brought up,

there was this huge outcry from law enforcement saying that if everyone's allowed to carry a gun, it's going to be, you know, officer safety and blah, blah, blah, blah, as if crackheads and criminals and thieves and, you know, murderers and rapists don't carry concealed weapons already. Whatever. I'll give you that. I'll give that logical insistence for just the briefest of moments. But me being the anarcho-libertarian, I look at it from the other direction of, if you require a disarmed populace to enforce the law, either you're doing

it wrong or your laws are stupid. Just a thought. But anyway. It's good news. Now that's great news. Hopefully it spreads like a virus. So it looks like Alabama, Ohio, India, and Georgia just passed it too right after y'all. Yeah, it's spreading slowly but stubbornly.

I'm glad to see more and more states are getting on board with constitutional carry. I mean, I think it sends a very clear message to the people that your rights are being respected. And I think it sends a very clear message to people who would harm those peace-loving people that you do so at your own risk. See, the only downside is South Carolina, they will allow you to carry, but you still want to have it concealed, if that makes sense. You still want to have a conceal, if that makes sense. It's just, even when I got my enhanced carry in Mississippi, that was the only type of recognition that South Carolina had was an enhanced carry. Yeah, we used to, I wish we could get enhanced carry. They were talking about doing it for a hot second.

And then it got, actually, I think, I believe I remember that it got, it did get passed. And then our Republican governor vetoed it. Yeah, not by a notch. Yeah, so it's, so yeah, it, so I don't know, but Michigan has had

pro-gun legislation pretty much for the last 40 years, but that has come to a screeching halt because of the voter fraud that ran rampant through Michigan during the last election basically flipped both houses, or both chambers blue. So now Michigan's a complete blue state.

Michigan makes no sense. Yeah, and they have been pushing. What's going on there? They have been pushing a lot of anti-gun legislation down our throats. Like we just got, they're pushing right now, I guess. I've heard that they're writing up an assault weapons ban. They are, they're trying to push through a 14-day waiting period um they push through red flag laws safe laws they push through um yeah they

they redid our they redid our registration um because we've always had we've had pistol registration for years which i don't know why that didn't get thrown out when we had both chambers and the governorship and stuff. But, yeah, right now they just changed it to where if you do not – basically, it's going to push more people to get CPLs, which honestly isn't a bad thing. But still, you need – basically, if you don't have a CPL and you want to buy a firearm, a pistol, then you have to go to the your local cop shop um get fingerprinted and get a background check and um i don't know if you have to get fingerprinted i do believe you have to get a background check if anything which i don't know

how much it costs uh but then you have to then go to you take that slip that they clear you on and you have to take that to your gun shop and then uh and then you can buy a firearm um begging the crown for permission yeah so yeah so that changed um yeah it's ridiculous i mean there's gonna be there's gonna be another mass shooting um or i guess what they consider a mass shooting and then i'm sure they'll probably push through because this all got pushed through because of the MSU shooting that happened from a deranged lunatic who had tons of warning signs, was being watched by the police and did nothing and they did nothing. So yeah, so we'll see. And I'm curious to see what all happens in the future. But unfortunately, the thing that sucks is yeah they can push through an assault weapons ban and you can bet your

left whatever you want to say that I will not be complying but what sucks is you can sit there and they'll push it through and it's law until it gets overturned in the courts which it will eventually. Those laws

only hurt the law-abiding citizens. That's the only downside is all of those laws and legislations only hurt the law-abiding people, which you are then mass-populating victims. You are purposely putting targets on the backs of those who just want to follow the law. But that's the whole idea. That's the point. Just want to follow the law. But that's the whole idea. That's the point.

It's sad because it's like for Chris, when he moved down, he was shocked that he didn't have to have a license just to be able to purchase a gun or to be able to be considered for even purchasing a gun, in which most cases you still have to get permission just to be able to be considered to get the license to be able to purchase a gun. So that's the whole thing. Then once they get a gun, it has to be able to be considered to get the license to be able to purchase a gun so that's the whole thing then once they get a gun it has to be registered they have to have a special license to then own that gun besides being able to purchase that gun and it's just it's terrible and then he came down here and he goes wait you don't have one of these i'm like no i can just go to the store and buy a gun if i really want one. No, I feel for you all up north. Nope.

I'm amazed they let people own guns in Baltimore at all, to be honest with you. Not very many people are allowed to buy guns. And that's the people who are legally trying to buy guns. It's the most difficult for them, which is the problem, because there's a lot of women who were men and women who work on shady sides of town with the church, with anything else. And the only thing that's preventing them from being able to defend themselves is the goal, the laws and the restrictions in order just to be able to be considered to

purchase a gun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if, uh, honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Michigan, if they started going after gutting our CPLs. I know there was rumors about them basically trying to gut our CPL. I mean, obviously, they actually, I believe they did pass it. You, yeah, yeah, I believe they did pass it. Like, you're not allowed, like, you can't be within, like, so many feet of a polling station, a polling box, like, all kinds of crap so i don't know um

yeah it's ridiculous uh it and hopefully uh hopefully that comes to an end um that people i'm hoping the people kind of got their heads out of their butts this last couple years because with the new election coming around um they it was interesting to see some of the polls from this last Tuesday from the primaries and stuff. So I am really hoping that things kind of turn around. Because, I mean, whether it's Democrat or Republican in office, I mean, the government doesn't care about you. They say they might because they want votes and they want money. But government does not care. And they will do what they can to stay in power, and that includes disarming the populace and hurting the people. So I'm hoping that people woke up and they kind of voted more and did some research on some stuff, but yeah, we'll see.

Speaking of waking up, so we posed this question that is the topic of the show. What do you wish you knew about prepping when you started? We post this question on the last show. Nobody responded. I was a little. I had the sads. Andrew had the sads. But then I asked the PBN crew.

I knew it was not going to happen. But I asked the PBN crew and I asked the matter of facts minions and we got responses so the show is what I wish I knew when I started prepping and I thought we would invite James from PBN and Jordan from Vienna Survival on to kind of you know help us talk through some of these responses and I think I might have grabbed one of y'all's responses. If I did, great. If I didn't, then at the end of all this, we'll all give our own personal thoughts. But one of the big ones,

and I see this one very, very frequently, is food. Venturing outside prepackaged meals into buckets and Mylar bags. Because I feel like a lot of people, when they start their preparedness journey, they start off firmly entrenched in Mountain House and the ubiquitous buckets of freeze-dried prepper food. And while I feel like that has a place, it's not the most cost-effective option.

