Ep 12: Chris Whitcomb on How to Survive in any Environment

Welcome to the Rewild Gear Podcast. Modern life, society, and responsibilities have domesticated us, but now it's time to rediscover your adventurous side. Whether that's camping, hiking, hunting, fishing, or just spending time in the great outdoors, this is the podcast for you. Join us as we get back to the wilderness and rewild. Welcome to the Welcome to the Every Wild Gear Podcast. I'm your host, Seth Spears, and I'm here today with Chris Witt Whitcomb. He is a bestselling author and former member of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, spending 15 years with the unit. Chris has worked extensively with foreign and domestic intelligence agencies in some of the most dangerous locations in the world, including Afghanistan, Kosovo, Israel, and Somalia, amongst many others. And he has been awarded numerous citations and awards, including the FBI's Medal of Bravery. Since leaving the FBI, Chris has worked as an on-air global security advisor for NBC News, was nominated for a Peabody Award, and has appeared on dozens of TV and radio programs, including The Today Show, Meet the Press, The Daily Show, Larry King Live, and more. Witt is the bestselling author of 3 books, including Cold Zero: Inside the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, Black and White. Chris is also an avid outdoorsman and works extensively with Mike Glover and the team at Fieldcraft Survival. Chris, welcome to the Rewire Gear Podcast. Glad to have you here.

Hi, Seth. Morning. Great to talk to you.

How you doing today?

Very well, man. Very well. Super.

We got all our technical details worked out. So after a couple minutes trying to get all that set up, so let's dig into it, shall we?

Yeah, that sounds great.

Super. We'd love to just start off by getting a little bit of your background story. I mean, your bio is pretty interesting. You've done a lot of cool things. So I'd love to just kind of hear how you got started and about your love of the outdoors and all that. So let's just start wherever you want to there.

Well, I think it started really when I was born. I was born in a very small town in northern New Hampshire, and my dad ran a ski area, and I lived basically outdoors. There was nothing else to do. We didn't have— and I date myself, but I've been around quite some time, as you know— and I grew up in the outdoors. We didn't have the internet. We literally had one television channel, if you can believe that. It was the days of network television. So, there was no television, no video games. There were no—

No internet.

Things most young people now take for granted, and because it was a different time, my parents gave me a great deal of freedom from my earliest age. And I mean, my earliest memories, and I'm thinking probably kindergarten, my friends and I would go out in the morning and we would come back if we were hungry. So it was a very independent lifestyle. We'd ski and ice climb in the winter. We'd hike and rock climb in the summer. and then play various things. But I grew up and lived all those early years, really right through high school, maybe even college, outdoors. So it was a way of life that I was born into and lived as a way of life most of the decades.

Super. So you've spent a lot of time in nature and the outdoors from a very young age. It sounds like you've really, really had a good time doing that too.

Yeah, I did. And then after I graduated college and started a regular life, I still did it recreationally. And then I joined the FBI Then the hostage rescue team, and the hostage rescue team lives outdoors half the time anyway. You know, any of those units, any of those military units, elite police units spend a great deal of time outdoors because you have to practice for those missions, right? So during those years, I was outside almost all the time anyway. So just for whatever reason, I have lived a life of considerable amounts of travel to various, various environments. And I've spent most of that time outside in those environments.

Yeah, super. Let's talk a little bit about some of those stories that you have, some of those outdoor environments that you spent time in.

That's interesting because one thing that's tough in a podcast or getting to know you is getting to know somebody and their background. And I don't mean to sound like an ass here, but mine is pretty is pretty broad. You know, that I worked in, uh, with the hostage rescue team in a lot of challenging environments in the war on terror, hostage situations, trained and traveled a lot internationally. I lived and traveled overseas a lot before I went into the FBI. I went to school my junior year in London and spent a lot of time in Europe. And then, uh, a recent company, uh, called Andy, uh, I worked a great deal in the Eastern Bloc countries, African countries, some Central American countries. And then I lived in I lived in Asia for almost 7 years. I lived in a country called East Timor, which at the time was a war zone. I moved there in 2006, and then I lived in Bali and spent a lot of time in Indonesia. So, I don't know really, but I think it's somewhere around 80 or 85 countries I've visited.

Wow.

Every continent except Antarctica. Many of those are not just vacations. Many of those I spent considerable amounts of time. So, I lived in Asia for more than 6 years. I have spent a great deal of time in Africa, including Somalia and some not so pleasant places. And, and of course, most of all of Europe, most of the Eastern Bloc, all of Central America. And so I guess we'd have to start with the geography maybe, or some kind of category. You're going to have to pick something that interests you, I suppose.

Got it. Yeah. You know, I'd love to hear from you as far as how all of those different regions how they differed insofar as the natural environment, nature, wild animals, and things like that. Because, you know, growing up in the US, and no matter if you're on the East Coast, the West Coast, or in between, the geography is very different. The nature is very different, the types of animals and things like that. And some people— so if you're in an urban environment, you know, you're not nearly as used to being in the great outdoors, say, like in Wyoming or Montana or Colorado. But if you grow up in kind of that rural environment, going into the city is very different for you. So I'd like to hear kind of your experience there as far as how some of those regions differed.

That's great, and I think it makes sense as we go along. The biggest threats I faced in my life are human beings, but I'll start with some of the lesser mammals maybe, if that's where we want to go. And I'll say, growing up in New Hampshire, New Hampshire didn't really have that much wildlife back then. You saw whitetail deer, various game birds, you saw black bears, and you saw moose. And the most threatening among those would be moose.

Yeah.

So, uh, most people don't realize they're moose— that moose are dangerous, but they can be very dangerous, like any mother in particular in the spring. So I'll start with a moose story.

Yeah, great.

So I have a place in Montana, spent a lot of time in Montana. Uh, when I first came back from Asia, my— a buddy of mine had a house at the Yellowstone Club, Big Sky, and I was up there and went for a hike, and it was about an 8-mile hike. Up high, and Lone Peak above Yellowstone in Big Sky, Montana is somewhere around 11,000, 11,500 feet. The hike we went on, a friend of mine, and went up above, came back down around, and we were probably a mile from the end of the hike. And we're coming down this trail and looked off to the right-hand side and saw a very large bull moose that was quite close.

Mm-hmm.

In relative terms, I'd say it was maybe somewhere around 60 feet, 60 or 70 feet. But a moose that size can close an open distance of 60 feet very, very quickly. So I immediately thought, okay, we just gotta take a look and walk out around because the moose saw us as well. And I'd done some basic preparation because they have a lot of grizzly bear up there. And they had offered warnings. People at the trailhead had written warnings about a grizzly bear. So I had bear spray and I had a horn and I had a .40 cal Glock, which was primarily for me, you know, hurt the bear, but I was going to eliminate my misery in a hurry. So anyways, I'd done basic preparations, water and all the stuff you do. So didn't think much about it, but you always take precautions. Came up, saw the moose. My friend said, oh, that's cool. Had never seen a moose and thought maybe we'd go over and take a closer look and pet it, as many people who visit Yellowstone area do. That's a bad idea. So we walked—

Not the smartest idea.

