#342 Garand Thumb - SERE Specialist on Surviving the Most Dangerous Places on Earth

27:49It's that nice sage green beret that we wear in the Air Force. You have the little SEER specialist tab. I don't know if you've ever talked to those guys before, but it is an incredible career field. And that training was wildly difficult. How does it start? You what? How does it start? Well, it starts with what they used to call triple S, which is SEER specialist selection, which is a three-week course. And like any other course, there's things that make certain courses more difficult in certain ways than others. Like TACP was harder physically in many ways. But what made SEER so difficult was just task overload.

28:29because the idea is that when a pilot ejects and he hits the ground or when a special operation member is separated from his unit and he has to evade, you have to be able to improvise a lot of things. So a lot of the first week of that triple S is about improvisation of different types of equipment. This sounds pretty simple. It's like, hey, why don't you go ahead and take a parachute and sew something up like a bag for yourself? It sounds easy, but there's parts per square inch and the amount that you have to sew ends up taking you about 15 or so hours. Now, at the same time, you're getting smoked every day, getting destroyed, going through all that horrible stuff.

29:04So you end up not being able to sleep during that very first week due to the task saturation that they hit you with. So it's a brutal first week that you have, or first two weeks that you have in that course. Then afterwards, you go out to the woods, you are graded on your ability to start fires in a certain amount of time to get them to certain head heights, to purify water, to improvise things, to build shelters, to very exacting specifications. Are you teaching them as you go? So are they teaching you, I guess, as you go? When you first start, you're just being taught. So the first three weeks is just you absorbing information and they want to see, are you able to retain this and then perform to that level?

29:46So whether with the time standard, with the pressure, when you're smoked, when you're exhausted. And another thing they add into sear as well is, um, food you don't eat. Um, so, uh, the large majority of the time you're going through this training, your calories are massively restricted. Um, and that is a, that is a huge thing that just sucks, man. I love food, you know, so it just sucks to not eat. I'm sure you've gone through it as well, but when you're working so hard, you know, during these, during selection in the woods and you're task saturated and you're trying to build shelters and chop down trees and start fires and evade.

30:25And you're running on like, you know, 250 calories a day. It's just, it's brutal. And it's meant to push, meant to push you mentally. Cause the idea is once you are a seer specialist and you're teaching people, you can speak to it directly. Like not only have I instructed you to teach in the woods, but I've also experienced it myself. I've experienced the dehydration. I've experienced the hunger. I've experienced those extreme conditions so that I can more accurately speak to those conditions to a possible evader in those various scenarios. So the kind of bottom line of it is once you finish those three weeks, like the toughness only gets much more intense because from there, when you get onto the actual SEER team, you've got about a solid six or seven months where you go to every biome that the world has to offer from the arctic to the temperate to the desert to the sand dunes to the open water to the to the beaches and you learn to survive there um on very little to nothing you also learn this sounds awesome dude honestly it's like the bear girls discovery channel show right here but real it literally was probably the coolest training you could ask for, man.

31:38You basically went to every climate. I've been to every climate, and I've learned to survive, and I've learned to survive with very little. Is it all in the U.S.? Most of it is. So you go to one school after you finish your serious specialist training up towards Isleson Air Force Base up in Alaska, and you head up to Dead Horse, Alaska, if you know that area, for your extreme winter survival. So it's like when we got down to like negative 60, negative 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And that was like... Sorry, how cold? Negative 60, negative 70. Holy shit. I think one day we got down to negative 80. Negative 80?

32:17Yeah. It was... You know, it was so cold. What do you do out there? I mean, how do you survive that? You keep walking. Because the thing about... I did a rewarming drill in Alaska. It wasn't that bad. Brutal. I mean, it feels like, you know... Was it painful? Yeah, it's painful. You get in and it's painful for like, I don't know, 30 seconds, and then you don't feel anything. It feels like razor blades are going on. Yeah, it's great. That's your body slowly shutting down. So the thing is, we couldn't have any fires, of course, right? Because the idea is you're possibly evading a military. So there's no fire.

32:54So the only way to keep warm is you just kind of slowly trudge around. Who the hell is running after you at negative 80? need to Russians or something. We got him. He's dead. Some crazy Russian. Probably just Eskimo up there, but no, what's, what's so cool about it is that in each of those biomes, we learn from a lot of the natives as well. You learn how they survive in these environments. So a lot of our like extreme Arctic training, you'll learn from, um, specific Eskimo examples of how they live so long in those environments. And you got to experience a lot of that stuff. Like the first couple, the first like week in that really cold environment, your face is just like, you're trying to keep it covered, but you're just, it's just so cold constantly.

33:32You're constantly getting chafed and way too dry and it's getting, you know, little frost nip and stuff. But then after a little bit, your body overproduces oil to coat your face and you start feeling fine. It's really bizarre how the body learns to adapt. And that's one of the really cool things about going through as a seer specialist was that ability to not just know, but experience. Like you've been able to experience those body changes in that thicker oil on your face, just in the case of the Arctic. What are you eating? Eating? We're not eating. We're in sear train, no food. You're in negative 80 degrees?

34:13You aren't eating? No, no, we are eating a little bit. So you're typically operating on between 500-ish calories or so a day. That's it? Dude, it's very, very little. When we went through. Dude, how do you keep, I'm being serious. How do you keep, you have to have, you have to eat to keep. I thought you had to eat to keep warm. Well, so you can also keep warm by just slowly trudging around like a prison. So that's what we kind of just did. We just, the best way to keep warm. Because you have the full layers on everything, of course. And so you just very slowly kind of perform your tasks. So building like small shelters, fighting trenches, et cetera.

34:52just keep moving very slowly because you don't want to move so much that you start sweating because once you sweat, that sweat's going to freeze and then you're going to get hypothermia and then you're going to die. So you just want to move just enough to keep your body warm, but not so much that you start, you know, getting too cold. And we learned that many other ways. We had to hike a couple of far mountains in that area as well. And you'll learn what to do to make you don't sweat because sweat will kill you out there 100%. You cannot let your body sweat. How long are you out there for? Let's see.

35:26I want to say we did about three or so weeks, I believe, of training out there. We did... What's the longest stint of time you're spending without being in a classroom environment? Like, you're out there surviving. I think the longest one we had was, I want to say it was like a month and a half. In negative 80 days? No, no, no. This is not the Arctic. This was - Just the Arctic. I want to go through all of them. Oh, man. Two weeks. Two weeks? I mean, a lot, because you go from tundra then to temperate Arctic, so you get into the forest, which is like a godsend, because you go from like negative 70 to like negative 40, and you're like, thank God, it's so much warmer now.

36:06Think about a 30-degree change. That's huge. Just want to say, you feel way warmer, so I'll take the forest any day. And this is without being in any structure, heating? Oh, yeah. No, no. I mean, you make your own structures. You have to learn how to survive in those environments. So you learn how to make igloos and stuff like no shit, made igloos, made fighting trenches, made snow caves where you poke the little hole in there to make sure you have the airflow. Every type of survival shelter that you can imagine that you can make in those environments, we were trained to make and we made them and we lived in them.

36:40And I'll take an igloo any day of the week. That thing was awesome. Wow. Yeah, the igloo was super awesome. But then you moved down to temperate, which was a godsend, because suddenly we had, like, little squirrels and, you know, winter hares running around. Wait a minute, hold on. What are you eating out there? The food you brought? So in the tundra, we were given one cold-weather emery, I believe, for the week, if I'm not mistaken. So you just kind of split that up between days. So it's like, okay, I'll have, like, a few rock-hard Skittles that I'll warm up in my mouth for, like, five minutes, It's like in the morning and then in the evening, I'll have like a bite of pound cake that I also have to warm up in my mouth for like five minutes.

37:18What are you drinking? So that's where it becomes tough because as you know, the Arctic is actually one of the driest places, is the driest place on earth because all water is frozen. So you have this small bag, a plastic bag that you keep inside all of your layers. And as you drink from it, you add snow to it. Or if you can find ice, God bless you, you get the ice in there. Of course, clean snow and ice, et cetera. And then as that's against your body, that warms it and then melts it. And then you just keep a constant supply of that going because any water outside of your body is going to freeze.

37:53Everything freezes solid. My boots froze solid. Even my muckalucks, like boots made for cold weather froze solid. your pee will freeze to your penis on the way out when you're peeing. It's crazy cold out there. So anything that needs to be defrosted, you have to use a little bit of your body heat to do it. It's a brutal environment. Sheesh. So what is the... I mean, once you kind of get a lot of things down, I've never done negative 80. Oh. But, you know, I've operated, trained in a bunch of different environments. And there's always things that, you know, once you learn it, it's like, okay, whatever.

38:33Got it. Yeah. And then there's things it's just, it's always a pain in the ass. What's the biggest hang up? You know, once you've kind of got it, what's the one thing? Maybe there's more than one thing. When it comes to survival or survival in the Arctic. In the Arctic. It's the water, man. Water. It's such a pain because you're burning so much liquid because it's so cold. Your body is working so hard. and you're working so hard and the wind is constantly just evaporating that moisture off of you. And so it's just brutal. So you got to drink a lot of water, but your little bags that are large enough to hold enough water, but they got to be small enough that, you know, they're not sucking your body heat.

39:11Because if you have a bunch of waters right up against your layers, you're going to freeze to death. So it's small enough to not really sap your body heat. And because of that, like every time you take a drink, you got to go search for snow and stuff it in there. So it's just like this, it's just so annoying. It's like this constant, oh, cool. Now I got to open up my layers and stuff snow in there and make sure I don't find like dirty snow or snow my buddy's pissed in and stuff. And it's just like that constant, like trying to keep that water source topped off because you dehydrate in the Arctic.

39:42I mean, you're, you're getting medevac, dude. That's, that's the end of that. Um, you're going to start getting frostbite, frostnip, especially with reduced circulation in your fingertips and your toes. Like that's quick. So you have to keep yourself hydrated, and it was just such a pain to keep ourselves hydrated the entire time. It just sucked, man. Damn. So what is the, I mean, what is it like an FT, for the two weeks straight out in the bush, what is a, is it like an FTX? Is it a movement, like we've got to move from this point to this point, and you've got two weeks to do it? Great question.

40:16Or how's the structure? So in the Arctic, it was primarily static in nature. So you started on the tundra, which is a bear. We're talking, I'll send you some photos to show people, but it's this bear, just barren rock and snow as far as the eye can see. Dead Horse is a brutal place out there. So we do do movements because you need to learn how hard it is to measure distance. Measuring distance in the desert and measuring distance in the Arctic are very difficult because there's not like a whole lot of placeholders to see that you can use to judge that size and that distance. So you might see a peak, you know, uh, in the snow and you're like, oh man, that can be more than 500 yards.

40:57So that was one of the questions we were right by this little peak. And they're like, how far do you think that is? We're like, no, it can't be more than 200 yards. Like cool. Walk it. It was like three miles. So, so, and that was horrible to do because we're already deficit on calories, et cetera. So, you know, maybe it was less, who knows? I'm sure my guys hop in there like it wasn't that bad it felt that bad but then you go to hike up this and you're like this is way longer than i thought it would be um and way more steep than i thought it would be it's just so hard because of that just sheet of white and half the time you know conditions are white out too it's so hard and we were there in january so we're talking like the coldest months that alaska has to offer on top of that uh brutal man just absolutely brutal and then um after doing those different types of movements in the tundra, um, we were bussed, um, well, not bussed.

41:47We took some of the military vehicles down to the, uh, temporary where we had some trees. And I'll tell you, that was a godsend, man, because, um, suddenly we had tree cover, the temperature raised and we had food. So like we were starving. So they're like, you guys can set snares. We were so excited. So we set snares, caught a rabbit. Um, I didn't get to the rabbit and for about like 10 minutes, That rabbit was frozen solid, just like completely upright when we found it. So there's not like a good way to thought at that point. So we actually had to take the rabbit just completely upright, take a knife and a stick and just beat that stick all the way through the rabbit.

42:23It was like an MRI of like a rabbit because it was just all the organs. And yeah, and then you eat every part of that you absolutely can. you know, you, you, cause we were able to make some fires and cook some of that rabbit out there. But like every animal dude that we caught out there, if you didn't get to that thing within the first second, we didn't, cause we were so task saturated. Um, that animal was freezing solid and you were taking a knife and you were beating a knife through that animal. That was just, I think we had one squirrel that frozen, like the thriller position. We kept that as a mascot for like a couple of days before we ate it.

42:59I mean, we were, we were just not having a good time out there, dude. And in fact, um, it's, it's funny in the temperate is where I, I got some really bad frost nipped, uh, so to, to the point where even today I can't feel any of my toes. Um, like it, it comes at you fast, man. Like I was wearing the correct footwear. We had the full Mickey mouse boots. You remember those there, uh, they're like these giant white boots and they inflate on the bottom. They create that huge, like air layer between you and the ground. Because if you conduct off that ground, you're just going to, your foot's going to freeze.

43:31I've never even seen those. I'm sure people have worn them. They're, they're cool. I mean, you, you need to have the air layer between you and the ground because that ground is so cold. But even with all that, man, I still managed to get frosted up on my toes and had to take my, my boots all the way off and massage with like warm water and warm them up and stuff. It was a, it was a process, dude. And I felt like an idiot getting, you know, as a survival specialist, getting frosted up out there, but it was valuable. I say that because I got to speak to it, the experience of it when I was teaching all those, you know, potentially at risk individuals.

44:05So it was cool, man. It was probably one of the most rewarding career fields that I've, I mean, I've only been in two career fields in the military, but it was an incredibly rewarding career field because I got to get this really cool experiential knowledge. And then I got to give that directly to people to ensure their survival in bad situations. None of my guys ever got into them, but my buddies had people who had to eject. I'm sure you're aware of some of the more recent events that happened with aviators who had to eject. And this training is so, so vital to ensure that our airmen, that our military members come home and that they return with Honor Man.

44:43So, man, just a hell of a career field. So much fun. Yeah, that sounds fascinating. Oh, no, it was. So were you always snaring little animals, rabbits? We snared everything. Squirrels, stuff like that? Any big game? Oh, yeah. Like if there's an opportunity, did they allow you to go, yeah, take the elk, take the deer, wherever it is? Oh, 100%. So pretty much so long as it was primitive in means and we created it, we were able to hunt whatever we wanted was the rule that we had from the government for that. So we did actually make our own rope and stuff with vines and bark and whatever we could get our hands on.

45:20We actually snared a deer with it, and that guy fought like hell. But it worked really well. You snared a deer? Yeah, around his neck. Holy shit. Did you guys have firearms? No. No, he strangled to death. Wow. Yeah. It was brutal, but it's a necessary part of training because you typically don't take large game when it comes to evasion, right? Because they make a lot of noise. They're going to lead a huge scene. You're going to attract predators, et cetera. But when it comes to survival, that's a viable thing to do. That's a lot of survival calories right there. And that's a lot of useful material.

