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- [00:18]
A
Hello and welcome. This is Gabriel Custodiet of Watchman Privacy, privacy practitioner, consultant, author and frontline fighter in the push for privacy. I know why you're here. Like the rest of us here in the Resistance, you're trying to escape the technocratic apparatuses that you see enveloping you and crushing your freedoms. That's why I created all of this, all without sponsors. I hope you enjoy this show. But then when you're ready to take the next steps to secure your privacy and your future, Visit my website, escapethechnocracy.com to start the real journey. Your support alone determines the future of the show. See you there. Welcome, everyone. I'm very pleased today to be joined by James Wesley Rawls. For some of you, you immediately, your ears perked up. You know who, who this is. For those of you who might not be familiar, Mr. Rawls is a novelist, former army intelligence officer and expert on prepping guns. All the good stuff, basically. He has a website called survivalblog.com, which I would certainly recommend you check out. And I first encountered him through an excellent novel called A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse. Easily recommend that book to you as well. He has several others. And Mr. Rawls, welcome back to the show. How are you doing today?
- [01:33]
B
Doing fine. Thanks for having me on.
- [01:35]
A
My pleasure. My pleasure. So I thought we'd kind of go about this discussion in topical chunks. And I want to start with something that is presumably the reason why people might be preparing, might be concerned about a coming collapse a little bit with the financial system, which I know you're very much attuned to. Now, I want to ask you, for starters, what do you look at as signs that a collapse in the financial system could be coming? Because on the one hand, we see things like inflation, all sorts of craziness. It has managed to amble on quite impressively.
- [02:12]
B
We might say, well, obviously, we're living in pretty perilous times economically. I think the things that people need to watch for are any sudden changes in interest rates, obviously any sudden decline in stock markets or even crypto markets. And people need to watch for any announcements of anything related to global credit, especially related for our American listeners, at least to the US Dollar. If there's any repudiation of American debt or if there's any signs that foreign investors are going to stop rolling over their US treasury paper, then that's a very, very large red flag that's gone up. So watch all of those and, of course, just generally watch the economy. I think that we're right on the cusp of a real estate collapse. Along with that, we could see a whole slew of macroeconomic perturbations that could take place. We could see major layoffs, we could see a general decline in the economy. We could see the foreclosure rate spiking for home foreclosures, for car loan. Car repossessions, for example, could spike. There's a lot of things that could be trigger points and it's just a matter of keeping a close eye on the markets and investing accordingly.
- [03:55]
A
Yeah, fair enough. Maybe a little bit more of a specific question, but it might lead us off into interesting semi tangent here. Warren Buffett said at one point that derivatives are a ticking time bomb. I'm curious if you could kind of explain a little bit of that for the layperson and what you make of that assessment.
- [04:15]
B
I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, I even have a static page at my website at the survivalblog.com site called Derivatives Time Bomb. It's talking about how large the global derivatives market is. Especially in notional terms. We're talking trillions really at this point of dollars that are at play. The implications really are huge. If there's a derivatives collapse, the dollar as a currency unit could disappear in as little as a week. We could see a run on the dollar, the dollar denominated investments. It could be a very ugly situation and derivatives could be the trigger. And a lot of people don't really understand derivatives. I recommend that people take a look at the static page that I mentioned called Derivatives Time Bomb at my site. Again, it's survivalblog.com Take a look at my general writings that I've had on the economy. I'm very strong on precious metals and tangible investments. I'm a big believer in buying productive farm or ranch land and occupying that land as a survival retreat year round. I think that's the best situation to be in. If you occupy your retreat year round, you're in a situation where you can build up that retreat. It's very difficult to have a remote retreat that you don't occupy year round and expect it to be productive for you. Because even if you were to hire the very best ranch manager, for example, there's a lot of other things that go into having a productive retreat that you need to have squared away. That includes fruit and nut trees, fully functioning large scale greenhouse, berry bushes, everything, asparagus beds, you name it. It all takes time and it all takes attention. And you really can't do that remotely very well.