Not the smartest idea. But as you well know, Seth, many people have ideas that don't seem— they're not so smart in the end. So I said, no, we're gonna go out around, we're gonna get out of the bull moose's view plane, walked off the trail through the woods and just came back out on the trail, maybe 30 yards away. Came back out, I could still see the moose out behind. The moose had kind of forgotten us, but I was looking back over my shoulder to the right, standing in the trail, and felt fairly comfortable the moose was no longer an issue. Heard a hellacious, uh, rumble, looked off to my left and saw a huge grizzly bear appear from the woods where we'd just been, uh, run across the trail and into a clearing, uh, back in the general vicinity of the moose. So looking at the moose, uh, heard the noise, turned my head, and by the time I turned my head, the bear was already on the trail and not more than— I don't want to exaggerate, but not more than 25 feet.

Wow.

At the very most. I mean, it was very close. You could almost feel the rush of the wind. But the bear was moving across, laterally across in front, ran into a clearing, and then through the clearing disappeared in the woods. So you could see the bear for something like, I don't know, 8 or 9, 10 seconds, which may not seem like much, but when there's a grizzly bear in that close proximity, it did seem like quite a bit of time. So had that bear chosen to run across and away, Uh, it, it did choose that. Had it chosen to come at me, uh, I would not be here to tell you the story. So I was very fortunate that I'm one of those rare people that had a close, uh, proximal encounter with a grizzly bear in the wild and have a great story to tell about it without any prosthesis.

Yeah, for sure. I saw a picture last week of 2 guys that had gotten attacked probably close to there, right?

You see A lot of bear attacks in Montana because people hunt. We hunt elk, hunt deer, and oftentimes people have encounters with bears. And, you know, I've lived my life with guns from the time I was a little kid and then on the job. And I think a lot of people read or watch YouTube channel depictions or whatever of encounters with bear, and there's a false understanding that maybe bear spray will work or that you lie there. If you've watched Revenant, you've watched all these bear things where people do various things to bears. Nobody really knows. There is no real true anecdotal remedy for coming in close contact with a brown bear. And I think it's luck. I think a great deal of it is luck. So what did I do wrong? And what did I do right? I don't think I did either. I was well prepared. None of that would have done me any good. I didn't have time to reach for the horn. I didn't have time to reach for the bear spray. I don't even think I could have gotten the Glock to myself. I think it was— Bear experience I was incredibly lucky to live through. And, uh, there's an animal experience. I had a very similar experience with a wolf, but wolves are very, very different. It was very cold. I was hiking. It was probably 5 degrees outside, blinding snow, you know, driving snow, and very, very cold. Also in Montana, uh, on my property. And, uh, and was walking into the snow. Walking into the wind, probably a 30-mile-an-hour wind into my face, came around the corner and there was a wolf standing there face to face, shocked as I was. But most people don't realize wolves do not threaten human beings. To the best of my knowledge, there's never been a documented wolf attack on a human being since 1900. I couldn't find one. So I came face to face with a wolf. It was just as baffled as I was. Eventually turned and ran, stopped, looked at me. Turned and ran, stopped, and then disappeared into the snow. So very lucky you've had a face-to-face with a moose, many with moose, with a grizzly bear, and with a wolf, all in the wild, and lived to talk about all of them.

Yeah, I know that those are great stories.

Many, many, many rattlesnakes. I'll tell you a rattlesnake story afterwards if you want.

Yeah, no, that would be great too. The grizzly, that's definitely, I mean, it's an apex predator. You know, it's one of those animals that if you come in contact with it and it's you against it, It's gonna win hands down. There, there's just really no chance unless it just gets bored with you and decides to walk away. I just saw a picture last week of these 2 guys that had gotten attacked in Alaska by a grizzly, and one of the guys, his face was basically ripped off, had to be completely repaired. Um, and he lived, he lived, but I mean, he was, uh, definitely the worse for wear because of it. So that's definitely an animal you got to be very careful with, as, as you experienced.

If you live in certain parts of the country, certain parts of the world, you think about various animals, right? Some people who live in the city, and I've lived in the city, consider a large rat the biggest issue that you come into, right? If you live in certain parts of New York, and I have, then the biggest predator you're going to come into, non-human predator, is probably a rat, and obviously not a real issue. But when you live in other parts of the country and living in the West, living in the Western United States as I have, The bear is certainly a big issue. And it doesn't have to be a brown bear. Black bear can be very dangerous too, especially time of year. The spring is very difficult when they have cubs. Any animal that has young can be very threatening. I've been confronted by whitetail deer. I've been confronted by elk. I've been confronted by moose. I've been confronted by all kinds of— I mean, even groundhogs. I mean, simple animals that are not otherwise threatening. Can be. So season can be very important. And what you— how you act in the wild can be very important. In the experiences I was just talking about, it was just an accident. I just happened into the animal's path. But in other times, if you're camping, the way you treat food can be very important. I was in Puerto Rico when I was on the job one time, and we were out in the jungle. We were sitting in this— in a hide on an operation. And You work at night primarily, and they have these monster lizards. And I mean, they're pretty impressive, but they're more impressive at 3 o'clock in the morning when they start ruffling around in the jungle and coming after your MREs. So the ration, meal ready to eat, a military MRE, we would have to eat in the dark. And then you'd have to be very careful the way you sealed it back up again, and then you'd have to have a mechanism for burying it. And because we were on an operation and you can't— you have to be very careful about being exposed, you'd have to come up with a method. So people who spend a lot of time in the wild have to think about the possibility of encountering a bear or some other aggressive, large aggressive animal. But you have to know and take precautions and how to deal with your camping activity, your day-to-day activities, because they're very sensitive to smell. They can get very hungry. And they can become more aggressive as a result. And we haven't even talked about cats yet or snakes.

Yeah, let's hear a couple of those stories.

Well, the first story is a snake story that goes back to the Hostage Rescue Teams. It's sort of a— it's kind of a military civilian unit, I suppose you'd say. And we can go into that later on if you want. But you go through training and one of the things that I went through was the Marine Corps Scout Sniper School. So I was not a Marine, uh, but I went through and graduated the Marine Corps Scout Sniper School at Quantico, Virginia. And during the training, you have to do what are called stalks. A stalk is where you start at point A, you have to land navigate through a wide open space to point B, and then you have to identify and shoot at a target And the entire time you're under observation by instructors with high-powered optics, right? So you're essentially— you're lying in a field, you're crawling across a field trying to find your target and without getting caught. It's a very, very strenuous and difficult thing. While you're doing that, they have instructors walking around through the field. And one of the things, because it's in northern— or it's in Virginia, and this was in the summer, They told us ahead of time that if you see a snake, you're not supposed to get up and expose yourself. You just call out snake and one of the instructors will come around and try to shoo off the snake. And, by snake, I'm talking about pit vipers, right? I'm talking about copperheads. I'm talking about cottonmouths and rattlesnakes. I'm talking about rattlesnakes.

Yeah.

So anyway, you have to do 10 stalks. I don't know the Maybe this was 3, 4, 5, I don't know, somewhere in the middle. And there were probably 20 of us in this field. You don't know where anyone is. You're very busy. And it's a very slow, methodical, difficult process to crawl through an open space under observation to try to shoot somebody, right? So anyway, I've got my mind on business. All of a sudden, I hear somebody yell snake. They're probably 30 feet off to my right. I can't tell because I'm face down crawling through the Tall grass. And so I know, okay, there's a snake, you know, whatever. And then I hear another guy yell, snake! And he's probably 15 feet away. Then I hear another guy yell, snake! Over a period of time, and he's just off to my right. So the snake is out, is obviously trying to get away from those guys, and he's coming straight at me.

Lovely.