It's not locally available. It becomes a limiting factor at a certain point. you know it like it becomes a limiting factor at a certain point and one of our patrons said he would kind of wish he had come to this he'd have known this when he first started out it could have made his dollar stretch a lot further if he had just got the buckets got the mylar bags and then prepped out of his prep you know prepped right out of his grocery store out basically yeah i mean the thing is though is the i i believe in um you know the whole uh two is one one is none thing and i like having the idea of having uh multiples and having a variety so i have mres i have mountain house i have uh bucket food i have all that so uh it's nice having a variety of stuff

um but i mean i do i do what mean, I do understand what they're saying. But my biggest thing with the Mylar bags and the buckets is, like, Mylar bags, my biggest thing, I just didn't know where to start with the Mylar bags. You know, there's not really, really nobody around me was using them. And so it just, when it came down to Mylar bags, I was like, well well i kind of think i know what i'm doing but if i don't seal it right then it's kind of hosed where the mres you're paying a little bit extra and then the mountain house and stuff like that but that's all freeze dry you know are pretty much freeze dried uh it's packaged individually like it's got the proportions it's got the directions um and all that stuff on it so you know you're, it's a give and take. I mean, it's kind of like, it's almost, it's basically like if you, you know,

yeah, if you like to change your own oil, but then someone who doesn't really know or doesn't really have time to do it, the convenience of going and paying a little bit extra to have it done. You know, it's just the convenience of it. So you have the convenience of everything. It's prepackaged and everything. But by all means, the buckets, mean i talked to uh stewart and he gave a whole i actually need to go through the chat again and hopefully i have it because i when i got my new phone i lost a bunch of crap

uh but uh i had a whole bucket list of stuff that he sent me uh and it was exactly it was like i think 2 000 calories there's enough food basically for not 2 000 it was exactly, it was like 2,000 calories. It was enough food basically for, not 2,000, I don't know. It was enough food for basically one person for a month in a five-gallon bucket. I followed that. I have two buckets. I'm going to probably throw up another four, I think, here soon and call it good. But that's all buckets, and that's beans and rice and a bunch of other stuff, not dealing with really mylar bags. But I don't know.

stuff not dealing with really mylar bags uh but i don't know i vacuum so the beans and the rice because the people don't consider the amount of bugs that are already in your food if you suffocate it i mean one less thing you have to worry about spoilage but i feel like so i i haven't tried the mylar bags at all um i i watched james and everybody else do it i'm definitely curious but at the same time i feel like there's a lot of undervalue to canon. Like that's something I really had wished I had gotten into a lot sooner or cooking from scratch. I understand where a lot of people feel like, oh, that's extra work. But as I get older and my food allergy that has gotten worse over the years, I wish I had done that more and more. that has gotten worse over the years. I wish I had done that more and more. And that's why I'm pushing myself to make as much as I can, whether it be homemade from scratch, can it preserve it,

whatever I can do on my own outside of certain things, I feel like isn't given enough credit for what it needs to be. Cooking from scratch is a big deal. A lot of people, yeah, I understand. Oh, it's so difficult. No, it just takes practice. And so my downfall is right now, I don't have enough practice to be able to say, hey, this is the best bread I've made. I'm putting it up. And James is going to smile because he's a professional cook. But I'm over there, James, what about this meal every now and then? Hey, I made this tonight. And it's not because I'm trying to brag, but I'm hoping that he'll give me some sort of input of, oh, that sounds good. Have you tried this or you have tried that?

And so for me, you know, Mylar seems like a big, big investment for me. But Cannon, I'm sure to somebody else's is as well. But that's a full pre prefixed meal. There's one less thing I have to worry about doing. I can just heat it up or mix it with whatever. I dehydrate and I may, you know, put away my own herbs. I actually have a coffee grinder specifically for herbs. My own, I make my own paprika and chili powder and everything else. So I think that's something that doesn't get enough credit and being able to cook from scratch. And then you're saving even more money because the only thing that's going to or whatever your vice is you have enough time to put aside to prep a meal for a week or to go ahead and be able to put away those dry beans and

and vegetables or whatever it is you got so you know for me i'm sorry i didn't mean to take that but i definitely feel like vacuum sealing and canning and cooking from scratch. Canning is an investment the first year. It is a big investment. But by the second and third year, it will have more than paid for itself because you're recycling the cans. You're figuring out your process. But again, cooking from scratch, for me, buying a month's worth of groceries and having all the powder, flour, yeast, everything I need, it's so much cheaper than trying to go buy a loaf of bread, which has all these extra preservatives and everything. But I found maybe one or two brands of bread don't have soybean oil.

There's soybean in everything. And that is a dangerous allergy for me, even with potato chips. everything and that is a dangerous allergy for me even with potato chips salt and vinegar chips are probably the only chips i found um other than one other one that doesn't have soybean oil in it that's interesting i mean but that's yeah and that's the thing is like cooking from scratch and uh i mean just by i mean i guess we're kind of both getting off topic here with uh with the what he was phil had up there but anyway i mean cooking from scratch you're you're basically you're label reading um i mean phil he he i know he started label reading i know i started a little bit here and there i need to get better at it uh

but yeah just cooking from scratch and i need to get better at cooking like and actually cooking from scratch on a lot of different things but lately I've changed my diet to basically it's just a steak and eggs lately for dinner, which is pretty not, I don't know. It's not really that hard to screw up. I'm a high protein, high fat, low carbs, no refined sugars. That's what we do in our house. And I feel the best. And Phil will be able to understand hypoglycemia is less of an issue for

for me even i usually have maybe an episode with it once or twice a year on not being on a restrictive diet and now i haven't had any issues see i was having i was having an episode of hypoglycemia like two to three times a month like that's how severe mine was before my wife and I completely revamped our diets. And it was just, it was junk. It was sugar and it was carbs and it was crap. And the minute I got rid of all that stuff and like my go-to lunch nowadays is a cheese and bacon omelet, maybe a piece of like grilled toast, maybe a couple of links of sausage or whatever, but it's all eggs and meat and lots of fat and butter. God almighty.

The one thing you can do. Real butter. Good living. Well, and I will tell you this for those of you out there who, if you know how to cook, if you know how to cook from scratch, or if you bake from scratch, which I'm a baker, the single best thing you can do for your health and make all your food taste a lot freaking better is every recipe you find that has oil in it, get rid of the oil, put in a complimentary amount of melted butter. I swear

to God, everything you bake will taste better with butter than with vegetable oil. I think it's a one to one oil, I mean one to one ratio replacement because I do the same thing. Yep. I'm going to tell you that I did that with, like, I make, and again, I try to limit the amount of junk food, but let's call it what it is. If you're a really good baker, you're going to bake some pretty, you're going to bake some very tasty, but not necessarily healthy things fairly frequently. So I replace a lot with honey.

I don't know how you do it because I don't eat anything I cook with sugar. I don't eat it. In this house, we actually tend to default to maple syrup. But I do like honey on my pancakes. Or sometimes I'll just skip that and just go straight for like a pat of butter and let that be that. But I was going to say the recipe I've been using for years for pancakes calls for oil. I started using butter in it instead. And the first time I did it, I had my wife and my daughter both commenting how much better the pancakes tasted.

And that's the only thing I changed was just take the oil out put the butter in and lo behold the pancakes tasted more buttery how about that that's the real that's the real deal pancake recipe that's what it is what's your opinion on crisco or lard oh lard is the king lard real real lard is the king especially if you're swapping if you're swapping things for baking, there's no comparison to swapping oils for lard, maybe even butter for lard, depending on what it is you're baking. I actually have two full jars sitting in the fridge right now and about to start another one that is literally top to bottom nothing but bacon and uh sausage grease and i use it i use it to season my cast iron pans religiously so i'm recycling it but anytime you get a recipe that calls for like crisco or something like that i just go dig a chunk out of there and here's the thing of it we cook so much bacon and sausage in this house or at at least I do, it's not like I'm ever going to run out any time soon. Matter of fact, if I'm thinking ahead when I'm baking or if I'm cooking things, I will segregate some of the sausage grease off to the side to use to season the pan after I'm done cleaning it out.

