Early Election Readiness

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground so I am completely overwhelmed uh with a lot of projects I'm working on at the moment I've still got a lot of you know work in progress and things like that so I thought I would take a break from some of that today and discuss what I think may be a useful topic for some of you and that is the things that I'm doing and thinking about in the early stages of preparing for what is very likely to be a pretty crazy election cycle right up front I I want to say that I have no idea as to what's going to happen you know we all have kind of have some pretty you know general idea that things are going to get pretty crazy or they may be pretty crazy right uh we'll talk a little bit more about that as as the election season gets a little bit closer uh for now I want to start by talking about some of the things that I'm thinking about and trying to do in the very early stages so think of this as kind of like a early stage election preparedness kind of thing I will reexamine the topic in the summertime as kind of like a mid-range kind of thing thing uh as the election gets closer and then of course uh just in a couple of weeks before the election I I plan to do another one of these and talk about some of the the last minute preparations uh that you might want to take if things start looking like it's going to get like out of hand right so I've got my notes and let's uh go ahead and get at it um in retrospect looking at all the the ideas that I have written down here I realized that a lot of what I have to say is pretty scary to think about I don't intend for it to be um but I think that you know at least for me personally I'm at a Crossroads where um it's really easy to to focus on a lot of the very very bad things in the world likewise it's also very very easy to focus on only the good things and uh kind of ignore the bad things to the point of being very very dangerous um I see this happening quite a lot all over the internet right we've got kind of the the Doomer culture um you know which is a cultural thing uh but we've also got people kind of mostly in like the commercial space uh where they're just kind of ignoring these problems because they don't want their livelihood to be stripped away from them uh if they Identify some of the uh causes of some of these problems I am trying to kind of take the best of both ideas right I'm not going to ignore all the bad things uh that are going on right now just for the sake of you know kind of protecting a a business model we all have to do that to some degree and I think that this really starts to matter now because is you know we I I have always tried to do the do the the kind of balanced approach where we talk about the bad stuff no matter how scary it is and just as a way of acknowledging it and preparing for it but we don't dwell on it uh we learn from it and we can focus on the good stuff right so so you know learning about the bad is a way of uh moving into the good stuff however this is challenging now because it turns out that when it comes to most things even talking about the B bad stuff just to learn about it is so horrifically awful that there's no real way to make it sound not scary so please just keep that in mind I I really am genuinely not trying to scare people with this stuff but you know some of these ideas are are pretty uh pretty heavy so full disclaimer going to talk about some heavy stuff today and when it comes to what I'm really trying to think about for moving forward you know the beginning part of 2024 we move into the summer and get closer to what's probably going to be pretty crazy uh I've kind of got two different ideas and two different things I'm thinking about one is the stuff that you probably want to hear about the most but actually matters the least and that's the gear stuff the normal prepper stuff the things that you can go online and buy you know your your standard preparedness things um this stuff I'm focusing on so we'll talk about that uh but really the more important things are some of the ideas uh that I'm kind of trying to work through and prepare for and considerations to think about right now try kind of make these decisions now rather than wait until later and be faced with kind of a moral dilemma uh when the chips are down so enough rambling on all of that uh let's talk about some of the physical things that I'm doing uh some of the more practical things that I'm doing to make sure that you know we have a lot more options moving into the future and that's one of the themes when it comes to preparedness and I think that that's something that kind of goes unspoken in the prepping world when it comes to just buying and selling gear and stockpiling and things like that but why do we do this right why do we prepare for things the main reason is so that we can have options when other people do not not necessarily because we're trying to be better than them or be more prepared than them or you know anything like that but we want to keep our options open as long as humanly possible and turns out prepping allows us to do that a lot of times now CO's over you know we've we kind of went through that Gambit of everybody jumping on the prepping train and learning a lot of things and uh I think we learned a lot about ourselves and others during Co and one of the things that I think the prepping Community learned is you know it was a good Shakedown right it was a good Shakedown exercise people learned a lot of the things that we now know right don't buy food unless you can eat it right don't buy things unless you're going to use it uh so hopefully now that you know a couple of years has passed since everybody went out and panic bought they now know okay you know maybe not buy 50 cans of food that you don't actually like to eat uh simply to to stockpile it so General things like that uh Food Water Shelter sanitation the basics you know chances are if you're watching this you probably already have most of that covered but this is just a good reminder just to go through check everything uh make sure you're all good to go and this is kind of a clue for later make sure that you're starting to think about people you might not be planning for I will go into more more detail in just a moment with Personnel concerns but this is kind of the thing to where everybody's loves the memes right they love to to talk really hard on the internet and uh when you know your unprepared Neighbors come knocking right uh when they can't get food at their grocery store and they know that you're the only one who has food well this is a whole different internet debate we can go down another day but I'm just saying when it comes to certain people co-workers friends uh neighbors loose contacts I'm not talking about strangers out there but I'm talking about people who you may know who have your phone number who may call you at 3: in the morning uh because their child has no food and they know you've got some so we want to avoid these moral dilemmas in the first place and if you can do that by helping others either by encouraging them or preparing a little bit in some way maybe that's a a good thing to start thinking about now but again this is a huge debate and I don't possess one opinion or another right how strange is that for someone on the internet to say I don't really know how to think about this you know when was the last time you heard anyone say I don't have an opinion on this you know I I kind of feel this way with regards to preparing for other people you know I don't really know how to feel about it but I can tell you you know I know what I'm going to do I know what I'm going to do in that situation and uh if that means that I have to go hungry then so be it so yeah I I really want to kind of avoid that situation in the beginning and if we can do that now now start thinking about it now just say it right when it comes to other preparedness things you know of course the basics Food Water Shelter if you don't have the basics down go to the FEMA website and download the FEMA list of three-day emergency supplies that's the best place to start uh for people who have no idea as to where to begin you know we all have feelings about FEMA and all that but for people who are a little bit put off by the crazy Uber apocalypse you know prepper we site a government website is is uh probably a little bit more socially acceptable to some people who may not be preparing right now I can guarantee you that I would probably have a better success rate giving someone the the female list with that female