So I go, all right, I can see probably 8 inches away because I'm crawling through the grass. Moving very slowly. I'm wearing a ghillie suit. I got this rifle that I'm dragging, and I'm trying to graduate Scout Sniper School. And the snake's a pain in my ass. I don't want to deal with it, but there's a snake coming my way. So all of a sudden, I hear a yell. I won't say a scream because there's a Marine, and Marines don't scream, I guess. I can't say that they do, but I heard a loud exclamation. I look off to my right, and I see a young Marine stand up. And he's got that snake hanging off his face. Oh, it had bit him in the face.

Oh no.

He's lying down and he stands up and he's got the snake, uh, hanging off his face. And he's— he was quite close to me. So that was a close encounter with the snake that, uh, once again I dodged. And I was very, very lucky. And since then I've seen, you know, living in the West, you see countless snakes. I've killed them with I've killed them with shot. I've killed them with shovels. I've killed them with a lot of different things. But it's not that I'm into killing snakes. I would just rather not have one of my horses or one of my friends or a tourist or somebody else get bitten. So just out of convenience, the world has plenty of snakes and I've done my best to eliminate a fair majority of them.

Yeah, that's interesting because we have this weird relationship with snakes. Especially venomous ones, because if you get bit, that's bad news. I mean, depending on how venomous it is, you can die pretty easily, very quickly. A coral snake, like here in Florida, we have a lot of those and those are dangerous. Pygmy rattlesnakes are an example. And just a quick story for myself, as far as a pygmy rattler goes, myself and my 2 sons and one of their buddies, we were hiking in the state forest last week and my son was barefoot. He decided he was gonna hike Barefoot, and he almost stepped on a baby pygmy rattler. It was no longer than, say, 8 inches, but it was curled up and almost got him. And I saw it just in time and grabbed him away, and then I killed it because obviously I don't want him to step on or anybody else who's hiking on that trail because they are pretty trafficked trails. The dangerous thing with the baby venomous snakes is they can't control their venom like a lot of adults can, so they just keep squirting and squirting it if they bite you. And so you're a goner if you get bit by one of those often. So, that can definitely be something you got to look out for quite a bit.

No, I agree 100%. And, spent a lot of time in Texas. I had horses in Texas and spent a lot of time there. And, I had the same experience growing up in New Hampshire. My early days with snakes, I didn't realize that. So, my buddy, a friend at the time, had an outdoor film festival in this field. He's an actor. And, at the end, I was walking out and I saw this little rattlesnake and I just walked around it and a guy came up and stomped it. And, said the exact same thing. I didn't realize, but young small snakes are more dangerous because they don't know how to control the dose. Yeah, which, which is obviously a problem. And, and I want to restate one thing: living in the West, or in many parts of the United States, uh, most pit vipers in my experience are not aggressive. They won't attack you. They try to get away. They— many don't even rattle anymore. And I've been told that was a genetic thing, or an evolutionary thing. I don't know if that's the case, but I've seen more snakes that did not rattle, and I'm talking about vipers, obviously.

Yeah.

I've seen more snakes that did not rattle than snakes that did rattle. So I don't know, uh, about snakes in your part of the world as much. I've spent a lot of time in the swamps down there in Louisiana, um, and, uh, but anyway, my point is my experience with pit vipers has been they're not overtly aggressive. They tend to be more shy, but I know some Species of snakes are very aggressive and can be very, very dangerous.

Yeah, like water moccasins. We have a lot of those down here as well, and those guys will chase you. They're very aggressive. You want to stay away from them.

Yeah, that's a whole different game.

Yeah, those aren't any fun. Chris, you know, you've told some great stories here about some of the animals that you've experienced. What would you say is your most memorable outdoor experience, and what did you learn from it?

Oh my God, I think we'd have to say most memorable in terms of enjoyment or most memorable in terms of almost dying. You know, either one.

I mean, let's, let's hear the dangerous one. Let's hear the one of almost dying and then, and then the most enjoyable too.

Oh my gosh. I'm trying to think of outdoor experiences that— all right. Well, since we're telling stories here, in 2006, I was working. I had a company and I took a contract with an intelligence agency. In 2006, both the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War had geared up, slowed down, geared up, and they were in— they were full on again. And, and so I went to Somalia. I went to Somalia on a contract with a— with intelligence agency. And I flew into Nairobi, took a twin-engine Beechcraft into Baidoa, a town called Baidoa, and I spent a lot of time there. The problem was at that time the U.S. government felt that a lot of bad guys were coming from, uh, those theaters of war through Saudi, down the Saudi Peninsula into Yemen, where I spent a lot of time as well, across the Straits of Yemen, which at one point is— I think it's only 22 miles— would get into Somalia. And then because Somalia had no government and because the United States had very, very few assets they would disappear. So there was a big push at that time to identify, target, and resolve terrorist threats in the war on terror, uh, within Somalia. So being the genius that I am, I thought, yeah, I'll take that gig. Uh, really bad idea. So I went into Baidoa with a transitional federal government which was being stood up in Somalia in 2006. And, uh, I got stuck there. I was— my exfil plan was to get on— there's a fleet of King Air, or there was at the time a fleet of King Air 500s flying out of, uh, Nairobi Wilson Airport, the civilian side, and they would deliver khat or mirra, or it's this mildly narcotic— or it's not narcotic, mildly euphoric, uh, thing that you chew that's somewhere between Copenhagen and, uh, eating peyote, I suppose. I mean, it's, it's, uh, very, very popular in Africa. So the planes would fly in They drop this stuff off, and then the intelligence agency or agencies would use those planes to ferry their various interests through Africa. So I'm in Baidoa, Somalia. I have no way out because there's no commercial aviation, uh, except either to walk all the way back to Kenya, which is a long, challenging walk— and that's an understatement— or—

How many miles is that?

I don't know because I just knew the direction. You know, a very difficult land map, but I didn't think that was going to be an option at first. And that's one of those things where you always have to plan for eventualities, right? Because things always go wrong. And so anyways, I'm in Baidoa. I'd been there for quite a long time. My money's running out. I had a full technical. I had 14 guys in an old Toyota pickup truck with a 20mm Dushka in the back, which is a That's an interesting area. Dushka is a type of, uh, you see like Black Hawk Down, whatever, you see those technicals driving around and that machine gun in the back, the belt-fed in the back, is called the Dushka, which is a DShK Russian, uh, machine gun. And in Russian, Dushka means sweetheart, so they would call it Sweetheart. Anyway, I had a crew, a couple chain guns, I had that and a bunch of, a bunch of kids really. They're all young. But my money started to run out, and because of because of other obligations or other commitments, my controllers were using the planes for things other than getting me out of there. So I kept conveying that I was getting more and more— that the situation was becoming more and more troublesome, and I'd been there for quite some time, and I, uh, I couldn't get out. I couldn't get out. So at that point, uh, the bad guys had found out where I was, and the bad guy— and the good guys there were telling me that the bad guys were going to find me and get me, right? In very simple terms, that's a problem. It's a problem. So even though Baidoa was by definitions a somewhat urban area, that really meant that they had piles of rubble, and some of those piles of rubble were more habitable than others, but it was a very, very rough place in those days. So I ended up having to stay hiding, basically hiding between 2 walls outdoors for quite a number of days until I could get out of the country. And that was pretty challenging. It was very dry, there was no water, and I was being chased by an alpha predator, and that alpha predator had a machine gun. So— That was not a bear story. I was not in the wilds of Montana. I was kind of in a wild outdoor space within what many people would call a town or a small city. And it was a very, very threatening environment. But I think my point in this whole story is it doesn't really matter what those elements are. You could be stuck in New York City in Central Park or between buildings, and you could be as threatened by nature as you are in the middle of the Amazon jungle. That survival, in my opinion, survival is confronting adversity in the most intelligent manner and taking care of basic precautions, which are food, shelter, and medical issues, for lack of a better word. So one of the most threatening outdoor experiences of my life was in Africa, outdoors, hiding from human predators, but facing all of the environmental difficulties that Africa can— you can confront in Africa, which would be heat, sun, lack of hydration, and lack of food.

