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Aug. 9, 2024 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
53:00
LOCAL preparedness networking: An interview with Thom Rigsby with American Contingency
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Welcome to today's episode of Decentralized TV.
I'm Mike Adams from the Brighteon.com studios in central Texas.
And of course, joined by our ever popular co-host, Todd Pitner from the great state of Florida.
Welcome, Todd.
Mike, how are you?
Great to see you.
I am doing great, sir.
It's great to have you on today.
And we have an amazing guest today.
To talk about, to talk with today.
And his company, his organization is called American Contingency.
We'll get to that.
Todd, do you have any contingency plans that need a little beefing up?
Well, you know me, Mike.
My contingency plans always have to do with my backyard food, forest, and animals.
So I don't know.
I do have a contingency plan for that bobcat.
You know what that is.
Alright, so your contingency is if everything collapses, you're just moving to the backyard and you're picking mangoes or what?
Yeah, it is just being very generous, getting lots of produce back there.
That's true.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, it's why we planted it.
I recently sent you the video, Mike, and man, could you believe that it's just been 10 months since that darn thing has been planted?
No, I can't believe it, but I gotta say there's been so much rain in Texas recently that I found a volunteer cantaloupe plant growing on my ranch that's very far along, so now I'm watering it.
I can't wait to have volunteer cantaloupe.
Wow, that is so cool.
That's so cool.
There's my contingency plan.
Don't spray weed killer and let the food grow.
Right.
Imagine that.
Yeah, imagine.
But let's get to our guest.
Let's bring him in.
Tom Rigsby from AmericanContingency.com.
So welcome to the show, Tom.
Today it's great to have you on.
Hey, guys.
Glad to be here.
Well, thank you for taking the time to join us.
And as you can tell, Todd and I are into, of course, food preparedness, but much more, obviously.
But we get to eat the food part, so that's fun to talk about.
But tell us about your world and your organization and how you're helping people eliminate fear and gain the practical preparedness outlook that will help them through uncertain situations.
Yeah, sure.
I'm happy to.
In fact, food and water is one of the 12 categories that we talk about a lot.
It's one of the things that you have to, we believe in a balanced approach, but one of the things you have to do to be a little better prepared.
You know, for me personally, I think I was fortunate.
I was able to grow up on a farm.
I learned a lot of the things that About preparedness and self-sufficiency.
I didn't know that was the lesson I was learning at the time, but it worked out that way.
And then I have army time.
I've got business time.
All of those lessons kept coming.
They just seem to keep coming back up.
And then as we got into the 2018, 19, 20 timeframe and things looked even more uncertain for us, this group of people came together very quickly.
And we just kind of organized around an idea of being better prepared, whatever that meant for you, right?
And as you guys said during the Open, preparedness for one person may look different than preparedness for another person, and that's okay, right?
What we want to do is help people understand that a dependence on the system, a dependence on a centralized theme or process, is not going to turn out well for you when things go bad.
I had an experience here, I live in North Alabama, so not too far away from Utah, and used to live in Texas, so there we go, we're all tied together.
But we had tornadoes come through, And took out the three main power feeds.
We were without power for 11 days, I think.
And through that time, I mean, 11 days with no power is a long time for a lot of people.
That is.
And that really kind of solidified for me that a lot of these things that I've kind of taken for granted and just learned throughout my life, we need to kind of Codify those, put those together in some way so that we can help other people go from this state of anxiousness to a state of confidence.
One question I have for you though right up front is, are you seeing a difference now?
Are more people seemingly becoming aware of the need for contingency planning, like sort of what I would call mainstream people who used to never be concerned about much of anything?
Yeah, we are, but it varies.
I think what happens is people have to experience a crisis moment for themselves, right?
They have to have that power outage.
They have to live in South Texas and have the polar vortex come through and really knock them off their feet.
They have to experience that to say, hey, you know what?
This doesn't work to keep doing what we're doing.
This is not a sustainable plan.
Sometimes, if they are lucky, they can see other people experience a crisis moment and go, oh wow, I hope that never happens to me.