- [06:26]
A
Well said. We'll certainly get into some of the details of preparedness as well. But just sticking with another thought or two on the financial system. So the price of gold, you're big on gold. The price of gold in the last two or three years went from under 2000 to it peaked at 5300 and now it's going back down. What in the last two years? What is your assessment of what caused that, how the gold price is going and just your overall sentiment on that market?
- [06:55]
B
Well, I think the run up in gold was way past due and where it sits right now I think is a fairly fair valuation. But if you look at it in terms of the U.S. national debt and the real value of the Federal Reserve note, which is essentially zero, I think gold has a long way to go. And the run up that we saw, particularly up to this last January, really was a foretaste of what's to come. I hope that people did not buy at the top, but even for people who bought gold in the vicinity of $4,000, I think they're still going to be fine. It would be just a few people who bought at the top north of $5,000 who might have be feeling burned right now, but even them, they will be sitting pretty in another 10 to 12 years when gold has a what the economists refer to as a speculative blow off where we could see gold zoom up past 30 or $40,000 an ounce. I'm actually a bigger believer in silver than I am gold, partly because it's a thinner market and because silver is more practical for barter purposes. Gold really is too compact a form of wealth for practical barter. Silver is perfect.
- [08:24]
A
Following up on a lot of the ridiculousness in the financial system, particularly the stock market, we have Nvidia, the graphics card making company. I'm looking here, they have a market cap of almost $5 trillion. We had SpaceX which hasn't really achieved anything significant yet in my understanding. They had an IPO that now has their market cap at around $2 trillion. There's all time highs in the stock market. What do some of those figures point out about where things are headed?
- [09:01]
B
We were talking earlier about derivatives. It's a global casino. Well, the stock markets are also more or less a casino. The real value of stocks is something that that is still subject to price discovery and as time goes on we'll see. Most equities are going to reflect underlying value certainly, but unfortunately the equities are all denominated in US dollars on the American market and there's going to be some risk, this dollar exposure risk for any stocks that are dollar denominated. If you're going to put any of your, your wealth into stocks, it, I think it should be ones that are very carefully selected for true long term value. And I wouldn't have stock exposure more than 20 or 25% of my portfolio. I know I'm very contrarian in that regard and I probably missed some opportunities, but I feel very good about the fact that I bought most of my silver between 5 and $20 an ounce. So with this, with the stock market the way it's sitting right now, which is grossly overvalued, I think there's room for a fairly large collapse in stock share prices. A lot of people are going to be very badly burned. They're going to make the previous drops in the stock market seem very small by comparison. And again, I don't recommend holding more than 20 or 25% of net worth in stocks. And those few stocks that you do hold should be very carefully chosen to be basically recession proof or even depression proof. And there are very few stocks that qualify. Most of the stocks that are touted right now like Nvidia and SpaceX and a lot of others are really overvalued in terms of what, what you're really getting. And they are very vulnerable to an economic turndown. If we have a, the market turn, then we could see the, the tech stocks for example, decline as much as 80%. And that would leave most people upside down in those stocks. So again, choose your stocks very wisely. You know, if, if there's a, a way to pick a stock for a item that's going to be in demand regardless of economic conditions, then that's the place to be. And that's going to be very traditional stocks. You know, companies like 3M or Coleman Industries, that makes the camping gear, for example, maybe some of the major food conglomerates there, you might have a good chance of holding and maintaining your wealth. But with most other stocks I think that there's unfortunately a very large potential to lose a tremendous amount of money. And when we see the next stock market collapse, it'll make the collapse of 1929 seem small by comparison. It's going to be a huge, huge drop.
- [12:42]
A
Yeah, it's hard to imagine that not happening. Of course the question is when you know at what point that will happen. Now, from a market perspective to more of a personal perspective, a topic that's near and dear to this particular show, you've talked about your experience getting debanked now you, as we all know, talk about some really naughty things, for example, the Constitution. So I wonder if you could, I wonder if you could share your. You have a business, you're very public facing about some of these topics. What was your experience getting debanked, if I may ask?