But anyway, this turned into a baking show all of a sudden. I think it might be dinner time. That's the problem. I like food. I'm sorry. it out. But anyway, this turned into a baking show all of a sudden. I think it might be dinner time. That's the problem. I like food. I'm sorry. So, Andrew and I are fighting over the banners. Save banner. So, this was a couple

of people actually said something in this vein. Find real mentors, not people selling junk. Where's the real information? There's one place called Prepper Broadcasting Network. I don't know if anybody's heard of it. You beat me to it. Hucksters. Total hucksters over there at Prepper Broadcasting Network.

I think they might be lizard people. I heard there are a bunch of them. Definitely stay away from the lizard people, as a matter of fact. Those two are complete knuckleheads they have no roughly idea what they're talking about true but no seriously like i i i kind of on the one hand i kind of feel this on a personal level because like when i first came into this i came into this from a perspective of like you you know, some of the things I was doing in preparedness I'd grown up doing.

Like my parents would never, ever admit that living on the Gulf Coast and having a box of hurricane stuff was preparedness, but that's what it was. So like this idea that we need non-perishable food and we need water and we need batteries for flashlights, like I grew up doing that. batteries for flashlights. Like I grew up doing that. My earliest, some of my youngest memories are helping mom and dad get the box of hurricane stuff ready every freaking hurricane season. It was just a thing we did. And then the end of hurricane season, you take all of, you take the peanut butter and the crackers and all that stuff out, you put it in your pantry and you eat it. So that way it doesn't sit there for years and then it goes stale. But on the one hand, I came into preparedness knowing a lot of that stuff. Because that was old hand. But then there were some other things that I've had to learn as I went.

And finding accurate sources of information that were trying to give you knowledge and not sell you BS. Sometimes that can be a trick. Especially in the modern world of social media where everybody is an expert when the camera is on. Yeah, and another thing is do your research because there's been a number of books that I've came across that had some very inaccurate information to the point it was dangerous. Just, for example, soap making, there's a certain way, you know, that you handle lye and water and one way goes smoothly. Another way will cause it to splash back and cause burns. And so, I mean, and I've seen the same thing with

herbs. I love knowing herbs. I love to know the equivalent of any pharmaceutical medication since I was a pharmacy tech for eight years. It just kills me the number of books I've encountered in which one herb they're saying is used for something can't be ingested at all. So it's just do your research on top of whatever you learn. Because just because someone is willing to teach you directly doesn't mean they're teaching you safe or correct information. So that's another thing is it finding people to learn from directly is amazing. Like Phil, I learned what I learned out of necessity from being poor and trial and error. But being able to reach out for me is I love running into people that I can sit and have one on one on one conversations with. But, you know, there's so much misinformation.

So don't don't hesitate to listen to what someone's doing, but also do your own research on top of it. Because, I mean, I can I can tell Phil the sky's purple all day long. But until he gets up off his butt and goes and doubles checks, you know? So I just wanted to also throw out there. So people are asking words of real information. September 27th, 28th and 29th.

Prepper camp. Chilling again. Yeah. Prepper camp is where it's at. Seriously. No, that's the thing. You beat me to the plug.

You got to be faster. Uh, no, that's the thing is You beat me to the plug. Faster. No, that's the thing is Prepper Camp. I mean, if you all want to find a place that is a good source of information, they have a ton of instructors and they're teaching everything. I mean, I don't even know where to begin. Like they teach all kinds of stuff. And so it's really good to see it. Everything from blacksmithing to cyber security that's the way i sell to people like every everything in the middle

it literally is everything and joe so if you come to prepper camp you don't have to do research but you can take notes it's usually in the best. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Take notes, take lots of notes, bring a notebook. Uh, yeah. So that's what I'm saying is, uh, in September, if you want to learn from some, if you want to learn from people who know what they're talking about, uh, and then, and the thing is too, what's, what's interesting is, I mean, and I know Phil and I've talked about this before, but, uh, you go to the class, it's a 45 minute long class, you go to it. And then when the person when the instructor is done if you follow them back to their their booth area and you decide to talk to them more you can spend another however many hours until they say hey i gotta go do something and then

like you can talk to them uh a lot of personable people they're they're there to share knowledge i have never had a conversation where i walked up to somebody and had a question, and the person's like, nah, I'm not sharing. It's always, hey, let's talk, and next thing you know, it's been an hour, and you've learned a crap ton more than what you learned in the class. So go to Prepper Camp. Tickets are still on sale, PrepperCamp.com. Well, and the other thing I'll say, even though we've said it before,

is like, it's not just the subject matter experts and the instructors. Like, some of the coolest experiences I've had at Prepper Camp have been sitting around the campfire with Wynn most of the time, like showing off this new piece of gear that

somebody brought out, and then there's at least four of us around the fire that are like, I have to one of those where'd you get it like it it's this it's this cool experience when you get yeah well it's networking but when you get this many people that are into preparedness together in one place inevitably you're gonna wind up rubbing off on each other and it's this great opportunity to network and make friends but it's also this really cool experience to check out each other's gear and talk about different skills and different techniques and different products and different sub other subject matter experts that didn't come to prepper camp like this is a huge opportunity for you to learn at

the campfire and at the the end down at the classes so like I sell Prepper Camp to everybody. Even if you're not into preparedness, if you're into overlanding, if you're into camping, if you're into van life, if you're into firearms, if you're into any of these different little communities, you will find something in Prepper Camp

that piques your interest. If nothing else, it's an opportunity to meet some really fun people who may or may not have worked for the DOD in the past and won't admit what branch they worked in. Well, there are

a huge variety of people that you wouldn't expect. There's everybody from every walk of life there. I mean, there really is. I love it. There will never be a year I don't go to. So, just to

keep the show on track a little bit. That's what Andrew does. He keeps us on track. There's always time to prepare. Not with James, myself, and Phil. He's kind of in trouble with that one. My family's gone now, so I can really open up.

It's going to get ugly. The beat button, ready? So there's always time to prepare. A true preparedness is a journey over time. I want to start off by saying I wholeheartedly believe this comment. This touches my soul uh because the fact is is yeah when you start getting into it uh and i mean again phil and i've had this conversation where uh everybody looks at it and they're like eight years do we start where do i begin because

they look at it as a whole well there's a there's a saying that uh uh, I read in a, in a book that, um, you know, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? And it's so that, and then I look at, I take that preparedness is the same exact thing. The way you prepare is you pick something you pick. I mean, and you, you start off as, Hey, I'm going to prepare. I don't need to start. I need to start sorting food or start getting food set up. All right, cool. How much food do you have? Do you think you have? Okay, go through your food.

I have, I don't know, two days, whatever. Well, okay, start with a week or start even with three days. Just start building up gradually. Get up to a week. Okay, now get up to two weeks. Okay, now get up to a month. And now start putting enough food back for two months. And then you start storing the food and, you know,

buckets or miler bags or whatever, freeze dry it, whatever you got to do. And now you're up to three, four or five months of food storage. Okay, now I want to do water. Like you just, you need to pick it a little bit at a time and just chip away at it. You're never going to, unless you have a lot of fricking money, you're never going to be able to do it all at once. You need to just chip away at it and just pick a section and just go at it i did that with guns and ammo i mean which seen the other band at the banner after this uh i did a lot of gun and ammo uh preparedness uh storing a lot

of ammo and stuff and so now i'm looking at my okay where am i lacking after that now that i got a house and a space of my own and it's like okay now i'm gonna i'm looking at food I'm like, okay, where am I lacking after that? Now that I got a house and a space of my own, and it's like, okay, now I'm going to, I'm looking at food. I'm also looking at more water. I'm also looking, you know, just, so I'm looking at different areas to do it. And so it's like, okay, cool. So it's like, well, the big thing is food. I want to get, uh, I mean, I don't mind buying, like the store I go to has some pretty good steaks, but still, I mean, they get, it gets expensive. So in order to do that, I'm going to buy bulk. So how did it, how do you get bulk? Well, I'm, I'm looking at buying a quarter beef and a half a hog. So what do I got to do to store that?