Yeah, you bring up a good point as far as survival goes. No matter where we are, what we're doing, like, humans' basic instinct is to survive. No matter how much adversity we go through, how much pressure we're under, you know, if we're out of food, out of water, being pursued by an animal or a person or anything like that. So I'd like to hear some of your tips as far as basic survival, no matter, no matter where you are.

Well, listen, I, I know it's very popular right now and I embrace that. There's so many companies that do such a brilliant job because the 2 wars, the 2 longest wars in American history, Afghanistan and Iraq, really brought a lot of the military units to the realization that they have to train for those threats. Because in many, many, many cases in the military environment or law enforcement environment, We have learned that the environment itself can be more dangerous statistically than the enemy. And because of that, the military has gotten much, much better with their schools. The various government entities have gotten much, much better with their training. And then many of those guys have come out and they've started their own companies and they've done a brilliant job in— like Fieldcraft, you mentioned Mike Glover and Fieldcraft. They do a brilliant job of teaching training based on real-life experiences. When I was a kid growing up, those schools really didn't exist. Let me backtrack. They did exist. The 10th Mountain Division used to train, uh, and Special Forces Green Berets used to train at Cannon Mountain, um, where I grew up in Franconia, New Hampshire. So you would go out skiing sometimes and you would see those guys in the winter in camouflage clothes hiding on the side of the ski slopes and go, you know, I'd say, Dad, what the hell was that? You know. So, they did train and it was important and it goes way back, but you didn't see it in the same way. And, I've been through all those schools since. So, my point I think was that I grew up learning how to do that because it was fun. And, I grew up learning how to do that because there was nothing else to do. It was a lifestyle, but we didn't have the formal training. We had the anecdotal evidence that if you didn't do certain things, you're going to die. Number one, in my experience from the time I was a small child getting lost in the woods, Is the number one thing I would recommend is finding shelter because your body can go for a very long time without food. It can go for a fair amount of time without water, but exposure to the elements can kill you very quickly. And it doesn't have to be that cold. I used to love the show Naked and Afraid, uh, for certain reasons. And I know that everybody would disagree with virtually everything I say in a podcast environment, right? But in my experience, the metaphor of surviving naked in an outdoor environment is the best— some of the best instruction you can get. Because if you do not take care of your body in terms of the outside environment, I think it's what will kill you the most quickly, in my experience. And people— I know people who have gotten very, very, uh, who have been threatened physically, and I remember from when I was a kid, 2 people dying from exposure when it was not even really that, that cold. So those who think that you've got to go out and that you don't have to worry and freeze to death if it's not below freezing, that's not the case at all. You could be wet and cold in 40 degrees and you could die from hypothermia. And, uh, in Naked and Afraid just showed that metaphorically, that if you have nothing else The first thing I would do is find shelter from the sun if it's hot, from the elements if it's cold. And then, of course, the worst thing that can happen in my experience is getting wet, because getting wet changes everything. Getting wet with your clothes on, you can have the best gear in the world and I don't care what you're wearing. If you get wet in an outdoor environment, you're at risk far more quickly than starvation or dehydration or anything else. So number one, shelter. And we can talk if you want about what I think the most simple shelter should be.

Sure, let's hear that.

I think first of all, you gotta, as I said before, you gotta avoid being wet if that's possible. So you've got to try to get out. And it all depends on the environment. If you're in a wooded environment, deadfall is an excellent way to get out and do what animals do. Try to find a burrow of some kind, a root ball, to get within a root ball. Oftentimes there's overhangs and streams. You've gotta be careful that You know, the rain doesn't bring that up, so you've got to take that into consideration. But you want to get a canopy. You want to protect yourself from what's overhead. And that could be something already there in a pinch if it's nighttime and you don't have the ability, or maybe you're hurt, maybe you're already cold, but you want to get out beneath some kind of a canopy. And the lower the canopy, the better, because heat rises, obviously. And if the canopy over your head is 30 feet, that's a lot of space between you And whatever heat you can muster. If you can find it, make a fire, or if it's just you, whatever the case may be. So you want a smaller space, you want a canopy overhead, and you want to get out of the— out of any kind of moisture if that's possible, be that snow, rain, hail, whatever the case may be. If you have to make it, you want to use whenever you can things around you. It's all— when I was a kid, one of the first things we learned is even when we had a tent is we would put snow boughs down, and they're very easy. It's very easy to break boughs off a fir tree, any kind of evergreen tree, and you can use those as a cushion. So if you can get yourself off the ground, that's very effective. And if you can get yourself a low-hanging canopy, overhead canopy, those are the 2 most effective things in my experience. Got it.

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Several years ago, I went through kind of a basic outdoor survival school put on by a former SERE instructor, and that was— we learned a lot as far as making shelters and filtering water And creating traps and fishing just with basic primitive tools and things like that. And so a lot to learn there for sure. And I think these are all skills that most people just don't have anymore that we used to learn and have when we were in a much more rural environment. Do you see that as something that needs to come back, that everyone should have some of these skill sets and not just Not just suppose that we're always going to have our iPhone in front of us and we can call for help or that, you know, that we no longer need these skills.

Okay. So let's generate some hate mail for your podcast right off the bat with some of my comments. Okay?

Of course.

And the first would be that I believe very strongly in the sense that I can't change another person and that no matter what I say, people don't realize or people don't know me. They don't know what I've had for life experiences. So they'll have things to say, I don't know this and I don't know that. So I use that kind of as a crutch to say, I don't care. I mean, ultimately, people that I love, people that I spend time with that I respect, I'm gonna spend time with them and really try to help them in terms of survival. But I don't think it's possible, Seth. I think I've heard so many crazy things, it shocks me. So I grew up learning how to live and spending most of my youth outdoors. And I mean that literally. summer, winter, fall in northern New England where it got— we'd camp out at 20 below zero and we never thought it was a hardship. It was just something that we did. Then I went through most of the military schools: SERE, 10th Mountain, uh, cold winter— or excuse me, cold weather survival, uh, Pickle Meadow and the Marine Corps schools. All of those schools. There's a million schools and I've been through quite a number of them. And we used to practice it day in and day out on the job. We would live outdoors in the winter, outdoor in the desert environments, all of those. So I say that only for this reason. I'm not bragging. I'm just saying in terms of experience, I think there are basic things people can do. And I think many people don't listen to those. And that we live in a time, as you just said, when people have trouble navigating apps on their cell phone and really couldn't get from— to the bus stop unless they had somebody telling them how to do it. So culturally, I think very, very few people know how to survive even in basic day-to-day outdoor situations. And, and I think— excuse me— I think that's a shame, but I think it is endemic, it is systemic, and it is, uh, it is difficult. I don't know Really what we can do unless somebody wants to engage. And that's what you're dealing with now. You're helping people. You have a perspective. Those that choose to engage and listen to what you have to say are going to benefit. You might save their life. I don't think that's the case though. I've got 4 kids, great kids, wide interests, but those 4 kids are used to map apps on their phone and have very little idea of how to survive in the outdoors.

