Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
EXIT Podcast Episode 17: Urban Preparedness
594 Plays3 years ago
Brice is a SOF veteran, an EXIT member, and founder of Antifragile Studies Group, a personal security consultancy. His organization helps individuals navigate dangerous urban environments, secure their homes, and prepare for increased volatility and unreliability in state services and the global supply chain.
We discuss:
- Why there's no escaping urban living or global supply chain dysfunction
- How individuals can stay safe and even thrive as their environment grows more chaotic
- What and who you need to know to survive in a declining urban center
- Skill development for civilians, in order of priority
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Bryce and Anti-Fragility
00:00:17
Speaker
Welcome to the exit podcast.
00:00:18
Speaker
Dr. Bennett.
00:00:19
Speaker
I'm joined here by Bryce.
00:00:21
Speaker
He's a soft veteran and founder of anti-fragile studies group, a security consulting business.
00:00:26
Speaker
Most prepper types are very focused on one particular type of collapse outcome where we all bug out into the woods.
00:00:33
Speaker
We grow turnips, but Bryce has a very different vision.
00:00:37
Speaker
Can you tell us a little bit about what you see going forward?
Immediate vs. Hypothetical Security Threats
00:00:42
Speaker
Yeah, thanks.
00:00:43
Speaker
So a lot of the Prepper community is kind of focused on bugging out, right, this idea that you're going to
00:00:49
Speaker
move out to your rural retreat and subsist off the land or live in this, you know, sort of ranch or paradise posts, you know, collapse, something along those lines.
00:00:59
Speaker
But my focus is on a little bit more of the here and now, right, where there are a large number of people in these urban and suburban areas that are experiencing not just some future hypothetical, you know, situation, but actual degrading security situations in their everyday life currently, right?
Understanding Anti-Fragility: Concepts and Examples
00:01:18
Speaker
So you can kind of see the trajectory that that's on and where you might expect that to lead.
00:01:24
Speaker
It's not a stretch to say that you ought to prepare yourself for that in a somewhat immediate sense, as opposed to kind of a longer term, hey, this thing might happen, but it's more of a contingency.
00:01:38
Speaker
And the name of the group is Anti-Fragile Studies Group.
00:01:40
Speaker
So can you explain the concept of anti-fragility and how it applies to this concept?
00:01:44
Speaker
Yeah, so that's from, I believe that Nassim Nicholas Taleb, right?
00:01:48
Speaker
He's kind of a modern philosopher.
00:01:49
Speaker
He has this collection of works called inserto and anti-fragile is one of the books in that works.
00:01:55
Speaker
And he brings out this concept of anti-fragile as being a word that we didn't really, or a concept that we didn't really have a word for previously.
00:02:04
Speaker
Right.
00:02:05
Speaker
Um, so we have
00:02:06
Speaker
fragile and we have kind of robust or resilient.
00:02:10
Speaker
And he terms this other understanding that we have, but didn't have a word for is anti fragile.
00:02:15
Speaker
So fragile would be a system that is weak and not very.
00:02:23
Speaker
It's kind of prone to collapse in chaotic situations or disorderly situations.
00:02:26
Speaker
Right.
00:02:27
Speaker
So usually highly optimized, but over optimized.
00:02:31
Speaker
Right.
00:02:31
Speaker
So, you know,
00:02:34
Speaker
An example would be if you had filled up your daily schedule to the point where you can't be even a couple minutes off or you're going to be late to everything and it's going to set you back considerably.
00:02:44
Speaker
That would be fragility.
00:02:46
Speaker
Or living in such a way where you have zero backup plans for anything.
00:02:52
Speaker
You don't have to spend money on having extra food stored away and that sort of thing or spend energy on it.
00:02:59
Speaker
But if the power goes out or the grocery store is not there, then you're not eating, right?
00:03:06
Speaker
Or you don't have heat.
00:03:07
Speaker
So it's a fragile system.
00:03:10
Speaker
And then robust or resilient is this idea of kind of having redundancies in that, right?
00:03:14
Speaker
So basically things will stay the same in a chaotic or orderly environment where
00:03:20
Speaker
you, you know, maybe your power goes out, but you flip your backup generator on that sort of thing.
00:03:25
Speaker
Right.
00:03:25
Speaker
And I think that's where a lot of the preparedness community sits on terms of what they're focused on is like, hey, I just want to keep things going roughly as they are.
00:03:33
Speaker
Keep my
Experiences in Security-Compromised Environments
00:03:34
Speaker
lifestyle, you know, kind of intact.
00:03:37
Speaker
Right.
00:03:38
Speaker
Or, you know, do fairly well in maybe a different location if things go bad here.
00:03:45
Speaker
But anti-fragile is the, I think he terms it things that gain from disorder, right?
00:03:50
Speaker
Right.
00:03:51
Speaker
So it's instead of, you know, collapsing or just doing the same, you're actually doing better when things become chaotic, right?
00:03:58
Speaker
And that is a idea that I understood prior to him, you know, prior to reading his book, right?
00:04:06
Speaker
and hearing him co-ing that term, but didn't really know how to express it, right?
00:04:11
Speaker
So you could see this in places that are collapsing, where there are people that are seeing opportunity and taking advantage of it, right?
00:04:17
Speaker
You know, sometimes in good and bad ways,
Replacing State Functions: Timing and Challenges
00:04:19
Speaker
but.
00:04:19
Speaker
Yeah, can you give us examples of, so you're a Green Beret, you've spent time in,
00:04:25
Speaker
disordered, sort of security compromised environments.
00:04:29
Speaker
Who do you see that was anti-fragile in those situations?
00:04:33
Speaker
Who was benefiting from disorder?
00:04:35
Speaker
And maybe, you know, there's maybe obvious cases like criminals, but did you find instances where people were responding to disorder in positive ways, constructive ways, and also sort of benefiting from the volatility?
00:04:50
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:04:51
Speaker
Right.
00:04:51
Speaker
So
00:04:52
Speaker
And it definitely depends on the situation, but an example would be providing security, right?
00:04:58
Speaker
So that's usually the primary concern when things collapse, right?
00:05:02
Speaker
Is that people need security provided for them, especially the people that can't, right?
00:05:08
Speaker
So if you are able to provide security and bring people kind of under that blanket, right, you can actually become, you know, the sort of de facto authority in that time, right?
00:05:22
Speaker
And that's what happens in places where a government collapses is you have, you know, quote unquote warlords that pop up.
00:05:29
Speaker
Now, some of those are very bad people.
00:05:30
Speaker
Some of them are okay.
00:05:32
Speaker
People are more okay.
00:05:33
Speaker
Right.
00:05:33
Speaker
Um, but the,
00:05:37
Speaker
That is an example of somebody that in the face of a state collapse is actually doing better than they probably were before.
00:05:44
Speaker
Some of these people, maybe they were somewhat prominent in society or, you know, in their own kind of villages or tribal groups, you know, depending on where you're at.
00:05:52
Speaker
But their status is improving based off of the, you know, decline of the central authority, if you will.
00:05:59
Speaker
Right.
00:06:00
Speaker
Another example might be logistics.
00:06:03
Speaker
When things start collapsing and you maybe don't have the supply chains, the highly optimized supply chains that you previously had, there are people that will start to create alternate routes and alternate supply lines to compensate for that.
00:06:19
Speaker
Those people are going to be benefiting from that disorder.
00:06:22
Speaker
Those people are actually improving their position based off of things having declined.
00:06:27
Speaker
Yeah, and sort of the
00:06:30
Speaker
The task of replacing state capacity is a very interesting task, not least because the state still wants to perform those functions.
00:06:41
Speaker
It's still very important to the state that it be in charge of those functions.
00:06:45
Speaker
And so there's maybe some timing that has to be done where you sort of...
00:06:53
Speaker
You have to get the timing right because if you jump into sort of providing those services while the state's still trying to provide them, then maybe you get yourself into a little trouble or a lot of trouble.
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, you get whacked real quick if you're doing that sort of thing too early.
00:07:09
Speaker
Right, right.
00:07:10
Speaker
How...
00:07:12
Speaker
I mean, this is sort of maybe ethereal or theoretical, but like, how do you look, how do you view that as far as like, how do I know when it's time to start actually making moves versus just sort of keeping my powder dry?
00:07:25
Speaker
It's situationally dependent is what I'd say.
00:07:27
Speaker
And I think that it,
00:07:30
Speaker
comes in degrees, right?
00:07:31
Speaker
So we use this language in special operations to describe different environments, right?
00:07:39
Speaker
Where we'll term them as being permissive or semi-permissive or non-permissive, right?
00:07:44
Speaker
And depending on what environment you're operating in, you kind of take a different stature, right?
00:07:50
Speaker
And a different approach to what you're doing.
00:07:51
Speaker
So if you're in a permissive environment,
00:07:53
Speaker
which is what most of us have lived in for most of our lives in the United States, right?
00:07:58
Speaker
Security is, for the most part, not necessarily provided for you, but you're under a security blanket of some sort, right?
