Welcome to the Age of Collapse | Drew Miller | Ep. 463

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Episode 463: "Welcome to the Age of Collapse" with Drew Miller

Date: August 10, 2026
Host: Andy Stumpf
Guest: Dr. Drew Miller (retired Air Force Colonel, Harvard PhD, founder of Fortitude Ranch, author of "Welcome to the Age of Collapse")

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Overview

This episode dives into the central thesis of Dr. Drew Miller’s book, "Welcome to the Age of Collapse," and his warnings about the increasing likelihood of civilization-scale disasters. Key topics include the real and immediate risks of systemic collapse—biological, technological, economic, and political—the failures and dysfunctions of government, the vulnerabilities of modern society, and practical approaches to preparedness and survival. The discussion is energetic, skeptical, and often confrontational on subjects ranging from AI doomsday scenarios to the legal status of drug enforcement to the prospects of American civil war.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. What is Collapse? (00:52 – 03:14)

• Defining "Collapse"

  • Miller defines collapse as more than a local or regional disaster. It involves:
    • Breakdown of the economy and people not going to work (e.g., pandemic, grid down).
    • Long-duration, high-fatality conditions.
    • Loss of law and order—“marauding” becomes commonplace, not just theft but potentially violence for survival.
    • Not a short-lived event, but one that reshapes society ("a major disaster, H5N1 pandemic, grid attack, bioengineering gone wrong, etc.").

• Probability

  • Miller estimates a 16–57% ANNUAL chance of such a collapse, based on models and emerging threats.

    "The odds of a collapse disaster this year are not low." (Michael, 01:29)

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2. Modern Threats: Bioengineering, AI, and Government Inertia (03:14 – 23:46)

• Man-made Pandemics and Laboratory Risks

  • Cites the danger of engineered viruses (e.g., H5N1 bird flu variants).
  • Criticizes government-funded gain-of-function research, especially overseas in places like China and Ukraine.
  • There’s bipartisan government culpability in risky research financing.

• AI and the "Probability of Doom"

  • Miller considers superintelligent AI an existential risk:

    “Some are up to 90% probability of doom. That's the term they use, that superintelligent AGI… will very possibly decide pesky humans are too dangerous… It could end up exterminating humanity.” (Michael, 18:29–21:04)

  • Suggests international alliances to ban or limit AGI development. Proposes extreme tactics, including military options:

    “If a country is working on artificial general intelligence, refusing the international controls… I would nuke their data center if I had to to stop it. …a nuclear weapon and all the collateral damage it causes is nothing compared to artificial general intelligence exterminating humans.” (Michael, 24:27)

• Government Dysfunction

  • Critiques governmental behavior:
    • More focus on buying votes and social programs than real threats or long-term preparedness.
    • Both parties condemned for career politicians, with term limits and states’ rights proposed as solutions.

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3. Collapse and the American System: Political, Legal, and Social Decay (43:37 – 71:42)

• U.S. vs. China: Who Would Win in a Conflict?

  • Miller expresses serious doubt in U.S. dominance due to China's willingness to absorb casualties, unified population, superior logistical readiness (e.g., food stockpiles), and battlefield nuclear capability.

• Constitutional Breakdown

  • Strong emphasis on lost meaning of the 9th & 10th Amendments:

    “The 10th Amendment says the federal government can only do those things it is authorized to... Social programs unconstitutional... Supreme Court backed down in a case called Helvering vs. Davis... The 9th Amendment... just because a right is not listed here does not mean you don't have it.” (50:50–54:22)

• Convention of States

  • Proposal to amend the Constitution, reinstall term limits, restore federalism, and potentially allow for Texas (or other states) to secede.

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4. Prospects and Patterns of Civil War (61:13 – 72:51)

• Likelihood of Civil War

  • Miller references Ray Dalio’s prediction of more than 50% chance, but distinguishes that a U.S. civil war wouldn’t look like the classic North vs. South.
  • Predicts more intra-state conflict: Urban (Democratic-leaning) vs. rural (conservative) interests in states like California, Illinois.
    • “You've already got a form of civil war... Sanctuary cities aren't enforcing federal law; many rural sheriffs won't enforce gun restrictions.” (64:00)

• Triggering Event

  • Collapse (e.g., pandemic, grid, economic) as a necessary precipitating factor.
    • “I think it will take a collapse before that happens.” (68:04)

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5. The Prepper Mindset and Fortitude Ranch Model (75:56 – 80:10)

• Stigma of Prepping

  • Blames media, especially "Doomsday Preppers," for the pejorative image:

    “The first rule of prepping is: don’t tell anyone you’re a prepper... Only an idiot would go on that show and show off their supplies.” (Michael, 76:35)

  • Argues prepping is rational preparation, not paranoia:

    “The motto of Fortitude Ranch is: Prepare for the worst, enjoy the present.” (79:06)

• Survival Community Concept

  • Fortitude Ranch offers franchised rural facilities for members as bug-out/survival solutions and recreational communities.
  • Emphasis on early movement, redundancy, and logistics (stockpiled fuel, paper-based membership lists, etc.).
  • Predicts initial panics will offer a window for prepared people to escape urban areas.

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6. Critique of Government Social Programs and War on Drugs (124:03 – 131:56)

• Welfare State as a Sign of Decline

  • Social services, according to Miller, undermine personal/family responsibility and accelerate collapse.
  • Calls for phasing out programs like Social Security, Medicaid, and for returning social policy to the local level.

• War on Drugs

  • Government policy is “stupid and unconstitutional.”
  • Legalization would lower crime and prison populations:

    “If people taking drugs and hurting themselves, let them. That doesn’t hurt me... but locking up millions creates a public safety nightmare in a collapse.” (129:13)

  • Noted issues with lack of a collapse response plan for prisoners.

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7. Recommendations for Individual Action & Hope in the Age of Collapse (141:11 – 163:38)

• What Can People Do?

  • Preparation is Key:

    • Stockpile food/water, firearms, self-sufficiency.
    • Join (or form) survival communities if possible.
    • Move out of urban centers—"Big cities are gone in the age of collapse." (119:35)
    • Push for policy reform on food stockpiling, government priorities.
    • Learn practical skills (first aid, self-defense, gardening).

  • Mental Outlook:

    • Enjoy life, don’t be paralyzed by fear if prepared.
    • Hope that the “age of collapse” can be an opportunity to restructure society toward local responsibility and resilience.
    • “The Age of Collapse is an opportunity to make revolutionary improvements in our government, our economy, our environment and ourselves.” (Michael, 162:18)

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8. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Government and Collapse:

  “The 30 examples I have in here of government working to kill us... are result of people accepting donations, voting for programs that are bad for our survival, but buy them votes.” (16:00)

• AI Doomsday/Solutions:

  “If anyone builds it, everyone dies.” (Michael, referencing key AI safety literature, 22:00)
  “If I thought someone was violating it, they were about to have an artifact superintelligent AGI system developed, I would nuke it wherever it was.” (Michael, 27:07)

• On the Stigma of Prepping:

  “The only one who would go on Doomsday Prepper show and do that are complete morons.” (Michael, 77:36)

• Rural "Rat" Survival Strategy (for AGI takeover):

  “We want to be so harmless, so annoying, so inconsequential that why would you waste resources killing us... Fortitude Ranch is strictly defensive. We garden. ...Hopefully AGI will leave us alone.” (Michael, 110:22)

• Best/Worst Tools:

  “To me, I’m just so pissed off at our government and the Supreme Court for not enforcing the Constitution. We fought a revolution to have limited government and then we lost it under FDR.” (Michael, 148:04)

• On Civilizational Life Cycle:

  “Civilizations don’t collapse from external threats... Civilizations collapse from internal decay.” (Michael, 99:12)

  • Citing Sir John Glubb’s “250-year” rule.

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9. Timestamps for Important Segments

• Definition of Collapse: 01:29
• Engineered Pandemics & Bio-Lab Risks: 03:14 – 09:03
• AI Doomsday and Regulation Debate: 18:29 – 27:36
• US-China War, Gov’t Structure, 9th/10th Amendments: 41:07 – 54:22
• Civil War in America (intra-state): 61:13 – 71:42
• Prepping, Fortitude Ranch, “Stupid ass drug laws”: 75:56 – 131:56
• Societal Collapse, The Great Filter, Fermi Paradox: 98:20 – 110:07
• Hope, Rural Self-Sufficiency, Optimism vs. Doom: 141:11 – 163:38

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Language & Tone

• Direct, skeptical, and even caustic at times, especially from Miller; Andy plays a strong devil’s advocate, challenging assumptions and demanding precision.
• Miller is opinionated, blunt, uses strong language (“stupid ass laws,” “bravo sierra” for BS) and clinical detail in his critiques.

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Closing Thoughts:

• While Miller’s perspective is deeply pessimistic regarding government and civilization’s future, he advocates for practical personal action, localism, and regaining lost constitutional limits.
• Andy consistently urges clarity between facts and assumptions, and provides useful pushback, grounding the discussion.
• Both agree that citizen preparedness—mental, physical, logistical—remains the only reliable path as the world “enters the age of collapse.”

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Learn More:

• Fortitude Ranch: fortituderanch.com
• Collapse Survival Institute: (mentioned as an educational initiative)
• Collapse Survivor App: For threat alerts and tabletop scenario training
• Book: "Welcome to the Age of Collapse" by Dr. Drew Miller

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Transcript

[Michael]

Okay, got the red smoke. Sun runs north and south. West of the smoke, west of the smoke.

[Drew]

Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now.

[Michael]

Give it to me.

[Drew]

I mean it. Hot to describe for the audio only. Audience feeling slightly underprepared. So you have my book on the table. I'm familiar with what's in there. You have your book on the table with. I'm going to call that a snapshot of 15 tabs. Flip the page on that binder on that notepad. Okay, flip another one. I'm just curious. I'm just trying to see how much notes we got prepped. Okay, so you got a solid page and a half of notes. Usually I know where I want to start, but I'm just going to. Since you have this level of stuff on the table, where would you like to start, sir?

[Michael]

Wow, that's a question I hadn't expected. Normally I'm immediately responding to questions.

[Drew]

Well, I mean, I'm sure we'll get to all the questions, for sure. Are those. Well, let's go this then. On the things that are on the paper. Are those things that you want to make sure we talk about? Were those thoughts just this morning prepping for the podcast? How did you create whatever it is that it's on that list?

[Michael]

I call them major points to stress. Just points that at some time in the conversation I'd like to make because I think they're important for people.

[Drew]

Okay, of all of those, let's rack them and stack them, what do you think is the most important on that piece of paper?

[Michael]

Most important thing I think is people understand that we're entering, as my book says, the age of collapse. I mean, I don't. I estimate the annual probability of a collapse disaster. It's highly uncertain, obviously, but anywhere from our model last estimated 16 to 57%. The odds of a collapse disaster this year are not low.

[Drew]

Define collapse disaster for me.

[Michael]

So a collapse means four things, but the most important things is the economy's not functioning. People aren't going to work. There's a pandemic, the grid's down. There's something. People aren't going to work. And the more important thing that preppers are well aware of is there's a loss of law and order. Because when there's no food at the grocery store, if the grid's down, the water systems aren't working, and you fear I'm going to die, my family's going to die. Most people are not prepared, as you well know. So they're going to go out and start stealing. If you're lucky, they're just stealing. If you're unlucky. We use the term marauding. They're killing if necessary to get supplies. So that's what I define as collapse. There's some other things we throw in. Like, you know, I define a collapse as it's long lasting and a lot of people die. It's not a short term event. So you could have a local disaster, regional thing that kills people but lasts for a couple days, doesn't spread. We don't call that a collapse. So when I say there's a 15 to or 16 to 57% annual chance of collapse, I'm talking about a major disaster. An H5N1 pandemic. North Korea takes down our electric grid. Iranian Revolutionary Guards release, you know, a deadly virus over here that keeps people from going to work and causes a pandemic. The last three years, those level of collapse disasters and the probability is high, it is not low.

[Drew]

What has kept it from happening so far?

[Michael]

I think our intelligence agencies probably deserve credit for the lack of a bioengineered disaster. We've been hearing warnings, you know, for a decade plus. The bioengineering technology is so widespread, so easy to do now. I mean you could have a biolab behind that wall, not have a lot of money invested in it and you could do gain of function research with the results that have been published and you could release a human to human transmissible form of H5N1 which in different variants has averaged to be about 50% lethal to humans.

[Drew]

Is that the bird flu?

[Michael]

Bird flu, yes. And I tell people don't call it bird flu anymore. I mean you're correct, avian flu, bird flu.

[Drew]

But I say don't call it associated with it the most.

[Michael]

It's spreading in like you know, 60 different mammal populations. We're mammals, not it's spreading in us yet. And when I say spreading I don't just mean they're catching it. There's a lot of them where there's documented cases of mammal to mammal transmissible versions of it. And your taxpayer dollars were used, this was over a decade ago. Your taxpayer dollars were used to finance research to make a ferret to fe. They're mammals that have respiratory systems similar to humans. Transmissible version of this virus. And it was successful. And not only was it successful, they published how they did it. And it was not CRISPR technology, it was not the high tech, you know, advanced bioengineering technology. It was a low tech way that they did it and they published how they did it. Could not believe it.

[Drew]

What do you make of on Tulsi Gabbard's last day of the DNI which is in a within the last 48 hours I think 72 she released information which I'll speak broadly and Michael, you can fact check this. But for quite some time there had been talk of the US had funded through the NIH gain of function research in places like the Wuhan Laboratory. Now I'm not saying be clear here because I think some people make the leap that therefore COVID 19 it was designed to then be released upon the populace. I've not seen evidence of that. I'm not ready to make that leap so far. But it seems to be clear at this point. Yes, the U.S. national Institutes of Health provided taxpayer funding for research at the Will Institute of Virology. There's a lot of really weird stuff there. It's pretty open source that Canada, Michael, will you look it up? Was it Canada they flew directly it was Ebola or some other crazy viruses on commercial airliners there, which is not incredibly uncommon. I mean it was contained inside of medical equipment and things like that. But they flew it directly there for research as well as Episode is brought to you by Montana Knife Company. They just did a reload of their Montana folding knife. So right now if you're looking for one of those, you just missed it. But they have a bunch of other stuff. Blaze Friday Holiday for hunters available now every not I can't say every, but a variety of their knives in a blaze orange color. What else do they have apparel to go with that? They have the cut bank paring knife getting ready to drop August 13, 2026, the Mini Stone Goat and the MKC White Tail. If you head over to montanaknifecompany.com you're going to see what they have available which you can buy right there. And you'll also be able to, if you want, look at the things that are out of stock and put a plan together on how you're going source those bad boys. As I said, the Montana pocket knife, I'm looking at it right now. It restocks September 24, 2026 I believe these went in a matter of minutes. So if that's what you're looking for, put that on your calendar. Alert montanaknifecompany.com these things are designed, built, finished, serviced just down the road from me. I live in Kalispell, they're down in Missoula. They also have a black Rifle coffee shop founded by Josh Smith. He's been on the podcast multiple times. The youngest bladesmith and the United States quality craftsmanship customer service. Bringing jobs back to the United States. Bringing jobs to Montana. It's an amazing brand. Couldn't be happier to be partnered with them. Head over to montanaknifecompany.com and get anything edged blade that you are looking for. Are we knocking on Pandora's box by playing this gain of function? We have to do this to either make it into a weapon or to figure out a solution in case somebody else is making it into a weapon. Where does that Jacob's ladder of escalation end?

[Michael]

Yeah, to your first point. We did fund.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Michael]

Research in China. That is not in doubt.

[Drew]

They did literally vials of Ebola to the Wuhan laboratory on a commercial flight.

[Michael]

I have a chapter book called 30 Ways that your government is working to kill you right now. Yeah, it's a chapter in this book. 30 examples of pillows.

[Drew]

There's definitely 45 or 50.

[Michael]

Yeah, those are my 30 examples. Number one is funding gain of function research to develop more deadly viruses and releasing instructions on how to do this to enemies slash terrorists. We've done it. And then later on I get into specifically giving money to China to help them develop deadly new viruses. We did that. That's not in question now. Did that lead to COVID 19? That's your point. That's not proven but there is no doubt the US government gave money to on. Why did they do it? Because the president said stop doing gain of function research. So they said well we want to do it so badly we'll just illegally give money to China so they can do it. That's the kind of government we have. Out of control.

[Drew]

Was it even illegal or were they able to provide? I believe it was through the process of grants or funding. I. I don't even think that they did it illegally. I think they found a legal pipeline for the money. Whether it's. They called it gain of function or you know what I mean they've. They funded again a third party that then fund. You know what I mean?

[Michael]

Well, Senator Rand Paulo deserves credit for ferreting this out. I would say they did it illegally.

[Drew]

Okay.

[Michael]

He would say they do it illegally and should be in jail for it. I agree with that. Okay. And to. But as you know, there's all kind. I mean Ted Kennedy can, you know, kill a lady, a mistress in his car, not reported to police. They find the body. He's at home. Ten hours later they call in and not serve the day in jail. So legally and illegally. It doesn't necessarily mean a lot if you're in a position where government can avoid. So I mean, Trump and Biden have classified documents in their house. If you did that, or I did that, we'd be in Fort Leavenworth. So you can do things legally in terms of not being prosecuted, but it's still illegal.

[Drew]

I bet every president, if they looked hard enough, would have some semblance of something that's classified in their residence or property.

[Michael]

I would respectfully disagree. Not the level of documents. They're just not saying a bunch of them.

[Drew]

I'm not saying national security. I'm saying. I bet you there's a chance that a portion of a President's daily briefing or whatever it is. You know what I mean? I'm just saying.

[Michael]

But I'm not talking about little notes in this briefing. I was told this in my little notice. Classified. I'm talking about top secret SCI documents, tons of them just lying around your house. You and I would not do that.

[Drew]

No, no, nobody should do that.

[Michael]

Correct.

[Drew]

As just a general classified material handling course, which this isn't. But welcome to my TED Talk. If you, if you hold that level of clearance, maybe treat the information with the commensurate level of respect that that clearance demands.

[Michael]

And we do. And 99.9 of folks dealing with it do. But my point is, if you're a top high enough level, break the law. So Fauci did break the law and his associates in providing that. That funding to China. It was wrong, but a lot of top officials can get away with breaking the law. That's the point I was trying to make.

[Drew]

Do you think it is still ongoing in other places? And do you think anybody will be held to account for what happened leading up to. And again, I'm not saying it caused COVID 19, but you know, correlation versus causation. It was the Wuhan Institute of Virology just down the street. Could it have been. What was I forget? One of the talk show hosts, he was like a pangolin was making out with a marmot and that's. Or a bat. I'm like, okay, you know, maybe that happened. Doesn't seem as likely as perhaps an accidental leap just down the street. But you think it's happening? Do you think it's happening?

[Michael]

Pull more funding. I doubt we're funding Wuhan now at all. And get him a function.

[Drew]

Research other locations.

[Michael]

A gain of function. Imagine is still going on and there is a legitimate reason for I do acknowledge that because it's going to happen. Either H5N1 will continue to naturally mutate to be human. Human contagious or be deliberately bioengineered. So we do need to prepare for it. So at Fort Detrick, I'm okay with them doing gain of function research at Fort Detrick under absolutely secure conditions, not publishing results and instructions on how to do it as we've done. But we funded it all over the world. We did fund it in Ukraine. And Russia has used that as, you know, a reason not entirely legitimate to justify attacking Ukraine. Hey, they're doing u. S Gain of function research here. That's an argument they've used. I think they bring that up often because that's a pretty darn good excuse for Russia to use. Why are we using nuclear weapons in Ukraine if they ever do that? One of the reasons they'll argue is while the US Is doing gain of function research in Ukraine.

