Latest / Man in America Podcast / Why are Forbes 100 Billionaires RUSHING to Build Bunkers? w/ Jonathan Hollerman

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Why are Forbes 100 Billionaires RUSHING to Build Bunkers? w/ Jonathan Hollerman · Man in America Podcast

• 0:00
  Seth Holehouse: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Man in America. I'm your host, Seth Holehouse. You know from watching the show that one of the topics I've talked about quite a bit is preparedness. Whether I'm talking from the angle of what could happen, talking about potential EMP or a collapse of the food system, or just doing a show on practical advice on, you know, the the fundamentals of prepping, whether it's food storage or water protection, medicine, etcetera. But it's something I think is really important.
• 0:29
  And as we are now looking forward to what is to unfold in 2,024, we're seeing a lot of indicators that make me concerned. We're seeing reports of these elites like Zuckerberg, for instance, building these massive compounds. It seems to be that it's not just him. There's a a collective discussion about how more and more people are preparing. We even have a recent notification that was put out by Google talking about these sensitive events that they predict to be happening, you know, in the coming month or so.
• 1:01
  So there's a lot of just different indicators that show that something could be happening. Not to mention, it's an election year. And I think there's gonna be all kinds of craziness related to that. And so joining us today is a returning guest, Jonathan Hollerman, who is a prolific he's an author. He's involved with a lot of different, you know, commissions and projects on helping people understand why we need to be prepared.
• 1:24
  But he also runs a company called Grid Down Consulting. And part of what he does with that is consult the elites. I mean, it's kind of odd, but he's you know, as you'll see in the interview that he's got a handful of clients that are in the the Forbes top 100 list, where he's, you know, building out bunkers, you know, ten, fifteen, you know, million dollar plus massive bunkers on 10,000, you know, acres, swatches of land. And so the information he's got is really particularly interesting because this is a guy that's actually consulting these people and understanding what their worries are, what they're preparing for. So this is gonna be a really good and interesting interview.
• 2:00
  I think it's very timely. And one thing I'll just say is that this isn't meant to be some sort of doomsday, it's all gonna be really bad interview. It's looking at the worst case scenario. And that's that's again, that is the foundation of what Mr. Hollerman focuses on is preparing for the what he thinks is one of the worst case scenarios, which is an EMP or some sort of grid down event.
• 2:22
  And if you prepare for that, you're kind of prepared for everything else. So hopefully, it's a very informal interview for you. It's also a good one to share with your friends or family. Say your husband is kind of on the fence. He's not really into the prepping stuff you're looking at.
• 2:35
  This is a good interview to show because there's a lot of helpful information in it and some practical solutions. So folks, please enjoy the interview. Jonathan, it is great to have you back on the show. Thank you so much for joining us today.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Seth. Glad to be here.
• 2:51
  Seth Holehouse: So for people that aren't familiar with you, I've had a couple interviews with you so far. And actually, you're probably one of my top one or two favorite authors. And we'll dive into your your book series a little bit later in the show. But, know, you are someone that specializes in preparedness, you know, EMP, what happens if disaster strikes. And how about I'll I'll let you just give a real brief introduction into what you do, like, with Grid Down Consulting and your books and also working on your task force just to help frame our discussion that, you know, obviously, you're someone that people might call a prepper, but you're not just some random guy that knows how to, you know, kill a deer.
• 3:29
  You are actually a a an expert in this field.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Yes. Sure. So my background is I'm formally a military SEER instructor that stands for survival, evasion, resistance, escape. Probably about fifteen years ago, the the threat of a grid down event kinda came on my radar, and I did just tons of research. And I I I I'm an analytical type guy, so I just started latching on to any kind of piece of information from the two thousand four EMP commission reports and any government reports.
• 3:58
  And I realized it is it is not a, sci fi conspiracy theory. This is documented. This is something that's likely to happen in our future either from EMP, solar flares, cyber attack, or a physical attack against the grid. So I started writing books on the subject, which which did really well. And then, about five years ago, I was invited.
• 4:19
  One of the members of the electromagnetic defense task force, which is a joint services wargaming operation looking at the grid down threats for the military and the government as a whole. I was invited to attend that, and that was a huge eye opening event to be part of. And, that led to I've been to a bunch of the FBI's InfraGard meetings. I I I was asked to be on the board of directors in Impact America. And then, you know, I was a member of Secure the Grid Coalition and and a bunch of these organizations and attending these meetings.
• 4:52
  And then two years ago, I was asked to be the the deputy director at the, US, Task Force on National Homeland Security, which is a congressional advisory board on EMP to to congress. So I I split my time between that, writing books. And I for the last twelve years, I have a company called Grid Down Consulting where I work with individuals to help them prepare for what may come, whatever events their family believes are on the horizon, help them build a plan of action. And over the last ten years, that business has grown. I've done over 500, worked with over 500 high net worth clients.
• 5:27
  And in the last couple years, it's there's so many people that are that are starting to do this. I I've I'm and I'm a one man show. So, essentially, I the last couple years, I've only really worked with super high net worth people, and it's kind of increasing. Just in the last two years, I've got four or five guys, families, I should say, on the the Forbes one hundred list that I've been working with. So that that's, I enjoy that because they don't have a budget.
• 5:56
  When they when they ask you what to do, you tell them you need to do this or you need to buy that, and they buy five of them. Where previously, I worked with, like, doctors and lawyers and, you know, you have a budget and you have to stay within that budget. So, it's been it's been very it's been very fulfilling, I I should say, to to do what I've been doing. So
• 6:18
  Seth Holehouse: It's it's interesting because I'd say that the a large chunk of my overall knowledge about preparedness comes from the books that you've written, and then, you know, our conversations. And so you do great work and you have a great knowledge. And, you know, now that we're in 2024, and there's these very strange things happening, like, I'm not sure if you saw Leave the World Behind, the recent
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 6:39
  Seth Holehouse: Netflix, you know, that mysteriously was produced by, you know, or strangely produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, which is interesting.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 6:46
  Seth Holehouse: And what they get into with that. But it's also I'm gonna play a little little video snippet here because so Paul Joseph Watson, if people are not familiar with him, he's a great, you know, great YouTube channel and and influencer. He has you know, he did a video on this recently, and he did a compilation of them talking about what's happening with all of these elites building bunkers. So I'm gonna play this quickly and then kind of look at a recent announcement from Google talking about a a sensitive event they predict might be happening pretty soon. Then we can dive into some of your work somewhere.
• 7:17
  So let go and play this video for folks first.
• 7:19
  Mel K: Well, mine's a little dark. I just feel a lot of concern that 2024 may be the year of a black swan event. This is a national security event with high impact that's very hard to predict.
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: Powerful people in the world, you know, they see themselves as utterly incapable incapable of actually creating a future in which everything's gonna be okay.
• 7:43
  Mel K: A colossal compound on the island of Kauai complete with a massive doomsday bunker. What is it with billionaires in their doomsday bunkers?
• 7:52
  Seth Holehouse: But, I mean, the question is, what do they know that we don't know? They're prepping for some kind
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: of large scale disaster.
• 7:56
  Todd Callender: I'm a bit worried about it, to be honest.
• 7:58
  Mel K: Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has started to prepare for the doomsday.
• 8:03
  Seth Holehouse: Is there something that Mark Zuckerberg seems to know that we don't? How many have seen the last of us in the zombie apocalypse? So we've got this. You know, that's just a small compilation of some various things. But then one other thing I'll pull up is that this announcement went out from Google recently that's strange to say the least, where they sent this out to advertisers, and they say that, dear advertiser says in February 2024, Google update the inappropriate content policy to clarify the definition of sensitive events.
• 8:35
  And so what they say in there is examples of sensitive events include events with significant social, cultural, or political impacts, such as civil emergencies, natural disasters, public health emergencies, terrorism, and related activities, conflict, or mass acts of violence, which could be a civil war, right, mass acts of violence. So you have Google talking about this sensitive event as they're talking about it. You have the the news came out about Zuckerberg, a lot of the other elites that are building these, and so and these bunkers to survive whatever it is. So I wanted to just kinda hit this conversation with two angles. One is what what could happen in 2024?
• 9:17
  What might these people know? You know, you you mentioned working with some people on the Forbes one hundred list. I think these folks a lot of times get news quicker than the average Joe Joe does. Maybe they've got someone that works in defense contract, and it gives them a tip. So I wanna see, like, what you're seeing on the ground, and then also what is happening in terms of the the the, like, the structures that people are building.
• 9:40
  So I'm gonna just just hand it over to you and see what your thoughts are.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Sure. So I I saw that clip here a while back where she was mentioning the 2024, a black swan event. I I have no special knowledge of any event coming down the pike. I I do run-in circles where we get information, I would say, maybe a little bit sooner than the the average Joe on threats to the country. A perfect example of this is the president of Taiwan.
