Securing Your Neighborhood During Societal Collapse

[00:00:11] Hello Rye, welcome back to the Survival and Basic Badass Podcast, Kevin and Chuck. Today, well, we're going to talk about Neighborhood Watch. Basically, how to secure your neighborhood as things start to get bad. Kind of escalate into an end of the world as we know it hits the fan kind of situation.

[00:00:37] You know, when things start to go bad and but can you like stay in the suburbs? I guess that's really what I want to kind of get into is if you do stay into the suburbs, how do you do it? How do you even try and make that work? You know, hopefully there's some kind of land you can maybe grow something in. But even if it's like a short term, how do we survive the first three weeks or something?

[00:01:07] You know, without even getting into real infrastructure. Again, this is not how we would advise you to set up your situation. This is a kind of I really don't have options. What can I do kind of situation? Right now, I will say before we get too deep into this, you know, make sure you guys like subscribe. If this is the kind of content you're looking for, you know, we'd love to have you back and enjoy it.

[00:01:35] But, you know, don't forget to hit those buttons because it helps. But all right, let's let's kind of jump into it. Now, one of the things is, will it work defending your neighborhood? And I guess what I'm talking about is, you know, maybe you take your block in the suburbs or your cul-de-sac and you organize everybody for kind of a mutual protection kind of situation. And supplies and security.

[00:02:05] I know there's a book I really enjoyed called Absolute Anarchy. And this guy, Johnny Jacks, wrote it. And he's got some good ideas and things. And I always kind of go back to him when I'm on these big topics that are broad and see what he has to say. And he basically his take was it's not going to work. And here's why. Here's how he lays it out. And then I'll tell you what I think could work and what you could do. And we'll hopefully find some solutions for you.

[00:02:35] But the bottom line is this, is if you if the world turns to crap and all of a sudden the police aren't coming out when you call and nobody's answering 911. And things are just getting bad because the cops are overwhelmed or they're not getting paychecks to come to work or the power is just out everywhere. And it's too much for people to respond and roads become congested. Any of these type of situations.

[00:03:04] If you try and network with your your neighbors in very short order, turns out people don't have a real stockpile of food. They don't have more than three or four days in your average house. Right. Which is kind of concerning. I mean, you know, eating at your normal levels. Right. I mean, I think everybody's probably got you got enough food in there. You can maybe go a week and a half, you know, eating the cans of tuna that are in the back.

[00:03:34] But when people are stressed out and bored at the same time, man, that's just that is all you're eating everything. You know what I mean? People don't think about rationing because they don't grasp the concept that, hey, this could go on. They're like, oh, the government will come fix it. Somebody will come through. Right. They don't they don't see the world that way. So anyway, so you all have your food and stuff.

[00:04:02] But the bottom line is in pretty short order, they're going to realize that you have food and preps and things and they don't. And even if you're not like barbecuing in front of them, you know, you're not out there making nice food every day. They're still going to notice that, hey, you know, you don't look like you're starving like the rest of us are starving. You know, my babies are crying every night. You should just give us some. And that's kind of where it falls apart.

[00:04:30] And that was his theory of why it would not work and how that would escalate quickly. I think the way to get around that is to kind of plan ahead. Right. To talk to your neighbors beforehand. And that's where you're going to save this situation. Again, I don't like it. I would rather have you have like a mutual assistance group.

[00:04:54] We did an episode on that and really go into detail how you could pick out the right people and, you know, find a way to work as a team with people who are like you. Right. People who have that same mindset, because when you try and coordinate your neighbors, you're going to have the Karens that live there. That guy who's always playing his music too loud next door. You're going to have, you know, the one who you think kind of steals stuff and probably does drugs three houses down.

[00:05:25] And, you know, these are the people you have to work with. I got, you know, I'll give you a solution, though. That guy that probably does drugs and steals shit down the road. Yeah. Get that guy on your side. Yeah. I was my neighbor asked me to go, you know, go over and feed his dogs. Yeah. And I was over there and the guy on the other side of him came like charging into the yard. He's like, what the fuck are you doing over here?