Yeah, no, that's a great point. And it used to be that everyone, uh, or most boys anyway, would go into the Boy Scouts, and their motto, be prepared. And I was never a Boy Scout, I was a Cub Scout way back, way back when, but that motto of be prepared has stuck with me over the years. And no matter what I do, I'm always thinking ahead and trying to make sure that I'm prepared for any situation. So I'd like to tap into that a little bit and ask you, what gear do you consider essential that you always have with you no matter No matter where you go or what you're doing? And I know that's kind of a loaded question. It's going to depend on the environment and if it's in an urban area or a rural area, et cetera. But just like to get your thoughts there.

Yeah, great question. And I think I just want to respond to one thing first, be prepared. I did start off as a Boy Scout, although it was very, very— we didn't have uniforms. It was just, we were technically Boy Scouts. But it was that our scout leader, a guy named Mike Doolin, great guy, was just absolutely remarkable. In terms of preparation. It was life skills. It was things that are not just, uh, what you'd rely on in a threatening outdoor situation, but things that are, that are life skills. And I think that's very important. So I agree with you there. Um, in terms of day-to-day things, my perspectives are slightly different because we're talking— I, I, if I'm in Montana or in, in Missouri and I'm outdoors, I have a very basic pack that I take in a four-wheeler. On a horse, or if I'm hiking and I have a, uh, let's see, I guess let me just start with the simplest. If I'm just walking around in an urban environment, I'm probably carrying a gun. So that's another thing, that's, that's an entirely different question. But a threat is a threat is a threat, and we live in difficult times. Am I a gun nut? No, I'm not. Do I want to get in a gun conversation? No, I don't. But I can carry anywhere I want I oftentimes do just because I would feel badly if something happened and I'd made a gun with a made a living with a gun all my life. I'd feel badly if I didn't have one. So anyway, the for the to answer your question, I personally oftentimes carry one in the wild or in an urban setting. Okay, is that where we're going with the survival conversation? Not necessarily, but as we said, survival is. Is, uh, is doing well in a threatening environment. So that's one. Um, if I do not carry a gun, I always carry a fixed blade knife, and that's for opening a beer bottle, it's, uh, for trimming your fingernails, it's for whatever. But a clip-on knife in your front pocket is a great way to help with so many different things, and it's— and most people carry one. So anyway, Carry a driver's license, carry a fixed blade knife, and carry $30 in your pocket in small denomination bills. I don't know. That's, I guess, in very basic terms. But your real question is, what do I carry if I'm outdoors? And the short answer is I carry a very simple med kit because weight can be a problem too. If you go out and you're hiking or you're on a, you know, on your own in the wild, Weight can be more of an issue than the threats you're trying to prevent. So I always go with simplicity and I usually go analog because in my experiences, batteries almost always fail, technology oftentimes fails. So I go simplicity and my med kit is number one. Med kit, I wanna take care of things that are an immediate threat and the number one threat is bleeding. If you cut yourself with that knife you carry in your pocket, you shoot yourself by accident, You get bitten, you fall down, you break a leg and a bone pops out, any of those things, I want something to stop bleeding. And it's— tourniquets are wildly popular now. You can buy any number of very simple tourniquets. And then, a clotting mechanism, some kind of gel that will— that you just pour into a wound and it'll stop the bleeding. So, you know, the ABCs of first aid, everybody should take a first aid course, obviously. But bleeding is the number one issue. You're probably not gonna die from a broken bone. You're probably not gonna die from a bruise or a contusion or something like that. But you certainly might die from bleeding. So my first aid kit is simple because I want it to be lightweight. Next, I want some kind of fire. If I do get lost, if I do get knocked down, I want to have fire for a number of different things. I wanna make a smoky fire for a signal. I might want to make a dry fire for heat. I might want illumination. In some parts of the country, nighttime predators can be an issue, and having some kind of light or fire can really help. So the next thing is matches. I use a sealed container with hurricane matches, which is super cheap. You can buy all these things in any outdoor store, and, and those work very well. And then the third thing is some kind of a a mirror that you can buy, a little sheet of metal that goes in your kit. They're very, very lightweight. They're very useful for a lot of things. And then anybody who's gone through a winter mountaineering school knows that the first thing they teach you is to carry ChapStick because you can use it for about 5,000 different things. So I've got to throw ChapStick in there just because I've been told that so many times.

Got it. No, that's great advice.

So then you start stepping down the list and you go, okay, You want water. Yes, of course. And now in North America, most places, water is not safe to drink. It's got to be moving at a certain speed. You could drink water and die from the parasites in it, or you could get significant health problems from the parasites in it. So you can buy all these straws and drinking devices now. Those are very good ideas, and they're very lightweight too. So first aid, fire or light, the reflection for various signal purposes. Which weighs almost nothing, so there's no reason not to tuck that in there, and, uh, and water. Then you start walking it down and saying, all right, how about a headlamp or some kind of illumination? Do you want some kind of battery-powered device? Sure. Cell phone— in many, many environments, the cell phone is the number one thing you can carry just because you can make a call now. I mean, people call from the summit of Mount Everest, right, when they're, when they're hiking and climbing. It's not always the go-to, but a cell phone might be your best survival mechanism in many situations. So we can talk through all the different things, but I would always say when I was on the job, we would say, yeah, I'm carrying 40 pounds of lightweight, high-speed gear. And 40 pounds of gear is 40 pounds of gear. I don't care how light it is. I don't care how it's made out of all these alloys and carbon fibers and everything. You just pack more shit in a backpack. So I'm a big fan of simplicity and I'm a big fan of common sense. So we could start talking about building a kit, but I want lightweight gear. I want things that are not going to go bad, things that are not going to fail, and things that have an immediate application.

Yeah, no, that's great advice. Thank you for that. I'd like to dig into a little bit as far as on the gear side, what brands that you really like that you feel do just an amazing job with some of the items that you've mentioned, whose quality is just fantastic.

Well, in my experience, the number one thing you want to avoid is made in China. And I have nothing against China. I have nothing against products made in China. I just don't want my life to depend on them if I'm in an outdoor setting. In my experience, most of the best products that I've bought are made in the United States because there are so many veterans and people with great life experiences that have come out in those environments and they're making them, right? So many companies now, small companies, have come out and made things they know work. And you can buy those kits ready-made. You can buy packages from Go online, you can find these established companies that are run by veterans from special operations groups. They might be Delta or SEAL Team 6 or Special Forces or MARSOC or any of the various groups, but they know and they're building these things because their lives have depended on it. So I— first thing I would say is save yourself a lot of time and aggravation. Just find somebody you trust and go with what they recommend because they, they know their lives have depended on it. So I would typically go with an American company, and that's not just some patriotic Buy America thing, which I am, but that's just common sense that these people are making the best products made by people who know what they need, people who back the quality because their lives depend on them, and they've already done the hard work for you. Save yourself the time and the effort. So in terms of clothing, there are so many brands. I think this thing's Patagonia. Patagonia is a great company. North Face is a great company. There are so many, uh, and because they're so competitive, they all have very, very good products. So starting with clothing, because I think shelter is so important, go with a name brand. As you work your way down, go with first aid kits that somebody else has put together for specific applications. Go with knives that are made out of the proper steel. and go with, uh, products that somebody has built because their life has depended on them. So I don't necessarily have a, have a brand that's a favorite, but it's like anything else. Like, let's just talk about guns for a second.

Sure.

