Mike Jones, how you doing, sir? Dude, welcome.
Thank you. I'm really excited to be here.
This is—
it's a little surreal to be in the room, like, for real, you know?
Thank you.
You know what I mean?
There's some cool stuff in here. No, did they tell you about any of this stuff?
They did. Uh, yeah, he was giving like the full kind of tour of everything, and, uh, there is, uh, an insane amount of history from World War II, uh, you know, swords to flags recovered during the evacuation of Kabul. Like, I, I am in awe of the individuals and the memorabilia and the history that's just surrounding me right now.
Me too.
Every day I step in here, I was like, wow, dude, what a great setting to have a discussion, to be honest.
Thank you. Thank you, man. Well, I'm pumped you're here.
Oh, thank you. I'm pumped to be here. We've been talking about this for, uh, 2 years. For 2 years. I, uh, I told— I, uh, when, when she texted me about it, I, I told you, like, I got the text, I'm like, oh cool, Sean Ryan, yeah, I'll hop on. And then that night I was like, laying in bed and I was like, I am not cool enough to be on Sean Ryan.
Dude, you are definitely cool.
Well, thank you. I'm, I'm, I, I, you know, I came out here, my, my buddies are like, dude, you have some fun stuff to say. So I'm just happy to be able to discuss, I think, some pretty interesting topics, um, that are very, very applicable right now to this day and age. So I think it'll be a really good discussion.
Yeah, I wanna— I mean, I definitely want to do a prepping segment. I know you spent a lot of time in Ukraine recently, right?
No, no, no, no, we, we interviewed a lot of people who have come Ukraine, and we've been working very heavily with, um, uh, companies that are drone-related, whether it be, um, you know, PowerUs, etc., like working on U.S. drone programs, like trying to get those guys up to speed.
Yeah, I can't wait to talk about that. Oh dude, and then I, I saw, you know, there's a segment in here where we're going to talk about, you know, the fact that the U.S. and China are so good at jamming each other's shit. And so, so we're doing all this drone warfare, and it might just You know, if that were to happen, if, if it were to happen, there's, you know what I mean, it might just come back down to regular, you know, GWAT rule. Yeah, GWAT style tactical, you know, stuff like that. Yeah, backhanded arm signals.
So it always kind of comes back to field craft, doesn't it? Every time.
Yeah. So yeah, we're gonna have an awesome discussion.
I can't wait.
But, uh, and I'd love to chat with you about some YouTube stuff too.
Oh yeah, you're navigating any— Believe me, dude, I, I will help you out. Um, we got some good contacts there. We'll, we'll get you We'll get you spun up if you have any problems with them.
We're good.
Okay.
But, um, let me start you off with an introduction. Mike Jones, you're a retired US Air Force Special Warfare veteran who served as both a SERE instructor and TacP specialist, working alongside conventional and special operations units. You later built your YouTube channel into one of the largest firearms and military-focused channels on YouTube, combining weapons testing, survival training, and military culture with your own style of humor. You're also the founder of Onward Research, a tactical gear company built around practical equipment and field use. And, more important than any of this stuff, I just found out you're a Christian.
100%, always. Everything thanks to God, thanks to my faith in Jesus and the fact that he saved me. I'm very serious about that. I always have been. I was raised Mormon, later became just Christian from that, but it's always been a huge part of my life.
So really, you were raised Mormon and became Christian?
I was, yeah, 100%.
Well, I'd love to hear that. Let's start there.
Yeah.
How did that happen?
That's a, that's a great question. So, uh, I love Mormons, first off. I really want to point that out too.
Um, like the nicest people on the planet.
They're the nicest people. And the message— messaging in Mormonism is incredible, which is that families are the unit that make up what makes a country great, that what makes everything so strong, a man and a woman having children and raising those children in Christ. Right. And I'm 100% for that. So I grew up Mormon. My parents converted when they were— maybe my dad was about 21. My mom was semi-raised Mormon growing up. And then when they married, they were fully Mormon. So I was raised Mormon. It was a great childhood. Being raised in the Mormon Church was interesting. You get a really good understanding of the Bible, and I will give this to the Mormon religion because you don't just study the Book of Mormon, which they state is just another testament of Jesus Christ. You also get very, very intense into both the Old and the New Testament. In fact, they very much so focus on the Old Testament and trying to understand some of those harder to understand books like Psalms, for example, which a lot of people tend to overlook. So I got a really good understanding of the Bible, was able to read through it, King James Version, not some weird Mormon version or anything like that.
Got to read through it cover to cover. You know, I was raised, was going to go on a mission, went, and I actually went to the Missionary Training Center. So I got my mission call and everything at the age of 18, which is what my parents wanted. Both my siblings ended up not kind of choosing that Mormon path. But when I was at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, I just realized I had some real issues with some of the history of the church. I'm not here to bemoan the Mormon Church at all because I think that they're very good people and I think that their heart's in the right place. But I personally had some issues with the history and how it was founded. And I realized that what was more important to me was my faith in Christ more so than identifying with a specific religion. So I ended up returning from my mission early. I believe I was at the Missionary Training Center for about 2 months. How old were you? I was 19 when I went to the Missionary Training Center. Wow.
You made this decision at 19 years old?
Every, every Mormon does. So when a young man hits that 18 years old and they graduate from high school, you're expected to go on a Mormon mission. And the Mormon mission is 2 years. Sorry if I kind of skipped over that information right off the top. I kind of forget that not everyone's as read in on the Mormon religion. But during those 2 years, you're separated from your family and you go out to wherever they call you to go to serve, whether it be a foreign country, whether it be within the United States, and you preach the gospel of Christ, Mormonism, right? So it's a very big step in a young man's life in the Mormon Church. And then after you return, you continue on with life. So every girl in the Mormon Church is looking for that returned missionary who served honorably for his 2 years on his Mormon mission. And then women also have the opportunity to serve in a mission as well, although they might have changed it. Again, I'm kind of outdated at this point, but it used to be that they'd go a little bit later at 21 if they wanted to.
But generally, they were encouraged to, you know, to get married and start families and stuff, which the Mormon Church is very focused on, which 100% for.
Wow.
It's something, right? But yeah, came back from the mission, from my mission, much, very early because I expressed to the Mormon leadership at the, at the missionary training center that I just didn't believe. And so came back, practiced Mormonism for about maybe another month, and then just ended up becoming a Christian.
How do they handle— How do they handle that?
You know, I think to my dad and my mom, what's really important to them is your character, who you are as a person. And so my dad was at first concerned that perhaps I had lost my faith. And so that was his biggest concern, was that I didn't believe in Christ or that I didn't believe in the Bible. And so those were some of his first questions he had for me. But I assured him, like, Dad, no, I'm a I'm a Christian. I'm saved by Christ. I believe in Christ. I believe in God, and I believe the Bible. I just—I'm not for the Mormon religion. So we still discuss that to this day, and to his credit, he still sends Mormon missionaries to me, puts me on the LDS mailing list because he's all about it. But no, he's a good sport about it, and what's important to him is that I have a good relationship with Christ, that I pray, that I read, that I stay studied up on it, and that I try to practice those Christlike virtues and those values as I go throughout my life. So. at first difficult for them.
But now, as, you know, I guess I've matured and gone on in life, they're quite pleased with— I think they're pleased with what I do. Let me know, Dad.
Right on.
No, definitely an interesting little path. I think that's most of my life though, which is taking the long route to get to places, I guess. Now with you, like, did you come to your faith like when you were younger or later in life?
Yeah, I mean, it's happening right now. So the truth— yeah, yeah, it, uh, now within the— really, I got serious about it within the past 2, 3 years.
Yeah, nice.
But before that, not really. I mean, just kind of going through the motions, definitely not making any big decisions like you'd made at 19. I mean, I was— it was, it was everything. I was just kind of forced into, uh, I mean, I was raised Catholic, forced into it, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
Kind of left it probably as soon as I left home.
Sure.
Maybe not left it, but just—
Did you go to the Catholic Church when they gave you the chance during basic training?
No.
Did you do that in the Navy?
No, I didn't do anything. That was it.
Okay.
I left home, I was like, I don't have to do that ever again. I'm done. Yeah. Then, I mean, what, I'm in my 40s now. And so, You know, 3, 2, 3 years ago it happened for me.
Interesting. Yeah, you've been— and I imagine you've, you've read the Bible. You, you read the King, King, uh, the King James Version? You know which version?
Man, I read all the versions, but I haven't even— I haven't read through the whole thing. And so actually, I mean, not to make this about my channel because it's not. No, no, you're fine. But, uh, uh, because I've— I mean, I don't know, I've read maybe 50, 60% of it.
Good.
I understand maybe 10%.
It's tough.
And so, we're actually going to go through the whole thing on my show.
Oh, that's really cool.
Yeah, we're going to do one book every 2 weeks for the next couple of years.
I'm going to send you that book, Understanding Psalms. It's by a Mormon theologian. But, that being said, it's not Mormon-based, it's just all the history behind it. That's what the Mormon Church was really good at was getting that history behind Bible passages to understand them because The stories that they tell, the way they explain things was based in a very ancient society from the one we're in today. So at times it can be very difficult to understand precisely what they're getting at. So that's why understanding the history and more specifically how that translation worked from whether it be Hebrew to Aramaic to Greek to Roman to French to English or however those translations went to understand how those words changed over time is probably one of the most interesting things about studying the Bible. It is such an interesting, such a nuanced and complicated book when you really look at it. It's simple. It's the gospel of Christ. But when you delve into it, it's rich. It's very rich.
Man, I would love to take a peek at that.
You're going to— you're about to— I'm going to blow your mind. I'm going to send that book right to you right after this. My dad sent it to me when I was at the missionary training center. Thank you. Of course.
So you grew up in California?
I did. Yeah. I grew up in a little town called Newbury Park. So it just overlooks the ocean right there by Ventura, kind of Malibu area. Yeah. Imagine being, you know, Navy guy. You kind of know that Port Hueneme kind of area right there where the Seabees are. Are you familiar with that area?
No.
It's okay. It's like, I'm sure my Seabees out there are going to be super pumped when I mention it, but it's a beautiful area. I just grew up just surfing, exploring nature because we're— we lived right on a nature reserve. So it was like it was pretty formative because I got this real obsession with just being in nature all the time. And it was great because I could just walk in my backyard and just walk right out into nature. So, you know, despite living in Southern California, which everybody associates with like the megacities, I had the, the nature reserve right there. So I got to just walk the canyon, explore nature. learn more about it. And, it definitely started that obsession that led me into my military career and survival, et cetera. So, it was a good childhood.
But, you became a biologist first, right?
Well, so I got my degree in biology first. I got my degree in biology and immunology, my bachelor's because— well, I guess we'll rewind for a little bit here. So, I went to college, I got my degree in biology because my plan was to go to medical school. And, I did go to medical school, in fact. So, I actually commissioned in the Navy under the HBSP program if you're familiar with that. And, uh, went to medical school at Nova Southeastern University in Florida. Um, did about 2 years of medical school, and, uh, I realized I was, one, not a good doctor at all, which goes on to my channel name. Uh, and two, uh, I just realized I didn't like medicine. I didn't like medicine at all. Like, I, I remember I was doing a rotation and, uh, you know, the first patient came in and, uh, they're like, I have a runny nose and I just don't feel good. The doctor's Yeah, you have a cold. They're like, can I get antibiotics? He's like, no. They're like, all right, well, I'm not happy about that. So they leave. Next patient comes in. Hey, my, my nose is running.
I just don't feel good. He's like, hey, you got a cold. I'm like, oh my God, is this just day in and day out? He's like, yes. I'm like, when do you see your kids? He's like, I don't. And I'm like, oh man. So then I joined the military. That helped a lot with that, obviously. But no, so I, I realized medical school Was not a good time. I really want to give it to my dad right now and give him a lot of credit because not only did my dad have to deal with me leaving the Mormon faith, but then he had to deal with me leaving medical school a few years later. So in his mind, I was a complete disaster during that time. I remember I got like a five-page essay from him. He he just loves me a lot. At the time, I was like, "What?" But he's like, "You're making the biggest mistake of your life leaving medical school." But it ended up working out really well for me. You know, ended up getting into you know earning my beret. 2 different colors and having a really fun military career and parlayed that into doing YouTube.
And now I'm in this room with you talking. So I guess it worked out to some extent. It worked out to some extent or another. You didn't—
you didn't even— you didn't— I mean, you went to medical school and you didn't become a JTA or a— you did become a doctor. Why am I having a brain— and PJ.
MD, like medical doctor.
Or PJ?
Oh, no, no, no. So that actually— that's actually a really good question. So actually, I started in the pararescue pipeline. Not a lot of people know that. So originally I was like, oh man, I have to get to the pararescue pipeline. That, that is a badass job. But the fact of the matter is, when I went through Air Force basic training, got into special warfare prep, went through indoc, did great in indoc, got into— excuse me, got into the first half. I can't remember what they called the very first 2 weeks of PJ indoc now. nowadays. But then went into team, uh, was it 14 Balls 2, I believe? Are we allowed to say that? Okay. Um, and, uh, no, just had trouble with the pool, man. Just like, uh, just like any other guy, right, who doesn't make it through. Uh, just could not do well in the pool. So—
You grew up surfing and you had problems with the pool?
Oh yeah, 100%. What was the problem, dude? I mean, you've done a lot of underwater confidence. You understand, um, when you're in full jock-up, you know, you got your full ABUs on, or BDUs, I'm sure at the time you guys wearing, uh, plus your little flotation vest and your little booties and stuff, and you're doing underwaters on like a 1:15 time, um, you go hypoxic quick. And, uh, I passed out underwater, had a good old shallow water blackout. Uh, you get 2 of those, you're gone.
No shit.
Yeah. Well, you're a liability. That means it's not that you're— it's not even that, you know, your body can't handle it. Like, you just— you're clearly not cut out for that type of training if you're not able to do that. So a lot of people don't know, I actually started with pararescue. So I went through, I want to say it was either 14 or 15 BALS 2 and BALS 3, gave it 2 shots. Second time, shallow water blackout again, full medical workup. They're like, hey, no, that's, that's a no in pararescue. So I was very lucky that I got a chance to reclass within the special warfare community, reclass over to SERE specialist, and then went on, did extremely well in that, and then later did the E-2-O route, commissioned, mustanged over as a TACP officer. So a really weird roundabout way of getting into special warfare. Originally, it was pararescue, just that pool. I mean, sure, for in your career field as well, the pool gets everybody. And, the funny part about that is—
I—
Sorry, go ahead. No, the funny part about that is as a SERE specialist at the end of my career, I ended up working at our water survival school where we did way tougher things than the things I did during indoc. So, clearly, it was just preparation, breath hold, and stuff that I was that I didn't focus on enough when I went through that original indoc. But, you know, hindsight's 20/20, as they say, or something like that.
Damn. How did you handle the—
Oh, the failing out of pararescue? Oh, it was brutal. It was absolutely brutal. I remember calling my family, just crying because it's like you feel like you— I— to me, I sacrificed everything, right? I left medical school, I went to pararescue, and then I failed that. I'm like, oh man, like, talk about hitting rock bottom. I'm sitting there. I'm— you got moved. So. And so special warfare, you have 2 dorms. They face each other on Medina Annex where they do the special warfare training. You have the side of people in training and then the other dorm is SOTS, students out of training. And I remember moving there to the student out of training dorm and getting there and just looking across and seeing the teams go out for their training. I'm like, Mike, my God, dude, like, what have you done? But I was lucky that the Air Force gave me another shot rather than reclassing me right off the bat. And I got a shot at SERE as a SERE specialist and got through that and earned that beret. And that was—
What'd your dad say? He's like, I told you, you should have stayed normal.
Pretty much. My dad's like, what did I tell you? What did I tell you? No, you know, I— when I earned that, that SERE beret, he was, he was very proud. He's like, what does my dad say to me? He says, you take the hard route. I do take the hard route, man. I think that's definitely a constant kind of thing I come back to, but it works out and I learn my lessons just slowly. And I know that probably is frustrating for God when I'm praying to him about this. He's like, we've been through this before, buddy. But that's my life.
I can relate. I can relate.
Unfortunately, I'm a hard-headed dude and I'm sure you can understand that.
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I never went to SERE.
You never went to SERE?
I never went to SERE.
Man, SERE is such a cool bit of training. Being a SERE specialist was very interesting. So the Navy, the Army, um, the Marine Corps goes to Navy SERE. So they, they don't have their own SERE career field. You shred out and you do that. You know, they pull Green Berets or they pull people from other career fields who work in SERE for a bit. The Air Force is the only branch that has a specific career field dedicated to SERE. And that's because the Air Force is so, so strong on this thought process of we always have to get our pilots, we have to give them the most amount of training because we're not going to leave a single man behind. And the huge moniker behind SERE is return with honor, which means a lot of things that we can get into it. But the idea is that after you're separated from a unit, whether you are evading an enemy, whether you're captured and you go through torture, that at the end of that, you can hold your head high and you can return back to your country with honor due to the training that you've received to ensure that you are, one, not giving away, you know, information to the enemy that could be damaging to your fellow U.S. servicemen, or two, you're able to evade capture completely, thereby insulting the enemy, and you return to the country with honor.
And that's always been a huge part of the Air Force's approach to pilots. And that's a good, I would say, good feeling for all of our aviators in the Air Force because they know that they're trained to that extremely high level. But what was really cool about it is it wasn't just the Air Force. We trained astronauts. We trained any DOD or Department of War personnel who were potentially at risk. We had a lot of SEAL teams come through as well for some of the more advanced training.
