Using Survival Manuals GXT EP07

Hey GenXers

Welcome to another great episode of our podcast GenXTalkin On Being Prepared.

I am Ed Watson, also known as will see and alongside me is my good friend Matt Marshall.

Say hi Matt.

Hi Matt.

Alright guys, today we're going to re touch on the US Army survival manual and.

In the previous podcast, what we did was we basically perused through some of the chapters and how it's laid out.

Now in this.

Episode what I wanted to go over well is I want to retouch on the manual itself.

And key concepts of how to use it, how it's laid out and.

Kind of the significance or importance of trying to strategize how you're going to pick this big.

Daunting book up and and try to learn bits and pieces of survival skills here and there.

I think one of the first things I wanted to say those remember, if you ever look for any type of survival manual it doesn't have to be this army survival manual.

It can be any others that are teaching a variety of different field craft.

Field medicine how to set you know basic camping and other field skills.

Remember that it's just a little bit different from survival and camping and fieldcraft type skills and preparedness.

Matt and I like to talk about preparedness a lot, and that's the key concept of our podcast theme.

However, with preparedness and thinking about preparedness mentally, you start thinking about survival skills, camping, the old craft, things like this, and.

A lot of stuff.

That you're going to see covered in the survival manuals.

As very basic first aid and field medicine type stuff is stuff that you can use for everyday situations and that goes to the core and heart of preparedness would.

You agree, Matt.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I actually was just watching a video earlier today.

Some of you may have heard of the the bearded green beret.

He's a.

He's a pretty popular guy on Tik T.O.K, Instagram etc.

And just has a ton of different videos that are out there.

And you know YouTube channels stuff like that.

He seems like.

A really super humble guy, but the the particular video that I was thinking of is he was he was.

Caring about supplemental bags to like you have a you have a bug out bag of some type right?

And and he in particular he was talking about.

He lives up in the up in the north.

Of New York.

State somewhere up in the mountains and so bushcraft and wilderness medicine, and all those things are like top.

Of his mind all the time because he's out there, right?

Yeah, and it comes second nature for him.

Second nature, and that's what he knows.

That's what he's perfectly skilled at.

But, uh, but he, he provided this description and he showed a couple of different things on.

If you were an urban prepper or a person who who is living in an urban type of environment, how does that differentiate?

Or how can you supplement your get home safe bag or your bug out bag or whatever bag you may?

You may have or your or your shelter in place.

How can you supplement that with certain tools that will help you in an urban environment?

Yeah, when last time uh mission.

I went camping I I actually took this and I put it in a waterproof bag and I just read I I I like to just read it once in a while and that's what I would encourage everybody to do.

'cause this is as thick as like a survival Bible.

You see how thick it is and.

You know hundreds of pages, a lot of illustrations going over a broad variety of topics on survival wilderness.

You know, fieldcraft, hunting, fishing.

Building snares and traps.

Setting out trotlines.

There's also basic chapters on on staying dry, staying warm, building a shelter.

Sizing up your situation, so that's the essence survival, and that's the essence of trying to to think of studying and strategizing your study of this book in accordance with the key concepts, and that S of survival.

Size up your situation.

Uh, like Matt said, are you.

Are you out in north the the the north part of New York up in the mountains near Fort Ord and the you know they're doing mountain warfare training at places like that, not forward.

I'm sorry.

Sorry about that at Fort Drum Mountain Warfare School in Fort Drum.

You're up in the north part of the state.

Sorry about that guys.

I I sometimes I have a hiccup I.

Can't remember all all.

The locations and names of all the bases.

What what, what, what's wrong with you, Ed?

Yeah, so are you up there or you?

Are you in an urban environment or are you somewhere on the East Coast?

Are you somewhere around Los Angeles or the the West Coast?

Are you out in the desert?

So what size up your situation at that time, or.

Where you plan to be traveling in the future?

Are you a truck driver or are you a traveling businessman or salesman?

What part of the nation or the world are you going to be going into?

So you're going to want to not just be it in if you've traveled anywhere, you know some of those habits that you get into, but.

You want to?

I mean, if you're going into the urban environment of, say, Tokyo, Japan, you might be looking at a completely different aspect.

