Transcript

Well hey there GenXers

We are here once again for another great episode of Gen X talking Story time Story God remember these are these really interesting episodes that we have where we'll read a short clip of just some fictional.

Type of environment where someone somewhere has gone through difficult times.

And they're in the midst of all those challenges.

And then we.

Open it up for questioning.

And you and I go back and forth.

And we'll see.

Where it leads us.

But before we get there Ed, welcome back.

Thank you Matthew.

It's great to be.

Back I'm excited for this episode.

And I'm looking forward to next week.

I want to tell the audience out there that we will be attempting to record a few very short updates live from Egypt.

Next week I'm going to be in Cairo, Luxor and Hurghata as the Arab say Inshallah or Lord Willing.

Nice, that's going to be exciting.

Number one because we've never done live or international recordings, so that should be fun.

But #2 so cool that you're getting to travel and internationally. That's going to be fun.

I think because of COVID and stuff it's still a little iffy.

A little weird.

I'm excited to see how things are for you when you get out.

Yeah, it's gonna be interesting.

It's a little bit of challenge already and another exciting aspect of it is we'll be at least with, if not interviewing, a guest named Chris Klein who's world travelers been to about 66 countries in the last few years. Damn.

That's a traveling dude for sure.

Now does he do?

He's going to show us.

Does he do that for business?

Or what does he do?

He's got a little bit of a business thing going on, and he's kind of working doing this working from home it in his business and partially for just travel pleasure as well.

Yeah, and one of the things he'll cover with this is.

One of his favorite tools while he's traveling, which is a Geo tracking device that will contact local rescue people that you're ever in the middle of nowhere and and you fall or something like that.

Yeah, well, that might be a tool that we'll have to add to our bug out bags so that we'll be able to hear about.

Yeah, I'm excited to hear about that, but I'm excited to hear about this.

Right?

Story time.

The title of it today is out of gas, but it's not a vehicle driving down the road and you run out of gas.

It's a little more.

Complex than that.

Second today for our entertainment, but more importantly, our consideration.

I'll introduce you to Travis and Nikki Lopez.

They were what many call an average American.

Their childhoods were not spent living in large cities or or playing in the Country Club or anything like that during the weekends they were spent living with middle class parents in small towns just outside of let's say, average America Tulsa OK.

They met in college, surprised everyone.

Travis and Nikki got married right after graduation, they took the 1st 10 years of their new careers to move up the corporate ladder.

Travis in it at a regional airline.

Nikki was an HR executive at a restaurant chain.

Both were quite successful.

They became part of the upper class.

Eventually they became parents of two young children.

Now, during eventful week at work, Travis started to recognize some strange things going on at his company.

There had been multiple episodes of the company canceling hundreds of flights to the media.

The company executives kept blaming it on a computer glitch.

However, being in the higher levels of it, Travis.

Knew this was untrue.

He went to his boss, Alan to review the issue and Allen says.

Why I'm not supposed to tell you anything?

I'm not supposed to say anything to anyone, but you know how we couldn't figure out what these computer glitches are?

Well, the real reason for the cancellations.

Was because the airline was short on fuel.

Our supplier didn't have enough fuel to give us and we had to cancel all those flights to overcome the shortage.

I think the execs were worried that the global fuel shortage is building and our fuel costs are about to blow out.

Through the roof.

Now if you say hey, the world is short of fuel because of the Middle East situation or a global fuel shortage, then everyone panics right about the end of the world coming and stock prices plummet.

And remember, it's all about stock prices to those guys in the corner offices.

Well, Travis did a.

Bunch more research.

Was there a global fuel shortage large enough to start affecting flight schedules?

Was the ongoing recession part of a fuel shortage?

What were those in charge, including the media not telling us and why?

You see, Travis had been raised with the attitude.

If it wasn't reported on the major news networks, then it wasn't worth reporting at all.

It was drummed into his head that his favorite news anchor was honest and above reproach and that the news services spent millions of dollars investigating reports around the world.

To keep everyone up to date.

Travis kept digging.

And he found the new sources of fuel were being contracted for during that time of those shortages and the new sources couldn't always fill the gaps between what was being shorted by the main supplier and the amount the airline actually needed.

There are at least 11 occasions in the past 18 months during which the additional suppliers weren't able to supply the fuel needed.

Additionally, while the government kept saying there's no real inflation to be worried about.