logo on it and it's not a bad list you know the basic 3-day Supply uh you could plus that up to 7 Days 2 weeks whatever it's a good basis to start from you can go uh find you know the International Red Cross you know the American Red Cross kind of lists again political feelings about some of these Institution aside the documentation they provide is is very very good for people who don't understand the severity of what's going on so uh another thing to think about is finance um I don't want to get too much into this but we all know what happened uh in Canada with regards to the trucking protests and some of the more um perfectly peaceful demonstrations we know what happened to to the concept of digital Banking and online banking uh so in that case cash is King just a good reminder uh that the only way that someone can take your cash and and prevent you from spending your money with cash is if they come and physically take it from you uh so it's a really easy to click some buttons and shut down your bank account we already know that basically everything that has a one and a zero attached to it every transaction every text message every piece of digital information is monitored in some way um now just because it's monitored doesn't mean that you know actions are taken on it but it does mean that that's a vulnerability and you don't want to get into a situation to where your bank account gets shut down because of you you know you donated to the wrong GoFundMe website and you know you're you're screwed so something you think about you know having cash on hand helps you know alternative currencies we'll talk about that another day I know people want to immediately bring in things like precious metals and crypto and things like that that's another talk for another day I'm just thinking about early on you know maybe now's the time to get you know some some cash back every time you go to the grocery store it might help later on just saying really these physical preparedness things are you know again I don't want to get into the habit of predicting a specific event will happen uh because I I think it's disingenuous and I think that I mean nobody can really tell right now but we can generally tell protests are going to happen um we already know what has already happened checkpoints being set up there are checkpoints in New York City on the subway system right now you know like we already know what the what's happening right we we we see the trends this is not you know fear-mongering to say that you're going to probably have to show papers again at some point this is already happened and because it happened once it's probably going to happen again maybe for a different reason maybe for the same one who knows uh all I know is that preparing to live in a situation where you've got checkpoints you've got mandates you've got papers you've got a lot of people with a lot of rifles walking around this might be something to prepare for uh especially if you live in kind of like an urbanized Center so we all know that's exactly going to happen soon as a riot start happening you know National Guard comes out and you know just creates a lot of problems for people like us who aren't going to be rioting you know um we're just trying to sit at home live our lives right but we're still going to be affected by uh by these checkpoints so something to think about I know people don't want to talk about it right but that we're all thinking it so I might as well say it another thing I'm thinking about is comms radio stuff I know everyone's least favorite topic except for the guys who like radio I personally detest working on radio stuff it makes me the most frustrated ever you know I get a super bad migraine a lot of times when working with radio stuff so please don't think that I'm some radio guy I'm not I I can't stand this stuff but I have to I have to learn this stuff because if my profession is in the information space that's my contribution at the moment to you know a better world I guess if you want to call call it that so because of that I think that if a person Works in an information space kind of job if they have information to send and they can't send it what good are you right you know if I can't send those wired reports out via radio at some point then what good am I right if I can't send a daily news update out when there's no infrastructure then you know what good am I I'm just going to sit here and look at my computer screen you know it's it's useless so so that's why I have to develop these kinds of things you know I think that the ghost net uh plan that we've created for kind of you know HF radio and it's kind of like an emergency stop Gap sort of thing you know I think that's probably the largest Network you know created by people who really detest radio uh in the world you know there's people on there's more people on that frequency a lot of times than on the main uh js8 call frequencies so you know I think that's kind of a cool aspect of it you know please don't think that I love radio I I really don't I I just have to get used to it and have to use it so for those of you out there who are not into radio and you don't see any value in any kind of radio stuff like please know that I understand I really do uh that's why I created the those a couple of tutorials on how to get started with this stuff for free so that you can kind of get your foot in the door understand the frustrations understand the the problems with it you don't need a license to get started listening you don't need to buy anything to get started listening you can just you know use your internet browser and learn how this stuff set up that's the where I would recommend uh to get started if you're interested not everybody's going to be interested um and of course I don't want to act like you know the stuff that I've done is the greatest thing ever it's not it's it's it's really quite quite poor I think in terms of the capabilities that it provides for the effort that you have to put into it however it's all we've got and I think that having some option no matter even if it's not really a great fit having some option is better than nothing we've already had multiple cell phone outages Nationwide outages uh Internet outages platforms going down social media you know just because it goes offline for an hour people seem to forget about it but you know like look this is important stuff and during these outages I was able to literally hop on the ghost net pull up JSA call pull up some of these HF radio tools and see people sending their local news reports from local area like how amazing is that that is awesome when there's nothing out there you know at least I caught at least half a dozen people from my area pushing you know local news reports from their local area couple people are even transmitting the wire so yeah me receiving my own news report via radio is that's pretty cool so anyway along with the radio stuff I'm kind of focusing a lot on energy needs again just to make sure that you know if I lose power or you know I have to operate where I don't really have power uh you know energy needs are are important as well now when it comes to some of the more theoretical things uh you know I'm I'm kind of focusing on the basic preps you know checking and making sure that you know all my stuff's good to go on that front I think we're all kind of squared away you know at least me I'm I'm personally kind of squared away you can always be more prepared but in terms of what I'm likely to be doing is sitting behind a computer uh during a contingent situation and battle tracking stuff and pushing out reports and stuff that's my that's my role to fill right if you're an infantryman if you're a grunt you have a different role to fill so you know that might be something to think about that's my job to fill and you know that's just kind of the way that it is so I feel like I'm kind of the only person on the internet or on YouTube who is not a I'm not a grunt I'm not an infantry guy I'm not going to be out there standing and holding a rifle you know on on the BM and if I am things have gone very very horribly wrong and you're not going to see any more Intel from me planning for the most likely scenario is probably a little bit better of a solution you know it's more likely for me to to grab a computer and go to work and do the best I can in that regard uh rather than trying to be out go out there and and be something that I'm not I'm I'm certainly not uh skilled in those ways and this kind of plays into some of the more you know theoretical things that I'm thinking about the the