00:08:05
Speaker
Of where you're maybe in a low, like low or very little crime area, and you don't have a lot of threats, you know, immediately against you.
00:08:12
Speaker
The, you know, country you're in is friendly to you.
00:08:15
Speaker
You have, you know, strong diplomatic relations, right?
00:08:19
Speaker
It's an allied country, let's say, you know, that's sort of a permissive environment, whereas semi permissive environment is, you know, maybe in the context of, you know, what the sort of work we do going into, you know, foreign countries, maybe the state government that we're working with is on our side, but there are insurgent groups there, or kind of gang groups, something like that, right?
00:08:42
Speaker
That
00:08:43
Speaker
you know, is semi permissive in that you may have to provide your own security some of the time.
00:08:50
Speaker
Right.
00:08:51
Speaker
Um, and you, you sort of have to work under the assumption that you need to all of the time, right.
00:08:55
Speaker
Because you don't know when that some of the time is.
00:08:57
Speaker
Um, and then of course you get into non-permissive and that's more of like being in a combat zone, right.
00:09:02
Speaker
Where, uh, yeah, you're actually in the fight on a regular basis.
00:09:06
Speaker
Right.
00:09:07
Speaker
Um, so
00:09:09
Speaker
In terms of when you need to start providing your own security and your own, you know, your own support and backup that way, I'd say we're starting to get to that that semi permissive environment, especially in some U.S. cities, right, where the security situation is declining to the point where you can't be assured that.
Law Enforcement and Urban Security Challenges
00:09:32
Speaker
The police are going to come per se or that they're going to come fast enough or that there's enough of a deterrent generally that bad actors aren't going to come after you.
00:09:41
Speaker
Right.
00:09:42
Speaker
So if you're living in one of those places, you know, you may already be in that situation where de facto the responsibility of providing your own security is on you.
00:09:54
Speaker
Yeah, and I wanted to address also this topic of anarcho-tyranny, I guess is the best word for it, where I think some would argue that in some of these cases where you are...
00:10:06
Speaker
you're vulnerable to criminality or riot, that often not only will the police maybe not come to your aid, but they may actually sort of selectively enforce the laws to prevent you from defending yourself.
00:10:19
Speaker
Do you think that that's, so I know that you live in an area where that topic has been discussed quite a bit, and I wanted to get your take on whether you think that's true or whether you think it's overblown.
00:10:31
Speaker
It's true to a degree, right?
00:10:34
Speaker
And it's going to be true
00:10:36
Speaker
just based off of capacity for police response, if nothing else, right?
00:10:40
Speaker
In that, in, you know, peak times, they don't actually have the resources to respond to every threat that's happening, right?
00:10:47
Speaker
If you look at the, you know, biggest riots from, you know, last year, summer of 2020, they lost control of a lot of places.
00:10:57
Speaker
They couldn't enforce it in their own backyard, right?
00:11:01
Speaker
But to the degree that, I think you're asking, you know,
00:11:04
Speaker
Is there some intent there sometimes?
00:11:07
Speaker
And I don't think yet so much, right?
00:11:10
Speaker
A lot of the kind of historical police force that's still there, I think are still very demoralized, but somewhat believe in trying to provide security and justice, right?
00:11:23
Speaker
But more and more, a lot of the guys that are true believers that way are, I think, leaving the force and the nature that might be changing.
00:11:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:33
Speaker
Well, this is a good opportunity to cut to Clay Martin's book, Concrete Jungle.
00:11:39
Speaker
It's gaining pretty broad appeal among prepper types.
00:11:42
Speaker
And his take on the urban environment is basically that your goal should be to get out as quietly and efficiently as possible.
00:11:49
Speaker
And maybe that's because he's addressing...
00:11:52
Speaker
a more existential crisis for that?
00:11:55
Speaker
Because he's talking about like, there's not food, et cetera.
00:11:58
Speaker
But what do you make of that take?
00:12:00
Speaker
And how does maybe your approach to the urban security environment differ?
00:12:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's more of a question of timing, right?
00:12:07
Speaker
And the timing that he's talking about is when things are truly getting that bad, right?
00:12:12
Speaker
A little bit what I'm talking about is
00:12:15
Speaker
where things sit in the, what I describe as the lulls between those bad events, right?
00:12:20
Speaker
So I'd say right now in this whole thing, we're in a bit of a lull, right?
00:12:25
Speaker
When you spent time in these sorts of environments, you find yourself in them from time to time where, hey, I was really busy doing, you know, work, going out and, you know, going on patrols on a regular basis.
00:12:37
Speaker
And right now my opponents don't seem to be doing much.
00:12:40
Speaker
I'm not doing very much.
00:12:41
Speaker
And then it picks back up again, right?
00:12:46
Speaker
But in this current period, you still have to worry right now about the increase in homicides, in murders in some of these areas, in property crimes and burglaries.
00:13:01
Speaker
And pretty much every category of crime is on the up and on a trajectory that it's going to continue
Historical Parallels and Current Urban Decline
00:13:08
Speaker
to be on the up.
00:13:08
Speaker
So when it comes to Clay's approach of bugging out, I think it's really just a question of
00:13:16
Speaker
When is the value of staying in the place that you're at no longer worth the cost of staying there?
00:13:25
Speaker
Right.
00:13:25
Speaker
So you can't continue to pay that cost.
00:13:27
Speaker
So, you know, it may be that you are
00:13:31
Speaker
at home with your family and you have a job that you still need to work in a city and you can't really transfer it elsewhere right now.
00:13:39
Speaker
And you're going to continue working there until the cost of working there in terms of security threats gets so high that you have to leave.
00:13:48
Speaker
Right.
00:13:49
Speaker
And that's the real basic relationship there.
00:13:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:54
Speaker
So.
00:13:56
Speaker
in terms of just sort of dealing with rising criminality, are there historical or overseas situations that you look to for inspiration, maybe it's the wrong word, but guidance as far as like what you see coming.
00:14:12
Speaker
I think of, I think of Venezuela.
00:14:14
Speaker
I think of the Balkans, the drug war in Mexico, the current state of Brazil.
00:14:20
Speaker
And those are maybe, maybe, um,
00:14:24
Speaker
very different degrees and depth of crisis.
00:14:29
Speaker
Like, for example, the Balkans was a war.
00:14:31
Speaker
It was sort of an ethnic conflict that was very explosive and there was issues with hunger.
00:14:37
Speaker
And then Venezuela maybe is more of sort of a political crisis, but pretty extreme political crisis.
00:14:42
Speaker
And then a place like Brazil where it's just sort of a low hum of violence all the time.
00:14:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's a great question.
00:14:52
Speaker
I see elements of a lot of those different historical conflicts in our current situation, right?
00:14:58
Speaker
And it's a little bit that
00:15:01
Speaker
kind of saying that history doesn't necessarily repeat but it rhymes right or or it permutates if you will we're going to have something that's maybe similar in some regards you know if things keep playing out the way they are similar in some regards to some of those past situations um but with a bit of an american twist on it if you will um what it's looking like right now is you know part
00:15:27
Speaker
part political Venezuela crisis, right?
00:15:31
Speaker
Maybe ethnic in some areas, right?
00:15:34
Speaker
The country has been purposely or otherwise divided along those lines, right?
00:15:39
Speaker
Or tried to have been.
00:15:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:43
Speaker
You know, depending on the US is a big country, right?
00:15:47
Speaker
Depending on the state and locale that you're in, you know, it may be very different, right?
00:15:51
Speaker
It's very different right now, just driving through, you know, red and blue parts of, you know, different parts of the country.
00:15:59
Speaker
I spent the weekend in between kind of Washington and Oregon.
00:16:03
Speaker
And in the area of Washington that, you know, I spend a good deal of my time in, the rest areas on the freeway are closed right now because the state won't, doesn't have the manpower to man them.
00:16:18
Speaker
And the people
Private Security and Urban Fragmentation
00:16:22
Speaker
that are frequenting them are a lot of heavy drug users that have created a lot of problems at them.
00:16:26
Speaker
So if you drive along the interstate in parts of the Seattle area, for instance,
00:16:32
Speaker
you won't find a restroom that you can actually go to.
00:16:34
Speaker
But if you get outside of it to some of the rural areas, right, they're still open, they're clean, they're nice, they're fully functioning parts of society.
00:16:42
Speaker
Yeah, right.
00:16:44
Speaker
It's easy to miss that when it's slowly happening around you.
00:16:49
Speaker
But that is at a fundamental level, a government service that's no longer being provided anymore in an area because of, you know, a combination of
00:17:00
Speaker
the government's own policies and the degrading security situation there.
00:17:04
Speaker
Right.
00:17:05
Speaker
And that's in large part political, I think, based off of the policies that are being pushed in those areas, you get predictable outcomes with some of these things.
00:17:15
Speaker
So, you know, that's, that's the way it's going to go in terms of, you know, historical precedent for some of this stuff, I'd lean a little bit on my own experience, right.
00:17:24
Speaker
And, you know, in Afghanistan, where
00:17:31
Speaker
I had this experience where we'd go into villages to do what we call KLEs, key leader engagements.