45:59There's a hide, tons of meat, bone marrow, et cetera, fat to keep you powered. So after we snared it, we used that entire deer. We used every single part, and you're trained to use every single part of an animal. And that was probably one of the coolest things. Like, for example, I'm sure you know this, but, like, there is enough tannin in every mammal's brain to tannihide. You actually don't need any other materials. I did not know that. You take the brain, mush it up, use that material, and once you get that hide off and you string up their hide, you scrape it down to as thin as you can get it.

46:32You can use that tannin from that brain, smear it on there, and it'll actually cure the hide. That's all you need. Wait, how do you do that? You just mix up the brain or something? Yeah, yeah. Take that brain, just mush it up into a little paste, like a little mortar and, what is it, pestle? And then just take that brain, and once you have that hide nice and cleaned up, where you have all that fascia off of it, you can smear that in thin layers across it, and there's enough tannin in every pample's brain, except for humans. I don't know why they told us that.

47:04But to tann a hide. And so we actually, we did that. We've tanned hides with tannins from the brain. We've tanned hides with salt, with multiple different things. But the point is, is that you got really good using every part. So every part of that deer was used from the hide to the antlers, to the bone marrow, to everything to make tools, to feed students. So although, you know, it was kind of a rough death for that guy. Maybe not in terms of nature. you know, being eaten alive. But every single portion of that animal was used. And that's what was, I think was really cool about the seer career field and how we approached it was you learn that kind of more ancient techniques of, it's not just a meat you're after.

47:46There is, this animal is the key to a civilization. Essentially, you have everything you need to start making civilization going again, and we're going to teach you how to do it. It was almost like the skills we were teaching was like the knowledge a 12 year old would have in like 1810. That's what I used to tell people. I'm like, I'm getting you to like the knowledge level of like a 12 year old in 1810. A 12 year old could skin a squirrel, could use every piece. He could start a fire out in the woods. That was no problem to him. Now in today's, you know, kind of more modern society, we've lost those essential skills to survive in the woods.

48:22So we're pretty much just getting people to that very basic level. How were you guys starting fires? Every method you can possibly think of. In fact, we used to have like competitions to find like the weirdest ways to start fire. So, of course, you know, a metal match, right? Just like your standard strike. We use flint. We use rocks. We use magnifying glasses, wood bows, friction method, everything you can think of. We've done it all. I would say the hardest one is a friction. You're just getting that piece of wood, just bracing it against your belt, and you're just rubbing that thing as fast as you can with some, you know, heart scrapings from the inside.

48:59of a tree trying to get that thing lit and just dripping sweat it's not the best way to start a fire but it is a way but yeah we've we've done every single method have you done a like a bow fire before i could never get it to work it's all about the wood selection just soft wood and hard wood if you have like two soft woods or two hardwoods it's no good soft and hard that's all it's only soft one hard yeah one soft one hard that's all you got to remember interesting but it's uh it's just like you learn all these different methods of survival that have kind of been lost. And the coolest part about all this, all this knowledge is not like we're keeping it to ourselves.

49:37It's all there in the Air Force 64-4. It's like the Seer Bible. I don't know if you've ever read it. I'd highly recommend having a copy. It is every bit of knowledge that we learn, just like old survival wisdom mixed with new stuff, mixed with military stuff in this just survival Bible. And you can read it all. You can buy it on Amazon. So I highly recommend it for everybody. I'm going to go order it right now. I'll get one for you. You're going to get that with learning songs together. Right on. What about the desert? Oh, man. The desert. Okay. This is what made the desert rough. In true seer fashion, it couldn't just be we go out to the sand dunes and we survive, right?

50:22They had to make it rough. So we're on the bus ride there. Those bus rides felt like they were so long because you're driving out there. And so much is riding on things when you're going out. Because we lose, your class size shrinks every single phase you go through. More and more people drop out. So when you get to desert, you're down to like 15, 20 dudes at that point. It's just a tiny class. So you're feeling that pressure because you have to perform every time you get there. So we're on that bus ride out there. We did ours in Vantage, Washington, which has a bunch of sand dunes out there. Also, I was new to this beach right by.

50:54There's a story about that. But so we get out there. We get off the bus. And it's hot already. It's midsummer. And the first thing they told us, they're like, upend your canteens. So we dump out all of our water. And we start a 48-hour dehydration exercise in the sand dunes. No water for 48 hours to experience it and see what it was like. And it sucked, man. because you hear, how long can you survive without water? Is it a week? About three days, three days, three days. So three days of that water, um, three weeks of that food, 10 minutes of that oxygen. But, um, when it comes to the water, I always heard three days.

51:40And then, you know, I always figured like after three days, you just kind of keel over and, you know, hit the sand and stop moving. Oh no, not at all. It is a miserable, miserable decline without water in the desert because, um, multiple people have talked about, there's a really good, um, story about this. There's a B-24 crew who got lost over the Sahara desert after a bombing mission. I'm sure you've heard about this. They ended up having to ditch in, um, out over the Sahara and they thought they were close to civilization. Um, when they ditched, they had very little water, um, but they had a journal.

52:14So, uh, all of them perished, but we able to have their journal to document kind of their demise. And we learned a lot about desert survival from it, but they talked about not being their eyes getting very irritated as they lost so much moisture after the first day that they were unable to blink the sand out of their, out of their eyes. Yeah. So that starts scratching your cornea. And I started to experience that. I remember the first day without water, I started feeling that grittiness in my eyes. I'm like, my God, this sucks. But what really got me was after the first day, you'd flex your arm up, And it would just stick because the lack of sodium, everything's so messed up in your body.

52:52So it would just completely cramp up in this position. So you'd have to like have a buddy or you'd have to kind of like force it back down. Your fingers would cramp up. So after the first day, I realized, oh, you're almost useless. So yes, three days without water. But what was cool is I got to teach people. I'm like, yeah, but after 24 hours in the desert without water, you're looking to be a casualty at that point. because we lost a lot of people in terms of having to be pulled medically due to just, you know, water-related injuries. Not water-related, dehydration-related injuries. We're sleeping because we made these tents that are in the heat of the day.

53:32You'd have to sleep and get out of the heat because that's brutal out there. And we just had like, remember the, you know, the emergency canopy for ejectors? It's like a C9 canopy. It's like the white, green, and red panels. I'm sure you've seen them before. So we had those, and we'd use those to cut those up, make desert garb and stuff, and we'd made our shelters out of those. So I was under one of those shelters, and we had wind just whipping across the sand dunes. And I was asleep, trying to sleep, trying to, because it was like hour 26 without water and just brutal, right? And I remember waking up, and the sand had blown over at the top of my hand.

54:08So my hand was completely under the sand when I woke up. And I was like, whoa, that's kind of weird. You know, and I went back to sleep after I lifted it out and I woke up again and it was up to my arm. I was like, oh, and then I woke up again after I fell asleep and it was in my nostril. I was like choking on sand. I'm like, well, this is how people die. Just getting buried in sand. It was a brutal thing to learn and to feel, but it was valuable. When I got to the end of that exercise, we finally got water again. I thought it was going to taste so good. It just tasted like warm jerry can plastic water.

54:39It was like the most like microplastics. Yeah, just microplastics straight into my system. And I remember the medics were like, hey, Jones, you went to med school. They're like, what was that like experiencing dehydration? I'm like, well, when I went to medical school, I learned about gonorrhea, but I didn't contract gonorrhea to understand it. But I was a little spicy at the end there. But the point being is that experiencing it was interesting and was valuable to me as a survival instructor to say that I've been there. I've experienced that. I know what it's like. And here is no shit the reality, which is after 24 hours, you're useless.

55:17So you're one of your first priorities in that environment is you need to get water. Otherwise, you will be a casualty. So that was probably one of the one of the really interesting things I think that I learned in survival was that because I'd always heard the three day rule. I never even considered that, you know, after 24 hours, I'd be completely useless. Is it three days in the desert or just three days in general? Three days in general. Now, in reality, you're probably going to perish a little bit sooner than 72 hours in the desert without water. Probably closer to 48, depending on what you're doing.

55:51But probably what contributed to that as well. But you get to teach that and explain how brutal that is. But you also learn really cool things that were fun because we got to take those C9 parachutes. And it's like, hey, you're a downed aviator. How do you make desert garbs? Made like desert garb out of it based off of the Bedouins and how they made their garb. So you learn just so many cool things and you're able to really experience it and do it out there. It was just incredible. An incredible career field. A lot of people go to the pet store, grab whatever bag has the most buzzwords, and then they never look back.

56:30A lot of bags look good on the front, but the real story is always on the ingredient panel. That's one reason I like Sundays. Sundays for Dogs is human-grade dog food made with real ingredients, not fillers and mystery additives. Their recipe contains 80 % plus all natural meat, roughly twice the meat content of some leading frozen brands, plus ingredients like kale, ginger, and blueberries. No fillers, no synthetic additives, no chemicals. Just simple, complete nutrition. And Sundays is gently air-dried instead of exposed to high heat, so it doesn't look or smell like regular dog food. It looks more like high-quality jerky.

57:16It was created by Dr. Tori Waxman to meet her standards as both a veterinarian and a dog parent. I like that because I want Stanley eating something I actually feel good about giving him. The best part is it's easy. No fridge, no freezer, no prep, no mess. Just scoop and serve. Stanley loves it and mealtime is simple. Make the switch to Sundays. Go right now to Sundays for dogs dot com slash SRS 50 and get 50 % off your first order. Or you can use code SRS 50 at checkout. That's 50 % off your first order. It's Sundays for dogs dot com slash SRS 50 Sundays for dogs dot com slash SRS 50 or use code SRS 50 at checkout.

58:10So how do you get water out there? This is a good question. Okay, so there's a couple ways. First off, when you land, you're probably going to have the most amount of pee you ever have in your bladder. Don't drink your piss. Please don't drink your piss. Do not drink your pee. But what you're going to do is you can dig out a pit. You can take a piece of canopy or like a trash bag. And what you're going to do is you're going to put a can under the trash bag. You're going to stake out that trash bag on all the corners. Try to seal as much as you can. And before you seal it all the way, what you're going to do is you're going to have everybody with you pee into that pit.

58:42Not into the cup, but into the pit. Then what's happening is you have trapped all of that pee underneath that tarp right there. You're going to put a rock in the center. So the rock is dipping down towards that cup. The heat from the desert is going to evaporate the water off that urine, purifying it. And then that water is going to condensate on the trash bag. Then it's going to go towards that rock and drip into the cup, purified this. All right. So what is the... So all you guys pissed into a hole. Yeah. Yeah. We all pissed into a hole and then we drank each other's piss, basically. That's some...

59:21I didn't like to think about that. There's multiple other methods. What was the first thing you put down? Like a cup in the middle. So you dig out that hole, you put the cup in the middle, then you cover it and you weigh down the sides with rocks. you're essentially just creating um an area that's sealed for that pee under the tarp and that we're gonna do this as a family honestly okay no no i'm telling you what was weird because obviously they brought the cup out we need some quality family time kids i think i'm gonna piss in this cup i made my kids do a lot of this to be clear um no it's crazy because then they brought out the cup and they're like all right drink up boys and you're so thirsty you know you're like okay.

1:00:05It tasted like dirt mostly. So it wasn't too bad. Um, you also have a transpiration bag. So like if you had like a, like sage or some type of desert plant out there, you can actually just take a bag, um, cover it over part of that branch and that branch will just naturally emit moisture and you trap the moisture in that bag. That transpiration bag is awesome. So having like little plastic bags works really well. Um, it tastes exactly like sage, like the strongest sage you've ever tasted in your life. You put sage in a bag and it just... You just cover it. You don't even have to cut it off. You can cut it off, but you actually just put it on a light plant and just kind of seal it off as best you can.

1:00:44And that transpiration bag works wonderfully. You get water from that. How do you get the water out of the bag? It can't be much. No, there's a lot of time. You want to do a few of them. But again, any bit of water is going to help. Another thing you can do, too, is you find where those riverbends are, right? Dry riverbeds, dry creeks and stuff. on the outside bend where the water is going to be slowest, you want to, or where that's most in shadow, you're going to dig down. You're going to hit water. Eventually it's going to be a little bit of digging beyond that. Of course, finding any type of water sources that could be trapped under rocks, any type of springs, oasis, et cetera, are going to be big.

1:01:21But outside of that, you're looking at purifying your, your piss. You're looking at, um, transpiration bags and and you're looking at digging down, but more especially, you're looking at getting out of the desert environment because, quite frankly, people just can't live there for extended periods of time without some good support. So the most viable option legitimately is drinking your own piss because you're going to expend so much water trying to dig a hole. You might not even hit it. You might be in the wrong spot. You're not thinking clearly. If you drink pee, there's only one problem with drinking pee.

1:01:56What's that? The problem with drinking pee is going to be when you drink it, because imagine you've been evading for a day and then you choose to drink your urine. Think about how have you ever like worked out? I'm sure you've worked out really hard and you piss like straight, like just like Camelot juice. Yeah, that's a great example. Drinking that is not good for your body. There's too many wastes. There's too much waste that's being excreted by your kidneys. then by re-drinking that you're going to put some extreme pressure on your kidneys and you're actually going to make things accelerate at that point so we do not drink urine technically if you were at a really full bladder and get some really you know piss clear pee you technically could but generally what we say is don't because it's pee for a reason because your body's excreting it So don't drink your piss Distill it like with the tarp Distill it with the tarp Just don't drink it straight So that is how me and Bear Grylls I guess differ a little bit Maybe that's just a difference between You know the UK and the US You know piss drinking versus not piss drinking They do do that Too much tea or something like that They do do that But no the desert was cool And the desert was more like an FTX After we spent some time In the Sand Dudes We then worked on desert navigation, desert evasion skills, learned from some really cool guys.

1:03:25We also went to a tracking school up in Montana. I'm sure some people are familiar with it, and those guys are wizards at teaching tracking and countertracking. Like, just absolutely incredible. What's the name of it, can you say? I couldn't tell you off the top of my head. I have their patch, like, sitting on my wall. I'll have to message you after this and give it to you. But, no, they're awesome. They were so good. I mean, you're just spending days just analyzing footprints and how those footfalls are looking. And from learning tracking, you learn counter tracking, which is so valuable when you're talking about evasion and stuff.

1:04:01Besides there, of course, we have the jungle. What's your favorite? Like environment? Yeah. Oh, I'd have to say coastal. That was awesome. It was just oysters and fish and crab. I just ate so much seafood that I, to this day, don't like seafood much anymore. Right on. So, no, the coastal is awesome. There's such, you see why peoples choose to live there historically, you know, cradles of civilization, because there's such an overabundance of food. Even in today's, you know, heavily farmed environments, it was so easy just to find oysters and all that kind of stuff. It was just, it was simple. What about the jungle?

1:04:44You like that? No. Jungle was hell. And the reason for that was the bugs. It was just like we didn't have any mosquito repellent. We didn't have any bug nets. We just, you had to live naturally. So to get, you just can't sleep on the jungle floor because there's so many bugs. At night, the jungle floor comes alive, and you do not want that crawling on you. You're going to get like a centipede on you or something. God knows what. and it's snake, God knows what, jungle's horrible, right? So you have to get yourself off the floor of the jungle. So to do that, you have to make a shelter that's capable of holding yourself.

