Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the exit podcast.
Speaker: Dr. Bennett.
Speaker: I'm joined here by Bryce.
Speaker: He's a soft veteran and founder of anti-fragile studies group, a security consulting business.
Speaker: Most prepper types are very focused on one particular type of collapse outcome where we all bug out into the woods.
Speaker: We grow turnips, but Bryce has a very different vision.
Speaker: Can you tell us a little bit about what you see going forward?
Speaker: Yeah, thanks.
Speaker: So a lot of the Prepper community is kind of focused on bugging out, right, this idea that you're going to
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.
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?
Speaker: So you can kind of see the trajectory that that's on and where you might expect that to lead.
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.
Speaker: And the name of the group is Anti-Fragile Studies Group.
Speaker: So can you explain the concept of anti-fragility and how it applies to this concept?
Speaker: Yeah, so that's from, I believe that Nassim Nicholas Taleb, right?
Speaker: He's kind of a modern philosopher.
Speaker: He has this collection of works called inserto and anti-fragile is one of the books in that works.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, so we have
Speaker: fragile and we have kind of robust or resilient.
Speaker: And he terms this other understanding that we have, but didn't have a word for is anti fragile.
Speaker: So fragile would be a system that is weak and not very.
Speaker: It's kind of prone to collapse in chaotic situations or disorderly situations.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So usually highly optimized, but over optimized.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, you know,
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.
Speaker: That would be fragility.
Speaker: Or living in such a way where you have zero backup plans for anything.
Speaker: You don't have to spend money on having extra food stored away and that sort of thing or spend energy on it.
Speaker: But if the power goes out or the grocery store is not there, then you're not eating, right?
Speaker: Or you don't have heat.
Speaker: So it's a fragile system.
Speaker: And then robust or resilient is this idea of kind of having redundancies in that, right?
Speaker: So basically things will stay the same in a chaotic or orderly environment where
Speaker: you, you know, maybe your power goes out, but you flip your backup generator on that sort of thing.
Speaker: Right.
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.
Speaker: Keep my lifestyle, you know, kind of intact.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Or, you know, do fairly well in maybe a different location if things go bad here.
Speaker: But anti-fragile is the, I think he terms it things that gain from disorder, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So it's instead of, you know, collapsing or just doing the same, you're actually doing better when things become chaotic, right?
Speaker: And that is a idea that I understood prior to him, you know, prior to reading his book, right?
Speaker: and hearing him co-ing that term, but didn't really know how to express it, right?
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?
Speaker: You know, sometimes in good and bad ways, but.
Speaker: Yeah, can you give us examples of, so you're a Green Beret, you've spent time in,
Speaker: disordered, sort of security compromised environments.
Speaker: Who do you see that was anti-fragile in those situations?
Speaker: Who was benefiting from disorder?
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?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So
Speaker: And it definitely depends on the situation, but an example would be providing security, right?
Speaker: So that's usually the primary concern when things collapse, right?
Speaker: Is that people need security provided for them, especially the people that can't, right?
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?
Speaker: And that's what happens in places where a government collapses is you have, you know, quote unquote warlords that pop up.
Speaker: Now, some of those are very bad people.
Speaker: Some of them are okay.
Speaker: People are more okay.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, but the,
Speaker: That is an example of somebody that in the face of a state collapse is actually doing better than they probably were before.
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.
Speaker: But their status is improving based off of the, you know, decline of the central authority, if you will.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Another example might be logistics.
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.
Speaker: Those people are going to be benefiting from that disorder.
Speaker: Those people are actually improving their position based off of things having declined.
Speaker: Yeah, and sort of the
Speaker: The task of replacing state capacity is a very interesting task, not least because the state still wants to perform those functions.
Speaker: It's still very important to the state that it be in charge of those functions.
Speaker: And so there's maybe some timing that has to be done where you sort of...
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.
Speaker: Yeah, you get whacked real quick if you're doing that sort of thing too early.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: How...
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?
Speaker: It's situationally dependent is what I'd say.
Speaker: And I think that it,
Speaker: comes in degrees, right?
Speaker: So we use this language in special operations to describe different environments, right?
Speaker: Where we'll term them as being permissive or semi-permissive or non-permissive, right?
Speaker: And depending on what environment you're operating in, you kind of take a different stature, right?