[00:05:54] And I know he's out of town. He told me he was out of town. Like and I was like, yeah, I'm just here to feed the dogs. Like, oh, sorry, I didn't recognize you. But, you know, that that wound up asshole down the street is like, you know, a decent dude if you give him the chance to be. It's nice to have the psycho in the pocket. Right. Well, that's right. So the next thing that you run into is a lot of people live in neighborhoods that have HOAs. Right.

[00:06:24] Now, I will say if you're cursed with that, that that's the way I interpret that. You may have a different opinion. You guys may enjoy having strict rules. I feel like local governments and municipalities have enough rules on our lives. Right. That I've always had the mindset of if I want to control what happens in the property next to me, then I should buy that property. And you're like, well, Chuck, I don't have enough money to buy that property.

[00:06:53] And I don't have enough money to buy the property next to me either. So I don't get to control that. Right. That's kind of how that works. Right. You know, when they can afford theirs, I can control this much, you know, as much as I have that that's mine. I can control that. And I decide what happens here. Me, the wife, whoever pays for it. Right. They get to decide what happens there and you don't get to decide for the rest of it.

[00:07:19] But when you're in an HOA, it turns out other people might decide what's right for you and you might not get to decide. That's where you get into trouble. You know, Kevin would probably like to have a Sherman tank parked in his driveway. And I don't know if an HOA is going to approve of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll tell you what they get on me about is, you know, I like to work on cars. Right.

[00:07:47] So, you know, I used to have every once in a while, I'd have an old car in the yard or in the driveway that I'm, you know, slowly working on fixing this or that. And it turns out some people just think it's having a bunch of junk cars in your yard and they don't approve of that shit. But I'm not an HOA. So, you know, they go fuck themselves, I guess. It's off, right? Exactly. Now, so that's how that plays out.

[00:08:13] But, you know, you have to decide what's right for you and what's going to work. Now, so I guess the way I would approach it is, one, you're going to want to talk to these people beforehand. Right. So get to know your neighbors. Now, you can do that by, like, maybe inviting them to a barbecue. Right. You know, sweetening people up with food and beer, that's probably a good way to get them on your side. Right. You know, hey, I'm the fun guy.

[00:08:42] Let's hang out. You know, you're not going to complain about me having a party if you're invited. And that's the trick. Always invite your neighbors to your house parties. And even if they don't go. Right. They're like, ah, he's going to go next time. He's all right. Yeah. And they start to, you know, so that's the thing. So start to coordinate. And, you know, it doesn't have to be like a beer party. You're like, oh, I don't live my life that way, Chuck. You know, I'm not a beer drinker.

[00:09:12] I'm a nerd. What do us nerds do? Right. When you're having your gaming party, you have over for that, you know, whatever you do. When you have soda and pie. Yeah. Yeah. I saw it. The Beastie Boys told me about your party. I know. So anyway, and yeah, just invite the Beastie Boys and your party will step up. Right. That's how it works. That works. Nice. You know, they know how to party is what I'm told.

[00:09:40] The so start to coordinate, talk to. If you do have an HOA, you want to attend these meetings. You want to make yourself known and get to know these people and talk to them. You know, that's something you would, you know, because the more you can establish yourself as a leader, as somebody who takes responsibility and gets on, because there's always some Karen in there. Who's going to be like, I love telling people what to do. Right.

[00:10:09] And, you know, that's the thing. Like people are like, oh, how did the schools get so bad in the school? Because nobody goes to a school board meeting because it's ridiculous. And you know, your opinion doesn't matter and nobody cares, but it's, that's how it gets away from you. Right. Right. You can't, you know, let that happen. And then your town, your village, wherever you live probably has a monthly meeting where you can just come in and, you know, you can use that as like a networking opportunity.

[00:10:39] You can use those as like spotting the Karens, you know, like this, you know, this Karen over here, man, maybe she, uh, maybe she can help me out with this nonsense. I got, I saw some lady was, uh, posting, asking for, um, uh, legal advice on a forum I was on. And, um, she said that the kids, when she drops her, her kid off at school, the other kids make fun of her and call her a Karen because of her asymmetrical haircut.

