Matter of Facts: Trouble in the Mountains

[00:00:06] Welcome back to the Matter of Facts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MWFPodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Ravellay. Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show.

[00:00:30] Andrew's not here. Nick is. Eddie is joining us. Let's get the admin work out of the way quickly so we can get to the point of this. First of all, Happy Halloween to everybody. I'm wearing my disguise. This is not a mask.

[00:00:42] Uh, patrons, I always forget to, unless Nick reminds me, to thank the patrons for supporting this insanity. And thank y'all for chipping in a couple of bucks to keep the shit show going because, you know, this is y'all's fault.

[00:00:56] And if you're upset with the show, then I've got a list of people you can blame. And if you're happy with the show, I got a list of people you could join in their group insanity, if that's your thing.

[00:01:08] Merch. Merch is always a thing. Um, I am wearing the official What Would Burt Do shirt because anybody that doesn't believe that Burt Gummer is an excellent role model for children, I question your upbringing and your childhood.

[00:01:22] He's probably partially responsible for me turning into who I am, so thank him for that. But we should all ask ourselves from time to time, what would Burt do in this situation?

[00:01:32] And now with the admin work out of the way, Nick's with us, Andrew's not, and Eddie is with us.

[00:01:40] And Eddie, I don't really have to introduce you to the patrons because you're very well known in the patron group.

[00:01:47] Um, to the listeners, let's see here, um, nationally ranked black powder and cowboy action shooter,

[00:01:57] recently went to the world, what was it, world muzzleloader championships, TV star all around, like, don't piss him off if you're within 700 yards of a maze holding anything made in the last two centuries.

[00:02:09] That's a good way to start.

[00:02:11] And a therapist.

[00:02:12] And a therapist.

[00:02:13] And, and a therapist that has recently started your own practice, which by the way, how is that going so far?

[00:02:19] Uh, I finally paid myself for the first month, so that was great.

[00:02:23] Fantastic.

[00:02:24] We've gone months without having to pay myself.

[00:02:26] That is a serious accomplishment for a new business.

[00:02:30] Taking a paycheck was nice.

[00:02:33] I bet.

[00:02:34] Hey man, it's nice when it works out that way.

[00:02:36] Fantastic that it works out that way.

[00:02:38] Yeah, I, um, I made a mistake and, uh, hired a marketing firm, which helped in the beginning, but they are seriously not producing on what they over, um, promised.

[00:02:45] And it's costing, uh, they eat most of my profits.

[00:02:49] So I have two more months of time.

[00:02:52] I basically am on the hook for another three grand with them.

[00:02:54] And then, um, and then we're basically making double what I made at my previous job.

[00:02:59] Well, you know, that's, that's the unfortunate thing about business, man.

[00:03:02] You don't know until you try some of that stuff and some, some ideas, they just, they don't pan out, but Hey, learning opportunity right there.

[00:03:10] A little freebie for anyone.

[00:03:11] If you ever open up your own thing and a marketing company promises that they can push your SEOs within, you know, less than a year, they're lying to you.

[00:03:19] It's a minimum a year to 18 months.

[00:03:21] So don't sign a contract.

[00:03:23] That's actually really great to know.

[00:03:25] I don't, I don't want to say I could have told you that, but like marketing guys always, they, I don't want to say they lie.

[00:03:33] They overestimate.

[00:03:34] They did make me a nice website though, that I get to take with me.

[00:03:37] So there's that.

[00:03:38] Oh, that's nice.

[00:03:39] I mean, a quality website's extremely important.

[00:03:42] Yeah.

[00:03:43] So that's something.

[00:03:46] So for those of you that don't know, Eddie was in the area affected by hurricane Helene.

[00:03:52] Um, do you, do you care if we mentioned where, what area you're in there, Eddie?

[00:03:57] Um, my business is in Canton, North Carolina.

[00:04:00] If you Google me enough, you'll find me.

[00:04:02] I'm listed enough places at this point.

[00:04:05] Yeah.

[00:04:06] So kind of in the direct impact area, would you say?

[00:04:11] Yeah.

[00:04:11] Um, everyone is focusing on Asheville, but, um, our downtown had, uh, about no lie.

[00:04:19] I think 35 feet of water above the banks and the, the, the river is generally 20 feet below

[00:04:25] the bank as a start.

[00:04:26] So what?

[00:04:27] 45 feet of water.

[00:04:29] Wow.

[00:04:30] I'm not shocked by that.

[00:04:32] 55.

[00:04:32] That was bad.

[00:04:33] That's incredible.