But if it does, what would we do?
And so when people start asking those questions, that's where we try to step in and say, hey, we've got some answers for you, some things you can begin to work on and think about and prepare those contingencies in your life.
All right, Todd?
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you.
You know, I'm interested, Tom.
Your experience when the you-know-what hits the fan and you need that contingency.
I go back probably about a half a decade, and here in Florida, we had not a hurricane go through.
It was like a Category 1 nothing burger, but it was a big nothing burger.
I mean, it just blew everybody away.
We lost our power for four days, and what people don't necessarily realize in a hurricane When the wind is blowing the rain sideways, and your power goes out completely, and it's the middle of August, you literally cannot open your window to get some airflow.
You know what I mean?
Right.
Torrential rain comes through.
So for me, after four days of that...
Now, they weren't all that, but four days without power really sucked.
And I told myself that would never happen again.
So I started my contingency plans that started with an all-home generator on propane.
So that was kind of the beginning of my journey.
But...
What are your thoughts on the contingency attitude adjustment that we receive regarding our own finances, Tom?
Because we start to treasure different things, don't we?
Instead of saying, hey, I mean, I never thought, Tom, that I would be, like, super excited about saving up for a generator.
You know?
I want that new car, man.
Not a propane full house generator, Tom.
You know, there are 12 categories that we help our members focus on.
And food and water, I mentioned earlier.
Income and economics is one of them as well.
And for a lot of people, I mean, financially, times are tough right now, right?
For a lot of people.
Even, let's go back four years, five years, when everybody was pretty flush.
There were still...
60% of American households that live paycheck to paycheck, that's not a good contingency plan.
And so I think what we have to understand, everything's about priorities.
And so whether it's time, whether it's talent, whether it's treasures, all of those things, we have to place a priority on how we invest them.
We, all three of us, and everyone listening, we all have the same 24 hours in a day.
But I know that we've all looked at people in the past and thought, man, they just get a lot of stuff done.
How do they get so much done?
Yeah, there's this dude named Mike Adams.
I'm still asking that question time and time again.
Well, it's a, and I'm sure Mike will attest, it's a focused application of resources.
That's right.
This is the outcome that I need to achieve.
I need to focus the application of my resources to achieve that outcome.
Now, what a lot of people don't realize, and I'm going to use a slightly different example, but I'm going to bring this back around.
I did the math.
I looked up the numbers, and in my county where I live, sworn law enforcement officers, there's about 2,100 of them, right?
And there's about half a million people.
So if you consider during a crisis, let's say an all-hands-on-debt crisis, you're still only going to have half of those law enforcement officers working at any given time.
So how many does that leave to respond to your emergency?
It's not that they won't come, although in some cases they might not.
Generally, they'll come.
It just might be two or three days later.
And so you have to be prepared when that happens.
Financially, the same thing can happen.
It's not that your employer wants to lay you off, but if their customers aren't paying them, if the cash flow dries up, whatever economic circumstance might occur, and it could be something It's unexpected like a hurricane.
It destroys the building where your company works.
And now you're the one who can't afford to put groceries on the table.
You have to plan ahead and use that focused application of resources to stockpile the things you need in order to create the outcome that you want.
Tom, I'd like to jump in here and mention that we are living in a nation now that is a lot less reliable than the one in which all of us grew up in in our younger years.
The power grid is not as reliable as it used to be.
The grid is overburdened.
They're not building out the power grid infrastructure to handle the supply of all the electric vehicles, for example, that are on the grid.
We saw what happened in Texas.
They didn't have the power grid winterized at all.
and we went a week with rolling blackouts.
We had eight minutes of power every 30 minutes.
And you had to do everything in eight minutes.
It was like living in this Groundhog Day hellish marathon.
The water pumps only work for eight minutes.
Wow.
If you think about it, the grid is not as reliable.
We also just had the CrowdStrike IT apocalypse, as it was called, where some people were sleeping in airports for four days trying to get on a flight, which brings us to the question of, you know, even when you travel, you need to think about contingency plans when you travel.
