The Prepper Broadcasting Network - The Ultimate Survival Challenge: RATION OR RUIN/MAY 2025

Episode Date: April 6, 2025

Will you join us?

PBM Family, are you ready for a true test of how prepared you really are? Are you ready for really fundamentally the ultimate test? The ultimate test probably that you've ever submitted yourself to, to really gauge how prepared you are. I'm talking about Rash in the Ruin. Rash in a Ruin is an event in May, sponsored by the Prepper Broadcasting Network, created fundamentally by the Patriot Power Hour guys, and it really truly is a test. I mean it will be a test of your might and your will. It will be a very real struggle. I'd say that it's likely not for everybody, but I'd love for you guys to participate. And even if you don't participate exactly within the rules, I think you could learn a lot. Fundamentally, what Ration of Ruin is, and

we're going to get the rules hammered out further, we're going to get you a full breakdown of exactly what you need to do to participate. But I want to get your mind rolling. I want to get your cogs whirring, if you will, now. Because you have a month to think things over, and I think it's only fair because we've been thinking about this, I've been thinking about this for a couple months, you know, so I think the lead up to this challenge requires a bit of thought. Fundamentally what we're looking at is three days out of a week, you're eating survival food.

Three days out of the week, okay? So in other words, let's just say Monday, Wednesday, Friday. You're eating 2,000 calories survival food out of your pantry for the month, right? That's how your week plays out. Three days a week for the whole month. Not, you know what I'm saying. Three the first week three days a second week three days a fourth three days Third three days for

The other four days You are on your own You're on your own You're so in other words, you're gonna eat whatever it is you have stored in survival food This is where the rules we got to hammer out the rules what equals survival food and what doesn't Preserve foods right now. We're talking about legitimate survival food from survival food companies freeze-dried meals so on and so forth and

then the other four days you have to forage fish hunt your way to dried meals, so on and so forth. Then the other four days you have to forage, fish, hunt your way to freedom and sustenance. That's a lot. There's no doubt about it. That's a lot. Now, in digging all this... In other words, here's your week, right? Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you're eating 2,000 calories of survival food. Break it up the way you see fit. Digging all that so in other words Here's your week right Monday Wednesday Friday You're eating 2,000 calories of survival food break it up the way you see fit Monday Wednesday Friday and

Then the other four days of the week you are You're basically out there roots tubers leaves berries whatever it is you can find meat birds fish reptilians whatever it is you can forage and kill and yeah that it's that's your call that you or you don't have to eat at all just fast that won't be easy that won't be easy and that'll get a lot harder. So in discussing this I thought to myself okay I love this first of all. I absolutely love and and if you're listening to me and you're saying there's no way in hell I'm doing that for 30 days try just just do me a favor if you've never done any kind of

challenge like this do me a favor ration or ruin for one week. Okay, ration or ruin for just one week and that's it. It's all. So don't do it anymore than just one week if you think it's crazy and see how you feel because look, this is a very real thing. This is particularly beneficial if you're an urban prepper, right? Like if you've got a seed bank and you're sitting there looking at that seed bank and you're thinking to yourself you know what well when I when all hell breaks loose I'm gonna plant these seeds and have a garden we're gonna eat on that garden like know that there's a time window when you're doing your ration a ruin challenge for the first week you can you can pretend that your seeds are in the ground.

And they ain't gonna do anything for you while they're in the ground. They just won't do you any good. So that's when you gotta start to wrap your head around what are you gonna do. Because again, the whole ration aspect is you may not have enough survival food to go eating 2,000 calories per day every day of the week.