[00:04:34] Yeah.

[00:04:35] But still, you know, at that point, you're talking about walls of water that are larger

[00:04:40] than most buildings that are going to be in the average city's downtown area.

[00:04:44] I mean, unless you're talking skyscrapers or megaplexes, you know, that's, that's a serious

[00:04:49] amount of water.

[00:04:50] The, the worst hit spot was, um, um, um, just, um, about, uh, 45 minutes to an hour away

[00:04:58] from me.

[00:04:58] So just a little bit past Asheville, uh, there's a famous picture of, uh, Hardee's, the waters

[00:05:05] crawl, um, wait, um, kind of going over the top of a Hardee's.

[00:05:08] So like, think of your, any fast food restaurant and the waters at the top of that.

[00:05:12] And mind you, that Hardee's was nowhere near the river.

[00:05:15] Yeah.

[00:05:15] I know you have said in the Patreon chat and the patrons will, will be familiar with this,

[00:05:20] but for the audience, what did you expect going into this?

[00:05:23] I know you've told me that you expected some flooding.

[00:05:27] Yeah.

[00:05:27] So, um, what most people probably don't know, um, are it's left their consciousness.

[00:05:35] Cause you know, that's how the new cycle works.

[00:05:36] We're already out of the new cycle anyways, during this point.

[00:05:39] But, um, we had, uh, we actually had a hurricane similar like to this about three years ago where

[00:05:46] it was a lot of flooding, um, downtown again, flooded the, the same businesses that kind of

[00:05:52] got wiped out, got wiped out, um, then, but nowhere near as bad.

[00:05:56] So like, but the businesses learned their lessons.

[00:05:59] Um, like there's a car, car detailing shop downtown.

[00:06:02] They already knew everything.

[00:06:02] They pulled out everything.

[00:06:04] They, everything of value.

[00:06:05] They moved out the, the bar took all of the, excuse me, the brewery that's, that got

[00:06:09] flooded out last time.

[00:06:10] They removed all their beer from the brew tanks that they could, um, they removed everything

[00:06:15] from the building that they could think, okay, water will come through.

[00:06:18] Well, it's mostly a concrete.

[00:06:20] It was an old textile building.

[00:06:21] So, okay, we'll have to swap out the mud and call it a day.

[00:06:25] And a couple other places, you know, move things out.

[00:06:28] No one was expecting this much water.

[00:06:30] Um, and again, the problem was, um, like we were expecting flooding.

[00:06:35] I told everyone there was going to be flooding, um, stay out of the area.

[00:06:38] Um, not to touch on another topic, but stay out of the area.

[00:06:41] There's a lot of flooding come to the area.

[00:06:42] It was going to be bad.

[00:06:44] Um, but the biggest problem we had was that there was a lot of rain that came before it.

[00:06:49] And then when the storm came over, it just started hovering.

[00:06:52] It just, it didn't push over and it just stayed there.

[00:06:55] And I mean, I grew up at the, um, down in the beach, um, in a place called Currituck, which

[00:07:00] is right above the outer banks of North Carolina.

[00:07:01] So I think, you know, the direct coastline and it's similar.

[00:07:04] I know Phil's used to this because of the coast, but if you're not from area where hurricanes

[00:07:08] usually hit, um, storm surge is a thing.

[00:07:11] Like all the videos you see in Florida, you know, the water's at people's knees and stuff

[00:07:14] like that.

[00:07:15] Okay.

[00:07:15] Not taking away from that.

[00:07:17] That's it's bad.

[00:07:18] It's dangerous.

[00:07:19] You can get stuck in houses and it destroys things, but it's mostly flat ground.

[00:07:23] Water comes in, water goes out.

[00:07:25] Well, here in the mountains, you got to think, you know, everything is tall.

[00:07:28] And then there's, uh, I'm using hand things if you're not watching it, but think of a mountain,

[00:07:32] you know, then there's the valleys where everyone lives.

[00:07:33] No one lives on the peaks.

[00:07:34] Everyone lives in the valleys.

[00:07:35] Well, all that water has to channel somewhere and it all goes to the valley.

[00:07:40] And so that's where I like all this water just got funneled into these spots and then

[00:07:45] just over flooded these already flooded rivers.

[00:07:47] And I mean, there was, I think we had, uh, 39 inches of rain in less than 24 hours.

[00:07:57] Wow.

[00:07:57] I mean, we're a rain, we're considered a rainforest here.

[00:08:00] So we already get a lot of rain, but we, we hit our annual rainfall in 24 hours.

[00:08:06] Wow.