Speaker: And a different approach to what you're doing.
Speaker: So if you're in a permissive environment,
Speaker: which is what most of us have lived in for most of our lives in the United States, right?
Speaker: Security is, for the most part, not necessarily provided for you, but you're under a security blanket of some sort, right?
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.
Speaker: The, you know, country you're in is friendly to you.
Speaker: You have, you know, strong diplomatic relations, right?
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?
Speaker: That
Speaker: you know, is semi permissive in that you may have to provide your own security some of the time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, and you, you sort of have to work under the assumption that you need to all of the time, right.
Speaker: Because you don't know when that some of the time is.
Speaker: Um, and then of course you get into non-permissive and that's more of like being in a combat zone, right.
Speaker: Where, uh, yeah, you're actually in the fight on a regular basis.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, so
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.
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.
Speaker: Right.
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.
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...
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.
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.
Speaker: It's true to a degree, right?
Speaker: And it's going to be true
Speaker: just based off of capacity for police response, if nothing else, right?
Speaker: In that, in, you know, peak times, they don't actually have the resources to respond to every threat that's happening, right?
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.
Speaker: They couldn't enforce it in their own backyard, right?
Speaker: But to the degree that, I think you're asking, you know,
Speaker: Is there some intent there sometimes?
Speaker: And I don't think yet so much, right?
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?
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, this is a good opportunity to cut to Clay Martin's book, Concrete Jungle.
Speaker: It's gaining pretty broad appeal among prepper types.
Speaker: And his take on the urban environment is basically that your goal should be to get out as quietly and efficiently as possible.
Speaker: And maybe that's because he's addressing...
Speaker: a more existential crisis for that?
Speaker: Because he's talking about like, there's not food, et cetera.
Speaker: But what do you make of that take?
Speaker: And how does maybe your approach to the urban security environment differ?
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's more of a question of timing, right?
Speaker: And the timing that he's talking about is when things are truly getting that bad, right?
Speaker: A little bit what I'm talking about is
Speaker: where things sit in the, what I describe as the lulls between those bad events, right?
Speaker: So I'd say right now in this whole thing, we're in a bit of a lull, right?
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.
Speaker: And right now my opponents don't seem to be doing much.
Speaker: I'm not doing very much.
Speaker: And then it picks back up again, right?
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.
Speaker: And pretty much every category of crime is on the up and on a trajectory that it's going to continue to be on the up.
Speaker: So when it comes to Clay's approach of bugging out, I think it's really just a question of
Speaker: When is the value of staying in the place that you're at no longer worth the cost of staying there?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So you can't continue to pay that cost.
Speaker: So, you know, it may be that you are
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.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's the real basic relationship there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So.
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.
Speaker: I think of, I think of Venezuela.
Speaker: I think of the Balkans, the drug war in Mexico, the current state of Brazil.
Speaker: And those are maybe, maybe, um,
Speaker: very different degrees and depth of crisis.
Speaker: Like, for example, the Balkans was a war.
Speaker: It was sort of an ethnic conflict that was very explosive and there was issues with hunger.
Speaker: And then Venezuela maybe is more of sort of a political crisis, but pretty extreme political crisis.
Speaker: And then a place like Brazil where it's just sort of a low hum of violence all the time.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker: I see elements of a lot of those different historical conflicts in our current situation, right?
Speaker: And it's a little bit that
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
Speaker: part political Venezuela crisis, right?
Speaker: Maybe ethnic in some areas, right?
Speaker: The country has been purposely or otherwise divided along those lines, right?
Speaker: Or tried to have been.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, depending on the US is a big country, right?
Speaker: Depending on the state and locale that you're in, you know, it may be very different, right?
Speaker: It's very different right now, just driving through, you know, red and blue parts of, you know, different parts of the country.
Speaker: I spent the weekend in between kind of Washington and Oregon.
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.
Speaker: And the people that are frequenting them are a lot of heavy drug users that have created a lot of problems at them.
Speaker: So if you drive along the interstate in parts of the Seattle area, for instance,
Speaker: you won't find a restroom that you can actually go to.
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.
Speaker: Yeah, right.
Speaker: It's easy to miss that when it's slowly happening around you.
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
Speaker: the government's own policies and the degrading security situation there.
