The Art of Manliness - #423： How to Survive a Grid-Down Disaster

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. We've all

00:00:18.740 probably thought about it at one time or another. What would we do and how would we fare after

00:00:23.740 societal collapse? Well, my guest today has spent his career helping individuals get ready

00:00:28.160 for such a situation. His name is James Rawls. He's the owner of survivalblog.com, the author

00:00:32.680 of several bestselling books on prepping, including how to survive the end of the world

00:00:36.600 as we know it. Today on the show, Jim and I discuss how our dependency on the power grid

00:00:40.520 makes us more vulnerable to disaster than we'd like to think and all the downstream consequences

00:00:44.980 that would happen if the power grid went down for a significant amount of time, including

00:00:48.780 loss of water, sewage services, and a disruption of supply chains. We then dig into what you

00:00:53.320 can do to prepare for such a situation, including securing a water supply, storing food, and the

00:00:57.480 skills and mindset you need to weather a crisis. Even if you don't think you're interested

00:01:01.660 in prepping, it's really interesting to think through what you need to do to survive an apocalyptic

00:01:06.060 scenario. After the show's over, check out the show notes at aom.is slash Rawls.

00:01:21.020 Jim Rawls, welcome to the show.

00:01:23.760 Thank you so much for having me on, Brett.

00:01:25.080 So you're the founder and chief editor of survivalblog.com, and I'm sure a lot of our

00:01:30.360 listeners have been there, and you've also written some books about prepping and getting

00:01:34.060 ready for natural disasters and just being ready in general. I'm curious, how did you

00:01:37.920 get started with this, getting prepared and teaching people how to prepare for things?

00:01:42.800 Well, I really grew up with the lifestyle. I was born and raised in Livermore, California,

00:01:47.820 which is the home of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. And my father worked in experimental

00:01:53.560 physics. And most of the kids that I grew up with were either the sons and daughters of ranchers or

00:02:01.260 the sons and daughters of physicists. And because they design nuclear weapons at Lawrence Labs, there's

00:02:07.460 a very high recognition of the nuclear threat there always has been. And even to this day, Livermore has

00:02:15.280 probably the highest per capita number of privately owned fallout shelters in the United States.

00:02:22.500 So I just grew up with that mindset, and it never wore off.

00:02:26.680 And I'm sure as you got older, you just acquired more skills. I mean, did you have any military

00:02:31.960 background where you learned things? Or was this something you just sort of did on your own?

00:02:35.680 Well, no, I studied a bit on my own. I grew up, you know, I'm the great grandson of a pioneer family.

00:02:44.140 And I did a lot of study on my own. While it was in my high school years, I already had a

00:02:49.300 recognition that I wanted to prepare on my own in addition to our family's preparations.

00:02:54.100 And then in college, I enrolled in ROTC, partly, and in fact, originally, because I wanted some free

00:03:01.660 training. And I went to ROTC basic camp at Fort Knox, Kentucky, which was basically a truncated

00:03:09.060 version of Army basic training with more leadership skills taught. And from there, I was really hooked.

00:03:16.180 And I went ahead and continued with ROTC, ended up graduating with three degrees and a commission as

00:03:26.380 a second lieutenant in the Army. I got a reserve commission as an intelligence officer.

00:03:32.600 And one of the nice things about Army intelligence is you get to do your wartime job in peacetime.

00:03:38.700 You actually get to work a live mission. So working in intelligence also gave me a much higher

00:03:45.360 recognition or realization of the fragility of society. I was involved with some country studies.

00:03:52.540 And I could see that, you know, here we were breaking down the vulnerabilities of various countries.

00:03:59.040 And in the back of my mind, I was always thinking, well, gosh, here in the United States, we're even

00:04:03.240 more vulnerable. I recognized our, in particular, our vulnerability based upon our dependence on the

00:04:10.700 power grids. There's an eastern grid, a western grid, and a Texas grid here in the States.

00:04:14.820 And we are incredibly vulnerable and incredibly reliant on those power grids. And if they go

00:04:23.040 down, all bets are off.

00:04:25.040 Yeah, let's talk about that. So that's a big point you've made throughout your writing on

00:04:28.880 the blog and in some of the books you've done, the power grid. I think a lot of people don't

00:04:32.880 even think about it because they take it for granted because every time they flip on the

00:04:35.460 switch, the lights come on. So what would cause the power grid, these different power grids to go down?

00:04:42.560 Well, there's a number of different things. Of course, we live in the modern age of terrorism.

00:04:47.620 So there's always the risk of a terrorist cyber attack that could attack the SCADA software,

00:04:55.120 which is the system control and data acquisition software that runs the power grid all the way

00:05:01.840 from generation through distribution all the way to your, in fact, nowadays, all the way to

00:05:07.540 your power meter is a SCADA control device. So there's a vulnerability there. There's vulnerability

00:05:14.220 to solar storms to, in particular, an X-class solar storm. There's vulnerability to EMP.