I need a chest freezer. Okay, step one, buy a chest freezer. So I did that. Okay, step two, now put the order in for a half a hog and a quarter beef. What's step three? Eat it. How do you power that chest freezer when the power goes out? Well, maybe not in your neck of the woods, though, Bobo.

You might be all right. Just let it go out if it's wintertime, right? Yeah, I know, right? You got months. Just take it out. If it's cold outside, take it outside. Take it out. Well, that's what.

So a really quick story. My dad and I, we went to the store, and I think I spent $60. I bought, I think, 16 New York strips. I don't know how many pounds of breakfast sausage and stuff like that. Like it was a good deal. Great deal on food did that. We came back, packaged everything up individually. And then, uh, I didn't want to put it in. Like he didn't, I didn't necessarily have a lot of room in his freezer. So I didn't, that and I would have forgot it. But, uh, I mean, of course it's 30 degrees outside. So I just went outside and put it in the garage and on top of his truck bed. So the animals couldn't get to it. And I sat there for two days outside.

So, you know, it was it was good. So, yeah, I do the same thing that. So the local the nearest country grocery store that once you get like outside of this very urban area I live in, they run meat sales every week and I keep an eye on them and when they run a sale for a whole boneless ribeyes it's a whole boneless ribeye usually for about five bucks a pound so the last time they ran that sale I came home with 22 pounds of uncut boneless rabbi and i sliced though that those two sobs up into what was it 28 steaks and then plus like the end pieces that i just used to make steak and eggs or fajitas or whatever and it was freaking divine but they also occasionally run a sale on ground beef where it's like 250 a pound but you have to buy like 10-pound chunks.

Last time they did that, I came home with three of them. We bagged it up, one pound each. Vacuum bagged it, chucked it in the chest freezer. I'm still eating on that. I don't remember... Why did Kyle Wilson... I hit the wrong button. Sorry, Kyle. I just saw that too.

I was trying something else and he made a joke about me trying to find a wife and I was trying to do something else and I accidentally... I read it wrong. Sorry, Kyle. Holly, if you're still listening, please apologize

to Kyle on Andrew's behalf. I will flog him at Prepper Camp. There's got to be a way to unban him. Actually, you know what? They're going to be at the summer camping trip, so they can flog you themselves. There you go. Oh, come on.

There's got to be a way to unban him. I was trying to figure out a way to be able to be there. You're not going to be there this year? Yeah. At the summer trip. The summer trip. summer trip oh i extended i extended that invite to the pbn crew but so far nobody's taking us up on it but we do have a pretty good i keep forgetting about it and i still need to do my um i i haven't i forgot all about it

andrew i'm taking away your band hammer Just put it down and back away slowly. But no, the thing I wanted to say about this is like the two most toxic things I hate to hear out of burgeoning preppers or even people that are curious about getting into preparedness is I will never be able to accomplish that because they totally fall victim to this idea that like see the guy that has the ammo cans lining the walls of his garage and all the guns and all the MREs and all the stuff, and it gets into their head like, I'm never going to be able to accomplish that. And to me, that's like taking a 22-year-old kid fresh out of college. He starts his job, and he looks at a person who's 62, 63 years old,

has been working for 40 years, saving for 40 years, and he's got a 401k and everything all plumped up. They're like, well, I'm never going to be able to accomplish that. And it's like, well, you will if you do it for 40 freaking years and you quit crying about it. Like, I just want people to understand. You have to start from the beginning. Yeah, you have to start. Well, not just that. You have to start at the beginning.

You have to go through the process. It's going to take time. It's going to take effort. It's going to take time. You just have to commit to it and go. But the other thing that I push back on people really hard is it's too late to start. any day now and i don't know if it will or not my crystal ball is in the shop but hear me out but they say well by the time i get prepared all hell is going to break loose and it'll be it's too late to start and i always point out to them like if the world is going yeah i kind of feel like i kind of i kind of feel like it's self it's a self it's a it's self-defeating because if you start today and let's let's say the day day that we go to Mad Max is 30 days from now. Nobody knows, but let's say that's going to happen in 30 days.

If you start prepping today, in 30 days, you'll be better prepared than you were today. If it starts in 30 years, you'll be a lot better prepared, hopefully. But my point is that the goal is not to get to a certain end point and stop in your preparedness journey. The point is to go on that journey, and it will be a lifelong journey. So if you start today, whether you're 20 or 30 or 50 or 60 or 65, whether you're a retiree or you're just starting out, it doesn't matter. the point is to be better prepared than you were the day before it is a journey it is not it is not like a goal and once you get here you stop none of us regard preparedness as once once i finally have 500 pounds of ground beef in the freezer then i can stop i don't have

to worry about preparedness anymore or once i get five,000 bullets stacked up, I don't need to prepare anymore. I'm prepared enough. That's not how this works. So I try to gently kick back at people whenever they try to use those two excuses of it's too late to start or it's going to take too long. The point is, if you start and you stick with it, you'll be better prepared than if you don't. So when the day comes that your personal emergency comes up, you have the option right here and now to choose to be screwed over 10 times harder or not screwed as hard. I think that Jordan is probably the best example of this because she is one of the only preppers that I know that is dying to get back to the lifestyle that she was accustomed to when she was, I'd call it more self-reliant than where you are now.

explains kind of what we're talking about right now which is there once you live that lifestyle there's no stopping and there's definitely no going backwards without like sheer anxiety you know what i mean so it's not a yeah it's definitely not an inventory to fill or a bucket list to fill out it's you get nestled into the self-reliant lifestyle and you know then that can go as far as you want yeah yeah i think the problem is is phil handled that much nicer than i would have said it only i for real only because like you said i have had where i was comfortable i had 400 acres to play on i had an amazing size garden i had had 25 chickens. Oh, yeah. You know, I had everything. And then life decided, you know, nope, no more.

Okay. So start over, start climbing back up. And it kills me because I have friends who are people I care about who I'm like, hey, what are you going to do in this situation? Oh, we're fucked. Sorry. Sorry. There's the beeper. situation? Oh, we're fucked. Sorry. Sorry. There's the beeper. You need it.

We're all grownups. And it kills me because it feels like, and Phil knows I had my little rant because I get frustrated because I can't prep for them. I can't. I can't make them decide that their family is worth more than a gym membership or whatever it is that they're prioritizing over putting a little bit of food up. But I think they finally have stopped calling me to complain about how bad things are because I've hit a point where I've basically said is,

I can't give you the answer you want. I understand you want to vent, but I can't sit there and listen to you talk about how hard times are and how little you have when you refuse to do anything to fix the situation. And it's not because I want to be a jerk. I love my friends, I want to be a jerk. I love my friends. But I can't do anything for them. If you are not choosing to put your family, yourself, or your future moments as a priority, then you're choosing to shoot yourself in the foot. It's you are choosing to, this is going to be so bad. Maybe I shouldn't say it, but you're choosing to victimize yourself.

