Hello there GenXers and welcome. I'm trying something new today with our episode. Most of you by now know that Ed is out gallivanting around the world, allowing us to live vicariously through him. Thanks Wilksie Ed's alluded to a number of upcoming items that, he's got to talk about. And other reports that he's got from the field. For today's show, it'll be a bit shorter. I wanted to capture five of some of the more common questions we hear in the preparedness community and answer them from my perspective. So let's get started. Shall we? Number one, why did you get into preparedness? Well, I've already talked about it in some of our shows before I was unknowingly being instructed in the ways of preparedness by both my mom and dad. For most of my childhood, my dad lived out being prepared. And it was very impactful watching that, watching him live through multiple recessions and, and very little money. If you want to hear more about both of my parents, I had a distinct pleasure of interviewing them in some of the earlier podcast episodes. When I was on a recent trip to the four corners area, when I left home. I ran into so many scenarios in which being prepared would have been better, but I was not prepared and I suffered the consequences. I've been robbed multiple times while traveling I've been scammed by three-card Monte players. I've been stuck in the cold, overnight, broken down in a vehicle in Sub-Zero temperatures with very little heat and no shelter. And the lessons I've learned through those. And so many more are what drive me today to be better prepared. As for preparedness itself. For me, it all started as kind of a fun thing, actually, zombie movies, of course, apocalyptic living, how would I survive? And so on, just putting myself through these kinds of mental tests, and of course, Y2K came and went and all of the fears surrounding it. And then there's this period of time. That we lived in a townhome community and ours had a fireplace and across the street, there was this nice little family, mom and dad, and two very small children. Weather was forecast to be in the single digits during a snow storm. Power had been out for two days already. And I remember going over there and offering to come stay with us, if it start getting too cold for them. And that was kind of an eyeopening experience for me, that even in the quote, normal times, individuals and families could be hit. With very difficult choices. So I really just started doing preparedness on my own. And eventually my wife jumped on the bandwagon and we've been going strong ever since for a couple of decades at least. Question two, what movies or shows or books influenced your preparedness planning? There's so many movies and books, right? 28 days later. That was actually one of my favorite still is one of my favorite zombies movies with Cillian Murphy. The fact that. It showed how quickly 28 days things went to complete hell. That was pretty impactful. World war Z, again, a very short timeline and the way they portrayed a massive apocalyptic event, that was pretty impressive. I will say that the book was much better because it portrayed multiple scenes from a zombie apocalypse, the book itself is absolutely fantastic. And then I remember back in the nineties there was a movie called outbreak with Dustin Hoffman. Wow. That was very impactful epidemic type of movie, fantastic movie. And then the thing that was powerful about that one as well is how the government or the agency could come in and essentially envelop this town and try to block people from getting in and out of the town. And people in general would attempt to fight back and do what they thought was right. And then of course so much talk has gone on about the, the walking dead. I would say the earlier seasons maybe up to season four. But after that it kinda got a little weird, but same type of scene from 28 days later, where guy wakes up and finds that the world has completely changed. As far as books go, there's the old standby. One second after by William forstchen. That is a very powerful book primarily because the author himself is a historian and he has connections with government like Newt Gingrich. People from back in that timeframe and it was actually a bit of a sad story. He was part of this commission that was tasked with finding out what would happen if an EMP were to hit the United States and how it might affect the United States the most. When his commission was getting ready to approach Congress with their report, nine 11 happened. And so it all got forgotten. And the only way he was able to present that information to the public was in a fictional novel. The result was one second after absolutely fantastic book, not just all doom and gloom, lot of really successful things that they did as a community. And then of course you know, Going Home is a fantastic book for get home safe type of environments. Again, that one's more of a EMP type of scenario. But a fantastic book and the series goes on after the first book. I still love the first one the most. And then there's the survivalist series by Arthur Bradley. That's an excellent, excellent book and book series and explains how a U S Marshall might respond. And not only how the goodness of a us Marshall might change the world, but also how certain evil sides of things might m ake the world worse and how you can fight back against that in really successful ways. And then of course, there's companion, gardening books and homesteading books and things like that. So, reading as much as you can about being prepared is absolutely recommended. Number three shelter in place or bugout? Now, of course, this completely depends on the scenario in our area. There is a potential, very unlikely, but a potential for a nuclear attack or other nuclear type of threat that said the thought of sheltering in place might not be the best approach to protecting yourself and your family. If it's known that a life altering event is approaching and the best bet would be to leave and leave quickly, then bug out by all means. To bug out typically implies with haste, hence the bug out bag to get out as quickly as possible. But this term bug out doesn't mean the same thing to different people. Right? Bug out to some may mean being instructed to do so by government agencies like FEMA to move yourself and family to a government provided shelter. However, for those who have planned and prepared ahead of time to bug out may simply mean moving yourself to the next phase of your preparedness plan. Maybe quickly move to your first bug out location. Another family member outside of the effected area. I suspect there are very few reasons why a person would leave the safety of their own home to move to an unknown scenario, like a government shelter when they could just as easily protect themselves within their own known home and area. A great thought heading into your planning is to have a decision-making tree. That says if X plus Y happens, then we leave. But then until that point shelter in place and implement the next steps in your plan, By the way, this should be part of your every days prepping as well. For instance, it's, much more likely for an area to be hit with a freezing storm or a hurricane causing a power outage than a nuclear attack. But with the same logic, if X plus Y happens, for instance, if power