Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
42: Clay Martin (Concrete Jungle, Prairie Fire)
2.8k Plays2 years ago
Great conversation with Clay Martin, Green Beret, preparedness expert, and author of Concrete Jungle, Prairie Fire, Last Son of the War God, and Wrath of the Wendigo.
We discuss how to network and prepare without getting Waco'd, how to teach boys what they need to know without getting sued, who you need to know in your local area, and how to be useful in an emergency when you're not a leg-breaker.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Clay Martin and His Works
00:00:17
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to the Exit Podcast.
00:00:19
Speaker
This is Dr. Bennett.
00:00:20
Speaker
I'm joined here by Clay Martin.
00:00:22
Speaker
Clay is a man who maybe needs no introduction, but I'm gonna do it anyway.
00:00:27
Speaker
He's a special ops veteran who's been in lots of dangerous places, done lots of dangerous things.
00:00:33
Speaker
He's written two books, Concrete Jungle and Prairie Fire, about essentially survival and organization under civil unrest conditions in an urban and a rural environment.
00:00:46
Speaker
He's also written Wrath of the Wendigo, which I'd like to talk about.
00:00:50
Speaker
I'll just say my wife bought me Concrete Jungle and Prairie Fire, and I went and asked my soft buddies that I have, none of whom are in our circles on Twitter, so it's not like they were buddies of Clay's.
00:01:04
Speaker
And to a man, every one of them was like, oh yeah, Clay's is a real deal.
00:01:08
Speaker
Read that book.
00:01:10
Speaker
So this is a guy who...
00:01:13
Speaker
The only way that I can judge, assess expertise is just to go ask a bunch of people.
00:01:18
Speaker
I don't have any personal expertise, but everybody that I've talked to says Clay is the dude.
00:01:23
Speaker
So welcome to the show, Clay.
00:01:25
Speaker
Well, hey, man.
00:01:25
Speaker
Thanks.
00:01:26
Speaker
Glad to be here.
00:01:26
Speaker
And thanks for that introduction, brother.
00:01:28
Speaker
Happy to be here.
00:01:30
Speaker
Awesome.
00:01:30
Speaker
Awesome.
The Value of Airsoft in Combat Training
00:01:31
Speaker
I want to jump right into something that you said on Tucker Max's interview.
00:01:38
Speaker
about a Japanese kid who won a competitive shooting competition with, I think you said, three years of airsoft experience and like 30 days of live rounds training.
00:01:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of the best, least well-known stories, but to me, biggest story that there is as far as training value from these airsoft guys.
00:02:00
Speaker
He didn't win just a shooting championship.
00:02:03
Speaker
He won what's called Steel Challenge.
00:02:05
Speaker
And Steel Challenge is a national, I mean, it's actually a worldwide event.
00:02:08
Speaker
They hold it every year.
00:02:09
Speaker
It's the same competition.
00:02:12
Speaker
And man, especially it's a fast-paced, quick game.
00:02:17
Speaker
The stages have been the same since like 1976.
00:02:20
Speaker
So everybody knows what they're getting into going into it.
00:02:24
Speaker
And I mean, this dude was a, he was a nobody.
00:02:26
Speaker
I mean, nobody's ever heard of him.
00:02:27
Speaker
He really was just some kid with an airsoft gun that set up some little, you know, bullshit paper plates or whatever in his, you know, his room and practiced it and got the money together, flew over, trained for 30 days and won.
00:02:40
Speaker
Beat Casey Asibio by like a second and a half that year.
00:02:44
Speaker
And I mean, Casey is a, you know, world, he's been a world champion in multiple other disciplines.
00:02:49
Speaker
It's not like all the good guys sat out that year.
00:02:52
Speaker
I mean, he actually, he legitimately won with almost no real gun experience.
00:02:59
Speaker
And what I find so compelling about that is you have said that there are genuine...
00:03:11
Speaker
connections between somebody's skill with that type of shooting and milsim close quarters battle like practice and the real thing.
00:03:20
Speaker
And I'm fascinated by the idea that someone in Japan with the gun control laws and, and, and, you know, the, the sort of law enforcement up your assness that, that is over there was able to become like world-class lethal.
00:03:37
Speaker
And, and,
00:03:38
Speaker
And the biggest challenge that I see in preparing for like a civil breakdown scenario is you have to get ready before things pop off.
00:03:47
Speaker
Right.
00:03:47
Speaker
But you cannot be early to the party.
00:03:50
Speaker
Right.
00:03:51
Speaker
That's exactly right.
00:03:53
Speaker
It's like super important that you don't show up early.
00:03:56
Speaker
And so have you thought about ways, do you have ideas for ways that people can prepare that don't put a target on your back in the same way that like airsoft training would?
00:04:07
Speaker
Sure.
00:04:08
Speaker
Um,
00:04:08
Speaker
Well, and actually the airsoft one is crazy.
00:04:10
Speaker
People look at me like I'm nuts when I say that.
00:04:12
Speaker
And a lot of people came back after they read Concrete Jungle where I mentioned it.
00:04:16
Speaker
And they're like, that is preposterous.
00:04:18
Speaker
And people make fun of airsoft guys and milsim guys all the time.
00:04:23
Speaker
Like they're a bunch of fucking nerds that don't know anything.
00:04:25
Speaker
And honestly, for the most part, those dudes are probably more lethal than your guy that has a safe full of guns and goes to the range once a week and blasts some pop cans or some nonsense.
00:04:36
Speaker
They're actually also out there doing like, you know, it's it's nerfed a little bit, but like tactical stuff.
00:04:42
Speaker
I mean, they're running around in the woods.
00:04:43
Speaker
They're actually trying to shoot at each other, all this kind of stuff.
00:04:47
Speaker
So, man, that one is huge.
00:04:48
Speaker
It's actually massive, especially in this day and age, too.
00:04:52
Speaker
It keeps the cost down so much.
00:04:54
Speaker
When I think about how I got good with a pistol, particularly.
00:04:58
Speaker
I had literally like a dump truck load of government ammo that showed up anytime I wanted it.
00:05:05
Speaker
And
Rethinking Youth Training Programs
00:05:06
Speaker
honestly, the way that I got really good was later in my career because I was on instructor duty and I could just have no responsibility and do whatever I wanted.
00:05:14
Speaker
I would stay after work and shoot for like four hours every day.
00:05:18
Speaker
Free bullets.
00:05:18
Speaker
I mean, why wouldn't you?
00:05:19
Speaker
I actually wore out a Glock.
00:05:21
Speaker
It's crazy.
00:05:22
Speaker
I actually wore out a Glock 34.
00:05:24
Speaker
I gave it back to Glock.
00:05:24
Speaker
I was like, I think this one's broken.
00:05:26
Speaker
And they were like,
00:05:27
Speaker
oh my God, like we've never seen one pushed this far.
00:05:29
Speaker
Cause like that, like the, the no-go gauge would almost fall at the end of the barrel is insane.
00:05:34
Speaker
But, uh, you know, barring that, barring and being in one of those unique positions where you have unlimited dollars for this, man, Airsoft is great, dude.
00:05:42
Speaker
You gotta, I mean, it's, it's so cheap and so available and you could do it right there in your, at your house right now.
00:05:49
Speaker
Uh, that's a really, that's one that man is really underappreciated.
00:05:54
Speaker
Then the other stuff, man, for keeping it off your back, it gets a little bit more complex.
00:05:59
Speaker
It depends really on what you're looking to do.
00:06:02
Speaker
If we're talking about food storage, I mean, that's super easy.
00:06:04
Speaker
You just buy some extra and start stashing that stuff away.
00:06:07
Speaker
A lot of the other stuff, a lot of the esoteric stuff, that's where you got to – there's ways to do it.
00:06:16
Speaker
I didn't cover it as much in any of my books.
00:06:18
Speaker
I did cover it a little bit in, I think, Prairie Fire, actually, talking about intelligence networking stuff.
00:06:24
Speaker
That's one that you can practice on your own too.
00:06:27
Speaker
And basically anything that would make you a good salesman will also make you a good intelligence operative.
00:06:33
Speaker
So reading up on some of the better books for salesmanship, and especially the way, you ever been on like a natural salesman in your life, a guy that was just good at it?
00:06:44
Speaker
Sure.
00:06:45
Speaker
That dude will know things about you in a two minute conversation where you didn't feel like you gave up anything that you wouldn't tell your priest in a lot of cases.
00:06:55
Speaker
They just had this natural kind of flowing way of dragging that stuff out and remembering it.
00:06:59
Speaker
And I mean, that's important to you.
00:07:00
Speaker
That's a valuable skill set, too.
00:07:02
Speaker
So honestly, just getting out there and being a little bit social, you know, looking at cars or some other bullshit that you don't really want to do that you're not actually going to buy.
00:07:11
Speaker
That's even a way to pick up on what they're doing, as long as you're smart enough to leave your wallet at home so you don't have to commit to it.
00:07:20
Speaker
You could go into any type of sales pressure place and make something up before you go.
00:07:26
Speaker
Like your name's going to be John Smith now and you have some bullshit email address.
00:07:30
Speaker
That actually gives you practice lying as well, which is an important skill set to have.
00:07:35
Speaker
We're being perfectly honest.
00:07:37
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
00:07:39
Speaker
I was thinking, so one of the projects that we're working on at the group is a scouting program for boys.
00:07:47
Speaker
Oh, cool.
00:07:47
Speaker
Right.
00:07:48
Speaker
And yeah, we're basically looking at the 1911 handbook and being like, all right, clearly we took a wrong turn at Albuquerque.
00:07:55
Speaker
What went wrong?
00:07:56
Speaker
How do we bring this back and also update it?
00:08:00
Speaker
And one of the things that occurred to me is that you could prepare boys to
00:08:07
Speaker
to like one of the, one of the, one of the, I think directions that Boy Scouts went wrong is it's lots and lots and lots of little merit badges that don't really add up to much.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yep.
00:08:18
Speaker
Um, but if you could, if you could create, um,
00:08:22
Speaker
Like your, your basic scout has to be the, the, uh, he has to be able to sit in the junior slot of the ODA.
00:08:31
Speaker
He has to be able to assist the senior on all of the different things.
