The Prepper Broadcasting Network - The New York Survival Refuge FRNY on I AM Liberty

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Survive a Collapse | Survival Community | Fortitude Ranch@PBNLinks | Linktree

What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, almighty God. I know not what course others may take. As for me, give me liberty or give me death. Oh, yeah, I see.

Well, that's probably a good call. Yes, as I've told people, I had a gentleman here yesterday. What day was he here? He was here Saturday. Time is flying. And I told him I used almost all of his money to buy food. I bought, there's a company, foodassets.com, and I used – they actually have a Hollerman special. You're familiar with Jonathan Hollerman, correct?

Yeah. So yeah, he recommended foodassets.com. I went there. They have a Hollerman special. It includes – it's basically 2 million calories, which is enough for one year for one man, one woman, and two children. And that's exactly what the gentleman who, he, he leased the Fortitude Village lot. Well, I won't say lot. So he gets about one acre of land here for 25 years.

And so I now have food for his family and another group and i have about three years of food for my family i love it man so yeah we have plenty of water lots of springs on the property so how do you feel about where you're at with the uh location location i say location, location, location. Well, I mean, how do you feel about how everything's set up? It's good. We're on from a main highway like 87 or 90 of the interstates. We're literally hours, over an hour away from both of those.

We're literally hours, over an hour away from both of those. And then even if we got off of those, we're two to three roads off of any state route. So we're pretty good. We got 68 acres here, and we're on a road. I actually considered putting a timer or a camera on the road to count exactly how many cars go up and down our road each day. Because if I had to hazard a guess guess i would say under 20 nice so it may be it may be a few more but on my first call with drew miller back in the wow november of 2022 he said is there a way you could block off the roads and i said i have the trees marked already i was facetious but i have looked at trees up and

down my road many times and thought okay so i could definitely i could cordon off my property yeah i think cordon off my property or the entire road and uh we really depend on um how on board it is. The other owners on this, there's actually, our property or our road is 1.7 miles, and we have seven houses on that road. Okay, I got you. So it's a pretty sparse population, and out of those seven houses, only four are full-time residents. The other three are not seasonal, but they're up here

every weekend. Actually, our closest neighbor is only here once every month or two. Do you know? So that's good. I do. He's a good gentleman. He and his wife have two children, elementary school. And I've told others that if things go well, I may offer to buy his property from him. Things are happening in our community here that are just unbelievable to me, with neighbors reaching out and neighbors being neighborly. It's really interesting, man.

It is. The common person seems to be acutely aware of the fact that it's time to build relationships again in neighborhoods. And that's a really good sign. And that's not because I'm holding meetings in my community every week or month or anything like that. It's just organic. It's a good sign. It is. It is.

Out of the four full-time residents here, one, unfortunately, it's an elderly couple, and the husband just died last week. He was 89 years old. He was the oldest resident in our – the oldest person I knew in our area, and his wife and son are still living in the house and two others at the other end of the road are one is former military did uh can't say black ops but he did operations in afghanistan before he retired and then the other one's a former uh nypd so they've got their own skills and i I'm actually hiring the military guy to do

excavation on my property, on Fortitude Ranch property for that matter. And he's dependable, good worker, expensive, but everything is getting expensive nowadays. Yeah, the unique angle that Fortitude Ranch offers the person who owns it is you kind of build your own survival community right there. You know what I mean? Yes. Every dollar that comes into Fortitude Ranch goes into building up Fortitude Ranch. So the buildings are built out. The food is built out.

ranch. So the buildings are built out. The food is built out. The gentleman who's here on Saturday with his, just his son, his wife and daughter were at a ballet event. So, but he was asking about water. And I said, the next funds that come in, I'm going to see about putting another well on our property. And the challenge is with that, I'll be looking at solar and after that event two weeks ago, I'm nervous about electricity because that solar, we dodged a bullet with that. Yeah, I might put solar lower on the list, man. Yeah, it's – I have – my family has five generators right now.

And we have – one of them is actually inside the trunk of a 66 Plymouth car. And that metal is about an eighth of an inch thick. It's – I don't know if it will act as a Faraday cage, but it is – yeah, that's my backup of a backup. Although if something does happen to blow all the electrical stuff, the only thing I really will depend on, I hope that doesn't blow, are my cordless tools. Tim the Toolman mentions all the time how they are almost a necessity. And I used a hand saw to cut down a bunch of saplings a couple days ago. And, yeah. Like a folding saw?

Just a bow saw. Oh, okay. Yeah, just a little bit of exercise there. But as I'm cutting it, I think I bought a trimming blade for my sawzall years ago. Oh, you were thinking, so fast i wish i had that it's nice it'll cut a one inch sapling in like i i don't even know two seconds three seconds it's fast and uh i'll tell you don't underestimate a good uh like a good thin blade hatchet on saplings i actually had a hatchet in my hand just before that and i was

thinking well what i'm cutting some of them are so thin that they'll flex they'll flex when i hit with the hatchet yeah that's why you need like almost like a tactic i have this hatchet that uh kershaw used to make they don't make it anymore. It's super thin, tactical, you know, kind of looking hatch. It's goofy looking. It's not like a tool. But I do take it camping for saplings for that reason. Like it's got a point on the back. You know, it's one of those goofy, you know, like kill zombie hatches.

But it's actually a really cool older tool that I use all the time when I go camping because of that. Because I strike the saplings in like a downward as opposed to a sideward strike. Yep. You know what I mean? Yeah, go with the grain. Yeah. Man, it's two strikes and those things will be down because the blade's nice and thin. I bet I could pull the same results off with like a, I don't know, maybe like an 18-inch or even shorter machete, a good thin machete.