00:17:39
Speaker
So it's where we'd go talk to village elders and part of our area of operations basically, and try and bring them into the fold, right?
00:17:47
Speaker
And oftentimes we'd offer them all sorts of different things, right?
00:17:52
Speaker
okay, I have humanitarian assistance.
00:17:53
Speaker
I've got food.
00:17:55
Speaker
I can dig you a well.
00:17:56
Speaker
We can bring in some medical support if you want.
00:17:59
Speaker
We can get a school going for you.
00:18:01
Speaker
We'll even help you build a little medical clinic, right?
00:18:04
Speaker
And they would reject all that, right?
00:18:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:08
Speaker
Oftentimes.
00:18:10
Speaker
If it was a place that was real close to us that was definitely within our own kind of sphere of influence and security bubble, if you will,
00:18:17
Speaker
oftentimes people would be a bit more accepting of it, but if it was a place that was at all in kind of the more Taliban end of things or where they, they controlled, you know, movement of people in and out of that place, um, complete rejection.
00:18:32
Speaker
Right.
00:18:32
Speaker
And they'd say, you know, well, that's all nice, but can you provide security for us?
00:18:38
Speaker
Right.
00:18:39
Speaker
Right.
00:18:39
Speaker
Um, if you, if you can't protect us from the Taliban, I don't want any of that.
00:18:42
Speaker
Cause we're going to get retribution from them.
00:18:45
Speaker
So, um, you know,
00:18:48
Speaker
In our own situation right now, what I think is, you know, what I see happening next, I think, is that the security vacuums that are forming in some of these places are going to get filled one way or another, right?
00:19:04
Speaker
If the police forces are being degraded and the security situation based off of policies is also declining, right?
00:19:11
Speaker
You're not arresting criminals anymore.
00:19:13
Speaker
You're not.
00:19:14
Speaker
you know, policing up your own city, you're just letting the stuff proliferate, right?
00:19:18
Speaker
Well, there's going to be a reaction of some sort.
00:19:22
Speaker
And it's right now looking like a combination of, you know, private security in the wealthier areas, right?
00:19:27
Speaker
People that can actually pay for it.
00:19:28
Speaker
And then, you know, more street gangs and that sort of thing in the places that can't, right?
00:19:35
Speaker
So people end up filling that vacuum in the absence of the state being there to do it.
00:19:40
Speaker
And what I'm advocating for a little bit is
00:19:43
Speaker
people need to take that responsibility, you know, at least for their own person and their own home on themselves.
00:19:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:52
Speaker
And I wanted to ask you about like the, the situation with essentially petty theft being legalized in San Francisco.
00:20:02
Speaker
I had occasion to visit there a couple of years ago, and this was before sort of the late unpleasantness with with the riots and everything and COVID and all.
00:20:13
Speaker
And it was like a science fiction dystopia, like, because you had the, you had the, the, the tech influence and lots of Teslas and lots of like, it just looked like very futuristic.
00:20:27
Speaker
And then as you looked closer, like there was, there was just needles and poop everywhere.
00:20:32
Speaker
And, and I, I,
00:20:36
Speaker
Now that things have... I haven't been there since this has happened, but now it's essentially petty theft is legal almost across the board in that area.
00:20:44
Speaker
And I wonder... It sounds like you're saying that that's not going to...
00:20:52
Speaker
continue just because it won't be tolerated and eventually there will be a response to that.
00:20:58
Speaker
But do you think that there's a place to like sort of, if you're in an urban environment, you're not going to be like growing your own food, but is there a place to sort of prepare for disruption in, in access to basic goods on the basis of like people just stop providing it to that area because it's too dangerous?
00:21:17
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's a good question.
00:21:19
Speaker
I think it will continue to degrade, right?
00:21:21
Speaker
Like the correction isn't necessarily things going back to normal, right?
00:21:26
Speaker
It's that if you look at the way that places start to form when these sorts of concerns crop up is you'll have very wealthy areas, right?
00:21:39
Speaker
You'll have large mansions surrounded by favelas, right?
00:21:42
Speaker
You'll have...
00:21:45
Speaker
you'll have large compounds with, you know, like mud huts surrounding them with very poor people around them that can can hardly can hardly eat.
00:21:53
Speaker
So society will break into these, you know, different vectors that way, where, um, you know, I don't want to say that have have some have nots, but it sort of ends up being that a little bit, right.
00:22:07
Speaker
Um, that seems to be happening in your San Francisco example, for instance, you have people driving around and tell us and
00:22:14
Speaker
They probably have, you know, supply chains to some degree that are highly tech oriented that are working for them, right?
00:22:24
Speaker
They're going to order off a Grubhub and Amazon or whatever, you know, online service they use and have that stuff delivered to their home, right?
00:22:33
Speaker
They just get all their meals on the Google campus or whatever.
00:22:35
Speaker
A lot of those tech companies just feed everybody, you know, so you kind of, you don't have to go to the grocery store.
00:22:40
Speaker
Yeah, so what ends up happening is that people are living in different worlds, basically, right?
00:22:46
Speaker
And they cross paths on the street or in, you know, kind of places that they might not expect to some of the time.
00:22:56
Speaker
And that's where you get, you know, unexpected encounters, right?
00:22:59
Speaker
That's why it's allowed to go on to a degree, though.
00:23:02
Speaker
in that a lot of the people that are in these areas don't actually feel the cost of this stuff happening, right?
00:23:09
Speaker
They can traverse through the urban environment and the city, even with it declining without it really changing their daily life that much for the most part.
00:23:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:22
Speaker
So it's,
00:23:25
Speaker
Even in that environment, though, that assumes that there is some service or some group providing logistical support, security, things like that for you.
00:23:36
Speaker
And you become very, very fragile in that sort of environment where if you are living in a small apartment in the city and your entire plan for
00:23:51
Speaker
being fed and providing for yourself and protecting yourself is, you know, these other services that
00:23:58
Speaker
might also go down at any given time, right?
00:24:01
Speaker
You're putting yourself in a pretty, pretty rough spot, right?
00:24:04
Speaker
To where, you know, yes, you want to get out before that happens.
00:24:08
Speaker
So if you see things starting to go bad, right, which they kind of could in any moment, you know, you want to get out early.
00:24:16
Speaker
The reality, though, is that a lot of those people are going to be stuck in that environment, should things switch for the worse, right?
00:24:24
Speaker
And
00:24:25
Speaker
given the recent track record we're on, I hope I'm wrong on this, but it looks like that's probably going to happen again at some point.
00:24:32
Speaker
I don't know when, I don't know how exactly, you know, we've got elections coming up again, midterms next year, right?
00:24:38
Speaker
I think election day is tomorrow, right?
00:24:40
Speaker
For when this airs.
00:24:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:45
Speaker
So those sorts of things are flashpoints, right?
00:24:47
Speaker
There are going to be flashpoints or shock events that come up.
00:24:50
Speaker
And if you have put yourself in a very fragile and precarious situation in a, you know, urban or suburban environment where you don't have any support or, you know, redundancy in your own life, you're gonna fare the worst if things actually do turn bad.
Essential Survival Skills for Urban Environments
00:25:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:10
Speaker
So that's a good opportunity to ask this, which is what skills is it worth a civilian learning for an urban decline or collapse situation?
00:25:22
Speaker
We've discussed getting some like basic first aid training.
00:25:26
Speaker
I've definitely heard from other people who kind of say like,
00:25:29
Speaker
You know, you're not going to turn yourself into Rambo.
00:25:32
Speaker
So like, don't overemphasize the sort of tactical component of, of preparedness.
00:25:37
Speaker
But yeah, what do you recommend as far as what's, what's the best priority?
00:25:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:42
Speaker
Medical is one of the things that you're going to use most.
00:25:44
Speaker
Right.
00:25:45
Speaker
And it's one of the most catastrophic things.
00:25:47
Speaker
Getting some trauma first aid training is critical in my opinion.
00:25:51
Speaker
Right.
00:25:51
Speaker
Right.
00:25:52
Speaker
That's one of those services, you know, I talk a lot about security or I have so far, but you can just as easily say that about EMS not showing up, right.
00:26:02
Speaker
Or, you know, uh, paramedics in that if their response times are delayed, which is happening right now, right.
00:26:09
Speaker
I have associates that have recently left the local fire departments over vaccine mandates and things like that.
00:26:16
Speaker
And they're saying, Hey, there are brownouts on some of our fire trucks right now because we don't have enough people to staff them.
00:26:22
Speaker
that results then in a longer response time for, you know, that first aid response that, that, that call that you make to 911, when you cut yourself open with the skill saw.
00:26:33
Speaker
Right.
00:26:34
Speaker
And in, in that sort of, sort of a situation, if you don't know how to slap a tourniquet on your leg or put a pressure dress and whatever the appropriate, uh, action is for that, that particular wound, uh,
00:26:46
Speaker
you're gonna bleed out and die before they even get there in the current environment, right?
00:26:50
Speaker
Not much different from when you are now suddenly doing things that you're not used to doing, right?