• 10:11
  I mean, the media is not really even covering the fact that a an an independence leaning, a separatist leaning president was just elected in Taiwan this weekend, and China is not happy about this. And a day and a half, two days later, we've already sent a delegation from America over to meet him and shake hands with him to the ire of China who's already starting threats. So we have this scenario where China may be pushing for independence and and or I'm sorry. Taiwan may be pushing for independence, and China has always said they will not allow that. That that is a that is a red line for them, and and they will take over Taiwan.
• 10:49
  They will use the military to to prevent that from happening. And so we're we're kind of in this really dangerous area of whether or not we're gonna respond and assist Taiwan. If we don't, if we let China just go in there and take over Taiwan, all of our large semiconductor facilities are in Taiwan where we get the the top semiconductors for all of our cars, for military technology, for your toaster oven. So we're we're in this situation where, can we allow China to take over those facilities and take over that country? Because it would be years and years.
• 11:27
  I mean, technology in America would take a big hit because it would be years before we could replace those facilities. So I'm just talking about one event. But what we've been watching here for the past year, I mean, starting with Russia going into Ukraine is we're and and our response to that, kicking them out of Swift and the the Nord Stream pipeline and how we responded. And, there's a lot of cyber attacks that are happening behind the scenes that a lot of people are are unaware of that are happening back and forth. People are unaware that China and Russia and most of our enemy nations have thoroughly in, infiltrated our our utility grids and and our pipelines and have the ability at a whim to shut these things down or destroy them.
• 12:07
  So these are all threats that are that you can document. These aren't these aren't, you know, like she mentioned a black swan event, but that's some nefarious thing that could or couldn't happen. There's no specifications. There's no documentation. I'm the type of guy that's gonna latch on to things that I can prove, that I can document and say, hey.
• 12:25
  This is a legitimate reality you need to be concerned about. And there's so many of those that are out there. We're watching our response to to Russia and our response to I mean, we just launched attacks on on on the Houthis. Right? And, you know, who are backed by Iran, who have the ability to to attack us in this mat in this manner as far as taking down our grid with an EMP.
• 12:48
  So we have all these we're kind of watching the allied and Axis powers being formed, like, in the the the late thirties. We're kind of watching, you know, these these these countries coming together, and we're watching Iran and Saudi Arabia, and China. We're we're pushing Russia into the arms of China, and and all these people are working against, the American, control. I I don't wanna use the word control, but America's been the leader of the world free world for a long time. And our country, we're watching the social fabric of our country fall apart.
• 13:24
  There is no there is no truth. There is no reality. There's up is down. Down is up. You know?
• 13:31
  It it's just the fabric of our society mainly because of the media that are pushing us in separate directions and dividing us by race and religion and all these different political factions. So, to answer your question is is a lot of the people that have the high net worth ability to do something about this. Right? I'm not convinced that it's like they have some secret guy on the, you know, natural security counselor or something that's feeding them information. They're just reading the same signs that we are, but they actually have the financial ability to create a safe haven for their family.
• 14:10
  And so from Grid Down Consulting and what I do professionally, you know, we kind of sell this as an insurance policy. Right? People have medical insurance and dental insurance and home insurance and car insurance and fire insurance and flood insurance. They have insurance on electronics. And if you don't have these different insurances in your life, the the people look at you and say, you're irresponsible.
• 14:32
  Aren't you preparing for a rainy day? How do you know you're not gonna get cancer? How do you know your house isn't gonna burn down? So the high net worth people are just seeing what's coming in the future, and they're saying, yeah. I'm gonna build a tucked away location on a couple thousand acres in this rural area and or on this island.
• 14:49
  And, you know, when when whatever it may come, whether it's another pandemic with a forty percent death rate, whether it's a grid down scenario in this country or whatever the case may be, a civil war, they've got a place to kinda ride out the storm.
• 15:04
  Seth Holehouse: And so with the with the folks that you're working with, some of these people, and I know that you secrecy is probably really important with this, but you can humor us a little bit. What what would you say is one of the most impressive projects you're you're working on? And you can give whatever details you want to or, you know, make make a few little bits about it up if you need to, you know, protect, you know, security.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Obviously, I don't discuss my individual clients, and I don't discuss, specific locations. But I've got multiple clients with that are working on between two and four thousand acres, very large budgets. I'm talking the neighborhood 20 to $40,000,000, budgets. And, you've got a client with a private island in The Bahamas.
• 15:46
  So there there are clients that that have the ability to kinda pull out all the stops and they say, you know, they fly me out and they have me go through their property and I design a a a structure that fits with their aesthetics that also has high security features. One of the the the differences between me and some of the it's only a a handful of guys that kind of do what I do, not to the level or to the amount that I that I've done it, but they have they they specialize more in building fortresses, you know, razor wire and alligator moats and things of this nature. The problem is is anytime you do that, it you can't you just can't hide it. Everybody knows exactly what you're doing. And you mentioned, in the news recently, there's some high net worth guys that have been kind of revealed for the the plans and the the the things that they're they're building and they're working on.
• 16:42
  And I do things differently. I believe in hiding in plain sight and I believe in, so when I design a facility, we will build the facility with three different sets of plans that one, the the the contractors see, one the building inspector sees, and one the homeowner sees. And none of the secret aspects of this property are on any other the plans other than the one the homeowner sees. And once that location is finished being built, we lock the gate, and it's large property, so it's not like you can just wander back on there. We lock the front grate, and we bring in one of my contractors from out of state.
• 17:21
  Again, that's important because a lot of people that do this, they build, they use local contractors, and local contractors talk at the local bar about the the crazy things they're doing up on the hill for that rich guy they're working for. Right? So we're bringing out a state contractor to to cut in the tunnel networks, put in the bunkers, and all the high security features of the location. But if you were a FedEx guy driving onto the property to deliver a package, nothing's gonna be out of sort. Nothing's gonna look like anything different than a, you know, a a large property or something along that that lines.
• 17:49
  Like I said, there's no alligator moats. There's no razor wire or berms or steel shutters or things of that nature. That doesn't mean there's a not a ton of security features on that property. So kind of my philosophy is live to fight another day. Right?
• 18:08
  Because a lot of these guys, these super high net worth guys, they'll have a security team of three or four or five guys. But that also gets interesting because these three or four or five guys have families. Right? They're not gonna leave their families behind. So now you have you're bringing in three or four or five other families.
• 18:25
  And if you try and run that location with an iron fist or if you try and do anything nefarious, those three or four or five guys, you know, those tier one guys, they're gonna put you in a ditch somewhere, and they're gonna and that they and their families are gonna live there. Right? So it's a it's a balancing act. There's a lot of things that go into what I do. There's a lot of boxes that need to be checked.
• 18:50
  There's a lot of things that we have to to look at. Extraction plans for high net worth guys. One of the big failings for a lot of these guys, these ones that are available in the press because they get building permits and they're doing projects that are so large, they just can't hide them from the the building inspectors. And so they have to file building plans, which are open to FOIA requests, right, that people are able to get access to. And when that big project makes it to the media, you can guarantee a month, two months into a long term event when people are starving to death, you're gonna have an entire town's worth of people coming to that location.
• 19:26
  Your four or five security guys, yeah, they may win the first handful of battles, but soon enough, I I at some point, they're gonna be overwhelmed. There's no place that's a % defensible. So these are things that, I really it it's it's far better for me to get involved in the process with these high net worth guys before they start billing because when I come in to analyze existing, like, yeah, I got a client with 10,000 acres in Wyoming, and, he built this structure. It's got bulletproof window. I mean, all kinds of crazy stuff that I know people are talking about in the nearby city.
• 20:01
  Right? I just there's there's no way people are talking about the things that are happening happening on this property. When I come in there, it's kinda like your cover's already blown. Right? So, I mean, things I do with other high net worth guys is, you know, when when you buy two or 7,000, five thousand acres somewhere, people are curious who's buying this $1,015,000,000 dollar property.
• 20:25
  So a lot of people wanna talk. And my philosophy is, you know, a lot of times we'll build a website for that property with a fake business and, you know, feed the people something to talk about that they can graph. That way there's not rumors flying around because then the rumors kinda take take on wings. So there's a there's a lot of stuff that goes into this, and I it's it's a lot I I I really prefer getting in at the early part of the process. The problem we're running into now is we've got all these scenarios that could happen in the near term, and it takes years to kinda build out some of these locations.
• 21:00
  So we're we're kind of running on fumes here. We're kind of running on borrowed time.
• 21:06
  Seth Holehouse: Hey, folks. I've got a quick message for you. So I'm sure you've heard a lot of people, myself included, talking about the importance of buying precious metals, gold and silver. But what's really behind that? Is it just a thing of, hey.
• 21:19
  Buy this gold. Buy this silver. Right? Or is there something deeper that we should be looking at? So I recently came across some figures about house prices.