It might be a cool way to take down. If you've got more of that work to do and you're worried about, you know, power tools and that kind of stuff. Right. Yeah, my tractor, my brush hog has cut a lot of saplings. And if it's level ground, it's great. But where I was cutting these, it was literally in a ditch and on a culvert where a culvert is. And I tried doing it with my tractor a couple years ago, and I got it stuck. Well, I did get it out, but it was close. out but it was close and uh the alternative um i have a what do you call it string trimmer which will take out it'll take a thin like quarter inch saplings that's how strong it is and i've thought about getting a blade for one of those because the blade cuts through a lot so but i haven't

gone that far yet so but uh so the other so you're doing the land management and everything. Yeah. Just on your own. Yeah. Still on my own looking for, not looking for full-time ranch managers right now, but I sent out a few emails, a few feelers out for assistant ranch managers on a part-time basis, maybe on a few hours on weekends. And if there's a, if they have time during the week, just to be like supervisors in a supervisory position, because I do have workers that I'm paying on, on site, they're working, we're converting a barn into our first housing unit. And that's, it's turning out to be a bigger job than I planned because we have to literally

to be a bigger job than I planned because we have to literally remove, let's see, 40 by 60, close to 2,000 square feet of concrete in the ground floor. So we're close to halfway done with that. And then once that's done, we have to put plumbing in and pour a new foundation. So actually level the barn as well. Some of the columns have sunk because of the deterioration. West Virginia location. It sounds like your head is in an even more on-grid sort of capability for these structures. I want them to be, when we built our house here, we started in 2015, I told my wife I wanted the most rustic, simple build design, and she's a landscape architect. And she works for people who – they're not bottomless pits of money, but they do have higher standards.

They got money to spend. And so, yeah, because she did – she worked for all those people, she wanted a nicer quality house here. And unfortunately, I jumped on the bandwagon. And so I'm like, okay, let's do this. I want cameras all around the house. Why don't we do outdoor speakers? Let's do indoor speakers. And before we knew it, we became a high-tech house.

And I tell my wife, I warn her, I say, you know what? There could be a day where we won't have any of these conveniences. And I tell – we have a nine-year-old daughter, and I tell her the same thing. I was teaching her like inch bag, I'm never coming home, good bag, get out of Dodge, and Tia Tawatki. It's like the end of the world doesn't have electricity. They don't have indoor plumbing. They don't have a lot of these things that we just consider the bare minimum. And so, yeah, for a few years, I was a ski instructor and lived in that exact barn for like three months a year, like two weeks at a time.

And in winter, there was no running water. So I literally had a wood-burning stove for heat and bottled water and like a camp toilet. So I'm kind of prepared for that. I don't want to go there. I pray, I hope and pray that Fortitude Ranch is a last resort that we will never absolutely need. But the thing is, if we do need it, it's the place to be. I love it, man. And your location, you obviously aren't going to give the exact location out to our audience, but what region of new york if people are considering

if you draw a from new york city we're about three and a half hours from albany uh northwest we're in the capsules okay and from albany we're an hour give or take so we're um but i'd say about an hour north of the southern border i know when dave jones was initially talking about this location he's like right on the pennsylvania border and my wife was looking at me we're not on the border uh yeah we're we're closer than buffalo that's for sure well i don I don't know about Buffalo. Buffalo has Pennsylvania and Ohio right there. But, yeah, we're in a good location. So you said you're about three hours northwest of New York City. Yes.

Okay. I like that. That's a good distance away from the big city. Not too many people are going to make it out of the city three and a half hours in desperation and collapse so i don't think you'll have you know streams of people to deal with in that area yeah a lot of people in new york don't have vehicles and uh that's something we kind of depend on but at the same time um well we what do you call it complac Complacency and normalcy bias. Oh, yeah.

When Sandy hit back in, what was it, 2011? Yeah. I don't keep track of the storms very well. But yeah, they lost power down there for a few days. And actually, a friend of mine, his brother-in-law had a restaurant down in New Jersey, and they lost power. 2012. Oh, it was 2012. Okay. Yeah, my friend got a phone call saying, hey, all the generators are sold out down here.

I'm going to lose thousands in meat and food products. Can you buy a generator up there where you are and bring it down to me? And he's like, yeah, I can do that. And he went to the store and was looking at generators, and they talking. And then power came back and he called back. I don't know how many days this was, but he called back and said, hey, I don't need the generator anymore. Well, what do you mean? Power came back. Well, I'm still going to buy the generator because it's for next time. It's like, oh, it's never going to happen again. again and it's like buy the insurance policy get it that's great you never need it that's and uh yeah i got one one time the first one we got um the first generator we ever bought this was i think this was pre-prepper for me this might have been like 2011 i was on my way but i didn't know really quite what i was doing yet and i bought it and i'll never forget um my brother-in-law was like befuddled by it we were

he was helping me carry it from the car to the where we keep it and like he was like why'd you buy this like it was like it was like bought, uh, like a hot air balloon, you know? Right. Exactly. It's just a portable generator. And he was looking at me and he had been like fresh out of the Iraq war. You know what I mean? And he was looking at me like, why did, why did you buy this? Cause we had literally, it got to a point, Frank, in our neighborhood, it's not like that anymore, thank God. But it had got to a point frank in our neighborhood it's not like that anymore thank god but it got to a point where if it was thunderstorming we were losing power like it it was a guarantee and i was just like god right we need a generator this is madness

but i'll never forget that the way he looked at that thing like it was like it was like i bought a nuclear bomb. You know what I mean? What are you going to do with this? What are you even planning on doing with this thing? They might have a flashlight or two in the house. They might have a few candles. But a generator?

We don't need a generator. And we're on a local co-op here with – I forget. We went to the main headquarters and talked to the CEO because my wife was livid because we'd lost power for three days. And we lose power about once every month or two here. Branches blow down, cars hit poles. It's crazy how many times we lose power. Luckily, we have a full-time house generator that runs on propane. And we've got two 1,000-gallon tanks for propane. So we're pretty well set there. But we saw all the maps.