- [13:20]
B
Well, that was a few years ago. It came out of the blue. It really hit me unexpectedly. I heard of people being debanked, but until you've been through it yourself, it's hard to appreciate how devastating it can be, at least in the short term. For example, I had a lot of my monthly expenses automatically debited by ACH from my checking account. So all my utility bills, for example, and my, my Internet subscriptions, even my vpn, they were all set up for ach. And that's something I've gotten away from since I've been debanked because when that hit, I had to scramble to either switch those all over to credit card payments or to payment by check or to my new checking account once I established one. I learned several things from that experience. First and foremost is don't do all of your banking with one institution. It's important to have several accounts. Have at least one with a, like a savings and loan type organization or credit union rather than a bank. Be very mindful of the politics of your bank. Any of the major banks are predominantly very liberal in their outlook and unfortunately a lot of them have been politicized. So if you look at the major banks like Chase Manhattan Bank, Citigroup, bank of America, Wells Fargo, all of those have management that is on the left side of the political spectrum and very statist. And they can be very vindictive very quickly. And there's basically nothing in banking regulations that says they can't debank anyone for any reason. It's all at will. And unfortunately the political winds of change may dictate how long you might have your account.
- [15:36]
A
And you know, presumably you didn't go into the details, you don't have to, but presumably it was just a notice that, you know, your accounts are closed. That's usually how it happens. No explanation, just I just got a
- [15:48]
B
letter in the mail saying your accounts are, are being suspended as of this day. And as it turned out, the drop dead day was just two days after I received the letter, although it had been postmarked three weeks. Well, the letter itself was dated three weeks before. It was postmarked a week before. And I got it again just two days before my account was closed. So I really had to scramble very quickly to establish another couple of accounts. And I now am more diverse in terms of where I keep my money. And I'm also a lot less dependent on ACH transactions for automatic debits from my checking, my main checking account to handle my bills. I think that people, especially anyone who's on the right side of the political spectrum or libertarian or these days even someone who is anti AI has to be aware that they can be debanked.
- [16:51]
A
Right. You go up and clean up some graffiti on the street and then you're far right these days.
- [16:56]
B
Yeah, that's right, that's right. But again, even just speaking out against AI might be enough in the very near future to get someone debanked. And it could be more than just being debanked if, if the AI itself takes a dislike to you, there's any number of different steps that it could take to make your life miserable, especially your financial life.
- [17:22]
A
Right? Yeah. There's a article here I'm seeing on Wired. US law enforcement warns of anti tech extremism as AI hatred grows. So there we go. Now moving on to some questions of where one should look locate oneself. Obviously that's an important thing for survival, for succeeding in life. One of the interesting things of course, as you know Mr. Rawls, is the way that the United States breaks down into states and then also counties where there's different governance, different rules, different laws and there's quite a number of options when you break it down to the county level. I know this is a specific question, but how, how should one choose a county? Like how would one vet not just a state but a county? What sorts of evaluation would go into that?
- [18:10]
B
With my son Jonathan, we co wrote a book on survival retreats and relocation and we went through state by state and even to an extent county by county, comparing different states with their various regulations. I think it's important that if people are flexible in terms of where they work, that they take full advantage of their opportunity to vote with their feet by relocating. Obviously as a prepper, I think it's important to be in a state that has a low population density, that's fairly self sufficient, that has a diverse economy with both agriculture and industry, and that's in a lightly populated region. So for me that left what I refer to as the American Redoubt. At the time I set it up, I included eastern Oregon and eastern Washington. But I can now see that was probably a mistake. Since those state governments are showing no signs of changing, they're still on the path to destruction. And part of that Destruction is the destruction of individual liberty. I no longer recommend Washington and Oregon unless or until eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington become separate states, or in the case of eastern Oregon, they're talking about having it merge with Idaho. In eastern Washington there's the Liberty State movement. If either of those are successful, then of course I would encourage people to relocate to eastern Oregon or eastern Washington. But for now I don't. So, so that leaves Idaho, Montana and Wyoming as kind of the core of the American redoubt. And I do recommend them for a lot of different reasons. Obviously low population density and a better opportunity to survive with their local power grids up. What most people don't realize is that yes, we have three power grids in the United States. An eastern grid, a Western grid and a Texas grid. But in the event of a grid collapse, local