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July 23, 2022 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:15:32
James Walton
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I know I always sound excited about this with special guests, but I really am.
I've got James Walton.
Welcome to the Delingfog with me, James Delingfog.
I know I always say I'm excited about this with special guests, but I really am.
I've got James Walton.
You're in Richmond, Virginia, according to your Skype address.
Right.
And if people can see through my really shit internet, they'll appreciate that I've been trying to recreate the coming horror future where we're sort of broadcasting they'll appreciate that I've been trying to recreate the coming horror future Well, actually, we won't even be broadcasting, will we, James?
Because the internet will be down and we'll have to communicate by pigeon and And Korea and stuff like that.
It'll be like going back to the to the 18th century, to the to the to the revolutionary years.
There you go.
You celebrate.
James, we're going to talk about prepping, which I know is going to be of great interest to a lot of my viewers and and and listeners.
Now more than ever.
I mean, people have been prepping.
I mean, there are certain religious groups, aren't there, that prep as a matter of course.
Yeah.
LDS, Church of the Latter Day Saints.
Generally.
Yeah.
But I think more and more people who aren't Church of the Latter Day Saints are kind of realizing that maybe now, like we haven't had any warning of what's coming, is it?
It's grown a lot.
It's grown a lot in the 10 years that I've been involved with it, for sure.
So, tell me about yourself and about your organisation first, so we know that you're a credible... My favourite test, because I always joke about that term, that terrible term that I hate, subject matter expert.
That's one of those things that always drives me crazy.
I'm with you.
A podcast network called the Prepper Broadcasting Network.
And the Prepper Broadcasting Network is now a 16 host 12 show operation.
So we do sort of somewhere in the ballpark of about five to seven live shows a week.
And then we also do 12 or seven other shows All different hosts, all different sort of aspects and levels of preparedness.
And it's an incredible group of people who do it largely by volunteer.
We have representation all across the United States.
We've got a new guy in Canada.
And basically every single night, if you go to PrepperBroadcasting.com, there's a podcast there waiting for you on the subject of self-reliance.
And independence.
And that's really kind of what we promote most is self-reliance and independence.
Brilliant.
Brilliant.
So for those viewers, and there's actually a minority here, but for those of those who've been asleep and are still asleep, explain why it might be make sense to do a bit of prepping.
What's coming our way?
So the biggest thing that I see from the average person is kind of a, you don't know what you don't know sort of situation.
You know, people have been reared on, you go to the supermarket, you buy the food that you need, you call the police when there's a problem, you depend on a lot of outside things to sort of help you get through the day, right?
Like you're, most people are dependent creatures.
And I was kind of like that for a long time.
About 11 years ago, I was completely unprepared, totally unprepared for anything.
I mean, I was unprepared, James, to even be like a man and a husband, and a father, which I was.
I was a father and a husband young, and just, I had really no skill set for any of it.
I was a chef and musician, and that was kind of like the top level of my skills.
I always liked to fish, so I had that too.
I fumbled my way into this prepping community based off... It was really on a whim.
I started listening to these prepper podcasts because we had got hit right here in Virginia by this massive hurricane.
Well, it wasn't massive, really.
It actually wasn't that bad.
It was Hurricane Irene in 2011.
And it was just a month after my wife had given birth to our first son.
I was 26, I think, at the time.
Something like that.
I was wholly unprepared for anything like that.
I just remember holding him and looking out the back windows and the trees were like, you know what I mean?
Like laid over in consistent wind that just wouldn't stop for hours.
And the level of inadequacy, man, was so glaring.
So I had to change, you know, in a big way.
And the prepping community let me in.
Being a musician and being a front man, I felt comfortable behind a microphone.
And it just so happened that one of these weird podcast networks I was listening to was looking for hosts.
So I just jumped in there and said, I'll do a show.
And all these years later, I'm still doing that show.
The guy who owned the place kind of stepped out.
I stepped in.
And now I'm looking at probably one of the best investments I ever made in my life, which was starting to prep 10 years ago.
You know, because we're seeing so many things happen.
We're seeing this massive sort of shuffle of the of the, you know, global marketplace.
And it's having incredible effects on stuff that we don't even see in the news headlines.
You know what I mean?
Not that it's conspiratorial, just that it's big stuff, like the massive amount of people in America who Looked at China in 2020 and said, whoa, how much stuff is made in China?
What kind of things are made in China?
There are so many businesses now that are moving away from that.
And that's going to have massive global ramifications.
And of course, we have the war and the war is currently having incredible ramifications on on food all across the world and fuel all across the world.
And, you know, it's It's a wild time, man.
We'll look back on this time and be kind of blown away, I think.
And now more than ever, you know, you really have to think about sort of what your quality of life is, what your standard of living is that you like, and start to fortify it if you want to keep it, because everyone's going to have a challenge keeping their standard of living from now on, from this moment forward.
That is very eloquently put.
Thank you.
Lots of people being being really envious of you, James, because they're thinking, yeah, he's got 10 years head start on me.
What what can I do now?
Isn't it too late to get yourself in order and acquire these skills?
Definitely not too late.
I mean, it's almost never too late.
You'll know when it's too late.
There'll be no question.
You know what I mean?
We may not ever get to too late.
Who knows?
Yeah.
Like I said, I think, I think what most Western nations are going to suffer is a radical change in that standard of living that you're used to.
You know what I mean?
Like that, that's what's going to change and that's what's changing right now.
Being able to get started.
You know, one of the, one of the biggest problems is the levels of anxiety and your anxiety comes from the fact that you haven't taken action.
But you live in a world where all know what's happening.
You know all the terrible things that could happen and how bad things could go, but there's no action being taken.
And a lot of that doesn't have to do with, like, it doesn't have to do with you being lazy.
It doesn't have to do with people like, I'm not doing anything about anything because I want to play Xbox all night.
A lot of times, like I said, it's about you don't know what you don't know.
Nobody gets taught about prepping in school.
Nobody gets taught about prepping in college.
Nobody gets taught about prepping from their parents.
You know, preparedness, self-reliance, homesteading, none of that stuff is really passed down anymore unless you really are from the country here in the United States.
And I don't know what that looks like in the UK if there's, you know, outskirts where there's that kind of lineage passed down.
But if you want to get started today and you want to have an effect, um, I talk about something all the time called the base level of preparedness.
And the base level of preparedness gives you six different things to focus on that will radically affect how you deal with any kind of emergency or disaster or even global upheaval, right?
And it's pretty simple.
It's water, food, backup power, i.e.
having some way to turn power on to some degree when the lights go out, Security, first aid, and an evacuation plan.
So for those of you out there listening who are saying, what is my first step?
Or what should I do?
How can I have an impact on my overall preparedness?
Pick one of those six.
Pick one of those six things and put some money into it.
You know, so in other words, you want to be able to turn the lights back on.
