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May 8, 2024 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
01:17:02
Decentralize TV - Steve Humble from Creative Home Engineering on constructing hidden rooms and passa
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Thank you.
Welcome to today's episode of Decentralized TV here on Brighteon.com, the free speech platform.
I'm Mike Adams.
Thank you for joining me today.
And as always, I'm joined by my co-host, Todd Pitner.
Welcome to the show today, Todd.
It's great to see you again.
I've missed you.
I've missed you.
It's been, it seems like forever since the last one we did, but I think it was last week.
I don't know.
We missed last week and we're doing it today.
Okay.
But I feel the same way because so much is happening in the world.
But hey, how's the food for us going there, by the way?
Oh, it's going great.
Thank you.
I mean, it's starting to come in, and I know it's the little things, but when I went out there and I saw my little old orange tree, and I'm sitting there, I'm like, what's that?
And then there's this little green ball hanging off of it.
The only one on the whole tree, but it's a survivor, man.
So it's very, very cool, and it's been really a nice balance between the food forest and my backpack mother nature, you know, where I eat my raccoons.
You have like a Noah's Ark of animals back there now.
Oh, it's amazing now.
I mean, literally, there's a herd of seven deer and there's a 10-point buck back there.
Really?
Oh, God, he's so beautiful.
Stoic.
So, yeah, we have about a dozen raccoons and all those deer.
So, you know, decentralization at its best, Mike.
You know, this is...
I think more and more people are really waking up to the importance of the topic that we cover here on this show, which is decentralized living.
I see so many people now asking me about gold, for example.
Like, oh, now I get it.
I should have some gold.
The dollar is losing value.
Where do I get gold?
And then what do I do with it?
Well...
I'm happy to say that our guest today, coming right up, about to join us, has some amazing solutions for how to keep your stuff safe.
His name is Steve Humble.
He's the president of a company called Creative Home Engineering.
They're found at HiddenPassageway.com, and they make secret entrances and passageways to secret rooms in your home.
So welcome to the show, Steve.
It's great to have you on.
Hey, thanks for having me, guys.
Yeah, welcome.
You do amazing work.
And to my producers, let's show some of the screens of what he does, like secret passageways and secret doors that look amazing.
I mean, you're an artist as much as an engineer with this, but tell us about your company.
Yeah, you bet.
So I was always fascinated from a very young age with the idea of secret passageways and James Bond and all of that.
I went to school, I became a mechanical engineer, and I started working in aerospace, but I had this kind of harebrained idea that I might be able to make secret passageways for other people.
In fact, at the time, I was a bachelor, and I lived in this big house with a bunch of friends of mine, and we had all these extra rooms.
And I kept looking around this house going, man, I need to build a secret door for this house because it's got all this extra space.
And then, you know, the idea just kind of wouldn't go away because I knew that there are people that own their own houses and actually have things that they're trying to protect.
And they've probably got the same fears that I have and that they have seen the same movies that I've had, that I've seen, and they're thinking of themselves, I want to have a secret passageway, just like the one that I saw in that movie, but I want to have it in my house.
And so I had this idea, and I eventually, after a lot of research, I quit my job and I moved in with my parents.
I was a very fresh-faced 23-year-old, I think, at the time.
And I started making secret passageways for people.
And it did not take very long before I started getting calls from very serious people that are building, you know, these incredible houses and estates.
And they needed the exact thing that I was specializing in.
And so it's been an amazing ride since then.
That was 20 years ago.
That is so cool.
And just to be clear, for those watching, you can retrofit an existing house with a lot of your solutions.
I mean, it doesn't have to be new construction, in other words, correct?
Yeah, that's exactly right.
So if it's a new construction project, then we have a lot more latitude to design just anything that you can possibly imagine.
But a good at least 40%, maybe 50% of our clients are doing a remodel and maybe they're subdividing a closet so that part of the closet becomes the secret space.
Or they're converting a storage room into a secret storage room.
We do that all the time and we're happy to take a look at your floor plan and figure out where the best places are for you to hide something.
And then finally I think in Hollywood it's often depicted as you walk up to a bookcase and there's a little figurine and you tilt it to the side and then Can you just briefly cover some of the different sort of out-of-bounds things that people might not normally think of?
Yeah, so you would think that after doing this for 20 years and having built, oh, probably 5,000 secret doors for people, that I would have seen everything.
But nothing could be farther from the truth.
It's like every day somebody calls me and they say, hey, I've got this crazy idea.
I want you to build this thing for me.
And I'm like, I can't believe it.
It just keeps coming.
There's always somebody that wants something unique.
And we love that.
We love, first of all, we love that it stays fresh and it's always a new challenge.
But on top of that, making something that's personal for our clients, it makes them feel special.
And we love to be able to do that for them.
Very cool.
Okay, Todd.
Now, Todd, I have to thank you for recommending our guest today.
I think it's an excellent choice for our show, our theme, our audience.
But you actually have some knowledge about this because you've seen some of this put into play, right?
Yeah, you know me, Mike.
I don't suggest anybody does anything if I haven't already done it or taken a shot at it.
And I will tell you, I am a customer of Steve's.
And ten years ago, when my wife and I bought our new home, it was all complete, but there was one specific room upstairs that I really, really wasn't going to use.
I just knew it.
You know, who needs two laundry rooms upstairs and downstairs?
And so I decided what I wanted to do was get a big, massive safe because I have a lot of lead and things that go with that, Mike.
You know what I'm saying?
Brass, perhaps.
Yes.
And I wanted to be able to have it.
After I did all my research, I'm like, Whoa, a little bit too late for this because the one that I want is so heavy, there would be a risk of it literally falling through the floor.
Plus, it wasn't inexpensive.
It was like $4,000, $5,000 bucks.
And all of a sudden, I don't know how, but I came across hiddenpassageway.com and I was fascinated.
And so I reached out and I explained what I had.
Steve, you gave me white glove treatment.
I know you probably don't remember.
That was 5,000 ago.
But you helped me arrive at a solution.
And the engineering behind what you provided is so astonishing that now when I bring people, I do this all the time, I bring people into my house and And we'll go for a little tour.
We'll go upstairs, and I'll tell them, I have a secret room.
And I'll bet them $10 that they can't find it.
And if they can't find it, they don't owe me $10.
I'm just saying I'll give them $10 if they can find my secret room.
Nobody has ever been able to do that.
No.
Not at all.
Okay, this is, I mean, that's amazing, and it's so smart of Utah to do that, but I want to direct a question here to Steve from that, which is one of the things that I've noticed is that psychologically, people don't intrinsically calculate the volumetric spaces of areas that they are walking through.
If people look at all the rooms that are wide open, they don't think, hey, there's like a thousand cubic feet missing from this internal map that they've kind of built.
They don't.
So you can actually hide large spaces from people as long as the outside looks correct.
Now, Steve, I know that this is your business model, but could you speak to the psychology of this and how easy it is to...