grids will pop back up almost immediately, and I'm talking within minutes in power exporting regions. And that includes a lot of the inland Northwest where you have a tremendous amount of hydroelectric power. Another good region is the Four Corners region where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, where they come together. That's a power exporting region because of natural gas production and a little bit of hydropower. So it's important that people choose an area that will be a place where they could pull through in the event of an economic collapse. And just in terms of individual liberty, it's very important that you choose a state that's unpretentious, that has a small tax structure where they're not trying to confiscate people's net worth gradually, which, and you know, if you go to states like Massachusetts or California or New York, their tax structures are set up where they're essentially gradually destroying people's net worth and transferring it to the state. It's an ugly situation. So move to a state that is not pretentious, that doesn't want to rob you of your life, liberty or property. Obviously there's a lot of other things that go into it, but look at things like gun laws, homeschooling laws, home birth laws, communities, sustainable agriculture. And at a county level you've got, or a city level, you've got to look at things like, things as simple as whether or not you can do large scale gardening and not run afoul of local zoning, or whether or not you can keep chickens and not run afoul of their foul laws. There's a lot of things that people need to look at. Again, folks should probably take a look at my Retreat areas page@survivalblog.com and a lot of that went into the book that I co authored with my son. Again, it was titled Survival Retreats and Relocation, where if you want to go through in great detail on how to select where to live, that book goes a long way toward that.
- [23:01]
A
I'll have to link that specifically in the show notes and the video description. Now, Mr. Rawls, one of the pushbacks I'll get from people if I bring up the American readout or particular places of like minded people where they, they settle an area is that doesn't this put people, doesn't this put a target on their back in terms of all grouping together in one location? Of course, Ruby Ridge famously happened in, in this area area that we're talking about. Is that a concern of yours?
- [23:29]
B
Not really. In fact, if anything, the consolidation of conservatives in a conservative state basically turns a red state a deeper shade of red. And I think that, you know, obviously you're not going to be immune from federal scrutiny or federal prosecution, but at the state level, those are the safe places to be for conservatives and libertarians. I would not want to be in Trinity county in Northern California because I still have a California government to worry about, even though from a population density standpoint and a self sufficiency standpoint, that would be a great place to be because it has a mild climate and lots of wildlife and fresh water and hydroelectric power and all that great kind of stuff. And it's a very lightly populated area. But you've got to look at state level government first and again, be willing, ready and able to vote with your feet. Take the opportunity to do so. Now if you have that opportunity, if someone listening to this is retired or self employed or telecommuter, then they ought to seriously consider relocating right now. And I mean this summer, taking your net worth out of your your big city location in your overvalued house and parlay that into a much larger piece of land in a lightly populated area. Now's the time to do it before the real estate collapse, because when the collapse hits, it's going to hit the big cities hardest and it's going to hit them first.
- [25:12]
A
Along similar lines here. Mr. Rawls, in one of our last episodes you talked about how you would hope and this goes back to the county governance that the sheriff in your area, if somebody was coming after you, the sheriff might be able to have your back. What exactly does that mean? What does the power of a sheriff in the US have? And maybe just as a thought experiment, explain what you're thinking there.
- [25:38]
B
Sure. From a GEDANKIAN experiment standpoint, the sheriff really is the key individual in each county who has a very strong say. So in terms of protecting individual rights. And in the modern context, the sheriff or one of his deputies is going to be someone who's going to warn you if there's been a federal investigation launched against you, for example. So it's important to live in a conservative county with a conservative sheriff who's like minded, so at least you have a chance of getting some warning if you're being targeted. Of course, having a friendly sheriff makes a lot of things go a lot more smoothly in terms of chief law enforcement officer sign off or national Firearms act registrations. And having the sheriff on your side will certainly go a long way in the event that you end up on the wrong side of politics in at the national scale, you'll have at least a buffer, hopefully some warning, and hopefully an advocate on your side. If it looks like there might be a targeted prosecution, whether, you know, whether it's an IRS agent that arrives or an ATF agent that arrives or an FBI agent that arrives, by law, they're expected to check in with the county sheriff before they conduct a local investigation. In most populous states that doesn't happen. But in the lightly populated states it often does as it should. And often that's an opportunity for the sheriff to intervene and point out the legitimacy or the illegitimacy of any particular investigation.
