633: When All Hell Breaks Loose! Survival Skills: Before, During and After

Welcome to the Holistic Survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival show is your family's insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to understand threats and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst scenario, you'll be ready. Welcome to Ballistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Jason Hartman.

Thank you for joining us on the Holistic Survival Show. Number nine. This is your host, Jason Hartman. Thank you for joining us today. I am in the car driving actually from Indianapolis to Chicago. I've been looking at properties there, investment properties for the last couple of days and found some fantastic buys. If you'd like to know more about this, be sure to listen to the Creating wealth show available on itunes or jasonhartman.com and that's 100% free. I apologize for the poor sound quality. It will only be with us for a moment here in the introduction. So Cody Lundin is our guest today. He is the author of a few books. His latest book that we're talking about is what to Do When All Hell Breaks Loose. Cody is a pretty hardcore survivalist and if things ever get really bad in any particular area, he's the guy you want to hear from. So let's go to the interview with Cody Lundin, When All Hell Breaks Loose.

It's my pleasure to have Cody London on the show. He is the author of When All Hell Breaks Loose and another book as well, 98.6 Keeping youg Ass Alive. Is that the title of that, Cody?

It's 98.6 degrees. The art of keeping your ass Alive with you. Close.

All right, good. Well, you are a very interesting guy and I'm glad to have you on the show. Welcome. Tell us a little bit about your background, if you would.

Sure, yeah. I started the Aboriginal Living skills School in 1991 in Prescott, Arizona. And what I do is teach modern survival skills, primitive living skills. In other words, if Jason was out in the jeep in the hills camping and the jeep broke down, that would be a modern survival situation, potentially where you had to get rescued by search and rescue primary, regulate core body temperature, et cetera. Primitive living skills would be living off the land, catching fish with your hands, making fire with sticks, making stone blades. I do that and I also teach urban preparedness, which is based off my second book.

Okay, and can you say that again? What was the last one?

Urban preparedness.

Urban preparedness. Okay. Well, most of our listeners, you know, I think this is a very good topic nowadays, Cody, and it is amazing how completely unprepared and how totally dependent most Americans are and in fact, most people in any city around the world. So tell us a little bit. Maybe let's talk about urban preparedness first, because that is a good topic. What should someone do to be prepared for the case of civil unrest, power outages, loss of utilities like water, gas, whatever, natural disaster? I mean, so many people are just completely unprepared. And we saw this in the post Katrina world, and I think we're likely to see it again, unfortunately.

Yeah, I agree. And it is unfortunate. The easiest way that families or anyone can find out what hurts the most is in their home or whatever, if they still have one bad joke in this economy is to turn off the breaker. And if you live in an apartment, put duct tape over the light switches and the refrigerator as it doesn't work anymore, et cetera, and find out what really hurts. Find out what hurts your family when the grid goes down by you pulling the grid down yourself, so to speak, and then improvise. And what you'll find out is you want to keep your home either hot or cold. It depends on if you're in Phoenix in June, you definitely want to have a way to keep your home cooler. And if you're in Minnesota, of course, in December, you want to have an optional way to heat the home. That's primary thermal regulation for your home. The next would be water. Have it on hand to store it. Know how to disinfect it if you need to find it in the field or in an urban situation or whatnot. And of course, probably even before food is emergency sanitation the biggest cause of death on the planet? Unfortunately, even over warfare, is lack of sanitation, where hundreds of thousands of people die each year. Right now, this isn't some 1800 statistic. If the toilet doesn't work, no one wants to talk about it. And so how do we dispose of this stuff from our body that can contaminate entire town water supplies and bring back epidemics that we haven't seen in a long, long time. And then we can follow it up with food, emergency lightings, communication, transportation, et cetera. But, Jason, the easiest way to find out, hey, what do I need to keep my family comfortable if the grid goes down? Is to pull down the grid and then find out for your family, because there will be some individual chase about what is needed per family, about, okay, here's what hurts the most. Let's buy this and store this and have this on hand and then we can go from there.