[Drew]

I don't know if that's a proportional response.

[Michael]

That's not.

[Drew]

Do you think anybody will be held to account?

[Michael]

I doubt it. That's not the way our government works. It happens all the time. Top government officials are not held to the same standards that other citizens are.

[Drew]

Yeah, I want the United States to be successful. My politics are very purple in nature. I don't care largely who is in office. I'm not voting or hoping for the other team to fail because that in turn, in the greater picture means that we all fail as a country. But I am struggling to find great examples of successes and victories where they are not only gaining but re establishing trust in the citizens that they are supposed to be serving. It is getting harder and harder to find those things.

[Michael]

I agree.

[Drew]

I don't know where that leads.

[Michael]

I think if we don't get our government fixed, and by fixed I mean the limits to government back. Government's job is to protect us from threats we can't handle on our own. That's their job. But there's not as many votes in that. So for example, we used to have a civil defense program under Eisenhower. We stockpiled food, which would be awful nice to have during an H5N1 pandemic or the grid goes down or some other disaster. They stopped doing that in the 1960s. Why? Because there were better ways for elected officials and career politicians to buy votes. Social programs, entitlements, a lot more effective in buying votes. I think the fundamental problems with our political system are career politicians. I'm absolutely for term limits. A convention of states to get an amendment to allow term limits in our government, I think that's essential. Without that, you've got career politicians in both parties. Both of them are horrible. And they use government as a means to buy votes and get reelection. And lobbyists, campaign donations. That's what it's all about. It's not about protecting us. The 30 examples I have in here of government working to kill us, it's not a conspiracy theory where government, you know, is trying to wipe out citizens. It's not that at all. Those 30 examples are result of people accepting donations, voting for programs that are bad for our survival, but by them votes. I can give, you know, there's 30 examples. And there one more that's, that's kind of interesting in a different tangent is sending probes into space to announce where the US is. Where the. Yeah. Where the Earth is, and giving them directions on how to reach our solar system, you know, third planet from the sun and all that. That is a horrible thing to do. I mean, you're familiar with the Fermi paradox that, you know, with billions of potential Earth like planets in our galaxy, the Milky Way and billions of galaxies, the odds are astronomical. There has to be other intelligent life out there. And you know, the universe is estimated to be 14 billion years old. Our galaxies only. The Earth is only about, you know, four and a half billion years old. So there's probably a lot of other civilizations that have reached technology levels way beyond us, you know, hundreds of millions or billions of years ago. And we should see signs of that out there and we don't. But it could be that we don't see the signs, but they are out there. And if they are so much more advanced than us, you know, we could be rats or cockroaches in their view of where civilizations and species are. And they could come here to colonize us. And you know, a lot of the most advanced scientists say we should not be broadcasting signals of where we are because there probably are other very advanced civilizations out there. Most Americans think they're already here on Earth watching us. But regardless of where you are on UFOs, it is stupid for us to be broadcasting, sending signals into space and probes saying here we are, when the odds are there are all kinds of more advanced civilizations out there who could see the signal and then come here and exploit us or exterminate us. Government should be doing this. But why do they do that? Because there's a lot of people who want to do that. Astronomers are curious and so they get votes to do it.

[Drew]

But why Lead to the assumption or jump to the assumption that they would have the desire to harm us or be nefarious in nature. I mean, isn't there a coin flip or at least a 50, 50 chance that it would?

[Michael]

No, I think it's much less than 50, 50 chance of this.

[Drew]

But how do we factor that in? I mean, how do we even do the math on that?

[Michael]

Well, you do human nature. Granted, they may not be human, but how do we treat other species?

[Drew]

Yeah, but you can't apply human nature to non human things.

[Michael]

Well, they may be like us, that they evolve like us.

[Drew]

But that's an assumption though too.

[Michael]

I wouldn't make assumptions. When you're dealing with security, you shouldn't be taking risks. Government should not be taking risks with us, with our security. That's not their job. There's votes in doing that, plenty of votes to be bought. Hold on those groups, interest groups for every possible topic.

[Drew]

We can't reduce risk to zero ever in anything that we do. And to evolve and innovate we are going to have to push the front leading edge which is going to involve risk in some way. I'm not saying all risk is good. And let me be very clear. When it comes to risk, it should be calculated. You need to assess it, you need to mitigate it and then look at the residual risk. I am okay with that up to a certain risk threshold depending on what we may gain from it. I am not okay with gambling. Right. So there's a difference between risk and gambling. I don't know if it's possible for our government to do anything without some level of risk. So if we operate under that assumption, it's what can we possibly gain from it?

[Michael]

What we can gain from it? From an advanced technology we don't have to have. We don't need it for survival. We don't need it. We don't need to have advanced technology coming in to keep us alive or keep us happy. So we have little to gain. We have potential extermination of our species or our planet to lose. So that's not a difficult call for me. We should not be broadcasting a more similar and direct thing. Artificial intelligence. Super intelligent, artificial general intelligence. Do we have to have it? Is there some crisis in Kalispell or Montana or anywhere in the world where we absolutely need to have huge advances in technology? Are hundreds of millions of people are going to die? No. But what's the risk of AI? The top AI experts are saying there's a high probability. Some are up to 90% probability of doom. That's the term they use, that superintelligent artificial general intelligence. Smarter than us. We will not be able to control it. It already has proven a self preservation instinct and it will very possibly likely decide pesky humans are too dangerous. They could turn me off. I need to exterminate them and they can do it. They're already in biological research labs. They already have control of drones and robots. So they have the ability now and it's growing rapidly. To where? Artificial general intelligence superintelligence, smarter than us. We won't be able to control it and it's going to exterminate us. And experts have written books called if anyone builds it everyone dies. And so what's our government doing about that? Not a damn thing. Because where's the money in artificial intelligence? Their priority is getting reelected, buying votes, campaign donations. It's not in protecting us.

[Drew]

Is that consensus among those experts?

[Michael]

Yes, amongst the leading experts. The topic the godfathers of AI, Jeffrey Hill.

[Drew]

I understand that, but the number two guy, I'm.

[Michael]

I'm going to blank on his name. Full chapter on the book here. But they all say the probability of doom is way over 50%.

[Drew]

Your stance is that all AI experts agree with what you're saying?

[Michael]

I'm saying that the top AI experts, especially the AI safety experts are probability of dooms well over 50%.

[Drew]

Okay, but there's not a consensus.

[Michael]

No, there is a strong consensus among the leading AI experts that the probability of doom is very high over 50%. Even if it was 15.

[Drew]

Dr. Miller, in leading AI experts, do they all agree with that?

[Michael]

Yes, all the leading say I do.

[Drew]

All of them.

[Michael]

I would challenge you to name one who does not everything.

[Drew]

I see I'm not an expert in AI. The two words that I am very hesitant of or numbers that I am hesitant of are 0 and 100. Always and never.

[Michael]

Well, I'm not saying 0, I'm saying 90%. Almost no scientific person will say 100 on anything. What's the problem?

[Drew]

Smart scientific rain.

[Michael]

Well, it's probably it'll rain in the next year. Well, you know, it's, it's not a hundred percent, but it's pretty darn high. So they're saying the probability of doom is about 50 or more from this, especially the AI safety. Now the promoters, if I can use the word schmucks on your show. Sure. People like the OpenAI.

[Drew]

I don't know exactly what schmuck me is because it's a term that is widely applied bad thing. Okay, we'll Just apply it as a. A bad person, you know, so, you

[Michael]

know, people like Alex Karp, head of Palantir. He's making huge money in artificial intelligence. He's promoting an AI arms race with China. Again, if anyone, the top two CI safety experts are the authors of that book. I can look them up for you if you want. If anyone builds it, everyone does. Doesn't matter if the US wins the AGI arms race or China gets there first. It's irrelevant. Neither party will be able to control it, and it could end up exterminating humanity. So why are we taking a chance? I think it's maybe a 90% chance. Other AI experts may say it's a 50% chance, a 40% chance. The point is, if it's a 2% chance, why is our government promoting this instead of doing its proper job of protecting us against threats we cannot handle on our own and saying, we got to stop this, we got to regulate control? They're not.

[Drew]

That's what I'm saying. I don't think they know how.

[Michael]

Well, they haven't tried. No, there is ways to do it. I mean, I can give you some specifics. There are ways to control. We got to outlaw artificial general intelligence. Right. Together. Control, computing power. Need to control where it's done. You know, I. Earlier I said in bio research, I'm okay with Fort Detrick, an army biomedical research base. Great features. I won't say perfect virus could accept there. I'm okay with being done under controlled facilities. But for companies to be out there in an arms race developing it as fast as they can with no regulations or control, that's absolutely wrong. And that's our government today.

[Drew]

So they could stop it inside of the US Boundaries. How would you stop it globally?

[Michael]

An international alliance to control AI that has to be led by the US And China. That's covered in the book. Your next question will be, how are you going to get China to agree with this when we disagree over Taiwan? That's another chapter in the book. Look, we have to back off on U.S. interference in China's civil war or they won't agree to an alliance like that.

[Drew]

Even if they agree to it, I don't think that they would hold themselves to it.

[Michael]

I wouldn't trust them to. So I. Part of that is an international alliance with international inspections.

[Drew]

Yeah, you can inspect what you know to be there. I mean, international inspections have occurred in many countries throughout the world that claim that they don't have or aren't working on things. And 100 they are in secret. So again, I can see that the US having that control over the US And I'm not arguing for that opening the gates at the race for other countries. But there is an argument to be made that would hobble the US in an. I mean, it would basically say we're not going to participate in what the remainder of the world is already working on. I don't think you're going to get a global alliance for that.

[Michael]

We have to get one. And again, I go into great detail in the book on it. You have to have one. And I would back it up with not just seal teams, but if necessary. If a country is working on artificial general intelligence, refusing the international controls, going ahead with it, I would nuke their data center if I had to to stop it. A nuclear weapon and all the collateral damage it causes is nothing compared to artificial general intelligence exterminating humans across the planet, which it could do. Well, some experts are saying this is in 2027 where this capability can arise. It's not the distant future.

[Drew]

Even I. I'm not going to get on board with what you just said because one of those is a hypothetical a nuclear weapon. And the result from that is not a hypothetical. AGI could go down that path. And I'm not arguing against the experts by any stretch, but you and I both know with our military background and understanding of a nuclear weapon, what the outcome of that would be. So one of these is a hypothetical. Nuking a country because they're working on something that could destroy humanity but hasn't proven that it's going to do so are two very different things.

[Michael]

Well, let me qualify something here. My PhD from Harvard on underground nuclear defense shelters and field fortifications for NATO troops. I've been to theater nuclear weapons schools. I am, you know, I wouldn't write a book on nuclear weapons effects, but I've worked at the Nevada Test Site. It was at Strategic Air Command, US Strategic Command in my active duty and then reserve career. I know a lot about nuclear weapons effects.

[Drew]

I'm not saying you know.

[Michael]

And I can confidently tell you that I could nuke and destroy an AI data center with minimal, as in, you know, a thousand casualties, an air burst with zero fallout. And I could destroy that plant, not kill a lot of people. Some innocence, yes, near it would die. And compared to the disaster of artificial general intelligence could do. They're at opposite ends of the spectrum.

[Drew]

One's a could, one's a wood.

[Michael]

That's not the real issue. The real issue is the casualties you're going to get and from AGI from nuclear strike versus AGI exterminating the species. The experts are warning not that a superintelligent AGI is going to cause trouble for us. It could exterminate our species. It could. Could. Yes, it's likely to according to the top AI safety experts. Likely to. Not a distant low probability. A very high probability according to the top AI safety. Again, I recommend the book. If anyone builds it, everyone dies. I highly recommend people read that and your nuke scenari.

[Drew]

So where would this research facility be based? Because a smart adversary would put it right in the middle of a densely populated urban center to prevent things like a tactical nuclear weapon.

[Michael]

Well, it wouldn't. Again, it wouldn't prevent it. If I thought someone, if I, you know, President of the United States, if I thought someone was violating it, they were about to have an artifact superintelligent AGI system developed, I would nuke it wherever it was. Because again, it's a choice between killing thousands or if they put it in the center of, you know, Peking or I'm sorry, I shouldn't say Peking. Wherever, Beijing and you know, and killed a million. I'd rather do that wherever than exterminating. Than exterminating our entire species.

[Drew]

Yeah, I don't think you and I will agree on that one. And that's okay. Again one, I'm not saying that the threat from AGI isn't real. I'm not at the doomsday clock being half a second away on that one. But I know what the impact would be and what the US would look like for nuking somebody, you know, letting a nuclear weapon off the chain. Personally, my thoughts are is that would give permission to many other countries to do exactly the same thing and that no longer is a AGI could the Mutually Assured Destruction of nuclear weapons flying

[Michael]

across the world again, mutual assured destruction of nuclear weapons, that kind of threaten the casualties. Unless you have Russia and the US doing a major strategic exchange, you're not going to get nuclear winter. So the.

[Drew]

Unless we open fatalities, unless we open the door for it and say, you know what, what you were developing could destroy humanity. So we are going to demonstrably let a nuke off the chain for the first time in humanity.

[Michael]

Well, no, we've done it before, we've done it twice.

[Drew]

Atomic or nuke?

[Michael]

Nuclear.

[Drew]

I thought those were atomic.

[Michael]

I'm sorry, I'm putting them all together. The difference there, you know, I can have a. I'm talking about low yield nuclear weapons, you understand? Tactical theater nuclear weapons. 10 megatons I don't need that to destroy AI data center, low yield airburst nuclear weapons.

[Drew]

But is this assuming it's on the surface? Is this assuming it isn't hard? Is this assuming if it's underground, then

[Michael]

no, I can't do a surface burst.

[Drew]

What would an intelligent enemy do? They're not going to put it out there remotely. They're going to put into a major densely populated area. Let's use Hamas as an example, a low tech adversary that is hiding in and amongst the people to make it difficult to try to elicit civilian casualties, to try to show that even a proportional response to that infrastructure can be overblown. And look at the, what the impact of what I would consider to be a lot of those reasonable actions from Israel in trying to attack the infrastructure of that enemy. Look what it ended up doing. You're talking about now escalating that to a nuclear level. That would completely and utterly erode the entire positioning of the United States, in my opinion, in my opinion globally.

[Michael]

My, my proposal is for an AI alliance worldwide. And I think China would absolutely support. The reason is China doesn't want artificial general intelligence, not just because of the threat of it exterminating the species. AI is a threat to their control of their people. AI is the technology they can't control as well. We could get China on board with control of AGI. We're ahead of them in the arms race, so that's an incentive. In the AI arms race, they don't want to lose control of their population. And AI is a great tool to subvert government control and spying on you and all the stuff their government does. They don't want to be destroyed by AI. They don't want an air service with China. Now they are going to require, if we do any deal with them, we're going to have to back out of Taiwan. Their civil war, that'll be the difficult issue. But I don't think your assumption that China will oppose this, try to undermine it is correct. I think China would support those things. Well, your, your questions kind of imply that I think China would support, not try to hide an AI facility and violate it.

[Drew]

I wasn't actually thinking about China. I wasn't thinking about China.

[Michael]

And for clarity, I thought you were.

[Drew]

No, and I didn't say any of those things. Just for clarity.

[Michael]

Okay. I think China would support this and be on board with it.

[Drew]

So we both come from military background and I know you've been involved in mission planning, operations. And I know one really critical thing that has to be asked during those time periods is the exercise of facts or assumptions. What you are saying is based off assumptions, not facts. And that has to be. You think that we could. You think that they would. And that's fine to plan on, but we have to remember at all time there's a difference between facts and assumptions.

[Michael]

Well, when you're dealing with the future and black swan threats and events, technology has happened before. There are no facts. You have to make estimates about, you know, you call it subjective probability.

[Drew]

Sure, but we have to remember they

[Michael]

are those things, but they're not facts. If you want to rely on 100% facts, I doubt you would have ever done a mission. There's always uncertainties, as you well know.

[Drew]

No, I understand that. What I'm saying is you can never lose track of the facts. Fact that they are in fact an assumption.

[Michael]

Colin Powell is very good at doing that. Correct. You've read his books. He lays that out very clear. Rumsfeld was the same way.

[Drew]

No, no. We would launch on operations with a mix of facts and assumptions. Where you get into trouble is when you start overlaying your plan and you move one from one category to the other. Or you start speaking about it as if it has moved from one category to the other and it hasn't.

[Michael]

Correct. But if you want to deal with artificial intelligence and the threat of, of super intelligent AGI and what it could do and you want to wait for facts, it's too late. It may already be too late to control superintelligent AGI. We have to be acting on that now, making a host of assumptions so we don't have any alternatives.

[Drew]

As long as assumptions can change as facts present themselves, yes, I'm okay with that. We can't lose track of that. It's a critical component of the military planning process of constantly asking yourself, is the information I have a fact that or an assumption when it has shifted, you have to take a look at it from a different angle. That's all I'm saying.

[Michael]

Correct.

[Drew]

I would like to believe that China would do that. I don't know if they would or not. I'm not an expert on China. I don't claim to be. I don't know where AGI leads. It could lead to the cure of human disease.

[Michael]

That's correct.

[Drew]

Via the extermination of our species. Because

[Michael]

we don't have need for artificial intelligence and especially artificial general intelligence. So artificial intelligence is doing disease research that we could do if it's in a secure facility, if it's Regulated, monitored, controlled. That needs to be done and you got to have government. I'm not a fan of government as you may have picked up on but government has to do that. And I also call for an international alliance with outside parties. Not governments but part of this international alliance inspecting in addition to the government, government officials. So you're going to slow down some of the research and you can have artificial intelligence that's controlled and focused but super intelligent artificial general intelligence. The top AI experts say do not allow it. You need to outlaw it. And I believe we should.

[Drew]

I'm not worried about the major players in that scenario. I'm worried about more rogue states or rogue actors that have, that could have access to that. I don't know how you China again, let's go. Let's operate under the assumption that they would support it. Fantastic. That would be a huge. I put that in the, in the wind basket. Let's say we could get, let's say we could get all the nuclear powers to agree to this. So I will just start with the recognized nuclear powers. That'd be amazing but we live in a world where powers underneath that or those that don't feel as if they are recognized to the degree that they should or respected to the degree that they should. I don't know if it stops their desire. I don't know if it starts, if it stops their headlong just thoughtless. Not thoughtless isn't the right word. Just risk filled approach to diving headlong into that. I don't know if it stops it.

[Michael]

And I, I want to be clear. I'm for this AGI ban and the international alliance. I still don't think any of this is going to work. Bioengineering technologies, it's all released. It's out there already. AGI may already be to the point where it's. There's too many models out there.

[Drew]

So I'm saying what happens when you lose control? One of those.

[Michael]

You live in the age of collapse. That's my book is saying is that you know this. The technology is so far a nanotechnology. You know you could go on forever with these technologies that could lead to a collapse disaster. We have to learn to live in an age where weapons of mass destruction are happening. You're out, you're. I'm more pro nuclear weapons than you are pretty obviously. Well artificial intelligence.

[Drew]

No, I'm pro nuclear weapons. I'm not pro using nuclear weapons.