- [27:44]
A
That's good thinking there. Now, I'm just combine a couple of regions here and for the sake of this question, so obviously big, big part of your audience no doubt is American. It's a great country to be, you know, preparing as, as you suggest for those who are, let's say, let's take two regions fairly different, but Canada and Australia.
- [28:06]
B
Well, you know, Canada has its merits, but unfortunately it's got, it's saddled by a federal a, a, a government out of Ottawa that is just basically foreign to the traditional bedrock culture of Canada. And you see the same thing in Australia. My general advice is if someone has the opportunity to expatriate and move to the United States, they should move as soon as they can take that opportunity and move to a lightly populated state, preferably in the American Redoubt or a place like the Cumberland Plateau in eastern Tennessee. In both Canada and Australia. For any of your listeners, the opportunity to prepare really has been limited by your own government because it's basically disarmed you. And you need to think long and hard about that because if we get into a situation where the Rule of law disappears. Only criminals and the government are going to have guns. And if the government is only semi functional, that means the criminals are going to run rampant and they're going to basically have everyone at their mercy because they've been disarmed. In both Australia and Canada, you really can't own effective weapons in either of those states in either of those nations. You cannot own concealable weapons that are effective in either of those nations. Sure, there's some workarounds. You can, you can still buy some slow to operate long arms and some antique guns which are actually surprisingly effective. But in the long run, I think in both Australia and Canada, they want to have everybody down to archery equipment and harsh language for their personal defense.
- [30:14]
A
Well, not, not harsh language. That would be illegal.
- [30:16]
B
Oh, that's right, that's. Well, that's especially in England, but even in Australia they have hate crime laws. But no, seriously, there's a lot of things that, that people living in an oppressed country need to be. They need to step back and look at it from, you know, the 30,000 foot view and say, well, where am I living and is it really worth living here? If I can't have economic freedom, if I can't have freedom of conscience, if I can't have true opportunity to speak my mind, if I can't defend myself, if I can't homeschool my children, if I can't have home birth. There's a lot of things that are very highly restricted in a lot of countries that people need to evaluate. And if after serious contemplation they decide they need to be someone else, somewhere else, then they need to take the opportunity to go ahead and relocate promptly.
- [31:23]
A
Good thinking there. That will move us into a few questions on firearms, on guns. Another topic that I always love listening to you on softball for you, Mr. Rales. What are some of the latest gun laws and how are they threatening to or messing up all of this for us?
- [31:42]
B
Well, if you look at a state like Virginia, which recently got itself a ultra liberal governor and recently had its state legislature turn purple or even a little bit blue in Virginia, it's kind of a microcosm of what we're going to see in all the more populous states in the next few years where they enacted a so called assault weapons law and they are attempting to disarm their own citizenry. A lot like Australia and a lot like Canada, they're essentially using that model at the state level. They're circumventing the Heller decision and the Bruen decision of the U.S. supreme Court. And unfortunately, the way our legal system is set up in this country, it takes years, even decades for state level court cases to make their way to our Supreme Court for final adjudication. It could take many, many, many years. And in the meantime, state governments can run roughshod over people's individual liberty. We're seeing that in Virginia right now and unfortunately in a lot of other states. And here I'm talking about states with medium to large populations, states that are nominally red or purple, states turning blue. And I think we're going to see that a lot in states like Indiana perhaps, certainly in states like Illinois, possibly in Texas, certainly in New Mexico, and all the coastal states, California, Oregon, Washington, and essentially the entire eastern seaboard. We're going to see over the next 10 to 20 years, unless the Supreme Court steps in with a strongly definitive case that comes out, we're going to see gun rights continue to degrade in those states. And it makes relocating even more important. And again, you want to get your net worth out of your house, if that's one of your primary assets in a populous blue state, and get to a red state immediately.