Uh, many, many people own guns, and they are highly opinionated in terms of caliber, in terms of manufacture, in terms of mechanism. And I would say that's the way people are. Some like Chevy, some like Ford. Some people like Brown horses, some people like black horses. I mean, everybody has a different opinion. If you go with a high-quality product and if you pay attention to who developed that product, you're probably going to have an excellent product and you're going to be, you're going to be happy with it.

Yeah, solid advice. That's great. Thank you, Chris. What is, what is the biggest life lesson that you've learned from nature and the outdoors? You spend a lot of time in a lot of different environments. What would you say is the biggest lesson that you've learned in those environments?

A couple of lessons, one right off the top of my head. One is what you said about being prepared. I always try to be prepared, and I always try to think ahead. I always, even though I've been out of that, I've been out of the, let's call it the violence-threatening world, the human, let's say the human threat world I've been out of for some time, it is still a day-to-day thing. You see it constantly. And people always say, oh, I never thought it could happen to me. That should be words people live by. It will happen to you. I never thought it would happen to me is something that you hear it constantly. Just in Times Square the other day, that poor woman shot and the child wounded. It happens every day. We live in a violent world, not just the United States, but the world in general. Things happen. That's life. So preparation is important. If you try and prepare for things, you eliminate risk. I always looked at it and said, my life has been about risk mitigation. And whatever you buy for gear, whatever you do, if you look at the environment, if you look at life as a statistical representation of risk, you can really do yourself a lot of good by just thinking. You just sit And think about things that might happen, and you just avoid certain things. So the first thing is not what you carry, but what you avoid. If you go out in the winter and it is— you should check the weather, you should dress appropriately, and you should prepare. If you were in the summer in the Sahara Desert, you should do the same thing. If you go to a bar on a Saturday night at 9 o'clock, there are threats you're going to face along that route as well. So, preparation in terms of understanding what might happen. Obsess about it? No. But, if you do it enough, it'll make sense. You walk into a room and you just look around. Even by habit, I go into a space and I look for exits. I look for threats. I look for all of those things. And, I do the exact same thing whether I'm in New York City or whether I'm in the wilds of Montana. It is the exact same mindset. It's the exact same process. What are the basic things I might encounter and how do I avoid them? Don't walk down a dark alley in a threatening neighborhood at 2 o'clock in the morning when you're drunk. Don't walk into a bear environment with a bologna sandwich hanging around your neck. Do those things sound kind of stupid? Yes. But have I seen both? Hell yes, I have. I've seen both, and I've seen many, many people get in trouble. Because they did things most people would think are nonsensical. So when you ask about that, I would say, come back to your previous suggestion, which is prepare, always be prepared. The next is knowing this, that's not going to be enough. In my experience, the times that I've gotten in trouble in my life, and there have been many, it has always been things I didn't understand. And the bear story is a perfect example. I was looking at a bull moose. I'd taken all the precautions. I was prepared. That bear came out of nowhere. Had it chosen to eat me instead of run off into the woods, I wouldn't be doing this story right now.

Mm-hmm.

I was well prepared. I had a lifetime of experience. I felt very comfortable in the environment, and I had no, uh, chance of, of, of surviving what happened. So be prepared. Understand that's not always going to be enough. So go back to preparation. It's a cycle. If you prepare and you prepare and you understand things are going to happen, that'll help you prepare more, more than that. So as a foundation, prepare and understand things are going to happen.

Do you think that that mindset of being prepared and always looking around and seeing your surroundings and just making contingency plans, is that something that you've learned because of your vast experience, or do you think that that's something that you were somewhat ingrained with? And I've heard different people explain it different ways, and some people think it's one, some people think it's the other. So curious about your thoughts there.

Great question, Seth. And I think it comes down to this. When I was a kid, the first time— I still remember the first time I really got lost. And I mean, I was just a— I was a very young— let's see, I must have been maybe, maybe 7 years old, 7 or 8 years old. A friend of mine and I were out in the woods, thought we knew what we were doing, got lost. and learned at an early age what we didn't know. And I still remember to this day what things looked like and sounded like and what I felt like, thinking it was getting dark and it wasn't gonna go well. So it was different in those days. I was a little kid. So it was, you know, in those days it was the ghosts and stuff that goes bump in the night, you know.

Sure.

Not starvation and dehydration in those things. But it didn't matter because once you start feeling that vulnerability, you get into a cascading death spiral of bad decisions. And I, and I've always, I've always said the same thing. In my experience, every bad experience that went really badly started with a very, very small event. And, uh, and I've seen it over and over again. The best preparations, the best conditions, usually it starts with something very innocuous. It starts with a very small decision It doesn't go well, and then it goes precipitously downhill from there. And you have to break that chain. I would say, as you prepare, as you understand that things don't always go that way, understand there is a chain of events that almost always leads to disaster. And in my experience, it starts very small and it grows very quickly, oftentimes, Goes very, very badly. So let's just go back to the first time I was lost. Oftentimes when you get lost, people tell you to stop, find shelter, and hunker down and let people find you. And you can watch endless television shows, and I've watched many of them, where they'll find somebody a mile from their clothing because they get cold. People get cold, they get hypothermic, they start to freeze. And there's a phenomenon— I can't remember what it's called— there's a phenomenon where people take their clothes off and then they just wander off. And that just makes it more difficult for people that are looking to find you. If you get lost, stay where you are. If it's— try to make it a safe environment, as safe as possible, and stay put until somebody can find you. If you're a moving target and they're trying to find you, it makes it more difficult. So understand that you've got to break the chain of bad decisions. If you make a bad decision, try and regroup, try to slow things down, and try to make better decisions before they go badly. So I learned that very early on. Then when you go through all the schools, the schools all know that now. So it doesn't matter if you're going to SERE, it doesn't matter if you're going through any of the military survival schools, and there are millions of them. It doesn't matter if you're going through a now civilian survival school like Outward Bound. When I was a kid, Outward Bound was the big program. There were several of them, but that was a great program too. But that's what they do. It's mindset. Survival is mindset. What you carry for gear really doesn't compare to what you carry for knowledge and decision-making. The number one piece of kit, I guess, when I look at it now, is your mind. What do you think? What do you know? What do you care about? What, what decision-making will save your life? And so some of it is what I learned, school of hard knocks growing up. And some of it is what I learned to refine in schools over time. And I don't know how many, Seth, but I'll bet I've been through a dozen survival schools and, and I've lived outside for, I don't know, 50 years. Wow.

Great. That's— yeah, that's, that's a fantastic answer, Chris. Whit, I'd like to dig into some of your books a little bit. I know you're, you're an author. You've written several books and you're in the process of writing another one right now. Why don't you tell us a little bit about those?

Well, the first book I wrote, and I got to say, I started out life wanting to be a writer. People don't even know what that is anymore because people don't read anything. Most people right now—

Unless it's on their phone.