I always laugh when I'm on an airplane and I see people traveling wearing, like, shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops.
I'm like, what if you're stuck here for a week?
But isn't it true that it's not just natural disasters anymore, although that's a big part of it, but the systems we've come to rely on are beginning to crumble more and more?
Sure.
Well, most of our lives are built around this principle of just-in-time delivery.
And what happens when that gets interrupted?
You know, it could be A ship running into a bridge.
It could be an ice storm that shuts down a major east-west or north-south interstate.
It could be a train derailment.
It could be something nefarious like a cyberattack.
One of the things that I worry about, just from a causative event perspective, is a focused attack on food distribution.
Yes.
Like a ransomware attack.
There are four major and about five or six secondary food distributors in the United States.
Well, if they targeted all four of them at the same time, they only have to have one that hits.
And then a quarter of our food distribution is offline.
Right?
So we...
That's one of the reasons we divided preparedness up into 12 categories.
So we can take a focused look at each one of those categories and say, okay, how are you doing in this category?
How are you doing in food and water?
How are you doing in medical, in security, in income and economics?
And then give our members...
The direction, the leadership, and the guidance that they need to prepare themselves, but then to also give them a network, kind of this safety net, to help support them when things go beyond their needs.
area of expertise, their level of experience, or just their capability.
There are a lot of questions from people in all of this, of course, and we all remember that for many years, frankly, until COVID, so-called preppers were basically mocked by the mainstream media, right?
And there were even shows, what was it called, like Something Preppers, Survival, like Overboard...
Doomsday Preppers.
Doomsday Preppers, yeah.
It was like, let's find the craziest, you know, survival extremist scenario and then put it on TV. But that's not indicative of what people actually do.
And now, isn't it becoming more acceptable to talk about preparedness?
It is.
And, you know, to your earlier question about how many people are interested...
More people are willing to talk about it once they have experienced a problem.
And I think that COVID actually opened some people's eyes to, I need more than just a 72-hour supply.
In fact, for a lot of people, a 72-hour supply is a surplus.
I mean, let's be honest.
Again, statistically, we know that the majority of households in America have less than three days worth of food in the house.
That's crazy.
How many days?
Did you say 30 or three?
Three.
Holy cow.
Three days.
And it's less than that if you take out the refrigerated foods.
Right?
So, this whole idea of 72 hours to chaos or 72 hours to anarchy is built on that statistic that says in three days, if people hadn't eaten in three days, they'll start doing what they need to do to find something to eat.
And, you know, I was in the Texas Guard during Katrina and Rita, and part of my unit's mission was to help provide security at Red Cross shelters.
We saw people getting off the buses that had taken drastic measures to get themselves and their families out of harm's way.
Quite frankly, I don't know that I, even to this day, I don't think I blame them for the things that they did.
I think they were in a terrible circumstance, and they were doing what they felt was necessary to provide for their safety and their family.
Wait a minute.
What kinds of things are you talking about?
We had one bus arrive.
And this was unusual.
As soon as the bus stopped, the door opened and the bus driver came out.
Of course, we're all in uniform.
We had sheriff's deputies, police there.
She came straight to us and said, that man got on the gun at gunpoint.
And so, you know, we kind of corralled them and we're talking to them.
And he was trying to get his family on the bus.
She said, I can't.
The bus is full.
There's too many people on here already.
I don't have room for five.
There were five members of that family.
He said, okay.
Pulled out a gun, pointed at the first guy's head and said, get off.
No kidding.
Until there was room for his family on the bus.
Oh my gosh.
We had another circumstance where a passenger got off the bus, had on tattered blue pants and a torn white t-shirt.
He walked straight up to us and said, I'm a police officer from New Orleans and I need help.
And his story had been that they just, they tried to kill him.
And that's why he had nothing left on him.
He ran to get away.
The most straightaway way he could leave was to get on a bus.
And so the sheriff there in the county kitted him up, gave him a car, and said, bring it back when you can.
And they were just...
That whole three-month period was just replete with stories like that and And people who were desperate, when they got there, they were like, please help me find out how my family member is.