Perspective what might be covered here? In this book? There may not be anything in this book for you. You might start relying on something more like Clinton Emerson's 100 deadly skills.

But sized up your situation for that time, do you have a broken leg?

Are you injured?

Is somebody else in your party injured?

Are you with your pets?

Are you in the desert or are you in the mountains and it's cold?

That way you know how to prioritize your order of work and your tasks.

Do you need to build a shelter first or you do you need to get water first?

And when you think about that and sizing up your situation with those key concepts with the survival manual.

Then you can look right through the table of contents and those chapters, and you say, oh, this is the chapter I want to.

Study next.

I think one of the important things this is one of the reasons why this is so important.

If you take that the the thing we reviewed last week, the the the acronym of Survival and it's you just got the S from right size up your situation.

Right?

If you take that acronym that.

Absolutely can be used in preparedness.

You need to size up, size up your situation, so I think that's a that's a key point in in understanding why it's so in.

And then second, as you as you just mentioned, it doesn't have to be the army survival guide doesn't have to be the marine preparation guide, it could be something as simple as a camping and wilderness.

This will be hard for me to do.

Right next to you.

Champion, there it is right there.

I can see it, yeah.

Camping in wilderness survival, right?

It's still related to survival, but it's preparedness, and so it goes into.

You'll find similar, very much like the things we're going to be reviewing today.

Any type of manual related to that, but certain manuals make it much, much more simple to dive into a specific area to for your for your particular the event that you're in and what and what you want to prepare for.

And as you saw in that book, if you're if for any of those that are actually able to view the podcast Matt was holding up, that survival manual looked like he got from Sam's Club.

And it looked like it had a lot of.

Pictures so if.

Yeah, did you see that?

If you're an infantryman, yeah.

If you're in current or former infantryman, that might help you out that it has a lot of.

Sam's Club.

Illustrations and just kidding guys.

Ha ha ha.

Look at that see that's a blue cord.

That means I'm infantry too.

I I was an infantryman first in the Marines first, but also in the arm.

There you go.

But, and that's what I loved about being in the in the infantry is there's a lot of field training and.

As you're going through field training and it's you're doing the Humpty dance and what we called the Humpty dance or hunting or hiking a lot to get from point A to point B, it was a luxury.

If you got to get in the cattle car or a Humvee or striker or a helicopter or anything like that and go from point A to point B, typically we were hiking.

About 15 miles or so at A at A at a check to get from point A to point B, set up a big waka camp area, set up our over watches and guard guard watches and everything else like that.

And then we're going through our typical you know, raid, ambushed type.

Training and exercises and patrolling and stuff like that, but.

We also broke out the survival manual and we usually had somebody who had just gotten back from mountain Warfare School in California or Jungle Warfare school in the Philippines or something like that, and they would teach us a few things and we just we would.

Learn just little tidbits each time, and that was really fun.

So as Matt said, it doesn't have to be the army survival manual.

It doesn't have to be a marine survival manual.

Doesn't have to be SAS or even military.

Any kind of wilderness camping oriented type survival manuals.

And show you poisonous vegetation to stay away from illustrations of poison oak and Poison Ivy, poisonous spiders, and other insects and snakes and stuff like that to avoid scorpions or what?

And it'll teach.

You maybe ways of trapping or killing a snake and putting it in a Stew.

So it's all kind of.

Good, it's all kind of fun.

That might be yummy.

Yeah, it might be so.

We let Matt.

We're gonna Matt and I are going to want to.

We've kind of gone over get getting, uh, the core concept of whatever survival manual you've gotten understanding the way the.

Chapters are laid.

Out sizing up your situation, make that assessment or that evaluation and.

You know, prioritize what skills you want to learn, and if you're a novice to this or you're an intermediate, that'll make learning each chapter that much easier and more fun, and it'll kind of line up priority wise.

I'm in the urban environment.

I need to learn urban skills.

This is 100 deadly skills by Clint Emerson.

Give you guys.

A little bit of a background on this book.

We talked about this previously right now.

Yeah, we did just slightly yeah.

Yeah, this 100 deadly skills. So to give everybody a background, the author, Clint Emerson is. I think a 20 plus year retired Navy SEAL. So he's doing all those kinds of crazy high speed, low drag ninja operations. Plus he attached.