That's what I was going to say. I agree with you 100%. People text, and the writing world has changed a lot. But when I was a kid, writers oftentimes were— let's use Hemingway for an example. I wanted to make a living as a writer. You can be a writer. And write and not make a living at it. I wanted to make a living as a writer in the model of my romanticized version of Ernest Hemingway, who for a long time— and, and I know people say this is things about toxic masculinity, all this bullshit, which you're talking to the wrong guy if you start talking about that stuff— but Ernest Hemingway lived a crazy life of adventure, and he did pretty well. I mean, he was in 2 plane crashes. in one event, right? He was in a plane crash. He got saved, and the plane that came to rescue him crashed, and he beat the window open with his head. He escaped a plane crash by beating the window open with his head, uh, and caused very significant damage to himself. Um, but whatever you think of Ernest Hemingway, he lived a life outdoors. He lived a life of adventure in war and in marlin fishing off Cuba. Any way you want to look at it. So when I was a kid, I grew up, I wanted to be that. I wanted to live a life of adventure. I wanted to write about it, and I wanted to— I, I just felt that was it. I never wanted to be a fry cook or a truck driver or a brain surgeon or an FBI agent. I wanted to be— metaphorically, I wanted to be Ernest Hemingway. So I wrote from a very early age. I was an English major undergraduate. And I was a speechwriter on Capitol Hill. Ernest Hemingway was a newspaper reporter, so I became a newspaper reporter. And then somehow I ended up being a speechwriter on Capitol Hill in D.C., and that's when I decided I wanted to go into the FBI. So I made a living the early years of my life as a writer, a magazine writer, a newspaper reporter, and a speechwriter before I went in the FBI. So when I got in the FBI, I got the life of adventure. And it was holy shit wild. I mean, my, my— you could be an FBI agent and you could spend your entire life sitting listening to wires or working white-collar crimes or things like that. I'm not knocking it. I'm just saying, uh, that their contribution is every bit as significant as, as mine was, but mine was different. Mine was violent crime, and, and I enjoyed it. So, uh, I'm coming back to the books. All the time I was in the FBI, I wanted to write did write and thought someday I was going to publish a book. I wrote a novel called Rules of Engagement, which now has been done as a movie and somebody else named the book. But I wrote my first novel while I was on the hostage rescue team in my spare time, and I never sold it. And so my first book was never published. And then, uh, because I have a lot of crazy stories, but, uh, in my life because of what I did for this job, and I was 3/4 nuts. I became friends with some people in Hollywood and eventually with friends with a guy named Peter Berg, who was a very, very successful and remarkable director. He's a brilliant writer in his own right. We became great buddies and hung out with him and hanging out in that world. So I was hanging out with, at the time, who were actors and musicians who I guess, I don't even know, like Madonna, Uh, Téa Leoni, who was a very early friend. Sheryl Crow, the musician who was, uh, going out with a, with a close buddy of mine. Anyways, endless— anybody that was somebody at the time, I was hanging with all the time. So I'd go and I'd do a mission, I'd go back to Quantico and drive up to New York and hang out, or we'd go to LA, or they'd come down to Quantico. It was, it was crazy times, but really fun times. So I tried and tried and tried to write my— to publish my first book. In those days, you would send a query to an agent. The agent would look at your presentation and they'd say yes, no, or go to hell. And all I got was go to hell. Couldn't get a rep with my novel, which bummed me out, but I kept trying. So one day I go and I do this gig. I go to New York with this crowd. That's why I brought it up. And this place in SoHo called the Mercer Hotel had just— it was just opening. And, uh, the Mercer Hotel has been, uh, that story where Russell Crowe threw a phone at the desk clerk, that was at the Mercer Hotel. At the time it was the place, right? It was, uh, what is it, Mercer and Prince, I think. Um, but anyways, the point of the story is I go up there, I think we're going out. My buddy Pete, the director at the time, an actor, says, no, no, we're gonna have a card game. And I said, what do you mean about having a card game? I don't want to play cards. So we got this big party together in a room, and, uh, there's a knock on the door, it's this guy. It's a knock on the door, it's that guy. It's a knock on the door, it's Brad Pitt, right? So Brad Pitt, uh, everybody knows at the time he was Brad Pitt. At the time he was happening, right? And he's from Springfield, Missouri, which was my first FBI field office, my first assignment. So we—

Oh wow.

And at the time, I, I don't think I was impressed. that it was Brad Pitt. It was just another guy, and he was a great guy. He is a great guy. And so he came in, card game starts, uh, and by the way, I should say I was an FBI agent, married with kids. I didn't have any money, but I did have a .45. So my buddy Pete had to spot me $100 for the buy-in to the poker game. So there's probably— I don't remember now— there's 8 or 10 people there. And then the party starts, right? Then all these people come in and there's a big party going on. We're all playing cards, all these other actors and famous people in this room. So we're playing around this table and the pot gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And I think it changes over time, but I think the pot got to be $2,000 or $3,000 or something like that. And it was pre— it was different card games in those days. So we played this game where it would go around the tables, dealer's choice, go around the table and you'd throw down 2 cards and the next person had to bet your card would fall between those 2. So I deal you 2 cards. If it's a 2 and a 2, you— there's no card that falls between them. You can't win any money. So you, you bet nothing and it passes. So the next guy gets a 2 and an ace, and every card falls between the 2 and the ace. So you're gonna bet the pot, right?

Oh, wow.

Problem is, the problem is if you get another 2, or if you get an ace, you have to double the pot. So 2s still in the deck, and there are 3 aces still in the deck. So if you get a 2 and an ace, it's just a reasonable statistical probability of risk, which we talked about before, and you're gonna have to double the pot. So let's go back. Here's this idiot FBI agent, uh, and I've got a .45 which was on the table, and everybody's speed loading the magazines. It was not an appropriate environment for an FBI agent. I fully admit that. I'm no longer employed, and I admit my idiocy. But it's, you know, it's that environment, right? There's a party going on, there's a gun on the table, there's a couple thousand dollars in the middle of the table. Comes to my turn, I get a 2, and then I think I got a 2 and a king. So the place goes dead silent, and they all go, oh, what an asshole, you got the money, he's gonna bet the pot, he's gonna win the whole thing. I'm sitting there thinking to myself, I don't have— I had to borrow $100 to pay to get into the game. I don't have $2,000 in my pocket. And if I get a— if I get a 2 or a king, and there are 3 2s and there are 3 kings, if I get one of those cards, I owe $4,000. So all of a sudden it goes dead silent and they look at me and they realize I'm not going to bet, that I'm not going to bet the pot. So Brad Pitt stands up and he goes, Whit— everybody calls me Whit— he goes, Whit, what a pussy. He goes, you think you're a tough guy, you got a gun, You're this big FBI guy. You're just a pussy. And he starts yelling at me and calling me names, reaches into his pocket, pulls out this giant wad of $100 bills, and he peels off whatever it was. I think he peeled off $2,000. And he says, I bet $2,000 that this idiot doesn't have the balls to bet the pot. Now I've got Brad Pitt calling me out.

Oh man.