So in other words, make it a self imposed loss, turn the power off and try and live with it for a day and see how it really is. Now. There are some people that are being forced to live with this now in these bad winter storms we're having in certain parts of the country. That's very apropos, no question about it. So what are some tips? You know, I guess, Cody, the first thing people need the most is probably water. Is that correct?

The first thing, and this is why I titled my book 98.6 degrees of my first book, is to regulate Jason's core body temperature. And what that means is the biggest cause of death, at least in the outdoors. And we saw that in people's apartment homes in Europe when they had the heat wave about three or four years ago, is if Jason's core body temperature gets too cold, it's called hypothermia and you'll die. And if it gets too warm, it's called hyperthermia. And that's compromising as well. So while it sounds trite and it's not necessarily worthy of a Discovery Channel show per se, thermoregulation is the biggest thing. And what helps that is water for not being dehydrated and et cetera. So what that means, like we first started off, one of the first things, if I took you out into the woods like I do with clients every year, and sat you out with the clothes on your back, one of the first things you want to do is you think, well, this kind of sucks. We need some shelter. And it's ironic that that's what started this whole mess with the subprime dealings. So knowing how to thermoregulate the temperature of your home is very, very important. And you can ask anyone now in Tennessee with the ice storm what it feels like when the living room is 37 degrees, it's no fun, right? But if you can't for some reason be a coat or whatever, have a wood stove where it's not practical, or you live in an apartment. Clothing, clothing, clothing, clothing. And water is the easiest way to regulate body temperature. And now we're under your, your second where you mentioned water. And yeah, water is critical. It's a biological necessity to the cellular level. Without it, we die very, very quickly. But it's amazing how many Americans haven't Even thought about room temperature because we're so used to the thermostat working all the time. And this mental stuff we're talking about right now, it doesn't really make sense unless people feel pain. And that's why I recommend, okay, live for two or three days and see what it's like when the house is cold or too hot. And you will invest heavily in your future by getting sleeping bags or whatnot. It's funny how it's not rocket science. It's fairly simple. And yet the vast majority of Americans are simply not prepared for any pending disaster or even a power outage.

Yeah, there's no question about that. A lot of people are in a situation where when they're trying to thermoregulate, for example, in cold climates, they will light fires, they'll do things like this. And you always hear, Cody, of these carbon monoxide deaths. So the easiest way to thermoregulate is with clothing or without clothing, I guess, depending on the case whether it's too hot or too cold. But what else do you do? So say, for example, you don't have heat and your living room is 37 degrees. Anything else besides clothing? What is the safe way to do heat inside?

Yeah, the carbon monoxide is a huge point that you bring up. I devoted like three or four pages and when I'll hell breaks loose to that, because it is actually, according to poison control center, it's the number one poison in America is carbon monoxide. It takes out the most people of any poison in our nation is not knowing that when we have a radiant flame that's either yellow or orange, it puts off carbon monoxide, which is, as you know, is colorless, odorless, and it's a killer because it bonds with the hemoglobin in the blood. And if we don't have oxygen, we die. Other things I mention when all hell breaks free is it depends on your structure. Let's say that you have a house in suburbia, and everyone knows in their home they have a room that's very comfortable in the summertime because maybe it's north facing, it's cooler and just naturally. And everyone knows they have that room that's probably southern facing or eastern facing. It's warmer in the wintertime because it gets a lot of that lower southern sun. So what I would do, just like I do in the wilderness, is partition off the home and make microclimates in the home. You might hang blankets or sheets or close doors to extraneous rooms and create a little One main room where your family can live the most comfortably, whether it's a summertime situation or a wintertime situation. Other things are just realizing the basic physics of conduction, conduction and radiation. And if it's too hot, well, the cold air sinks and maybe we'll get down lower to the floor and warm air rises. Let's sleep up higher in the wintertime orientation insulation. There's lots of things that are being peddled about now as far as the green infrastructure fixed by Congress. And part of it is insulating homes. And that might seem kind of like a faux pas thing to do, but according to several of my friends, about 33% of the energy budget in this country is based on room temperature of the American home. So in other words, it's heating and cooling the American home. It almost takes an entire third of our energy budget because our homes are just so. They're horribly dependent upon the grid. And this isn't a fantasy of mine because I live in an underground passive solar earth home. I spend nothing for heating or cooling. I don't need to burn wood. I catch rain. It's gravity feed water. It has natural lighting. In other words, I don't have any money required to operate my home. That's the extreme because I'm kind of extreme. But the average American within their home has those microclimates that would be cooler or warmer depending upon the situation, to help thermoregulate core body temperature a little bit easier than just wow, let's look like the Michelin man with all these clothes on for 24. 7.