You know, to hide something from people who aren't even, you know, really noticing much.
Yeah, so you're right.
Everybody's concerned about that.
And we try to make it as camouflaged as it can possibly be.
So if we can choose a spot on the floor plan where it would be impossible to know that any space is sort of missing, then we'll do that.
But sometimes that's just not possible, and that's totally fine because out of the 5,000-plus secret doors that I've made, I've never once had a person or heard of a person who had walked through one of these houses and said, hey, where's the space that's missing?
You assume that there's a way to access that space from some other area.
Your brain is not capable of really mapping a space like that.
Right, right.
I've noticed that as well.
Now, if someone knew, okay, there's a secret room in here, and I'm going to map out the entire house, and I'm going to take measurements, then eventually they could calculate, like, where's this empty space?
But nobody does that.
But let me insert here.
Yes?
Even people who I've given it up, I'm like, it's right there.
My next challenge is now figure out how to open it.
Nobody can figure out how to open it.
You have to click your heels three times and sing Wizard of Oz and all of that to be able to do it.
No, the engineering on it is just astonishing.
It's magic.
I mean, that's all I can say.
A question then.
Does it rely on something that's not electronic?
Because this has always been one of my concerns.
What if an electronic component fails where there's no electricity or something?
A hundred percent.
Not electronic.
Okay, Steve, you want to?
Yeah, so some clients care about that and others don't.
We do all kinds of secret doors that have no electronic anything in them and we can certainly do that for you.
Some of my favorite ones do rely on electricity because obviously that opens up more possibilities.
Like for example, I have one in my house.
Where you play a sequence of notes on my piano, and it happens to be the James Bond soundtrack, and if you can play the notes correctly, then the secret door will open.
That is so James Bond-ish right there.
I mean, you're like a secret agent on our show now with that.
I wish.
No, that is so cool.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but no, continue.
Like, what other kinds of...
I mean, what you can share...
Yeah, sure.
So there's a lot that we could share.
So I'll share some of my favorites.
I love the ones that are sort of the romanticized ones from the movies.
So like we were talking a moment ago about the stone walls where there's sort of a staggered pattern of stones that we use to conceal the camouflage.
I love it when you push on several of the stones in a certain sequence.
If you push on the stones correctly, then the secret door will open.
Or sometimes we'll make it so that you push on a stone and it actually pops out and reveals the existence of a fingerprint scanner that was hidden behind the stone.
That's kind of a fun one.
Wow.
You know, twisting wine bottles and, you know, a lot of times the clients have some collection that is significant to them, some particular McNack or something.
Or if they choose a book, maybe it's their favorite book or sometimes it's even a book that they wrote or something.
So, we love to do custom secret switches, and you're not limited to any one secret switch.
If you're the type of person that can't decide, we can do multiple, so you can do either or.
We can make it so that you have to operate certain switches in the correct sequence, and only if you get the sequence correct does it open.
And we can add switches after the fact.
You know, sometimes somebody's had their door for five years, and they just want to keep it fresh, and they want to change it.
And so we'll send them out a new secret switch that's pre-programmed to go with their secret switch.
I see.
Okay, well, and here's another question then.
So among your clients, I mean, I know, of course, you respect their privacy, but among the clients that you've had, I would imagine, of course, some people want to keep certain things secure, firearms or gold or what have you, but are some people also using these as possible safe rooms for if there's a home invasion, they can hide in there and just be quiet and wait, you know, That's not what I would do.
I would be out there with my AR-15, but some people would rather just hide and wait for it to pass.
Is that a use that some people do?
A lot of our clients are concerned about a place to go for their wife and kids if they're away on a business trip.
And so they don't really expect their wife and kids to be pulling out the AR-15.
And, you know, there's all different use cases.
We generally respect clients' privacy, so we don't always ask a lot of details about what they're going to use the room for, because that's what they're paying for us to not know and to not tell people, and so that's what we do.
But yeah, so we do have a lot of different locking configurations.
That's one of the advantages to everything being totally custom is that if you're using it as a place to go in case of a home invasion, then you may not want a sophisticated access control system like, say, a fingerprint scanner because that's just going to take time.
You want to be able to get in there in a hurry and then close the door and lock it behind yourself.
Right.
Whereas if you're using it to store valuables, then in that circumstance, you probably do want a more sophisticated access control system.
And in a lot of cases, we'll even have like a toggle where you can switch modes between the quick entry mode and the high security mode.
Oh, okay.
That's a great point.
That makes a lot of sense.
Okay.
Next question.
Or, Todd, do you want to chime in on that?
No.
Keep going.
Okay.
Keep going, Mike.
I love your inquiry.
And I've done podcasts about this before where most people, they overestimate the security of what they call a safe.
So, first of all, most people who buy safes, they're not even safes.
I think they're called, like, residential security containers or whatever.
And they can be defeated by, you know, a guy with a drill in about two minutes or less.
And to actually have a secure safe is a very big deal.
A lot of steel.
It's heavy.
And it's an obvious target.
So do you ever have discussions, Steve, with your clients who maybe somebody calls you and says, I don't know if I should get this $10,000 safe or if I should just build this secret room instead.
Do you ever have people weighing those two?
And how do you help people make that decision?
Yeah, so we are in the information age now where somebody can just go onto YouTube and search for how to break into safe.
And there will be dozens of videos that show guys breaking into really high quality safes in like two minutes.
It's astonishingly easy.
And if you're going to have a safe in your house, then you might as well also put a neon sign on top of it that says this is where I keep all my valuable stuff.
Right.
And so it's really almost a non-safe in a lot of ways.
And if you follow news at all like I do, it seems like every month or so there's a story about some celebrity who had their place broken into and they found the safe.
And guess what they did?
They broke it.
They threw it out the window, smashed it to a million pieces, whatever, and they were able to get the valuables or they just steal the safe outright.
So having a way to camouflage the safe is really just as important as having forced entry protection, if not more so.
And you can have both.
You can have a safe that's concealed behind a secret door, or we make a lot of secret doors that are themselves also safes, or vault doors.
So you kind of get the best of both worlds there.
Oh, that sounds really great.
Okay.
Let me just give out your website again.
It's hiddenpassageway.com.
Hiddenpassageway.com.
And I love this, what we're showing right now, how this stone wall opens up and it's got the...
I mean, I'm just thinking, you said you're a mechanical engineer or trained as such.
Just the hinges on this, you know, the structural integrity to have something pivot that might weigh a thousand pounds or more, is that seemingly difficult to achieve?
It is, yeah.
Especially, it's exponentially more difficult as the doors get bigger and more complex.
So we've made secret doors that are big enough that you could actually drive a vehicle through.
We do all kinds of, you know, lifting staircases, things that rise up out of the floor, and it's always a new and interesting challenge.
I was going to say, too, I appreciate you calling out our website, which is hiddenpassageway.com, but I wanted to share with you also Hiddenpassageway.com is where we cater to the needs of clients who need something very highly customized.