00:05:23.500 And the one that most folks in the mass media completely ignored, and that is the vulnerability

00:05:29.280 of staffing. If nuclear power plants don't have a set level of staffing, they, by law, must scram

00:05:40.600 the pile on that power plant and shut it down. That's by NRC regulations. So that's 20% of our power

00:05:48.280 generation right there, and more than 20% on the East Coast. And staffing is also a problem. Say there

00:05:55.060 were a pandemic or, or a economic collapse with widespread rioting, looting, just lawlessness,

00:06:04.820 power plant operators will not feel comfortable leaving their families and going to work. They're

00:06:12.220 going to want to be at home protecting their families. And again, if there isn't a certain level

00:06:17.520 of staffing, even hydroelectric plants need a little bit of staffing. But in particular, nuclear,

00:06:25.060 to a lesser extent, any natural gas or coal-fired plants require fairly heavy staffing. And then

00:06:32.880 at a minimal level, hydroelectric plants even require a little staffing. If the staff isn't there,

00:06:38.880 the lights are not going to be on. The grids will go down. And once the grids go down, bring them back

00:06:46.120 up is a pretty complicated process. They refer to it as a, as a dark restart. And it actually takes

00:06:56.280 power to make power. So a dark restart would have to start in, if the, if the Western grid were to go

00:07:03.800 down, that dark restart would have to start in the Northwestern United States and restart the system

00:07:12.520 all the way down to the coal-fired plants in Arizona, for example. And the complexity of the

00:07:19.300 power grids is going up year by year. Right now, they're in the process of creating grid inner ties

00:07:25.860 between the Eastern grid and the Western grid, in part so that if the Eastern grid were to go down,

00:07:33.460 it could be dark restarted with power from the Western grid.

00:07:36.660 And I mean, I think most of us, you know, most people who are listening, that's probably,

00:07:41.040 I'm going to say in their thirties, they probably don't remember, I remember reading about blackouts 0.98

00:07:45.600 that occurred in the East coast and would go all the way from New York through the Ohio River Valley.

00:07:50.420 I mean, it was pretty massive and because everything's all connected.

00:07:54.240 Yeah. And the level of interconnectivity and level of dependence is only greater now than it was back

00:08:02.240 in the 1970s. We rely on the grids for so much now that life as we know it simply wouldn't be going

00:08:12.540 on without them. Because not only are we dependent on the power grids for pumping water, which is like

00:08:19.940 98% of civic water supplies are not gravity fed any longer, partly because of federal standards for

00:08:27.800 turbidity. By law, most water has to go through filters and that's all electrically pumped through

00:08:37.040 filters rather than going through from gravity tanks. And there are very few civic water supplies that are

00:08:45.780 gravity fed all the way from a mountain source, say, all the way to someone's tap. And ironically,

00:08:53.380 one of those systems is the San Francisco Hetch Hetchy system, which is fed by an enormous reservoir up in

00:09:01.800 the Sierras. It was kind of a sister valley to the Yosemite Valley, which was flooded. That's the

00:09:07.640 Hetch Hetchy Dam. And they have gravity fed water all the way from end to end. But that system is a very

00:09:15.460 small minority of systems. Most civic water supplies rely on grid power to pump the water up to enormous

00:09:23.640 gravity tanks. You see them dotting the landscape, especially in the Midwest, for example. Wherever

00:09:30.500 you see those tanks, they're completely dependent on grid power and the water will be gone in two to

00:09:36.840 three days if the grids go down. Okay. So when the grid goes down, power goes out, two to three days,

00:09:42.840 no water. I imagine you have problems with sewage as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah. If toilets aren't flushing,

00:09:49.000 then unfortunately, we live in a society that is not used to the third world standards of cleanliness.

00:09:57.500 At least in the third world, people are taught not to foul of a water supply upstream. We have a highly

00:10:03.960 urbanized society with people who just don't have a clue. I think it will be a public health nightmare 0.61

00:10:10.000 if we have a grid down collapse because people will begin fouling streams and creeks and it's going

00:10:18.960 to end up fouling all the water supplies that people could otherwise be drawing on. So one of the crucial

00:10:24.380 things is to have the ability not just to transport water from open sources, but also have the ability

00:10:33.340 to filter water or bring it up near a boil or treat it with chlorine. Those are skills that every family

00:10:40.580 should have and there's tools to go along with that. You need to have the water filters. You need to have

00:10:46.280 at least plain hypochlorite bleach on hand and you need to have some way of transporting water even if gasoline

00:10:54.280 gets short. So if there's a shortage of gasoline, you're going to have to think in terms of having like a

00:11:00.340 two-wheeled garden cart and several big water cans, like a five-gallon military plastic water cans are ideal.