[00:08:07] Yeah.

[00:08:07] And the audience can't see me over here, like cringing, but like, I remember before the

[00:08:12] storm hit that the estimates I was seeing were something already like 24 to 27 inches,

[00:08:18] which.

[00:08:19] Yeah.

[00:08:19] Two feet of water.

[00:08:21] Yeah.

[00:08:21] But I was telling my wife, I'm like two feet of water here where I live would cause catastrophic

[00:08:27] flooding.

[00:08:28] And I'm like, I'm 21 feet above sea level here, which is hilarious to everybody that lives

[00:08:33] anywhere with elevation, but stick with me.

[00:08:35] But like new Orleans is three feet below sea level for comparison sake.

[00:08:39] So I'm practically living on a hilltop where I am, but two feet of water would flood most

[00:08:45] of this city.

[00:08:47] Two feet of water in a mountainous area is a level of catastrophe.

[00:08:52] I don't like, and I saw this coming Eddie, because I'm like, if it rains two feet at the

[00:08:56] peak of a mountain, that two feet of water is going to go down to the valley.

[00:08:59] And now you're going to wind up with, you know, four or five, six feet minimum when it

[00:09:05] all piles into the valleys.

[00:09:06] It's, and you're right.

[00:09:09] Like, I remember y'all had that huge thunderstorm system that blew through, I think two days

[00:09:13] before Helene hit.

[00:09:14] And I was like, great.

[00:09:15] So every basin is already filled.

[00:09:18] Every river is already maxed out.

[00:09:21] Every pond, every retention pond is already maxed out.

[00:09:24] And now you're about to put two feet of water into it.

[00:09:27] There's nowhere for it to go.

[00:09:28] Well, I don't know that there's anywhere in the country that has room for two feet of water.

[00:09:35] There's no metro area in North America that can absorb two feet of water that fast.

[00:09:42] Nobody, nobody has the infrastructure for it.

[00:09:44] I mean, even assuming, even assuming flatland, even assuming flatland, you know, and not mountains

[00:09:50] because realistically you're losing what?

[00:09:52] Probably 50 to 70% of the surface area where that water would normally sit.

[00:09:58] Due to the, due to the elevation.

[00:10:00] Yeah.

[00:10:01] Well, I mean, Raggle Fraggle just jumped in.

[00:10:04] He's three and a half hours from New Orleans and only 19 feet above sea level.

[00:10:07] Yep.

[00:10:08] Welcome to Louisiana.

[00:10:09] You got it.

[00:10:10] You got to drive four hours to find a mountain.

[00:10:12] I think my house where I grew up in was, I think our house where I grew up in was like

[00:10:15] a foot above sea level.

[00:10:17] It was extremely flat.

[00:10:18] Down there on the coast.

[00:10:19] That would happen down on the coast.

[00:10:21] But yeah, man, it's just, I don't know.

[00:10:23] It, it, it, it makes my stomach do flip flops hearing about that much rainfall because there's,

[00:10:29] there's nowhere on earth that can absorb it.

[00:10:32] There's nowhere for it to go.

[00:10:33] Yeah.

[00:10:34] I mean, so the walls of Rotter were dangerous.

[00:10:38] Let's call it what it is.

[00:10:39] This is, so first off, I want to get the caveats out of the way so I don't have to come

[00:10:44] back and touch them.

[00:10:44] So just give me a minute.

[00:10:45] The, I'm extremely thankful that I didn't lose anything to my house.

[00:10:48] My business got minimal damage.

[00:10:50] There was a leak in the business, there was a leak in the roof that we already knew about

[00:10:53] that it filled up a 55 gallon trash can and went over the brim.

[00:10:57] So we already knew that was going to happen.

[00:11:01] We had friends that had lost a whole lot more.

[00:11:03] We had friends that had watched their houses float down the river.

[00:11:06] Like we, and then there's people that, you know, died.

[00:11:10] And I, there was a body hanging in a tree down below my house that I helped a cop get

[00:11:16] out the, get, get out.

[00:11:17] Um, it is, so all those caveats out of the way, extremely thankful.

[00:11:22] All right.

[00:11:23] Now we can move on to the next part.

[00:11:24] Um, so yeah, the, the water, the water is, was extremely dangerous.

[00:11:29] Um, the, the big thing though, was the, the mud and the landslides, um, like all this

[00:11:35] water just calls all the ground to destabilize.

[00:11:37] I mean, not just thinking trees to get touched over in the wind.

[00:11:40] Okay.

[00:11:40] Cause I mean, that happens.