If you don't want to be that person who's saying, help me, help me, help me, then get off your ass and do something for yourself and your family. Yeah. Exactly. And it kills me because it's like you, money is tight. I get it. We're all hurting. I've gone to the food bank.

You know, yeah, not my proudest moment, but it's there for a reason. Yes, they don't always give you food that you like. But if you're hungry enough, you're going to eat it. I grew up poor. So I've learned there are a lot of things. There's only a few things I will not eat out of choice. If I am hungry, I will still eat the, that's still on the table. But, but you know what I mean though, is, is if you're hungry enough, you are going to eat.

And seeing people take beans because they don't know how to cook it and they refuse to learn and use it as table activities for the kids i'm just like that's an entire several days meal in my house pinto beans and ham is a big meal like okay lentil beans all right i get it you use it in your heat and packs you can less variety but pinto beans of all things to toss out, I'm just like, oh. Curry lentils, man. You got five pounds of linto beans, I mean five pounds of pinto beans, and you wasted them. Not willing to ask, how do you make it? The analogy I like to use with people is, hypothetically, one day there's a mountain lion that's going to jump out of a bush and he's going to try to eat you.

You have two options to get ready for this day you can either lace up your best running shoes or shoot yourself in the foot or which one would you rather do unfortunately and jordan like you and i talked about this specific case but there's a lot of people out there that are whether they realize they're not shooting themselves in the foot because they're spending their money on crap they don't need and they're not prioritizing preparedness. But that's why I surreptitiously reordered all these banners to bring this one up for up next because it kind of fits cleanly in right here. Preparedness is prepping is a mindset. Preparedness is multifaceted. Learn your area of expertise well, but know as many facets as you can.

area of expertise well, but know as many facets as you can. So the problem that the, the problem you're facing with these individuals in your lives is that preparedness is not an activity, it's a mindset. And that's why, even though you're in a much different situation than you were in a couple of years ago, when honestly, like my heart was kind of palpitating when I was thinking about, you know, 400 acres and a garden and everything else and being out in the middle of nowhere. I miss it. I used to hunt and fish all the time. Yes, that speaks to my soul. Living in suburbia hell where I do.

But my point is, you went from that environment. God almighty. You went from that environment to the one you're in now, but your mindset didn't change. I still need to prepare in the environment I'm in with the means that I have no matter what. That's why I always say preparedness is not an activity. It's not a hobby. It's not a it's not a thing. It's a mindset. And if you are in the preparedness mindset, you're going to you're going to prep however you can with whatever you have available to you because it's what you do so i don't remember where which person dropped this on me but like it makes perfect sense you know like that is preparedness

it's the mindset and preparedness is so multifaceted like when i first got into it i came strictly from the perspective of like post-hurricane Katrina, New Orleans. That was what switched me on. So my big worries were self-defense, home defense, because, you know, I don't know if y'all are aware, but they were doing some hood rat shit in the freaking city and being able to have food and water because that was kind of the situation that was kind of in, you know, high demand at the time. It was about turning your home into a castle to weather for three to four weeks that was really what got me started and then the longer I stayed in this mindset in this community the more I started thinking about things like medical gear I started thinking about

recently made the jump into GMRS starting to think about alternative communications when the cell phone networks go down like the longer i've stayed in this the more i've the more i've realized how multi-dimensional preparedness is and it has spidered me down all these new tracks all these new things to learn about and not all of them i'm ever going to be really good at. Like, I'm never going to be the ham radio nerd. I'm never going to be the world's best at medical stuff. I'm never going to be the world's best farmer. I could kill. Look, I've tried three times to make a potato plot, and I've killed them every single time. My farmer ancestors are crying from the great beyond because I cannot grow even potatoes.

And all you have to do to grow potatoes is neglect them, like ignore them. I can get potatoes to sprout in my pantry if I don't leave them in there long enough, but as soon as I put them in the dirt outside, they die. It's probably a dare. Your best bet for potatoes I found for me when I lived in Mississippi was not putting them directly in the ground, For me, when I lived in Mississippi, was not putting them directly in the ground, but putting them in either molasses buckets or even those potato bags. Perfect every time. Don't even try putting them in the ground.

I tried that. I effed that up too. Listen, I am as annoyed. You have a black thumb. I have a black thumb. I am really good at vacuum bagging and storing food. I'm not really good at growing it. So here's what's going to happen. If you live in the vicinity of, like, you know, New Orleans, Louisiana, and you're really good at farming and you need somebody to do hood rat stuff to defend your crops, call me.

I'm there. I can make that happen. But growing stuff is just not in my bag. And Joe Olivera, I totally, I totally know where you're coming from. Comms is sorcery. That's common of the night for sure.

I don't know if you guys give an award, but that's great. I mean, that, that is, it's a band. I mean, Andrew and I,

Andrew and I, I swear to God, we get, we get, we get a request for a comms episode at least once every other month. And the problem is always that Andrew and I like to bring people onto the show that are experts because we don't consider ourselves to be experts. And that's kind of where I am right now with comms is I'm looking for somebody that really knows ham and GMRS very well to come into the show. Because I know just enough GMRS

to sound like I halfway know what I'm talking about, and that's about it. Comms is reps, man. That's what I've learned so far. It's just, you know, like anything else. You've got to play with it. Well, you know. You've got to play with it.

You've got to learn it. But for the prepping mindset thing, I would add to it if I were talking to my older self. Because when I got started prepping, if you would have said prepping is a mindset, I would have said, well, that's cool. What is it? What is the mindset? And I would say that the prepping mindset for me took – I'd tell myself, dude, it it's gonna take you five years just to get out of sort of like free living chef pants lifestyle guitar playing goofball into like make sure the doors are locked in the car in the house and you know what i mean that's sort of very basic kind

of stuff that you expect from somebody who's supposed to be a prepper and uh you know even just turning that mindset on takes years that's what i would have liked to tell myself back in the day and there's going to be i would also i would also caution myself that until you get even after you get that mindset uh in in gear people are always going to look to you when something goes wrong and be like i thought you had this handled you're a prepper that's one of my favorite things that gear, people are always going to look to you when something goes wrong and be like, I thought you had this handled. You're a prepper. That's one of my favorite things that happens to me. You don't have that? You're a prepper.

You know, I find myself kicking myself in the butt. Do you know how many people have asked me about not having a chainsaw when Hurricane Ida dropped two trees on my house? Yeah, it's whatever it is that you don't have. I mean, that's how you get it but to be fair we weren't starving to death we had plenty of drinkable water like i had every

other problem dealt with pretty handily except for the trees on the house the big problem i had at that moment so you know the reason when you commit to that prepper moniker you suddenly become mythical in the eyes of the normal person right and it's like dude you don't have a jumbo jetliner out back what kind of prepper are you i just i i do like to point out to people that like the whole idea of preparedness is two things because you ask like what is what is prepping it is acknowledging that there there are threats around you and then acknowledging that you can do something against to hedge yourself against those threats once because there are people who see threats but don't think they can influence the world around them and they're not preppers they're just hypochondriacs and then you have

people who like have the blinders on and they can't see the threats no matter what they're not preppers either so you have to have those two elements to be into preparedness. And again, in my defense, I had never had a tree problem so severe until that moment that I needed a chainsaw. I would regularly take my axe and paw bunion a tree down if it was bothering me in the front yard. Because, you know, it was like a 3-4 inch trunk and I'm a I'm a big burly guy so swinging an axe isn't hurting my daggum feelings. But, you know, when two oak trees hit the house, we were well outside of axe territory. But anyway. Yeah.