[00:11:07] And she wanted to know if there's a way she could like Sue to like fix this. And then the, one of the replies was like asking if you can sue a bunch of eight year olds for calling you a Karen is the most Karen thing I've ever heard of. Exactly. Yeah, it is. It's a hundred percent. Um, so the next thing, right. After you kind of work your way into the community and that's a tricky note there, but like I said, you need to start getting involved. You need to talk to people.

[00:11:36] A lot of communities, they've been have like emergency preparedness meetings for the town. I'm seeing that more and more. Right. When I left New York, they actually had them there. There was like a guy in charge of that. And it'd be like once a year or once every other year, they'd have a meeting where they talk about community preparedness and stuff. Go get involved. Go talk to these people. Turns out if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably more knowledgeable about things

[00:12:04] than your average guy by far. Right. Just cause that's where your interests lie. And that's where you're putting your research and effort that, and me and Kevin are obviously huge vaults of knowledge. You know what I mean? There's that. So that's right. That's right. That's, you know, now, um, there are a lot of, a lot of little organizations that you can get involved with in your area that you may or may not even know about doing a little bit of research will help.

[00:12:30] I mean, even, even the volunteer fire department down the road, you know, you don't have to volunteer and be a fire, you know, to be a fireman. If you don't have that kind of time, but you can still go down there and be involved. You know, they have that bullshit, like pancake breakfast, every, you know, you see the signs out there. You know what I'm talking about. Go down there. My wife is going to serve the town chicken plate dinner. She's going to be the runner who goes up to the car. How many plates? Three plates. I got you.

[00:13:00] And then they hand over 36 bucks and you hand over three chicken dinners. Oh yeah. Well, I mean that all that sort of networking and stuff is great. Uh, you know, being involved in your community, knowing who's who, you know, hanging out with the mayor, hanging out with the mayor. That's right. Oh dude. Yeah. So my town is, is growing now. Mind you, I live on the outside of town. My town is like population, like 200 people. And.

[00:13:30] You know, we have like a post office and a hardware store and a mechanic. Yeah. And a dollar general, of course. Dollar general, of course. Yep. Right. And, uh, you know, and, and these are, you know, in the, the central hardware there, he's got kind of some of everything and they're pretty cool. And, you know, we love having it and it's perfect for me, right? This is the world I want to live in. Right. I want small town.

[00:13:54] So they just sold one of the big like soy fields that are right in the middle of town. And now they're building 200 houses in this field. And I'm like 200 houses. We only have 200 people. If we had 200 houses, like right now, prior to this development coming in, there's not even municipal water in, and this is in town. I live outside of town.

[00:14:23] Like we don't even, you know, I got to drive five miles to get to the big city, you know? And it just, yeah, the world's changing and everyone's like, yeah, your property values are going to go up or whatever. And I'm like, you mean my taxes? Yeah. That's what, that's what it means. That part might happen. Um, the upside is I actually live in a different County than my town that I live in, which sounds impossible to me, but somehow. Somehow it happened.

[00:14:53] Me and the ATF fight on it all the time. I'm like, I live in this town and they're like, yeah, that's this County. And I'm like, no, no, not where I live. That's. Yep. And well, you can't live in that town and in that County. Cause that yet here it is always. It's always good to have your, your, uh, where you live a little bit confusing, you know? Exactly. I got a different, different town that I pay a property tax in from then the one I pay

[00:15:22] school tax in from my actual mailing address. Like keep it confusing. Keep them, keep them guessing. Right. Exactly. All right. So now how do you approach these guys? Right. You go up to your neighbors and you'd be like, Hey, you know, you ever think about things and you kind of see who would get on board, you know, well, how are you guys for preparedness? How are you guys like, man, if the, the store shut down for like two or three days, cause the power was out, would you be all right?

[00:15:52] You know, maybe we should, you know, talk about, you know, getting like, you know, do you have a generator or something? I could, you know, could we like share it and I can charge up your fridge and you can charge up mine or, you know, like little things, right? Like baby steps. You don't need to give out all your preps kind of, I'm a crazy prepper and I have. Right. But if you come at them like with the, you know, what you're really into and that you actually are a crazy person, you're not going to want to deal with you. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta ease people into it. Yeah.

