The Prepper Broadcasting Network - THIS WEEK IN PREPPING - PREPPER NEWS 2024

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

Today we look at the biggest headling in prepper news so far in 2024, how preppers are taking to ebikes, the news that folks just don't make communities any more, 6 hots takes for preppers in 2024 and so much more https://atlantagoldandcoin.com/the-5-best-silver-coins-to-have-why-when-the-shtf/ https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/canada-has-a-car-theft-epidemic-here-are-simple-ways-to-protect-your-vehicle-from/article_356e7786-ca76-11ee-ab3b-630b7f0e0162.amp.html https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/30/preppers-seeing-the-value-of-e-bikes/amp/ https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/mentalhealthforthedigitalgeneration/2023/6/the-friendship-recession-what-it-is-and-how-to-cope-with-it https://www.fox19.com/2024/02/06/butler-county-sheriff-changes-how-it-arms-trains-deputies-after-ominous-warning-fbi-leader/ https://www.laineygossip.com/first-trailer-for-quiet-place-day-one-starring-lupita-nyongo-in-first-lead-role-since-2019-looks-really-good/77644/amp https://screenrant.com/last-of-us-season-2-filming-isabela-merced/ https://www.reddit.com/r/preppers/comments/1akc8a4/6_hot_takes_on_prepping/ https://amzn.to/42EJoTw https://www.survivalsullivan.com/why-mres-are-expensive/ https://www.aspirin.ca/en/products/aspirin-81mg-quick-chews/ https://www.youtube.com/@PaulHarrell/

Thank you for patients. Water for patients. Coming at you from the frozen tundra that is east-central Alberta, Canada, streaming live on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Rumble, and Odyssey. Welcome back to the workshop where we create community, find freedom, promote preparedness, and share success. I am Toolman Tim. Today is February the 15th, 2024. This is episode 424 of Workshop Radio. How are all my fellow delinquents out there? It has been the most gorgeous spring day, even though

it is still well in the throes of winter. So I hope you guys are having just as good a weather as we have been up here. Let's open up with a rule to live by one of my favorites. This is lucky number 13. And this is probably one of the very first rules that I learned to live by even as a kid. I might not have knew how to verbalize it, but it most certainly was one I lived by. Rule number 13, the best way to find a solution to a problem is to start working on it. Now, that might be one of the most simple rules you will ever hear, but I will tell you right now that there are so many times that I will start a big project. And I know you guys have heard me use the example of working on the siding for the house, but it doesn't matter what it is way back before Becky and I were even married. And I started working on a chicken coop. I had

never built a building before. I'd never built a wall. I'd never sheathed anything in, let alone a chicken coop. But you know what? I started and I figured it out as I went, because that's the cool thing about the human brain. One of the things that I have always enjoyed about myself and others is a lot of times it just takes that very first step to start on a project, to get going. And all of a sudden you're like, Oh, I realize it. But if you were to just sit there at your living room, you know, living room coach or in the kitchen table, and you wonder, how am I ever going to start? I've never done something this big before. Ah, it's that stupid old cliche, you know, a journey of a thousand miles, start with a single step. And for me, the best way to figure out how to build something, how to tear something down, how to learn a new skill is to just start. It's to jump off the bridge. It's to take that first step.

And by the time you start working on it, you start building those little synapses in your brain. All of a sudden you are good to go. Thanks for the love over on Facebook. I see someone in there this evening. It's great to see everyone. All right. So last week I said, I would like someone in the audience, someone in the delinquent workshop community to come up with a name for the precious metals report or the precious metal segment. And Byron Roberts, you were out there. He won the silver Canadian dime and he come up with a very apropos name. So going forward, our precious metal segment is going to be called dropping the dime for short and dropping the dime

on precious metals for long. And I, I had to say Byron, you guys never cease to amaze me with the, uh, the names you come up with. So let's dive into what I got to share with you guys about precious metals this week. And we'll go on from there. This is a good one. So last week I shared with you guys, the silver dragons YouTube channel. And I watch on there a ton. He goes in to his local coin shop called Harry's and they talk about precious metals, ad nauseum. And I have learned a bunch, but they continue to talk about mercury dimes. And I thought, what is so special about a mercury dime? You'll see a picture here for those on the video only.

And they started talking and he explained what made these dimes special. So I ended up doing some digging, Google Foo for you, and I found this article that I wanted to share the highlights of. This comes from Atlanta Gold and Coin Buyers, and it's the five best silver coins to have when the shit hits the fan. And I want to shout out to the delinquents I see in here so far this evening. We got Ellen Kerr from Down Under. I see Digger, and I just saw Rachel Brown pop in here. It's great to see you folks. I always love it.

So this explains why these particular dimes are so sought after for folks who are collecting, don't like to use the hoarding word, precious metals in case something bad ever happens. Mercury silver dimes. To begin with, the mercury dime, and for those who don't know why it's called that, it's basically the picture on the front and the picture on the back. The mercury silver dime was produced from 1916 to 1945, which means that they're instantly recognizable as being 90% silver coins. So there's the first part. As we know, I believe it's the mid 60s, probably 1965. Anything before that is 90% silver. So that's cool. But there's some designs that span before and after. So just by looking at it, you may not be able to tell if they're silver or not. That's what's

great about these mercury dimes. In an HTF scenario, it's important that you own silver coins that are easily identified as being silver. While regular investors and collectors know how to instantly identify silver coins, the general public may not be familiar. So things like this mercury dime are great because they were only made, here you go. So if you're ever looking to get into junk silver, the best stuff you can get is the stuff that was only made before the U S or in Canada's case, Canada switched over to nickel or silver plating, that sort of thing. That's what's great about these. This design was only made in the silver era. So if you have them, hopefully folks are going to know, Hey, that's silver. There you go. Also, the small size or denomination of the coin is ideal for small purchases.

For example, you might have a local farmer that sells eggs and is only willing to accept silver coins. A couple of mercury dimes will probably buy you a dozen eggs. I like that. So that's the first one. We're going to bust through the rest of them. I may do a deeper dive. If anybody's interested in these mercury dimes and why they seem to be so special and so lauded after within the preparedness realm, we'll do a deeper

dive. But here's five coins tonight that work really well or should work really well in an SHTF or just a barter kind of scenario. Here's two more, the Standing Liberty and the Washington Silver Quarters. If you're able to acquire some of these decent condition, full date Standing Liberty Silver Coins at a decent price, it's recommended to do so. As again, they're instantly recognizable as silver coins, considering they were only produced until 1930. A simple date check. Remember, silver coins were produced up to and including 1964.

Or if you're not sure, look at the edge of your coin. Quarters, dimes, they're going to be copper colored if they're, you know, copper with some cladding on them. Or they're going to be silver if they're silver. Simple as that. So you've got the Mercury dimes. You've got the Standing Liberty and the Washington silver quarters were all made before the switchover. Franklin silver dollars. quarters were all made before the switchover. Franklin silver dollars, like the Mercury dime and the standing Liberty quarter, it's instantly recognizable as a 90% silver coin. And once again,

they were only produced from 1948 to 1963. That's what that really funny portrait for anybody on audio, the really funny portrait of Benjamin Franklin. And yes, I know who Benjamin Franklin is. Like the silver quarters, there's not a nice round number of silver halves that equals an ounce. So in this case, half dollars, 2.75 equal an ounce. So we'll call it three. So if you don't mind leaving a little on the table, it says. I thought it was kind of neat. And something else you'll see. So if you go back to these ancient quarters, a lot of them were worn down quite a bit. So if you see a stack of those next to a stack of Benjamin Franklin's, they're going to be a little bit thinner. Again, you're going to lose a little bit. They said roughly most of those old ones from the early 1900s have lost about 20% of their silver content

simply from being beaten around in drawers and all that over the years. And then finally, Morgan silver dollars. These things are gorgeous. They still make some, I think, or somebody's printing them because I saw some on Silver Gold Bull this morning. These were only minted from 1878 to 1904. And then again in 1921, they're gorgeous. They equal just over three quarters an ounce of Troy silver. But the problem is you end up paying a little bit extra because they're collectible. So I'm not a big fan of getting into collectible coins simply because you're going to pay more than what the silver is worth. And for me,

I want to have silver as a wealth insurance. Like I said, you know, five to 10 ish percent, maybe if I'm lucky, but for me, it's just, I'm going to pick up right now. I've been picking up eight ounces of silver once a month, just so I have it. So these are neat. This was kind of a neat one. And then they added a bonus and these are the American silver Eagles. And the main reason behind these is they're recognizable everywhere, anywhere in Canada, people like, Oh, I really want to get silver Eagles. I tried to get silver Eagles for a long time until I was finally able to do it during COVID the mint ceased operations for a time. It caused was finally able to do it. During COVID, the mint ceased operations for a time. It caused inventory to quickly dry up and the premium skyrocketed. The biggest problem

with American Silver Eagles is the fact that you end up paying a higher premium on them. And for those who aren't familiar with silver, the premium is what you pay above spot price. So spot price is the real world trading price on the market. The premium is what if you walk into a coin shop or a silver shop right now, that's how much more you're going to pay. So for generic rounds, ones that aren't minted from a country, you're going to pay a slightly less premium than you are for Maple Leafs from Canada, Cougarans from South Africa, or Liberties from, well, Silver Eagles from the United States. But typically overall, you pay an extra buck or so for Liberty Silver Eagles. So there you go. That is your spoon-fed bit of dropping the dime on

silver and gold precious metals this week. All right, let's take a look at the community here real quick. We got some new faces, local prepper. Good to see you. Chatted with him at prepper camp this year. Joker Lee's great to see you. Been a minute since you're here. That's great. Always my good buddy, Patrick. I do believe if you're looking for a good neck knife like this one right here, Patrick didn't ask me to do this, but his neck knives are wonderful from MT knives. I think it's.com now used to be mtknives.net and a new name greetings for Michigan Brown. I mafia love that name and Brian powers. Maybe I've seen that name in here before. Maybe I haven't, but either way, great to see you folks. All right. Next we

have the sunshine news with Willow. Just got that in. You know, it's funny. I share this with you guys quite often. Willow is great. She puts together, she, she picks one news story from the prepper sphere each week and she puts her own sunshiny spin on it. And almost every time when I get her segment, I call her a roving reporter for the work for workshop radio this week and prepping almost every time when I get her segment, it turns out to be an article that I was already planning on talking about. So when you hear this, I'll dive into it just a little bit more afterwards, but I won't be dealing with that article too much as we go on. So without further ado, let's bring up Willow.