He showed us all the lines, and we are at the very end of one of the last lines. And so if anything breaks in between, anywhere between the source of the power and us, we're the last to get the power back so um so that's why we have as many generators as we do but sometimes i'll just walk around and i'll i'll need a tool of some kind and i'll grab it and i think to myself most people don't even know what this is because on a farm it's amazing how many times you need just twine, paracord, a knife,

so many things that most people wouldn't even care. I mean, I don't have it on me now. I usually have a knife in each pocket. And if one's dull for cutting dull things and one's razor sharp, if you touch the blade, it'll cut your skin. So, yeah, being prepared, i guess it kind of started with me being a sailor i've sailed since 1995 oh i'm not that gives you a leg up for sure you know there's it's you don't have it on the boat right if you don't have it when boat leaves the dock

you're not going to get it and even at at the docks i go to now, it's a challenge to get off the boat because we're at oil terminals. And the oil – the Coast Guard says that – the rule for the Coast Guard says any sailor is allowed to get off his boat for a port call. And the oil company says that's absolutely fine. You just can't get off on our dock. And that's the only way to get off the boat. Wow. So we have to contact our company. Our company has to send a fax to the oil company. Oil company approves it, contacts the, uh, our company again, our company

contacts us and says, okay, the list of people you gave us are allowed off the boat. And if they forgot a person, uh, that person stays on the boat and nobody wants to stay on the boat. I'm sure. stays on the boat and nobody wants to stay on the boat i'm sure well we most of the time we just stay there because it's such a challenge but uh yeah speaking of generators when you're on a boat you're not hooked up to a landline so the only way you have electricity is running a generator so for the last 25 almost 30 years now i've dep depended, well, half that time. So 15, 18 years of my life, it's been that long now. Half of 20, my math is off right now. Twelve and a half. Yes, half of my life has been spent at sea.

Not quite half. There's times where I take a hiatus for six months or something. But yes, half of that time has been depending on a generator. And being the engineer, I was the one who had to make sure it ran or else the boat would be in the dark and we'd be dead ship, kind of like that Baltimore vessel. Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, that breeds a certain kind of person.

No doubt it's a much different thing than somebody who's living in a big city that almost never loses power and can have anything delivered to their front door whenever they want, right? And that's normalcy bias. You're almost like two different species. Yes. Yeah, I was interviewed by a New York Times

reporter two weeks ago. And he asked me about membership. Yeah, Alexander Nazarian. How was he? Did he seem crazy out of New York Times? No. He's an interesting character. He basically told me – I forget what his backup was. I spoke to a bunch of people, and I spoke to one person who had a couple cases of water and a little bit of food.

And I'm just thinking to myself, that'll get you by for about three days, which is what, what FEMA says have three days. But now he was, he was on board and he was excited. And when I told him I lived in a geodesic dome or we live in a geodesic, he's like, you, you live in a dome home. I've, I've got to come out there. Even if, even if I don't see anything else, I've got to see that. But yeah, we spoke for close to 90 minutes. And he was excited.

And he asked me what there was to see here. And I told him, we're still in pioneer mode right now. We're building things, but it's slow going. But the membership that we have, I told them, I'll have food for you. I'll water for you. And I'll have a dry place to stay to sleep. And even if it's in our home, our garage, our barn, before it's converted into housing units. Uh, one thing that we're different, we are a franchise location, Tennessee and New York are franchises and the other five locations are corporate. We have a little more leeway in what we can do.

So when my wife and I first – when we first bought this property, our plan was to turn the barn into an Airbnb. And then we decided to build the dome first, and we put everything into this structure. It's amazing. We love it. everything into this structure. It's, uh, it's, it's amazing. We love it. And now we're turning the barn into housing for 40 years ranch. But my wife didn't want that to happen. She's like, if you do it, you're going to do it right. I want, I want the Airbnb design. So we kind of met in the middle. So she wants higher end rooms.

Oh, okay. First and second floor. And then if we go, we, by the time we were ready for the third floor, we may actually build a Viking lodge, which is a true Miller's design, which is two log cabins separated and connected by a connector unit. And that can house up to a hundred people. So we may build, instead of building a third floor in the barn, we may build that and we've got plenty of room for it. Like separate of the barn altogether?

Separate, yes. That'll be a good, not a quarter mile, but probably about 500 feet away. Okay, yeah, that's a good move. I like that, man. That's really cool. Do you guys have a standalone website, or are you guys linked off of the fortitude ranch.com we are we're still depending on fortitude ranch.com i actually got an email last night from the coo asking for pictures because they want to send out a group email showing pictures of all of

the ranches oh nice so we may we may go independent we are going to have we do have fortitude ranch new york facebook page but that's it's inactive at this time. I haven't put much up there at all. Actually, I haven't put it. 42 Ranch, Tennessee, Chris, the ranch manager down there, actually set it up. And the thing is I want to show progress on this property, and that's one thing. I've got thousands of pictures, and i've got to put those up to show what we've accomplished before even fortitude ranch happened and then what we've done

since fortitude ranch starting last year so so what um uh how do you feel like Like, when I met you in person a year ago at Prepper Camp, this was one of those situations where it was like, this is on the horizon. And for people who don't know, your demeanor is such that you look like the type of guy that could build a Fortitude Ranch by himself. You're a high-energy dude. You know what I mean?

I can appreciate it. So I'm meeting you for the first time and watching this kind of take place, and now that it's all, you know, you're in the thick of it, I'm interested in, like, what's going on in your head. You know what I mean? Are you feeling, how are you feeling how are you feeling i'm excited the a year ago well september that was proper camp in september and the following month we actually had an open house and i did we did a bunch of stuff set up uh display rooms and did a lot of work.

And it was a no-show. Nobody showed up for it. And it was actually depressing because I literally emptied out a lot of stuff out of the barn that was valuable to me, but not to Fortitude Ranch. And it's been slow going, but we have our first members now. And it was a small influx of cash. It was allowed me to do a bunch of small things. And I'm nervous that we won't be prepared. When that solar storm hit last week, I was scared. I was 200 miles away in Providence,

Rhode Island on my boat. And the funny thing is the silliest thing I did is I wrapped my phone in boiling plastic and stuck it in a garbage can. So I would have an MP3 player on my long walk back from profit. I mean, like supplies, I had plenty of food and water and supplies on the boat to get to walk back home. And I told my wife, I said, and I go, this could be bad. And she said, how bad? I said, best case, we have wonderful light shows. Worst case, I'm walking home. And that's something I've dealt with probably since Y2K. Y2K was the first time I really- Might be time to invest in one of those e-bikes. You can park at the dock. invest in one of those e-bikes.

