A (3:01)

Fair enough. What about your background by the way, in combat simulations? Could you talk about that for a minute?

B (3:07)

Combat simulations? Well, I actually started. One of my first jobs was for FASA Fredonian Aeronautical and Space Administration with Ross Babcock and the legendary Jordan Wiseman. And if you're going to go what? That sounds familiar. It's FASA F A S A. They're the ones that develop the board game the role playing in BattleTech. And I was starting to working with them when they were doing the BattleTech simulator and things didn't work out in Chicago and I ended up coming back to Detroit. But some years later I, I myself and a friend of mine created the Starship Combat Simulator which is something I always wanted to do. This is circa 1992. I mean my fastest computer was a 486SX and we had about 10 of them in the thing and we had 16 screens in the whole thing. These again were tubes and they had to be spaced a certain distance apart otherwise they, they would interfere with each other. I mean, forget this is when LCDs were $25,000 for like a 19 inch. It's like forget that. So wrote and designed a starship combat simulator in which five people flew a starship on a two hour mission. In fact we invented, or I invented our own language for it. It was called Q both because it was omnipotent in a reference to Star Trek's character Q who was omnipotent. But also it was an advanced queuing system que that we got to write all the simulations in and such that we could write out the simulation and what would happen when you were aware what you were faced with, what communication. So you had a captain, you had a. And he had no screen. He was in the captain's chair and then the four people in front of him each had four screens each. So you had helm officer, weapons officer, engineering and operations and operations like ran the shields and everything. Engineering had to allocate power to weapons and helm for ship speed and to engineering for shields. And it was all a fine balance. It was really a lesson in game balance. And game theory. And this was in my basement. So I made a starship simulator in my basement. My buddy's wife was a fantastic artist extraordinaire, and she decorated this thing so beautifully. I mean, you see the pictures of it, you're going like, oh my God, Why that thing looks like it leads off into another room? It's like, no, that was her artwork on the wall. Literally, if when you see the pictures, you think there's a corridor leading off to other places and it's just a painting on the wall. But I had probably near a thousand people over several years go through this thing. And then we wanted to evolve it and make more simulators and connect them. And my partner really found what we call every reason not to, so ended up going nowhere. So I ended up. It just became a really great learning point in my education. Basically, I gave myself a PhD in combat simulation.

A (6:43)

Yeah, that's the thing that I'm impressed with by you, Steven, is that you do so many things and you just put a ton of attention into them and you do them very well. There's nothing that you're doing that you're not doing very well. What do you think is the key to your mindset of just achieving and having curiosity and accomplishing things? Is there some, some kind of secret that you'd be willing to impart to people that they could follow?

B (7:05)

It's not a secret, it's a curse. Listen to Elon speak on Joe Rogan and he was asked, like, how many people in the world think they would like to be Elon Musk? And he pauses and thanks. And he goes, not very many. I mean, you got a brain that doesn't shut off and you're always thinking like on in five dimensions, both back into history and future forward. And you can see nothing but a realm of possibility is around you. And then you deal with companies and other things that are literally. They call, you know, I'm going at the speed of neutrinos. And they literally called the speed of their operation plate tectonic speed. And I'm going like, oh my God. You know, and it can be awfully frustrating to anyone out there. You know, I'll probably have a podcast on this in the future, one of my own. And it's what we call a high speed mentality. And it has to do with desire, drive, want your own set of personal standards. Like, okay, you're never there on time, you're always early for whatever you're doing. You always have contingency time built into whatever you're doing. I was at Chrysler and we had a meeting. My engineering location was Jeep and truck engineering in Detroit, which was the old AMC headquarters. And we had the new Chrysler technical center up in Auburn Hills, which was the world headquarters. I had like a really, really important meeting. It's like a 45 minute drive. And so I left an hour and a half before, 90 minutes before the meeting. And I ended up getting there and I walked right through the door two minutes before the meeting and walked in. I just kind of went like, made it and someone looks at me and goes, well, if you would have left early, you know, you would have been here two minutes before the meeting started. I just looked at him and snapped, I go, I left 90 minutes early for a 45 minute commute. You know, not only was there an accident, but, you know, there was a detour and I had to go around and everything else. I'm here on time because I left early. And it's adhering to all the little things of that little level of, of excellence. It was like we just, you know, got back from an event and I showed up early to help Josh and go around with Andy and get all, all the food for everyone at the event. And I mean, that was, you know, a good 14 hour day and it was last year and it was some of the best part of it, but, you know, it was, yep, let's go, let's get it. And as I say, you know, if you're walking towards someone in the hallway and they drop something, you reach over and pick it up to hand it back to them before they can even realize that they dropped it. You know, it's, it's a high speed mentality, but it has to do with your personal want, your personal drive and canines. We call it ball drive, where, you know, say you got like a black lab. It's like you can throw that ball into the water all day and that black lab will go out and get the ball and bring it back and go, dad, throw it again. Until that black lab is literally like coming back, dropping the ball, laying down, and it's like, oh, you're going to throw the ball again. And it goes out after, you know, again, you know, three hours straight. We call that ball drive. And it has to do with personal wants, personal ambitions. A culture of daily learning is really important. Every day you are learning something, you are in pursuit of something. Is, you know, is that part of your drive? Is that a part of your curiosity? Is that part of, I don't know what would you say that's part of Gabe.

A (11:11)

I'm not sure. I think as you say, it's just a drive, it's a will to will to know and a will to do. And you just have to put it into action.

B (11:20)

Yeah. And you can see why some people that have this, they call it a curse.

A (11:26)

Yeah, certainly. Let's.

B (11:30)

I just.

A (11:32)

Just for.

B (11:32)

We're doing my background when we got interrupted last time.

A (11:36)

Yes. Did you want to say more or. I think we did you want to.

B (11:40)

Say more about that?

A (11:41)

Go for it.

B (11:42)

I started at Chrysler Corporation in 1990, went through it to 2000 and electrical engineering was my original education. And through Chrysler I got exposed to a great deal of manufacturing engineering, mechanical engineering, which is why I have a class called the three Real methods of Wealth Creation on my website. And it's like you won't find them in Google. It has nothing to do with the stock market, it has nothing to do with real estate, has nothing. It's how research and development manufacturing engineers actually take something that is unavailable to the entire population and put it into the real gross domestic product. And that is how you make wealth, not money. And what's like the Chrysler foundry had a saying. They were in Indianapolis and they're the one that poured the engine. We're the only ones in the company that makes anything real. Everyone else just assembles it or paints it.

A (12:42)

Right.

B (12:43)

I got a great deal of manufacturing engineering knowledge through osmosis, through being in the scientific labs doing vehicle development. Again, high speed started back then because we were a six person high paced group doing the thermal analysis of the vehicles and aerodynamics and thermal analysis is like bumper to bumper engineering for the whole vehicle because what part of the vehicle doesn't involve aerodynamics and heat, especially since your only heat sink is the air. Now you get into like what we call NVH noise, vibration and harshness, which. Well, noise comes from the wind. Okay. Literally the wind. Your slipstream going over your windshield wipers. What noise is that making? What noise is it making going past your FM antenna? What noise is it making on your mirrors and everything else. So I got a great deal of mechanical engineering and knowledge through osmosis, through that procedure and then later stages of Chrysler. I got into electrical cad, chemical engineering because I had a professor my own side study in hydrogen and hydrogen manufacturer and all other forms of energy. I've been into energy since people ask me goes, when did you start in energy? I go second grade. And so I got me into electrical chemical engineering because we had problems with the flow of current from the alternator, you know, going throughout the vehicle and coming back. And it's like, well, they would put a grounding cable on your heater core, which is aluminum, because it was causing. There was too much interference being radiated through it because of the electronic ignition system that interfered with your AM radio. Well, that was basically short circuiting the heater core back to the engine block or the frame ground, which was allowing a large amount of electrons to flow through it. Well, when you get electron flow in one direction, you get ion flow in the other, and ions would be pieces of aluminum entering the coolant. And they came up and they were showing us, it's like, yeah, we got a problem with the heater core. And it was like mush. And they were going, we don't know what's causing this. And I put my finger on it and they go, yeah. And we measured 35amps through the grounding strap. And I go, I go, I know what's causing this. Instantaneously I became the electrical chemical person for Chrysler diameter Chrysler person. Because the PhD Indian who was in charge of electrochemistry kept on following asleep in meetings. And since I had the ball drive and the want, it's like I kept on getting the assignments and kept on solving it. To this day, I think I'm the only person to ever measure the resistance from one corner of an engine to another corner of the engine. But this got me to that. And hydrogen manufacturing got me into a great deal of chemistry. It got me into a great deal of electrochemistry that then when I started publishing books on the manufacturing of hydrogen, I'd make videos on the books. And that got me into a great deal. What's called thermal chemistry. This is high temperature, 2000 degrees Fahrenheit and everything else for the manufacture of hydrogen and other compounds from dead trees, branches, leaves, propane, kerosene, diesel, everything, the reformation of it over into another substance that you could then use. And so that kicked me into the entire chemistry field, which I began to just absolutely devour. And that's why my background is in everything from electrical engineering, from circuit board design to component level placement, component level design, RF design, having a ham radio background, which would be, let's see, I've been programming for 44 years in amateur radio for 41. And so, yeah, anyways, then electrical engineering, RF engineering, antenna theory, all the way up into electrical chemical engineering to chemical engineering to thermochemical engineering. And actually some of the consulting I got done doing recently was thermochemical Engineering and the temperatures were literally up to 5,500 Fahrenheit, 3,000 Celsius. Oh, that's, that's a, that's a fun world up there. Oh, that's, that, that, that's fun. I, you just got to love those type of things or like you won't get into it. I mean, whatever it is, chase your passion, chase your desire, and that's how you do it.