[00:16:22] And you just kind of feel it out and you'd be surprised. I mean, when I have conversations with people, more and more people are, you know, full on crazy preppers. Right. More than you think. Like also, if you realize who's on your side or at least, Hey, like you own a gun, right? Cause you know, like at least a hunting rifle or something. Oh yeah. Oh, you have handguns too. You, you have a concealed carry. Oh, okay.

[00:16:49] You know, and you start to, you realize who your allies are. Right. And, and you'll know, like when you, when you see your neighbor fly in the don't tread on me flag, you know, like, Hey, that guy might be somebody I should talk to. Right. Now mind you, you might step on landmines or get shot going through his yard, going up to the door. But once you get to the door, just proceed with caution.

[00:17:14] Um, if the guy just flies a Jolly Roger out front, he's definitely the guy you want to talk to. Um, that's, you know, that's where you want to be. I'm just saying. Now let's, let's talk about like, um, organizing, you know, you getting a, getting a group together. And, and I think most of you guys have experience, you know, growing up in different neighborhoods and, and being around different people.

[00:17:39] Like there's, there's usually some old guy that's like the self, you know, the self-proclaimed mayor of the, of the street. You know, mine was an old guy, uh, when I moved in named Walt in a wheelchair and he just like wheel around. And every time I talked to him, be like, you got to come over for, for drinks. He's always like trying to get me drinking cocktails with him. And, uh, his son was taught, tell me son lives down the street and he's telling

[00:18:07] him, he's like, yeah, my, my mom's always yelling at him. Cause she keeps finding bottles of bourbon hidden behind the fucking, the books on the bookshelf or, you know? Yeah. But, uh, you know, there's that guy that knows everybody that's lived in that neighborhood for 30 years. You know, he's a good guy to talk to. He's a good guy to, uh, you know, get the inside, you know, inside scoop and who's who in the neighborhood, you know, feel things out.

[00:18:32] Um, now if you're going to start organizing something a little bit more centralized to your, your community, you want to, you have a couple of things you need to work on. Like one is communication. Um, you should be able to like effectively communicate with people and neighbors, uh, but also like local law enforcement and, uh, other community organization organizations

[00:18:57] like the, you know, like I was saying, the volunteer fire department, um, you need to be able to organize well, organize meetings and events and things like that leadership. You need to, uh, be able to inspire and motivate people to do the things, you know, the, the kind of things that it takes to, you know, get, get this community going. Um, you need to be good at conflict resolution.

[00:19:23] Cause like Chuck was saying, there's always the Karen and the, you know, there's plenty of male Karens out there too. Even if you only have like, you know, a men's social club or whatever you're calling it, you know, there's always some, some dickhead that's like super excited about rules and shit, you know? I mean, maybe you are that dickhead that's obsessed with rules. I'm not, you know, I'm just saying, uh, you need to be good at networking. Um, that's a big part of it.

[00:19:49] You know, getting, uh, you know, getting involved with the different organizations that are around you and talking to different people and figuring out what they're doing. Right. Um, time management. This is one that's, um, that can be tricky because we all have jobs. We all have shit we got to do. You know what I mean? We have responsibilities. We have kids. We have, you know, all sorts of nonsense going on. Um, one thing that I, when I think about time management, I like, uh, I like to look at the Eisenhower matrix. Have you ever heard of that?

[00:20:19] I've not. It's, uh, you know, Dwight Eisenhower, obviously general president. Um, his, his quote was, uh, what is important is seldom urgent. And what is urgent is seldom important. And basically what it is, it's organizing things in the two groups, you know, things that are important, you know, spending time with your kids and your family, you know, getting, you know, getting ready for any kind of emergency and that sort of stuff. But there are things that are urgent, you know, and that's the stuff that you have to

[00:20:49] take care of immediately and then space out time for the stuff that's important. You know, um, you know, we can all run around like, you know, chickens without a head and, and not get anything done, you know, but there's a, there's some rules that you can kind of, uh, look into it. It's, it's, you know, easy enough to, to find time management plans. Um, and, uh, you know, those are basically the things that you need to, to think about

[00:21:18] when you're starting a community group like this. Yeah. Another thought. I mean, that's it. You, you do need to think a kind of a command structure and I hate to say it in any kind of situation like this, you really need a clear leader and somebody to take charge and whatever and organize and handle and make decisions. You can't do things by vote. Right.