00:11:10.220 Without that, you are going to be a refugee in very short order. And if the 20th century taught us anything, 1.00

00:11:19.200 it's that the life of a refugee is nasty, brutish, and short. 1.00

00:11:24.260 Okay. So power grid goes down. I want to kind of flesh this out for people. So all the things that,

00:11:29.060 because we take this stuff for granted. So power goes out, power grid goes out, water gone two to

00:11:33.420 three days, sewage gone as well. You might think, well, there's natural gas, but that probably also

00:11:39.800 depends on the power grid, right? Mostly. Although in the Western United States, they're in the process

00:11:46.120 of switching over the compressor stations on the major natural gas pipelines to be powered by

00:11:53.720 natural gas powered compressors, engines that run on natural gas. That's the logical thing to do.

00:12:01.780 But ironically, that wasn't done up until about five or 10 years ago. And they're just slowly in the

00:12:06.940 process of doing that. Very few people have natural gas that's piped to their home that depends on

00:12:16.380 local wellhead pressure, natural pressure. Everyone else has to depend on compressor stations. And if the

00:12:23.100 power grid goes down for an extended period of time, the pressure on the natural gas lines will drop.

00:12:29.460 And by the time you get all the way out to a civilian tap, a tap out at someone's domestic

00:12:34.720 residence, they are going to be out of natural gas. So people need to stock up on propane as well,

00:12:40.520 for example. There's just a huge cascade or chain of events that most people just don't recognize.

00:12:48.680 They have an expectation that tomorrow is going to be just like yesterday. And unfortunately,

00:12:56.580 that may come back and bite us. And again, as a modern technologically advanced and technologically

00:13:03.660 dependent society, that risk is large and growing with every passing day.

00:13:09.740 Right. And also when the grid goes down, logistics systems also go away as well. So food will probably

00:13:18.040 go away pretty in a couple of weeks, possibly.

00:13:20.680 Yeah. Two weeks or less. Most grocery stores are not very well stocked. When I was growing up in the

00:13:27.000 1960s, our local grocery store had a back room with cases and cases of wet-packed foods and staple foods,

00:13:37.700 things like rolled oats, all the main staple foods were stockpiled in the back. In a modern grocery

00:13:45.280 store, that back room is not for extra inventory. It's simply a breakdown area for what comes off of

00:13:52.460 pallets from the back of trucks. What you see on the shelf is all the store has. And that is not a

00:14:01.340 very deep supply. And unfortunately, the modern just-in-time inventory control system, which is a modern

00:14:08.120 miracle, actually was copied from the Japanese Kanban system, is incredibly efficient. It is, again, a modern

00:14:15.960 miracle. But when the power grids go down and telecommunications go away, the store's automatic reordering

00:14:23.220 system is just going to fall apart. So any supplies that come in will be sporadic at best if the 18

00:14:31.240 wheelers are still rolling. Again, it's this huge cascade or chain of events that is almost

00:14:38.820 unavoidable when you see a disruption in a modern first world country.

00:14:44.840 Yeah. I think that's sort of the irony. As you said, the world we live in is a miracle and it's

00:14:49.500 hyper-optimized. But the problem with hyper-optimization is that it's extremely

00:14:53.560 fragile. You mess up one little part and the whole thing just falls apart.

00:14:57.780 Exactly. So that's what Survival Blog is all about. I've been encouraging people for many years

00:15:04.240 to recognize the fragility of our society. Secondarily, to recognize the inability of the

00:15:10.500 government to respond in the event of a disaster. We have organizations like FEMA that have time and

00:15:17.080 time again dramatically, spectacularly failed to be able to respond to any even localized disasters.

00:15:27.780 Lord knows how they'd respond if it was a nationwide disruption. I like to say that FEMA

00:15:33.100 actually stands for Foolishly Expecting Meaningful Aid.

00:15:37.200 Well, before we get into specific tactics and gear supply, that's the stuff people love to talk

00:15:42.780 about when they talk about prepping and getting ready for these sorts of things. But I think

00:15:46.480 mindset, you talk a lot about mindset. What is the mindset shift that needs to occur in people

00:15:51.620 in order to get ready for a disaster situation, but also to cope when something happens?

00:15:58.740 Sure. Well, I think the main mindset you need to have is what I refer to as yo-yo,

00:16:02.680 which stands for you're on your own. You need to recognize that government won't be there to help

00:16:08.300 and that everyone rushing to the store at the 11th hour is part of the problem. Everyone who's stocked

00:16:15.100 up in advance is one less person rushing to the store, so they're actually part of the solution.

00:16:21.860 You can have extra on hand to dispense as charity or to have on hand for barter.

00:16:27.360 If you have the mindset of a well-prepared individual who's looking out for the best interests

00:16:34.500 of his family and his neighbors, and you stock up accordingly and arm, prepare yourself,

00:16:44.420 get set up with communications equipment, first aid, the whole works, you're going to be part of

00:16:49.940 the solution, not part of the problem. And from an actuarial standpoint, your chances of survival

00:16:57.100 are going to be an order of magnitude greater than your neighbors because the average American

00:17:03.180 suburbanite has no water filtration, no water storage, and virtually no food storage. The

00:17:10.700 average American family has less than a three-day supply of food on hand at any given time.