A (17:56)

Going back to manufacturing for a moment, what do you think makes people successful is the successful mindset in manufacturing versus the unsuccessful mindset. Or when you, let's say consult or work with these companies, the thing that.

B (18:09)

Is making them fail. And there's a lot of, I mean I have a podcast on the extinction events of major corporations in the United States and the world. I mean everything from the transformation of Standard into Exxon and ExxonMobil, which is not an extinction event yet, it's a transformation. But the Sears, you know, the extinction event of Sears, what caused them? You know, how Sears, if they were forward thinking enough and listened to the fringe rules of acquisition, evolve or die or expand or die, they actually could have taken their Sears catalog and become an online presence such that Amazon would have never existed. You know, if they started their Amazon, the Sears online catalog and with the business model of Amazon before Amazon, Amazon will have never existed or we would have have, you know, two very dominant things online in competition with each other. So instead of Sears being extinct and we have Amazon, we would have had, now we have Amazon, ebay and let's say Walmart to a certain extent. We would have had like Sears and Amazon competing with each other and ebay for another marketplace. And, and it would have been a completely different world and Amazon either would have never came into existence and, or they would have evolved to have competed with Sears Corporation. And the number one thing I find is there's two things people play not invented here syndrome. So the second you, they go, well how would you do this? And it's like I would do it this way and I'd consider doing it with this approach and this and this widget and turn this thing around and turn all your negatives into your positives and they play not invented here syndrome. Since they didn't invent it and come up with it, then they don't want it and it's purely vanity driven and that is just destructive as hell. The other thing they do is they find reasons not to. So you know, it's like you propose they, you want to do something, you're telling them about it. And they go, well, won't that affect the color of the sky? Won't the sky be less blue? Or it's like, you know, what will the space aliens think? And whatever. They will make up any reason in the world to not do it. To the point my consulting to some corporations, they have adapted my vernacular. I call up one of my buddies, Tommy. I go, tommy, it's like, did you talk to so and so about this and that? He goes, yep. I go, well, did they like it or not? And he just goes, man, no, they just found reasons not to. It's like, okay, fine, that's a dead end. And I'm not talking like showstoppers, like it's a violation of physics. Because I was talking to US Army Development Command in regards to some artillery stuff and because I had some stuff, and it's like, you know, there's the potential to throw a 155 howitzer shell over 200 miles instead of the current range. And they go, we understand this and everything else and we're talking about the different aspects of the propellant and, you know, in the stuff and the. And one of the guys goes, what did you calculate for your number of GS of acceleration? I go, about 72,000. He goes, you realize we're down between 30 and 35,000? I go, yes. He goes, at 72,000 GS of acceleration, you'll turn the projectile into a marshmallow in a barrel. I go, you mean that solid, high strength steel forged billet of a projectile? I mean, it's really hard steel and it's heated and then it's forged into its final shape. It's really strong. And I go, you're telling me that thing will turn into a marshmallow and the barrel? He goes, absolutely. So it would deform in the barrel from the acceleration. And I go, well, there's a showstopper right there. You know, I've just pushed the limits of physics for that material science. It's like, yes, we could select a different material science, a different alloy and a few other things, but for what they were using right then, that was pushing the limiting of physics. So that is a showstopper. That's not a reason not to. And most people bring up reasons not to. And the only thing development engineers do with reasons when you find problems is they don't turn it into a reason not to. They turn it into a problem solved. And then they move forward because anything that is new and good is going to be rife with Things that have to be overcome and solved in order for you to move forward. That's why it's called research and development.

A (23:11)

Now you are at heart an engineer and a tech guy, but I've also heard you speak quite knowledgeably about preparedness, we want to call it that, and combat training. So quick question for you and you yourself are a very prepared person. Just curious, what are the things that you have at all times or near you that maybe people can emulate from you? What are the tools, the clothing brands, whatever you want to mention? What are the fundamental things people need to have on them in your view?

B (23:41)

We have. So I started teaching people associated with special operation forces in about 03. And I was teaching. They brought me along because I was teaching satellite communications. And this is back in the day of like 03. And it had to do with began and terminals and in our sat and iridium 9505. And it's like you need a little class on how to use an Iridium satellite phone because it's not just like your regular phone. You got to be outside in a clear area of the sky. It's an international calling sequence or it was. They've made it a little bit easier. And I was working with a bunch of guys and there were all former seals and so one of the things they did is like we were training up someone like dcis because they were going over to Iraq to hunt down people who were stealing and selling sappy plates on ebay. So these would be all ex Marines, ex Rangers, 75th Rangers, couple team guys and such. And so even though my classes and stuff for them was only a couple days, I was down there for a couple of weeks. And they'd like, you know, hey, throw the damn engineer in the class with the students so he knows what they, you know, they're going through. So I got trained up in a lot of this. And then they found out I knew about batteries and energy and power and I started teaching batteries, energy and power. So they understood it as good well as they did bullets, ballistics, minutes of angle and everything else. Because mission success is based upon right now power. If you can't communicate, designate, illuminate, navigate. I got like nine of those eights in there. If you can't do all that, then you can't have mission success. How are you going to like put a dot or find the GPS location or 10 digit grid of your target if the battery in your soft lamp is, is going dead? You don't have radio comms up to the Orbital Cafe for them to start pickling loads and having them drop down on top of your opposition, and they realized they had to know batteries. So I got pulled along in all of this. And as the guys evolved, they kept my phone number and my contacts and I became like their on call science and technology Q and A person. And one of the things we came up with about probably three, four years ago was there is no longer any one best thing out there. That's why I just gave you all that preamble, because I'm working with guys that go into harm's way. And whether or not they come back alive depends upon their training, their knowledge, as well as what they have, and their knowledge of how to use and adapt what they have. So, like, you want to go and go to some YouTuber or Facebook preparedness group is going, well, you need to have a flashlight and you need to have a multi tool, and you need. It's like, no, it's like there is no longer any one best thing because it's like, I'm living in Michigan. You know, you're living in Antarctica. Someone else is living in Mexico. Someone else is in the Canadian Northwest Territories. Someone else is, you know, down on the beaches of Panama, a jungle environment. Someone else is a sailboat or sailing around the world. And nice saying the sailboaters have is when something goes wrong, we can't walk home. So all these different people are going to have different things that they need first more than anything else. And, you know, the common tropes. Jim Phillips, who was a legendary preparedness teacher and a lot of stuff I learned, I learned from him, evolved it as well as Crescent and my own stuff. And, you know, it's a mishmash, but, you know, you'd go like, what's the most important thing in preparedness? Water. People would say. Someone else would go, fire. And someone else would say, you know, multi tool or flashlight. And it's like, no, the most important thing, according to the legendary Jim Phillips, who unfortunately is now deceased, is clothing. What will kill you first? Well, I'll die of thirst in one to three days, I'll die of, you know, lack of food. And seven to 28 days, you'll die of exposure. In Montana, if your car breaks down and your engine doesn't run and you're outside and you're in a blizzard with a 35 mile per hour wind and it's 10 degrees Fahrenheit, you'll die of exposure wearing your fall winter jacket because you were going to grandma's on Thanksgiving in 30 minutes or less. I mean you're going to be completely inoperative and then on your way towards Death very quickly. If I, we were in Death Valley doing vehicle testing. And so you drive into Death Valley, you, you go through Nevada and you make a right hand turn of the Cherry Patch Ranch and you head in on the flat land towards Furnace Creek in Death Valley. You go towards Stovepipe Wells, you go past Stovepipe Wells which is one Motel one, one county store. And then you begin to go up this hill called Towns Pass and it's a 5,000 foot rise at a 7 1/2% grade. Well, if you are in your Dodge Ram towing a trailer and you're at maximum weight, you come in on the flatlands and it's 118 degrees outside, you have to be able to go up that hill. The vehicle has to be engineered such that you, you can make it up that hill and the vehicle is not going to puke its coolant or die on you. Because where we're going up that hill and all of Death Valley in August is all foreigners. You can go to Furnace Creek to go hotel and go into the restaurant. You won't hear English being spoken except by us because all the Europeans are on vacation in August and they all want to go and experience the west or a portion of them, this is back in the 90s. And so they would go to Death Valley. So you know, we only have a limited number of days for testing. We, the weather waits for no one. So we, my boss and I, we were in a, a Dodge B van and we're pulling a trailer behind us at whatever the maximum gross vehicle weight of the trailer. We had water dummies in the vehicle to simulate like eight total passengers in the vehicle and some more weight thrown in. So the vehicle and the trailer were at maximum GC VW gross combined vehicle weight. And we're going up and we're working. It's like we're going wide open throttle, second gear, air conditioner is failing. But we're staying within all the temperature limits for the engine oil, transmission fluid, coolant temperature, top tank, bottom tank. It's like, yeah, vehicle is, you know, the vehicle is operating within, you know, its limits. It's like we're pushing the limits, but we're within the engineering limits. And so it's, this is not a trivial thing to stop, but we're going by and there was this guy and his wife and his family broken down on the side of the road going up Towns Pass out of Death Valley. And it's like it was 118 at the bottom of the hill. Birds literally would walk in your shadow. That's how hot it is. And he just goes, abort test, Abort test. Abort test. And it's like, immediately I turn off. Actually, I left the data acquisition running because I wanted to catch the vehicle cooling down. But he threw it. You know, he dropped it out of low gear and pulled over. And we pulled over and we walked back. And it was a French family, and. And. And my boss spoke some French because he was at AMC when Renault bought amc, so he knew conversational French. And the guy was going, we're talking to him is like, get. He understood the vehicle. His vehicle died. Okay? His vehicle just didn't overheat. It, like, overheated and then threw a rod. And it wasn't one of ours. It was not a Chrysler product. You know, it was a foreign product. And we kept on telling them, get your kids and your wife and get in our vehicle. We'll turn around and drive you down to Stovepipe Wells, where there is a payphone. Cell phones were not ubiquitous at this time. And there's a payphone and there's air conditioning, and they got ice cream and cold beverages, and there's a motel right across, and you can call whomever and they can come and your rental vehicle or whatever. So what that. And the guy kept on insisting, oh, no, I can see it right there. We just walked down the hill and we'll. We'll be there. Well, I mean, you can see forever in Death Valley. You can literally see 100 miles. So looking at the country store down Stovepipe Wells, which was easily 10 miles away, it's like, no, no, sir, you will not walk there. You will be dead before you can walk there. And there really wasn't much traffic out there either. It wasn't like one car after another. It was them and it was us and other vehicle companies out there doing testing, and not always at the same time. And so we ended up basically almost forcibly throwing them into the van and taking them down there and making sure they got into communications with whomever. But so what that man needed and needed to have on him was dramatically different than anything else. As Jim Phillips says, your number one requirement is clothing. Clothing is your mobile, personal shelter, because the environment will kill you first before anything else. It's like, if you fall out of your sailboat, how long can you tread water? So an automatic inflation vest would be, like, one of your number one priorities. If you're On a sailboat for this guy, it would be water and coverage hats and stuff so they don't get sunburn and sunscreen and some form of communications, obviously. But since we're talking circa 1992, again, cell phones were not ubiquitous and literally in Death Valley you hit scan on AM or fm, it just spins forever. You can't pick up anything. So not even a CB radio back in the day would have been of good for him. And so, and it's like we take you, Gabe, driving through Montana, you know, and it's December or January and you're in the middle of a blizzard, but you're on the way to grandma's house, which is only a two hour commute for you. And it's something you do every year. And it's like, oh, no big deal. But this year you get a freak bomb cyclone going through and it's like, oh, it's white out and snow drifts, you know, you hit a snow drift that you didn't realize was there, you go off into the side of the road and you go into the ditch enough that your vehicle is now immobile. And the safety systems of the vehicle is like, said you've had a collision that shuts off the engine and everything else, which is a serious violation of the engineering standards for not to allow you to be able to restart the vehicle to keep yourself either warm or cool. So, you know, based upon these examples, and plus, you know, it's like, okay, what are your students doing? Are they like locking out of a submarine at 100ft down? Are they on a, are they on a go fast, you know, or a riv on top of the ocean surface and going into a country? Are they in a, are they in a tropical environment? Are they in a desert environment? Are they in an arctic environment? Are they in some place miserable like England, you know, cloudy and rainy and cool? Are they, you know, in the, you know, in Alaska, you know, or the Northwest Territories or Hudson Bay, you know, it's like, where are you? And it's like, what are you doing? It's like, are you out on your own and you're not going to be resupplied? Do you have a resupply train behind you? Are you in Iraq in combat? You know, Allah, the Operation Iraqi freedom in the 2000s? It's like, do you have a supply train behind you? It's like, are you foot mobile? Are you vehicle mobile? It's like, what I have on me and what I have in my vehicle are like two different things because I'M not having everything on me. If I'm in the vehicle, there's things on me which is usually such that I can find the things that are in my vehicle. So, you know, I have two flashlights on me. I got my main flashlight in my right pocket and I got like a single AA flashlight in my left pocket. And I pulled out my super duper fancy flashlight in my right pocket. For whatever reason, it didn't work. And so I immediately reached in my left pocket, pulled out my push button stream light that has solid click on and click off, turned it on and, you know, continued with what I had to do. And then I figured out that my smart flashlight decided to shut itself off even though the battery was fully charged and everything else. So there is no one, right? There is no longer anyone, any best item. There is no longer anything for you to have on you. It changes hour to hour, day the day, week to week, season to season. Am I walking around the block? Am I going for a 10 mile or 10 kilometer race or jog is part of that rural. And the start line, the finish line is in the city. But we're jogging around the country and coming back around. Are there any support vehicles or is it like a thing that me and 10 other people are doing? Are you going to be traveling on a plane? You know, Gabriel, I mean, how much does what you carry with you change whether you're driving someplace or taking an airplane someplace?