So to become— everybody goes to this particular SERE school.
They go to, they go to this one. There's also— so let's, let's break it down a little bit. So you have the Air Force SERE school, right? It's changed a little bit nowadays, but the Air Force SERE school historically has been at Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington, right by Spokane, otherwise known as Spokane. So you have that and that's where most of your DOD, most of and all your Air Force personnel go. And you do have other branches that go there too. Navy also has their own SERE program and they run that primarily up east. And they run a great program. The Army also has their own program as well, which I'm not as read into. So you do have other SERE programs running, but they're also run heavily with the influence of Air Force SERE. And the reason for that is the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, the JPRA, is located right there next to our base at Fairchild. So a lot of that work, the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, I don't think I said that at first. So So all that kind of centralized messaging for SERE and anything SERE-related is coming from there.
And, you know, we're very proud of the fact that we're kind of the epicenter of a lot of that information and a lot of that TTT— excuse me, TTP development for the entirety of the Department of Defense, Department of War. So just a cool career field. And that training was— we can go on. So SERE Level C is where your guys go that are at risk of being separated from the unit. So you have— you your special operations guys, you have all your aviators, pilots, etc. And you have lesser, um, schools for SERE. You have SERE Level B as well, and you have of course the online course that everybody—
So this is the top course that everybody—
Well, there's, there's a few higher ones than SERE Level C. There are, there are. Um, and you have different teams.
Are they all up there too?
No, I got you. Yeah, we won't, we won't talk about— we need— Mike, thanks.
My bad.
No, no, no, you're good. Um, so there are higher courses. that we've worked with a lot of your guys with on that stuff. But, that's about a month to 2 months depending on the courses that you take. And, it goes from classroom all the way to being in the woods where you learn how to survive. And then, you learn how to survive while you're on the run, while you're being chased and evaded. You learn how to evade, how to counter-track and track. You learn all these cool skills during SERE Level C. And then, in addition to that, after you're done, you go through the what do we call it? The Eerie portion, the, the, the evasion, or excuse me, you go through the— what am I thinking of? The resistance and escape portion, the RE portion, which is kind of that side that's not really discussed so much, not because it's any crazy wazoo information, but because— You know, some things are not meant to be discussed outside of DOD channels and that type of stuff. But you have really interesting training there. And then afterwards you can go to— you have like your water survival, you know.
Did you ever do the dunker training with like the helicopter, like go in the water, spin? Because do you like it?
I don't know anybody that likes it.
I had a good time. I was one of the instructors for that for a while. At one point, that was a— that was a wild time, too. Because there's so much to go over in SERE. But the point is, these courses are 2 months long to a month long, very intensive. So to become a SERE specialist, you have about a year to a 2-year pipeline to become a SERE specialist, what a lot of people call a SERE instructor. It's that nice sage green beret that we wear in the Air Force. You got the little— you have the little SERE specialist tab. I don't know if you've ever talked to those guys before. But it is an incredible career field and that training was wildly difficult. And I say that— you what? How does it start? Well, it starts with your— what they used to call Triple S, which is SERE Specialist Selection, which is a 3-week course. And like any other course, there's, there's things that make certain courses more difficult in certain ways than others. Like TACP was harder physically. In many ways. But what made SERE so difficult was just task overload, because the idea is that when a pilot ejects and he hits the ground, or when a special operation member is separated from his unit and he has to evade, you have to be able to improvise a lot of things.
So a lot of the first week of that Triple S is about improvisation of different types of equipment. This sounds pretty simple. It's like, hey, why don't you go ahead and take a parachute and sew something up like a bag for yourself? It sounds easy, but there's parts per square inch, and the amount that you have to sew ends up taking you about 15 or so hours. Now, at the same time, you're getting smoked every day, getting destroyed, going through all that horrible stuff. So you end up not being able to sleep during that very first week due to the task saturation that they hit you with. So it's a brutal first week that you have, or first 2 weeks that you have in that course. Then afterwards, you go out to the woods, you are graded on your ability to start fires in a certain amount of time, to get them to certain head heights, to purify water, to improvise things, to build shelters to very exacting specifications.
Are you teaching them as you go? So are they teaching you, I guess, as you go?
When you first start, you're just being taught. So the first 3 weeks is just you absorbing information, and they want to see, are you able to retain this and then perform to that level? So whether with the time standard, with the pressure, when you're smoked, when you're exhausted. And another thing they add into SERE as well is food. You don't eat. So the large majority of the time as you're going through this training, your calories are massively restricted. And that is a, that is a huge thing that just sucks, man.
Mm-hmm.
I love food, you know? So it just sucks to not eat. I'm sure you've gone through it as well. But when you're working so hard, you know, during these, during find selection in the woods and you're task saturated and you're trying to build shelters and chop down trees and start fires and evade, and you're running on like, you know, 250 calories a day. It's just, it's brutal. And it's meant to push, meant to push you mentally because the idea is once you are a SERE specialist and you're teaching people, you can speak to it directly. Be like, not only have I instructed you to teach in the woods, but I've also experienced it myself. I've experienced the dehydration, I've experienced the hunger, I've experienced those extreme conditions so that I can more accurately speak to those conditions to a possible evader in those various scenarios. So, the kind of bottom line of it is once you finish those 3 weeks, the toughness only gets much more intense because from there, when you get onto the actual SERE team, you've got about a solid 6 or 7 months where you go to every biome that the world has to offer, from the Arctic to the temperate to the desert to the sand dunes to the open water to the beach.
inches, and you learn to survive there, um, on very little to nothing. You also learn—
Dude, this sounds awesome, dude. Honestly, it's like the Bear Grylls Discovery Channel show right here, but real.
It literally was probably the coolest training, um, you could ask for, man. Uh, and like, you went to every—
you basically went to every climate.
I've been to every climate, and I've learned to survive, and I've learned to survive with very little. Um, so is it all in the US?
Um, most of it is.
So the, the only, the only school you go to, one school after you finish your SERE specialist training, um, up towards Eielson Air Force Base up in Alaska, and you head up to Deadhorse, Alaska, if you know that area, um, for your extreme winter survival. So it's like the— when we got down to like -60, -70 degrees Fahrenheit, and, uh, that was—
I'm sorry, how cold?
-60, -70. Uh, holy— I think one day we got down to -80.
Um, -80?
Yeah, it was, you know, uh, it was, it was so cool. What do you do out there?
I mean, how do you survive that? You keep walking because the Like, I did a— I did a rewarming drill in Alaska.
It wasn't that bad. Brutal.
I mean, it feels like, you know, it did it.
Was it painful?
Yeah, yeah, painful. You get in and like, it's painful for like, I don't know, 30 seconds, and then you don't feel anything. Feels like razor blades are going.
That's your body slowly shutting down. Um, no, so the thing is, we couldn't have any fires, of course, right? That, that, um, because the idea is you're possibly evading, uh, a military. So there's no fire. So the only way to keep warm is you just kind of slowly trudge around.
Who the hell's running after you at -80?
I don't know, Russians or something. We got him, he's dead. Some crazy Russian. Probably just Eskimo up there. But no, what, what's, what's so cool about it is that in each of those biomes, we learn from a lot of the natives as well. You learn how they survive in these environments. So a lot of our, like, extreme Arctic training, you learn from, um, specific Eskimo examples of how they live so long in those environments. And you got to experience a lot of that stuff, like The first couple, the first like week in that really cold environment, your face is just like you're trying to keep it covered, but you're just— it's just so cold constantly. You're constantly getting chafed and, and way too dry, and it's getting, you know, little frostnip and stuff. But then after a little bit, your, your body overproduces oil to coat your face and you start feeling fine. It's really bizarre how the body learns to adapt. And that's one of the really cool things about going through as a SERE specialist was that that ability to not just know but experience. Like, you, you've been able to experience those body changes in that thicker oil on your face, just in the case of the Arctic.
Um, I mean, what are you eating? Eating?
We're not eating. We're, we're in the— we're in SERE training. No food. So you're in -80 degrees, so we had— you aren't eating? No, no, we are eating a little bit. So you're typically operating on between 500-ish calories or so a day. So like, that's it, dude. It's very, very little. Um, when we went through—
Dude, how do you keep— I'm serious, I'm being serious. How do you keep— you have to have, uh, we have to eat to keep— I thought you had to eat to keep warm.
Well, so you can also keep warm by just slowly trudging around like a prison inmate. So that's what we kind of just did. We just, uh, the best way to keep warm, because you have the full layers on and everything, of course. Um, and so you just very slowly kind of perform your tasks. So building like small shelters, fighting trenches, etc., just keep moving very slowly because you don't want to move so much that you start sweating. Because once you sweat, that sweat's going to freeze and then you're going to get hypothermia and then you're going to die.
Right.
So you just want to move just enough to keep your body warm, but not so much that you start, you know, getting too cold. And we learned that many other ways. We had to hike a couple far mountains in that area as well. And you'll learn what to do to make sure you don't sweat because sweat will kill you out there 100%. You cannot let your body swipe.
How long are you out there for?
Let's see. I want to say we did about 3 or so weeks, I believe, of training out there. We did—
What's the longest stint of time you're spending without being in a classroom environment? Like, you're—
you're— you're— I think— I think you're out there surviving. I think the longest one we had was— I want to say it was like a month and a half.
In -80?
No, no, no. This is not the Arctic. This was the Arctic?
I want to go through all of them.
Oh, man. 2 weeks.
2 weeks?
I mean, a lot because you go from tundra then to temperate Arctic. So, you get into the forest, which is a godsend because you go from -70 to -40 and you're like, thank God it's so much warmer now. Think about a 30-degree change. That's huge. Just want to say you feel way warmer. So, I'll take the forest any day.
And, this is without being in any structure heating?
Oh, yeah. No, no. I mean, you make your own structures because you have to learn how to survive in those environments. Um, so you learn how to— we make like igloos and stuff. Like, no shit, made igloos, um, made fighting trenches, um, made snow caves where you poked a little hole in there to make sure you have the airflow. You— every type of survival shelter that you can imagine that you can make in those environments, we were trained to make, and we made them and we lived in them. Um, and I'll take an igloo any day of the week. That thing was awesome. Like, wow. Yeah, the igloo was super awesome. But then you move down to, um, temperate, which was a godsend because suddenly we had like little squirrels and, you know, Wait a minute, hold on. Yeah, what do you—
I mean, what are you eating out there? Uh, so food you brought?
So in the tundra, we were given one cold weather MRE, I believe, for the week, if I'm not mistaken. So you just kind of split that up between days. So it's like, okay, I'll have like a few rock-hard Skittles that I'll warm up in my mouth for like 5 minutes, like in the morning. And then in the evening, I'll have like a bite of pound cake that I also have to warm up in my mouth for like 5 minutes.
What are you drinking?
So that's where it becomes tough, because as you know, the Arctic is actually one of the driest places— is the driest place on Earth because all water is frozen. So you have this small bag, plastic bag that you keep inside all of your layers. And as you drink from it, you add snow to it. Or if you can find ice, God bless you, you get the ice in there, of course, clean snow and ice, etc. And then as that's against your body, That warms it and then melts it. And then you just keep a constant supply of that going because any water outside of your body is going to freeze. Everything freezes solid. My boots froze solid, even my mukluks, like boots made for cold weather, froze solid. Your pee will freeze to your, to your, to your penis on the way out when you're, when you're peeing. It's crazy cold out there. So anything that needs to be defrosted, you have to use a little bit of your body heat to do it. it. It's a brutal environment.
Sheesh. So what is the— I mean, once you kind of get a lot of things down, I've never done -80, but I've operated, trained in a bunch of different environments, and there's always things that once you learn it, it's like, okay, whatever, got it. And then there's things, it's always a pain in the ass. What's the biggest hang hang up, you know, once you, once you've kind of got it, what's the one thing— when it comes— maybe there's more than one thing.
When it comes to survival or survival in the Arctic?
In the Arctic.
It's the water, man. Uh, it's water. It's such a pain because you're, you're burning so much liquid because it's so cold. Your body is working so hard, um, and you're working so hard, and the wind is constantly just evaporating that moisture off of you. And so it's just brutal. So you gotta drink a lot of water, but your little bags that are large enough to hold enough water, but they got to be small enough that, you know, they're not sucking your body heat. Because if you have a bunch of water right up against your layers, you're going to freeze to death. So it's small enough to not really sap your body heat. And because of that, like, every time you take a drink, you got to go search for snow and stuff it in there. So it's just like this— it's just so annoying. It's like this constant, oh cool, now I got to open up my layers and stuff snow in there and make sure I don't find like dirty snow or snow my buddy's pissed in and stuff. And it's just like that constant, like, trying to keep that water source topped off because you dehydrate in the Arctic.
I mean, you're getting medevaced, dude. That's the end of that. You're going to start getting frostbite, frostnip, especially with reduced circulation in your fingertips and your toes. That's quick. So, you have to keep yourself hydrated. And, it was just such a pain to keep ourselves hydrated the entire time. It just sucked, man. Damn.
So, what is it like, an For the 2 weeks straight out in the bush, is it like an FTX? Is it a movement like we got to move from this point to this point and you got 2 weeks to do it?
Or what was the structure? Great question. So, in the Arctic, it was primarily static in nature. So, you started on the tundra, which is a bare— I'll send you some photos to show people, but it's just barren rock and snow as far as the eye could see. Deadhorse is a It's a brutal place out there. So we do do movements because you need to learn how hard it is to measure distance. Measuring distance in the desert and measuring distance in the Arctic are very difficult because there's not like a whole lot of placeholders to see that you can use to judge that size and that distance. So you might see a peak, you know, in the snow and you're like, oh man, that couldn't be more than 500 yards. So that was one of the questions. We were right by this little peak and they're like, how far do you think that is? We're like, well, it can't be more than 200 yards. Like, cool, walk it. It was like 3 miles. So, so, and that was horrible to do because we're already deficit on calories, etc. So, you know, maybe it was less, who knows.
I'm sure my guys will hop in there like, it wasn't that bad, it felt that bad. But then you go to hike up this and you're like, this is way longer than I thought it would be, um, and way more steep than I thought it would be. It's just so hard because of that just sheet of white. And half the time, you know, conditions are whiteout too. It's so hard. And we were there in January, so we're talking like the coldest months that Alaska has to offer on top of that. Brutal, man. Just absolutely brutal. And then after doing those different types of movements in the tundra, we were bussed— well, not bussed. We took some of the military vehicles down to the temperate where we had some trees. And I'll tell you, that was a godsend, man, because suddenly we had tree cover, temperature raised, and we had food. So like, we were starving. So they're like, you guys can set snares. We were so excited, so we set snares, caught a rabbit. I didn't get to the rabbit, and for about like 10 minutes, that rabbit was frozen solid, just like, just like completely upright when we found it.
So there's not like a good way to thaw it at that point. So we actually had to take the rabbit just completely upright, take a knife and a stick, and just beat that stick all the way through the rabbit. It was like, it was like an MRI of a, of like a, of like a rabbit because it was just all All the organs. And, uh, yeah, and then you, you eat every part of that you absolutely can, you know. Yeah, you— because we were able to make some fires and cook some of that rabbit out there. But like every animal, dude, that we caught out there, if you didn't get to that thing within the first second— we didn't because we were so task saturated— um, that animal was freezing solid. And you were taking a knife and you were beating a knife through that animal that was just— I think we had one squirrel that froze in like the Thriller position. We kept that as a mascot for like a couple days before we ate it. I mean, we were just not having a good time out there, dude. And in fact, it's funny, in the temperate is where I got some really bad frostnip.
So to the point where even today I can't feel any of my toes. Like, it comes at you fast, man. Like, I was wearing the correct footwear. We had the full Mickey Mouse boots. You remember those?
Yeah.
They're like these giant white boots and they inflate on the bottom. They create that huge, like, air layer between you and the ground. Because if you conduct off that ground, you're just going to— your foot's going to freeze.
I've never even seen those.
I'm sure people have worn them. They're cool. I mean, you need to have the air layer between you and the ground because that ground is so cold. But even with all that, man, I still managed to get frostnip on my toes and had to take my boots all the way off, massage with like warm water and warm them up and stuff. It was a— it was a process, dude. And I felt like an idiot getting, you know, as a survival specialist. just getting frostnip out there. But it was valuable. I say that because I got to speak to it, the experience of it, when I was teaching all those, you know, potentially at-risk individuals. So it was cool, man. It was probably one of the most rewarding career fields that I've— I mean, I've only been in 2 career fields in the military, but it was an incredibly rewarding career field because I got to get this really cool experiential knowledge and then I got to give that directly to people. to ensure their survival in bad situations. None of my guys ever got into them, but my buddies had people who had to eject.
I'm sure you're aware of some of the more recent events that happened with aviators who had to eject. And this training is so, so vital to ensure that our airmen, that our military members come home and that they return with honor, man. So, man, just a hell of a career field. So much fun.
Yeah, that sounds fascinating.
Oh no, it was.
What's the— what's— so were you always snaring little animals? Rabbits?
We snared everything.
Squirrels, stuff like that?
Yeah, we would snare the game.
Oh yeah, like if there's an opportunity, did they allow you to go, yep, yeah, precisely, the elk? No, the deer? Oh, 100%.
100%. So you, you pretty much, so long as it was primitive in means and we created it, we were able to hunt whatever we wanted, um, was the rule that we had from the, from the government. for that. So we did actually make our own rope and stuff with vines and bark and, and whatever we could get our hands on. We actually, we, we snared a deer with that, and that guy fought like hell, but it worked really well.