00:26:56
Speaker
You're on the move and you have to jump a fence and you open a big old wound in your arm or something like that.
00:27:04
Speaker
Trauma first aid will, it'll keep you alive, right?
00:27:08
Speaker
If you take something like a TCCC class, which is what became very popular or standard in the military,
00:27:15
Speaker
especially later on in the GWAT, right?
00:27:17
Speaker
So the trauma first aid that we, you know, started teaching in SAF and started following somewhat religiously has saved a ton of lives, right?
00:27:27
Speaker
And can save what we kind of call preventable deaths, right?
00:27:30
Speaker
There's some things that,
00:27:33
Speaker
yeah, that injury is catastrophic.
00:27:35
Speaker
It's just the way it is, right?
00:27:37
Speaker
But there's a lot of stuff that you can keep somebody alive long enough to get them to that next level of care to where they're going to live, right?
00:27:44
Speaker
And that's a pretty important thing.
00:27:48
Speaker
Maybe more so than, you know,
00:27:51
Speaker
even, you know, dare I say it, firearms training, right?
00:27:54
Speaker
Or the tactical end of things, right?
00:27:56
Speaker
You do also need to be able to provide your own security.
00:28:00
Speaker
If you don't have that, then people are just gonna take advantage of you.
00:28:03
Speaker
You'll become a slave to them, right?
00:28:05
Speaker
So if we're talking about fundamental skill sets, I would say in my book would be trauma first aid.
00:28:11
Speaker
I'd put in, you know, basic firearms training.
00:28:14
Speaker
And if you can get some familiarization with some combatives, even if you've never done it at all before,
00:28:20
Speaker
You know, if you just do a month of classes at a jujitsu gym, for instance, right, and you have them teach you some like how to deal with chokes, for instance, right, you'll be better off and have a leg up on a vast majority of the population.
00:28:34
Speaker
All that stuff is high yield for just a little bit of investment.
00:28:38
Speaker
That doesn't mean that you have to become a world champion or become, you know, the best in that art of that sport.
00:28:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:44
Speaker
It just means that you're better than, you know, 90, 95% of the folks that you might encounter on the street or that you're just better than you were the day before.
00:28:55
Speaker
Right.
00:28:56
Speaker
You're, you're a step further along that path.
00:28:58
Speaker
You know, no one's ever all the way.
00:29:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:01
Speaker
And maybe you create some deterrent effect, you know, it's where you're not having to like, you don't necessarily have to be,
00:29:10
Speaker
um, the match for everyone that you might possibly encounter, but you can make yourself kind of enough of a pain in the ass to, to deal with, you know, that they might leave you alone.
00:29:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:21
Speaker
I mean, you know, even myself as an example, right?
00:29:24
Speaker
Like I've done some jujitsu, done some Muay Thai, taken some fights, done some competitions.
00:29:30
Speaker
I've also spent enough time in a, uh, like MMA gyms and martial arts, um, studios that,
00:29:35
Speaker
I know the guys that are going to beat me, right?
00:29:38
Speaker
I know my place in the pecking order, if you will, right?
00:29:41
Speaker
And we also know each other when we see each other, right?
00:29:45
Speaker
And that sizing up almost happens, you know, somewhat immediately when you're like, oh, call flow.
00:29:51
Speaker
cauliflower ear, right?
00:29:52
Speaker
This guy's like rips.
00:29:54
Speaker
He's, uh, you know, maybe he's trying to make it look like he's not right.
00:29:59
Speaker
Which makes it worse.
00:30:00
Speaker
Um, so, uh, so yeah, that guy, all right.
00:30:04
Speaker
I'm, you know, I'm not going to mess with them.
00:30:06
Speaker
And then maybe he's like, all right, I don't want to really want to fight
Communication Skills for Urban Survival
00:30:09
Speaker
that guy either.
00:30:09
Speaker
Right.
00:30:09
Speaker
So there's a lot of stuff that just doesn't happen that way when you've made yourself kind of a harder target.
00:30:14
Speaker
And it happens just as an innate attribute of doing the thing to a degree, right?
00:30:18
Speaker
You can't really bluff that stuff some of the time.
00:30:19
Speaker
Right.
00:30:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:21
Speaker
So back to your question a little bit in terms of skills, I would say trauma first aid, some like firearms and combatives for security.
00:30:29
Speaker
And you're not going to start at the top of the pyramid, but get yourself into a better position than you currently are.
00:30:35
Speaker
Right.
00:30:37
Speaker
And then after that, I would say communications is a key one.
00:30:40
Speaker
Right.
00:30:40
Speaker
And this is in terms of individual skills.
00:30:42
Speaker
Right.
00:30:43
Speaker
That assumes that you have
00:30:45
Speaker
you know, ideally a group that you can communicate with.
00:30:48
Speaker
But even if you're just listening, right, if you know how to listen on, you know, you know, shortwave and the hand bands and, you know, some of the police and EMS channels in your area, right?
00:30:58
Speaker
Because a lot of that stuff's just open on the airwaves, right?
00:31:01
Speaker
It's out there.
00:31:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:03
Speaker
That will give you a lot of information about what's happening in your area, even if you're, you know, not necessarily talking on those radios.
00:31:10
Speaker
So I feel like I know where I would go to get some first aid or EMS training.
00:31:17
Speaker
I know where I would go to get some basic combatives.
00:31:20
Speaker
I could find a jujitsu gym.
00:31:22
Speaker
Where would I go to learn comms?
00:31:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's a tough one.
00:31:28
Speaker
You know, there's a lot of stuff online, right?
00:31:31
Speaker
If you, one of your best resources, well, I should plug what I'm doing a little bit and that I'm working on hopefully getting a comms course together in the not too distant future, right?
00:31:42
Speaker
But one of your best resources that you're gonna have locally is ham radio clubs, right?
00:31:48
Speaker
So there are ham radio clubs that pretty much all across the country, even in, you know, little small towns, there's probably one guy out there somewhere running HF at a minimum, right.
00:31:58
Speaker
And trying to talk to people all over the world.
00:32:00
Speaker
And those, those guys, those people are more than happy to show you the ropes, right.
00:32:06
Speaker
You know, for the most part, ham radio as a, as a hobby, if you will, or discipline is sort of apolitical and, and, you know, yeah, there are a lot of prepper types that are into it these days.
00:32:18
Speaker
Your ham radio club is, you know, if you listen to the local repeaters or hop on them yourself, it's just a lot of people having kind of normal benign conversations and stuff, right?
00:32:28
Speaker
Just for the fun of it, right?
00:32:30
Speaker
And a lot of kind of old retired folks too.
00:32:33
Speaker
But that is a decent spot to learn the technical end of it.
00:32:38
Speaker
Right.
00:32:39
Speaker
Um, there are a couple of decent resources.
00:32:44
Speaker
There's a prepper communications is a book.
00:32:47
Speaker
I can't remember the off there's name off the top of my head.
00:32:50
Speaker
Um,
00:32:51
Speaker
But that will give you a breakdown of pretty much everything that you would need to know without going into more technical depth than you need for what we're talking about here.
00:33:02
Speaker
So it's a pretty good resource in terms of getting your feet wet.
00:33:10
Speaker
Right.
00:33:11
Speaker
And then there are some trainers out there that offer some pretty advanced courses if you're looking into, you know, taking the next step, if you will.
00:33:19
Speaker
Okay.
00:33:19
Speaker
So that's medical, that's firearms, that's combatives and comms.
Home Security: Audits and Defense Strategies
00:33:25
Speaker
Is there anything else kind of in the stack or are those the big ones?
00:33:29
Speaker
Yeah, I would put
00:33:31
Speaker
maybe entry and exit access, right?
00:33:34
Speaker
So being able to, you know, we would call this breaching or demolitions in the military, right?
00:33:40
Speaker
Being able to make your way through things that are maybe designed for you not to be going through them, right?
00:33:48
Speaker
Locked doors, locked gates, things like that, right?
00:33:51
Speaker
And I know that that's not a thing you wanna be in the practice of doing on a regular basis when you're, you know, like I,
00:33:59
Speaker
I don't go around picking locks or breaching doors in my daily life.
00:34:03
Speaker
I don't want to.
00:34:04
Speaker
Right.
00:34:05
Speaker
But if you're talking about, you know, things have degraded a bit or even just understanding your own home security.
00:34:11
Speaker
Right.
00:34:11
Speaker
And what you've built yourself, that is a pretty useful discipline that way.
00:34:16
Speaker
You know, so.
00:34:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:18
Speaker
The entry level for that is pry bars and sledgehammers and that sort of thing, right?
00:34:23
Speaker
Mechanical breaching.
00:34:25
Speaker
Um, and you know, you can kind of go the surreptitious route with, uh, um, you know, lock picking and, um, you know, that sort of thing.
00:34:34
Speaker
I think actually you had Gruntpa on, right?
00:34:35
Speaker
And I think he's got a pretty good post on one of his, on his site that covers maybe a covert entry bag.
00:34:43
Speaker
So that's a pretty good resource if you're looking to like, hey, what do I need to get?
00:34:48
Speaker
And how can I use that to get in and out of places?