- [34:10]
A
Now, you're very big on night vision equipment and I wonder if you could just explain this at a base level because you've said things like, don't get another gun until you get some night vision equipment. Get some of the stuff before it becomes outlawed. What is the big deal about night vision equipment?
- [34:29]
B
I guess the primary issue is we have a 24 hour clock and in any given month we're going to be in darkness half the time. And unless you own the night, unless you have night vision and thermal gear to give you an advantage, you are at a huge disadvantage for half of our 24 hour cycle. And it's important that people recognize that they need night vision gear, they need to practice with that gear, they need some redundancy for that gear, and they need a big stockpile of batteries and they need to select gear that can operate with rechargeable batteries so they can have solar recharged batteries for all their night vision gear. So there's a lot of things that go into it. The technology has moved along rapidly. If you look at the proliferation of night vision gear in the hands of the military and police, that really shows you the direction things are headed for the general populace. And we're also seeing criminals increasingly use night vision equipment. And in a situation where the rule of law breaks down, the last thing I would want to be, the last position I would want to be in is to have no night vision gear and have bad guys with modern night vision gear able to basically outflank me on my own property just because it's nighttime. It's really important to get that night vision gear. There's a number of good vendors on the market. Again, it's a rapidly changing technology, but I recommend that each family have at least one thermal scope and one night vision light amplification scope. And now here I'm talking a weapon site like an ANPVS 14. It's important that you have those and practice with them and have plenty of batteries and charging capacity or charging capability to have that gear available even in a long term grid down societal collapse. Be ready folks.
- [36:56]
A
In our last episode we were talking about a concealed carry license and you suggested getting one in multiple states. Maybe that comes as a surprise to some people who think, oh, you know, I just have my concealed carry in my own state. Maybe they don't realize that they can have concealed carry licenses in other states. What's the advantage? What would be the process and how should one strategize? Like what's the, what's the purpose of doing this?
- [37:20]
B
Well, you have to look at state reciprocity laws and there's a number of websites that describe them and compare them. It all depends on what state you currently live in, where you plan to live and where you often travel. If you have relatives in states that have reciprocity with your state, then there's a huge advantage. If you travel often, if you travel for business, or if you travel to keep up family relations, it's important to research it if it makes sense to get a concealed carry permit. Now Obviously there's now 26 or almost 27 states I guess now that have permitless concealed carry. That's the situation in the core of the American redoubt that I mentioned. For example, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, we have permitless concealed carry. In fact, amongst those three states, they even recognize permitless concealed carry for people traveling across state lines between those states. That's kind of an ideal situation. But for a lot of the people listening to this, right now you live in a blue state or a purple state or even in a red state that is not particularly friendly to concealed carry across state lines. You need to find out what your situation is with your own state and whether or not it's worthwhile to get a concealed carry permit. If you see it in your advantage, go ahead and get it. Keep it current. And of course you want to train regardless. Keep your training current, keep references to those state laws in the glove box of your car so that when you do cross state lines, you'll know whether or not you can carry concealed. If you're, you know, if there's state reciprocity and if there isn't, you need, you need of course, to unfortunately lock up your gun and separate it from its ammunition. So you can just benefit from the federal safe travel legislation that allows you to cross state lines armed, but unfortunately you won't have immediate access to a firearm when you're traveling.
- [39:42]
A
Well, on the topic of gun self defense, let me sneak in an ethical question for you, Mr. Rawls. So I know you're a Christian, and in Matthew 5:38, this is the new King James Version, we see that Jesus says, you've heard that. It was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him. Also, how would you evaluate that, that statement by Jesus?
- [40:13]
B
Well, it's obviously it's Jesus talking. So it carries a tremendous amount of weight that we only have two cheeks. Okay. We have an obligation as Christians to turn the other cheek, that we don't have an obligation just lay down our life and be totally submissive to someone who seeks to take our life. You know, even in the book of Luke, for example, it talks about the disciples getting ready to travel and the question of being armed came up and they said, well, we have two swords. And Jesus said, well, that's enough. So there's all kinds of things in Scripture, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament that point to the viability and the right to keep and bear arms. But of course, we have to temper that with our responsibility as Christians to try to de escalate and to try to do our best to not get into situations where we might find ourselves forced to take a life. That's the last thing we want to do.