Maybe something that you should invest in is a backup gas generator or Uh, a solar generator.
And if you don't have that kind of money, then maybe just get a little power bank.
You know, one of those little power banks that you can charge your cell phone on so that you have the means to back up power.
Something.
But those six buckets are crucial because then you kind of have a plan.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, let's do those one by one.
And you've started with generators.
Let's go for that because that, this has been much on my mind recently.
I know from some of my read, A great point.
that generates one of the most stolen things when when that that become a very valuable community but the question is um if you've got no fuel to run them um what do you and also do solar ones work i mean in a northern climate like like the uk are they even worth worth the the money that's a great point
so the core component of a solar generator is most of the time like a lithium ion battery right That lithium battery can be powered by a solar panel and the sun, or almost all of them now are like three to six ways of charging.
You can plug these batteries into your wall and stick it in the pantry until the lights go out.
Now, once the lights go out, you're not going to be able to recharge it.
You can use a gas generator to recharge that battery.
Uh, you can plug that battery into your vehicle with a 12 volt and recharge that battery.
And it's a big battery.
You know what I mean?
You'll get hours worth of power out of it, depending on what you try to hook it up to.
Um, but if you're trying to keep lights on, gather intelligence through your cell phone, radio, you know, stay in touch with some form of media and, uh, you know, maybe.
Bans for some kind of climate control or something like that.
Maybe some entertainment you can run.
Televisions, radios, charged cell phones for a really long time on one of those Renogy batteries, Jackery batteries.
They're really effective.
Right.
I mean, I anticipate that people would soon, if things really kick off, there are going to be gangs roaming the roads.
Well, if you've got a generator outdoors, that's going to be stolen instantly.
But if you've got a house, is it going to be noisy and smelly?
How does that work?
Oh, if you have a gas generator, it's going to be loud.
That's for sure.
They make smaller, more efficient generators.
Honda makes a great one right now that is pretty quiet, but it's not a It's not going to put out the kind of power to keep your refrigerator on and, you know, air conditioner or something like that.
But again, it's kind of when you're talking about backup power.
As one of those six options, you want to sit down and figure out what it is that you're going to want to power up first.
First and foremost, you know, what are the necessities?
And I would say you're obviously going to want to have light if you're going to go this direction.
You're definitely going to want to know what's going on in the outside world, right?
And those two are low draw.
They're pretty low pull on energy.
They're not going to take a lot of energy.
You're probably going to want some kind of entertainment.
It's likely that entertainment is number three above almost all, because that's just kind of who we are, right?
When I say entertainment, I mean television, the cell phone, something like that.
And then you may have a desire to keep a refrigerator or freezer on if you have I've got thoughts about those groups, though, to be honest with you, James.
It all depends on how you define when all things jump off.
of these somewhat fantastic roving bands of marauders that we all fundamentally dream up in our head i've got thoughts about those groups though to be honest with you james you know it all depends on how you define when all things jump off or what did you say when all yeah when it really hits the fan when things really were to get crazy so So let's say there's no more food coming into your city.
That's usually a big one, right?
One of the biggest ones is the trucks have stopped running, stopped coming into the town or neighborhood or whatever.
And for a long time, it's been what represents you the most, right?
It's, oh my God, all these people are around, they're stealing, they're robbing, you know, this kind of thing.
Obviously, You need people and you need community to make sure that that doesn't happen, and we can talk about that, but that's a bigger conversation.
The other thing to remember, though, is once resources are out of an area, there is going to be a massive exodus out of that area also.
So in other words, if you're worried about an army of 10, 15 guys, 5, 10 guys, whatever, running around wreaking havoc, never forget they have requirements also that have to be met daily.
So they're not robots.
In other words, if you get down the path of storing food for your family, you're going to start to understand the calorie game.
It takes a lot of calories to feed people over a long period of time.
If you have a family of four, that's a lot.
If you have a squad of 12 men, full grown men, that you have to feed on a daily basis, you're going to run out of food if it's not coming into the area, you know?
And that's going to push people to leave that area eventually.
They're going to say, you know, resources are exhausted.
There's also the now this may not happen as much in the UK, but there's going to be an attrition rate on these bands of roving people if that becomes a thing.
And what I mean by attrition is bullets.
You know what I mean?
So they're going to die in their efforts to break into homes.
If their number one way of getting calories and feeding their roving gang is we got to go door to door and take people out and take their food.
they're going to lose a guy at the front door here.
They're going to lose two guys at that house.
You know what I mean?
And eventually it's going to become, okay, we're no better off than anybody else.
So if there's something like that, it's going to be short lived.
I'm sure.
Um, because of that, you know, people aren't just going to all just lay down and die because there's mean guys roaming the streets.
There will be coalition, the people that form together to fight back.
There's no doubt about it.
Um, yes.
So that's true.
They have to keep their little gang afloat.
They can't just go to the supermarket, buy food.
They can't just order a pizza.
They've got to keep their gang afloat with calories.
And it's a lot of calories.
You know, you're talking 2000 calories per person per day for 10 guys talking 20000 calories a day.
Well, more than that, because they're going to be physically active and literally fighting.
So they're like soldiers, you know, 3000 calories per person per day.
It's a lot.
It's a lot to have access to every day.
And once.
Yeah.
I don't mean to go on, but once once people get hungry in those gangs of bad guys, that's how mutiny happens.
If you read Sun Tzu, The Art of War, he talks about that a lot.
He talks about you have to keep the soldiers fed.
You have to keep them disciplined or else there'll be mutiny.
So then you're going to have attrition within the ranks of these gangs where they'll start killing each other to take the head.
I mean, that happens in gangs here in America a lot.
Just just nowadays, you know.
So, yeah.
Will they be a problem?
Sure.
A basic security plan, which is why that's one of our six, could probably deter them.
And like I said, there's going to be mass exodus and mass attrition, I'm sure, in those ranks.
OK, so I'm, you know, I'm leaping ahead of us here.
Actually, what we should really be talking about is sensible, practical stuff like How much food do you need to store?
But let's let's let's talk about this defense thing, first of all, because obviously, if you've got supplies, you've got to be prepared to defend them.
So what are what are the basics?
Bearing in mind that in our country, we don't have a Second Amendment.
So it's much.
OK, people in the country quite often have this.
Yeah, sure.
I mean, probably the first thing and your number one priority if you're really going to think about security, not cameras, not locks on doors, but numbers of people.
You know what I mean?
people take yeah sure I mean probably the first thing and your number one priority if you're really going to think about security not cameras not you know locks on doors but numbers of people you know what I mean and the good thing about the UK is you guys have people right You guys are kind of tight.
So at least as far as I know.
So you got people.
You have to engage those people.
You know.
Quantity has a quality all its own, I think is to say.
So while a person can have a gun or, you know, a bad guy can have a gun or two bad guys can have two guns.