A (39:10)

Completely. Yeah, you can't, you know, you can't take anything you want in an airplane, obviously.

B (39:15)

Yeah, yeah. And it's like you start going down your, you know, your hierarchy of things, and it's like the first thing you need is you need to be able to breathe. That's number one. Okay. That's going to knock you out in 30 seconds to three minutes, you know, not being able to breathe. In fact, if someone was to practice jujitsu and choke you out, basically you're out in like six to eight seconds by restricting the blood flow, you know, to your head. So actually breathing and not bleeding out, you know, as an artist, like, oh, my arm, it just disappeared. You got like three arteries spurting. Well, obviously you extenuating out is going to be knocking you out. And single digit tens of seconds, 10, 20, 30 seconds, you're going to be passed out, never mind not being able to breathe. So it's like, are you anticipating, you know, are you anticipating being shot? No. Okay, let's not worry about the tourniquet. And it's like when I was in the sheriff Reserve. I carried like four tourniquets on me because I actually had a full T trip C, Tactical combat casualty care, stuffing wounds and tourniqueting and, you know, all that nice stuff, stopping catastrophic blood loss. And so that was one of my priorities. It's like I was wearing a gun, I was wearing a bulletproof vest and I was wearing a uniform that said shoot me. And so having tourniquets was, you know, a high priority. Now if I'm a host puller, which is what cops call firemen, or let's say, Gabriel, you're going over to. Do you remember the paradise fire that killed over 100 people in California?

A (40:56)

Yes.

B (40:56)

Okay, let's say preparedness related. It's like your grandmother was in paradise. Okay. And let's say you were living in like Reno, Nevada. Okay. Close enough to California, but yet not in California. Okay. And it's like, it's like, Gabriel, I need some help. It's like there's a fire and it could be coming my way. It's like it might be here tomorrow. So what's one of the requirements? Breathing. Okay. If you can't breathe, you're going to lose consciousness within minutes. So one of the things that can cripple you is smoke particles in your eyes, which is why a lot of guys I know actually have swim goggles in their travel gear. So if there's a fire in the hotel, they can actually still see even if they're coughing on the smoke, because those particulates get in your eyes. And even if you're coughing and moving, what good is it if you can't see? So if you're going down to Grandma's, maybe you're going to take a Mira or an Israeli gas mask or even a Nova or a better one with you with 40 millimeter canisters. Because it's like, if you. It's like, well, the fire's at. Not at Grandma's yet, but I'm going to have to drive through an area that has not the fire yet, but has the wind blowing the smoke completely over it. It's like I'm going to get the grandma. I'm going to take the back roads and everything else. And let me tell you, as someone who studied wind noise in vehicles by setting off gigantic smoke bombs inside of vehicles to see where all the smoke came out. Let me tell you, a vehicle is extremely leaky, okay? It's not a sealed environment. And therefore, I don't care what they say about your in cabin air filter smoke is going to get into your cabin, especially when it's like that density. So Gabriel may very well wanting a gas mask such that his eyes don't get contaminated and he has his vision obstructed from particulates. And he's not choking on particulates and coughing while he's trying to call grandma on his cell phone. Because you got a wireless earbud in each ear so you can talk through your phone to grandma via Bluetooth. Right, Gabe?

A (43:25)

Of course.