Cody, that's amazing. You got to put a. Is there a picture of your home on your website?

There is, yeah.

Oh, so I'm here@codylondon.com By the way, and it's L U n D I N. Where is that photo? I've got to see this house.

It's under Aces. It's on the 1st, it's on the homepage. And there's actually, you'll see on my banner it says Cody Self reliant Home. There's several pictures of it, including the construction of it. And you being a real estate guru would probably be way, way into. I've been telling some of my friends for years the next real estate person that actually decides to build something environmentally responsible is the wave of the future. I actually work with the Acosa Institute. They're young students that study sustainable design in a three month program. And they're the cutting edge of the next engineers and designers for real estate because the Bottom line, I don't mean to tell you is as soon as the economy recovers, guess what fuel is going to do? It's going to go right back up because of demand. And Jason, I don't pay anything to heat or cool my home.

You are in Prescott, Arizona. So that's ACEs and Aces Arizona center for Environmental Sustainability, his website. That is an interesting home. Definitely. No question about it.

Yeah, and that's just a sister company of mine that deals with that. But Codylenbeen.com and they can just check out the house. And of course, as you probably know because you have the book When All Hell Breaks Loose, I spend about a page talking about my home because what I wish more Americans would be interested in doing, and maybe this recession will help that is to be more proactive on dealing with the cause of stress instead of really in the aftermath of the effects by unwise decisions. You know, if you have your basis covered from a strategic survival standpoint, go ahead and make your millions of dollars and whatever. But if you're out of food on the first week of a pending disaster or whatever, there's a shift in priorities that probably needs to happen.

Sure. Well talk to us a little bit, Cody, about water. I mean in the water department obviously so necessary. There are two sort of categories. There's stor storage and then filtration and purification. What is the best way to do both of these things?

Well, as far as an urban dweller, what's available pretty widely on the Internet especially now are 55 gallon polydrums. Remember, a gallon of water is 8.3 pounds a gallon. So even 50 gallons of water is a heck of a lot of weight. And you don't want to be up in your six story apartment having this thing cascading down several floors and hurting people. So you got to dictate the water weight value in. Poly tanks are pretty readily available. If nothing else. Camping stores usually have 5 to 7 gallon jerry cans because if you have that much water weight for storage, you will not lift it or move it once it's full. So you have to have a siphon pump or just have a screw off top where you can dip it out with a pitcher. The nice thing about 5 to 7 gallon jerry cans is they give you an extra lifeline of support via hydration. And yet they're much more economical to purchase, easier to get and easier to store. But even so, if you had some elderly people in your home, they are not listing that jerry can. So then you might save a couple apple cider Gallon jugs or whatever. So you can have some gallon containers around that elderly people or kids can use. So that's what I would do for. And I'm doing an urban storage thing. I have 3,000 gallon tanks and I'm catching rain and snow right now via gutter systems that I've custom made. But that's me in a wilderness situation. And yet it could be you too, because all the gutter systems on your home, you can catch tens of thousands of gallons a year depending on what your environment is for rainfall in poly tanks, for whatever, for just gray water for watering plants. It just makes sense, especially in my country because of course you're calling, I'm in Arizona. So the king of droughts has been with us for about 10 years.

Right. Everybody doesn't realize the biggest water catch in the world is their roof. I mean there's so much water water to be caught off a roof, don't let it just run away and disappear.