• 21:26
  So in 1930, the average family home was approximately $4,000. Fast forward to 02/2023, the average family home is just over $400,000. So you have to ask yourself, why is that? Is it because things have just gotten more expensive? No.
• 21:42
  It's actually because the dollar has lost 99% of its value since 1930. Right? When people talk about the collapse of the dollar or inflation, this is what it means. Now let's take a look at gold. So in 1930, if you wanted to purchase your home in gold, it would take approximately 200 gold coins.
• 22:01
  So 200 gold coins would purchase the average family home in 1930, about $4,000. Now if you instead of buying a home with that gold or cash, you set those aside. If you set aside $4,000 in cash in 1930, it would be worth $4,000 today. What can you buy with $4,000? Can you buy a family home?
• 22:21
  No. You can't even buy a crappy used car. But if you set aside $4,000 worth of gold coins in 1930, which is 200 gold coins, 1 ounce coins, that would be worth approximately $400,000 today. And this is the key lesson about precious metals. It's not about getting rich.
• 22:41
  It's about putting your money into an asset that protects you against inflation and against the destruction of the currency, which is what happens to all fiat currencies, especially now we're in the end days of the dollar. And so that's why it's important, maybe not all of your money, but a portion of your money, a portion of what you have, I highly recommend putting it into precious metals of gold and silver, because what it's doing is it's protecting you. This is an asset that has stood the test of time, not just stood the test of time since the nineteen thirties. We're talking about the rise and fall of civilizations. Gold was used to buy houses back in ancient Rome.
• 23:19
  It's still around. It's an asset that will forever have its value. So folks, if you want to do this and you need someone you can trust, there's no person I can recommend more than doctor Kirk Elliott. He's a very good friend of mine. He's a strong Christian patriot, and he's out to really help people to protect their savings and what you've worked for against the destruction of the dollar, not to mention also protecting it against the dangers of a central bank digital currencies.
• 23:44
  So to learn more about this, go to goldwithseth.com or call (720) 605-3900. Again, that's goldwithseth.com or (720) 605-3900. Both those places will allow you to set up a quick appointment where you can talk to a wealth advisor that will help get you started on this path. Again, goldwithseth.com 7 2 0 6 0 5 3 9 0 zero. And with the clients that you're seeing now and looking at the overall trend, even this whole, you know, leave the world behind film, which it's funny because I think it's a great film to show a friend that like thinks you're just a doomsday prepper.
• 24:28
  That's maybe some liberal that's saying, yeah, you're too wacky. And, you know, we don't need guns and whatever, you know, they're kind of biting, you know, buying into and, you know, maybe they're living in in a in a blue city right in the middle of it. That film does a great job of saying, look, like, it really presents that scenario, like, think very accurately of what could happen. And it it makes you want to be Kevin Bacon. Like, it makes you want to be the guy that's prepared, the guy that has antibiotics, knows how to treat radiation poisoning, you know, that probably has all those things.
• 25:01
  And so but it just it just seems like this is becoming much more of the of the collective consciousness now. And so on your end, you've been doing this for quite some time. What are you seeing change? Are you seeing more and more people being aware of this? Are you seeing an uptick in book sales, an uptick in people reaching out to you?
• 25:21
  Obviously, you're trying to grow your business. You're doing things to have growth. But are you seeing that there's actually a trend of more people thinking, you know, I need to really think about my my my safety if something goes wrong?
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: A %. I mean, there is, I would just say in the last year, there's probably just 50% growth. And it's just it's not one specific thing that you can hang your hat on and say it's this reason why everybody's really pushing into this. But to be honest, back when Obama first became president, a lot of people really freaked out, and there was a huge climb in long term food sales and things like that. So it is cyclical.
• 26:00
  Right? So I I don't wanna say that this is the time. I'm not a prophet. You know? I don't have some special knowledge that that isn't out there, but there is real concern about the future of our country.
• 26:13
  And, again, looking at China and Taiwan, I I strongly, strongly believe that if we get closer to November and it looks like Trump's gonna win, I I firmly believe that China will go after Taiwan with the current administration in office than they will if Trump gets in there. Right? There's just they'd rather face off against who's in there who's in office now than who's who's not. But to kinda go back to your question on that movie, there were some pros and cons to the movie. I mean, I saw it.
• 26:46
  Obviously, it's it's Hollywood's take. It's Barack Obama and his, wife's take on the the end of civilization type event. And they did pull out some tricks and and and talked about how an enemy may attack this country and the disinformation and shutting down the communications network. There was a bunch of glaring just regular errors in the sense of, like, I I think at one point, didn't the, the power facility catch on fire or something? But they had electricity throughout the whole thing because that would be the first thing an enemy takes out, would be electricity because every aspect of human life today revolves around electricity.
• 27:26
  That would be the the very first thing. It's in every enemy nation's war doctrine that first strike doctrine is taking out the electric routes, which it showed, but they just everybody seemed to have power. The, I think Kevin Bacon's initial speech when they pull up on his property, I think it's fantastic. I think it's absolutely true, and that's how people would absolutely respond, in that scenario. So this idea, well, my my buddy Bob at work is a is a prepper.
• 27:53
  I'm gonna go to his house. That's not gonna go well for you if you if you're planning on doing that. You know? If you're not taking it serious and you think you're just gonna go to another location. But that brings up a whole another aspect of this.
• 28:05
  A real person that was serious about what they're doing knows the first rule of preparedness is you don't talk about it. The fact that Kevin Bacon, everybody in town knows that he's a prepper, right, and showing up at his house, that's bad for him. Right? So he would not have been talking about it. It would not have been obvious.
• 28:26
  And then the lie and then the silly thing was, you know, he tells them about this bunker that he helped build. He ain't telling them about that bunker. He's gonna go there and get that stuff for himself and his own family. Right? He's not gonna like, hey.
• 28:36
  There's a whole bunch of free food in, underground bunker down the road here. He he wouldn't have told them about that. Right? But then with any Hollywood movie on this subject, they always throw in weird stuff. Like, what the heck is up with the deer?
• 28:51
  Right? Running around, staring at people. You know what I mean?
• 28:54
  Seth Holehouse: So With the flamingos.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: It's like their pool. Yeah. They're like, they're projecting. They're projecting. And, you know, I've heard a lot of people comment about this.
• 29:03
  You know, they're prepping us for what's coming or this or that. They're projecting to a degree. But at the same time, they always they always make do something weird. Right? So I don't know.
• 29:16
  So I think a better thing to show people would be like American blackout. That's probably a 10 old kind of docudrama that if it I I think it was Discovery Channel. Maybe it was History Channel. One of them put out, which was on a long term or was on a grid down event and how fast society will fall apart.
• 29:32
  Seth Holehouse: Oh, so it's called And it's kinda American Blackout?
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: American blackout. I think you can watch it on YouTube at this point because it's it's pretty old. And they do a really good job about showing how fast society falls apart when you lose the electric grid and how fast people get in desperate. Now, obviously, it's a mainstream production company. So the prepper character in that docudrama, well, you know, he's rocking a flat top.
• 29:57
  He's wearing BDU pants. Right? I mean, it's just yeah. It's just kind of so they they paint the prepper as usual as, like, some crazy guy. But the end of the end of the show so they do a really good job.
• 30:10
  But at the very end of the show, what you see is, like, the standoff happening with this prepper guy, and I'm giving really I I guess I am giving a little bit of spoiler here, but, and there's this big standoff, and then all of a sudden, the lights come back on. Nobody explains how or why, but the lights just come back on. And then everybody just kinda walks away and life goes back to normal. The same thing with the movie Contagion. If you remember years ago, I think it was, Matt Damon was in that.
• 30:38
  So, like, society falls, falls, falls, falls, falls apart. You know, he's watching his neighbor get killed over some food or this or that, people breaking in and things of that nature. Then all of a sudden, the the government that's all you know, so people are starting to starve to death and riot and they're looting and going crazy. And the government comes out on the news and says, oh, we we got a vaccine. It's gonna be six months.
• 31:01
  You still have to feed people for six months. You still have to keep everything from falling apart for six months. And then everybody starts dancing, and they're having problems. And, you know, everybody goes back to driving to Starbucks for their their morning coffee. That's just not how it's going to be.
• 31:14
  When society falls apart to that level, it's just not gonna you're not just gonna kick it, you know, back on.
• 31:21
  Seth Holehouse: Exactly. Well, it's funny because even with these stereotypes of preppers, it's like they say they're these bearded guys in flannels. And like, I don't know. Looking at you and I, I'm not sure where that stereotype even comes from.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: We're both guilty as charged, I guess.
• 31:34
  Seth Holehouse: Exactly. So, you know, I always like to, you know, have a good part of these types of discussions be just practical knowledge and know how. And and and one thing I will say, so I'll pull up your website. And I'll I'll put the link in the description, but I highly recommend people check out this website, Grid Down Consulting. There's a few things on here.