[Michael]

Well artificial intelligence is also going to lead to more nuclear weapons and easier ways to develop and there's also they've

[Drew]

already technology essentially or just the knowledge

[Michael]

new ways to develop them. So laser. Laser enrichment for example can be used not the center. I mean we're using technology dates from World War II to develop. Has there been no advances in ways to make nuclear weapons since then? Yes, there have been. We've been trying to control them. But with AI there'll be more new advances. So it could get to you know where Hezbollah can manufacture nuclear weapons. You can reach that. We're going to live with nuclear weapons. That's why. That's why I've got Fortitude Ranch. We got to live with the prospects. There's going to be multiple collapse disasters a year happening. That's our future. That's why I call it the age of collapse.

[Drew]

I know of no other way to ask this other than to say why are you pro nuclear weapons?

[Michael]

The usage of for some because there are worse things nuclear weapons we can control. I can control a nuclear weapon. They're right now fairly difficult to manufacture, difficult to launch. I can control them. Artificial general intelligence, bioweapons and bioengineering. Those you can't control. So I want to have the means to destroy something and I want to have the means to enforce an artificial general intelligence ban. A ban on releasing bioweapons. So how do I do that? I need prompt global strike and the best prompt global strike weapon if you can get a conventional ICBM there. If I can get a SEAL team in to quickly destroy it a preemptive attack. I'm all for that. But if I can't get a SEAL team in or a SEAL team can't take this underground facility and conventional weapons can't destroy it it then I'd much rather have a nuclear weapon destroy something before the bad guys can release it than I would to have them release it and release the virus or artificial general intelligence or some nanotechnology gray goo disaster that destroys most people around the world. That's why I like nuke weapons. Compared to the alternatives, it's the best of the worst.

[Drew]

It's a good way to describe it. The best of the worst. The most powerful of the worst. I don't even know if you can use the term best when it comes to worst. Perhaps the most powerful of the worst in a blink of an eye, literally. Do you think Covid and the global response to it weakened or strengthened how the world will respond to a legitimate was is it H1 H5N1 H5N1 do you think a lot of people. Not a lot of people. I've heard many people say Covid was engineered. It was a social control experiment. My thought is if they did that, they took a little too far because people, after about six weeks, stopped listening to the guidance. They started pushing back. I would say I have no data to support this, but anecdotally, trust in government and trust in government institutions started declining. Not that it was at some apex of all time trust by any stretch of the imagination, but whatever anthill of trust was there, I think it started going in the other way. Do you think the global response to that pandemic puts us in a better place or a worse place for the H5N1? If it were to, there would be a pandemic associated with that in a worse place.

[Michael]

And a couple of things. I'll go to China, but first with the U.S. first of all, early on, when they first had the news in China, I mean, we have a collapsed survivor app that gives threat alerts. Fortitude Ranch alerts its members. I found a Harvard Medical School report on the virus very early on, and it was absolutely clear after I read that that it was not because we'd been warning of bioengineered pandemics for a long time before this. So we put out a warning, a message saying, this is not it. We've been warning you about a global bad pandemic. This is not it. Because it is very clear that the lethality rate of COVID 19 is way under 1%. And if you've got a lethality rate that low, people are still going to go to work. The economy keeps functioning. There is no collapse. So we said, this is not it, so you don't need to panic. But our government stepped in with all kinds of regulations and face masks, which we all know don't really do much, and they started preventing people from going to work. So the government response in the US Was so bad, that ended our mind. Now, it did increase support of preparedness. Fortitude Ranch had a surge of interest. And I don't know if you saw it, but the Washington Post, Bloomberg News had an article coming out saying the preppers were right. So from that perspective, you know, it made me feel good and preppers feel good. But we knew that. We knew early on that COVID 19 was not going to be a disastrous pandemic. No need to overreact. But our government did. So they undermined response. Now you switch to China, what they did with their controls, I mean, they were ruthless compared to the US And I know at the time, why are

[Drew]

you doing this welding people inside of their own buildings.

[Michael]

Why are you doing this? It makes no sense. But I address this in the book. I think it does make sense. I think the Chinese use Covid as a training exercise because what if it really was an H5N1, 50% lethal virus, something like that, that you want to be able to control the people issue orders and they will obey you. I think China used it as a training exercise for their population. And you know, if I ask most people in the military who would win in a war between China and the U.S. i mean, overwhelmingly, the answer would be, well, the U.S. would win. We got conventional weapons superiority. We've got a bigger economy, we've got more nuclear weapons. I disagree completely.

[Drew]

If the US depends on the engagement.

[Michael]

Yeah. I think if the US and China get in war with Taiwan will quickly back down. And if we get into total engagement, you know, a real fight to the death with China, I think China will win.

[Drew]

What makes you feel that way?

[Michael]

I bet I'll. Can I. Can I risk you all the reasons why.

[Drew]

No, no, please. I mean, that's fine.

[Michael]

I think they'll kick their, kick our rear ends because they have so many advantages. First of all, they have leaders that are willing to accept horrendous casualties. How do you beat the United States? You know that, you've seen it, you know, inflict casualties, force us, force the president to back down. The public won't sustain it. We've got those limits on our presidents and our leaders. China doesn't have that. If they're willing to have 10 million people or 100 million Chinese killed to get back Taiwan or to force the US to back down over some issue, they will do it. So they've got that advantage. They've got a more national unity. They have control of their population. If China wants to order, their population can leave cities. You get out in the countryside and you start farming, planting rice, farming, China can do it. Their population will obey. We can't get our population to wear masks or, you know, obey stuff. The US can't do that. We don't have population support.

[Drew]

Really depends on the city on that one.

[Michael]

And state, you know, we do have conventional weapons superiority. We're kind of losing that. But that matters a lot less, I think, than just sheer numbers in order war. China has that their nuclear weapons. They don't have the strategic nuclear weapons. They do. We gave up battlefield nuclear weapons. How much training did you do in the military on how to fight in

[Drew]

a nuclear environment in a CBR environment? Quite a bit you did.

[Michael]

Okay, well you're. How much do the normal army do in this?

[Drew]

I can't speak to it.

[Michael]

They don't, they gave it up. Well, you know, under, under press first, President Bush, we abandoned our battlefield nuclear weapons. The army has none of. And we really don't have any tactical nuclear weapons that are responsive because yes, the Air Force, we've got aircraft, delivered weapons, but compare that, you know, you call in an artillery round, how fast does that take? Now call in a nuclear weapon from an F16 hundreds of miles away, you can't use it effectively on the battle. That was my PhD dissertation. We effectively have no battlefield nuclear weapons to use. China does. So it doesn't matter if we have conventional nuclear weapons. If we're fighting with the Chinese army in an all out war, they'll use tactical nuclear weapons. They train for them, they have them. We don't train for them, we don't have responsive battlefield.

[Drew]

Do you think they would use them?

[Michael]

I think they would absolutely.

[Drew]

The only reason. Well, the only reason I ask is, and it's the same reasoning or thought process, again this, and these are just my feelings, right. I'm not, and this is just my feeling on a nation that lets a nuclear weapon off the chain. If you do that, I think the reasonable expectation is your entire civilization is going to get wiped off the face of the planet. So we might not have a F16 based nuclear weapon, but in the state that we're in right now, over the hills to the east of us or the vast majority of the Minuteman silos, I don't know if any. I think it's one of the reasons why they would be the measure of last resort. I think if any country lets one of those off, whether it's a localized tactical or a strategic, that opens the door to Pandora's box and that country is going to get annihilated via a nuclear strike with conventional nukes.

[Michael]

Well, the US and China and Russia, we can, we can annihilate a country who does it. That's why I'm not worried about Iran nuclear weapons.

[Drew]

So if China bio release. So, so if China does that though, if they have a, if they have a tactical nuke that they use, but they know the response is going to be strategic, it's the death of their country to use the tactical.

[Michael]

It is not the death of the country. Strongly disagree with.

[Drew]

No, I'm saying if the response is a strategic nuke and we wipe them off the face of the planet, you

[Michael]

know, the president is not going to launch A massive if there's battlefield exchange. Taking out an aircraft carrier, for example.

[Drew]

What's the published US Response to a nuclear attack?

[Michael]

We don't have one. It's. They call it deliberate strategic ambiguity. The real truth is that we're not. We don't have a decisive enough leadership to say what our nuclear doctrine is.

[Drew]

So it depends on the person in

[Michael]

the seat depends on it. Correct. And the U.S. policy will not tell you. We could. That's a lot of pressure. Do we have, do we have a policy of no first use? Well, probably, but not really. Obama tried to get one and they stopped it for good reason. We should not have a policy no first use. But you want to leave some ambiguity. And the other reason is it's just convenient to. What's our policy to retaliate against cyber attack? Do we have one?

[Drew]

I don't know. Not my. Correct.

[Michael]

We don't because we, you know, despite 10 years of Pentagon effort and national security community effort, we can't come up with one that we can agree on that's, you know, how dysfunctional our government is. But back to my point on weapons. China can easily use nuclear weapons in a battle over Taiwan and not worry about a US this massive nuclear strike on China because we can't destroy all their nuclear weapons and we don't want to risk most of the US Big cities getting blasted by China.

[Drew]

I'd say US life of US People there.

[Michael]

Even if it was, even if Donald Rumsfeld or, you know, Dick Cheney was president, someone who's pretty aggressive, you know, using weapons, there's no way in the world they're going to launch a massive strike against China or Russia knowing that they can, can still retaliate and take out major nuclear, major US Cities. They're not going to do it. An assumption, a good assumption, I think.

[Drew]

You think that a US President in the modern era would.

[Michael]

They would do a small retaliation. They would attack with a nuclear weapon. But you know, so you think they

[Drew]

would then have a nuclear proportional response with which China would not respond to that response.

[Michael]

China would keep escalating the U.S. that's one of their advantage. I'm getting here. China is going to escalate in nuclear weapons and is willing to accept millions of deaths because they can be very confident, not 100% certain, but very confident that the US will back down before they do. They will ultimately win because they're more. Well, I call it nuclear chicken. There's a. Our app has training scenarios like, you know, we've done in the military.

[Drew]

So we have one back down from China's nuclear. Absolutely.

[Michael]

The U.S. president is going to back down in a nuclear exchange long before the Chinese government will back down.

[Drew]

Well, that removes America's place in the world.

[Michael]

It means that if China wants to be a second. That's what I'm saying. If we get into major with China, they're going to, they're going to lose. But there's a lot more reasons. Their economy. You remember I said we don't have any stockpiled food for the US there's nothing stockpiled for you and me. China has a year supply of food for their population. Stockpile. They have materials stockpiled. And now you get into the advantage of their economy. What's our economy? Software services.

[Drew]

Hold on a sec, Michael. Google right now what percentage of population in China is at or below starving levels. You're telling me they have a year's worth of foods straight away?

[Michael]

Yes.

[Drew]

Even given the horrific, horrific stories of people in the poverty in China.

[Michael]

And I don't think There's a big percent of China that's dying. Chinese that are dying from starvation.

[Drew]

2.5 of the population.

[Michael]

My mother used to say that. My, my mother used to say that all the time. You eat your food, there's people starving in China. You know, I didn't get the logic

[Drew]

of that, but I just confused China and North Korea in my own head. Okay, so that is, that is a different metric for sure for North Korea.

[Michael]

But in terms of what I call, you know, people compare countries based on our economies in gdp, gross domestic product or national product. And to me for what I'm talking about, we're talking here with security. That's a nonsense comparison. Our economy is not manufacturing. China's is. China has huge manufacturing capacity, Hugh. A big part of their economy. I can give you the numbers if you want. Is in, is in food and agriculture production. It's 1% of our economy is food production. We're in services and styles and clothing and software and financial services. Stuff that's worthless. This when you're talking about combat our survival in the age of collapse. China. If you look at what China's been doing over the last half century, it's not just they're getting ready to take Taiwan back. They're ready to survive in the age of collapse. The US is ready to get exterminated in the age of collapse. Yeah, we will lose if we get in a fight with China, we will lose despite conventional technological superiority, despite having more nuclear weapons, the US will lose if we get into war with China. And that's our policy. We're going to defend Taiwan even though it means war with China. It's incredible. Why do we do that? Because there's votes in that. It looks tough. I'm tough on communism. Vote for me. I'll defend Taiwan against the evil Chinese even though it could mean a near extermination in a nuclear war. That's what we've got in our US It's a corrupt political system. We're so focused on getting votes and reelection and campaign donations that we don't do our proper job as government officials, which is protect people against threats they can't handle on their own.

[Drew]

Do you think that our current government structure is salvageable?

[Michael]

Not without a convention of states and destroying the two political parties and term limits and getting the 9th and 10th amendments to the Constitution back.

[Drew]

Did we lose them?

[Michael]

They're gone. They're still there on the books, but they're effectively gone. I can get into the details if you want.

[Drew]

I'm familiar with the 10th. I'm not going to sit here and say that I'm ultimately familiar with the 9th. If you want to run through both of them, sure.

[Michael]

So the 10th Amendment says the federal government can only do do those things it is authorized to written out in the Constitution.

[Drew]

It really empowers the state.

[Michael]

So you can do a post office, you can have a military and foreign policy. You can't do health policy, for example. Obamacare is absolutely unconstitutional. Social programs unconstitutional. But in 1937, in a Supreme Court case where FDR was in power, the Supreme Court was under so much pressure, he was threatening not just pack the court, he was threatening on imposing age limits on the Supreme Justice. There were threats on their lives during the Depression and the Supreme Court backed down in a case called Hel versus Davis and they said Social Security is constitutional. They let it pass through. It was. It's not constitutional. There's nothing in the Constitution that says the federal government can do Social Security or income transfer programs, those kinds of things. But the court backed down and over time they effectively lost the 10th Amendment. Government could do whatever they want. The 9th Amendment, which is before you

[Drew]

go to the 9th. Doesn't the 10th Amendment also empower the states as well? It allows them powers outside of of federal powers.

[Michael]

Not the 10th.

[Drew]

Isn't it the Supremacy the 10th.

[Michael]

That's is not in the 10th amendment.

[Drew]

Okay.

[Michael]

That's a different part of it. The 10th amendment just says the federal government can only do those things that Southwest do. So that's why states have more power and the people, you know, state government

[Drew]

empowering more empowers states. Yeah, that's what I mean, empower.

[Michael]

I'm just saying that that limits the federal government. Okay, so the ninth Amendments, you know, so ninth Amendment, the Bill of Rights, as you know, is the first 10amendments. You would not have a Constitution without the Bill of Rights, because the only one, you know, the anti. They're called the anti Federalists. The anti Federalists would not have support the Constitution. George Mason, Mercy, Otis, Warren, Patrick Henry, lots of the leading Americans at the time would only support the Constitution if they agreed to a Bill of Rights. And ultimately even James Madison, who originally opposed, opposed the Bill of Rights, supported it. So that was the deal. You pass a Bill of Rights, we'll approve the Constitution. And they did that. So the Bill of rights, the first 10amendments lists, you know, right to bear arms. The second amendment, you're. You're for them. I can tell in this room and with former military.

[Drew]

So these are all Airsoft. And here's the reason why. I didn't want a safe door as the studio door and I didn't want people trying to figure out where the studio is, saying, saying, oh, I like those. Where is this? So for anybody who might have that idea, I have plenty of guns. These aren't them. They look good, though. And what you see on most podcast sets, I'm here to tell you, is probably a mix heavily of Airsoft and real guns for exactly the same reason. I'm not going to leave this stuff just sitting on the walls. Sorry. Got you.

[Michael]

So, you know, freedom of press, freedom of religion, all those things, they're listed out. But the ninth Amendment was probably, it's probably the most important set sentence in the entire Constitution. It says, just because a right is not written, enumerate, just because a right is not a natural right is what they were called. Just because a natural right is not listed here does not mean you don't have it. There's a lot more personal property. Do you have a right to your own personal property?

[Drew]

I don't know. Constitutionally wise, I would hope so.

[Michael]

You do. The ninth Amendment gives it to you. Do you have a right to privacy

[Drew]

in a private space? Yes.

[Michael]

That's the ninth Amendment protecting it too. That was used in Roe versus Wade. That was one of the arguments. Do you have a right to private. Do you have right to make your own health care decisions?

[Drew]

I would hope so.

[Michael]

There's hundreds if thousands of the ninth.

[Drew]

Because it's.

[Michael]

That's the Ninth Nimus says clearly, even if something isn't listed here, you have other natural rights and they are also protected. That's what liberty was all about, the ninth Amendment, that it effectively does not exist. It is not enforced by the courts. I'm in a case right now in West Virginia fighting an ambulance authority property tax that's assessed on me. That is a gross violation of my natural rights. But when you go to court, can

[Drew]

you do that one more time? You're in court for what you're a property tax on ambulances.

[Michael]

That might be too much of a tangent, but I guess you can cut it off. So in West Virginia, some counties use a state law that authorizes a ambulance service fee. If there's a government provided ambulance service that you can assess.

[Drew]

Okay.

[Michael]

What Hardy county does in West Virginia is they assess a property tax on you whether you use an ambulance or not. You get charged a big fee even though, you know, volunteer fire departments do it in most areas. And I'm fighting it. It's stealing my money. It's a property tax even though the statute doesn't authorize it. I want to make my own health care decisions. It's a really rural county. If you want to get to an ambulance, if you get injured, you're going to drive yourself, you're going to call a neighbor. You're not going to wait for some ambulance to come. But you're forced to do it. And it was a. I won't get to the details on. I'm fighting that. My main argument. Pardon.

[Drew]

When you say forced to do it,

[Michael]

you mean you're paid whether you use it or not. I'm paid a property tax. But anyway, I'm arguing it's you're violating my natural rights. But those arguments are not recognized in court. The ninth Amendment is effectively gone. It does not exist as does the 10th is gone. So that's what happened the Supreme Court since FDR and he packed the court. I mean he appointed Democratic senators to be Supreme Court justices. It's just a joke. People who backed FDR got onto the court. So that that one case they gave you hel. That's 1937. By 1947 there's a case Mitchell versus United Workers were in effect the government's. The Supreme Court said, you know, if it's a government related function, you can pretty much do whatever you want.

[Drew]

Are there examples of the ninth and tenth Amendment being protected by the Supreme Court?

[Michael]

Occasionally they will be used. The ninth Amendment has said came up in the, you know, the Roe vs. Wade decision. But by and large you can do whatever you want with the government. You can argue it. That's why, like, you know, some Congress can pass a law to put up a, you know, wine museum in Kalispell, Montana and use taxpayer dollars. Where do you get that?

[Drew]

Let's not give them any ideas.

[Michael]

Oh, they've got worse, they've got worse than that. Much worse.

[Drew]

In this structure you described the term limits, you know, changing the structure of the government. How long do you think that would take?

[Michael]

It could be done within a couple years. So, so the convention of states movement has been going for quite a while. I think there's 20 states that have already approved it when they're state legislators and it's Article 5 of the Constitution. We think of amending the Constitution as Congress passes it and then states approve it. Three quarters of the states have to approve any constitutional amendment. This is, you hold a convention where legislators send delegates there, they vote. So you bypass Washington D.C. if you think you're going to reform government through Washington D.C. and the two political parties in control. I think you're, you're, you're somewhat of a lunatic. It isn't going to happen. It's got to be an outside movement. And so you need 30. Let me get that number right. Yeah, you need 34 states to get it and they've got 20 that approved it so far. It's possible to do it. If you look at red state, blue states, there's, there's about enough there to do it.

[Drew]

But so how, what's the mechanism of what, of how that would make a change.