1:05:24So it requires a lot more man hours. It requires making rope if you don't have rope, which is time consuming of and of itself. And then on top of that, it's constantly, constantly just drizzling at minimum. So you're constantly wet. So it's like Chinese torture. It's like every minute of every day you're out there, it's like you just feel a little drip of water hit you. At some point, somewhere in your body, there's a drip of water. You hear that dripping sound. And it was like maddening. I'm sure people love the tropics somewhere. But living in a survival situation out there was taxing because of like the critters that you had to deal with.

1:06:02Now, there was an overabundance of food, which was cool. But it just wasn't like the tastiest food. Have you ever eaten like a banana slug? Mm-hmm. It's, you know what a banana slug is? Mm-hmm. It's like a big old slug's got little tiger stripes on it. And we had to eat them, like, as a part of training, of course, because that makes sense. So, like, I have that combined. Not only am I trying to get away from the bugs, but then, like, some of the only sustenance we were eating that was safe were banana slugs, which every, when you bite into them, they excrete, like, this stuff that hardens your saliva in your mouth.

1:06:38So you're, you know, like, just tastes like mucus. So it's just like you're eating banana slugs. You got bugs crawling everywhere. You're getting like water dripped on you. You try to hike up a mountain. You just, your foot gives out in the slick, you know, terrain because everything's so wet. It was, and then false floors, right? You have false floors everywhere. So you're climbing on a mountain. All of a sudden you're off a cliff on vines and you don't even realize it until like your foot pokes through. So you start having to carry a pole to like double check to make sure there's a forest floor below you because there's so much vegetation.

1:07:08So that one sucked. I'll take the art. I'll take the jungle before the Arctic. Never mind. I like, I mean, I know. What is the deal in that? I like jungle warfare. It's good. Oh, yeah. That was out in the, was it Guam? Was that where they did that? Well, we did some in Panama. Oh. Yeah. Is that where you guys did it, Guam? Mm-mm. We did ours up in Forks, Washington, where they filmed Twilight. Okay. Yeah. We filmed Twilight. So it was a logging area. right there. So, you know, the government had like control of that area, but logging could be done. But I guess like the thing out there is to do some illegal logging to make some extra money or something.

1:07:51So it's like, God, 2.30 AM in the morning or something like that. I hear like the shittiest truck you can imagine driving up the nearest road to us, right? So we're like, all right, what is this? So we're about like a couple hundred meters into the tree line and truck stops. And it's like, it turns on all those lights. And we hear this guy. He's like, Earl, I see some people back there in the trees. He's like, oh, god, they got us. And they just like speed off. So that was Forks, Washington. That was a weird place, man. We ran into a cop and we paid him to bring us a pizza, because we hadn't eaten for like two weeks.

1:08:29And cop was caught by a cadre on the way up.

1:08:35Damn. No, no. You know, I imagine with some mosquito repellent, like a little bit of DEET and like a mosquito net, probably be really nice. But primitive survival was sucked. And I mean, the only place you can really signal like for recovery is at rivers. So we spent a lot of time learning fording rivers, how to navigate rivers, how to float rivers, how to make like expedient rafts and that type of stuff. So it was some interesting training, but yeah, it was unforgiving. This sounds awesome. Like I said. It sounds horrible and awesome. It's like both. It's like the thing. You hate it when you're in the middle of it, and then you get home, and you're like, that was badass.

1:09:15That's what they told us. They're like, people pay for this. I'm like, I don't think people pay to starve, but okay. But no, it was legitimately really fun. People pay to drink their own pee? Yeah, like people trade. That's an easy business measure. People pay to almost die of dehydration. But no, open ocean was awful because you're just out in the open ocean on a little life raft. You did that too. Yes. So you do every environment. That one sucked because the Coast Guard gets their little jab at you first. So we're out in just south of Astoria. Coast Guard unit out there is awesome. There's also a PGA unit out there.

1:09:50Awesome, guys. So the Coast Guard cutter gets to take you out, right? And it's horrible weather out there. So what's the Coast Guard cutter going to do? They got about 24 airmen in their bottom hold. They're going to do donuts. They're going to have a good time. Oh, dude, we were so seasick before we even hit that life raft. It was brutal. So I don't have my sea legs, and that was, I don't know. Are you good on a boat? Smaller ones. I did not. Smaller ones I'm good on. Have you ever been on those little 12-man life rafts, the little inflatable? No, but I mean, I've spent whatever, however much time in a Zodiac.

1:10:27OK. Yeah, yeah. Bobbin. Doing the thing. But it's like the big, it's the slow. Oh, yeah. That gets me sometimes. That's it. You know what I mean? But yeah, that would suck to be in a grapter. It was interesting. The worst phase was what's called fam phase. We called it famine phase, but it's familiarization phase. It's about three weeks out in the forest, and it's just constant smoking, just constant work, work, work, zero sleep, all that type of stuff. And you're just, it's a very tough phase where we lose most of the guys who go through it. Um, and that was brutal because you have so little food during that time.

1:11:08Like I'm talking like minuscule amounts that I lost, I think 30 pounds when I got back. So I weighed like 190 going out. I weighed like 150 or 160 coming, uh, when I got back from that three-week phase like that was not a not a good time because of that that sucked yeah i'll bet yeah that's no that's no good good please so are you going out the where do you vacation do you go oh i most guys like us like to get out the middle of the woods and that and be left alone where do you i do the exact same thing i got into the woods oh yeah i i'll be honest it ruined me on camping for like a couple years.

1:11:50But I think once I got out of the military, I kind of came to love it a little bit more again. I relearned my love for camping again when I realized I wasn't starving and I didn't have to make time fires and stuff. And instead, I could make my kids do it. And then it became pretty fun. No, I love it. So actually, most weekends, I spend away out in the mountains or things like that and just enjoying nature. Nice. Yeah. Have you applied for any of these survival shows? No. So the problem with these survival shows is that they want like all your rights. Gotcha. Like your image and your likeness and stuff.

1:12:26And I run Grand Thumb. And so usually it's just like a mismatch. And so no, I don't. Plus, it's a lot of time. Like these survival shows last like a month or two. Like have you seen some of them? Like how long they go? Yeah, yeah. That's a long time away from kids, man. I love being with my kids now that I'm out of the military. So I don't want to have to be away if I don't have to. And I can easily just suffer for a few days for a survival video on my channel and be home again or have my kids camping out nearby for two months on a show. So have you applied for any survival shows? No, no. I don't want to.

1:13:00I've got no interest in doing that. No. It just looks cool. I like watching it. I know. I actually want to meet Bear Grylls one of these days, you know, because I haven't met him yet. Me too. We've tried to get him on a couple times. Just too busy. He's quite a Christian, you know. He's unabashed in his faith, which I really appreciate for any public figure when they're completely okay with posting that. Have you seen him post before? He's very open about his faith in Christ. I love it, dude. I think it's cool too. No, that's very cool. So what are some of the other sides of Sear? I mean, what breaks people?

1:13:38Oh, I mean, honestly. Lessons from Vietnam, stuff like this. Oh, man. So Vietnam was like the turning point when it came to Sear. That's when like Sear really came into its own. Because if you remember during the Korean War, you'd have Americans who were captured and they would completely capitulate. and they would be on camera denouncing the U.S. completely what looked like mind controlled. You remember those videos of like U.S. service members just like defecting, like they'd get captured and they'd straight defect to North Korea. And it made no sense. And so the U.S. ended up putting into place what we have today, which is the resistance to interrogation, which was so, so, it worked so well during the Vietnam War.

1:14:25the Vietnamese were particularly brutal in their treatment of prisoners of war. The stories of the men who went through these sessions, it's unfathomable the types of torture that they put these men through. John McCain, for example, went through just the most horrific stuff you can imagine. But due to the training, the resistance training they had, they were able to not give up any information to put their fellow service members at harm. And thus, at the end of their captivity, they're able to, as we say, return with honor, knowing that they had kept that information safe. And so the Vietnam War was like the first real test of is our resistance training doing well?

1:15:08And yes, it did very well. and we've had a i say we the u.s air force and the military as a whole has had a very successful program since then um making it better and that that's um and when you speak of breaking stuff like that's going to be a large part of it is um that that's a particularly difficult part of training to become a seer specialist it's a particularly difficult part of training when going through SEER level C. It's not something that's talked about much because it's such sensitive information, but it's probably one of the most valuable things that many service members will do because it really does a lot for our military.

1:15:53I can't speak highly enough of it, and that's about all we can really say about it. Can you talk about what makes somebody crack under pressure maybe a little bit? in terms of resistance.

1:16:09Let me think about this for a moment.

1:16:15Yes. Here's what I'll say about it. A trained interrogator is going to bait you in many ways. He's going to know you. The interrogator's going to know you, just straight up. He's going to know a lot of details about your life and who you are. Don't engage in that way. Remember your training. Say that right on right on. We had the opportunity to learn from some of the Department of Defenses and five eyes best interrogators in hearing how they handle things and going through interrogation courses ourselves. And that was very eye-opening to understand a lot of the nuance behind human psychology and the nuance behind how people answer questions.

1:17:06It's a very, very interesting science. It really piqued my interest in psychology going through that training. very cool course. Very interesting to learn from some of those men who've done it their entire lives and are legends in that career field to learn how they did it and the way they approached it. Such an opportunity to learn that stuff. I bet that's fascinating. We had, um... Oh, man, he's gonna kill me. We had a guy that was operating with CIA that went down over Columbia. Oh, wow. Do you know about this guy? Oh, actually, please, please. Oh, man, it was a fascinating interview. I mean, he was held captive for I don't know how many years.

1:17:50Oh, I think I do know this case, then. I believe I know what you're talking about, but please continue. I love this. Yeah, I mean, it's just the stuff that, like, kept him going. You know what I mean? Like carving a little chessboard and reading the Bible. Like, everybody had, like, their little thing that just kind of kept him going. You know what I mean? to fixate on, to cut out all the horrific shit that's going on around you? Oh, 100%. You know, we have a name for that. We call it like the... It's kind of a generic term in survival, but we say the will to live. Have you heard that before? So it's like there's this X factor in any type of survival scenario, in any type of evasion, resistance, escape scenario, that you can't quite put your finger on.

1:18:37Because there's been a lot of people who have been in almost the exact same survival scenario, one will perish and one won't. Why does that occur? And what we've taught and what we found is it's that will to survive. What drives a person to survive an event is so personal. And that's what's been a really interesting part of learning survival, of interviewing survivors and people who've been through these harrowing events is what they focused on. Like you talked about carving a little chest or reading the Bible. For some of these people, it was their faith in Christ, right? They thought about it constantly.

1:19:14Like they prayed, they recited the Bible. For others, it was, I have to get back to my kids. Like my kids cannot live without me. Like they need to have a father or a mother. Like I have to get through this. For some people, it was just like, I want to prove everybody wrong. Like I got into this situation. I will get myself out. I will not be another statistic. But that little X factor in survival, the will to survive is something that we teach as one of the most important things when it comes to survival. And if I was teaching you as a survival student, I would tell you, I don't know what motivates you personally to live, to want to live, but I want you to take that, get that little kernel in your head for whenever you find yourself in the worst possible scenario, because it will get you out.

1:19:57Whether it be your faith in Christ, your country, your family, your kids, whatever it may be, you latch onto that and you use that because it will get you out. And that's what's craziest about survival to me, is despite skill, it's always that will to survive. Mm-hmm. Have you found, or is the program, have they found a commonality that is most common for people that do have the will to survive? Is it family? What is it? If they found one. The most common two ones that have been encountered are faith and family. you know, with family typically coming first. Well, it's changed over time, obviously.

1:20:38It used to be faith primarily. Now it's family faith. But those two are kind of the two defining factors that motivate people to come back. And then for a third that I definitely want to mention is country. You know, people believe in the United States. They believe in our mission and what we and what we do, that they will do everything in their power to repatriate themselves back to the United States to honor their country. Because I'm sure, like, when you chose to serve, it was a big deal to you, you know? I know it was a big deal to me. I was very serious about it when I raised my right arm.

1:21:14And so a lot of people have used that. But those three things definitely encompass a lot of the main talking points that we go over when we talk about will to survive. I mean, you got guys like Poon Lim, A guy who lived on a life raft for an infathomable amount of time simply because of that faith in his family that he had to get back to his family. Like people have been through so much. It's wild to think the types of punishment that people have put themselves through. Pilots in Vietnam crawling on their arms as their legs were infected and rotting off just to get back home because they used that will to survive so intensely.

1:21:55Like, you feel in awe of the breadth of how far the human will and the human body can be pushed. Wow. That's interesting stuff. It's crazy to think about what people have been through. Like, have you... I know we talked about it a bit before. Have you read up on, like, John McCain and what he went through? No, I haven't. Like, we're talking... I've heard a little bit, you know what I mean? I mean, as you know, he sustained permanent disabilities physically from the injuries he sustained during those torture sessions. We're talking the worst pain and the worst things you can possibly imagine. Things you hear about in movies, fingernails and bones.

1:22:40Just. It's insane how cruel a human being can be to another human being when you're on two sides of a border against each other, you know, and seeing what those men did to him and his courage to not break. Whatever you might think of the man politically, the man served honorably as a US service member and gave up zero information. And not just him, plenty of others. And many of them didn't come home. Many of them perished without giving information due to the intensity of torture. So we're talking astounding individuals. Man. Yeah, dude. Reading these is gonna be harrowing. for, you know, people who choose to delve into it.

1:23:24I don't want to take the words out of those people's mouths, but I would definitely highly encourage, like, a deep read into those men who were captured during the Vietnam War and who went through those POW camps. I bet you guys got some incredible briefs that nobody gets to hear doing that job. Bo Bergdahl, for one. That was a weird one. Really? Oh, yeah. You remember him. Can you go into it? Sorry, say it again? Can you go into it? Yeah. That was a weird one, man. That was a weird one. I know what we can say about that one. But that was a weird event. Yeah. Well, what are five items? No firearms.

1:24:10Oh, okay. What are five items that you would take in to the bush with you? That's easy. Five items. I only got two items for one survival event, and that was a knife and one match. That's it? Yep. Knife and one match, and it was start civilization, Mike. And you will make a fire, and you'll keep a fire going for a week with this one match. So that means that once that fire starts, that fire does not go out, and you learn methods to bank fires and stuff. So number one is knife. A good fixed blade knife will get you a lot of places that will allow you to survive in almost every environment. Like knives that we use going through training were like the SE4 and the SE5.

1:24:53The SE5 is actually co-developed with another seer guy, Yoakum, if he's out there. Maybe I shouldn't say his name. No, Yoakum's good. He's an awesome guy. So like we just, we'd use a hell of those knives. You want a good knife that's thick through the tang all the way through the handle, like to make sure it can just take, you know, you beating it through wood. So number one, knife. If I have a knife, I can get through most stuff. dude if you got a metal match good like a fariseum rod life's on easy mode at that point so a knife and a fariseum rod we're looking to start restart civilization at that point if i get a third item give me an axe man with an axe oh yeah with an axe you can fell trees and we can start building a community like at this at this point we're freaking good um i don't really need anything else beyond that.