00:08:36
Speaker
And then you're, you're like finisher you're the way you finalize is you, is you get the skillset in one lane to become the senior.
00:08:43
Speaker
So you, you go get EMS training or you go get, you know, you, some kind of engineering credential or comms credential.
00:08:51
Speaker
this is actually going to crack you up do you know why the boy scouts were founded and why that original manual came out the way that it came out tell me that was actually specifically to make a future generation of soldiers uh that was the idea that was the idea as you grow these yeah they were concerned that people already getting too soft urbanization so they founded the scouts the idea that this was kind of a military preparatory course uh to the point that man at least up until like
00:09:17
Speaker
10 years ago, if you were an Eagle Scout, you got instantly promoted three ranks when you joined the Marine Corps or the Army.
00:09:26
Speaker
Wow.
00:09:26
Speaker
You already knew all the shit.
00:09:28
Speaker
And it's really fucking crazy, especially if you look at the older manuals.
00:09:32
Speaker
Take one of those, take the patrolling manual from the Boy Scouts and overlay it next to the patrolling manual for, let's say, the Marine Corps 6-5 or the Army's Ranger Handbook.
00:09:43
Speaker
Look at the positions and the way that they walk.
00:09:45
Speaker
It's exactly the same.
00:09:47
Speaker
The only thing that's a little bit different is your duties and responsibilities of like now you create a machine gun instead of, you know, the tent or some bullshit.
00:09:55
Speaker
But yeah, that's what it was built for.
00:09:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:59
Speaker
And I think one of the issues that we've had as we've as we've worked on it is like this question of liability.
00:10:06
Speaker
And I think one of the ways that you can handle that right is you can just.
00:10:10
Speaker
you can just make it a book.
00:10:12
Speaker
Like there's no organization.
00:10:14
Speaker
This is just a book and you and your dad and your friends can go learn some things.
00:10:19
Speaker
No, that's great.
00:10:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:20
Speaker
And one of the things that I've thought about is like, uh,
00:10:25
Speaker
Basically, same thing with the Airsoft thing.
00:10:27
Speaker
How do you train kids in a way that won't get them in trouble, won't get you in trouble, won't get anybody hurt?
00:10:32
Speaker
Right.
00:10:33
Speaker
And I thought I'd get a little cheeky with it, like pen testing.
00:10:38
Speaker
Like, this is career training.
00:10:40
Speaker
We're going to help you become a penetration tester.
00:10:41
Speaker
So here's how you smash a lock, and here's how you break into a computer.
00:10:46
Speaker
Here's how you social engineer, get somebody's password off of them.
00:10:50
Speaker
No, no, no.
00:10:50
Speaker
Dude, it makes total sense.
00:10:52
Speaker
I mean, you know...
00:10:54
Speaker
I had a couple of people actually ask me after I said that stuff too, about the airsoft, like, I'm going to get my kids some, uh, some airsoft guns and, uh, you know, they're going to be toys.
00:11:02
Speaker
I'm like, no, no, no, they're, they're never toys, but you should get them some and, and just have them treat them like their real gun, like their whole life.
00:11:09
Speaker
Uh, but yeah, no, it's a great way.
00:11:10
Speaker
And with your very, very marginal chance of, uh, of injury, you put some safety glasses on and it's basically nothing.
00:11:19
Speaker
Uh, yeah, no, man, that's just all great.
00:11:21
Speaker
And,
00:11:22
Speaker
like you're saying there too, decentralized organization is huge.
00:11:26
Speaker
It's pretty much what all of us have to face down these days.
00:11:29
Speaker
Because, you know, one or two things, like you said, liability,
00:11:33
Speaker
Or Rico statue, if you start trying to grow an organization, that's what they always come after us with.
00:11:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we've seen this.
00:11:39
Speaker
Like every organization that's popped up that's even a little bit right, it always somehow, some way gets its pee-pee spanked by Rico statue.
00:11:49
Speaker
I mean, just I think today those two, was it Oath Keepers or some bullshit, they got convicted for the January 6th shit.
00:11:56
Speaker
And they got convicted of conspiracy.
00:11:58
Speaker
That was a big one.
00:11:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's not good.
00:12:00
Speaker
Right.
00:12:01
Speaker
So I think that's just something that we have to we have to accept for for our lot in life now was anything that we're going to do has to be decentralized.
00:12:11
Speaker
And honestly, with the way things are sliding, that's probably better anyway.
00:12:15
Speaker
You know, we think about this, you know, I got buddies that are, you know, dudes that I talk to that are like New York State right now.
00:12:23
Speaker
I can help them digitally, but.
00:12:26
Speaker
when the balloon actually goes up, they might as well not exist.
00:12:31
Speaker
Nothing outside of the five miles around me matters anymore.
00:12:33
Speaker
No human, no nothing.
Survival Predictions and Community Building
00:12:37
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:12:37
Speaker
And I guess, you know, one way you can get around that if you're in a, my sort of goal with my, because I've got this group that's spread out all over the country.
00:12:49
Speaker
Yep.
00:12:50
Speaker
But even now, there's probably three or four clusters where the guys are within 20 minutes of each other.
00:12:55
Speaker
Oh, that's awesome.
00:12:56
Speaker
That's fantastic.
00:12:57
Speaker
And that's the goal is to get the thing big enough so that the waterline is such that you've got your dozen guys in each city.
00:13:06
Speaker
Right.
00:13:07
Speaker
And there's no organization.
00:13:10
Speaker
It's just like, I want you to have guys that you like and trust and can count on in your...
00:13:16
Speaker
in your neighborhood, you know, primarily so that you'll have a good homeschool co-op or so that you'll have a good barbecue.
00:13:22
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:13:25
Speaker
But also, if you learn some things that'd be valuable in an emergency situation, that's good, too.
00:13:30
Speaker
No, dude, 100% with it.
00:13:31
Speaker
I mean, that's a great way to look at it.
00:13:33
Speaker
And that's one thing that's, I mean, that's probably the hardest step for people to take in the real world is accepting that balkanization thing.
00:13:42
Speaker
And accepting that we need to find our dudes and live close to them.
00:13:49
Speaker
If things do get really bad, you might be living in that dude's woodshed.
00:13:52
Speaker
That's just how this shit works.
00:13:56
Speaker
I mean, it's crazy.
00:13:58
Speaker
People think about this like it's preposterous, but we saw it.
00:14:01
Speaker
And we've seen it in recent memory.
00:14:02
Speaker
I mean, that's basically how Iraq went down.
00:14:05
Speaker
As soon as the central government was destroyed, as soon as it started torturing, killing Shias, and vice versa,
00:14:10
Speaker
And it didn't take very long before they just separated neighborhoods.
00:14:13
Speaker
Lebanon, their civil war was the same thing.
00:14:16
Speaker
All the bullshit in the Balkans, the 90s, it was the same thing.
00:14:19
Speaker
You know, carts going this way and this way, full of everybody's shit.
00:14:22
Speaker
Like, you know, we'll pass each other on the road once and that's it.
00:14:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:28
Speaker
Do you think that I wanted to ask you that you mentioned a few times that our situation is probably more like the Balkans than it is like 1861.
00:14:36
Speaker
And I think the nature of technology is such that, that, uh,
00:14:41
Speaker
we're making friends all over the world.
00:14:45
Speaker
And we're also having to like smell the shit of people we hate who live right next door.
00:14:52
Speaker
And we're like, we're, it's like the dream of the internet in the nineties was like, Oh, I'll make friends in Turkmenistan.
00:14:58
Speaker
And then we won't go to war with Turkmenistan and we'll all get along.
00:15:01
Speaker
And it's like, that did happen.
00:15:03
Speaker
Right.
00:15:04
Speaker
And also we realized how much we freaking hate people in San Francisco.
00:15:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:12
Speaker
And so I'm interested in your take on like, what can we learn from situations like that, like the Balkans, like Iraq, that we could use to strengthen our position and sort of be prepared for that eventuality?
00:15:27
Speaker
Now, this gets into a little bit of a slippery slope as far as trying to predict the future, because obviously nobody knows.
00:15:33
Speaker
I try to read the tea leaves, but I don't really know either.
00:15:36
Speaker
But I think one thing that we can agree on is the Empire is kind of crumbling, and it's not looking very good.
00:15:44
Speaker
And so when I look at the way things are right now, the reason I say that I don't see an 1860 type event, I mean, you have to, when you really look at the roots of 1860, that was, you know, honestly, that was the rich people that lived in the South versus the rich people that lived in the North using the poor people as pawns.
00:16:02
Speaker
It's not like a poor farmer in South Carolina had slaves in 1860.
00:16:05
Speaker
He couldn't afford it.
00:16:07
Speaker
That's just how it was.
00:16:09
Speaker
But they manipulated the state's rights issue and the pride in your region and all this other bullshit and basically got those poor people to go to war for them and die in droves.
00:16:20
Speaker
I just don't see this time something like an equal faction.
00:16:27
Speaker
I mean, we obviously see the lefty, crazy, whatever, communist fucking revolution that has taken over the government part.
00:16:35
Speaker
I just don't see a counterweight that's like an organized...
00:16:39
Speaker
equal-sized thing that will end up fighting it.
00:16:42
Speaker
I just don't see it happening.
00:16:43
Speaker
No, Republicans... I see Republicans as basically the equivalent of Indian agents.
00:16:50
Speaker
Their job is just to keep us...
00:16:54
Speaker
On the reservation.
00:16:55
Speaker
Right, right, right.
00:16:58
Speaker
Sell us as much liquor as possible.
00:17:00
Speaker
Right.
00:17:00
Speaker
And smallpox blankets and shit.
00:17:02
Speaker
Right.
00:17:03
Speaker
Yeah, dude, I mean, that's a fucking greater now.
00:17:05
Speaker
I mean, I assume it's the Washington Generals too as a political movement.
00:17:08
Speaker
I don't even think they're fucking trying anymore.
00:17:11
Speaker
But that's not really the point.
00:17:12
Speaker
To me, the point is more...
00:17:14
Speaker
No matter what, though, this is already on the glide path to complete fucking chaos.
00:17:20
Speaker
Whether that's just people stop listening and stop obeying the rules, whatever.
00:17:25
Speaker
And I think, honestly, that's more likely anyway than some crazy March on Washington bullshit.