Speaker: Right.
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.
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.
Speaker: And, you know, in Afghanistan, where
Speaker: I had this experience where we'd go into villages to do what we call KLEs, key leader engagements.
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?
Speaker: And oftentimes we'd offer them all sorts of different things, right?
Speaker: okay, I have humanitarian assistance.
Speaker: I've got food.
Speaker: I can dig you a well.
Speaker: We can bring in some medical support if you want.
Speaker: We can get a school going for you.
Speaker: We'll even help you build a little medical clinic, right?
Speaker: And they would reject all that, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oftentimes.
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,
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And they'd say, you know, well, that's all nice, but can you provide security for us?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, if you, if you can't protect us from the Taliban, I don't want any of that.
Speaker: Cause we're going to get retribution from them.
Speaker: So, um, you know,
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?
Speaker: If the police forces are being degraded and the security situation based off of policies is also declining, right?
Speaker: You're not arresting criminals anymore.
Speaker: You're not.
Speaker: you know, policing up your own city, you're just letting the stuff proliferate, right?
Speaker: Well, there's going to be a reaction of some sort.
Speaker: And it's right now looking like a combination of, you know, private security in the wealthier areas, right?
Speaker: People that can actually pay for it.
Speaker: And then, you know, more street gangs and that sort of thing in the places that can't, right?
Speaker: So people end up filling that vacuum in the absence of the state being there to do it.
Speaker: And what I'm advocating for a little bit is
Speaker: people need to take that responsibility, you know, at least for their own person and their own home on themselves.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I wanted to ask you about like the, the situation with essentially petty theft being legalized in San Francisco.
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.
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.
Speaker: And then as you looked closer, like there was, there was just needles and poop everywhere.
Speaker: And, and I, I,
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.
Speaker: And I wonder... It sounds like you're saying that that's not going to...
Speaker: continue just because it won't be tolerated and eventually there will be a response to that.
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?
Speaker: Yeah, no, that's a good question.
Speaker: I think it will continue to degrade, right?
Speaker: Like the correction isn't necessarily things going back to normal, right?
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?
Speaker: You'll have large mansions surrounded by favelas, right?
Speaker: You'll have...
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.
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.
Speaker: Um, that seems to be happening in your San Francisco example, for instance, you have people driving around and tell us and
Speaker: They probably have, you know, supply chains to some degree that are highly tech oriented that are working for them, right?
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?
Speaker: They just get all their meals on the Google campus or whatever.
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.
Speaker: Yeah, so what ends up happening is that people are living in different worlds, basically, right?
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.
Speaker: And that's where you get, you know, unexpected encounters, right?
Speaker: That's why it's allowed to go on to a degree, though.
Speaker: in that a lot of the people that are in these areas don't actually feel the cost of this stuff happening, right?
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's,
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.
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
Speaker: being fed and providing for yourself and protecting yourself is, you know, these other services that
Speaker: might also go down at any given time, right?
Speaker: You're putting yourself in a pretty, pretty rough spot, right?
Speaker: To where, you know, yes, you want to get out before that happens.
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.
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?
Speaker: And
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.
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?
Speaker: I think election day is tomorrow, right?
Speaker: For when this airs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So those sorts of things are flashpoints, right?
Speaker: There are going to be flashpoints or shock events that come up.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
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?
Speaker: We've discussed getting some like basic first aid training.
Speaker: I've definitely heard from other people who kind of say like,
Speaker: You know, you're not going to turn yourself into Rambo.
Speaker: So like, don't overemphasize the sort of tactical component of, of preparedness.
Speaker: But yeah, what do you recommend as far as what's, what's the best priority?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Medical is one of the things that you're going to use most.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's one of the most catastrophic things.
Speaker: Getting some trauma first aid training is critical in my opinion.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
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.
Speaker: Or, you know, uh, paramedics in that if their response times are delayed, which is happening right now, right.
Speaker: I have associates that have recently left the local fire departments over vaccine mandates and things like that.
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.
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.
Speaker: Right.
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,
Speaker: you're gonna bleed out and die before they even get there in the current environment, right?
Speaker: Not much different from when you are now suddenly doing things that you're not used to doing, right?
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.
Speaker: Trauma first aid will, it'll keep you alive, right?