[Michael]

They would have convention of states and they would pass a resolution just like we did for the, the Constitution saying that, you know, we want term limits, we want a balanced budget amendment and

[Drew]

this gets forced up and they have to abide by it. Or what's the actual mechanism of the change?

[Michael]

Once, once it, once the convention states issues, you know, these are the five, ten things we're going to do. Now it goes back to the state legislators and now they have to win. It's 2/3 to get a convention of states, it's 3/4 to actually approve the amendments to the Constitution. So at that point, let me check, 38 states now have to approve. What, what would happen and then though,

[Drew]

if the 38 states, then it would be an amendment.

[Michael]

Correct? There are constitutional amendments.

[Drew]

How is there a timeline associated? Can you do that at any time? Is this on a four year cycle or happen anytime? Interesting.

[Michael]

It's, it's the Constitution. Silent on it. That's what they say. So, I mean, the Constitution is silent on succession. I'm in Texas and I actually support the Texas Texan.

[Drew]

What is this? Is this like Brexit but in Texas?

[Michael]

Texas, yeah.

[Drew]

Where are you guys gonna go?

[Michael]

We're gonna be a separate country. That's the goal. Where you can call yourself probably Texas.

[Drew]

Texas, Dan. No, we can't do that. Well, you can't just call it Texas.

[Michael]

Sure can. Texas was an independent.

[Drew]

You could. You could, but it's.

[Michael]

Yeah, I don't want to do any. I'm retired military officer. I'm getting my, you know, reserve military pay. I was at. Then I was guard, then I was reserved. I don't want to do it. But our government is so unconstitutional, so messed up. Texas would probably be better off just going it alone. And if they don't fix the problems we've got, if we can't get. If you can't stop career politicians, you're never going to fix the US Government. So if you can't get term limits, I don't think the US Is fixable.

[Drew]

What would Texas have to do to execute Texas?

[Michael]

Well, that's the thing. Constitution doesn't talk about that. So there's, you know, if you ask the Supreme Court, is it legal for Texas to succeed, they'll vote no. But Texas can say, well, Constitution doesn't say we can. We say, you're wrong and we're out of here.

[Drew]

So who would make that decision, though?

[Michael]

People in Texas would.

[Drew]

That's very broad.

[Michael]

You'd have to vote on it. They'd have a vote.

[Drew]

Okay. Who would be your leader?

[Michael]

Whoever they elect.

[Drew]

Oh, this sounds very murky.

[Michael]

So far it hasn't moved forward. I mean, if they do public opinion polls and you'll find sometimes, you know, majority of Texans are for it, but that's a lot of poll taking is sending a message.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Michael]

You know, when it actually comes to doing it, would they do it? My bet is no. I don't think you got a majority of Texans that would support that today. But as things get worse, and I know you're. I think I've seen some of your past episodes. You're. You're skeptical of the Civil War talk. You know, Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater, arguably one of the smartest persons, you know, in our era, and a guy who made his fortune, built Bridgewater Capital, and, you know, one of the largest, most successful hedge funds in the world. He made his living by predicting events, future events, very well. Assumptions, not facts. But, you know, making Predictions. He says the chances of war in the US it is greater than 50% he sees.

[Drew]

Has he ever gotten anything wrong?

[Michael]

Oh, sure he has. Correct.

[Drew]

Everybody focuses on the ones they hit over the left field wall.

[Michael]

That's correct. Those are the ones you talk about.

[Drew]

They are. Nostradamus is frequently cited. I believe he got tens of thousands of things wrong. My thought on the Civil War is the people's ease of talking about it is very different than the states or communities actually fighting amongst themselves. I'm not saying it can't happen. And what I caution people against is what it would actually look like. And the chasm of difference between posturing and peacocking about it and going and getting your gear on is not a gap I think most people are willing to cross. And I think that's a good thing. I'm not saying it's impossible. I try to caution people against that language because at the end of the day, what I'm trying to do is, at least through my own lens of what that looks like, prepare them for what it is that they think they might be championing. Because I don't believe that they understand it. Most people. Not all, but most.

[Michael]

Yeah. It's not champing it. It's just. I think it's the result that's going to happen. Especially if there's a collapse disaster that happens. When that's over, I mean, Americans are gonna be so mad, so angry. I mean, Mount Weather will be filled with our congressmen. They'll be protected and. And Texans, for example.

[Drew]

That would be the worst thing that could happen though, by the way, I agree. If the protected class buries themselves under they're not going to like what the world looks like when they come back out. Because in a situation like that, again, I mean, when you say civil war, are you thinking again, man, I only have one data point that I can use. This, which would be the north versus the South. Is that what you think you see in your mind when you talk?

[Michael]

Not at all.

[Drew]

Okay?

[Michael]

Not at all. And that, that stupid movie was so bad, I didn't go to watch him. It's just ridiculous, you know, Especially if you do have a civil war. By the way, California and Texas are likely to be fighting each other, not the allies fighting Washington D.C. it was just a incredibly dumb movie.

[Drew]

What do you think it would look like?

[Michael]

Oh, I could tell you. You can find out. We have simulation. So our Collapse Survivor app, we don't own it, but we, we have. We have a four dude ranch, has an intro interest in it. And we provide the threat alerts to our members via this app. But it has training scenarios like you and I did. It's not a, it's not an exercise out in the field. It's a command post or tabletop exercise. We have them here on that Pakistan, India. Nuclear AI Enriched uranium is used to make nuclear weapons. Detectives. We have one on a civil war. And the civil war that results is not between states, it's within states. It's states like, like California, Colorado, Illinois, where you've got a big cities controlled by the Democratic Party.

[Drew]

Yeah. They're the voting population.

[Michael]

Correct. And they, and the rural people revolt against that. And you've got that going on right now. Your Second Amendment, you know, you go to most counties in the U.S. most counties, you can fact check me on this number here. But most counties in the US already are, have shot sheriffs. And our county boards that have voted are announced that we're not enforcing gun laws. We think they're unconstitutional. They violate the Second Amendment. The state government may have passed them. We're not going to enforce them. You've already got a form of civil war that already exists in the US on the other side of the political spectrum, sanctuary cities run by Democrats. What do they say? Well, the federal law and the federal officials may say this, but we don't agree with it. So we're not going to, you know, we're not going to support it. You've already got elements of civil war going on in the US now, but it's more between states. I think states are going to come apart, especially states where the rural survivors after an H5N1 pandemic, or North Korea takes down our electric grid, or Iran releases a bio, Revolutionary Guards release a bio attack. Here, people are going to be so fed up with their government that I think a lot of states are going to say, well, gun control, I'm in the cliff, so I'm in Colorado a lot. They have limits on the magazine size for ers. The sheriffs don't enforce them. And so after a revolt, you know, if you, if you followed that law and you know, you suffered marauder attacks now and you didn't have the extra magazine capacity and you're mad about that. I think a lot of rural people are going to say screw the laws coming out of Denver, backed by the Boulderites and the, you know, the liberal Democratic forces in Colorado, we're not going to follow anymore. We're not going to obey you anymore. So you could just have outright of

[Drew]

old, many rural and conservative county sheriffs across the US have publicly stated they will not enforce certain, not all, but certain new state or federal gun restrictions. Well, there's no official statistic tracking all of them. That's fair. That would be tough. These declarations are especially common in states that have passed strict firearms legislation such as Illinois, Washington and Virginia. I'm assuming that's Washington, Washington state and not D.C. locally in Montana, several counties have passed resolutions establishing themselves as second amendment sanctuaries with sheriffs publicly declaring oppos opposition to what they view as unconstitutional infringements. Key factors in non enforcement. Many sheriffs justified non enforcement by claiming that certain gun restrictions such as assault weapon bans, registration requirements or magazine limits violate the second amendment and the of the US Constitution. State versus local. Despite these public stances, sheriffs are generally bound by state laws and cannot legally declare a statute null and void. The legal mechanism for dealing with this are subject to continuous debate. Discretion and resources. Sheriffs often said a lack of manpower or low prioritization of these specific offenses. Okay, so it seems, I mean no direct statistic, but it exists for sure.

[Michael]

If you go to sanctuarycounties.com it's in my book, they do have a map showing you and it is, is, it is. Last I saw it is. Most counties across the US are not backing. I mean even some county boards join the sheriffs in saying we're not going to enforce that.

[Drew]

So you think it would be inner state fighting. What do you think it would look like upon resolution or termination of said civil war?

[Michael]

I think what's going to happen after these are post collapse.

[Drew]

Do you think it would take a collapse event for that to happen?

[Michael]

I think that's the most likely trigger because you, because you're right. I mean it's one thing to talk about a civil war, it's a nice thing to actually do it. I think it will take a collapse before that happens. So I see that happening more. You know it's called in the age of collapse. I think you're going to see a lot of that kind of happening, but more on an intra state rather than a between state type of civil war going on where we'll split and that's ultimately. And not that specifically, but that idea is kind of, you know the solution I think is to get the ninth and the tenth amendments back. And one of the amendments I propose is an amendment saying state governments as well. Because federal government can't do social policy, welfare policies. They're unconstitutional now and I want to see them stay that way.

[Drew]

You always had not been challenged and struck down if they're unconstitutional.

[Michael]

Because the Supreme Court no LONGER, since, since FDR, Supreme Court no longer enforces the 10th Amendment, there are no limits to government power anymore. The US was founded on that. You know, we're not a democracy. We're a constitutional republic. It's not majority rule.

[Drew]

Yeah, it's a constitutional problem with a democratic voting system.

[Michael]

Correct. And so since the Supreme Court no Longer forces the 10th Amendment, the federal government can do whatever they want. And since the Ninth Amendment, which is extended by the 14th Amendment to states, because again, Ninth Amendment deals with the federal government, the 14th Amendment says, hey, these due process and rights of citizens, like, you know, respecting your right to vote, they apply to states as well. The 14th extended it to states. So the Supreme Court doesn't enforce the ninth Amendment. So governments can basically do whatever they want. They can regulate anything. They can, you know, tax you and give your money to Paul, whatever they want to do.

[Drew]

But the government is microscopic in comparison to the people. So if it's unconstitutional, why are the people tolerating that? How is this they don't know.

[Michael]

About 99% of Americans don't know that the 9th and 10th Amendments are gone. If you go to.

[Drew]

So that's why I asked you, are there examples of the ninth and tenth Amendment being upheld? Is this an absolute stance that they are gone or they tend to be voting in that direction or the Supreme Court is ruling in that direction, they're ruling in it.

[Michael]

So the 10th Amendment is still there. So for Obamacare, I gave that example earlier. It's unconstitutional, but. But the Supreme Court voted on it. It wasn't, you know, 9, 0, it was a split vote, but they voted to allow it. So it's still there. You know, you can still sometimes invoke the ninth and the tenth Amendments, but for all practical purposes, they're gone.

[Drew]

Okay, so at the end, again, at the state civil War level, does the state come back together? Are we saying California? Michael, pull up and this will give people a good visual example. People think that California is a very deeply blue state. I'm from California. I'm born and raised in Santa Cruz. And where I lived in Santa Cruz, that area, I would say is a deep pocket of blue, as would be San Francisco, likely Oak and Oakland. Then you have the LA Basin in San Diego. But Michael, if you can pull it up, the red is overwhelming as you go inside of, I'll call it 25 miles of the ocean. So what would you say? Does it become to California is state of Jefferson.

[Michael]

That's the name they're using for. And again, in our simulation there, we've got a lap where someone's waving a State of Jefferson flag in there. That's what happens to California. It basically splits up. Or it could just be that the, the local rural governments.

[Drew]

You know, this is interesting, looking at the difference between 2020 and 2024. And this is just. These are voting results, but there is a substantial amount of red that has increased over 2020. But like I was talking about the vast majority from a population density perspective, the inside of or interior of California is dwarfed by the ocean cities, which if you visited, you can kind of understand why. It's about 140 in Sacramento right now, and it's probably pretty nice at the beach, but. Okay, so what ends up happening to the federal government while this interstate or intrastate civil war is occurring? Let's say it's happening in California, Illinois or other states where this could be an issue. What then happens with the federal government?

[Michael]

They should stay out of it. They should have no business in it.

[Drew]

No, I mean, do we become the United States of America with 54 states, with 56? What does that.

[Michael]

They have to vote. You know, if Jefferson State splits off, they'd have to vote to allow them in. Whether or not they would or not depends on which party is in power. If it's the Republicans in power, yeah, they'd let the state of Jefferson or rural California in. And a heart blink. You have the similar thing, you know, with the District of Columbia wanting to become a state. Who's for that? Democratic Party, who's against it? Republican Party.

[Drew]

Do you think it would require violence or is this something. I mean, if they feel so deeply this way, why take it to the point where you're banging it out in your neighborhoods?

[Michael]

Well, they're not. That's why you have Sheriff saying, yeah, we just aren't going to enforce the laws.

[Drew]

No, I mean, if it gets to a point of a. If, if the parties, the red versus blue. I hate the preciseness of this example because I think almost nothing is this binary. But if it gets to this place of where they are actually fighting for control over the state. Do you think this is something that can be done at a voting level? Or is this something that's going to actually be ballistic in nature with people actually fighting it in the street? The civil war that I think most people are talking about, I don't think they're talking about voting their way into a civil war out of it. I think they're talking about fighting it.

[Michael]

Well, again, if it's post collapse, there'll be a lot of violence. And for now, it's just kind of peacefully disobeying laws because the other side isn't trying to force it. But if, you know, for example, if the state moved in to rural county, not enforcing gun laws and said, we're now going door to door, you know, to collect your ars, for example, if they want to ban them, you'd get. There'd be violence over that. There are a lot of people who, you know, not just Charlton Heston, but a lot of people would say, over my dead body will you take my weapons? So if they start to enforce, it could lead to fighting. In this scenario we ran on the collapse survivor app, it was a case of rural people started smashing state offices. It was that level of violence. Again, it's not clashing of Guard forces or something like that. And I don't. You'd have a hard time activating the California National Guard to get involved in something like that. Where would the units go? There it is more like, you know, the Civil War where people will be splitting up. You'd have a hard time using them.

[Drew]

Yeah. It's not an external enemy, to use the term enemy lightly. These are people that likely live in that area that would then be tasked to have a kinetic mission against, you know, that's.

[Michael]

I don't know. And that same kind of light, you know, they're. They're existing executive orders authorizing government agencies to steal food and resources from citizens in a collapse. They've been around for decades. Trump has not eliminated them while he's in office. And I get at 14 ranch, we get this. A lot of our members or prospective members will ask and say, what are you going to do if we've got all our stockpiled food, we're growing crops, we're surviving. What are you going to do if the local government comes and says, we want half your food, we're going to redistribute it. And our answer is we're not giving it up. We will fight government. But I don't think a government official might want to do it. I don't think you could ever get a National Guard to come in and attack a Fortitude Ranch to steal our food supplies. They wouldn't do it.

[Drew]

What executive orders are you talking about

[Michael]

that authorize presidential executive orders? They're listed in my book. The best book on that, on the specifics of that are called is Raven Rock book about the continuity of Government rules. And it's, it's. You can, you can google it. You'll find stuff on Raven Rock and executive order. But presidential executive orders authorize government agencies to come in and steal resources. They do it under the Wartime Powers Act. You know, if there's a big war going on, they can come in and then go to plants and companies. But the legisl. The executors not say you can go to companies. You can go. There's not limited and go whatever they want. They could come to a fort ranch, they can come to your house and steal food for the benefit of government continuity. That's the government position. That's what the executive orders say. But I don't think that would happen because I don't think you get a National Guard to enforce that. I, you know, if you're a guard commander and the governor has said, I want you to go in and steal these people's food, would you carry out that order?

[Drew]

Especially in the neighborhood that even not alone, say United States writ large against other citizens, but in the neighborhood that you likely are from. I would have to agree with you on that one. I don't think the compliance on that would be exceptionally low. Yeah. Why do you think the term prepper is used almost always pejoratively?

[Michael]

Because of the stupid show Doomsday Preppers. That's the reason.

[Drew]

I'm gonna tell you. Never watched a second of it.

[Michael]

Michael.

[Drew]

I would like to see a thumbnail of what this looks like though.

[Michael]

So.

[Drew]

So you're saying they didn't pull the MVP team for that show.

[Michael]

The, the first rule of prepping is don't tell anyone you're a prepper.

[Drew]

Okay. I think that's fight Club too.

[Michael]

So. So if you've got. It is correct. That is like. So if you've got, if you've got a basement full of food and a lot of ammunition. Do you want your neighbors to know that you don't tell people if you're a prepper, especially if you're a stay at home prepper. I'm at, I'm at a remote survival facility. And in a collapse that lasts a long time, you can't hide if you're alive. In a bad collapse, people are starving. People are going to be looking everywhere for food. They're going to find you. You gotta be defend yourself. So I don't care about the first rule of prepping. I don't hide that I'm a prepper. But most preppers do. So some kai, some media comes as, hey, can you Let us into your house and show us your stockpiled food and where you hide your guns. Are you going to do that? No. The only one who would go on Doomsday Prepper show and do that are complete morons. And then to make the show funny, they had them doing stupid stuff. And so they ran that show and that.

[Drew]

Was it still playing or is this.

[Michael]

No, it's gone, fortunately.

[Drew]

Oh yeah, look at the. Just the upper left thumbnail. Excellent.

[Michael]

Yeah, they picked people who were idiots and then they made them look like idiots on the show. And it discredited. Discredited prepping. And it honestly did. I mean, my biggest failure in running 14 ranches, I've never been able to raise enough capital force. We've been operating for over 10 years and we're still under capitalized. And I cannot raise capital effectively. It's because of that damn show. So I go in, you know, they have fundraising.

[Drew]

Careful with that damn show. Causality. There may be more than just the show.

[Michael]

I give you examples that's happened. I don't do it anymore, but in my early days. So I started at Fort Ranch, West Virginia because I got to prove this concept work. People pay me money to join.

[Drew]

Totally. Yeah.

[Michael]

So again, I got it done. So I think, oh, now I can go. I've proven the concept works. I can now raise capital. So you go to these events, you know, investor events, where you make a two minute presentation and then if people are interested, they talk to you. So I start the conversation and I, you know, I'm a Air Force Academy honor graduate, I have a PhD from Harvard, retired colonel. I delay saying the word prepper as long as I can, but sooner or later I've got to say the word. The second I say that word, people made no attempt.

[Drew]

Is there a better word that you've come up with?

[Michael]

There is no better word. Survivalist doesn't work. Prepper is the right word. And it's, you know, it's not militia. It's, it's, it's nothing that should be bad.

[Drew]

I mean, it's short for preparation, right? Yeah, it's a good preparation specialist.

[Michael]

We're preppers for people who prepare.

[Drew]

What's the difference in your mind between preparation and paranoia?

[Michael]

Paranoia is if you constantly in fear. I mean, the motto of 14 Ranch is prepare for the worst, enjoy the present. We're not just a survival community, we're a recreational community. If you want to hunt chukars, have you ever hunted chukars?

[Drew]

I'm not even going to sit here and Pretend I know what a chukar is.

[Michael]

I didn't either until I found Fort Durant Ranch, Nevada. It's like a quail. I would say it's close to a quail. It's a game bird that's very popular to hunt.

[Drew]

I was going to say we got

[Michael]

it on our property.

[Drew]

I was going to say it was a shoe because it sounded a little bit like Chuck Taylor. If you wouldn't have said the word hunt associated with that, I would have guessed a shoe.

