263 Bug-Out Training - The Mission That Will Remain Nameless

0:00Well, that's it. I'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Take a long time to get here. Go ahead. Punch it in. Whoa. Welcome to the bunker. Welcome to the bunker. Good. I'm going to tell you what this heat is this heat is entered into. Well, it's already been there, but it is dangerously hot like it is.

1:00It this heat has a pressed my constitutional rights. This heat is like un-Christian. It's refugee hot out there. It is ridiculous. Yeah, it's they said we wasn't we're not supposed to hit a hundred today, but. I think we hit it. If not, there's humidity out there. Yeah, it feels worse. Our index today was 106 out here. So yeah, it's it's entirely unnecessarily hot to the point where it's I mean those guys out there that were working today. Man, I felt bad for them. I'm like they signed up for the job, but at the same time they were having to utilize the shade from the trees and. Take breaks and all that good thing. But they're also probably you know a lot younger, you know look I did four and a half hours yesterday in a hundred over a hundred degrees. And I don't know what the heat index was. Four and a half hours out there changing pulling the tires off my truck could not get the freaking lug nuts.

2:04I mean it was it was a battle all day because I had a guy come I'm switching my my trucks got 20 inch rims. And Rhonda's got 18 inch rims will I want to keep them the same. So I went on and did the Facebook marketplace and asked for an even swap say, but he was got 18s out there. I'll take him I got 20s or not beautiful, but even swap this and then a guy finally called me some it's like yeah I'll take him. So I had a time limit for him, you know, he can only come out one day and it was yesterday. I was bus I mean I'm getting that thing up on blocks and you know and trying to get it all off and it was great and I have it a ranch and air impact. It still would not break these things I broke I had two breaker bars both of them broke now one was from Walmart and one was from the harbor freight. So that should tell you something right there. I managed to get a socket that was slightly smaller and I would hammer onto the lug nuts so that it would just wrench in there.

3:06And I found a wrench just regular little ratchet wrench that was heavy freaking duty like from old school days you know like rusted and I stuck that on air and I outfitted a huge like five foot pipe and I ran into that thing. I had a sledgehammer and used torque and I would like hang on it with all my weight on one hand while I'm taking a hammer beaten on the on the socket with the other other one just to get these things to break. You want to talk about sweating? You want to talk about I'm too old to be out and that kind of doing that kind of labor in the fucking sun. I was dying now if you're a younger guy like probably the guys working on your pool. Yeah, you know it's bad but it's doable. Yeah, yeah. Well that's actually a perfect segue into what we are talking about tonight. Which is. And several times before I'm an independent contractor for government contracts and essentially for lack of a better term I'm a paid actor I do role playwork for

4:17for contracts where students are in there what we call a culminating exercise or a final exercise before they achieve like the next level of what they're doing. This is the mission that shall remain nameless. Well, most people, I mean, most people know I guess generally that they've ever heard of it because every time. Excuse me sorry every time that the exercise happens half of the country thinks that the US military is taking over. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Conveniently forget this. No, no, no, I remember because I remember in Texas years you're like at least over a decade well over that I remember the doing an exercise like that in an area right where the 35 and there's a bridge. And like then people were calling and going man what's going on there's this military action the military's in bait. I mean, it was just crazy people are going nuts over this stuff. My guys, they're practicing. Yeah, it's my it's my old unit that that's that was what that was when I was in third special forces group that's called.

5:17Yeah, it's called J. Helm J. Helm exactly and everybody's like no, J. Helm like yeah J. Helm then people are going no J. Helm is a is like a secret code word for no. Something that is that is an open source name, by the way. Both of them have four four letters and the two fours equals this. Yeah, it's a cool name though. If he's gonna lock it means this. Yeah, it's on the day of the equinox. Yeah, but the the exercise that I take part in and I've talked about some of it before. And it's also an open source name it's called Robin Sage and Robin Sage is the culminating exercise for special forces candidates. A gay name compared to like J. Helm. J. Helm. Robin Sage. In tight. I'll just say this. The name itself has has has a meaning in part of it is a name of a person.

6:19But every time I go do this contract, I take notes on how things went good and bad or indifferent and I kind of correlate that to if you did truly indeed need to leave your home and actually commit to a bug out, which of course is not ideal. But these same same things actually go into if you were bugging it. Like if there was an emergency and you said this is my castle, this is what I'm doing. So I need to adhere to a couple different things. Sure. And it's also every preparation, Bibleists, you know, fondest daydream is the whole bug out. Oh, man. Completely completely bored of of any reality whatsoever. But still it's a great daydream. I don't think the actual action of bugging out I think it's just the bag. It's like the first. It's clear money. It's the vehicle. Yeah, they want to they want to live a fantasy with, you know, about a bag.

7:21Yeah, in the in the shit they can buy it, put in it and they'll be all curious. And a lot of that's all gear porn. That's all it is. You know, they and there's so many YouTube channels out there that you can find that, you know, talk about, hey, this is my bug out bag and I bought this and I bought that. And now if you if you're really looking at a lot more prepper, so, you know, quote unquote channels, there are a lot more of them now talking about, you know, bugging out is dumb. You know, it's a last ditch resort. Like if you had to, okay, I got it absolutely have to. But if not, stay home. You know, that's that's where your stuff is. So yeah. Sorry, I'm having a drink water. In every case, every prepper survivalist is, you know, in our world, we should know how to book out. No, how to book out. We should know when to bug out, how to bug out the reality of bugging out, where we're going to bug out to, you know, the whole coordination with your group, your family, all that stuff.