Travis started doing his own little version of a consumer price index and he found out that it was actually 10 to 15% inflation rate, so that's on most of those items that you would get on a normal day. What he and Nikki in this case would purchase on a regular month?

From grocery items to the meals at their favorite restaurants, even with Nikki being in the restaurant industry with her executive discounts, they still saw large price increases and it was actually rising on a week by week basis.

So once Travis began to recognize the urgency of the inflation and the fuel shortage, he decided to broach the subject with Nick.

Nikki tried her best to catch up with Travis and his research, and it didn't take her long to figure out that the global economy was headed South, and it didn't seem like the American government could get themselves together long enough to do anything about it and there was nothing about it in the News 1 evening as Travis.

And Nikki were discussing, Travis says.

I think we should just write down what we think is going to happen and what we believe is not going to happen so we can plan better for the future.

Travis walked up to this whiteboard, right and draws a line and he says.

We're splitting it into three parts.

We're going to say what I believe will happen.

What I think may happen and what I think won't happen.

So what I believe will happen.

I believe in 30 months or so I'll no longer be employed at the airline.

Because of the fuel shortage, I believe the airline will eventually go.

Out of business.

I believe I will lose my job in the next 20 to the 24 to 34 months.

And because of my age, past salary, global depression, etc.

I'll not be.

Able to find another job that pays more than maybe 50% of my existing salary because of the fuel shortage. I believe that the industry will the industry.

Of the airlines will basically collapse and most people won't be able to eat even because of the fuel shortage.

I believe that the other businesses which rely on some sort of fuel will go out of business.

And I believe that things will become so pricey, including food that many people won't be able to afford it.

So what do I think might happen?

I think there might be huge numbers of homeless people, huge numbers of very poor people and large numbers of people who have jobs that barely keep them afloat.

There will be smaller numbers of middle class business owners making up that that center section and then there will be a very very small number of rich people who still try to control everything.

What I think won't happen.

I don't think it'll be.

A continuation.

To be able to afford the current lifestyle.

I don't think the government will collapse completely.

I don't think civilization will collapse completely.

I don't believe the conspiracy theories being posted on the Internet.

I think that oil and gas will become much more expensive.

As the cheap stuff runs out, I think most.

People won't be able to pay for.

Gas in their cars.

Perhaps that's fine, but having higher prices for gas doesn't just make it more expensive for us to get to work.

It makes everything more expensive that's shipped from one point to another.

Think about the.

Domino effect, if we had to pay 20% more for everything.

Then we could start without a lot of daily purchases, which might cost jobs right?

And then those people wouldn't be able to find any jobs, so.

They wouldn't be able to pay for things and then so on and so on.

It builds and builds and eventually the economy has the.

Potential of.

Crashing because of a lack of spending.

I don't think most people are ready to hear this or even want to hear it.

They're too conditioned by the media and the government to think that anything bad would happen in America.

They would just think that some genius or some government program would come along with a plan and make everything better without any pain.

On my part.

This came from a book called Out of gas and different characters.

Different approaches to the solution, of course, but the concepts and the things that the couple wind up doing is pretty incredible and they wind up making some.

Huge changes in their lives and I'm not talking.

We go off and live off the grid or anything like that.

They still live a normal life, but they do change their approach to life from your point of view head.

What do you think they did right initially?

With Tommy, it depends on how you want to look at it, because a lot of people in the world, they believe that ignorance is bliss and.

But they probably think that they would be just as happy if they were none the wiser and Travis didn't stick his nose.

He snoot in the business and start doing his own research, but.

That so that can be argued, I guess by some people, but by others, especially the probably most the people who are our audience, they would say.

What they did right was they basically did their research and once he got his wife up to speed, they kind of made sure that they were collaborating on the same page.

So at least they were getting their facts straight.

They weren't jumping to conclusions.

They were just trying to make sure not doing this two to five minute Internet research.

They were doing real research.

They're probably collecting from 10 to 15 different sources on different topics, and looking at the trends and patterns and and getting the facts that they were already given.

Starting with the guy given he met tip off that he probably shouldn't have given him two because then that goes to.

Corporate interests where they might have.

They might find somebody in that kind of situation, probably sign the non-disclosure agreement or an NDA, even if they found out hey this guy.

Tipped off this person here, or we could be talking about potential insider trading scenarios or whatever else, so it opens itself up to a lot of discussion on preparedness and.

Financial preparedness especially.