So, I feel like we kind of, I somehow managed to put these in almost the perfect order. But somebody asked, how do we make prepping a part of our everyday life? Like that's what they wish they knew. Because a lot of people, they're stuck in this mind frame of, I have everyday life stuff and then prepper stuff. And those two things are constantly competing for time, money, resources, energy, all these things. And so it's a struggle.

money, resources, energy, all these things. And so it's a struggle. But then some of us manage to integrate preparedness into our daily lives so well that it's like, it's not that there's normal food and prepper food, it's all food. So when I go to the grocery store and I buy food, it doesn't matter if it's beans and rice for a bucket or beans and rice for the pantry, it's just food. I'm buying food. I buy more than I need, and I put some away for later. Ammo. I'm not buying prepper ammo and then normal hunting or normal training ammo. It's all ammo. I just buy more than I need, and I put some away for later, or in my case, reloading components. But it's this idea that once you manage to make preparedness more of a part of your daily life, it stops being, it starts working a lot better. It stops being a drain on everything because it is everything.

It's part of everything. Half the stuff on those shelves back there is camping gear. Take a wild guess what half it also gets used for. Every time we have a power outage, every time we have a hurricane, every time we have some stuff go down, like those cots are extra places for us to sleep. The Jackery's back there is a backup power source. The Iceco's over there is an auxiliary refrigerator.

I mean, all this stuff that's for camping, it's come in handy a time or two. But it's not prepper stuff. It's just everything's preparedness therefore everything fits both needs i think what do y'all do i think the answer to this one is make commitments like commit to things that are a pain if you don't do you know like the moment you get in deep in gardening the moment you have something out back that you have to feed all the time or keep alive. If you have chickens, your lifestyle is now built into that because you can't be like, I'm going to take chickens off for a week. You know what I mean?

You won't have them. Commit to solar. Commit to gaining a certain amount of water from rain catchment, not like fill rain barrels up and look at them, but like we're going to wash dishes with the rainwater from now on. You know what I mean? And building those commitments into your life and building routine into your life, I think, is really the that's the crux. You've got to be in a position where you can't turn it off because things are depending on it. I agree with that. And I think this is going to go back to something maybe even a little off on topic. But so a lot of people just don't know where to start just to make it a part of their routine.

And it's doing things you don't want to is motivating yourself, right? Half the time you can't find the motivation. You're like, you know, things you don't want to is motivating yourself right half the time you can't find the motivation you're like you know i can do it tomorrow you know what this this can wait you know i kind of like with my lines that i was supposed to do for sarah's things happen and then it's like i can hold off i can hold no you just gotta do it i wouldn't know anything about that yeah yeah of course you wouldn't that's kind of why i said it but but for me like even in my hardest times through everything when i thought there was nothing when there was no point to get up to keep prepping when there was no you know whatever it was i count to 10 and i did this for two weeks and i forgot who i heard this from. And it was a woman who said to do it. And she goes on those mornings where you feel like you don't want to get up and you don't

want to go do something count to 10. And at the end of 10, regardless of how you feel, you get up and you do it, do the same thing with your preps. You know, if it's not something you really want to do count to 10 and then just do it because the only thing holding you back is yourself and on the extreme preps maybe money but you know you'll get there but it's count to 10 and then do it if you don't know where to start you know what count to 10 and then just just try look something up just try because i think that's our biggest issue is, you know, people who don't know where to start on making it your everyday life. Guess what? Like Phil said, it becomes just a part of habit. But there are times even for us, we're not sure where to start. You know, with Phil, I'm sure you ran into the same thing with the comms and everything else. moms and everything else. But we've all had those moments, even as seasoned preppers, we have moments where we're not sure where to start or we're not sure how to keep going. We just keep pushing ourselves because you have to make prepping. It's not only a mindset, but you have

to push it into a habit. You know, you can form a habit within doing something. Was it every day for two weeks? No, that's breaking a habit. It takes two weeks, but it doesn't. It takes three days to form a habit or something like that. But it's the whole point of pushing yourself to keep doing it. Think about how you can extend your meals. Think about how you can, you know, you can buy your food, plan out your meals for the month. You know, make sure you have first aid in the house. You wouldn't go without first aid to begin with, even if you just have children in their house.

Even if you don't. I mean, look at Andrew. I'm sure he needs it. First aid all the time. Who knows? I think it's good to have skin in the game. I think it's good to do things. Yeah, but push yourself.

Yeah, to put things in place that are going to cost you money fundamentally if you screw up or if you decide that this is something you're going to walk back on. Like you guys are talking about getting pigs and cows and stuff, which is great. There's always going to be an accident somewhere. I mean, you know how many times I've gone sewing or I'm hand sewing through some thicker material. on sewing or I'm hand sewing through some thicker material and the other day I shoved a sewing needle up my thumb on accident and it slipped and

straightened to my thumb and that was fun. That was one of those... What are you, Vietnamese? I will show you the progress after the show on what I was making that hurt me. Is it bloodstained now? No. Bloodstained for a discount no i think commitments are important man and and like i said having some skin in the game on things

rather than just saying i want to be a prepper and what my plan is is to do x y and z and and you know i'll get around to it eventually like once you don't have the option of getting around to it eventually and you have to get around to it every morning every evening you know, I'll get around to it eventually. Like once you don't have the option of getting around to it eventually, and you have to get around to it every morning, every evening, you know what I mean? Then it's just, you know, it's really hard. You know, you're either going to sink or swim that, you know, it's lifestyle then because it's part of your daily life. The other thing I try to tell people is I'm like, if you there, there, we all acknowledge there are certain hobbies that are kind of prepping adjacent. And if you can find an interest in those things, it will definitely help. Like camping, hiking, firearms, overlanding, wheeling, jeeping.

Like there's so many different things out there that there's some element of that hobby that kind of fits really cleanly. Like in my case, this family loves to go camping. It's really cleanly. Like in my case, this family loves to go camping. And if it weren't for how brutally, disgustingly hot it gets down here on the Gulf Coast in certain months, we would camp much more. But like spring and late fall is perfect for us. But anyway, so like, you know, a lot of the preparedness stuff we have, it's specifically for camping. have. It's specifically for camping. A lot of the modifications I've made to my truck that you could argue would make it semi-useful as a bug out vehicle. They were originally made for camping. So I always tell people, Mike, if you can find those hobbies that kind of backfeed

into preparedness, it definitely helps with making this a regular part of your life. I mean, this is where my daughter, she's learned to use a pocket knife. She's learned to use a ferro rod. She's learned how to use FRS radios, and I'm sure she'll be learning how to use GMRS radios in the near future. Like, this is where she's learned a lot of those skills is because we love to go camping. And when you go camping, some of this stuff just kind of comes up. And when you go camping, some of this stuff just kind of comes up. So, you know, like I'm not, I'm never going to go out as far as say like camping is like preparedness practice.

Because let's call it what it is. You're in a much more controlled environment. You were ready to live like a homeless person to have all the support equipment. But it's still an opportunity to learn and practice skills that you otherwise probably wouldn't. I see in the private chat we are getting a special guest. I'm guessing it's Lil Bit. Oh, there's my little cigar buddy.