You can park at the dock. Well, that's the thing. We do have bicycles. Well, no, I moved to another boat. In Texas, we had bicycles. And I have an exercise bike on the boat that I'm on now, but I don't have a physical bike. But yeah, that's something. It's funny you say that.

There's a bicycle in our locker. One of my coworkers did bring a bike to the boat. We bombed around on Ben the Breaker of Bankster's e-bike up and down the mountain at Dave Jones' a couple years ago. And I could see the utility, man. for a almost exactly for a situation that you're discussing, getting from Rhode Island to the Catskill Mountains in an emergency, like kind of cool. And I guess if I had one, I don't have an e-bike, but if I had one, I'd take the battery off and put that thing in my, maybe in like a EMP-proof dry bag or something like that, and keep that with me.

You know what I mean? So if anything or something like that were hit. Here's what I've been wondering, though, about these solar storms and subsequent EMPs shutting down the electricity. I'm starting to wonder, like, is the electricity even going to be our biggest problem? Because that was a big storm. And a lot of things happened and not a lot of things.

It did trigger, in my podcast I did this morning, I mentioned that it did trigger like the largest earthquake near the Italian super volcano in 40 years. Wow. That blast of energy hitting Earth because it affects the quartz in the ground. Right. I'm starting to wonder, like, you know, are we hyper-focused on EMP equals off-grid when we could see, you know, much more perilous things like earthquake-type events, natural disasters, and maybe even things that affect us directly. I'm starting to wonder, do we need EMP protection, like the human body? I had a conversation with some workers.

My boat's in dry dock right now, and we're prepping. We're at a cleaning facility, and I was talking to them about this EMP coming, and they're like, well, what will it do to the human body? I said, not much. We are electrical, but we've been pretty much standing in daylight and sunlight for millennia. So our bodies won't get affected by it, but metallic things, things that conduct electricity, well, our bodies, if we touch a hot wire, we do feel it. I don't know. I didn't think about – I was hearing about the quartz. I don't know if it was from you or from Sarah.

Probably both. But yeah, world events. I think the worst thing about losing electricity is the human reaction. Oh, for sure. In terms of supplies won't be able to be delivered if vehicles don't run. The cities will become, sorry to say, but death traps unless you get out of the cities. People – I mean look at San Francisco now. My sister-in-law is here right now from New York City.

She lives right in lower Manhattan or Upper East Side. I bet she's got some stories. And she's seeing that things happen. And for her, she doesn't have a driver's license. She doesn't have a vehicle. So she takes the bus back and forth. But if something big happens, who knows if the buses will be running. So she takes the bus back and forth, but if something big happens, who knows if the buses will be running.

Yeah, the cities are – a lot of them are in dire straits without a disaster. Right. They look almost post-apocalyptic and nothing's happened other than left-wing liberal policies. You know what I mean? I get nervous. I do. When I'm in a city, I mean, I crew change in cities. And when all I see is asphalt, concrete, and buildings and glass, and there's no plants around, there's like a tree every block or so. Not even that. It just feels so unnatural to me now. Yeah. I don't have that feeling, but I do have a vigilance in cities that is definitely elevated.

You know what I mean? Situational awareness, absolutely. Yeah, big time. I mean, people are getting attacked left and right. People just walk up behind you, and if you're not paying attention, you got your earbuds in. The next thing you know, you may wake up in a hospital or you may not wake up at all. Yeah. I mean, I was always scared when I worked and went to school in Philly, always. Like, not scared, like shaking, frightened. But I was always vigilant.

I never felt like, unless it was maybe midday and I'm walking through Center City. But I traveled the city a lot at night. I traveled the city a lot in the subway. Um, but I traveled the city a lot at night. I traveled the city a lot in the subway. And there was always just that feeling of like, you know, keep your head on a swivel, man. You're in Philly. This is, you know what I mean? This is because, I mean, when I was going to school, West Philadelphia was going through just an absolute murder fest. It was bad. It was really bad around 2004, 2005. I think that was the year that we coined the phrase kill Adelphia. I mean, that was as crazy as it was in that time. I'm sure, I don't know if it's worse now with murders, but then again, you know, Frank, the problem with the cities now is they're run by these invalids't i don't trust that they're taking data down correctly i don't trust that they're you know the cops are working the way that they worked in 2004

and i don't trust that the the data is right so in other words if they say yeah we had x amount of robberies or x amount of burglaries or x amount of rapes, X amount of murders. I look at the number and I'm like, I don't know, you know, who up there is fudging the stats so it doesn't look as bad as it is or whatever. You know, it's hard to trust that kind of stuff anymore because, you know, the leadership has no integrity. I was actually talking to my daughter about that yesterday. Wow. that yesterday. Wow. I said, if 10 people get robbed and 10, those 10 people call the police, that's 10, that, that, that 10 reports of, of a robbery. Now, if a hundred people get robbed, but after in between that, no, the police never show up. The police never take a report. The police don't do anything. Now there's a hundred robberies, but out of those hundred, only five

call the police expecting help. Now instead of 10 reports, you only have five reports, even though there's 100 versus – there's 10 times the crime but only half the reports. And that's what's happening. The cops, the police in some of these cities are doing so little that the calls aren't going – people aren't calling the police anymore. So the crime rates, the reported crime rates are going down, but the crime is going up. And that's scary. Oh, that's super scary. You look at the data and you say to yourself, things aren't so bad. And then you see it with your own eyes and you're like, I don't know, though. It looks bad. You know, and how do you affect that?

Because you're when you're doing budgetary stuff in a city or even in a county, you know, you're you're allocating money, I'm sure, to law enforcement based on crime data. And if they're like, we need more guys and they're like, no, you don't. The crime is going down. You're doing a great job. We think we can shrink the police force. The crime is going down. You're doing a great job. I think we can shrink the police force. We don't need that many police. And it's a self-prop a point, you know, they're reaching a wits end point where I think, I mean, I think the biggest thing that people are going to be pushing for going forward is just honesty. You know, I think after COVID and after the BLM riots and, and, you know, now with the wars and everything that they've seen since 2020, I think the public is hungry to not be in the position that I'm in and you're in, which is I don't know if I trust any numbers. I don't know if I trust the leadership.