I think the best thing that he did is dug in deep into the research.

They bring up a term in there that he did his own kind of consumer price index.

Let's look at the definition of consumer price index real quick.

Merriam Webster defines consumer price index.

As an index, measuring the change in cost of typical wage earner purchases of goods and services expressed as a percentage of the cost of these same goods and services in the same base period.

The number he used was something like 10 to 15% and if you look up consumer price index.

Rarely does it ever go over 7 or 8%. If you look at the history, you'll see there's numbers that go back and they probably go back further. But the ones I found readily available were.

2011 to.

2021 it's a little freaky. Yeah, because you look at down in 2011, 2012 13 it's all around 1.5 one point 6 maybe up in the twos all the way through.

To 2021

Any guesses on where it's at now?

Or where it was.

In the second half of 2020.

112%.

Oh, not quite 7%.

So yeah, we played the silhouettes.

Which is.

Well, at five times the normal CPI.

Had done research on.

That end for those things in a while, but.

If your typical American doing the eight to five white collar thing, and you start thinking about things like this and you say wait a second.

Like 85% or more of us really. Every year we're getting maybe a 4% raise and bonus and stuff like that. That's yeah, just barely.

Edging up above that CPI or cost of living type stuff so.

Yeah, and sometimes not even above sometimes, like Kristen in her job, I mean.

She's been there two or three years with the county government, and I think the most she's seen is maybe a 3% increase.

That's a little nerve wracking when you see that your income is not keeping up with inflation.

This opens up a lot of discussion on a lot of things.

If you're thinker and somebody who likes to think outside of the box, great, especially when you're talking about.

White collar type stuff.

In America, you're dealing with half and I do.

A lot of annual training on things like insider trading, which most workers in the white collar are going to be exposed to that, but they had to go through that training every year and bribery, corruption, everything else like that.

So there's possible touching on that.

But nobody tells you what kind of product.

Are you pushing?

Out how much does it cost us?

What is the supply chain type of issue?

What is our overhead?

Are we going to have to make cuts here and there, but you start seeing your stocks go down?

And here you coming across a scenario where this guy specifically told Travis well because of this and this.

Now in reality Travis could have taken that information and actually invested in other different things.

If somebody could, if he did enough for this research based on high level.

Insider information

He could be getting investigated for insider trading types done additionally, if you were a blue collar worker and you're working in the oilfield, or you're a cowboy ranch, hand a construction auto mechanic.

All that kind of stuff.

That's a hard skill.

You're actually the one putting rubber on the road and steel on target.

It's funny in a lot of those realms.

Those are the guys that are the men and women that it provides us the tangible benefits, but they don't have to go through all this certain different Mickey Mouse, kabbalistic and esoteric type of training every year.

And you have all of these huge, almost corporate entities.

That's supposedly educational or accredited.

That's a pay to play in the white collar world.

Saying, OK, you're going to be in this white collar realm and you've got to go through certain number of.

Continuing education credits.

Every year you have.

To do a.

Certain number of learning management LMS courses every year and a lot of it is completely irrelevant to what you're doing.

Number one and #2. If you pay your mafia pizzo to them with $150 a year or whatever.

You get to be in good standing with certified anti money laundering specialists or whatever else, so there's a lot going on here.

And if you start to see these.

Types of hiccups in the system?

I think you owe it to yourself to do your due diligence and start researching it to see how things could tangibly impact you.

My next question is actually around what may they have done wrong.

If you read through the entire story, the real story.

It's not necessarily what they did wrong, but how they initiated how they started their whole lives.

Because there was part of it.

One of the very first things that Travis does is, he says.

I gotta stop this way of living because we're both executives in our organizations, right?

They have two kids.

They barely ever see their kids.

And that's the first thing he.

Does I don't care what it takes.

Business wise or work wise I have to find time to be around my kids because he was working the the typical 6070 hours a week they were dropping their kids off at at the grandparents or at the daycare or whatever it might be and they never saw their kids. Yeah that was the first thing.

They did change.

But just having that lifestyle where they're living.

In excess, Yep, even though they're upper class that that concept of paying for something with a credit card is just.

I did it for years.

Makes me frustrated because you still wind up paying 20 years later.

30 years later, you still wind up paying for that debt.

So what are some of the things that you would think?

They could have done better or that they.

Didn't didn't do right.

So I'm going to go onto.

More cut I mean.

I don't think they have to make hard changes, but I.