The Longshot thoughts right uh with regards to Personnel concerns so this is kind of a tough one right and we start getting into well this is personal choice but one of the things that I personally learned a lot from Co and and the kind of lockdowns and um interesting situations that arose from that when it comes to the freedom of travel is that a lot of people are spread out a lot uh uh people have a lot of family a lot of friends co-workers all over a city uh they're not really you know sure based on the economic situation a lot of people are moving back in um with either parents or they're moving parents back in with them or they're having a more communal kind of way of living but a lot of people out there you know have kids away at school or they have you know friends in contacts who live on the other side of town um people are kind of spread out a lot and that's a huge concern for Readiness um just just getting things right out in the open I got an awful lot of emails from a lot of people we're talking like hundreds of emails from people uh during Co who said Hey look I had you know Grandma across town uh there was a riot that broke out and I had to go rescue her because her house was in kind of like a a dilapidated area and she had to get out of get out of Dodge right so here's me and my minivan having to go launch a you know Rescue Mission you know unarmed unprepared you know in the middle of an afternoon when I can take you know an hour off from work as an emergency and I got these I got a lot of these emails so it seems like it's a fairly common thing for people to have to do is launch these halfhazard unplanned highrisk rescue missions if you want to call it that uh when a riot goes down we've all seen the footage of people you know the absolute gridlock when somebody gets shot and it doesn't look like it's a good shoot you know to the media at first and uh we see a riot potential breaking out and everybody as soon as 5:00 hits they're out of town right so they absolute gridlock on a lot of these highways we've seen this multiple times in multiple cities so that might be something to prepare for a little bit more than you might think and I have two main thoughts about that the first thought that I have is something probably people aren't going to want to hear and that is me coming at things from kind of like a I I guess like a public response uh attitude and that is look it's a lot easier to evacuate early than it is to evacuate during a contingent situation uh it is a lot easier to get people out of Harm's Way out of Dodge before the crisis occurred evacuating early really is the best shot for most people now again just to temper kind of any scary thoughts I'm not saying you need to evacuate now like you don't need to grab your bugout bag and head for the hills you're probably not going to have to do that at all most people probably aren't even no matter how crazy things get this country is pretty spread out if you're in a city yeah I mean you might be facing some pretty tough situations so that's why I'm talking about it in the beginning but look it may be easier to you know grab grandma have her you know sleep in your spare bedroom or whatever uh for a couple of days just if something looks like it's getting ready to to kind of pop off and the reason that you want to do this is because one it's easier and safer you assume less risk evacuating or transferring Personnel before the crisis happens the other reason that you may want to consider something like this is really along the lines of some more like military Doctrine sprinkled here and there and that goes back to places like Viet Vietnam or even today South Sudan where the concept of the protected Villages is most certainly in effect you bring people out of the countryside where the bandits are and you bring them into a village a concentrated area where you can protect that now I have some thoughts on that and we'll be doing a dedicated video on this this idea uh in the in the future because that can take a very dark turn for some of you who may be able to identify uh the problems with this not going to get into that now I'm just saying that look if you've got Grandma across town you've got your aunt and uncle you know at the next town over and you've got the space you know it might be a little bit better to bring them in for a couple weeks you know have a little vacation um bring them in for a couple of weeks just while things are crazy so that you don't have to worry about them right because if I'm sitting in you know my talk or my house or whatever and I'm thinking about Grandma because she's in a really bad part of town or a place that could become a bad part of town and and uh I'm thinking all right when she going to let me evacuate her you know that's the kind of thing you you've got to think about and it's a lot easier if they're you know take the hostages out of the equation so to speak if you know what I'm saying right a little easier to do it that way now again this is something people aren't going to want to hear and people are probably not going to want to do there's a lot of very independently minded people out there uh who don't really see the need to go this far like they may see ah this is just an overreaction I'm not going to go crash on your couch for a couple weeks man I'm fine I've got my own apartment don't worry about it I'm living in the dorms it's okay we're all good here we're perfectly safe right we've all heard this before so for people like that uh who still want to be you know pretty independently minded but you still realize look man they are not prepared um maybe it might be a good idea to just help them out a little bit with supplies or Logistics or things like that if you've got an aunt or an uncle and they're uh uh living by themselves you know in an apartment or out in the middle of nowhere or someplace like that just go you know go take them at armod of groceries you know just some extra supplies to get them through a couple of weeks of craziness if it looks like that might be an option I'm not saying go absolutely crazy now but I guarantee you it will be appreciated and while you're at it hey here's maybe a good opportunity to talk about things like radios and mesh tastic if you have to you know uh bring along a small little AM FM radio maybe a small shortwave receiver if you've got one and kind of kind of maybe a little cheat sheet on how to work it and stuff like that you kind of see where I'm going with this you can prepare people on the cheap without expending too many resources and we get into what I was kind of talking about at the beginning of well you know if they're not going to prepare now I'm not going to help them that's not really a total solution is it you know we've still got people that we care about in our lives sometimes that may not necessarily understand the severity of what's going on and they may not want to prepare themselves so uh just a couple extra resources maybe go take a case of water uh and leave it at the office you know a couple of cases of bottled water cost you know nothing and you can leave it in the break room you know or leave it in your office or something like that just in case right we don't want to go whole hog and just start ordering cases of MREs for total strangers right that's just not financially viable but the just tiniest bit of preparedness can help quite a lot and uh it prevents you from having to expend more expensive resources later on if it's cheaper for me right now to go take Grandma and armala groceries than it is for me to expend significant resources potentially start taking physical injuries and medical issues to go get Grandma when things go sideways then you know maybe it was worth it to prepare somebody else that you don't have to prepare for later on right just something to think about I don't really have a you know solid opinion on any of this but I I'm just you know you know things I'm thinking about for the future another thing that I'm trying to plan for or something that at least I'm thinking about constantly is the concept of the work schedule I understand that for a lot of people prepping is kind of a luxury uh being able to take time off to work on radios or or respond to an issue that's also a luxury as well so I understand and I guarantee you that if NASA were to get on TV tomorrow morning and say that there's an asteroid coming Earth to wipe out all Life as we know it about 95% of all jobs in America would still expect you at work at 8:00 a.m. the next day so I understand that right now we're in this really tough spot where everyone's