I don't know if I trust – you know what I mean? They're hungry to look out at the government or almost anything and say, you know what? I believe them. I think even if it's not good news, at least it's true. And then we can work with that. Right. People grew up watching television for news. They grew up buying newspapers for news and they trusted it. And unfortunately, people, even though they know the TV is lying, some of the time they're like, oh, they're telling the truth most of the time. This multi-car pileup isn't fake news.

So it's – I forget what the term is where they show somebody reading an article, and they're like, that's so fake. That's so fake. That's so fake. And then they turn the page, read the next article, and it's something they support. It's like, oh, wow, that's all true. That's all true. That's all true. But even though some of it is true,

there are still lies thrown in there. And that's what they depend on. Confirmation bias, exactly. And so people will, I mean, my wife, she turns the TV on first thing in the morning when she makes her coffee and she watches maybe 20 minutes of it. And I sit there watching it and I cringe

because yeah, I know I hear outright lies and then I hear things that could be true. And then you see, of course, accidents and certain things happen that are the truth. And I have, I have a skewed sense of reality in some ways. And yeah, like you said, confirmation bias. I trust the art. I trust the things I believe in, She said confirmation bias. I trust the things I believe in even though they may not be true. So it's challenging. A friend of mine – Oh, go ahead.

Oh, no. I was just talking to a friend of mine a couple days ago. I forget exactly what I said, and she's like, I don't know if I – oh, we had confirmation for one of our godchildren. We have three godchildren. And I was talking about that, and she's like, I don't know if I – oh, we had confirmation for one of our godchildren. We have three godchildren. And I was talking about that, and she's like, I don't know if I believe in God. I don't have – I need facts. I need proof. And I thought to myself when I was talking to my daughter, if I take your watch and I smash it into a million pieces, how long will it take for that to reassemble itself into a watch?

And she's like, never. Right. Now look at Mother Nature. Look at all the things outside it's uh the atheists say that this entire planet was designed which just came to be just spontaneous spontaneous creation or something and it was hard to if you don't if you can't touch it it's hard to understand and people people who live in their bubbles, in their – yeah, their bubbles, the cities, it's hard for them to understand things outside of that. And so when something like –

They're surrounded by the man-made. When you live a life that's totally man-made, how easy is it for you to be like, yeah, we make everything? You know what I mean? We do everything. We make everything. What do you mean, God? You go out and spend time in the real world, which is the hinterlands, the Catskill Mountains, for example,

and you'll very quickly be able to be like, oh, my. There's something much larger at play. Yes, there is. And a couple weeks ago, my daughter There's something much larger at play. Yes, there is. And a couple weeks ago, my daughter lost a tooth. And yesterday, she's like, I know the Easter Bunny isn't real. I go, why isn't the Easter Bunny real? Or not the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy. And I said, yeah, there's some things that are imaginary, and there's some things that are real.

And that's how the conversation about the watch, smashing the watch came to a belief in God. We don't see God as a person in person, but we can see the effects of God. And it's important to realize that we are, we are very small creatures in this infinite, all but infinite universe. So, but make the most while we're here.

That's what I say. Yeah, for me, nothing has been better for my relationship with God than having those sort of intersections of disbelief and faith and then followed up with sort of research and looking at—it's like, you know, seeking what's—I don't know. That's hard to explain. Believing and not believing have made me believe more. They've given me more faith. You know what I mean? Like trying, because it takes, for me it took time,

and I think it takes time the older you get to wrestle with those ideas. You know? Right. In that, it's like the Jacob renamed Israel. And Jordan Peterson even put up, I think he has a book out right now called We Who Wrestle With God. And that whole concept of wrestling with God, I think, is actually the best way to do business. And, you know, not in a way that you're like, he's real, he's not real. But I think a lot of people start there, especially if they find faith later in life.

That's where a lot of people start. It's like this peeking over a hedge. Like, is there a God over there? All my life I've been behind this hedge, and I know I've always told myself there's no God over there. And then you start the peeking. And then all of a sudden you're climbing over over that hedge and you're wrestling with those ideas that—because I did this all through my 20s, just sort of wrestling with these ideas of faith and God and all that kind of stuff. And it seems like the more you do that, the deeper your faith becomes, which is really weird. Like, the more you call things

into question and then read the Bible and then listen to biblical scholars and then also listen to detractors—I think that's important in everything, by the way, is, you know, if you're really into something, you should You listen to the real crazy left-wingers. It's important to listen to them, man, because you can see right off the bat, like, these people have no foundation and they're totally off base. Like, they'll never last, you know? I read a quote from the Bible on, I think it was Sunday night or something like that, and it was a quote that talked about, you know, how the persecutors will not last long because they have no root.

And that's, man, that's who we're dealing with right now. You know, there are people with no roots. They're shallow. And it's just a, I don't know, it's an interesting time for that. A lot of people coming to God lately, Frank. It's not by accident, and it's definitely not by, you know, it's not a coincidence. Now, I was listening to Jack Spierko, one of his older podcasts, and he was talking about how when he was in high school, he was, I don't know if it was on the debate team or if it was a class where he had to debate.

And sometimes he was chosen to debate, all of us were to debate on the side team or if it was a class where he had to debate. And sometimes he was chosen to debate, all the students were to debate on the side they were against. And so they had to create a speech supporting everything that they were against. And they had to find facts to support that and ideas to support that. And like you said, sometimes the detractors are the best way to grow because we look at what they say and it makes us think what basis in fact or what basis in reality or what basis in faith, where does that come from? And it makes our understanding deeper. And it's important to look that way. Yeah, I watch all those news stations, CNBC, MSN.

I watch all those news stations, CNBC, MSN. It's even, yeah, you watch them and you hear that stuff. It makes you go back to listening to like Tim Pool or anybody like that. And it's like, wow, it's like night and day. But if you don't appreciate the night, you won't appreciate the day that much more. Yeah. Oh, it's important, man. It's important to listen to the people who are supporting the ideas that you're against.