A neighborhood with a bunch of people who have come together to protect that neighborhood.
And we'll talk about ways to do that.
That's going to be a deterrent in and of itself.
You know, it's not like I'm going to wander through these streets quietly and pick the house we want.
You know, there's a barricade.
There's trees down.
We can't drive our pickup truck into that neighborhood because they've dropped the trees to keep us out.
And then there's people.
All the time there's people.
And they have weapons.
They have rocks.
They have compound bows.
You guys have compound bows, right?
Yeah, yeah.
It just needs to be a deterrent.
It doesn't have to be a war-fighting force of people, but the criminal has to look at it and say, let's go to the next one.
Let's not stay here.
There's too much risk.
Let's go to the next one.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
They're your biggest asset in terms of security for that kind of a situation.
Because we can agree, can't we, that in the kind of scenarios we envisage, the police are going to be pretty... the things we've relied on in the past, they're not going to be working.
It's happening in the Americas right now.
It's already happening here.
We just had a school shooting here in Texas.
It took the police an hour and a half to respond effectively.
19 people were shot in one by one guy.
You watch the video, you lose your mind.
Yeah.
You don't even believe what you're seeing.
So... Yeah, I read 400 police officers were there, doing nothing.
Sorry, go ahead.
I'm sorry, I talked over you.
Yeah.
No, I gather there were 400 police there and they all did nothing.
Fundamentally.
And they had the baddest things you can buy.
They had the body armour, they had the coolest things that you could buy slung on their shoulders Really did nothing for hours, except listen to gunshots go off, little kids get killed.
So, we've reached that point in some places in America already, and the people have already begun to respond.
In Indiana, in a shopping mall in Indiana yesterday, or two days ago, one of these crazy people showed up, started shooting people, and a 24-year-old kid who was carrying a concealed handgun shot the killer immediately.
I think he shot three people, but as soon as he saw him, he put him in his sights and put him down.
And, you know, America's at a point now where the people have to become the deterrent because the police are no longer the deterrent, you know?
And I don't mean we need to start just gunslinging, but the average bad guy has to understand that there are consequences to their actions.
And it's sort of the same mentality.
You know what I mean?
There has to be some level of deterrent, whether it be police or a public that is vigilant in some way.
You know?
Yeah.
Personal and community level, you know?
Yeah.
So, but yeah, to your point, 100%.
Things get even worse.
So, does that mean setting up groups?
So, it involves setting up groups, doesn't it?
Talking to people, talking to your neighbours, saying what the situation is.
We've got to form a team.
I wrote a book years ago called Come Unity Community.
And one of the biggest takeaways from that book, that book was exclusively about neighbors and neighborhoods and bringing them together for the benefits of neighborhood prepping.
And one of the biggest takeaways was you have to form ownership in the community.
Like you and your neighbors have to buy into this is ours.
Cause I grew up outside of Philly in row homes.
Yeah.
You know, We were territorial and mean, you know what I mean?
And that territorial thing has to exist.
Like, we're better now.
I think we're better people now than we were then on a whole.
But that territory thing, we can't give up.
You know, this is our neighborhood.
We love it here.
We take care of it.
We have ownership of it.
We're not going to let just anybody come through and destroy it.
And if you can establish that, you know, in a sort of perimeter, then you can get a lot of buy-in from people.
You know, you can get a lot of people who say, my family's here.
Everything I have is here.
We're not just walking away from this and giving it up.
And that's important right now.
You know, that's important right now.
Dear James, I'm already feeling better after this stage in the conversation.
You're filling me with hope and positivity, which is really good.
Thank you for that.
Glad to hear it.
Well, we've got tons of listeners, man.
We've got UK listeners too.
So that's a good sign.
That means people are listening.
People are taking notes and they're doing things for sure.
I still think at the moment, the number of awake people is a relatively small proportion of the population, but at least there are some of us.
And yeah, so OK, so I mean, I'm already seeing this among among the awake people that there is There is a sense of community.
It's like discovering the human race for the first time.
Have you found this?
It's like how things ought to be.
Yeah, well, that's the book I need to write.
And, you know, we went through something James called, well, I call it anyway, the 100 year amnesia.
You know what I mean?
And that one year amnesia was, I guess, industrialization in America and probably in the West in general.
So maybe 150.
Ear amnesia and the things that happened before that all just make sense.
This little gap that we've lived in from then on, just the total amnesia of who and what we are and all the things that we used to know.
You know, like our separation from the natural world is so unbelievable.
As I started to get into prepping and started to learn about wild edibles and wild medicine, It was just blow my mind the things that my parents had no idea about, their parents had no idea about, and just the medicine that's in the backyard that you don't even grow.
You know, like just being able to identify trees and plants and all the different things that they can do for you.
There's a, you probably can't see it, but there's a tree back here that has some big fruits hanging off of it.
And this is a wild tree called a pawpaw tree.
And this pawpaw tree is an exotic plant, exotic tree that grows all the way up to, I think, Pennsylvania.
It's the northernmost exotic plant, tropical plant, I'm sorry, in the United States.
It's delicious.
It tastes like a mango had sex with a banana.
That's what it tastes like.
It's, I mean, it's a perfect combination.
I never knew it existed until I bought this house and started ripping trees down.
Nobody really knows about it.
It grows wild.
In September, they come off the tree.
They're ripe, delicious.
There's some seeds inside.
But the fact that there's a total ignorance about this incredible fruit that exists, that nobody even really knows exists, just speaks to that amnesia that we lost in 100 and 150 years of the natural world being separated from us.
I think in the UK, you're talking more like 250 years of amnesia because 230 years of Industrial Revolution, which is what kicked off your Industrial Revolution.
began in about 17, 1780, 1790.
We've had so many generations forgetting that.
But in the past, this was always presented to us as a an escape from the back, back breaking toil and misery.
Well, you gotta have the balance.
I think all we need is a balance.
You know what I mean?
was for that period with with automation and all the kind of manufacturing and stuff which gave us gave us all our creature comforts but i think you're right we've got to learn to live like our pre uh 19 early 19th century ancestors which is a big ask well you gotta have the balance i think all we need is a balance you know what i mean i
i don't want to live and i don't live um on 50 acres in the middle of nowhere because i like people i like cities i like entertainment i like to go and do fun stuff with my family water parks you know all the stuff uh i have no desire to live out in the middle of nowhere never come off my property that's not me that might be the dream for some but i do a lot of stuff i've got chickens roam in the yard you know fruit trees gardens
that kind of stuff on less than an acre of land i got a buddy who is mostly self-sufficient in terms of food on less than two acres of land um Um, so there is a, there, there is a movement to sort of, you know, we've tipped the scale so extremely that there's a radical movement to just completely tip them in the other direction.
And I think you're asking for a lot of trouble that way too.
You know, I see, I see that mentality in sort of the green movement, right.
And sort of the climate.