having to work sometimes multiple jobs people even in First World nations are having a hard time you know affording food and that is Weighing on me a lot and I understand that me going out there and telling people well just you know take some free fre time well what free time you know nobody has that so that's why I am taking on a lot of roles that's why I do the wire now I had not planned on doing the wire reports every single day I hadn't planned on doing that I was only going to do it topically but guess what it's become important and people seem to find Value in it so I'm going to continue doing things like that because I can I I do have the ability to do that sometimes it's not very good but you know it's the best that I I can do right so I'm going to continue doing that I'm going to continue working on automation I'm going to continue working on some videos that maybe make things a little easier to understand so that you don't have to do what I do and spend 16 hours a day trying to figure out how to do the smallest tiny thing on radio and uh you know scour the internet for forums you know scrolling through endless walls of people asking well why would you ever want to do that you know well just give me the answer you know I know how frustrating this is so I'm going to continue working on things that make it a little bit easier for those of you trying to be a little bit more prepared capable things like that moving into what I think is probably a very serious topic and very inflammatory so please be advised that I understand this is controversial I understand that this gets really spiritual really quickly uh I I don't intend for it to be but there's no way that it can't and this is what I'm calling the concept the idea of leaving the door open specifically leaving the door open for people who may want to make changes to their lifestyle or their profession mostly their profession when things get a little bit more severe um I know that it may not seem like it and I don't mean to trivialize people's experiences and hardships out there but in the United States uh as hard as things are I can I can say pretty confidently that uh the United States's hardship right now is not nearly as bad as it can be for one and there are a lot of very very suffering places uh there are a lot of very desperate people on this Earth and right now the United States thinks it's dealing with hardship but um it's it's not really in most places now there are very very desperate places as we can see all over the internet and all over social media so I don't mean to trivialize it we've got you know Zombie Land out there in some places of the country but by and large you know the United States has been has been very very lucky uh to not have to deal with widespread famine uh to not have to deal with WID spread uh disease and issues like that so with that being said uh there are going to be people in the future that want to make a change and they want to you know see the light and uh stop being a part of the problem and start being a part of the solution as much as I want to let my own personal feelings Cloud the issue and just say you know there's no good there are no good people left in some of these institutions uh that's what I want to think uh but I can't plan for that if I'm trying to trying to be you know a little bit more open-minded about things I realized that look you know I I worked in federal government or with federal government for about 10 years uh before um Co hit and my my plans changed uh somewhat willingly and somewhat unwillingly and I realize that there are a lot of people working in very very very bad institutions that 68 10 months from now may realize all right enough's enough I'm going to take the brown shirt off and I'm going to start actually helping people instead of hurting people uh as painful as it is to see a lot of the very very bad things coming from a lot of institutions in the United States I am fairly confident that you know in the future we're still going to have some good people come forward and say look you know uh you were right I was wrong and I I can't I can't support this Behavior anymore it's going to be very few uh very few people and as time goes on it'll be even fewer uh right now we can definitely see a purge kind of happening amongst a lot of you know for instance US government uh institutions where the number of good people in certain jobs is rapidly dwindling but I also know and this is really what I'm trying to do personally it's challenging but I'm trying to also recognize the fact that it is never never never too late to do the right thing and it's really challenging for me it really is uh you know because I see what some of these people have done and and I don't want to get into the the habit of saying look you you want to you know let these people in who have caused so much harm you know we want to let them into the fold after this I I I don't know the answer to this but I let me share just one reason why I think that we really need to leave the door open and allow people the opportunity to do the right thing even if it's at the late hour right just me sharing a personal anecdote that may help uh in the later part of my career uh one of the the issues that I was working on overseas is the the concept of targeting in Iraq and Syria so was part of the uh overall mission to uh take the fight to Isis and eliminate Isis in Iraq and Syria now as many of you know that was a very very very very bad Mission uh and I do not support most of what happened and what I saw and because of that myself and a few others really even though we were you know targeting uh we were trying to figure out ways and working with the local Iraqis and syrians in some cases is trying to figure out how can we avoid killing these guys you know war is never good it's it's always going to have very very bad things happen and again I don't want to get into it too much but one of the things that we found out uh very early on is that one of the reasons one of the main reasons why people continued to be in Isis maybe not join Isis but join uh stay in Isis is because they felt like they had nowhere else to go they felt like their V Villages had abandoned them their family had written them off uh their family had said you can't come home anymore so these dudes you know very young very young kids in a lot of cases they were Outcast from their society they were kicked out of their Village their family had disowned them and they felt well you know might as well put on that vest over there you know that's what they felt like they felt like they had nowhere else to go and you know like it or not I'm not trying to get into the whole moral debate here but like it or not it may have been a better option to try to get the locals to bring these people back into the fold because a a person who wants to stop killing you know but they feel like they have no choice but to continue killing is is a very dangerous person right now take that idea and apply just a tiny bit of that to the United States if we want people either in some of these institutions like the military national federal agencies you know local police in some cases if we want them to stop the behavior that they're committing against the American people in some cases if you want to get the bad you're probably never going to get the baddest of the bad but if you've got people who feel like they have nothing better they have nothing else they might as well stay on the payroll that's not good so we want to offer them the the door and allow them to to uh change their ways in such a way that they don't feel like a social pariah it's challenging and I don't personally agree with it in many cases but I'm telling you that this is going to matter and I think this is something people tend to leave out and forget look at what happened already and this has been completely forgotten look at all those military service members who did the right thing when it comes to the covid vaccine they refused an illegal order we know that this order was illegal it has been proven in every court in the land that this is an IL legal order and how many people got kicked out for that around 8,000 or so and it continues to happen you had service members Ure torture you had service members en endure retributions and retaliatory actions that's still continuing to this day and what has the American people done for these people you know the American people was shouting at all those you know National Guard soldiers holding Shields against the American people and when those people decided enough's enough I'm going to