That's a blasphemy. Yeah. And it happens a lot, believe it or not, in Arizona. I think there should be some property tax credit for catching rain, at least for vegetation on the outside. But the other question you asked is about disinfection, not purification. Water disinfection kills the pathogens that make us sick, the parasites, protozoa, bacteria and viruses. Water purification deals with how water looks, smells and tastes. So there's bravery, different things we're talking about here. And as far as making water safe to drink so it's potable, there's several ways to do that. I outline several in my book. Tincture, iodine 2%, sodium hypochlorite 5.25 to 6% basic household bleach, blah blah blah. You can buy filters, you can buy gravity filters, you can buy inline filters for your home. What I would do is have a multi use way to do that. Have two or three ways to disinfect water. Chlorine bleach is a pretty obvious one. And if you do have filters, have them non mechanically based. Your inline water filter will not work when there's no water pressure to run it because the grid is down. So low tech it all the way down. Although there's some contraindications where people shouldn't use as an example tincture of iodine 2%. I can, because I'm not pregnant, I don't have an allergy to iodine and I don't have a thyroid issue. I can use tincture of iodine 2% to disinfect water and my wounds so now we have this double edged sword that's dirt cheap to buy. And imagine the infection rates of having an open cut after Hurricane Katrina and walking around in that slop in the streets. And guess what's too full to take you with your infected cut? The hospital, because there's too many people. So it's very important to be as self reliant as possible. And knowing how to buy intelligent survival gear that doesn't cost a lot of money that does multi use features is a true godsend.

Yeah, no question about it. So with the water that is stored, so you have water in whatever size container, maybe you have water in multiple size containers, how long can you store it? What is the sort of shelf life of water? Do you have to add something to it over time as it sits there? And how about just drinking the water out of your water heater? I mean that's 40, 50 gallons in most homes, right there it is, yeah.

That'S a good question. And I've heard some various debates on that from friends of mine. There is no real stats. We can go to my water that I have filled. Now I don't because I have my rain collection complete, but I used to hire a little guy in a truck to come out once a year with about 1600 gallons of water and fill some poly tanks. Like I mentioned earlier, I never use anything in that water. In other words, my water will sit there for an entire year outside in tanks that are sealed of course from all rodents and anything else and it seems to be fine. If you're squeamish about that, then you can add some chlorine bleach. So let's say we have that five gallon jerry can in the closet and we filled it in the bathtub when times were good. And it's been sitting there for a couple years if people wanted to. There's four quarts to a gallon and you can add two to four drops of chlorine bleach per quart of water. So the math on that is what, 8 to 16 drops per gallon? You could go ahead and do that if you wanted to. Maybe every six months, maybe every year if you wanted to. My thing would just be empty it out, water your plants and just refill the damn thing every year and just call it good. But that's kind of a personal question and I don't really have any hard data that I can share with your listeners on. Oh, you always got to do this because I've literally not treated my water ever in my tanks and they've just been just fine for going on nine years now.

When you go to a sporting goods store like an rei, I was looking there last week at the various water filters and then the little tablets that you drop in water and so forth. Do you have anything to say about those?

Yeah, it's confusing, isn't it?

Yeah, it is.