Oh man, he's getting big. You're going to be walking around Prepper Camp this year, buddy. He's already crawling and he's six months. Oh, he's definitely running around forever. We've got to keep you away from that lake. I want to swim, Mom.

Just put floaties on him and let him rip. That's a good idea. So the last one, which is going to bring a tear to Andrew's eye. There's more to prepping than guns and ammo. Blasphemy. I know. Sorcery. Sorcery. But to be fair,

whoever says that gets a ban. Oh wait, that was Kyle. No, that wasn't Kyle. Kyle did message me that though. He's like, there's more to prepping than ammo. Oh, that's why you banned him. Oh, never mind. Kyle, you might have brought this on yourself.

You already had it out for him. I know, I just had to find a reason. And he insulted me by saying i needed to find a wife dang it i'm single forever but like i was saying like i i feel like you know firearms is definitely something that brings a lot of people into preparedness either accidentally or on purpose but yeah i do feel like there's a lot there's a lot of people that get that are into preparedness that this is where they start and stop and they don't get into food. They don't get into medical equipment. They don't get into everything else. They don't get into any of the other disciplines that are in preparedness.

This is where they start and stop. And this is like where the, this is, there isn't even more to life than guns and ammo. Amen. I want to, than guns and ammo. Amen. You and I can be friends. If little Cajun boys and girls misbehaved or if they were up out of bed after hours when the Fado Doe was happening, it was supposed to be adults only, the Rougarou was going to come and get them. Oh, sweet. And the Rougarou – I've got to look up the Rougarou now. I've heard different accounts.

Most of them closely resemble a werewolf basically. It's almost up there with Krampus on Christmas. Oh, he's sweet, though, dude. Kind of. And I told, I told my nieces when they were really little, I told my nieces about Krampus and I said that he's going to come murder you if you're not good. And my mom was like, don't you tell him that stuff. Kyle's back on YouTube somehow. I don't know if you unbanned him. He doesn't want to admit that he unbanned him.

I didn't unban him. I can't figure out how to unban him. I've been trying. I've been literally on the internet now trying to figure out how to unban them this entire time. You have to go into the YouTube settings for the primary account that's on this. Oh, that's mine. Oh, we can't put images in here? I'll do that as soon as this is over. Here, let me try it.

Let me ban them and we'll try it. So I agree with Gargoyle. Ban them again, Dagumitra? My kids can't eat gun and ammo at least i know i can feed them i can protect them but i can definitely feed them so thank god for being southern right yeah i mean if you if you go back to prepping as a lifestyle me personally like the only gun i could say that i touch daily is the edc gun the only gun that i say fire i fire daily is none so you know from my perspective man it's it's something i do it's close to the bottom of things that are really a priority for me from a preparedness standpoint you know what i mean like

i understand if you don't have a gun you don't have any ammo then it might be a different priority level but once you get rocking and rolling if you're talking about prepping as a lifestyle and stuff it's like you know i don't see myself using them very often my dog's crying though so i'm gonna step away for a second yeah no it's um no i mean this is kind of like going back to what I was saying before. Was in college and apartment living and stuff like that, I mean, I didn't have a lot of room. And so I did my prepping. I mean, I guess I could have, instead of buying guns and ammo, I could have stored food and stuff. That's quitter talk.

Right? No, I had nos on that at all so no i so it's one of those things where now i got room so it's i'm looking at okay what do i need to expand on but no i i don't know i mean guns and ammo it's honestly my whole part of thinking was my whole my whole part of thinking was bugging out, uh, was my, it was a, it was my whole, uh, philosophy. I mean, everything revolved around bugging out. So I kept very minimal. I kept, I didn't store a lot of food or water at my place enough to, you know, yeah, get through a storm. I had enough for a couple of weeks and stuff like that. Uh, but my whole thing was I'm bugging out. So there is no need to, uh, store a crap ton of food when I'm bugging out. And, uh, I'll probably just start taking other people's stuff.

So, you know, it's just one of those things that is just, this is my mindset, but now I have a house and I'm trying to change that mindset toward now. It's like, okay, I'm more apt to bug in for a, I'll consider bugging in for a little bit longer of a time until the prison that's down the road from me lets out. But, you know, it's like,

okay, take that. And now I need to store more food and more water and, you know, and everything like that. Is it a women's prison? I don't know. It's a super max.

I think. Oh, nevermind. I was about to say, we might've solved your lack of a wife problem. No, I think it is. Well, you may have still figured out the lack of a wife problem, even if it wasn't.

Dude, I'd start writing letters. Why not? What the hell? Actually, funny story is I think there's a website that you can pen palin in. Oh, you can actually write letters. Funnier story. For those of you who've seen The Road Warrior, it's the sequel to Mad Max. It's probably the first one most people here in the U.S. saw. The whole biker gang, those were all men, even the really girly-looking ones. There's a backstory there that I don't want to talk about on this podcast,

but if you Google it, it will make your skin crawl just put that away in the back of your noggin for later she's waiting for me what was that Andrew waiting for me uh I don't know how you didn't figure that out right away well the exposed nipples

and the flat chest on the you're going down a rabbit hole we don't know no no i already i already know yeah the whole backstory oh no there's more backstory because i i i'm a weird person and i see a rabbit hole and i just go face first into it so me and google are freaking dangerous so i will come back out with knowing stuff that will make me sign off the internet for a day. Guns and ammo.

You should have it, but it's not the only thing. Andrew, you know where Kyle works, right? Yeah, I know where Kyle works. He knows some Lafey's. I'm sure he does. Alright, so He knows some Lafey's. I'm sure he does. All right.

So, Andrew, Jordan, and James, like, if the thing you didn't know when you first started, if that wasn't brought up, what was it? Or have we kind of covered what y'all would throw into the pot? We've covered quite a bit. I definitely would have liked to have told myself that you're going to be living a lifestyle that a lot of people are going to wish they were living. You know what I mean? Like there's deep fulfillment in prepping. The prepping thing is when I got started was, holy shit, the whole world is ending. The government's corrupt.

Everything's ruined. And I'm a father and a husband and totally unprepared. And I got to change that. So it was like a mad, you know, anxious scramble to start clawing resources closer. And I would have liked to have been there and said, you know what, dude? Like, it's going to take time. been there and said you know what dude like it's gonna take time but once you get over the hump you're gonna be doing the things that first of all your ancestors have always been doing and you're gonna feel that connection and then on top of that you know you're gonna be living a

very fulfilling lifestyle because of the self-sufficiency aspect of the things that you do day in and day out and that would have been way cooler than being like oh shit you know what i mean for like a couple years what about you jordan anything no i don't know i mean i grew up poor and happen to be you know very self-reliance and just teaching myself i don't i don't know if there's much i i think if anything starting younger on learning to manage money which you know i grew up poor i managed the best i could have made money at an early age just selling my crochet i i think i would have told you know if i had known better that how hard things would have yeah things would have gotten then i would have tried to have set myself a little bit more financially on this as you know, a backup. But other than that, I mean, I think we covered basically everything on learning to can and cook from scratch sooner. I mean, I've cooked from scratch for a while, but just perfecting those skill sets would would have been probably a big thing is because I've encountered people not like in the way I