[00:21:44] Like we all know that, you know, socialism doesn't work because it's like, Oh, the one guy has food and we all vote that he gives it to everybody. Right. And you're outnumbered. Sorry, buddy. And that's how that's going to play out. No, I will say you catch more flies with honey. And by that, I mean, if you're like, Hey, I am somebody who's been preparing and because I knew something might happen.

[00:22:11] I have these three 50 pound bags of rice that I have to give to the community that I have extra might buy you a little friendship. Right. Right. Maybe it's not rice. Maybe it's whatever, you know, you think is, is going to buy. I mean, Kevin, I know it's a couple of 24 packs of Miller light. Right. He's going to be like, Hey, I think, you know, my neighbors, you know, there you go. Hey, look at how I should be in charge. I'm the guy with the cooler bowl of beers.

[00:22:39] Now, I don't know how long three 24 packs are going to go at, at Kevin's house. Depends on what kind of neighbors you got. Right. Right. That's it. Um, maybe you buy that aristocrat whiskey. You got 12 bottles. Like I said, I think it might be the, uh, the 50 pound bags of rice, but you know, your neighbors, right? I don't. Um, so that you do need like a leadership structure and, and a chain of command.

[00:23:05] And it doesn't mean one guy has to be in charge of everything. I think you do need like an overall organizer, right? Like one guy who's like, this is what we're going to do. But he might be like, you know what? But Jimmy's on the SWAT team in town. Jimmy can run security for this place. Right. I don't, as the general leader need to be the head of security that can be Jimmy. And you know, same thing.

[00:23:32] You can put Susie, the gardener in charge of, you know, all the farming and planting and, you know, organizing that. You don't need to be that. That's sexist, dude. Susie could be in charge of the SWAT team and Jimmy could be a gardener. Yes, Kevin, you are right. I was wrong. Um, another thing you got to think about, like some of the first things that are going to come up are like water, right?

[00:23:56] If water shuts down, you know, you might have that reserve of water for a while, but it might go away. You need to have a plan. And then if things are going to escalate long-term, you need to think about a plan for sewage. One, you have to think about a plan where sewage isn't going to back up into your house. Right. And two, what are you going to do with future poos? Right.

[00:24:21] And you know, you can all have outhouses, but if you set those outhouses up in a certain section of the neighborhood, you could maybe avoid contaminating and spreading bad things. Right. And just smelling, you know, that fat bastard that's next door to you, you know, he should smell like, like something died in his ass. No, you don't need that. That's right. Yeah. No, you don't need it just escalating. So you need to think about these things.

[00:24:51] There's certain things. So again, you know, it depends what suburbs mean to you. If every house is 10 foot away from each other, planting and gardening might be tough, but usually even those neighborhoods have like some green sections of grass, like on a corner lot or something that, you know, whatever. But you need to think about, right. Somebody in charge of like gardening or farming, uh, livestock, if that's a thing. And always, you know, keep in mind, like there's always really gardening stuff you could be doing

[00:25:21] right now. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Food preservation, um, you know, food service, hunting and fishing, entertainment, security, uh, security patrols. Right. So that's another thing you need to think about is, is laying out your neighborhood. Um, you know, where is your neighborhood most vulnerable? Right. So the first three or four days without power, you know, people are going to come up the street, right.

[00:25:51] They're going to come to that main, you know, kind of, like I said, if you're like on a cul-de-sac, they're going to come where they turn onto your street, maybe having a roadblock and setting up something there, maybe come day two or three, you need to set up some kind of overwatch, right? Somebody who kind of got their back. Maybe somebody who can see a little further what's coming up the road. Hey, you know, I see a large herd of 20 people walking towards the end of our street.

[00:26:20] And maybe we need to bring the security force up to our regular gate guys to back them up. That kind of thing. Um, that's something you want to plan about and think about then as time escalates. Well, yeah, but what if somebody just came in the backyards and, you know, hit this house and robbed, you know, Johnny's house last night and they had a little home invasion. So are there ways that you can secure kind of the back?