8:23You should at least know how to, but it's not what you want to do. No, you shouldn't really want to unless and like, like for instance, I like my bed and my toilet. Now, I agree. Like, but in our situation where we are right now in this home, I would have to like make that decision quickly. Because my home itself in its location and what we're close to is almost indefensible. It's no longer in the country. But one of the things that I want to start with is in these locations. Okay, so hold on. Before you do that, and you're getting talk about location, was it at least close to your house where you were going? No, no. No, my lane is around two hours from me. Okay. So I go out there and I spend two weeks out there. Hills, flatlands, swamps, mountains, where were you at?

9:24Well, in this particular case, we moved locations from our last or our normal spot. We were at is actually a Boy Scout camp. And we were not allowed to use the nice facilities like they have buildings and pre-made tents and you know all this different stuff which would have been wonderful. But we weren't allowed to use that. We were actually in one of the camping areas that they utilize. And there's a decent trail leading up to it. But when you get down in there, you know, I was looking around and there's a hill, a pretty significant hill coming from one side down into where our camp is. But there was several really hard, what we call a draw. So basically, we're two hills kind of come together and they create a natural sort of dip in the ground. And you can see water would run through there and create a stream. You can see that as a stream. And when I talk about location first, it took one rain to realize that everything else was also essentially a stream just based off of the slope of the land.

10:36And when it rained, normally, I imagine that if we did not have to clear out like all of the brush and the leaves and all the stuff that was on the ground to set the camp up. It wouldn't have been as flowing like the water would, you know, wouldn't be readily, you know, as fast running through there as it did. But we made a presence there so that also increases the flow of rain water. So what why is that? Well, I mean, when you when it starts to rain and it's coming down the ground, you've got brush, you've got dead leaves, you've got tree stumps, you're trees, you know, you've got the brush and everything else that basically sort of impedes the water's, you know, force. Once that's removed, there's no, there's nothing to restrict the flow of water. Because you guys were ready to trample through it. Yeah. And that's something I think that a lot of people don't really take into account.

11:39You know, when you start trampling down grass and brush and, you know, clipping, you know, different stuff away and taking a rake in smoothing areas out, it may look nice, but that water no longer has anything to block it. Oh, this is just like in the old west, man, those, those towns, the main streets became rivers. That's exactly what it was. So when it started to rain, the top of the hill that was to the direct north of us was from the top of the hill down to the campus 450 meters. So, and then the next biggest hill, which had basically switched backs going up to it was, oh gosh, it probably took about 15 minutes to walk up there. And I can't remember the elevation, but it's a pretty significant hill. And there are power lines that run like this cleared path, you know, so there's power lines and it would go all the way down to what's called bait or a lake bait and or bait lake.

12:41So the location of your, you know, quote unquote, bug out area is is really important, not just, you know, not just the fact that you need to find a good spot. And you, but you also need to make sure you find a spot that doesn't, you know, belong to someone like you can't just think that because it's, you know, some kind of SHTS situation and you're going to pack up your stuff. And you're going to go set up camp and you don't know exactly who's land you're on. Somebody might get real upset real quick that you're on their land. And that can turn really dangerous depending on what part of the country you're in. So because I know around here in North Carolina, there's some people that if you show up on their land and you're unannounced and un invited, you might get shot. So if tensions are flying high because it's an actual SH, you know, TF situation, then, you know, it's going to be even worse. You might not just get shot once you might get shot a lot. So you got to, you got to keep that stuff, you know, in mind, if you do absolutely have to leave, you need to have a place to go.

13:51Next thing I want to talk about is weather. So it did rain while we were out there, it rained pretty heavy. Oh, okay. Yeah. And, but it didn't rain a lot. Now, the last time I was on contract, it rained literally every single day for two weeks. And it wasn't just a little bit of rain. It was all the way. Yeah, it's when you had the moss growing in your tent. Oh, dude, it was so gross. There was mold spores on everything everywhere. But not this time. Not this time. Now, no, this place had better air flow. It wasn't as dense as the other place. So I, and I instead of keeping my rain fly on, I actually set my tent up. I got a new tent and it has vented tops. So I put it a tarp like pretty decently above that. So that way I could have air flow out of the tent on the top. And at night, I would open up the windows to try to get it to cool off. But it was so hot that we ended up having to bring out what's called ice sheets.

14:58And buddy, you probably know what that is. But normally when we see ice sheets, it's like, you know, basic trainees or initial trainees and stuff like that. It's literally a cooler with sheets like bed sheets and ice. And that's if somebody goes into a serious medical event caused by the heat, you take these ice sheets, which are cold cold and you wrap them up in it. And it forces the body temperature to drop down quickly. So we actually had to bring those out. Not normally you wouldn't see that kind of thing. But it was so dangerously hot that we ended up, the cadre actually had to bring those out. And it's, it's a safety measure. That's really what it is. How many IVs was popped? Oh, dude. Let me tell you what. You do security halts and everybody hoops of the raw meat. Yeah. Now as part of this, like when the candidates come in,

16:00we have, you know, we have some stuff inside of the camp. And the appearance is that we are a group of essentially refugee fighters that have come together and formed a group. And what we have is what we have. We started out the day that they got in. And we had like, probably like 28, 5 gallon water cans. And now they have to develop a way to get these things refilled. Right? They have to develop that network and do all these different things. But real world, we had already burned through three quarters of that the next day. That's how, that's how hot it was from one like starting just day one. That's how friggin bad it was. How was it? Oh, dude, all of it. Like all the humidity is right right in that one spot.