start doing the right thing and I'm going to get out of this institution what did the American people do they ignored it they said great good job fine and then they went back to their Netflix and Starbucks yeah we had crowdfunding for a lot of the the people that that experienced some of the more high-profile incidents uh and that's fantastic but by and large you know there's a lot of service members out there who quietly got out uh who did their time and they said you know what enough's enough they may even be you know uh jabbed right they they did that to them M themselves because they felt they had no other option at the time and then they realized afterwards oh my gosh you know and then they got out think about it like this somebody who enlisted in the US military in 2020 the year 2020 after all of this stuff happened right they're coming to the end of their first enlistment now so they're looking and we want to make sure that that Soldier out there says hey it is better for me to leave these institutions than be to be caught up in a bad situation where I've got make a moral decision that may or may not be good for me but probably won't be good for anyone else so we want to offer you know a better life same thing with a lot of these corrupt everything from you know corrupt law enforcement to corrupt politicians to some of these you know big companies that that just leaned really really hard into the woke ideology we want to offer them a chance to to do better and we want to make that option available for them now I know this gets tricky I I know it gets very very sticky and a lot of people out there uh have the have the mentality of of no amnesty for what was done to them or their family uh during the past couple of years and in most cases I completely agree with that idea I really do I'm not saying that we need to just ignore all the things that were happening and you know you know the nice nice lady living down the street you know you know your neighbor Sally who turned you into the police for having more than three people people in your home I'm not saying that we should you know forget that and I'm not saying that you need to assume operational risk just for the sake of taking the high road I'm just saying that this is really something we need to think about and I don't know of any other way to do it than to uh allow people the chance to do better and not demonize them for it because I can tell you if all of these people doing very bad things right there's going to be a lot of people that that that that enjoy this right why do you think the IRS has had you know tens of thousands of people apply it's because a lot of times people working for the federal government enjoying hurting people and that's why they get into these certain jobs now I'm not talking about those people I'm not talking about the sadistic people who get in into a job because they have you know a shiny piece of metal on their shirt that allows them to hurt people and that's why they get into that job in the first place because they're sadistic and they enjoy it there's a lot of those people in case you haven't noticed but there's also a lot of people people who maybe were 11 Bravos they were in the military they got out what what better job is there for a grunt in you know in in the early 2000s than to than to be a street cop right trying to help their community and do the best they can right they get into the job they do the best they can and they realize uhoh a lot of the people around me don't want to do this you know same thing with any other Public Service the medical field good grief right we talk about you know how how awful it is to be a Fed these days and how awful and Evil these people are let me tell you something the medical field oh boy you know uh I have met a a lot of very very sadistic people uh in the medical field and it's it's sad because you know it's a field where altruism really can shine if you let it like what more wholesome thing can there be than someone who wants to help people good grief that's the best you know job you can have in my opinion unfortunately there's a lot of people out there who are in it just for the money and there's a lot of people out there who are in it for other other reasons and uh we'll talk a little bit more about some of that dark stuff later if I can figure out a way to do it without sounding utterly you know negative but really this kind of unscheduled rant is really to encourage people to to realize that slamming the door in the face of people that may help you later is probably not the best thing to do even though we may want to do it I'm not saying we need to go out there and start drinking Bud Light because they said they're sorry no you know words without actions are useless in my opinion I think that if someone out there genuinely wants to make a change and genuinely says I'm going to make a change and they do it you know they start saying hey look I'm not going to be a part of these institutions anymore I'm not going to be a part of these these harmful things and I'm going to start doing something else that's great we need to support more of that right and all I'm saying is something we need to think about about right because right now it is so so easy to get stuck into US versus them it's so easy to get stuck into well you know these people are Beyond saving you know that may be the case for most people out there but I know that there are some good people left who want to do the right thing and they are screwed and I want to make them less screwed so just thinking about that I you know I'm not saying we need to have a whole you know Kumbaya moment just saying something to think about is is maybe not completely voiding uh people who may want to help in the future because it's going to happen as bad as things are right now it can get so much worse and when it does get worse there's going to be an awful lot of people who did not see the light because they were insulated from it uh they they were far away and they didn't see the Badness and they're going to want to to make some changes so just just saying may not be the best idea to avoid these these people now another thing that I really am trying to work on personally because I I suck at this is Stress Management um I realize that a lot of these dualities are very very very stressful and these times that we're living through right now are absolutely the kind of times that test both your faith your personal convictions your core values all of this stuff right you know I thought I had life all figured out I think many of us thought we had all life figured out we had our careers planned we had our education planned we had a whole plan for the future and now you know I think many of us myself included are just living dayto day just trying to make it and this is going to increase in the future and all of this means that stress is certainly a part of our Lives now and I mean like the extreme extreme um health problem inducing stress and one of the things that's stressful for me and it's directly related to the last point is look I right now don't have the luxury of dealing with or interacting with super nice people a lot of times uh I know strange right but I I feel like people kind of ignore this uh the people out there who get on YouTube and have a great fantastic Community that's all wholesome with the white picket fence and you know they're able to defend their community and work together and things like that they they may argue here and there but they're all driven together by a common goal you know I don't have that and I guess that a lot of you probably don't have that either now I'll talk a little bit more about Community Development in the future and some of the challenges that you're going to have to overcome that a lot of people ignore because they don't or or maybe not ignore but they probably just don't have these problems I'll talk more about that in the future but really what I'm trying to say is I just I feel like I have to interact with a lot of people that I really don't like and it's in the interest of being better doing better and the number of people like I'm a pretty easygoing guy like in you know my day life day-to-day life I can get along with pretty much anybody um and you know it's getting really hard for even me like I'm not saying that I'm the best at this kind of thing but look in my you know professional life I've worked many many jobs in every place I've ever worked people will definitely say about me that I can get along with anybody I can get along with anybody under any circumstance any situation uh