live. I've encountered that all my life and I've just never really cared. It's not going to stop me from doing what I've needed to. Well, and I was going to say like, bear in mind that Andrew and I at least once a year do a financial preparedness show, which makes some people's eyes cross. But like knowing how to manage money and how to budget i mean that's that's part of it it's a big deal yeah and you know what they damn sure don't teach it in schools and i'm sorry to say to the uh to the boomers and the oldest of the gen xers but a lot of y'all based on what i'm seeing around me a lot of y'all freaking fail to teach your kids how to do it too thank god my father did but most most of y'all boomers,

screw that pooch. You know what another good one would be, especially for people who are coming up? When I got into prepping, I had already been a homeowner, so I didn't have the chance to take advantage of this, but it's the biggest investment, most likely, that you make,

and you should, you know, look at it as a prepper. You know what I mean? All that weird prepper stuff like water, defensive ability, all that kind of stuff I think is something that people could be like $350,000 in the hole and be like, damn, I didn't think of any of that stuff. You know, sun, like this is a backyard, get any sun at all. That kind of basic stuff that'd be

that'd be good to know ahead of the game what about you andrew you still trying to figure out how to unban kyle or do you have anything to drop it up now i'm gonna ban him on the other time might as well go all no um no i it's just yeah it's just how much of a journey it was. I mean, I've said this before where, like, my uncle, he's really somebody who was pushing preparedness forever. He's always been doing it. And you kind of look at him, you're like, okay, that's kind of cool. But then watching the show Jericho really got my mind,, uh, my mind like racing of, okay, if this ever happened, uh, what, what could I, what could I do and where would I be? And,

um, all this kind of stuff. And, uh, that kind of got my, the, the gears going on the whole preparedness thing. And that kind of got me going on that. And, and so, yeah, I just, it's just one of those things where I just wish, uh, it's just one of those things where I just wish it's just one of those things where like, yeah, just I just wish I knew what I was getting into pretty much. I mean, where that where the road of taken and how much money spending and the you know, it's the junk that you buy that. OK, this doesn't work. But then this does. It's the junk that you buy that, okay, this doesn't work, but then this does. It's like how much crap I have that just doesn't get used anymore because I've either, A, upgraded it, handed it down, or just I bought it because it was a gimmick that someone sold me on.

And I'm like, well, that kind of sucks. It doesn't really work. So I don't know. It's just one of those things where just hindsight's 20-20. But at the end of the day, I mean, every day you prep is your one day better. So just start. And I'm glad I started, and I'm glad the road that it's taken me down. And, yeah, we'll see where it goes, I guess. Yeah.

And if I had to go back in time and tell younger Phil anything about preparedness, I would tell younger Phil that the emergency you might be preparing for is substantially worse than the one you're currently thinking of. Because like I said, like I grew up with the idea of like the box of hurricane snacks and the couple flats of water and the couple packs of batteries. Like that was all we really needed to get through a hurricane. You know, thank God we hadn't been hit by anything of the magnitude of what I've seen since then. So if I had to go back and tell like teenage Phil, you know,

cause like it was really when I was like 21 and 22 years old that a tour in Iraq and then watching hurricane Katrina Ground Zero really flipped my eyes open real fast but if I had to go back in time and tell teenage Phil something I would say hey bud the emergency you need to prepare for is a lot worse than the one you've seen before and that might have pushed me I don't know that it would have pushed me into preparedness younger but it would have given me some direction as far as once I got into it like I wouldn't know that it would have pushed me into preparedness younger, but it would have given me some direction as far as once I got into it. Like I wouldn't have been preparing for the two or three day emergency. I would have started off with that signpost up.

I need to be ready for a month. And now we're well past that point. But like, you know, it took me some time to realize like that was what I was preparing for. That was the magnitude of what I could be facing is you need to be able to live off-grid for a month. When I first started thinking about preparedness, that wasn't even on my radar. If something was going to last for a month, how would that even happen? We live in the first world in the United States of America, where you flip a switch and the lights come on and you twist a

tap and clean water comes out. Like, the idea that we could ever be in a situation where any part of this country could be that screwed up for 30 days, it didn't register with me. But it does now. And if you live in places like, you know, Flint, Michigan, then I guess the whole reference

about clean water coming out of the tap is lost on y'all poor SOBs. Womp womp. Womp womp. Yeah, some people don't live in the first world, even though they live in the United States of America. Tragedy, that is. But we do need to go ahead and start wrapping this up, rolling this out the door. I have dinner to go eat, and I'm sure Jordan is about to get choked to death with her microphone with her headphone cords and james i'm sure you have trouble to get into so james walton

intrepid commander prepper broadcasting network if you can't figure out where to find prepper broadcasting network i think last time i i think i checked y'all i checked our stats like literally today and we're doing like what 30 000 downloads a month or something crazy like that? We're down, actually. But yeah, 30,000 a month. Yeah, I've been following it, too. We're down in 24. You know what it was, though?

I don't know if you guys are, too. You know that iTunes was... They didn't get in any trouble, but they were inflating the statistics. They were auto-down auto downloading on everybody's phone and counting it for everybody's podcasts everywhere and it really hurt the big guys a lot yeah podcast news yeah but prepper broadcast network giver by the spiel it's um what is it it's 12 shows and 18 hosts or something like that. I think it's 12 shows now and 15 hosts, something like that. It's always moving around.

It's a bunch of shows and a bunch of hosts is what I'm going to say going forward, I think. A bunch of shows and a bunch of hosts all, you know, across the nation and in Canada. And, you know, if you're looking for a variety of opinions on preparedness and the news that you dig. That's PrepperBroadcasting.com. Yeah, a lot of different perspectives, too. Like, Jordan, with Phoenix Survival, you've recently kind of, from the ashes, brought your show back to life. For sure. Totally, totally.

Saturday mornings. I'm softballing that one right over the plate for you, knocking it out of the park. No, no, I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm on Saturday mornings. I'm softballing that one right over the plate for you, knocking it out of the park. No, no, I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm on Saturday mornings, though. So I don't catch everybody, but, you know, it's to start the weekend. But, yeah, I mean, that's the thing about this collection of lunatics that is Prepper Broadcasting Network is, like,

it's all these different shows. It's all these different perspectives. It's all these different experiences. It's all these different people that all approach the question of how do we survive bad stuff in our environment with our skill sets so on so forth and so we wind up sometimes sounding like we're all singing off the same sheet of music but to be perfectly honest you don't have to listen to about a week of content and realize that like each one of those shows each one of those hosts really does have their own individual perspective i mean that's what you get out of me and andrew anytime we talk about something relating to weather because there's a little

bit of difference between new orleans and michigan and the weather events we have to deal with are so absolutely, like, opposite in some cases. Like, he starts talking about getting a couple feet of snow, and, like, I start turning the heater up down here, because I just can't even, I don't even want to think about that, and then I tell him, like, oh yeah, you know, there's a cap or a hurricane in the Gulf, we're gonna sit here and wait and see what happens with it, and I'm sure half the audience thinks I'm completely bat-crap crazy, but, you know, you can't evacuate for all of them. Every now and then you've got

to sit around and play the prepper Super Bowl, so I'm saying. But, we need to go ahead and punt this one out the door. Thank you, James and Jordan, for coming on. Andrew, thank you for being Kyle. Thanks for having me. Holly is going to have a field day with that for the rest of the day, I'm sure.

You're welcome. And to the listeners, the next time we ask you all for feedback or leave you all with a question and we encourage you to use, you know, our social media to reach out or the contact form, please do, because if you don't, Andrew gets the sads, and then I have to try to talk him up. And we'll be back in another week bye everybody Thank you. We'll see you next time.