17:01It was terrible. But that goes to say that, you know, they talk about one gallon per water, you know, per person to per day. And I'm just going to go ahead and tell you right now, you need a lot more than that. Because if anything crazy were to happen in this world during one of these super El Nino's, dude, you're, you're, you're wishing you're wishing in one hand and shitting in the other. Because it's going to be bad. And this is all in all, we were at 35 total people, 35 or 36. And we burned through that much water in one day. Now, students are that with the cadre. That's students plus contractors plus our gorilla fighters. So 35 total. And that's also sanitation. And that's also cooking because they cook in the camp. So that's a lot of water. Now, if you had a group of that many people and you're trying to sustain like a camp or something like that.

18:09Water has to be like your number one thing almost. And of course, there's always security. There's always a bunch of different things. But somebody's going to have to have, you're going to have to have a dedicated team every single day of procuring, cleaning, filtering, and processing water. Like that's going to be their whole job. And I mean, once they made arrangements, of course, within the scenario to get these water cans refilled, they're having to pay for them. What was that, what was that scenario that what did they come up with? So we have auxiliary drivers that are part of a scenario that are our lifeline for the gorillas. And they have to establish a relationship with these drivers. And part of that is, and I can't go to like to do to deep.

19:10Whoa. That was some vicious talks there. Somebody ran the doorbell. I think I got delivery so. Yeah. Well, I'm just weird. Could you, you were like, yeah, they have to establish a rapport with these with these gorillas. And then you were like, we were like, right, right, right. I was like, nice sound bite, man. Yeah, nice. But yeah, it's, they have to establish that relationship. And then every morning in the scenario, we are ready to bring up the trash and the cans. But we don't know because we don't want to endanger our auxiliary guys. Right. We don't know where they get it from. We don't know, you know, all those different things. We just go back up and they pick, we pick it up. So they have to give up our cans. And then once the, in the role, of course, the drivers know that the students have cash,

20:13which is, it's a fake money, but they'll start charging them. So then they got to work through that. Well, like in a real life scenario, there's, there's not going to be anybody aiding him betting a group of gorillas without getting paid. Right. Right. So, you know, they've got to work through that process. And the great thing about this scenario is that every next step is driven off of what they do or what they don't do. You know, so if they do well, they're, they're problem to decrease. If they don't do well, their problems increase significantly. So, but yeah, water based off of the weather is going to be like, I can't even put a, like a sense of urgency on how important that's going to be. Yeah, the way I look at it is, you know, I've watched pretty much every season of alone. And I'm sure you guys seen them too. And I, and I noticed right off the bat that, and this is similar, but this is what you're talking about.

21:15And what we're, we're talking about, but it's just with one person rather than a group. But what I noticed is that they, they get there and they, you know, they get each person gets their little area. They're all alone and they're, and they, they have to now survive. And they don't have much at all. They say, you know, they're backpack. So the very first, they're, they're walking around. They're looking at wildlife. They're, you know, cutting on some wood and they're doing this and that. The very first thing you should do when you get to a spot is you need to look for water. That's your very first, if it is the summertime or the spring of the fall, water is your very first thing. If it's the winter, fire is your very first thing, water is your second thing. If it's the summertime, water is your first thing, fire is your second thing. Those are the two things you have to have because without fire, you can't purify water. Without fire, you can't cook food either. But water can't survive. You've got to establish those priorities to work. Right. And again, this kind of goes back to the seas of survival, you know, or the, the, the, the, the rules of three.

22:20And one of the rules of three is, it's, it's shelter is also extremely important. You know, but I think that, like on that show and a lot of people in general, let's say you, you had to leave, right? For whatever reason and your only recourse is to go to like in the woods or a state park or something along those lines. And you have to make a shelter. You do need to build a shelter, especially in the summertime or the winter time because you'll die of exposure. Exactly. But you, but you have to know your water source before you start that because building a shelter could take all day or two or three days. You need water right away. Yeah, they don't work their, their rest plan in. They think that I've got to get this done and I've got this water, but they're not considering the fact that the more they work, the more they drink. Sure. And you know, they're depleting their, their water reserve while not even really thinking about, shit, I need to go get some more water.

23:20Where am I going to get it from? Right. Right. And worst case scenario in any kind of a situation, even if it's the winter time, the worst case scenario you're throwing your tarp over yourself, a bunch of leaves, a bunch of everything. And you're just going to freeze overnight. You're not going to get it very good sleep, but you're going to be alive. You get to where you go and you build your fire or you get someone to build your fire, put somebody on fire, firewood and water. And then didn't get you get your shelter going. But everybody wants to build a great big shelter. And as far as I'm concerned, very few people on the show alone actually build a very good shelter in the scenario that you were at. Were the students required to make that camouflage shelters or they just could they just put up any old tarp and ready to go or tent? Well, what they do is is they bring tarps in with them plus they also have caches and then they also get an air bundle. Now in the camp, we already have some tarps and they do negotiate with us to be able to use the tarps and whatnot. And they pop up a couple different tarps for their usage.