I think especially when you get in your thirties, 40s, and 50s, you're educated, trained.

You have experience, a lot of your kids may be nesting a little bit, but they're starting to leave.

And I'm actually supervising kind of a supervisor and kind of in the middle.

I've got people over me and people a little bit.

This side of me that I'm supervising that are retired 20 plus year law enforcement veterans like federal law enforcement.

So one guy, he's 5758 years old. Let's talk about going the other day and.

He's like, well, I'm divorced, it's got my.

Dog, and I'm happy.

The kids are out of the house.

I've got my retirement now I've got this job with the company here now, I'm fine, but you have a lot of different.

Lifestyles and attitudes.

And behaviors.

There's a million different things to talk about here.

Did he make some right decisions for?

Him he's trying to.

It what I want to try to say is break it down and say 3040 fifty you have to make periodic reevaluations or reassessments of how happy you are.

Where are you at?

Where do you wanna be?

Is this what you're doing that is making you happy and I forgot.

Who it was but somebody.

Challenged me to think.

Think about the things that made you happy as a kid.

What did she do?

Did you play baseball?

Did you enjoy it or was it something that you were doing to mostly appease your?

Mother and father?

What was it that you used to do as a kid and you truly enjoyed?

And why are you no longer doing that now?

Is it something you've grown?

Out of or whatever.

On this scenario, you're talking about to discuss.

I don't think they did anything really wrong, and I I think they just needed to make a little bit of a tweak make that periodic reassessment.

They did their research, they didn't.

Jump to conclusions, but I'd like to quote Martin Marty Bird of the Netflix Ozark series.

Money, laundry at the very first episode of the first season.

Opening scenes, he's saying things like let me scratch wampum dough, sugar, clams, loot, gills, bones, bread bucks.

Money that which separates the haves from the have nots book.

What is money?

It's everything if you don't.

Have it right.

Half of all American adults have more credit card debt than savings.

25% have no savings at all. Only 15% of the population is on track to fund even one year of retirement, suggesting what the middle class is evaporating or the American dream is dead.

You would be sitting there listening to me if.

The latter were true.

You see, I think most people.

Just have a fundamentally flawed view of money.

Is it simply an agreed upon unit of exchange for goods and services?

$3.70 for a gallon of milk. 30 bucks to cut your grass. Or is it an intangible security or happiness?

Peace of Mind.

Let me propose to you a third option.

Money is a measuring device.

You see, the hard reality is how much money we accumulate in life is not a function.

Approves President or the economy or bubbles bursting or bad breaks or bosses.

It's about the American work ethic, the one that made us the greatest country on Earth.

So that said, after we had this capitalist thought.

And we even have people.

I think it was.

The rock saying.

That he noticed that every time he worked harder, he actually gained more, but more of what you're gonna work harder and you're gonna work longer hours.

Time is wealth as well, so how much time do you have now?

So I think Matt just go back to that point.

I want to make is reassess, make those periodic reassessments of who you are, what makes you happy, where are you, where do you want to be?

Look back on where you have been and say OK.

This is what I've researched to be the current situation and this is what I think we have to do to make these slight.

Tweaks to get to where we want to be.

To make us happy and agreed upon.

Measure of happiness and fulfillment in lights.

You you hit the nail on the head there with an agreed upon measure of happiness.

Very important and and you'll notice in the story there one of the things they did and I'm not sure the point got across as well as the original author, and that is they sat down together.

They both did their individual research.

They both separated.

Went off listed things they thought would happen, might happen and will not happen and they both just started scribbling down things on this whiteboard.

I shortened it for the purpose of this discussion, but they both wound up writing things and very, very similar results based on their independent study and research that they did.

But what they did is they allowed each other to talk about those situations and then go.

Now how do we want to come out of this? We see that something may potentially happen in another year or two years, but how do we want to come out of this if we expect only one of us to have a job and that one job is only making 50% of what I'm making today, we would be in the future living on 1/4.

Of what we're making.

Today, but you said little tweaks and things like that.

Certain circumstances, man, it's huge.

It's a huge change for them in this case of Travis and Nikki and and they purposefully said we're done with this.

We can't continue living that way.

To me, they would seem like a small change and if.

You talk about it with your partner.

And family they might seem like a small.

Change at first.

But you're right, they could be huge changes because you know you.

Could be used to going to.