1:25:40I guess if I could, I'd take a compass. It's always nice to know where you're going. And then I guess there's a fifth item. Wow. You're giving me a lot right now.

1:25:52Fifth item. What would I need? A sharpening stone. I'd take a sharpening puck. A sharpie? A sharpening puck. Oh, a sharpening. Yeah, just a wet stone so I could sharpen my tools a little bit easier rather than using like a sandstone or something. Get a better edge by having like a professionally made puck. But with those five items, you can restart civilization. We can go from nomadic to the Bronze Age pretty quick. Right on, man. Yeah. Well, here's a sixth, Borea. Oh, I'm ready.

1:26:25What are these? Tell me about these. Vigilance Elite gummy bears. So, you know. Can I try one right now? Yeah, have at it, man. This is all on camera. Did you know how hard it is to get monetized when you're in the firearms industry on YouTube? So that's how those came about. These are good as hell. Yeah, man. Oh, they're super good. Right on. Some good coconut oil. Let's go. Let's take a break here real quick. Let's do it, brother.

1:26:53Fall is here. Football is back. And that means people are going to end up in your kitchen, whether you planned for it or not. burgers before kickoff, wings before the game, breakfast before a full day of football, or just trying to feed everybody hanging around the house. And when you're cooking like that, bad pans make everything harder. And that's why I use Hexclad. Hexclad gives you the searing power of stainless steel with the convenience of nonstick in one pan. You get great heat control, easy food release, and cleanup that does not turn into an all-night project. And you don't have to baby these pans.

1:27:34They're metal, utensil-safe, dishwasher-safe, oven-safe up to 900 degrees, and built with stay-cool stainless steel handles. If you're ready for a full upgrade, Hexclad's 12-piece set gives you the pans, saucepans, stock pot, and lids you need for hosting family dinners, and better meals during the week. And, if you just want the everyday essentials, the 6-piece set is a great place to start. Over 1 million customers, more than 50 ,000 5-star reviews, and every Hexclad product comes with a lifetime warranty. Don't go into football season with cookware that makes game day meals harder than they need to be.

1:28:15Upgrade your kitchen with Hexclad and make cooking, hosting, and cleanup easier all season long. For a limited time only, our listeners get 10 % off your order with our exclusive link. Just head to hexclad.com slash SRS. Support our show and check them out at hexclad.com forward slash SRS. Make sure to let them know we sent you.

1:28:46airport hotel lobby coffee shop you join the free wi-fi without thinking because everybody else does understand what you just did you put your traffic on a network that you don't own that somebody else configured with people on it you can't see there's a term for that uncontrolled environment. I've worked in them. You don't go in without cover. Glacier's VPN encrypts everything leaving your phone the moment you switch it on. Your traffic, your location, sealed device to server. On their network, it's on. Back on yours, it's off. That's not a setting, that's discipline. I'm a co-founder of this company.

1:29:37I didn't put my name on somebody else's product i helped build the one that i needed glacier download it on the app store and remember privacy isn't paranoia it's protection

1:29:57all right mike so we spent a lot of time on uh seer that was awesome oh it was a good time we Talked all about training. I mean, it was so much fun, man. So then you get into, you become a TACP. Yep, I went E to O. So I was at Angel Thunder, if you're familiar with that exercise that they do out in New Mexico, Arizona area. It's like a big personnel recovery thing. And at the time, TACP had just fired up its officer program. And so they were building it up. And one of the tech, the tech officer there was like, man, you should really try out. Like we need, we need good guys from the special warfare community to, to come over and give it a shot and give it a shot.

1:30:43Put it in my packet, went through phase one, went through phase two at Washington DC and Eustis. That was brutal. And then went to the schoolhouse and well, sorry, before the schoolhouse went to officer training for the air force, Edo mustanged it and went and went through team earned that second beret. It was a good time. Did you like it? Yeah. It was, you know. Can you describe what a TACP is for the audience? Sure, sure. So TACP is a tactical air control party. And it's always a party, first off. So the main moniker is advise, assist, control. And so the idea is whoever we're working with, Army, Marines, Navy, whoever, we're going to advise you on your options of air power, right?

1:31:29What can the Air Force do for you? then we're going to assist you in implementing those resources into your mission planning. I'm sure you've worked with JTAX, for example. And then finally, we control. So we also are JTAX and we will control those aircraft and put those effects on target, whether it be a type three control, like through a talk or whether it be on the ground, boots on the ground with attached with the team, you know, doing all the cool guy stuff. So it's a very broad field. You have guys working to talk and then you got uh you got guys in the field attached with units so it's a it's a very very um kinetic uh facing career field um which was very appealing to me always blowing shit up i mean i would burn into these guys everywhere i was i was always like this has to be like the coolest job you're just there's it's just like one of you and you're attached to the coolest groups you know what i mean he's worked with cansoft they got an american tac p yeah go to dev group they got a tac p go to delta they got a tac p go all over the place and you don't it's just one it's just one of you it's like so and i would talk to him all the time like so you don't really like you're just kind of on your own program over here like like yeah i'm like so you don't really have anybody to report into yeah yeah how long are you here like a couple years and then where do you go i don't know i think i might go to the sas like this is what you do you just bounce around and you really have it it's the weirdest so air force special warfare as a whole is just weird man because uh when you talk tac p and ccts and pjs pjs have their own units of course and we all do but i mean we shred out we we go out into the wider military community and we're just one or two guys in like a random unit so you know you'll just show up to an army unit they're like yeah this is our air force JTAC.

1:33:19And they're like, what do you do? And they're like, stop talking to the JTAC. I had that. I showed up to a ghost country over at a JBL and those guys two one. What's up guys. Um, and, uh, I show up and he was like, like, Hey, this is our air force JTAC. And this he's like a private, he's like, what is a JTAC? He goes, you don't rate to talk to the JTAC shut up. No, it's, it's a great career field. Um, there is nothing like controlling an aircraft and putting ammunition down. Like that is a feeling right there. And that is cool, man. Um, and the guys we, I had in my unit that I worked with were incredible.

1:33:57Um, just wonderful operators, uh, just great guys, just excellent JTACs. And that's really what we, uh, what we pride ourselves on is not just being good at advising and assisting, but being very proficient at JTACing with weapon hearing and in how we make sure that we deconflict, you know, what is a very, very fluid, very moving battle space that can be difficult to keep track of where your targets are versus where your funlies. As you know, it gets mixed up quick and the JTAC's job is to make sure that those friendlies are good and that those effects go where they need to go. And we definitely, as a career field, pride ourselves on being very good at that.

1:34:38Can you explain the difference between a TACP and a CCT guy? That's a great question. So combat controllers, you'd put like a tier two, tier one primarily, right? They're trained to an extremely high level. Their main job is airfield seizure, right? But on top of that, they also become JTAGs. Now, things have changed a little bit since the global war on Terra has changed, but you have guys, the CCTs are typically attached with those soft units right off the bat. Attack P primarily is attached with conventional units and special operations units as required. So like in my career field, I spent most of my time attached with 2-1 over Striker Brigade.

1:35:17And then spent the other time attached with 1 Special Forces Group with one of the dive teams who were super weird. Just kidding. They were super cool. Have you ever worked with a dive team? I bet I'm a SEAL. Get out. You guys are weird on your own. But no, I mean, Army dive teams are just weird, man. I've not worked with them. They're weird. They're cool guys. But so a combat controller has a slightly different, doesn't have a slightly different, they have a different main job, which is not just in JTACing, but they also do ATC, air traffic control. So once they establish that airfield, they can begin to bring in that air power onto the ground, bring in supplies, et cetera.

1:35:54So they can be that mobile ATC. In addition, they often get a JTAC cert as well. Pure badasses. First there, they mean it, man. Those guys rock. Tons of like just incredible CCTs throughout history. So that's CCT and then TACP primarily conventional. You can also, and then special warfare, excuse me, special operations. And then you can also assess within TACP to become special warfare specific. Those guys are primarily attached with like second Rangers or they go over to the 2-4 if you're familiar with that unit. So then they do all that good stuff over there, which is where you saw the TACPs.

1:36:29Right on. Yeah, it's an awesome job. What's your favorite aircraft to work with? Oh, man. I mean, A-10, man. Those pilots are just so cool, dude. They're so cool. And on top of that, not only are they good at putting effects on the ground, but they're also Sandy qualified. So if there is a downed aircraft, they're qualified to take on as an on-scene commander and help direct that air power. So not only are they like a pilot, good at, you know, bringing in ground effects, good at rescue, coordinating rescue, but they're also quite good themselves at directing casts as well from the sky. Like they are truly a very multifaceted pilot.

1:37:13I've always been impressed by those people. and there have been some I think so many pilots come to mind you hear about that girl who had to do that belly down landing after her A-10 got damaged, actually totter and sear but I mean these A-10 pilots are just a different breed man and there's nothing like that 30mm coming in like on that gun run just the sound of that thing as it rips through the open air like what a cool aircraft literally a gun and then we put a plane on it and that's it I mean, the newer aircraft are cool. You know, F-22, F-35s are awesome. F-15s probably, notionally speaking, nowadays...

1:37:52Not notionally. F-15 probably just nowadays is better for the amount of payload it can carry. But, I mean, you talk cast, dude. You know, close air support, you're talking the A-10. That thing's just the king of it. You just can't beat that thing. Nice. What's your favorite aircraft? Probably the A-10. You can't say the A-10. I retook that one. Maybe the Apache. That's a really good one. Apaches are weird because they're like army. They're not like aviation. They kind of treat them like a tank, you know? So they kind of do their own thing. You can try to call in like an abbreviated, like, you know, call for air support.

1:38:33We'll see. I mean, Spectre's always good. You know, gunship is always good. Do they still use those anymore? A little different now. Yeah, I would think. They've upgraded quite a bit, and they have much different munitions, and they're delivering them the classic, you know, tank rounds plus 30 mil plus Gatling. Like, it's a lot different from what you see nowadays. Much more precision-guided munitions to put effects directly where they need to be, kind of limiting that collateral. What do you think about, I mean, I'm not sure, when were you in? Did you see kind of the phase between where it went from, you know, human to human, I guess not human, like a gunship and then it just moves over to the Predator and the drones and kind of lose that camaraderie.

1:39:22That always kind of bothered me. It's like you go meet the pilots before the operation and then it's like, hey, I see you're a real person. Yeah. You know, you bond a little bit, you build some camaraderie, you see some of the same guys. And then it goes to drones, you know, and it's like, do these people even give a shit about me? Yeah, they're out there a little hutch out in Creech Air Force Base. Yeah, I mean, it's a real concern. It's like, there's no human attachment. And it's probably getting worse nowadays, too. I can't even imagine. So I was a TACP from 20, so I went through, I transferred, transitioned from SEER to TACP from 2018 to 2019.

1:40:04So 22 is when I got med retired out. So I didn't really see the transition so much. When I was in, Predators, MQ-9s were already quite big. In fact, we did like a huge fan where we actually went out and met the drone pilots. So I could put a face to the name on that stuff. And those guys have a brutal, brutal schedule. Have you ever talked to those guys before? Well, yeah. Actually, I talked to this guy, Dale Stark, a friend of mine. And he went from A-10 to drone. Dude. Back to the A-10. Yeah. Because that schedule is brutal, man. But yeah, so I mean, when we were in, we worked with pretty much every aircraft from AC-130 to Apache to aircraft and everything.

1:40:45So I didn't really see an over-dependence or an over-reliance on drones in the controls that we did. Of course, I wasn't deployed as a TAC-P. So never, never, I can't speak to operationally. But as far as like our training bulls were concerned and what we'd work with when working with different special operations forces or when working conventional, it was a pretty even smattering of all the different types of airframes that you'd see. You'd pretty much get everything from Navy F-18s to MQ-9 here or there to an A-10 to F-15, et cetera, et cetera, to foreign aircraft when they would come in. So didn't so much see that overly, you know, non-human aspect where you're not seeing a pilot in the sky anymore, where everything's kind of being relayed.

1:41:30So I saw, you know, mostly talk to pilots. Gotcha. Gotcha. You know, the funny thing is, you know, JTAC, you see the course to become a JTAC. They can't always get the correct aircraft for like on short notice for the training stuff. So when I was doing like one of my controls at JTEC QC, he checked in as Viper, which is an F-16. I'm like, well, that's interesting. I do not hear an F-16. This guy must be really high, you know? He's like, nah, I'm angels like 12 right now. I'm like, yeah, 12 ,000 feet, where are you? So he's like, yeah, nominate your target. So I nominate the target. I was out at Razorback Ridge, which is out by Kansas City, I want to say.

1:42:10And so slowly I heard a little lawnmower engine. And a little Cessna came flying in and he had a M240 mounted under the wing with a string. He just reached out and pulled and fired the M240 and then pulled that Cessna up. And so after we talked to the guy, I'm like, do you just have an M240 on your Cessna? He's like, yeah. I'm like, he's like, well, I got my SOT. And we're like, what does the FAA say? He goes, we look to be good. He's just a civilian pilot. Just like, I'll never forget that fake F-16 coming in. But he made hints. He was good. He crushed it, dude. He was quite good with that, Cessna.

1:42:49You know, when the world ends, that Cessna is still going to be flying. There's going to be a little M240, and that guy is trained. Hell yeah, man. I'm going to look out for that guy. Nice, nice, nice. But no, so we saw, you know, everything. We went to figure out that including Cessna's. So how did you start the YouTube channel then? Oh, my gosh. And you know, that's a, that's a funny one, man. So at the time I was a seer of seer guy, I was coming to the end of my career in seer. I was getting ready to transfer, um, over to attack P and I was a huge, I'm a huge gear nut. I always have been. And we got issued like a JPC for a jump program or something like that.

1:43:31And everyone's like trying to, you know, mess around with it, trying to figure it out. I'm like, you guys suck. Like, this is how you set it up. And then another guy asked me how to set it up. So I set his up instead of like three JPCs. I'm like, all right we're done i'm gonna just make a video on it and i'll just post it so i made a video on set a plate carrier and i got like a million views i was like that's how it started i was like oh i'll do a video on packing a pack and everyone my unit was like you're a fucking idiot everyone knows how to pack a pack so i was like hey you know light stuff at the bottom have your stuff up top and someone's like no you put heavy stuff on the bottom in the comments and all my buddies were like okay maybe people don't know how to pack a pack so it kind of began the journey of um you What I thought was common knowledge in the military, I realized was not very common knowledge outside when it came to tactical gear.

1:44:14So that's kind of how it started, was explaining some of those basics. So you legitimately started because you got tired of setting people's gear up for them. Yeah, literally. I didn't want to set up another JPC. That's hilarious. I know. And somehow it got a bunch of views. Dude, I swear. It's always an accident. It was an accident. It's all timing. I guess I just came in at a time when there wasn't really a whole lot else going on in that sphere and worked out and then made a few gun reviews and those took off. And suddenly I was getting a lot of ammunition on top of everything. And I'm like, well, this is really cool.