24:23But a lot of them what they do is if they're setting up their sleep area, it's just a poncho. You know, tied down on four corners and hung up with the center or something along those lines. A lot of them do have just personal tarps that they bring with them. Tie two sides to two different tree or you know, two trees and then put it at an angle. You know, you're just making basically a lean to why did you get to have a tent? Because I'm a fucking retired bro. Okay. I mean, I'm a contractor and in the scenario itself, what we have is all we have in life. You know, I'm the camp's herd major and that doesn't have any bearing on like what my setup is. But every, every, you know, gorilla fighter in the tent to include our cooks. What we have on our back is what we have. So that's how we came.

25:23Now you guys are in a patrol type setting or at least the. I mean, if you wanted to call it essentially a patrol base, you can. Would that be the same as hiding? I would say, I would say a little bit. I wouldn't necessarily say hiding, but also in the scenario based off of the physical location, there's a small airport nearby. And, you know, in the scenario, basically any airplane or helicopter we see is labeled as these guys may be looking for you. But there's a lot of overhead cover, you know, so. It's a non-provissive environment. Yeah. Yeah. For, for these students, it's a technically a denied environment. So we left home to fight the war. They got sent here, you know, from America. So that's the, that's the whole gist of that part of the scenario.

26:25And again, none of what I'm saying is secret. So that's all. Well, and evenly parallels a bug out situation for a purpose of violence. I mean, perfectly across the board. Yeah. This is this is exact kind of training that you're giving these. You're, you're practicing yourself, but you're also giving these students. But this is the exact same kind of training that most purpose of violence never even do. No. No. And I think a lot of people, again, not to sound corny with it, but. I think a lot of people in their mind, they believe that if they had to bug out, it's going to be like the first red dog. You know, like we're going to go out in the woods and we're going to form this girl a band of fighters and we're hoping that. A couple of cute girls with you that are going to be cooking and yeah. And like, you know, the US military is going to come back us up that, that's not, that's not going to be a thing. Well, but yeah, exactly. Still the best, you know, RIP. But so the next thing is gear and equipment.

27:26So I hate to say this to everybody who thinks that they're going to bug out. And they have an 85 pound rack and they don't go walk with that 85 pound rack. You're going to, you're going to leave most of that stuff for somebody else to pick up. I'm just telling you that right now because I have a truck that I brought my stuff into this camp with. And I bring a lot of stuff. Because I believe in a lot of intel behind. I mean, we used to call it target identifiers. Yes. You start tracking people. And you know, we can tell a lot about somebody by what they leave behind. We're just their trash, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Who was it that called it a loot drop? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You don't want to be a loot drop. But I can't remember. Yeah. I don't think it was. Yeah. So I have my truck. I bring my truck down into essentially the trail. And then I go bring my stuff down there.

28:26And then when I get ready to leave, I load my truck back up. If you think you're going to haul all the stuff that I bring to this contract on your back. And you've never put any weight on your back and got in walk. You're not doing it. You're not doing it. You need to be more realistic about what a bug out would actually entail. You probably bring in a pretty good size tent with you. Yeah. Just and it's a comfort thing. You probably have a cot. You probably bring just for comfort. Um, um, I got a list of two and two ease. I got all that stuff. Yeah. I post to a poncho and maybe a woolie or something to warm. Oh, yeah. And, you know, yeah. A gel, a gel mattress for my cot. Absolutely. Yeah. But you're not, the boy is, you're not, you're not hoping all that shit in here. No, I'm not, I'm not suffering. No. Now I do, I do when we, when I go do missions, I've got my gear. I've got, you know, they, and they do have a point in time when they tell us, hey, in case we ever get blown out of here, you do need to have, you know, it go bag or a bug out bag set up.

29:32And I'm like, all right, cool. Give me a list of what you guys think that looks like. I'll give it to my guys and see what they have available. You know, that kind of thing. Is that real world or is that just, uh, scenario? It's, it's scenario based. Um, but, you know, even for guys who operate in the military, if you were in a long term patrol base, um, or in a forward operating base, you need to have a go back ready to go and case something where to ever happen. The longer you're there, the more of a chip to camp, it becomes. Yeah. Yeah. So same concept. Um, but you really, really need to reexamine what kind of gear and what kind of equipment you think you're going to do. And that also goes for your bug in like a lot of people think that nothing's going to change in their home. If you know, they did have to bug in and I would argue that is not true. That is not true at all. You're going to have to really think about the necessities in life.

30:33And you're going to have to start thinking about how can I rearrange this home to make it more efficient in case something crazy happens. While we're doing this. So I watched a movie that runs and I watched a movie last night brand new. It's on. It's on prime. It didn't end it's free. I'm not going to give the premise way because it is brand new. And I thought it was pretty good. It was called the last house. Anybody seen a deal for this? I'm not going to say why or how or what the situation was. But it's a, it's an end of the world. You know, T. Walkie kind of a situation. It's an SHTF situation and a family gets stuck locked inside their home. In other words, they can't go outside. They they're forced to bug in and they cannot leave the walls of the home. And I'll leave it at that. But it really it really had. Man, I'll tell you what. The father was definitely a survivalist. I'm not a survivalist, but he was.

31:33He was determined to make this get this family to survive. And the stuff he came up with was. The move that the writers came up with was pretty cool on how they got their food, got their water, did those other stuff and how they get themselves sane. You know, a lot of a lot of things worth checking out. It's it's a sci-fi-ish type of movie. So it's got a it's got a great story line, which I won't mention. But the survival stuff in it is pretty cool, actually. So the last house, the last house. All right, let's check that out. And going back to water, I sent you guys a video on water. And you know, talking about pools and, you know, your hot water heater and all these different sources that a lot of people talk about. And it's it's kind of ironic that we're filling up a pool right now. But they tested a lot of those different water sources and a lot of that stuff came back as pretty bad.