We had to leave Grandma.
We had to leave.
So, you know, help us find out whether they're okay or not.
Tom, let me interrupt you, though, for a second, because you're talking about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which still has left psychological scars in this region of the country, New Orleans, Louisiana, East Texas, and so on.
And yet, and yet...
Every single person was warned many days in advance.
So as people of faith, don't we require adults to also take some responsibility for their own preparedness?
Yes, we do.
And here's my...
I don't know what you call it.
This is my story for that.
Do I believe that I used to do a lot of woodworking, table saws, big saws, that sort of thing.
Do I believe that if I had an accident, cut my thumb off, I could come in, sit down, hold my thumb together, pray and ask for divine intervention and that my thumb would be reattached?
Yes, I believe that.
Do I also believe that God allowed for doctors to be trained to learn how to do that?
Yes, I do.
And so, is the miracle that it just reattached itself, or is the miracle that there's a doctor that knows how to do that?
And it's kind of like the story of, you know, the man that was on top of the house during the flood, and three boats came to save him, and he said, no, you know, God's going to provide, and he drowned.
And when he got to heaven, he said, why didn't you provide?
He said, well, I sent you three boats.
Right?
We...
I think what happens though, just in a very practical sense, is that people don't pay attention.
Until your phone goes off, and listen, we didn't even have these marvels of technology back then.
Until your phone goes off, the TV starts screaming at you, the sheriff shows up and knocks on your door, people don't really pay attention.
You know, then when the sheriff's at your door, and this is one of the scenarios that we train through in American contingency, and we do it kind of in the context of a train derailment, but it's the same principle.
When the sheriff knocks on your door and says, hey, there's been a train derailment, you have 10 minutes to leave, or I'm dragging you out of here.
What do you take?
If you already know the answer to that, your preparedness level is much higher than the person that goes...
I don't even know where to start.
And even worse, that's not the time to have the argument about Grandma's wedding album.
Those things should already be decided well in advance.
But most people just believe there's a normalcy bias amongst most people that says, no, everything's going to be okay.
The police will come, the fire will come, EMS will come.
Here's my great example that I use all the time.
Do you have, and I'll just ask you two guys, do either one of you or both of you have a fire extinguisher in your kitchen?
Absolutely.
Yes.
I'm kind of a fire extinguisher nerd.
Right.
So my, and I'll admit, that's my daughter, one of my daughters, is not as preparedness minded.
And she is more of a systemic believer, right?
Well, you know, If I need the police, or if somebody's trying to break in the door, I'll just call the police.
I'm like, okay, well, that's fine.
If you have a fire in the kitchen, what are you going to do?
Well, I'll take my fire extinguisher out.
I'm like, why do you have a fire extinguisher?
Why don't you just call the fire department?
Right?
You can still rely on services, the systemic services, but you have to take responsibility for yourself.
That's right.
And I think what has happened over time...
Is that we have, as a society, we have trained people, trained our members of society to rely on the system.
Sure.
And we've all heard this, right?
Why do you have to raise your own cows?
Why don't you just go to the grocery store and get meat?
Well, where do you think that meat comes from?
Right?
Right.
They're so disconnected.
People are so disconnected from their own self-sufficiency that they don't even realize how absurd that statement is.
And so, you know, one of the things that we spend a lot of time advocating for is just, you know, be your own first responder.
Be capable of handling whatever happens.
Because the reality is, you're always there before Fire, police, EMS show up.
It involves you, right?
So...
Well, let me interrupt you there because this is a key...
This is a pillar of the message that we share on this show.
Decentralized TV means decentralized living.
Stop depending on these centralized systems.
And, of course, in my kitchen, I have a fire extinguisher and within reach an AR-15.
So if somebody...
If a bad guy shows up at the door, I know to spray him with a fire extinguisher.
And if there's a fire on the oven, I know to shoot it with the AR. Right?
I'm well-trained, well-trained.
But very few people have that, right?
Very few people.
They do rely on 9-1-1.
And, you know, I live out in the country.