Yeah.
Lunacy right now.
It's like, oh, we use fossil fuels to get here and to achieve all this stuff.
And we ruin the environment, cut the fossil fuels off 100 percent.
And, you know, that kill millions of people if we do that.
Oh, they're insane.
They are.
They are fascists.
They are.
They are Malthusians.
They are.
They are crazies.
You're absolutely, absolutely right.
I have heard it said, though, James, by several people, they, you know, people who are into the sort of thing that we're into and they say, look, I've been doing my research about what happened in places like Grozny during the Chechen conflict.
And, you know, when things get really serious and basically, if not in a gang, armed to the teeth, you're screwed.
And people say, well, why should I even bother prepping under those circumstances?
Because, you know, It would be better to die quickly rather than have a lingering kind of life of pathetically trying to grow my own vegetables, not getting enough food and wasting away.
Yeah, that's because people think they have a choice.
You don't have a choice.
You might think you have a choice.
You might think that you can say, honey, we're going to sit on our porch and watch it all come to an end.
But if if one of those guys comes up on you in the leg and then points the gun at your wife, You're not going to look at her and smile and say, this is what we wanted.
Your body's going to, your survival instinct is going to kick in no matter what you've told yourself.
And you're going to want to survive.
You're going to do everything you can to survive.
You know what I mean?
It's built into you.
It's built in by the, it's the reason you're literally sitting here talking to me right now, right?
Generations before you have used that survival instinct to make it this far.
And while you can sort of, You can definitely get away from the things that you have to do by telling yourself that.
And a lot of people do.
Uh, it just doesn't work that way.
You know, swim to the bottom of the ocean and say, I'm going to kill myself down here.
I'm just going to drown myself.
You know, your body's going to take over and you're going to try to get back to the surface.
The same thing will happen as society continues to devolve.
You're going to find your niche.
You're going to try to figure out how to survive.
You're going to make it on the meager scraps or whatever.
If it gets to that point, or.
Get to work.
Start putting food up.
Start growing food.
Start meeting people.
Start fortifying your body itself.
Learn how to fight.
Get in shape as best you can so that you personally can be a personal deterrent to people.
There's a lot that a single person can do as a deterrent.
I used to be the total opposite.
Remember I told you at the beginning of the show I had no skills.
Nothing.
When I got out of high school I couldn't even run a quarter mile.
I was one of those kids who skipped gym class.
I'm not doing that running around throwing balls nonsense.
Um, and you know, over the span of 10 years, I learned how to fight.
I went to an MMA gym.
I started working out.
I got in shape, got strong.
Those kinds of transformations can happen, but you got to start in the ASAP, you know?
And, and again, so much anxiety starts to be lifted off you, the more action you take, right?
Once you realize that you, You can do harm to a person if they try to do harm to you.
The amount of anxiety that was lifted off of me, because I spent my whole life being a little guy.
A little skinny, pale kid.
And you know, I didn't get any taller.
But I'm stronger and I know how to fight.
So it changes everything.
Changes your interactions with people.
And prepping does that on all levels.
You read a story about, oh my god, all these food plants are on fire.
What's going to go on with all the food?
What about the issues over in Ukraine and the wheat?
My family's going to eat.
There's no doubt in my mind my family's going to eat.
And that's from the work.
That's from the work.
And a lot of people want to absolve themselves of that work.
There's all kinds of excuses I've heard about that.
But you'll live a much better life You know, if you get started today, doing whatever it is you can.
There's more options today, James, than there ever was before.
There's ways that you can grow food in your apartment.
Meat, you know what I mean?
There's ways that you can grow.
I mean, I've got people who grow quail inside the house.
Quail.
Lay eggs every day.
Six weeks, they're mature.
You can butcher them and eat them.
They're small, but you know, it's something.
Right.
It's something you're sure you're surely drawing the line at eating our cats and dogs.
Oh, yeah.
I'm not eating any cats or dogs.
No, I'll eat anything.
Squirrels, raccoons, possums, deer.
That's fine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're a big dog.
Dogs are important deterrent, too, from a security standpoint, man.
You know, years ago, we bought a pit bull here kind of by accident.
Twelve, 13 years ago now.
He's dead.
He was a great dog.
But we started piling the pit bulls on because we fell in love with them.
And I'm going to tell you right now, just the simple fact that our house has three pitbulls in the backyard on a day-to-day basis, from a day-to-day security standpoint, means that your average criminal, if they're casing a neighborhood, are going to say, the house with the three pitbulls seems like a bad option.
Let's look at the other homes.
You know what I mean?
That's the simplistic deterrent right there.
Um, living in the current mindset really helps in terms of security and day-to-day sort of self-defense.
Because if you, if you get yourself in that mindset of becoming the guy that is more work than you're worth, you know, that's really what you want to be.
You want to be the guy or the guy with your family that people look at and go, that guy's going to be a problem.
You know, I might be able to take him, but he's going to be a problem.
I'm going to get hurt.
And that's who you want to be.
You want to be that person.
Go down the street, find another victim, because I'm not the victim, you know, and everybody can do that.
Everybody can do that.
That's the good thing about it.
So let's let's let's go back to the slightly more boring stuff that we should have dealt with at the beginning, which is food.
I mean, yes, water obviously is important.
You need presumably water, sort of a Berkey filter.
Would that be good?
Yeah.
So let's let's do water real quick, because that's easy.
Um, yeah, you're going to need at least a gallon per person per day.
At least if you want to wash, if you want to water gardens, you're going to need more.
Um, but at least one gallon per person per day.
Okay.
My best recommendation for buying water is one gallon jugs of water to store in your home, but there are massive limitations to storage, right?
You get to a point where a week's worth of water is probably the most you're going to be able to store in your home, particularly if you've got like a family of four.
It's a lot.
We're talking 28 gallons of water, right?
Yeah.
So you're tapped out at that point.
I don't know what the rain barrel laws are in the UK because they're different in all the states here in America.
But if you can capture rainwater anyway, it's a gold mine.
You can shore up your water needs with two rain barrels because they're 50 gallons each, 55.
So if you need 28 gallons per week, And you can fill two rain barrels up.
That's 110.
You got some wiggle room, right?
And yes, you'll need some way to filter that water.
You could use the Berkey filter.
You can sanitize the water using bleach.
There's something that's worth talking to your audience about called the 6-8-8-6 rule.
I kind of made it up.
I didn't make the formulation up, but I made up the 6-8-8-6 rule just because it's easy to remember.
6-8-8-6.
6% or 6 drops of 8% bleach will sanitize a gallon of water.
8 drops of 6% bleach will sanitize a gallon of water so that it's safe for you to drink, right?
There might still be sticks and stuff in it if you don't have a filter, but you can drink it and you won't get killed from the pathogens that are inside.
So the 6-8-8-6 rule.
I'm a big fan.