00:17:30
Speaker
I think that's a fucking pipe dream.
00:17:32
Speaker
So that's kind of how I see it.
00:17:35
Speaker
I see things just slowly falling apart.
00:17:37
Speaker
And then you'll have some regional players that are like, okay, fuck it.
00:17:42
Speaker
Kansas doesn't pay federal taxes anymore.
00:17:45
Speaker
And then neither do the counties in Missouri that are next to them.
00:17:47
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:17:48
Speaker
It's just these little regionalized conflicts.
00:17:53
Speaker
I see that as just so much more likely and so much more predictable for where we are right now.
00:17:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:59
Speaker
So like when we – one of the guys that I interviewed was a Green Beret who mentioned –
00:18:08
Speaker
The people who were successful in relative terms, you know, it wasn't great for anybody in the Balkans, but like successful in relative terms in that was people who knew how to get things.
00:18:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:20
Speaker
And people who knew how to break legs and protect things.
00:18:24
Speaker
That's also important.
00:18:25
Speaker
That's also an important point.
00:18:27
Speaker
Yeah, I'm interested in your take on like, uh, so for, for, for me, I, I'm not going to be a leg breaker, I think in this lifetime.
00:18:36
Speaker
Um, you know, we all grow up dreaming and, and some of us do it and some of us don't.
00:18:42
Speaker
And, um, nor, nor do I think that I'm going to be like a mechanic or a farmer.
00:18:47
Speaker
I've always been kind of a talker and, uh, I I'm interested in, you know, you mentioned in the book that like, you've got your 18 F who's your, your, your, um,
00:18:57
Speaker
intelligence person whose job it is to know people and know what's going on and know things.
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:03
Speaker
And, and, and know how to get things and, and, and have relationships.
00:19:06
Speaker
And what would you see as like the, the top, let's say five people to know in my five mile radius to be, uh, to, to be prepared.
00:19:20
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:19:21
Speaker
Okay.
00:19:22
Speaker
Aside from my ODA, aside from my buddies, my contacts, my informants.
00:19:26
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:19:27
Speaker
Yeah, you talk about useful people.
00:19:29
Speaker
Okay, number one is either a surgeon, a doctor, or a veterinarian.
00:19:33
Speaker
It doesn't matter which one.
00:19:35
Speaker
If you haven't already had that dude.
00:19:36
Speaker
Those...
00:19:38
Speaker
I mean, honestly, in this day and age, I would even say that I believe veterinary school is more difficult than medical school.
00:19:45
Speaker
Like those dudes know their shit.
00:19:48
Speaker
And if I had to have somebody patch me up in a pinch, certainly better him than, you know, my guy that read an EMT book one time.
00:19:55
Speaker
So, you know, that guy, that guy is very important.
00:20:00
Speaker
Secondary.
00:20:02
Speaker
Man, I really lean towards, it's not like a definitive dude, but for me, I know one old cowboy here where I live that knows everybody.
00:20:10
Speaker
He knows everybody, everybody's fucking business, everybody's gossip, and that also undoubtedly means that he can get things.
00:20:16
Speaker
He already kind of is the fixer, and if things got spicy, so that dude exists for you somewhere.
00:20:23
Speaker
I don't know who he is, but he's there.
00:20:27
Speaker
I'm going to have to say third...
00:20:30
Speaker
Man, the local grocer, like if you live in a smaller area especially, that dude is important because not only does he know where stuff comes from and know where shit's, you know, maybe able to get some alternatives.
00:20:45
Speaker
That guy also knows logistics.
00:20:47
Speaker
All right.
00:20:47
Speaker
He understands, you know, feeding people and keeping shit straight, keeping things rotated.
00:20:55
Speaker
Man.
00:20:56
Speaker
We've got an agricultural co-op.
00:20:58
Speaker
Oh, nice.
00:20:59
Speaker
They know about feed.
00:21:00
Speaker
They know about hay.
00:21:01
Speaker
They're watching that stuff locally.
00:21:05
Speaker
Those are also guys that I would very much trust to be able to come up with a viable plan when just feed's not coming anymore.
00:21:14
Speaker
Oh, fuck, we're out.
00:21:15
Speaker
How are we going to keep some breeding stock around?
00:21:17
Speaker
What's our rotation schedule going to be?
00:21:19
Speaker
How many things do we need to kill off right now because we can't support, obviously, the shit that we've had in the past?
00:21:25
Speaker
So those dudes are way high on that list, too.
00:21:30
Speaker
I see.
00:21:30
Speaker
That's three.
00:21:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:33
Speaker
Okay.
00:21:34
Speaker
Some kind of leg breaker, be it either the, you know, like the, the, the chief or a deputy or somebody that's fucking tough, or if not him, like the local fucking criminal that is, provided he's not a complete fucking scumbag.
00:21:46
Speaker
But if he is a complete fucking scumbag, somebody familiar with law enforcement on one side or the other.
00:21:53
Speaker
And the flip side of that is if you already know who the kingpin is and shit's looking real squirrely, you might not want to know him just because you're friends.
00:22:01
Speaker
You might want to know him because that's something that needs to get taken care of day one.
00:22:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:09
Speaker
That's a good note.
00:22:11
Speaker
Very interesting.
00:22:16
Speaker
We've been talking a little bit about the elections and January 6th.
00:22:22
Speaker
And in Prairie Fire, you mentioned a really iffy election being one of the circumstances in which things might pop off.
Political Disillusionment and Economic Concerns
00:22:31
Speaker
And I'm interested to hear, has your perspective changed as a result of 1-6?
00:22:36
Speaker
Did it basically go the way you thought?
00:22:39
Speaker
How has that colored your thinking since?
00:22:43
Speaker
Okay, so it went pretty much exactly the way I thought up until January 6th.
00:22:49
Speaker
you know, when I was writing the book, like, I made that prediction in, like, July, and I can actually remember the moment it happened.
00:22:55
Speaker
I'm pretty confident it was Pelosi came out on TV and was like, we might have to either mail this in or just skip this election, and I was like, like, they hated old orange man so bad.
00:23:07
Speaker
There ain't no fucking way they were skipping an election.
00:23:10
Speaker
That was not going to happen.
00:23:12
Speaker
That was not going to happen.
00:23:13
Speaker
And, like, four seconds after that, I had the epiphany.
00:23:16
Speaker
I'm like, they're stealing this.
00:23:18
Speaker
Like,
00:23:20
Speaker
this is happening uh so how they stole it i actually man this is how naive i am i actually predicted just the old you know stuffing the ballots i didn't know about this electronic shit i was yeah fucking shocked on election night when that started happening like whoa doggie uh
00:23:41
Speaker
So they did.
00:23:42
Speaker
I was right.
00:23:42
Speaker
They stole it.
00:23:43
Speaker
But, man, they stole it way bigger than I would have ever imagined, bro.
00:23:46
Speaker
That was, I mean, that was stunning.
00:23:48
Speaker
That was absolutely stunning.
00:23:51
Speaker
So then we were kind of on the glide path.
00:23:54
Speaker
I was like, oh, shit, here it goes.
00:23:55
Speaker
Because the book came out October 31st of that year.
00:23:58
Speaker
So I was like, ooh, here we go.
00:24:01
Speaker
I will say that I was kind of confident going into that, that if an election was sketchy, which it was, and definitely that fucking sketchy,
00:24:12
Speaker
I thought some governor somewhere would be like, nah, dog, not today.
00:24:17
Speaker
And I thought there was a very high likelihood of it starting right then.
00:24:21
Speaker
And obviously I was wrong because all these governors are nutless wonders too.
00:24:26
Speaker
It turns out they're just parts of the machine.
00:24:29
Speaker
So that actually has influenced where I think that we're going now in a big way.
00:24:35
Speaker
Number one, that was really what
00:24:38
Speaker
let me know that like the Republicans are in no way serious.
00:24:41
Speaker
I mean, they are, anybody that's elected now is controlled opposition.
00:24:45
Speaker
You know, maybe you can have some bastions here and there of like maybe Florida, like maybe they're legit, but I doubt it.
00:24:51
Speaker
And it doesn't fucking matter.
00:24:52
Speaker
You could, if you control like five States, like it doesn't matter.
00:24:56
Speaker
But that definitely changed my opinion about the machine anyway.
00:25:00
Speaker
I kind of thought people might wake up more this time too.
00:25:03
Speaker
Obviously, they were going to fucking steal the 22 election.
00:25:05
Speaker
Why wouldn't they?
00:25:07
Speaker
They got away with it the first time.
00:25:07
Speaker
Why would they not do that?
00:25:10
Speaker
And they did.
00:25:10
Speaker
They stole it exactly the same fucking way.
00:25:12
Speaker
All the little fucking vote bullshit.
00:25:14
Speaker
It's the fucking carbon copy.
00:25:16
Speaker
It's the same thing.
00:25:19
Speaker
So that's actually kind of shattered my illusion that the common man would ever wake up.
00:25:25
Speaker
I don't think they will.
00:25:27
Speaker
I think honestly, man, that our countrymen are just too fucking stupid to ever wake up to that fact.
00:25:34
Speaker
Well, there's this huge coordination problem that you have to overcome, which is like the first 10,000 people who...
00:25:46
Speaker
uh, who charge into the breach are going to get their shit wrecked.
00:25:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:52
Speaker
And, and, and, you know, nobody wants to be that person.
00:25:56
Speaker
And so it, I, in my opinion, it has to be a situation where the immediate day to day is so unbearable that like, I mean, right now, right now, um,
00:26:12
Speaker
I can move away.
00:26:14
Speaker
My kids don't have to go to their schools and get their fucking nuts cut off.
00:26:19
Speaker
They haven't pushed me into a situation where I...
00:26:28
Speaker
where flipping the table over makes sense for me as an individual.
00:26:34
Speaker
And of course, if we could coordinate everybody and say, all right, today's the day we're all going to do it.
00:26:39
Speaker
Well, then it would be over immediately.
00:26:41
Speaker
But that's a fantasy.
00:26:42
Speaker
Right.
00:26:44
Speaker
And so, I mean, one of the things that I'm looking to, and I'm interested to hear if you have other things that you look to,
00:26:51
Speaker
like economic political movements that tell you that they're sort of looking out for as, as signposts on where things are headed.