Work every day and buying a 20 or $30 lunch.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

When I first moved into Dallas.

When I first got my my first anti money laundry type of job, I was hired on as a contractor and I'm not going to lie.

They paid me quite well.

I was single, I was living.

In an apartment.

And I probably gained 10 or 20 pounds in the first three or four months because I was going all the fancy restaurants in Dallas.

I was having wine Scotch. I was having 25 to $35 shots of Johnnie Walker Blue or Talisker or those types of the Scotch.

I was having 35 to $75 seafood state plates.

And so when you talk about the change, those are the types of changes that I made and they seem like small tweaks to me.

But you looking back they're huge.

When I met Nisha and we got married.

We started this white Board of who are we?

Where have we been where we at?

Where do we want to be?

These are the types of changes that we're going to make, and in the future something like this happens.

What can you do to readjust that employer risk?

Sing mutually agreed upon happy Spot that you want to be in the future. Are we going to refinance the House and you get the house payment down another 2 to $400 a month?

Or we have to pull some of that money out.

We got money in savings over here money and savings over there and.

If you're looking at.

Leadership for the entire community.

What is?

That we can do to try to help all of our friends, family and neighbor.

Financially, try to keep those goals because there's leaders in the white collar community that are there leasing Porsches and stuff like that because that's the lifestyle that they want to have.

There is a lot of jockeying and posturing for a social position in this area that I've met and.

If these economic impacts were to occur in their life.

I mean just so everybody knows if you're in the spaces that Matt and I are in more like white collar space, I'll say that probably at least 30% of managers above us are actually legacy. They come from families that already had legacy wealth or affluence.

Grandfather or somebody invested in this company and they pulled strings to get grants.

Done a job fresh out of high school as a manager in a place out here and we're talking about people that you say.

Screw up a cup of coffee.

They would screw up a glass of water and they would drive that Porsche down the road until it ran out of gas and then it's running out of gas on the tollway, causing the traffic.

Jim, there's some of those people out there and we're going to have to deal with them 'cause they can shoulder surf on me and look over what I'm doing and say.

And I have no clue how you're doing this.

Anti money laundering transactional.

Analysis Now we're going to say.

And you're supposed to be supervising me.

That's exactly right.

Well hey there, Jen Exerce Ed and I wanted to introduce you to pack Rabbit, our newest affiliate group.

Pack Rabbit grew from one person desire to craft a healthier and more efficient way to carry a pack.

Now pack Rabbit is a small company made up of entrepreneurs, hunters, athletes, military and outdoor enthusiasts.

Their designs are influenced by diverse backgrounds and personal experiences that tilt them heavily towards simplicity and utility.

Pack Rabbit believes that multifunctionality is not a condition of luxury, but an absolute necessity.

One key aspect of several of their backpacks is a folding shell that turns into a rather comfy seat when out on the trail.

We invite you to check them out.

The link for their website.

Is in the show notes.

I've got two more questions.

First of all.

Do you think it's effective and realistic to plan for something like this?

That's seemingly way out there?

I mean, the fundamental problem here is that First off, a regional airline runs out of fuel for their airplanes, but then underneath that there's the lack of fuel.

From any of their providers to fill the gap.

Which means that there's a lack of fuel in the Middle East where the fuel is coming from.

So then there's a question of, well, can the fuel reserves within the United States be provided?

To supplement that lack? Or would the US government be willing to sacrifice those fuel reserves in order to fill the gaps for certain companies or whoever it may be?

And so it's.

Very very quickly starts to become a.

Much bigger problem.

Very complicated too.

In that case.

You hope that the fuel reserves we do have can.

The question is, is that really an out there type of scenario that you don't need to worry about it?

Would it be better if we had some way of preparing for that type of scenario?

But you're asking the wrong person nextmap because I'll tell you right now.

People listening in our audience. If you guys have seen the news once or twice in the last 20 years, that some US headquartered global or International Corporation.

Either wetboek corrupt or was found to be so complicit in fraud or criminal activity that their top CEOs are still in prison to this day, Iran.

If you've heard of stories like that once or twice, you are about a light year behind or you need to be awareness wise.

This is not something that happens once or twice.

It is not something that happens occasionally or even frequently almost daily.

I would say monthly at the very.

Least a major global corporation headquartered in the US either dissolves, gets bankrupt because of bad spending, bad decisions made by its management and leadership CEOs and everybody, or they sell to the company as soon as they sell. I guarantee your jobs are going to be wiped out.