- [41:31]
A
You have a really useful book suggestion list on your website, Survival blog. Lots of great resources. There are a lot of free resources, definitely people should check out. You mentioned a book on the list called the Black Swan. This is by Nassim Taleb. What are some main takeaways from that book?
- [41:52]
B
Well, I think Nick Taleb did a good job of pointing out the unpredictability of major markets and modern societies in general and their vulnerability to rapid change that's not anticipated that radically changes either economic opportunities or personal freedom. And in the Black Swan, you know, a Black Swan event is Basically a. Well, the basic premise is as you're walking along a river, you expect to see all, all white swans. On the rare occasion that you see a black swan, that is truly a rarity. And in the economic sense of that, that means that you can expect most markets to continue along much as they have day after day, month after month, year after year, with just a nice stream of white swans. But occasionally there's going to be that black swan. And the Black Swan event is going to be the one that takes almost everyone by surprise, one that completely obliterates a market or a currency, and that is going to devastate the average investor. And to be ready for a black swan event, you need to have some contrarian investing strategies. One of those, of course, is investing in precious metals. So I agree with Nick Taleb's basic premise. As a full blown survivalist, I look at it as an outlook on markets that drives personal preparedness. And if you look at the possibility for black swans, you take the opportunity to invest in a contrarian nature. By having at least part of your portfolio geared toward Black swan events, you'll have all your bases covered. You'll still be generating income for normal market times, but in the event of a black swan showing itself, you'll have part of your portfolio in something that's going to run contrary to the mainstream. And while the mainstream gets wiped out, you will actually profit.
- [44:28]
A
We were discussing before we hit record about how cavalier people are about purchasing things in their own name without private purchases. And obviously if you purchase something, that's a strong, strong moment that you're on the grid, especially if that is not in cash. What are some just your overall thoughts on this topic, how casual people are, the importance of private purchases, and maybe an example or two of things that people really aren't thinking about.
- [44:59]
B
Yeah, I think it's important that people, when they make major purchases, do the majority of those with cash. And here I'm talking about large quantities of food storage, firearms, ammunition, firearms accessories like full capacity magazines, all sorts of ammunition reloading gear, and even some communications equipment. It's important that you make those purchases with cash, that you do so face to face and you don't leave a paper trail. Now obviously for a lot of the people listening to this, they live in states that don't have private party firearms transactions. They have what in the modern parlance they like to refer to as universal background checks, which basically is a ban on private party sales. The other half of your listeners who do live in free states where you can still buy firearms private party. Granted, the selection of guns that you have will be smaller and the time it takes to find them will be much longer if you buy private party because you're going to have to go to a bunch of gun shows or watch the classified ads and then go make cash purchases from private parties. But if you have the opportunity to do so, if you're in any of those states, again, it's about half of the states do go ahead and buy private party. If you live in a state that's restrictive and that requires paperwork on all firearms purchases, keep in mind that's only referring to modern firearms. Guns made in or before 1898 are generally in most states exempt from those laws requiring the 4473 form and the background check and all that. So if you live in a state that restricts modern firearms purchases, but where pre1899 antique guns are still possible to purchase with no paper trail, then make sure that about a third to a half of your collection is antique legally. And there's some very effective guns that are available that were made before 1899. Here I'm talking primarily things like Mauser bolt action rifles like the model 1891 Argentine, the model 1893 Spanish, the model 1894 Swedish, the 1894 Brazilian, the 1895 Chilean, and even the very early 1896 Swedish Mausers. Those are all available depending on their serial number range. Those models are available private party if you buy them pre 1,899, and they can even be rechambered into very modern cartridges if you so desire. So again, make those purchases private. And again, if you live in a private party purchase state, buy all of your guns private party if you can. If you live in a restrictive state, there may be a couple of guns that you're going to want to buy with a paper trail, but recognize the fact that the government may come looking for them and collect them someday. So you want to hedge your bets by buying some antique guns. And look on the Internet, there's a number of different vendors. I even run a small mail order business selling them, but that specialize in pre1899 cartridge guns. We're not talking muzzleloaders here, we're talking guns that shoot modern cartridges. And in the case of the Mausers, we're Talking about cartridges like 7x57 Mauser and 6.5 by 55 Swedish Mauser, which are incredibly effective cartridges. There's basically no difference at all between those and a modern Production bolt action rifle. They're fully capable guns.