And those are typically more expensive projects.
But in recent years, we have launched a new sort of sister website that's dedicated to more regular kind of people.
And so we have way more cost-effective offerings.
This other website is called HiddenDoorStore.com.
And it has the same great camouflage, fantastic quality, but fewer options available.
And by having less options, we can really get the cost far, far lower.
Great, we brought that up there.
Yeah, thank you.
So we're really proud to be able to have things that almost anybody can afford.
Wow, that is pretty cool.
But Todd, it was a custom solution for you, correct?
Well, it was through his website, and I may or may not admit that on this page you might get a little bit of insight.
So, yes.
It was custom to my home, but it is something that he can easily customize for anyone's home.
You know, I think we should also talk about the process a little bit, Steve, if you don't mind, where can you walk people through once they go in and place an order?
I know with mine, it came in this massive container.
The shipping was amazing.
The instructions were amazing.
But I did need to, I'm not a handy guy, but I did need to hire a carpenter to come in and do everything.
And I know they had a couple of issues and you guys were just right there on it.
To be able to walk them through it.
And it ended up just working out perfectly.
But can you talk about the process?
What your support is?
What people can expect?
And at what point in time does the project get so big that, you know, you actually go on site?
Yeah, great questions.
So the first thing is that the clients call us and hopefully they have some sense of where in their house they want it to go and what kind of camouflage they want their secret door to employ.
And we usually have them send us some photographs and a floor plan and then we'll just have some conversations where we'll walk through the options and features and see what they're interested in and we'll get them a cost proposal for all the things that they want.
And then hopefully they accept the cost proposal and then we create a very detailed drawing package that's just for them and their house and it includes a CAD drawing of the space in their house where the secret door is going to go and it will show images of what it's going to look like in the open position as well as the closed position and what the rough opening needs to look like prior to the start of installation so that way they can prepare their opening if they have a builder or somebody that's helping them they can look it over and everyone can agree
like okay this secret door is going to fit in this space when it shows up And we try to make it as easy as possible for the client.
So we take care of everything that we can possibly take care of.
The doors ship pre-hung in their own frame so you can basically take them out of the box and you just slide them into the opening kind of like it was a dishwasher or a refrigerator or something.
You do have to shim it like it's an ordinary, any door that you get.
If you get a pre-hung door, you have to shim it, make sure it's plump, and you fasten it to the building.
And if you do need help, it's very important for the client that they have great access to customer service.
And so that's a huge part of what we do.
We make sure that if you call, there's no answering machines.
You're going to talk to somebody, and that person is going to be knowledgeable, and they're going to have all the drawings for your project, and we'll do a FaceTime with you.
And 99.99% of the time, We can sort out a project in a simple FaceTime call if there is a problem, which itself is rare.
But every once in a while, we'll do a really big project where a client has like seven or eight doors maybe, or maybe they'll have a project that's complicated.
And if they have the budget, they want to bring somebody out, we're happy to go out.
And many clients do that anyway, just because they don't want any local person to be aware that there's a secret door.
They don't trust their builder or whatever.
And also, you've got to keep in mind that If you're building a house, there's like 500 people that have seen the inside of your space.
No matter how careful you are, you've got drywall guys and paint guys and electricians.
They've all seen it.
And so typically we'll advise them to put it on the plan as a storage room.
And so all those people come do their work, never knowing that they're just going to be And then when the secret door shows up, it just slides right into that opening and only the homeowner has to be aware that there's a secret.
Well, I'm really glad you mentioned that.
That's a great point.
But I also find that the people involved in home construction, they're also working on so many homes, typically, that they completely forgot about your home two months later.
Probably, at least where I live, they can't even find their way back to my property location.
How do I get there again?
Yeah, because it's all confusing, which is great.
And people have short memories, too.
It tends to be that way.
But speaking of that, then in terms of accessing, you know, you have doors, you have different mechanisms.
Some of them, I guess, might be codes or you said piano keys.
That's easy for people to remember.
But what about numbers or codes or words or letters?
Do you have anything that functions like that?
Yeah, all the time.
So we'll do alphanumeric keypads.
And of course, if we do a keypad, then we have to hide it, right?
So we'll hollow out a book and hide the keypad inside of the book.
Or we'll do maybe, there's all different ways to hide keypads.
But there's other things as well, like iris scanners, fingerprint scanners.
We have all kinds of tricks and places where we hide different access control methods, depending on what the camouflage is.
Wow.
So you've seen everything.
I would imagine you probably have some pretty prominent high-level people as your clients, just generally speaking.
I do.
I mean, not everybody, but I wish I could name drop.
Of course, I cannot because of privacy concerns, but there's a lot of people on my client roster that you would recognize.
Absolutely.
But, you know, there's also a lot of people that are just, you know, ordinary people that love the feeling of being prepared, and we're happy to accommodate them, too.
And that's my next question, actually.
Are you seeing any changes, trends of an uptick in interest in your products?
Or is it pretty steady?
Are there certain world events that make people more interested in your solutions?
What have you noticed over the years?
Yeah, so obviously unrest in the world is terrible, but it's not terrible for business.
We get an uptick in business anytime something ridiculous happens.
So COVID was very good for business.
And as you will recall, at the same time that COVID was happening, there was a lot of other types of unrest with the Black Lives Matter movement and so forth, where there were a lot of people that were concerned about a breakdown of law and order.
And so that was, there were people coming out of the woodwork to buy our products.
I mean, just this week, I just got off the phone with a client who is living in LA and they were just, you know, lamenting to me about how bad it's gotten.
And, you know, everyone's seen those images and they...
You know, they're making a very large order with us because, you know, a few years ago they wouldn't have thought about it, but because of the increase in crime that we've all unfortunately observed, there's a lot of people that need a secure place to go.
What about, and Todd, jump in at any time, but I have at least one more question.
What about control systems from inside if it's a safe room, right?
Let's say the family goes into the safe room and there's an intruder in the home.
Do you ever rig up control systems?
Because this is the way I would do it.
If I were to build a secret Batcave or something, from inside the control room, I would want to have access to cameras.
I'd want to have an instant fogging machine, just disperse fog in the entire house, and then I would slap on my night vision Batman goggles and go out there and find everybody.
Do you have control systems sometimes, or does it get that complex?
Well, it does get that complex.
And believe it or not, I have at least one customer that I know for a fact that they have a fogging machine that fills the house with smoke.
See, I wasn't making that up.
That's awesome.
So some of that tends to get a little bit out of our wheelhouse.
We try to focus on our core competency, which is making doors that don't look like doors or making really high security doors.
But we also like to help out people whenever they need our help.
So we actually are just launching a new product right now that is a wall reinforcement product.
So it's basically a system of ballistic armor panels that people can use to line the interior walls of a room that maybe was 2x4 in drywall construction.
And this makes it a bulletproof room.
No way.
That sounds awesome.
Yeah, so that's a really cool product.