00:27:01
Speaker
I'm looking at energy prices for the Europeans.
00:27:04
Speaker
Like at what point did they actually start not having enough to eat and not being able to stay warm?
00:27:12
Speaker
And what does that do for their feelings about, um,
00:27:15
Speaker
the great replacement about the EU and how unelected those people are and, and all the money that's going to this war.
00:27:23
Speaker
Like, I think, I think once you, once you hit people in like these material factors, that's when the math potentially changes.
00:27:32
Speaker
It does start to matter a hell of a lot more.
00:27:34
Speaker
It really does.
00:27:36
Speaker
And I mean, honestly, look at Brazil too.
00:27:38
Speaker
Like I'm not following Brazil like super closely, but it looks like they're, they're having less of this bullshit than we did.
00:27:44
Speaker
Uh,
00:27:45
Speaker
They might actually pop off down there, which is pretty crazy.
00:27:48
Speaker
But, dude, I'm 100% with you.
00:27:51
Speaker
That's kind of how I feel about things now.
00:27:56
Speaker
I believe, honestly, that the majority of our countrymen, let's say 70%, 80%, are so blinded by, I can just go to work and watch some fucking sports ball and still get sort of paid, and it's all good, that they would never, ever do anything to change their situation.
00:28:14
Speaker
I mean, dude, you still got people calling for like lock Hillary up like seven years later.
00:28:18
Speaker
Like, come on, man.
00:28:21
Speaker
It's fucking ridiculous.
00:28:23
Speaker
Like it's not, it's not, come on, you know?
00:28:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:27
Speaker
So I'm with you, but now you start hurting people's feelings though, with money and gas prices.
00:28:33
Speaker
And I honestly think too, that we're on like an unstoppable glide slope of economic collapse.
00:28:39
Speaker
Like the stuff is, is, is fucked up.
00:28:43
Speaker
Uh,
00:28:44
Speaker
I'm no economist major either, but when I look at what's happening to gas prices, food prices, the known inflation, stock prices, I'm like, ooh, this is bad.
00:28:57
Speaker
This is real fucking bad.
00:28:59
Speaker
There's almost nothing you can do to turn that around once it gets here.
00:29:03
Speaker
I mean, we printed money to bail ourselves out of 2008.
00:29:08
Speaker
That trick only works once.
00:29:10
Speaker
I don't think we can do it again.
00:29:12
Speaker
So, I mean, I think we're on a glide path here for some real bad stuff.
00:29:17
Speaker
And once people get hungry and cold and, yeah, they start getting a lot more likely to build guillotines, if you will.
00:29:27
Speaker
Yeah, and I basically see my role as helping guys to get prepared in –
00:29:39
Speaker
material economic ways that, that, you know, a more independent way of making a living where you're more in control of how you make your money.
00:29:49
Speaker
You're more in control of your social situation, who your kids are around in ways that like, you know, like we were saying, don't, don't trigger an immune response from the system.
00:30:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:03
Speaker
That would, yeah.
00:30:04
Speaker
Nobody wants the immune response right now.
00:30:05
Speaker
That is not, that is not a fun, that's new.
00:30:09
Speaker
Right.
00:30:10
Speaker
And I wanted to get your take on I detected some similarities in terms of your focus in Prairie Fire and Concrete Jungle, your focus on the people skills and the connections and the networking.
Lessons from Guerrilla Warfare and Resilience
00:30:33
Speaker
Because basically, so I picked up Mao Tse Tung's Guerrilla Warfare.
00:30:39
Speaker
And what was fascinating about that is it's like, it's not a long book, it's a thin book, but like, it's like 80% go make friends.
00:30:51
Speaker
And then like 20%, all right, you need this many rifles and this is how your squads are organized.
00:30:57
Speaker
And I wonder if that was, it was just very similar to what you wrote.
00:31:00
Speaker
And I wanted to see if you had like, that was a deliberate connection.
00:31:04
Speaker
Well, fuck yeah, it was.
00:31:07
Speaker
One of the things that used to drive me crazy about the prepper movement, and I'm talking about the old pre-COVID prepper movement, which I was kind of involved with too.
00:31:15
Speaker
I've always been on the fringes of that at the very least.
00:31:18
Speaker
Everybody was like, get some fucking guns and like a bunch of like, no, dude, no, none of that shit matters.
00:31:26
Speaker
It was very deliberate, man.
00:31:28
Speaker
I am a Green Beret.
00:31:30
Speaker
I'm a guerrilla warfare master, whatever.
00:31:32
Speaker
They trained me to do that at like the master's course called the Special Forces Qualification Course, which is heavily influenced by Mao.
00:31:41
Speaker
Basically, the whole course is taken from, you know, communist guerrillas, the successful ones, particularly Mao and then Ho Chi Minh after that and his guys.
00:31:52
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, that's a way of thinking.
00:31:55
Speaker
I mean, to the point the course is modeled close enough off that stuff that we call our instructors cadre members.
00:32:00
Speaker
Like, that's their name.
00:32:01
Speaker
That is their title.
00:32:03
Speaker
So yeah, all gorillas in the modern world have been heavily influenced by communist gorillas in Mao.
00:32:12
Speaker
And they do have some very good points, man.
00:32:15
Speaker
They were very successful.
00:32:17
Speaker
And the only way to learn how to counteract that was to learn how to do it.
00:32:20
Speaker
I mean, basically their kung fu is the best at that stage.
00:32:24
Speaker
But yeah, dude, that's it, man.
00:32:26
Speaker
Friends is so much bigger, so much more important than any equipment or any other bullshit.
00:32:30
Speaker
Those human relationships that you can count on.
00:32:34
Speaker
even just knowing somebody personally means that they're more likely to, to help you and see you as an asset and somebody that's not going to, you know, stab them to death in their fucking sleep.
00:32:44
Speaker
So yeah, man, the human connection piece, undoubtedly more important than anything else.
00:32:52
Speaker
Do you think that there are any lessons to be gleaned?
00:32:56
Speaker
I've heard, I've heard different stories from veterans and,
00:33:02
Speaker
About sort of the level of respect that our adversaries in Afghanistan deserve.
00:33:14
Speaker
And I wonder if you have thoughts on like, are there lessons to be learned there?
00:33:22
Speaker
You know, any anything that we could take away from that experience, given that we may face the kind of surveillance and sort of kinetic environment that they were facing.
00:33:37
Speaker
I think I can sum that up.
00:33:38
Speaker
I think I can sum that up in one.
00:33:39
Speaker
They fucking won, didn't they?
00:33:43
Speaker
Right.
00:33:44
Speaker
Right.
00:33:44
Speaker
They did.
00:33:45
Speaker
And there's the objective was to get rid of the Taliban.
00:33:48
Speaker
The Taliban's control of Afghanistan right now.
00:33:50
Speaker
They fucking won.
00:33:51
Speaker
And that's a bitter pill to swallow for a lot of guys, you know, for my generation, man.
00:33:55
Speaker
And I totally get it.
00:33:55
Speaker
It was not fun to come to that conclusion and face that reality.
00:34:00
Speaker
But that's part of putting on your big girl panties.
00:34:03
Speaker
We face the facts.
00:34:04
Speaker
And the fact is, they fucking won.
00:34:07
Speaker
Same thing with Ho Chi Minh and the North Vietnamese.
00:34:10
Speaker
You can look at all the stats, like we kicked the shit out of them in battles, we killed so many more people, and all this other shit.
00:34:15
Speaker
Well, they fucking won.
00:34:16
Speaker
So persistence goes a long ways, it turns out.
00:34:20
Speaker
The ability to take damage goes a long ways.
00:34:24
Speaker
Just being able to outlast your opponent goes a long ways.
00:34:27
Speaker
It's like the Romans getting annihilated at Cuny and then just raising another army.
00:34:36
Speaker
Right.
00:34:36
Speaker
We'll do this again.
00:34:37
Speaker
We'll do it again Tuesday.
00:34:41
Speaker
So other than that, I mean, and hopefully not absorbing the kinds of losses that we inflicted on the gains because we did.
00:34:48
Speaker
We killed a shit ton of them.
00:34:52
Speaker
I think the biggest thing to look at there is it goes, again, back to the type of conflict that I think is coming.
00:34:59
Speaker
And again, this would be different if like, I don't know, like the fucking red Chinese were landing on California and landing boats like, oh, OK, we know how to deal with that.
00:35:08
Speaker
Right.
00:35:08
Speaker
For what for what's happening to us and the way I see the empires kind of collapsing and ceasing to exist.
00:35:15
Speaker
I think it's a lot more about avoiding conflict and just being able to survive.
00:35:19
Speaker
Now, you still got to be able to flex enough that the bandits or the local organized crime or the local fucking warlord doesn't want to take all your shit.
00:35:28
Speaker
But if you can avoid getting in a firefight with those guys, that's better.
00:35:33
Speaker
That's much better.
00:35:34
Speaker
And I don't know.
00:35:35
Speaker
We'll see what that plays out to later.
00:35:37
Speaker
But survive is step number one.
00:35:39
Speaker
So it sounds like you're very much anticipating essentially just the escalation of criminality.
00:35:51
Speaker
Yes, man.
00:35:51
Speaker
Even if this were to go to a shooting war, you'll see the escalation of criminality first.
00:35:56
Speaker
And I, like I said, I don't see this being like a blue and gray conflict.
00:36:01
Speaker
So I honestly see even at the later stages of collapse, it'll just be like more organized crime.
00:36:07
Speaker
It'll be like, you know, 30 man squads of criminals instead of three man squads.
00:36:11
Speaker
But it's essentially the same thing.
Urban Survival and Crime in Societal Breakdowns
00:36:13
Speaker
And I mean, that's not unlike, you know, tribal warfare, the planet over.
00:36:18
Speaker
And for all of human history, besides, you know, some organized armies that we grew once in a while, like the Romans or the Greeks, a lot of it could just be comparable to organized crime.
00:36:29
Speaker
I mean, well, there's almost an optimism to that relative to being up against somebody who can see you from orbit and send a little drone to...
00:36:42
Speaker
you know, blow you up before you've heard anything or seen them.