00:17:16.020 That makes day four a very hungry day.

00:17:19.280 Right. So when it comes to prepping, my experience is when you look at, you read a book, you look at a

00:17:25.800 website, you get really excited and you can get overwhelmed at the same time. It's like, man,

00:17:30.120 where do I start? Right? Because there's so much. Like, so if say someone who's just starting out,

00:17:34.640 they want to get prepared, what should their top priorities be?

00:17:37.640 My website, for example, we have a quick start guide for newbies. If you, if you go to my website,

00:17:45.180 survivalblog.com and click on, there's a link marked getting started in the top bar, that will take you

00:17:52.280 to a kind of a basic introduction. And then there's a link there to a Excel spreadsheet to what I refer

00:18:01.040 to as the list of lists. And there you can kind of break down what the basic requirements are for

00:18:09.740 family preparedness and get yourself started in a systematic way to stock up, team up and train up.

00:18:18.260 Gotcha. So yeah, we'll definitely put a link to that in the show notes. So I imagine water is

00:18:22.840 probably a top priority when getting started. Yes. And you mentioned, we've mentioned, you know,

00:18:27.160 having water filtration systems, but I also imagine having water storage, just water on hand

00:18:32.600 can go a long way. Yeah. Of course, you know, there's limits to that, especially for someone who lives

00:18:37.660 in an apartment, there's only so much room available. So you really need to think in terms

00:18:42.840 again, of, of if you're, if you're planning to hunker down in a suburban or urban environment,

00:18:48.360 you need to locate a open source of water, like a pond or a lake, and set up a plan for transporting

00:18:59.020 that water. And unfortunately, human nature being what it is, if you're in a, in a city or a suburb,

00:19:05.540 and you're wheeling along a cart full of water, in the midst of a major societal collapse, someone's

00:19:12.700 probably going to walk up and stick a pistol in your back and say, I'm taking that cart. So you

00:19:18.320 also need a security plan to go along with it. I'm actually a big believer in living at your intended

00:19:23.880 survival retreat year round, like I do, because I don't think that bug out plans or, you know,

00:19:30.420 are, are, are very realistic. The, if you think that you're going to have more than one trip out

00:19:37.020 of town with your gear, you're, you're dreaming at most, you'll have one vehicular trip out of town

00:19:43.360 with what, with what you can carry in your vehicle. Everything else will have to be pre-positioned

00:19:49.200 at a well-stocked rural retreat. Hopefully you've got country cousins that you can depend on,

00:19:55.020 or that you have a, a well-stocked vacation home, for example, in a, in a remote area that's not on

00:20:03.300 major lines of drift. I realize that most people don't have the means to do that or don't have

00:20:08.980 country cousins. So you may have to make plans to, to hunker down right where you are, but the

00:20:15.620 logistical tail to that is pretty long. And it takes some planning, takes some thought and prayer

00:20:22.940 and some budgeting. And let's face it, if you, unless you are willing to commit part of your

00:20:33.180 annual income to stocking up, no one else is going to do it for you. And unless you do it,

00:20:38.980 if something major happens, you may end up having to look across the dinner table at your family and

00:20:45.040 say, sorry, I didn't plan ahead. It's not a very pleasing prospect.

00:20:50.400 No, definitely not. Okay. Well, so water, you want to rely, not rely so much on water storage,

00:20:57.440 find an open source of water and rely on filtration. I guess, would food be the second

00:21:02.300 thing you need to think about?

00:21:04.460 Food is probably, yes, the number two on the list. And I go into, into a lot of detail in my book,

00:21:10.640 how to survive the end of the world as we know it. And if you also go through my blog archives,

00:21:15.180 which are absolutely free and they date all the way back to 2005, we've been posting daily in

00:21:21.280 survival blog. There's tens of thousands of articles and letters and column items that have

00:21:27.940 been archived there. We go into great detail on, on storage food, both commercially packed or bulk

00:21:35.080 foods that you can pack yourself. Typically that's done with a five gallon food grade HDPE plastic bucket

00:21:42.520 or, or, or of the tall version of that, the seven gallon, what's called a super pale bucket.

00:21:48.700 Typically those will have a O ring seal lid. And then you can convert those with what's called a

00:21:54.960 gamma seal lid, which is a, a, a lid ring that has a spinner lid set into it to make it easier to get

00:22:03.500 into those, those buckets. You need to think in terms of stocking up in, in bulk foods, your, your

00:22:10.860 basic staples, you know, wheat, rice, beans, honey, and smaller quantity of wet packed canned foods,

00:22:18.460 perhaps some MREs as a short-term supply as well. And then if you have the money for it,

00:22:25.660 some ultra long-term storage food, those typically come in the number 10 size can, which is just,

00:22:33.320 just short of a one gallon can. And those are typically night nitrogen packed. And those are

00:22:40.620 designed for extreme long-term storage. We're talking 30, 40 years with full nutritional adequacy,

00:22:47.760 even after that length of storage, uh, they're pretty amazing foods, but you've got to, you know,

00:22:54.340 figure out what your budget can handle and also what your palate can handle. A lot of those foods

00:23:00.020 are pretty high in sodium, for example. And if you're on a sodium restrictive diet,

00:23:04.160 a lot of those long-term storage foods won't do for you.