We're excited to launch on our website.
Basically, you tell us how many lineal feet you need, and we'll devise up a system, and it goes together a bit like an erector set.
You go into the room and screw all these panels up, and you've got a safe room.
Hold on a second.
Where's that product?
I don't see it on your site right now.
What's that called?
We haven't exactly launched it yet.
If you go back to the website in 30 days, maybe even less than 30 days, you'll see that product up there as well.
Okay.
We've got to get you back on then because that is a big deal.
Does it screw into the studs then?
That's right, yeah.
So, like I said, it goes together a bit.
Like an erector set, there's horizontal struts that will tie into all the studs on a given wall, and then the ballistic armor plate is all laser cut so that it fits together with overlapping seams so that you can, with just kind of standard tools that everybody has, you can screw it all together and have a very secure room.
Can I ask you the ballistic rating of that?
Because tons of people are going to want this.
Yeah, absolutely.
So we're offering it to start in UL3 and UL8 ballistic ratings.
So for those of you who may not be aware of what that means, basically UL3 means it will stop rounds from almost all handguns and UL8 means it will stop multiple rounds from an assault rifle like an AR-15.
Okay, so I'm not familiar with the UL-8 that you're talking about.
I'm familiar with like 3, 3A, level 4 ballistic plates, you know, for body armor, things like that.
So you're saying it's rated 3 and better?
Is there a choice or is it all the same rating?
Yeah, so there's a choice.
Oh, okay.
It depends on if you want to spend more for the thicker armor plate or if you're on a budget, you just want the UL-3 and you're comfortable stopping handgun rounds.
And is it made out of, what is it, ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene or something else?
No.
I mean, for custom projects, we have done all kinds of different armor cladding, but this particular product, which we're trying to make affordable and accessible to a lot of people, uses AR-500 ballistic armor plate.
Oh, that's what I use for target practice.
And it just eats ammo, by the way.
You can barely even dent AR-500 unless you're using it.
But it's very heavy, though.
It is.
It is heavy, but in an application like this, weight is not the primary concern.
We've done other projects where weight was a huge concern, but your house is going to be able to support the weight of those panels very easily.
I see.
Wow.
Todd, what do you think?
You could have a bulletproof secret room.
I know, my mind is churning.
Hey, I have a question that's just kind of a fun one, I think.
I often, you know, we built this house 10 years ago, and Mike knows I put in a food forest, have done so many things to my property that I can't ever envision selling it.
I would never want to.
But I did fantasize a little bit about...
Showing somebody through my home and them teeter-tottering on whether or not they can afford it or they would want it, I think the food forest would make them lean.
But then I thought, man, oh man, if I could just get the dude to come upstairs with me and say, I'm going to show this to you, and if you don't buy this, I'm going to have to shoot you.
Exactly.
But, I mean, these rooms are so value-add to your property value, but you can't talk about them.
Right?
Yeah.
I hear stories like that all the time.
I had a client tell me that they put their house up on the market and they didn't get any bites.
And then all they did was they just changed the listing to include that it has a secret panic room.
And he said overnight it was like flipping on a switch.
They were doing constant showings.
They got their asking price and that's all.
Wow.
Okay, that's brilliant.
Okay.
Yeah, I would imagine, I mean, in the right city, the right neighborhood, you know, when the police are being defunded nationwide, you know, people want safety.
It makes perfect sense.
And the fact that it's done.
And, you know, it's like with my setup.
It's a room, you know?
So it's all marketing at that point in time.
It can just either be a hidden room to where you could, you know, confidently take self-custody of whether it's your precious metals or cash or armory or whatever.
But it can also be a panic room because it...
It's what it is, too.
So that's really good insight.
Question, Steve.
So can you give people a sense from a budget standpoint, kind of entry level, and then blow us away with, if you don't mind, what's the most expensive installation you've ever done?
You bet.
Great question.
So our least expensive secret door that we have for sale right now costs only $1,000.
And again, that's at hiddendoorstore.com.
We probably have 10 different kinds of secret doors there that are sub $5,000.
I think our average price for both standard and custom projects this last year was in the low 20s.
So the average is brought up quite a bit by some of the clients that need more elaborate and higher security projects.
As far as the most expensive, I believe to date the single most expensive door was a touch over $300,000.
I think it was about $330,000.
And we've had several projects though where the clients, they spent a lot more than that with us.
We just wrapped up a project actually where the client ordered seven secret doors and they're all really, really incredible, super high security, motorized, all the bells and whistles.
This client just wanted everything and we were happy to give it to him.
But that client spent much more than that with us.
Wow.
Oh, congrats.
Well, I guess, Todd, we're not the only people who are security-minded, I guess, because I haven't spent anywhere near those numbers yet on security.
But, I mean, I'm glad to know that there's that much interest out there.
We live in an unpredictable world right now, and you don't know, especially, you know, The scenario I'm always thinking about is, even though I don't travel that much, if I did travel, like if I were a wealthy CEO of some oil company or something, and I had a bunch of gold or whatever,
or bearer bonds, who knows, right, in my home, and I'm leaving to go travel for a week on business trips, that's when I want everything hidden for obvious reasons, because no one's there to watch the place.
I'm sure you hear that all the time, Steve, right?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And many of these clients have multiple homes anyway.
And so, you know, they might be away from the home for months at a time.
And so before they leave, they'll make sure that their most valuable possessions are locked away from the cleaning staff or whoever else might wander into the house when they're not available to sort of protect it.
That makes perfect sense.
And I should say, I did spend insane amounts of money on my security dog, who was right here in the studio, so I'm guilty as charged on that, but he's been worth every penny.
And Todd, you've met him right here in the studio.
Yes, he almost met my neck with his teeth.
Nah, he's so friendly.
What are you talking about?
He rarely attacks people.
It was so funny, Steve.
I was in there.
I was at the other mic behind his desk, and I talked with my hands, and I made the mistake of smashing my hand down on the desk.
And within, like...
Split second, his dog, Rhodey, jumped on the desk and got between Mike and me and just gave me that...
I'm like, whoa.
Just kidding.
He's looking at me right now.
Hey, Rhodey, get your toys.
Get your toys and come on up.
Yeah, get your toys.
Come up.
There we go.
There he is with his toys.
Look at that.
He just did that.
I mean, this guy is worth every penny, but...
Imagine this guy plus a secure room.
Sorry, he's blocking.
Okay, you guys go ahead.
Let me get him off the desk.
Hey, Steve, do you ever counsel anybody that's kind of starting from scratch to...
Think in terms of what else they have in their room, like the room that I happen to do.
Again, we had two laundry rooms and don't need two laundry rooms.
But now that I have it inside my secret room, and now it's my secret room, I love the fact that I have running water in there.
There's a place for a toilet.
I haven't installed one, but there's a place for one.
But it kind of gets you thinking a little bit about if you did have to stay in there for an extended period of time, not bad to have running water.