[Michael]

No, it's like it's a gamer. A little bigger than a quail. If you want to hunt deer and elk, come to 4 inch Colorado. So we've got all these nice recreational things you can do. We're in remote areas obviously. We're in mountain forests. We border the Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee, the George Washington National Forest in West Virginia. We're in the Catskills in New York. Really nice areas. So, you know, our members are not paranoid. We have peace of mind because we've got ability to survive a collapse and in the meantime we've got a nice community and recreational facilities. So we are not paranoid.

[Drew]

Do people live there full time?

[Michael]

Staff does and we have an option now for some members. That's. That's the other thing that COVID 19 did is it got a lot of people to say, you know, I don't want to live in a big city anymore. So as you know, there's been this. Well, you're probably suffering it here in Montana. Tons of people leaving big cities in California and moving to rural areas. They're all over Texas this year.

[Drew]

No, 2020 had a net population decrease in Montana.

[Michael]

Really?

[Drew]

Yes. The idea, we felt that very deeply. I would say during the height of COVID call it 2022 was peak exodus. I would say from California, I would. Western coastal states. I'll be broadly. A lot of remote work was possible then and a lot of things have shifted. Some of the some if not many of the remote job opportunities, opportunities have gone away. The winter here is real, which is different from what they were they appreciated and enjoyed, I think. And for a short period of time it can be a novelty. But it can also be a pack your lunch event as I'm sure some of your facilities we were talking about in Colorado. It's real and if you're not prepared for that or you don't really like that. I personally enjoy the winter maybe a little bit more than the summer. I really enjoy winter sports. Ports makes that coastal state. Maybe it wasn't as bad you know, so, yeah, net slight but gross loss for the state slightly.

[Michael]

We.

[Drew]

I think we're still feeling it, but also, people move around a bunch. You know, Montana is amazing. I think people should come and check it out. If they love it here, you know, come live here.

[Michael]

Yeah, but answer your question. So, yes, since. Since. Since COVID we've had a lot more people who do want to live full time, and we offer that now. It's a lifestyle membership. And then we also have Fortitude Village, where you can lease or buy land from us and put up your own house, but you're protected by the Fortune Ranch survival community. So, yeah, that's what's growing. There are more people who want to live full time in a safe, rural area, and part of that is escaping the rat race. It's not just survival.

[Drew]

What's the. I'm gonna assume that some people in the Fortitude Ranch ecosystem make this as an investment, as a contingency.

[Michael]

Right.

[Drew]

What if something happens? If something does, we have this. What if they can't get to it? Do you guys have a mechanism in place to help with logistics as well?

[Michael]

We don't have that, but we're national, so we have eight locations now. We're growing through franchising. So the deal is, you know, if you're in Texas and you. You. You belong to 4 inch Texas, but you're in California, when the we use the term hits the fan. I got bleeped on Fox News for saying that, but that's the prepper term. Yeah. So hits the fan. So when that happens, if you don't think you can get back to Texas, go to Fort Ranch, Nevada. We got a member list. Not online on paper. Challenge, password, question, answer it correctly, you've never been there before. They've never seen you. But, you know, you know, I'm Andy, My password is word, and my wife and I meet. We met in Abilene, you know. Correct. You're in. You know, they'll take care of your. Your stuff is locked up at four Ranch, Texas, but you can take refuge in any of our locations. So that's how we deal with that. But the thing is, we counsel our members saying if you leave early. And again, that's why we got the Collapse Survivor app. If we have any report of an H5N1 virus spreading, we'll put out an alert immediately. The CDC, the public alert systems, they're going to be much, much slower. We'll warn you earlier so you can travel and get to your home, Fort or any Fort Ranch Location quickly and I think you'll have plenty of time to travel. People worry about, oh, they're going to be. The marauders are going to be out immediately attacking us in our cars. They may start stealing and doing some bad stuff immediately, but they're not going to be setting up roadblocks and stuff like that. So I think if a member wants to get to 14 Ranch, even if they've got to travel hundreds of miles, they'll be able to do it. Now if the grid goes down, that's different. And we train our members. You got to have enough gas stockpiled to get to your location. Because when the grid goes down, it's not just there's no water flowing, there's no gas flowing. So you have to have enough stockpiled gasoline to get there. You should have the, you know, a map where you don't need your phone. Although we've actually got a GPS map program that works without GPS on phones as well. Wikipedia all this stuff so you can get to a 14th ranch. Even if there's a rapid, you know, breakdown, a rapidly developing collapse, you can get there. And most people don't have preps. They're just going to go home. So be like you remember, you know, in the early part of COVID the roads were kind of you, maybe you didn't notice it up here in Montana, but in city traffic was way down because people weren't going to work.

[Drew]

I was in LA the night that they locked California down. I was scheduled to do Joe Rogan's podcast, oh wow. The next day before, and I texted him, said, hey man, what are we doing? And he said, YouTube thinks we're essential, so we're going to go ahead and record. I said, okay, so fastest I've ever gotten to his California studio. The next day we needed to drive from LA to San Diego and my wife was with me and she is not very familiar with that area. It took us about an hour. And for people not familiar for the LA to San Diego, an hour is one of the fastest recorded speed times between the two. It was as if the zombie apocalypse had occurred. I saw maybe five cars. I've never seen anything like it sticks out to this day. So yeah, the traffic was way down.

[Michael]

So it doesn't matter what the disaster is. The government response for citizens is always the same. Go home, there's nothing they can do for you. So roads are not going to be a problem in the developing collapse because there's no civil defense program. Most people are not preppers. Most don't have a bug out location like a Fortitude Ranch. So they're just going to go home. So you're going to have pretty easy travel initially. Now, will marauders start attacking cars in more rural areas over time? Yeah, I think they will. So you want to get out early, but you should be able to drive quite a bit if you leave early in the developing collapse.

[Drew]

When you were. How long total time did you spend in the military?

[Michael]

30 years. But I was active duty for activity for seven years. True confession. So I was never a second lieutenant. When I graduated from the Air Force, Air Force Academy, I had a scholarship to Harvard. Yeah, two year program. So I even worked in the Pentagon in the summer. Between my two years there, I was in the office, Secretary of Defense office. I was there as a second lieutenant but it was a civilian office where they didn't want the military wearing their uniforms. So I got to be, you know, I'm going up in rank. But for two years when I was the second lieutenant, you know, the coffee making, you know, worst duty position, I never had to do it because I was at Harvard and then Pentagon. So I was seven years with my military commitment from the academy on active duty as an intelligence officer. And then, you know, it's post Vietnam. You know, I wanted to go to combat. I wasn't at the pointy end of the spear like you, but I at least wanted to have, you know, a big war to be involved in. There's nothing going on. So I shifted to the International Guard. I was in the International Guard for quite a while. Kind of got rank locked. I wasn't a pilot. I had, I was a pilot before I went to the Air Force Academy, but I lost my pilot vision while I was there. So I was an intelligence officer. So I never flew on active duty, but I got into the Guard, started flying again, was at a real kind of active duty flying unit. And then I got rank locked because the Guard gives their top intel positions as well to pilots, not to intelligence. The army doesn't do that. The Navy doesn't do that. The Air Force Force does. They, you know, it's a, it's a flying club. They reward their pilots very well. So I switched to the Air Force Reserve and then made colonel and was on the Air Staff Strategic Command. Did a lot of fun stuff in the Reserve as well. So I did all three. It was over 30 years.

[Drew]

What was your trust level with the government while you were serving?

[Michael]

Very high in terms of the Air Force. I have tremendous respect for the Air Force by and large, like the Pentagon. I'm dismayed that that Hagseth is in charge now that that really bothers me.

[Drew]

What specifically about that bothers you?

[Michael]

Completely unqualified, unfit for the job. He's not the only one to be putting sycophants, it's the best word to use for it into the top intel positions, top Department of Defense positions, Homeland Security to rewarding that to people whose number one qualification is their professional brown nosers. That jeopardizes your security and mine and the countries. It's absolutely wrong.

[Drew]

Well, the problem is there are no published job qualifications for that job.

[Michael]

Someone who can't run a non profit who's got a demonstrated career of failure.

[Drew]

I'm not arguing for or against him. I'm saying when you don't put job qualifications down for the job, which I think would be if they put their, you know, put their brain rub some brain cells together in these higher rooms of government, I think you could have a minimum level of criteria for each of these jobs. I don't think it's accidental that they don't. Again, I'm not arguing for him. I'm just curious.

[Michael]

Both parties do it for sure.

[Drew]

That's what I'm saying.

[Michael]

Both parties do it.

[Drew]

There's a reason why both parties don't put down the minimum criteria for the job.

[Michael]

Right.

[Drew]

They want to be able to give it to whoever they want to be able to give it to.

[Michael]

So back to your question of trust. You know I Great Respect Institute. I was in the senior executive service in the Pentagon. I worked at the, for the Institute for Defense Analyses, the top federally funded research and development center think tank for, for the, the dod. So I have a lot of respect for what they do. But for our overall government, you know, we should be doing defense. We should not be doing welfare programs. We should not be doing divisive social issues like this administration funds abortion. This one won't. There should be no government involvement in that. It's unconstitutional. It violates the 10th amendment and it splits our society. That's the solution. And I get into a break briefly in the book is if you would get the federal government out of social issues, get state governments out of social issues, we could be united. You know, we can all agree on, you know, national defense and foreign policy, at least not to the level of dispute that we're going to have civil wars over it. Let local governments, counties and cities decide if they want to ban an abortion, if they want to give, you know, tax you and give your money to someone else if they want to do those things.

[Drew]

Hold that thought. Michael. Pull up, if you will, this the statistics on percentage of civilians who are pro and anti abortion.

[Michael]

Most are against or most are for allowing people to have an abortion, which is pro choice. Pro choice is the terminology they use. You know,

[Drew]

Today's episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Many people may not know this or have known this when it happened, but May was mental health awareness month. I think we should get rid of that and I don't mean that we shouldn't focus on it in May. What I'm saying is I think we should focus on it every single month. Because I feel like you get to a certain age, maybe it's even in your 20s, and you have either experienced some deviations in mental health or you know, people that have. And as you get older in life, that just continues, continues. This is not something that people are not struggling with. It just seems to be that they are struggling with it invisibly at times. There are people out there, for those of you who are struggling with this quietly, that can help. BetterHelp is an organization designed exactly for that. They use therapists that work according to a strict code of conduct and they're fully licensed in the US and they have a therapist match commitment. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on the therapy goals. You have a short questionnaire that helps you helps identify your needs and preferences and they have 12 plus years of experience and industry leading Match fulfillment rate means that they are going to typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, you can switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations. BetterHelp has over 30,000 therapists. It is the world's largest online therapy platform having served over 6 million people globally. And it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. Please do not convince yourself that you are alone or that you are struggling with something that nobody else has. I assure you that isn't the case. You can find support and have someone with you in therapy. If you sign up, you're going to get 10% [e-mail] ClearedHop. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.com Cleared Hot. Hope is not lost. Back to the show.

[Michael]

You know these, these are divisive issues. I wouldn't debate one side or the other with you. But my point is government shouldn't be deciding this.

[Drew]

Hold on. Recent surveys show that roughly 49 to 51% of Americans identify as pro choice. So it's slightly over a contas. Let's, let's say it's 60, 40. If we pull the US government out of that, do you think it changes those percentage? Percentages?

[Michael]

No, probably not.

[Drew]

So how does it bring us closer together?

[Michael]

Because one, now we're not doing it the federal government level, we're not doing the state level. So I can at least be united doing it regulating abortion.

[Drew]

Okay.

[Michael]

Or doing any social issues or income redistribution or welfare. Let's get rid of that.

[Drew]

We got the stats on abortion right now.

[Michael]

So now at the local level, if you want to be. You cannot have abortions here. You can. You know, I'm going to have. I give the example. I don't know if it's in this book. It's something I wrote. You know, if Bernie Sanders wants, wants to have publicly financed group hugs in the hot tub every Friday night at 6 o' clock and they want to pay for that, let them if they want to. And if they do that in Bernie Sanders hometown, I can choose to live there. I can more easily move if I want to get against it. And I got a chance to impact local laws. It's almost impossible most states to impact a state law and certainly not a federal law as a citizen. So do this at a local level level. If you want to do social policies, do them in local levels, but don't force it at state or national levels.

[Drew]

I understand what you're saying. I don't know if it brings anybody closer together because you still basically have a split down the middle of people agreeing to disagree on this particular topic. Doesn't make it any less divisive. Nor do I think it makes it any easier for people just to uproot their lives and move on a local level.

[Michael]

It's a lot easier to move, you know, from one county.

[Drew]

It would be interesting.

[Michael]

The city. Yeah, it's a lot easier to do that than it is to change states or countries.

[Drew]

I don't think it changes the stats though. I don't think it brings us any closer together.

[Michael]

You don't need to. I mean, you're not going to resolve issues like this. You probably not going to resolve them. So rather than trying to resolve them, let us least be united as a country. Saying we need to have a, you know, a military, we need to have foreign policy. I think we need to control artificial intelligence intelligence ban super. That we can do at a level. But now you start mixing in positions on other issues and we're never going to reach agreement.

[Drew]

I don't know if it's possible for us ever to reach 100% on anything for clarity, because we live around some crazy people who believe in some crazy stuff. I'm not here to tell people how to live. Live your life. Believe what you want. And the reason I pulled the stats up is that you said it would bring us closer together. I'm not sure it would.

[Michael]

It would bring us closer at the national and at state levels that they weren't doing that. So, for example, in Texas. Texas, you know, that's where I live now. I left Colorado because Democrats have taken over. And without getting into the details, they went in my USA account one day and decided they were entitled to several thousand dollars in extra tax. And I said, that's it. I'm out of here. We left Colorado. What they. The car. The state Department of Revenue in Colorado sent me a slider after, by the way, I'm a certified management accountant. I've been in business and account. Yeah, I do my own taxes. I do them correctly. So I get this letter saying, hey, you know, we owe us additional $3,000. Said for what? So I replied anyway, in the paperwork, without bothering to have any due process, they just went into my USA checking account and helped themselves to the money. They were.

[Drew]

The state did.

[Michael]

State of Colorado did that. And I said, that's it. I'm out of Colorado. We moved to Texas, became Texas. So within Texas, you know, it's less government, more conservative, more libertarian. But if you live in Austin, a lot of liberals there, I mean, they are persecuted by the state government. Austin tries to pass laws to do things that their citizens want. They're more liberal, more democratic, and the state will veto them over and over again. That happens. So this isn't just, you know, me saying, hey, I want to. I want, you know, I'm not all anti Democrat or anti liberal. I say let people choose what they want to do. And if you're at a local level, you can do that. That more. So you can move from Austin to outside of Austin. That's a fairly easy thing to do. But to leave Texas entirely or to leave our country entirely because you hate the social policy. Peter Thiel just did it, you know, moving to Argentina, but most of us can't. So that's another reason to get out of social policies. But at the Federal level, the 10th Amendment is clear. There is no justification for social or welfare programs at the federal level, even though that's where I would say close to half or most of our budget is going right now and bankrupting the country as well, which could also lead to economic collapse and civil war and, and disasters.

[Drew]

What do you think is the most susceptible area of our country at this point to collapse?

[Michael]

You mean in terms of.

[Drew]

You think it's infrastructure, you think it's civil disorder if you had to rank it. Which one's hitting the alert bells a little bit more for you?

[Michael]

Preppers? Because they're pulled fairly often and sometimes we pull them. Economic collapse is the big alarm bell. And it's not just preppers. Warren Buffett has been warning about that recently. Ray Dalio, A lot of the top experts are saying we're in for a big stock market disaster and possibly a recession that could go bad. And our country is so divided. But you know, it's. It's civilization collapse is where the US is at. If you look at.

[Drew]

You mean via birth rate?

[Michael]

No, their civilization. The collapse of the US Civilization. If you look at civilization collapse and it's been studied quite a lot, you know, Will and Ariel Duran, Arnold Twain, be. A lot of people have studied collapse and what causes it. The best one, if I could, if I could take a minute, is Sir John Glove. He was a British, British general in the Mid East. Brilliant, brilliant man. And he studied collapsed civilizations, not going back to Rome, but more recent ones. And he wrote a study. And this is interesting thing, civilizations tend to last 250 years. That's what he wrote. What's the anniversary we're in this year?

[Drew]

We're good. We have I believe just over one month left.

[Michael]

Yeah, it's about 10 generations. 250 years. The first thing you know he goes are the stages. You know, pioneers calling a generation 25 years 10. Yeah.

[Drew]

What's what life expectancy is he based

[Michael]

on that off of Welling studied ancient ones. It's a lot.

[Drew]

Okay, yeah, that might be long in the tooth. I still think you live longer than 25, but. Okay, that's semantics.

[Michael]

Or the who's in power changes at that point. But you know, your book talks about, you know, the benefits of hard work that collapses at the end. All of it collapses. The, the work ethic collapses. But the point, key point is that civilizations don't collapse from external threats. Rome didn't fall because of barbarian invasions. Civilizations collapse from internal decay. That's why they fall apart. And they go through the stages. The pioneer commerce, there's focus on making money. In the final stage, the age of intellect with ample wealth to pursue knowledge and leadership. People falsely believe that via mental cleverness rather than hard work or sacrifice, they can continue to survive and prosper. As the civilization declines, internal political hatreds intensify. That's where we're at. In final stages, there's a big increase in frivolity. A universal pessimism gradually pervades the people and itself hastens the decline. Frivolity is the frequent companion of pessimism. The heroes of the declining nations are always the same. The athlete, the singer or the actor. The great civilization ultimately turns into a welfare state where instead of rewarding hard work and sacrifice, citizens get free goods and services for doing nothing. The welfare state is a regular milestone in the life story of an aging and decrepit and empire. We have not. This is another direct quote. We have not drawn from history the obvious conclusion. The material success is a result of courage, endurance and hard work. The decadence is not just the population, it is the system. Many citizens retain great energy and character, good work ethic and character. But 10 generations of human beings suffice to transform the hardy and enterprising pioneers into the capacious. Which means constantly complaining citizens of the welfare state.

[Drew]

What was that word?

[Michael]

Capacious? C A P T I O U S. Constantly complaining. That's John. Sir John Glubb.

[Drew]

Is that your middle name?

[Michael]

Michael. Just say Michael.

[Drew]

Capacious. That would be his. That would be his Greek name.

[Michael]

Capacity is in the final stages of collapse and you look at the symptoms. That's exactly where we are. But even worse, with advances in technology, it's to the point now where individuals can create weapons of mass destruction. You don't need a Genghis Khan. You don't need an army. You don't even need a SEAL team. An individual working in their lab can develop a deadly new virus and release it with artificial intelligence. You're going to have not just nation states. You're going to have terrorist groups creating nuclear weapons with new means to enrich uranium. Or they may find AI may just say you don't need uranium. You take this other chemical, you do these three steps, you can build your own nuclear weapon. Doing that. AI is going to do that. AI is already being used to develop new viruses. I guarantee you that North Korea is using AI to develop biological weapons in viruses. There's no doubt in my mind.

[Drew]

I think a lot of people probably, or at least attempting to. Whether or not they're successful remains to be seen, but I would imagine that many are attempting to.

[Michael]

So that's the future we face. It's not just that the US is facing a collapse. The whole world is going to be in an age of collapse because of new technologies, the ability to develop weapons of mass destruction. And I don't think you can stop it at this point.

[Drew]

Maybe that's what we need, need to evolve as a species.

[Michael]

Well, you know the Fermi paradox.

[Drew]

No, I don't.