00:23:07.560 Yeah. And you've probably, people are probably thinking, well, what do you, where do you put

00:23:10.260 this stuff? Well, you can get creative. Like I've seen people like replace their box springs with

00:23:15.940 boxes of food storage.

00:23:18.600 It's very easy to, to line up a whole bunch of super pails of, of storage food in place of your box

00:23:25.600 springs. You're going to end up with a bed that sits maybe four or five inches higher than normal,

00:23:30.580 but it's not that noticeable. A lot of people also just plain replace a coffee table

00:23:35.380 with cases of long-term storage food and then draping them with a large piece of fabric.

00:23:44.160 And then you can lay a piece of glass over the top or decorate over the top or whatever,

00:23:49.100 but it's really not that noticeable unless somebody goes tugging at the drapes, uh, to see what's

00:23:54.600 underneath there. Anyone with bookshelves can line up small cans of food behind all your books.

00:24:01.640 There's a lot of different techniques that you use even for an apartment dweller to maximize food

00:24:07.640 storage. But typically the best, and ideally the best storage space would be the classic cool,

00:24:15.760 dry place. If you have a house with a basement, a dry basement, that's the ideal place.

00:24:21.300 Yeah. And I know a lot of people think MREs are the first go-to, but those don't last very long,

00:24:26.560 contrary to popular belief.

00:24:28.380 And also they're, they're fairly bulky in terms of the way, because they're packaged with,

00:24:32.620 you know, utensils and an MRE heater and toilet paper and all the little accessory items.

00:24:39.180 In terms of bulk there, you're only getting 12 meals in a case that measures about 18 by 18 by 24.

00:24:47.080 24. So that's a fairly bulky way of storing food. They are handy in that they don't require any

00:24:54.920 cooking, but there's just so many drawbacks. Your, your, your per unit cost or per meal cost is also

00:25:02.960 quite high. They are fantastic for, you know, someone who's in a military field environment

00:25:09.300 because they're, they're just packed with calories. You've got 2,400 calories typically in one MRE

00:25:15.120 and they do have their advantages, but for the typical suburban prepper, I wouldn't recommend

00:25:22.500 keeping more than one or two cases on hand, which you mainly need are the staple foods that you use

00:25:27.820 on a regular basis. Not only are they things that you already know how to cook, you already are accustomed

00:25:34.480 to eating for your digestion, but even more, even better is it's kids, kids will enjoy eating them

00:25:44.020 because they're, you're going to be on your, your normal menu, your normal diet. And because you're

00:25:52.060 stocking up in quantity and using foods that you normally buy anyway, there's not going to be any

00:25:57.780 waste. And you're not going to worry about things reaching their expiration date and having to be

00:26:03.120 donated to charity or thrown out. You're going to be rotating those foods constantly and using them

00:26:08.600 up. So you've got the advantage of zero waste and you're eating cheap because you're buying in

00:26:14.700 quantity. If you buy oatmeal, oatmeal in individual serving packets, you're paying literally 30 times

00:26:22.440 the price of oatmeal bought in bulk. I think that's an important point you made there. Cause I think

00:26:27.740 there's a lot of suburban say suburban preppers like I want to get ready. So they buy bulk flour or

00:26:32.940 wheat or oatmeal. They've never cooked with it before and they expect, Oh, whenever something

00:26:38.280 happens, I'll figure it out, but probably not the case. Yeah. And of course, if you buy wheat,

00:26:45.380 which is the ideal way to, to, to store rather than flour, flour only has about a three or four

00:26:50.080 year shelf life. We can store for decades or even centuries. You've got to practice using those foods

00:26:57.300 and you've got to integrate them into your family's diet so that you have, there's a learning curve

00:27:03.260 with every individual food in terms of preparation. And there's also a acclimation curve. You, when you

00:27:13.620 integrate these into your menu, into your, into your daily diet, your individual digestive system has to

00:27:22.860 be used to it. And if people were to switch to, you know, all wild game, for example, they'd run into

00:27:29.900 a lot of trouble in a hurry digestively. It could be disastrous. Yeah. I think that's an important

00:27:35.960 point throughout all this stuff. Like I think a lot of people, when they think prepping, they just think

00:27:39.900 buying the gear, buying the stuff. But if you don't know how to use it, it's useless.

00:27:44.820 It's not about stuff. It's not about gear. It's about skills and what's between your ears.

00:27:53.680 A lot of these folks who get involved with prepping think that they, they can buy a off the

00:28:01.040 shelf, you know, one year or two year food supply, set it in their garage and they're prepared.