00:34:51
Speaker
Are you talking about that tweet thread that's all about Minecraft?
00:34:55
Speaker
He's got a tweet thread that's all about like this tool is good for this in Minecraft and you shouldn't do anything bad with it.
00:35:01
Speaker
But if you needed to do something like it's very circuitous.
00:35:06
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not saying go out and break into places that you're not supposed to.
00:35:10
Speaker
Right.
00:35:10
Speaker
I'm just saying it's a useful skill set to have.
00:35:13
Speaker
Even if you were to never use it, you know how to harden your own home now based off of that.
00:35:17
Speaker
Right.
00:35:17
Speaker
You know, like I know how to pry a door open.
00:35:20
Speaker
You know, I know that like these standard locks that I get from Home Depot and Lowe's.
00:35:26
Speaker
don't really do very much.
00:35:27
Speaker
I know that the like default screws that you use for these hinges come out with almost no force, right?
00:35:34
Speaker
You do that once or twice and you realize, all right, yeah, I'm gonna put some deeper screws into this, you know, into these hinges.
00:35:40
Speaker
I'm gonna put maybe a secondary deadbolt or a secondary lock, you know, in a non-conventional position on this door, right?
00:35:47
Speaker
And now it's greatly improved the time it takes somebody else to get into my house.
00:35:55
Speaker
Yeah, I can't remember who I was talking to.
00:35:57
Speaker
We were having a discussion about sort of home projects and how the first time that he ever knocked down a wall.
00:36:07
Speaker
it became all of a sudden his whole house became like dynamic space.
00:36:12
Speaker
Cause he was like, Oh, that, that wall's just, I know what's behind that.
00:36:15
Speaker
That's just drywall.
00:36:16
Speaker
There's nothing there.
00:36:17
Speaker
And I've definitely seen situations where there is a, an extremely expensive, heavy door with an extremely expensive, heavy lock.
00:36:28
Speaker
And there's just drywall right next to it.
00:36:31
Speaker
And like, so, so in terms of understanding your environment, um,
00:36:37
Speaker
it helps a lot to at least know how to break it so that you can see the
00:36:43
Speaker
what you're looking at.
00:36:44
Speaker
And so I wanted to ask you then also, what are the types of things that you look for when you do one of these?
00:36:50
Speaker
So to preface this, you do like a home security audit where you sort of, you play the bad guy and you think, how would I crack into this house?
00:37:01
Speaker
How would I cause problems?
00:37:04
Speaker
So what are the types of things that you do on a home audit and what do you look for as far as vulnerabilities?
00:37:11
Speaker
Yeah, so it starts with, um, before I visit, I ask, you know, for some information, basic information, address, name of the person that I'm, I'm working with that sort of thing and set up, you know, what the homeowner is looking for, what they think their threats are, um, you know, that, that sort of thing, um, and prepare, you know, a little bit of open source intelligence, if you will, on kind of that location before I even get there.
00:37:39
Speaker
you know, what photos can I find of the interior house on old MLS listings, right?
00:37:45
Speaker
You know, I'm going to bring some physical maps, right, that you'll get to keep afterwards that, you know, detail the surrounding area.
00:37:53
Speaker
So I know the terrain features before I even set foot on there, right?
00:37:56
Speaker
You know, there are some mapping services that you can use that will show who all the owners of the surrounding properties are.
00:38:03
Speaker
um you know for where you're at you know things like that that give you a lay of the land of both the physical and human infrastructure around you as kind of best you can right and then things like you know crime stats and um you know local resources where's the where's the nearest hospital that sort of stuff right so what i'm basically
00:38:23
Speaker
doing in these situations is replicating what I would do if I were taking a site overseas, right?
00:38:28
Speaker
This is what I did for a number of years.
00:38:30
Speaker
I especially was as a engineer.
00:38:32
Speaker
So the physical security of our, you know, compound or our fob or our, um, you know, whatever site we might have in, in, uh, kind of more permissive environments was oftentimes, you know, kind of share responsibility with me and the, uh, weapon sergeants.
00:38:48
Speaker
Um, and
00:38:50
Speaker
I'm treating your home like I'm taking over your site to defend it.
00:38:53
Speaker
Right.
00:38:54
Speaker
Um, first off.
00:38:55
Speaker
So if this is my, you know, base of operations, what would I do to harden it and to improve the security?
00:39:02
Speaker
Right.
00:39:04
Speaker
Um, and then I'm also flipping it after that and saying, Hey, if I'm going to attack this, you know, how am I going to attack it?
00:39:11
Speaker
Right.
00:39:11
Speaker
It's kind of a,
00:39:12
Speaker
It goes both ways, if you will.
00:39:14
Speaker
Same question.
00:39:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:15
Speaker
Same question.
00:39:16
Speaker
Just, you know, looking in or looking out basically.
00:39:19
Speaker
Right.
00:39:19
Speaker
How am I going to hit this?
00:39:20
Speaker
And, you know, maybe in a couple different scenarios, how would I hit this?
00:39:25
Speaker
You know, and then how would I defend it?
00:39:26
Speaker
How would I defend it against a mob?
00:39:28
Speaker
How would I defend it against a single burglar in the middle of the night?
00:39:31
Speaker
Right.
00:39:32
Speaker
That sort of thing.
00:39:34
Speaker
So depending on the situation a little bit, it's gonna guide what I'm looking for, right?
00:39:38
Speaker
Like what are your major threats?
00:39:40
Speaker
But some things that are sort of common trends are, what is the outer perimeter of this structure or this home or whatever it is that we're looking at?
00:39:50
Speaker
What's that setup like?
00:39:51
Speaker
A lot of American homes don't have a lot in that way.
00:39:59
Speaker
Maybe you have a fence, but it's a small fence, which is better than nothing.
00:40:03
Speaker
Or maybe you have just a completely open line.
00:40:05
Speaker
If you look at what happens to homes in foreign countries when the security situation degrades, even the poorer homes will build
00:40:14
Speaker
large masonry walls with broken glass embedded in the upper layer of it.
00:40:20
Speaker
Right.
00:40:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:20
Speaker
To remove people from getting over.
00:40:22
Speaker
Right.
00:40:25
Speaker
And so that's one of the key things, right?
00:40:27
Speaker
Do you have an outer perimeter?
00:40:28
Speaker
What's your outer perimeter like, right?
00:40:30
Speaker
What are your systems for notification after somebody's in your outer perimeter, right?
00:40:35
Speaker
Do you have security cameras?
00:40:37
Speaker
Do you have security lights in the middle of the night?
00:40:39
Speaker
Do you have a dog that's going to wake you up, right?
00:40:42
Speaker
You know, what do you have that like?
00:40:44
Speaker
Sorry, do the security lights make a big difference?
00:40:47
Speaker
Are they a major deterrent?
00:40:49
Speaker
It depends a little bit on where you are, right?
00:40:51
Speaker
So, you know, if a house is on a...
00:40:56
Speaker
major street, but it's in the dark and somebody can move to the, you know, whatever their breach point is without being seen, even though there's maybe traffic coming by, that's a problem, right?
00:41:07
Speaker
Whereas if you have security lights that are going to light up and show that, Hey, there's somebody breaking in the, the chances that someone, you know, somebody might still do that.
00:41:14
Speaker
A determined attack are still going to, you know, come in.
00:41:17
Speaker
But if you're, you know,
00:41:21
Speaker
you know, kind of thinking in that that mindset, you don't really want to be seen, you're trying to minimize your profile, that makes you a little bit of a harder target in that degree in that that way, right.
00:41:31
Speaker
And it may alert the people inside the house that something's happening, if they can see that light, you know, at the corner of their eye and a window or something like that, right.
00:41:39
Speaker
That's probably not the biggest deterrent, but what you're trying to do overall with this is layer security on in such a way that it's both a deterrent and difficult for people to get in, right?
00:41:53
Speaker
You're raising the cost of it for somebody else.
00:41:55
Speaker
So something like an outer perimeter, even just a small fence, right?
00:41:59
Speaker
That doesn't necessarily stop somebody from coming in, but it does...
00:42:03
Speaker
delineate the line between somebody being, you know, on the sidewalk or in your property a bit more, right?
00:42:08
Speaker
You can't really say like, oh, I didn't know.
00:42:11
Speaker
I just stepped off the sidewalk.
00:42:13
Speaker
If you jump someone's fence, right?
00:42:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:15
Speaker
So if you're dealing with, you know, like a mob of protesters, for instance, that are out in front of your house and you have a, you know, a perimeter fence out there, even a small one or a hedge or something like that, right?
00:42:28
Speaker
you have a bit of a stronger case in saying, Hey, no, this is my property.
00:42:33
Speaker
It's clearly delineated.
00:42:34
Speaker
You know, maybe I even put a sign out front, right.
00:42:36
Speaker
Um, it said, Hey, you know, no trespassing or something along those lines.
00:42:40
Speaker
Um, so that physical barrier doesn't necessarily, you know, have to absolutely stop people from, from entering.