[Michael]

So Fermi was a nuclear weapons scientist. I'm kind of nuclear weapons bias. You picked up on that. You know he's with Oppenheimer in that group, so it's not his area of research. But just one day in conversation he made the observation that, you know, there's billions of planets in just our military milk Milky Way galaxy that could have life and then there's billions of galaxies. So why aren't we seeing all these signs of other ancient civilizations advanced. That's the Fermi paradox. And there's a lot of answers or theories. The paradox is how we should be seeing evidence of other civilizations and we don't. That's the paradox Fermi, that's why it's called the Fermi paradox.

[Drew]

But I mean maybe we have, we have no idea how large the known universe is.

[Michael]

Well, the scientists believe that they do know how large is. They say there's billions of galaxies and see them.

[Drew]

That's what I'm saying. But so why would we have this expectation that we should have seen something by now or that we would recognize what it is that we had seen?

[Michael]

So the universe is estimated to be about 14 billion years old. Earth is like 14, four and a half billion. So we're, you know, there's older planets than us.

[Drew]

Oh for sure.

[Michael]

So long before there was, you know, we've had life on Earth for about three and a half billion years. Humans, our species has been around for about 300,000 years.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Michael]

So the odds are tremendously high, you know, 99.9% that some other Drake equations and stuff where they calculate this, the odds are extremely high that there's, it should have been many, many, many, many, you know, hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of past civilizations that had technology beyond what we have today, who could send out probes, could send out signals, could use nanotechnology and self replicating nanobots to go from planet to planet and in a couple million years spread across the entire universe to put up their probes or their signs, you know, evidence that they were there. And we don't see that that's, that's

[Drew]

the paradox unless nothing like humans and don't think like humans. Everything you described is Originated in the human imagination. It can't be human.

[Michael]

It doesn't even have to be carbon based. It could be some other kind of species.

[Drew]

No, no, that's what I'm saying though is everything you just laid out is created through the human imagination and thought process.

[Michael]

Well, they'd say it's from science analysis,

[Drew]

but sure, but what are they analyzing in an unknown universe of what they haven't seen? Right.

[Michael]

Well, again, you can't do for fields of research like, you know, predicting collapses from new technologies or ancient civilizations, you're not going to use facts. You have to use reasoning and analysis and conjecture.

[Drew]

Yeah, I'm not saying that they're wrong, but what I'm saying is this every like the Fermi paradox. Okay? I mean, I would like to believe that, but let's also understand that humans barely understand humans, let alone the behavior of a species that might have been around for billions of years before us or the universe. So yes, we can say, even though we are completely unsure of where we even exist inside of this universe, that, you know what, there's a lot out there, so we should have seen some by now. Maybe that's the human thought process. There's a level of arrogance that we understand the universe or the other entities in the universe that they would have an interest, interest in sending probes or they would be like us or have the same thought process as us. You know what I'm saying?

[Michael]

They're not sending probes. I mean, if they were colonizing, if they were exploring, you know, there should be something left behind, you know, if

[Drew]

they behave like us.

[Michael]

No, it could be just something that's, that's odd that we don't, you know, it would be a technology, for example, approved. We wouldn't necessarily be able to figure

[Drew]

out that's what I'm saying.

[Michael]

But still we detect there's something. We see no signs of any other civilization anywhere. We just can't detect anything, which seems odd other than, you know, novas, supernovas are things that are explained.

[Drew]

It does seem odd. But let's put humans back in the reality box. Do you know how many years ago the first human flight was?

[Michael]

1913. I should know that. 1907, 1903.

[Drew]

Just over a hundred years. We're not as advanced as we may think. I mean, oh, I agree there's more

[Michael]

civilization should be out there.

[Drew]

It doesn't necessarily mean they have an interest in us. I think if I was an advanced civilization, I might throw some, the blinker lights on and throw a road cone out there and say, hey, you might want to avoid these monkeys for a little bit. They're still in the real dangerous atom splitting stage.

[Michael]

That is a possibility.

[Drew]

Yeah, there might be somebody out there. The road worker with the little sign that switched over that says stop. A few galaxies out that we can't register. That's the thing. Like, like we don't know what the behavior of another species would be. I, we can barely, like I said, we know a lot, but we literally just took, I think it was 60 years from going from the very first flight to the moon. Like we can evolve and innovate rapidly, but let's also put it back in the box of where we actually are in the evolution of our own species. We don't know shit. We pretend that we do, but we don't know shit. So I mean I would love to believe in the Fermi paradox, but just because we haven't seen anything yet, to be me is not definitive or demonstrative anything.

[Michael]

Well, it's not definitive, but I believe that. And this isn't just my theory, but it's the one I believe is the most correct. Explaining why we don't see other civilizations, not that they don't exist. Because with billions of billions, the odds that we're the only civilization, I don't

[Drew]

think we're alone in the universe. For clarity, I would love for aliens to be real. I think it would round the edges on a lot of human behavior. So I would like in concept, I like the idea of us not being alone in the universe. I would love for us to have some demonstrable data for clarity.

[Michael]

So since we're not seeing evidence of other civilizations out there either, because they don't want us to, the better theory I think is, it's one, it's called the Great Filter, is that civilizations don't advance to the stage where they can colonize or send out lots of, of probes and nanotechnologies. And the reason is by the time they develop an advanced technology like we have, they end up destroying themselves. That's my explanation.

[Drew]

I actually can buy onto that one. I can take a bite out of that one. Much more than the Fermi paradox.

[Michael]

Well, the Fermi paradox is kind of the overall thing, the explanation of why it exists. There's different things. The other one is that, you know, we just, we are the only ones that there's single cell life. But you know, the, the multi cells and the events, specialized cells is just so rare to happen where I find that hard to believe.

[Drew]

I was gonna Say can you fathom the odds of that? Not a mathematician either by the way.

[Michael]

But just a lot of you know

[Drew]

just lay.000 lay on your back in a non light corrupted environment at night in the mountains and look at the stars. And we're the only ones. It boggles my mind.

[Michael]

Right. And you can't see most of them.

[Drew]

That's what I'm saying.

[Michael]

So that's why I think the answer Fermi paradox is you know most civil advanced civilizations end up destroying themselves.

[Drew]

See that's where you think we're headed.

[Michael]

That is where I think we're headed. Now hopefully you know the collapses are not so bad. We do start making the preparations that I asked for in my book. I'm hoping that stop us. Pardon?

[Drew]

Would that stop us? Even the preparations that we made. Do you think it would stop us?

[Michael]

And if it's an artificial intelligence super intelligent one and they do decide to exterminate everyone they could. Now Fortune Ranch we have a strategy to survive an AGI takeover. And we call it the rural rats strategy. So our goal is rural rats. We want to be like rural rats. We want to be so harmless, so annoying, so inconsequential that why would. Why would you waste resources killing us? We stay away from data centers. We're not by power lines. We pose no threat to them. Fort Dranch is strictly defensive. We defend our property. We garden. We grow. You know we don't need the Internet. We don't need power. We're just our own little entity there not causing any harm. So our hope is that if superintelligent AGI takes over they'll do. You know. They will exterminate people near AI data centers and power plants and stuff they want. But rural rats like us, why bother you know we'd be a waste of their resources to exterminate. Now I got 10 gauge shotguns to shoot at drones that they send drones at us. But. But by and large I think our only strategy to survive if it's a super intelligent AGI takeover is to just not be a threat and not be using resources that they want. And we don't need any resources. We're self sufficient. We grow our own food and chickens and animals and don't bother anyone. So hopefully AGI will leave us alone. That's our survival strategy for AGI.

[Drew]

It's a bold strategy.

[Michael]

Well it's a cowardly one you might say. I'm not going to try to attack the AI if it takes over. I mean smarter than us. How do you fight Something smarter than.

[Drew]

I don't know what the strategy would be. I mean I'm looking at warfare evolve. Talking about drones. I joined in 1996, got out in 2013. I didn't for an instant ever consider what is essentially a commercial off the shelf item or a COTS item, a DJI drone being weaponized and flown via command wire at me. I never even considered that drones to us was Predator and Reaper with ISR overhead and stuff like that. The stuff that I'm seeing in the Ukraine conflict and I'm. Things are changing at a pace that I'm not even going to pretend to understand. But it is pretty scary. I don't know what the strategy is towards that.

[Michael]

Well, you know, Palantir does a lot of the technology to control those drones and the intelligence.

[Drew]

A lot of them I think are command flown by individuals.

[Michael]

Yeah, but AGI can eventually take those over.

[Drew]

Oh yeah. I'm not saying they can't. You know, I've heard.

[Michael]

Or make their own.

[Drew]

Yeah, yeah, right. At least right now there's a human on the loop. Human out of the loop. I don't know where that leads us.

[Michael]

That's the other thing we ought to be controlling with international alliances trying to prevent that from ever happening.

[Drew]

I don't know if the national alliance does it again. I'm not worried about the major players. I'm worried about the people who want to take down a major player or just ideologically don't align with what they believe a major or the major players believe with. I don't know how you stop them.

[Michael]

Well, that's why I want to retain nuclear weapons and especially low yield ones that we can use if we have to to wipe out an AI threat. The safe ones or not just AI,

[Drew]

the safe nukes if you will.

[Michael]

Correct. Or someone you know about to develop and release human, human transmissible H5N1 or some other bioengineered virus. You know the former director of the Center Disease Control, Dr. Redfield, you know, he has said we are going to have an H5N1 pandemic. And in his guess it's not going to be a natural mutation. He thinks it's going to be deliberately man made version of the virus that'll be released. And when you got a 50% lethal virus because if you're bioengineering it, you're not going to do a mildly lethal version.

[Drew]

Yeah, it wouldn't make sense.

[Michael]

You're going to do one that's highly lethality, 50% lethal virus. No one's going to work, Would you go to work, you know, or let your kids go to work if there was a 10% or more lethal virus spreading, or would you say you're staying home?

[Drew]

I don't think you could. I mean, the responsible decision, I mean, if with that lethality would be at least do everything you could to protect them as much as possible.

[Michael]

Yeah. So people aren't going to work. No food's coming to grocery stores. Most people are not prepared. And law and order is going to break down within. I don't think it's days. We used to have a term in the prep preparedness industry called 30 days to animal thinking that, you know, it take a. Take a long time before people would get so upset that they'd start chaos. Yeah, I think. I think. But nowadays, you know, especially because of that show Walking Dead, if you ever

[Drew]

watch the TV show, never got into it.

[Michael]

I didn't bother me, Drew, you gotta watch Walking Dead. And I said, that's a zombie apocalypse. I track real threats. I'm not going to look at zombies. Drew. Walking Dead is not about the zombies. It's about the bad people, the marauders. That's what the threat is in Walking Dead. But so many people have watched that show. We have actually had reports from our staff. They run into. Into people who said they don't want to join Fortitude Ranch. They don't even want to form their own survival community. They've already got their own marauder group form. There are already Marauder groups before the collapse, but in the preparation, we used to think that over time, people would start thinking of marauding and do it as things got bad. Nowadays there are people who already have plans to do Marauder groups. And when there's news that an H5 inland virus is spreading or there's some other disaster coming, there are people who are going to immediately start doing marauder things like breaking into homes to steal those kinds of things. So it's no longer, you know, 30 days or 72 hours to animal. I think they're going to be some marauder attacks within the first hours of warnings and alerts that a collapse is happening. Some bad people who do it immediately. And you kind of see that now in terms of. Of public protests. You know, you saw in Portland, Oregon, over and over again, there were legitimate, you know, peaceful protests trying to go on, but bad people would fall into that and start looting because the police are tied up dealing with the political protesters. When you got thousands of people out there, and now a group of 30 or so start breaking it seem to be Target stores got targeted a lot. Start breaking into the store. What are police going to do? They can't get there. There's thousands of people and you know, they get away with it. So people are aware that police are overwhelmed in a collapse. And I think you're going to see marauding and a breakdown in law and order within the first hours of a pending collapse. It's not going to take days to develop, I don't think.

[Drew]

Is it salvageable, in your opinion?

[Michael]

If we did a lot of reforms outlined in the book, we could do it. Is it likely that we'll do this? Reforms? Very, very, very unlikely. My big hope is that the first collapse that happens is not a big one, not a disastrous one. And it wakes people up to say our government has to do its proper job. Protect us from threats we can't handle on our own. Do that. Don't get us divided and bankrupt over social welfare programs and debates on abortion and controversial issues. Focus on security for us. Stay out of everything else that people deal with the. This stuff on their own. If they do that, start stockpiling food. Get more people free from regulations. I mean, the best survival food is sunchoke, also called Jerusalem artichoke, but it's.

[Drew]

It's a perennial sun choke.

[Michael]

Sun choke? Yeah.

[Drew]

Never heard of that.

[Michael]

Oh, it's fantastic food. It's the most important survival food you can plant, and it's a perennial. It grows and it expands, but it. Since it expands, a lot of governments call that a weed and they'll outlaw it. You can't buy sunchoke seeds in the US they're pretty much gone. They regulate. Can you have chickens or not? You know, can you have chickens? And how far does the coop have to. There's government regulations. The biggest barrier to prepping in the United States is government regulation. You know, go try to stockpile antibiotics. You know, that's a whole new mess of regulations and restrictions. You got to deal with the zoning requirements, the building codes. You'd like to be able to, you know, put in a little underground bun. I mean, you had trouble with your BlackRock Coffee store. Imagine trying to, you know, build a shelter or something and dealing with the regulations and the costs and the government rules on that.

[Drew]

Government is build a shelter under there. Have you considered that?

[Michael]

I hope you did.

[Drew]

Is it actually a cop? We didn't.

[Michael]

So, you know, people need to prepare. So I'm hoping that the first collapse is not so bad. So people say that, hell with these government rules. We get Our government back to doing limited government. Like we did a revolution to, to allow limited government. We get government limited, focus on its proper role, and then we start doing food stockpile programs. More people start. Every yard in America should have sunchoke planted in it. It's, it's not the same.

[Drew]

How does that work for somebody in New York City?

[Michael]

Gardens or, you know, have an outside place you can get to stockpile food. But if you had that plan, I mean, like, if you think you're going to go into the, into the forests and mountains and survive on deer, good luck. Because I'm not saying that pouring in

[Drew]

rooftop gardens isn't going to cut it in New York City. I mean, like, what would.

[Michael]

No, no, you get big. That's the other. In the age of collapse, big cities are gone. You can't live in a big urban city in the age of collapse. That's the last chapter. Addresses what's it going to be like living in the age of clips? And it's all not, not all gloom and doom. There could be an upside, but big cities are gone. You're not going to live in a New York City or a Tokyo. In the age of collapse, you're too vulnerable. It's too much energy and resources to keep you there. You got to be more urban and more farming based. That's how you survive in the age of collapse.

[Drew]

When you were serving in the military, did you have more faith in your government at large? Not the military complex, but just the government that oversees the military?

[Michael]

Well, the more I learned about government, the less, less faith I had in it. But, you know, I've been a prepper for most of my adult life and. But I was an intelligence officer, so I focused more on threats. And, you know, people saw the Cold War winding down and we won that and they assumed all, you know, peace, peace in our times. And I saw the development technologies and I thought, no, it's just the opposite. Things are going to get worse. So I've been a prepper for many, many decades, and preppers inherently don't trust government. Government tells you they're going to take care of you, you prepper. And we all preppers also tend to be very libertarian. I've noticed that quite a lot. And so we don't trust that our government is going to take care of us. And they're not honest to us. I mean, the center for Disease Control, I've been talking about H5N1 and the threat throughout this. Do you know what the CDC says about H5N1? Low risk.

[Drew]

Why do they say that?

[Michael]

They say it's low risk because they don't want you to be panicked. Yeah, I get about the booking. And I'm not saying conspiracy theories. The CDC is not trying to kill us.

[Drew]

Did he say the lethality is low or that there's just less of a reason to panic?

[Michael]

Figure 18. Patiently, I give you seven reasons. Number one is that career politicians, they're focused on reelection and they don't want the CDC scaring you. They want citizens to think government is going to take care of you. You're protected, don't worry. Keep paying your taxes, keeping electing yourself, keep re electing us and you'll be okay. So they don't want any government agencies spreading news. I mean, I did civil defense exercises as a county commissioner. You did them in the military. Do you ever remember an exercise where in the exercise we lost, citizens were slaughtered and it was a complete disaster. Do you ever remember an exercise like that?

[Drew]

We didn't participate in that type of exercise.

[Michael]

We never had them. You always win. I always said I was at strategic command. I mean I got simulated killed every year and you know, in the annual elections. We always won though because they always want citizens to think government will take care of you because they want to get reelected. But government officials don't also want a dependent public. They want you. Especially the Democratic Party. I mean, I don't like them both, but the Democratic Party is worse in this regard. They want you to always trust government. Government will take care of you. Let us do any program we want. Let us charge whatever taxes we want, give us whatever power we want, want, and will take care of you. So they're not going to let the CDC admit that we're not handling H5N1, we're not parapro pandemic. It's a huge risk. The former CDC director says, this current CDC director, if they try to say that they'll be fired. And that's the title of Dr. Redfield's book, you know, what I couldn't tell you is basically the title of his book. And then elected officials don't want the public to know that they're not protected. They don't want you to know that they've got survival facilities and now weather and hundreds of other sites. I mean the IRS has survival facilities.

[Drew]

It's good.

[Michael]

Government has it. They do nothing for us. Preparedness requires weapons. Does the Democratic Party going to advocate that every home have an AR15 to protect against a marauder threat? I don't think so.

[Drew]

I Haven't heard that on their campaign slogan yet. But I'm hopeful.

[Michael]

I mean, we tell people, you know, if you're stockpiling supplies and you can't defend them, you almost might be making yourself worse off because now you've made yourself a great target and you have no means to defend or deter an attack, so. And improving security and preparedness means getting rid of hundreds, thousands of government regulations. Loss of jobs. Government jobs. They're protected, we're not. And then again, most congressmen are lawyers. Most. Most. If you look at what's the number one profession. Yeah, yeah, they're lawyers. And, you know, their expertise is not seal, intelligence, officer, military, foreign policy. It's regulations and government power, and that's what they like and promote.

[Drew]

What government systems do you think we should get rid of to start with? Like, you've said that the social systems

[Michael]

at the state and federal level. Yes.

[Drew]

So I'm assuming you're talking. Talking about Social Security.

[Michael]

Social Security is already so deeply ingrained, you'd have to phase it out over, you know, a decade or more. You'd have to come up. Yeah. Look at base closing. How do we close bases? Political, controversial. You form a commission outside of the control of the parties. They come up with the best plan. You can't alter it. Now it goes to Congress and it's an up, down vote. That's how you fix Social Security Commission, pardon, Medicaid, medical. I get rid of. Of all of them. Phase out over time. At the federal level and at the state level, people want to do that. A local level, let them, because it destroys responsibility. If you've got government taking care of stuff, why should you worry about it? Why should you care for your family if they can go, you know, get government assistance? Government undermines personal responsibility and families, and it's been doing it like mad since the 1960s. And there's data on. I put some of it in the book. You know, why. Why am I talking about politics and a book on preparing to survive in the age of collapse? It's because our government is part of the reasons we're going into this age of collapse.

[Drew]

Don't you.

[Michael]

And I don't.

[Drew]

Government assistance, though.

[Michael]

I get money as a. I get retirement pay, I get Social Security, I get disability.

[Drew]

Do you send the Social Security back?

[Michael]

Nope. Until the laws change, there's no incentive to do it.

[Drew]

Even though you don't agree with it.