• 31:56
  So if you go up to the books button on top, these are your books. I'll give my quick kind of thoughts, and then I'll let you jump in as well. But the this this book right here, Survival Theory Preparedness Guide. This was the first book that I found, which was really is a preparedness guide. Extremely, extremely practical.
• 32:16
  It's not some high level thing where it's like, only if you can build a million dollar bunker, are you okay? Like, the the fundamental principles are just exceptional. It should be, you know, people's reading once a year. But then you also have this your EMP Equipping Modern Patriots series, which I I thoroughly enjoyed this. The and this actually I think I learned more from this series, which is now what is it?
• 32:39
  Four or is it five part series now?
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: It's three part, and there's a companion novel that I I co authored that one right there alone, with a female author. So it's a it's a different character, from the from my series, and it's written from a female's point of view. So it kinda paints a picture what would happen to a you know, from from a female perspective in that environment.
• 33:01
  Seth Holehouse: Okay. And so these are books that are just really, really entertaining. They're they're gripping, and you learn so much. And then you've got survival theory too. So if someone's just starting and they wanna get the the the initial download of information from you, what would you recommend?
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, there's a couple books I recommend. Obviously, my book survival Theory, I would start there in Survival Theory two. So Survival Theory two is kind of the, I would say, the culmination of my life's work because the first thirty or 40% of that book includes a report that I wrote, on the psychology and physiology of starvation and human desperation and a prolonged breakdown event. And I wrote that report for the the the US military, the for officer training, and it to to kinda explain to the military of what they can expect when society kinda falls apart and how peep and how their soldiers and their emergency personnel are gonna react. So that report that you're pulling up there now, so, obviously, in survival theory too, it's just the text of the document, and most of the document, not all of it.
• 34:07
  I want to wake American people up. And so just like survival theory one, survival theory two, because I I I'm only one guy and I only have time to work with so many clients, those were that was kind of my way of paying back the average Joe, the blue collar worker that, like you said, can't afford a 2 or $5,000,000 survival retreat location to fall back to. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of information in there for for somebody that's on a budget to to to kind of prepare. And so this report that you have up there on the screen now, grid down destination, that I'm giving that away for free in PDF. So I want that to be shared with as many people as possible because there is a big glaring hole in the preparedness community, and that is a a vast misunderstanding.
• 34:53
  It's it's normalcy bias of how people are gonna act and react in the aftermath of a long term event. And, so, I mean, I there's probably 30 pages on historical data in the the Holomador, the Chinese famine, the Bengal famine. So that if I could pick one thing, if someone would say, hey. What's one thing? If it was one thing, I would say get that report.
• 35:14
  It's a 22 pages. It's not gonna offer any advice for you, but it is a you have to understand what you're preparing for in order to prepare. So you have to understand the mindset of other people that are gonna be around you or even part of your group in this environment. And you have to understand how people are gonna react when they start going hungry. Because most of the preparedness, quote unquote, experts on YouTube, they they grew up in the richest country in the world.
• 35:40
  They they've never they don't understand the psychology and the physiology of what starvation does to a person or to a community or to a town. So that's so critical to understand beforehand. And you can download that on free on my website. And I I'll plug a couple other books. Incredibly important books to to buy would be Selkow Begovic, The Dark Secrets of SHTF Survival.
• 36:01
  This is a guy that survived somewhat of a grid down event in modern society, during, the Bosnia conflict. His town was surrounded. They for a year, they had the electricity cut off. They they prevented food and supplies from entering that town. And his firsthand accounts of how fast that town fell apart and neighbor killing neighbor over scraps of food, warlords taking over street by street.
• 36:26
  Yeah. That's a book there. I I that book is incredibly important for people to read. If you're looking for fiction aside from my books, the book One Second After, which is a very common book on this subject, is a big wake up call. That's a New York Times bestselling author that that wrote that book.
• 36:42
  So those would be some some books I remember. You know what? I'll throw in two more. Philip Zubardo, the the Lucifer Effect. He's a world renowned psychology.
• 36:50
  It's basically how good people turn evil. And he he explains how the average Joe can go from being a a regular farm boy and then go to Vietnam and, you know, commit horrible atrocities and come home. It talks about how SS troops, you know, in in some of these camps were able to to murder and kill tons and tons of people. And then you find them ten years later, and they're working a nine to five. They're a family man with five kids, and they're living normally.
• 37:16
  So this idea that mankind is generally good and peaceable and we're all gonna hold hands, sing Kumbaya, and just ride out whatever storm may come because that's what the American people have always done. That's just not true. All these events that have happened from Katrina to Hurricane Sandy and these there's always other areas of the country that came to their aid, and there's always an electric grid outside of those areas at least to to bring in food and supplies and the the ingenuity and the the resolve of the American people to to race to the aid of other Americans in in need. Some of these scenarios, you're you're not gonna have that ability. You're gonna be on your own.
• 37:53
  The the American government, the United States military, is 99% reliant on the civilian electric grid. They've warned congress twenty years ago that if they lose the civilian electric grid, the United States military will be completely unable to respond. They've got forty eight hours of backup diesel. They've got three days of food on the average base. They rely on interstate trucking and the electric grid just like everybody else.
• 38:15
  So these movies in Hollywood where there's always the military running around or bringing in box trucks full of food, never gonna happen. It's just never gonna happen. So having some under I I guess my point is is the most important thing, Seth, for the American people to do is gain knowledge about what the after effects of a long term event or some big catastrophic event, serious pandemic, some of what that looks like. Because people's idea today is all based on Hollywood and the Walking Dead and the like the movie you just discussed where people were just like, oh, hey. You know, how's it going?
• 38:51
  Hey. You're a prepper. Let me have some food. It's just not it's not gonna be that way. And people need to realize before they before they start planning, before they start running out buying food plans and things like this, they need to have a better plan of action and think through their kind of preparedness plan of action before they start buying stuff.
• 39:10
  Seth Holehouse: It's such a good point. And before I I respond to that, I just wanna show people on your website, griddownconsulting.com, and I'll put these links in the description. Under the research button up there, you hover over it. On the very bottom down, it says grid down report. And that's how you get to this page right here, and then you you click on that, and it opens up the PDF.
• 39:30
  So that's free for everybody. Great place to start. And something I wanted to share with you in terms of what you just said about the mindset. Folks, have a quick message for you. Look, the twenty twenty four election is do or die for the globalist and communists that had infiltrated our country and are currently running it.
• 39:48
  And they either have to win or they're going to destroy America so nothing is left either way. And if you're the person that's watching this show and following this information, unfortunately, you have the weight on your shoulders of making sure that your family is prepared, especially as we head in to this next year in this next election cycle because unfortunately, I think it's gonna get rough. And one of the ways I know they're going to target us is through our food supply. You can see all the food factories burned down, you can see the warnings of coming famines and food shortages and everything like that. And food is one of the number one ways totalitarian regimes have always used to control the populations destroy the food supply.
• 40:25
  So if you don't have at least two, three, four, five, six months worth of stored food, I highly recommend you take that very seriously. Because look, as I mentioned, if you're the person that's watching this, you're the person that carries the burden of making sure your family is prepared. I would recommend at least six months, if not a year of storable food. So if things go haywire, whether it's grid down or terrorist attack from what's coming across the border, that your family can safely stay in place and you can feed your family. So folks today, go to heavensharvest.com and make sure you get your storable food that'll last for up to twenty five years.
• 41:00
  Just in case things go south, you know that you have what's gonna take to feed your family, which is so so critical for us to get through this next stage of history. So go to heavensharvest.com today, order your food that lasts up to twenty five years and use promo code Seth to save 15% on your entire order. Again, that's heavensharvest.com and use promo code Seth, s e t h, to save 15% on your entire order. I would definitely consider myself a prepper. I've, you know, I've done a lot of preparations.
• 41:32
  People who watch the show know that I'm a prepper now. I'm not someone that has a, you know, 5,000 acre off grid location and all that. I'm I'm a middle class prepper. Right? So I'm doing what I can within my means.
• 41:42
  But I was thinking about that, you know, one day, it's like, why am I like that? Like, why am I someone that is thinking, okay, how many years worth of food do I have? How much ammo do I have? Do I have antibiotics? Or why am I someone that has put so much time and effort and money into this versus the average person.
• 42:00
  And it's not necessarily because I'm some survivalist, and I hope the world goes to to to, you know, to hell in a handbasket so I can live out my days in the woods. And I'm not that kind of guy. Actually, I I like my life. I like my a lot of modern comforts. But I'm like that because I've just researched how quickly societies can fall.
• 42:20
  Like, I didn't go, you know, okay, how do I become a prepper? Was actually through reading books like yours or other information and seeing how quickly society can actually fall and how we we really are living on a knife's edge that that holds it holds the balance of our world in order. Right now, there's so many different competing parties trying everything to knock our world off that knife's edge into chaos. And so that's it for me is just first starting and learning, reading about what's happened before in communist China, you know, even the book you mentioned about the the guy in in Bosnia. I think it was Bosnia.