I carry a Katadyn Hiker Pro.
That's a hand pump filter.
Highway.
That's a hand pump water filter that's really effective.
But there's a number of different filtration methods out there.
You know, you can filter with charcoal and sand if you had to, and then purify that water with bleach or into a boil.
But that's water.
You know, water is pretty straightforward.
Digging a well is really a great way to get out of it, too.
When it comes to food, I feel like there is a stigma That people need to get beyond with the food.
Most people think of preppers, they think of survival food.
They think of long-term food storage, freeze-dried, on the shelf for 20 years, crack it open and use it when the end of the world comes, right?
That's one aspect of food.
We talk about something all the time in the prepping community called the prepper's pantry.
The prepper's pantry is separate from this survival food idea.
That's when you take the food that you buy every week and you start adding quantity to it.
Right?
So now rather than having one month's worth of food or two weeks worth of food that you buy at the supermarket, you buy extra cans, extra packages, extra bags, so that you can get yourself up to maybe three months worth of that pantry food.
So that your menu at home hardly changes over a three month period.
But at the end of the day, James, If you're, if you're dependent on supermarket food and long-term food storage, then you're just on a, you're just on a countdown to when the food runs out.
If we really, I'm where there's no more food production, right?
You're just waiting until everything runs out.
Um, and that could be the stuff that you run out of at your home or the stuff that, you know, you barter for.
So there's a whole nother level of food.
Which has to do with trapping and hunting and growing food, raising animals, chickens, you know, quails, rabbits, all that kind of stuff that I highly recommend Preppers get into.
I have to imagine that fishing is a big deal in the UK, right?
Yeah.
Fishing is one of those things that Preppers hardly even talk about, but I've been fishing my whole life.
And if I were right now in a situation where I had zero protein to provide for my family, the first place I would go is to the river because fishing is It's cheap, it's easy.
If you have a net, you can really bring home some protein.
But I'm 100% confident I can go to a river, catch fish, bring them home, fillet them, eat.
So for me, what has really given me a break of the anxiety, James, in terms of the food and the issues that are affecting the food and the supply chain has been sort of this multi-dimensional look at how food comes into my house.
You know what I mean?
So what are the many ways that I can bring food into my house?
I can do it through the supermarket.
I can buy it in bulk and pack it away for the long term.
I can go out and hunt it.
I can fish for it.
I can trap for it.
I got food in my backyard.
I'm trying to reach and grab a chicken for you.
I got these running all through the backyard.
You know what I mean?
And they lay eggs so that there's protein that way.
And You know, the other thing that I've been playing around with too, James, that I think is effective is... I don't know if they have them, but I'm sure they will if they don't, and you guys might.
There are these farm-to-front-door deliveries now.
CSAs, they're called sometimes.
Their food delivery also.
They come direct from farms, and they deliver the groceries to your house.
You know what I mean?
So, open up all the doors you can with food.
Open them all up.
As they start to close, if things get bad, you just know you have all the more options, you know?
Yeah.
But fundamentally, you're going to want to have 2,000 calories per person per day for your fat, you know?
If you want to address that fast, you can get yourself a 50-pound bag of rice, two 25-pound bags of beans, and bucket them up in five-gallon buckets in Mylar bags with 2,000 cc oxygen absorbers and you'll put away something like 160,000 calories just like that, you know?
What are oxygen absorbers?
Yeah, sure.
They're just basically a little packet that you put down into your long-term food.
Are these chickens too loud?
No, I'm liking it.
Now for the show.
You take this little package and you throw it in the bucket and it It keeps the larva from growing in grains, so it sucks up all the oxygen.
There's iron inside of it, and the iron starts to rust, and the rust process absorbs all the oxygen molecules, so that that little container really kind of loses all of its oxygen, thanks to the oxygen absorber, and it starves anything in there from spoiling the food.
Okay, where do you get these things from?
So if you go to Amazon, you can buy a pack of Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers that are all together ready for long-term food storage.
They sell them.
As long as you look up Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers, you can get a pack, like a 20 count of these bags and the oxygen absorbers and put your food in, drop the oxygen absorber in.
Mylar bags heat seal.
So you can use your lady's hair straightener to seal the bag with heat.
And then you can put something on your shelf in an afternoon that'll last for 20 years.
Know what I mean?
No doubt about it.
You take white rice, mylar bag on the shelf.
We do it with our big box membership supermarkets that sell foods in bulk.
And that's what we do.
We buy big bags of flour, big bags of rice, big bags of beans.
They go into mylar bags, into five gallon buckets.
And that's how we stack those calories, you know, for the worst case scenario.
And you also save money that way as food prices go up.
You know, if you have rice from 2015, which I don't have anything that old, but if you have rice from years ago, it's obviously a money save, right?
You're not paying the same price.
So, uh, yeah, that's it.
That that's just one aspect of the process though.
You know, if you, if you buy a big, a big bag of rice, would it not just keep by itself or does it go off?
Yeah, what's gonna happen is there's a creature called the Indian Meal Moth.
Several things can happen, but what the most likely thing that's gonna happen is there's something called an Indian Meal Moth, and I was in food safety for a very long time, so I got a real good grip on the pests that destroy food, right?
Because that's part of that.
The Indian Meal Moth will eat through that rice, or you'll open it and give the Indian Meal Moth access to it.
And then it'll multiply so rapidly that you'll have an Indian meal moth problem you won't want to deal with.
All the flour in your house, all the rice in your house will be at risk.
And it'll just be a real pain.
The other thing that'll happen if you escape the Indian meal moths are bulk grains are packed with bug larvae and bug eggs.
It's just impossible not to do.
It's impossible to build out because it's just an impossible thing, if you can imagine.
There's acres of fields filled with these plants, wheat, patties filled with rice, the whole thing.
And when they're harvested, and even when they're washed, and even when they're put through the mills and things like that, there's still some larvae left.
Most of the time it's weevil larvae.
And over time, those weevils will hatch.
And they'll feast on And then they'll leave your rice or your flour.
It happens in rice and flour.
These little black bugs will start to appear.
The way you keep that from happening is you pack it away from sunlight in the mylar bag.
You put the oxygen absorber in there so the eggs can't get the oxygen they need to grow and they never hatch.
You know what I mean?
Right.
That's the process.
Yeah, that sounds I've experienced that.
I mean, I've always been saying what you say makes a lot of sense.
What are the foodstuffs that tend to vanish in times of crisis?
I mean, I imagine things like salt and sugar, are they important?
Yeah, I mean, salt is an easy problem to fix, you know.
You should have a lot of it if you want to eat.
Another aspect of food that we didn't touch on is food preservation.
Drying, smoking, salting and curing.
A lot of these require some kind of salt, but again, it's a way to take what you have growing in your garden and extend it for a long period of time, but you're going to need salt to do that kind of stuff.
Salt's a big one.