00:36:44
Speaker
Like if I had to face one, you know, I'd rather face the local, you know, psychopath.
00:36:52
Speaker
Right.
00:36:53
Speaker
I mean, me too.
00:36:54
Speaker
No question.
00:36:55
Speaker
So without getting overly optimistic, that is, that's what I see happening more.
00:37:00
Speaker
If it turns the other way, man, that's a different bag of worms.
00:37:04
Speaker
But
00:37:05
Speaker
I mean, basically, then you're having to switch glide paths completely.
00:37:07
Speaker
You're going to have to say instead, like, I don't know, like five states elect like real governors.
00:37:12
Speaker
And they're like, fuck it.
00:37:13
Speaker
We don't recognize the 2026 election or whatever.
00:37:17
Speaker
And come get us.
00:37:19
Speaker
In which case you have like the classic, you know, blue on gray fight to an extent.
00:37:27
Speaker
I still don't think that goes the way that people think it does.
00:37:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:31
Speaker
Obviously not great getting shot at by F-15s and drones and shit like that.
00:37:35
Speaker
But you also can't just carpet bomb Houston.
00:37:39
Speaker
Right, right.
00:37:41
Speaker
You really can't.
00:37:42
Speaker
I mean, you can, but it's not going to help.
00:37:45
Speaker
Are you familiar?
00:37:46
Speaker
Sorry, no, go ahead.
00:37:47
Speaker
Finish your thought.
00:37:50
Speaker
If anything, I see them, the big them, having to adopt kind of an anti-guerrilla strategy for that scenario as well.
00:38:01
Speaker
Not a lot of set piece battles because nobody's kind of dumb enough to face off against our technology.
00:38:08
Speaker
And then that just bleeds us so dry.
00:38:12
Speaker
People ask about which way would the military go.
00:38:14
Speaker
Man, probably like 50-50.
00:38:15
Speaker
We're being honest.
00:38:17
Speaker
It would depend on the specifics of the break.
00:38:20
Speaker
But you could easily see that going 50-50.
00:38:22
Speaker
And then you're right back at square one.
00:38:26
Speaker
We have some drones too.
00:38:29
Speaker
Yeah, no, I've been deep enough with enough of those goobers to know that they're not all on side.
00:38:39
Speaker
For sure.
00:38:40
Speaker
Are you familiar with Out of the Mountains by David Kilcullen?
00:38:46
Speaker
No, I'm not.
00:38:48
Speaker
So he's got this theory.
00:38:51
Speaker
This is another book that my wife bought me, and then I went and talked to a bunch of pros, and they were like, yeah, your wife's got great taste.
00:38:56
Speaker
It's a great book.
00:38:57
Speaker
So she just knows, apparently.
00:39:01
Speaker
But basically, his thesis is that the expansion of communications and surveillance technology is making it so that the classic Maoist agrarian insurgency,
00:39:17
Speaker
is a lot harder to prosecute just because it's just harder to hide in the hills than it used to be.
00:39:21
Speaker
Okay.
00:39:23
Speaker
And
00:39:23
Speaker
And his thesis is basically that it's going to be the urban littoral, where instead of hiding in isolation, you're going to hide in the noise and the capital of a big city because, like you were saying, they can't carpet bomb Houston.
00:39:39
Speaker
Right.
00:39:40
Speaker
And I wonder, you know, when you wrote Concrete Jungle, you talked about a lot of the problems with like a catastrophic situation
00:39:51
Speaker
Yes.
00:39:52
Speaker
Breakdown in which case, like you're basically like, if I'm, you know, you tell me if I'm misstating, but, but basically like if it goes bad, then your objective is just to get out of the city.
00:40:02
Speaker
Like you're not gonna.
00:40:05
Speaker
And I, and I wonder if you have thoughts on like, on like kind of an intermediate decline situation where you, it does still make sense to stay and like how you would manage that.
00:40:18
Speaker
Yes.
00:40:19
Speaker
In fact, it's briefly covered, but it is in there.
00:40:23
Speaker
I did kind of think about that as well.
00:40:25
Speaker
Really, the only way...
00:40:27
Speaker
in my opinion, to stay there, even with advanced criminality, and this will just happen anyway, is again the balkanization by like neighborhoods.
00:40:37
Speaker
Kind of South African broken glass and razor wire.
00:40:41
Speaker
Yes, 100% man.
00:40:41
Speaker
I mean, we've faced kind of like nothing like this, but you can look at inner cities, especially like Harlem or Compton that are controlled by certain gangs in the neighborhoods around that.
00:40:54
Speaker
They already kind of have that.
00:40:56
Speaker
you don't live in the middle of, I forget which gang they are.
00:41:00
Speaker
You don't live in the middle of Compton though and be Crips.
00:41:02
Speaker
You can live in the middle of Compton and be Bloods, can't be Crips.
00:41:05
Speaker
So it's already kind of sorting yourself out.
00:41:08
Speaker
So, I mean, that's not an unfair model for what I would see us turning into if we stayed in the cities.
00:41:16
Speaker
You kind of have to.
00:41:17
Speaker
I mean, you have to have that entire neighborhood on watch and like little kids are playing in the street, but they're also keeping an eye out for not only like,
00:41:24
Speaker
the state, but you know, enemy dudes, cause they know what their fucking cars look like.
00:41:30
Speaker
Uh, and just kind of living in those kind of like fortified little, you know, small block areas for lack of a better word.
00:41:39
Speaker
Uh, it's, it's hard to imagine like pick it up and moving across the city, but if things get bad enough, people will, uh, that's just, that's just how it works.
00:41:48
Speaker
Like they'll, they'll make it happen.
00:41:50
Speaker
Uh, so that's kind of where I would see that going.
00:41:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:54
Speaker
Um, you mentioned that, that basically your orientation toward your survival strategy should model to foreign internal defense.
00:42:06
Speaker
If you think the government's the good guys and unconventional warfare, if you think the government's the bad guys, and can you elaborate on what you meant by that and, and, and how those approaches differ?
00:42:17
Speaker
Sure.
00:42:18
Speaker
Uh,
00:42:19
Speaker
They're actually exactly the same thing in reverse.
00:42:21
Speaker
This is primary mission set for us as Special Forces guys.
00:42:25
Speaker
If our government likes their government, we'll go to a foreign internal defense.
00:42:28
Speaker
And if our government doesn't like their government and likes the rebels, then we'll go do unconventional warfare.
00:42:36
Speaker
So where it gets spicy for Joe Citizen, which we all are now on the street, is...
00:42:46
Speaker
How, okay, I picked my team.
00:42:49
Speaker
And let's say that I'm pro-government this time.
00:42:52
Speaker
Okay, that's a dangerous fucking spot for me to be in.
00:42:55
Speaker
Because the way that I can actually help is all the shit that you see from Homeland Security now.
00:42:59
Speaker
Like, if you see it say something, reporting, all this other bullshit.
00:43:03
Speaker
Well, this is very unfortunate in conflicts like this.
00:43:07
Speaker
But if you get caught ratting, like somebody's going to come over and scoop your fucking eyeballs out with a spoon after they cut your children up with a hatchet.
00:43:18
Speaker
And the same thing is true in reverse.
00:43:19
Speaker
Like if you picked the bad guy team or the rebel team or whatever, all right, and eventually you get caught, well, those things are not off the table for a state actor either if they're pissed enough.
00:43:32
Speaker
So it's just kind of a really shitty situation.
00:43:38
Speaker
The best thing you can do, if at all possible, is remain neutral with your little war band and kind of see what happens.
00:43:47
Speaker
And people look at me like that's a bitch answer, but man, it's the right answer.
00:43:52
Speaker
For the most part, it's not maybe what they're going to make a painting of in 100 years.
00:44:01
Speaker
Fucking that guy stood up like, well, maybe he waited to see who it looked like was going to win.
00:44:05
Speaker
Maybe he just got this one out.
00:44:08
Speaker
But it is the strongest survival strategy, if we're being perfectly honest.
00:44:13
Speaker
Going back to this conflict avoidance thing.
00:44:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:18
Speaker
I think, yeah, I honestly, well, maybe this is another direction I can go with you.
00:44:27
Speaker
One of my buddies had me go buy an IFAC.
00:44:30
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:44:30
Speaker
Okay.
00:44:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:32
Speaker
And something first aid kit.
00:44:35
Speaker
Individual first aid kit.
00:44:36
Speaker
Individual.
00:44:37
Speaker
There it is.
00:44:37
Speaker
Individual first aid kit to go on a plate carrier.
00:44:40
Speaker
Yep.
00:44:40
Speaker
And I opened that thing up.
00:44:45
Speaker
And it's like, it's just all blood shit.
00:44:48
Speaker
It's just how do I stop blood and how do I plug up holes?
00:44:51
Speaker
And, and, um, uh, like this, this was one of my, like, oh, I'm not a leg breaker moments.
00:44:58
Speaker
I was like, I hate this.
00:44:59
Speaker
I don't ever want to see this shit again.
00:45:06
Speaker
Dude, fucking understandable, man.
00:45:09
Speaker
I fucking get it.
00:45:11
Speaker
I fucking get it.
00:45:13
Speaker
And, you know, is there a way to, like, is there any getting comfortable with that?
00:45:19
Speaker
Like, how do you sort of settle in your mind that you might need to use these things and learn on them?
Mental Readiness for Emergencies
00:45:29
Speaker
That is a tough one and a very good question, actually.
00:45:34
Speaker
This is honestly the same as what it takes to get comfortable killing other human beings.
00:45:42
Speaker
And this is an important thing for people to ask themselves and to figure out that haven't done it.
00:45:52
Speaker
You know, the first thing is to dispel any notions of like, I don't know, the fucking Rambo fantasy bullshit or on the medical side, the, you know, I'm going to stick a little gauze on and it's going to be fine.
00:46:03
Speaker
The first step is to accept the hard reality that this fucking might be what I got to do.
00:46:11
Speaker
And that takes a minute to set in.
00:46:13
Speaker
And once it does, you think about the reasons that you would do that, either the killing or the repairing.
00:46:21
Speaker
For me, that comes to, like, I don't particularly care for medical stuff myself.
00:46:25
Speaker
You know, I'm not great at it, but I do have some training at it.