Speaker: If you take something like a TCCC class, which is what became very popular or standard in the military,
Speaker: especially later on in the GWAT, right?
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?
Speaker: And can save what we kind of call preventable deaths, right?
Speaker: There's some things that,
Speaker: yeah, that injury is catastrophic.
Speaker: It's just the way it is, right?
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?
Speaker: And that's a pretty important thing.
Speaker: Maybe more so than, you know,
Speaker: even, you know, dare I say it, firearms training, right?
Speaker: Or the tactical end of things, right?
Speaker: You do also need to be able to provide your own security.
Speaker: If you don't have that, then people are just gonna take advantage of you.
Speaker: You'll become a slave to them, right?
Speaker: So if we're talking about fundamental skill sets, I would say in my book would be trauma first aid.
Speaker: I'd put in, you know, basic firearms training.
Speaker: And if you can get some familiarization with some combatives, even if you've never done it at all before,
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.
Speaker: All that stuff is high yield for just a little bit of investment.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You're, you're a step further along that path.
Speaker: You know, no one's ever all the way.
Speaker: Yeah.
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,
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, you know, even myself as an example, right?
Speaker: Like I've done some jujitsu, done some Muay Thai, taken some fights, done some competitions.
Speaker: I've also spent enough time in a, uh, like MMA gyms and martial arts, um, studios that,
Speaker: I know the guys that are going to beat me, right?
Speaker: I know my place in the pecking order, if you will, right?
Speaker: And we also know each other when we see each other, right?
Speaker: And that sizing up almost happens, you know, somewhat immediately when you're like, oh, call flow.
Speaker: cauliflower ear, right?
Speaker: This guy's like rips.
Speaker: He's, uh, you know, maybe he's trying to make it look like he's not right.
Speaker: Which makes it worse.
Speaker: Um, so, uh, so yeah, that guy, all right.
Speaker: I'm, you know, I'm not going to mess with them.
Speaker: And then maybe he's like, all right, I don't want to really want to fight that guy either.
Speaker: Right.
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.
Speaker: And it happens just as an innate attribute of doing the thing to a degree, right?
Speaker: You can't really bluff that stuff some of the time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then after that, I would say communications is a key one.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And this is in terms of individual skills.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That assumes that you have
Speaker: you know, ideally a group that you can communicate with.
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?
Speaker: Because a lot of that stuff's just open on the airwaves, right?
Speaker: It's out there.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: So I feel like I know where I would go to get some first aid or EMS training.
Speaker: I know where I would go to get some basic combatives.
Speaker: I could find a jujitsu gym.
Speaker: Where would I go to learn comms?
Speaker: Yeah, that's a tough one.
Speaker: You know, there's a lot of stuff online, right?
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?
Speaker: But one of your best resources that you're gonna have locally is ham radio clubs, right?
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.
Speaker: And trying to talk to people all over the world.
Speaker: And those, those guys, those people are more than happy to show you the ropes, right.
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.
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?
Speaker: Just for the fun of it, right?
Speaker: And a lot of kind of old retired folks too.
Speaker: But that is a decent spot to learn the technical end of it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, there are a couple of decent resources.
Speaker: There's a prepper communications is a book.
Speaker: I can't remember the off there's name off the top of my head.
Speaker: Um,
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.
Speaker: So it's a pretty good resource in terms of getting your feet wet.
Speaker: Right.
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.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So that's medical, that's firearms, that's combatives and comms.
Speaker: Is there anything else kind of in the stack or are those the big ones?
Speaker: Yeah, I would put
Speaker: maybe entry and exit access, right?
Speaker: So being able to, you know, we would call this breaching or demolitions in the military, right?
Speaker: Being able to make your way through things that are maybe designed for you not to be going through them, right?
Speaker: Locked doors, locked gates, things like that, right?
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,
Speaker: I don't go around picking locks or breaching doors in my daily life.
Speaker: I don't want to.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But if you're talking about, you know, things have degraded a bit or even just understanding your own home security.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And what you've built yourself, that is a pretty useful discipline that way.
Speaker: You know, so.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The entry level for that is pry bars and sledgehammers and that sort of thing, right?
Speaker: Mechanical breaching.
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.
Speaker: I think actually you had Gruntpa on, right?