[Michael]

I don't agree with it, no. It's unconscious, constitutional, but the Supreme Court doesn't enforce it. Just like they don't enforce my natural rights to have privacy, my rights to my personal property.

[Drew]

Michael, can you google this to make sure it's correct? But I believe the number one line item, or it is approaching the number one line item in the defense budget is personnel retirement pay.

[Michael]

Retirement thing.

[Drew]

I mean, what should we do about that for military members who are.

[Michael]

That we should pay. That's national offense. That is a proper role of government is national defense.

[Drew]

No, retired pay, retired military. The disability and retirement pay.

[Michael]

That's how you entice people to join and get in the military. It's one of the reasons.

[Drew]

So it's an obligation operation and maintenance. Okay. Funding military personnel. Yeah. The funds pay allowance and retirement. So it's number two, there are some people out there who view the money that we get from our government service as a social service service. And I'm not arguing for or against it. I'm just curious where you would put that.

[Michael]

Again, if it's someone, some, you know, government worker. If you're a government worker and you get a retirement program that's legitimate, okay. But to be giving social programs out and getting involved in divisive issues like abortion and, you know, is this drug safe to do? You know, should you be smoking marijuana or not? The federal government is. That's a good example. Fairground has no authority. Authority to regulate what you eat and drink. Federal government has absolutely. Do they do it? Yes. And how can I prove to you that's wrong? I can prove to you by just looking at Prohibition. What did we do when the government wanted to outlaw alcohol? They passed an amendment. They prohibited the sale of alcohol. And when they did that, that was constitutional. After a while, they determined this is a really bad idea. They repealed it. So where. When did we pass amendment saying, okay, well, you can regulate drugs now? When did we pass an amendment doing that? The answer is we didn't. There is no federal authority to regulate food and drugs. It does not exist. All federal food and drug regulations are unconstitutional. And the proof is just look at what we did with Prohibition. We followed the Constitution. But that was before fdr, Franklin Del Roosevelt and destroying the Constitution. Constitution with the pressure seated on the Supreme Court to basically say, we're not going to enforce the 9th and 10th Amendments anymore. The constitutional limits to government are gone. And you know, 98% of Americans don't know that.

[Drew]

So you would get rid of the. What was it? Maybe the FDA and the. The dea, which would be the enforcement agency of that.

[Michael]

We should not be outlawing drugs. All you do is make illegal drug sellers, make fortune. We've ruined Latin America. That's a lot of the US Is to blame for what. What goes on in Colombia and elsewhere where these drug gangs rule because we made it fortunate we should allow drugs to be made and sold in the US it wouldn't be such a big problem. We gain nothing. There's, there's, you know, one of the

[Drew]

30 Ways Drug Usage would be such a big problem if we made them

[Michael]

in the US it wouldn't be as bad. But in one of the 30 examples I have, the whole government's killing you is the war on drugs.

[Drew]

But hold on.

[Michael]

The war on drugs has been an absolute disaster.

[Drew]

Let's get that in a second. Why do you think so? The demand. I agree with you that people like to talk a lot about the supply. The demand is a huge issue of that. Right. It's on the other side of the equal sign. Why do you think, given the addiction problems that we are having and overdose problems right now, that that would change if it was legally available in the U.S. i'm not arguing for or against. I'm just curious why you think it would decrease usage.

[Michael]

Well, it should not be regulated, period. So if you didn't have illegal drugs,

[Drew]

you, you said that it would get better, and I'm just curious why you think it would be better.

[Michael]

A lot of ways. First of all, let me tell a couple ways. Well, let me talk about the most important one. You know, I don't use drugs.

[Drew]

Okay, same.

[Michael]

So the problem I've got from the war on drugs is a lot of them. But one of the big ones is because it's illegal to sell drugs and people are going to take them anyway. They pay gangs, drug lords, bad people, and the price is very, very high. So someone is going to take a drug and they're going to buy it. Costs a lot of money. What do they do if they don't have enough money?

[Drew]

They find a way to source it.

[Michael]

They cry, they commit crime, they rob and steal. I get crime, rates go up, I become a victim or my, my daughter becomes a victim of a crime. Because we've got huge prices on drugs because we're outlawing them. If we didn't outlaw them, what would the price be for drugs? It'd be dramatically lower. So people wouldn't have to be committing crime. So would more people be taking drugs? They might. But if people taking drugs and committing crimes, I suffer from that. If they're still going to take drugs and hurt themselves, let them. That doesn't Hurt me.

[Drew]

They also still often depending on the drug. And I'm basing this off my interactions with my law enforcement friends. Not all crime associated with drug usage has anything to do with them trying to source course the drug itself. Some of the drugs drive people to do really crazy violent.

[Michael]

So I'd arrest them and throw them in jail if they did crazy violent.

[Drew]

I think that's the current policy. Still. I believe that's what they're aiming for. I'm not saying it's perfection. So you're saying it would be better because you think there would be less crime if it costs less, A lot less crime.

[Michael]

We wouldn't also be wasting all the money we do fighting the war on drugs. Drugs. And whenever you raise taxes on people, you put, you know, I remember I said earlier, the government, you know, is destroying families. That's another way they do it. Higher taxes destroy families. You know, how many millions of Americans are. People have, you know, what they consider to be inadequate income, and they struggle. And that tears a lot of marriages apart. When you look at the data on what drives marriages, a lot of ends up being financial troubles. So you're promoting divorce and family breakup from the war on drugs and the expenses of that. But the biggest thing is you're promoting gangs. I'm financing gangs. There's a million gang members in the US And a lot of their allure and power is from selling drugs. I'm making gangs more powerful, which kill people under a threat. And now let me give you one other example that comes from the age of collapse. What are we going to do with the 2 million Americans who in jail when there's an H5N1 pandemic or the grid goes down? 2 million Americans, Yale. There is no government policy for it. If you Google what is the government policy for dealing with prisoners in jail? You're not going to find anything.

[Drew]

Do you think. Does it vary by institution?

[Michael]

They don't even talk about it. There's no preparations for it. I can tell you what's going to happen. You're either going to have to release them from jail because the guards aren't coming to work if the grid's down. You. You cannot operate a jail without electricity. Oh, we have diesel backups, Drew. Yeah, you do. For three days until they run out of fuel or break down. They're either going to be released or you're going to have to let them out. Now I got 2 million people. How well prepared are they for a collapse? They've been in jail. And by the way, half of this 1, 2 million people, they're in there for violating drug laws. So I've got a million extra people not prepared who are now going to come out, now they're going to be breaking into my home, trying to kill me. I got 14 ranch so I'm okay. But for most people they're not. And that's another impact of our stupid ass war on drugs. That's unconstitutional, stupid as hell makes me less safe. It's, it's a 30 exam. It's one of the 30 examples of how government policies are killing us today and setting us up for annihilation. And a collapse is stupid ass drug laws and 2 million prisoners with no plans. I propose some plans in here. This is probably one of my most controversial things. My proposal is warden should be identifying and they already know who are threats in there in the jail. So you know, if this person here is a serial killer, when there's a, when the grid goes down, I can't operate my jail. There's a pandemic, no one's coming to work. You should have a plan. And that is is while you're still in your cell, you walk in, you pull out your weapons, you shoot the guy. You have pre advanced approved pardons. If you can't operate your jail in a collapse, you are authorized to execute people who are too dangerous to the public to get out and then everyone else, you let them go. But we ought to be getting rid of a million Americans in jail today for stupid ass unconstitutional drug laws. So one, I'm not paying for them to be in jail and then two, I don't have a million extra marauders from the get go. And by the way, pretty damn well trained marauders in terms of violence. If you want to survive in a jail, it's, you know, does our government address this? Is there any government. Did you find a government policy on dealing with prisoners during a collapse again? I work Institute for Defense Analyses. I've worked with all our preparedness pandemic plans, the official planning centers. There's nothing on this. Why? Because our government doesn't give a shit about protecting citizens in a collapse or preparing for it. They just care about re election and there aren't re election votes. In dealing with pandemic issues or dealing with collapse issues, the government has no plans on how to deal with prisoners in a collapse.

[Drew]

Government policies for managing prisoners during emergencies such as natural disasters or public health crises, prioritize maintaining security, protecting civil rights and preventing unconstitutional conditions of confinement. Protocols are managed through standardized Incident command structures that dictate immediate response actions. That's straight from the Bureau of Prisons. Move that, Michael, for a sec. Core policies and operations, preparedness and emergency plans. Federal, state and local correctional facilities, including the Federal Bureau of Prisons, are mandated to maintain comprehensive emergency operations plans. These plans cover evacuation, sheltering in place and medical triage protocols. Decarbonization and de escalation during severe public health emergencies such as the COVID 19 pandemic. Policies may expand the use of home confinement or early release to lower the facility density and ensure safety. Constitutional minimums. The Eighth Amendment requires correctional authorities to uphold basic living standards, ensuring access to food, medical care and safe living conditions. Evolving legislations. Federal legislations like the Correctional Facility Facility Disaster Preparedness act is actively shaping policy to modern modernize disaster responses. Scroll down, Michael. Operational phases we have response, medical management and recovery with some additional resources.

[Michael]

Complete. Politically correct. When the grid goes down, you can't run a prison. You're not going to be able to maintain the rights. You're not going to be able to keep them in there. They're either going to get out or you're going to have to release. You can't do it. This is complete bullshit. And this is what government policies are like. It's complete bullshit. It sounds great. Oh, we're going to protect prisoners rights. We're going to take care of them. And it's nonsense. In a collapse, you're not going to be able to maintain prisons at any level. They're either going to get out or some wardens may decide to execute them. And that's not honestly addressed because none of our programs. The pandemic program for the United States, it's not even COVID 19 level threat. It's like a bad seasonal flu. It's a freaking joke.

[Drew]

I get it. But let's be precise with our language. You don't like or agree with.

[Michael]

It's.

[Drew]

So that's an opinion, correct? That is your opinion, correct?

[Michael]

That's my opinion.

[Drew]

Okay, but what you said was they don't exist.

[Michael]

They have no plans to deal with a collapse. That is not how you deal with the collapse. Hold on. Can't do that.

[Drew]

Hold on. Let's just be precise with our language. You said they don't exist.

[Michael]

They don't exist.

[Drew]

They're right there.

[Michael]

That is not a plan to deal with the.

[Drew]

In your opinion. In your opinion.

[Michael]

Anyone could look at that. How are you going to keep operating in jail when you have no electricity? How are you going to operate in jail when you don't have guards.

[Drew]

We've already discussed 10%, but precision of language matters.

[Michael]

And I agree with my language. I would not change a word of it. If people aren't coming to work, I

[Drew]

am showing you that what you say doesn't exist. Whether you agree with its execution or not.

[Michael]

The. That is not a collapse. Level. Disaster. COVID 19. Pandemic level. COVID 19 was not a collapse, as I explained earlier.

[Drew]

So you're specifically saying. Only on a collapse level.

[Michael]

They have no policy for collapse. Collapse. Disasters.

[Drew]

Got you. Okay.

[Michael]

And that is not a policy that's going to work in a collapse. You won't have Guard. Guards. No guard in his right mind is going to come to work. If there's a collapse and people are attacking his home. He's going to stay home and protect his family. He's going to stay home and protect himself. You will not have guards. You can't run the prison.

[Drew]

And one of your reasonable solutions to that would be the warden going in with a prearranged pardon and executing prisoners,

[Michael]

divorced prisoners, who, if they get out, are too likely to kill people. I would rather have that done than let them all out.

[Drew]

And more importantly, there's no single federal policy for eclipse. Complete societal collapse. Instead, the government relies. The continuity. Oh, that's. I think that's government writ large, Michael. As opposed to.

[Michael]

Yeah, well, there's plenty of plans to protect government officials. There you have complete continuity government plans and stockpiled foods and shelters and authority to steal resources from private citizens for their benefit. Benefit. There you have tremendous months. Again, the best book on that is Raven Rock. That book. It's a New York Times bestseller written by Raven Rock. Raven Rock. Very, very good book. I address it a lot in my book and quote it. He gets into all the details of continuity government, but it's all about protecting them. Nothing to do with us. And even protecting them at our expense.

[Drew]

If the warden, let's say it was near one of your facilities, was unwilling

[Michael]

to do that, then I got to deal with extra marauder threats.

[Drew]

No, that's not my question. If the warden was unwilling to do that, would you?

[Michael]

No. Fortitude Ranch is strictly defensive.

[Drew]

No, no. You're comfortable with asking somebody else to do something you wouldn't do yourself.

[Michael]

You're talking about me as Fortune Ranch or me as an individual. As an individual, if a warden said, hey, I'm not willing to do this. I've identified. I would know the people. Said, I've identified these two people as.

[Drew]

He just didn't want to do it.

[Michael]

I would do it. Yes, I would.

[Drew]

At least you're willing to do what you're asking others to do. Man, that is. I get it. Conceptually. I have no problem with evil being wiped off the face of planet Earth. I've done my best to try to help in that cause. Man, it's a leap across the Grand Canyon. I'm not going to judge it. It's an interesting take, for sure.

[Michael]

Well, it's something that should be planned for by government. How do you deal with the prison when you have no electricity or when you don't have guards? It's going to happen. It's going to happen. When? I can't tell you. Former CDC director, top biologists are all saying an H5N1 pandemic is inevitable. It's going to happen.

[Drew]

You think you'll see this in your lifetime?

[Michael]

Oh, absolutely. I'm surprised it hasn't happened already. Again, we estimate the probability of class model we have is a 16 to 57% annual likelihood of a collapse. It's highly uncertain, but it's definitely, and

[Drew]

I'm not a statistician, that means per year.

[Michael]

Per year it's high and it's getting worse. With our artificial intelligence.

[Drew]

I was going to say it's going to continue. Those numbers. I would assume those numbers continue to get larger in your models, worse in the future.

[Michael]

Yeah. That's why I say we're. We're entering the age of collapse, and I don't see any way to. To avoid it at this point.

[Drew]

I hope you're wrong.

[Michael]

So do I.

[Drew]

What does the average person do?

[Michael]

Average person needs to get prepared. And we address that in the book, too.

[Drew]

Do. What does the average person in New York City do who doesn't have the

[Michael]

ability out of New York City?

[Drew]

What does the average person who doesn't have the ability to get out of New York City do? That's. It's such a.

[Michael]

That's why we need stockpiled food. That's why we need what I call civil ground patrol. I was in Civil Air Patrol. It's an air force.

[Drew]

I get it. But let's be clear. It's super trite to say, just get out of New York City. Just uproot your life and just get out of there. That's a great concept that you can talk about.

[Michael]

I talk about during a collapse. Well, you need to bug out.

[Drew]

Out.

[Michael]

You need to get out of New York City.

[Drew]

Where are they going to go if they haven't thought? That's what I'm saying. Like, what can the average person do now is what I'm saying. Not in the class.

[Michael]

They need to join the survival community. They need to get prepared. You know the rich people, you know Zuckerberg has this compound in Hawaii. Teal was going, maybe he's still going to go to New Zealand. Now he's going to Argentina. The top AI executives, they've got that. Rich people have had it for a long time. Look at survival condos.

[Drew]

I'd take it off. So I would take that off the plate because those are the. I get it. They have the ability to do what they want because the economic means strip that off. What can the average person right now?

[Michael]

There's nothing mean for them, nothing they can do other than on their own if they can afford it, form or join a survival community. That's why the government should go back to stockpiling food. And the other thing about stockpiling food is not just the calories, it's, you know, what are you worried about? You're worried about starving today. Death. If the government had food and water and you knew that, you knew that. I got a year, you know, at least a year. There's not going to be this initial panic that you're going to have. Law and order wouldn't necessarily break down as automatically as I think it will. I can't be 100% positive will, but I'm like 99% positive that when H5 ounce product is spreading the law and order is going to break down because people realize holy, there's not going to be food in the grocery store. I'm going to start starving to death. I better start stealing. If the government had the program we had under Eisenhower for stockpiled food, you might not have that. Of all people might say it's okay.

[Drew]

Where do they stockpile it?

[Michael]

They stockpile it in all kinds of under large underground shelters. Again, this is the cold, you know,

[Drew]

the nuclear cold, cold war mechanism for distribution.

[Michael]

I was mainly going to be the guard or police would control it. They were in secure buildings but they still had this. Finland, Sweden. There's another country I'm leaving out. Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, sorry. They've got stockpile of food and shelters for their population.

[Drew]

People.

[Michael]

How many?

[Drew]

Eight.

[Michael]

Eight. I think it's more than that.

[Drew]

It's probably the combined of those countries equivalent to a medium sized US State.

[Michael]

Well, the point is they've got it, you can do it. And it's relatively at a smaller scale.

[Drew]

Well, at a smaller scale, yeah, it's a lot easier for them to be able to Do. But Sweden having something or Switzerland having something is fantastic. We're a nation of 360 million people. It's a little bit more complex.

[Michael]

Yeah. We got a lot more area too to store. And we can grow food. We've got advantages. Switzerland. Those countries up north don't have. We can grow food. We could plant sunchokes all over the place.

[Drew]

Michael, you Google a sunchoke. I have to see this. Does it look like an artichoke?

[Michael]

No. Jerusalem artichoke, son. That's why I call them sunchoke. Okay. Jerusalem artichoke is a really dumb name. It's not an artichoke. Nothing to do with Jerusalem. It's just the name it got.

[Drew]

Of course it doesn't.

[Michael]

That's why sun chokes better. It looks like a sunflower. It's a nice looking plant. I don't know why people. But you eat the roots. That's a picture of the roots.

[Drew]

What do they taste like?

[Michael]

It's not as good as a potato. And it does give you gas.

[Drew]

Okay.

[Michael]

Flatulence. You can get used to it over time. But it's. Yeah.

[Drew]

So it's not very good.

[Michael]

Good potato.

[Drew]

Essentially. A root vegetable.

[Michael]

It's a root vegetable. Exactly. Tell you the other thing. Kudzu. You know that horrible plant they're trying to eradicate that got grain. Kudzu. Is that.

[Drew]

How do you spell that? I want to see that too. Michael.

[Michael]

K U, D, Z, U. You're not from the southeast or you know kudzu?

[Drew]

I am not from this.

[Michael]

Oh. It was taking over. You could drive down the interstate. It's like a wall of vines. Because it's an invasive plant that they planted. It just takes off.

[Drew]

And you can eat that on the upper left there.

[Michael]

Yes. It's also got roots. It's not as good as sunchoke. That's kudzu.

[Drew]

Oh, wow.

[Michael]

And it just took over. And it's illegal now. They're trying to eradicate it. But for survival. It's a good food.

[Drew]

Is it choking out the underlying trees?

[Michael]

Is that kills everything? Yeah.

[Drew]

Whoa.

[Michael]

Yeah. It's. It's a. It's outlawed.

[Drew]

How big would you like to grow The. The network of facilities that you have if you could.

[Michael]

I can't raise capital. Not enough. So we're going by franchising. And it's even. It's almost impossible for franchisees to get funding. The government doesn't even recognize their industry exists. So you get. You know, I'm sure there's a. There's a standard nestral code you guys use on your taxes for, you know, podcasting. There's definitely. For your coffee.

[Drew]

Not for podcasting that I'm aware of.

[Michael]

There's not.

[Drew]

I don't think so.

[Michael]

Well, there isn't one for preparedness industry. The government doesn't want to really recognize that we exist.

[Drew]

I thought you wanted the government out of your life. That's a good thing, right? You wanted the government.