And here we are, folks. Hello, and welcome to today's Sunshine Prepper News. I'm Willow, the Sunshine Prepper, here to spread a bit of positivity on the unavoidable doom and gloom. Join me for a deep breath and a big sigh before we get into today's topic. breath and a big sigh before we get into today's topic. That's always refreshing. Also, the more oxygen in your brain, the better you can handle this slightly stressful information. So coming at you today is a warning put out by an Ohio sheriff. About a week ago, there was a sheriff training in D.C. where all the sheriffs were briefed by the FBI director and several federal agencies. Quite a bit of juicy and irrelevant information was given to the sheriffs, and Sheriff Rick Jones decided the best thing he could do was make this information public.

And I quote, not to alarm you, but to arm you. So Sheriff Jones was told by the FBI director that there are more red flags going off now than before 9-11. Red flags meaning people in this country that want to do us harm. He and all the sheriffs were told it's not a matter of if, but a matter of when we will see attacks on U.S. soil. He says the FBI are warning the sheriffs now because the FBI knew 9-11 was coming, but no local law enforcement knew that that was even on the radar. So obviously he can't tell us everything, but Sheriff Jones wants the public to know what he knows. As he puts it, we are in a terrible way right now. The sheriffs were told there are already people here that want to harm us. They are going to attack our elections, even at the local levels,

and we're not going to be able to call on the military or National Guard for help quickly. It's going to fall on the local law enforcement. He also elaborated on how five sheriffs had been sent to Israel after the attack by Hamas. And there they learned that the only thing that saved the people was the local law enforcement. He also mentioned that it was the exact same when 9-11 happened. And so when shit flies sideways near you, the local law enforcement are the people that you have to rely on. When you consider how many people are leaking through our southern border, it's not so far-fetched that similar to how Hamas was able to infiltrate Israel, that they could gather enough people and resources in the USA to cause great harm.

Haven't we have been in a mysterious era of food-related facilities burning down and train derailments and things like that? Sheriff Jones also warned about cyber attacks and the reality that the United States is under attack right now. His department was attacked and reduced to paperwork for processes for about two months. He emphasizes how the cyber attacks are not being done to help us in any way. They are being done to harm us. Even if the attack seems like invisible, it's no less of an outright attack. In his case, they didn't pay the ransom. And so all of their information was released on the internet. And the only thing that the FBI could say was that they don't recommend paying the ransom, but they know people who do it. Super, super helpful. But yeah, Sheriff Jones

really emphasized how we as a country are on the defense and we're just absorbing these constant attacks going on. The FBI director told them that for every one person that we have in government that deals with cybersecurity, the Chinese government has 50. So allegedly, the cyber attack that took down his department came from Russia, but he also claims that Butler, Ohio is seeing cyber attacks from Chinese origins about five times a day and from Iranian origins about three times a day. Sheriff Jones is also very concerned about the threat of drones. They're being used actively overseas in hot conflicts, and our country has no way whatsoever to detect or stop them, at least not on the local level. Questionably, but unlikely on the federal level. One would hope,

but who knows? He also emphasized over and over that he doesn't want to cause fear or panic, but he just wants the public to be aware that you, you are under attack from our cyber systems, to our grid systems, to communications phones. We're currently on the defense and absorbing attacks from enemies. Time to breathe about it. Time to breathe about it. Well, what can you and I do about the shiesty shenanigans behind the scene that no one wants to warn you about? Well, friend, it's good old basic prepping today. That question came up in the press conference

and I agree with Sheriff Jones. Having what you would need to stay home in the event of a power outage slash storms for seven days is an excellent place to start. Focus on the pillars, food, water, shelter, security, energy, health and sanitation. If you're interested in hearing the 30-ish minute press conference, the link will be in the description below. Wishing you and your family a pleasant week during Global Implosion 2024. I hope you guys enjoyed that. Willow has absolutely been blowing me out of the water with the stuff that she comes back with. If you guys haven't

listened to that news conference from the sheriff, let's just say it's rather interesting. Number one, I got sent it from Rick from Prepper Camp and I had planned on going live with that article just to kind of share a little bit about you or about it to you, but Willow did a much better job breaking it down. So number one, if you want to go listen to it, great. Number two, again, Willow is awesome at telling you the hard news, but while smiling and giving solutions based. And that's what this show is about. Dealing with the news that pertains to preppers without scaring the living shit out of any one of us and about what can we do? It's all about, can I affect it? Can I change it? Nope. But it's great to be aware of it.

So if I'm nervous about shit like this, how in the world am I going to fix it? Well, for me, it's always an action-based thing. So what can I do to deal with it? All right. So here's the first thing. Don't sit around and fret about it. We'll always try to be busy doing what we're doing. Simple as that. Get busy doing shit. Get busy putting food together. Get busy stocking up your fuel reserves. Get busy testing out your generator, which I thought about while I was driving today. And now I need to do it. How about this? They talked about cyber attacks, have an analog backup of a whole bunch of things. I've heard people say lately, they've been buying

a lot of DVDs at Goodwill and that sort of thing. Cause you can buy them a dime, a dozen or a dollar a dozen. I don't know, whatever. Anyway, just buy a bunch, throw the cases away, put them in. Do they even make CD sleeves or CD binders anymore? I don't know, but it's worth having. Now, when you, if, and when you decide you want to listen to that news conference by the sheriff, one thing he said that, um, the way they were getting into some of these devices where they were either at the end of life or they hadn't, you hadn't updated the firmware, hadn't changed the passwords. That's all low hanging fruit we can do. Any kind of hardwired device or any technology in our home, every so often go around and check. It's crazy we even have to do this, but run it and see, hey, are there any software updates that I've skipped for

the last 12 years? Well, let's hit okay. It may not be the only thing that can fix it, but it's a good start in the right direction. Well, what are we going to do? We need to have backup power. No shit, Tim. We know. Okay, good. Move on. No, but if you're going to have backup power, it's like folks who ask me all the time about

the EMP shield. Same thing. Like, well, it's no good if there's no power coming in. Well, I'm going to make sure I have a generator before I make sure I'm protected against a power surge, a lightning strike, or an EMP, that sort of thing, right? Store fuel, make sure it's safe. So simple. And try not to focus on the negative possibilities if you can. But here's the thing. Everybody, not everybody, most folks that I meet at Prepper Camp and all the other events I go to end up being nervous about an event. It's the thing that brings them to prepping. And I try to tell them, take that fear of,

I don't know what to do. I'm lost. Where do I go? What do I do? Take that fear and turn it into motivation. Turn the fear into purpose. I'm going to look after my family. I'm going to make sure we're set for sickness, for bad weather, for loss of job, all of those things, turn it into a purpose, do the shit. Like Becky and I, we had a date last weekend. Guess what our date was sitting around on the kitchen floor, putting, filling five gallon Mylar buckets with dry goods, Mylar bags with dry goods, putting them into a five gallon bucket with a gamma seal lid on top, labeling them and working toward having a year of dry good calories on hand. So simple as that guys, that's the type of thing we want to look at this. We want to say, okay, can we, can we influence it? No. Can we change it? No. Should I be concerned? Okay.

Concerns. Okay. Now where do we take that concern? We look at it and say, what is the solution? What can I do to fix it? Let's take a look at the audience here real quick. And like Joker Lee said, this, one of the biggest focuses that this sheriff talked about this week was number one, be prepared. What can they do to be prepared? And number two, your local community, because federally, state level, provincial level, they ain't going to be there to help you. And honestly, even local isn't going to be great. Joker Lee says local law enforcement, LOL. That's funny. LOL. You can't find a cop most days around here to save your hide literally and figuratively for us. Our police are a federal police force. So they're new, typically not even from the local community. We do have one local

County Mountie. He's probably going to stick around if anything ever goes sideways. But for me, I'm going to focus even smaller than local law enforcement. I'm going to focus on my community and my family, and we're going to put together everything we can to be prepared for any eventuality. And we're going to go on from there. So give Willow a subscribe guys. She is Sunshine Prepper News on YouTube and she is every week. She's done it without fail for six weeks now sent us her five to seven minute segment. If you're interested in maybe being a, an expert or contributing a segment every week to this week in Prepping, I'm open to suggestions, so send it my way. All right, let's remember our main sponsor for our Thursday night show. That's Fortress Canine,

my good buddy, Joel Riles, who does the Protection Dog Podcast. He will give you a verbal tongue beating. Boy, that sounds dirty, Tim. Come on, back up a little bit. He will end up telling you how it is, how to get there, how to do it, how to make life the way you want to make it. He ain't going to mince words. He's not going to candy coat it. But if you listen to what he ends up saying, you will be a lot like him and you will rise from the ashes.

You will build yourself the entrepreneurial venture that you want and you'll find the self-reliance you're looking for. So there you go. Joker Lee's over in the comments says there's a couple local city police services around, but yeah, most of it is RCMP based. And for our Americans, that's Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which means mounted as in on horses. However, they don't actually ride horses most days and most of them can barely find the donut shop, let alone a rural location. That is the biggest problem here on the prairies now, isn't it? And Joker Lee says we used to have the rural crime watches, but they've either been disbanded or disappeared from lack of participation. Yep.

We got a lot of those dust collecting signs around the area as well. And that's what it ends up coming down to. So yeah, I mean, rural crime watch helps, but if people aren't going to participate very much, you can do. And then of course you have guys like the, whatever he was, a cop in Quebec who said, don't post videos of porch pirates online because you could be sued for defamation. So that's what we deal with up here. All right, moving right along folks. We need to, we're going into stranger than fiction. This is where I take a weekly dive into the news that I have found while reading throughout the week. And I share with you the news stories that I think will affect us as prepared mind preparedness minded folks. Here we are. All right. This is a good one.