You snared a deer?
Yeah, around his neck.
Holy shit. Did you guys have firearms?
No, no, he, uh, he strangled to death.
Wow.
Yeah, it was, uh, it was brutal, but it's a necessary part of training because as Uh, you typically don't take large game when it comes to evasion, right? Because you don't want— they make a lot of noise. They're gonna capture— They're gonna cause— you're gonna leave a huge scene, you're gonna attract predators, etc. But when it comes to survival, that's a viable thing to do. That's a lot of survival calories right there, and that's a lot of useful material. There's a hide, tons of meat, bone marrow, etc., fat to keep you powered. So after we, um, after we snared it, we used that entire deer. We used every single part, and you're trained to use every single part of an animal. Um, and that was probably one of the coolest things. Like, uh, for example, I'm sure you know this, but like, there's enough tannin in every mammal's brain to tan a hide. You actually don't need any other materials.
I did not know that.
You take their brain, mush it up, use that material, and once you get that, that hide off and you string up their hide, you scrape it down to as thin as you can get it. You can use that tannin from that brain, smear it on there, and it'll actually cure the hide. That's all you need.
Wait, how do you do that? You just mix up the brain or something?
Yeah, take that brain, just mush it up into a little paste like a little mortar and pestle. And then, uh, just take that brain, and once you have that hide nice and cleaned up where you have all that fascia off of it, you can smear that in thin layers across it. And there's enough tannin in every mammal's brain except for humans. Um, I don't know why they told us that. But, to tan a hide. And so, we actually did that. We've tanned hides with tannins from the brain. We've tanned hides with salt, with multiple different things. But, the point is that you got really good using every part. So, every part of that deer was used from the hide to the antlers to the bone marrow to everything to make tools, to feed students. So, although it was kind of a rough death for that guy, maybe not in terms of nature being eaten alive, but every single portion of that that animal was used. And that's what was, I think, was really cool about the Sierra Courier field and how we approached it, was you learn that kind of more ancient techniques of it's not just the meat you're after.
There is— this animal is the key to a civilization, essentially. You have everything you need to start making civilization going again, and we're going to teach you how to do it. It was almost like the skills we were teaching was the knowledge a 12-year-old would have in 1810. That's what I used to tell people. I'm like, I'm getting you to the knowledge level of a 12-year-old in 1810. A 12-year-old could skin a squirrel, could use every piece. He could start a fire out in the woods. That was no problem to him. Now, in today's kind of more modern society, we've lost those essential skills to survive in the woods. So, we're pretty much just getting people to that very basic level.
How were you guys starting fires?
Every method you can possibly think of. In fact, we used to have competitions to find the weirdest ways to start fire. So, um, of course, uh, you know, a metal, uh, a metal match, right? Just like your standard strike. We use flint, we use rocks, we use magnifying glasses, um, wood bows, friction method, everything you can think of. We've done it all. Um, I would say the hardest one is the friction. You're just getting that, that, that piece of wood, you're just bracing it against your, your belt, and you're just rubbing that thing as fast as you can with some, you know, uh, you know, heart scrapings from the inside of a tree trying to get that thing lit. And you're just dripping sweat. It's not the best way to start a fire, but it is a way. But yeah, we've, we've done every single method. Have you done a, like, a bow fire before?
I could never get it to work.
It's all about the wood selection, just softwood and hardwood. If you have like 2 softwoods or 2 hardwoods, it's no good. Soft and hard, that's all.
It's all soft, one hard.
Yeah, one soft, one hard. That's all you got to remember.
Interesting.
But it, it's, uh, it's just like you learn all these different methods of survival that have kind of been lost. And the coolest part about all this, all this knowledge is not like we're keeping it to ourselves. It's all there in the Air Force 64-4. It's like the SERE Bible. And I don't know if you've ever read it. I highly recommend having a copy. It is every bit of knowledge that we learn, just like old survival wisdom mixed with new stuff, mixed with military stuff in this just survival Bible. And you can read it all. You can buy it on Amazon. So I highly recommend it for everybody.
I'm going to go order it right now.
I'll get— dude, I'll get one for you or something. You're going to get that with the song, with learning songs like Together.
Right on, dude. What about the desert?
Oh man, the desert. Okay, this is what made the desert rough. In true SERE fashion, it couldn't just be we go out to the sand dunes and we survive, right? They had to make it rough. So we're on the bus ride there, and those bus rides felt like they were so long because you're driving out there and so much is riding on things when you're going out because we lose— your class size shrinks every single phase you go through. More and more people drop out. So when you get to desert, you're down to like, like, you know, 15, 20 dudes at that point. It's just a tiny class. So you're feeling that pressure because you have to perform every time you get there. So we're on that bus ride out there. We did ours in Vantage, Washington, which has a bunch of sand dunes out there, also has a nudist beach right by. There's a story about that, but— So we get out there, we get off the bus and, you know, it's hot already. It's midsummer. And the first thing they told us, they're like, upend your canteens. So we dump out all of our water and we start a 48-hour dehydration exercise in the sand dunes.
No water for 48 hours to experience it and see what it was like. And it sucked, man.
Mm-hmm.
Because you hear, how long can you survive without water.
Is it a week?
About 3 days.
3 days.
3 days. 3. So 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food, 10 minutes without oxygen. But when it comes to the water, I always heard 3 days. And then, you know, I always figured like after 3 days, you just kind of keel over and, you know, hit the sand and stop moving. Oh, no, not at all. It is a miserable, miserable decline without water. in the desert because multiple people have talked about— there's a really good story about this. There's a B-24 crew who got lost over the Sahara Desert after a bombing mission. I'm sure you've heard about this. They ended up having to ditch out over the Sahara and they thought they were close to civilization. When they ditched, they had very little water, but they had a journal. So all of them perished, but we were able to have their journal to document kind of their demise. And we learned a lot about desert survival from it. But they talked about not being— their eyes getting very irritated as they lost so much moisture after the first day that they were unable to blink the sand out of their, out of their eyes.
Yeah.
So that starts scratching your cornea. And I started to experience that. I remember the first day without water, I started feeling that grittiness in my eyes. I'm like, my God, this sucks. But what really got me was after the first day, you'd flex your arm up and it would just stick because the lack of sodium, everything's so messed up in your body. So it would just completely cramp up in this position. So you'd have to like have a buddy or You'd have to kind of like force it back down. Your fingers would cramp up. So after the first day, I realized I was— you were almost useless. So yes, 3 days without water. But what was cool is I got to teach people. I'm like, yeah, but after 24 hours in the desert without water, you're looking to be a casualty at that point because we lost a lot of people in terms of having to be pulled medically due to just, you know, water-related injuries. from not water-related, dehydration-related injuries. We were sleeping because we made these tents. So during the heat of the day, you'd have to sleep in these and get out of the heat because that's brutal out there.
And we just had like, remember the, you know, the emergency canopy for ejectors? It's like a C9 canopy. It's like the white, green, and red panels. I'm sure you've seen them before. So we had those and we'd use those to cut those up, make desert garb and stuff. And we'd made it, made our shelters out of those. So I was under one of those shelters and And we had wind just whipping across the sand dunes and I was asleep, trying to sleep, trying to— because it was like hour 26 without water and just brutal, right? And I remember waking up and the sand had blown over the top of my hand. So my hand was completely under the sand when I woke up and I was like, ooh, that's kind of weird, you know? And I went back to sleep after I lifted it out and I woke up again and it was up to my arm. I was like, oh. And then I woke up again after I fell asleep and it was in my nostril. I was like choking on sand. I'm like, well, this is how people die, just getting buried in sand.
And it was a brutal thing to learn and to feel, but it was valuable. When I got to the end of that exercise, we finally got water again. I thought it was going to taste so good. It just tasted like warm jerry can plastic water. It was like the most— the most like—
Microplastics.
Yeah, just microplastics straight into my system. And I remember the medics were like, hey, Jones, you went to med school. They're like, what was that like experiencing dehydration? I'm like, well, when I went to medical school, I learned about gonorrhea. But I didn't contract gonorrhea to understand it. But I was a little spicy at the end there. But the point being is that experiencing it was, was interesting and was valuable to me as a survival instructor to say that I've been there, I've experienced that, I know what it's like. And here is no shit the reality, which is after 24 hours you're useless. So you're— one of your first priorities in that environment is you need to get water, otherwise you will be a casualty. So that was probably one of the, one of the really interesting things I think that I learned in survival was that because I'd always heard the 3-day rule, I never even considered that, you know, after 24 hours I'd be completely useless.
Is it 3 days in the desert or just 3 days in general?
3 days in general. Now, in reality, you're probably going to perish a little bit sooner than 72 hours in the desert without water, probably closer to 48, depending on what you're doing. But, um, probably what contributed to that as well. But you get to teach that and, and explain, you know, how brutal that is. But you also learn, you know, really cool things, uh, that were fun because we got to take those C-9 parachutes and it's like, hey, you're a downed aviator. How do you make desert garb? Made like desert garb out of it based off of the Bedouins and how they made their garb. So you learn just so many cool things and you're able to really experience it and do it out there. It was just incredible, an incredible career field.
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This is a good question. Okay, so there's a couple ways. First off, when you land, you're probably gonna have the most amount of pee you ever have in your bladder. Don't drink your piss. Please don't drink your piss. Do not drink your pee. But what you're going to do is you can dig out a pit. You can take a piece of canopy or like a trash bag, and what you're going to do is you're going to put a can under the trash bag. You're going to stake out that trash bag on all the corners. Try to seal as much as you can. And then before you seal it all the way, what you're gonna do is you're gonna have every— everybody with you pee into that pit. Not into the cup, but into the pit. Then what's happening is you have trapped all of that pee underneath that tarp right there. You're gonna put a rock in the center so the rock is dipping down towards that cup. The heat from the desert is going to evaporate the water off that urine, purifying it. And then that water is going to condensate on the trash bag.
Then it's going to go towards that rock and drip into the cup. Purified piss.
Hold on. So, so what is the— so all you guys pissed into a hole?
Yeah. Yeah, we all pissed into a hole and then we drank each other's piss, basically.
That's some— that's some—
I didn't like to think about that. I'm— that— that there's multiple other methods. What was the first thing you put put down, uh, like a cup in the middle. So you dig out that hole, put the cup in the middle, then you cover it and you weigh down the sides with rocks. You're essentially just creating, um, an area that's sealed for that pee under the tarp. And that hole—
We're gonna do this as a family, honestly.
Okay, no, no, I'm telling you what was weird, because obviously they brought the cup out.
We need some quality family time, kids. I'm gonna piss in this cup.
I've made my kids do a lot of this, to clear. Um, no, it's crazy because then they brought out the cup and they're like, all right, drink up, boys. And you're so thirsty, you know, you're like, okay. It tasted like dirt mostly, so it wasn't too bad. Um, you also have transpiration bags. So like, if you had like a, like, sage or some type of desert plant out there, you can actually just take a bag, um, cover it over part of that branch, and that branch will just naturally emit moisture, and you trap the moisture in that bag. That transpiration bag is awesome. So having like little plastic bags works really well. It tastes exactly like sage, like the strongest sage you've ever tasted in your life.
You put sage in a bag and it just—
You just cover it. You don't even have to cut it off. You can cut it off, but you can actually just put it on a live plant and just kind of seal it off as best you can. And, that transpiration bag works wonderfully. You get water from that.
How do you get the water out of the bag?
It can't be much. No, there's not a ton. You want to do a few of them. But again, any bit of water is going to help. Another thing you do too is you find where those river bends are, right? Dry riverbeds, dry creeks and stuff. On the outside bend where the water is going to be slowest, you want to— or where that's most in shadow, you're going to dig down. You're going to hit water eventually. It's going to be a little bit of digging. Beyond that, of course, finding any type of water sources that could be trapped under rocks, any type of springs, oases, etc., are going to be big. But outside of that, you're looking at purifying your piss, you're looking at transpiration bags, and you're looking at digging down. But more especially, you're looking at getting out of the desert environment because quite frankly, people just can't live there for extended periods of time without some good support.
So, the most viable option legitimately is drinking your own piss because you're going to expend so much water trying to dig a hole. You may not even hit it. You might be in the wrong dark spot. You're not thinking clearly.
If you drink pee, there's only one problem with drinking pee. That's what it's at. Um, the problem with drinking pee is gonna be, uh, when you drink it. Uh, because imagine you've been evading for a day and then you choose to drink your urine. Think about how— have you ever like worked out? I'm sure you've worked out really hard and you've pissed like straight, like just like CamelBak juice. Yeah, that's a great example. Drinking that is not good for your body. There's too many wastes, there's too much waste that's being excreted by your kidneys. Then, by re-drinking that, you're going to put some extreme pressure on your kidneys and you're actually going to make things accelerate at that point. So, we do not drink urine. Technically, if you were at a really full bladder and you had some really piss, clear pee, you technically could. But generally what we say is don't, because, uh, it's pee for a reason, because your body's excreting it. Um, so don't drink your piss. Distill it, like with the tarp. Distill it with the tarp. Just don't drink it straight. So that, that is how me and Bear Grylls, I guess, differ a little bit.
Maybe that's just a difference between, uh, you know, the UK and the US, you know, piss drinking versus not piss drinking. You do that too much tea or something like They do do that. But no, the desert was, was cool. And the desert was more, more like an FTX. After we spent some time in the sand dunes, we then worked on desert navigation, desert evasion skills, learned from some really cool guys. We also went to a tracking school up in Montana. I'm sure some people are familiar with it. And those guys are wizards at teaching tracking and counter-tracking, like just absolute Incredible. What's the name of it? Can you say? Oh, I couldn't tell you off the top of my head. I have their patch like sitting on my wall. I'll have to, I'll have to message you after this and give it to you. But no, they're, they're, they're awesome. They were so good. I mean, you're just spending days just analyzing footprints and how those footfalls are looking. And from learning tracking, you learn counter-tracking, which is so valuable when you're talking about evasion and stuff. Um, Besides there, of course, we had the jungle.
What's your favorite, uh, uh, like environment? Yeah. Oh, I'd have to say coastal. That was awesome. It was just oysters and fish and crab. I just ate so much seafood that I to this day don't like seafood much anymore.
Right on.
So no, coastal was awesome. There's such— you see why peoples choose to live there historically, you know, cradles of civilization, because there's so such an overabundance of food even in today's heavily farmed environments. It was so easy just to find oysters and all that kind of stuff. It was just simple.
What about the jungle? You like that?
No. Jungle was hell. And, the reason for that was the bugs. It was just like we didn't have any mosquito repellent, we didn't have any bug nets, we just You had to live naturally. So to get— you just can't sleep on the jungle floor because there's so many bugs at night. The jungle floor comes alive and you do not want that crawling on you. You're going to— you're going to get like a centipede on you or something. God knows what. And it's snake. God knows what. Jungle's horrible, right? So you have to get yourself off the floor of the jungle. So to do that, you have to make a shelter that's capable of holding yourself. So it requires a lot more man-hours. It requires making rope if you don't have rope, which is time-consuming in of itself. And then on top of that, it's constantly, constantly just drizzling at minimum. So, you're constantly wet. So, it's like Chinese torture. It's like every minute of every day you're out there, it's like you just feel a little drip of water hit you at some point somewhere on your body. There's a drip of water and you hear that dripping sound.
And it was maddening. I'm sure people love the tropics somewhere, but living in a survival situation out there, was taxing because of, um, like the critters that you had to deal with. Now there was an overabundance of food, um, which was cool, but it just wasn't like the tastiest food. Uh, like, uh, have you ever eaten like a banana slug?
Hmm.
It's, uh, you know what a banana slug is? It's like a big old slug's got like little tiger stripes on it, and we had to eat them like as a part of training, of course, because that makes sense. So, I have that combined. Not only am I trying to get away from the bugs, but then some of the only sustenance we were eating that was safe were banana slugs, which when you bite into them, they excrete this stuff that hardens your saliva in your mouth. And, it just tastes like mucus. So, it's just like you're eating banana slugs, you got bugs crawling everywhere, you're getting water dripped on you. You try to hike up a mountain, your foot gives out in the slick terrain because everything's so wet. It was— and then false floors, right? You have false floors everywhere. So you're climbing on a mountain, all of a sudden you're off a cliff on vines, and you don't even realize it until like your, your, your foot pokes through. So you start having to carry a pole to like double-check to make sure there's a forest floor below you because there's so much vegetation.
So, uh, that one sucked. I'll take— I'll take the Arctic— I'll take the jungle before the Arctic. Never mind.
I liked— I mean, I don't— what is it doing that— I like Jungle War Let's get—
oh yeah, uh, that was out in the, uh, was it Guam? Was that where they did that?
Well, we did, we did some in Panama. Oh yeah, is that where you guys did it, Guam?
We did ours up in Forks, Washington, where they filmed Twilight.
Okay.
Yeah, we, uh, so, uh, it was a logging area, um, right there. So, uh, you know, So the government had like control of that area, but logging could be done. But I guess like the thing out there is to do some illegal logging to make some extra money or something. So it's like, God, 2:30 AM in the morning or something like that. I hear like the shittiest truck you can imagine driving up the nearest road to us, right? So we're like, all right, what is this? So we're about like a couple hundred meters into the tree line and truck's stops and it's like it turns on all those lights and we hear this guy, he's like, he's like, I see— he's like, Earl, I see some people back there in the trees. He's like, oh God, they got us. And they just like speed off. So that was, uh, that was Forks, Washington. That was a weird— that was a weird place, man. We, uh, we ran into a cop and we paid him to bring us a pizza because we hadn't eaten for like 2 weeks. And, uh, cop was caught by cadre on the way up.