1:44:48Like I'm shooting for free now. Like, this is great. Like who doesn't love shooting? And, uh, I'm like, I guess I'll discontinue it. And I, now I have way too much ammo. So like life's really good. So I've actually never heard somebody say that before. Yeah, actually I don't have enough ammo. My ammo sponsors out there, I don't have enough. But no, I mean, the whole, you know, the whole thing, I was like, wouldn't it be cool if I got so successful? Like one day I just could just shoot not to worry about it. And that happened quick. And I was like, wow, like there's something to be done here. So, you know, did it going through kind of the tail end of my military career.

1:45:25Didn't really, it went somewhere during my military career, but I was much more reserved while I was in. Once I got out is when I kind of went obviously full time on it and started really investing the time and stuff in it. is when it kind of evolved into what it is today with kind of the multifaceted, ballistics, survival, everything that you kind of see nowadays. It's awesome. I mean, it's awesome. The content's amazing. I'm just a severely autistic man with a basement and with a camera setup. Like, it's very dangerous. That's cool. Thank you. I mean, so what year did you start it? 2017. So technically, I'd had the channel, but it didn't have a channel name.

1:46:05Like, I posted it. We started at the same time. Did we? I think so. 2017, 2018 is when I really kind of got into it. And that's when I started posting. And I haven't missed a week since, because I post every Sunday. So since about 2018, it's been one video per week since then to now, 2026. Kind of tiring when you think of it that way. But every video is so fun. You know, you get to be so creative and explore all these really interesting topics. I get to learn. Uh, so for me, it's very like, uh, it's very stimulating for my mind to be able to, to do this new every week. Cause I get to tackle a new topic, even stuff that we know, like going back, um, and really delving into it is still very interesting.

1:46:49Like every time I do a survival video, I get to delve back into my, uh, you know, uh, my survival manual and read back through all my old notes. And it, you kind of rekindle those memories and rekindle old knowledge that you might So it's been really good in terms of, I would say, making me a more rounded survival guy overall. I would say I'm better at this point than I was when I was in, which is cool. Yeah. That's my favorite. I mean, you do a killer job with the gun reviews. Thank you, man. We just... My favorite stuff is your survival stuff. I think I watched one. It looked like you were in a basement.

1:47:24I think you were talking about nuclear fallout or something. The one that we just did? Yeah. Yeah, that was a really fun one. You know, it's funny, based on what's happening in the world at the time is kind of what people have an appetite for. You know, when things are less serious, people don't want serious stuff. But things have kind of been serious for a couple years now in terms of how people view how the country is going. So we found that our survival content, which previously didn't get as many views, is doing very well right now because it's like people don't worry about it until they see that things aren't going so well.

1:48:05You know, when things are good, they're, you know, playing video games, watching football, life's good. But when you start watching, you know, those gas prices climb and I'm starting to struggle. Are things not going well? Wait, what? You know, and they're watching those grocery prices of eggs climb and climb and climb. they're suddenly like, well, maybe I should get some skills. And so we've really been focusing on that. That was an interesting one because, you know, nuclear war is probably one of the most, you know, terrifying things you can imagine. And I don't know about you, but, you know, our training for nuclear war was like, hey, try to get underground.

1:48:39Otherwise, like you're fried. And it wasn't a whole lot more than that, but there's a lot more out there that can be explained. So I really wanted to delve into that in that video. And it was very interesting to learn more about it after speaking to different experts and reading up on it and being able to try the things out. It was a very fun video to do, for sure. It was a very fun video. And then I learned a new conspiracy theory from it as well. Oh, really? I love what's this. So people commented immediately. Quite a few, by the way. I posted it on my Twitter today. Or X, whatever. The nuclear weapons aren't real.

1:49:19Interesting. So I am a man of science. I have my degree. So I have offered for them to put forth any evidence because I believe that the evidence seems to point to the nuclear weapons are very real due to the spikes in radioactive isotopes during testing phases. But I digress. But so there's a huge. So I had a huge amount of people hop into my to my YouTube channel and be like, you're an idiot. Nukes aren't real. This is a psyop. How much do the government pay you? Dude, I wish the government paid me to do this stuff because they'd probably pay a lot more. But no, so that was a fun one, including the conspiracy theory because I didn't know about that one.

1:49:57So that brought me to like an hour of reading and I concluded they were wrong. But I could be wrong. I could be wrong. You know, Sean, I don't know. How much are they paying you? Yeah, so nuclear weapons aren't real. Right, right. It would be a nice world, wouldn't it? Yeah, it sure would be. But no, man, these survival videos have kind of taken on a life of their own. But it's been fun because I remember the first big one that we did. I think it was just like a very basic evasion video. I got an email about a month later about a guy who had gotten lost in the desert due to a bad flash flood. And he got separated.

1:50:41Rescue crews couldn't get to him for a few days. and he directly told me that due to the video and the things he had learned, he'd been able to survive, to purify water and to make it back home to his family. And, uh, that was like, that was pretty, pretty eyeopening for me because I hadn't, I knew that the survival stuff is important. I've taught it my entire life, but hearing that, that personal testimony that that came back home to his daughter, and that his daughters get to see him every day now, that he gets to be a father in their lives still, because of watching just a YouTube video. Like, that felt good, man.

1:51:21That felt really good. And that definitely was, like, a nice galvanizing push to be like, let's do a lot more survival. That was a good feeling. Is that your favorite thing to do? The survival stuff? Yeah, yeah, it for sure is. I mean, I love shooting. They're pretty close. I love guns, man. I love guns, but survival is a huge passion. And I like survival because

1:51:46it's fun. You know, survival is something that's appealing to everybody. So I like that my whole goal with my YouTube channel is to make our population more prepared. The United States has always been founded on the citizen soldier, the citizen militia, the man who is ready, the man who's ready to protect his family, the man who's ready to protect his country. And I want that everyone to know that that is what is expected of you being a citizen of the United States, that you should always be ready. So I love that our survival videos are kind of like this little, little kind of entry into that world.

1:52:23A lot of people will click on a survival video that won't click on a gun video, but oftentimes after watching survival, they're like, holy shit, I need a gun now. So it's been a really, it's been really fun for me to see that passion of survival then transfer into general preparedness of a society. And I think that's been a really nice kind of causation from us kind of focusing on those videos more. I just want to see a more prepared population, man. That's what matters most to me. It's what made America an incredible country and continues to make America a credible country is our men and women being ready at all times.

1:52:59Mormons are huge into this, aren't they? Not to make a generalized statement. No, no, no, no. No, actually Mormons are very specific. They're actually given very specific guidance from the church, the Mormon church on what to do. And one of those things is two years of food storage that can survive for two years. My family a hundred percent did it. So growing up, we always had food storage and we'd cycle in and out our food storage. We'd have days where we'd cook using our food storage. The Mormons are serious and prepared. The Mormons are crazy prepared. There's when everything goes down, go ahead to the Salt Lake Valley.

1:53:33You're What is it? They believe in the end times. And when we say end times, they don't believe that, you know, the whole world is going to, you know, we're light on fire and it's over. They believe it's going to come to a slow crashing halt as natural disasters, wars, rumors of wars begin to break down the fabric of society before the second coming of Christ. So to them, they need to ensure that they have the community in place, the food in place to survive any famines that might come forth during that time to ensure that they're ready, to be there during that second coming of Christ, whenever that may come.

1:54:08They don't postulate to know other than they say the end times are near or they're here. That could be now, tomorrow, 100 years, 200 years. But their whole point is the world's becoming more crazy, which I would agree with. Seems to be more destabilized than ever. And so they believe very much so in preparing to ensure that the family unit can survive should anything happen. I'm all for it, dude. Mormons are awesome. Me too. Me too. So we'll talk more about that later. Oh, you're good. You're good. And then you have reviewed every gun. Just about. At this point. I mean, like every gun. Every. Pretty much every military rifle.

1:54:56Every military service rifle on earth, plus experimental systems. Yep. Plus we were very lucky. Hundreds of thousands of rounds. I mean, so what's your favorites? What do you... Dude, the M4 is a powerhouse. There's a reason. You like the M4 on everything. I love the M4, man. And it's simple. Very few operating pieces. Very accurate. Very lightweight. Easy to power through. Tons of different debris, et cetera. A very adaptable platform. It's probably the deadliest rifle that's ever been fielded in the history of mankind The M4 is an incredible, incredible weapon system And people fail to recognize how incredible it is Because we're living in it right now We're living in the age of the M4 The M4A encompassed the Mark 18, URGI, etc But what we have, what the M4A1 brought to us in terms of upgrade to the AR-15 Is what I consider the M4, which is pretty much every AR-15 nowadays it is the best rifle that's currently fielded.

1:56:03There is nothing that comes close in terms of everything, man. It is a superbly, as the kids would say, min-maxed weapon at this point. They have just done a superb job. So I know it sounds plain, but in 100 years, people will look back on the M4 and recognize it for the incredible weapon it was, if not already. And who am I to to deny that. It'd be like, it'd be like living in World War II and being like, ah, the Grand's okay. Oh, the Grand was incredible, you know? So definitely the M4 in terms of like, just being such a good weapon system. But I mean, we all know it and we all love it. Mm-hmm.

1:56:41Now there are plenty of other really good weapons. Let's hear it. What are your favorites? Oh. You know, it wasn't particularly good, but it's a Russian experimental weapons, AN-94. Have you heard of it before? No. So the AN-94 is a very, very interesting assault rifle. So how it works is it has a mechanism by which it can do hyperfire. So it can fire two rounds at a burst rate of approximately 1 ,800 to 1 ,900 RPMs. So that essentially sounds like one shot when it's fired because it's so quick. It does this by means of a very ingenious pulley system. It literally pulleys within the action. When you look at the AN-94 head-on, the magazine is actually cockset, offset, about a solid 15 degrees, and that's to allow the offset bolt of the pulleys to clear the round as it feeds the second one.

1:57:39So when it fires, it captures that initial recoil energy and makes the pulleys retract, load that second round before the recoil hits the shoulder, fires that second round, then the entire mechanism, including barrel, cycled back together. It is the most bizarre service weapon you've ever looked at. And it was supposed to be adopted by Russia. It wasn't ultimately, but it was such an interesting mechanism. It wasn't particularly effective. What we found was that the hyperfire at about a hundred yards tended to spread out and tended to vertically string. If you recall, the United States military really tried to focus on that hyperfire, that burst fire with the OICW, if you remember those trials, where they tried to have the burst fire would do a two or a one, or excuse me, a two or a three, or it would fire them so fast that you wouldn't feel that recoil impulse.

1:58:35So it's not just Russia that tried it, but it's Russia that attempted to adopt it. So you don't see AN-94s in very large numbers, but they've certainly been captured in like Ukraine and still used. It's just, it's so odd that I love it. It was such a departure from what you typically saw from service rifles is what made it so interesting to me. It was such a treat to be able to shoot it. There's one in civilian hands in the country, and there's two in government hands. Just a bizarre, interesting weapon. Yeah. And what's really cool is when you look at all these service rifles from other countries, you can see what they're focused on and what they're not focused on, uh, based on their environment, their people, their culture, service rifles are a great window into a culture themselves.

1:59:24And that's, what's really interesting. Like the SIG, the SIG 550, right? We're talking six hour in Switzerland over there. Um, it's a, it's a sealed action with rubber gaskets on it to ensure that you're not, not going to get a lot of that mud and snow and et cetera from the very brutal environments that they live in up there in the action. It was designed specifically for that. It's of course based off the AK with the long stroke gas piston system. It's cool to see those differences in designs going from country to country. But if we kind of come to nowadays, you see that the UK now is likely moving to the AR-15.

2:00:05Most countries tend to move to the AR-15 because of how good it was. But prior to these adoptions, you saw a lot of countries running a lot of interesting service rifles. France with the FAMAS. Have you ever gotten a chance to hold one of those guns? So weird, dude. The most violent injection ever. Weird 25-round magazines, but a three-round burst, so it doesn't quite work out. So many odd weapons. and then of course you have Australia with the EF90 you know basically a Steyr AUG that's modified to the Australian Defense Forces standards there's just being able to shoot these guns and to spend time on them especially like the experimental ones like the AN94 or with the NGSW we got to spend time with most of those weapon systems to be able to see how the different ones were.

2:00:58Although it was a spear that was adopted, the other ones were very forward-thinking and very interesting. So I think that's probably the coolest part of doing Grantham is I've been able to not just understand these different weapons, but I've been able to get that hands-on time that, here we go, Seer again, that experiential training, the experience with these weapons for not just 5, 10 or a mag, but, you know, with the N94, it's 800 rounds, which is a psychotic amount on that very rare weapon system. So that's what's been so fun is I can directly compare all those guns for my reviews, and that makes it fun.

2:01:39You know, I've been able to see a very broad spectrum of firearms, and I think as a reviewer, that makes me... You know, I'm better able to get a grasp on a weapon and why it was developed and why or why not it might be a good fit. And that's been a really fun part of this journey is shooting guns I never thought I'd get my hands on. I mean, some of the stuff you get over there, I'm like, damn. Have you messed with any of the NGSW entries beyond the spear? What is it? The next generation weapon system. So we adopted the SIGMCX SIGMCX SIGMCX. But there were other companies that came forth, like General Dynamics, Textron, et cetera, that had rifles that they submitted that ended up not being picked up.

2:02:29But if you ever get the chance, getting time on those weapons systems, you're going to realize how good some of those rifles were. It's true Velocity who owns the rights to it now. They make like that polymer case ammunition if you've seen it before. No. So they make a polymer case ammunition? Polymer case ammunition. Does it work? Very, very well. So my first thing I thought of, because we actually had these guys talk to us when I was still in the military. I remember in 2017 meeting the rep, and they're working on getting that polymer ammunition to the military. And I'm like, what about the heat sink?

2:03:04Because brass works as a heat sink for weapons. You know, every time it fires, it ejects that brass. That brass is hot, so it's drawing that heat away from the weapon. and that was my big concern with polymer, he assured me it wasn't a problem. It wasn't until I tried out their entry from True Velocity with their polymer case ammunition that I became pretty impressed with the capability of the ammunition. The thing that really surprises you is how lightweight a 25-round mag of.308 is. Like, you... Wow. Yeah, like, think about your kit, like, carrying an SR-25 or an M110. Mm-hmm. You know, six mags up front, like, you're...

2:03:40That thing's dipping. But this polymer case ammunition is, I want to say it's like a 25 or so percent weight. It's massive. And so when you pick up this mag, it doesn't even feel like it doesn't feel like a.308 should be in there. But that weapon was so, so cool. It was like, you could change from open bolt to closed bolt for different types of rolls. It had a terrible trigger, but that's because they kind of stopped development on it. But it was such an interesting weapon. It uses that. is that everyone calls it a potato suppressor. I can't remember the name of the company. I'll say Delta something, Delta P perhaps, but it's like a little short, stubby potato looking suppressor.

2:04:22But just like there's so many good guns that came out of that program that I'd love to see developed. And that was like so cool because as they were doing these trials for what would become the M7, the Spear nowadays, I got to try out those different guns in their infancy. And that was a really, like, a really cool experience of just being a gun tuber. Just, you know, I'm just a guy. I served, sure, but being able to get hands-on time with these experimental weapons was just one experience. That is awesome. It was so cool. I'm serious. I'll put you in contact with True Velocity. They'll bring it out.