You know, because, and it's not even just so that you can say, ha-ha, I'm right, and do that confirmation bias business. You know, when I listen to people who don't align with me, I listen. And I'm listening for things, and I'm looking for things that I might agree with. You know what I mean? So I can say to myself like, oh, here's a here's a thread of common ground, which is way more important than, you know, figuring out what we disagree on. That's how I started listening to Russell Brand all those years ago. Like I started listening to Russell Brandsell brand i mean before he was on rumble before when he was just starting on youtube and he wasn't even really he wasn't even really who he is now but i heard those little threads i could hear in the larger conversation i could hear

like you know what it is frank when when you start to get an understanding of what's really going on in the world like i could see that happening to him and i would tell you guys i would tell the pbn audience i'd be like i know it sounds crazy but russell brand is doing some crazy talk right now he might be on our side before you know it because you can hear it you can hear it in people and i didn't hear him in the early days. I heard him more recently. And, yeah, I hear things that I don't really support with him, but there's a lot of things I do support listening to him.

And when the left starts attacking somebody, there's a reason for that. That's a telltale sign, right? Yes. Yeah, their game plan is so transparent. So let's get back to Fortitude Ranch, New York, because I am interested in kind of like what can people sign up for? When they go to the fortituderanch.com site, they go to the New York branch or location. I'm not sure of the verbiage, but what do they have the option to sign up for? Is there one membership? Is there multiple? There's multiple. It started out with

Spartan Economy and Luxury room inside the ranch. So the Spartan is the cheapest, and Spartan, it starts at about $3,000 per year. I'm sorry, $3,000 down, and that can be made in payments, and then about $1,000 a year. And what that includes is if something happens, and we've expanded the corporate ranches and the franchises to say it doesn't have to be a Teotihuacan event, an end of the world event. If your house burns down, if you face a personal emergency where you have to just get out for yourself, it's not the whole neighborhood or the whole town or city or whatever, you can still come to these ranches. You can still be supported here. You may not have all access to all the facilities, but if it's an emergency for your personal or family, you can still come here. And the economy is slightly larger, slightly larger room.

Let me go back to Spartan for a moment. There's Spartan shared, which means you literally just have a cot and probably a footlocker to keep your stuff in. Spartan private would be you're in a room, maybe with some other people, like in bunk bed style. Economy is, again, a larger room, a little bit more expensive. Luxury is the largest room,

and it includes a window. And in some of the locations, that window may only be to a hallway. And we talked about it here and said, if you pay for a luxury room here, you get to see the outdoors. You get to see outside. We're not going to build any interior luxury rooms. And then the luxury is expensive. It's tens of thousands of dollars for a family of four. And then there's an annual food restocking fee. So that's about $300 per person.

an annual food restocking fee, so that's about $300 per person, and then quarterly payments, which all of that money is going into building Fortitude Ranch a bit bigger and better. And recently we've opened up to, well, I say recently, it's one of the originals, Fortitude Village Lots. If you want to be in an outside area, a Fortitude Village lot, and we offer it at all the ranches, is up to an acre of land. And you can put a tiny home there. You can put an RV there. You can put just a shipping container. Whatever you want to put on that land, it's yours to do with. Just don't turn it into a trailer – not trailer park trash.

You can't overload that acre with a whole bunch of stuff. But I was talking to the gentleman who just leased the lot. It's a 25-year lease, and they started $25,000 for 25 years. And then beyond that, you also pay the annual restock fee and the quarterly fee. We have four RV stations here with electricity, water, and propane. So we offer that in New York. Wisconsin has 14 directions actually built on a former park where they had a lot of RV stations, RVs.

So they offer that there as well. And your RV rates are the same as like the luxury private, right? No, they're not quite as high because you're covering your own housing in that area. I'm looking at the membership sheet on the website, and it's a little misleading. That's why I'm bringing it up. Let's see. It has the luxury private and the pricing, and then it has the RV membership underneath of it with no pricing, really. And it's adjacent to the luxury private, so it looks a little confusing.

Right. I don't know if I have that right here. I mean, you know your numbers, so that's fine. I just wanted to clarify that so people would know. If they go look at this price sheet, they say, why do I pay the same for a luxury private room with a toilet and sink and everything as some guy who rolls up in an RV. Right. Yeah, with the RV, you're going to be paying for – if you use the electricity, gas, and water, yeah, you're going to be paying a higher price than if you – what's it called? Boondocking, if you just bring your RV here and you have all of your own services. We do recommend that if you have a Fortitude Village lot, you do have it be independent

power-wise. We have electricity running to our village, to some of our village lots, but we're also saying if we lose electricity, that means you're going to lose electricity too. So if you want to have power all the time, have a generator, have solar, have batteries, have whatever you need for your power requirements when there is no power. And it may be temporary, it may be permanent. We don't, we don't know. And let's see. So we've got the private room, actually County Spartan RV.

One thing that we've been tossing about between all of the ranches is somebody who doesn't have $3,000 to put down and say $300 a month or $200 a month for the fees. We've been offered something. I don't have the name on the top of my head. I apologize. But it's basically you pay $300 a month and and it gives you access to Fortitude Ranch. It gives you, in case of a collapse or something, you can still come here, but you're not paying all that money down. And you're not going to get all of the benefits in terms of you're not going to have as much space as even a Spartan, but you will have a place to stay. And, but what that guarantees you, every membership will include one year of food per person, access to unlimited, well, not unlimited water, but water, a room or space for you to be in, and storage place for weapons. We do recommend that all members have weapons. That's one thing that I've had lots of discussions with potential members saying, well, I can't have a handgun in New York unless I have a permit.

And that's true. You cannot have a handgun in New York. You can have a rifle. You can have a shotgun. Just like everywhere else, you do a background check. And once you pass that, you can buy it. We have proper storage on site. We have multiple gun safes here. And, yeah, we have not set the shooting range up, but I was actually on the land a couple days ago marking out the territory for a potential 100 to 200-yard shooting range.