To the National Security Agency, the NSA as well, but no such agency.

So not only does he know.

The bushcraft and survival skills and deadly combat skills of seals and other special operations community.

They all go pretty much to the same type of that level of training, but he's been behind the enemy lines and he knows a great deal about the overall.

Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or what we call ISR?

He he knows that field and that field craft as well.

So he talks a lot in this book about deadly nomads.

What he calls the deadly nomads.

And he in this book right here, the 100 deadly skills you go over page by page of very basic concepts starting from your everyday carry type of bag.

To learning how to make a silencer for a pistol out of a water bottle so.

I can't wait to try that.

Yeah, I'm going to try that one these days.

You need to.

You you need to move.

Out of your state first though, right?

We'll see, we'll see.

There's a dude.

That lives next door to me.

He's a I think.

I think that the family is from Honduras and and they're actually pretty pretty nice family.

I I hang out with them every once in a while, but I see them looking out my window. I I see them every once in a while and they go out there with a little 22 rifle.

And they're shooting at I.

I think they're shooting at squirrels or birds or something to see if they can kill them.

I don't know what they're doing, but they just go out there and they start shooting these things and you can barely hear it.

It's a 22, right? It's just kind of pop pop pop.

And and, uh, I I started thinking to myself, huh?

If I can, I mean I'd have to, you know, go through some tricks you know some taxes and things like that to get a silencer into into Maryland, Maryland.

But I think I could probably do that.

I could probably use my little ex star 9 millimeter with a silencer on it and it would be super fun.

And I could do it right out my back door and nobody would know anything about.

It's just some snap snap snap.

Yeah, that and another good option since we're on that topic. Just a tip in case you didn't know it for anybody out there that didn't know about firearms and 20 twos, you can get a 22 pistol or 20 most types of 22 rifles and you can actually buy 22 subsonic.

And it's got a little bit less powder in it.

And when you pop that off, it's it's basically almost like it's silenced.

You can you can hear it, but it's not a loud pop.

A regular 22 isn't even actually that loud to begin with. I I shoot a 22 without ear pro.

Right, right?

Yeah, this reminds me when when we go to the gun range they're all well, not all, but the vast majority of gun ranges here where I live are indoor.

And and not many.

Can you shoot rifles?

So it's most.

Mostly just handgun, and it's really kind of funny I.

I think of I, I think of Letterkenny.

There's a coach on Letterkenny this this comedy show.

He always says it's freaking embarrassing.

When you go in.

There with a 22 and somebody shooting.

You got all these.

People with like 40 fives and these and these governors and and all these massive guns in.

44

Their caplow koplow got blown.

You got the 22P.

Pop pop it's hot.

There saying

Hey, you know, but you know what the the 22 is actually a I think an underrated caliber. It's very deadly ammo. It can take down most of your smaller animals.

Uhm, yeah.

That the reason now I I don't want anybody to get upset. I never did this myself, but the reason I know about the 22 with the subsonic ammo being almost like it's silenced very quiet is that.

For a while when I was a cop and.

I was on graveyard.

Duty, I had a partner that was just a stray dog killing fool.

There's a lot of and, and they're just.

It's almost like they're coyotes.

They're not just a lost dog with a collar.

Yeah, he wouldn't kill him then, but he'd usually kill.

Coyotes. We had coyotes.

But but, and they're very effective and and they're very accurate even for a small, even if it's just a LED round out to about 100 yards, they're deadly accurate. It's like throwing darts usually.

Well, in the and and the other thing too, about about 20 twos you can get a pretty wicked round in there with the with the the hollow points and different types of rounds that are going to just.

Go an animal or whatever it may be so it is a good self defense weapon.

It's just you know it's not going to be.

Yeah, a big manstopper kind of kinda weapon, you know.

I mean, I think it can be depending on there's a key thing for.

With shot quality.

Yeah, sure quality, so we call it a replacement so some people are into what they say.

Stopping power like your 44 magnet. Well, some people are into shot placement like Mel Gibson's character in Lethal weapon with this.

9 millimeter Beretta, right?

But just a.

Well, we got a little bit a little bit off topic there, but good good stuff.

Little bit off topic, yeah.

Good stuff moving right along.

Into another book, we've got one.

Another one of my favorites is the guidebook for Marines and the part that I love in here.