00:46:28
Speaker
And I've done it on the battlefield and shit before.
00:46:31
Speaker
Really when I got like serious about like my first aid kits to house, it was about my kids.
00:46:36
Speaker
I'm like, okay, well, you know, fucking when I thought COVID was still gonna be like the end of the world or some bullshit.
00:46:42
Speaker
Like if, if there's no doctors, I, my kid falls and fucking stab himself in the chest with some rebar.
00:46:48
Speaker
Uh, am I going to fix that or am I going to let him die?
00:46:51
Speaker
And the answer is I'm going to fix that.
00:46:53
Speaker
So, you know, that's how I like mentally rehearsed.
00:46:56
Speaker
Like, okay, man, I know how to do this shit.
00:46:58
Speaker
This is how you cut off fucking rebar with a hacksaw.
00:47:01
Speaker
This is how you, uh, pull something out.
00:47:03
Speaker
If you have to, if you don't have a choice, this is how you crack a rib cage and get in there and see a lot blood vessels and hope for the best.
00:47:12
Speaker
Uh, it's uncomfortable though.
00:47:14
Speaker
And it should be, uh, you know, these are not things that if, unless that's our profession that we normally have to worry about, but that's the thing you do have to worry about them.
00:47:27
Speaker
And, uh, so getting yourself in that headspace of, I'm going to have to fucking do this.
00:47:31
Speaker
So I need to get comfortable with it now.
00:47:33
Speaker
And I just really think about the steps to do it.
00:47:36
Speaker
That, that is actually important.
00:47:38
Speaker
Uh, and the same thing with the, uh, with the killing piece, uh, cause that,
00:47:43
Speaker
even in advanced or maybe especially in an advanced criminology or advanced criminology scenario, it's going to have to happen.
00:47:52
Speaker
And you have to get comfortable with that before you need to do it.
00:47:56
Speaker
Do you think, I wonder if hunting and dressing an animal helps to kind of get the practical material.
00:48:07
Speaker
I know.
00:48:08
Speaker
I think it's absolutely fantastic.
00:48:09
Speaker
When I think about something like this, like fucking make sure my wife's not in here.
00:48:13
Speaker
My wife doesn't like to touch raw meat.
00:48:16
Speaker
She just doesn't like to.
00:48:17
Speaker
If somebody has to cut up meat, it's going to be meat.
00:48:19
Speaker
She'll cook it and all that shit, but she doesn't like to touch it.
00:48:22
Speaker
That is fucking preposterous for 100 years ago.
00:48:25
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:48:27
Speaker
It is.
00:48:28
Speaker
Those women would be like fucking ripping feathers.
00:48:32
Speaker
Sure.
00:48:33
Speaker
That's not talking shit on her, though.
00:48:34
Speaker
It's talking about how far we've fallen from our natural state.
00:48:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:39
Speaker
I think that those things do help.
00:48:41
Speaker
In fact, as far...
00:48:44
Speaker
If I'm being honest, for men to get comfortable with the idea of both dressing wounds and killing other people, the two probably best things you could do is hunting and some kind of martial art that actually involves fighting, like jujitsu, boxing, kickboxing, and some shit like that.
00:49:02
Speaker
The interpersonal conflict part.
00:49:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:08
Speaker
The deliberate infliction of pain.
00:49:11
Speaker
Yes.
00:49:12
Speaker
Even if it's, you know, you're strictly non-lethal and you're doing it to somebody who's maybe your buddy.
00:49:18
Speaker
But that's, I mean, even that just a barrier to strike someone with the intent of ringing their bell real good.
00:49:25
Speaker
That's a lot of people do not have that experience.
00:49:29
Speaker
They do not.
00:49:30
Speaker
They absolutely do not.
00:49:31
Speaker
And especially the, like the kind of softer our world gets.
00:49:36
Speaker
And those are things that you want to know how to do before you need to know how to do them.
00:49:40
Speaker
So, you know, again, it is, it is, I can see it will be very uncomfortable to, to have to learn, especially like later in life, but it's a very important thing to do.
00:49:51
Speaker
Absolutely.
The Impact of Parenthood on Survival Instincts
00:49:53
Speaker
Going back to the subject of children, I, I have this theory that, uh, basically just, just, just having kids, uh, awakens a lot of, a lot of things in you that like you kind of,
00:50:10
Speaker
they sort of complete you.
00:50:11
Speaker
They tie off some loops.
00:50:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:13
Speaker
And, and, and one of the respects in which having kids does that is it, is it forces you to take things seriously that you otherwise wouldn't as a single person.
00:50:23
Speaker
Cause you just, cause your, your, your heart exists outside your chest.
00:50:29
Speaker
If I didn't have kids, I wouldn't even give a shit about the collapse of the Western world.
00:50:34
Speaker
Right.
00:50:34
Speaker
You know,
00:50:35
Speaker
Right.
00:50:36
Speaker
Who fucking cares?
00:50:37
Speaker
Can I still get hookers and coke and some whiskey for the next 20 years?
00:50:40
Speaker
Then fuck it.
00:50:40
Speaker
I don't care.
00:50:41
Speaker
Yeah, you could probably find an island in Indonesia to hide that out and be fine.
00:50:47
Speaker
Right.
00:50:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:48
Speaker
Without a problem.
00:50:50
Speaker
It's a lot different when you think about your children and your future.
00:50:52
Speaker
It does.
00:50:53
Speaker
You're right.
00:50:53
Speaker
You have to think about something else in you.
00:50:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:56
Speaker
Who are they going to marry?
00:50:57
Speaker
How are they going to, and I mean, so just to not to, not to plug, but like, that's what exit is.
00:51:02
Speaker
Exit is about building infrastructure so that we can have grandchildren.
00:51:06
Speaker
And, um, very, very important.
00:51:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:09
Speaker
And I, I just, I thought it was really interesting that you mentioned about the, the medical training.
00:51:14
Speaker
I hadn't thought about it that way, but like, absolutely.
00:51:18
Speaker
Like that, that is how I would overcome it is I would go, I need this for my kids.
00:51:21
Speaker
And I would just,
00:51:23
Speaker
gut it out.
00:51:24
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:51:25
Speaker
And that's, that's, I mean, just be able to visualize that before you need to do it and think about it in those terms will make everything about it a lot more serious.
00:51:34
Speaker
So they make your training for it a lot serious, more serious.
00:51:38
Speaker
And it also kind of, you know, preps your mind to be able to do it should in the God unfortunate instance that you have to.
00:51:47
Speaker
Sure.
00:51:48
Speaker
Even, even fitness.
00:51:50
Speaker
The primary reason that I, that I am trying to stay in shape.
00:51:53
Speaker
I'm 35.
00:51:55
Speaker
Primary reason I'm trying to stay in shape is so that my kids can be strong, but I can still take them out if I have to.
00:52:05
Speaker
Because I think, I think there's this hugely important stage of adolescence where you
00:52:13
Speaker
your dad should still be an authoritative presence in your life.
00:52:16
Speaker
Yes.
00:52:17
Speaker
But you're also going to be inclined to test that dominance hierarchy.
00:52:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:24
Speaker
And I think it's really, I've known guys who were like, yeah, I could kick my dad's shit in.
00:52:32
Speaker
And it's not healthy, in my opinion.
00:52:35
Speaker
No, fuck it.
00:52:36
Speaker
That's very unhealthy.
00:52:38
Speaker
See, I'm going to have this problem too because I didn't have kids until I was 36.
00:52:42
Speaker
So, you know, I'm going to be the old dad.
00:52:44
Speaker
It's a harder curve.
00:52:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's a harder curve.
00:52:47
Speaker
So I got to come with it.
00:52:48
Speaker
And I told my wife, if I had girls, I would just already be on steroids, like all of them.
00:52:52
Speaker
Just like, but I have boys, so I only had to, you know, scare them.
00:52:57
Speaker
So that's a little different.
00:52:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:59
Speaker
I totally believe in that Mel Gibson trajectory.
00:53:02
Speaker
You know, once you're like 60 some, go ahead, get on the gear.
00:53:06
Speaker
Go ahead and get ripped.
00:53:07
Speaker
Yeah, no, absolutely.
00:53:09
Speaker
Why not?
00:53:10
Speaker
Right.
00:53:10
Speaker
Right.
00:53:13
Speaker
He looks great, man.
00:53:14
Speaker
He looks fantastic.
00:53:15
Speaker
Oh, fuck yeah.
00:53:19
Speaker
Well, I wanted to give you a minute to tell us about Wrath of the Wendigo.
00:53:23
Speaker
I haven't ordered it yet.
00:53:24
Speaker
I'm going to order it as soon as we get off the phone.
00:53:25
Speaker
But it sounds like it's covering a lot of the same themes as the stuff that you've written, but it's a fictionalized account.
00:53:34
Speaker
And I wanted to just hear if you've got like a...
00:53:37
Speaker
summary so uh so it was uh super important to switch back to fiction instead of real things had not everybody had not uh because there are definitely things that you cannot write about uh from a serious perspective without getting a talking to but
00:54:00
Speaker
If you live in a fantasy world like Star Wars, like you can write about rebellions and how they might kick off and how they could start and possibly successfully win against the Empire.
00:54:13
Speaker
As I understand it, Wrath of the Wendigo takes place in the Roblox universe.
00:54:17
Speaker
Yes.
00:54:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:54:18
Speaker
Exactly.
00:54:22
Speaker
So in the United Roblox of North Robloxistan, there's some dudes.
00:54:29
Speaker
They're like, you know what?
00:54:30
Speaker
Fuck it.
00:54:30
Speaker
Maybe I just don't want to live under this Roblox regime anymore.
00:54:34
Speaker
And so they carefully craft a plan over a couple of years and recruit some other Minecraft dudes and basically start a low-grade insurgency that shears them off a piece of that republic.
00:54:50
Speaker
And that's how they fight for it and win it and continue to fight against the dark Roblox empire.
00:54:58
Speaker
Right.
00:54:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:00
Speaker
As I understand it, it includes some elements of like Norse myth and Amerindian myth.
00:55:04
Speaker
Can you tell us a little bit about your inspiration there, what you find fascinating about that?
00:55:09
Speaker
Well, that was actually the fucking crazy part about this.