They come out with a new product it seems like every month. Yeah, I have a lot to say about that. Okay. I would like three ways to disinfect water to keep my family safe. One thing I would want Jason to buy is a really good metal pot. Metal pot with a bale. That's just another word for a handle with a cover. That's stainless steel. So that's an investment at REI or maybe even at the thrift store. Don't get aluminum. Where if Jason had to, you could boil your water. You could boil it. How long do you boil water? Well, at your approximate sea level location, just bringing water to a boil disinfects all the pathogens that are going to be a problem. This 2 minute, 5 minute, 10 minute boiling thing is nonsense. And it wastes water through evaporation, it wastes fuel and it wastes time. So just bringing water to a boil unless you're at altitude is going to cut it. So I want that stainless steel pot. And then I would get for me with the contraindications so stated is from Walgreens has an actual brand of their own. Is that tincture of iodine 2%. That's for short term use only. There's a college in my town that uses it for 30 days on a wilderness trip and we're talking just maybe three to seven day scenario if the grid went down or whatever. I would want that. And then I would probably. We all probably have household chlorine bleach around and I might invest in a quality filter from the camping store with the caveat that they only do one thing. What's more practical that I would do if I were you is to get a gravity feed filter. More kind of a home use where you can put a gallon or two at a time in it and it just gravity feeds down through a porcelain filter or whatnot. There's several varieties of filters that are out there of that nature. Big Berkeley and there's some others. Birkenfeld is another name I've been doing the stats on that. That's much more applicable for a family. You don't want to be pumping this camping fiasco thing in your backyard with the three kids screaming for water. You Want to be able to process a lot at one time, either via halogen. Halogen like iodine or chlorine bleach, or via a filter. That's what I would suggest.

Okay, good point. And what is the rule of thumb for water storage? Is it 1 gallon per person per day?

There's so many variables in that question you asked. What was the last oil intake? How old is the person? Are they sick? How hot is it outside? What's the humidity level in general? That's what they say, because the human body needs about two quarts per day, basil just to survive. And then they say, well, we'll give you another quart for cooking and another quart for cleaning. I've lived in several places where I've hauled my water for years. I can tell you exactly what I use in my desert. In my high desert, I would want at least 2 gallons per person per day. A gallon per person per day is pure survival. If it gets hot in California in the summertime, you might easily drink a gallon and a half a day trying to stay cool. You want to try to store as much water as you can. It's one of those items that unfortunately, it's heavy and it takes up some space, but you trade everything you had if you didn't have it right?

No question. Okay, let's go to the subject of food for a moment. What do we do about food? We do MREs. I mean, there's the short term and the long term with all of this stuff. The long term, when you talked about water, is good, filtration system, collecting cisterns, roof water with gutters and so forth. The short term is just having some in storage. So with food, what is the short term? I think the first thing most Americans need to take care of is the short term, the seven days. I mean, most Americans can't survive for two days. It's unbelievable.

Yeah, you're sharp. Okay. Yeah, because you're right. These things are short term, and then we the long term. And they're two very different scenarios. Short term, for food, it's really hard to beat canned goods. You know, they're dirt cheap. In my book, I show you how to open it on a brick wall. Got can openers, nice and recommended, but you don't necessarily need one. If you don't have one and they don't need cooking, you can open up the can, stick in a stick and eat the beans or whatever. So with MREs, you can do that too. But those on a budget, they're very expensive compared to Canned goods. So I push canned goods because they're cheap. We've got the bean stew with gravy or whatever it is. You can have an entire meal in a can and call it good with minimal fuss and minimal expense. And they store fairly well.

And you can eat it cold.