The most, I think is most relevant for our.

Podcast fans would be the chapter Chapter 12 on sanitation and hygiene.

So couple, this is a really great chapter on field sanitation and hygiene.

It's very short chapter as well.

Then it goes into physical fitness and it's very basic physical fitness as well.

So there's a couple of very basic chapters in here that segue right into.

Survival manual any type of survival manual or fieldcraft or camping manual.

Very good section on sanitation and hygiene purifying water.

Learning how to.

Uh, look at uh stream flow and saying, OK, this part upstream over here is going to be for our drinking and cooking go a little bit further downstream, we're going to be bathing there maybe.

A little bit further downstream, washing clothes a little bit further downstream we might be washing vehicles.

It depends on how large a group of people that we have out there.

So that's a good part of the the guidebook for Marines for novices and beginners.

Did you have any other books that you wanted to go over Matt.

Yeah, yeah I wanted to share.

Just tell a quick story first, there's when I was early on in my in my preparedness.

Kind of like serious preparedness days I happened upon.

Now I would read fiction books all day long just all the time and and it would kind of just help me to to generate.

Ideas in my mind of things that I could do.

That would just just kind of get me thinking in that frame of mind, not necessarily bushcraft or fieldcraft type of stuff, but how would I prepare against certain types of of events that occur.

So I came across upon this one one series of books by an author.

Named Arthur Bradley.

The series is called the survivalist and the There's a there's a fella on there.

His deputy Marshall Mason rains.

And he was a. He's a if I remember USUS marshals, but they were just just excellent. Excellent books. And each time he would end his book with, you know, kind of this.

Just like several of these different different authors, he would end the book with a don't panic kind of thing, and then he would say if you're interested in learning more about preparedness, I've got a couple of books for you, so I went and I bought these books so one was the preppers instruction manual.

Oh, OK.

So this is.

50 steps to prepare for what any?

Disaster that looks like a heck of a book.

It's actually and it's as you can.

See it's super small.

How it marks certain pages.

I would fold fold certain pages to to the points where I wanted them.

It's a pretty.

Well, well worn out book and the the seam is is breaking and things like that because I used this a lot in my earlier days and then I thought, well, you know.

He's got this other book that's a kind of a bigger book.

And moved to practical disaster preparedness for the family.

For the family.

Outstanding Matt.

Now I just did a, uh, I just did a, uh.

A Tik T.O.K video on the five and the five Horsemen of Apocalypse, right?

And that's the the earthquakes or hurricanes or tornadoes, et cetera.

Et cetera and kind of some ideas around that, and how?

How much we should prepare for these different things, because those are the real things that we need to be preparing for.

You know, the the real things that will hit us.

The natural disaster type of things.

And then there's other things.

Things like terrorist activities like like the EMP's like the you know, nuclear attacks that are much much less likely that we.

That'll just we can have as a benefit if we happen to have prepared for these other more common things.

So those two books, Arthur Bradley, great, great stuff.

And if you like, good.

Fiction, good prepper fiction.

The survivalist series.

Absolutely fantastic.

Loved loved it.

Segueing from those books and in that discussion you just had shared with us met and along those lines he said, OK, we've got this.

All this survival and prepping type information out there, but here's your you know your more likely scenarios. It stirred this up in me and I'm I'm bringing this back up this 100 deadly.

Skills in his introduction and I'm just going to read it out.

Potential dangers lurk everywhere these days.

Disaster strike in war torn regions and far flung location.

But with alarming regularity, they also seem to inch closer and closer to home spanning acts of terror, mass shootings, and the unseen and sometimes virtual matrix of everyday crime.

Danger refuses to be confined to dark alleys, unstable nations, or distant zip codes.

So he's talking about things like that and he says, you know, people tend to imagine worst case scenarios in highly colorful terms.

But chaos and crime are the real apocalyptic scenarios we picture aliens, frozen tundra, intergalactic warfare, when in fact the catastrophic.

Event we've been waiting for is more likely to look like a mundane report of vandalism on last night's news or the massive Internet shutdown in tomorrow's headlines, or indeed the violent criminal hiding in the shadows of a desolate parking.

Garage in the face of a true catastrophe.

A basement full.

Of canned peas and distilled waters isn't likely to be much help.