Again, not scary, but something to be aware of. And this comes from the Toronto Star. And of course, a lot of my news articles are going to be Canadian because Google News spoon feds me a hefty diet of Canadian biased media. Oh no, sorry. Yeah. Anyway, so this is the Toronto Star and this is a good one. Turns out in Canada, and I'm sure in the US as well, there is a car theft, not a cat theft, as somebody said in Telegram earlier today, a car theft epidemic. Literally thousands of vehicles being stolen. I believe somewhere I read a vehicle every five minutes in Canada. Canada has a car theft epidemic. Here are simple ways to protect your vehicle from being stolen. And why did I

like this article? Well, two things. It identifies a problem that is a huge issue around here right now, but it's solutions. It's not just typical fear-based mongering from the mainstream media. Last year marked the second year in a row where private insurers paid out over a billion dollars in claims for stolen vehicles. Yep, and that's in Canada. Probably be able to throw that up to $100 billion in the U.S. Yep. And that's in Canada. Probably be able to throw that up to a hundred billion in the U S consider. No, sorry. 10 billion, because you guys have 10 times the population. And here's the big one, largely driven by organized crime. Yep. That's what

happens here. We'll go two, three years without a car theft in my small little town. And then all of a sudden it's almost like you can watch it. One town gets hit, the next night's another village, the next night's another village, and it's the organized gangs out of Edmonton, mainly for our area, and they just scope out during the day and then they steal at night and then they turn tail and run. Auto thieves now have a wide spectrum of methods at their disposal to hijack smart quote-unquote modern vehicles, of methods at their disposal to hijack smart quote-unquote modern vehicles, including copying the signal from your electronic car key, even when it's seemingly safe, safely stored inside your home. Smart keys, here we go. Smart keys in modern vehicles are ripe for theft. One of the most, and this is something I learned a lot from this article. I hope you guys do too, because these are some

things I'd heard about, but didn't really know how they worked. One of the most common techniques employed by the modern auto thief, thief, auto theft. Yeah. Anyway, is what's called a relay attack. This is tack is done through the use of an antenna like device capable of catch capturing the RF or the radio frequency used by your smart key and your smart key. For those who don't know, is that little key fob that you click that'll open and close your locks, that sort of thing. The radio frequency used by the smart key to communicate with your vehicle. They're able to mimic the same signal once they catch it. Criminals can then trick your car into thinking the fob is closer than it is. Key fobs used in modern vehicles are constantly emitting

a signal that's able to be detected and potentially copied and used to steal a vehicle. It's kind of scary shit, but again, we're going to talk about it a little bit. The key fob doesn't even need to be near your front door. So you get home, you set your key fob on the counter, you hang it by the back door where the key rings go, and some ne'er-do-well comes by and wands your house with an RF radio frequency detector, picks up the signal, is then able to use a machine to open your car, start your car and drive the hell off. It's kind of scary. Something I didn't know was a thing. I was pretty

sure that these, you remember when they brought in these key fobs and it costs $800 to get a new one cut and they said it's for your own good. Yeah, well, there you go. Key fob doesn't have to be near the front door. The range of relay devices are constantly improving with new models able to intercept a key fob signal anywhere in the house. The simplest thing you can do, this is where the rubber meets the road. Keep your key fob, well, okay. Keep your key fob as far away from the front door, back door, and garage as possible. The deeper they are in the house, the less likely the thieves are to steal your signal. Some manufacturers include an on-off switch on the fob, which I didn't know and I'm not sure I want to mess with that.

But here's the one I like. Store the key within a metal container or a signal-blocking Faraday bag. Alternatively, less expensive RFID poaches with signal blocking metal mesh are commonly available. So, ah, there you go. Rachel just, Rachel brought up the comment. So we're going to take a look here in just a second at the comments, but Rachel said, so what you're saying is put your key fob in a Faraday bag. So the problem with all of these safety measures is they make our life less convenient. These technologies are supposed to make our life more convenient. And when they make

them less convenient, we're less likely to take part in them. So if they tell you, hey, take your key all the way to the center of the house and hide it under your bed. Well, you might do that three times. And the fourth time you're going to stop doing it because it pisses you off. Right? Exactly. Next, they're going to say, well, maybe open up your key fob and turn it off or take the battery out every night. Well, eventually you're going to stop doing that because it's inconvenient. But like they said, if you have a metal box right by the back door or a little Faraday bag hanging on the back door, open it up, throw your key and zip it. It always goes to the same place. I love that. It's like program compliance. Tonight's

content creator spotlight is going to be a dude who I've looked up to for many years. He talks about program compliance. He says, carry the gun you're going to carry. Don't carry the gun that's too heavy to carry because the first time it's uncomfortable, you're going to leave it behind. Simple as that. Here's something else I learned. Two other common practices. The tech incorporated into modern cars. OBD ports. Those are the ones that scan it to see how your vehicle is working in the CAN bus system. I didn't know about that. The onboard diagnostic port is a little socket underneath your dashboard that mechanics use to access what's wrong with the vehicle. Criminals now have a device that can plug into this port and reprogram the car to recognize

a different key signal. Yep, there you go, folks. Similarly, criminals can plug into a modern vehicle's CAN bus system, which enables its engine control units to communicate with each other. Thieves have devised a tool that can inject into this system located near the front headlight connector and impersonate the key fob, allowing them to unlock and turn on the car. So here is a little more advice from this expert. The more inconvenient you can make it to steal your car, the less likely thieves are to target it. They want to spend as

little time breaking into your car as possible. We know this, yes, but it makes sense. Never leave your vehicle running or your key fob inside the vehicle. Two things that my sorry ass does quite often. And when you live where it gets to be minus 46, do yourself a favor and get yourself an automatic car starter installed so that you don't have to leave your damn key fob in there. Cause that's something I'm guilty of. I'm going to say it right now. This expert also suggested installing a secondary alarm as the primary alarm is controlled by the vehicle. That's not a bad idea. He also advised installing a tracking device on your automobile. He also said there's physical deterrence, such as mechanical devices that you can lock on the

steering wheel, such as the club. So the idea is, in my mind, two things. Make it as easy for you to come into compliance with the program, make it as easy as you can to, you know, to still use the technology you want, but make it as difficult as you can for the ne'er-do-well crackhead to steal your vehicle. I talk about this in my securing your generator video. And again, it's all about making yourself less attractive to whomever wants to steal your shit. So if your vehicle is parked all the way up close to the house, not near the road, that's one parked in a well lit area. That's two. Maybe you got dogs around, maybe you got an alarm, maybe you got auto sensor lights. All of those are good things. I really liked the idea. I didn't catch the first time the backup of the

alarm so that it will still go off if the doors open, even if somebody thinks they've got you figured out. And then of course, some sort of Faraday bag or a little metal container right by the back door. Throw your keys in there, incorporate that into your everyday routine. It's not going to be so bad. And then the big one that a lot of preppers don't always talk about, have good insurance. That simple. I think we all should have good insurance. It's one of the first purchases Becky and I do with big, with big ticket items, whether it's the house, the business, the vehicles, anything like that, have good insurance because it's a small price to pay to have your ass covered. If again, some junkie breaks into your backyard some night and steals your vehicle while you're covered that way, you don't have to feel like you need to go out, defend it with lethal force, and then end

up getting stuck by a needle or something. Not that that's going to happen, but that's the kind of shit that does happen. So have insurance. All right. That's the end of that first article, folks. Let's go back and check out what everybody had to say. L2 Survive, great dude. Check out his channel on YouTube as well. He said, lately, I've been thinking about all the military bases, police stations, prisons, gun stores, gun and ammo manufacturers, and who is going to take them over more than the local gangs. That's fair. You're not wrong. They have the numbers, they have the manpower, they have the organization, and they have the will, which is good or bad, of course, but they have all of that. So there you go. L2 Survive also says, think of all the scary weapons just sitting at some ammo dump.

Nothing my group or the groups around me have stocked up can compare to a few tanks or a daisy cutter or two. Again, not wrong. Cabot Porter says you can wrap an aluminum foil just like my hat. My spare is in the truck in a box wrapped in aluminum foil. You like my hat, my spares in the truck in a box wrapped in aluminum foil. You know what? Nothing wrong with that at all. At least she didn't say tinfoil. It is aluminum foil, but it works. So maybe look at one of those silent, is it silent bag or one of those Faraday bags, whatever it happens to be, but just have something, throw it in there. It sucks that it's come to this, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let somebody else steal my vehicle. All right. This one's cool. This is actually something I've been looking at a little bit,

and it is from Clean Technica. And if you don't know this company or the website, cleantechnica.com, they are definitely not known for their prepping articles. They would be, you know, an environmentally friendly, traditionally left wing kind of company. This article, I don't, doesn't have a, from Jessica, sorry, Jen, Jennifer Sensaba is a prepper seeing the value of e-bikes. And I actually believe I reached out to this lady on Twitter about a year ago, trying to get her on the show because she talked about preppers and electric vehicles as well. It's a pretty good article. I've been looking at e-bikes ever since I went to Nate and Aaron's house, Two Chicks Homestead, when we have the workshop get together last summer. Yep. Mike from Two Towns Over had a beautiful e-bike that I had never

really thought about. And Ryan, that's Prepper Dad from the now defunct Next Generation podcast on Prepper Broadcasting Network. He was looking at them as well. They have some really cool benefits. And there's a ton here that we can look at. But this is an article that talks about, Rachel Brown says, this is an article from a Crunchy magazine. Yeah, you're not wrong. And that's okay. Because the more I think about it, the more we know truth is truth, no matter where you get it. And I love the fact that this kind of stuff has spread and gone mainstream. So this article is actually talking about a YouTuber who is a gun YouTuber. That's a scary

word. I understand. And he did a review on an e-bike that was sent to him and he really liked them. So first off, they said he picked or chose a flat dark earth color, which is a nice color for blending in during the common end of the world scenario. I would venture to say it's just a nice thing to be a gray man. You know, if you, if you need at night, you decide to pull over, you're going to park your bike out into the woods. Last thing you want is bubblegum pink or tangerine orange. It's going to show up in the middle of the woods, but a bike that's, uh, you know, army green or forest Brown or something like that. It's going to hide in the woods a little bit better. This dude said that it was really comfortable for riding around on. They tend to be built a