Exactly. And that's huge because people think, oh well, what does that mean, to eat it cold? It means that if you don't have a way to make a fire, if you don't have something to burn and a safe place to do it. And I guarantee you this, Jason, if the grid did go down, unfortunately, one of my direful predictions would be what you mentioned before. Carbon monoxide by idiots who don't know how to use fire. All of a sudden trying to use fire for whatever reason, to burn a body, to heat the home, to have alternative lighting, to cook the beanie weenies or whatever it is. And the flip side of that is massive fires because people have forgotten how to be respectful and how to use fire. So if at all possible, you bet. Eat it cold because that'll save you a lot of heartache if you don't have the skill set to know how to do some common sense stuff. Another option to go along with food that's hard to beat is just the good old Coleman camping stove. You know, one of those big green ones you can get at the thrift store where you can put a couple pots on it. Stay away from the ones that are expensive, the backpacking stoves. Try to feed a family of four or five on a spindly little backpacking stove with one burner. Go ahead and invest in a Coleman stove or whatnot. Two burner. They have some off brand names at the discount stores. And there you go, you got your pot, you got your canned food and you're good to go. So short term, I would say that long term MREs do have a long storage life, although I've seen them eclipsed by canned goods in certain scenarios. But we could go into, oh, there's bulk foods, as you probably know, because I'm sensing you've done quite a bit of research on this. Anyway, you can pay a hell of a lot of money for stored foods in these Mylar bags, in buckets with nitrogen, etc. When you can go to a discount store and buy a five pound bag of beans for 15 bucks and do it yourself. But then people are short on time again, the food can get fairly complex. If nothing else, just buy extra canned food for your family. Don't make this more complex than you have to go buy some extra beans and rice and then rotate them, use them as part of your meal plan. And if you don't, then you wasted 15 bucks for a year or whatever. I've literally had pinto beans 1998. And yes, they're harder to cook. Another investment every survival kitchen should have is a pressure cooker. They are awesome because they can take those cheaper, more nutritious whole grains and cook them in a fraction of the time, using a fraction of the water, using a fraction of the fuel. So something as simple as a pressure cooker can just make a world of difference. Now, one more thing before we shift gears on the MRE thing. I have a course that's based on the grid going down called the Self Reliance Symposium. And each meal is different, supplied by me. One night it is freeze dried camping food and the next night we do beans and rice in a pressure cooker. And the next night we do just canned goods, just like we were actually doing it for real. And without a doubt, all across the board. The fancy, more expensive, the hybrid and freeze dried camping food, no one likes it. It leaves the body feeling starved. Everyone seems to like beans and rice real well because it's hearty, nutritious, it's filling, it's a whole grain, and guess what, it's dirt cheap. So be real careful about putting all your eggs in one basket with MREs or freeze dried camping food and just blowing it off for five years in your closet because literally you could be starving your family through it. Doesn't seem to possess the nutritional value and satisfaction of real food. And I'm talking one meal, let alone if you were eating that for a month.

Well, it seems to work for the troops. I mean, the military is using the MREs though, and gosh, if there's any physically demanding part of life, it's got to be war, right?

Yeah, the MREs are good. They're much, much better than the freeze dried camping food, which you think that the backpackers are they doing any less? They're carrying a 70 pound backpack. And yet what I'm telling from my experience is the clients when they have, because I asked them which was your favorite dinner and most all of them say it's the whole grains and then it's the canned goods and then it goes on to the extraneous stuff. But you're right, I've eaten tons of MREs. Super duper calorie load. And for your clients that can afford that or want to do that, it is a kind of a dumbed down way just to get a few cases and stash them because you can forget about them. As far as storing food, any type of food, I have several things listed when all hell breaks loose about what would accentuate the storage time. Like, you know, as cool as possible out of the sun, no oxygen, things like that, that would, you know, you'd want to store your MREs, you wouldn't want to put them in the back of the trunk of the Mercedes, you know, where it's 125 degrees in there because the shelf life can go down to months if they're stored in hot temperatures.

Okay, yeah, that's good to know. So what's the storage life of the beans you mentioned pinto beans from 1998. Are you saying a 10 year shelf life on and what type beans? I mean, what can do people buy at the store when you say that? Specifically?

What? Canned?

Yeah, what, what can, you know, you say canned food, that's the cheapest, it's the easiest. And what I say to people is, look, when you go to the store, just buy a few extra of everything and don't eat it all. Go to the store again and buy a few more than two and just slowly sort of accumulate some food just in case for that just in case scenario.