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.
Speaker: So that's a pretty good resource if you're looking to like, hey, what do I need to get?
Speaker: And how can I use that to get in and out of places?
Speaker: Are you talking about that tweet thread that's all about Minecraft?
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.
Speaker: But if you needed to do something like it's very circuitous.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm not saying go out and break into places that you're not supposed to.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I'm just saying it's a useful skill set to have.
Speaker: Even if you were to never use it, you know how to harden your own home now based off of that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, like I know how to pry a door open.
Speaker: You know, I know that like these standard locks that I get from Home Depot and Lowe's.
Speaker: don't really do very much.
Speaker: I know that the like default screws that you use for these hinges come out with almost no force, right?
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.
Speaker: I'm gonna put maybe a secondary deadbolt or a secondary lock, you know, in a non-conventional position on this door, right?
Speaker: And now it's greatly improved the time it takes somebody else to get into my house.
Speaker: Yeah, I can't remember who I was talking to.
Speaker: We were having a discussion about sort of home projects and how the first time that he ever knocked down a wall.
Speaker: it became all of a sudden his whole house became like dynamic space.
Speaker: Cause he was like, Oh, that, that wall's just, I know what's behind that.
Speaker: That's just drywall.
Speaker: There's nothing there.
Speaker: And I've definitely seen situations where there is a, an extremely expensive, heavy door with an extremely expensive, heavy lock.
Speaker: And there's just drywall right next to it.
Speaker: And like, so, so in terms of understanding your environment, um,
Speaker: it helps a lot to at least know how to break it so that you can see the
Speaker: what you're looking at.
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?
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?
Speaker: How would I cause problems?
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?
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.
Speaker: you know, what photos can I find of the interior house on old MLS listings, right?
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.
Speaker: So I know the terrain features before I even set foot on there, right?
Speaker: You know, there are some mapping services that you can use that will show who all the owners of the surrounding properties are.
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
Speaker: doing in these situations is replicating what I would do if I were taking a site overseas, right?
Speaker: This is what I did for a number of years.
Speaker: I especially was as a engineer.
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.
Speaker: Um, and
Speaker: I'm treating your home like I'm taking over your site to defend it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, first off.
Speaker: So if this is my, you know, base of operations, what would I do to harden it and to improve the security?
Speaker: Right.
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?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's kind of a,
Speaker: It goes both ways, if you will.
Speaker: Same question.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Same question.
Speaker: Just, you know, looking in or looking out basically.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: How am I going to hit this?
Speaker: And, you know, maybe in a couple different scenarios, how would I hit this?
Speaker: You know, and then how would I defend it?
Speaker: How would I defend it against a mob?
Speaker: How would I defend it against a single burglar in the middle of the night?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That sort of thing.
Speaker: So depending on the situation a little bit, it's gonna guide what I'm looking for, right?
Speaker: Like what are your major threats?
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?
Speaker: What's that setup like?
Speaker: A lot of American homes don't have a lot in that way.
Speaker: Maybe you have a fence, but it's a small fence, which is better than nothing.
Speaker: Or maybe you have just a completely open line.
Speaker: If you look at what happens to homes in foreign countries when the security situation degrades, even the poorer homes will build
Speaker: large masonry walls with broken glass embedded in the upper layer of it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: To remove people from getting over.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so that's one of the key things, right?
Speaker: Do you have an outer perimeter?
Speaker: What's your outer perimeter like, right?
Speaker: What are your systems for notification after somebody's in your outer perimeter, right?
Speaker: Do you have security cameras?
Speaker: Do you have security lights in the middle of the night?
Speaker: Do you have a dog that's going to wake you up, right?
Speaker: You know, what do you have that like?
Speaker: Sorry, do the security lights make a big difference?
Speaker: Are they a major deterrent?
Speaker: It depends a little bit on where you are, right?
Speaker: So, you know, if a house is on a...
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?
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.
Speaker: A determined attack are still going to, you know, come in.
Speaker: But if you're, you know,
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.
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.
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?
Speaker: You're raising the cost of it for somebody else.
Speaker: So something like an outer perimeter, even just a small fence, right?
Speaker: That doesn't necessarily stop somebody from coming in, but it does...
Speaker: delineate the line between somebody being, you know, on the sidewalk or in your property a bit more, right?