Right? So that's where the rationing comes in. Now thinking about this I said you know I kind of can figure out how this is gonna go. Like I could see how this is going to go. I kind of got a pretty good feel for how this is going to go. And it's going to be extreme calorie deficit for four days and then you know eating survival food for the other three days. Because the likelihood that I'm gonna forage 2,000 calories of squirrel nuts and zippers is just not... it's probably not it's probably not gonna work out in my favor all the time so I talked to future Dan about this and Ben and what we decided to do

was to come up with a couple divisions we decided to do two divisions okay because my thing my what I said to them was, look, I like it, but what personally, like to make this as beneficial as I can personally, I want to eat what's available in my sphere of influence in totality in spring. And what I mean by that is, I want to eat eggs in the morning, because that's a part of my ration of ruin. Right? A part of my very real survival situation is I wake up the day after collapse, the day after disaster, whatever it is. The stark reality for me is not, oh I'm not gonna

eat anything but survival food and weeds. No. I'm gonna go out to that chicken coop. That's why I have it. You know what I mean? Well, I wouldn't even need to go out to chicken coop. I have them on the counter, but you know what I'm saying. So I started saying, like, we're not gonna have a garden. Like I don't have a garden yet. Nobody's really got a garden yet, right? We've got things growing outside. So my garden, even by April, well I may have some tasty treats,

but my garden is not going to be, it's not going to provide me with 2,000 calories either. The eggs are going to help. I'm going to be in a way better boat than anybody who's in an urban survival situation with no backyard goodies. And this is kind of part of the deal, right? This is kind of like proof in the pudding. Like I know I can starve. I do it by choice sometimes, right? But what I really want to do is see on those days, on those four days out of the week, if I'm eating eggs and foraged foods and maybe something that's been hunted and then something that's been grown, how do I feel? How does that feel? So we broke it down into two divisions because initially we were saying let's all do the same thing, right? But we got Dave Jones in the challenge also. So then we find ourselves in this situation where it's like we've got a two and two audience. Like we got Ben and Dan who are fundamentally banking on food storage, right? As part of their

big long-term plan. And then we've got Dave and James who are banking on food storage but are also you know meal makers and homesteaders, you know. So like that so your first your first job PBN family if you're gonna join us for the fun that will be ration or ruin and it will be fun it will be challenging it's going to be tough okay but we're gonna share in this struggle together and if enough of you join if enough of you join, if enough of you take part, right, then we will do a complete and total Ration or Ruin recap at the end of each week. I don't know who will commit to be there, I don't know if Ben and Dan and Dave can all be there, but I 100% will create a digital bonfire by which we can sit around and talk about how the week is gone in ration or ruin, okay?

and by when I say enough like just give me like five of you but Because I think it would be a great time to convene and it'd be it'd be you know, there's something about this camaraderie Suffering within the camaraderie that is really I enjoy it a lot You know, I enjoy the struggle And the camaraderie within the struggle and I think a lot of people need it in their life So You want to participate in rational you got a decision to make you've got to decide are you going to be in one of the two divisions

We have cash bound division cash bound division. Cash bound division is fundamentally your foraging and your food storage only division. You're going to eat 2000 calories three days a week from food storage meals and then the other four days you're basically out there. Okay? Figuring it out. Probably doing a lot of fishing if I had to recommend. Ha ha ha. Aside from that, you have cultivator bound division. Okay? The cultivator division is all about

three days survival food, four days foraging, hunting, homesteading. Now what I'm not going to do is I'm not going to take anything off my shelves. So it's not going to be a homesteading operation where I can pull from things that have been packed away for a long time. Instead, it's going to be whatever's growing and whatever's fresh that day. So I'll basically be foraging my own homestead. So are you cash-bound or are you cultivator-bound?

Which division are you in? The cash-bound division is going to have a much tougher go of it than the cultivator-bound, assuming that if you join cultivator bound division, you are, you know, actually growing food. I mean, whatever division you join really doesn't matter if you don't have anything to eat. You're not getting any kind of benefit from the cultivator side. Like I said, we still have a lot to hammer out.