00:28:07.300 They're dreaming. Again, there's the learning curve that goes with each of these things.

00:28:12.180 When you buy tools, you need to have the skills to go with them. That takes experience. It takes

00:28:18.580 time. It takes trial and error. Whenever you buy a tool, you need to have a full set of manuals to

00:28:24.660 go with it and spare parts and lubricants. I mean, it's a whole list of things that you have to,

00:28:32.540 to, to think about. And again, it's about skills, not gadgets.

00:28:39.120 So after food, so we got water, food, what would be the next thing someone needs to think about that

00:28:44.940 they're probably not thinking about? Probably self-defense. Or if it's, if things fall apart

00:28:48.920 in the middle of winter, I guess fuel would be closer to the top of your list. But self-defense

00:28:53.100 is very important, especially for people living in a urban or suburban environment, because you can

00:28:59.500 have the best preps in the world. But if someone comes barging in your front door and takes it all

00:29:05.000 away from you, you've got nothing. So you've got to think in terms of self-defense. And again,

00:29:11.600 there's a learning curve there. I've often been quoted as saying, owning a gun doesn't make anyone

00:29:16.460 a shooter any more than owning a surfboard makes someone a surfer.

00:29:20.320 Right. So again, we're going back to that thing. It's not, you can't just buy a gun and expect,

00:29:23.420 okay, I'm going to be ready. You got to, you got to practice with it.

00:29:26.100 Right. I would much rather own just one gun and have plenty of magazines, plenty of ammunition,

00:29:32.280 and most importantly, plenty of training than own a half a dozen guns and just a little bit of

00:29:38.680 ammunition. It's all about balance. And this, the training to go along with every item or tool that

00:29:46.800 you have or every vehicle you have is just as important as that item itself. So don't think in

00:29:55.180 terms of, you know, solving this problem with a checkbook or a credit card or a click of a mouse

00:30:02.140 on Amazon. Okay. It's not that simple. You've got to, to stock up, team up and train up. And the team

00:30:10.940 up part of it is the people you associate yourselves, yourself with. You've got to find trustworthy

00:30:17.220 friends who are like-minded, who you can really rely on when everything hits the fan. And you've got to

00:30:24.340 identify those folks now and start teaming up with them and training up with them now because you

00:30:31.120 don't want to have to be working the kinks out of the system after everything hits the fan. You want

00:30:35.980 to have a well-oiled machine in terms of your, your, your neighborhood. For example, you want to have

00:30:41.700 a neighborhood watch on steroids, but you got a plan for that. Now that means commonality of calibers.

00:30:48.540 It means training. It means having extra, you know, like field, field phones and, and, uh,

00:30:55.980 commo wire, for example. So that even if the grid is down and the telephones aren't working and the

00:31:00.280 cell phones aren't working, you can still pick up a field phone and talk to, you know, three or four

00:31:06.220 of your neighbors on a hot loop. And anyone who's listening to this, who doesn't have military

00:31:11.680 experience is probably thinks I'm talking Greek right now, but you've got to get up to speed on all

00:31:17.180 these technologies. Part of teamwork in defending a community when everything falls apart is going

00:31:25.740 to come down to communications, solar charging for, for batteries and night vision equipment. And

00:31:33.120 without night vision equipment, you're going to be at a huge disadvantage. I've often said that it's much

00:31:39.740 more important to own one gun with a detachable night vision scope than it is to own a half dozen

00:31:47.140 guns. I would much rather have one gun that I'm truly competent with and that is capable of defending

00:31:54.920 my family at night than having a dozen guns. Right. So night vision is definitely, it's a force

00:32:01.300 multiplier. Absolutely. Communications and night vision are your two key force multipliers in modern

00:32:09.360 combat. And if you can't shoot, move and communicate, you're ineffective. And part of

00:32:18.040 being able to shoot is having good night vision. And in terms of moving mobility, you want to be able

00:32:25.980 to cover pretty good distances in a short amount of time. And communication is crucial because if you

00:32:33.500 cannot coordinate security with your neighbors, everyone is going to be, you know, every man for

00:32:39.940 himself. And you've got to be able to watch each other's back. And communications is key. So I'm a big

00:32:48.880 believer in MERS brand, MERS band radios. MERS stands for multiple user radio system, M-U-R-S. That's a

00:32:57.620 fairly lightly used band. It's ideal for short range push to talk communications. It's fairly low

00:33:05.140 probability of intercept because most folks will be listening to CB, including the bad guys, but they

00:33:10.580 won't be listening to the MERS band most likely. And the other advantage of MERS is it's right next door

00:33:17.260 to the National Weather Service alert frequencies. So your same walkie-talkie can have one of its

00:33:23.740 frequencies set to the National Weather Service broadcast channel. And it's the same band that is

00:33:33.780 used by most infrared driveway alarm systems. The best well known is sold under the brand name Dakota

00:33:42.740 Alert. That uses the MERS band. So the same walkie-talkie that you have on your belt can have push to talk with

00:33:50.500 your neighbors. It could be tuned to the National Weather Service frequency, and you can normally

00:33:56.280 leave it on the frequency of your Dakota Alert driveway alarm. So if someone comes rolling in off

00:34:03.820 the county road onto your lane, you'll hear alert zone one, alert zone one. That'll at least give you

00:34:10.940 some time to react. So it's all there in one package. Again, that is MERS, M-U-R-S. 0.99

00:34:17.720 Can you buy this on Amazon or do you have to go somewhere special?