Speaker: You can't really say like, oh, I didn't know.
Speaker: I just stepped off the sidewalk.
Speaker: If you jump someone's fence, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
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?
Speaker: you have a bit of a stronger case in saying, Hey, no, this is my property.
Speaker: It's clearly delineated.
Speaker: You know, maybe I even put a sign out front, right.
Speaker: Um, it said, Hey, you know, no trespassing or something along those lines.
Speaker: Um, so that physical barrier doesn't necessarily, you know, have to absolutely stop people from, from entering.
Speaker: And another consideration there is if,
Speaker: If you look at the way that those linear barriers were used in, say, fire bases in Vietnam, right?
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.
Speaker: And they'd tell us about how they would use, you know,
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So the goal of those linear barriers isn't to
Speaker: stop or completely prevent an attacker from coming in, but to slow their movement in and to notify you that they're coming.
Speaker: That's what you're trying to do with your outer perimeter.
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.
Speaker: Yeah, we had a situation where there was like a... We were in a pretty rough area early on in our marriage.
Speaker: And there was a graduation party or a football game.
Speaker: I can't remember what it was, but there ended up being a very large drunk mob in my front yard.
Speaker: And, you know, not like it wasn't even political.
Speaker: It was just sort of, they were just sort of milling around and causing damage.
Speaker: And yeah, my fence was not a...
Speaker: was not an impermeable barrier, but they, they stayed out of the fence.
Speaker: They just sort of threw garbage in my front yard.
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.
Speaker: It's about, you know,
Speaker: time and effort and, you know, risk that it generates for someone who's trying to get in.
Speaker: It's always, you could always build a theoretically higher wall.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You can build a higher wall.
Speaker: You can, you can add additional layers onto your security.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Learning that stuff will help you see,
Speaker: these problems in the way that, you know, people like me see them, people like Clay Martin see them, right?
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?
Speaker: I'm concerned about where my rounds are going or could potentially go, right, in any room that I'm defending.
Speaker: So let's say that you're at home with your family, for instance, right?
Speaker: You're going to want to consider carefully
Speaker: what your defensive position is and who might be on the backside of that.
Speaker: Right.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, so that's the sort of, uh, you know, experience and, uh,
Speaker: detail that I get into when I do these home audits, right.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um,
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 example.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, so those are the sorts of considerations.
Speaker: And then we can test, you know, test your, your plan out.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So if your plan is like, Hey, I'm going to go unlock my gun safe.
Speaker: I'm going to get my gun out.
Speaker: And then I'm going to confront this person at the front.
Speaker: Well, let's test that, right?
Speaker: Like I know I can breach this door as you currently have it set up in five seconds, right?
Speaker: You know, can you get into your gun so you can get your gun out in five seconds, right?
Speaker: Well, here's some stuff that we can do to slow that entry so that you now have the time to do that.
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?
Speaker: Or both, right?
Speaker: You do both of those.
Speaker: You've slowed the entry of your attacker
Speaker: And you've sped up your time to your defense tool.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And you're in a much better spot than you were before.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
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.
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?
Speaker: Like, should they just, um,
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.
Speaker: You absolutely have to balance your risk that way.
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.
Speaker: That's not a good plan.
Speaker: There are some pretty good trade-offs.
Speaker: There's concealment furniture that you can get that we'll either use biometrics or ARFA chip that
Speaker: pop open pretty quickly.
Speaker: Right.
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?
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, you know, maybe you mount, you know, a,
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.
Speaker: But nobody else really knows that, right?
Speaker: And your kids can't even reach up there, so they can't get it.
Speaker: So those sorts of solutions are examples of things that you could
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
Speaker: they're going to, I guess they could get shot or something like that, right?
Speaker: It could happen.
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.
Speaker: So it's not just specific to your terrain and your location.
Speaker: It's also specific to sort of your profile.
Speaker: and how types of problems that you're, that you're imagining you're going to face.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It may even be that like firearms are useful, but they're not a universal tool for everything.
Speaker: They're a tool that has a purpose and you can use them in some situations.
Speaker: You know, I definitely am an advocate for them, right?
Speaker: I think it's by far the biggest equalizer that most people are going to have in a fight, right?