This is not a members only thing. This is an everybody thing. This is just, you know, just get it and get into it thing but That's the ration of ruin is fundamentally going to be defined by those core elements and 30 days to figure out really what you got as A prepper and survivalist, you know, what do you really got? Like you can think about it, you can brainstorm it, you can war game it, you can pretend that you know how it's gonna go,

you can look at your food storage and say I got X, Y, and Z calories, you can write all of these things. Oh, I know how to forge and identify these things and all that. But fundamentally, until it's rested at your feet, until the situation arrives at your front door, until you commit to these rules and go forth into it, you really don't know. One of the things that I think is going to be my biggest struggle in ration or ruin is going to be my digestive system. I think my digestive system is probably going to go absolutely bananas because I don't eat survival food. I'm not really very much for a pre-packaged survival food storage as is. Like the mass, the massive amount of calories, or the mass of calories that I have are food

storage staples that I've packaged myself. So high sodium, prepackaged, preservative-full, freeze-dried meals from 4 Patriots, Ready Hour, you name it, right? Valley food storage, whatever. I have them, but they are not where all my calories lie. So eating that kind of food a Full day's worth and nothing else. My body's gonna be like dude. What what are you doing? And then on top of that in by being in more more foraged foods than I eat normally My I mean I'm also again all of this infrastructure that you've built over the years and all of this

the skill sets that you've built over the years you're gonna get real hard data on what you got one of the things that's really got me feeling confident about Rash in a Ruin is that I look at my backyard and I look at the woods immediately out back my home and I look at a variety of things on my runs and Already, I know a multitude of places to go to get calories Just straight forged calories. You know what I mean? and That's not because I'm cramming. In other words, I don't see all that stuff and know all that stuff because, oh, we're

doing Ration of Ruin, so let me hurry up and identify all this stuff. It's because I've been looking and foraging and running that park near my home and foraging out of that park for years. So I already kind of have the framework for the ration or the ruin, right? So yeah, what do you got? You know, like when you wrap your head around four days of forage food only, what's your first step? What's your plan? What are you gonna do? So, PBN Family, like if you've got health problems

or struggles or you know, considerable concerns about not eating for days at a time, you know, just you know, wrap your head around that and understand, uh, this is not the thing for me to do, or maybe I should talk to my doctor first, you know what I mean? Like I don't want you to get in any health trouble or health problems by struggling alongside of us. But if you're healthy and you feel good and you want a real challenge and you want to really see like, we tell ourselves lies, you know what I mean, particularly in the prepping and survival communities. We tell ourselves these tales

about how well we're gonna do and how we're gonna survive and how we're gonna keep four people alive or six people alive or even two people alive. And we, you know, a lot of it is horse shit until it's put to the test. This is a moment this is this is one of those opportunities And like I said if you say to yourself you guys are absolute idiots like there's no way I'm doing that for 30 days fine Then just give it a week

Because you're gonna learn things about yourself in a week of Ration or ruin that you won't even believe. I mean you simply won't believe it. You'll be faced with so much reality it within a week of just eating your survival food only and then being left to your own devices the other days. Take a peek around the world, take a peek around the world take a peek around your world and Start thinking about ration a ruin. Okay. I want you guys to try I really do even if it's just for a week But if you go the month if you go the month and you attend all four of our little ration a ruin recaps We're gonna give you something it's probably gonna be like a challenge coin, something like that.

I might make them all myself. I may 3D print you guys custom designed challenge coins for Ration or Ruin. That's what I'm thinking. Because it's not gonna be easy. You deserve it. Alright folks, yeah, wrap your head around it. You got time to think, you got time to plan, you got time to sit around and consider. Is this something I want to do?

I want to give a big thanks to Ben and Dan once again for laying something out on the table to really test the might of myself and Dave Jones and themselves and now everybody else here at Prepper Broadcasting Network gets to play along and I think it's gonna be one hell of a time, okay? Alright folks, I appreciate you more to come, that's hardly all the details and all the rules but wrap your head around what you know and think about if Rashin' a Ruin is something you want to get yourself into in the month of May. Talk soon.