A lot of those situations because.

They're going to offshore them.

Something like this happens and there's currently nobody still employed with Enron, Enron is.

There's probably a huge leadership change at HSBC after their scandal. Wells Fargo after their scandal. These are just a few financial institutions or others I can think off the top of my head, if you just Google something like US corporations involved in a scandal.

Or fraud or corruption.

You'll see just how often and frequently this stuff happens within probably 5 to 10 minutes of research so.

It is a realistic scenario.

Well, what can you do to prepare for it?

Well, you have your training, education and experience.

If you're in your thirties, 40s or 50s, you should have enough of a foundation that if something happens, you can lateral to another unit within the company to another corporation or something like that.

And you could take.

Drop in pay. Yeah, now I left one company a while back for many reasons, but one of the main reasons was it its stock that was at 12 to $14.00. Whatever went down to about $1.75 because.

They were on the $250 million deferred prosecution agreement because there were people inside that were corrupt and facilitating fraud. According to the Department of Justice releases.

It they initially wanted to try to file for bankruptcy, but.

The powers that be the the power brokers of King Solomon. Those that claim that they are doing God's work to this day.

People like the CEOs of Goldman Sachs and they said no, we're not going to let you file for bankruptcy. We're going to float you this $1 billion loan and you're going to stay afloat.

And we want a return on our investment as well.

Then they try to sell the company too.

Donald Trump, Chinese friend Jack Ma, who's running Ant and Alibaba.

He's affiliated those anyway.

Now the Chinese Government has him almost on lockdown.

Nobody heard of him in a while and eventually they couldn't sell themselves to anybody and their stock went down and it looked like I mean people were.

Bailing out of that like rats coming off of a sinking ship.

But why if you have the training background education experience, you should be able to get to another company.

If you're a blue collar and you have hard skills.

And you're working as a truck driver or in the oil field or something, and your truck line goes out of business water.

You can find another job working with the railroad. It's not that there's not jobs out there. Walmart is now starting to pay 15 to $18.00 an.

Hour I mean.

That, I think is also.

Indicator of where the interest rates are going in the country.

I think we are having some.

There's recession.

There's some economic impacts and we're saying, oh, we're going to pay you more money come over our work for us we're going to pay you more money.

There's a lot of people still were getting.

That COVID relief and unemployment and.

They've made the life adjustment that this is sustaining, though maybe they don't have the same amount of drive and ambition to achieve or accomplish that other people do, and they're fine with that living in.

And they have the opportunities they have.

The opportunities for training, vocational training, education and whatnot, but they want to live in a cheap apartment and just eat peanut butter and Jelly sandwiches and romanet and oatmeal every day.

But if you're one of those others, that's more of an achiever and and this is where you said you wanted to do where you want to beat everything else.

Like that, you've got to make that adjustment and.

And you might have to tighten your waistline a little bit, tighten your belt, but you're gonna make ends meet.

You gotta have faith that at the end of the day, you are going to get through this.

Like Eleanor Roosevelt said, this too shall pass.

Yeah, absolutely.

A lot of people I'm sure would hear a a story like this and they would get discouraged.

Feel like it's a dismal outlook, but that does bring me to the last question, which is, what do you think the real chances of this happening are from my perspective?

There's actually two parts to the question.

What do you think the real chances are?

And then if you think there's a good chance of it happening, what can you do to?

I'm probably one of those people who have forever just thought.

Well, it's not going to affect me because I'm going to prepare in my own way.

I'm going to prepare my family.

I'm going to have a garden, but if if you start to think of things a little bit more realistically, if.

There was a significant increase in the cost of fuel.

Just fuel.

But what happens to a country when there?

Expenses increase in a significant way, like the story goes.

If you increase the cost of fuel, maybe you can't get to work that day, but there's all these other things in the background that you're not even thinking of that could affect you and and honestly, the way the characters in the story.

Move forward, it's fantastic in how they start to basically remove themselves from a non sustainable.

System to a sustainable system in an area that is not as affected by those out of fuel situations, such as a small town.

If you have a small town where there's milk, there's cattle.

Yes, it takes gas or fuel to run a tractor, but if you have a community that comes together and gathers.

The harvest and makes enough corn, or enough wheat that can be processed.

Then as a community they're taken care of.

Then they take care of themselves, so I think there's different things that can be done.

We as everyday prepper type of people.