- [49:11]
A
Just a final question for you here, Mr. Rawls. You don't strike me as the type of guy who starting at 5 o', clock, Netflix is up and running on the big TV and such. You have talked about having healthy hobbies, right? Because I think it's a really interesting point because even if somebody they're productive, they're forward thinking at a certain type of point of the day, when it becomes the leisure hour, they get into these hobbies that rob them of their health, rob them of their mental capacity. They're really non productive hobbies when they could be having just as much entertainment doing something that's productive. What are your thoughts on fostering some good habits, some good hobbies rather, and how somebody can get into that mindset?
- [49:58]
B
Well, you're absolutely right. I feel really blessed to live where I do and the way I do. We live in a very remote area and we do, we raise livestock, we have a very large garden. My wife is a tremendous blessing in that regard. So a lot of my spare time is actually very productive in terms of my physical health because I'm getting a lot of physical exercise. This morning I was out cutting and splitting and stacking firewood, for example. We live self sufficiency, so we benefit from that. And of course my health benefits from the, from the fact that we're eating a lot of food that we produce ourselves. We're not eating packaged foods, we're eating foods that my wife cooks. And most of that comes from our garden or from our own livestock. So in terms of hobbies, it's important that people gear their hobbies towards self sufficiency. Granted, there's a few things that people can do in the area, in the gaming arena, for example, that might have some practical use, but most of it is a waste of time. You really should be spending your hobby time with things that are productive, that give you meaningful exercise for cardiovascular health and that are going to contribute to your preparedness for any disruption in the grid or major infrastructure. So for example, hand loading ammunition is a good one. Home canning, dehydrating handcrafts that are productive. Like for example, we raise sheep, we have fleeces every year. We just recently had shearing season. So things like carding and spinning wool or just felting wool, you don't even have to learn how to spin, you can always felt wool to make felted items like slippers, for example. There's a lot of hobbies that people can develop that are basically 19th century crafts. They're handcrafts where you're not using grid power, you're creating a usable, practical item that can be used for your own purposes or for barter. So carpentry, for example, but put an emphasis on hand tool carpentry rather than electric tool carpentry.
- [52:41]
A
Fair enough. All good thoughts. So we'll wind down here. This has been Mr. James Wesley Rawls of survivalblog.com, we'll have various links to your stuff, Mr. Rawls, but I'll give you the final thoughts here.
- [52:56]
B
Well, I just encourage everyone listening to think and pray about their situations. And if you feel that there is a legitimate threat to your health and safety living in the times that we live in, that you adjust your lifestyle accordingly. And that could be something major like making an out of state move, or it could be something pretty minor like just doubling up on the amount of food that stores well that you buy at your grocery store each week. If you feel convicted to make a change, go for it. Hopefully that's going to be a change for the better, one that will contribute to your family's preparedness so that if everything does hit the fan someday, you can look across the dinner table at your spouse and children and be able to tell them, well, we're ready. Don't be the guy who's looking across that table saying, I'm sorry I bought the Jet Ski, I'm sorry I bought the plasma hdtv. I'm sorry we took that vacation to Hawaii. We don't have anything to eat.
- [54:17]
A
Hey, thanks for listening. I could really use your help. Real quick if you could share this episode with someone, engage with me, leave a review anywhere. This helps me to break the technocratic shadow banning the that is happening with my brand. And of course, if you really want to escape the technocracy, go to escape thetechnocracy.com privacy, tutorial, series, books, newsletters, consulting, and of course you can leave a donation. Thank you very much.
- [54:51]
B
Sam. Sa.