• 42:57
  Right? When when when Bosnia collapsed. And, like, you're reading books like that that have shown me, it's like, oh, it's like so someone might say, well, why why do you Seth, why do you need 200 BIC lighters? It's like, well, go read the book about the guy in Bosnia where it's like, if you're someone that has a lighter, you're like a kingpin on your street. It's like, you know, it just helps make sense.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: It gets back to the little things. Right? Yeah.
• 43:20
  Seth Holehouse: It does.
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: You you you use the term normal. Right? Preppers are the preppers in today's modern society are considered weird. You know? You're what's wrong with you?
• 43:31
  You know? Just go down to Walmart and buy buy food when you need it. And so I would make the case for six thousand years of modern human history, every society, everywhere, all towns, all people were preppers in the sense of they all had food to get them through the winter. They knew how to root cellar. They knew what kind of plants they could eat in the forest.
• 43:54
  They knew that you had to boil water before you drink it or you're gonna die potentially die. They they they have life skills that we don't dream about, and they always thought forward. They always thought ahead. Today, with just a dying delivery system, again, it's a % reliant on electric grid from the from the grocery store where you buy the food, the computer when you you buy it, sends a signal to the distribution facility. Distribution or this facility sends more stuff, and then the signal goes from the distribution center to the canning facility, from the canning facility to the farm in Mexico.
• 44:28
  All these there's just trillions of signals flying around the world at any given point in time that keep this society sane and normal, that keep us fed. You take away those signals, those electronic signals, and that's where the future warfare is gonna be fought in the electromagnetic spectrum with cyberattacks and E and Ps, things of this nature. You take that away, everything stops where it is, and nobody has life skills from a hundred years ago. So, like, the idea of having enough food in your house for for even a couple months is, like, insane to people. But I would make the I would make the the the conjecture that you're the one that's insane because you're just you're putting your faith and trust in the United States government.
• 45:12
  Oh, they're they're taking care of this, and, you know, this will never happen. I got I got news for you. We've been working in the this this industry trying to convince the American government to harden electric grid for twenty years, and they're not doing it. They're just not doing it. We can get into the reasons why on another podcast and all the intricacies and all the fights and all the bills that we've had defeated by the electric utility industry.
• 45:35
  But we're not. We're the the the they're kicking the can, and it's not political. It's five administrations in a row now that have failed to take the safety and security of the American populace, and it wouldn't even be that expensive. It'd be less than what we pay Pakistan each year. But they they're just not doing it.
• 45:52
  They're not hardening our grid. They're not making our grid safe, from these types of events. And it it's just so frustrating because it's so obvious to the military leaders, to those in government. It's it's so obvious that this is what's coming for this country, and no one's talking about it, and no one's doing anything about it. So I don't know.
• 46:17
  I it's it's time to buy beans and bullets, people, if you're getting nothing else from this conversation. You know? Take this stuff seriously. Don't take my word for it. Don't take Seth's word for it.
• 46:27
  Go and read some of these books. Read the 02/2004, '2 thousand '8, '2 thousand '17 E and P Commission reports on this, bipartisan reports, to congress on this threat. I mean, they tell con they told congress in 02/2004, if we lose the civilian electric grid, which is highly, you know, which is highly likely in World War three, if we lose the civilian electric grid, ninety percent of the American population will die within the first year. Disease, societal arrests, violence. If and, you know, so, I mean, we still talk about nine eleven.
• 47:01
  We still talk about Pearl Harbor. You know, you're talking about three or 4,000 Americans dying, which are terrible, horrific tragedies. We're not gonna be counting our dead in the thousands or 10,000 or even hundreds of thousands. We're gonna be counting them in the the millions of tens of millions, probably the hundreds of millions of Americans dying from event like this. And everyone's putting their head in the sand and just kicking the can down the road.
• 47:23
  So we'll deal with it later. We're gonna study this problem some more. At the E and P task force, that I'm a part of and the Secure the Grid Coalition and Resilient Societies under Tom Popick, these are all places. We we have solutions to harden the grid. We have you know, we can provide solutions for states where we're working with, you know, the the states.
• 47:43
  Some of the states are seeing that the federal government's not doing. So we're making some headway in in certain states. But, you know, as for American people so let me let me if you would, Seth, let me throw out one more plug. Everybody that's listening to this, I highly recommend. There's a newer documentary out called Grid Down Power Up.
• 48:02
  It's GridDownPowerUp.com, and and that's by David Theiss, and it's narrated by, oh, man, I'm just having a brain malfunction. Dennis Quaid. Dennis Quaid's the narrator, and I highly, highly recommend. It's a one hour documentary. Check that out.
• 48:19
  David Theiss, the director, doing a great work. In fact, I'm gonna be in DC, with with him and Dennis Quaid here on on Tuesday. There's a new trailer out on YouTube for this. It's a seven minute trailer. You can go and check that out.
• 48:32
  But this is this is a really good documentary to share with your friends to show the insanity of what not protecting the grid looks like. Right? And the the reasons why it hasn't been protected and the fact that we do have solutions to do it. It's just not being done. So I'd highly recommend everybody check out that documentary that, just came out here recently.
• 48:50
  I think it's coming out on Amazon and YouTube here in the the coming months. But, for now, you can you can check it out online there.
• 48:58
  Seth Holehouse: Perfect. And, you know, you mentioned one second after, which I'll pull that up again. And and that was this was it's a whole series similar to, you know, to your series. This was by William Forsh Forsh Forshchen. Forshchen.
• 49:11
  This was also a pivotal book for me. I've I've actually listened to or read read or listened to the series multiple times. And for me, it was I put it on audiobook while I was out on my tractor. So I'm out there, you know, digging or building garden beds, and I've got this on listening to it, but great book. This, you know, like some of these other books, this right here will turn you into a prepper, not in a bad way, just because it makes you aware of just how vulnerable things are.
• 49:37
  And so getting into more practical things, and I from let's just say that there's someone that's watching this, and they live in suburbia America. Say they're on a quarter acre in a 1980s bilevel and they're they're concerned. And they've done nothing to prepare. Right? They're they're just now starting into this.
• 49:58
  Aside from, I'd say starting off is like downloading that free PDF on your website, and just reading more about that. If someone came to you and say you only had five minutes to talk to them, and you're you're trying to just give them some quick, you know, some quick pointers that you think could really help save them in the future, whether it's food supply, whatever it is, what what's that what's that, you know, that five minute spiel look like to somebody that has done nothing to to prepare?
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: That that that is really a difficult thing because it flies in the face of what everybody wants to hear. So there's a lot of prepper channels online that'll tickle people's ears. Right? And they'll say, oh, you know, you live in sub some suburban area of Atlanta, like you mentioned, on a quarter acre and a cul de sac. And, here's some here's a 10 step program to prepare for the apocalypse.
• 50:51
  Right? Do this. Put a garden in your backyard. Put a six foot privacy fence so no one will know you're gardening in your neighborhood. And do this and throw trash out front so it looks like the place is a bit they're gonna give you all these kind of easy things for you to latch onto, and then you're gonna feel really confident, that you're you're safe and protected because you follow this 10 step program.
• 51:14
  And what I will tell you out of the gate is that if you are on no budget, or a very tight budget, you're the average American in this country. Let me be honest with you. If a long term grid down event happens in this country, it's gonna be very difficult for you to make it through. And the solution is not staying in your suburban neighborhood, your your row house downtown, and writing things out and seeing things how things are gonna go. Read the first chapter of Sokol Bagovich's book where book where he's like, if I could go back and do anything different, I would have got out immediately out of the city while I still could.
• 51:49
  But he was like, I was young and I was dumb and I just wanted to you know, it's history and I wanted to stay here. And, you know, two chapters later, he's eating, you know, maggoty sandwich that he finds in a refrigerator. Right? And, you know, they're drinking water out of rain barrels, everyone has diarrhea. So education is so important.
• 52:09
  Understanding what's coming to build your plan of action. I say it over and over and over again because that's the thing that most of these guys online get wrong. The second thing is they don't understand the long term ramifications or even the threats of an EMP scenario. Again, I'm in this industry. I see the reports.
• 52:26
  We're discussing this constantly. This is not some this is not some tinfoil hat thing that, you know, you put it up there on the shelf to consider down the road. This is something that is coming, for this country. It will happen in our lifetime. I firmly believe that.
• 52:43
  So, a lot of people that the the the word prepper, the word preparedness covers such a large gambit of people. There's people in in Florida that are preparing for hurricanes. That's just if you live in Florida, you're gonna hit be hit by a hurricane at some point. You should have a case of water and some MREs in your basement. That's just common sense.