Right on. I feel like that's an essential, especially if you get a bunch of people on hand that are out of New York in particular and they don't know how to use their gun. You know what I mean? Right. That's one thing. We want to have at least an annual training. And once we start growing, I'd like to switch it to a monthly training,

first aid, life-saving, food foraging, firearms training, sniping, any type of survival skill that can be useful. And basically have monthly classes on those things so maybe first aid stop the bleed one month maybe firearms training firearm safety self-defense and have events on a regular basis so one thing that i've heard about a lot of the ranches people will sign up they'll bring their supplies to the, and then they'll just keep it in the back of their mind. They'll never come up there. They'll never, never meet the other members, won't go to trainings, won't go to the events.

I want this to be a community where people, if something happens, when they arrive, they're like, hey, Joe, hey, Steve, hey, Mark, hey, Julie. They know everybody. I mean that won't be the case with all of them. It may not be the case with most of them. But if we have a core contingent of people that know each other, it will be a lot easier to work our way through the apocalypse or any other event, whether it be a short-term event or long-term. I like it, man.

I would – I've been locked down largely with raising kid responsibilities as a dad, but there definitely is quick coming a time where we'll probably see more of the nation. And I'm interested in going to some more shows other than Prepper Camp every year. And maybe something that would be fun to do would also be to hit the fortitude ranch locations and conduct some trainings for you guys you know what i mean so you could break up because i'm sure special guests and stuff like that would get people you know like they would they probably would love to hear from you and have you teach them a bunch of stuff too but i bet if you could send a newsletter out and say you know we got this guy coming this week got this guy coming this

week and this guy coming the next week it might get some people to be like oh okay cool we'll go up there that could be that could be a good way to keep that engagement going absolutely yeah bringing people have creating interest and a reason to be up here one thing i failed to mention with forage ranch with a membership you get 14 days at any one or all of the locations. So up to 14 days, meaning you can go to Fortitude Ranch, New York for a week. You can go to Colorado for a week. Or you can go to any of the ranches for up to 14 days, up to a total of 14 days. So we were talking about some of the locations, like Colorado.

If you want to rent an Airbnb out there, for the price of your membership, you could make that up with just one year of staying in a nice place. Colorado is not the middle of nowhere. It's in a safe location, so it would be a bit of a drive. But when I was up there last September, it was beautiful. And I look forward to going there again. Been to Colorado about five times in my life. I think I saw more during my ranch manager training than I have in the other four times.

Oh, really? Yeah, did ranch manager training last year there. And it was great. Although the location of the ranch, there was a wildfire there a few years ago. And you see the devastation, all the trees are burned or gone or burned down. And it's just acres and acres and miles of burned down forests. You know, it could be a blessing in disguise, man, because that becomes fertile land to grow food. Yeah, it won't burn again for a long time. And the really cool part is where Fortitude Ranch was or where Fortitude Ranch is in Colorado, they protected their land. And so because they worked to keep the fire away from their buildings, when the firefighters were coming there, they helped them out because they were willing to work alongside the firefighters. And they did their due diligence. So they got the extra help where a lot of people

lost their homes. It's a huge deal, man. Yeah, it's a lot of responsibility. I mean, what you're doing is building a survival community from the ground up, you know, and it's an impressive thing to take on. I'm glad to hear that you got people on staff a little bit to some degree, giving you a helping hand up there. That's another thing. You see once in a while you'll drive down a city street and you'll see someone with a jackhammer jackhammering out. I know what they go through now because jackhammering for a few minutes isn't bad at all. But when you jackhammer for an hour, it definitely builds muscles and wears you out. And I can't imagine doing it for eight hours a day out in the field. That's what I was going to say. Your brain's got to rattle loose a little.

Yeah. Can't be good. It is amazing seeing how, I mean, people hit concrete all the time, but it's amazing seeing how much destruction a jet camera will do. It'll just eat through that concrete. The thing is it only eats out a very small, it breaks a hole, and it breaks like a triangle piece of concrete away. Then you have to back up a little bit, do another triangle, another one,

another one. And it's thousands upon thousands of those to get all that, all that concrete out of there. It's a hundred year old barn. So that concrete's a hundred years old. The only blessing is that they did not put rebar in it. They didn't, it was only for cows. so they didn't reinforce it. Oh, man. If it was reinforced, that would have been a nightmare. Oh, my.

I've never even thought of that, breaking up concrete with rebar in it. Right. Jeez. Yeah, you literally have to trace the rebar end-to-end and then rip that single piece out, then go to the next piece and the next piece. end to end and then rip that piece single piece out then go to the next piece and the next piece and the and uh i didn't think about it until we had like a 10 by 10 foot section out and there was no rebar in it it's like oh wow thank god that was that was a blessing yeah but you're learning so much man you know and and this will give you the ability to replicate it

once you get it you know what if i were you frank once you get it established and that kind of stuff i would definitely look to uh i talked to rick austin and see if i could do a a talk every year at prepper camp about how to build a survival community from the ground up you know what i mean because you've got a lot of vital information now, and you can use that also as a means of putting Fortitude Ranch New York out there in front of all the prepper campers. Absolutely. That'd be great. Oh, wow. There's something on the tip of my tongue, and it slipped my mind now. Oh, in terms of pulling out all that concrete and putting plumbing in, when we built our house, the dome that we live in, we did that. Well, we didn't do it. We hired a plumber, but we saw how my wife and I put all the insulation down.

We put the plastic down, and then the plumbing had to be put in. We did a lot of the work here ourselves. So it's not our, what do you call it? It's not our first rodeo. Although, after building this house, it was a lot of work and I'm looking forward to having more help with the barn to do that work. So it's going to be a ride. It's going to be an adventure. That ought to be a consideration for those folks who are getting in at the budget level. That's why I'm offering some people, if they live in the area, if they live close and they're

willing to put in a few hours, they can get a discount on their memberships. Yeah, that's a good idea. So if somebody, I have an electrician that I'm talking to. It's funny, I thought there was a lumberjack, but he actually works for, his family owns a lumber, basically a lumberjack sales company. They sell the equipment for lumberjacks and for timber harvesting. And some of that equipment might come in useful as well. Oh, I'm sure of it, man, if you're dealing with woods.