Damn.
No, no. I imagine with some mosquito repellent, like a little bit of DEET and a mosquito net, probably be really nice. But primitive survival sucked. And, I mean, the only place you can really signal for recovery is at rivers. So, we spent a lot of time learning fording rivers, how to navigate rivers, how to float rivers, how to make expedient rafts and that type of stuff. So, it was some interesting training. But yeah, it was unforgiving.
This sounds awesome. Like I said, it sounds horrible and awesome.
It's like, uh, it's like both.
That's what they always— like the thing, you, you hate it when you're in the middle of it, then you get home and you're like, that was badass.
That's what they told us. They're like, like, people pay for this. I'm like, I don't think people pay to starve, but okay. But, uh, no, it was, it was legitimately really fun.
People pay to drink their own pee?
Yeah, like people trade.
That's an easy business.
People, people pay to almost die of dehydration. But no, uh, open ocean was awful, um, because you're just out in the open ocean on a little life raft.
You did that too?
Yes. So you do every environment. Um, that one sucked because, uh, the Coast Guard gets their— gets their, uh, gets their little jab at you first. So we're out in, um, uh, just south of Astoria. Uh, Coast Guard unit out there is awesome. There's also a PJ unit out there. Awesome guys. Uh, so the Coast Guard cutter gets to take you out. Right. And it's horrible weather out there. So what's the Coast Guard cutter going to do? They got about 24 airmen in their bottom hold. They're going to do donuts. They're going to have a good time. Oh, dude, we were so seasick before we even hit that life raft. It was brutal. So I don't have my sea legs. And that was— I don't know. Are you good on a boat?
Smaller ones.
I did not.
Smaller ones I'm good on.
You ever been on those little 12-man life raft, the little inflatable?
No, but I mean, I've spent whatever, however much time in a Zodiac. Okay. Yeah, yeah, doing the thing. But it's like the big— it's the slow. Oh yeah, that, that, that gets me sometimes. That's it. Like, you know what I mean? But, um, yeah, that would suck to be in a raft.
It was interesting. The, the worst phase was what's called fam phase. We called it famine phase, but it's familiarization phase. It's about 3 weeks out in the forest and it's just constant smoking, just constant work, work, work, zero sleep, all that type of stuff. And, it's a very tough phase where we lose most of the guys who go through it. And, that one was brutal because you have so little food during that time. I'm talking minuscule amounts that I lost, I think, £30 when I got back. So, I weighed 190 going out, I weighed 150 Or 160 coming, uh, when I got back from that 3-week phase. Like, that was not a, not a good time because of that. That sucked.
Yeah, I'll bet.
Yeah, that's no, that's no good.
Cool.
Please.
So are you going out the— where do you vacation? Do you go— oh, most guys like us like to get out the middle of the woods and that and be left alone. Where do you—
I do the exact same thing. I got into the woods. Oh, yeah. I'll be honest, it ruined me on camping for like a couple of years. But I think once I got out of the military, I kind of came to love it a little bit more again. And I relearned my love for camping again when I realized I wasn't starving and I didn't have to make timed fires and stuff. And instead I could make my kids do it. And then it became pretty— then it became pretty fun. No, I love it. So actually, most weekends I spend away out in the mountains. or things like that and just enjoying nature.
Nice. Yeah. Have you applied for any of these survival shows?
No. So, the problem with these survival shows is that they want all your rights to your image and your likeness and stuff. And, I run Grantham. And so, usually, it's just a mismatch. And so, no, I don't. Plus, it's a lot of time. These survival shows last a month or two. Have you seen some of them, how long they go?
Yeah, yeah.
That's a long time away from kids, man. I love I love being with my kids now that I'm out of the military. So I don't want to— I don't have to be away if I don't have to. And I can easily just suffer for a few days for a survival video on my channel and be home again or have my kids camping out nearby versus, you know, 2 months on a show. So, you know, have you applied for any survival shows? No, no, I don't want to.
I've got no interest in doing that.
No, it just— it looks cool. I like— I like to, you know, I like watching it. I know. I actually want to— I want to meet Bear Grylls one of these days. You know, because I haven't met him yet.
Me too. We've tried to get him on a couple times, but just too busy.
He's quite a Christian, you know. Like, he's unabashed in his faith, which I really appreciate for any public figure when they're completely okay with posting that. Like, nope. Have you seen him post before? He's very open about his faith in Christ. I love it, dude.
I think it's cool too.
No, that's very cool.
So, what are some of the other sides of Cyr? I mean, what Oh, I mean, honestly, lessons from Vietnam, stuff like this.
Oh man. So Vietnam was like the turning point when it came to SERE. That's when like SERE really came into its own. Because if you remember, um, during the Korean War, you'd have Americans who were captured and they would completely capitulate and they would be on camera denouncing the US, but completely what looked like mind controlled. Do you remember those videos of like US service members just like defecting, stripped? Like they get captured and they'd strip defect to North Korea. And it made no sense. And so the US ended up putting in place what we have today, which is the resistance to interrogation, which was so— so it worked so well during the Vietnam War. The Vietnamese were particularly brutal in their treatment of prisoners of war. The stories of the men and the men who went through these sessions. It's unfathomable the types of torture that they put these men through. John McCain, for example, went through just the most horrific stuff you can imagine. But due to the training, the resistance training they had, they were able to not give up any information to put their fellow service members at harm. And thus at the end of their captivity, they're able to, as we say, return with honor, knowing that they had kept that information safe.
And so the Vietnam War was like the first real test of is our resistance since training doing well? And yes, it did very well. And we've had a— I say we, the U.S. Air Force and the military as a whole has had a very successful program since then, making it better.
Right on.
And that's— and when you speak of breaking and stuff like that's going to be a large part of it is that that's a particularly difficult part of training to become a SERE specialist. It's a particularly difficult part of training when going through SERE Level C. It's not something that's talked about much because it's such sensitive information, but it's probably one of the most valuable things that many service members will do because it really does, does a lot for, for our military. I can't speak highly enough of it. And that's about all we can really say about it.
Can you talk about what makes somebody crack under pressure, maybe a little bit, or—
In terms of resistance?
Mm-hmm.
Let me think about this for a moment. Yes. Here's what I'll say about it. A trained interrogator is going to bait you in many ways. He's going to know you. An interrogator is going to know have to straight up— he's going to know a lot of details about your life and who you are. Don't engage in that way. Remember your training. Say that.
Right on. Right on.
We had the opportunity to learn from some of the Department of Defense's and Five Eyes' best interrogators in hearing how they handled things and going through interrogation courses ourselves. And that was very eye-opening to understand a lot lot of the nuance behind human psychology and the nuance behind how people answer questions. It's a very, very interesting science. It really piqued my interest in psychology going through that training. Very cool course. Very interesting to learn from some of those men who've done it their entire lives and are legends in that career field to learn they did it and the way they approached it. Such an opportunity to learn that stuff.
I bet that's fascinating. We had— oh man, he's going to kill me. We had a guy that was operating with CIA that went down over Colombia.
Oh, wow.
Do you know about this guy?
Oh, actually, please, please.
Oh, man, it was a fascinating interview. I mean, he was held captive for I don't know how many years.
Oh, I think I do know this case then. I believe I know what you're talking about, but please continue. I love this.
Yeah, I mean, it's just the stuff that like kept them going, you know what I mean? Like carving a little chessboard. Yeah, reading the Bible. Like everybody had like their little thing that just kind of kept them going, you know what I mean? It's just to fixate on, to, to cut out all the horrific shit that's going on around you.
Oh, 100%. You know, we, we have a name for that. Um, we call it like the, uh, it's kind of a generic term in survival, but we say the will to live. Have you, have you heard that before?
Mm-hmm.
So it's like there's this X factor in any type of survival scenario, in any type of evasion, resistance, escape scenario that you can't quite put your finger on because there's been a lot of people who have been in almost the exact same survival scenario. One will perish and one won't. Why does that occur? And what we've taught and what we found is it's that will to What drives a person to survive an event is so personal. And, that's what's been a really interesting part of learning survival, of interviewing survivors and people who have been through these harrowing events is what they focused on. Like you talked about carving a little chest or reading the Bible. For some of these people, it was their faith in Christ. They thought about it constantly. They prayed, they recited the Bible. For others, it was, I have to get back to my kids. My kids cannot live without me. Like, they need to have a father or a mother. Like, I have to get through this. Um, for some people, it was just like, I want to prove everybody wrong. Like, I got into this situation, I will get myself out.
I will not be another statistic. But that little X factor in survival, the will to survive, is something that we teach as one of the most important things when it comes to survival. And if I was teaching you as a survival student, I would tell you, I don't know what motivates you personally to live, to want to live. But I want you to take that, get that little kernel in your head for whenever you find yourself in the worst possible scenario, because it will get you out. Whether it be your faith in Christ, your country, your family, your kids, whatever it may be, you latch on to that and you use that because it will get you out. And that's what's craziest about survival to me, is despite skill, it's always that will to survive.
Mhm. Have you found or has the program, have they found a commonality that is most common for people that do have the will to survive? Is it family? What is it if they found one?
The most common 2 ones that have been encountered are faith and family with family typically coming first. Well, it's changed over time. Obviously, it used to be faith primarily. Primarily now it's family faith, but those two are kind of the two defining factors that motivate people to come back. And then for a third that I definitely want to mention is country. You know, people believe in the United States. They believe in our mission and what we stand for and what we do, that they will do everything in their power to repatriate themselves back to the United States to honor their country. Because I'm sure, like, when you chose to serve, it was a big deal to you. I know it was a big deal to me. I was very serious about it when I raised my right arm. And so, a lot of people have used that, but those 3 things definitely encompass a lot of the main talking points that we go over when we talk about will to survive. I mean, you got guys like Poon Lim, a guy who lived on a life raft for an unfathomable amount of time simply because of that faith in his family that he had to get back to his family.
Like, people have been through so much. It's wild to think the types of punishment that people have put themselves through. Pilots in Vietnam crawling on, on their arms as their legs were infected and rotting off just to get back home because they used that will to survive so intensely. Like, you're— you feel in awe of the breadth of how far the human will and the human body can be pushed.
Wow. It's interesting stuff.
It's, it's crazy to think about what people have been through. Like, have you— I know we talked about it a bit before— have you, have you read up on like John, uh, John McCain and what he went through? No, I haven't. Like, we're talking—
I've heard— I mean, I've heard a little bit, you know what I mean?
I mean, as you know, he sustained permanent disabilities, um, physically from the injuries he sustained during those torture sessions. We're talking the worst pain and the worst things you can possibly imagine. Things you hear about in movies, fingernails and bones and just— it's insane how cruel a human being can be to another human being when you're on 2 sides of a border against each other.
Mm-hmm.
You know? And seeing what those men did to him and his courage to not break, whether you— whatever you might think of the man politically, the man served honorably. honorably as a, as a U.S. service member and gave up zero information. And not just him, plenty of others. And many of them didn't come home. Many of them perished without giving information due to the intensity of torture. So we're talking astounding individuals, man. Yeah, dude, it— reading these is gonna, is gonna be harrowing, um, for, for, you know, people who choose to, to delve into it. I don't want to take the words out of those people's mouths, but I would definitely highly encourage like a deep read into those men, um, who were captured during the Vietnam War and who went through those POW camps.
I'll bet you guys got some incredible briefs that nobody gets to hear on that job.
Bo Bergdahl, for one. That was a weird one.
Really?
Oh yeah, you remember him.
Can you go into it?
Sorry, say it again.
Can you go into it?
Yeah. That was a weird one, man. That was a weird one. I don't know what we can say about that one, but that was a weird event.
Yeah. Well, what are— what are 5 items? No firearms. Oh, okay. What are 5 items that you would take into the bush with you?
That's easy because I only got 2 items for one survival survival event, and that was a knife and one match.
And that's it?
Yep. Knife and one match. And it was, uh, start civilization, Mike. And you will, you will make a fire and you'll keep a fire going for a week with this one match. So that means that once that fire starts, that fire does not go out, and you learn methods to bank fires and stuff. So number one is knife. A good fixed blade knife will get you a lot of places that will allow you to survive in almost every environment. Uh, like knives that we use going through training were like the SE4 and the SE5. The SE5 was actually co-developed with another SERE guy, um, Yokum, if he's out there. Maybe I shouldn't say his name. No, Yokum's good. Um, he's an awesome guy. So like, we just— we'd use a hell of those knives. You want a good knife that's thick through the tang all the way through the handle, like, to make sure it can just take, you know, you beating it through wood. So number 1, knife. If I have a knife, I can get through most stuff. Dude, if you got a metal Metal match, good. Like a ferrocerium rod, life's on easy mode at that point.
So a knife and a ferrocerium rod, we're looking to start— restart civilization at that point. If I get a 3rd item, give me an ax, man. With an axe—
Oh yeah.
With an ax, you can fell trees and we can start building a community. Like, at this— at this point, we're freaking good. Um, I don't really need anything else beyond that. I guess if, if I could, I'd I'd take a compass. It's always nice to know where you're going. And then I guess as a 5th item— wow, you're giving me a lot right now. 5th item. What would I need? Yeah, sharpening stone. I'll take a sharpening puck.
A Sharpie?
A sharpening puck.
Oh, a sharpener.
Yeah, just a, just a whetstone so I could sharpen my tools a little bit easier rather than using like a sandstone or something. Get a better edge by having like a professionally made puck. But with those 5 5 items, you can read me, you can restart civilization. We can go from, you know, nomadic to the Bronze Age pretty quick. Right on, man. Yeah. Well, here's a 6th. Oh, I'm ready. What are these? Tell me about these.
Vigilance Elite gummy bears. So, you know, you know, uh, can I try one right now? Yeah, have at it, man.
This is, uh, this is all on camera.
Did you know how, uh, hard it is to get monetized when you're in the firearms industry on YouTube. So that's how those came about.
These are good as hell.
Yeah, man.
Oh, they're super good.
Right on.
Some good coconut oil. Let's go.
Let's take a good— let's take a break here real quick.
Let's do it, brother.
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That was awesome.
Oh, it was a good time. We talked all about training. I mean, it was so much fun, man.
So then you, you get into, you become a TACP.
Yep. I went E to O. So I was, I was at Angel Thunder, if you're familiar with that exercise that they do out in New Mexico, Arizona area. It's like a big personnel recovery thing. And at the time, TACP had just fired up its officer program. And so they were building it up. And one of the TACP officers there was like, man, you should really try out. Like, we need, we need good guys from the special warfare community to, to come over and give it a shot. And give it a shot, put in my packet, went through phase 1, went through phase 2 at Washington, D.C. and Eustis. That was brutal. And then, uh, went to the schoolhouse and, uh, well, sorry, before the schoolhouse, went to officer training for the Air Force. EDO, mustanged it and, uh, went and, uh, went through team, earned that second beret. It was a good time.
Did you like it?
Yeah, it was, you know, it was—
Can you describe what a TACP is for the audience?
Sure, sure. So TACP is a Tackle Air Control Party, and it's always a party, first off. So the main moniker is Advise Assist Control. And so the idea is whoever we're working with, Army, Marines, Navy, whoever, we're gonna advise you on your options of air power, right? How— what can the Air Force do for you? Then we're going to assist you in implementing those resources into your mission planning. I'm sure you've worked with JTACs, for example. And then finally, we control. So we also are JTACs and we will control those aircraft and put those effects on target, whether it be a Type 3 control, like through a TOC, or whether it be on the ground, boots on the ground, attached with the team, you know, doing all the cool guy stuff. So it's a very broad field. You have guys working the TOC and then you got guys in the field attached with units. So it's a, it's a very, very, um, kinetic, uh, facing career field, um, which was very appealing to me.
Always blowing shit up.
Oh, I mean, I would run into these guys everywhere.
I was, I was always like, this has to be like the coolest job. You're just— there's— it's just like one of you and you're attached to the coolest groups, you know what I mean? You work with CANSOF, they got an American Tac-P. Yeah, go to DEVGRU, they got a Tac-P. Go to Delta, they got a You go all over the place and you don't— it's just one. It's just one of you. It's like, so— and I would talk to him all the time, like, so you don't really like— you're just kind of on your own program over here? Like, yeah. I'm like, so you don't really have anybody to report into?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
How long are you here? Like a couple years? And then where do you go? I don't know, I think I might go to the SAS. Like, this is what you do? You just bounce around and you really have—
it's the weirdest. So Air Force Special Warfare as a whole is just weird, man, because, uh, when you talk TACP and CCTs and PJs— PJs have their own units, of course, and we all do— but I mean, we shred out. We, we go out into the wider military community and we're just one or two guys in like a random unit. So, you know, you'll just show up to an Army unit and they're like, yeah, this is our Air Force JTAC. And they're like, what do you do? And they're like, stop talking the JTAC. I had that. I showed up to Ghost Country over at JBLM, those guys, 2-1, what's up guys? And I show up and he's like, hey, this is Air Force JTAC. And this, he's like a private. He's like, what is a JTAC? He goes, you don't rate to talk to the JTAC, shut up. No, it's a great career field. There is nothing like controlling an aircraft and putting ammunition down. Like, that is a feeling right there, and that is cool, man. Um, and the guys we— I, I had in my unit that I worked with were incredible. Um, just wonderful operators.