there's there are very few people that I can't get along with in some form or fashion to get the job done however these days the world is rapidly eclipsing my my skills and abilities on that front uh I feel that every day that goes by maybe I'm just getting older and it's starting to starting to make me a little bit more kogy I guess but I feel that you know a lot of times I'm having to talk with people and interact with people and plan and and work with with people you know outside of you know my family unit outside of my organization here but like in my daily day-to-day life and I'm just getting nowhere I'm up against a brick wall a lot of times it's it used to be man I could probably go into a riot in the middle of a fist fight and I could I could break it up you know I could probably just get in there start meeting people start getting to know people the more they know you the the faster you can establish a personal connection with somebody that the least likely they are to hit you you can move in and and do stuff like that nowadays I can't I can't do that anymore you know I just if either lost that skill or Society has degraded to a point to where I it's just really hard for me to work with a lot of people now and I feel that in order to have the effectiveness I had in the past I have to compromise a lot sometimes it feels like I have to compromise on my core values and personal beliefs and that I will not do so you know we're in a rock in a hard place and that's super stressful when people people just giving you nothing and I feel like I'm not meeting people across the aisle I feel like I'm not compromising I feel like I'm jumping across to their side just getting people to talk to you now and not treat you like a piece of garbage is challenging it is really really hard even in this community that I work in to have a person be kind to you you know it's really hard and I I feel like because I have had so much difficulty with this in my own personal life I feel very very committed and dedicated to trying to be a lot nicer to people than I think I should be because you never know and people are going through some really tough times now so maybe people are a little bit more blunt and stressed and at the end of their rope more than you think I definitely know that's the case probably even with me but I just think that trying to do the best you can and uh you know leaving the door open for people to to to have a little bit more leeway sometimes is is probably not a bad thing to do on the other hand we can have this whole debate of you can't give people an inch anymore you cannot yield one cimeter to anyone because it will take that rope and hang you with it you know that's a unfortunate part of living in the world today but you know at the in the interest of of not being super super negative all the time uh I I just think that you know I I'm willing to let people talk a lot more nowadays I'm I'm willing to let people vent you know I don't know what it is about me but my my family experien is the same thing as well um you're just going out to the grocer store and you know just talking with the cashier or talking with somebody in the aisles and the number of people that have just vented their life to me you know standing you know at their card in a grocery store is pretty high lately uh it seems like it happens almost every time and I just let them talk you know and some people need that just talk to a complete to and total stranger and that really indicates to me a lot of things and one of those is that people are very stressed they're at the end of their Rope A lot of times and um they need to be able to function uh in the world today and that's very hard to do um so things that I can do to make that easier for people is to not shut that door for them make it so that people who want to do the right thing have that option and they don't feel like well they're not they're never going to accept me now because of what I've done to people you know it's a hard thing it's a very hard um very hard thing but I'm just trying to get these ideas out there because maybe we need to start thinking about this a little bit more there's going to be people there's going to be people that want to make a change in their life there's going to be people that are so stressed that they do very very very serious things uh because they feel that they have no other option left and and we want to make these people feel like they do have options that they can change their ways that they don't have to live super super stressed all the time because they're conflicted internally with what they've done or what they continue to do so yeah that's a pretty heavy topic isn't it I don't think anyone was expecting myself included to to kind of talk about these very severe and very heavy issues but I think that it's probably a good idea to talk about them early on so that we can build on these ideas as we get closer um to you know what's probably a crazy time now one of the final ideas that I wanted to talk about about is the concept of money or rather the lack of it um I've been doing a lot of thinking lately and this is probably not the greatest analogy for the United States but I've been really doing a lot of soul searching a lot of research and one one thing that is really Weighing on my mind a lot um is the concept of extreme poverty extreme famine and extreme desperation uh I know cheery topic right but you know everybody goes through phases right and I think my latest phase is is the idea of um desperation prevention I guess if we want to call it that and um you know I read a lot of stories about extreme situations around the planet I've even seen quite a few myself firsts hand and though it is very very challenging to to kind of put like a situation of widespread famine and you know widespread hyperinflation and things like that into an eon context in America it's really hard to to cherry-pick that knowledge because America is such an interesting and unusual place and I'm not saying that the United States is going to become Dar for or anything like that I'm I'm just I'm just saying that right now in the content creation culture we see a lot of people just recommending you buy very expensive things and that will solve your problems and I'm trying to think a little bit more broadly than that now of course I will agree things like you know basic preparedness things tool tools of the trade right Firearms you need your tools of the trade right defensive things you need things like night vision and thermal and things like that that may be a year salary for some people um are are really kind of necessary you know body armor is not cheap and all this tactic cool stuff is you know you can get away with as minimalist of a setup as as possible but at the end of the day you're still going to have to spend an awful lot of money just to maintain a baseline of of self-defense capability now the reason that I want to start talking about this now is because what's around election time Christmas right we've got the holiday season coming up as the later parts of the year start creeping in financial desperation is going to be very common I think uh so people are going to have less options uh financially they're going to have they're probably going to spend a lot on the holidays or a significant portion of their you know uh income on the holiday season uh travel uh even energy costs like energy bills like my local co-op you know over the months of December and January inexplicably just raised the rates you know and they just did it right can they do it no did they do it yes it's going to happen for a lot of people I've you know got an energy bill where I can measure my my consumption my consumption didn't change at all as a matter of fact it went down a lot cuz I try to use a lot of wood Heating and uh uh the bill goes up skyrockets you know 40% 50% increase and so I'm trying to plan for that in the future and basically say that if you're going to have to economize so that you can have options later in the year it might be better to do it in the summertime trying to plan early on in the year is probably a a good thing to do so that by the time you get to the end of the year you're not broke you know you don't have uh high energy cost high cost for just Surviving High food costs and now you've got a deal with the impacts of like rioting or unrest or checkpoints or something like that better to have options later and if you're going to have to have have to economize it's probably better to do it in the summer time and the springtime rather than wait until much much later