This guy's also got a book that is deadly skills and.

There it is, there it.

Is Oh yeah, puzzles and activity book.

There you go.

That's awesome.

Puzzles and activities book and I got these together.

And I'm just going to be honest and say give you an assessment and evaluation after a brief perusing of.

Both of these.

Two things number one.

In the military communities, as everybody can imagine, most people honor, respect, and venerate the special operations community pretty highly.

Let's say at least 95%. They're like almost in all of these guys. If they ever see them, which they rarely do because those guys are operational or.

Usually wearing field gear that are hardly ever just in a regular uniform for parading and stuff like that they get in uniform once in a while and show you this fruit salad of a huge chest full of ribbons and medals that they want from all these kinds of far flung combat campaigns that they've done.

But the reality of it is there's about 5% and I respect the the special operators a lot, but these guys themselves, a lot of them are very humble. They are the quiet American type.

They try to blend in and everything and I don't know how many. If they've been working with MPR I Blackwater then it was XY and then now it's Academy Constant Ellis and whatever else you want to call it triple canopy. These other private military companies almost like virtual.

Mercenaries usually working on behalf or in conjunction with CIA and State Department type operations.

These guys do this a lot and they themselves are extremely humble in most cases and.

When they run into Intel persons they they respect those guys, they're like, oh, you know me.

I'm just a knuckle dragging.

Trigger pulling booger picker or something that they literally called themselves that I've heard this guy constantly and he knows as much if not more about operational intelligence than I ever will.

Yeah, but that said, number one.

Number two is Clint Emerson guy. I don't know who he is. I've never met him or anything else like that, but I I can't say enough about what he's done with putting some basic skills in a couple of books and and some of those guys that have more, you know, whatever kind of crazy ten 1520.

30 plus years in the intelligence and Special forces communities.

They might scoff.

At his little books a little bit.

Because if you're not novice or intermediate and.

You go through some of these, you'll be.

Like now, that's a little bit basic or whatever.

If you are novice or intermediate, or even if you're like me, I'm about intermediate somewhere, but you're going.

Through this puzzle book this this thing.

Right here has exercises that will get your brain lubed.

For surviving confrontations, surviving a different variety of encounters, so my hat is off, and kudos to Clint Emerson for putting these together.

Yeah, I like that.

I like that.

I like the idea of getting your brain lubed and ready for this type of thing because it that is part of part of just being prepared.

It's just.

Just making sure you know you've you've been through some of these scenarios in your mind and we talk about.

We've talked about it multiple times already, it's it's it's.

It's really cool.

Really fun to learn this stuff it.

I mean, it's it's hard for me to explain fun for me absolutely, but I think I with the with the passion.

The excitement that we show, I think.

We can, you know there's a lot of people that are going to see it and think, wow?

OK, that that could be something that would be fun.

It it's it's interesting you had you had listed off a couple of different names like like learning some different things like observed observation skills as part of the game, or Sudoku and pick a priori.

Yeah right yeah.

These are all minesweepers.

These are all games that you you think OK, you know.

When I was early on in my computer, you know computer career years ago Minesweeper was kind of a thing that a lot of people.

A lot of people did.

You know the other one was that I remember was.

Just in in my mind, a game that I used to like was that.

I think it's called.

Pick a pair or something like that where you're is, that is that the one he's talking about, where you you flip over a card and then there's a you flip over another card and you try to remember where those cards are.

That's part of it, but he's also got this one where.

He wants you to look.

At this picture.

Yeah, and they're very similar, but you're building your observational skills to find which two are exactly alike.

I love.

Loved, I think those were in highlight magazines or something like that when I was a kid.

Those were some of the absolute coolest ones that I.

I remember the coolest games that I remember you know from from when I was growing up, so I would.

I would probably love that type of game.

Yeah, so I was on street patrol one night as a cop.

I let my vision go down to about 2025 or 2030, and especially at night when sometimes some lights would hit my eyes.

You are red lights or lit up signs. Things like that. That would make it even a little bit blurrier. Plus what we call the 1087 or a meeting with one of my partners.

A vehicle passed a suspicious looking vehicle, passed us going in the direction I was facing and I was looking trying to get, you know it's night time and here I am.