You know, in the Civil War, our soldiers were paid with salt.
They were, because it's not something you can just, you can't just dig a hole in your backyard and find salt if it's all gone off the ship.
You know, another big one that people forget to store a lot of is oil.
Cooking, some kind of cooking meat.
Ghee, crispo, oil, something.
You use it every day, but it's not something you think about.
But if you run out of it, it can really affect how you cook food every day.
You know, butter, whatever it is.
Yeah.
See, where you have to get, James, is not... You want to get past the point where you're worried about the things that people buy when they're crazy.
You want to have those things in your house already.
Yeah.
I mean, your house, because today you decide you're going to start going out and buying a little bit of extra of everything that you know what I mean?
And then you build on that over the next year.
Well, even in six months, if you go out, you buy one can extra of your favorite soup every time you're at the supermarket.
Think about how many you'll have in three months.
You know, I mean, just one item.
Now, imagine you imagine you do it with oil.
Imagine you do it with rice.
You could invest 20 bucks extra.
Into your supermarket trip.
That's if you have nothing else, right?
$10, $20.
And you can start having a lot of extra food and foodstuffs on hand.
And even, you know, hygienic products on hand.
Just by buying a dishwasher every time you go, you know?
Yes.
I was thinking of... Okay, so apart from foodstuffs, I was thinking of what things would be really, really annoying not to have.
And I was thinking, for example, if you didn't have a coffee... Sorry?
Ammo.
Get your tampons problems shored up early.
That's one of the things that we did at our house.
Yes.
Real fast.
Yes, I don't personally use tampons, but I was thinking of... If you have a woman, you know.
Dentist pick.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Bring up a really good point with toothpaste.
This is one of those things about prepping where you don't know what you don't know, but once you learn it, Then things get easier.
We don't store extra toothpaste.
Well, we don't store that much extra toothpaste.
And one of the reasons we don't is because we store extra baking soda.
We store extra baking soda for baking.
We store it for personal hygiene, for cleaning.
If you take your baking soda, salt, if you keep, if you grow mint or if you store mint essential oils and you mix those things together, you can add You can add wax, you can beeswax, you can add coconut oil to that mix also and it makes a little bit better a toothpaste.
But how good a toothpaste are you worried about, you know, making?
No, I'm with you.
I'm with you on that one, James.
You misheard me.
I said dental floss, the stuff that picks between.
Sorry about that.
Because I can just imagine how annoying it would be if the bits stuck in my in my difficult parts of my teeth.
It would drive you nuts and you'd have toothache as well.
I saw that years ago, man.
And it wasn't even a prepping thing.
You buy the metal pick that they have at the dentist.
You know, like the crooked pick.
You can just buy it.
Oh, you are... James, I love you, man.
You are so clever.
And then you never even think... I was also thinking that maybe now is the time Obviously not in your case, but to invest in one of those cut throat razors that you can just strop and keep it sharp.
Yeah, I got I have one of those.
Yeah, you got to learn how to keep it sharp.
You got to learn how to how to use this strap and that kind of thing.
They call it.
So that's a skill set, but that's worth doing for sure.
Yeah, that's worth doing.
Again, back up If you're talking about going to the 1800s, no more electricity ever, then that's that's part of that plan.
But if you have a backup power solution, then you can get one of those razors that charges pretty quick.
Those electric razors are pretty efficient, and you could probably keep that thing charged and do what you needed to do.
But I guess if you're shaving down the skin, yeah, yeah, that'd be something worth learning.
It's always good to learn how to sharpen a blade and to keep a blade sharp, be it an axe, knife, razor, you know, that kind of stuff.
That's a skill worth having.
Soap's a big one.
You know, soap's a big one.
I think it's important to have a lot of soap on hand.
How do you recommend buying that in bulk?
How does that work?
What do you get?
It depends on what you want to do.
Obviously, you can just buy bulk bars of soap.
I think the consensus is pretty clear that bar soap, especially more natural bar soap, is way better for you than like the gel soap.
We don't use the gel soap anymore.
I got so many prepper friends that started their own soap businesses that I've got so much soap piled on me that I don't even think about soap anymore.
But I also have an affinity for bar soap.
It's one of my guilty pleasures.
Fine, handmade soap is one of my favorite things.
My wife has always been buying that bar soap Extra bar soap from different places because she knows I love it.
But that's the direction that I would go.
I would start stacking artisanal bar soaps, again, sort of as one of those things that you buy an extra of.
And you reach a point, James, where you have, you know, 20, 30 bars of soap and you're feeling pretty good about your preparedness level of soap, right?
Yeah.
And then again, soap is also a combination of Soap is simply the combination of some kind of animal fat, or fat in general, and lye, which is made from soaking your ashes from your fire in water for 24 hours.
Now, people add things to that to make it nice, make it smoother, make it fancy, make it smell good, but the basic soap is animal fat and lye.
Okay.
Yeah.
You got the option of let me stack up the soap or let me learn the process or both, you know, and then, you know, if I run out of it all, I can duplicate it and make my own.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we've covered we've covered sort of defense, more or less.
We've covered food, water and power supplies.
What have we missed?
First aid's a big one.
Oh, yeah.
It's a big one.
So, you know, you're not going to become a doctor overnight.
That's a good thing, James.
What I've seen of doctors in the last couple of years, I wouldn't trust them with my life.
Great point.
Great point.
You need some resources on hand.
You need some resources that you can read now.
Our favourite pick at the network is a book called The Prepper's Medical Handbook.
The Prepper's Medical Handbook is written by A guy who is not just a family practitioner, but a guy who has experience in places like Haiti, treating off grid, right?
So Haiti, after the earthquakes, he showed up with his people, brought people back from the brink.
And he has a skill set up here that is kind of built for the prep.
You know what I mean?
His medical handbook has these great modules in it that give you a very easy to understand list of sort of met the Medical equipment you need to deal with heart fractures and breaks, uh, illnesses, that kind of thing.
He tells you what to do, but also the things that you should have stored, which that's what the average person needs.
You know, the average, you know, what do I need to buy and what do I need to know to address a problem?
Um, so that book I think is a great resource to have on the shelf and to read ahead of time.
And then you have to look at your own personal family and start to build Your own stockpile of the things that you guys need.
You know, like my wife gets heartburn a lot, so it only makes sense for us to have a lot of stuff to deal with heartburn, right?
And your family, I'm sure, has their issues.
So start.
And then you have to get training.
You know, you eventually have to get training to learn how to stop someone bleeding to death, how to go as far as you want to go as a person who's going to treat your family, you know?
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
No, that's good.
I agree.
So, yeah, it would take too long, wouldn't it, for us to discuss all the magic ingredients, all the remedies that you need to have on hand.
I mean, bandages and... It's a big thing, man.
It's a very big thing, you know.
It takes time, too.
It takes time, which is why I always want people to get going, man.