Speaker: You can take someone that, you know, you don't have to spend money.
Speaker: five years in a gym, getting good at a martial art, right?
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.
Speaker: You know, but there are other options, right?
Speaker: There are other things that you can do and some of those might be appropriate in your situation.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: You mentioned that you
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.
Speaker: What would you conceivably do with that information?
Speaker: Well, I don't necessarily have enough time to go in depth, as much depth as I'd want to with, you know,
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?
Speaker: Like I can't do that sort of workup.
Speaker: Um, or if I did, it would be, you know, fairly costly for, um, you know, people.
Speaker: Um, but the,
Speaker: The idea is that you at least know who your neighbors are if you haven't yet.
Speaker: So you should know who your neighbors are, right?
Speaker: And you should go talk to them, go try and map your neighborhood a bit yourself if you can, right?
Speaker: This gives you a bit of a jumping off point on it.
Speaker: And it also allows you to see things like, oh, I thought that neighbor of mine owned that house.
Speaker: He's a renter.
Speaker: It's actually owned by these other people, right?
Speaker: Because you see things like that.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But nobody knows Bob last Bob's last name.
Speaker: Nobody knows that much about him.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, maybe, you know, who, who doesn't live there.
Speaker: Like, like if you see a stranger, you know, they're a stranger.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
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?
Speaker: You know, to the degree that it's exposed at that level.
Speaker: So it gives you an opportunity to
Speaker: have a jumping off point if you don't already for understanding what's in your neighborhood, right?
Speaker: Which, you know, it's going to be a varying degrees of uses for different people, right?
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.
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.
Speaker: Yeah, that makes sense.
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.
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.
Speaker: So if, if,
Speaker: I need a short list of who should I get to know in my area and how do I get to know them?
Speaker: What would be your approach to that?
Speaker: That's a great question.
Speaker: Well, I'd preface it a little bit with you should try and do that as soon as you can.
Speaker: And you should try and build up your network if you haven't already.
Speaker: Having a network or community of people to rely on is absolutely crucial in these sorts of situations, right?
Speaker: If you're on your own and you just thought, hey, I've I've got a basement full of food.
Speaker: I'm going to be OK.
Speaker: It's probably not going to work all that well for you or like what you're talking about.
Speaker: You're in an apartment in an actual urban center.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And you don't have that stuff stored up.
Speaker: You have to find a way to access it.
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.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: So,
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 in for the most part.
Speaker: But if you can create some relationships that are across the divide, let's say the urban rural divide, right?
Speaker: That's a mutually beneficial relationship, right?
Speaker: This cuts both ways to a degree.
Speaker: And I think that this is something that, you know, people kind of see their own or
Speaker: I think have blind spots and miss their weaknesses, both in urban and rural environments.
Speaker: Right.
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.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: and highly dependent on services provided by the city and the state and local government and all that.
Speaker: And that can be a weakness.
Speaker: A lot of these rural areas are also fairly heavily dependent on the supply chains, right?
Speaker: Aside from if you have, you know,
Speaker: like are truly self-sufficient, right?
Speaker: You actually can raise all of your food on your own, which is a hard thing to do.
Speaker: You're going to be pretty poorly affected by some of these supply chain issues that are coming up.
Speaker: In fact, you're probably going to be hit first and worst from shortages, right?
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?
Speaker: That's not how the supply chain works today, right?
Speaker: Those crops are being, like the soybeans grown in
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
Speaker: then your area doesn't have enough food, right?
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.
Speaker: but not shortages.
Speaker: Most stuff's still around for the most part, right?
Speaker: Rural areas are having a tougher time with it.
Speaker: It's because they're further out in the supply chain and further away from, you know, the ports of entry, right?
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.
Speaker: And I bring that up because when we're talking about this kind of
Speaker: urban, rural relationship.
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.
Speaker: And then later on that year when they're harvesting
Speaker: their beef for the year or their crop for the season, whatever the case may be, maybe they help me out.
Speaker: Maybe that cuts both ways a little bit.
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.
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?
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.
Speaker: But if you can, you know, do it.
Speaker: And then go further down the source if you can, right?
Speaker: So not...
Speaker: Not the app that you order stuff on your order with on your phone, right?
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?
Speaker: Or the dock workers that unload stuff off of out of container ships, right?