Without making significant like I'm going to move out into the sticks in Oklahoma or something like that, it's probably not realistic that you're going to be able to recover easily from a scenario like this.

The beauty is a scenario like this doesn't happen overnight.

It happens over a couple of years.

Right?

I would argue that it could happen overnight, but in this particular scenario it's not going to happen overnight.

This is going to occur over a period of time.

To to that point, it seems like the only reason why it would happen overnight is if it were.

A nefarious type of situation from.

The folks in the Middle East or the Russian pipelines or the Chinese wanting to lock down our economy for some reason.

So I guess from that perspective, certainly it could happen.

Yeah so.

Real quickly for my benefit.

Maybe the audience as well repeat your last two questions again.

What do you?

Think are the real chances of something like this occurring and then is there a way or what do you think can be done to prepare for it?

OK, that kind of goes back on to some things that we've already discussed.

The real chances of this occurring and having tangible impacts on people.

There's going to be so many variables out there, for example, fuel and energy well.

Sad to say, it could get into politics.

If it was the former president in that administration in office, there might be different outcomes.

The current president.

Maybe we send some troops to energy, oil and natural gas rich Ukraine.

Where they have their own personal.

Business connections.

I I just don't understand.

It doesn't matter what your politics is and then this goes to.

Why are some things in the news and why are some things not in the news instead of talking about?

Excuse me, Mr.

You're no longer the vice president with the sun railing, the lines of cocaine off of the hookers.

But in Ukraine you are now the President and you still have a personal vested interest in.

Ukraine is a known crooked country from business perspectives and the company Burisma was a known crooked entity there.

So you can look at those things and realize there's possibly scenarios where it's going to be political and that goes into all kinds of different companies.

And that's the SIG.

Sad, sorry, sadistic reality.

Of white what is fireproof fireproof?

Here's the bosses son.

It may not be you.

It doesn't matter what your training education background experience is.

If you are not in the club.

You are expendable.

Your whole unit is expendable unless it's sales or marketing compliance.

All this other stuff we would actually rather not have you guys do compliance at all.

We we have you as a cost of doing business compliant security, so you can actually goof.

Fuel prices and Homeland Security.

Fuel prices and those variables that go into that is actually part of the infrastructure study for Homeland Security studies.

You have to look at this and say this is actually part.

Of the the.

Infrastructure mechanism.

It can have a huge impact, so there's actually whole units.

Of military intelligence and Homeland Security personnel who's part of their job is dedicated to studying these types of of often real time scenarios.

So what is the reality of something like this happening?

It's a real potential.

There's variables like and they could be extremely complicated and political, and that's why you're not seeing it in the news.

And what is it that you can do to prepare yourself?

You can be a prepper and listen to jinx talking.

And we're going to talk through these scenarios and bringing up a whole bunch of other scenarios.

And you have to make a decision tree.

If this did we do this?

If that, then we do this.

Is this a yes OK?

Then we're not worried about it.

Is this, uh, no.

Oh then there's something over here, though.

And create milestones there along the line.

If you see.

This trigger number occur then do XY and Z if.

It stays below this level.

No need to be concerned.

This is a beautiful snail because this is one of those that I've said it 100 times. I'll say it again in the age of information. Ignorance is a choice and.

There is a lot of misinformation out there.

Instead of wondering about what's going on in the Ukraine and why or other areas, there's huge multi.

Billion dollar decisions happening globally every day.

But what were you hearing in the news?

You're hearing that seven years ago?

Joe Rogan may have said the inward.

We're hearing that a few days ago, Whoopy Goldberg said something.

And then the whole thing like older, leaving Spotify and the rock is backing him up.

Oh, now the Rook is not backing him.

This is not news.

Movement errors, that's right.

This is not news that an impact.

That's right, those are distractions.

Those are distractions and there are things that are going to occur in maybe even day-to-day life that you have no control over and you may not be able to be prepared for it.

Are you going to get in the vehicle axe?

Cent is a tornado going to suddenly hit?

Is there going to be something that nobody saw?

Make a huge economic impact?

That's going to have an impact on you.

Life and death.

So you could go to sleep one day and just not wake up now.

Wake up, that's right.

However, there are some things in your control and this is one of them.

You can, and I believe the creator did not put you on this earth to just walk around aimlessly like sheeple and wait for something to happen.

Maybe there's a lot of.

People there with that mindset but.