Yeah, there's tons of grains out there. Especially at the more hippie health food stores. You'd be amazed at what's out there to eat. What you'll find at the regular grocery store is of course you'll find brown rice which doesn't store very well. I've eaten 40 pounds of rancid brown rice. And if you are not single, you will be at the flatulence from that. It was pretty horrific. But I wanted to do an experiment on myself. It took about two months to eat all that and it was a pretty bad thing each time I did that. But I ate it because I went, oh, could I eat this rancid brown rice? And the reason it's more nutritious is the fat and the oil is in the grain still. It's not taken out like polished white rice, which sacrifices longevity of storage. The other would be white rice at the store. There's always pinto beans, there's always lentils at the store, there's always split peas at the store. The approximate shelf life, I don't even get into that in my book. The reason I don't is when I did my research for it and my own personal research, it was all over the map. Some people would say this lasted two years and other people would say it lasted 10. There's too many variables. Where is it stored? Where did you buy it? Did it have insects to begin with? Did your house get flooded? There's a lot of variables in where you put the food that would directly impact its storage life. So that's a real hard one to deal with. The easiest way to deal with that is called fifo. First in, first out. In other words, if you buy food, you have it as part of your regular meal plan and you rotate it like you're saying so that it's always kind of fresh because you're always eating it on the go. It's not just stuck away. And that's hard to do with things like freeze dried stuff and MREs. That's why I'm cautioning people. Although you should have a stash of that probably, so we don't have all our eggs in one basket. Try to make some of this stuff a regular part of the meal plan and you'll be a lot happier.

Sure. And so go back to that accounting or finance term fifo. First in, first out, or, you know, and then there's Philo and Lifo and all of those I remember from school. It's good stuff. Okay, Cody, there's so many areas of this. Obviously we can talk about weapons, communication. I kind of find that communication seems to be very overlooked when you talk about sort of modern survivalism. People, they just expect their cell phones are going to continue to work and I don't think they necessarily expect that. What do you have to say about communication? I mean, obviously you should have a radio so you can listen to one way communication and know what's going on. But what about two way communication?

Yeah, communications are going to be huge in any disaster, post disaster or during. The most obvious way to communicate when things are down is to have a plan, a game plan with your family. I call it the Five W's. And I even talk about this in my first book on wilderness survival. 98.6 is just as applicable in the woods as it is in the city. Where are you? What are you doing? Why are you there? Who? What?

Why?

So in other words, if Frank goes to work, we know he's working at the 7 11. He's driving the Toyota truck with a license plate, so. And so we know he's back around this time, et cetera, et cetera. So I would have a game plan so that every family member knows. Look, if something happens and we're all separated in the city and we're at work or at School or whatever, let's meet here, let's come back and do this. That's a communication plan that has no moving parts except what comes out of your mouth and into your family's ears. That's the most dependable plan in my opinion, is making a family game plan between you and your family. Of course, to have a NOAA weather radio would be primo. And a hand crank one even better. Grundig is a German manufacturer that makes a high quality model of that. There are several others out there. Again, I'm not trying to sell stock in any certain company. Trying to promote common sense. So to have a radio that's applicable especially for emergency broadcast via storms like a NOAA weather radio would have, would be a wonderful thing for a family to have to get updates on what's going on. Is there a sewer line break? Guess what? We better shut the water valve off to the house because we don't want to be drinking this fecal matter that all of a sudden is in our, our hot water tank because it came in from the outside. There's a lot of variables when the grid goes down as far as two way communication that can get pretty intense. Yeah, the repeaters for the cell phones could be all screwed up. I just, I don't know what to tell you on that. I mean there are walkie talkies, there's all sorts of things. I tend to stay fairly low tech because low tech's hard to take out when the grid goes down. And I've mentioned the best low tech stuff I can think of. Get that weather radio with batteries. It will have a plug in as well and it will have a hand crank so that you don't need the batteries if the batteries go bad. And at least talk with the stuff about your family about the realities of. Look, if something happens and our phones don't work, let's meet here. If something happens and the grid burps for whatever reason.

Right. Okay, good plan. So obviously have a plan and have a contingency plan in case for some reason that plan is interrupted and you've got to go to plan B. How do you envision Cody people needing all of this? I know you're not one and I'm glad you're not one to be like some of these fear mongering sort of survivalists. But what situations might occur? I mean, do you want to talk about just, just kind of mention that as to why this is so important? Because I really think it is. I think more than ever we need to be thinking responsibly and in a self reliant manner.

Yeah. And we're not. And the reason we're doing it now is because we're feeling some pain. And I don't know why Americans are so hip to learning how to swim when the boat's already half full of water.

Because we've had it so good for so long.