32:34Like pretty, pretty bad. And you know, a lot of people think, well, I've got my water heater. When was the last time you cleaned your water heater out? When was the last time you drained it? You know, have you ever drained your water heater to see what has settled at the bottom? It's unpleasant. It really, really is. So if you've never cleaned out your water heater that might not be the best choice, you know, water heater is supposed to be rinsed once a year. And there's an, and there's an, there's a rod inside called an anode rod, which is a sacrificial rod. It's a piece of metal that goes down into the water that tries to collect as much of the minerals as possible on it. That's what it's designed for supposed to be eaten up. A lot of people don't realize that there's one of those in there that has to be replaced. They're not expensive. You know, about 15, 20 bucks, whatever, but those have to be replaced. It's super, super easy, but nobody ever does their water heaters. Water heaters is not a good place to find water. If you need water swimming pool is a great place because you're already halfway there as far as the filtration and all that.

33:37You know, you still have to filter it and you know, go through the whole filtering process and the chemicals in this net, but you're still starting out with fairly clean water and a sister in full of water. It's a great start. Yeah, I saw one where the guy took his water from his pool, you know, and had it tested very little wrong with it at all. But what he ended up doing is he took a whole bunch of that and he actually distilled it. So he made a homemade distilled. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's still a great distiller. Yeah. And you know, it's boiling and it's going through the copper pipe being and doing all the distilling things and it would drip out into the other container. And essentially it should be right. It should be perfectly clean water. It doesn't account necessarily for heavy metals. And it doesn't necessarily account for some maybe per, like we have a, we had an issue here in North Carolina, not in our place, but they have PFAs in the water.

34:37Like forever chemicals. So that's been an issue in the past. One of the Pfizer plants is up by Raleigh and I don't even want to talk about what they did to the water of there. And that's still like a lot on the lawsuit. A good water management system anyway. If you have somebody on it, a manager, somebody working on it, they're going to distill their water at least twice once. Once is perfect enough. But if you want to really clean that flavor out, a lot of times the flavor comes with the, you know, with it, you can distill it more than once. You can get a very nice distillery set up on Amazon for anywhere from like 50, 60 bucks small. I just suggest something around the 80 to 120 mark. And you're going to have a beautiful set up for water. Well, I saw one where it, you know, it was going through all the copper tubing and doing its thing. And before it dripped into the next container, it was going through an activated charcoal reservoir. So it was dripping into a reservoir and then it was getting just rid of bad flavor.

35:39Yeah, and it was going through another filter just but right before it went in. And, but back to a gear and equipment. You really, really need to like, you're, I don't know how to word this properly. But when it comes to having a, you know, quote unquote bug out bag or a bug out plan, you really need to reexamine what you think is necessary. Stick with the, you know, the rules of three and stick with the seas of survival. And don't overpack your stuff. And I mean, it's, I can't even begin to express just how much I know for a fact there are so many people who fantasize this thing. But they've never gone out and one tested their equipment or two seen if they can actually carry it. It takes a 24 hour dedication to just go out, you know, doing your backyard, go out and press your test stuff, you know, do it now.

36:39So you can work through the problems and you were gone during this. Yeah, I think you said you listened to that episode, but we refuge has a bug out bag exercise coming up. It's a, you know, I think it's 24 hours, maybe 36 hours, you know, just living out of your bug out bag. It's designed for you to go and press your test your stuff. You know, let's say you brought several different waters, you know, filtration systems and the one that you thought you were going to use isn't working. Then you can go get another, you know, you can go, you can go back to your vehicle or if you didn't bring it, you know, you didn't want to carry all your blankets and it gets a little cold. You can go back, but you know, there's a safety mechanism into that when when shit is a fan for real, you're not going to have it. But it's just going to, it's just kind of suck or you're just going to do it without or you can just kind of die, you know, yeah.

37:40The other thing is, is you're not going to have unless there's somebody in your group, you're not going to have someone to coach the professional. It's there until you, hey, by the way, your bag sucks, maybe not do that or all of this extra crap that you have is just ridiculous. You need to, you need to turn that back. There's not going to be somewhere that someone there to coach you along if it's real. And you really don't know what you don't know. You watch a YouTube video and you see, you know, a guy who's pushing a product or, you know, somebody who they might like a certain tool or a certain mechanism or whatever it may be, would you? And, you know, it might not work for you. So, you know, go out and, you know, we preach it so much, go out and press your test your stuff. But I mean, time's running out in the late gentleman. Time is running out. Yeah. And I would also say in the, in the interim between now and wherever you're at in your preparedness journey, you need to start working on your field craft.

38:48You need to start working on, you know, quote unquote, bush crafting. You need to learn how to, you know, some stuff you need to learn how to some, like put some stuff together and do a thing that you need to do. I'm like, you know, I'm going to do a project, I'm going to do a project, I'm going to do a project and I'm going to do a project that you need to do. And I say that because my next subject is communications. So, I have quite a few bell of things and I have set up now where I have a case for all of my radios. And I just so happened that a few days before I went on this contract, my son-in-law had a busted tape measure. And I was like, you know what, I could use that. So I cut off the end and I just took it out of the, you know, the tape measure case and brought it with me. And while we were out there, I realized that students were having a horrible, horrible time getting communications out to what we call a split camp. So they actually take some individuals, they split them into a different location and they were having a really hard time reaching them.