2:05:00Dude, it is a cool gun. I'd love to try it. Oh, man. So, you know, thousands. I mean, I don't know how many. How many guns do you have? How many guns have you, how many different guns of you do you have experience with? How many different guns I have experience with? I know in my personal armory, I have well over 500. What?

2:05:25It's a good, it's a, it's good, man. It's good. I don't get, I don't get rid of guns because I'm a reviewer. I shouldn't get rid of guns. That doesn't make any sense. I want to keep them as an example. But I mean, I have experience with every single one of those. Every single one of those guns, you can ask people who have been to my armory, but every single one of them is set up. They got optic, light, peck if needed, you know, IR laser, illuminator, zero shot, they're all cared for, et cetera. So I take great pride in making sure that I have time on each gun and to ensure that I have the experience on them.

2:05:59But yeah, I mean, as far as experience on how many different types of guns got, I don't even know, dude. So with all the experience you have with all these different firearms, I'm curious, what is your everyday carry? Oh, that's a great question. You know, so it depends on weather, right? It depends if it's really hot or if it's not. So if it's really hot and I'm not wearing a whole lot, I'm going with the Glock 43X, right? Love that thing. Shoot the hell out of it. I have the COA site. Have you used the COAs before? What's that? Is that the new Aimpoint? It's an Aimpoint enclosed optic. I just got one.

2:06:37Oh, dude, they're so good. Are we going to shoot it today? Maybe. But we could shoot it today. You've got to shoot it today, man. They're awesome. So I carry that. Otherwise, I carry either. So I have an SOT, right? Because we do a lot of machine guns. So sometimes I'll carry my Glock 18. As for like, yeah, little funsies. I have mine machined out for an optic. We actually went with a dual illuminated RMR with fire optic because the Glock 18 has such a quick cyclic rate that the typical Chichikon RMR screws can hold it in. So we actually permanently mounted that LED one, excuse me, the fire optic one, because those never run out of battery.

2:07:15They're powered by the sun. So got that guy on there with an X-ray hand. You carry a Glock 18? Quite a bit, yeah. That's amazing. I have it on semi, you know, but I have that little switch on the side. It should have needed it. So if you've ever seen the 18... The party valve. Yeah, you have up for semi, down for auto. So you never know. What are you scared of? Nothing. I'll tell you that much. And then besides that, I have like a Gen 3 17 that I carry when I'm not feeling so spicy. I've had that thing since like 2017. I've got like, I want to say like 90K rounds on that thing. Damn. All Glock.

2:07:52All Glock. All Glock. Nice. I know. What about you? What are you carrying? 365 XL macro. 365. I don't, I carry either the macro or the, just the OG one that they came out with, what, like eight, nine years ago-ish? Okay, yeah, that's a great one. I still have the same one. You know what? Same one I did to review on, like, over nine years ago. Way back when, you know what Sig needs to do better about? Naming their guns. What do you, naming their, they need to get that, because like, think, how many different versions of the 365 are? Like, macro, XL, Big Boy. I don't even know. They have so many names.

2:08:28They got to, like. What else do you carry? Like. Other than your firearm. Oh, that's a great question. I carry it, well, like on my body. Yeah. Legitimate. Not like what. Multitool. Everybody wants you to carry. Multitool. That's it? Yeah. Firearm and a multitool? In my truck, I've got like med kit, all that kind of stuff. But yeah, that's about it. Someone's going to tell me, I'm sure, I'm not carrying like eight tourniquets on me and a full med kit that I'm gonna freaking die by. It'll be in the comments. You know, dude, I'll use my knife, I'll cut, I'll make a rope, and I'll tourniquet myself.

2:09:02I don't know. But yeah, that's what I carry. Right on. Not a whole lot, but... I mean, also, I'm on my ranch a lot, so I'm just kind of got like a rifle on my life. You got some beautiful land out there. Thank you, man. Idaho's gorgeous. Well, sorry, not Idaho. We live in Chicago, of course. That's where you find that land. So move out to Chicago. That's where you find all the cool land. Well, I got you a present. Oh, my God. I'm so excited.

2:09:29Is it Sig telling me to come out with my video finally? It might be. Oh, no way. Yeah.

2:09:38So clear and safe for the audience. But yeah, so two things here. Okay. One, silence the shop. That's so good. They're a huge fan of you. Well, they're super nice. I love those guys. They are. They are, right? They're so good. So they wanted me to give you this. that's nice maybe it could be a new adc i don't know whatever i will 100 carry that but you i just want to talk about like do you know what they've done silence the shop my god things have changed fundamentally in the firearm world because of them and because of that lawsuit that they brought forward yeah incredible i mean you probably know a lot more about the specifics than i do but I mean, you don't have to do all the bullshit paperwork for the ATF.

2:10:23And I don't know how many states. They went to what? They went to war with the federal government over this. And they won. They won. I was like, holy shit. I could not believe it. It was them, PSA, Zev, and several others, like, all came together with this huge lawsuit. And they just supported the hell out of each other. And it was a great moment of, like, gun community unity and got it done. And people were so, you remember it? People were so bad-mouthing it. They're like, oh, whatever. And you know, that doesn't matter. It's not going to do anything. Dude, it changed everything. Now I can walk into my gun shop.

2:10:58I want that. Walk the same day out with that suppressor. Isn't that great? And so yeah, they told me about, I didn't even know what was going on. Oh, yeah. And then they told us about it. They told me about it. And so I had Elijah, my COO, reach out. I was like, wait a minute. I was like, why would they do this? Isn't this kind of counterproductive to their whole entire business model? Like this could put them out of business. That's the type of people they are, dude. I said, just reach out and make sure this is legit. And I was asking him that. And he did. And they're like, yeah, yeah. They're just going to be legitimately could put us out of business.

2:11:36And I'm like, I love that, dude. That's amazing. Like I'm a, I'm huge on integrity. Oh yeah. And I mean, so those, and they're like, yeah, if it puts us out of business, it puts us out of business. But this is what we believe in. I'm like, that's a badass company, man. What a cool guy. It's a badass company. It's the same thing with machine guns. I have machine guns on registry that are worth tons of money. I hope that registry goes away and you can just buy machine guns. I don't care how much money I lose on it. Please make that registry go away. You know what I mean? Americans should have those rights.

2:12:06Sorry, I digress. I'm passionate. And then SIG. Oh, yeah. You know, this is a P365. It's like the newest one. It is. It's like, what do you give a guy that has 500 guns and has shot pretty much everything in the world? And so this is the newest model. Put a flashlight, their optic on it. And I don't have to tell you what this is, but I want to tell you about SIG2 as a company. Heavy, heavy. And two things. One, we did this. I did this episode with this guy Schlepp, and he's amazing. Yeah. Have you heard of Roblox? The game, right? So there's all kinds of horrible shit going on on Roblox. That's what I've heard.

2:12:49And lots of sex exploitation and satanic cults and just horrific shit that your kids shouldn't be messing around. They shouldn't have access to your kids. And Schlepp, he had an incident on there when he was a kid. Oh, wow. But one thing that we unveiled when I did his episode is they have recreated every active shooter event in the U.S. Columbine, Udall V, Sandy Hook, all of them. And so basically in the game, you can be the active shooter and go in and kill the kids that were killed in the actual event. And it's so realistic that it's the actual, it's the layout of the school or whatever the venue is.

2:13:41Why would anybody do that? Right? I don't know. And on top of that, they put the kids' names above them in the classroom. So when you enter and you're like this first-person shooter game. My God. It's like they put the victims' names over the kids that you're killing in the game. and they had a sig weapon they had a sig firearm oh and uh so my buddy jason who's a huge fan of you uh i told him about it i was like yeah i just want you guys to know like these are your firearms in this game and uh we are going to crush roblox and um i don't know if you want your firearms in that game or not but i'm just letting you know yeah well like as soon as he got off the phone with me, got on with legal, and now they've pulled them all.

2:14:37And then there's a sheriff's department that's next. Here. There's a sheriff's department that's a county over for me, and they have a really low budget to fund the, it's like$3 million budget for the entire sheriff's department, vehicles, firearms, salaries, medical, all that stuff. And I have a good friend who just kind of took the lead at the SWAT team over there, and he was telling me about their firearms and how jacked up they are. And he's like, dude, it's like mismatched shit that's 20, 25 years old. You know, and I started getting angry. I'm like, you guys have a huge drug problem over there.

2:15:19Who knows what's going to happen? Your lives are on the line, and this is the shit that you're running out the door with so called jason and i was like hey um this is the situation i will buy the rifles do you guys have anything that's like shelved maybe an old bottle or something that you can give me at cost and he's like let me he's like give me a couple days so we were gonna partner yeah and they were just gonna sell me the stuff at cost and then i was gonna donate it to the sheriff's department that's awesome comes back a couple weeks later he's like hey we're gonna i'm like where do I send the bill?

2:15:51He goes, we're going to take care of that. On top of that, we're going to put suppressors on them. We're going to put our optics on them. We're going to put flashlights on them. We're going to give them the whole shebang. And they donated the entire SWAT team, like 30 brand new getups. Jason rocks. Dude, Jason's so cool. I just love companies like that. They have a spine. You know what I mean? That support the people that matter, man. I love to see it. so it's just two amazing companies anyways they're both really excited you were coming on so that's very kind of them that's really i i love those guys both that's that's really you know it's funny i don't have that gun i'll be damn i know i don't have that one so uh uh i i never asked for the uh the newer full-size uh 365 so i'm very excited i'm gonna i'm gonna pull the trigger on that guys it's like you know i'm excited man perfect perfect perfect and nowadays with the suppressor, you know, getting transferred.

2:16:44That's... Dude, the first time I bought a suppressor was a year. No, a year and a half before I got it. Yeah. Nowadays, we're going to send that to the FFL to transfer it, walk out with it. That's right. Freedom, man. That's some freedom right there. That's awesome.

2:17:00When we first started building the Sean Ryan Show storefront, we didn't have everything figured out. We had products, merch, ideas, and a growing audience. But turning that into something people could actually shop from and keep them coming back, that takes the right setup. And that's why we built it on Shopify. Shopify gives you what you need to start selling without having to piece a bunch of different systems together. You can build the storefront, manage products, take payments, track orders, and keep the business moving from one place. And if you're just getting started, you don't need to know everything on day one.

2:17:36Shopify makes it simple to launch your store and start selling in a few steps. They also have design templates and AI site building tools to help you get the storefront looking right without starting from scratch. And once people are ready to buy, ShopPay makes checkout fast and easy, which is huge. You don't want somebody ready to support your business and then lose them because you got a clunky checkout. I like Shopify's product so much. It's so simple, I had the CEO and founder, Toby, on my show. So if you've been sitting on an idea, waiting until you have it figured out, stop waiting. You can start simple.

2:18:15Learn as you go and build it from there. If you're ready to hear the... of your first sale today, head over to shopify.com slash srs to start your free trial today. That's right. Start your free trial at shopify.com slash srs. That's shopify.com slash srs. I'm always looking for things that help me stay focused without feeling wired or packed with questionable ingredients. I like clean products. Simple, intentional, and something that actually fits into the day. That's why I've been using Ultra Pouches. Ultra gives you the pouch experience built with zero nicotine and zero caffeine. And you're probably thinking, if there's no nicotine and no caffeine, what's actually in it?

2:19:05Ultra partnered with leading neuroscientists to design these pouches with clinically proven nootropics and smooth energy that lasts one to two hours. Calm, steady, flow state focus without the crash. For me, these are perfect to keep at my desk or my gym bag. If I'm sitting down to work, prepping for an interview, or trying to stay locked in during a long day, I can pop one in and get that extra support without nicotine, caffeine, or ingredients that I don't want. And the flavors are solid. My favorite is Tropical. It's clean, smooth, and easy to keep using. Ultra is the ultimate guilt-free pouch, delivering instant focus and mental clarity without nicotine or caffeine.

2:19:57New customers can use code SRS to get 15 % off at TakeUltra.com. That's TakeUltra.com for 15 % off with code SRS. After you purchase, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. But let's get into some of this drone stuff that you've been studying in Ukraine. Oh, boy. Oh, warfare is just completely different now from what we knew, man. Completely different. How we trained, how we approached things is, for now, for the current fight that's occurring in Ukraine, is obsolete due to the constraints that you see there. due to the free operation of drones in those area.

2:20:49It is completely dominated by drones. If I'm not mistaken, I believe talking to the different drone companies and the different operators who are over there, I'm understanding that drones are accounting for well over 90 % of kills at this point. Over 90%. So we're talking, I mean, think about it. Think about how devastating a precision guided GBU 39 was, right? You get that thing right where you need to get it. But now you've got these drones that are just the most precise things that can directly target exactly what you want. So we're talking a short kill chain and we're talking a very, very accurate projectile because it's controlled by a person right down to the final moment.

2:21:34all televised, all recorded. This is literally Fahrenheit 451 stuff. Like, when you think about it, if you recall reading that book, how these, like, film war footage and show it, like, we're there right now. We're living the book, and we're living a weird reality right now, man. And we're unprepared, perhaps, not even as the US, but as a society, for what this is gonna mean for the future. What have you learned?

2:22:07movement, uh, cannot be had to not be done right now. As we talk about the front right now on Ukraine, what surprised me is the, the breadth of, of support that they have and the protocols that both sides have put into place on every single portion of that front, wherever it may be, you have 24 seven surveillance by a drone operator on areas, grids, very specific. They are watching troop movements real time and communicating them to each other and communicating them to a hundred killer crews with first, uh, you know, FPV drones. So you're talking, your unit goes to move out to take a piss prior to walking out.

2:22:56You're going to get FPV'd. You're talking about your unit is going to try to make a journey back to, you know, to the supply line. They're going to get toe poppers dropped along their route because they know exactly where you're moving. We're talking warfare that we couldn't fathom due to where the technology has brought us today. So I've just learned that movement is just near impossible right now. It's nearly impossible to move. And if you do have to move, you're getting struck in some way, form, fashion, or another. Whether it be a casualty or whether it be a near miss, they're coming for you.

2:23:30Because these drones are so ubiquitous and cheap. Nothing I could have ever imagined. I don't think any of us could have imagined. So what does that cause? Is that a cause to stand still? I mean, obviously not. Still going on. I'm talking to, so again, this is all going to be secondhand from many interviews I've done with Ukrainian vets on the front. Those who operate within the actual special operations sphere of the Ukrainian military. is that movement as a whole is largely stopped. There are coordinated armored assaults and stuff, but largely there is not a whole lot of movement of that front line due to how saturated these contested areas become with drone technology, whether it be surveillance, whether it be FPV drones, whether it be drones dropping toe poppers.