You'd be surprised at how many people think that they know exactly what they want when they first call me.
And I don't want to talk anybody into anything, but when they show me their floor plan, sometimes, having done this so many times, I'll have some lights come on and up.
I'll tell them, hey, we'll do whatever you want, but this is what I would do if this was my house.
And I love to be able to share my insights with people.
And usually, if I make a suggestion like that, they'll see the light.
And we've ended up changing the concept of a lot of projects that way.
Wow.
What are some of your go-to suggestions?
Well, so a lot of it is budget dependent.
So sometimes people will call me and they want this huge elaborate thing because they've seen it on a website, but they are also really trying to save money.
And so I'll be the first to say, no, no, no, let's dial your project down.
You don't need as much of the wow factor.
You're looking for a safe place to store valuables.
We can cut the motorization or we can change the opening configuration to something that's more cost effective.
I would love to see you save money and get what you want as opposed to spend more money for something that you don't need.
I want you to be super happy with it.
A lot of times, if the client is looking more for that wow factor, I will suggest secret doors that are more imposing because the bigger, the heavier the object, the less you would think that it would be a secret door and the more astonishing it is when it actually moves.
That's fascinating.
So, for example, in my house, I'm building a house right now for myself, and I'm going to have five secret doors in it, and one of the secret doors is a fireplace that opens up, and I'm going to have a couple different ways to open it, but my favorite way is I'll have a mounted stag where you reach up and grab the horn,
and the horn is like a handle, and that causes the fireplace, the whole firebox will go into the wall, and it will slide in behind the wall and give Wow.
Oh, I want to see that.
That's just too much fun.
How did you manage to make a career out of having so much fun?
That is fun.
I'll be honest, though.
Our clients, they tend to be very demanding.
And they have a right to be.
And many of them are paying for that, and that's what we will happily accommodate them.
But it's fun, but it's also very stressful.
Yes, I can imagine.
And you're dealing with workmanship and materials and quality control.
There must be mistakes from time to time.
And then there's user support.
Not all customers know how to work a drill, for example, or what have you, right?
That's right.
Yeah, well...
We have customers, too, here, so we get calls from them on all kinds of various things, too, like, how do I open this container?
Oh, well, believe me, you should try a hidden passageway.
It's way more complicated.
We're fortunate that This business, even on the pre-designed side where things are more cost-effective, it's not like a huge, massive volume business where we have a thousand customers a day and we can't possibly give them the white glove.
We still make it a point to make every customer feel like they're our only customer and you can talk to me.
Anyone in the world can talk to me even though we're currently running probably 130 projects simultaneously right now.
If you call I will make time and we will talk and I'll get you everything you need.
Well, I've got somebody that needs to call you, so I'm going to connect you to somebody that I know that's actually looking for something just like this, I think, with new construction.
But anyway, we'll talk about that off-air.
In the interest of time, first of all, Steve, I want to respect your time and say this has been amazing, really fascinating.
Is there anything else you want to share with us sort of in the last few minutes here today?
Let's see.
Well, first of all, thank you for putting up with all the background noise.
This place is a bustling business.
I can tell.
It's so hectic that I just got rid of the door to my office.
So now people walk by and I'm very accessible to the employees.
But it's a madhouse here all the time.
So, as far as what you should know, I think the most important thing that maybe we haven't talked about is that when you're making a decision to put a secret door in your house, you're going to be faced with the choice to either go with maybe your local handyman or your local cabinet shop.
Or to go with some faraway company run by a guy like me that you've never met before.
And so it's quite natural to say, oh, well, I'm going to have my local cabinet guy do it.
Especially if you go to him and you're like, hey, can you build a secret door like this?
He does not want to say to you, no, I can't do that.
But there is certainly a benefit to having a specialist that has done this thousands of times.
And the secret doors that we build today...
I'm sorry to tell you this, Todd, but they're even better than the one that we built for you 10 years ago.
They get better and better and better.
And there are so many clients that call me and they're like, hey, I paid some ungodly amount of money for this secret door and it's sad.
It rubs.
It warps.
It doesn't close properly.
Can you fix it?
And sadly, the answer is usually no, I can't.
I wish I could.
But really, it has to be purposely built and engineered from the beginning to be a smoothly running, finely tuned machine that can handle the loads and have the engineering behind it to make it work right.
Building a secret door is so much more challenging than most people realize.
And in fact, many of my customers are those very same woodworkers that, you know, they got in above their head and they realized, oh my gosh, this is not going smoothly.
Please help me.
And we have to try to figure out a way to salvage the situation.
But in most cases, the client would have just been so much better off if they would have come to us in the beginning.
I know it sounds self-serving, but it really is true.
No, but I can imagine, exactly, when just hinges alone, just hinges, I can imagine.
You have to think way outside of the box on this, because you're talking about pivoting an entire bookcase with the load of books on the bookcase.
That's not just a household door that you go buy at Home Depot with $10 hinges, right?
And this thing, like you said, has to not sag, because if it sags, let's say it pivots.
If it sags, it's going to leave tracks, right?
It's going to leave tracks on the floor, and then everybody's like, oh, look, there must be a secret door right there, right?
And it does, and in fact, this is such a common sob story.
They will put a hinge on, and they'll get it all just perfect, and then they'll put weight on the shelves, and it will sag.
Right.
The house itself is likely to move, and they didn't plan for that.
And so the next thing that they do is they put a non-marking caster wheel on the floor to help support that weight, but it still marks.
They always mark.
And so that's when they realize, oh crap, I did this wrong, and then they call me, but it's too late.
Oh man, that's funny.
Yeah, if I were doing this, I would go to you, because you have to have years of experience to engineer these things correctly, clearly.
Yeah.
It's like you don't hire your guy down the street to build you an airplane.
And then fly in it.
That's true.
I'll say our product is sophisticated.
Maybe not airplane level sophistication, but it is sophisticated.
And when people see it, that's when they realize, especially, you know, you go to a website, there's sprung up a couple of competitors in recent years that try to do what we do, although they admit themselves that they do it on sort of a lower level.
But there have been a few companies that, you know, they've got a good website and they have photos and maybe they're photoshopped.
And when you go and you see a photo of a secret door, you can't really tell how good it is.
They're going to show you an angle of it that shows it being awesome.
And you're not really going to see its weaknesses.
But when you see a well-engineered door side by side with a cheap secret door, there's a world of difference.
And your eye is a It's a very sophisticated instrument, and your eye can see if anything is not exactly right, and it's a dead giveaway.
You know, from 20 feet away, you could say, oh, even an untrained person can see, oh, I see light.
I see an arc in the floor where it's carved the floor.
So to really have a secret door that can fool an intruder, it's a whole other level and you really should have something that's properly engineered.
Wow, great point.
I can attest to that.
I remember after my door was installed, I cannot remember the exact conference, but I was invited to it, and it was like a home builder's conference or something.
And there was a section where it was a vendor who produced these secret doors.