• 53:02
  That's not really what I kinda focus on the longer term events. So separating who am I listening to and what's their perspective, if they're just giving you short term advice, almost all that short term advice is gonna tell you to stay put, stay in your safety zone, your house, and do everything in your home and prepare everything right there. And that's great. I don't disagree with that advice for talking about a one week or two week event, a snowstorm or a power outage or or something like that, great. But if we're talking a long term event that collapses society, the if you get nothing else, your chance of surviving a long term event with in a suburban neighborhood of a big city or even in a a small town with five or 10,000 people, that's five or 10,000 starving, desperate madmen, I'm gonna be blunt, a month or two into this event.
• 54:00
  You're outnumbered 5,000 to one. You're the only guy in the town with a generator with with enough power to you're the only one with lights on. You're the only one not getting skinny. People are gonna figure this out really fast. The idea that just because you bought this one year food plan from Wise and you have it in your basement, you paid for it so it's yours and you get to keep it, that's just not gonna work when society and the rules of engagement basically change.
• 54:26
  And that's why I talk about normalcy bias. A lot of people make their plans into the future with the idea of in the back of their mind, you know, things are gonna people are gonna still talk normal. We're still gonna have normal conversations. We're we're gonna make handshake agreements with a neighbor, and they're gonna do this, and we're gonna do that. If something happens, you know, we'll call 911.
• 54:45
  Well, none of that stuff's gonna function. None of none of those things, it's gonna go back to the com those common denominator essentially where the guy with the biggest stick or the biggest gun and the the most know how and the one willing to check his soul at the gate, either that's willing to do horrific things is gonna be the one that's eating your food, essentially. Right? So I strongly, strongly advise you. Well, you have to have a plan to get out of mass population centers, period.
• 55:11
  If that means uncle Bob's farm, if that means a bed and breakfast that you visited four or five times, it's off the beaten path. So I I lay out five different strategies. I I I mentioned earlier, my survival theory is kind of my way of paying back to the average Joe, right, that can't afford these large survival retreats. Survival theory two, I lay out five strategies for people on on very little to no budget on a better scenario than sticking in your house and just watching it all fall apart around your ears. Because at some point, yeah, you may have, you know, an AR 15 and you may you may think you're John Rambo, but at some time at some point, a bigger group's gonna come along.
• 55:50
  At some point, you you have to sleep sometime. Right? You're you're not going to win long term. You may win the short term battles, but the long term fight, especially if you have food, especially if you have supplies, you got a generator, you got solar panels on your roof, and you're one of the few people in your neighborhood with power, it's gonna it's gonna go very poorly for you. Let me put it that way.
• 56:12
  So having a fallback location to go to even if you don't own it. So I lay out five strategies. They're not wonderful. I'm not gonna sit here and say, oh, these are golden tickets. These are they're gonna be uncomfortable, and they're not gonna be the best case scenario.
• 56:27
  But I would take one of those five strategies long before I would just hang out in town and just see how bad it's gonna get. So what what I tell people to actually answer your question, the two big things you have to understand. Your your major I mean, unless you live in Southern Arizona, you can procure water. Right? You in these in an off grid event or in a serious pandemic event where you can't you gotta be away from people.
• 56:52
  You can procure water. You can procure shelter in a sense of you can have a a roof over your head. You can have weapons for personal protection. Your biggest thing is food. The average person eats 2,000 pounds, a metric ton of food a year.
• 57:07
  The so I've actually worked with a couple mayors of small towns. After the book One Second Half came out, I had a couple mayors reach out to me and say, hey, we wanna do something and prepare for this beforehand. Right? And and one of them was in Utah. I'm not gonna name the the name of the town, but it was it was only like 500 people.
• 57:23
  It was a small town. It was a there was a ranching town. They had grain bins around. They had cattle around. We crunched the numbers.
• 57:30
  We looked at the town. I looked at it with the mayor, and it was just no way to keep, you know, we're talking 2,000 pounds of food a year. That, I mean, that town needed 1.5 metric tons of calories basically delivered to that town every day until they could get their farming and their agriculture and start growing their own food, which was a huge issue as well. It just wasn't feasible. The the people were gonna start starving long before that first harvest season came.
• 58:00
  And once people starve and start going nuts, you you can't you can't maintain order. So that was a big thing, another big eye opening. I did that with two towns, and we just discovered it's just not feasible to keep people fed. So you have to understand lack of food starvation is gonna be a major factor. That that's gonna be the the big issue is not having food.
• 58:23
  And once people average Joe's not even so much them, but once their their seven year old kid starts to starve to death, there's nothing they're not gonna do to procure food for that child. It's just human nature. It's it's survival. It's just we're gonna go back to kinda caveman days, essentially. And and the American people think we've evolved past that.
• 58:42
  And it's just we're not gonna get back there, but but we can very easily. So lack of food. And then your biggest threat is people. And that's what nobody wants to understand. They they they wanna have this well, I'm gonna barter, and I'm gonna trade with this guy or trade with that guy.
• 58:58
  Man, if you trade with somebody and they have they give you their last chicken to just get some rice to feed their family, they're coming back, and they're probably coming back with the group. Every time you meet face to face with somebody, they're reading you. They're looking at how skinny you've gotten, how dirty you are. You know? Do you are how haggard you look?
• 59:19
  Are you is your face gray or seeks your cheeks sunken in? Everybody's scoping everybody out. So you you're are you gonna barter your way through this and trade this or trade that? You're kinda opening the door to, you know, getting yourself ambushed in the very near future by a larger group. So my philosophy is is humans are lack of food and other humans are the big threat.
• 59:41
  If you can get in a tucked away location during that large die off, we said, for the first year, if you can keep your head down for the first year and live through that first year, your chances of long term survival go through the roof because, you know, you need to it sounds terrible to say, but you need to let that craziness kinda go past and then come up for air and look around you and see what other groups and then you can start, you know, pulling groups together, start kinda rebuilding society. But that first year, if if you're just out in the open, if, you know, if if you're in the middle town or, again, going to live off the national forest, I mean, that's a crazy ridiculous idea too. You know? I mean, I I I cover a lot of these different dynamics that people are telling other people to do. Again, it comes from a place then they they're good hearted.
• 1:00:28
  They're trying to help people, but they don't know what they don't know. They haven't been in any of the meetings that I've been in. They haven't been inside the they just assume somebody's gonna fix this thing at some point. It's just not gonna happen. If you get nothing else from this, the last thing I'll say, there is zero plan at FEMA to deal with a long term grid down event.
• 1:00:46
  There is zero plan at the federal government to deal with a long term event. There is zero plan at The United States Military to deal with a long term event. None of these organizations have even looked at a long term grid down event. It's something beyond design basis. And, again, they're kicking the can down the road.
• 1:01:03
  They're putting their head in the sand, pretending it's not gonna happen, hoping, wishing, praying it's not gonna happen. The leaders know it's a threat, but it's just that's where we're at as a country. And, you know, failure to imagining, this is the future of warfare, and very few people are talking about it.
• 1:01:21
  Seth Holehouse: I'm glad that, you know, you're speaking sober words. You're not just puffing it up for people. You're trying to give them a very real understanding. And now you're coming from the perspective of a grid down event. You're coming from the perspective of a really worst case scenario.
• 1:01:34
  But one thing that I gathered from your books from one second after others is that if you can prepare for that worst case scenario, you're going to be pretty good in most other scenarios, whether it's a natural disaster that knocks the grid out for a month or whatever it is, you're gonna be fine if you can prepare for that. So I will make sure I put all the links in the description for the end of the show today. We we talked about a lot of different things. I encourage people I'll pull up one more time. I encourage folks to go to your website.
• 1:02:06
  Go to that research page, go to that grid down report, start there. Great place to get started. And just yeah, thank you so much for what you're doing. And thank you for giving so much important information. And hopefully, we can do a show again, say mid year, and the world's still kind of holding together.
• 1:02:26
  That we're not, you know, we're not doing some remote broadcast from our bunker over hand radios together.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Hopefully. But I'm I'm happy to come on anytime.
• 1:02:36
  Seth Holehouse: Great. I
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: appreciate being here, Seth.
• 1:02:38
  Seth Holehouse: Absolutely. Thank you so much for being here, man. Take care. Folks, as you know, my friend Mike Lindell has a passion to help everyone get the best sleep of your life. And he didn't start just by simply creating the best pillow.
• 1:02:49
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• 1:03:10
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• 1:03:55
  Go to mypillow.com. Make sure you use promo code man. Alright, folks. I hope you enjoyed that interview. So perhaps you saw the recent Obama movie on Netflix called Leave the World Behind.
• 1:04:06
  And the movie was really built around the premise of a massive cyber attack that shut down communications, and really set forth these steps, the dominoes fall to lead towards civil war. Now, you know, I've talked a lot about preparedness. And it's funny because even though it was a movie that had the Obama's behind it, it was an amazing red pill movie. So if you have friends and family that say, hey, look, you're kind of dumb for prepping so much, or they don't understand. It's actually it does a really good job of showing how vulnerable people are.