39:55So I just so happened to have, and I wanted to do it anyways. That's why I brought it with me. I happen to have that tape measure. I happen to have some extra house coax. I happen to have an soldering iron. And I happen to have electrical tape. And I just happen to have a battery bank that was strong enough to power the actual soldering iron. And all I did is I took some sticks, some zip ties that broken tape measure. And I started making a handmade Yagi antenna, a Yagi antenna or Yagi however you want to pronounce it. It's a directional antenna. So essentially what I did was I took that coax and normally on like radio coax that's dedicated for radios you have a positive and a negative. This is just regular house coax. So I had to take and strip some of it off. And I had to make equal lengths of positive and negative for the two sides. I made mine three elements just basically three sticks in different lengths.

41:10And on a Yagi you have the very first stick right is called the driver. And then the next one that's actually where the coax is soldered into right and then on the forward part of it. It actually that's like the direction that it's going to go right. So I made my positive my negative and I soldered it into the main line wrapped that into or soldered in the main line that wrapped it with electrical tape. And then on the middle element, it's split into. So essentially what you're making is you're making with basically a dipole antenna that is directed in a and it's going in a direction. So I had to make a lot of people call it a hairpin. And it just so happened that one of the drivers brought in some groceries.

42:15You know in the scenario that they paid for and there was a loaf of bread. So I took the loaf of bread, you know the twist. I so I just stripped the plastic off of that. And I made what's called a hairpin. It's just a breaker. That's all it is. So if you start pushing too many owns through the right the actual antenna and it overheats. Yeah. So it'll pop that hairpin. So that way you won't have spurious transmission. And you won't you know send out too much stuff and your stuff is all crazy looking. I never worth all that. I'm an electrician. Yeah. All it is is it's just it's the same thing as having a fuse. Yeah, having a fuse. So I made this thing with sticks and just spare parts and zip ties and some tape and just cobbled it together. And I got it soldered in and everything like that. And I think the coax was probably about 20 feet. So I had them throw me a line and tossed it up into a tree and pulled it up there.

43:20And I tested it on my radio first and from our location, which is right by bait and lake. I was able to make a com shot all the way to. Oh gosh, I hit a repeater. I can't remember how far it was, but it was pretty decently far. Probably have 45 to 50 minute drive. And I was able to hit a repeater using just that directional antenna and one of my balfangs is larger. It's closer to 10 watts. That's all I did. And they were absolutely nerding out hardcore over the fact that they learned to learn to do lesson. Yeah. I was able to make communications in this small valley that we were in, but with all of their equipment that is super duper, you know, but any other country would be high tech. Even though the stuff that they had was older, but they have a whole bunch of new kind of stuff that even I'm not familiar with. And they were not able to get communications.

44:27So I said, you know what? Let's try something. I've got this coax. It's already here. Do you have an adapter? Plug this into where your antenna normally goes. And I'll be damned if they didn't get their com shot. Now I will say that the the cadre walked in to be clear. You said, calm. Yes. Yes. Make sure. Yes. My antenna was a little above average. Not going to lie. Well, some of longer than others. I'm just saying. Yeah. My coax is kind of thin, but it works. So the cadre walk in and they're doing their stuff. They have to do their stuff with the students like kind of far away. And so there's walking in. They were talking to me and what we call the G chief. He's the essentially the commander. And we were talking and one of them kind of started looking up and he kind of looked straight up in the tree. And he looked at that. And he's like, what the hell is that? And I was like, well, that's that's a handmade Yagi antenna. And he just looked at me and he kind of shook his head. He's like, that's why they made their communications. And I was like, Hey, man.

45:36Not going to lie kind of proud of it. Don't bash them. That was for me. Without your setup, what would they have done? They would have had to have gone on top of a hill significantly far to pull out a piece of equipment that shoots a different kind of radio. It's high. It's HF. And if they put it on too high of a power, it is very easily detectable by sensors that can pick up on HF radio and any other kind of signal for location. Yeah, they have to take that thing. I forget. I think they said a thousand meters minimum away from the like the camp. So that way in case anybody detected it, they're detecting it in a wrong area. So right there, you're talking about a mission, a mission away from camp, which in real world would be dangerous. You're leaving your camp less people and going out into the unknown, not knowing when or if you're going to make it back.

46:39Right. But I say all that to say this. A lot of people, they've been out there, you know, bow fangs are more popular than ever. You know, you can get them pretty much everywhere. They're inexpensive. But the problem is is one, people don't test a amount of learn how to use them to they don't know the limitations of what those radios can and can't do. And three, they think that, you know, even without learning how to use the damn thing that for some reason, you're just going to turn this thing on in an HF, S H T S situation, you're going to be able to talk to like Japan or something. It's not how it works. It really is not how it works. Those limited those those radios are extremely limited on what they can and can't do. They're very powerful for what they can do. They're great for what they are, which is close in simple communication. And even without a whole lot of knowledge, you can accomplish that in a group.

47:39Yeah, we have our arts, I think believe ours are 10 watt. We have two, we have one eight watt and two 10 watt bow fangs. And I know that we, we tested ours out here on the homestead. And through forests and over two hills, we were still able to hear before it cut out. Yeah, which is pretty good. I mean, that's that's acceptable. That's about how it is say, let me see quarter mile. I was about a quarter mile, that was about a quarter of a mile through woods and over hills and they still work. That's pretty good for what they are. Yeah, yeah, I would say so. Now, there are ways to secure your communications a little bit using just regular bow fang. There are different tools that you can use to encrypt them, you know, to a point. Within the radio settings, you can change what's called your transmission and you receive CTCSS and DTS. They're just codes and transmission levels within the radio. You can set offsets. You can do a whole bunch of different things.