little heavier because they got to carry a little extra weight. They tend to have a thicker frame. They tend to have what looks like a much more comfortable seat, all of those things. Some of the gun, the gun tubers hadn't heard that term before, but I like it, have actually added wagons behind their e-bikes, giving them cargo capability for hunting or anything, just moving things around your, you know, your property, that sort of thing, because we're going to talk a little more about the solar capabilities of these as well, which I really dig. And this one here said, speaking of hunting, the silent running is a huge win. We've known about this for years as many outdoor stores

are selling them, but it's a benefit worth repeating. The quiet nature of an e-bike and the independence from fossil fuels is useful in a bunch of different scenarios. And the ability to bypass traffic is useful. Now we're going to talk later on tonight about how bugging in is almost always a solution. I get it. That's cool. But there are times you're going to have to hit the road. And depending on what you're prepping for, what you're, you know, decided you need to deal with, this may or may not be a thing. But no matter what, I love the idea of having a powered vehicle that you can, you know, energize from the sun. It can be charged on solar. This dude here mentioned that he uses 200 watts of solar to charge his e-bikes up off grid. And he

also suggests, this is a good one, covering the reflectors and the light could make for an easy way to move around stealthily. Stealthily, I always love saying that word. It always sounds wrong. E-bikes have worked flawlessly in hundreds of miles, but this was a great tip that I hadn't heard before. And it's good for just about anything you're going to be using on a regular basis. They recommend putting thread locker on the bolts to keep it from rattling apart in rougher riding. I like that. There you go. A rather interesting read, a short read, but I wonder for whether you're in the audio listening or here, anybody have an e-bike or have anybody looked at the benefits of an e-bike? Because I'm kind of, I'm down on them. I, I'd really like when I first brought up the idea to Becky,

she kind of laughed at me, but I'm just going to keep mentioning it until she's like, yeah, go ahead, honey. I'm sure I can make lots of content, you know, but, uh, get myself a little basket and go around selling flowers or something like that. But the things I would do, of course, I would definitely set up a specific solar charging station or tap into the one that I have on top of my storage container out there. I've got two 100 watt solar panels and then four deep cycle batteries in the garage. So I could tap into that. That would be nice. Another thing they didn't mention, but have extra parts on hand. This is the kind of shit. If you've read the Mad Mac book series yet, it's really good. He, he

rides, I believe it's an e-bike actually. He really enjoys it, but he has a lot of extra parts on hand again, just a good thing to have no matter what you're using and know how to patch tires. If you've got a tire plug kit in your vehicle, it's not going to work the same as it is on a bike. But I remember as a kid, probably something that most I'm going to guess, and I'm not trying to judge, but I'm guessing folks, you know, under 30 in their twenties or younger, maybe have never patched a bike tire. I remember with dad, you know, it was never, you never replaced the tube. You never replaced the tire. It was pull it out, put a 15 cent patch on it, put it back out and you're good to go. So as a kid, I kind of learned

how to patch bike tires. And if you haven't learned, give yourself a, the opportunity to do it. All right. What do we got next? Um, oh yes. And Rachel Brown says the articles from a crunchy magazine and a digger. I believe a couple of folks are wondering exactly what crunchy means, and I think that entire term has been kind of co-opted, such a weird word, but you'll get a lot of kind of hippie-ish or hippie-esque folks, mostly moms, who will say, I'm a crunchy mama. In other words, I like to eat natural. I'm probably against certain things. I like to use, you know, vinegar cleaners around the house, that sort of thing. So that's where crunchy granola the whole way down goes. So yeah, you know, it is, it's funny. I enjoy it. Next article. This one, I don't know if you guys have heard about this. This one really piqued my attention and it's, you might say, Tim, what the

hell does this have to do with prepping? Well, hang on. We're going to talk about it. And it is called the friendship recession, what it is and how to cope with it. I actually pulled up three or four articles until I found something that was worth sharing with you guys. But the idea is, is that modern society is becoming a lonely society. And we kind of wonder, well, where does this head into prepping? Well, the opposite of it is building yourself a community. So let's dig in. And there is the winner of this, of last week's contest, Byron Roberts.

Good to see you, brother. Listen to him while he's driving. As long as you're not watching while you're driving, we're all set. All right. So here it is, guys. This is what is called the friendship recession. Question. When was the last?

Oh, and this comes from healthyplace.com. So when was the last place that you hung out with your friends or the last time you hung out with your friends? I can tell you, I'm not sure if you can, but if you can let me know. Or when's the last time you had a real heart to heart conversation with somebody you cared about? If you cannot recall the date, you like countless others may have been hit by the friendship recession. Interesting. Now, before we go any further, there's going to be that five letter C word, COVID, that seemed to exacerbate a lot of things. My daughter and I just spent six hours in the car today. I took her up to her brace appointment, came back. I realized the entire trip, we never listened to any music. We talked for five hours of it. She

fell asleep for the last hour. I must have bored her, but no, we were talking about, she was talking about how there's a real disconnect in the education system. And we were also talking about how COVID exacerbated that. And it seems like we're going to be a generation out before we know all the bullshit that society went through because of COVID. Here it is. Adults are going through a friendship recession and it's set to worsen in the future. What is a friendship recession? It means that more and more adults are devoid of close friends, thereby having fewer people to rely on during crises and increasing loneliness. Loneliness was on the rise before COVID-19, but the panic pandemic only made it worse.

Loneliness, right here, folks, impacts mental health and reduces one's quality of life. There you go. Now, loneliness, you can look at a ton of government or health studies. Loneliness is a killer. Folks who live by themselves, who have no interaction with other people, tend to live a shorter period of time. That sucks. I get it.

But also, the society we live in, it's very common. Let's go back a century. It was very common to grow up, go to church, work, marry somebody all within 30 miles of where you grew up. Most people from my parent, before my parents' generation really never went anywhere. So you built deep, deep seated ties with your local community and all of that. Now it's very common for folks to move around. So that's number one. It's very common for people to have much smaller families so you don't have all those cousins. Everything in modern society is saying we don't need connections. So what do we do? Where do we go? Because this is something that is only going to

get worse as we go on. This author here says it's time to work on deepening old friendships, making new yet solid friends and maintaining quality friendships over time. It's funny. I was actually driving the other day and my friend, best friend, Danny, we haven't talked in two or three years. It's just what happens. I know best friend, you haven't talked, right? Well, we will. And I sent him a text message and I'm like, Hey, we got to talk sometime. Give me a message. Give me a holler when you're free and we'll have a good long conversation. We haven't done it yet, but I did it. I reached out. I didn't wait nearly as long because we'll just get busy and not think about talking. And that's what ends up happening. So what is left for us? Evaluate our list of friends on the

basis of quality and decide where to go from there. And it also said, you're never too old to make new friends. I know this sounds like an elementary school kind of a presentation, but here's, here's what I want us to pat ourselves on the back because number one, we're in a community this evening. We're all a bunch of crazy delinquents from the workshop, but we make these connections online first. And then what do we do? We're the crazy people who get in vehicles and drive hundreds of miles to go meet up in real life. Now that doesn't mean you're going to have somebody local immediately, but a lot of times what ends up happening is you go to one of these in-person

events and then you meet somebody who lives 20 or 30 miles away from you. And I love it. And that's okay. It doesn't mean you have to, but what it means is you have connections. You make connections with people that are willing to help you out when times get tough, or if they don't, you make connections with people that you can contact or who will look, check in on you when, and if they haven't heard from you. And if you can't do any of those things, you know, where I got started On the TSP, the Survival Podcast Zello Group. I talked to people on the Facebook forum for a long time just through text. And eventually I graduated to Zello where I made friends with Patrick and Nicole and Jaggi, whom we still pen pal with over across the ocean. There's something about talking to folks with your real voice on the internet that gives you a connection. So reach out, find local like-minded

folks if you want to. I'm not telling you you have to. I'm just saying this is one of those things that the rest of society has wrong. And hopefully us as preppers and homesteaders can say, you know what? It's okay. We're going to reach out. We're going to meet some people and we're going to build freaking community. That's what I love. So let's pop back over to the delinquents in the comment section. And Rachel Brown's not wrong. She says the more people I meet, the more I like my critters. I wonder if that has to do with the reason why we keep getting more Chihuahuas. I'm going to go with that. Yes. MT Knives Patrick is building a hoop house in the dark with his boys. Hey boys, good to have you in here as well. I will, uh, yeah, hopefully get to see one or two of you in real life before too long. Joker Lee says, uh, uh, I have, uh, yeah, I've been in that recession since about 2016. Rachel, if I need human contact, I know where to go. I just choose

not to. Yes. I will not begrudge you on that. Joker leaves. The decline of the church as a center of societal contact and influence has definitely been an exacerbating factor as well. We're discussing that with a friend this morning at the kitchen table. Yes. So again, I'm going to throw it out there. No matter where you fall on the right, left, center,

religious, irreligious spectrum, 100%, the community church was the center of societal contact. You went there for weddings, you went for funerals, you went for baptisms, you went for christenings, you went for potlucks, kids plays, you know, the local speaking club, everybody met at the local church. Everybody was centered around it. And if you look for me growing up in Nova Scotia, it was very easy to see because, you know, the entire province was kind of dug out of or blasted out of rock. And so you really only have one main road through every community and you'll go every 10 or 15 miles and see another church because that's as far as most folks went. So we have to figure out a way to center our own

societal combat contact as well. So yes, there we are. Let's see. Rachel says, I'd rather build a better life for if times get harder, even if they don't. 100%. And, okay, Mike said, Mike's homestead said, when we meeting up at the gully. So by gully, I'm sure he means the delinquents gully down in just south of Camden, Tennessee. So I am heading south on March 19th or 20th. And I will be south of the border, not in Mexico, but south of the Canadian border for six or seven weeks. It's going to be my longest road trip yet. I've got four events I'm speaking at so far, and I'm going to be at the gully most of the in-between time. My good buddy, buddy, Brian Alexovich from the lots project will be down there. We'll be down there

working on and off. I would love to have a get together where folks can just come. There'll be food, just like we did last time. It'll be nothing huge or nothing, you know, you come, don't come, doesn't matter, but there seems to be enough of an interest that we want to do another work day while we're down there and it'll be good. It'll be a lot of fun. So I will share a little more with that as we go along, not tonight, but as the time gets a little bit closer, I will figure that out for sure. And MT says, I hope you're dropping. I hope you're stopping by for a deuce and a half off-roading experience. I just, I had to stop there for a minute for anybody, but back in the college days, we used to say