9-1-1 response time where I am, you know, 25 minutes maybe.
Right.
Or never.
So it's like 9-1-1, I mean, local sheriffs, they are here to write the report of what happened after it's done.
Right.
Let me just say, we have a lot of first responders in our ranks, which is great.
We welcome them.
We learn from them.
But one of them is a fire chief.
And he said to me, if we arrive at a fire, at a residential fire, and we can see flames, the house is already gone.
Yeah.
We're not saving the house.
We're saving the neighbor's houses.
Interesting.
And because there's only so much that they can do.
And so you've got, I mean, 25 minutes is an eternity when your kitchen's on fire or when somebody's transmitting.
You have to be prepared for that.
But one of the things that we do, and while we teach and encourage and train and support all of that, we also support each other through our nationwide network.
We have members in all 50 states.
We have chapters in 37 or 38 states.
But let me give you an example of how that plays out.
I think it was two years ago.
We had a member from Pennsylvania who had to drive For whatever reason, they drove to Florida.
And they were on their way back over Christmas weekend, and somehow they were in Mississippi.
They must have been in far western Florida.
But they were in Mississippi and hit a deer on the rural stretch of, I guess, 20, 59, whatever the interstate is there.
And it completely disabled their car.
Well, he was able to pick up his phone, put out a text message on our app, and within 30 minutes, we had three people from in that area there helping him.
Incredible.
And ultimately, what wound up happening is that one of them showed up with a car carrier trailer, and they ferried his car all the way back to Pennsylvania.
Wow.
That's cool.
That's the power of having a network.
I'll give you one other example in this one.
You know, it's funny.
The things that affect me emotionally are people helping other people.
You know, I look at the sacrifices that people make for other people, and those are the things that kind of catch me in the feels.
So this might happen as I tell this story, just forewarning.
There were a couple of, maybe last year, Tornadoes in Forks, Mississippi, again with Mississippi.
And that whole town was wiped out.
And we called and asked the emergency manager there, what can we do to help?
And he said, if you can help us find some totes, like plastic, sterilite, the totes.
We could use some of those.
And we're like, okay, we can do that.
What are you going to use them for?
And he's like, everybody's home here has been completely destroyed.
And they are walking around trying to find what little pieces they have left of their life.
And they don't even have a box to put them in.
Wow.
I said, okay.
So we put a message out.
We had a member, I think in Illinois, Ohio, a member in Ohio.
And she said, I have a business and we have thousands of them.
How many do you need?
I said, well, that's, you know, 500.
And she put them on a truck and sent them down that night.
They were there the next morning.
Beautiful.
You know, it is, it's not one or the other.
I think it's, we need to reduce our reliance on the systemic services, but we also can't do it by ourselves.
And so we have to be responsible for our own preparedness, but we also have to be good members of the community.
And we need to support, to the greatest extent that we can, we need to support our neighbors, our friends, family, neighbors, or the circles that we talk about.
We need to be able to support them.
And when we can help somebody, Ten miles, a hundred miles, a thousand miles away.
We need to be prepared to do that as well in whatever way that we can.
And everybody has some way that they can support.
And so that's one of the messages that we emphasize within our network is, you know, find a way to support.
If you can't physically get out and help, help track people down.
Relay emails.
We've got a thriving Ham Radio Network, right?
So we can find people, we can pass traffic, we can get updates for you.
There are literally hundreds of ways that you can help people when they are in need.
You know, one of the...
As an organization, we try to broker those needs and capabilities.
See, this reminds me, and I am going to mention, like, one of the sponsors of the show that we have is the Satellite Phone Store.
And there was a true story recently where one of their customers with a sat phone was on the island of Maui when those fires happened in Lahaina.
And, of course, the power was cut off to the whole island.
I mean, everywhere.
Cell towers were down.
A lot of things were burned up.
Well, one person with a satellite phone was able to allow, I think it was hundreds of people, to make calls to their relatives to say, I'm okay, we're okay, the kids are okay, whatever.
And then some calls were made to law enforcement, like, here's where we are, or here's where the problem is, or the fire is, or whatever.