If you're dealing with trees, the lumber folk are going to be definitely a valuable asset for sure. trees, the lumber folk are going to be definitely a valuable asset for sure. You might wind up with a little off-grid sawmill on the property one day. Who knows? I've looked at sawmills for over a decade now, and I go back and forth with the cost. About a year ago, I had a DEC person come here, environmental conservation, and we walked a good portion of the property. And these, well, 100 years ago now, these were all open fields and they weren't planted. They were just open. These are all pioneer trees. So whatever blew onto the land grew and we walked and there's a lot of low quality trees here. And I mean, the highest, I would say all the fruit and nut trees that I've planted are probably worth more than all the lumber on this land. Oh, wow. So, oh, speaking of which, I've got

five or four peach trees in the bed of my truck I've got to plant today. That's the spirit. my truck i've got a plant today that's the spirit yeah food food is critical i mean it's great to have stored food but the stored food is uh what do you call it self self-sufficiency you can you can live on it until it runs out well i think that is the only i think from what i know and i've never been but what i know about the West Virginia location, if there is an Achilles heel, that's it. It's the replaceable food. You know, it's the sustainable food sources, right? It's because the replacement ends the moment the collapse begins.

So if you're reliant totally on food sources that are stored then yeah there's you know clocks ticking but if you can get those perennial food producers in the ground you get those fruit trees those nut trees get those quails and those chickens and those rabbits man woof you can do some stuff especially because because you have people. You could probably produce even more food with more people than you ever have by yourself because you'll have the hands to do the things. Absolutely. The details, the pruning of trees and all that kind of stuff. Really get into it. Right.

Two hands can only do. My wife and I are working together. We can get some things done, but we can't get everything done. We've got about 50 chickens outside. We had four turkey hens sitting on eggs for about three weeks, and none of them were hatching. We actually incubated eggs as well, and out of 34 eggs, only one turkey hatched. I mean, my wife usually has a, not a really a green thumb, but she's, she's definitely a mother hen. She, out of like 50 eggs that she's incubated over the past several years, out of 50, she's probably hatched 40 of them or 45. She's amazing. And this time it didn't work out, I think, because I started the incubation. So, but the hens that were sitting on eggs all several of the eggs turned out bad so to be safe we just got rid of all the eggs

and we put a bunch of i went to tractor supply bought a bunch of turkey poults threw them underneath and then next morning all the hens are like oh look i'm a mother i'm a mother and unfortunately we've got a predator on site and uh we've lost half well we lost four of those turkeys yeah and it's frustrating because they're not cheap yeah but we do have predators are a thing man but again then you go back to that concept of people and now you got somebody who can you know be around the hen uh area whatever you guys got the hens in the pens in the fields and keep an eye out for those predators, you know? The more people make a huge difference on predation. So there's benefits to

that. Yeah, some people talk about how children, what can children do in a situation like this? Well, children are fantastic with animals. They can keep an eye on all the animals, and it's simple to say, oh, this this happened or this happened oh yeah all you need is a human around you know like you like a nine-year-old a nine-year-old there's no fox that's gonna be like i'm gonna hop that fence and eat that chicken with that human standing right there you know it just won't happen they'll still wait no but they'll they'll look for animals on the fringe and it's up to the children or the guard to make sure that anything that can be predated on is predated, that there's more towards the center of the flock. Yeah, that's a good call.

So fortituderanch.com is where people should go, right, Frank? Yes. And there they can go by location or actually go to the membership page is where you go. Yes, membership. Most of the information is there. If there's anything specific for Fortitude Ranch New York, my specific email is fortituderanchny at proton.me. Can you do that one more time? Fortitude?

Yes. Fortitude Ranch NY at proton.me. Okay. Right on. Did we leave anything out? Anything you want to say before we call it on this one? We'll definitely have you back on. I want to hear more about the progress once you keep going and keep growing.

Well, the challenge is right now funding. We are looking for independent investors, and we've had a couple of investors already, and we tell them it'll probably be a few years because every cent that comes into Fortitude Ranch is going into building. years because every cent that comes into Fortitude Ranch is going into building. And most of the things we can do ourselves, but having building in New York, as long as you build as your primary residence, you can do all the work yourself. The barn is kind of a question. It's still a, we consider it a physical barn, animal housing. So right now, all the work we do is upgrading a barn. Once we start putting plumbing electrical upgrades in, then we have to apply for permits. So with permits, we need

actual physical electricians, plumbers, things like that. So if there are any skilled people in our area, within an hour, the closest town is Stanford, New York. That's a ways from us, but that's the closest town. And if anyone is in within, I say the sound of my voice, but I guess we're nationwide and worldwide. So I guess Ellen in Australia won't be coming to the property anytime soon. But anyone closer than that, you're more than welcome to contact me. And, uh, let me give out my phone number too, just, just so people have that. You want to give out your personal phone number? Well, Fortitude Ranch phone number.

Oh, okay. But, uh, yeah, if they, if people call it, they'll, they'll have a reason to call. So that's 585-797-7019. Again, that's 585-797-7019. And I've heard others give out their phone numbers in the past, and I thought the exact same thing. Oh, everybody's going to be calling. And it's amazing how few people actually call those numbers. Unless they have a real reason to call or text. They can text as well.

Give Frank a call, folks. And Frank, I appreciate you, man. You've been a long timer here at PBN. And your support has gone a long way to help us become what we've become. And now it's our time to make sure we can get New York Fortitude Ranch up to its full potential. Thank you, James. I appreciate that. And I appreciate your time and Pepper Broadcasting Network. And Dave Jones, special shout out to Dave because he's the one who introduced Fortitude Ranch to me.

There you go. The NBC guy. All right, James. Thank you very much. No problem. Guys, you're in good hands in Fortitude Ranch, New York. Trust me on that one. Frank's been with us a long time, and I spent a good amount of time with him at Pre prepper camp this year and you know he comes with he comes with a lot of experience

from the self-reliance and independence standpoint of a faith-based man and father husband you know a lot of this fortitude ranch stuff and the investment of of money i know you guys are sitting there thinking well i get i'm investing in room, but I'm also investing in a person. So I'm glad we could have Frank out to talk to you all and get to know him a little bit. Go out and visit the location if you're close. You know, it's a viable option for millions of people in the area. All right, PBN family, I appreciate you guys, and we will talk soon. See you.

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