B (43:26)

So anyways, you're going to be having that with you. So that's protecting, you know. So we covered clothing and why? Because of cold, hot and other situations. Then we got airway and breathing. So that's important. Well, like the guy on Townspass and Death Valley, he probably didn't have anywhere near the amount of water. In fact, the same mentor of mine, Edwin York, they would launch missiles, sounding rockets out of where like the Nellis Air Force Base area was. And they were doing upper atmospheric research. In fact, he discovered the Van Allen radiation belts, but he never identified them. So they were almost called the Edwin York radiation belts rather than the Van Allen radiation belts. So the rocket would go up and then it would come down, and it would come down way down range. So he actually, you know, would go out with a buddy in a jeep and to go find the rocket. And he actually had to travel into Area 51, Groom Lake, before there was anything there, because his rockets would go that far. And so do you know, in the late 40s and early 50s, how did you find a rocket that went, you know, 125 miles downrange? No, no GPS, no radio beacon, none of that. They put like, you know, an ounce of hamburger meat in there. So when the rocket landed, it would rot. And they'd look for the Vulture circle, you know, going above the rocket. And that was their indication what direction to go for the rocket. So anyways, my point was that he studied the amount of water you needed in a Nevada desert environment. Not quite as bad as Death Valley, but still 100 plus degrees, high sun loads, and driving in a Jeep that is not protecting you from the 40, 50 mile per hour wind going by you. They took five gallons of water per person per day. So they would literally load up a cooler with, you know, they knew it was going to take them a day to go out and back. So they would take two days plus of water per person, two of them, and they would load up a cooler full of water and ice because the ice melts, becomes water, and the allocation was 5 gallons per day for each of them being active in a desert environment. In fact, when I was in Arizona doing vehicle testing, they got construction crews on the road in the summertime and one time I was stuck in traffic and there was construction and I just pulled over, I went up and talked to the guy in charge because they have these big orange coolers on like all the vehicles where you can go and get water. And I asked them how much did they allocate per person per day out in Arizona for the road crew? Which is definitely a whole day hard days worth of work. And he said, you know, five plus gallons plus more plus spare for you know, every person out there is what, what they had. So it's hard to say what is the number one best things that you have on you. It's like, okay, I hate multi tools with a passion because all they are is a damn good pair of pliers, they're a piss poor screwdriver and they're a piss poor knife and they're a piss poor pair of scissors and they're an okay pair of, you know, light wire cutters. And it's like if you're going out and if you're going out and to do something and you know you're going to need a screwdriver, then you take a frickin screwdriver. Because when the guys would come in for the class I go, okay, let's see who's got the best multi tool. Everyone pull out their multi tool. And they'd all pull them out, put them down. I'd go by and collect them all in a basket, throw them in a hallway. I go, you just lost your multi tool, what are you going to do now? And I had a whole collection of like I've collected and bought like every screwdriver you can think of. Especially the small ones like the Dewalt and the Milwaukee and the Chinese ones where it's like the size of a golf ball and all the bits go into the ball. So you can have a real screwdriver sometimes ratcheting, that's like a real Phillips or a small Phillips or a pointed Phillips or a fat Phillips and or you know, a good blade screwdriver or a Torx and that, you know, and even those won't even touch my laptop. It's like Gabe, when you travel with your laptop, do you carry a miniature screwdriver set with you in case you have to like open it up and it's like, you know, your NVME got bricked and it's like, okay, I gotta you know, take my spare NVMe or go buy one, open it up, drop it in, take my backup boot drive that I travel with, which has my recovery software on it, boot off the USB drive through Lightning 4. Wait, not lightning, thunder. Thunderbolt 4. And then, you know, the computer sees it, boots it up and it's like, oh, you're booting up in recovery mode. Would you like to take me the image that you saved off nine hours ago and reflash your C drive? Yes, please. You know, and you recover it. So if I'm traveling, I have a small set of screwdrivers, a set of really small screwdrivers for my laptop, where the bits are small enough for me to get into my laptop to replace the drive or the memory or to do something that requires opening the drive. Otherwise the second your laptop goes kaput, your kaput at 2am in the morning and you can't do anything until anything else opens up. So what you are carrying with you is not only the environment, it's not only the situation, it's not only what you're doing and going to be doing and where you are in the world. It's what you have on you. It's like, what do you have on you that is going to require it being repaired, fixed, reconfigured, frequency changed, etc. And so you know that you start making a matrix of all these different things and it's like the comm guy is not carrying the same thing as the shooter, you know, and the shooter is not carrying the same stuff as the breacher. They all have their different things for that mission, that application, that adventure that they're going on, that hike, that bike ride, that trip across the country that you're doing, you know, going to the Grand Canyon, you got different things on you for every different situation. It's like, Gabe, you and I, let's go on an adventure. Let's drive the yellow knife in January. Or like Gabe, hey, let's go on adventure and see Meteor crater and the Grand Canyon in Arizona in July. I'll take you to my favorite hotel I stayed at when I was at Chrysler Corporation in, in Arizona. And it's like, wouldn't our vehicle have a different, you know, backup and configuration for going to the Grand Canyon versus going to Yellowknife in the wintertime.

A (51:24)

Absolutely. Yeah.

B (51:26)

Yeah. So the answer is, what's the best thing to have? And it's like, there is no best thing to have. There is no one thing to have. The best thing to have is a knowledge of what you need, what you're doing, what can go wrong, and what you need to fix it. So it's like, okay, I got two forms of light on me. What are those for? Well, those are for me to get to my other things that I have with me on my donkey or on my, you know, I might have a, you know, if I had a Malinois, I might have a pack on the Malinois that it's carrying some stuff. You know, maybe my. My cat has some things on it or, you know, stuff in my vehicle or whatever. So the light allows me to get to my better sources of light so I can open up the hood and, you know, look into it better. And it's like, okay, what' going on? Is my. Is my main serpentine belt broken? Is it loose? You know, is. Is. Is the radiator pressurized? You know, take a pair of gloves, leather gloves, squeeze the top hose, and it's like, oh, it's pressurized. Okay, Nothing dripping. That's good. And it's like, you know, what is wrong? What's making that noise? If you ever heard the power steering pump going low on fluid or bad, it's an unmistakable noise. And it's like, oh, my power steering is leaking. Good thing I got an extra can of it, you know, in my kit in the back of the vehicle. So fill it up full of power steering, get myself to the next town, find a 24 hour Walmart and get more power steering fluid. Go and check into a hotel or drive to a larger city and then take it in to some place to get fixed. So your configuration changes. And a lot of it is based upon what do I need right now? What do I need? Like the old saying goes, you know, the only reason for a pistol is to fight yourself to the point where you get a rifle. Right? Sure, it's same thing. Why do I have two flashlights on me? Two is one, one is none. Three is for me, four is even more. Five, I make it home alive. Six is good mix. Seven is heaven. Eight, I don't make a mistake. Nine is also fine. With 10, I don't go to the store again. Yeah, it started off as they taught me, two is one, one is none. And then like when I was on the survival podcast with Jack Spiritko, I kept on making another one. He'd always ask me, like, steve, what are you up to now? You know, it's like I had to keep on inventing that. Those sayings out further and further and further.

A (54:01)

I love it.

B (54:03)

And so the answer Is there is no answer because it's solely based upon you. Are you on a sailboat? If you're on a sailboat, you're going to want, first of all, you're going to want to have your Mustang self inflating life preserver on you and you're going to want to have an EPIRB on you, a water activated epirb. So the second you fall off the boat, the EPIRB automatically signals to the satellite, a digital one, saying here in the national, the Coast Guard and National Emergency Response center, they all get the EPIRB signal. It's like, well, the guy's 50 miles off of Florida towards the Bahamas, you know, Coast Guard station Fort Lauderdale, you know, spin up your, your Blackhawk equivalent, Seahawk and it's like, go after this person. It's like you're sitting there and it's like, damn, I should have packed some bourbon while I'm waiting because you know they're going to come and get you, you know, and next thing you know, there's the helicopter over you, either the 60 or the dolphin and you know, and the rescue swimmers lowering down the harness for you to put your arms through and you know, to raise you up into the helicopter and you know, get you back home. So I didn't even say water. I mean, if you're off the coast of Florida, you want the self inflating vest, especially if the surface, if the wave of the sea state's high and you want to have the automatic EPIRB going off and it's like, I'm going to be rescued within an hour. You know, it's like, why do I, you know, why do I need water? That's why I said, I wish I had some bourbon, you know, so it's like, okay, are you going to be, how far off the coast are you going to be? You're going to be in international waters, are you going to be in domestic waters? It's like, can you, you see the skyline of Miami? All of that changes your situation. You want to give me another example?

A (56:06)

I think that's a good sampling of your preparedness mindset, for sure. I wanted to ask you about some privacy questions, actually.

B (56:15)

Oh yeah, that's what we were initially going to talk about. I mean, it's called the Watchman privacy podcast, isn't it?

A (56:21)

It is, it is. But I also want to just hear your thoughts on a variety of things. Answer me this. Your what are the things that are going to basically take away our ability to be private in a short Period of time here. If. If that's not already gone, it's all right.

B (56:37)

It's already gone. For your average citizen, it's already gone. Some friends of mine were doing some experiments, and so they would pick obtuse names of animals, and it's like they'd be having a conversation in the room, and it's like they'd have their Alexa unit on. These are like high speed, you know, team guys. Okay. It's like they're testing the crap. So the computer was off, phones were outside, nothing else on there but the Alexa. And they'd have conversations about platypuses. Now, how often does a platypus come up in normal conversation?

A (57:21)

Once every 10 years.