And, you know, so it's a legitimate question.
I mean, granted, that's one of our sponsors, but just generally speaking, we have to have backup plans for communications, ham radio.
You just mentioned you have a thriving ham radio network.
Speak to us about that.
Like, if we just rely on the cell towers and the mobile phones, that's often not enough.
Yeah, I think we've become very attached to our little device that we carry around in our pocket all the time.
And we have assumed, because 99.9% of the time it does work fine, we have assumed that it's always going to work.
Well, here are two things that a lot of people don't understand.
Number one, when a particular cell in the cell network becomes overwhelmed, when too many people pick up the phone, try to make a call at one time, it artificially attenuates its signal to reduce its footprint.
That's how each cell manages its capacity.
So when a crisis moment occurs, whether it's A flood, an earthquake, a tornado, and everybody tries to get on the phone, and so if you're already living on the edge of coverage, you're not going to be able to get coverage.
The second thing that happens is, especially in an extended power outage, each one of those cell sites has about 60 to 70 hours worth of fuel.
And then it doesn't work anymore.
And so you can't send a text message, you can't make a phone call, you can't browse through any of the social networks, it's just done.
And so it doesn't have to be this huge thing that knocks this capability out of function.
So the way that That most people live today.
You know, you've got the kids at one or two schools.
You've got mom somewhere working.
You've got dad somewhere working.
If something happens in the middle of the afternoon, what's your plan for getting in touch with everybody?
Yeah.
And so, you know, what we encourage people to do is just think through the scenario, right?
It's context- Context, risk, and mitigation.
What is the most likely scenario that's gonna happen for you?
If you live in Tornado Alley, let's just say it's a tornado.
Okay, a tornado comes through.
What's the risk that the cell phone doesn't work?
All right, if that happens, how do we get back in touch with each other?
Because if the kids are trying to get home and the parents are trying to get to the schools and neither parent can talk to each other and they don't know which school they're going, you could pass each other along the way.
So thinking through what those capabilities are and coming up with a primary alternate contingency and emergency plan is how you prepare for that.
We have a whole set of suggested PACE plans, but you have to tailor those to you in your particular circumstance.
We encourage families to use GMRS radios, you know, in a particular way.
I mean, they're cheap, they're ubiquitous, but in some geographic regions, they don't work very well.
You know, the terrain just doesn't, you know, is not conducive to using that, so you have to use something else.
Maybe it's a SAT phone.
Maybe it's a SAT communicator.
You know, And the big thing, and this applies to all 12 of the categories, I think you need a PACE plan, that primary, alternate, contingency, emergency options in each one of the categories.
Communications, yes.
Medical, yes.
Food and water, yes.
I agree.
It's all of those things.
And that can become overwhelming for a lot of people.
When somebody comes to us and they've seen or experienced a crisis moment, And they're feeling that anxiety.
We don't want to pile on, right?
We want to help take some of that off.
But also, let me add this and bring in Todd on this, too, because Todd is great about being a hands-on guy.
When Todd learns things from our guests here, by the way, he implements it like he was talking about his food forest earlier.
But it seems to me, and Todd, I'd like to bring you in on this, that Too often, contingency plans can focus on stuff, items, things, like get these, these, these, these.
And then people lack the skills, like, oh, you have 12 tourniquets.
Have you ever put on a tourniquet with one hand?
Have you ever stopped bleeding with one hand?
Those kinds of questions.
Todd, if you don't mind jumping in here about that whole philosophy of learning to do, not just having the stuff.
Yeah, I think it can be so overwhelming.
I have been that prepper for years, right?
And I have a secret room in my home that covers fire, water.
It covers everything, you know?
But there is so much in there that took me years to be able to acquire.
And people these days have the attention span of changing channels, right?
And plus...
What we're talking about here today, contingency plans, does require initiative and work.
And many times it could really, really screw up your Netflix time.
And so my question...
I'm kind of serious about this, is that people seem to be just so kind of lazy that this might sound really good, but it's a great idea to do next weekend.