00:42:49
Speaker
And another consideration there is if,
00:42:52
Speaker
If you look at the way that those linear barriers were used in, say, fire bases in Vietnam, right?
00:42:58
Speaker
So I learned a good deal of this stuff from a couple of Vietnam vets that were like civilian contractors in the engineering course when I was going through.
00:43:07
Speaker
And they'd tell us about how they would use, you know,
00:43:11
Speaker
like lines of barbed wire, for instance, and trenches and ditches and things like that to slow the movement of, you know, the Viet Cong or Vietnamese into into their camps.
00:43:22
Speaker
Right.
00:43:23
Speaker
So the goal of those linear barriers isn't to
00:43:27
Speaker
stop or completely prevent an attacker from coming in, but to slow their movement in and to notify you that they're coming.
00:43:39
Speaker
That's what you're trying to do with your outer perimeter.
00:43:42
Speaker
You want to know that someone's coming and you want to make it harder for them to come in and slow their progress into your property.
00:43:49
Speaker
Yeah, we had a situation where there was like a... We were in a pretty rough area early on in our marriage.
00:43:56
Speaker
And there was a graduation party or a football game.
00:44:00
Speaker
I can't remember what it was, but there ended up being a very large drunk mob in my front yard.
00:44:08
Speaker
And, you know, not like it wasn't even political.
00:44:12
Speaker
It was just sort of, they were just sort of milling around and causing damage.
00:44:19
Speaker
And yeah, my fence was not a...
00:44:24
Speaker
was not an impermeable barrier, but they, they stayed out of the fence.
00:44:27
Speaker
They just sort of threw garbage in my front yard.
00:44:30
Speaker
And so, yeah, like it's, there's, there's definitely a role for, because just like, just like that drywall example, like if you, if you learn how to pick your own locks, you learn that locks can be picked and therefore like whatever you get, there is not going to be an absolute deterrent to somebody who really wants in.
00:44:51
Speaker
It's about, you know,
00:44:52
Speaker
time and effort and, you know, risk that it generates for someone who's trying to get in.
00:44:58
Speaker
It's always, you could always build a theoretically higher wall.
00:45:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:06
Speaker
You can build a higher wall.
00:45:06
Speaker
You can, you can add additional layers onto your security.
00:45:09
Speaker
Right.
00:45:11
Speaker
Learning that stuff will help you see,
00:45:13
Speaker
these problems in the way that, you know, people like me see them, people like Clay Martin see them, right?
00:45:17
Speaker
Because the view that I have when I'm, you know, in a house that I'm going to defend, for instance, like you talked about with the walls, that's very much a concern, right?
00:45:28
Speaker
I'm concerned about where my rounds are going or could potentially go, right, in any room that I'm defending.
00:45:35
Speaker
So let's say that you're at home with your family, for instance, right?
00:45:39
Speaker
You're going to want to consider carefully
00:45:43
Speaker
what your defensive position is and who might be on the backside of that.
00:45:47
Speaker
Right.
00:45:47
Speaker
You don't want to be shooting into your kids rooms, even if, um, you know, the bad guy is in between you and them.
00:45:55
Speaker
Right.
00:45:56
Speaker
Um, so that's the sort of, uh, you know, experience and, uh,
00:46:02
Speaker
detail that I get into when I do these home audits, right.
00:46:05
Speaker
Is to show people what those considerations are, you know, here are your breach points and here's some stuff that you could do to not necessarily stop someone, but to slow them per se, you know, slow them, slow their progress and notify that, you know, Hey, you've got a problem so that you can then enact whatever your plan is.
00:46:25
Speaker
Right.
00:46:26
Speaker
Um,
00:46:26
Speaker
You know, just having somebody fail for a couple extra seconds at a reach point might give you enough time to get that pistol that you have stored away as an
Firearm Accessibility vs. Child Safety
00:46:35
Speaker
example.
00:46:35
Speaker
Right.
00:46:36
Speaker
Right.
00:46:37
Speaker
You know, so those are the sorts of considerations.
00:46:40
Speaker
And then we can test, you know, test your, your plan out.
00:46:44
Speaker
Right.
00:46:44
Speaker
So if your plan is like, Hey, I'm going to go unlock my gun safe.
00:46:47
Speaker
I'm going to get my gun out.
00:46:48
Speaker
And then I'm going to confront this person at the front.
00:46:50
Speaker
Well, let's test that, right?
00:46:51
Speaker
Like I know I can breach this door as you currently have it set up in five seconds, right?
00:46:56
Speaker
You know, can you get into your gun so you can get your gun out in five seconds, right?
00:47:00
Speaker
Well, here's some stuff that we can do to slow that entry so that you now have the time to do that.
00:47:05
Speaker
Or maybe we need to position that weapon somewhere a little bit closer for you so that you have quicker access to it, right?
00:47:13
Speaker
Or both, right?
00:47:14
Speaker
You do both of those.
00:47:15
Speaker
You've slowed the entry of your attacker
00:47:18
Speaker
And you've sped up your time to your defense tool.
00:47:22
Speaker
Right.
00:47:22
Speaker
And you're in a much better spot than you were before.
00:47:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:26
Speaker
I mean, I've basically, you know, I live in a relatively rural environment where there's lots of folks who are armed and who know me and I know them.
00:47:36
Speaker
Um, and, and for me so far, the, the, the risk calculus of trying to keep a handgun real close by my bed, uh, when I've got a house full of kids, uh, has not made a ton of sense for me.
00:47:51
Speaker
And so, uh, not to get like too deep into the weeds, but like, what would you recommend for somebody who's in that kind of a situation?
00:47:58
Speaker
Like, should they just, um,
00:48:00
Speaker
you know, go for a baseball bat or should they, or should they try to secure that firearm in a way that's more, uh, that's the safer and more accessible.
00:48:10
Speaker
You absolutely have to balance your risk that way.
00:48:13
Speaker
If you're in a low risk area and you're worried about kids getting their hands on your guns, you don't want to leave it under your pillow.
00:48:24
Speaker
That's not a good plan.
00:48:26
Speaker
There are some pretty good trade-offs.
00:48:28
Speaker
There's concealment furniture that you can get that we'll either use biometrics or ARFA chip that
00:48:36
Speaker
pop open pretty quickly.
00:48:37
Speaker
Right.
00:48:38
Speaker
So, you know, if, if you were wanting to, maybe you're a little, you get a little bit more worried about your situation, right?
00:48:46
Speaker
Like things have gotten a little more testy around and I still don't want the kids anywhere near the guns because you know, they're really young and they, they don't understand him yet sort of thing.
00:48:55
Speaker
Right.
00:48:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:58
Speaker
Well, you know, maybe you mount, you know, a,
00:49:02
Speaker
concealed flag box up on your wall by your bed that you can then, you have an ARFID chip embedded into the lamp on your nightstand and you just wave it by, it pops open, your gun's available to you.
00:49:20
Speaker
But nobody else really knows that, right?
00:49:22
Speaker
And your kids can't even reach up there, so they can't get it.
Early Warning Systems and Community Engagement
00:49:26
Speaker
So those sorts of solutions are examples of things that you could
00:49:30
Speaker
do to um you know have your weapon closer if you need it ultimately that risk reward is a trade-off for you right it's sure how you need to store your um you know your weapon given your situation um you know that's uh situationally independent you know what i would probably advocate for more than that is you know early warning of some sort right like if you have a couple outdoor dogs you know that that can uh bark yeah that doesn't mean that
00:49:58
Speaker
they're going to, I guess they could get shot or something like that, right?
00:50:01
Speaker
It could happen.
00:50:01
Speaker
Somebody, if your profile is so high that someone's going to be approaching your, you know, your homeless silenced weapons and taking out your dogs, you probably, you probably need to up your security a little bit, but.
00:50:15
Speaker
So it's not just specific to your terrain and your location.
00:50:19
Speaker
It's also specific to sort of your profile.
00:50:22
Speaker
and how types of problems that you're, that you're imagining you're going to face.
00:50:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:27
Speaker
It may even be that like firearms are useful, but they're not a universal tool for everything.
00:50:33
Speaker
They're a tool that has a purpose and you can use them in some situations.
00:50:39
Speaker
You know, I definitely am an advocate for them, right?
00:50:41
Speaker
I think it's by far the biggest equalizer that most people are going to have in a fight, right?
00:50:48
Speaker
You can take someone that, you know, you don't have to spend money.
00:50:52
Speaker
five years in a gym, getting good at a martial art, right?
00:50:56
Speaker
You know, your skills as a shooter definitely improve over time, but just getting somebody that can shoot fairly decently versus somebody that can't is a, is a game changer.
00:51:08
Speaker
You know, but there are other options, right?
00:51:10
Speaker
There are other things that you can do and some of those might be appropriate in your situation.
00:51:14
Speaker
So.
00:51:16
Speaker
Cool.
00:51:17
Speaker
You mentioned that you
00:51:20
Speaker
you take a look at not, you take a look at the terrain and you take a look at these, well, the human terrain, the neighbors.
00:51:29
Speaker
What would you conceivably do with that information?