B (57:22)

Yeah, right, right. They're talking about. Oh, yeah, yeah. My daughter, she loves platypuses. For whatever reason, she thinks they're the cutest things in the world and she wanted me to get some books on them. And she's been watching YouTube videos on platypuses. And there's a platypus rescue foundation, but it's not in the United States because she wanted to go see one. We found out that at the zoo, you know, two hours in the city away from us, one. So we're gonna do a daddy daughter trip and like, we're gonna go to the zoo and make a day of it and go see the platypus and everything else. And then they'd pick like another animal and it's. And. And it'd be. And it's like they just have their phones with them in the room, like one iPhone, one Android. And they'd be talking about, oh, the turtles and everything and the turtle rescue efforts and what Elon did during the big storm in Texas, you know, turtles and everything else. And then they would do the same thing with like another animal, like zebras and, you know, zebra conservation. And the only thing on was like their Microsoft Windows laptop in the room. Everything else was. There was no Alexa, no phones, anything in the room. And they would see what started popping up. You know, you're just surfing like CNN or something. It's like, I mean, I know, please forgive me for saying that. Anyways, they'd be on like a common public pad plum website, and they would see what would pop up in the advertisements. And sure enough, platypuses popped up. And, you know, and then again, other things popped up at different times. But yeah, they were. They were testing to see what was listening to them, you know, And a lot of it is. I mean, it's like, what was what was the one app that was known for, like, having the most permissions? It was either a mapping app, oh wait, some other innocuous app, but it had permission for like everything. And all it was was a honeypot to suck information out of you. And it wasn't for, you know, NSA or government or any first world nation intelligence service or anything. It was for they were selling the advertising data. You know, it was just people who wrote the app to listen to you, to figure out that crap about you so they could track your website you're going to and what you're talking about, so they could sell that information to other entities that were doing digital marketing. You know, the big data brokers and the data houses and everything else. It's like I was in a hospital recently for a minor thing, but it required me. I called a paramedic friend of mine, he goes, yeah, you're an ER trip, Steve. Go to the hospital. And I was in a state that I'm not normally in. I was in a great deal of distress. And I go into the hospital and it's like, okay, it's an eight hour event by time you're all in and discharged and everything else. And it's like the phone number I gave him was one of my main phone numbers that I only use for very close friends, family, banks and doctors and hospitals, you know, and it's like, so when you're in distress and they're going, what's your name, your address, your Social Security number, what's your phone number? It's like you're just rattling this off by unconscious competence or rote memory. It's like, anything you'll tell them anything to get them to give you the damn morphine because you hurt so bad. Well, I started getting these advertisements, I mean, I started getting these texts because my insurance didn't cover me in that state. So as far as that hospital was concerned, I was uninsured. Yet the law says my insurance has to cover emergencies in the other, other states. So since I was an ambulance trip to the er, I have to submit all the bills and everything to the end my insurance company, and they'll verify and they'll cover it. So I kept on getting these. It's like, wait, I don't get spam on this number. Spam text. Why am I getting spam texts offering me insurance? I was like, oh, the bills were coming in to my address for the ambulance, for the radiological, for the radiology, for, you know, the CAT scan and the X ray. They were coming in for the hospital network I was in, they were coming in from like these six different entities. And then, you know, I stopped ignoring the text and I sent one back. And it's like, yes, I'd be very interested in insurance for my company. So I start doing open source intelligence, background checking on the phone numbers. Does it lead to a person or some other VoIP provider and everything else? And they go, there are somebody. It's like, well, we can have my manager, you know, call you about, you know, insurance for yourself and everything else. It's like, yeah, there's one of the big, you know, what comes to mind when they say to you, Gabe, when they say, well, I'm going to pass you off to my manager. It's like, okay, yeah, right. This is a scam, right?

A (63:09)

Yeah.

B (63:10)

So. And it's like, oh, well, with all the spam these days and everything, I only answer phone calls from people I know. What's the name of your manager and what's their phone number? So I know the calls from them, and so they give me the person's name and their phone number. So I was like on background, checking the name, it doesn't exist. And the phone number not associated with them, associated with a voip and everything else. And I go, well, how do I know? It's like I'm in a different state, okay? And I'm like a thousand miles away from where I was in the hospital. And I go, well, every state's different. How do I know you offer insurance for my state? And she goes, oh, we offer insurance for the state. And this is the state that I was in in the hospital, not the state that I live in. It's like, okay, I've socialed you enough to know that someone within that hospital network, billing network, third party company or something, was selling my information. It's like, you know, what do you think the name of a person who's quote, uninsured, unquote, would be of value to someone selling or scamming insurance? Gabe, what do you think my name and number and details would be worth? A buck, five bucks, ten bucks?

A (64:40)

It's worth something, that's for sure.

B (64:42)

Yeah, I mean, it's probably, you know, between one and $10 or one and $20, you know, for a lead, to either scam me or to legitimately sell me insurance. So I go online, I look up who is the ciso, the chief information security officer for this hospital network, and it's like, oh, okay. And so I call up the main number for the hospital, I go Will you please transfer me. Transfer me to the Office of so and so? It's like, certainly. And I get his voicemail. Turns out he's on sick leave because one of his kids got sick. And it's like, hey, I got inside information. I was in your hospital, Great hospital. And it turns out looks like either you're hacked and you don't know it, hacked and you know it, or someone in your hospital or someone in the billing network for one of your other services, like radiology and imaging, and someone else or the ambulance network is selling my information. And here's what I have. And, like, I'm 85% confident that the leak came from you. And they're like, we don't get these phone calls like this every day. I go, no. It's like, do you want to find the leak and patch it, or do you just want me to find a file a HIPAA complaint? And they go, oh, no. Oh, no. We'd be happy to work with you and find out where this leak is coming from.

A (66:16)

Right.

B (66:18)

So where did we start off? You know, you know, your leaks of your personal security, and, you know, a lot of it, you know, has to do with marketing and private actors, you know, trying to monetize you by. You downloaded a calculator app, and you didn't realize that the calculator app, which was free, you know, opened up all of the permissions on your phone to everything to them. Your microphone, your camera, you know, access to your external storage, you know, your. Your web history, your location data, and everything else. It's like, now the phones are, you know, pretty good. It's like, do you want to allow access to, you know, these things to this app? And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Well, the mapping app, yes, but only when the app is active. And, I mean, if you're using Waze, it's kind of hard to use Waze, which is a pretty darn decent navigation app for your car, especially since it tells you about all the police and accidents and the traffic backups and everything else ahead of you and tries to reroute you. It's like, that's something you would say, yes, you can have access to my location or while I'm running you. And. But even though you're saying no to all these permissions, it doesn't mean they don't have a workaround to get around you saying no. Right. Yeah.

A (67:43)

Yeah. You should expect if something's on your. On your phone, that it's a potential issue whether or not you've given it various permissions.

B (67:51)

Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, already you've lost a great deal of your privacy. If you own a phone, basically, you're being monitored. If you don't put that into a radiation shielding bag to shield its emissions from receiving and sending things sometimes falsely called a Faraday bag. But that's the concept behind it. But the real reason is to prevent it talking to other things or other things talking to it. So if you make an arrest and your law enforcement officer and you're arresting some druggies or whatever, immediately take their phones and they. You throw them into radio frequency shielding bags so that you know, they're being tracked by their handler with the drug dealer. And it's like, oh, they got pulled over. And it's like, okay, sending automatic signal to erase and reboot the phone now, you know, you want to take their phone and throw it into the bag so it can't get that signal from whoever is watching them. You know, erase their phone and thus any message history, communications, phone numbers, even if it is going to their burners and everything else, you know, they want all that erased. So that's why police throw your electronic device into a shielded bag or box so it can't get the erase command. And it's like, already. I mean, drug mules have been. They've been putting airtags into drugs as long as they've been out. You've seen many of the YouTubers, like, put an air tag in a package and send it to, you know, Kim Jong Un in North Korea, you know, and watch DHL trying to make the, you know, watch it go to China and then, you know, go to the airport in China. And it's like, you know, it won't make the hop over to North Korea because they weren't shipping into North Korea because it was during COVID And I mean, one of our favorite people did it on YouTube. It was what Dave Bombardi, all things secured. One of the guy, one of the guys did, did it and got famous for it. He sent one to Tim Cook at Apple. You know, he sent like half a dozen of them. And he had an update every week of where are my air tags that I sent to all these impossible locations in a package?

A (70:16)

Why is the Ring Doorbell the killer app, as you say? For privacy?

B (70:22)