But in the meantime, the Olympics are on tonight.
So my question is this.
Let's be pragmatic.
AmericanContingency.com.
Can you share with me People want to be told what to do and how to do it.
I presume that there's a way that I can go there, become a member, get a 101 of some sort, get my basics complete, and then have a roadmap on how to be able to augment all 12 of those contingency areas that you discuss.
Is that kind of the idea of your service?
I have to tell you, Todd, I might need to bring you in so that you can preach that sermon a few more times for me.
That's exactly what we do, actually.
We help people understand that...
Let me say it this way.
There are 12 categories, but we don't hit people with all 12.
Here are the core four, and we talk about these four.
What are the four?
So, health and medical, food and water, communications and security.
Okay.
That was going to be my guess.
I was thinking, yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
And then kind of close, you know, five, number five, and there's mobility so that you can move around.
But if you get those four things, you can be pretty self-reliant, self-sufficient, rather.
Mm-hmm.
Through most circumstances.
Yeah.
Now, you know, the thing about people want to be told what to do, 100% I agree with that.
And so we begin with a series of checklists that say here are the things, here's how you assess where you are currently.
You go through this onboarding course, the 101 course, and the output of that is here are the areas where you need to focus your Time, talent, resources, your attention to be better prepared.
And we want them to get a broad understanding of all 12 categories and then pick one that they're really interested in.
It might be food and water.
It might be homesteading.
It might be mobility, right?
It might be security.
But pick that category and go really deep in that.
And we have discussion groups and forums And we try to provide these opportunities for people that are focused on a particular category to spend time with each other in that category.
The idea there being that if they get around people that are pursuing the same outcome that they are in the same category that they are, then they remain engaged and build deeper relationships that way.
Now, all of that said, we really, really, really encourage our members to join local chapters, because it's those local chapters that are going to be able to come over when you have a limb on your roof.
Sure, and you mentioned that you have an app associated with this?
We do.
We've got an app for both iPhone and Android.
And then, of course, the website.
All of the same services are available on the website and on the phone app.
So whether it's more convenient for you to type or whether it's, you know, as most people do, walk around staring at their phone all day, we try to meet you where you are.
So where I am right now is I want to join.
Okay?
And as Mike knows, certainly by the weekend I will be a member.
Okay?
Okay.
And I want to know then, so I come in and I'm onboarded with, you said, a one-on-one class, maybe there's kind of a checklist, there's something.
A, what is my initial cost to come in and be a member?
So, we have two membership tiers.
A premium membership tier at $5 a month and a premium plus membership tier at $10 a month.
And I chuckle at that because it's one or two cups of coffee a month, right?
100%.
And for the training, for the connection, That you get, that's well worth the $5 to $10, and we haven't even gotten to the equip or the inform.
We've got a team that monitors the news, monitors the weather, monitors current events, and they publish a daily, we call it the daily sit route, but it's a daily email email.
That gives you the top five things you need to know today, plus the weather and everything going on in the network.
So if you don't do anything other than just read that email, you'll be better informed than 90% of other people walking around today.
That's awesome.
Can I make a suggestion?
Absolutely.
With your business, first of all, everybody, five to ten bucks is nothing.
It literally is nothing.
And it's an investment, not an expense.
And I think it would be kind of fun.
A service like yours is for me to be able to go in and have an option which is buy one, gift one.
So that I could opt, I want mine to be $20 a month.
With that, I would like you to be able to gift that to someone in the network in need, because there may be some who do not have the means, and I understand that.
So I'm not, you know, please don't take me wrong when I say that's nothing.
But in perspective, that's nothing.
Come on.
And so I... Can't wait to dig in.
But all that has to happen is there to be the need in my life, one time, to where that network, especially if what I'm understanding, it is robust enough to where it is local to my area in Tampa, I would imagine, and I can add value to that.
But, you know, that's the first thing.
So we sign up.
We go through, we get on the app, and then I presume we start doing an outreach, connecting with our local community, and then do they have local meetings, or how do we get involved locally?
So, as soon as you sign up, so our country is divided, we've divided the country up into six regions.