And when I went and looked at them, I'm like, excuse me, but it's like, man, these are a piece of shit.
You know?
They just were not good.
You know?
They looked kind of cool, but when you really...
Take a look at it like you're saying, the hinges and just, you know, really bad shoddy work.
Well, and also I think a lot of woodworkers don't necessarily realize...
I mean, woodworkers typically build cabinets to stand on the floor so the gravity load is dispersed through the structure on both sides evenly.
You hang that now from one side...
Now, guess what?
It's no longer square.
Like, one side of the wood starts to go down.
Even if the hinges don't fail, the wood itself, right?
I mean, don't you have to...
You have to think about all of this, Steve.
That's right, yeah.
It's like woodworkers don't really realize...
They might be the best woodworker in the world, but the wood itself is just an inappropriate material for building a precision machine like a secret passageway.
way, it's going to expand the track, the temperature and humidity, and the amount of warp and sag that it takes to make a secret door stop working properly is minute.
So it might as well, it's like you're building a secret door out of a wet noodle, you know, it's It's way too floppy unless it is supported in just the right way.
And then, you know, the woodwork, we're talking about woodwork, but there's so much more.
I think of the woodwork aspect of our secret doors as like 10%, maybe.
There's so much more that goes into the steel work that's behind it and all the electronics and the locking and all of that.
Like I said before, it took us a long time to be able to make the secret doors.
All right.
Well, this is really amazing.
The website, folks, is hiddenpassageway.com.
And then for the more affordable, what is it?
Hidden Door Store.com, right?
Yes, sir.
Okay.
So hiddenpassageway.com for more of the custom jobs.
And they'll be able to talk to you, Steve, to talk about their project?
Absolutely.
Certainly on the custom side, you will talk to me if you call me.
On the more affordable stuff, it's not always necessary to talk to me.
We try to set it up so that you can just order it right online.
That makes sense.
It's a very streamlined process.
Okay.
Well, very good.
Todd, final thoughts?
This was awesome, Steve.
It's been a long time since we spoke, but I am a very satisfied customer, and I use your product weekly.
Man, you can't get a stronger testimonial than that.
Yeah, I really appreciate it, guys.
It's been a pleasure.
That is awesome.
Yeah, you too, Steve.
Thank you.
Have a great day, and we'll be in touch.
We'd love to hear from you about your armor project when that goes live.
Yeah, check back with me.
And we've got some other cool things we haven't talked about yet.
I don't want to spill the beans, but this coming year, it's going to be a big year.
Okay, very cool.
All right, thanks so much.
Take care.
All right.
See you, Steve.
All right.
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All right, welcome back, everybody.
Wow, Todd, I mean, what a great recommendation as a guest and a topic.
This is a topic that we needed to cover on this show, and we hadn't yet.
Awesome interview.
Oh, you know, he over-delivered on my expectations.
I remembered him as being this very, very sharp young guy who was legitimately always accessible.
I mean, he picked up the phone any time I called, probably still would.
And I just cannot say enough about this company, and their workmanship is beyond compare.
I mean, he is an engineer first, and craftsman first.
You know, close second.
But anybody who is interested in this, I really like that he shared hiddendoorstore.com.
Oh, yeah.
Because there are some very cost-effective ways to just turn a room into a secret room.
Nobody will know what's there.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
And for a lot of these, you can install them yourself if you have even just rudimentary, you know, skills.
Yeah.
Well, I would say, based upon my experience when I had a couple of really capable carpenters install it, you need to have your you-know-what together.
Yeah, okay.
It's not just push it in and put a nail in it.
I would recommend somebody budget in a good carpenter to install Okay.
Well, that makes sense.
But, you know, the investment in this seems to be well worth it considering how much risk there is today of home invasions or of looting or who knows what.
The police are being defunded.
More and more people are becoming desperate because, well, they're losing their jobs, they're losing their homes.
Food banks are going crazy because people are hungry.
They can't afford food.
That's right.
Thanks to Bidenomics, as they call it.
Nobody can afford to eat now.
So we're all at more risk at the moment.
And being secure makes a lot of sense, Todd.
And you know what, Mike?
I'm just going to share my experience with it.
I've had so much fun with it.
Just so much fun because it's a fairly sizable room.
And what I did on the inside was I dedicated one wall to fire and water, you know, because when the you know what hits the fan, you better know how to make fire.
You better know how to purify water.
Another is, you know, lead and copper and other contraptions.
There's, I don't know, it's just...
I think I've sent you a picture of the inside of it, but it is just, man, I've just never had more fun over a long period of time, just one little investment at a time, improving it.
So I have a whole section with food that's in there, you know, for freeze dried food and things that you sell.
But it's really an investment in your future, your protection, and your ability to decentralize with self-custody.
Yeah, exactly.
Self-custody of the things that matter.
And I should mention...
Food confiscation has happened before in societies when the rule of law started to break down.
Governments ordered police to go out and confiscate food.
Again, this is happening in communities throughout history.
If you have prepped with all your food supplies and you don't want them to be taken from you, because you know how this goes.
When things go bad, then the preppers are blamed.
Like, oh, you're hoarding all this food.
No, you bought it five years ago.
But they'll claim, you're hoarding all the food.
You need to redistribute it to the people who didn't prepare.
So they'll just come take it at gunpoint.
Well, if they can't find it, they can't take it.
Something else I wanted to mention up front.
I should have mentioned this earlier, just to our audience, this was not a paid interview.
Steve is not a sponsor.
Not a sponsor.
There's no affiliate.
Right.
We don't earn anything off of product sales or services or anything like that from this company.
But I hope he sells a gajillion of these things because of our show because everybody is going to so enjoy having that additional protection.
Oh, no question about it.
No question.
And, yeah, I hope his business does well, too, because, I mean, he's...
Adding value through innovation and problem solving in a high-value way, and he's using his training and experience in engineering and artistry.
I mean, gosh, it really...
I mean, I hope he realizes he's got the dream job.
I'm sure it's brutal.
I'm sure it's long hours, but he's kind of got a dream job for what a lot of people would hope for, you know?
I agree 100%.
Yeah.
You know...
Pertaining to hidden passageways, question for you.
Is Texas a state, and this may sound silly that I even have to ask this, but I live in Florida and we don't have basements here because they would flood.
But is Texas a state to where basements are commonplace?
No, they are not commonplace.
At least not on this part of Texas.
No, nobody builds them.
Now, where I'm from in the Midwest, everybody had a basement.
Yeah, I was going to say, man, that would be my dream if I won the lottery and could build a new home and I want to have a basement because you know how much fun you could have with hidden passageways in a basement where a road just goes into the basement.
I mean, every basement.
I mean, I grew up in a home with a basement and looking back, it's like a bomb shelter.
All the walls are concrete.
There's a drain in the floor, I think, with a little sump pump we had in it, just in case of any kind of flooding.
But from the basement, there were like sunken windowsills, so there was some natural light from the outdoors coming in.