• 1:04:34
  And so the one of the biggest vulnerabilities that you see in that film, though, is communication and the lack of communication. What happens when your cell phone no longer works, which is a very easy situation to have happen, whether it's a cyber attack or an EMP or any number of things, even natural disasters can cause that. And so joining us today is Chris Hoare from the satellite phone store to talk through exactly how sat phones work, demystify them, and it's actually they're much more simple and easy than I imagined. So folks, please enjoy this interview with Chris from Satellite Phone Store. So Chris, thank you so much for joining us today.
• 1:05:11
  It's great to have you on the show.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: It's a pleasure to be here, mate. What a crazy day today has been.
• 1:05:17
  Seth Holehouse: Absolutely. So it's interesting. I know that you know, your a lot of your background relates to communications, especially satellite communications. And we recently at my house, my wife and I, we watched leave the world behind, you know, the new Obama, Michelle produced Netflix movie about basically the end of our communication and this massive, you know, cyber attack on America, which spirals into civil war and all the things that, you know, we spend our days worrying about these days. And I've also talked extensively about preparedness and, you know, EMPs and just the overall, I think things that we'd be looking at in terms of, like, fundamentally making ourselves harder to kill.
• 1:06:02
  Like, that's my objective is like become really hard for the government to get rid of you. Like, that's the goal for surviving. And so Yeah. With your background in satellite communication, satellite phones, etc. How do you how does that play into the overall scenario of just preparedness?
• 1:06:20
  Or how's that how important is that in kind of people's perspective of, okay, what should I be doing?
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 4: Well, it's very important. And look, I'm sure, you know, most of viewers who or all the viewers of your show, understand that you have to be prepared. And so, typically, people have the food, they have a life straw, they have, you know, extra ammunition, and all of those things, generators, and that's great. You should have all of that. But if you don't have a way to communicate, I mean, you're really kind of on your own.
• 1:06:51
  And the cell towers, you know, and the cell networks are constantly under attack, like all of the infrastructure is, whether it's from Iran, Russia, China, it doesn't matter, or just crazy kids, you know, like in the case in Vegas and the MGM. But they are vulnerable, and they you know, this technology is used around the world. People understand how to hack it and how to take it down, And other things can take it down, like an EMP attack, which, as you know, governments are weaponizing this kind of technology, or a solar flare can take out all kinds of satellites and, you know, electronics. But if if the cell towns go down, then, you know, your cell phone has no bars. Everyone understands that.
• 1:07:36
  And even on a good day, only 7% of planet Earth is actually covered by cell phone service. So that's not a lot. I mean, we all see these ads on TV for all these dots all over America. Right? But, look, if you're here in Colorado and you're going up to hike, you park your car, walk a few hundred yards off the road, and you have no service.
• 1:07:56
  So satellite phones communicate directly with satellites in the sky, so they do not need those towers, and that's the advantage. That's why they work absolutely anywhere, and they'll work no matter what is going on on the ground. And, of course, in this country, we've seen things like hurricanes and terrorist attacks. You know? When nine eleven happened, a lot of the switching capability in New York was under one of those towers, so that just took out even landlines.
• 1:08:25
  You know? But if you're not prepared with independent communications, then you are very much kind of on your own. So, you know, this technology was created back in the late nineties. And back then, these satellite phones were five, ten thousand dollars or more, and people were paying $20.30 bucks a minute. I mean, it was a toy for the rich.
• 1:08:44
  What we've done at sat123.com is make this available to anyone because we don't think that just the rich should be able to survive, you know, a disaster or an emergency. So we've taken away the cost of these phones, which is still a thousand to $2,000, and we're offering them for free with activation at sat123.com. So this is like, you know, democratizing emergency communications, and it's absolutely vital to have communications, you know, when you have when everything else is down or when we're under attack or whatever it is. Because if you can't communicate, then really you just have knowledge that you have with your team or whatever. So I I think satcom is vital, you know, in normal times as well as being prepared for an emergency.
• 1:09:33
  If if you remember that terrible shooting in Las Vegas, you know, I can't remember which hotel it was, but at that music festival, you know, like, the cell towers were still operating, but they can only handle so many calls at one time. So if they got overloaded, then everyone's call gets rejected, And that's, you know, the last time that you don't wanna have, you know, communications, but it happens it happened there. It's happened at other kind of mass casualty events. So, you know, this is life insurance, if you like, that will keep you alive. You know, regular life insurance sends your wife or family a check when you're gone.
• 1:10:10
  I prefer to, like, still be here. And so I think that's just another way to look at it.
• 1:10:16
  Seth Holehouse: And what about privacy? Because one of my concerns is, let's say there's some type event where, say there's an EMP, and then the government steps in with martial law or who knows what. And I find that in my the scenarios I've read about in my own kind of, you know, imaginations that that would be the time that there's this big disaster where they come in to try to, you know, enforce and control everything. And so, you know, some of the books I've read, you know, say like, I think it's one second after different books about kind of EMP scenarios, Ham radios become a big thing. Right?
• 1:10:51
  These little kind of off the grid ways of communicating, which is still trackable. But with satellite phones, are they trackable? Is it something that, you know, you could have some guy in an in an outpost listening to what you're talking about? Or is it because it's going up to the satellite, is it much more difficult for that?
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: I mean, it certainly is more difficult. And look, I'm not an engineer, so I can't guarantee this, but just my experience, which is, fifteen years in this business, you know, it is certainly much more difficult. When it comes to tracking, you know, you and I have cell phones, and everyone has cell phones. Right? But the cell cell phone networks track those and record your movements via GPS.
• 1:11:33
  Even when you turn your phone off, the there's still another battery in there that keeps the clock going, and that means that, your microphone and camera can be accessed, by the carrier, by bad actors, by whomever. You know? And once you turn your phone back on, all of the traveling around you did when it was off is then transmitted back to, you know, the carrier. So you are always being tracked with your cell phone. And, look, we all have you know, some people don't understand that.
• 1:12:04
  You and I do. And there's really no avoiding it. But a satellite phone, the best you can track someone is within a 50 square mile radius. And I don't know about you, mate, but, you know, I lose my remote control on my couch. You know?
• 1:12:18
  So 50 square miles is a huge area, and it really you know, it's really very useless for someone who's trying to hunt you down.
• 1:12:27
  Seth Holehouse: I see. And what about the Bivy Stix? Because I know I I I like Mike Adams. I know him. I listen to him, and he talks a lot with the Bivy Stix.
• 1:12:35
  So what are those?
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: Well, the Bivy Stix is a little device about the size of a pack of cigarettes. It connects to the satellite network, and then a free app on your Android or iPhone connects to the Bivy Stix. And what that all means is if your cell towers go down, you're still gonna be able to use your regular cell phone to send text or receive text, no matter what. You won't be able to make phone calls, but you'll be still in communication via the Bivy. And the Bivi and the Satphone that we're offering today, they all run on the Iridium network, and this is the same network used by the US government and the US military.
• 1:13:15
  So, look, they're not gonna take that down. If that goes down, we're in a different, you know, different we have a different problem. But this will work any way you can see the sky. So the Bibi, you turn it on, put it in your pocket, and it'll connect to your phone via Bluetooth, And now you have a backup. And even if you don't have a chip in your phone, it'll still work.
• 1:13:36
  So, you know, that's a it's a great device. It is a little cheaper on the monthly plan. I think it starts around $50.60 bucks, goes up to 80 or something, but that includes the device. And you can see the baby at sat123.com as well as the satellite phone.
• 1:13:54
  Seth Holehouse: I see. Okay. Okay. And we'll put these links in. So these are the different phones.
• 1:14:00
  Now, I see here's Bivi and fair okay. So Faraday bags. Actually, this is my next question was Faraday bags. So this is, you know, one of the other big things is that if there's an EMP, my guess is that a satellite, you know, sat phone is fried just as much as a laptop or the the computers in my RAM truck. Right?
• 1:14:20
  So it's dead. Absolutely. But Faraday bags will protect. Right? So is that the whole idea with these is that you have your sat phones, you keep them in a Faraday bag, which protects it from that EMP blast or a solar flare.
• 1:14:33
  And that way, regardless of what happens, they're always gonna be there. Is that right?
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 4: That's absolutely correct. And, yeah, you know, Faraday bags are essential. You know, we recommend you get a spare, cell phone and put it in the bag, you know, along with your satellite phone or what have you, because, you know, typically, you're going to have your cell phone, and it's you know, if you're walking around and this happens, a solar flare or whatever it is, that's going to get fried. But knowing that you have a backup, you know, in your Faraday bag, you know, would basically enable you to then resume communications when it was over.