[00:11:42] We all know that, but like all the, the reason all the highways collapsed was because the

[00:11:46] wall of water just went underneath the, when they're going down the rivers, went underneath

[00:11:52] the roads and destabilize the whole road system and just collapsed whole highways.

[00:11:57] The, I think, um, it's no lie.

[00:12:01] I mean, I was talking to someone that's involved with a mapping area.

[00:12:04] We're going to have to have a new topographer come in this area because whole rivers have

[00:12:08] changed the routes.

[00:12:09] Um, the thing, the whole landscape has changed.

[00:12:13] We're going to have new maps are going to have to be drawn after the storm.

[00:12:16] Wow.

[00:12:17] I mean, that makes a lot of sense.

[00:12:19] I know, you know, I've never had that kind of rainfall around me.

[00:12:22] Fortunately, never have.

[00:12:23] We've had storms that have dropped, you know, a couple inches of rain in a couple of hours.

[00:12:29] And that has washed out driveways that has caused road embankments near and along creeks to wash

[00:12:35] out culverts.

[00:12:37] And, and this is relatively flat land.

[00:12:39] So the water can't really gain that much velocity.

[00:12:43] You know, it's, um, you know, we, we, we see the pictures of the highways being gone.

[00:12:50] And, and, you know, I think that it really doesn't truly hit home until you say something

[00:12:57] like the topography of the region has to be remapped.

[00:13:03] So that means that the ground level has changed, not feet, not a few feet in some places.

[00:13:10] What do you say?

[00:13:11] I do like five, 10 feet, 15 feet in some spots.

[00:13:14] Yeah.

[00:13:15] Um, I mean, there's some places where, um, like, you know, 20 feet, the mountain is gone.

[00:13:19] Um, one of the rivers that I'm talking about that changed this thing, um, it jumped its banks

[00:13:24] and now is about, you know, I think it's, uh, 14, 15 feet over from where it originally

[00:13:31] is.

[00:13:31] And it just cut a new swath.

[00:13:32] So like that river has changed then, and then down, um, in that it changed its course right

[00:13:38] through the middle of a school.

[00:13:39] Um, actually.

[00:13:40] Okay.

[00:13:42] Uh, there, there is, um, the one I'm specifically thinking of it, it decided, um, this new river

[00:13:46] goes through a school.

[00:13:47] Yeah.

[00:13:48] Well, and the other thing that I don't even know, yeah, I don't know how long it's going

[00:13:52] to be before y'all can find out if this came to pass, but with, with the sheer weight of

[00:13:57] the water that's compiling in these low lying areas, cause this is, we've started seeing

[00:14:02] this in new Orleans after repeat, you know, years and years and years of low line areas

[00:14:07] and the weight of the water compact in the ground.

[00:14:09] You might find that some of these valleys have actually like lost elevation relative

[00:14:14] to sea level between soil erosion, between the weight of the water.

[00:14:18] I mean, it's which downstream of this is going to make flooding even worse in those areas.

[00:14:23] It's, it's like, I don't know a better way to say like guys, mother nature doesn't take

[00:14:27] any prisoners.

[00:14:28] When she gets pissed off, she tears everything to pieces.

[00:14:32] So one of the people asking the comments, is it a new river or dry ancient river?

[00:14:36] No, these were active rivers.

[00:14:38] Um, the, um, it's not like out in Texas or, you know, like they're 40 feet wide, but only

[00:14:42] a foot deep.

[00:14:43] Um, some of these rivers could only be, you know, a couple feet deep and stuff like it,

[00:14:48] depending on where it is, but the major river is there, you know, anywhere between 10 and

[00:14:52] 20 feet deep at their deepest parts.

[00:14:54] Um, we're talking, you know, like boulder holes and stuff like that.

[00:14:57] Um, so no, these were active rivers cause like this is, we're known for fly fishing and

[00:15:01] trout fishing care.

[00:15:02] So these were active, um, extremely like well-producing rivers.

[00:15:08] So aside from the, the rainfall and the road washouts and obviously the power loss, what

[00:15:17] other like immediate on the ground effects were you guys seeing stuff that, you know, as

[00:15:22] soon as the storm passed, you noticed had changed.

[00:15:27] So here it was hard in the beginning because we lost power.

[00:15:33] Or we were, I live up on a mountain.

[00:15:35] Um, so we, we were kind of stuck in the mountain.

[00:15:39] Um, we didn't know what the, we knew downtown would have been flooded.

[00:15:42] And so we didn't know what we could expect.