Uh, just great guys. Just excellent JTACs. And that's really what we, uh, what we pride ourselves on is not just being good at advising and assisting, but being very proficient at JTACing, uh, with weaponeering and how we make sure that we deconflict, you know, what is a very, very fluid, very moving battlespace that can be difficult to keep track of where your targets are versus where your friendlies are. As you know, it gets mixed up quick and the JTAC's job is to make sure that those friendlies are good and that those effects go where they need to go. And we definitely as a career field pride ourselves on being very good at that.
Can you explain the difference between a TACP and a CCT guy?
That's a great, that's a great question. So combat controllers, I would put you you'd put like a Tier 2, Tier 1 primarily, right? They're trained to an extremely high level. Their main job is airfield seizure, right? But on top of that, they also become JTACs. Now, things have changed a little bit since the Global War on Terror has changed, but you have guys, the CCTs are typically attached with those SOF units right off the bat. Attack P primarily is attached with conventional units and special operations units as required. So like in my career field, I spent most of my time attached with 2-1 over Striker Brigade, and then spent the other time attached with 1st Special Forces Group with one of the dive teams who were super weird. Just kidding. They were super cool. Have you ever worked with the dive team?
I bet I'm a SEAL.
Get out. You guys are weird on your own. So, but no, I mean, Army dive teams are just weird, man. Just—
I've not worked with them.
They're weird. They're cool guys. But so a combat controller has a slightly different— doesn't have a slightly different— they have a different main job, which is not just in JTACing, but they also do ATC. Air traffic control. So once they establish that airfield, they can begin to bring in that air power onto the ground, bring in supplies, etc. So they can be that mobile ATC. In addition, they often get a JTAC cert as well. Pure badasses. First there, they mean it, man. Those guys rock. Tons of like just incredible CCTs throughout history. So that's CCT and then TACP, primarily conventional. You can also— and then special warfare, excuse me, special operations. And then you can also assess with within Tac B to become, um, special warfare specific. Those guys, uh, primarily attach with like 2nd Rangers, um, or they go over to the 2/4 if you're familiar with that unit. So then they do all that good stuff over there, which is where you saw the Tac Bs.
Right on.
Yeah, right on. It's, it's, it's an awesome job, man.
What's your favorite aircraft to work with?
Oh man, I, I mean, I, I— A-10, man. Those pilots are just so cool. Dude, they're so cool. And on top of that, like, not only are they good at, at, at, at putting effects on the ground, but they're also Sandy qualified. So if there is a downed aircraft, they're qualified to take on as an on-scene commander and direct, help direct that air power. So not only are they like a pilot good at, you know, bringing in ground effects, good at rescue, coordinating rescue, but they're also quite good themselves at directing CAS as well from the sky. Like they are truly a very multifaceted pilot. I've always been impressed by those people. And there have been some, I think if so many pilots come to mind, you know, you hear about that girl who had to do that belly down landing after her A-10 got damaged, actually taught her in SEER. But I mean, like these A-10 pilots are just a different breed, man. And there's nothing like that 30mm coming in, like on that gun run, just the sound of that thing as it rips through the open air. Like, what a cool aircraft.
Literally a gun, and then we put a plane on it, and that's it. I mean, the newer aircraft are cool, you know, F-22, F-35s are awesome. F-15s probably, notionally speaking nowadays, not notionally, F-15 probably just nowadays is better for the amount of payload it can carry. But I mean, you talk CAS, dude, you're, you know, close air support, you're talking the A-10. That thing's just just the king of it. You just can't beat that thing.
Nice.
What's your favorite aircraft?
Probably the A-10.
You can't say the A-10. I already took that one.
Maybe the Apache.
That's a really good one. Apaches are weird because they're like Army. They're not like aviation. They kind of look, they kind of treat them like a tank, you know? So they kind of do their own thing. Like you can try to like call in like an abbreviated like, uh, uh, you know, call for air support. We'll see.
I mean, Spectre's always good, you know, gunship is always good. Do they still use— do they even use those anymore?
A little different now.
Yeah, I would think.
They've upgraded quite a bit, and they, they have much different munitions, and they're delivering than the classic, you know, uh, you know, tank rounds plus 30mm plus Gatling. Like, it's a lot different from what you see nowadays, much more, uh, precision-guided munitions to put effects directly where they need to be, kind of limiting that collateral.
What do you think about— I mean, I'm not sure, when were you in? Did you see kind of the phase between where it went from, you know, human to human— I guess not human, like, like, like a gunship, and then it just moves over to the Predator and the drones? And no, so I kind of lose that camaraderie. That always kind of bothered me. It's like you go meet the pilots before the operation, and then it's like, hey, I see you're a real person. Yeah, you know, you, you, you bond a little bit, you build some camaraderie, you see some of the same guys. And then it goes to drones, you know, and, and it's like, they're out there. Do these people even give a shit about me?
Yeah, they're out there, a little hutch out in Creech Air Force Base.
Yeah, I mean, it's just it's a real concern. It's like, is this— there's no, there's no human attachment.
And it's probably getting worse nowadays too.
I can't, I can't imagine. I can't even imagine.
So I, I was a TACP from 20— so I went through, I transferred, transitioned from SERE, um, to TACP from 2018 to 2019. So, um, '22 is when I got med retired out. So, um, I didn't really see the transition so much when I was in. Predators, MQ-9s, were already quite big. In fact, we, we did like a huge fan where we actually went out and met the drone pilots so I could put a face to the name on that stuff. And those guys have a brutal, brutal schedule. Have you ever talked to those guys before about like their— you're talking—
Oh yeah, I actually, I talked to this guy Dale Stark, friend of mine, and he, he went from, uh, A-10 to drone, dude, back to the A-10.
Yeah, because that schedule is brutal, man. But yeah, so I mean, when we were in, we worked with, with pretty much every aircraft from AC-130 to Apache to aircraft and everything. So I didn't really see an overdependence or an overreliance on drones in the controls that we did. Of course, I wasn't deployed as a TACP, so never, never, never. I can't speak to operationally. But as far as like our training goals were concerned and what we'd work with when working with different special operations forces or when working conventional, it was a pretty even mattering of all the different types of airframes that you'd see. You'd pretty much get everything from Navy F/A-18s to MQ-9 here or there to an A-10 to F-15, et cetera, et cetera, to foreign aircraft when they would come in. So didn't so much see that overly non-human aspect where you're not seeing a pilot in the sky anymore, where everything's kind of being relayed. So I saw, mostly talked to pilots.
Gotcha. Gotcha.
You know, the funny thing is, you know, JTAC QC, the course to become a JTAC, they can't always get the correct aircraft for like on short notice for the training stuff. So when I was doing like one of my controls at JTAC QC, he checked in as Viper, which is an F-16. I was like, well, that's interesting. I do not hear an F-16. This guy must be really high. You know, he's like, I'm Angel. It's like 12 right now. I'm like, you're like 12,000 feet. Where are you? So he's like, he's like, yeah, nominate your target. So I nominated the target. I was out at Razorback Ridge, which is out by Kansas City, I want to say. And so slowly I heard a little lawnmower engine, little Cessna came flying in and he had an M240 mounted under the wing with a string. He just reached out and pulled and fired the M240 and then pulled that Cessna up. And so after We talked to the guy. I'm like, dude, you just have an M240 on like your, your Cessna? He's like, yeah. I'm like, he's like, well, I got my SOT. And we're like, what does the FAA say?
He goes, we look to be good. He's just a civilian pilot. Just like, I'll never forget that fake F-16 coming in. But, uh, uh, holy shit. He made hits. He was good. He crushed it, dude.
Nice.
He was quite good with that Cessna. Then the, you know, when the, when the world ends, that Cessna is still going to be flying. There's going to be a little M240 40, and that guy is trained. Hell yeah, look out for that guy. Nice, nice, nice. Oh, but, uh, no, so we, we saw, you know, everything which we were out there, including Cessnas.
So how did you start the YouTube channel then?
Oh my gosh, you know, that's a, that's a funny one, man. So at the time, I was a SEER, a SEER guy. I was coming to the end of my career in SEER. I was getting ready to transfer over to Tac-P. And I was a huge— I'm a huge gear nut. I always have been. And we got issued like a JPC for a jump program or something like that. And everyone's like trying to, you know, mess around with it, trying to figure it out. I'm like, you guys suck. Like, this is how you set it up. And then another guy asked me how to set it up. So I set his up. I set up like 3 JPCs. I'm like, all right, we're done. I'm going to just make a video on it and I'll just post it. So I made a video on setting up a plate carrier and it got like a million views.
And I was like, that's how it started.
I was like, oh, I'll do a video on packing a pack. And everyone in my unit was like, you're a fucking idiot, everyone knows how to pack a pack. So I was like, hey, you know, light stuff at the bottom, heavier stuff up top. And someone's like, no, you put heavy stuff on the bottom, in the comments. And all my buddies are like, okay, maybe people don't know how to pack a pack. So it kind of began the journey of, um, you know, what I thought was common knowledge in the military, um, I realized was not very common knowledge outside when it came to tactical gear. So that's kind of how it started was explaining some of those, like, basics.
So you legitimately started because you got tired of setting people's—
Yeah, literally, literally. I didn't want to set up another JPC.
That's hilarious.
I, I know. And somehow it got a bunch of views. I— dude, I swear.
It was an accident.
It was an act. It's all, it's all timing, I guess. I just came in at a time when there wasn't really a whole lot else going on in that sphere and worked out. And then made a few gun reviews and those took off, and suddenly I was getting a lot of ammunition on top of everything. And I'm like, well, this is really cool. Like, I'm shooting for free now. Like, this is great. Like, who doesn't love shooting? And, uh, I'm like, I guess I'll just continue it. And I— now I have way too much ammo. So like, life's really good.
So I've actually never heard somebody say that before.
Yeah, actually, I don't have enough ammo. My ammo sponsors out there, I don't have enough. But no, I mean, the whole, you know, the whole thing, I was like, wouldn't it be cool is if I got so successful, like one day I just could just shoot and not have to worry about it. And that happened quick and I was like, wow, like there's something to be done here. So, you know, did it going through kind of the tail end of my military career. Didn't really— it went somewhere during my military career, but I was much more reserved while I was in. Once I got out is when I kind of went obviously full-time on it and started really investing the time and stuff. in and is when it kind of evolved into what it is today with kind of the multifaceted ballistics, survival, everything that you kind of see nowadays.
It's awesome. I mean, it's awesome. Content's amazing.
I'm just, I'm just a severely autistic man with a, with a basement, with a camera setup. Like, it's very dangerous. That's cool. Thank you.
I mean, so when, what year did you start it?
2017. So technically I'd had the channel, but it didn't have a channel name. Like, I'd posted a—
we started at the same time.
Did we? I think so. 2017, 2018 is when I really kind of got into it, um, and that's why I started posting. And I haven't missed a week since because I post every Sunday. So since about 2018, it's been one video per week since then to now, 2026. Kind of tiring when you think of it that way, but every video is so fun, you know. You get to be so creative and explore all these really interesting topics. I get to learn. So for me, it's very like, it's very stimulating for my mind to be able to do this new every week because I get to tackle a new topic. Even stuff that we know, like going back and really delving into it, is still very interesting. Like every time I do a survival video, I get to delve back into my, you know, my survival manual and read back through all my old notes. And it, you kind of rekindle those memories and rekindle old knowledge that you might have forgotten. So it's been really good in terms of, I would say, making me a more more rounded, like, survival guy overall. I would say I'm better at this point than I was when I was in, um, which is cool.
Yeah, yeah, that's my favorite. I mean, you do a killer job with the gun reviews.
Thank you, man. We just—
My favorite stuff is, uh, is your survival stuff. I think I've watched one, it looked like you were in a basement. I think you were talking about nuclear fallout or something.
Oh, the one that we just did? Yeah, yeah, that was a, that was a good— that was a, that was a really fun That's a good one. You know, it's funny, based on what's happening in the world at the time is kind of what people have an appetite for. You know, when things are less serious, people don't want serious stuff. But things have kind of been serious for a couple of years now in terms of how people view how the country is going. So we found that our survival content, which previously didn't get as many views, is doing very well right now because— Because it's like people don't worry about it until they see that things aren't going so well. When things are good, they're playing video games, watching football, and life's good. But when you start watching those gas prices climb and I'm starting to struggle—
Are things not going well?
Wait, what? And they're watching those grocery prices of eggs climb and climb and climb, and they're suddenly like, well, maybe I should get some skills. And so, we've really been focusing on that. That was an interesting one.
Yeah.
Because nuclear war is probably one of the most terrifying things you can imagine. And, I don't know about you, but our training for nuclear war was like, hey, try to get underground, otherwise you're fried. And, it wasn't a whole lot more than that, but there's a lot more out there that can be explained. So, I really wanted to delve into that in that video. And, it was very interesting to learn more about it after speaking to different experts. experts and, and reading up on it and being able to try the things out. It was a very fun video to do for sure. It was a very fun video. And then I learned a new conspiracy theory from it as well.
Oh, really? I love— what's this?
Oh, so, uh, people commented immediately, quite a few by the way. I posted about my Twitter today, uh, or X, whatever. Um, the nuclear weapons aren't real.
Interesting.
Yeah. So I, I, uh, I am a man of science. I have my degree. So I have offered for them to put forth any evidence because I believe that the evidence seems to point to that nuclear weapons are very real due to the spikes in radioactive isotopes during testing phases. But I digress. But, uh, so there's a huge— so I had a huge amount of people hop into my, to my YouTube channel and be like, you're an idiot. Nukes aren't real. This is a psyop. How much of the government government pay you? Dude, I wish the government paid me to do this stuff because they'd probably pay a lot more. But no, so, uh, that was a, that was a fun one, uh, including the conspiracy theory, because I, I didn't know about that one. So that brought me to like an hour of reading, and I concluded they were wrong. But I could be wrong. I could be wrong, you know. I don't know.
How much are they paying you?
Yeah, so, uh, nuclear weapons aren't, aren't, uh, aren't real.
Right, right.
It would be, it'd be a nice world, wouldn't it?
Yeah, it Sure would be.
But, uh, no, man, the, these survival videos have, have, uh, kind of taken on a life of their own. But, um, it's been fun because I remember the first big one that we did. Um, I think it was just like a very basic, uh, evasion video. Um, I got an email about a month later about a guy who'd gotten lost in the desert due to a bad flash flood, and he got got separated. Rescue crews couldn't get to him for a few days. And, he directly told me that due to the video and the things he had learned, he'd been able to survive, to purify water, and to make it back home to his family. And, that was pretty eye-opening for me because I knew that the survival stuff is important. I've taught it my entire life. But, hearing that personal testimony that that man came back home to his daughter and that his daughters get to see him every day now, that he gets to be a father in their lives still because of watching just a YouTube video. Like, that felt good, man. That felt really good. And that definitely was a, like, a nice galvanizing push to, to be like, let's do a lot more survival.
That was, that was a good feeling.
Is that your favorite thing to do, the survival stuff?
Yeah. Yeah, it for sure is. I mean, I love shooting. They're, they're pretty close. I love guns, man. I love guns. But survival's a huge passion and I like survival because it's fun. You know, it, survival is something that's appealing to everybody. So I like that my whole goal with my, with my YouTube channel is just to make our, our population more prepared. The United States has always been founded on the citizen soldier, the citizen militia, the man who is ready, the man who's ready to protect his family, the man who's ready to protect his country. And I want everyone to know that that is what is expected of you being a citizen of the United States, that you should always be ready. So I love that our survival videos are kind of like this little, little kind of entry into that world. A lot of people will click on a survival video that won't click on a gun video. But oftentimes after watching survival, they're like, holy shit, I need a gun now. So it's been It's been really fun for me to see that passion of survival then transfer into general preparedness of a society.
And I think that's been a really nice kind of causation from us kind of focusing on those videos more. I just want to see a more prepared population, man. That's what matters most to me. It's what made America an incredible country and continues to make America a credible country is our men and women being ready at all times. Right.
Mormons are huge into this, aren't they? Not to make a generalization.
No, no, no, no. Actually, Mormons are very specific. They're actually given very specific guidance from the church, the Mormon Church, on what to do. And one of those things is 2 years of food storage that can survive for 2 years. My family 100% did it. So growing up, we always had food storage, and we'd cycle in and out of our food storage. We'd have days where we'd cook using our food storage. The Mormons are serious and prepared. The Mormons are crazy prepared. There's— when everything goes down, go ahead to the Salt Lake Valley. You're going to be fine.
Why? Why? What is it?
They believe in the end times. And when we say end times, they don't believe that, you know, the whole world is going to, you know, light on fire and it's over. They believe it's going to come to a slow crashing halt as natural disasters, wars, rumors of wars begin to break down the fabric of society before the second coming of Christ. So to them, they need to ensure that they have the community in place, the food in place to survive any famines that might come forth during that time to ensure that they're ready to be there during that second coming of Christ, whenever that may come. They don't postulate to know other than they say the end times are near or they are here. That could be now, tomorrow, 100 years, 200 years.
Mm-hmm.
But their whole point is the world's becoming more crazy, which I would agree with. Seems to be more destabilized than ever. And so they believe very much so in preparing to ensure that the family unit can survive should anything happen. Um, I'm all for it, dude. Mormons are awesome.
Me too. Me too. We'll talk more about that later.
Oh, you're good. You're good.
But, um, and then you have review— you have reviewed every gun.
Just out at this point.
I mean, like, every gun, every, every— pretty much every military rifle, every military service rifle on Earth, plus experimental systems.
Yep. Plus, we were very lucky.
Hundreds of thousands of rounds. I mean, so what's your favorites? What do you—
dude, the, uh, the M4 is a powerhouse. There's a reason—
You like the M4 on everything.