2:24:18The ability to deny is just so high right now on both sides And that movement is what would be a weak mission ends up being a three-week mission because there's no way to pull out from the front is one clear example that they run into constantly. They're just unable to exfil from any area just due to how intense it is. So it's a wait for weather. It's a wait for something to be able to get out of that area. Wild when you think about it. Is there any way they can move with anything? I mean, are there certain vehicles they can use for moving? Armored vehicles seem to be the way to go. Armored vehicles seem to be the way to go.

2:24:55As far as like Bradleys, armored troop carriers, et cetera. You obviously see every form of vehicle used right now, but armored troop carriers being the most sought after into what you want to do. Also, the targeting of hunter-killer crews. So the direct targeting of FPV drone operators, you know, via their intelligence networks, helps to also disrupt that so they're able to pull units out as well.

2:25:24so basically if you can be seen if you can be seen you're gonna get you're gonna get targeted um is what it's looking like right now unless you're a very low value target um but due to how many drones they have um how cheap they are it's just an easy it's an it's an easy thing to spend the money to to immediately eliminate somebody i think about the cost of like a typical precision guided bomb from the US military. Half a million. Somewhere around there. I think a tow missile, 250 ,000, right? Not a tow missile, excuse me, like a hellfire. You're talking extreme sums of money. Now you're talking FPV drones, talking$200 to$400 with like a RPG-7 warhead attached to it or a mortar attached to it or a hand grenade.

2:26:07You're talking nothing in terms of being able to target somebody. So the ability of a ground force commander to implement immobile fires, quick. and just effective. And the kill chain is just so short. From identification to being able to put a precision weapon on somebody, due to how close they are, it's quick. It's insane talking to these guys about the things that they have to do to ensure that they're also not targeted by FPV crews themselves, because that's a big part of the warfare now as well. These FPV crews target each other across lines and stuff. Do you think this becomes obsolete at some point?

2:26:49I think the missing piece of the puzzle is going to be electronic warfare. Now, there are ways to circumvent electronic warfare against drones. For example, you can have fiber optic spool and you can operate off that. But as you know, when you add a fiber optic spool to a drone, it becomes significantly slower and less maneuverable, and less able to get onto the target. So people were like, oh, they're just going to throw a fiber optic spool and then you're screwed. Not so much. The drones are much slower at that point, much easier to target with rifles, shotguns, et cetera. So it is going to be different once you see a more widespread implementation of electronic warfare, if it ever makes it to the Ukrainian front.

2:27:40But when we're talking about possible U.S. involvement in a conflict with a foreign adversary who might have those capabilities, our electronic warfare is quite good. And so I think you will see a shift in how drones are used during that time, probably more so in resupply, which has been shown what they're really good at as far as moving supplies up. The Ukrainians are using them very heavily in that role as it stands right now. But I definitely think there's going to be a shift because you're going to see probably a very electronically contested environment when you get towards a front line, especially with our capabilities of what the U.S.

2:28:16has. Are you familiar with Epirus? With Say it More Time? Epirus? No, please tell me. It's a directed UW weapon. Oh, no, no. I am familiar with that. Okay. I knew what you were talking about. We had one in the backyard over here. Do you really? We did. Oh. I interviewed the CEO of it. That's super cool. Yeah, he brought one out. Did you take down a drone with it? No, they couldn't. I mean, I was home. Turns out they don't want to fire EWs out here. That's fair. It makes sense. You see those like a lot of... You can take out like 100, 200, 500 drones at once. Totally silent. Did you just see them all?

2:28:57Could they get fried? That's just a shoulder-fired, soldier-carried weapon right there. You're not even talking like vehicle-mounted versions of these. Oh, no, this is vehicle. Oh, that's a vehicle mounted one? Yeah. That's so cool. It's insane. That's so cool. Drones are scary. Drones are very scary. But there's a counter to them. There's a counter to everything, right? So I think the next war where you see a better anti-drone capability is very much still going to change how warfare goes. I think it always comes back to one thing, which is no matter what, fieldcraft still matters. At the end of the day, you're going to get seen if you have bad field craft, if you're not camouflaging your blindage well, if you're not camouflaging yourself, if you're not moving during times that make sense for the type of imaging software or the imaging sensors that they have, well, then you're going to get spotted.

2:29:51That field craft, it always comes down to that individual soldier and their skills in the field, no matter what. And I think you'll see it much more once we hit that denied environment electronically. Mm-hmm. Polymarket.com has a market on whether Ukraine takes back any territory in Crimea by the end of this year. Not the peninsula, just any territory, and it's only a 6 % chance. What do you think? It's hard to say with this, with what's happening right now, because I've been talking to the guys on the ground, and it's a lot of frustration being unable to move and really make any advances with the types of munitions that are on the ground right now.

2:30:34It's a weird world where we're kind of betting or putting percentages on it, but that seems to be the case. It might be a stalemate for the foreseeable until some technology comes along that's widely implemented by Ukraine that allows them to break that stalemate that they currently have with drones. It's the only way I can think of it. What do you think is my question? i think uh i mean i don't think either side has really like gotten i mean we're i feel like we're still at where we were where we started here you know what i mean so i don't really see anything being taken no i could be wrong on that i haven't followed it that closely recently but i'm not a military strategist.

2:31:23It just seems like it's not really advancing. Warfare itself is advancing. It is. But it seems like it's kind of been a stalemate the entire time. I 100 % agree with you. And I think that's... Nobody's gained or lost any ground. No. And I don't think anybody expected Ukraine to be able to hold out for as long as they I certainly didn't win the... If you remember the 2014 war, I thought it would be quite a disaster. But with foreign intervention and stuff, it certainly hasn't been. Well, I mean, it's not just Ukraine. Of course. You know what I mean? Yeah. The entire world is testing... Every weapon...

2:32:05...new technology. That's what this has turned into, I think. Yes. And that's why the war continues to go on, is everyone is taking advantage of the situation between Russia and Ukraine to advance their warfare, their technology and warfare. I believe I just read that Russia's current, not killed, but casualties stand at about just under a half million right now. Sheesh. That's a staggering number. I mean, how many did we lose in the entire global war and terror? What was it? I want to say 9 ,000, somewhere around that number. A horrible number of Americans lost their lives, but put into perspective, of nearly half a million casualties is a lot of people.

2:32:51That's almost World War II numbers right there. That's in modern warfare kind of unfathomable to see those types of numbers. Here's a couple other things about drones I think is interesting, is when you don't get the wide coverage that you're seeing on the Ukrainian front, if we have a more denied environment, it still comes down to you can still evade these. These things are not perfect. There's a lot of now handheld weapons that make it much easier to engage and destroy drones, not just electronically, but with the very rifles that you're holding. Drone rounds, shotgun-specific drone rounds have gotten so good where you're able to engage well outside the threat envelope of that FPV drone.

2:33:32Obviously, if you take a shotgun and you blow a drone up at 20 feet, you're taking shrapnel. But with these newer rifle rounds that are able to travel out to 120 yards, you're able to detonate and destroy those guys way far out if for whatever reason they're able to get past that blanket of electronic warfare. So I think we're about to see some very interesting developments in terms of how the squads, at least the U.S. side, is going to be handling things. Because you can see now how gung-ho the Department of War is now about getting us caught up. You have huge companies now investing millions and millions into not just drone technologies, but anti-drone technologies.

2:34:11And I think we're going to see these drone-specific squads very quickly being stood up and tested in the very near future. It's a very interesting, very quickly changing time in the U.S. military.

2:34:28It's just wild to think about drone units. You know, who would have thought? it's uh i mean i got buddies that are still in i'm sure you do too and uh i got one guy that just went out the door up in fifth group you know right up the road here and i just i'm like i would not want to be dealing with that shit that's craziness man i would not i mean i think you hear the sound of those fpvs flying by just in just out here just training and screwing around you're like that is terrifying yeah to hear that screaming towards you um just an absolutely different type of warfare and with implementation of AI technologies.

2:35:05Seems like there's nothing you can do. Legitimately, you better be damn good with a shotgun. Yeah, dude. Believe me, I've used these anti-drone rounds, like the rifle-specific ones on the drones. It's still tough, dude. It takes a little bit of training. You can get it, but I mean. You got 25 of these things all coming at you simultaneously, so it's over. It's done-zo. It's got to be both electronic warfare and some type of, I would guess, AI implementation of targeting systems. It's got to be. I think that's very quickly on the horizon. I'd be surprised if it's not there already. Let's get back to prepping.

2:35:43Yeah, let's hit it. I love prepping. Me too. Me too. This is a pretty nice prep site, man. This is very nice. You got enough... This is liquid gold right here for the apocalypse. I know, I know. But, I mean, you were talking about it earlier. You know, so many people are getting concerned. Things aren't going well. We're in multiple wars. Nuclear threat is up. I just had Annie Jacobs on. Do you know who that is? no please tell me about any jacobs she's an author and she just wrote uh one about biological war oh god yeah and um and and a lot of shit to fear out there you know economy's not doing great yeah all these wars nuclear threat russia is pissed i mean it's there's any number of things there's a lot of very deadly uh biological specimens that uh have been away from earth for a long time Therefore, our ability to resist them is very low.

2:36:46That if released back to the population, it would be absolutely devastating. I'm sure she went over that, so that would be horrific. It's like, how do people, what do you even start with? Water. Back to our three days, man. What do you start with? Water. What is your advice? Water. Water, water, water. It has to be water. You actually store water, or you have filtration systems? It depends. So it depends on your property, right? So you got to take a close look at your property. Do you have a creek or a spring? If you do, wonderful. You're able to develop that and to have yourself your own private water supply.

2:37:20Now, if you don't have that, you have to realize that should a horrible natural disaster happen, should a war kick off, that very likely that water supply within the city is no longer going to function very quickly. So you have to store water at that point. So you can easily get those big old 50, you know, those huge gallon drums, you know, big oil drums. They have them like plastic, get those microplastics in you. It doesn't matter at this point. But you can keep a bunch of those filled up with a nice little smidge of bleach in there to keep them purified. And those will keep for years and years and years.

2:37:54So it's not too difficult to be able to store water to the point where you can then work on other sources to ensure that you can continue adding to that. Because obviously, rain still comes. There's still water underground. There's still ways to get water. But to give yourself a bridge from that water system failing to you setting up like a rain collection site on your own property, well, have a couple of those 50-gallon drums of that water ready. that way you can have some buffer before you have to set that up. But that brings into the other subject, you know, have a way to then purify, collect and purify your water.

2:38:32Purifying doesn't even have to be a nice filter. You can make natural filters very easily with coarse rocks through finer rocks, through finer soil, through very fine sand, through charcoal in there. You can purify water just by a simple tiered filter that you can make yourself. So it's not dependent on just buying filters out there. So you just have to set yourself up. Make sure you have rain collection stuff ready. Make sure you're ready to dig down and hit that water table, wherever you might be. It's going to be completely dependent on your area, though. But given those things, if you do them, you're going to be okay, and you're going to have that water.

2:39:08I think just for a regular person, I mean, a simple gravity filter, like there's this new Aurora that you just dump it in the top, goes down. Very easily. An hour later, you got purified water. And they're good for like 100 ,000 gallons of water. Exactly. They're good forever. And you can easily back push them to get any debris loose. They're excellent. The point is, it's easy to purify water. You can buy a filter and that's going to last you 100 ,000 gallons. You can make your own. Purifying water is not the problem. Collecting it is. So make sure you have those implements collected in whatever method.

2:39:44I mean, if you're on the coast, you know, you know you can't drink seawater, right? You can't? Well, you can't, you can drink seawater. You're just not going to live very long. But if you go, and I've done this before, if you go about 800-ish yards in about half a mile or so, dig down, you're going to hit that water table, purified, purified, good drinking water. I've done it. I did it on the coast of Oregon when I was a survival instructor. Go on those hundred meters, dig down, you're going to hit it after about maybe five feet and that water is coming through all of that silt all that sand will pull all of that salt out and you have pure fresh drinking water so again it just depends on your area but there's always going to be a way to get that clean drinking water you see to identify what it is for your area and you drinking seawater is kind of cool you know just letting the the land filter i i thought that was one of the coolest things that's cool that is that's freaking neat where do we go from here what's the next step

2:40:45I think a lot of people are focused on themselves, rightfully so, worried about themselves and how they're going to survive. And I do agree that that is a priority. I think from here, we need to go back to as a country, thinking about the US. How do we aid our country? How do we get ourselves back on the track? And I'm not specifically giving anybody a game plan, but I think working together as a community and beginning to set aside differences to make, I hate to say, say it that way, but to make an America, an incredible country is going to be what's really going to write the ship because clearly we have problems right now.

2:41:30People could see it. Everyone can see it, but I think it's only going to get better when we pull ourselves up by your bootstraps and work together to help improve our very own economy. I very much so believe in a community and in the American people being able to write this country. And I think more focus on that is going to be important. You know, it's the famous quote, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. I think that's absolutely true right now. And I think that would definitely help some people out. You got any suggestions? James? It starts with your local neighborhood.

2:42:05You can get with your local neighborhood to start and see what needs to be done to ensure that you guys are prepared, whether that be simple things like starting a garden together. A community garden is a great way to do it. It's something that we do in our communities at where we are. Working on ensuring that you're helping out, you know, the older families and community to ensure the older members in your community to make sure they're prepared, that they're ready to face whatever they may have, because they're still going to have good knowledge and information once the world does end to help civilization continue.

2:42:35So I think it's about starting with those simple neighborhood communities, which I feel like we're losing, and then expanding out from there. Because once we start getting to know each other and talking to each other again and figuring out what we can do together, I feel like a lot of things can be righted. I mean, there's certainly more to it, but I think it's a good start to really start focusing on the country and how we can right this. I'm not going to disagree with you there. It's tough. I mean, there's a lot more to it than just, you know, people kumbaya-ing and everything being good. But at the same time, I think that...

2:43:09But you still have to bring something to the table. You do. You need to have a hard skill. If it's the end of the world, and we are in that scenario, which may be far-fetched, maybe not. But you know what I mean? If you don't have any skills, you don't have any supplies, you don't really have anything to bring to the community, you're worthless. You are a liability. And I would think you'll probably be treated as such. What's like that joke? It's like... Charity, you know, it's not going to work. What's the first person you throw off the boat? It's like the lawyer, you know? It's like, you know, you want to make sure that you have skills, you know, hard skills, which are important and which are being lost.

2:43:51I think you just had Mike Rowe on. Mike Rowe's been a huge advocate for those hard skills for people to learn. Those hard skills are so important when we talk about post-collapse of something. It's like, you're not a doctor. That's fine. But man, you're a plumber? Holy crap, you are needed. So having some skill like you were talking about is... Anything. Anything, just something beyond being a lawyer, right? But I'll tell you another thing that I think I don't hear a lot of people talk about is reading material. Ooh, yeah. You know, and because, like you were saying, and even in the survival school, it's like, well, a 12-year-old in 1812 had more knowledge than we have as a survival expert.

2:44:35Very true. For U.S. special operations. That's, you know, a lot of knowledge lost, you know what I mean? 100%, yeah. And you guys are the experts. And there's lots, you know, if it is an end-of-the-world scenario, I mean, I think one thing I have, because I'm obviously not a know-it-all at this shit either, is there's books. Because you're not going to be able to look shit up on YouTube. You're not going to be able to pull things up on Google. A hundred percent. You're not going to be able to fire up the DVD player, any of that. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so you need hard copy books. A hundred percent.