Get started.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I'm all I'm all keyed up already.
I'm all fired up, James.
You know, I couldn't I couldn't think of a better person to advise me than somebody called James, because it's a great name.
It is a great name.
There's no doubt about it.
I've got generations.
Yeah.
Have you?
Have you now?
Yeah.
If only you could be channeling.
Well, I suppose you are.
You're channeling your ancestors.
Have you traced your ancestry back?
Do you know how far you go back in America?
I don't.
I don't.
We're not impressive.
Impressive.
I think my great-grandfather was a train bum in the early 1900s.
But my grandfather, he fought in World War II.
He had a little bit of a drinking problem.
He was a little bit of a fighter.
But yeah.
Right.
James, you know how we are.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Of course I did.
Of course I did.
Okay, so we've done a few things.
Was there one more we haven't done?
Yeah, the bug out plan.
Yeah, well, two different things.
Why do you need that?
OK, different things.
So real quick, the bug out plan is a massive undertaking that people often get confused with a simple evacuation.
It took me just to give you one example.
It took me eight podcasts, an hour each to do it right.
Evacuation on the other hand can be simple and it can be a quick way for you to deal with a problem.
We evacuate long before we ever say the B word.
You know what I mean?
Here's the other thing about bug out too.
Everything we've lived through since I've been doing this 10 years, pandemics, everything.
And all the preppers that I know, James, I don't know anyone who's ever bugged out ever once from anything.
I've never done it.
I don't know anybody who's ever done it because your inclination is to bug in and stay.
If you have to leave, though, if you have to leave, hurricanes coming, you know, wildfires are big.
You got to sure up that evacuation plan.
And the best way to do it is to have all the documentation that you need in a fireproof locked bag.
I think that's a very important prep for people to have.
Fireproof locked bag, you can have cash.
Go ahead.
You make a good point there.
I mean, look, we're unlikely to have hurricanes or volcanoes or fires or anything like that in the UK.
We're lucky that way.
But actually, I think a much more important thing is for people to have documentation of their bank holdings, of their shareholdings, because I think what's coming They could easily try and say, well, we've got no records.
All our computer records are lost.
We don't know how much you've got.
We don't know whether you have proper legal property, whether you own this property or not.
Prove it.
Yeah.
And that's a good one.
Your house by anything.
And you leave that stuff behind because you had moments to leave for some reason.
And all that documentation, documentation gets left behind.
And also having a having a place that, you know, you're going to go.
And it doesn't have to be like a secluded secret bug out location, but if you're dealing with power outage, if you're dealing with some chaos in your city or in your town, then you should have a family member or choose a hotel, motel place to stay that you go to, that you know is there, that you know is reliable.
You use that cash that's inside your bag, right?
That you store in your bag for emergencies to make sure you have enough cash to stay at that hotel.
And then all you got to do is grab that bag, maybe grab some bags that you and your family have important things in and you can leave, you know, and you don't have to live through a long term power outage, two weeks or whatever, you know, something like that.
You don't have to live through whatever kind of chaos might be roiling.
And it gives you an out, gives you a quick out, you know, and I think long before anybody worries about bugging out to the mountains or the woods, just have a solid evacuation plan.
I've suddenly thought of another one.
Communications.
If the mobile phone network goes down and we have landlines, I mean, they're actually trying to phase them out, which to my mind is crazy and actually probably sinister and deliberate.
But it's like they don't want us to communicate.
And, and what are people going to do?
Yeah, sure.
when yeah sure I mean the most important thing that you can do ahead of time is to establish where people are going to go when there's a problem so So establish where you and your family are going to meet when there's an issue.
You know what I mean?
So rather than having to depend on that, if your mobile phone's your only communication option, you know, we're all going to meet at home.
We're all going to meet at this house.
We're all going to meet at this place.
You're going to go pick up the kids.
I'm going to go pick up Pop up and we're going to come back to this place.
Whatever that little easy plan is.
I recommend people have another cell phone on a different network.
You know, one of those pay-to-play sort of cell phones.
Buy minutes for it because it could be that one network's doing poorly and the other network's doing really well.
There's satellite phones.
Satellite phones are an option.
They could be affected by the same things that are affecting your mobile network though.
There's amateur radio, ham radio, which could also work.
That's a high... Go ahead.
How difficult is that though, ham radio?
I mean, you know, are the... I've seen them on TV, you know, walkie-talkies and stuff.
Is that... are they easy or are they... It's a commitment of time and it's also a commitment of effort over time.
You know, so you have to get a license to use it, at least here in the States.
So you got to study, you got to take tests.
And that's just one part of it.
Then you likely will have to join a group of people, learn how to use it and to get proficient with it.
And then the person that you're contacting has to have all that, too.
So, you know, I like having a ham radio on hand, even if for no other reason than just to listen to the airwaves in a disaster.
because they will be on.
So if you're So if you can't even broadcast with it, which in an emergency you can call out into your ham radio, it's legal.
You can use the ham radio just to listen to the broadcast of who might be broadcasting over it.
And there will be departments and agencies speaking through ham radio when the mobile networks are out in a disaster.
That's a guarantee.
So it's worth having.
Right.
Yes.
I mean, I think I'm I'm so far down the rabbit hole, James, that I think that the enemy is actually not going to be.
I mean, obviously, the marauding gangs initially, but the real enemy is the government and the authorities.
But remember, your friend, there's not enough of them.
Remember that if you're worried about government, there's no magic.
Hidden military that they have.
That can physically come and deal with every person in the UK.
They don't have a one-for-one on the UK, right?
A lot of times, in shows like this, like we did just earlier, we will say, in a collapse, the police will be incompetent and outnumbered.
Yeah.
In every disaster, at least in the United States, the government is outnumbered, out-resourced, and incompetent.
And that's exactly what will happen in a collapse.
They're not coming to take you away because they don't have enough people to take you away.
And they're not coming to help you because they don't have enough people to come or resources.
Yes.
OK, so back to that point, for those of us who can't get Shotguns or other weaponry.
What are the next best things?
You mentioned compound bows.
What else should one have for self-defense?
Anytime you can shoot a projectile.
Well, the important thing about weapons is this, James.
What are you talking about and when are you talking about?
Because right now, my best option for a weapon is not a lethal weapon.
You know, if there's rule of law in place, If there's still law, then you gotta be very careful about what you do with any weapon.
You gotta be real careful about, I was attacked, so I stabbed this guy in the neck and killed him.
Because at least here in the States, you can go to jail for that.
If I pull my gun on a guy who's standing in my front yard and yelling at me, I'm going to jail.
That's a guarantee.
I can't just shoot somebody because they're saying mean things to me on my property.
So it's not, when there's law involved, there's no clear cut like, Make sure you have a gun so you can shoot back, because there's repercussions.
Same thing, I'm sure, in the UK.