is lost in your local area, due to a recent weather event and all indications are that it will be three or four days, decide if it would be best to wait it out with generators, solar power, or cooking over a fire, or if it would be better to bug out. To a local hotel, keeping in mind, pets and other family specific cases. Number four, if faced with an active shooter or active assailant type of situation, would it be better to run and hide or attack the shooter? Oh boy. One thing we could all agree to is that nobody really knows what they're going to do when faced with this type of event One thing that can help a person to understand their own potential is. Training for themselves and then place themselves into very similar type of situations. Obviously you can never place yourself purposefully in an active shooter type of event, but if you seek out training from local law enforcement, read books about real life scenarios and try to comprehend how you might respond to those events. Then just try to become more familiar with the real scenarios and how they shake out. I have a great group that I belong to where we get to see regularly actual FBI footage or actual FBI reports and local law enforcement reports. on real events, that occurred. And it allows me to play it through in my mind and see how I might respond, knowing how people moved through the scene This may help you keep a sound mind when faced with potentially disturbing type of events. There are several ways survival experts recommend responding to active assailants. By now, you may have already heard of run, hide and fight that most typical response. First you run to keep yourself alive. Next, you hide to make sure the assailant can't see you. And if all else fails, then you fight to hopefully protect yourself and give yourself a fighting chance to stay alive. But I would submit to the listeners some additional thoughts. My wife and I recently went to an active assailant presentation and they changed it up a bit with some very good logic. Now notice I'm using the term assailant, not shooter because as we have learned, it could be a vehicle. It could be a knife, it could be a gun, it could be a handgun. It could be a rifle. It could be a semi-automatic rifle. So many different situations start referring to them as Asailants, so it's not just a shooter. And it puts it into your mind that it's not always a gun that's causing the danger. Now the main trouble in my mind with run hide fight philosophy is it puts it into the mind of the person experiencing the trauma from the very beginning that they are a victim. So the person's mentality is already coming from a position of fear and possible death. I must run. I must hide. And then magically somehow they're supposed to remove all that fear and fight... Right! That's not going to happen. So the presenter that my wife and I went to see, he challenged that approach with a new one, avoid deny, defend. Simple adjustments to the words, but these are actually active in their engagement with the assailant to run means to run away in fear, but to avoid means you're actively understanding where the danger is coming from and avoiding that danger with the most logical approach. It may actually mean moving closer to the danger in order to move to the next step to hide also out of fear, usually implies a cowering event, right? Again, prompting a fear reflex, but to deny can prompt a person to continually deny the attacker access to the area in which the resistance is located. And then to fight implies. This is your last chance and effort to life fight like hell, but if your mindset is already one of positive, I will get out of this danger safely. Then the natural course of thinking would be to defend yourself from harm. Finally, if you, if your mindset is actively engaged with the assailant or other danger, it naturally causes you to think and observe much better than if you were simply to run, hide and fight so that after the event event occurs and is concluded and you are safe, then you can tell, which is the next step, right. You can inform authorities of what actually occurred with confidence because you're actively engaged in it. Your mental response is no longer I've been a victim and forever will negatively be effected by this trauma, but you've done your part to protect yourself and protect others through a difficult event. Number five, what would be some means of communication? In a post-apocalyptic world. Hmm. Well, I guess one of the biggest questions is how bad of a post-apocalyptic world are we talking about here? If it's a full-on mad max or EMP type of world? Well, that's one thing, but if it's economic collapse, then the world might be affected in a totally different way. I mean most thoughtful scenarios for what could one day become the new normal apocalyptic world are those that would happen over time. Economic collapse, running out of fuel adverse government takeover, et cetera. These are more of like frog and hot water type of events and theoretically persons, families, communities could possibly prepare better ahead of time. Begin to come closer together as a unit, a family, or a community. Begin recognizing existing ham radio users or CB and walkie-talkie options that might be available in your area. Establish codes that can be used between known group members and ensure messages are clear and reach the intended persons establish ahead of time. The means to power said devices, CBS and ham radio. Whether they be solar, wind or other, this will be important in ongoing communications. If the scenario is more EMP or coronal mass ejection type of event which there is more immediate results. Very little planning has occurred, and this could make things much more difficult of course, but still doable. First consider planning ahead. Establishing a small Faraday cage for EMP type of events, no need for a massive bunker or house sized applications for this type of protection, because to understand EMP or CME enough you would understand what devices could be affected and protect just those devices. For instance, although some speculate, all electronic components within all newer vehicles are susceptible to EMP. This is not likely the case based upon testing that's been done in reality. There are certain components like a starter, perhaps that could be affected if a backup of that starter unit is housed in a Faraday cage. And then when the component itself fails inside the vehicle, or a simple replacement of the unit fixes the vehicle and it's back up and running. But the reality is there's many different ways we've been communicating throughout history all the way through tying two cans together and 5g, there will always be ways to communicate. It will require a bit of inginuity. Well, it's been fun answering some of these questions. I look forward to doing this more in the future. If you get a chance to look us up on social media, it's @genxtalkin. We'd love for people to comment on their own thoughts. Our YouTube channel is a great place to do this. Drop us a subscribe here and there we'll be back next week with some new content to share, really looking forward to what Ed's going to have to present for us. And for now, I'll leave you with the last thought to always be preparing, to respond well and recover faster until next time. This is Matt Marshall signing off.