Because you now know who's at your front door when you're not home. And you can talk to them and. Or see them as if you're not at home. As if you're at home without looking out through your peephole. And one of the problems for privacy is this, is that if you have a WYZE camera ecosystem, and it's one of the ones I play with, I mean, the AI on the WYZE system, you know, it's all cloud based and everything else it does record locally, but, I mean, all the AI is cloud based. It's like, I can say bicycle, and it'll show me all the times people gone by my house riding a bicycle in the last two weeks. I can say, you know, red car. It'll show me literally all the red cars. I can say airplane. It'll show me all the airplanes. I say, you know, cat. It'll literally show me all cats. I can say dogs. They'll say, or show me all dogs. And sometimes it confuses the skunk and the possum for a cat, but, you know, it'll show it to me as a pet. Well, one of the things wise does and will alert you to is gunshot detection. And there used to be a thing in the cities still are, called shot detectors. And they used them on high crime neighborhoods. And they would triangulate where the shot came from. And there's actually a science behind it. I knew one of the guys at Raytheon that did the shot detector that was on the military vehicles to say that shot came from 2 o' clock in direction. And it's a combination of the regular microphone picking up the supersonic crack along with the subsonic sound of the gunshot. And it can infer a lot of information from that so it knows it's a real shot and not just a car backfire. Are you dropping a 2x4 onto concrete? You know how loud that can be? A slam like that, it can tell the difference. Of course, I had to get cursed at by this guy because he goes, man, there's nothing. Because there's nothing supersonic in nature. And I raised my hand, I go, meteor, you know, and all other people in the room circle, damn, Harris. Jesus. Just like, keep your mouth shut, you know? Yeah, I just had to tell the guy something in nature that went supersonic. So anyways, even my apple watch lets me know if I'm in a loud environment. It typically does this when I'm in the shower. And because it. And if I'm just in any other loud environment, let's say I crank up the Metallica as I'm sitting there working on some code or something, it'll say, you're in a loud environment. It's like, no kidding, idiot. I'm Half deaf, you know. And so the idea is that now your WYZE cameras, it's an active selection. Do you want to be notified if there's the gunshot detected? Because the WYZE camera will also pick up your smoke detector and your carbon monoxide detector, both of which have separate beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beeps. Notice all the smoke detectors you've ever heard in your life have the same beep to them, don't they? It's a very, very annoying beep. Well, the carbon monoxide detectors have a different beep. So the WYZE camera will alert you. Let's say you're down in Cancun enjoying the vacation, right? And you sitting there, down there on the beach. You got your phone with you and your pocket. You're listening to some tunes on your earbuds, just watching, you know, the people walk by and the waves and the surf. And also you get this notification, this urgent notification on your phone that says, smoke detector is going off in your house. It's like, okay, you get on your phone, you look through your WYZE cam. It's like, damn, there's not supposed to be anyone in my house. You see smoke in the house, and you know there's someone coming over to look after your dog twice a day, and your dog's running around all confused. And you hit contact emergency services, and it actually connects you with your local 911, even though you're in Cancun and says, you go, hey, my cameras are showing that there's a fire in my house and the smoke detectors are going off. Will you please send fire, you know, to my address? And just to make sure, you know, this is my address. And it's like, rolling fire now. Sir, do we need to roll ems? It's like, well, yeah, the dog might need some oxygen. So the thing is these. All of our devices are listening to us. And now we're being able to actively select notify me of a gunshot. So one of the things is, okay, soon you're. You're. Now your cameras are doing it soon. Your doorbells are doing it. Soon. My Apple Watch or your Google Watch or your other smart watch is going to have a gunshot detector in it. Then your phone is going to have in it. Then someone's going to pass the law that there has to be gunshot identification and like all these electronic devices, and it has to go to the Central Repository of Notifications of Firearm action alert system, etc. That way, it's for the children in case there's like an active shoot. All the children's watches will start going off, you know, reporting gunfire in the school and where it is and all the other stuff. You know, they'll make a reason for this to be automated and record reporting. Just as these morons passed a law that your vehicle has to be able to detect a drowsy drunk or distracted driver. Okay, that law is going into effect in like 2 and a half years. And it's just like you're. And this is for regular vehicles, not self driving vehicles, not autonomous driving vehicles or whatever you want to put on it. You know, your lane assist on your GM vs Full Autonomous vs what's the Tesla mode called, Abe? Gabe?

A (76:42)

I'm blanking on it.

B (76:44)

Fsd. Full self driving.

A (76:47)

Right.

B (76:48)

Okay. So anyways, yeah, so regular vehicles and they're going to have to either try to wake you up and over take control of the vehicle and pull you over and turn the car off. And it's like, talk about intrusion into your life. This is coming into your vehicle that you're going to buy. And right now all your vehicles with your, you know, smart dashboard, not, you know, how they've emulated the Tesla and it's like, oh gee, we can, you know, how much, how expensive switches and controls and everything are for your entire dash and everything is, those are things are pretty darn expensive. And there's individual molds for all of them. Kind of easier just to go to an electronic touchscreen and everything else. Well, now they have an electronic touchscreen. They got a computer in your car and you've seen people hack them and play Doom on a Tesla, haven't you?

A (77:44)

I have, yes.

B (77:45)

Yeah, well, they all have SIM chips in them either because you've subscribed to having a hotspot in your vehicle so you can surf the Internet while you're going out. But the thing is, we had something called the World Duty cycle in the 90s. We didn't know what everyone did with their vehicles because the second the vehicle came off the assembly line, it could be going, you could have went down to your dealership in Detroit, got your vehicle and you could have headed off and drove to Cancun or Panama or, you know, all the way down to the Darien Gap. Or you could have driven all the way up, you know, the Elkana highway to Alaska in summer or in the wintertime. You could have gone to Furnace Creek in Death Valley or still Pipe Wells in the summertime or the wintertime. Or you could have gone up to Bemidji Minnesota or Yellowknife in the wintertime, you know, we don't know where your vehicle is going. And it's like for you soccer moms, like, how many miles do you drive a day? Where are you going? How many of your miles are within city limits? And so many of them are highways. And we actually had people in the 90s that would sign up for what's called the World or the USA duty cycle program. And we'd literally have like a few full PC. So it'd be like a 386486 computer, small one in the trunk of their vehicle with a GPS antenna on it. And they would literally have to run a phone cord every night from their house. So Chrysler paid for a phone installer to go over to your house, extend your phone line into your garage, and give you a cable that you could plug that would go from the wall jack. You could open your trunk and plug it into the computer and plug in power such that it would download to Chrysler what you did that day. So we would get an idea of what your duty cycle was so we could apply it to the population, because that's how we engineer a vehicle. It's got to be engineered such that 95% of what everyone will do with the vehicle it's engineered to do for. And how can we do that unless we know what people are doing? And they got paid to do this. The participants, they got paid handsomely to allow us to do this and literally put in a second phone line, pay for it. And the last thing we want is their teenage daughter picking up the phone just when the two modems are trying to talk to each other just so we could get an idea. Well, now, started with OnStar. OnStar tracks you. OnStar knows what's going on. OnStar can listen to you. It's like, you know. And you can make emergency calls via OnStar. In fact, you get an accent. OnStar makes a phone call for you to GM OnStar that you were in an accident. And they'll call emergency services if you don't respond, because they know who you are and where you are. Now, friends of mine that are paramedics, they show up to an accident. Accident. It's like the minivan is upside down in the ditch. So they went off the road and it like it rolled over in the ditch. No big crash. Like it rolled over. And it's getting to a stop. And the ambulance shows up. Fire department shows up. And they cut off the side curtain airbag, which is always inflated when it goes off, which is one of the biggest saviors of traumatic brain injury to the human head, is a side curtain airbag. Because when you roll over or get a side hit, your head goes into the B pillar pretty hard. The front pillar between your windshield and your in your door is called A pillar. Next one back is B pillar, next one back, C pillar. So anyways, Ford and GM and Chrysler, that doesn't exist anymore. Stellantis or whatever they call and Toyota, everything else, they figured out that if they track where you go when, where, how fast you drive and everything, what stores you go to. Because if you're parked in that parking lot, it's obvious you're going into Kroger, it's obvious you're going into Trader Joe's, or it's obvious you're going into Walmart, or it's obvious that you're probably either going to the pizza place Great Clips or the, you know, the other restaurant next to it. It's one of them. Combine that with your credit card data and it's like now they know a lot of information about you. So anyways, all these automobile companies are now monetizing you. Like the old saying goes, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product. And so they now have probably the best picture of the world duty cycle ever imagined. But you know, they are monetizing you to a tune of hundreds of dollars, tens or hundreds of dollars per month or per quarter or you know, whatever period of time you want to pick. Selling your data of who you are, where you're going and what you're doing just from your vehicle computer. Now it's like, I mean a lot of people are always concerned, like is the NSA watching me? Is the CIA watching me? Is the Chinese Communist Party watching me? Is some kid in the basement of their parents house hacked into the phone system and listening to me? These are a lot of popular things that people ask you about, right, Gabe?

A (83:34)

For sure.

B (83:36)

But you know, the biggest intruder into our live is the data brokers, Facebook, the car companies monetizing us. It's like, you know, why would I listen on listen to you for privacy purposes when I can listen to you for monetary purposes?

A (83:52)

Right, exactly. How about this then, Stephen, Wind us down here.

B (83:57)

Oh, we're just getting going.

A (84:00)

Maybe you are. I have less of an attention span. What are some of the things that you do or you find are you think about in terms of your own privacy strategies or just using technology for really cool things?

B (84:17)

Well, I think automatically everyone's going to have to contact you and say they want a part two of this episode.

A (84:23)

I'm sure there will be.

B (84:27)

My privacy. Well, that's kind of different because I know where my privacy is being violated. And I'm not gonna be one of those people to go, like, I got nothing to hide. I don't care. I'm not gonna be one of those people. And it's like, okay, so I have. Let's give an example. I got like, let's say WYZE cameras all the way around the outside of my house, right? And I mean the good ones, the really low light sensitive ones. And I'm using the AI detection and the cloud storage to my benefit. And that doesn't mean I don't have other cameras that aren't part of the cloud. What's the protocol? Rstp, you know, so you can stream the video directly to like your own NVR at your house and then back it up off location. That doesn't mean the WYZE cameras aren't sitting out there front and center for you to go, ah, he's got a WYZE camera. Let's jam. Is jam his WI fi, then break into his house. Okay. There's another set of cameras watching you that are wired that you're not going to jam. So as you're walking up to smash my wife's camera or jam it, you know, the other one is catching you in the act. That would be a good scenario. So I'm using the convenience of one to my advantage and the other one for its obscurity to be as a backup to the WYZE camera. So security systems for homes, we don't need passive infrared detectors, inframore glass break sensors, PIRs, motion detectors, a lot of stuff. A lot of that stuff, if you have the WYZE security system is automatically taken care of with just like one WYZE camera. So the WYZE camera will automatically detect glass being broken through its audio sensor. You smash my sliding glass door, it's going to go, you know, you know, and notify me or the monitoring company or whomever. So there's cameras inside the house and there's cameras outside the house. Now, have you seen those little remote controls, like for turning your Christmas tree lights on and off?