I love the M4, man. And it's, it's simple. Very few operating— very few operating pieces. Very accurate, very lightweight, easy to, to power through tons of different debris, etc. A very adaptable platform. Um, it's probably the deadliest rifle that's ever been fielded in the history of mankind. Um, the M4 is an incredible, incredible weapon system, and people fail to recognize how incredible it is because we're living in it right now. We're living in the age of the M4. The M4A encompass the Mark 18, URG-I, etc. But what we have, uh, what the M4A1 brought to us in terms of upgrade to the AR-15 is what I consider the M4, which is pretty much every AR-15 nowadays. It is the best rifle that's currently fielded. There is nothing that comes close in terms Everything, man. It is a superbly, as the kids would say, min-maxed weapon at this point. They have just done a superb job. So I know it sounds plain, but, you know, in 100 years, people will look back on the M4 and recognize it for the incredible weapon it was, if not already. And who am I to deny that? It'd be like, it'd be like living in World War II and being like, ah, the Garand's okay.
No, the Garand was incredible. You know, so definitely the M4 in terms of like just being such a good weapon system. But I mean, we all know it and we all love it. Now there are plenty of other really good weapons that—
But sir, what are your favorites?
Oh, you know, it, it wasn't particularly good, but it's a Russian experimental weapon. It's AN-94. Have you heard of it before?
No.
So the AN-94 The M94 is a very, very interesting assault rifle. So how it works is it has, um, a mechanism by which it can do hyperfire. So it can fire 2 rounds at a burst rate of approximately 1,800 to 1,900 RPMs. So that essentially sounds like one shot when it's fired because it's so quick. It does this by means of a very ingenious pulley system. It literally pulleys within the When you look at the AN-94 head-on, the magazine is actually offset about a solid 15 degrees, and that's to allow the offset bolt with the pulleys to clear the round as it feeds the second one. So when it fires, it captures that initial recoil energy and makes the pulleys retract, load that second round before the recoil hits the shoulder, fires that second round, then the entire mechanism, including barrel, cycles back. back together. It is the most bizarre, like, service weapon you have ever looked at. And it did it. It, it was supposed to be adopted by Russia. It wasn't ultimately, but it was such an interesting mechanism. It wasn't particularly effective. What we found was that the Hyperfire at about 100 yards tended to spread out and tended to vertically string.
If you recall, the United States military—
Mm-hmm.
really tried to focus on that hyperfire, that burst fire, with the OICW, if you remember, like those trials.
Mm-hmm.
Where they tried to have like the burst fire would do like a 2 or a 1, or excuse me, a 2 or a 3, or would fire them so fast that you wouldn't feel that recoil impulse. So it's not just Russia that tried it, but it's Russia that attempted to adopt it. So you don't see AN-94s in very large numbers, but they've certainly been captured in like Ukraine and still used. It's just, it's so odd that I love it. It was such a departure from what you typically saw from service rifles is what made it so interesting to me. Uh, it was such a treat to, to be able to shoot it. Um, there's one in civilian hands in the country and there's 2 in government hands. Um, just a bizarre, interesting weapon.
Interesting.
Yeah. And what's really cool is when you look at all these service rifles from other countries, you can see what they're focused on and what they're not focused focused on, uh, based on their environment, their people, their culture. Service rifles are a great window into a culture themselves, and that's what's really interesting. Like the SIG, the SIG 550, right? We're talking SIG Sauer in Switzerland over there. Um, it's a, it's a sealed action with rubber gaskets on it to ensure that you're not, not going to get a lot of that mud and snow and etc. from the very brutal environments that they live in up there in the action. It was designed specifically for that. It's of course based off AK with the long stroke gas piston system. It, it's just, it's cool to see those differences in designs, you know, um, going from country to country. Uh, but if we kind of come to nowadays, you see that the UK now is likely moving to the AR-15. Most countries tend to move to the AR-15 because of how good it was. But prior to these adoptions, you saw a lot of countries, um, running a lot of interesting service rifles.
France with the FAMAS. Have you ever gotten a chance to hold one of those guns?
No.
So weird, dude. The most violent ejection ever. Weird 25-round magazines, but a 3-round burst. So it doesn't quite work out. So many odd weapons. And then of course you have Australia with the EF90, you know, basically a Steyr AUG that's modified to the Australian Defense Forces' There's just being able to shoot these guns and to spend time on them, especially like the experimental ones like the AN-94 or with the NGSW. We got to spend time with most of those weapon systems to be able to see how the different ones were. Although it was a Spear that was adopted, the other ones were very forward-thinking and very interesting. So I think that's probably the coolest part of doing Grantham is I've been able to not just understand, um, these different weapons, but I've been able to get that hands-on time that— here we go, see her again— that experiential training, uh, exper— the experience with these weapons for not just 5, 10, or a mag, but, you know, with the N94, it was 800 rounds, which is a psychotic amount on that very rare weapon system. So that's what's been so fun is I can directly compare all those guns for my reviews, and that makes it fun.
You know, I've been able to see a very broad spectrum of firearms, and I think as a reviewer, that makes me, you know, I'm better able to, to, to get a grasp on a weapon and why it was developed and why or why or why not it might be a good fit. And that's been a really fun part of this journey, is shooting guns I never thought I'd get my hands on.
There's I mean, some of the stuff you get over there, I'm like, damn.
Have you, have you, um, messed with the, uh, any of the NGSW entries beyond the Spear?
What is it? Sorry.
The Next Generation Weapon System. So, uh, so we adopted the Spear, right? The, the Sig MCX Spear. Um, but there are other, uh, you know, companies that came forth like General Dynamics, Textron, etc., that had rifles that they submitted that ended up not being uh, picked up. But if you ever get the chance, um, getting time on those weapon systems, um, you're going to realize how good some of those rifles were. Uh, it's True Velocity who owns the rights to it now. They make like that polymer case ammunition, if you've seen it before.
No.
So they make a polymer case ammunition. Polymer case ammunition. So the rifle works very, very well. So my, my first thing I thought of, um, because we actually had these guys talk to us when I was still in the military, remember in 2017 meeting the rep, and they're working on getting that polymer ammunition to the military. And I'm like, what about the heat sink? Because brass works as a heat sink for weapons. Yeah, uh, you know, every time it fires, it ejects that brass. That brass is hot, so it's drawing that heat away from the weapon. That was my big concern with polymer. He assured me it wasn't a problem. It wasn't until I tried out their entry from True Velocity with their polymer case ammunition that I became pretty, um, impressed with the capabilities ammunition. The thing that really surprises you is how lightweight a 25-round mag of .308 is. Like, wow. Yeah, like, think about— think about your kit, like carrying an SR-25 or an M110, you know, 6 mags up front. Like, you're— that thing's dipping. But this polymer case ammunition is— I want to say it's a, like, a 25 or so percent weight rate.
It's massive. And so when you pick up this mag, it doesn't even feel like it doesn't feel like a .308 should be in there. But that weapon was so, so cool. It was like you could change from open bolt to closed bolt, um, for different types of roles. Um, it had a terrible trigger, but that's because they kind of stopped development on it. But it was such an interesting weapon. It uses that— it used that, um, is that— everyone calls it the potato suppressor. I can't remember the name of the company. I'll say Delta something. Delta P perhaps. But it's like a little short stubby potato looking suppressor. But just like, there were so many good guns that came out of that program that I'd love to see developed. And that was like so cool because I, as, as they were doing these trials for, for what would become the M7 and the Spear nowadays, I got to try out those different guns in their, in their infancy. And that was a really, like, a really cool experience of just being a gun tuber. Just, you know, I'm just a guy. You know, I served, sure, but being able to get hands-on time with these experimental weapons was just, uh, what an experience.
That is awesome.
Oh, it was so cool. Yeah, I'm serious. I'll, I'll put you in contact with True Velocity. They'll bring it out, dude. It is a cool gun.
I'd love to try it. Oh man. So, you know, thousands— I mean, I, I don't, I don't know how many. How many guns do you have? Or how many guns have you— how many different guns have you— do you have experience with?
How many different guns I have experience with? I know in my personal armory I have, uh, well over 500.
What?
It's a good— it's good, man. It's good. I don't get— I don't get rid of guns because I'm a reviewer. I shouldn't get rid of guns. That doesn't make any sense. I want to keep them as an example. But I mean, I have experience with every single one of those. Every single one of those guns, you can ask people who've been to my— into my armory, but every single one of them is set up. They got optic, light, PEQ if needed, you know, uh, IR laser illuminator, um, zeroed, shot, they're all cared for, etc. So I take great pride in making sure that I have time on each gun and to ensure that I have the experience on them. But, uh, yeah, I mean, as far as experience on how many different types of guns, God, I don't even know, dude.
So with all the experience you have with all these different firearms, curious, what is your everyday carry?
Oh, that's a great question. You know, um, so it depends on weather, right? It depends if it's really hot or if it's not. So if it's really hot and I'm not wearing a whole lot— I, uh, that rhymes— I'm going with the Glock 43X, right? Love that thing. Uh, shoot the hell out of it. I have the Koa sight. Have you used the Koas before?
What's that?
Um, it's an Aimpoint, uh, enclosed optic.
I just got one.
Oh dude, they're so good. Are we gonna shoot it today?
Maybe we could shoot it today.
You gotta shoot it today, man. They're awesome. So I carry that. Um, otherwise I carry either— uh, so I have an SOT, right? Because we do a lot of machine gun stuff. So sometimes I'll carry my Glock 18. Um, as for like— nice. Yeah, little funsies. I have mine machined out, um, for an optic. We actually went with a dual illuminated RMR with fiber optic because the Glock 18 has such a quick cyclic rate that the typical Trijicon RMR screws just couldn't hold it in. So we actually permanently mounted that LED one— excuse me, the fiber optic one, because those never run out of battery. They're powered by the sun. So got that guy on there with an extra—
Do you carry a Glock 18?
Quite a bit. Yeah.
That's amazing.
I have it. I have it on semi, you know, but I have that little switch on the side should I need it. So if you've ever seen the 18— Party valve. Yeah. You have, uh, you have up for semi, down for auto, so you never know. What are you scared of? Nothing, I'll tell you that much. Um, uh, and then besides that, I have like a Gen 3 17 that I carry when I'm not feeling so spicy. Uh, I, I've, I've had that thing since like, uh, 2017. I've got like, I want to say like 90K rounds on that thing. So damn, all Glock.
All Glock.
All Glock.
Nice.
I know. What about you? What are you carrying? 365 XL Macro?
365. I, I don't, uh, I carry either the Macro or the, the just the OG one that they came out with, what, like 8, 9 years ago-ish?
Okay, yeah, that's a great one.
I still have the same one. You know what, same one I did a review on like way back when.
You know what Sig needs to do better about naming their guns?
What do you—
naming, they need to get that because like think how many different versions of the 365 There's a lot like Macro XL. There's a lot, boy. I don't even know. They have so many names. They got to like—
What else do you carry? Like, other than, other than your firearm?
Oh, oh, that's a great question. I carry it well, like on my body. Yeah, legitimate.
Not like what multi-tool everybody wants you to carry.
Multi-tool.
That's it. Yeah. Firearm and a multi-tool. Yeah.
In my, in my truck, I've got like med kit, all that kind of stuff. But, uh, yeah, that's about it. Someone's gonna tell me, tell me, I'm sure, if I'm not carrying like 8 tourniquets on me and a full med kit that I'm gonna freaking die.
But it'll be in the comments.
You know what, dude, I'll, I'll use my knife, I'll cut, I'll make a rope, and I'll tourniquet myself. I don't know. But, uh, yeah, that's what I carry.
Right on.
Not, not a whole lot, but, uh, I mean, also I'm on my ranch a lot, so I'm just kind of got like a rifle on.
Beautiful land.
Thank you, man. Idaho is gorgeous. Well, sorry, not Idaho. We live, uh, in Chicago. Of course, that's where you find that land. So move out to Chicago, that's where you find all the cool land.
Well, I got you a present.
Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. So is it Sig telling me to come out with my video finally? It might be. Oh, no way.
Yeah, so, so clear and safe for the audience, but yeah, so 2 things, sir. Okay, one, Silencer Shop. That's so— they're a huge fan of me.
Well, they're super nice. I love those guys.
They are, they are, right? So they wanted me to give you this. That's nice. Maybe it could be a new ADC, I don't know, whatever.
I will 100% carry that.
But you— I just want to talk about, like, do you know what they've done?
Silencer Shop? My God, things have changed. fundamentally in the firearm world because of them and because of that lawsuit that they brought forward. Yeah. Incredible.
I mean, you probably know a lot more about the specifics than I do, but I mean, you don't, you don't have to do all the bullshit paperwork for the ATF. And, and I don't know how many states they went to. What, they went to war with the federal government over this and they won?
They won.
It's like, holy shit.
I cannot believe it. It was them, PSA, Um, uh, was it, uh, Zev and several others like all came together with this huge lawsuit and they just supported the hell out of each other. And it was a great moment of like gun community unity and got it done. And people were so, you remember it, people were so, so badmouthing it. They're like, oh, whatever. And you know, that doesn't matter. It's not gonna do anything, dude. It changed everything. Now I can walk into my gun shop. I want that. Walk the same day out with that suppressor.
Isn't that crazy? And, uh, so yeah, they told me about— I didn't even know what was going on.
Oh yeah.
And then they told us about— they told me about it. And so, uh, I had, uh, Elijah, uh, my COO, reach out. I was like, wait a minute. I was like, why would they do this? Isn't this kind of counterproductive to their whole entire business model? Like, this could put them out of business.
That's the type of people they are, dude.
I said, so just reach out and make sure this is legit. And, uh, I was ask him that. And he did. And they're like, yeah, yeah, they're just gonna be— legitimately could put us out of business.
And I'm like, I love that, dude. That's amazing.
Like, I'm a— I'm huge on integrity. Oh yeah. And, uh, I mean, so those— and they're like, yeah, if it puts us out of business, it puts us out of business, but this is what we believe in.
And I'm like, that's a badass company, man. What a cool guy.
It's a badass company, dude.
Same thing with machine guns. I have machine guns on registered registry that are worth tons of money. I hope that registry goes away and you can just buy machine guns. Yeah, I don't care how much money I lose on it. Please make that registry go away, you know what I mean? Americans should have that, those rights. Sorry, I digress. I'm passionate.
And then Sig. Oh yeah, you know, this is a P365. This is like the newest ones. It is. It's like, what do you give a guy that has 500 guns and has shot pretty much everything in the world? And, uh, so this is newest model, put a flashlight, their optic on it. And, uh, I don't have to tell you what this is, but I want to tell you about SIG too as a company. Heavy, heavy. And, uh, 2 things. One, we did this— I did this, uh, episode with this guy Schlepp, and, uh, he's amazing. Yeah. Have you heard of Roblox?
Yeah, the game, right?
So they— there's all kinds of horrible shit going on on Roblox, and, uh, a lot of like sex exploitation and satanic cults and just like horrific shit, uh, that your kids shouldn't be in messing around. They shouldn't have access to your kids. And, and, um, Schlepp, uh, he had an incident on there when he was a kid.
Oh wow.
But one thing that we unveiled when I did his episode is they have, uh, recreated every act— like active shooter event in the US. Columbine, Udallvi, Sandy Hook, all of them. And so basically in the game you can be the active shooter and go in and kill the kids that were killed in the actual event. And it's so realistic that the— it's, it's the actual— it's the layout of the school or whatever the venue was. It anybody do that, right?
I don't know.
And on top of that, they put the kids' names above them in the classroom. So when you enter and you're like this first-person shooter game—
Oh my God.
It's, it's like they put the victims' names over the kids that you're killing in the game. And they had a Sig weapon. They had a Sig firearm. Oh, shit. And, uh, So my buddy Jason, who's a huge fan of you, uh, I told him about it. I was like, hey, I just want you guys to know, like, these are your firearms in this game, and, uh, we are going to crush Roblox. And, um, I don't know if you want your firearms in that game or not, but I'm just letting you know.
Yeah.
Well, like, as soon as he got off the phone with me, got on with legal, and now they they've pulled them all.
And, uh, that, that, that's—
she's off. And then, uh, and then there's a sheriff's department that's next here. There's a sheriff's department, um, that's a county over for me, and they have a really low budget to fund the— it's like $3 million budget for the entire sheriff's department— vehicles, firearms, salaries, medical, all that stuff. And, um, I have a good friend who just kind of, uh, took the lead at the SWAT team over there, and he was telling me about their firearms and how jacked up they are. And at least like, dude, it's like mismatched shit that's 20, 25 years old.
Yeah.
You know, I, I started getting angry. I'm like, you guys have a huge drug problem over there. Who knows what's going to happen? Your lives are on the line and this is the shit that you're running out the door with? So I called Jason and I was like, hey, um, this is the situation. I will buy the rifles. Do you guys have anything that's like shelved, maybe an old model or something that you can give me at cost? And he's like, let me— he's like, give me a couple days. So we were gonna partner. Yeah. And they were just gonna sell me the stuff at cost, and then I was gonna donate it to the sheriff's department.
That's awesome.
Comes back a couple weeks later, he's like, hey, we're gonna— I'm like, where do I send the bill? He goes, we're gonna take care of that. On top of that, we're gonna put suppressors on them, we're gonna put our optics on them, we're gonna put flashlights on them, we're gonna give them the whole shebang, and they donated donated the entire SWAT team, like, yeah, 30 brand new getups.
And Jason rocks, right? Dude, Jason's so cool. I just, I just love companies like that that have a spine, you know, support— that support the people that matter, man.