48:47But if you never learned how to do that, and you don't know how to find repeaters or if you don't know how to do any of those things, what good is it to have a radio that you never learned how to use? You're not going to just take a bow fang out of the box, you know, when the world starts to end because it doesn't teach you how to use the radio. It just tells you what the knobs and buttons are. They automatically assume that you know how to use the piece of equipment since you bought it. I actually have listeners that have asked me questions, you know, about, you know, what is this button to? What is this button doing? It's hard to over, you know, without doing a video and showing people how to do stuff. But I mean, there's there's all kinds of videos out there on this and there's all kinds of training you can go to. There's people out there like, you know, radio made easy. You got a bunch of, you know, you can see scout. You've got all these people that have these classes that, you know, it's a little bit of money, but it's an investment.

49:49And I guarantee you when you leave there, you're going to have to operate this stuff, you know, at a expert level, basically. So yeah, and then continue to practice it. Yeah, yeah, and it's perishable. I mean, yeah, dude, the other day when I was on contract, I had to pull them out and I was like. One certain radio wouldn't about thing. It was a different radio, but I haven't used it a long time. And so it's a little different than about thing. I've used about things over and over over years. This other one I haven't. And we were using this primarily and it took a minute. I actually had to break out the manual. So he'd the manuals out. You know, keep that. I asked you questions, but you know, keep keep training with your stuff. Man, I mean, we preach it all the time, pressure test at, you know, keep pressure testing stuff. You have to stay in the fight, you know, don't think you've mastered something and put it down and go to the next thing. You got to continuously train this stuff.

50:50And that's one of the big reasons that I have really enjoyed is because I get to do my own my own stuff, right. You're not going to always have, you know, cases of spare parts for radios and wire cutters and all that kind of stuff. But you've got to learn that you can make a makeshift antenna with a whole bunch of different things. It's not just the radio. It's not just your power to your antenna. Are you going to be able to utilize what you have around you to make something work. Three point. It's not power. I used to be wrapped around. Oh, I got to, you know, get a 10 watt balfang to, you know, to push. It's not you're not pushing out that signal. You're your antennas transmitting the signal. It's not the power at all. It's the signal. How, you know, it's it's just looking mine up. It's we've got the eight watts. Not the 10. We're going to three eight watts. It's a it's a line of sight. But, you know, eight, five and eight watts will do a what tin will do.

51:54I mean, it's not really a power issue. It's it's a line site. I want to sit weapon. But it's a line of sight, you know, device that you just got to get above. Get a bug get your signal above things to, you know, over the obstacles to go a little further. Okay. So, so what about the, when you were finishing up now, but what about toilets and kitchen and stuff like that? How do that will work? Well, the kitchen itself was it's our Montenegro's and I've talked about the Montenegro's before there from Vietnam. They've been part of the SF community for, oh my gosh. Since the beginning is a SF essentially, you know, going back to Vietnam. I mean, that's not the beginning is a SF. But going back all the way to when MacVie's saw was in, was in Vietnam advising the Montenegro's had been fighting the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army for years.

52:55And they had also been fighting the French for years. So, they are a traditional and pretty much cherished part of the SF community. So, that's not part of the training. And so the guys don't learn the guys and gals. They don't the students. They don't get to learn the cooking part. That's not part of this mission. Oh, no, no, no, they have other stuff for that. You know, I sent you guys a picture of that snake that we killed. That thing was freaking monstrous. It was huge. At first, I thought it was a Western diamond back, which we don't, or an Eastern diamond back, sorry, we don't see a whole lot of Eastern diamond backs around here, but it was a timber rattler. And it had 12 rattles, 12 or 13 rattles. He was, he was girthy. Yeah. But they have to go ahead. I was just going to say they got pissed off that we got rid of the body instead of eating it.

53:56Like they were going to go ahead and cook it. It's good eating. It's not going to be wrong. Yes. But well, modern yards would have known what to do. They would have made it taste good. Oh, yeah, absolutely. But we went ahead and disposed of it because we already knew we had coyotes in the camp. Like they'd come in at night. We were 95% sure there was a couple of wild pigs that came in. And I kept trying to tell everybody, I'm like, look, man, you got to get rid of your trash. You've got to clean up your area because the more mice that come in looking for tidbits to eat, the more snakes that are going to come in. And if we get a couple of wild pigs in here who really want to get near stuff, you're going to have a bad night. Absolutely. Anybody running live ammunition on that? No, no, no, no, no, no. It's all very, very controlled. It's all blank ammunition, blank adapters. We use a lot of foreign weapons, AKs, the PKM, the RPK. We ended up with an M14 that was captured on a mission and a G3 from Germany.

54:59But one of our contractors is German. And when he was in the German army, that was his formula. Like, that's what he used. Like, I definitely have to get the G3 in here. And I was like, okay, we'll try to get it and lo and behold, they put it out on our own mission for him to have, because he kept begging for it. So I'm just running around with the students have to build a little train or you guys use the bathrooms at the camp. Now, so normally we would have them to dig a slit trench. And that's for the medic to actually supervise as there's standards that, you know, that fall within that purview. But on this particular setup, there's a, I guess for lack of a better term in outhouse. It's one of those long term outhouses. Yeah, yeah. Oh, gosh, yeah, yeah. It smelled like I can't even, it was horrible. It was absolutely it. Regiment. And it was just a hole.