But from the outside, those were sunk like three feet into the ground in order to get light into there.
But, I mean, basements, I mean, concrete, rugged, Yes.
And a lot more temperature controlled.
I did finish a basement when we moved to Asheville, North Carolina, and it was a really nice one, and it was huge.
But what I had them do is build false walls so it looked smaller on the inside, but it left on each side four feet of space.
Oh, wow.
And I had some hidden passageways into those that And for me, I used it as storage, just additional storage place.
But it would have been so cool to make it owe so much more.
Oh, yeah.
That's a great idea.
You can do a lot of things like that.
Or I've seen pictures of people building false walls, right?
So they would have a room, but then they just come out five or six feet, build a whole new wall.
Yeah.
And then you've got that storage area behind that.
Yep, exactly.
Exactly.
And also, who knows about gun confiscation, right?
Yes.
I mean, it hasn't happened yet in America, but there are a lot of people who would want to confiscate guns if they could get away with it.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, the ATF is now saying, hey, they want to ban AR-15s.
They tried to ban arm braces.
They got slapped back by the judges, but they want to ban AR-15s.
I mean, if they criminalize AR-15s, Do they really think that, what, I mean, 100 million or how many Americans, 50 million Americans that own 10 guns each?
Because I think there's 500 million guns in America.
Do they think those 50 million people are just going to turn over these high-end AR-15s?
Not a chance, man.
They're not going to do that.
No, no.
Not even for a week's worth of Big Mac meals.
No.
Soylent green, cricket patties, cricket McNuggets.
No, nobody's going to turn their guns.
But the point is, I mean, overall for this show, Todd, I know you agree with me.
We don't advocate anybody to do anything illegal or unethical.
I mean, we are very much based in morality, ethics, and also obeying the law.
But if there comes a day where...
The law changes and says, well, you're not allowed to have more than a 30-day supply of food, let's say, or you're not allowed to have this firearm that you've owned for 10 years or 20 years that has helped to keep you safe.
Well, then that law is invalid.
It's unconstitutional.
Do you think, Mike, one day they'll say it's against the law?
To be able to pick all of those oranges off your orange tree in the back?
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe, yeah.
Well, I mean, in Oregon, it's illegal to capture rainwater off your own property.
Oops.
Right?
I'm glad I don't live there.
Yeah.
Now, you can capture it off a roof, but I'm talking about land.
Oh, I see.
There was a case where a farmer built, well, he was doing permaculture.
And he built up a little dam for partial capture of water retention.
Of course, there's a spillover, so the excess rainwater spills over and goes on downstream.
And, you know, that's the way, I mean, I've got a pond on my property.
That's the way it all works.
It has a spillway.
But in Oregon, then he was arrested and he was actually thrown in jail for capturing rainwater on his own property because the state of Oregon said that water belongs to the people downstream in this other town.
Horrible.
Yeah.
So, hey Todd, maybe one day your oranges will be considered contraband.
Hey, I have a question.
Sorry, it's off topic, but it's timely.
So I have four water catchment containers of 300 gallons each, and they are full.
How many of those Saffrax pellets would you suggest I throw in there I mean, does a little go a long way or...
Okay, so you have 300-gallon containers and you have four of them, right?
Right.
Well, number one for the audience, Safrax.com, S-A-F-R-A-X. They make the chlorine dioxide tablets.
Right.
My dog is here wanting playtime.
The chlorine dioxide tablets, you toss them in water and then it makes chlorine dioxide gas, which sterilizes the water.
And they're great.
I use them all the time.
What is it, Ro?
He's like, is it time?
Is it time yet?
Close.
You can go on the Safrax website, and they do have a guide there.
But it's all in parts per million and in minimum meters and all.
Right.
And here's what I would do.
Yeah.
Okay, just off the top of my head, I got 300 gallons.
If you want to treat it like kind of shock treat it, And remember, it will dissipate.
The chlorine dioxide gas will dissipate over time if you have any kind of aeration of that.
I would put 30 tablets in a 300-gallon barrel.
Okay.
That would sterilize the crap out of it.
Now, though, when I'm using it to be able to water my food forest, is it then just going to put bad water on my plants?
Should I be worried about that?
You would want to let it dissipate for several hours before you water plants with it.
Okay, so it's hours, not like days or weeks.
No, no, it's just hours, or like 24 hours.
Like, for example, you can use chlorine dioxide in water as a deodorizer.
And the way you do that is you just have a bucket of water, and you can throw 10 or 20 tablets into it, and the corn dioxide gas just kind of forms, and then it sweeps out of the bucket, and it goes and deodorizes everything, like pet odors, cigarette smoke.
Car retailers use it, use car retailers to deodorize a vehicle.
They'll just throw like 30 tablets in a bucket, close the doors, wait five hours.
Okay.
Yeah.
So it's perfectly safe after a period of time, after it dissipates.
Okay, okay.
That's very helpful.
And I've had a lot of people, by the way, reach out to me wanting to figure out how to get the Safrax person back on to be able to de-confuse it because the website is all about parts per million.
No, just tell me, you know, a smart water bottle, the two liters.
Can I just put one tablet in there?
That would be too much if you're about to drink.
That would be overkill.
Okay, but what I'm suggesting is what would that be good for?
So I can start associating it in my mind.
Yeah, that's a good idea.
Well, I'll reach out to him.
We'll see if we can get him back on.
Okay, that would be great.
I'm sure we can.
He was very friendly and he's got a great solution for preparedness.
He really does.
In fact, I have a whole case of his product and I need to buy more.
But let's talk about other solutions as well.
Now, give us an update on Decentralized Directory, and that's your website, decentralizeddirectory.com.
I'll bring it up while you're talking, but how's it going there?
Because that site is really evolving.
Yeah, it's going excellent, Mike.
And I'm just going to focus people on where I believe the real value is.
If you go to the key partners supporting decentralization and you just click on that and you scroll down to the tax savings, that is probably what people are getting the most value out of the consultations.
I do not...
Do not and would never discuss or suggest anyone do anything related to tax evasion.
But there is such a thing, a legal lawful term called tax avoidance, where you can plan.
There are entities out there that allow you to be able to lawfully keep more of what you earn.
And I've just been amazingly...
I've been able to help with these.
But then at the same time, that is an area where you can just explore it.
And really, the site is there for you to explore the partners.
You're in there.
Miles Franklin is in there.
Food Forest Abundance is in there.
I have my solar guy who did my solar, and he does 37 states.
This is just an opportunity for you to really take back control.
And if you want to escape the system, you need an escape plan.
And that's what I try to do, Mike, is just help people direct them there safely.
Well, that is so cool, and I know you have already helped a lot of people learn about these UNAs, as they're called.
I still don't know as much as I need to know about this structure.
I know you sent me some material, but you're the expert on this, not me, but I'm fascinated by what I see so far, and the fact that it is IRS-recognized is pretty darn amazing.