• 1:15:06
  Seth Holehouse: And so the other thing with with with so with sat phones is that is it basically I'm used to, you know, you grow up and you have a cell phone, you have your network. And it used to be that you're on a landline, and there was long distance and everything was kind of based upon area code or wherever you were. Cell phones, you know, it's countrywide, so I can call someone across the country. So with satellite phones, if let's just say you're over in London, is it the same to calling you in London as it would be calling you in Colorado? Or how does that work?
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah. No. It's a great question. And the answer is yes. There's just one area code for these Sat phones, and it's the same price to call anywhere.
• 1:15:46
  But, look, you can also call regular cell phones or landlines from a Sat phone, and vice versa, they can call you. It's not just you have to have another person with another Sat phone to communicate. You know, they can communicate with outgoing or incoming calls and texts, and it's like the same worldwide. So what we do at sat123.com is we give you a hundred minutes a month, and those minutes can be used to call wherever or whomever. And if you don't use them, you can roll them over, you know, because you're not always going to need to use your sat phone.
• 1:16:17
  But when a disaster happens, right, typically, you're going to have a lot of calls to make, you know, so we don't want you to also get hit with, like, a huge bill just for doing that. If you haven't used it for six months, then you're gonna have, like, six hundred minutes, you know, and that's quite substantial. And we don't cut you off regardless, you know, so we understand that if you're using a sat phone, there's probably a very good reason.
• 1:16:39
  Seth Holehouse: Now the one question I have is that, obviously, right now, you know, say you have say there's there's a hundred thousand sat, you know, phone users that are on your network or right? And maybe they get used periodically when hiking or whatnot. But if something happens, let's just say there's a grid down scenario or something, Would you would your satellites be able to handle all of those phones or a large amount of them all at once being activated? Because that that would be, I guess, that the majority of them would be used, like, almost instantly in in the event of something like that. So would that overload the system?
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 4: I I think the answer to that overall and and, look, there are exceptions to everything, but is no. Because with an Iridium phone or a Bivi, like, you are typically gonna be have access to three satellites. Right? So and these satellites were built to take a lot more volume. When Motorola put this company together and launched over 70 satellites, I think that they thought this was gonna be the new cell phone network.
• 1:17:42
  And so, you know, they built it, you know, to be able to handle, you know, substantial amount of traffic. But, yeah, there's very they only make, like, a hundred thousand or or so of these phones a year. So the whereas they make a million iPhones a day, right, or whatever it is. So there's never been that kind of volume, and we've never heard of someone not being able to make a call because of overload. And, again, look, I mean, it it could happen, I suppose, theory, maybe, but I think it's highly unlikely given the the low number of phones total and the huge number of satellites that they have.
• 1:18:17
  Seth Holehouse: I see. That makes sense. So how does the pricing work? So I'll I'll pull up the website here. We've got Michigansat123.com.
• 1:18:26
  Easy easy website. How's how's this work?
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 4: So here we have the IMRSAT phone, which is the other network, and we have a bunch on this page. But the phone is free with activation, so you're looking at normally, a phone that would cost a thousand bucks or more is gonna be free. To get that, you sign up for a fifteen month plan where you're paying $95.99 a month. And so your a hundred minutes of text, you get to use, and if you don't use them, you can roll them over. You can also get US phone numbers, for this.
• 1:19:01
  So if you give it to your friends or colleagues, they can just call what looks like a regular cell phone number, and then that will translate to your cell phone.
• 1:19:11
  Seth Holehouse: I see. So it looks like the most the the packages change based upon how many minutes you want per month. And are there okay. And here you have the Bivis, which you mentioned. So those are unlimited unlimited satellite texting, $65 a month or 12.
• 1:19:28
  Okay.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, what you have at the top of the page there is one, two, three phones or more, and the price actually goes down. You get the same amount of minutes. But you if you have buy two phones, you're paying slightly less, for each, contract per month, and you're, you know, sharing the minutes. So if you and your wife have both have a phone and one of you uses a hundred ninety minutes, the other one uses zero, you're not gonna get an extra bill.
• 1:19:55
  But we you know, we're always encouraging people to think about obviously, you think about yourself, but think about your loved ones, your family, your wife, your husband, your kids, you know, and your colleagues. Because in a disaster, you know, if you're not involved, that's great. But if you have your one of your kids who's out in Florida and that was just hit by a hurricane, not knowing if they're okay is, like, extremely painful. Right? We've all been through this.
• 1:20:21
  We don't know if someone's okay. So it's giving you peace of mind to be able to reach out, or they can reach out to you saying, hey. I'm okay. You know, I'll get back in touch when everything's calmed down. But if they don't have a sat phone and they're in that kind of situation, you know, you're not going to be able to reach them and vice versa.
• 1:20:40
  You know? And look, I mean, how much money do we spend a month on things? Like, I I worked out the other day. Right? My coffee per day is, like, nearly $10 because I have two of them.
• 1:20:49
  Over thirty days, that's you know, that adds up. Right? It's way more than the cost of these cell satphone contracts, And this will save your life, and this can get you out of a jam.
• 1:21:01
  Seth Holehouse: It also makes sense to say, have a sat phone for yourself, and maybe you have two kids at college, give them a baby stick. Right? Just in case.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. Yeah.
• 1:21:10
  Seth Holehouse: Okay. Okay. And this is interesting because I, know, I've so I have a sat phone, but I'm gonna actually I'm gonna go sign up for one after this interview because I've listened to Mike Adams talk about them all the time. Sat one, two, three sat one, two, three. And he's a huge proponent for sat phones.
• 1:21:26
  And I've thought about it, but I guess in my mind, I thought, oh, they're probably a couple thousand dollars, and it's probably expensive. And but, you know, thinking about, okay, so a hundred bucks a month, it's like, well, if I canceled a couple streaming subscriptions and moved some things around, it's not easy to cut or not difficult to come up with that. But I like how that your the minutes just kind of roll over. So I probably would rarely use it, if not ever. And so say something happens ten months from now, I've got a thousand minutes saved up.
• 1:21:54
  It makes a makes a big difference.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah. No. You're absolutely right. It's like, look. Hopefully, you'll never need it, but if you're in a situation where you do and you didn't buy it, like, you're gonna like, we've all been there, you know, with that kind of regret.
• 1:22:09
  And these things tend to sell out too. When we we saw the beginning of the Ukraine Russia Conflict, you know, we sold out within a week of everything, and we had to wait, you know, to get more phones in. Because, again, they just don't make that many of them. We're one of biggest dealers in in The United States, but there's only so many that we get allocated a year. You know?
• 1:22:28
  So if things start to get bad, you're gonna have a lot of trouble finding a phone at any price. So being prepared is being prepared in advance, not after the fact.
• 1:22:38
  Seth Holehouse: You know, I bet if you could have worked out a deal with Barack Obama and put a SAT one two three ad at the end of the movie, at the end of the leave the world behind, you guys would have just been, like, just pumping out phone contracts.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah. No. Look. I mean, he does a favor making that movie. You know?
• 1:22:54
  But the reality is is, like, what they showed in that movie is clearly very possible. And one of the biggest problems that the people the characters had in the movie was they had no connection to the outside world. So it's like they didn't know what was going on. They didn't know where to go, what to do, you know, because they had no way of reaching out. And the cell towers are gonna be the first thing that get taken out if somebody is aggressively trying to take us down as a country.
• 1:23:19
  So you wanna make sure that you are not like those characters. They're just wandering, hoping, praying, you know, because you're in the dark. And it looked pretty horrifying at the end there. Of course, we don't know what happened afterwards, but I think nothing good. I don't wanna spoil it for anyone.
• 1:23:34
  Yeah.
• 1:23:35
  Seth Holehouse: Okay. And final question, maybe the most important is that how did you get access to the White House Press Briefing Room? I'm still trying to figure that one out. Was that Obama again? Did he hook hook that up with a phone deal?
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 4: Can't use any names, but I have friends in low places. What can I say?
• 1:23:52
  Seth Holehouse: Great. Well, Chris, thank you. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. Folks that are watching sat one two three, that's the website s a t one two three, where you can sign up, and that's it. Tell the men in America
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 4: Can I just take the phone number there, Seth?
• 1:24:07
  Seth Holehouse: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Please. Of course.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 4: I do apologize. It's (941) 955-1020. That's (941) 955-1020. And we're open twenty four hours. Call us anytime.
• 1:24:19
  We have US based customer service, so you'll get all the answers to your need. If you don't know what plan to get or what device to get, give us a call. Go to Sat123.com. We have a lot of videos there to help you make a decision.
• 1:24:30
  Seth Holehouse: Great. Well, Chris, thanks again for coming on. It's been real nice speaking with you, and you've now gained a new customer. I'm going there right now to get my phone.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 4: Job done. Thanks so much, mate. I appreciate
• 1:24:39
  Seth Holehouse: it. Absolutely.