A (86:47)

Yes.

B (86:48)

Okay. Or it's like, it's like, you know, it's like, do I have an Alexa? Yeah, I. I have an Alexa unit with the bose sound in it. And it's like, play some really great tunes when I want it to. But one of the cute things I did Is I put an Alexa on off switch or someone else's on off switch on the Alexa. So, and then I wrote an Alexa script and I go, alexa, kill yourself. And it goes in this, and that's its command again, I forgot I wrote the script for it. And it goes click. You can hear the switch go click. And it turns off the power to the Alexa unit. So what's the Alexa doing if it's not powered? Because there are no battery powered Alexas. And yes, I've opened them up and there's nothing inside the Alexa to keep it powered or to make you think it's not powered when it is powered. Just like your iPhone is never off. Right. You know that when you turn your iPhone off, it goes into minimalistic mode and it's still an airtag. You can still find your phone when your iPhone is off because it's still acting like an airtag.

A (88:03)

Right?

B (88:04)

But Alexa, when you say turn yourself off, you know, it kills itself. So then I'd like, go on my phone and purposely activate the Alexa app on my phone and say, you know, Alexa Lazarus, you know, rise from the dead. And that would activate the switch that would then turn on the other Alexa and it would boot up and everything else. I could play music or have a video chat with, you know, one of my older relatives or something like that that, you know, it was convenient for those purposes. The same thing is I have. You can take an Alexa switch, you can take a Christmas tree light switch, you can take a more obscure switch. And it's like, I have it, you know, like, on my way out of the house, I'll push the button, and what it'll do is it'll turn on all the switches on the outlets that are powering the WYZE cameras inside the house. Because I don't want the damn WYZE cameras watching me or listening to me and seeing what me and my, you know, tabby are up to, you know, during the daytime, that's between me and my tabby. So for personal privacy, I might have those things for security because, like, you might be more privacy centric, but maybe I'm more security centric. Does that make sense?

A (89:34)

Yeah. That's what I've always appreciated about you, is that you somehow find a balance between all these things and there is a balance to be found for sure.

B (89:41)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, don't find a reason not to do it. Find reasons to do it. Which is something I started saying during when the pandemic started. As I tell people, shut up and stop finding reasons to not do it and start finding reasons to do it. It's not like we're in a pandemic or anything. You know those emergency funds you were saving for a rainy day just in case, Guess what? It's here. You know, go buy that freezer and go buy that extra food you wanted. So. So I'll have something out. I'll have something else. It's like when I'm gone, because I've actually had someone break into my house and they stole everything. And I mean, it is rape. It is.

A (90:24)

It's very, very disturbing.

B (90:26)

It's traumatic. I mean, I puked. I was so upset. All my firearms from when I was a childhood that went hunting with dad and everything were stolen. And you know, all that sentimental stuff, it was like it was all gone. And I was gone for weeks. They had weeks in my house and they kept on coming back. And they even knocked out the knockout that went underneath my. That was in my closet that lets you go underneath the bathtub to see if I had stuff underneath there. So it was a really professional thief. I had a safe and it had like 300, $101 bills in it. Because during the blackout of 2003, which I wrote a book on, you couldn't get change if you went to the corner Arab gas station. And it's like, you know, here's a $5 bill. I want, you know, a dollar Pepsi. You know, in 2003, he couldn't give you change. He didn't have any change. So $1 bills were very valuable. Well, they actually had so much time in my house, they went through my file folders. I mean, it's like, you know, it's a big. It's like five drawers of files. And they went through and they found the manual for my safe. And this is not neatly organized. This is a mess of files. And they found the code from the factory to get into my safe, got into my safe and got the 300 bucks. Luckily, I was smart enough to take any additional funds and other items I had and drop them off at a friend's house. Only this time I didn't drop my guns off at his house because I was in too big of a hurry. Otherwise I still would have had, you know, those things that were stolen from them. But it wasn't as bad as it could have been. But it was bad. So, I mean, once you've been, as, you know, one of my mentors, Clem, would say, once you've been sensitized to this issue as in you've been violated, your house broken into, you gotten so upset about it that you puked over the whole damn situation and everything else that, you know, you come home at 1:30 in the morning, it's like, why is my back door. Wait, it's not off its hinges? They knocked in. My back door was so well secured, they knocked, knocked the entire door jamb and door out of the frame that the 6 inch lag bolts were going into that held the door frame into the two by fours all the way around the wood. And I had, I had like double deadbolts. Not like where the handle is. I had them up in the middle of the door. And I had the hinges that were pinned such that when you shut it, the pins go into little holes so that side of the door can't be just knocked in like, as if, like you got access to the sides with the hinges. You can knock out the pins and the hinges and then take the door out. Well, one, my hinges were on the inside. Two, they had the pins in them for when you shut the door. So even if you knocked out the hinges, you know, let's say you broke in the front door and you want to take all the goods out the back door, you couldn't get out the back door by popping the hinges because there were pins in there going into the wall on the hinges. They're called security hinges. So I've been, you know, sensitized by that. So, you know, I like, if I'm going to go away, you bet the cameras are on, on the inside of my house. House. And you bet, you bet they are, they are layered. You bet they are going to notify me and, or the other people on the list. It's not just me. It's like, you know, my friends who give a damn about me. I watch his house when he's gone. He gets the alerts on my house as well as me when I'm gone. It's called Overwatch.

A (94:16)

That's good. That's clever. All right, Stephen, you are you, you could go on forever. I cannot. So let's, let's bring you back in another time. This has been great information.

B (94:25)

Okay, hang on, guys. Yeah. Yeah. You know where Gabriel is? Yeah. Get the drone. Yeah. Take over three Red Bulls to Gabriel at his location.

A (94:35)

There we go. I'm expecting it any moment.

B (94:37)

Oh, they're asking. Gabe, it's a long trip to where you're at. When the drone drops off the Red Bull, would you please recharge it so I can fly back Home.

A (94:44)

If you can find me in my basement in Calcutta, then props.

B (94:49)

No, no, no. What was. What FDR said. No, no. When the Doolittle raid over Tokyo happened, it's like, yep, they attacked from our secret base from Shangri La.

A (95:00)

Give the, give the final word here. Tell people they like what they've heard. They want to hear more from you. Tell them how they can find your stuff.

B (95:07)

Oh, Lord. Hang on a second. My, my cat is infatuated with a stink bug. And it's like, no, stay away. Leave it alone. You don't want to play with that thing. If you do, you're going to get a bath. You don't want that. She doesn't want a bath. So anyways, see where to start. Okay. One of my best sellers, Nuclear War Survival Skills. I updated the book from my mentor, Crescent Carney. It was actually the people I worked with that said, steve, you need to update the book. I go, no, I don't. It's timeless. And they go, we can prove to you it's not. I go, go ahead. And they go, bucket, stove, newspaper. I go, oh, crap. Because the bucket stove you make and nuclear survival skills, the fuel for it was newspaper. So I had to go into the book and I had to update it and add it on. I changed newspaper to Amazon boxes and I made a whole bunch of other updates. I spent 500 hours updating the book and for, and it's called Nuclear war Survival Skills 2022. And it's at nuclear this. I'm saying nuclear war survival skills.com and if you're going on Amazon for it, make sure you're getting the 2022 version. It's only in soft copy. It's not the hard copy version. Or you can get it on the website. The website will lead you to the right links on Amazon. More About Me Some of my podcasts, which are only up to eight or nine now, but Gabe just helped me figure out, figure out the secret to doing really good podcast distribution. So I'm going to restart my podcast. And they're kind of like a Joe Rogan format. They are long, like one to three hours long. And it's not a 13 dumb, 13 minute YouTube video. Okay. I go into depth, just like you heard me, dumping what we call unconscious competence on you about security and what's the best thing to have and all the different situations are you're going to have me talking on various subjects about things in history or energy and or, you know, greater issues that are going on on those podcasts and those are at Harris. Like my name. H A r r I s1234.com that will also lead you to my store, which I'm updating, which is shop, shop. You guessed it. Harris1234.com and it'll lead you to the stuff I have up there on security, preparedness, food storage, water, power, batteries, energy, solar generators, how to power your house from your car. It's like I've been doing this for quite some time and I got a lot of stuff up there, including things like you would never expect. If you want to do food preparedness, people always said, Steve, we thought food is like, you have the best stuff. On the simplest way of doing food preparedness, I go, thank you. And surprisingly involves an inverter, your car, and an automatic 2 pound bread maker that makes a 2 pound loaf of bread in 58 minutes. But I've simplified it even more. And if you want that, it's called the freezer video, which has nothing to do with the freezer being powered. When the disaster happens, your power fails, but it has to do with the extreme shelf life you can get by putting things into a dedicated freezer that are already shelf stable. So if I send you out, let's say you love baby bell cheese, right, Gabe? I bet you didn't know baby bell cheese is shelf stable. It's only in the refrigerated section because that's where Americans expect it. But it's like Velveeta, it's shelf stable. So how long do you think that cheese will last if you freeze it at minus 5 degrees?

A (99:11)

Very long time.