00:34:20.120 Sure. Yeah, you can buy Dakota Alerts, including Dakota Alert-compatible walkie-talkies on Amazon.

00:34:26.920 I've got a link on my website that folks can use to get to those Amazon products.

00:34:32.940 Cool. So you mentioned mobility, getting places. So what's the plan? I mean, we talked about if the

00:34:39.000 grid goes down, gasoline logistics is probably going down with it. So how do you stock up on fuel

00:34:45.860 in a safe way? Well, there are limits, of course. Of course, the safest way to store fuel would be

00:34:52.420 diesel because it has a fairly high flashpoint. Gasoline is problematic because it doesn't store

00:35:00.240 as well as diesel and there's more fire hazard if bullets start flying. So I'm a big believer in

00:35:06.000 diesel vehicles. If anyone listening to this thinks, oh, well, I'm going to stock my country cabin,

00:35:14.500 you need to have enough fuel on hand at all times to make that one trip out of Dodge.

00:35:22.720 And ideally, I look at vehicles like a crew cab, diesel, four-wheel drive pickup would be just

00:35:29.820 about ideal. And in the bed of that pickup, if your retreat is a long distance away, you should

00:35:37.080 probably have an 85-gallon fuel tank. They make a lot of them that are L-shaped and they're designed

00:35:43.100 to have a toolbox on top. And they kind of blend in. They don't look really apparent that you're

00:35:49.940 carrying a tremendous amount of fuel. But if you have a diesel pickup that has a 32-gallon tank of its

00:35:57.020 own and an 85-gallon reserve tank, you've got a tremendous amount of range. We're talking over

00:36:03.880 1,000 miles of range one way. I imagine medical supplies and training would probably be something

00:36:10.120 you want to think about too as well. Certainly. And that's something that's certainly not to be

00:36:14.600 overlooked. And every retreat group, if you're getting together a group of friends, you need to

00:36:21.180 at least find a nurse and preferably someone who has a medical degree and a background in emergency

00:36:28.900 medicine. That would be a key person to have on your team. But even without that, you should at

00:36:37.120 least take all the American Red Cross courses, the CPR class, the basic first aid class, the advanced

00:36:46.380 first aid class. And if you have the time, I would recommend you join your local volunteer fire

00:36:55.260 department and get training as an EMT. That would be fantastic. That's what my son did.

00:37:02.860 Yeah. And I imagine if you or someone in your family has special medical needs, I'm thinking

00:37:07.980 diabetes, dialysis, you need to think about that too.

00:37:12.620 Yeah. Unfortunately, if the grid goes down, folks are not going to have access to kidney dialysis. 0.88

00:37:18.160 But just think of the number of people who breathe every night with a CPAP machine. It's a huge

00:37:23.360 number of people who have COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorders. There's a huge number of

00:37:31.860 people with COPD or who have severe sleep apnea who depend on a CPAP machine. That's a constant

00:37:40.380 positive air pressure device. It's basically a mask you wear at night hooked up to a pump,

00:37:48.000 an air pump. If the grid goes down, most folks are going to be out of luck because they don't have

00:37:52.600 battery powered CPAP machines. So between kidney dialysis and other chronic medical conditions

00:38:03.340 like COPD, there's a huge number of people who are dependent on insulin for diabetes. There's a huge

00:38:12.400 number of people who are dependent on heart medications. If we have major disruption, we could

00:38:18.180 probably expect to see a 20% die off in our population, even if there was still food and water

00:38:28.220 distribution. And if there's no heating, there's no power, there's no water, there's no food distribution,

00:38:36.020 we could see a die off of as much as 70% of our population over just one winter. That's how system

00:38:44.460 dependent we are these days. The numbers will be staggering. The social interaction coming out of

00:38:53.200 all of that will be horrendous. I think you're going to want to be able to hunker down for not

00:38:58.880 just one year, but two years while waiting for a die off if we have a grid down collapse where the

00:39:03.900 grid doesn't come back up. And so, I mean, okay. I mean, thinking about that as well, I think you

00:39:09.340 talked about this. One of the things you can do to prepare now is like get in shape, get your health

00:39:15.380 right. Absolutely. Yeah. If people don't have a vigorous lifestyle now, they should. You know, just

00:39:23.800 before this interview, I was out hauling slash getting my firewood in for next year. Here where I live,

00:39:32.500 I'm out cutting firewood every summer. And we're talking five cords every summer, which I fell,