I know that you know going out and suggesting to people to go buy an extra load of groceries for a family member uh that might not be financially viable for a lot of people you know a lot of people especially in my local area they just can't afford the full C of groceries anymore they're just barely making it so I understand that that suggesting that might be disingenuous but I still think that you can do a lot for very little uh in this country even as high priced as things are now you know we've still got options and I'm just saying that it might be a good idea to start taking advantage of some of those options and and the reason that I kind of think about it is I go back to kind of you know the co era where you know I can't go to my local grocery store because they require papers to get in and they've got a an armed uh individual standing out in front of the grocery store checking people's papers I'm not going to do that I refuse to do that in this country so I've got to drive an hour and a half out of town wasting all that gas money to pay even higher prices at the next town over you know I don't know about anybody else but a lot of people had to do that during Co but I can tell you that I probably can't afford to do that now so you know it's it's going to be tough and we're going to have to make a lot of tough decisions and and um we're going to have to examine alternative ways of getting Logistics and doing that is not easy and it's most certainly not cheap so you want to allow yourself for Murphy's Law to kick in for for for checkpoints high prices papers and all this bad stuff which increases your costs you need to prepare for that to come crashing down all at the same day on the same weekend because that's probably what's going to happen not saying it's going to but I'm just saying it would be a pretty good idea to plan for right you know and again one of the reasons why I'm so focused on this uh I I know that it probably is you know people are complaining about high price High food prices in America but you know they're not having to deal with widespread famine you know we're not talking about hundreds of thousands of people dying a year because of malnourishment now food insecurity here in the western world is getting to be pretty bad and I am really leaning forward into this so that we could prevent this as much as possible just just to show one random statistic here um last year uh the fourth quarter of 2023 so over the winter time the grocery store chain bernardos uh in Ireland did a study in which they found that over 40% of Irish citizens were had or were skipping meals so that they could feed their child you know 40% you're 40% in a western nation in a nation where the economy is not horribly bad you know it's not like Somalia right this is the Western World and you've got 40% of people uh skipping meals so that they can feed their child for me this makes me extremely blindingly angry uh beyond all comprehension right but it also makes me extremely motivated to try to do what I can to help prevent this I I personally I can't do very much right the average person out there if you're watching this by yourself you probably can't do very much either but you can do something you know you can do something you know in the United States Canada as well I guess uh Western Europe you know the UK um places like that I think that there's a lot of discourse and there's a lot of anger angst conflict between the haves and the have knots between the left and the right the up and the down whatever right there's a lot of conflict between US versus them as complex as this situation is I think that really there's going to be a lot of have knots helping out a lot of other hav knots you know it's going to be pretty pretty rough and I think that in a lot of situations it's not going to be like 2003 again you know where the average soldier in Iraq is you know handing out his MRA to a starving kid you know I think it's going to be along the lines of that Soldier being very very hungry too you know so we're going to have people manning and working with food banks that are facing in food insecurity themselves we're going to have people running charity events that are just barely above that charity threshold themselves and it's going to be very very tough and I think that we need to cut a people a lot of slack when it comes to this because I it's it's very very hard and it's going to get even harder for people out there so I'm you know in the mindset of well let's do the best we can and we might have to temper expectations in doing so there's going to be no savior with a blank check show up and and help us uh we really have to do it ourselves and in doing so I think that it's important for us to have the capabilities that we can I know that every generation that has existed since the dawn of time has complained about the times they're living in or you know every generation has basically had the uh story of well when I was a kid I had to go to school you know walk to school through the snow uphill both ways right we all have that you know even the ancient philosopher Cicero was talking about you know kids these days they don't listen to their parents and all they want to do is write their books you know it's like you know we've had this this this idea going around for a very very long time but I do at the risk of sounding disingenuous I do think that this time period we're living through maybe not this this one generation but definitely the time we're living through is very very special I think that those who come after us are going to write books about us either way so we might as well make these books worth reading I think that we need to live our lives in such a way that we are worthy of the admiration and the respect that people may or may not uh attribute to us in the future I don't think that we're going to achieve this Respect by shouting louder than the next guy or having an versus them mentality but I also think that we're not going to achieve this by laying down and giving up right because there are a lot of deliberate attacks on the very people that built human civilization and keep civilization going so I'm not saying that those people you know need to give in and let these people take over no we're not going to do that but in any case I'm just some random guy on the internet right I don't know much I hardly know anything to be honest but I do know this I do know that small things help right and I do know that you know working on the small goals small achievable goals that you can actually make happen are going to be a prerequisite for the big stuff for working on the big actions and working on bigger more complex issues if I've got somebody on my team and they can't handle a simple task I'm not going to give them a big task right so it's the same thing in society we have to get the little things right before we can do the big things right and I I don't know if it's just me but I feel like there's a sense of pressure like a a a sense of for boing if you want to call it that but it's not necessarily negative it's a sense of urgency like like the clock is ticking you know maybe not to a specific event you know or anything but it seems like we're we're we're rapidly approaching something what it is I I don't know I'm not saying the apocalypse is going to happen tomorrow I mean who knows but I'm just saying that I just feel like this pressure every single day to do the absolute best I can every single day and I and it's something that I I have tried to you know Implement in my life over the years but nowadays it's actually really happening you know and it's happening naturally I'm not trying to do this it's just something that's just a drive you know that you feel every single day uh maybe it's just me I don't know and going back to what I kind of said at the beginning you know one of the kind of ways to wrap this up is to realize that keeping your options open is going to be very very important when it comes to physical preparedness you know prepping if we want to call it that you keep your options open doing that by having water food shelter sanitation things like this physical gear that can keep your options open when those options are removed from society when the water doesn't work when the electricity is turned off you want to have options right the option to eat and have water and things like that that's what it means to prep well guess what we also need to prepare more socially and I think that Beyond prepping a lot of the issues that we're facing in society are going to come to a head on a social front more