B (99:12)

Decades. So that's the freezer video. So I have, basically my approach is, okay, even though you've just drunk from the 4 inch fire hose of Harris, my approach when I'm teaching you this stuff is give me your hand, let me walk you through this step by step. And by time, I walk you through it step by step, it's not with this intensity, okay? By the time I walk you through it with this step by step, you're done with the video or the MP3 file or whatever, you go, I know kung fu well. No, really, it's not like that in the Matrix. But really, if you want to know how to make a battery bank and I get my battery bank video, there will be no question in your mind how to make a battery bank for your house after you've had the battery bank video, or how to do the food storage or the water or the power or anything else that you want for your own Personal preparedness and personal protection. It's like, it's like, how much more do you need? I mean, we just went through a pandemic. And, you know, there was protein shortage. The only thing that you could there, all the beef was gone, all the chicken was gone, all the pork was gone, all the fish was gone. The only thing that was on the shelf, and I have documented it, was the impossible burger, you know, the synthetic vegetable burger. And I go, hey, impossible burger, here's a marketing survey for you. And I showed the entire meat cases empty, except for this one column of these cases of impossible burgers. It's like, here's the survey. There is a shortage of all meat products and here is the freezer case loaded with your impossible burgers and no one wants your crap. It's like, what is this telling you? But yeah, it's like, how much more prodding do we need? We're in World War Three right now as a proxy. We got hot war going on in Ukraine between NATO, Europe, United States, the Soviet Union and Ukraine. We got things going on with USA and Iran, with Iran and Saudi Arabia, which could diminish dramatically, affect world oil considerably. Because they can take Saudi oil offline. You do that, then there's more demand for USA export. Everything else it can, believe me, it can dramatically affect you. We got China and Taiwan. If China and Taiwan clack off, it's going to be China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines all at once. I mean, that entire southern Pacific area, it's just going to be one great big hot zone. And it's like, with all the things going on in the world at the moment, it's like, how much more does your bell need to be rung that you need your own personal food and water and power insurance. That's what preparedness is. It's food and everything else. Insurance. You know, the ability to know that I can power my freezer, refrigerator, my smaller tv, and charge all my phones and tablets in my house and keep my modem router, my router going for my fiber or my cable or my cellular data, and I can still get information about what's going on in the world. It's just like, how important is that to you? Which goes back to a thing I forgot to show you, those images I created for that presentation. But it goes along with the saying that security is like oxygen. You don't know you need it until it's gone, and then you'll pay any price to get it back instantly. Well, if you run out of water, you turn on that tap, and it's like, nothing's coming out and your kids are thirsty and everything else. And you're out of everything else. It's like, what price are you going to pay for that? Or for food or for, if you live in Nevada, to have an air conditioner going in your bedroom at night or to have heat when it's cold? You know, I was, you know, in one of the southern states, and that cold snap, and it's like, yeah, I actually had to. I had my propane heater in my RV and I actually had to get my backup propane heater going with my normal one on one day to provide enough heat. And then I also have an electric blanket I use as a mattress pad that heats me, which goes to a concept of don't cool the house to cool the room, to cool the person. Cool the person. Same thing with don't heat the house to heat the room. Heat the person, Heat the person. And I tell you, one night, I have a 6 watt heater for my cat, and she just loves to lay on her blanket with her 6 watt heater. Well, I stole that from her one day. I put it underneath my blankets because it was so cold, because that was enough to, like, help me, keep me warm. And then she crawled underneath the blankets and we were all warm. So how much more indication do you need? My friends, I am begging you, I'm pleading you. I am being belligerent with you. I am saying, please don't do something not only for your own security, like what Gabe is talking about, your own privacy, your own security, but your own preparedness for those that you love and you care about. Please take one step forward. I don't care if it's like some other person on YouTube. I don't care if you go to Harris. 1, 2, 3. I don't care if, you know, part of your personal privacy is you get a graphene phone or, you know, whatever you're doing, do something every day, every week, every chance you get to move yourself forward. Because someone once. I have a private group called Steve's Power Circle. And it started off all about being preparedness. Now it's a greater think tank. And someone wrote to me and said, hey, what do the people in your power circle do when there's a nor' easter getting ready to clobber Washington, D.C. and, like, stop all the, you know, turn off the power and stop all the traffic? I wrote back to him. I said, nothing. They're already prepared, right? So. And we literally had these storms come through my state a couple weeks ago, and it knocked out the power on the other side of the state like crazy. And one of the people in my group who lives over there posted a picture of him in his basement because the tornado sirens were literally going off. The power was out, and him and his kids were. His kids were sitting there and watching something like Aladdin on a smaller TV with a dvd, and they had, you know, he had a. Like a glass with ice, and he had a Coke can there, and he had some munchies, and he had the AM FM shortwave radio sitting there, you know, listening to the local station about the weather, because the kids were watching something else, but they were in their basement. And he goes, what do Harris people do when there's no power in a tornado and the kids are scared? Nothing. I mean, what do they have to do before. Nothing. We're already prepared. We're already ready. My friends, it is the biggest peace of mind you will ever have. And Gabriel has given you a tremendous peace of mind in his education that he's given you. It's like I'm trying to give you another peace of mind. In fact, I should put it up on the website. It's on my X thing. I have a story of how the iWatch saved my mother's life, and she asked me to record the story for her for Mother's Day so it could benefit other people. I think it's on nopub. K, n o w p u b. So x.com nopub. I think it's on there. But it's a really great story about what I've done for my parents since 1998 for their safety and protection. And my mother, because it wasn't a question of if, it was a question of when my mother was going to have a medical emergency. Gabe, it took 14 years for her to have a medical emergency. But the doctor said if you didn't have that thing, you'd be dead or you'd be paralyzed in a nursing home. And it's the entire. It's not the iWatch. It's the philosophy behind it and how I trained my mother. It's like you trained your mother, and one of the guys I work with, you trained your mother. I go like a Malinois. But there are things like that that I use to protect her life. And it's like I turned off all the security. There's no pin code for her phone. It's like Siri is listening all the time, and she got trained on saying, I'm not going to say the name because I might accidentally activate someone's device. But Siri, call 9 1. We had her do it like four times on the watch, four times on the phone. We had her speak loudly to the phone in the other room. Like she went into the bathroom and talked to the phone in the kitchen, and it hurt her. And her best friend and I were just sitting there by the phone. We saw it, you know, calling emergency services. And five, four. We just kept on hitting cancel. But I worked, walked her through that. She got into an AFIB event and she couldn't do the damn swipe up on the phone to get it to activate, you know, so she could call 911. She didn't know that she could press the button on the side five times. I just got her the iPhone 15 and the iWatch four days before this happened. But she fell back on her lowest level, remembered training. She looked at her watch and she said, Siri, call 911. And it said, calling emergency services in five four, three, 21911. What's your emergency? Yes, I called my doctor to get an appointment and I told him what was going on with me. And they said, hang up and call you right away and send an ambulance. What's going on, Mrs. Harris? And it's like, apparently I'm having a high heart rate in an AFIB event. What's your heart rate, Mrs. Harris? And she goes, 172. It's like, how do you know that? It's like my iWatch that my son got me, which he always has to throw in there, you know, told me. And ambulance was there in two minutes. She was in the hospital in four minutes. So a lot of stuff that I'm talking to you about is not only for your protection and the protection of your kitty cat, but it's for your parents, your grandparents, your children, your grandchildren, your people that you. Those who are you call friend, and those who you love and those who are family and those that you care about. You know, it's. It's for all of those. It's protection and safety of all of those people are things that I talk about. And it eventually becomes. It's not hard, but it becomes the lifestyle. Just like your lifestyle of information security and privacy is part of your lifestyle. It's like. It's like. Do you think about it much, Gabe, or is it more like breathing?

A (111:19)

It's pretty natural at this point, right?

B (111:22)

And that's what we want. Our listeners and those who believe in what we're saying. That's what we want them to do is to emulate what we've done such that it becomes as natural as breathing. It's like, oh, look, Johnson's summer sausage wrapped in cellophane. You know, at Walmart, you know, not in the freezer area, is on clearance. Oh, I'm going to buy 10 of those things and throw them in my freezer. Now you got emergency food, you know, so what if you have to wait for it to thaw and you get out some crackers and everything else? It's like, you know, for you and your family, it's like you got probably, I don't know, six good meals there that you can space out with other things with your baby bell and other stuff and your Hershey bars and other things that you throw in there. It's like, you know, you're not gonna starve, you're not gonna go hungry, and it's easy to start with.

A (112:22)

There we go. Sausage. All the way to sausage and Hershey.

B (112:26)

I know. No, no, Gabe, I told you how the sausage was made. Literally.

A (112:30)

There you go. There you go. All right, this has been Steven Harris. We'll have links for the things he said. You're probably going to want to go track down some of his stuff, his books, etc. So thank you again, Stephen.

B (112:39)

Okay, Gabe, pleasure being on. Hope to do it again with you in the future. And we'll pick another wild subject to, you know, another wild rabbit hole to go and dive down.

A (112:51)

Hey, thanks for listening. Look, I could use your help real quick if you could share this, engage with me in some way, leave a review anywhere. This really helps me to break the technocratic shadow banning that is happening with my brand. And of course, if you really want to escape the technocracy, go to escape the technocracy.com privacy tutorial series, books consulting, and of course, you can leave a donation. Thank you very much.