Because the tax burden is only probably going to keep going up in America, especially, you know, as inflation happens and then people get higher and higher wages, everybody moves into higher and higher tax brackets, even if they don't raise tax rates.
Right.
You're still moving into higher brackets.
Yeah.
And I will share with you, the entity that I discuss has been around for over almost 35 years.
Wow.
And, you know, I hate to say it any other way, but this is what the elites use, folks.
They're pretty smart folks.
Yeah, they know the secrets.
Yes, yes.
And this is so accessible, too.
It is not anything that is just super complicated.
I'm a simple man, Mike.
I like easy.
And this has been an easy solution for me.
I've had mine for over four years.
It was introduced to me by somebody I trust greatly.
He had his for two years prior to that.
We were just talking yesterday about how many people, when we help them, they're like, I just wish we knew about this 20 years ago or whatever.
My goodness, the amount of tax advantages that you would achieve is mind-numbing.
Oh, yeah.
If people are interested, you know, check it out.
Come to DecentralizedDirectory.com and we'll try to give you some insight.
That's great advice.
Now, but I have to say, you say, Todd, you say you're a simple man, but you have a food forest, a secret room that we found out about today.
You have private crypto and an unincorporated nonprofit association.
So you may be a simple man, but you're actually pretty sophisticated in a lot of these areas, right?
Yeah.
I try, Mike.
I'm taking this decentralization thing to heart.
Anytime there is inflation associated with anything, I want to figure out how to escape it.
That's why I got the solar, too.
My energy bill was just getting nuts, and everybody can feel that pain.
Food inflation, my goodness.
We've got to keep more of what we earn.
That's the biggest lever here.
Available to us all.
And back to the theme of our show today, as we get close to wrapping this up, you know how there are underground bunkers that people build out of large culverts?
And there are companies that sell these big culvert, I don't know, like 12-foot diameter culverts or whatever, that are made into survival bunkers.
And there are a lot of people in Texas that have these.
In certain parts of Texas, the drier parts out west, groundwater is not really a problem, so people do have a lot more buried structures there.
But one of the best ideas that I heard of is that all of these underground bunkers have an escape hatch.
Which is typically it's like, I don't know, like a two-foot diameter vertical shaft with a ladder in it that you climb up and then there's a way to get out just in case your main entrance collapses or something.
Yeah.
And the best idea I heard of, and I know our guests would appreciate this, of how to conceal that is somebody parked an old junk car on top of that, cut out the bottom of the trunk, Took all the tires off so the car sits close to the ground and now the escape hatch goes through the trunk and you exit out of the trunk of the rundown vehicle.
That's awesome.
So there you go.
I mean, hiding in plain sight.
You can't do that in an HOA-controlled community.
You can try.
You would be heavily fine, but it would be fun.
But, you know, sometimes hiding in plain sight, right?
Right.
Yes.
So, in fact, there's something that I mentioned to my audience in one of my books, Resilient Prepping.
It's one of my audiobooks.
That's at resilientprepping.com if anybody wants to download it for free.
But I said, you know, and I don't do this because I'm sharing it publicly, but if you do rainwater collection like you're doing, one of the best places to hide gold is to bury it under your rainwater tank.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah, that would be kind of hard to access.
It's very hard to, like, yeah, because even if you want to get to it, you're going to have to drain the tank But if a thief wants to get to it, forget it.
They don't have time.
And they're not going to look there.
And the next best place, which I also have not done this because it's pretty gross, but if you really need to hide something that people will never look, you take your gold or whatever and you put it in a tight waterproof container, obviously, with a cable, and you drop it into your country septic tank.
Right.
And nobody's going to go swishing around in your septic tank, I guarantee it.
Nobody's dumpster diving there, that's for sure.
No.
So there are strategies of varying levels of grossness where you can hide stuff that nobody will mess with.
Yeah.
Oh, at this point in time, just give me my little secret passageway in my home.
Yeah, exactly.
You don't want to go swishing around in your septic tank?
Not just yet.
No, okay.
Right there yet.
Right.
Well, there was also a friend of mine...
You know, hey, one of the best ways to disguise your entire home in a Mad Max collapse scenario is to use paint and special effects to make it look like your home has already been on fire and already burned down.
That's funny.
And then you throw partially burned mattresses in the front yard and stuff, make it look like it's already abandoned and burned out.
But you can do that with paint and a little bit of effort.
That's amazing.
I love creative people.
I like the people at Disney.
They're building artificial cities with just special effects and perspective illusions and stuff.
You can do that to your home.
Right.
Amazing.
Probably wouldn't pass the HOA though.
No, but what they can't see without a red light won't hurt them.
Yeah, all your broken down cars and burned out mattresses in your front yard.
But hey, I have a food forest in the back.
It's okay.
Yeah.
All right, Todd.
Well, that's about it for today for me.
Anything else?
No, this was fantastic.
Steve Humble, thank you for joining us.
Really appreciate it.
And we are going to get you back because we're very excited about your next cool endeavors.
Yeah, bulletproof rooms.
You know, I want somebody to sell off-the-shelf how to bulletproof your car.
But that's tricky because the panels have to be all certain shapes and everything and they have to be in the door.
There are companies that will bulletproof your car for a very high fee and swap out all the windows with ballistic windows.
All you need is to be able to bulletproof your diesel tractor, Mike.
I know.
I know.
That's true.
Then you'll have the perfect setup, you know?
Run your ranch for 400 years off all your diesel.
Yeah, exactly.
Right.
No, but a ballistic vehicle makes a lot of sense in a breakdown scenario.
I mean, a ballistic protection vehicle.
Oh, by the way, I have to give you this feedback.
What?
I was doing a consult, and this wonderful lady, she's just wonderful.
Sally, you know who you are.
And she was telling me that her favorite parts of our shows are these after parties when we start getting a little bit silly.
I love y'all's senses of humor.
I just said, you know, we just never grew up, really.
That's probably accurate.
We just try to suppress it.
Yeah, we're still having fun, too, like our guest today.
He gets to play around with secret James Bond passageways, and you and I get to interview cool people who do stuff like that.
Yeah, this doesn't suck.
No, not at all.
It's good stuff.
All right, well, thank you, Todd.
It's been tons of fun today.
You bet.
Thank you.
Thank you, everybody, for watching.
And until next time, Mike, let's don't make it a two-week absence.
Yeah, yeah.
We've got many guests lined up.
We'll get to them more quickly following the holidays here.
Perfect.
Thank you, Todd, and thank you for watching today.
You can check out all the episodes you may have missed at decentralize.tv.
And all these episodes are evergreen episodes, by the way.
They're not about current events.
And so you can watch them at any time and gain tremendous value and wisdom and solve problems.
Just check it out, decentralized.tv.
And thank you for watching today.
I'm Mike Adams with Brighteon.com, a free speech platform that hosts this show.
Thank you for watching.
Take care, everybody.
Cheers.
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