2:45:14And, I mean, there's a whole bunch of them out there. That Sear book that you just said. And I'm definitely going to go get my hands on that. But there's just one. It's like a series that I have. What the hell? Is it like those restarting civilization? Back to the basics or something? I think I know what you're. It's everything. It's how to build a house, how to do a chicken coop, how to go. Like, it's all the shit you need to know to survive. And you don't have to worry. You don't have to worry about it right now. But at least you have, like, an instruction guide. I'm starting from zero to a hundred.

2:45:54You don't have to study it. You don't have to do shit. You're not going to have anything to do when it happens, except do this, except work on civilization. You know what I mean? So like have the, I think that's one of the biggest things you could do is just have hard copy books, you know, on, on, on all that, how to be, even like even books at home Depot on just how to like carpentry and how to get yourself a shelter and repair your own shit. Like that's important stuff. There's real important stuff and not that many. There's just not that many Americans left that like have this knowledge. That's very true.

2:46:27There's a lot of hard skills lost. I mean, simple things like black powder can be made from urine. You know, there's these little facts of life that so long as you have the knowledge, you can take yourself from the Stone Age to, you know, pre-industrial area in a couple months if you know what you're doing and you have the knowledge there. you have to have books plus entertainment too because you're you got to have a way to unwind as well so having a good book library i think is something that's very much so lost nowadays too you know like a good library good study that you walk into just some people are like they're they uh i talked to a buddy yesterday he he has friends and himself they're like stacking bibles and warehouses because they think it's all going to go digital and that the bible will wind up being manipulated but um interesting it is right yeah it's a weird rabbit hole to go down well you can also go over how the bible's been manipulated by their religions also like it just in simple translations like that's a whole topic of conversation right there but what else you know the food stuff i think the you said two years of food we have that oh yeah i'm over that but it's like it's a peace of mind it brings you and just knowing you have it knowing you have it and then um like simple things like powdered uh vegetables and stuff like like those multi-vitamin kind of mixes that they put in that are powdered like so many people just are like rice beans rice beans and like make sure you don't get scurvy and die so please get some of those powdered vegetables in there too but when you have that nice it really doesn't take much space to have two years of storage.

2:48:09It's kind of insane how, how, how little you eat kind of when you look at it, like all lined up, like it was like, uh, it was like, uh, you know, I want to say like a wall of our garage for all of our food storage. It was, it's not bad at all. And it doesn't cost a lot to do it. In fact, tons of, uh, Mormon specific companies specialize in it. And like, you can just buy packages for your two, like two year surprise supply, like right off the bat. It's like an entire cottage industry in utah to make sure that you're you know in line with what the more teachings are seeds you keep seeing oh yeah oh absolutely well we garden quite heavily too so we have tons of i don't garden but i have a shit ton of seeds it's important tons of seeds tools oh yeah hammers nails gardening shit like all that stuff like i don't know i just think you don't have to actively do the thing all the time you know I mean, it's going to take you a season, but I mean, just like the timeline, like for me, I think I enjoy thinking about it.

2:49:12No, it's a fun thought experiment to be like, okay, like it goes down. How's this going to work? You start with your food storage system, you get the garden going by next season, you have that, then you're running low on your food storage, and then you start supplementing with your garden and pretty soon you're nice and situated. You know, there's a... It's fun to think about. It's terrifying to think what would happen to... The desperation, I think, would be a very interesting thing. Like, I was in Haiti post-Quake. Oh, man. And you talk about desperation, what it does to people and what they're willing to do to their fellow man to get food or what they're willing to not do for their fellow man.

2:49:57And you'd be surprised at the violence and the greed people will go through to make sure that they live and you don't. Like that collapse, like that cholera outbreak that happened there, if you recall that, it was like maybe a year afterwards when we were there. Staggering loss of life from a very simple disease. when you're in those survival situations, simple things like sanitation can take out an entire community, can literally wipe you off the map. It's vicious, absolutely vicious in those situations. And that was a quake. That was just an earthquake that just took that country to its knees for a while.

2:50:47Desperate situation out there. Did you ever make your way over to Haiti during that time? Not during that time. You've been to Haiti before? Yeah. Nice. Port-au-Prince? Yep. Been there. Been all over it. Yeah. There was a... I mean, that country's always in turmoil. But 2004, we went down there. That's when Aristide got yanked out. Oh, Aristide came back when I was there, too. Did he really? He sure did. And they started rioting, of course. sounds like a groundhog day yeah funny you mentioned air seed because uh uh yeah yeah he came out of like that was my first that was it that was like the first place i ever deployed to oh really haiti's like dead bodies floating around in the it were out there and just all the prisoners broke out of prison shit on fire it was just i was like it it it devolved pretty quickly and uh i think that was the stench uh from from rotting bodies was pretty freaking bad, especially in the quake, all the collapsed buildings and stuff, and they weren't able to clean out those bodies or they just didn't clean up those bodies.

2:52:00That's how diseases start right there. It's like you just got to do the work. It's a great example in not doing the cleanup immediately and that leading to a lot of secondary heartache from the things that occurred because of that. you had a lot of unnecessary death that occurred afterwards from simple cleanup. Do you ever think about... I mean, I love the, you know, building community and all that stuff, but do you ever think about when it really happens, if it really happens, who you can trust, how you can trust them? Like, oh, great, we got this community garden, and then a drought happens.

2:52:40Yeah, and then... And you got kids, and they've got kids, and you have all the water, they have a little bit of water. You have all the ammo. They have a little bit of ammo. Their kids are starting to starve. Yours are doing all right. How do you know? How do you know who to trust? You ever think about that? All the time, man. I think it's going to be, you're going to have to play it by ear when it's occurring in that situation. I don't think it's... You just talked about desperation and what human beings will do for survival. I think this is why it's important. We aren't any different. I think this is, oh, we're not different at all.

2:53:16We're just not desperate right now, but we can be just as desperate. And I think that's why it's important to have firearms. It's like the famous story. It's like, yeah, I don't believe in guns, but I have a bunch of food. It's like, cool. Does your neighbor have guns? He's like, yeah, I don't know. It's like, does your neighbor know you have food? Yeah. Well, probably not going to have food once the world goes to shit. You still have to be able to protect yourself at the end of the day. You got to have that rational self-interest in yourself and protecting your family. because when it comes down to it, when people are starving and they see that you're doing well, you're a target man.

2:53:49You can't trust anybody. You can't trust anybody. That's why hopefully you're able to get communities established beforehand or if needed after so that you can begin to work together to make a better living situation for everybody. Because as you know, homesteading is very doable, but it's tough work, man. It's definitely easier with more hands. But it might be like that at the beginning when things are shaking out and when people are starting to starve. I mean, most people will die out in what, the first month? Oh, easily. Easily. Without food, clean water. Clean water being the big one. That's going to take...

2:54:28How many people do you know are told when something goes wrong to fill up their bathtub with water so they can have water? That's their... Like, that's their water. Just the bathtub. And you don't think that everybody else is going to be doing that too. And that's not going to lower water pressure to a point you're not going to get enough water. What are you going to do when you have zero water? Let's say it's Arizona, Phoenix. Water pressure is nothing. Anywhere. Anywhere. It's just, and you're talking about like zero access to clean water. You're going to have an insane amount of death. And you're going to have an insane amount of disease that rises from that.

2:55:06And it's going to be a rough, rough bit as that shakes out for wherever you are. I think that's why a lot of people are trying to move out further now, trying to establish larger homesteads. But people can still come out to you in those homesteads because they're going to know that there's going to be farms out there. There's not as many people. It's dangerous no matter what you do. That's why you got to train. You got to be prepared as much as possible. I think that's why the survival stuff's so big. I think that's why firearms are so big is people recognize that people are selfish at the end of the day and that you do have to be able to protect yourself, you know, until things can calm down to the point where you can reestablish order and justice in a society.

2:55:44But there's inevitably going to be that period of lawlessness that's going to be Mad Max slash Haiti to, you know, the nth degree. That's going to be insane to deal with.

2:55:57It's horrible to think about. It is, but I mean, it's the reality. No, it is. If you've been through, like, I've always been somewhat of a prepper. Yeah. But then I moved to Florida, and I saw how people acted when a hurricane wasn't even for sure going to hit. Yeah. And I mean, gas, water, food, all of this shit's gone in less than 24 hours. It's gone. Generators, gone. Gas, gone. Lines like, just to get out of Florida. I remember that, I think it was Hurricane Matthew. And there was a traffic jam from Miami, Florida, all the way to Atlanta, Georgia. Oh, my God. We're talking like stop and go traffic.

2:56:40I saw that shit and how people act. And I was like, I'm out of here. Florida's not for me. Well, you see people fighting over water bottles. It's just insane. People fighting over water bottles when a hurricane might hit. Yep. And it's like, what do you think people will do when? And they're not even desperate yet. They're not even... Fist fights at the fucking gas pump. They're not even desperate. They're not even desperate yet. And I think that's what we try to, you know, kind of bring it back to, like, the survival series. But that's what we really... It's hard to impress upon people, not just civil collapse, but say a war does break out.

2:57:13Say you do have a fracture in the United States. Like, what would that war actually look like, you know? And I think that's why a lot of people are watching, because I think a lot of people are afraid of that. A lot of people see the division that you have right now within the U.S. How... I don't think at any point in history we've had left and right so far from each other, as far as, like, talking points and stuff. So what would happen if there was a fracturing? It's like, what would actual open conflict look like? It would be the most dangerous country in the... It would be the most dangerous country in the entire world.

2:57:46With the amount of firearms... Firearms that we have. ...people that are trained how to use them, it would be a bloodbath. It would be insane. It would be impossible to take it over. Maybe drone swarms. But you could not send a military in here to occupy this place. It would be... Oh, it would... You think Baghdad in 2005 was bad? Oh, yeah. This shit would be... Imagine the U.S. Crazy. It would be insane. And I think we take pride in the fact that people can invade and also recognize the fact that we're some violent and well-armed dudes and we're all looking at each other right now too that's scary as well it's just and i think that's i think that's why the survival series is it just tends to to resonate because people people feel that that kind of fear at the edge you know i guess is the best way to say it just imagine how that would work you know what's the reality of being a single guy out there actually trying to do this.

2:58:45Just literal hell. Literal hell. I got a hot question for you. Okay. Ready? Yeah. You wake up to reports that the United States has been hit by a coordinated attack. Power grids, communication networks, transportation systems, financial institutions, and critical infrastructure are failing across the country. Nobody knows whether more physical attacks are coming and misinformation is spreading faster than officials can respond. Cell service is disappearing. ATMs and credit cards no longer work. Gas stations cannot pump fuel and millions of people are beginning to evacuate major cities. How do you survive the next 30 days?

2:59:31The way I survive the next 30 days, me personally, me personally, I have the ranch. of course, that I live at. So 100%, it's got to be securing a property, securing my assets, securing my water sources. I have springs that deliver water. So making sure that I can keep those access to myself. And when you talk about that amount of mass exodus out of the city, how many people are going to be spreading out into the country, trying to thieve, raid, murder, as they begin to starve to death, as they leave without any provisions or supplies, those initial that initial week to two weeks of mayhem are going to be will likely feel like a war in terms of having to fight people off your property and i think that's what that's what it will come down to so in my case it's going to come down to our community of farmers and ranchers protecting our area as much as we can to keep those thieves out of things that are valuable food and water that's consolidated i think that's the only thing you can do because if you're in a city and you try to head out, you're going to get caught up in a traffic jam.

3:00:41It's a couple cars without gas. That roadway is shut down until those can be pulled off of the emergency services at Dover. So being able to, everyone says they're going to travel out of the city and they might try, but they're going to get stuck out there. So if I was in the city, I'd stay still as much as possible and try to shelter for those 30 days. But being where I am on a homestead, if people are homestead or more rural, 100 % secure your assets for the next week and prepare for the coming storm of violence and thieving and murdering that's going to be occurring inevitably. It's going to have to be full military watches.

3:01:17Like we're talking, you always are going to have several people on watch if at all possible. If it's just your family, you're going to take those four on four off with whoever is able to, to ensure that you can protect that property. That's the thing that comes to my mind for those first 30 days, especially the first two weeks. What do you think, Sean? I'm 100 % with you. Yeah, it's going to be insane those first two weeks. How did you find your property? You know what? What were your check marks? Check marks were far away on incorporated land and water. Water rights was my big one. I wanted to make sure I had good water rights because I wanted to be able to obviously feed the livestock that I have with grass that I grow on my property, hay, as well as being able to water them on the property.

3:02:08So far away, secluded. I can't see a single neighbor from where I'm at for miles. And plus water rights. Those were my main things. And then, of course, when you get those, you get pretty nice shooting dishes as well, which is what we're dealing with. So it's not too bad. And it was as easy as finding, I think we just used one of Boise's number one realtors. and she was able to find it, no problem. Nice. Yeah, it was not hard at all. There's a lot of land in Chicago, you know. A lot of land in Chicago if you want to move there and check it out. But no, it worked out pretty well for us. Same check marks.

3:02:48Yeah. Yeah, a lot of them. Water was my number one thing. My wife thought I was crazy. It took us forever to find this. How do water rights work out here in Tennessee? I mean, I don't know exactly how they work out, but i was looking for fresh springs yeah and creeks on my property and if it didn't have it i wasn't interested nice and uh you know there's a creek every 10 feet here but that's nice but um yeah that was my main main thing without even knowing it you knew water was the most important thing oh i mean i thought about like i said i thought you've thought about this ad um you know i met this uh i used to work with this green berets were always the best at finding this i would listen yeah they are and uh there was this one guy and i was you know i was young i didn't wasn't that and i was just stock up ammo and i remember he said to find his house he just opened google earth and typed in real estate or something and he would only look at the places that were in the green sections really green sections are protected land oh so it's like yeah i only had and you can't build there you can't get any bigger you know what i mean yeah and so he would he would go and look for those the most secluded spots and he's like yeah i only own like a half acre but there's not i'm on public you know protected land and there's not another home for 52 miles and i'm like how did the green is like so this is my backyard i'm like that's actually that's really that's really genius that's like um my uh my family's cabin that we have up in oregon it's like much the same thing it's like we border one property but then the other three it's right up against national forest which is undevelopable so it's like might as well just be our national forest at that point especially when you get those landlocked territories it's probably one of the best parts about owning land is backing up to some type of public lands.

3:04:50How do Green Brays figure this out? What is it about Green Brays? Just some weird dudes. Well, Mike, we're wrapping up the interview. I say we go hit the range. You know I love shooting, man. Blow some shit up and shoot the shit out there a little bit. Let's do it, brother. Awesome getting to know you. Awesome interview. Tons of knowledge there. I just thank you. Thank you so much for having me on, man. It was a real pleasure to be able to chat with you. I'm sure we'll talk more and get some more stuff done. Likewise. All right, Matt. Thanks a lot, man. Appreciate it.

3:05:37No matter where you're watching The Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, Please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.