I've got— our party has stopped partying and they're staring at me. I've got all my friends around the table. I'm embarrassing everybody. And I go, oh, what am I gonna do? So I bet the pot. I got a 7. So I won $1,000 and whatever that was on the table. So I won $4,000 or $5,000 in cash in this card game at the Mercer Hotel. We have the party. Uh, I wake up the next morning. I don't even know if I went to sleep, right? It was New York. It's whatever in those days. I wake up the next morning. It's Pete, my buddy Pete. It's 8 o'clock in the morning. And he says, hey, man, I got a meeting downstairs. You got to come downstairs. I want you to meet these guys. And I go, Pete, I'm hammered. I'm not going downstairs for a meeting. Are you out of your gourd? I'm going to sleep. Somehow he got me down. I walked downstairs to this little corner booth, this little cafe in the Mercer Hotel. And Pete's sitting in a booth in the corner right across from Fanelli. And there's these 2 other guys. And so finally, these 2 guys look over and they go, Pete, who is this idiot? And Pete goes, oh, actually, he's an interesting guy. He's done these various things. They listen to the stories, and one of the guys, this guy Rob— uh, Web Stone, Webster Stone, um, Web Stone looks at me and he goes, well, that's interesting. You know, you should write some of this stuff down. I wake up and I go, as a matter of fact, I'm a writer. And he goes, no. I go— and Pete says, yeah, that's why he brought me down. Thank you, Peter Byrd. Pete, my buddy, he made my— he changed my life. And 2 weeks later, I had an agent who was the head of the William Morris Literary Agency, one of the top agents in the world. And 2 weeks after that, Little Brown bought my first book in a preemptive bid on what was scheduled to be an auction. So on Thursday afternoon, I couldn't get arrested Writing a novel. On Saturday morning, after winning $4,000 or $5,000 in a card game with Brad Pitt, I end up selling my book by accident at the Mercer Hotel in New York City. So do I have a long story talking about my first book? That's my story. If you want to write a book, uh, stay with it because you have no idea. Once again, preparation. I prepared. I went to college. I wrote for newspapers, magazines. I did everything humanly possible to sell the first book. I prepared. I couldn't get it. Out of the blue comes a grizzly bear running across my path, and that's my first book deal. And, and that changed my life. I, I left the FBI and I started writing books.

Amazing. A fantastic story.

That's, that's my life, man. I don't know how to explain these things. That's the way it works. Yeah.

So as a writer, I've found that most writers are also voracious readers. And one of the questions I like to ask every guest that I have on the show is what book or books have had the biggest influence on your life?

Great, man. You ask fabulous questions. And there are different books. And I would say The Sun Also Rises was one of my first books that really mattered just because I was so obsessed with Hemingway. I mean, my junior year in high school, which was a long time ago, I took Jumped in a car with a buddy of mine who had like a 1974 Pinto or something like that with a couple lacrosse sticks and 2 cases of beer. And we drove from Hanover, New Hampshire to Key West, Florida, just to go see Hemingway's house. Okay.

That's a long drive.

That's a long drive with 3 cases of beer and 2 lacrosse sticks.

That's not enough beer.

No, no. Well, we stopped. I mean, that's where I got exposed to Piggly Wiggly for the first time driving across Alabama. Um, so, so one of Hemingway's books, but I think The Sun Also Rises, which is one of the most formative books for me, um, which I— maybe it shouldn't have been my first, one of my first books, because, uh, uh, picking a hero who was emasculated by getting his, uh, genitalia blown off in war is probably not a protagonist you want to build your life upon, right?

Sure.

But, but then all the other books that came around, so I I was an English teacher for a while, and we taught Catcher in the Rye. Like everybody who's ever gone to school has written Catcher in the Rye, as if nobody's ever come up with a better book to teach, right? They still—I think they still teach it. But Catcher in the Rye was a formative book because I wanted to be Holden Caulfield. I wanted to be standing at the edge of a cliff catching kids when they came off the cliff, you know, and that's why I think part of why I went into the FBI. So that was a formative book. But as an adult, I. I changed a great deal. And somewhat early on, I fell in love with Cormac McCarthy and then with Stephen— Charles Frazier, with Charles Frazier, who wrote Cold Mountain and another— a number of other brilliant books. And then with a guy named Jeffrey Lent, who ironically went to Franconia College, this now defunct college where I grew up in Franconia, New Hampshire. And I, I've always said that, that Jeffrey Lent, Charles Frazier, and Cormac McCarthy wrote with a similar style about 3 different parts of the, of the world. Cormac McCarthy wrote primarily about the southwestern United States. Charles Frazier writes primarily about the Mid-Atlantic states. And Jeffrey Lent writes primarily about the Northeast, but with a similar voice and with a similar perspective. On the human condition. So those are my favorite writers. And if you had to ask what book do I— is my favorite book written in the English language, I would say Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, which some critics call torture porn. And I say to them, come have a drink with me sometime and I'll talk to you about your taste in literature. I'm a huge fan of Cormac McCarthy, uh, and, uh, as a brilliant stylist. But listen, there are so many Brilliant writers, and I try to read most of them. But my— those are my tastes. If you've read Charles Fraser, if you've read Cormac McCarthy, if you've read Jeffrey Lent, you'll know a whole lot about me and my perspectives on the world.

Super, that's great. We're about to wrap up here.

Seth, I'm sorry, I gotta preface by saying that Shakespeare is the greatest writer in the history of the world, in my opinion. Um, but I don't look at his, his works as books. He wrote plays. And I watch plays and that's a very, very different thing. I didn't include poets in that. I don't include playwrights in that. And I don't include television and movie writers, some of whom are brilliant, like Taylor Sheridan. I love Taylor Sheridan's work and he's my favorite screenwriter. I mean, I have not met him. I hope I do someday. Holy shit, is that guy a sharp writer. Super.

No, that's great. Thank you for sharing all those. That's, uh, we'll definitely include all these in the show notes. We're about to wrap up, but just a couple other final closing thoughts or questions. Do you have a favorite podcast you listen to?

Yours. Thank you. You're too kind. No, listen, I like Joe Rogan just because I'd love to go on Joe Rogan and talk to Joe Rogan, but not about the things I've done in life. My side gear, my side gig is, I guess, in very, very basic terms, physics and math and and what people talk about right now. The world is a vastly complex place. It is not just a hobby of mine, but I spend a great deal of time thinking about it. So I love that. And there's the guy, and forgive me, I can't remember his name, embarrassing myself, but he does the podcast. He's a professor. I think he's a professor of AI at MIT.

Mm-hmm.

And he gets some fascinating guests on there. Well, but most of the podcasts I listen to and spend most of my time are more Sean Carroll-type guests who talk about physics and the state of the world and cosmology and mathematics, theoretical abstractions to a certain extent. Those are the things I listen to most often.

Super. And just to close, what is one final piece of advice that you would give to our audience?

Oh my God, one piece of advice. I don't know that would come— what that would be. One piece of advice, I guess, would be live life to the fullest. Stuff happens. That's the way it is. I have never, ever once said no to adventure. And when I die, I will regret some of the things that I've done. Happens. But I won't regret anything I haven't. Meaning— I know that sounds stupid, but meaning that I won't look back on my life sitting here talking to you. I won't look and say, geez, I wish I'd done this, or I wish I had done that. I've done everything that I could ever think of doing. I've never had a chance to go into outer space. I flew in the backseat of an F-15 one time. We went to the edge of space, but, um, I've never— I, I've had vast life experiences in so many different ways, and primarily because I just said, okay, I'll do it. Okay, I'll go. I'll try that. And people say, geez, I wish I'd done this. And I go, don't tell me that. Do it. Do not live a shy life. Live aggressively. If you have the slightest inkling that you might want to do something, do it. When I was a kid, I did half the stuff by hitchhiking. People say, I don't have enough money to fly here and do that. I go, rent a bike. Walk, hitchhike, don't make excuses. Live adventure and you won't regret it. Live, live adventure. Live life, live life fully. That's my advice.

Great. Chris Whitcomb, thank you so much. This has been a fantastic interview. I've enjoyed our time together today and I think our audience will as well. And thank all of you for listening to the Rewild Gear Podcast. We'll see you next week.

Thanks for listening to the Rewild Gear Podcast. You can check out the show notes for today's episode at rewildgearpodcast.com. If you're ready to spend more time in the wild, our line of high-quality minimalistic outdoor gear can help you do just that. Check us out at rewildgear.com.