00:55:11
Speaker
A lot of people have asked me, like, was this all marketing hype or did you really have a fucking vision?
00:55:16
Speaker
And the fact is I really did have a vision.
00:55:19
Speaker
That part's not bullshit.
00:55:21
Speaker
And that was the way that it came to me was this kind of blending of of of Germanic barbarian, particularly with some North American Indian mythology.
00:55:35
Speaker
And that was kind of like the new religion that these guys awakened as they were breaking away from Robloxistan.
00:55:41
Speaker
It basically reached back into their their primal roots with, you know, and and kind of like reevaluated their spiritual world first.
00:55:52
Speaker
Very cool.
00:55:53
Speaker
Is that a topic of interest for you, a topic of study?
00:55:58
Speaker
here's the fun crazy thing before this, it wasn't, uh, I didn't know a lot of these things.
00:56:03
Speaker
It's actually been very weird since the book came out as a, yeah, I got some very smart, like super educated friends and shit.
00:56:11
Speaker
And, uh, so there'll be like elements of the book.
00:56:13
Speaker
I'll call it like, Oh man.
00:56:15
Speaker
Uh, I also enjoy like the, uh, let's say for instance, like the, uh, you know, Siberian shamanistic thing of this and this, and this is what he meant.
00:56:23
Speaker
And I'm like,
00:56:25
Speaker
I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about, man.
00:56:26
Speaker
That was just how it came out.
00:56:28
Speaker
They're like, Oh, well that's weird.
00:56:32
Speaker
Cause that's exactly what, you know, whatever is that said, you know, 150 years ago, like, Oh, that actually disturbs me more.
00:56:40
Speaker
It actually disturbs me way.
00:56:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:42
Speaker
That's, that's wild.
00:56:46
Speaker
Well, uh, if, if, uh,
00:56:49
Speaker
If you want something like for the kiddos, I can definitely recommend Dolaire's Norse Gods and Giants.
Exploring Survival Through Fiction
00:56:56
Speaker
It's this really beautifully illustrated story of all the Norse myths.
00:57:02
Speaker
Say the name of it.
00:57:05
Speaker
D-A-U-L-A-I-R-E-S.
00:57:10
Speaker
Dolaire's Norse Gods and Giants.
00:57:13
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:57:14
Speaker
All right.
00:57:16
Speaker
That basically, that was in my school library growing up.
00:57:20
Speaker
And I just lit me up as a kid.
00:57:24
Speaker
Okay, righteous.
00:57:26
Speaker
And I think your kids would dig it too, if that's something that's interesting to you now.
00:57:31
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:57:33
Speaker
But yeah, well, that's cool, man.
00:57:35
Speaker
Everybody go out and buy Wrath of the Windigo today.
00:57:39
Speaker
That's fascinating.
00:57:43
Speaker
I want to ask also if there's...
00:57:47
Speaker
What's on your reading list these days?
00:57:49
Speaker
What's been fascinating to you?
00:57:52
Speaker
What would you recommend people check out either in this domain or elsewhere?
00:57:57
Speaker
It's been kind of weird just because...
00:58:03
Speaker
Basically, I've had an awakening, too, that kind of led me to believe at the same time I was writing Wendigo.
00:58:09
Speaker
Man, so much of our history is so much bullshit.
00:58:13
Speaker
It's just made-up fucking nonsense, which is terrifying when you get there.
00:58:18
Speaker
I'm going to definitely recommend Chronicles of Pre-Celtic Europe.
00:58:21
Speaker
That one is fantastic.
00:58:23
Speaker
Whether or not it's true, I don't know, but it's a pretty plausible, pretty good theory and story.
00:58:29
Speaker
That one's great.
00:58:31
Speaker
Somebody said that...
00:58:33
Speaker
Somebody said journalism is the first draft of history.
00:58:38
Speaker
I go, bro, look at these journalists.
00:58:40
Speaker
What does that tell you about history, man?
00:58:43
Speaker
That was exactly right.
00:58:48
Speaker
So you were going to say something else.
00:58:50
Speaker
Other than that, man, honestly, I haven't read a whole bunch.
00:58:52
Speaker
I've just been catching up.
00:58:53
Speaker
I spent the whole summer writing this book, so I've been kind of catching up on my other tasks and stuff.
00:58:58
Speaker
But yeah, that one's great.
00:59:01
Speaker
And other than that, man, spend some time getting ready for the serious boy shit because it's going to get ugly.
00:59:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:10
Speaker
Ranger Handbook, is that a place to start?
00:59:12
Speaker
Yeah, Ranger Handbook is great, especially if you get the pre-2012 edition.
00:59:19
Speaker
Yeah, basically the older you can get with those, the better off they are.
00:59:21
Speaker
But I think 2012 is when they made the definitive weirdo fucked up changes.
00:59:26
Speaker
What are they doing, like a Girl Scout Ranger handbook?
00:59:30
Speaker
Man, I don't remember what they did, but they took a bunch of shit out and it was not great what they came up with.
00:59:38
Speaker
So yeah, so shit can't any of the newer ones...
00:59:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:44
Speaker
Other than that, man, I mean, War of the Flea, some of the classics of, of guerrilla stuff, the squad about the, the IRA.
00:59:52
Speaker
That was fantastic.
00:59:55
Speaker
Is it kind of, kind of, to me, you got to kind of like the flea, like the, like the insect or of the flea.
01:00:00
Speaker
Okay.
01:00:01
Speaker
We were, we were talking off the air a little bit about how the, how the seriousness of the situation has motivated us and has motivated a lot of our friends to,
01:00:13
Speaker
To just clarify like what they're here on earth to do and the tediousness and the soullessness of their day jobs.
01:00:25
Speaker
You know, it's one thing if everything's going to be okay, but if it's really not, then it forces and should force some reflection on what am I actually good for in this world?
01:00:38
Speaker
Right.
01:00:39
Speaker
No, dude, 100%.
01:00:40
Speaker
And here's the thing that I think is terrifying.
01:00:43
Speaker
Like, I get it that sometimes we've got to do some bullshit job to make money so we can do the other thing.
01:00:51
Speaker
We've all been there.
01:00:52
Speaker
We've all walked down that road before.
01:00:54
Speaker
It sucks.
01:00:55
Speaker
Whatever.
01:00:57
Speaker
I just feel like, man, we are on the cusp of like the worst economic disaster that anybody can fucking imagine within like six months, if not within like two or three.
01:01:08
Speaker
It's going to be fucking horrible and awful with interest rates and all that other bullshit the way they are.
01:01:13
Speaker
Like loans will be gone.
01:01:15
Speaker
Like the bulkization will mostly be over.
01:01:17
Speaker
unless you have the cash on hand to buy property at the absolute rock bottom, uh, right before hyperinflation takes off and our money's not worth shit.
01:01:29
Speaker
The only problem with waiting that long is you don't have any of the skills that a lot of the dudes that I know that like really got scared about, uh,
01:01:39
Speaker
around the COVID time, they started doing small-scale regenerative farming or raising dairy cows or some bullshit like that two, three years ago.
01:01:52
Speaker
The advantage to that and to getting to your spot as soon as you possibly can is you get to make your mistakes while there's still a chance of recovery.
01:02:02
Speaker
You get to make your mistakes with the cows while they're still a vet.
01:02:04
Speaker
Or you get to make your mistakes with the sheep and they all fucking died because a coyote ate them and you fucked up.
01:02:09
Speaker
When you can still buy a replacement, learning all that shit after the fact, after it's already at like, you know, the, the, the critical threshold, that's a, that's a lot more difficult.
01:02:21
Speaker
So, man, dude, I'm big as much as, as much as you can, are you going to get your spouse on board for this shit to, you know, make your move stat, make it fucking happen real quick.
01:02:33
Speaker
Yeah, and that's definitely a lane in which you can develop capacity that NSA doesn't give a shit.
01:02:43
Speaker
You know, everybody doesn't give a shit.
01:02:45
Speaker
Go grow potatoes.
01:02:46
Speaker
Right, nobody talking to me.
01:02:51
Speaker
And, you know, a lot of guys on Twitter will argue back and forth about like, oh, you know,
01:02:57
Speaker
you're, you're telling guys to like run away into the Hills and when they could be like contesting the real,
Skills for Societal Instability and Children's Roles
01:03:04
Speaker
you know, power structures.
01:03:04
Speaker
And my take on that is if you can't eat, you're not contesting shit.
01:03:10
Speaker
And, and basically it's not about, um, it's not about alternatives.
01:03:17
Speaker
The, the, the analogy that I draw is, is a labor strike.
01:03:21
Speaker
Like, Oh yeah.
01:03:23
Speaker
If, uh, if the factory workers, uh,
01:03:26
Speaker
go on strike and you tell those guys like, Oh, you're just running away from your, from your power structure in the, it's like, no, that's how I develop a power structure is by, is by strategic retreat or tactical retreat.
01:03:40
Speaker
Right.
01:03:41
Speaker
And, and,
01:03:42
Speaker
And basically, yeah, you shouldn't.
01:03:45
Speaker
If you have the means to make a lot of money and to have a position of power, hang on to it.
01:03:52
Speaker
But also get squared away on this other stuff.
01:03:54
Speaker
Figure out what it takes to buy land, what it takes to grow something.
01:04:02
Speaker
Honestly, for me, the biggest advantage, like I have realized that like,
01:04:09
Speaker
it would have to get real bad for like the best thing for me to do to be, go, go be a farmer.
01:04:16
Speaker
Not because being a farmer is not good, but because I'm, I suck at it.
01:04:20
Speaker
And, and, and basically what I've concluded is like the value of me buying a dairy cow and buying chickens and trying to grow potatoes and strawberries and things is,
01:04:36
Speaker
is that I had to go to the co-op and ask a bunch of questions and people, you know, connect with, connect with the guy who runs the beef auction, connect with the guy who, who knows how to build an apiary or build a chicken tractor.
01:04:53
Speaker
And I mean, those are the guys, my, my insurance policy, in addition to like trying to figure it out myself, I,
01:05:03
Speaker
My insurance policy is kind of that there's a bunch of old farmers around here who know me and know my kids and probably don't want us to starve.
01:05:13
Speaker
Right, right, right, right.