00:51:33
Speaker
Well, I don't necessarily have enough time to go in depth, as much depth as I'd want to with, you know,
00:51:40
Speaker
the like a network analysis of every house near you and who, you know, who they're associated with and all that sort of stuff, right?
00:51:47
Speaker
Like I can't do that sort of workup.
00:51:49
Speaker
Um, or if I did, it would be, you know, fairly costly for, um, you know, people.
00:51:55
Speaker
Um, but the,
00:51:57
Speaker
The idea is that you at least know who your neighbors are if you haven't yet.
00:52:03
Speaker
So you should know who your neighbors are, right?
00:52:05
Speaker
And you should go talk to them, go try and map your neighborhood a bit yourself if you can, right?
00:52:12
Speaker
This gives you a bit of a jumping off point on it.
00:52:14
Speaker
And it also allows you to see things like, oh, I thought that neighbor of mine owned that house.
00:52:19
Speaker
He's a renter.
00:52:20
Speaker
It's actually owned by these other people, right?
00:52:22
Speaker
Because you see things like that.
00:52:25
Speaker
maybe you didn't catch the full name of somebody that was a little suspicious and everybody just knows them as, uh, you know, Bob down the way.
00:52:34
Speaker
Right.
00:52:34
Speaker
But nobody knows Bob last Bob's last name.
00:52:36
Speaker
Nobody knows that much about him.
00:52:37
Speaker
Well, now you've got a name, you've got an address, you can start kind of, you know, going down the rabbit hole if you want to, uh, on, uh, you know, uh, what's going on there.
00:52:47
Speaker
Right.
00:52:47
Speaker
Um, maybe, you know, who, who doesn't live there.
00:52:52
Speaker
Like, like if you see a stranger, you know, they're a stranger.
00:52:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:56
Speaker
And you can know, you know, you'll see like, if you're in a place that's changing, right, that has projects going up, you'll see who the owners are of those projects and what companies they are and what they're planning on building and things of that nature, right?
00:53:10
Speaker
You know, to the degree that it's exposed at that level.
00:53:15
Speaker
So it gives you an opportunity to
00:53:18
Speaker
have a jumping off point if you don't already for understanding what's in your neighborhood, right?
00:53:23
Speaker
Which, you know, it's going to be a varying degrees of uses for different people, right?
00:53:27
Speaker
If you're well established, you've been there for a long time and you know everybody, well, it might not be all that helpful.
00:53:33
Speaker
But if you just move to an area or it's a, you know, denser population, you know, area and you don't know everyone, that can be pretty useful information.
00:53:42
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense.
00:53:44
Speaker
since in an urban environment in particular, you're even really a suburban environment for the most part, you're not going to be growing your own food or like raising animals.
00:53:54
Speaker
Um, it seems like getting your basic needs met is going to be very much a matter of social engineering in a sort of, uh, decline or sort of, uh, semi-permissive environment.
00:54:05
Speaker
So if, if,
00:54:09
Speaker
I need a short list of who should I get to know in my area and how do I get to know them?
00:54:14
Speaker
What would be your approach to that?
00:54:17
Speaker
That's a great question.
00:54:18
Speaker
Well, I'd preface it a little bit with you should try and do that as soon as you can.
00:54:22
Speaker
And you should try and build up your network if you haven't already.
00:54:25
Speaker
Having a network or community of people to rely on is absolutely crucial in these sorts of situations, right?
00:54:32
Speaker
If you're on your own and you just thought, hey, I've I've got a basement full of food.
00:54:36
Speaker
I'm going to be OK.
00:54:38
Speaker
It's probably not going to work all that well for you or like what you're talking about.
00:54:43
Speaker
You're in an apartment in an actual urban center.
00:54:47
Speaker
Right.
00:54:47
Speaker
And you don't have that stuff stored up.
00:54:49
Speaker
You have to find a way to access it.
00:54:52
Speaker
I would get to know local butchers and ranchers would be probably a top priority and ideally some like-minded friends that are outside of the urban area.
00:55:05
Speaker
Right?
00:55:06
Speaker
So,
00:55:07
Speaker
That's one of the things that I think is lost a lot or that is, this is probably one of the harder things to do because you kind of become a part of the local community that you live
Urban-Rural Collaborations and Supply Chain Dependencies
00:55:17
Speaker
in for the most part.
00:55:17
Speaker
But if you can create some relationships that are across the divide, let's say the urban rural divide, right?
00:55:25
Speaker
That's a mutually beneficial relationship, right?
00:55:28
Speaker
This cuts both ways to a degree.
00:55:30
Speaker
And I think that this is something that, you know, people kind of see their own or
00:55:37
Speaker
I think have blind spots and miss their weaknesses, both in urban and rural environments.
00:55:41
Speaker
Right.
00:55:41
Speaker
So if you're in an urban environment, yes, you're fragile and that you are highly dependent on these, you know, just in time supplies, supply chains that are experiencing some pretty significant issues right now.
00:55:53
Speaker
Um,
00:55:54
Speaker
and highly dependent on services provided by the city and the state and local government and all that.
00:56:00
Speaker
And that can be a weakness.
00:56:02
Speaker
A lot of these rural areas are also fairly heavily dependent on the supply chains, right?
00:56:07
Speaker
Aside from if you have, you know,
00:56:11
Speaker
like are truly self-sufficient, right?
00:56:13
Speaker
You actually can raise all of your food on your own, which is a hard thing to do.
00:56:17
Speaker
You're going to be pretty poorly affected by some of these supply chain issues that are coming up.
00:56:22
Speaker
In fact, you're probably going to be hit first and worst from shortages, right?
00:56:27
Speaker
If you look at where these supplies come in, it's not as though the crops that are grown in Illinois are being distributed in the United States, right?
00:56:35
Speaker
That's not how the supply chain works today, right?
00:56:37
Speaker
Those crops are being, like the soybeans grown in
00:56:40
Speaker
know rural illinois are being sold on a global market to a buyer in japan right that stuff doesn't stay local and we've optimized that to such a point where you know you are looking at like your food isn't necessarily your food supply isn't there throughout the year it's being grown in another region of the world oftentimes right and being shipped there and if it doesn't get shipped there right or if not enough gets shipped there
00:57:10
Speaker
then your area doesn't have enough food, right?
00:57:12
Speaker
So with what's happening, you know, even right now with the supply chain issues, people talking about grocery stores being out of foods, I've seen elevated prices in sort of the blue urban areas that I frequent.
00:57:25
Speaker
but not shortages.
00:57:27
Speaker
Most stuff's still around for the most part, right?
00:57:30
Speaker
Rural areas are having a tougher time with it.
00:57:32
Speaker
It's because they're further out in the supply chain and further away from, you know, the ports of entry, right?
00:57:38
Speaker
So if you think that you are going to be insulated from, you know, supply issues because you're, you know, more remote, that's not actually the relationship.
00:57:51
Speaker
And I bring that up because when we're talking about this kind of
00:57:54
Speaker
urban, rural relationship.
00:57:57
Speaker
Well, if I'm in an urban area and the supply chain is having issues and people in the rural area need something, well, that's an opportunity for me to help them and develop that relationship.
00:58:09
Speaker
And then later on that year when they're harvesting
00:58:13
Speaker
their beef for the year or their crop for the season, whatever the case may be, maybe they help me out.
00:58:19
Speaker
Maybe that cuts both ways a little bit.
00:58:21
Speaker
So generally having resources and relationships that exist outside of your immediate area are one of the more important things that you can do to insulate yourself from some of these issues that you're likely to experience.
00:58:36
Speaker
And then after that, I would say, you know, get to know your local fire department if you can, you know, the kind of emergency, like your sheriff, right?
00:58:46
Speaker
You know, if you're in an urban area, that's going to be more like the local police precinct, which is sometimes a little harder to manage.
00:58:52
Speaker
But if you can, you know, do it.
00:58:54
Speaker
And then go further down the source if you can, right?
00:58:58
Speaker
So not...
00:58:59
Speaker
Not the app that you order stuff on your order with on your phone, right?
00:59:04
Speaker
So, and not the grocery store that you go to, but the trucker that brings that food from port to the grocery store, right?
00:59:13
Speaker
Or the dock workers that unload stuff off of out of container ships, right?
00:59:19
Speaker
You know,
00:59:20
Speaker
The further kind of up the line you can go that way and the more relationships you can make with those sorts of people, the better off you're going to be.
00:59:27
Speaker
You know, the owner of a grocery store is a fairly decent person to know.
00:59:32
Speaker
Yeah, I hadn't thought of it that way because like everyone, I feel like, well, I can't speak for everybody, but a lot of people in a rural context can be a little smug about like because they have this sort of theoretical option to grow their own food and take care of themselves.
00:59:49
Speaker
that they're going to be just fine.
00:59:51
Speaker
But it's, I mean, it's worth pointing out that nobody's actually exercising that option at the moment.
00:59:56
Speaker
There's everybody's driving into town to go to Walmart and Costco.