dropping a deuce, but yes, if you guys haven't seen Patrick's deuce and a half, oh my God, I really need to get in that with him. As soon as I see it, great. This, this is community folks, and I'm going to share it because the show's going great tonight. I saw Patrick's picture on Facebook and I looked at Becky and I said, I want to go for a ride in that. And like three hours later, Patrick private messages me and he's like, Hey Tim, when are you coming down to go for a ride? It's almost like we're on the same wavelength, even though I'm a Canadian, he's an American. It's okay. It's like dogs and cats. You know, Ellen says for us Aussies, it's a local pub, a town without a pub dies. And Joker Lee says we counted nine closed churches in the four local towns this morning, and only one of them has been bought, maybe by a local German-speaking church that's been

using the local hall for meetings. In my small town, church after church after church, sold, tore down, repurposed. There is one that was built out of stone well over 100 years ago. There's some that are 300 and 400 years old, but they can't afford to keep the heat on. They can't afford to keep the lights on. Folks don't go anymore. And so they're like, what do we do? So they've been in the process of selling it. They were lucky to get a benefactor. Somebody donated a ton of money to it, but my goodness, it's yeah. So you're not wrong about that. No matter where a person falls on the religious or spiritual spectrum, traditionally, the local community church was where it's at. So what does that mean

for us? We just have to work a little bit harder to build community. And the thing is, prepping as a lone wolf is really, really tough. I almost say it's basically a myth. We can try to be as lone or as alone as we want, but when it comes down to it, it really does help to have a few folks. So there we are. Let's move on. So next, and I have, if anybody has any suggestions, I've been collecting, if you really like the intro and I have four or five classic apocalyptic films in there, I've been collecting some new audio snippets because eventually I'm going to have some really fancy, snazzy scene transitions to go from the section we were just in, Stranger Than Fiction, to the next segment, Workshop Wasteland, where we take a look at popular culture in books, movies, and music all about dystopian and

post-apocalyptic fiction. So I'd love to have a little video transition with maybe an audio clip or something that can play there for 10 seconds. Make it sound really, really fancy. Something real nice, Clark. Anyway, so that's what I'm going to do going forward. What do we got next for you? A couple of really quick stories. We're not going to go far at all. If you guys like The Quiet Place, love The Quiet Place. Jim from The Office, who would have known he could act right and direct like that? Anyway, Quiet Place 2 was almost as good. I'm pretty excited about A Quiet Place Day 1. The trailer's out. If you want to see it, the link, I threw it in the description. Looks pretty good, but I love the active collapse movies. They don't get done

often enough, and this is going to be the one that takes place when the creatures show up. Enough said. If you watch the Super Bowl, apparently they showed a 30-second spot of that. All right, what's next? Right here, folks. You know I love The Last of Us Season 1. I'm not super excited about Season 2, but if you are, good for you. Production has begun. They also moved filming from Alberta to British Columbia. No big deal, but if anybody's wondering, I think it's going to go live in 2025, but they have started filming. And if you want to see what the world would look like without humans, watch The Last of Us Part One, the first series. It was awesome. All right. Now, I don't know if you guys have seen this. So we have, and I should share

the links, but I can't bring them up right at the moment for you guys, but I will if you want them afterwards. If you're on Telegram, we have five different Telegram groups for the workshop. We have the chat, we have the health group, we have the ham radio, we have the book club, and we have the workshop wasteland where we talk about movies and that kind of stuff. It's kind of a cool way to keep that off to the side. So Becky and I were looking for something to watch the other night and we settled on of all things, the return of the living dead. It was a lot of fun. We, Becky and I, it's kind of neat. We've gone the better part of a couple of years without really watching a whole lot of movies. And for whatever reason, film has

been one of our passions over the years. And I've been able to incorporate it somewhat into some of the content I make. So we were sitting down the other night and we're like, we need to find something to watch. And we ran centered in on the return of the living dead. That'll be 40 years old next year, 1985. Yeah, I know folks 39 years ago. It was funny. It was definitely a horror, horror comedy. Not as funny as say Shaun of the Dead or Tremors, but it was definitely in the horror comedy vein. It's a real tot 91 minutes long. So my thoughts on The Return of the Living Dead. Like I said, 1985, 39 years old, a tot 91 minutes long. It actually had a pretty good budget for a low

budget horror film in the eighties. It was somewhere between three and $4 million, which shows in the effects. If you can see that picture there on the audio, I'm sorry about that, but of course it deals with some of the crazy eighties ideas. It oozed mid 1980s punk culture. What did it include? Acid rain, hardcore punks, toxic waste, possibly nuclear weapons, and of course, something misplaced by the military. And if you see that picture right there, it's some sort of melting reanimated corpse that the military sent or did something with. It is very much like the reanimator, if you've ever seen that also a good one, but this one is definitely a dystopian kind of feel to it. All right. Things that happened in this that didn't catch on in

going forward, horror movies and zombie movies. Well, there were intelligent zombies in this. They were talking zombies, which was crazy. And zombies didn't die. If you shot him in the head, all of which I didn't realize it. Now I should back up and say, I'm not sure if I ever actually watched Return of the Living Dead all the way through without interruption in the past. However, I basically knew the entire movie because it has been quoted and spoofed in how many TV shows and movies over the years. The thing is, if you watch it today, looking back with the modern lens, you're going to think it's a cliche. Why is that? Because everything that originated in this movie has been copied and recopied and Memorex to death to the point where people don't even realize where it originated from.

So this is an origination. This is where a lot of the tropes in modern zombie films come from. It is technically a horror comedy, but I would say it definitely skews horror as opposed to funny, and that's okay. There's two great reveals and surprises at the end and before you cover yours and say, Tim, don't spoil it. I won't. I know it's hard to spoil a 40-year-old movie, but the surprises slash reveals make the film. Let's put it that way. The effects are hit and miss. I would say there is a, uh, a half bodied zombie tied down to a table that talks. The effects are as good as anything you'll see today. And then there's a headless zombie roaming around in a warehouse that looks so bad that I think you could do it faster in Canva and make it look better. So there is what it is, but overall love

the film. I love any movie that takes you back to the, the eighties that were that dystopian, dirty crime filled era that was society in the 1980s, whether it's Jason takes Manhattan or escape from New York return of the living dead. They're all so much fun. I will warn you if you haven't seen this, there is a lady who spends three quarters of the movie full frontal naked. Um, not really sure why I'm just going to say drugs. Anyway, it's a great movie. I'm going really sure why I'm just going to say drugs Anyway, it's a great movie I'm going to give it 4 out of 5 stars I want to say 3.5

But I'm going to go 4 because it is a classic And it is worth seeing If you've never watched this And if you say, is it really dystopian Wait till the end And then make up your mind Enough said Alright, next folks,

what do we have for you? Well, the next is I renamed this segment. I used to call it the side hustle spotlight. And I realized that it was probably constricting what I want to talk about. So really what it's going to be is a quick segment where I discuss entrepreneurship in building business every single week. Because to me, that is one of the pillars of preparedness, entrepreneurship. Because when COVID did all the shit that it did, the thing that saved us and the thing that gave us the freedom and autonomy to do and choose what we wanted was having our own businesses.

So this is going to be a different topic. It's only going to be a short little one but today in finding freedom that's what we're going to call it and if you're not sure where that comes from listen to the opening of the show again and you'll know so finding freedom and we're going to talk about how to fire somebody if anybody out there has ever fired anyone let me know because the first time you do it it's kind of intimidating intimidating, but it gets easier. And does that suck? Yeah. Should it, should you have to? No. My resident director back in college, actually the female resident director used to work for a large theater chain. And he was the guy that would be called into fire people. And one day they said, we're warning you, this dude is a little bit

This dude is a little bit unhinged. So here's Scott sitting behind his big desk in a suit and tie. They call the dude in. He says, sorry, sir, but your services are no longer needed. They kept a security guard outside just in case. Anyway, the dude loses his ever loving mind. He jumps up onto Scott's desk in one jump and he rips his shirt. He had buttons. He rips his shirt right in half straight off like the incredible Hulk.

Wow. Was it ever hilarious? Apparently. And scary as all get out. So Scott had to call insecurity and that was the end of it. So yes, I got a whole bunch of things to share from the, the community here in a minute too. So why are we talking about firing somebody? Because I fired somebody, well me and the employee director, whatever you want to call her from the daycare, fired our second director in six months and it sucked, but it's like pulling a bandaid off and she was great at it and I knew she'd be a little bit nervous, but I told her, I said, I'm going to explain it this way. And I hope you out there don't take this the wrong way, but firing somebody is like cutting the head off a chicken for the first time. If you've never done it, you're probably going to be scared. You're probably going to be

intimidated and you're probably going to think I'm going to get sick to my stomach, but you don't. What you have to do is you have to find that spot in your brain, in your personality that allows you to turn off the switch. And the only way to explain it is to say you have to become dispassionate. You have to hide it. You have to turn off everything other than business for a minute. Just like Lone Canadian says in the comments, don't let it become personal. That's exactly what needed to be done. So how do you do it? Well, you probably won't sleep the night before. I did, but I didn't sleep a ton. It's just what it is. I don't fret about it. I don't stress about it. I just go in, I grab myself a cup of coffee, I call the person into

the office and it's done. You just say it. You don't beat around the bush. Here's the other thing. When you need to fire somebody, a really, really smart friend of mine, Mr. Chris Dixon told me this. I'd never heard it before. He said, hire fast and fire even faster. And that has been a big area of struggle that for us in the past. So we're getting better at it. You got to pull the bandaid off because it's not fair to the employee and it's not fair to their fellow employees. And I feel like if we, if as an employer, you hold on too long, the person you owe an apology to their fellow employees or their fellow coworkers. So anyway, don't beat around the

bush. Say it how it is. Don't leave anything open to interpretation, have a witness, write things down, know if it's legal or not legal to record things, have a plan ahead of time, plan out what you're going to say, give them a couple of minutes to process, have their effects collected, and then walk them out the door. You have to be as dispassionate as you can be, but you also should not be, it should not be open to discussion. If they want feedback, you can offer them very quick constructive feedback, but it is not a place to sit down and go over the who, what, when, or why, other than this is the fact, this is the fact. And if it's come to the point where you need to fire

somebody, if you've done your job right they should already know why they're being called into the office that morning but again turn off whatever needs to be turned off inside turn it into a business-only decision pull the band-aid off and do it all right pop back over to the comments here chris dixon says oh my favorite thing lol he said actually i hated it every time but it's a necessary thing. It is. It sucks, but it has to be done. Byron Roberts said he just fired his fourth employee.