If you have a compound bow and you're on your front porch and some group of people comes up and starts picketing or whatever, you can't just shoot someone through the liver with a broadhead and not expect repercussions, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So if there's rule of law, less than lethal weapons, I think, are the best thing to have.
Right now, I think the average person should spend more time thinking about less than lethal weapons like tasers, like mace, you know, those kinds of things that, again, we're talking about that deterrent word again.
You know, sure.
You want to deter people from what they think they want to do.
I want to mess with this guy.
Right.
They make this weapon called a burner.
It looks like a gun, but it shoots a pepper ball at some insane per second.
You shoot people in the chest with the burner, it's going to knock the wind out of them.
It's going to send the pepper spray up in their face.
And you can run away.
They're not going to run after you.
You know what I mean?
Or they're going to leave because they're going to say, this is awful.
And that's kind of what you want.
That sounds good.
No, I don't want to go killing people at all.
I'm just thinking, yeah.
So a burner, you say it's called?
Yeah, the burner.
B-Y-R-N-A.
It looks like a handgun, but it shoots pepper balls.
Again, that could be an issue.
In certain circumstances, because if people see you with something that looks like a gun, they might not be smart enough to know that it's a gun.
So mace, mace is great.
People know what mace is, right?
I never know recently.
You can buy paintballs with pepper spray in them.
Can you?
Yeah.
I mean, this is something that I'm literally going to do in the near future because I think it's one of the great home defense things you can have.
You know, if you can light somebody up on the outside of your property with a paintball gun filled with pepper spray, uh, They're going to go away, you know, and then you don't have to shoot firearms at them.
You don't have to get in a physical altercation.
But you guys shoot paintball, I'm sure, right?
Sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're right.
You don't want to escalate the situation by by killing one of them and making them determined to come and kill you.
Or just go to jail.
You know, killing people is not a free thing.
You know, you don't get to just kill even if someone's trying to hurt you.
No.
Well, the thing is, the States, you have to prove that you had no ability to run away.
That's it.
It's, it's, it's the same here.
And anyway, it's, it's not in most of our natures, you know, you've got to be trained to kill people.
You've got to have that, that, that, the, the instinct not to kill people trained out of you by the military or whatever.
So most of us would not be very good at it anyway.
Yeah.
Um, yeah.
Good point.
It's scared.
Yeah.
So, James, before we go, is there any...
Tell me the most amazing thing that people don't think about that they ought to think about What what what what key items they might need or what?
Give me your special tips.
OK.
I mean, I gave you a bunch.
You did.
You did.
I'll tell you what.
I'll tell you what I think is is worth mentioning for sure is your life.
Will wholly improve when you start prepping.
You don't become a hermit that hides away in your home just because you become a prepper.
If you're dragging food in from your backyard and preparing it, and you're eating the freshest food that there is to be had because it's grown in your backyard, your life gets better.
You know, if you're learning how to make bread from scratch because you're worried that, well, I store wheat or I store flour and one day I might not be able to get bread if something happens and I want to be able to know how to make bread.
Well, you're also making fresh bread every day.
And that's a great thing to have.
You know what I mean?
And prepping opens so many doors for you to improve your overall life.
And you do it in a way where you become responsible.
Right?
So, ooh, I want a loaf of fresh bread, I can make it myself.
Ooh, I want some real good fresh eggs, they're in the backyard.
You know what I mean?
And that touches on almost every aspect of your life, the further you get down the road with this thing.
It even affects your relationships.
It affects your relationships with your kids, with your wife.
You know, because the women who, in 2020, the women in America were one of the most resounding voices when it came to, this is a problem and we need to figure it out.
And the women who had men who were men and were prepared for the chaos, the level of anxiety that they had to deal with must have been night and day compared to the average woman who was dating a guy who was largely useless.
You know?
Yeah.
I think it's a quality of life in answer.
It is not.
You don't wind up in a bunker, hold up, you know, scared to come outside.
Yeah.
And that's probably a stigma worth dispelling.
I don't really know what particular tips I could give outside of the biggest one being to increase your numbers.
You know what I mean?
And again, that's a quality of life thing too.
If you start to expand the people in your neighborhood who are getting prepared, you're going to have friends as neighbors.
And that's cool!
You know what I mean?
That's a way better life than just I stay in my house because I hate everybody in my neighborhood because they're all idiots.
Which is like...
Default for somebody who doesn't want to go out and meet people.
So.
What I would say, the biggest tip that I can give is is maybe you don't have to be a prepper forever, but right now you should take this thing in 100 percent.
You should take lifestyle in 100 percent.
You should listen to the Prepper Broadcasting Network as much as you can, because I can tell you what, all these people are regular people.
There's 16 different hosts.
None of them are radical extremists.
They're all regular people who have took the same journey that you're going to take.
And we have a great community of people who you can just touch base with instantly and answer your questions.
So I'd say go whole hog on prepping, at least for the time being.
James, you're a great ambassador for prepping.
I really love talking to you.
In fact, you're one of my favorite, favorite podcasts.
And I hope I meet you one day.
I liked your setup in the background and you seem like a guy I could hang out with.
So thank you very much.
Tell us where we can, you know, find you and find your channel and stuff.
Sure.
Can I put a request out first?
Cool.
Sure.
I want I want to host in the UK.
So if anyone is listening who would like to be a part of the Prepper Broadcasting Network, I really would like representation in the UK at PBN because I know that there's a lot of people with concerns and I like those voices.
The numbers in the UK have been going up consistently, our listeners, and I'd like to have a voice there.
So if you're listening, go to PrepperBroadcasting.com.
The contact form there goes directly to my email and we'll talk if that's something you feel, you know, driven to do.
But yeah, the website is PrepperBroadcasting.com.
We're available.
On every podcast platform there is.
You know what I mean?
Just look up Prepper Broadcasting Network.
We were recently killed on YouTube.
So we're not there anymore.
But you know, that's the nature of speaking the truth and things like that.
And one of the special things that we also do at PrepperBroadcasting.com is we have a... As if 16 different hosts and 12 different shows isn't enough for you to deal with.
We have a membership side of things that is a lot of DIY videos, a lot of member requested videos.
And it's really where we take people who are on this preparedness journey and give them the answers that they're looking for.
We are highly accessible people.
Every one of the hosts email goes right to them.
Uh, the network email goes right to me.
You know, there's no, we don't have any media group or anybody between the listeners and us.
So if you want to get in there and get it done, I'm telling you.
The Prepper Broadcasting Network is one of the most direct paths to answering the questions that you have.
Right.
Preparedness journey.
That's really good, James.
And let me remind viewers and listeners, you can support me on Locals, on Subscribestar, on Patreon and on Substack.
And I really appreciate your support.
And James, thanks a lot.
And it's been really great talking to you.
And good luck.
Great, for sure.
I had a ball.
Thank you very much for having me on.
Thanks a lot.
Okay.
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