Squinting, and I'm bout to reach for my binos, 'cause I had vinyls in my my passenger seat.

I'm bout to reach for those at.

To try to look at the license plate and just run the license plate real quick and my partner alongside me facing this way says that was New Mexico ABC 123. He had the license plate mostly what?

And he saw it in his rearview mirror. He had 2020 vision, and he saw it in his rearview mirror. And those are the types of observational skills, and.

Even if it's a panic situation, hopefully.

You can train yourself to a point where you don't panic or freak out, and you can look at a potential other.

Witness or potential victim or the.

Suspect of an int.

Yeah situation you say?

Yeah he was at least 5 foot ten he was wearing these type of clothes.

I noticed an interesting limp that he had all these little things.

Any little minutiae that you observe in anything, any situation.

Like that can help.

They were still off topic a little bit, but.

Yeah, but I actually I.

Uhm, think.

I want to share one more thing related to that.

When I went through this concealed concealed carry class.

Uh, we were learning some pretty advanced things right and but.

One of the.

But one of the games that we played was.

Uh, they would set up a scenario and they would say OK now Matt, all I want you to do is take this with this little electronic pistol thing and I'm going to set up a light here and a light over here and a light over.

I want you to pay attention as the shooter and the police officer that's sitting here responding to this event, right?

I want you to.

Pay attention to that light and tell me what's the series of colors.

That's all you have to do.

Series of colors.

OK, that that light right there changes.

That's all you have to know.

Right, everybody in the class knows this is the only thing they needed to know.

And yet and what would happen is they would set it up so that there was a person behind somewhere else that was not behind me necessarily, but behind a barrier that was that I'm looking at.

Basically and and this person is is yelling at me saying something don't know what it is and I'm sitting here with the pistol and I'm saying.

You know, back off, back off, back off and I'm and I'm trying to pay attention to the person that's yelling at me and I'm trying to remember what the lights are saying or what you know what colors?

What series that the lights went in?

And I'm and I'm telling you, the thing that blew me away the most is that was the second time we had done that exercise.

The second second time, it wasn't me that didn't get it.

And you still didn't get it.

None of the people in the in the class.

There were maybe two people that.

Got 'cause it only went to four.

Colors it was like green, red, yellow, blue, yeah.

And and.

He was the 2nd.

Just say.

In fact, they're so focused on the event that's happening.

I'm a virgin.

All of the things going on.

All the other lights that are flashing all that you know all this crazy stuff and they knew we had already been through this exercise.

We knew the target of the exercise was to get the series of colors and the point of it.

Was was to put your mind through this exercise.

Of what happens in an excited event like that and where your your adrenaline pumping and your everybody is excited about what's going on.

These are all witnesses to the shooting.

That's that just occurred and they're all gone.

Going, oh, the guy was five feet tall.

No, the guy was six feet tall.

No, he was three feet tall.

No, he was a ****** that was running around with, you know.

And none of us saw the big ape that was walking across playing basketball.

You know that type of thing, none of us nobody in the room got it and it was just it's a so it's one of those things that we all learn.

We should be learning about observation that comes back to the comes back to the books.

Definitely, we'll teach you some of those lessons, so I love that.

Love that example.

And that sounds like a future episode that is teaching observation skill.

Training exercises.

That would be cool.

I would love that.

Yeah, we should do.

That whole different video.

OK, so Matt, I'm going to close it off and for my for my parting shot for this I'm just going to say.

Live by your wits and learn basic skills with the the survival type manuals.

Parting shot Riff reading is fundamental Rif.

You also have to try to put this into practice a little bit, but if you can.

Do these things that we've talked about in this podcast and just learned.

Just read a page or two a week, or a chapter or two here and there, and then once a month or so go out somewhere and try to.

Put some type of survival skill fieldcraft, or observational skilled actual practice.

I think you're actually going to really enjoy.

It yeah.

Well, for my parting shot, yeah so yeah.

Reading is fundamental.

I mean I don't think I really have a whole lot of time to spare, you know to to read stuff so I like your I like your idea of you know, maybe just taking a little bit a week.

And and thinking through some of the things that you can read through, but also, like if you're working outside, I just spent I think 2 1/2 three hours out outside this morning. You know, kind of prepping the house and and, you know, mowing the grass and and cutting. I, I should say Moe and the weed.