56:00And the G chief for looking at it were like, that's not going to work. But we usually have, it's a handicap toilet seat thing. And so we took the handicap toilet seat thing and put it over the hole. And that's what everybody used. And that's another, that's another important thing is sanitation. It's really, really important because if you're bugging in and your toilets aren't fleshing, you're going to have a place to go. One of those, one of those ideas that you can use is they have toilet seats that go over five gallon buckets. And what you can do is you can take a contractor bag or a thick bag of essentially, and the bottom layer is some cat litter. And then I've seen some people who use the composting stuff like the actual liquid. I don't know which one would be better, but I've seen it to where some people put the kitty litter down.

57:02You do your business, you put some kitty litter. Sand. Sand. And then what you're doing essentially is you're creating a layering effect. And then when you need to before it becomes 87 pounds of human shit, you take the bag and then you take it way, far away as possibly as far as you can and you bury it. So, and that's one method, but you still got to wash your hands. So, you got to have water to wash and do that kind of stuff. You can technically use gray water to wash your hands. So, let's say you're able to cook, right, and you made pasta. You take that pasta water and set it to the side rather than just dump it. You can technically wash your hands in that pasta water. So, you know, you know, yeah, then Jesus, I use a squirt of a sanitizer to sanitize your hand after that. Yeah, so I personally don't like sanitizer. I mean, I know that it's supposed to be doing a thing, but all it feels like is just wiping the dirt from one side to the other.

58:05Yeah, we got a good wipe that you got to wash your dirt off first, which is what gray water can do for you. So, what we would do is we had technically you can piss on your hands and wash your hands. Technically, yeah, technically. But what we had is, you know, like the orange gatorade coolers, you know, that was a dedicated hand washing station. And it has to be enforced also. So, if you're in a group and you know there's a dirty bird who's not washing their hands after they take a dump, you need to start enforcing that. Because it doesn't take long and that person and whomever else he has touched or interacted with is going to start getting sick. And if you start getting dysentery in a group of people in the camp, it is not going to not going to talk about a whole new trouble. Oh, man, you got a new enemy to fight. It's not even just that. It's like people don't really take into consideration besides like, you know, the end result of what dehydration does to you.

59:08One of the symptoms of it is you and the put diarrhea. Diaria is just going to further that further your dehydration. The sanitation is very important. Oh, man, I can't even, can't even begin to. But now let's just say it's like you have to have you have to bug out. And you're going to be generally on the move until you get to your wherever you're going to be. And even if you have a group of people or just one or two or it's just yourself, you have what's called an entrenching tool or an e-tool. You can dig a hole. We call it a cat hole. You need to dig it pretty deep. And you need to be able to do your thing in that hole and then cover that hole. And it can't be anywhere near where you're going to be cooking, sleeping or doing any of those things. Yeah, that's that's your actual bug out location. Right. You're on the move. You're just going to poop wherever you poop. Yeah. Yeah. But that's also an indicator of where you have been going or where you're going. Oh, that's true. It's true.

1:00:08If somebody like me or buddy is tracking you and we got a sniff of the dumps and there's toilet paper and there's flies but buzzing on fresh duke. That's a pretty good indicator that you passed through there. And then we can start looking for where you went. Fresh duke. Like that. Fresh dukes. What the duke? So I say all of those things in closing. Yeah, in closing. You know, again, we've been emphasizing this now for what? A couple of years. The bug out fantasy is it's I'm not going to say it's a total fantasy, but it's pretty close to total fantasy. It's just not that realistic. It's just it's just not you have to come up with something better. And if you do end up having to do this, even if you don't want to, you better train on how to do it.

1:01:09Like you got to get out there and put some weight on your back and go walk in the woods. You need to do all of those things. Yeah. You know, there's campsites everywhere. I mean, I don't care where you are. You're living in downtown Dallas and in 40 to 45 minutes, you're at a campground somewhere somewhere where you can spend 20 bucks and you can rent a little, you know, spot. And they have rested camping. We just walk in and you can camp in little areas. I mean, grab your bug out back, pay them 20 bucks and stay overnight once. Just yourself or you're going to find a junior spouse or whatever you're in a kid and just stay overnight one time and see what it's like. Get a feel for it. Imagine in your brain, what is it going to be like when this is a week, when this is 20 days, when this is three months start thinking about those kind of things, but just grab 20 bucks and your bug out packs and food in it and go out and camp in one of these places one night. You don't have to go to the bar on Saturday night. Go down to the local park and, you know, drive up to the booths, pay 20 bucks and whatever it is, go camp take the bar with you.

1:02:14Yeah, take the bar with you. It's a good one. I'll tell you what, if you really, if you really want to learn how to bug out, study some homeless people, especially in a metropolitan area. Oh, that's a great point. Awesome point there. And I don't want to call them professionally homeless, but they are. There are some people who have been homeless long enough in their own, in that environment where they thrive. You really want to learn, well, how bad is going to suck to bug out, go study some homeless people. My, Prepper Brothers and Sisters, if you have an idea for a show topic or would like to be on the show as our guests, email shtf at topspunker.com, website topspunker.com, YouTube Topspunker Podcast Channel, and SpeakPike, SpeakPike.com slash tops. Thank you so much for joining us tonight and remember, stay prepped, stay happy. Thanks for listening and good night.