01:00:00
Speaker
And so the person who is the person who is closer to those resources and maybe has more contact with the distribution network at that level, you know, has, has an advantage that they could use to like help those rural folks out, but also to benefit from, you know,
01:00:18
Speaker
their rural folks preparation as they're transitioning to be more self-reliant.
01:00:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:24
Speaker
And what this really kind of turns into, right?
01:00:27
Speaker
When things go more this direction is somewhat more of a bartering system and somewhat more of a, you know, you think about you're in a rural area, maybe you have food security and you are, you know, with a bunch of, you know, like-minded people that are providing security for each other, right?
01:00:44
Speaker
Well, you probably can't do things like
01:00:47
Speaker
make your own insulin, right?
01:00:48
Speaker
There are key supplies that you're not going to be able to get, but that somebody somewhere probably still has, right?
01:00:55
Speaker
You need those relationships to be able to make those connections.
01:00:59
Speaker
I have food, you have insulin, let's make this happen, right?
01:01:03
Speaker
Right.
01:01:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:06
Speaker
And I was talking to a friend about the role of
01:01:10
Speaker
essentially smuggling and organized crime in the Balkans where people would bring huge amounts of goods over the Adriatic to sort of feed and take care of, you know, soap and cigarettes and all the sort of the fundamentals that people needed out there and how, yeah, it wasn't necessarily like the farmers that were the most anti-fragile in those situations.
01:01:38
Speaker
It was guys who were
01:01:40
Speaker
you know, running boats and trucks and getting things from place to place.
01:01:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:46
Speaker
People will, uh, fill in the gaps that are left by, you know, the shell of whatever had previously been there and they'll do oftentimes very well from it, you know?
01:01:58
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:01:58
Speaker
Like maybe you were making almost, almost no money, uh, you know,
01:02:04
Speaker
working on a container ship or, you know, truck drivers are not a good example because they're making pretty good money right now.
01:02:09
Speaker
But, you know, something that previously wouldn't have necessarily had a ton of status or, you know, monetary value in society, but now it does, right.
01:02:23
Speaker
And you can use that to, you know, move yourself kind of in a more positive direction for maybe yourself and your family and
01:02:32
Speaker
your friends in that environment.
01:02:33
Speaker
So, I mean, you can already, you can already see that happening in the macro where I don't think when, you know, when the supply chain was humming along in the nineties and the two thousands, nobody even thought about truckers.
01:02:48
Speaker
Like truck truckers were just not on anybody's radar.
01:02:51
Speaker
And now they're in the news all the time.
01:02:52
Speaker
And they're like, it's just really important that this trucking system operate correctly.
01:02:56
Speaker
And so you're even seeing, you know, a certain level of, of,
01:03:02
Speaker
political awareness growing among those folks who are like, yeah, we actually, we, we have a very important role in this system.
01:03:11
Speaker
And, and the more dysfunctional it is, the, the, the, the more that guy becomes somebody you ought to know.
01:03:18
Speaker
And that like, even if it's not, even if it's not sort of monetary, like you're, you're making more money or you're,
01:03:24
Speaker
you know, you're kind of getting yours on the back end, just, just being somebody who it's important to know is, is a hugely valuable thing and, and kind of a reversal for people in that situation.
01:03:37
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
01:03:38
Speaker
People are starting to see the value in things that they've taken advantage, taken for granted, I should say, for most of their lives, right?
01:03:46
Speaker
And they don't even really realize that they have, you know, you mentioned Clay Martin earlier in his books, and I think he mentions that a couple times, like those little things in life, right?
01:03:55
Speaker
Like having, you know, garbage pickup at your house, things
Adapting to Urban Service Disruptions
01:03:59
Speaker
like that.
01:03:59
Speaker
um that when you haven't had those you know when you've missed meals right when you haven't had uh when you haven't had garbage pickup when you have to burn your own uh you know waste um and all the terrible fumes and all the stuff that comes with that right uh well you know that makes you really appreciative of that stuff but most people in the states and maybe more broadly the western world don't
01:04:25
Speaker
have that experience don't understand that you know when those things go away things get much worse and pretty rough pretty quick yeah not really the world you want to live in you know so just just moving to a rural area um i'm doing my own i'm hauling my own garbage now
01:04:43
Speaker
And it's, you know, it's not a huge problem.
01:04:45
Speaker
It's actually kind of enjoyable.
01:04:46
Speaker
It's a, it's a pretty drive through the country to go to the, to the landfill.
01:04:50
Speaker
And, but it is, you know, if I let that go for a couple of days, it's a lot of garbage.
01:04:56
Speaker
And, and it's, I can only imagine what that would be like in a suburban context where it's rows of houses producing that amount of garbage and it's not going anywhere.
01:05:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:06
Speaker
It'd be extremely, extremely problematic.
01:05:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:10
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:10
Speaker
And you get that in some cities when there isn't, isn't garbage pickup, you know, um, it gets pretty gross, pretty fast.
01:05:16
Speaker
Right.
01:05:17
Speaker
Uh, and even if you have a way of burning, um, waste, that isn't a very fun,
01:05:24
Speaker
environment to be in either, right?
01:05:25
Speaker
Because, right, you know, people start burning tires and batteries and, you know, oil and things like that, right?
01:05:32
Speaker
And that, that is not nice smoke to have to breathe in, you know?
01:05:37
Speaker
So, you know, that's, that's the reality, though, when when things start to, to break down, it is interesting to hear, like,
01:05:47
Speaker
the trucker thing, for instance, of people now suddenly really valuing those guys, right?
01:05:51
Speaker
And the same thing, like if garbage pickup went away, was what was going away right now, and the garbage trucks were on strike, people would be like, please just bring them back.
01:06:00
Speaker
Bring back the garbage trucks.
01:06:02
Speaker
There's just trash all over my backyard.
01:06:04
Speaker
I can't take it.
01:06:06
Speaker
You know, like I can't fit this stuff in the back of my Prius to take it to the dump.
01:06:10
Speaker
Right.
01:06:11
Speaker
And it's.
01:06:13
Speaker
Oh, yeah, man.
01:06:13
Speaker
Before I got a trailer, I was trying to I was trying to put garbage in the back of my car and it was disgusting.
01:06:19
Speaker
It was absolutely disgusting.
01:06:21
Speaker
I was only like one load, but I was immediately like this is not sustainable.
01:06:25
Speaker
This is not this is not a solution.
01:06:28
Speaker
So yeah, and yeah, it would be with garbage men too.
01:06:31
Speaker
Give them a medal, give them the key to the city, whatever it takes to get them back.
01:06:36
Speaker
Well, that's awesome.
01:06:37
Speaker
So as kind of a final note,
01:06:40
Speaker
what are some books that maybe you recommend or areas of study that, that can give people more insight on anti-fragility in this urban environment and, and, and sort of the way forward?
01:06:51
Speaker
Oh, that's a, that's a great question.
01:06:53
Speaker
Um, yeah, I mean, you, you nailed it a bit with Clay Martin's books, right?
01:06:56
Speaker
Um, I think more concrete jungle was the urban one, right?
01:06:59
Speaker
Um, yeah.
01:07:00
Speaker
Uh, for individual skills, I think Joe DeLeo, uh, has some pretty good stuff he's put out recently.
01:07:06
Speaker
There's actually a lot going on right now in, um,
01:07:12
Speaker
new books coming out right in this space.
01:07:14
Speaker
Right.
01:07:14
Speaker
I think it was sparked by last last summer's, you know, festivities, we'll say last year's festivities.
01:07:22
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:22
Speaker
Proper communications is one that I'm going through right now to work on comms.
01:07:25
Speaker
I'm also working on this book.
01:07:27
Speaker
Let's see.
01:07:29
Speaker
Suburban Defense.
01:07:30
Speaker
I'm reading through that right now.
01:07:32
Speaker
That's a pretty good one.
01:07:33
Speaker
It covers a lot of the stuff that we're talking about, about kind of hard, how to harden your home and suggestions on that.
01:07:38
Speaker
So if you just wanted to pick up a book that is going to help you, you know, harden your position and think about defense, that's probably one of the better ones.
01:07:46
Speaker
I'm not all the way through it yet, but what I've seen so far is good.
01:07:51
Speaker
And then what is it?
01:07:52
Speaker
The Civil Defense Manual by Jack Lawson.
01:07:56
Speaker
That's sort of like a reference, massive reference book.
01:08:01
Speaker
Right.
01:08:01
Speaker
Good.
01:08:03
Speaker
Good thing to have on your shelf if you can.
01:08:06
Speaker
Awesome.
01:08:07
Speaker
Once again, Bryce is the founder of Anti-Fragile Studies Group.
01:08:11
Speaker
You can find them at antifragilestudies.com.
01:08:14
Speaker
You can also check out what we're doing here at Exit.
01:08:17
Speaker
We're exploring the broad scope of ways to struggle for space and influence and create freedom for all of us, whether that's things like this, where it's increasing your personal security, whether it's finding better income sources.
01:08:31
Speaker
You can check us out at exitgroup.us.
01:08:34
Speaker
Thanks for your time, Bryce.
01:08:34
Speaker
It was great talking to you.
01:08:35
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for having me on.