[00:26:48] Do you have natural barriers like a lake on one side or a mountain, you know, cliff on the backside or even briars and things like that? You know, maybe putting up some fences, maybe planning some shrubbery that's going to keep people out, you know, as a perimeter in your backyard. These are the things, you know, if you have another development in houses behind yours, where there's a stockade fence between the two of you, that's something.

[00:27:16] And then even networking and talking to your neighbors behind you, if they know they're not going to be attacked by you and you know, they're not going to attack, you know, they're not going to attack you. You're not going to attack them. And it goes both ways. That's one defense that you don't need to worry about. So that's the thing. Being a community and helping your neighbors is a big thing.

[00:27:43] But I would say finding a way to get water for your street is going to be probably priority. Number one, then setting up that community. But the more you can secure your neighbors around you. And honestly, if they're dependent on your well or something, that also kind of helps. Remember, they might want to just take what you got. So you gotta find that happy balance. Security patrols, you know, maybe it's even just setting up a lot of things.

[00:28:13] Setting up tripwire alarms, things like that in the back, you know, areas that, you know, that's the kind of thing that matters. I know I bought a bunch of these. They were actually like grenade tops. So they actually have the pull pin, like a grenade and whatever the part that screws in. And you could drill out the little incendiary, you know, little explosive part that, you know, the firing pin would hit.

[00:28:40] We drilled it out the right size and you could put shotgun primers in there where I know they make them where you can put in like the 22 blanks like you buy at Home Depot and Lowe's. They have the ones for the nail gun things. They have the little, and you can buy those that'll, it'll make a pop. Now, mind you, that noise isn't that loud, right? If I'm in my house with the doors closed and everything, I might not hear it.

[00:29:08] But if you had somebody out on watch, they probably would hear it. You know, if they're out on the front porch or they're, you know, at the end of the street, they're not that far away. They might hear these things going off. And again, they make ones for shotgun rounds and different things. You can, you know, look into what's necessary for your neighborhood. Um, you need somebody who's going to really run security. You're going to need somebody who can do medical, maybe communications.

[00:29:34] You know, do you worry about outside just even monitoring what's going on in the rest of the world? You know, that stuff's going to matter. Uh, scavenging and scavenging and all that kind of stuff. You know, that, that stuff matters. Um, maintenance, taking care of equipment, uh, you know, gathering supplies, maybe some sending somebody out to go get, you know, go, go hit up the pharmacy or the, the vet clinic to,

[00:30:02] you know, you know, that's going to be risky because that's where all the drug addicts are going. But maybe that's why it's good to know the drug at neighborhood, you know, I know the drug, drug dealer down the street and yeah. Um, but the more you guys talk about and discuss this stuff beforehand, people can get prepared and the more people can have supplies, the more people, Hey, you know, are we really light on gun ownership in the neighborhood? Is that something I need to, you know, bulk up in my supplies?

[00:30:32] And the thing is you can buy a couple of really cheap guns that you can, you know, guns don't have to be expensive. Right. They, they can be 200 bucks or 150 bucks or, you know, whatever. I don't know. You can get a used shotgun pretty inexpensive. Yeah. Uh, it was funny cause I know when I wanted to get into hunting, one of the counties near

[00:30:56] me had a, a restriction where you could only hunt with a shotgun and I didn't have a shotgun. Like I had a tactical type shotgun, but I didn't have a hunting shotgun and basically it didn't have sights on it. You know what I had? And, and that was really the thing. Um, and I went to the local store and there were a couple other requirements that mine didn't meet. And I was like, what do I need to get the cheapest shotgun?

[00:31:22] And they showed me all kinds of junk and, you know, things that were 150, 200 bucks. And they were like, so sloppy and dangerous and whatever. And then the guy's like, you know, I can just order you like a Mossberg Maverick, which is like Maverick is made by Mossberg, like their cheap version. And he's like, I can get you a nice one for one 99. And I'm like, Oh yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. But you had to plan a little bit, you know? And, and that's, that's the thing.

[00:31:51] Like you can maybe work out the right thing for, you know, yourself, that kind of stuff. Um, but talk to your people, find out the skills they have, find out where you're weak. And that's the thing. Like, so somebody is maybe an EMT or a medic or a nurse at the, whatever. Do they have any supplies in their house? Is there any way they could stockpile some supplies in the house?