And Lone Canadian says, don't let it become personal. And Lone Canadian also said, I knew a guy that used to say, feeling blue, skid a few. Oh, man. skid a few. Oh man. So I don't want to come across as uncaring because I hope anybody who's worked for me or with me knows that that's not the case. But when it comes down to these things, it needs to be treated as a business numbers and money thing. Just go in, pull the bandaid off, and go out. Simple as that. There you go. And Lone Canadian says, deal with facts and only facts. Document it. Do not fall for the excuses. Do not let feelings or pity influence you. Nope. And there may come a time, a few hours or a couple of days later,

where you might second guess yourself or you not regret, but you might think, damn it, they have kids or they have a house or they have a payment. And you have to tell yourself, think, damn it, they have kids or they have a house or they have a payment. And you have to tell yourself, unless it's a layoff because of financial constraints or something, if it's, it's because of poor performance, it's not your fault. It's theirs. Simple as that. All right, let's move on. That was finding freedom. I like that name. It's going to stick with it. And I'll get us, like I said, a nice snazzy intro for that one. What's next? One of my favorites, folks. And it is, I read it on the internet where we go to reddit.com R slash preppers. And we find the most interesting post from preppers, our preppers on Reddit this week. And this is a good one. Now I want to, I need to,

we've talked about Reddit before. I like going there on occasion, but I like to hold back because as Chris Dixon said last week or the week before, there's a certain type of folk that hang out in Reddit. So the first thing I want to say is anyone on our credit, our preppers, they act like if anyone is preparing for anything worse than a power outage is probably a little bit insane. And there is a serious tone of self-righteousness on our preppers. So you don't have to go there if you don't want to. There's a ton of very smart individuals who definitely skew practical prepping as opposed to theoretical prepping. And I like that. Slightly judgmental, I'm sure we all are at times, but there's a lot of really good information on there and it's worth

scouring. So this week comes from our preppers. I read it on the internet, six hot takes on prepping user named Snuffy Bodalicious. Bodacious. There you go. Number one, the most controversial, do not buy gold. Hang in there. We will get into the commentary once we get along here, but the S&P 500 has historically indexed more than twice the rate of gold. True? I'm not going to argue. For the zombie apocalypse, people are only going to be interested in what will keep them alive. Rice and bullets. A fistful of 22 shells, $5 in today's market is going to be worth a lot more than a fistful of gold in today's market, $10,000. Two, bug out plans are probably a bad idea. Okay, this person's being slightly facetious, but hang in there and listen as we go.

Regarding catastrophic scenarios where you're unable to simply drive out of town and snag a hotel in another part of the country, it's probably cheaper, easier, and safer to prep your home with the plan of bugging in. If we reach the point where chaos is going on all around you, the violent hysteria will probably leave you alone if you have the means to stay inside and quiet for a few weeks. It might have been a Batman cartoon from many years ago. I'm not sure if it is, but they talked about how you could basically hide in the middle of a firefight simply by not drawing attention to yourself. I don't think I want to try that, but I see where they're coming from. So don't buy gold, bug out plans are a bad idea, guns are a great idea but not the most important. When people come

on here asking what they should get for their next gun purchase my first question is how much food storage do you have? Do you have a water filter? What about medical supplies? Without food you're going to be in a position where you have to leave your home to find food, likely by stealing from other people. It's not only immoral, but it's a sure way to get yourself killed. Again, these aren't unpopular opinions per se. They just need to be unpacked a little bit. How about this one? You probably have less than half the food that you think. I'm going to guess this one's wrong, especially about our community. But listen, if you look at your food storage and you think you have a six month supply,

in reality, you probably have a two to three month supply. Unless you did the math and actually counted out the calories you have on hand. How about this one? Number five, stock what you need. Don't stock to trade. I don't think that is an unpopular opinion at all. They said it's almost impossible to have too much rice for the time when supply chains are totally disrupted. I like that. Store what you eat, eat what you store. We've all heard folks say that over the years now, haven't we? How about nuclear war is possible, but easy to prep for. nuclear war is possible, but easy to prep for. Huh. Well now, the most common nuclear bomb for both Russia and America has about 350 kiloton. If you're at least two and a half miles from the epicenter, you'll probably survive the blast if you're inside a structure of some kind. From there,

the best way to protect yourself against radiation is to simply stay inside for at least two to three weeks. Having some plastic sheeting on hand, the cheap stuff painters use is good enough to seal up your broken windows. There you go. All right, so what did this person say that was unpopular? Don't buy gold, bug out plans are useless, guns are cool but not the most important, you probably have less than half the food you think, stock what you need, don't stock to trade. And nuclear war is possible and easy to prep for. I don't really disagree with any of those, but hang in there. So number one, the overall theme of this entire post is to be practical, is to be edgy.

You know, they want to be a little edgelord like, hey, I don't agree with you. But really what it is is to shock people into saying, you know what? They're not wrong about that, right? So what do I got to say about it? Well, number one, don't buy more guns if you don't have food. Yes, is it great to have a gun? It's great to have a few guns. Is it great to have a lot of guns? Yes to all three, but again, it's common sense that you can't eat bullets. So, well, you can, but that'd be your last meal. So yeah, have food, stock food first, then get a gun. Okay, cool. Don't buy gold and ignore, don't just buy gold and ignore retirement. That's my thoughts on this. So they were talking about it. They treated gold

or I'm going to say silver as an either or. Either you buy gold and you don't store for the long-term retirement. Well, I'm going to say do both. Of course, invest and get set up for retirement because that's what common sense folk do. But it doesn't mean that you can't buy some, I would say, more silver than gold to make sure your ass is covered in case something ever goes sideways. Again, it's a type of thing that holds its value. I don't know anybody in here who's buying silver or gold who expects to make a profit off it. The entire idea is wealth assurance. You buy it because gold and silver hold the purchasing power over millennia.

Simple as that. And bugging in, yes, is the best idea 99% of the time. But you know when it's not? When you got a hurricane coming at you and you have three days notice and you can get the hell out of Dodge and go stay somewhere safe. That's when it's not a good idea. Simple as that. But yeah, do the math on your food. Guess what? Becky and I know how many five gallon buckets of dry food it will take to feed us and our kids for a full year. And we are three buckets away from getting there. That's the type of thing. Just do the math. Look at your calories. Figure out, okay, how many calories do we need? 2,000 per person, something like that. All right. 2,000 per person

for two people, 4,000 a day times seven, 28,000 a week, 100,000 a month, 1.2 million a year. There you go. All right. Simple as that. Do the math. Figure out how much do you actually have. Storage eat, eat what you store. We've heard that a thousand times and it makes sense. Do it because why would you store a bunch of stuff thinking, well, you know, if I have three extra bottles of hand sanitizer, I could probably swap that out with a town drunk and he's going to give me rice. Well, you know what? I can almost guarantee you that the town drunk is probably going to eat his rice long before he trades you for hand sanitizer. And if you guys remember back, it's probably two years ago now, I had Dave Jones, the NBC guy, nuclear biological chemical on the show, and he definitely affirmed the fact that nuclear war is very much survivable

and very much easier to prep for than you think. Do a little research or go back and listen to that episode. It was a good one. We had some technical difficulties, but 100%. All right, let's take a look at, back at the comments here, Ellen Kerr from Down Under says, I teach people how to ride motorcycles. Sort of the same thing, removing students from the course. Some people should not ride. Again, it sucks, but you have to pull the plug. That was going back to the firing one before that. Joker Lee's, this is great. Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. I believe it might be the art of war. No plan of war survives the first encounter with the enemy, but why would you not plan, right? We always plan. I love that quote. Thank you, Joker Leaves, for sharing that.

Lone Canadian, as Commander Zero would say, in most cases, other than the end of the world, as we know it, $50 will probably be a lot more useful than a 50 caliber. Yep. 99.9% of the time, 50 bucks will be worth more than 50 caliber, but I'm not saying don't have any. Alan curse is surrounded on three sides by volatile Aussie eucalyptus bush. I won't be bugging in if there's a wildfire, it is situational bingo. If we had the chance that, you know, okay, here's the deal. Say something blew up at the Hardesty oil plant down there where the oil storage facility and the prevailing winds are heading westerly to easterly. Well, guess what? Ah, my ass is heading south. I ain't staying here. We're all packing up, me and the

dogs and the kids and the family, and we're all heading South and we're going to get away from it because that makes sense. But again, in a worst case scenario, absolutely bugging in makes sense. All right. What's next? The weekly workshop. And what is that? Well, well, I'd ask it's where I share with you the things that I've done this week so that I get accountability. And hopefully you might get a little inspiration or a little bit of feedback. You can say, Hey Tim, guess what? You did this wrong, or here's an easier way to do it. Uh, what, uh, you know, I had a great week. There were some things that got done that I wanted to get done. Some things that didn't get done, like they should have got done, but I did freeze dry onions this week. And you might say, well, how did that turn out? Well, not bad.

Light as a feather. An entire freeze dryer filled three small Mylar bags, which was cool. They taste like, you know, the nasty sour cream and onion rings that you can get in chips. That's what they taste like. But the smell was horrible to get out of the freeze dryer. I scrubbed and used vinegar and it got rid of 95%. So there is what it was fun. Would I do it again?