01:05:16
Speaker
Well, you know, think about this from a co-op perspective too.
01:05:19
Speaker
This is, I live in town, so I've got like a little yard.
01:05:23
Speaker
Well, I've got my brother-in-law lives 10 miles away.
01:05:28
Speaker
I was the land.
01:05:29
Speaker
So I contributed to the chicken feed and the fucking vaccination for the goats.
01:05:35
Speaker
And that's my that's my deal.
01:05:36
Speaker
Like I make more money.
01:05:37
Speaker
Yeah, I'll feed I'll feed cash into this thing.
01:05:42
Speaker
He has more time.
01:05:43
Speaker
He fucking works on that shit.
01:05:45
Speaker
It works out.
01:05:46
Speaker
It's a, it's a benefit to both of us.
01:05:48
Speaker
And, uh, finding those like small scale co-ops like that with somebody that you can trust too, man, that shit has huge value.
01:05:54
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:55
Speaker
Um, we actually currently, while I'm trying to get my fence figured out, we've got our cattle pastured on somebody else's land.
01:06:01
Speaker
So we pay them to take care of the cows.
01:06:04
Speaker
And, um, yeah, just having these, having these longstanding relationships, uh, is, is, is tremendous.
01:06:13
Speaker
Um,
01:06:14
Speaker
So yeah, that's, and, and, and the, the regenerative ag thing, I mean, part of the purpose of that is to make it less labor and input intensive.
01:06:26
Speaker
Right.
01:06:27
Speaker
So that it's something that you can conceivably, uh, ramp up to while you're doing other things.
01:06:34
Speaker
Right.
01:06:35
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's great.
01:06:36
Speaker
And yeah, we've got 10 acres.
01:06:38
Speaker
It's almost all forest.
01:06:40
Speaker
And, um,
01:06:42
Speaker
we've looked at from a regenerative ag perspective, we've looked at like thinning out the woods with goats and, and, you know, having kind of the, the tiered, the, the vertical farming and ways to ways to use it more effectively.
01:06:57
Speaker
And, and I'm, I'm, I'm terrible at all of it, but, but it's, but it's, it's actually, it's actually pretty cool to learn.
01:07:03
Speaker
And I also, one of the things that I've noticed with my kids and, and, and,
01:07:09
Speaker
I think a big part of my challenge in my adolescence, and I think a lot of suburban kids can relate to this, is everything my parents asked me to do was basically like make work.
01:07:21
Speaker
It was like it did not like the household would be fine if I did not exist.
01:07:28
Speaker
Gotcha.
01:07:28
Speaker
You know what I mean?
01:07:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:07:30
Speaker
From a material perspective, obviously my parents love me and everything.
01:07:33
Speaker
But like I didn't need to be there for things to work out.
01:07:38
Speaker
Yes.
01:07:38
Speaker
And my boys, they're little, but they go close the chicken coop up and collect the eggs every night.
01:07:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:46
Speaker
And if it doesn't happen, it's a problem.
01:07:48
Speaker
It's not a big problem, but it's a problem.
01:07:50
Speaker
And if, and if, and if, you know, things were to get really bad and like a substantial portion of our calories were those chickens and the door were left open, that could be extremely bad.
01:08:01
Speaker
And so to give my kids this responsibility, um,
01:08:05
Speaker
while they can still screw it up, you know, without killing everybody.
01:08:10
Speaker
Right.
01:08:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:13
Speaker
And then, you know, when, when things get hard, they're competent and they get to feel like, you know, I mean something to this family.
01:08:21
Speaker
And, and I just, I think that's one of the things that has created this like shitty teenager archetype is basically the absence of that.
01:08:35
Speaker
See, I had never actually thought about that because I grew up with like, you know, donkeys and horses and shit like that.
01:08:41
Speaker
I'm like a like a little like three acre thing.
01:08:45
Speaker
So it had never occurred to me.
01:08:47
Speaker
To be like a teenager would make work stuff.
01:08:50
Speaker
But it makes a lot of fucking sense now that you say it.
01:08:52
Speaker
And yeah, that makes a lot of fucking sense, man.
01:08:57
Speaker
It really does.
01:08:58
Speaker
I know that just from a homeschool perspective, too, one of the things that we've talked about in our family, though, is we want to get back to that spot where you're at.
01:09:09
Speaker
for those chores and responsibilities that are like real.
01:09:12
Speaker
Cause yeah.
01:09:13
Speaker
I mean, now that I think about it, I've had my kids like, you know, watch the windows, like buy him a toy or some bullshit, but it was made up bullshit.
01:09:19
Speaker
Like it was, you know, yeah, it's a lot different.
01:09:25
Speaker
Cause if it needed to happen, you wouldn't give it to them.
01:09:28
Speaker
Right.
01:09:28
Speaker
Exactly.
01:09:30
Speaker
Exactly.
01:09:32
Speaker
It makes a lot of fucking sense, man.
01:09:35
Speaker
There's a, uh, in my church, there was a leader in my church who, who came to visit, um, our, our congregation.
01:09:43
Speaker
And, uh, I don't know if you know, so I'm, I'm a ladder to saints.
01:09:45
Speaker
So we did the two year missionary experience suits and ties and bikes.
01:09:50
Speaker
And I did that in 2006 to 2008.
01:09:53
Speaker
And one of the things that he, and that's basically like our rite of passage.
01:09:59
Speaker
That's, that's boy to man kind of.
01:10:01
Speaker
Yep.
01:10:03
Speaker
Not explicitly, but like girls, you know, at least when I was growing up, girls would be like, I'm expecting to marry a guy who's done that.
01:10:10
Speaker
And if you haven't done that, you're not.
01:10:11
Speaker
He's already done his fucking mission.
01:10:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:13
Speaker
You're not ready for me.
01:10:16
Speaker
And so it's sort of this acid test of like, how are we doing?
01:10:22
Speaker
Right?
01:10:22
Speaker
How are the boys handling this experience?
01:10:26
Speaker
And...
01:10:27
Speaker
It's become really challenging for young boys to make it through that experience.
01:10:36
Speaker
And basically what this leader said was, the only North American kids that are doing okay with this experience are farm kids.
01:10:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:48
Speaker
And we're running out of farm kids to be honest.
01:10:53
Speaker
And, and I, yeah.
01:10:55
Speaker
And it's, it's so much to do with, uh, being, having a ramp into the adult world versus a cliff.
01:11:06
Speaker
Right.
01:11:07
Speaker
So dude, totally get it.
01:11:09
Speaker
I think it matters.
01:11:10
Speaker
It's a huge difference.
01:11:11
Speaker
I think too.
01:11:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:13
Speaker
That's, that's incredible though.
01:11:15
Speaker
I hadn't, I hadn't heard that from that perspective and,
01:11:18
Speaker
That makes a lot of sense.
01:11:19
Speaker
You know, my kind of equivalency there was at one point, not too distant past, they had to incorporate a class into the special forces course called like how to have a conversation with a human being.
01:11:36
Speaker
Dude, I mean, this is like 2013 or 2014.
01:11:38
Speaker
Well, these fucking kids started showing up, man, that like.
01:11:43
Speaker
couldn't do it like like they'd grown up with so much like technology in their hands and this bullshit that like they really didn't navy seals yeah well they had no idea how to how to work how to like talk to a person it was crazy but yeah dude it makes sense that's wild man and it's wild and and what are the what are the ramifications for readiness like how could you possibly know
01:12:09
Speaker
How could you possibly know what those kids are going to do?
01:12:12
Speaker
You know, it's, it's maybe they surprise you, but you know, who knows?
01:12:19
Speaker
It's exactly, exactly.
01:12:22
Speaker
Man, that's crazy.
01:12:23
Speaker
Um, so what are you, so you're, you're, you're basically, um, subsidizing some, some kind of farm activity.
01:12:32
Speaker
One of the things that my, um,
01:12:34
Speaker
my other green beret, uh, uh, buddy mentioned when we talked about this was, yeah, guys who have the connection between urban, like manufactured goods and distribution and money and all that.
01:12:51
Speaker
And then like, you know, the stuff that actually comes out of the ground and, and stuff that you need to eat, um, and timber and things.
01:12:59
Speaker
The people that are that have a foot in both worlds do a lot better.
01:13:05
Speaker
And it is an advantage in some ways.
01:13:08
Speaker
Yes.
01:13:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:09
Speaker
And I think so.
01:13:11
Speaker
I think that's smart.
01:13:12
Speaker
But like in terms of your personal, you know, you're are you doing like backyard farming?
01:13:18
Speaker
Are you raising rabbits or something?
01:13:20
Speaker
Or what's what's that look like for you?
01:13:22
Speaker
No, part of the reason that I moved here where I'm living at right now is my family's been here since the land rush.
01:13:28
Speaker
I've got like thousands of cousins with real farms and ranches and shit like that.
01:13:33
Speaker
So I live in town just because that was where I fell and it's what I could buy at the time.
01:13:38
Speaker
But I'm not worried about that part because I've got a big circle around me that has that bit covered.
01:13:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's rolling deep.
01:13:47
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's basically a unique situation, you know, for me, but
01:13:52
Speaker
Yeah, I've got some night vision goggles, so I'll make sure the cows stay safe.
01:13:55
Speaker
They grew the cows.
01:13:56
Speaker
We call it fair.
01:13:58
Speaker
Excellent, man.
01:13:59
Speaker
Hey, I really appreciate you taking this time.
01:14:01
Speaker
This was awesome.
01:14:04
Speaker
Incredible info for the guys.
01:14:05
Speaker
Oh, dude, thanks for having me on.
01:14:06
Speaker
No, I enjoyed the hell out of it, man.
01:14:07
Speaker
This was great.
01:14:09
Speaker
So yeah, again, if you want to support Clay and learn some good things, check out Concrete Jungle, Prairie Fire, Wrath of the Wendigo.
01:14:17
Speaker
Those are all available on Amazon.
01:14:19
Speaker
If you want to learn more about what we're doing, check us out at exitgroup.us or follow us on Twitter, exit underscore org.
01:14:26
Speaker
Hey, Clay, thanks for being here.
01:14:27
Speaker
Hey, thanks, brother.
01:14:28
Speaker
I appreciate it.