Right. So I'm not sure. I mean, look at human nature. If we were all prepared, according to the American red Cross, about 96% of Americans, according to their statistics, are not prepared. Not prepared for a pending disaster. So that leaves about a hearty six point whatever percent people that are going to get their butt kicked and everyone else is going to take their stuff or whatever scenario you want to look at it. I've seen people, I take people out in the wilderness and get paid to put them out of their comfort zone. And not that it gets really weird out in the field because I control that because I have to, but I've seen people really hungry, I've seen people really tired, I've seen people really dehydrated. And it's not fun. It's not fun. So if you can picture tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people pissed off, tired, irritable, scared, you tell me what could happen.

Yeah, you know, I mean, the state of California here is passing out IOUs rather than checks to people in big cities like Los Angeles. We've got a lot of people that are on government aid. And what if someday the state doesn't pay everybody and they can't buy food? What if the big earthquake comes along and the shelves at the store can be bare in a few hours? People have got to think in advance. So very, very wise just kind of in wrapping this up. We covered the basics today. There's a lot more than the basics. What didn't we cover? Cody?

There's alternative transportation and alternative lighting, which are probably. Lighting would be probably the next thing on the agenda. And the way to do that with kids is just get a battery operated lantern, stay away from the propane lanterns, stay away from, get kerosene, stay away from the open candles. With the kids and the pets knocking them over here, we're back to carbon monoxide and burning down your house. You know, just flashlights, the chemical light sticks or a lot of LED lanterns are on the market right now. And that would be a worthy investment. It's ironic, Jason, that I was telling your producer we just had 12 inches of snow two days ago here, and I was at my girlfriend's house in town and not at my homestead. Her little cabin is all on electricity and the power went out so we had no way to use the toilet. We had no way to heat because it's electric heat. It was an electric stove. It's an electric pump for the water. Everything was gone boom in an instant.

Right. Well, she sure has the right boyfriend, doesn't she? Yeah, right. So self reliance, so lighting. Just give us a clue to transportation.

Transportation. Buy some good shoes and break them in. I love bicycles. I mean, how can 3 billion Chinese be wrong? A good quality mountain bike. I'm not saying you go buy the tricked out version. Just a nice comfortable bike would save tons of calories because you can move without using calories via coasting. I have just like a milk crate on the back of mine and a day pack. So let's say that you're going to get supplies or water and you're on your mountain bike with a backpack or a daypack on to carry supplies to keep your hands free and maybe a little pouch or a case on the back. You'd be worlds ahead of most people with just that setup.

That's for sure. That's for sure. Cody, tell us about your courses. I mean you alluded to that. How long are they? And I'm really curious as to the price of them if you want to talk about that here on the air.

Sure. I teach courses anywhere from two days to nine days long. My weekends average $395 for two days and my nine day course I think is around $1,600 or so. And that's all me. There's no other co instructors so you're paying for my instruction. And I teach courses like I mentioned earlier in Modern survival skills, Primitive living skills and Urban preparedness. And all those can be looked under the course button on my website@www.codielandin.com and that's pretty much where people register and sign up and everything's right there.

All right, excellent. Well, Cody, thank you so much for joining us on the show. And I hope that cough improves there. I've been a little sick myself so I probably sound a bit stuffed up. It's no fun, is it?

Tail end of a cold, but yeah. Thank you for doing the interview. Now. Sorry about the cough.

All right, appreciate it. And everybody go out and get yourself a copy of When All Hell Breaks Loose and check out Cody's website as well. Thanks for joining us today, Cody.

Thanks, Jason.

Hey, Al Rance. Hell here, you know, with all the financial uncertainty now is the time more than ever to be in touch with Jason Hartman. They have what's coming up we call the Masters Weekend. Now they're going to learn about the tried and true conservative investments that work in real life. For example, how to get the taxes back that you paid over the last five years. Imagine that. How to make up to 40% or more, even in today's climate. It'll be at the Masters Weekend in Costa Mesa. How do you reserve? How do you find out information? Simple. Go online to jasonhartman.com also get your free educational podcasts. Do not miss the Masters Weekend.

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