As soon as you join, The regional coordinator or regional support team for your region will get an email with your information and they will reach out to you and help you get connected with a local chapter.
If there's not a local chapter, I'm 99% sure there is one in Tampa.
But if there's not one and you're interested in starting one, they'll walk you through that whole process.
It's a very simple, straightforward process.
In fact, our Southeast Regional Coordinator lives outside of Orlando, so he's pretty close to you.
Perfect.
Hey guys, can I contribute a skill here for the purposes of knowledge and entertainment?
Please.
I don't know if you know how to egg burp a snake, but I captured egg burping a snake at my ranch last night.
I want to show you this video.
This is real.
Okay, here it is.
You see the snake?
He's already sort of swallowed one egg.
There he is.
He's got an egg in his mouth.
And now you tap his tail.
Watch this.
You tap his tail and he burps up the egg.
There you go.
Whoa!
And that egg is perfectly intact.
I've never seen that before in my life.
Why is there a snake in there?
Well, because the snakes like to eat all their eggs, and that's where the chicken lays the eggs.
But I've learned that if you just mess with the snake, he'll burp the egg back up like that.
Wow.
And why not just...
Take that snake out back to meet its maker, Mike?
Because they also eat rats.
Yeah, that's true.
We have a rat problem.
I've got rats that have more than a 72-hour food supply, by the way.
But these snakes eat rats, and so I let them be, but they go after the eggs.
That's a huge snake.
Yeah, that's pretty typical, right?
That was just from my broadcast.
But there you go.
How about egg burping snake skills?
Egg burping.
So, we have a poultry group, people who raise chickens and turkeys and ducks.
That would be a great video to include in that group.
All right, well, you can have the video.
Do what you wish with it.
All right, gentlemen, we are almost out of time for this segment.
I want to give our guests here, Tom, just to, one more time, walk us through your, like, The method for people, obviously AmericanContingency.com.
How can people reach out and learn more from you?
That's really the number one gateway to reach us and to get involved with American Contingency is just go to our public-facing website, AmericanContingency.com.
That will tell you everything about us.
It will walk you through the process of how to get started.
All of the join buttons lead you right into the membership site, which is a private Members-only site where it's kind of like Facebook for preppers.
It's a whole lot that's wrong with that analogy, but that's really the best analogy to describe it.
And then it's inside that member site where you can get access to the phone apps.
You can find all of the groups of people who are working on the same outcomes that you're pursuing.
You can ask a lot of great questions and get great answers.
Sounds perfect.
All right.
Well, that's awesome.
I didn't realize we were having Mark Prepperberg on today as the guest.
Oh, man.
No, it's all good.
Todd, anything you want to add before we wrap this up?
Well, I just want to let people know that if they do a little bit of research on Tom Rigsby, you will find that he's also kind of a business life coach.
And from an entrepreneurial standpoint, I had a bunch of questions.
So we may have to have you on for another round at some point in time because I was very, very keen on some of your insights business-wise.
But this is so cool.
And yes, I am going to become a member without question.
I'll be on the lookout for it, Don.
I'd love to come back anytime you guys would like to help me.
Okay, Tom.
Sounds awesome.
All right, thank you so much, Tom, and you'll see me on there, too.
We can help cover Texas and Florida.
But thank you for joining us today.
It's been a pleasure, and thank you for all that you're doing to help our communities stay strong.
You bet.
My pleasure.
Y'all take care.
All right.
You too, Tom.
Take care.
Bye-bye, Tom.
Have a great weekend.
All right, and to our viewers, then, we'll be back after this short break with the after-party discussion.
Todd and myself usually getting carried away, so stay tuned.
We'll be right back.
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We've got a lot of items here available now in stock, ready to ship out at healthrangerstore.com.
And remember that all of your purchases help support this free speech platform to support our interviews, our investigations, and our broadcasts that bring you news and analysis every single day that you just won't find on places like YouTube, which are heavily censored.
So thank you for your support.
I'm Mike Adams of healthrangerstore.com.
Take care.
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