Sure. I'm going to try fish too sometime, but I sure would love to find a better way to get the smell out of the freeze dryer. All right. Well, like I mentioned to you before, we fired the daycare director, so we don't have to talk about that anymore. Becky and I had a date night last

Saturday evening, filling buckets for dry goods and long-term storage. That was a lot of fun. We've actually had a lot of date nights lately, folks. So make sure you do that. We've been so busy building these businesses, but we were out of town for a couple of nights and we stayed in a hotel up in Lloyd and we watched a movie we'd been wanting to watch for a while. And it was a really nice, enjoyable evening. I did a video this week on the coast flashlight. If you haven't seen that, that is what I wear around my neck with my neck knife. This is the tiny little thing. I won't turn it on and blind you. But if you haven't seen the review video, I was really excited. Um, it did well, but I really liked this damn little flashlight. It's a whole story behind it. Uh, there's a new interview up on Patreon. So here's

the deal. If you want the Patreon link, I can share it, but it's, uh, it'll be in the description tonight, but five bucks a month. That's it guys. So if you want to, I am never one who says, Hey, give me money because I deserve it. No, no, no. I am a firm. So if you want to, I am never one who says, Hey, give me money because I deserve it. No, no, no. I am a firm believer in Ayn Rand economics, and that is value for value exchange. So if you get value out of what I do, great, say thank you. But if you want more value, go over to Patreon five bucks a month and you get some really cool exclusive content. And right now I just put up my very, my second ever in-person interview. So now we have, there is one from Joel Salatin. And now this week was John Pagliano, the smartest financial dude I know. And we sat down for about 45 minutes.

He called it mind your business. And it's all about how he built his first million dollars, how he manages to save when everybody else doesn't. It's a great interview. So if you go over to Patreon, choose subscribe, pick it up five bucks. It was a good video. I love the interview. He's a good friend. We got some work days done at the Lloydminster daycare. We are so close guys. So close. This will be daycare number three. They finally did the elevator inspection slash whatever else you want to call it. Tomorrow is the final, final inspection for the fire suppression system. We get, here's the steps just because I like to share it. We get the inspection done. That inspection goes to the building inspector.

You're going to love this. So the final fire inspection goes to the building inspector. He signs off on the building inspection. Then we get the health inspector in there. They sign off on the health inspection. Then we get the daycare inspector in and they sign off on our daycare license. Sounds simple, but guess what? We have been waiting and waiting and waiting. And now all of a sudden the dominoes are about to fall.

I am excited. There is the link for the coast video folks. I'm not sure if it will. Yeah, if it There is the link for the coast video folks. Um, I'm not sure if it will. Yeah. Um, if it won't show up and if it's not clickable, it's okay. But if it is clickable on YouTube, that would be great. Ooh, what else? Ah, I got the washer, the dryer, the electric stove, all hooked up at the new daycare. I'm excited about that. I hung way too many bulletin boards. I want to show you guys this. I need to start recommending products to you too, because I get asked all the time, Tim, what do you use for this? What do you use for that? And I really don't take the time to stop

and mention it. So I hung just about 20 bulletin boards this week. And if you are wondering what my go-to anchor is, it's these guys right here. They're the Cobra Flip Toggle Anchors. They're not cheap, but they'll hold well over a hundred pounds a piece. So with two of them, you're looking at 250 pounds on regular drywall, as long as they're spaced apart. But what I like about them, okay, the two little downsides, you have to drill a half inch hole, but by the time you put the half inch hole in, you put that little flip toggle all the way through, and then you zip tie it out really, really quick. It fills in the hole anyway, but these things are, they're so good. And then they have a quarter inch or an eight 30 seconds bolt that tightens down into them. But these are my go-to for hanking heavy items on drywall. So there you go.

I threw the Amazon affiliate link in the description. So if you want to support the workshop, all you got to do is click that you buy something great. If you don't, that's okay too. But I really like these. These are awesome and they're fairly inexpensive. I'm going to keep going, but I really need to shout out to red flyer media. Great to see you in here. Probably see you at, no, I'm sure I will see you at, um, the self-reliance festival, but red flyer media says my son is opening a jujitsu gym Saturday. He's a serial entrepreneur. Mom is the video support. Love hearing it.

And good night, Rachel Brown. It's good to see you this evening. All right. What else did I do? I ruined a hole saw. So this is a calamity of error. So I'm going to quickly explain to you. We bought a triple sink, stainless steel, for the daycare. Great. Okay. I also ordered the recommended set of taps that

Amazon said, Hey, you need that. I ordered them because I needed them. Well, guess what? They had an eight inch span and this one had a four inch span. Okay. Anyway, number one, that sucked. So now I need to drill new holes into the stainless steel sink. Okay. Off I go to Home Depot to pick up a hole saw. I pick it up. I come back. I realize my drill is in Provost an hour away. I'm not going to get it. So I'm like, oh, that's okay. It has a quick connect on it. I'll put it into my impact driver. Well, guess what? Didn't fit. It was a three eights, not a quarter inch. So I'm like, well, what am I going to do? Well, what did I do? I got out my socket adapter,

took the socket adapter, put a three eight socket on there, then drove the hole saw into the three eight socket, ran it all into my impact driver, started drilling those holes and chewed the teeth right off them. So sometimes rigging things up doesn't always work out. Kind of funny. This, this Friday tomorrow, there should be the final episode of delinquent's galley Chronicles. I say final, it'll be the final until I get you guys some new content when I'm down South, but I'm excited about that. So if you're looking, that should be out there. I've got some editing to do. Yeah, I'm not going to make any excuses. It should be up there is all I'm going to say. And if it isn't, well, it will be up there early next week. Tomorrow night, we've got the post-apocalyptic book club. We're reading

chapter seven through nine in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Simple as that. All right, real quick. Chris Dixon says tip on drilling small holes in drywall is to use a step bit or a unibit for excellent holes that don't tear out. Ooh, I like that. I actually looked at a step bit at Home Depot the other day. They were a hundred dollars. So I really just need to remember to bring my drill with me. All right. Next segment is the cookbook of the collapse. And I do like this one quite a bit. Letty Lou, you are awesome. She actually set up a form. So if anybody wants to submit it, it'll be pretty easy. You can grab the link from the telegram group. So what am I looking for? I'm looking for simple recipes from everyone else out there. We're going to put them together. When we get to a hundred, we're going to create a book

and it's going to be called the cookbook of the collapse from the workshop. And it's going to be stuff that you can cook out of your preps, that sort of thing. So this week, Becky gave me her recipe while our recipe for meatloaf, love meatloaf. And it's simple. Here it is four pounds of ground beef. Yup. Now this is not carb. This is not keto keto friendly so i'm warning you before we get into this four pounds of ground beef that sounds great tim yep then we add three boxes of turkey flavored stove top stuffing three eggs half a cup barbecue sauce quarter cup ketchup salt and pepper to taste half a cup of water put it all in a bread pan bake it on 350 until it's done i like to undercook meatloaf a little bit yes you don't want it to be really pink in the middle or anything. You want it to get to that supposed to get to 165,

but I don't let it go anymore because it's really easy to over to overcook to burn meatloaf, but it's a dead simple one. It's something you could make out of freeze dried hamburger, ground beef, which I just bought a whole bunch of the other day. I never mentioned that, but I believe I cooked up about 30 pounds of discounted meat. I got it at the grocery store, got it all frozen and ready to go into the freeze dryer. And Lone Canadian says, yep, you need a special hole saw for stainless. Yep. It'll chew the teeth off a regular one. Yep. I kind of knew that, but I was really hoping that it was like some kind of Chinese-ium that would just drill really nice, really nice. Well, guess what? It wasn't. So there you go. It sucks. We live, we learn. I threw away $35, whatever it was. So yeah. All right. Next,

we're going to take a dip into the community nailbag. Yep. I said community nailbag. That is where we look at the feedback that I got from the community over the last week, since last week's in prepping. As Chris Dixon says, that's really nice, Clark. Get yourself something really nice. And some people are like, what the hell is he drinking tonight? Well, anyway, if you don't know or if you don't quote Lampoon's Christmas Vacation at least three times a week, I'm not sure we can be friends. And Joker Lee says, rolling on the floor, Chinesium. I thought I was the only one that used that term other than Dalton from Pole Barn Garage.

There is actually a segment on or a forum on Reddit called Chinesium. And it shows things that are supposed to be well-built that are not. We bought many, many years ago, we were doing a grand reopening at Home Hardware. And I reached out to the buyer and I said, what can you sell me cheap? They said, oh, we've got a great one. It's a 35 pack of screwdrivers. We can sell them to you for a dollar 80. I thought, well, that sounds cheap enough. Turns out they were made out of some sort of mix of cardboard and aluminum foil. If you put them within 10 feet of a screw, the heads would break off. So I'm just telling you, they weren't real secure. So there's your Chinese for you. And Mike's homestead said jelly of the month. Yes. Jelly of the month. All right. So what do we got here? All right. First off this week in the

nail bag, uh, let me, I got these out of order. So the first one was from a conversation over on Telegram and James was talking about putting together five gallon personal hygiene buckets that you could also maybe share with folks who are having a hard time or in, you know, kind of a collapse or not even a collapse, but after a disaster scenario. kind of a collapse or not even a collapse, but after a disaster scenario. And the topic came up of chewable aspirin for folks who, you know, maybe have heart problems in their family or can't swallow pills. Someone says chewable aspirin in the trauma situation, if you can't swallow pills, for instance. Somebody else, I believe it was Jeff said, where do we purchase adult chewable aspirin in North America? I haven't seen them in years. Brian Alexovich mentioned, could you just use more of the children's ones, right? The adult dose on the bottle in Sharpies, figure out how many grams you need to equal the adult dose. Now I'm not sure about that for sure, but I think that would work. Someone else mentioned, we have a couple of family members

that don't like swallowing pills. And then somebody from Australia said there is one called Dispirin, which is a direct chewable tablet. So I did some digging and I found out, excuse me, aspirin totally still makes quick chews. 30 tablets, orange flavored, 81 milligrams, which is the type of thing you give to somebody if they're having a heart attack or if they just want to be on a home use blood thinner. Just in case you can pick them up in Canada, you can pick them up in the US. They're on Amazon. The whole work. So are chewable or dissolvable aspirin still a thing? Yes.