[00:32:18] If you might want to stockpile some supplies to be able to share to them, if you can't really get them on board, because sometimes it might not, they might not see the other stuff as practical. Like, Oh, I would never do anything outside, you know, of, of my professional thing. I don't want to get sued. I don't want to whatever. But then when you have those supplies and they have the ability, they have a duty to,

[00:32:47] you know, kind of take care of people. So it, you know, see what you can do. Right. That's the, the way it should be. But, you know, who knows? Yeah. I think everybody, uh, everybody has a nurse or an EMT living in their neighborhood. I don't, I don't understand how that is, but every place I've lived has kind of been that way. I, I, um, I remember I used to live next door to this guy and, uh, his wife was like,

[00:33:15] just like a big mean woman, always like bossing them around and shit. And, uh, one day they're, uh, they're moving away and, uh, you know, he was packing the truck and she came out and started, you know, like trying to boss him around. He's like, listen, there's a peacetime general and a wartime general. This is wartime. Go back in the house. And she turned around, went back in her house. Oh shit. There you go. You got to run it like that. Right.

[00:33:43] I don't know, but find a way to network, but think about security. Think about setting up, you know, where are the hides? Where could I set up a sniper situation? Where could I set up an overwatch? But the thing is to have enough people to do this. Um, you know, obviously you're probably more likely to be hit at night, at least during the beginning of, you know, a downturn.

[00:34:08] Um, you know, that first, cause that's when the gangs feel safe, you know, under the cover of darkness, I guess that that's where evil lurks. Right. Right. Right. Evil's out at the, you know, you know, evil comes out after dark and that's, you know, that's what you want to do. You want to plan for that. So. Yeah. You got to plan for this, the werewolves and the vampires, man. They're right. So the best advice. Yeah. I have for this though, is talk to your neighbors beforehand.

[00:34:37] If this is your play, you want to get to know each other. You want to get involved. You want to establish yourself as somebody who's friendly, somebody who, you know, is kind of a go-to and then just start to nudge and encourage everybody to move in the right direction. Right. I would say if your plan is really to work with people, you need to buy some extra preps. And like I said, they can be super cheap stuff.

[00:35:04] It can be a hundred dollars worth of 50 pound bags of rice right now that you set aside. Or you know what I found is super cheap is a pancake mix. Go to Sam's club, get the big bag of pancakes. And if you could do pancakes in the morning and rice in the afternoon for a couple of weeks, that would buy you a lot of friendship. And, you know, but if you talk and you organize and you get a couple of people to do the same thing.

[00:35:33] Now I understand we need protein and we need things to live and whatever. Yeah. Basics are going to carry you a long way in helping out with, you know, buying you friendship. And, you know, you can go, you can go a long way on rice and potatoes, you know? Yeah, no, exactly. And that's the thing. I mean, even better, but my best advice is move out of the town and go back into the country

[00:36:00] where you can get out in the middle of nowhere, you know, whatever, get out of that cul-de-sac. But if you're in there, you know, you got to find a way to work with the world that you have. Right. I mean, you know, we all have to work. We all have to have a job and there's certain quality of life that people don't want to give up. And I don't blame them. Right. You want to enjoy life. Right. We can't run around living in fear. The whole point of prepping is to live. And if that means you have to create a lifestyle that you don't want in any way, that's not living. Right.

[00:36:30] Right. So just keep that in mind. Uh, but with that, I would say, you know, you guys have show ideas, thoughts, concerns, emails at prepping bad asset, gmail.com. Uh, I will put a link to the Facebook group. I'd appreciate it if you're not there, you know, we have a new, new group. Um, I'd recommend you guys check it out. Uh, we also have a website. I have the link in there that takes you to all the different things, uh, to the, you know, the store.

[00:37:00] We got some cool t-shirts. Uh, I know we had a cool mug that says cool things like, you know, don't give them an inch, that kind of thing. Uh, we have stuff with the new logo and all that. So all kinds of good stuff. Check us out. I'll put it in the show notes, but with that, I'd say stay safe and we will talk to you guys next week.