00:39:41.800 buck, haul, split, and stack every year. It's great exercise. And that's just, and meanwhile,

00:39:52.420 my wife is very busy with our gardens. We have two different gardens. You really need to have a

00:39:57.920 vigorous lifestyle. And don't think so much in terms of just sitting on a exercise bicycle or

00:40:05.880 running on a treadmill. Make it useful. Make it practical. Again, I love splitting wood,

00:40:13.940 but find exercises that will match your lifestyle after a collapse. Because if you just concentrate

00:40:23.720 on running, you're only going to have lower body strength. Or if you just concentrate on,

00:40:29.660 you know, one particular type of upper body exercise, you're not going to have the lower body

00:40:35.320 strength you need. And unless you are involved in vigorous work, digging post holes, splitting wood,

00:40:45.640 all that sort of thing, you're not going to have the back strength you need.

00:40:48.780 So if for anyone who's stuck in an urban environment, I actually recommend swimming,

00:40:54.640 ironically, more than any other, because it works your entire body, all your muscle groups.

00:41:01.900 And if you swim quickly aerobically, you're getting really good exercise. But physical condition is

00:41:08.500 crucial. A normal diet and normal body weight are crucial. And if you can't get serious about this,

00:41:17.620 you've got to ask yourself how serious you are about living and providing for your family.

00:41:23.480 Again, it all comes down to priorities. It all comes down to time. There's always a ratio of sweat

00:41:28.580 to dollars. If you're willing to sweat more, you can spend less. And you can do a lot of these things

00:41:34.560 yourself. You know, you can hire someone to build fences for you, but why not learn how to do it

00:41:39.420 yourself and get exercise doing it at the same time?

00:41:42.560 Right. So, I mean, I guess another mindset question is where we've talked about some of

00:41:46.080 this kind of bare bones, right? We've barely scratched the surface of this stuff. But as I

00:41:50.380 said earlier, I think for a lot of people, it can be overwhelming. So, I mean, I guess there's

00:41:54.720 set expectations. This is not something you can do in a month or even a year. It probably is

00:42:00.120 several years of investment, right?

00:42:02.160 Yeah. Folks, it's a multi-year plan to get up to speed. And it can take quite a while to find a group

00:42:08.540 of people that you can really trust and train with them. Again, there's learning curves with

00:42:13.780 all these things. And if you're establishing a rural retreat, it takes time to establish

00:42:19.860 fruit and net trees, for example. Those take years to grow. Or even just berry bushes take two or three

00:42:26.220 years to start really producing. So, there's a time component to all of this. And for anyone listening

00:42:32.620 to this, who feels behind the power curve, they have some catching up to do.

00:42:38.040 But yeah, get started, right? Don't let-

00:42:40.240 Yes. Don't just plan. This is not a pencil and paper exercise. This is not an armchair exercise.

00:42:47.620 This is a get up out of your armchair and do it exercise. So, if you feel serious about preparation,

00:42:55.620 I believe as a Christian, you should get down on your knees and pray and ask for God's

00:43:00.040 providence and guidance in this. And then once you feel firmly convicted to prepare,

00:43:07.240 forget the halfway measures. Dedicate a good part of your budget to preparedness. And if that means

00:43:13.960 skipping your planned vacation to Hawaii or selling your big screen television or selling your jet ski

00:43:21.380 or whatever it takes, get your finances in order and get prepared. Because no one else is going to do

00:43:27.460 it for you. And again, statistically, your chances of survival for you and your family will be much,

00:43:33.380 much greater. You know, I look at it from a, you know, a 19th century pioneer perspective.

00:43:39.940 My family came out west by covered wagon in 1852. And I grew up with that mindset that we provide for

00:43:50.040 ourselves. And that's what I tried to instill in my children. And for those of you folks listening to

00:43:57.800 this, I think that's the good, the good sound and historically proven approach. Use old technologies

00:44:07.500 where appropriate and high technology where appropriate, but old fashioned common sense at all

00:44:15.320 times.

00:44:15.760 Well, Jim, this has been an interesting conversation. Thank you so much for your time.

00:44:19.500 Thank you so much. And God bless you and all your listeners. Again, I encourage them to take full

00:44:23.680 advantage of all the archives at survivalblog.com. They're fully searchable and free.

00:44:29.900 My guest here is James Rawls. He's the owner of survivalblog.com. You can go there. Like he said,

00:44:34.420 on the podcast, he's got thousands of free articles on prepping over there from all sorts of things.

00:44:38.940 Also check out his book on amazon.com, how to survive the new world as we know it. Also check out our show

00:44:43.620 notes at aom.is slash Rawls. That's R-A-W-L-E-S. We're going to find links to resources. We're going to delve deeper

00:44:49.360 into this topic.

00:45:02.220 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

00:45:06.640 make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. As always,

00:45:10.740 thank you for your continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay

00:45:13.940 manly.

The Art of Manliness - July 17, 2018

#423： How to Survive a Grid-Down Disaster

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