Yes, they are. There you are. All right. This next one was great. This came from a locksmith. Now I didn't, I didn't have the permission to share or to share their name. So I didn't, I forgot to send the email back. So I'm not going to give you their name. However, I want to shout them out because what I love is when folks reach out to me and say, Hey Tim, you're wrong. And what I mean by that is

they're like, you know what? I'd like to inform you on something that you said that I think maybe could be done in a different way or there's better options. And I appreciate that because I'm only one person. I'm only, I can only base what I know off of my own personal experience. And if you've heard me talk much in the past, I really enjoy smart keys by quick set. And what they are is ways to quickly rekey a lock. The problem is they're not really expensive and they're not super reliable, but for me, it was really the only option I knew about. So this gentleman said, and he said, I just want to let you know, Tim, I disagree with you and not in a mean way by any means, but he said, as a trading

locksmith, I can tell you smart key isn't very durable. For residential environments, there are much better options. For padlocks, American Lock or PacLock, PAC Lock, are both really good brands. I love hearing from folks, boots on the ground guys who work in the fields that can say, hey, here's a great recommendation. And then I will pass it along to you guys. Because again, a lot of the stuff that I used to use is based on 10, 15 years ago at the hardware store and what I use in property management today. They offer the also pack lock and American lock offer the ability to use your house key for the key and knob cylinders in padlocks, which I like. Slodge or slage or sledge or whatever make decent products. And for the consumer market, they said might be the best value of what's available at the big box stores. I like this.

Local locksmith shops may also sell other brands that are higher quality. I sell US can, which is also can be changed to different keyways, including slage, primus or medico. US can even has a restricted keyway that forces you to get your key sourced at a locksmith and not a kiosk. Now, this was, the last couple of pieces were really great information. They said, hey, I'd really like to suggest an option for rental properties, and that's electronic keypads. We also do these at the daycare, or at least at the one in Lloyd right now. And he said, the one that I like that you can pick up at big box stores is the Slosh BE as in Bravo Echo 365. And he said, that's one of the best ones. You could also couple that with a

passage function lever or knob so tenants wouldn't get locked out. Yeah, nothing wrong with that at all. And for lubrication, here we go. This is a good one. I recommend Triflow, Houdini, or Super Lube. As WD-40 is a no-go, it attracts dust, as you probably know. And yep, I've heard that from a lot of folks, and it does. It's just a collector of junk. So if you're looking for a good lock lubrication, if you're looking for a good personal lube, oh, did you just say that, Tim? You know what I meant, folks. Man, get your mind out of the gutter if you're looking for a good lube for your lock. Triflow, Houdini, or Super Lube. So there you go. I love feedback like that. Thank you very, very much for sharing. Over at the comments here, Chris Dixon says, other than Chinesium, I also enjoy Unobtainium for stuff you can't find.

unobtainium for stuff you can't find. Yep. And George Snorri, who took over from Art Bell on the Coast to Coast AM radio show, his intro, he uses the word unobtainium and I always appreciate that. All right. Next, this was Dave. This was feedback from last week's episode. And he said, Hey, I'm just listening to the podcast while working on the wood chipper. That sounds rather ominous. He said, I'm really glad you covered the doomer versus prepper conundrum. He said, because we right now live in the safest, most comfortable, secure, and leisurely lives that have ever existed on planet earth. Look at the actual statistics, leisurely lives that have ever existed on planet earth. Look at the actual statistics, not at the news. All the fear and the drama is about people making money. You have the time and the bandwidth to worry about things because things are so great and we have so much free time. I do not disagree disagree whatsoever. And for those who don't know the Doomer term, go back to the 1980s and 90s.

That was a lot of folks that were like, hey, I'm going to go live in the woods because the world's going to hell in a handbasket and it's getting there quick. It was basically pessimistic preppers before the term prepper even existed. So if you're wondering what is that? Yes, I would definitely call myself an optimistic prepper. I think there's nothing wrong with that. We should focus on solutions, not on the doom and or gloom. All right. Finally, this piece of feedback in the community nail bag come from a guy named Jimmy Slim on YouTube. I love that name. I, uh, there was a bully in high school in elementary school called Jimmy Sims. So it reminds me of that, but Jimmy Slim, they wanted to know why are MREs so expensive?

And if you're wondering just how expensive MREs are, well, I don't know in the US at the moment, if anybody knows, throw it in the comments. But in Canada, most recently I paid 40 bucks a meal for MREs. They're not even worth it at that price, but I picked some up as a novelty so we could make some videos on them. But holy cow, 40 bucks a meal is getting astronomical. So I did find this article, just so everybody knows, and it's by survivalsullivan.com. And it answers the question, why are MREs so darned expensive? Well, question and answer, MREs are always sold in cases of 12 or more, which generally costs between 60 and 180 bucks. Yeah, we know that. That's fine. So further down here, basically, they get into them. Where can I get cheap MREs? Well, you can buy the civilian

brands on Amazon. We know that. However, this says here you can often get military surplus MREs for $60 to $80 for a pack of 12. Meanwhile, a similar 12 pack from companies like Ozark Outdoors, XMRE Blue will cost a lot more, far more or less for the same food in a more colorful package. Even at $5 for a meal doesn't sound too bad. Compare the price of eating at a restaurant. It's important to consider the bigger picture. If you're building up a stockpile of food, you're going to need to buy more than a few meals to sustain yourself. They said, if you do the math, a month's worth of $5 meals for a single person could be $450. Well, guess what? In Canada, it's going to be a hell of a lot more than that. There you are. Hey, Homestead Twins, great to see you

in here. He said, hey, Tim, everyone was doing a live stream at the same time, just catching yours now. Great to see you in here. Absolutely appreciate it. I know I've noticed that 6 p.m. Mountain Time has gotten to be a kind of a busy time, and I don't really know necessarily what to do about that, but there's more than enough time for everybody to catch replays. It's great to see you. Homestead twins. Awesome. And Lone Canadian, my good, closest prepping neighbor that I know of said, well, shit, I thought I was a prepper. Now I think I might be a doomer. So yes, MRAs are expensive. Absolutely. And yeah, so Lone Canadian said he just bought two cases at

150 a case dude that's a good price if that's the case how many cases just in case yeah that's a really good price all right and maybe it's just because the ones i get have gone through so many hands it's like a drug dealer who you know buys it in a kilo and then breaks it down into ounces and then breaks it down into grams then breaks it down into ounces and then breaks it down into grams, then breaks it down into joints. Did you say that? Yeah, I did. Anyway. All right. Final segment of the evening. And that is the creator spotlight. And this is one near and dear to my heart, I guess you would say. So this is a YouTuber by the name of Paul Harrell or Harold, depending on how you pronounce it. Paul Harrell, I believe it is. He is the very first YouTuber that I got into when I first started watching YouTube probably seven years ago. And it was, it was when I really started moving away from watching regular television and I would just watch informative and entertaining folks on YouTube.

And at some point, I guess that's when I decided I wanted to be a 40 year old YouTuber as well. So anyhow, Paul is probably one of the best gun channels, the most, I don't know, just average kind of real world stuff. Paul's actually been involved in a couple of lethal force incidences in his life. He is a gun expert. The dude can shoot anything. So I wanted to shout him out because unfortunately, a few months ago, Paul was diagnosed with cancer and the diagnosis wasn't good then. And it's really not good now. And he was at around 700,000 subscribers a couple of months ago and he was, uh, what, anyway, just an awesome guy. He he's, he's an interesting dude. He's funny. He's dry. He's honest. He tells you how it is. And anyway, uh, when he came back and said it's

a terminal diagnosis, he's pretty much done making videos now. His brother's taking the channel over to keep it going in his memory. Anyway, a bunch of other gun tubers out there decided to take it upon themselves to spread the word that Paul was not doing so well. And they said, we would love to get him up to a million subscribers. And this is the picture here with his gold play button. That is a perfect rendition of what Paul's facial features normally look like. Rarely smiles, always unimpressed and a great dude all around. And I just wanted to take this two minute segment of the creator spotlight to focus on him because in some weird

way, he's probably a bit of an inspiration for why I'm a little bit of what I'm doing now, probably a bit of an inspiration for why I'm a little bit of what I'm doing now, but how many people he has helped teach them the basics and the advanced of guns over the years. And, uh, he's not long for this world. So if you're interested in seeing a ton of really good gun content that isn't flashy, that doesn't, um, involve blowing up a ton of vehicles, but it does involve shooting a whole bunch of meat targets. Give Paul a follow guys, because his stuff is absolutely awesome. His link is in the description below. So one more quick throw back over to the community. Lone Canadian says, if you want a couple of cases, let me know. I think there may be some available at that price. Yes. Lone Canadian,

if you can get me two cases, let me know and I will get you the cash. I would love it. That is a really good price. And since Alice and I have been doing the Wheel of MREs and it has been a really good series so far, we're going to keep going. But I would love to have some of that price. Thank you, brother. See, community folks, we're not in a friendship recession at the workshop. Now, are we? No, we're not. We are not in the poverty mindset. We are in the abundance mindset. We had a really good run in with the poverty mindset today with people who are really close to us. And it came to the point where it's time to cut them off. But that doesn't mean that we don't have family. We don't have community. We aren't in, we are not going to ever be in the poverty mindset. We are going to embrace community.

We're going to build absolutely everything we can. We're going to focus on solutions. And guys, what a great episode. Thank you. These episodes keep getting just a little bit longer, but I love putting them together for you. So what do we got coming up this week? Well, number one, we have tomorrow night, the post-apocalyptic book club.

We're doing chapter seven through nine on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrug. It's going to be a good one. I know Nate will be in there. We may see Byron and John and a few others, maybe. If you want to be part of the live stream, come on and talk with us live. Join us over in the telegram group and I will get you the invite link, or you can just join us live on the channel tomorrow evening, six o'clock mountain time, like always. And Sunday evening, since she got so rudely interrupted earlier this week, yes, no, I guess it was last week. Now, Mrs. Toolman, Becky is going to be my guest on Sunday evening. And we are going to give you guys a, I guess, a catch up. We're going to sit

down. She hasn't been on the show for a full episode in a few months because we've been so busy. So we're going to fill you in on what we've been going on, what we've been doing, what she's been doing, our empire building. And if you have questions for her, bring them along because she will answer them for you. And beyond that folks, yeah, what a great episode. I can't wait to see you tomorrow evening. I can't wait to see you Sunday evening. We have a long weekend here because Monday is family day. What is that? I'm not sure it's another made up government holiday, but I can think of worse things to celebrate than your family. Hey, so this weekend, guys, get out there and make the world exactly what you want it to be.

Build yourself the community you want. Build yourself the freedom, the self-reliance you want. And hey, make sure you make time for your family too, because that is the original community now, isn't it? So with that, folks, as always, stay happy, stay healthy, and have a great week.