I love to see it. So it's just 2 amazing companies. Anyways, they're both really excited you were coming on, so—
That's very kind of them. That's really— I, I love those guys both. That's, that's really, you know, it's funny Funny enough, I don't have that gun. I'll be damned. I know, I don't have that one. So, uh, uh, I, I never asked for the, uh, the newer full-size, uh, 365. So I'm very excited. I'm gonna, I'm gonna pull the trigger on that, guys. It's like, get home, I'm excited, man.
Perfect, perfect, perfect.
And nowadays with suppressor, uh, you know, getting transferred, that's— dude, first time I bought a suppressor was a year— no, a year and a half before I got it. Yeah, nowadays we're gonna send that to the FFL. Transfer it, walk out with it.
That's right.
Freedom, man. That's some freedom right there. That's what you want to see.
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Oh boy. Oh, warfare is, is just completely different now from what we knew, man. Completely different. How we trained, how we approach things is for now, for the current fight that's occurring in Ukraine, is obsolete due to the constraints that you see there, due to the free operation of drones in those areas. It is completely dominated by drones, if I'm not mistaken. I believe talking to the different drone companies and the different operators who are over there, I'm understanding that drones are accounting for well over 90% of kills at this point?
90%, over 90%.
So we're talking— I mean, I mean, think about it. Think about how devastating a precision-guided GBU-39 was, right? You get that thing right where you need to get it. But now you've got these drones that are just the most precise things that can directly target exactly what you want. So we're talking a short kill chain, and we're talking very, very accurate projectile because it's controlled by a person right down to the final moment. All televised, all recorded. This is literally Fahrenheit 451 stuff. Like, when you think about it, if you recall reading that book, how they used to film war footage and show it like we're there right now. We're living the book and we're living a weird reality right now, man. And we're Unprepared, perhaps not even as the U.S., but as a society for what this is going to mean for the future.
What have you learned?
Movement cannot be had, cannot be done right now. As we talk about the front right now on Ukraine, what surprised me is the. the breadth of, of support that they have and the protocols that both sides have put into place on every single portion of that front, wherever it may be. You have 24/7 surveillance by a drone operator on areas, grids, very specific. They're watching troop movements real time and communicating them to each other and communicating them to hunter-killer crews with first, you know, FPV drones. So you're talking your unit goes to move out to take a piss prior to walking out, you're going to get FPV'd. You're talking about your unit is going to try to make a journey back to, you know, to the supply line. They're going to get toe poppers dropped along their route because they know exactly where you're moving. We're talking warfare that we, we couldn't fathom due to where the technology has brought us today. So I've just learned that movement is just near impossible right now. It's nearly impossible to move. And when— if you do have to move, you're getting struck in some way, form, fashion, or another, whether it be a casualty or whether it be a near miss.
They're coming for you because these drones are so ubiquitous and cheap. Nothing I could have ever imagined. I don't think any of us could have imagined.
So what— I mean, what does that cause? That caused a standstill. I mean, Obviously not still going on.
Talking to, so again, this is all going to be secondhand from many interviews I've done with Ukrainian vets on the front. Those who operate within the actual special operations sphere of the Ukrainian military is that movement as a whole is largely stopped. There are coordinated armored assaults and stuff, but largely there is not a whole lot of movement of that front line due to how. saturated these contested areas become with drone technology, whether it be surveillance, whether it be FPV drones, whether it be drones dropping toe poppers, the ability to deny is just so high right now on both sides. That movement is what would be a week mission ends up being a 3-week mission because there's no way to pull out from the front is one clear example that they run into constantly. They're just unable to exfil from any area just due to how intense it is. So it's a wait for weather, it's a wait for something to be able to get out of that area. Uh, wild when you think about it.
Is there any way they can move with anything? I mean, are there certain vehicles they can use for moving?
Armored vehicles seem to be the way to go. Armored vehicles seem to be the way to go, um, as far as like Bradleys, armored troop carriers, etc. Um, you obviously see every form of, of vehicle used right now, but armored troop carriers being the most sought after into what you want to do. Also, the targeting of hunter-killer crews. So the direct targeting of FPV drone operators, you know, via their intelligence networks helps to also disrupt that. So they're able to pull units out as well.
So basically, if you can be seen, you're dead.
If you can be seen, you're going to get targeted is what it's looking like right now, unless you're a very low-value target. But due to how many drones they have and how cheap they are, it's just an easy— it's an easy thing to spend the money to immediately eliminate somebody. I mean, think about the cost of like a typical precision-guided bomb from the US military, half a million, somewhere right on there. Think of a TOW missile, $250,000, right? Not TOW missiles, excuse like a Hellfire. Like, you're talking extreme sums of money. And now you're talking FPV drones, we're talking $200 to $400 with like a, you know, RPG-7 warhead attached to it or a mortar attached to it or a hand grenade. You're talking nothing in terms of being able to target somebody. So the ability of a ground force commander to implement a mobile fires, quick and just effective. And the kill chain is just so short from identification to being able to put a, put a precision weapon on somebody due to how close they are, it's quick. You know, it's, it's insane talking to these guys about the things that they have to do to ensure that they're also not targeted by FPV crews themselves, because that's a big part of the warfare now as well.
These FPV crews target each other across, uh, you know, lines and stuff.
Do you think this becomes applicable Obsolete at some point?
I think, I think the missing piece of the puzzle is going to be electronic warfare. Now, there are ways to circumvent electronic warfare against drones. For example, you can have fiber optic spool and you can operate off that. But as you know, when you add a fiber optic spool to a drone, it becomes significantly slower and less maneuverable, less able to To get onto the target, so people were like, oh, they're just going to throw you know fiber optic spool and you know then you're screwed. Not so much. The drones are much slower at that point, much easier to target with you know rifles, shotguns, etc. So it is going to be different once you see a more widespread spread implementation of electronic warfare if it ever makes it to the Ukraine, the you know to the Ukraine. Ukrainian front. But when we're talking about possible US involvement in a conflict with a foreign adversary who might have those capabilities, our electronic warfare is quite good. And so I think you will see a shift in how drones are used during that time, probably more so in resupply, which has been shown what they're really good at as far as moving supplies up.
The Ukrainians are using them very heavily in that role as it stands right now. But I definitely think there's going to be a shift because you're going to see probably a very electronically contested environment when you get towards a front line, especially with our capabilities of what the US has. So are you familiar with Epirus? With, with, say it one more time. Epirus? No, please tell me.
It's a directed EW weapon.
Oh, no, no, I am familiar with that. Okay.
I know you're not. We had one in the backyard over here.
Do you really?
We did. Oh, we— I interviewed the CEO of it.
That's super cool.
Yeah, he brought one out.
How would he down a drone with it?
No, they couldn't. I mean, I was, I was hooked. Turns out they don't want to fire EWs out here.
But, uh, yeah, that's fair. It makes sense. You see those like a lot of, um—
You could take out like 100, 200, 500 drones at once. Totally silent. Did you just see them all? It's— could they get fried?
That's just a shoulder-fired, soldier-carried weapon right there. You're not even talking like vehicle-mounted mounted versions of these.
Oh no, this is, this is vehicle.
Oh, that's the vehicle-mounted one. Yeah, it's, it's— that's so cool.
It's insane.
That's so cool. Drones are scary. Drones are very scary. But there's a counter to them. There's a counter to everything, right? So I think, I think the, the next war where you see a better anti-drone capability is very much so going to change how warfare goes. I think it always comes back to one thing, which is no matter what, uh, field craft still matters at the end of the day. Uh, you're, you're going to get seen if you have bad field craft. If you're not camouflaging your blindage well, if you're not camouflaging yourself, if you're not moving during times that, uh, make sense for the type of imaging software or the imaging sensors that they have, well then you're going to get spotted. That field— it always comes down to that individual soldier and their skills in the field, no matter what. And I I think you'll see it much more once we hit that denied environment electronically.
Polymarket.com has a market on whether Ukraine takes back any territory in Crimea by the end of this year. Not the peninsula, just any territory. And it's only a 6% chance. What do you think?
It's hard to say with this, with what's happening right now, because I've talked to— I've been talking to the guys on the ground and it's a lot of frustration. Being unable to move and really make any advances with the types of munitions that are on the ground right now. It's a weird world where we're kind of betting or putting percentages on it, but that seems to be the case. It might be a stalemate for the foreseeable until some technology comes along that's widely implemented by Ukraine that allows them to break that stalemate that they currently have with drones. It's the only way I can think of it, man. What do you— what, what do you think is my question?
I think, uh, I mean, I don't think either side has really like gotten— I mean, we're— I feel like we're still at where we were, where we started here. Yeah, you know what I mean? So I don't really see anything being taken. No, I could be wrong on that. I haven't followed it that closely Recently, but I'm not a military strategist. It's, it's, it's, it just seems like we're— it's not really advancing. Warfare itself is advancing. It is. But it seems like it's kind of been a stalemate the entire time.
I 100% agree with you. And I think that's—
Nobody's gained or lost any ground.
No. And, you know, I don't think anybody expected Ukraine to be able to hold out for as as long as they have. I certainly didn't when the— if you remember the 2014 war, I thought it would be, um, quite a disaster. But with foreign intervention and stuff, it certainly hasn't been.
Well, I mean, it's not just Ukraine, of course, you know what I mean? Yeah, the entire world is testing every weapon, new technology. That's, that's what this has turned into. I think that then that's why the war continues to go on, is everyone is taking advantage of the situation between Russia and Ukraine to advance their warfare, their technology and warfare.
I believe I just read that Russia's current— not killed, but casualties stand at about just under 500,000 right now. That's a staggering number. I mean, how many did we lose in the entire Global War on Terror? What was it? I want to say 9,000, somewhere around that number. A horrible number of Americans lost their lives, but put into perspective, yeah, half a million, nearly half a million casualties is, it's a lot of people. That's, that's almost World War II numbers right there. That's in modern warfare, kind of unfathomable to see those types of, types of numbers. Here's a couple of other things about drones I think is interesting is when you don't get the wide coverage that you're seeing on the Ukraine front, if we have more denied environment, it still comes down to you can still evade these. These are— these things are not perfect. There's a lot of now handheld weapons that make it much easier to engage and destroy drones, not just electronically, but with the very rifles that you're holding. Drone rounds, shotgun-specific drone rounds have gotten so good where you're able to engage well outside the threat envelope of that FPV drone.
Because obviously, if you take a shotgun, you blow a drone up at 20 feet, you're taking shrapnel, but with these newer rifle rounds that are able to travel out to 120 yards, you're able to detonate and destroy those guys way far out if for whatever reason they're able to get past that blanket of electronic warfare. So I think we're about to see some very interesting developments in terms of how the squads, at least the U.S. side, is going to be handling things because you can see now how gung-ho the Department of War is now. about getting us caught up. You have huge companies now investing millions and millions into not just drone technologies, but anti-drone technologies. And I think we're going to see these drone-specific squads very quickly being stood up and tested in the very near future. It's a very interesting, very quickly changing time in the US military. It's just wild to think about drone units, you know, who would have thought?
It's, uh, I mean, I got buddies that are still in. I'm sure you do too. And, uh, I got one guy that just went out the door up in 5th Group, you know, right up the road here. And I just, I'm like, I would not want to be dealing with that shit.
That's craziness, man.
I would not.
I mean, I think you hear the sound of those FPVs flying by just in, just out here, just training and screwing around. you're like, that is terrifying. Yeah, to hear that screaming towards you. Just an absolutely different type of warfare.
And with implementation of AI technologies, seems like there's nothing you can do, you know. I mean, what legitimately— what, better be damn good with a shotgun.
Yeah, dude, uh, believe me, I've, I've, I've, um, I've used these anti-drone rounds, like the rifle-specific ones on the drones. It's still tough, dude. It takes a little bit of training.
You can get it, but I mean, you got 25 of these things all coming at you simultaneously, So it's over.
It's donezo. It's got to be both electronic warfare and some type of, I would guess, AI implementation of targeting systems. It's got to be. I think that's very quickly on the horizon. I'd be surprised if it's not there already.
Let's get back to prepping.
Yeah, let's hit it. You know, you're prepping.
Me too. Me too.
This is a pretty nice prep site, man. This is very nice. We got enough. Uh, this is liquid gold right here for the, uh, for the apocalypse.
I know, I know. But, uh, I mean, you, you were, you were talking about it earlier, you know, so many people are getting concerned. Things aren't going well. Yeah, we're on multiple wars. Nuclear threat is up. Nuclear threat. I just had Annie Jacobs on. Do you know who that is?
No, please tell me about Annie Jacobs.
She's an author and she just wrote, uh, one about biological war.
Oh God.
Yeah. And, um, and, and a lot of shit to fear out there, you know. Economy's not doing great.
Yeah.
All these wars, nuclear threat, Russia is pissed. I mean, it's— there's a lot, any number of things.
There's a lot of very deadly, uh, biological specimens that, uh, have been away from Earth for a long time. Therefore, our ability to resist them is very low, that if released back into the population would be absolutely devastating. I'm sure she went over that. So that would be horrific. It's like, how do people— what do you, what do you even start with? Water. Yeah, back to our 3 days, man.
What do you start with? I mean, water. What is your advice?
Water, water, water, water. It has to be water.
You actually store water or you have filtration systems or—
It depends. So it depends on your property, right? So you got to take a close look at your property. Do you have a creek or spring. If you do, wonderful. You're able to develop that and to have yourself your own private water supply. Now, if you don't have that, you have to realize that should a horrible natural disaster happen, should a war kick off, that very likely that water supply within the city is no longer going to function very quickly. So, you have to store water at that point. So, you can easily get those big old 50, those huge gallon drums, the big oil drums. They have them like plastic. Get those microplastics in you. It doesn't matter at this point. But, you can keep a bunch of those filled up with a nice little smidge of bleach in there to keep them purified. And, those will keep for years and years and years. So, it's not too difficult to be able to store water to the point where you can then work on other sources to ensure that you can continue adding to that because obviously rain still comes, there's still water underground, there's still ways to get water.
But, to give yourself a bridge from that water system failing to you setting up a rain collection site on your own property, well, have a couple of those 50-gallon drums of that water ready. That way you can have some buffer before you have to set that up. But, and that brings into the other subject, have a way to then purify it, collect and purify your water. Purifying doesn't even have to be a nice filter. You can make natural filters very easily with coarse rocks through finer rocks through finer finer soil, through very fine sand, through charcoal in there. You can purify water just by a simple tiered filter that you can make yourself. So, it's not dependent on just buying filters out there. So, you just have to set yourself up. Make sure you have rain collection stuff ready. Make sure you're ready to dig down and hit that water table wherever you might be. It's going to be completely dependent on your area though. But, given those things, if you do them, you're going to be okay and you're going to have that water.
I think just for a regular person. I mean, a simple gravity filter like there's this Aurora that you just dump it in the top, goes down very easily. An hour later, you got purified water.
And, they're good for 100,000 gallons of water.
Exactly.
They're good forever and you can easily back push them to get any debris loose. They're excellent. The point is it's easy to purify water. You can buy a filter and that's going to last you 100,000 gallons. You your own. Purifying water is not the problem, collecting it is. So make sure you have those, those implements collected in whatever, you know, method. I mean, if you're, if you're on the coast, you know, you, you know you can't drink seawater, right?
You can't?
Well, you can't— you can drink seawater, you're just not going to live very long. But if you go— and I've done this before— if you go about 800-ish yards in, about Half a mile or so, dig down, you're gonna hit that water table, purified, purified good drinking water. I've done it. I did it on the coast of Oregon when I was a survival instructor. Go on those 100 meters, dig down, you're gonna hit it after about maybe 5 feet, and that water is coming through all of that silt, all that sand will pull all of that salt out, and you have pure fresh drinking water. So again, it just depends on your area, but there's always going to be a way to get that clean drinking water. You just need to identify what it is for your area. area. And you drinking seawater is kind of cool, you know, just letting the, the land filter. I, I thought that was one of the coolest things.
That is cool.
That is, that is freaking neat.
Where do we go from here? What's the next step?
I think a lot of people are focused on themselves, rightfully so, worried about themselves and how they're going to survive. And I do agree that that is a priority. I think from here, we need to go back to, as a country, thinking about the US. How do we aid our country? How do we get ourselves back on track? And I'm not specifically giving anybody a game plan, but I think working together as a community and beginning to set aside differences to make— I hate to say it that way, but to make America an incredible country is going to be what's really going to right the ship because clearly we have problems right now. People can see it. Everyone can see it. But I think it's only going to get better when we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and work together to help improve our very own economy. I very much so believe in a community and in the American people being able to right this country. And I think more focus on that is going to be important. You know, it's the famous quote, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
I think that's absolutely true right now. And I think that would definitely help some people out.
You got any suggestions?
It starts with your— it starts with your local neighborhood. You can get with your local neighborhood to start and see what needs to be done to ensure that you guys are prepared, whether that be simple things like starting a garden together. A community garden is a great way to do it. It's something that we do in our communities out where we are. Working on ensuring that you're helping out the older families in your community, the older members in your community to make sure they're prepared, that they're ready to face whatever they may have because they're still going to have good knowledge and information once the world does end to help civilization continue. So I think it's about starting with those simple neighborhood communities, which I feel like we're losing, and then expanding out from there. Because once we start getting to know each other and talking to each other again and figuring out what we can do together, I feel like a lot of the, a lot of things can be righted. I mean, there's, there's certainly more to it, but I think it's a good start to really start focusing on the country and how we can right this.
I'm not going to disagree with you there.