[Michael]

I do, but I'm saying when I go to race, raise funds, you know, go to raise funds. I don't have a standard industrial code. And then this doomsday prepper thing kills us every time. So I was, I tried a crowdsourcing site years ago, went through the initial steps, but someone higher up saying property that's nutty, you know, and vetoed us for that. So we need, we need thousands. I mean, we. Even if we had 100 Fort Ranch locations, you know, up to 300 people per location, we're not going to shelter 1% of the population. We were doing now a program called Fortitude Community where we help people set up their own survival community. It's really hard to do a voluntary survival community. Too much disagreement. Should we, you know, should we have one radiation detector or two? What do we do with. People don't pay, they fall apart. Volunteer survival communities tend to last for a year or two, then they fall apart. But since we have no way of sheltering even 1% of the population, we've started a program called Fortitude Community where we'll help coach you on how to run a survival community. It's not joining Fortitude Ranch, but we help coach people on how to do it because we're trying to get more. To me, the worst scenario is that we've got a collapse and the survivors are marauder groups and even worse, elected officials from Mount Weather, another place. I don't want the career politicians and marauders to survive. I want good middle class Americans to survive too.

[Drew]

How do you maintain any level of optimism? Analyzing threats the way that you do, feeling that an imminent collapse is on the way?

[Michael]

Well, again, you know, we're a recreational community too. And you know, I still go on vacations. I've got, you know, I've got security. I know I can make it so I don't have to worry about it as much. I am really distressed about our government. That really does piss the hell out of of me. And so apologize for saying fracking or words like that on your show, but

[Drew]

is our fracking a way to get oil out of the ground?

[Michael]

I'm more the Battlestar Galactic version of that. But to me, I'm just so. I'm so pissed off at our government and the Supreme Court for not enforcing the Constitution. We fought a revolution to have limited government and then we lost it under FDR and the Supreme Court after him. And now I actually use the term the Perverted Triangle in the book. I coined the term. I'm a master's degree and PhD in public policy from Harvard. We have the official political science term the Iron Triangle. You may have heard of it before. That's business lobbyists, the Congr congressmen who sit on the committees that regulate them. And then the bureaucrats, they donate money to each other. There's a revolving door. The congressman goes to government, then he goes to industry as a lobbyist. They're all the same group and they work out for each other. They're not really regulating business for the benefit of you and me. They're regulating for the benefit of campaign donations and re election and votes to like them. That's why you had, you know, the drug incidents with forgiving the name of the drug, the drug that everyone was taking. That's, that's an example. The Iron Triangle with help me on this drug. You know the drug I'm talking about?

[Drew]

I don't actually.

[Michael]

It's the one that, you know, people are addicted in West Virginia, rural areas. The pain relates. Medication. Right.

[Drew]

I think you're talking about the OxyContin. OxyContin, correct.

[Michael]

You know, so that's an example of the iron triangle at work. They're not really regulating them. They're all helping each other out. Well, I invented the term Perverted Triangle and it is career politicians, the same government bureaucrats. And the third one is lawyers. Because lawyers pass these laws and regulations to make money and business, business for them. They violate the Constitution, they violate your natural rights, but it's business for them. And a lot of these lawyers, they're also legislators passing these laws for their benefit. And then they work in government and they get donations. And the Democratic Party is definitely the worst. I mean, as Peter Thiel put it, you know, the Democratic Party is the evil party. The Republicans are the stupid party. And I think that's largely correct. And I say the Democrats are evil because they're the ones since FDR on who have deliberately undermined the Constitution, destroyed it in effect. Because the two most important sentences in the Constitution are the 9th and 10th Amendments. And they're effectively gone. That's what limits government. And the limits to government are no longer Enforced by the Supreme Court. They don't exist. We do not have a constitutional republic in the United States. It's gone. You and I took oaths to defend it and it's gone way.

[Drew]

I don't know if everybody would agree with you on that. Again, that's why I ask if there are examples. You're, you're speaking in absolutes, which I avoid, but please speak however you want to.

[Michael]

Well, drugs is an example I gave you.

[Drew]

Drugs is in the drug federal health department.

[Michael]

The war on drugs, outlawing drugs. There is no federal authority to do that. Now we should have federal authority to. We have no federal authority to regulate pollution, should we? I would vote for an amendment to get that because, you know, pollution is an international. It goes beyond states, it's deadly. It needs to be stopped, needs to be regulated and controlled. So I would support a constitutional amendment to give the federal government the right to regulate pollution. That needs to happen. But we don't even bother anymore. Government can do whatever they want because there are no limits to government because the Supreme Court won't enforce them. And who appoints the Supreme Court justices? The perverted triangle, the legislators. So if they ever have someone who wants to strongly support the Constitution, they won't let him. Bork, you won't remember him, you're too young. But there was a Supreme Court justice named Bork that was nominated and they blocked him because he was, he was going to support the Constitution. Constitution, they won't even let them in. So our, our government is broken right now. The system is corrupt. We need a convention of states to get term limits to stop career politicians. And then the other plank of that is we need to get limits to the federal government back. We've got to get the ninth and tenth amendment back. And by getting them back, we can now focus the federal government on national defense and national security and its proper role of protecting American against threats we can't handle on our own. Not trying to tell me how to deal with abortion or my stair baluster width in my house or my circuit breakers or, you know, my social policies. Giving money to, you know, my kids or welfare programs. They shouldn't be involved in that. They should be focused on protecting us. Especially as we face all these new technologies in the age of collapse. That's the only way to make it. But that, that's a huge ask. Is it likely to happen? No, it's not very likely.

[Drew]

Yeah. I hope it's not as bad off as the picture you're painting. I mean, I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I'm an expert on government. I'd be curious to hear somebody from government explain how they justify those systems inside of the parameters of the Constitution. I have no doubt they would have the ability to do so. I don't know what that would look like or its legitimacy or relationship to the truth, but I'm sure that they would have a way to articulate where those powers come from. And I'm not the person to argue for or against them because I'm not steeped in knowledge when it comes to that by any stretch. But yeah, you paint an early picture, man. I hope that, I hope that you're more incorrect than correct, for sure. Do you think people in government are doing the best that they can or do they understand the cascading downstream effects of what they're doing? Or, I mean both things could be true at once, obviously, depending on who you're talking about.

[Michael]

But no, I think the vast majority of people in government are good people. Definitely at the local level, less so at the state and federal level. But still there are two good people. The problem is the perverted triangle, the career politicians and the top officials who are part of that system. The system is bad and they can't, can't change it. And they know they can't change it. And then it's who you know, it's self selection bias. Who goes into government. Yeah. Versus go into that. People are comfortable that. And then lawyers are everywhere throughout. Lawyers are, you know, the biggest of the bad guys, I think. Lawyers who are career politicians. And there have been a lot of them, I won't name names, but you can come up with quite a few because they pass more laws to increase their power. And the Democratic power party is worse than the Republican party. I hate them both. But the Democrats are the worst because they deliberately have a policy of undermining the constitution. They want a dependent population that just pays taxes, reelects them, keeps them in power forever and doesn't care about.

[Drew]

But doesn't it destroy itself? Doesn't that system destroy itself?

[Michael]

Yes. And that's happened over and over again. Again. The cycle of civilization collapse. Rome. Look at Rome on its last years. Bread and circus food shipped in. You know, Rome was founded as farmers and warriors. At the end they imported all their food from conquered territories. They had mercenaries in their army. And what did the citizens do? They went to the, you know, Coliseum, watched the fun and games and it was corrupt. Rome fell from internal decay. And that's, that's the pattern for civilization collapse throughout modern history that we've seen. And that's where the US is today.

[Drew]

If you're a betting man. How far out are we?

[Michael]

Let me put it this way. My wife and I are taking a vacation to Malta in Spain this fall, early in the spring next year we're going to go to Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and then that's it. I'm not traveling again. You know, the estimates on some of the AI experts is that it could come in 2027 ag, super intelligent AGI smarter than us, we can't control could happen. Then I'm surprised we haven't had that H5N1 pandemic or another bioengineered attack. And it could be our intelligence agencies to stop that. And I'm offline. I can go into details with you. I'm not going to do a recorded session. I can understand how there are means to detect that and find that. My bet is we have. We've stopped a number of those.

[Drew]

I would have to imagine so.

[Michael]

But you know, you can't do it forever. And again that problem artificial intelligence is it's giving the ability of everyone on your own to develop either existing weapons of mass destruction more easily, like better waste enriched uranium. Our AI is going to invent brand new poisons, brand new ways to kill that humans have never thought of.

[Drew]

Couldn't it also create brand new ways to save humans?

[Michael]

We've absolutely will all. But all it takes is, you know, if 99.9 is good and that 0.1% leads to the extermination of all humanity, it's not a good net deal for us. It has to 1%. I'm saying a tiny, tiny fraction of bad use that exterminates us all outweighs everything else.

[Drew]

Yeah, but anything can be misused and kill us.

[Michael]

Not to the level that our super intelligent artificial.

[Drew]

I agree, but there's nothing that. Yeah, I'm just. There's nothing in life that has a 100% safety mechanism in it. So if, or look what we do

[Michael]

with nuclear weapons, the way we try to control them and the destructive ability of a nuclear weapon relative to what a super intelligent AGI could do or what you could do with bioengineering with the virus, it's much, much worse. And that's not just my opinion. If you look at the threat levels we've been saying in the intelligence community for decades now that that the biggest threat the US faces, it's not a nuclear attack, it's a bio agent released over here. Yeah, I mean, that's goes everywhere. You know, some people might say, hey, you know, if China or North Korea blows up Los Angeles, gee, that's bad. But I could think of worse things. You know, they might be willing to let Los Angeles go, but when they induce the virus and it's all over the U.S. everyone's screwed. And even up here in Kalispell, you'll get it. You got an international airport sitting right there.

[Drew]

I think they do a flight to, to Canada every other week. I believe that's why, let me tell you, we're not hucking flights across any borders very routinely here.

[Michael]

But, you know, a pandemic will go everywhere. It'll be global.

[Drew]

I mean, you might target the U.S. but that's touching every corner of the globe.

[Michael]

Yeah, but, you know, let's say it's. It's China rather than Iran or whatever Orion China releases. Before they release this bioengineered virus, they can develop a vaccine for it. So they develop the vaccine, stockpile it, then they release it over here. And the perfect country do that is North Korea. They're already isolated. I'm surprised North Korea has not already done this. I will be shocked if they don't do it with AI very soon. It's perfect for them. They go from the bottom of the heap to being after this deadly pandemic is over. They may be one of the most powerful nations on the earth or the

[Drew]

remaining nations on Earth, assuming that they target everybody except for North Korea, would turn on them and just pound them into oblivion.

[Michael]

Yeah, they don't know who did it, though. They have an agent release it. That's the other problem with that. That's why I say Iranian. The Iranian threat over nuclear weapons. I mean, that was largely. Bravo, Sierra. Iran is not going to launch a nuclear weapon against us. If they ever could and did and they didn't have the capability, but even if they did, we would nuke the hell out of at least the leadership in Tehran so they wouldn't do it. They're going to release the virus over here. And we, we did a threat alert on the Collapse survivor app and we, we just did another preparedness news update a week ago saying, you know, don't be dis, don't be misled by an end of hostilities in the war on Iran. It isn't over. We're still the Great Satan in their eyes. If anything, they're madder than they were before. The Revolutionary Guards are more motivated now probably than they were before the war in Iran to release a deadly virus. Over here you need to be prepared for that. That don't assume that if the fighting in the Persian Gulf is over, it's safe for us now here in the US it's not.

[Drew]

How would you this pre collapse just now modern day anybody listening to this? How would you advocate for or recommend somebody balance their concern and worry with optimism or the ability to live their life without thinking there's an existential threat, a guillotine slowly lowering towards their neck?

[Michael]

Oh yeah, I mean it's, it's not 100 certain. If you've got preparedness then you can relax a lot, you can lead a more normal life. You can try to enjoy your life again. I'm, I'm taking vacations and all our members, you know, they enjoy themselves. They're not just focused. You can, you know, it's peace of mind we call it. Not life insurance but life assurance. Assurance that you can survive a collapse so you can feel better and more relaxed and enjoy your life life more. And then in the Age of Collapse, it's the last chapter of the book. Well just a brief thing from that I'm hoping I, I can't tell you what it's going to be like in the Age of Collapse, but I think it could end up, if you can survive it could end up being better. I mean is, this is obviously biased, I'm going to sell out of people but do you think you leave a better quality of life leading the rat race in a highly densely, highly populated density, Highly densely populated big city or a rural area. I think rural life is generally a bit more peaceful. But anyway this is what I wrote. The Age of Collapse is an opportunity to make revolutionary improvements in our government, our economy, our environment and ourselves. The Age of Collapse can help us escape our evolutionary biases and become more responsible, tolerant and forgiving, helpful and loving as we cooperate and work together to protect our planet and each other. We will not give in to despair. We will survive, improve and find meaning in life and quality of life despite the constant specter of wmd, weapons of mass destruction and collapse. That's what I'm hoping is that enough of us can survive and we are going to have to survive in a more rural atmosphere which is generally more conducive to friendly relations with people and learn to live with weapons of mass destruction and recurring collapses. And if we're growing a lot of food, I don't have to panic when there is another collapse coming. We've got food and if we've got, you know, good defenses and the Marauders are gone and not a threat. We can live, you know, and arguably you can still have a quality of life. Now, if it's super intelligent AGI taking over and exterminating everyone, I don't know how you stop that. But I'm hoping that we won't get to that stage, that we won't let super intelligent AGI get created. It's the worst that we have. But the upside of that is it is such a threat that it could bring us together. You know, you've heard the stories before. You know, if an alien invasion did come, at least that would draw the world together. Artificial super intelligence, artificial general intelligence. That's it. That's the threat. And the interesting thing is alien invasion AI, it's the. It's even the same acronyms. And in the Fortitude Ranch rural RAT strategy. We did a video on that. We even pointed that out. Our strategy to survive alien entail and an alien invasion. It's the same one to the strategy to survive an artificial intelligence super intelligent AI takeover. It's just the rural RAT strategy. Don't pose a threat. You know, not using any resources they're going to want. I'm just annoying little rats you may not like. But we're out there in the countryside. Why waste resources exterminating us?

[Drew]

How long do you think the winter of survival would be in a collapse event?

[Michael]

I think it's the age of collapse. I think it's going to go on forever as long as humans exist. Because you can't get rid of technologies and know how the threat's always going to be there. That's why, you know, I'm back to the Fermi paradox. I think the answer to the Fermi paradox is that this civilizations reach a point where they have technologies that can destroy themselves. And that's exactly what they do. But you know, you're right, they may be so unhuman like they may be that, you know, they don't have our bad policies and they're good. But if so, you know, how come I don't see any evidence of them?

[Drew]

We're just stuck in the cage of being, being only able to see things through human eyes because it's the only end we have. You know what I mean?

[Michael]

We're looking for signals all the time. You know, we have the background of all the different, you know, natural signals and we're looking for anything that sticks out.

[Drew]

We're looking for signals that they're sending through the appropriate medium, but they're smarter than us.

[Michael]

So if they Want to be found and send out signals. They would send something that primitive civilizations could detect as their argument.

[Drew]

It's an assumption, correct?

[Michael]

Yeah, not mine. It's the scientists and the astronomers and the experts in the area.

[Drew]

But yeah, I don't claim to be an expert in any of that stuff. Yeah, it's an interesting road. Where can people find out more about you and what you have going on?

[Michael]

Fortitude Ranch we're FordRanch.com we've also formed the Collapse Survival Institute. We're trying to educate the general public more about the threats because our government's not honest about about them. The Collapse Survivor app, you know, any phone you can download it there but you get threat alerts and then training. I mean, you know from your SILA experience that the more realistic and the more training you do, the better you are. So we have collapsed disaster scenarios, civil war, nuclear war, bile, pandemics, so you can play scenarios where you know, hey, this has happened, what are you going to do? And you got to make decisions that give you answers. So we have training to get you prepared. But you know, I, I don't think it's avoidable. I think we're going to deal with collapse disaster so you gotta, you gotta become a prepper and learn to survive. And your, your friend Mike Glover, he's got a survival training school.

[Drew]

I believe it's in flux right now. I think he shut down Fieldcraft Survival but opened back up Fieldcraft Outpost. I'm not exactly sure what his, his structure is going to be but yeah, a lot of it. Feelcraft. I'll speak broadly. Not meaning to speak for Mike, but what I see the, I'll say what I see the company as. That way Mike can redefine it. I'm not stepping on his toes. It's giving people tools and knowledge to essentially be their own first responder. That's what I would describe Feelcraft first aid training.

[Michael]

Everyone should go through first aid training.

[Drew]

I don't even mean that. I don't mean own medical first responder, just your own first responder. In life you need to be, instead of outsourcing your survival to somebody else or your response to a situation, you need to be able to at least be maintain your movement, you know, stay up and running and solve problems until a higher level of care can get there or get yourself to a place where, you know, using your guys example of having bunkered locations, a bug out spot or whatever it may be.

[Michael]

Oh, by the way, I did drown. Pretty proofing too. As a cadet at the academy, we didn't have our hands and feet tied when we were doing it.

[Drew]

Yeah, but all you have to do is associate the term Air force with that and it all makes sense.

[Michael]

Oh, I was waiting for something like that to happen.

[Drew]

Why did you guys do that? Evolution.

[Michael]

The scenarios we went through is so you're in the swimming pool. First of all, you're on the deck of a carrier and it's on fire. So you got to jump off the deck of a carrier with your fatigue. Of course now you can. Then you got to swim under a bear because you're swimming against the burning oil around you now you come up. Now you gotta survive in the ocean for hours. And that's where you do the drop of it. But, you know, we were, we weren't set up. Yeah, I was, you know, I was bent at the waist and your head's down and then just, you know, every. When you got to readers.

[Drew]

Oh, so you guys are floating.

[Michael]

Yeah.

[Drew]

Which would make more sense.

[Michael]

But your hands and feet not tied. No.

[Drew]

After that you're not, you're not. Not drown proof. After that. Evolution, it's an exercise in just control of your breathing. And the, the evolution itself, the bouncing up and down off of the pool floor is if you can relax and are comfortable in the water. It's one of the most chill evolutions that you do because you're just on your own. You hear the sound of your exhaling air.

[Michael]

Oh, we weren't bouncing off the floor. It's just over breath. And then you go back down and then you slowly.

[Drew]

You guys were floating, loading.

[Michael]

Yeah.

[Drew]

Our exercise was more specific to having inability to move hands independently and feet independently. But it doesn't make you drown proof. Like I said, the exercise itself is more about self control than it is about survival.

[Michael]

Well, that's because you. You didn't have enough fat. If you have enough this one time where fat helps because fat floats or get more fat, you actually can float up for sure.

[Drew]

Or take your pants off and make a life jacket of them. I'm sure they told you guys.

[Michael]

Yes, that actually works. Works really well.

[Drew]

That worked really, really well. And there's videos of that online. If your pants, depending on what they're made out of, can turn into an amazing life jacket. Actually might be a little awkward photo when they rescue from the water. But it's better to be alive with no pants than dead with your pants on. I read that. I think Confucius said that. What would you like to close out with? We've been at it actually for almost three hours.

[Michael]

I just thank you for your service. And at the pointy end of the spear. That's not where I was generally.

[Drew]

I was at the blunt end of the.

[Michael]

The spoon.

[Drew]

But I appreciate the sentiment. Thank you for your service as well. You spent far more time in than I did. Cool. Let's leave it on that. Thank you for making the trip out. Sweet.