Challenge people encourage people to actually.

You don't necessarily need to be alpha or an apex predator, but you can be alert and you can be aware of and you can say I want to live.

Excellent words there.

I don't know how else to.

Finish that up.

I would like.

New I want to live.

So I'm thinking.

If you're ready, we can go into parting shots and close this thing down.

Lodge that brother.

Let's do it.

OK, you want to go first.

Sure, I'll go first to Janek source.

My party shots for this would be don't let yourself.

Be distracted by news that doesn't have anything to do with anything that's going to have an impact on you as jinxers.

I think we're in our 40s, fifties and such.

I I put this out on one of my tik toks the other day.

I encourage us to try to be leaders and not followers.

Beat uniter.

Not dividers.

Reach out and try to gather, scatter and let's try to be prepared because there's going to be a lot of people.

In generations that are younger than us, not to discredit them, they're the people in Gen Z, the zoomers and even your teenage kids.

These days they're not stupid, they're sharp, it's just that they've had this phone with an app and they have.

They might arguably have shorter attention spans, but they're sharp.

They don't want to be a drone in the height of life they want.

To live, and they're going to look for answers and.

One other things I think.

Jinxers in preparedness spaces need to do is learn to be a leader because you are going to be looked on.

It's almost an expectation of you that you're 4050 years old and for you to say. I don't know kid, I just work here.

That's not going to cut it.

I'm not only or you're going to have to say, hey, I want to live.

You're going to have to be the leader.

Of the pack so.

Keep your finger on the pulse of these scenarios and the intricate ends and outs of them as best you can without losing sleep over it.

That way you can be best prepared for those situations that you can have some control over.

I've got so many different directions for my party shots that it's really hard for me to focus on just one or the other.

This is a crazy topic.

I'll try to limit it as much as I can.

But First off, there's a lot of people that say.

Social media has a negative effect on people.

Like Tik T.O.K or Instagram?

And gosh they really can be so distracting from reality.

Things that are going on around you.

But if you're if you curate your feed well enough.

You're not locked in an echo chamber.

You can still see both sides of the arguments occurring, and you can get an outside.

Opinion of what's happening around us, which brings up the second point.

I'm saying that for a reason, because I just read an article from this independent news guy sitting there in New York City, right?

He's a pretty smart guy and he's tide in pretty well to the news world up there.

And he wrote an article on news bias.

And how it happens?

He gives some numbers something like 60% of people in the media are are liberal or are leftists. And I guess there's a separation between leftist and liberal. I understand that but.

It's something like 60 to 70% of them are, and I feel like that's probably an understatement. There's probably much more than that.

In reality, they just don't admit it, but the reason I'm bringing that up is the media you know is biased one way or another.

So if you observe some things that are going in the media and then confirm certain things by looking in this your own social media type of environments.

And then take the concepts.

Maybe even go and do your own detailed research.

You can get some truth.

All that media should be there to do is tell you that something is happening and I'll give you resources that you can go do your own, study your own research, things like that.

That was the number one thing I think the characters in this did.

Very, very well.

They did their own research they dug in.

They found some very impactful.

Numbers how it would affect them individually and they made their own individual choice, yeah.

And they prepared their own families.

Not only their own small.

Family, but their extended family, their parents, their grandparents, the people in the community that they moved to, like you said Ed.

They started gathering.

People of like mind in saying we're not going to be ill prepared for these scenarios coming up.

We're going to be prepared.

And we're going to protect our own.

It's hard because I think a lot of things going on in social media is saying no, you shouldn't go off on your own and do this and just protect your own.

You should be doing this for everybody, and that's not the direction we should be.

We should be working together.

But certain people are going to have common cause, and that's those people who are going to band together and do the right thing for that community.

I would just encourage our audience and those outside of our audience to.

Learn, research and be prepared for those things that are coming.

That's all I had for today.

Alright, well I think that's awesome.

What do you think?

Matt and I think we can actually probably pick up in another episode.

Talk about this particular type of situation even more in the future and before we go, I want to say again, one time real quick to all our listeners out there. We will be doing our best to do a really quick live 234 minute or so.

Update or check in from Cairo, Luxor and Regatta, Egypt.

Coming up next week.

That's going to be so exciting.

I'm looking forward to it.

I love this discussion, Matt.

This was.

Awesome, excellent well.

Gen X Rs until next time this is Matt Marshall signing in awesome.

Take care guys.