It's, it's tough. I mean, there, there's a lot more to it than just, you know, people kumbaya-ing and everything being good. But at the same time, I think that—
But you still have to bring something to the table. You do.
I mean, you need to have the difference.
end of the world, and we are in that scenario, which may be far-fetched, maybe not, but you know what I mean? If you don't have any skills, you don't have any supplies, you don't really have anything to bring to the community. Yeah, you're worthless. You're a liability. And, and I would think you'll probably be treated as such.
What's the, uh, what's like that joke?
It's like, uh, charity, you know, there's— yeah, it's like It's not going to work.
What's the, what's the first person you throw off the, the boat? It's like the lawyer, you know, it's like, you know, you want to make sure that you have skills, you know, hard skills which are important and which are being lost. I think you just had Mike Rowe on. Mike Rowe has been a huge advocate for those hard skills for people to learn. Those hard skills are so important when we talk about post-collapse of something. It's like you're not a doctor, that's fine. But man, you're a plumber. Holy crap, you are needed. So having some skill like you were talking about is—
Anything.
Anything. Just something beyond being a lawyer, right?
But I'll tell you another thing that I think I don't hear a lot of people talk about is reading material. Yeah. And because like you were saying, and even in the survival school, it's like, well, a 12-year-old in 1812 had more knowledge than we have as a survival expert.
Very true.
For U.S. Special Operations, that's, you know, a lot of knowledge lost, you know what I mean?
100%.
And you guys are the experts. And there's lots, you know, if, if it is an end-of-the-world scenario, I mean, I think one thing I have, because I'm obviously not a know-it-all with this shit either, is there's, uh, books. Because you're not going to be able to look shit up on YouTube. You're not going to be able to pull things up on Google. You're not going to be able to fire up the DVD player, probably any of that. Yeah, you know what I mean? And so you need hard copy books. And I mean, there's a whole bunch of them out there. That, uh, Seer book that you just said, I'm definitely gonna go get my hands on that. But, and, uh, I mean, but there's, there's just, there's, there's one, uh, there's this one, it's like a series that I have—
what the hell is it? Like those restarting civilization, back to the basics or something? I think I know what you're—
Dude, they're— it's everything. Yes, it's how to build a house, how to do a chicken coop, how to route, how to guard. Like, it's all the shit you need to know to survive. And you don't have to worry— you don't have to worry about it right now, but at least you have like an instruction guide on starting from 0 to 100. You don't have to study it, you don't have to do shit. You're not going to have anything to do when it happens, except do this, except work on civilization, you know what I mean? So like, have the— I think that's one of the biggest things you could do is just have hard copy books, you know, on, on, on all that. How to be— even like, even books at Home Depot on just how to like carpentry and how to get yourself a shelter and repair your own shit. Like, that's important stuff. There's real important stuff. And not that many— There's just not that many Americans left that like have this knowledge.
That's very true. There's a lot of hard skills lost. I mean, simple things like black powder can be made from urine. There's these little facts of life that so long as you have the knowledge, you can take yourself from the Stone Age to pre-industrial area in a couple months if you know what you're doing and you have the knowledge there. You have to have books plus entertainment too because you got to have a way to unwind as well. So, having a good book library I think is something that's very much so lost nowadays too, you know, like a good library, a good study that you walk into. It's just—
Some people are like— they, uh, I talked to a buddy yesterday, he, he has friends and himself, they're like stacking Bibles in warehouses because they think it's all going to go digital and that the Bible will wind up being manipulated.
Ooh, but, uh, interesting.
It is, right? Yeah, it's a weird rabbit hole to go down.
Well, you can also go over how the Bible's been manipulated by other religions also, like just in simple translations. Like, that's a whole topic of conversation right there.
But what else? You know, the food stuff. I think the— you said 2 years of food.
We have that. Oh yeah, we have over that.
But it's like, it's the peace of mind that breaks you, like just knowing Knowing you have it.
Knowing you have it. And then, simple things like powdered vegetables and stuff like those multivitamin kind of mixes that they put in that are powdered. So many people just are like rice, beans, rice, beans. I'm like, make sure you don't get scurvy and die. So, please get some of those powdered vegetables in there too. But, when you have that nice— it really doesn't take much space to have 2 years of storage. It's kind of insane how little you eat kind of when you look at it all lined up. It was it was like a wall of our garage for all of our food storage. It's not bad at all and it doesn't cost a lot to do it. In fact, tons of Mormon-specific companies specialize in it and you can just buy packages for your 2-year supply right off the bat. It's like an entire cottage industry in Utah to make sure that you're in line with what the Mormon teachings are. Yeah.
Seeds. You keep seeds?
Oh yeah. Oh, absolutely. Well, we garden quite heavily too, so we have tons of—
I don't garden, but I have a shit ton of seeds.
It's important.
Tons of seeds. Tools. Oh yeah, hammers, nails, gardening shit, like all that stuff. Like, I don't know, I just think you don't have to actively do the thing all the time, you know. You can, you can, you can— I mean, it's going to take you, you know, season, but I mean, And, just the timeline, for me, I enjoy thinking about it.
No, it's a fun thought experiment to be like, okay, it goes down.
How's this going to work? You start with your food storage system, you get the garden going. By next season, you have that, then you're running low on your food storage and then you start supplementing with your garden.
Pretty soon, you're nice and situated. It's fun to think about. It's terrifying to think what would happen. to the desperation, uh, I think would be a very interesting thing. Like, I was in Haiti post-quake.
Oh man.
And, uh, you talk about desperation, what it does to people and what they're willing to do to their fellow man to get food or what they're willing to not do for their fellow man. Um, you'd be surprised at the violence and the, and the greed people will go through to make sure that they live and you don't. Mm-hmm. Like that collapse, like that cholera outbreak that happened there, if you recall that, it was like maybe a year afterwards is when we were there. Staggering loss of life from a very simple disease. It's when you're in those survival situations, Simple things like sanitation can take out an entire community, can literally wipe you off the map. It's vicious, absolutely vicious in those situations. And that was a quake. That was just an earthquake that just took that country to its knees for a while. Desperate situation out there. Did you ever make your way over to Haiti during that time?
Not during that time.
You've been to Haiti before?
Yeah.
Nice. Port-au-Prince?
Yep, been there. Been all over it. But yeah, there was, uh, that country is always in turmoil. But yeah, 2004, we went down there. There was this one, Aristide got yanked out.
Oh, Aristide came back when I was there too.
Did he really?
He sure did. Uh, and they started rioting Of course.
Sounds like Groundhog Day.
Yeah, funny you mentioned Airseed because, uh, uh, yeah, yeah, he came out.
That was my first— that was it. That was like the first place I ever deployed to.
Oh really? Haiti?
It's like dead bodies floating around in the water out there, and just all the prisoners broke out of prison. Shit on fire. It was just— I was like, geez.
It, it, it devolved pretty quickly in I think that was the stench from rotting bodies was pretty freaking bad, especially in the quake, all the collapsed buildings and stuff and they weren't able to clean out those bodies or they just didn't clean up those bodies was—
Yeah.
That's how diseases start right there.
Yeah.
It's like you just got to do the work. It's a great example in not doing the cleanup immediately and that leading to a lot of secondary heartache from the things that occurred because of that. You had a lot of unnecessary death that occurred afterwards from simple cleanup.
Do you ever think about— I mean, I love building community and all that stuff, but do you ever think about when it really happens, if it really happens, who you can trust, how you can trust them? Like, oh, great, we got this community garden and then a drug Yeah.
And then—
And you got kids and they've got kids and you have all the water. They have a little bit of water. You have all the ammo. They have a little bit of ammo. Their kids are starting to starve. Yours are doing all right. How do you know? How do you know who to trust? You ever think about that?
All the time, man. I think it's going to be— you're going to have to play it by ear when it's occurring in that situation. I don't think it's—
we just talked about desperation and what human beings will do for survival.
I think this is why it's important.
We aren't any different.
I think this is— oh, we're not different at all. We're just not desperate right now, but we can be just as desperate. I think that's why it's important to have firearms. It's like the famous story. It's like, yeah, I don't believe in guns, but I have a bunch of food. It's like, cool. Does your neighbor have guns? He's like, yeah, I don't know. It's like, does your neighbor know you have food? Yeah, well, probably are not going to have food once the world goes to shit. You still have to be able to protect yourself at the end of the day. You got to have that rational self-interest in yourself and protecting your family because when it comes down to it, when people are starving and they see that you're doing well, you're a target, man.
You can't trust anybody.
You can't trust anybody. That's why hopefully you're able to get communities established beforehand or if needed after so that you can begin to work together to make a better living situation for everybody. Because as you know, homesteading is very doable, but it's tough work, man. It's definitely easier with more hands, but it might be like that at the beginning when things are shaking out and when people are starting to starve.
I mean, most people will die out in what, the first month?
Oh, easily, easily. Without food, Clean water. Clean water being the big one. That's going to take— how many people do you know are told when something goes wrong to fill up their bathtub with water so they can have water? That's their— like, that's their water, just the bathtub. And you don't think that everybody else is going to be doing that too? And that's not going to lower water pressure to a point you're not going to get enough water? What are you going to do when you have zero water? Let's say it's Arizona. Phoenix, water pressure is nothing.
Anywhere.
Anywhere. And, you're talking about zero access to clean water, you're going to have an insane amount of death and you're going to have an insane amount of disease that rises from that. And, it's going to be a rough, rough bit as that shakes out for wherever you are. I think that's why a lot of people are trying to move out further now, trying to establish larger homesteads. But people can still come out to you in those homesteads because they're going to know that there's going to be farms out there. There's not as many people. It's dangerous no matter what you do. That's why you got to train. You got to be prepared as much as possible. I think that's why the survival stuff's so big. I think that's why firearms are so big, is people recognize that people are selfish at the end of the day and that you do have to be able to protect yourself, you know, until things can calm down to the point where you can reestablish order and, and justice society, but there's inevitably going to be that period of lawlessness that's going to be Mad Max/Haiti to the nth degree.
That's going to be insane to deal with. It's horrible to think about.
It is, but I mean, it's the reality.
No, it is.
If you've been through— I've always been somewhat of a prepper, but Then I moved to Florida and I saw how people acted when a hurricane wasn't even for sure going to hit.
Yeah.
And I mean, gas, water, food, all of this shit's gone in less than 24 hours. It's gone. Generators gone. Gas gone. Lines like—
Yeah.
Just to get out of Florida. I remember that, I think it was Hurricane Matthew, and there was a traffic jam from Miami, Florida all the way to Atlanta, Georgia.
I'm like, yo, we're talking like stop-and-go traffic.
I saw that shit and how people act, and I was like, I'm out of here. Florida's not for me.
Oh yeah, well, you see people fighting over—
It's just insane.
People fighting over water bottles when a hurricane might hit.
Yep.
And it's like, what do you think people will do when—
And they're not even desperate yet.
They're not even—
Fistfights at the fucking gas pump.
They're not even— it's like, it's not even desperate yet. And I, and I think that's And that's what we try to kind of bring it back to like the Survival Series. But that's what we really— it's hard to impress upon people, not just civil collapse, but say a war does break out. Say you do have a fracturing of the United States. Like, what would that war actually look like? And I think that's why a lot of people are watching because I think a lot of people are afraid of that. A lot of people see the division that you have right now within the US, how I don't think at any point in history we've had left and right so far from each other as far as talking points and stuff. So what would happen if there was a fracturing? It's like, what would actual open conflict look like?
It would be the most dangerous country in the entire world with the amount of firearms that we have, people that are trained how to use them. It would be a bloodbath.
It would be insane.
It would be impossible to take it over. Maybe drone swarms, but you could not send a military in here to occupy this place. It would be— oh, it, it would—
you think Baghdad in '05 was bad? Oh yeah, this shit would— imagine the US.
Crazy.
It would be insane. And I think we, we take pride in the fact that people can't invade and also recognize the fact that we're some violent and well-armed dudes and we're all looking at each other right now too. That's scary as well. It's just— and I think that's, I think that's why the Survival Series is— it just tends to, to resonate because people, people feel that, that kind of fear at the edge, you know. I guess that's the best way to say it. Just imagine how that would work, you know. What's the reality of being a single guy out there actually trying to do this? Just literal hell. Literal hell.
I got a hot question for you.
Okay. Ready?
Yeah. You wake up to reports that the United States has been hit by a coordinated attack. Power grids, communication networks, transportation systems, financial institutions, and critical infrastructure are failing across the country. Nobody knows whether more physical attacks are coming, and misinformation is spreading faster than officials can respond. Cell services disappearing, ATMs and credit cards no longer work, gas stations cannot pump fuel, and millions of people are beginning to evacuate major cities. How do you survive the next 30 days?
The way I survive the next 30 days, me personally, me personally, um, I have the ranch, of course, that I live at. So 100%, it's got to be secure Securing a property, securing my assets, securing my water sources. I have springs that deliver water. So making sure that I can keep those access to myself. And when you talk about that amount of mass exodus out of the city, how many people are going to be spreading out into the country trying to thieve, raid, murder as they begin to starve to death, as they leave without any provisions or supplies? Those initial— The initial week to 2 weeks of mayhem are going to be— will likely feel like a war in terms of having to fight people off your property. I think that's what it will come down to. So, in my case, it's going to come down to our community of farmers and ranchers protecting our area as much as we can to keep those thieves out of things that are valuable, food and water that's consolidated. I think that's the only thing you do because if you're in a city and you try to head out, you're going to get caught up in a traffic jam.
There's a couple cars without gas, that roadway is shut down until those can be pulled off of the emergency services. That's over. So, being able to— everyone says they're going to travel out of the city and they might try, but they're going to get stuck out there.
So—
If I was in the city, I would stay still as much as possible and try to shelter for those 30 days. But being where I am on a homestead, if people are homestead or more rural, 100% secure your assets for the next week and prepare for the coming storm of violence and thieving and murdering that's going to be occurring inevitably. It's going to have to be full military watches. Like, we're talking you always are going to have several people on watch if at all possible. If it's just your family, you're going to do— take those 4 on, 4 off with whoever is able to, to ensure that you can protect that property. That's the thing that comes to my mind for those first 30 days, especially the first 2 weeks. What do you think, Shawn?
I mean, I'm 100% with you.
Yeah, it's, it's going to be insane those first 2 weeks.
How'd you find your property? You know what, what were your check marks?
Check marks were far away, unincorporated land, and water, water right Water rights was my big one. I wanted to make sure I had good water rights because I wanted to be able to obviously feed the livestock that I have with grass that I grow on my property, hay, as well as being able to water them on the property. So far away, secluded, I can't see a single neighbor from where I'm at for miles, and plus water rights. Those were my main things. And then of course when you get those, you get pretty nice shooting distances as well, which is what we're dealing with. So, it's not too bad. And, it was as easy as just finding— I think we just used one of Boise's number one realtors and she was able to find it, no problem.
Nice.
Yeah. It was not hard at all. There's a lot of land in Chicago. There's a lot of land in Chicago if you want to move there and check it out. But no, it worked out pretty well for us.
Same Same check marks. Yeah, yeah, a lot of them. Water was my number one thing. My wife thought I was crazy. It took us forever to find—
How do water rights work out here in Tennessee?
I mean, I don't know exactly how they work out, but I was looking for fresh springs. Yeah. And creeks on my property, and if it didn't have it, I wasn't interested. Nice. And, uh, you know, there's a creek every 10 feet here. But that's nice. But, um, yeah, that was my main, main thing.
Without even knowing it, you knew water was the most important thing.
Oh, I mean, I've thought about that. Like I said, I've thought—
Oh, you've thought about this ad nauseam.
Um, you know, I met this, uh, I used to work with this— Green Berets were always the best at finding this shit. I would listen.
Yeah, they are.
And, uh, there was this one guy and I was, you know, I was young. I didn't— I didn't— wasn't that in. I would just stock up ammo and shit. I remember he said to find his house, he just opened Google Earth and typed in real estate or something, and he would only look at the places that were in the green sections.
Really?
Green sections are protected land.
Oh.
So it's like, yeah, I only had— and you can't build there, you can't get any bigger, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
And so he would, he would go and look for those. the most secluded spots. And he's like, yeah, I only own like a half acre, but there's not— I'm on public, you know, protected land. Oh, and there's not another home for 52 miles. And I'm like, he's like, so this is my backyard. I'm like, that's actually— that's really genius.
It's really genius. That's like, um, my, uh, my family's cabin that we have up in Oregon. It's like much the same thing. It's like we border one property, but then the other 3, it's right up against national forest, which is undevelopable. So, it's like might as well just be our national forest at that point, especially when you get those landlocked territories. It's probably one of the best parts about owning land is backing up to some type of public lands.
Yeah.
How do Green Berets figure this out? What is it about Green Berets? They're just some weird dudes.
But, um, well, Mike, we're wrapping up the interview and, uh, I say we go hit the range and—
Let's do it. You know I love shooting, man.
Blow some shit up and shoot the shit out there a little bit.
Let's do it, brother.
Man, awesome, awesome getting to know you. Awesome interview. Tons of knowledge there. I just— thank you.
Thank you so much for having me on, man. Uh, it was a real pleasure to, to be able to chat with you, and I'm sure we'll—
sure we'll talk more and get some more stuff done.
Likewise.
All right, man. Appreciate you. No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.
Mike Jones, also known as Garand Thumb, is a U.S. Air Force veteran, firearms instructor, and one of the most recognizable voices in the firearms and tactical community. Through his platform, he tests weapons and gear, breaks down tactics and training, and explores survival, preparedness, and what it takes to operate in extreme environments.
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