along the lines of a preparedness front you can stockpile as many cans of beans as you want but I think a lot of people right now are finding out that those cans of beans aren't helping them to build their Community together now it's the bare minimum right you know we could stockpile you know cases and cases of ammo right for the shtf situation but I think a lot of times people have found out that you know spending 15 years AC crewing you know a decent sized um Armory is not it's not solved any of the problems that they're facing today preparing for social problems is a thing as well being able to understand yourself understand the world around you or at least try to and try to realize a lot of dualities right I don't have everything all figured out I'm sorry I just I don't have a lot of the answers and I'm searching for them right now right I don't know what to tell you on some on some regards I think a lot of the population is unsavable uh when it comes to what we can do as humans I think that they're unsavable and I'm not really speaking to them same thing with unfortunately a lot of the community around me you know they may have similar values but those differences are just enough to to be worth standing your ground on on the other hand I want to keep the door open for anyone who's willing to realize that they need to make a change in their life and I want to do this because I would have wanted someone to keep that door open for me you know so at the end of the day it's really just about keeping your options open physically with preparedness but also when it comes to the people in your life or people who may be in your life or may come into your life we need to work on this a lot more than than we are right now I I certainly do and all of this is to say that I have never ever ever regretted having more options in a contingent situation or during an emergency and unfortunately a lot of the emergencies that we're likely to face as this year gets a little bit crazier they're not going to be oriented with gear the emergencies the preparedness you might have to make might be with your community this is why it's as scary as this stuff is to talk about I really am excited I really am you know I don't want to you know end on a a negative note here after ranted for an hour about how awful the world is no I I I want to talk about the bad but you know end on the good note which is that this is some very exciting stuff can you imagine how amazing of a time this is to live you know we've got all the bad stuff but let me tell you something for every bad thing that happens in the world we have an opportunity to do good this is amazing right we have the chance to do some really really great things we don't live in boring times of all we have a chance to do something now this doesn't mean it's going to be easy it's not going to mean that we're not going to suffer and and have some pretty tough times right what is it they say that the best things in life are free that's very true but you know what it's also true is that nothing worth having comes easy just because it's free doesn't mean it's easy and I think that you'll find that some of the most free things in the world end up being very very difficult and and daily daily challenges so so we have a choice don't we we can wallow in fear we can buy random junk on the internet and we can see that our phone screens every single day of Our Lives or or we could do something about it now I know that opinions vary quite widely on how to improve the world around them but here's the good news as this world gets gets a little bit more serious and as things go downhill the good stuff the good courses of action are going to be a lot easier to identify right now it's a good I mean how many people do you see out there planting trees and picking up trash on the street you know these little things that used to be a part of daily life uh many years ago certainly are very much appreciated now it's the little things that are really not debatable right the little things to improve the world around you not just physically but you know socially you know getting to know people uh getting to to understand what people's life experiences are and and working through that especially people who you may not agree with were never going to change the world by simply shouting at each other back and forth and I and I don't want to hear of any of this ah it's too hard garbage no I don't want to hear any of this oh but they are are too powerful no I I don't want to hear any of this this just excuses yeah I get it you're not going to change the world you're not going to change the US government in one fail swoop that's not going to happen but these little things add up and let me tell you something the kids out there they're watching you the kids out there in the world today those the those young people are watching what we are doing right now and they're basing their world view on it so imagine yourself every single day like someone is watching you right that's what integrity means right doing the right thing even when nobody's watching just every single day that goes by imagine yourself teaching the future Generations that are going to come after us we may not be able to change the world within our generation it may not be within two or three generations but it's going to happen soon the pendulum swinging things are going to equalize it's going to to it's going to pan out um in the future you know somebody said one time that very few Generations have the honor of being able to defend freedom in its hour of Maximum danger and that person was right but there's more to it than that it's not just Freedom that's at stake it's the very way of life on this planet that is really at stake in many different regards I hate to sound like it's so severe but it really is and we have a chance to do the right thing and we're going to start by doing very small things first I could just go on for hours and hours and hours about the little things that help you know but at the end of the day you're going to have to decide that for yourself you I think we've got a lot of Big Ideas here we've got we've certainly got our work cut out for us there's a lot of a lot of work to be done and one could argue I personally may think that the amount of work we have to do based on the time we have left is I can do the math here and we just don't have enough time left to do the work that we need to do but hey that's okay it doesn't mean that's not an excuse not to try right I don't know what's going to happen with this election season I really don't I think that just generally and this is probably just a lazy assessment things are going to get crazy you're going to have probably the same stuff that happened come back riots uh all kinds of stuff we know how the election itself is going to go you know I think that's fairly clear um even though people somehow are still debating it I don't understand but I think we all know how that's going to go um I'm also leaving uh kind of the assessment open for events that may happen you know we may have some pretty serious false flag attacks real attacks all kinds of stuff you know we've got just read the news you know we've got some pretty serious issues here and I think that some of these issues are going to come to a head pretty soon uh but in terms of the grand experience right we're just getting this is the early look right the the grand thing of things to start thinking about and and probably more importantly the ways of thinking uh this is the kind of things I'm thinking about for now so I think I've rambled on it long enough uh I think this gives plenty to think about and uh I I look forward to kind of moving forward into the more exciting stuff of uh more deliberate preparedness kind of things more specific uh things that I'm uh trying to do to to you know provide as best I can uh for people during this uh crisis and we'll we'll get to those topics uh at a later date so thank you all for watching uh thank you all for putting up with my ramblings here and uh I I really do mean it when I say that I am very excited for the good things that we can do because like I said we can focus on the bad we can let that consume us or we can be overly excited about the potential that for every bad thing in the world there's a chance for us to do the right thing and uh I'm never going to turn down an opportunity to do the right thing or at least try to right so that's the kind of mentality I'm moving forward with and I hope that it helps uh for a lot of you out there even if for now we may have to fight in the shade