It's but yeah, you know, just just kind of cleaning up around the property.

We're expecting a storm here here this afternoon, so just kind of prepping the area all during that time.

I was listening to a couple of preparedness podcasts.

One of my guilty pleasures is to listen to some podcasts.

Oh, Chael Sonnen.

You're welcome.

Another great really fun one.

If you're into type of type of podcast, so there's some.

There's some good stuff that I listen to.

That's a great way to get information into your brain that you may be interested in that you just don't have time to sit there and and read, or you don't have the patience sometimes to sit there and read, but.

Aside from that, one of the one of the key points, I think that you that you.

Made early on.

Was was practice and and takes some of the skills that you learn like like Ed was saying.

If you do one thing a week and you just go learn that one, that one particular skill that is so much more valuable than not having done.

Anything for the last three or four weeks, right?

One thing a.

Week, just keep it super simple.

I identify your own vulnerabilities and we can.

This is and and prepare for those type of those type of situations that you might be weak at.

Try to try to improve your, improve your skills a little bit and then and then kind of go from there.

Yeah, that's that's good parting shots, but.

So good stuff.

Before we close just to.

Point this out about what you just.

Said guys, if you're novices or interim.

Idiots and you're going through the survival manuals and stuff like that.

You're reading a little bit.

You're practicing or training a little bit.

Don't ever get discouraged because a lot of it is very easy.

A lot of it's very easy, but some of it is almost impossible, so I'll tell you the things that I've I've struggled with.

Building a shelter or lean to or something like that is really easy.

Having extra set of dry clothes and you're wet and you need to change that's that's easy enough.

You can get in undercover that so you can change and be.

In dry clothes.

Or you're not going to freeze today.

However, especially if you're somewhere where it's it's been dampened, starting a fire is in and if like fieldcraft starting a fire or camping or whatever, or survival purposes when everything is pretty damped is going to be very discouraging.

It's going to be very hard.

You're just going to have to be patient with it or trapping animals with a snare with little snare wire.

I've never to.

I'll just be honest with you.

I've never.

Been able to do.

It so if that's going to be one of your weaknesses, and you've trained with it a few times and you never end up snaring a.

Rabbit, or a squirrel or whatever?

Move on to something else, like setting a trotline. I haven't set a trotline and will have fish. I know how to get other game or you bring out your little 22 rifle and you just plain come from.

50 yards away and you've got your rabbit.

Because setting up snares and other things is very difficult.

And if you fail the first two or three times, don't get discouraged.

Keep trying and just keep going guys.

Never give up, never quit.

Well and then.

And then Ed, there's another.

There's another part of that, you know, I know, we're kind of.

Finishing up here.

But the other the other part of that is.

I mean, if you live in a city somewhere.

There ain't gonna be many squirrels you know there ain't gonna be rabbits things like that so so that falls really really low on many people.

Many people priority lists.

They may be thinking like my my son actually came to me a couple of days ago and he asked me hey deep, is it true you have a lock picking set?

Yep, true.

It's like, yeah, yeah, I've had a lock picking set for years.

I you know and and I I went through some training on how to pick locks and and he.

Yeah, yeah.

Said well, could I?

Throw it.

What do you need to borrow like lock pick set for?

And and he was like I.

Just want to see if I can figure.

It out so so.

And I had a similar type of type of situation.

The first time I started playing around with this lock pick set I I get a get a little padlock and I start clunking around in there and I started following the.

The this the steps you know the written steps.

I didn't have the delicacy.

We are the delicate nature that's required to be a good lock pick with actual lock picks and and the first time he ever did it he picked this lock and then and I said, OK, now you just gotta lock it back up.

Yeah, it's tricky too.

And then try it again and so it's now been two days and he still hasn't been able to do that.

Very same lock.

So yes, even even skills like you know, just picking locks or just just other things that you can figure out that you can try to figure out.

He will absolutely get discouraged.

Just try to try to overcome the discouragement and move forward.

Keep going, find something else.

Yep, Yep.

Fun stuff, yeah?

Absolutely all right guys?

Ed Watson signing off from Geonics talking Matt.

Yeah, Matt Marshall signing off.

Have a great day, Matt.

I'll see you next episode.