Speaker: You know,
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.
Speaker: You know, the owner of a grocery store is a fairly decent person to know.
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.
Speaker: that they're going to be just fine.
Speaker: But it's, I mean, it's worth pointing out that nobody's actually exercising that option at the moment.
Speaker: There's everybody's driving into town to go to Walmart and Costco.
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,
Speaker: their rural folks preparation as they're transitioning to be more self-reliant.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And what this really kind of turns into, right?
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?
Speaker: Well, you probably can't do things like
Speaker: make your own insulin, right?
Speaker: There are key supplies that you're not going to be able to get, but that somebody somewhere probably still has, right?
Speaker: You need those relationships to be able to make those connections.
Speaker: I have food, you have insulin, let's make this happen, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I was talking to a friend about the role of
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.
Speaker: It was guys who were
Speaker: you know, running boats and trucks and getting things from place to place.
Speaker: Yeah.
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?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Like maybe you were making almost, almost no money, uh, you know,
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.
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.
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
Speaker: your friends in that environment.
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.
Speaker: Like truck truckers were just not on anybody's radar.
Speaker: And now they're in the news all the time.
Speaker: And they're like, it's just really important that this trucking system operate correctly.
Speaker: And so you're even seeing, you know, a certain level of, of,
Speaker: political awareness growing among those folks who are like, yeah, we actually, we, we have a very important role in this system.
Speaker: And, and the more dysfunctional it is, the, the, the, the more that guy becomes somebody you ought to know.
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,
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.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
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?
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?
Speaker: Like having, you know, garbage pickup at your house, things like that.
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
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
Speaker: And it's, you know, it's not a huge problem.
Speaker: It's actually kind of enjoyable.
Speaker: It's a, it's a pretty drive through the country to go to the, to the landfill.
Speaker: And, but it is, you know, if I let that go for a couple of days, it's a lot of garbage.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It'd be extremely, extremely problematic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Uh, and even if you have a way of burning, um, waste, that isn't a very fun,
Speaker: environment to be in either, right?
Speaker: Because, right, you know, people start burning tires and batteries and, you know, oil and things like that, right?
Speaker: And that, that is not nice smoke to have to breathe in, you know?
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,
Speaker: the trucker thing, for instance, of people now suddenly really valuing those guys, right?
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.
Speaker: Bring back the garbage trucks.
Speaker: There's just trash all over my backyard.
Speaker: I can't take it.
Speaker: You know, like I can't fit this stuff in the back of my Prius to take it to the dump.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, man.
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.
Speaker: It was absolutely disgusting.
Speaker: I was only like one load, but I was immediately like this is not sustainable.
Speaker: This is not this is not a solution.
Speaker: So yeah, and yeah, it would be with garbage men too.
Speaker: Give them a medal, give them the key to the city, whatever it takes to get them back.
Speaker: Well, that's awesome.
Speaker: So as kind of a final note,
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?
Speaker: Oh, that's a, that's a great question.
Speaker: Um, yeah, I mean, you, you nailed it a bit with Clay Martin's books, right?
Speaker: Um, I think more concrete jungle was the urban one, right?
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: Uh, for individual skills, I think Joe DeLeo, uh, has some pretty good stuff he's put out recently.
Speaker: There's actually a lot going on right now in, um,
Speaker: new books coming out right in this space.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I think it was sparked by last last summer's, you know, festivities, we'll say last year's festivities.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Proper communications is one that I'm going through right now to work on comms.
Speaker: I'm also working on this book.
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: Suburban Defense.
Speaker: I'm reading through that right now.
Speaker: That's a pretty good one.
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.
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.
Speaker: I'm not all the way through it yet, but what I've seen so far is good.
Speaker: And then what is it?
Speaker: The Civil Defense Manual by Jack Lawson.
Speaker: That's sort of like a reference, massive reference book.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Good thing to have on your shelf if you can.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Once again, Bryce is the founder of Anti-Fragile Studies Group.
Speaker: You can find them at antifragilestudies.com.
Speaker: You can also check out what we're doing here at Exit.
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.
Speaker: You can check us out at exitgroup.us.
Speaker: Thanks for your time, Bryce.
Speaker: It was great talking to you.
Speaker: Yeah, thanks for having me on.