[00:15:45] And the mate, what made it harder was all the cell phone service in the area just dropped.

[00:15:49] So there was usually, you know, in storms, you can rely on cell phone coverage and stuff

[00:15:54] like that to get news.

[00:15:55] Uh, there was all the cell networks died.

[00:15:57] Uh, so it was basically, um, I mean, we were an island.

[00:16:02] There was no way of accessing Asheville.

[00:16:06] Um, you're in, I don't live in Asheville, but like, there was no way of accessing Asheville.

[00:16:10] Um, chimney rock legit.

[00:16:12] Just, um, it's a little, little, little hard to say this.

[00:16:16] Cause I used to, me and my wife took our dog there like a month before it happened, but

[00:16:20] chimney rock, which is a cool place to go visit and camp and everything doesn't exist anymore.

[00:16:24] But Asheville was an Island.

[00:16:26] There was no way to get there.

[00:16:27] That's why they were using helicopters to take, um, and supplies, but there was no, there

[00:16:33] was no coverage, no news coming in and out.

[00:16:35] Um, all the water treatment was you're either lost water completely or your water when your

[00:16:42] water is full of sewage and dead bodies and dead other things.

[00:16:46] And so the, you couldn't have any water and no power.

[00:16:50] And, and I guess this is the part where I can make it real fun for myself to top it all

[00:16:54] off a day and a half before the storm hit.

[00:16:57] I threw my back out on the most, um, oh my God, I'm old way fashionable.

[00:17:01] Uh, I sat down and my back at thrown out.

[00:17:05] And so as the storm was coming through, I'm laying on the ground, relying on, uh, to get,

[00:17:10] no, I told you guys this earlier, but I'm an outside for everyone else.

[00:17:13] This isn't a crap on my wife thing.

[00:17:15] This isn't, she is a brilliant woman.

[00:17:16] She's getting her doctor.

[00:17:17] She's smarter than hell.

[00:17:18] Uh, and she's the only dumb thing she's ever done in her life was marry me.

[00:17:22] Um, but I was relying on her and giving her instructions on doing things, but she's always

[00:17:29] relied on me because I've just done it.

[00:17:32] Um, and you know what?

[00:17:34] I'm going to call it out.

[00:17:34] FEMA was doing their fucking job.

[00:17:36] Okay.

[00:17:36] So shut the fuck up about that.

[00:17:38] Anyways.

[00:17:40] Um, but, um, my wife, I had to rely on her to do, um, her, uh, to get things done, but

[00:17:48] she's never done it before.

[00:17:50] Um, and it was kind of the whole thing.

[00:17:54] So like, you know, I was sitting there thinking, I forget the name of the series, but the one

[00:17:57] where he makes that survival book, you know, where, um, he, like everything he writes down,

[00:18:02] the one that lives in the cave and everything, like they take over the valley.

[00:18:05] You know what I'm talking about?

[00:18:05] Franklin Horton is it?

[00:18:08] Yeah.

[00:18:08] The Franklin, Franklin Horton series, but he makes like, he makes a little survival book

[00:18:12] that like, uh, everything you need to take care of is in this book.

[00:18:14] So if I'm not home, you just rely on the book that the first thing I thought about after

[00:18:18] this was like, okay, cool.

[00:18:20] I can, this is something I need to do.

[00:18:22] So like, if something goes wrong, I can do this.

[00:18:24] But like, we, we had food.

[00:18:27] Okay.

[00:18:27] We have a generator, but what I didn't have was gas.

[00:18:31] I had one gallon of gas.

[00:18:33] In fact, we're now dealing with the fact that she, um, she spilled gas in her car because

[00:18:38] again, this is not a crap on my wife thing, but she has never touched a gas can in her

[00:18:42] life.

[00:18:42] She didn't even know how to open up my gas cans.

[00:18:44] So she actually broke one of my gas can lids.

[00:18:47] And when I told her, Hey, I need you to go buy gas before the storm, I was sent there thinking,

[00:18:53] um, Hey, okay.

[00:18:55] You're going to fill up every single gas can I have.

[00:18:56] There's a five gallon.

[00:18:58] There's a five gallon one behind the home.

[00:18:59] Go grab every single gas can.

[00:19:00] She bought, she brought one gallon of gas, but if you've never done it before, I can't

[00:19:05] well, if you don't know, you don't know.

[00:19:07] Well, that's a, that's a perfect learning point for anyone listening to this show.

[00:19:12] If you've got a spouse, if you've got a girlfriend, if you've got roommates, at least have them

[00:19:18] walk through the basics of some of your most key things, you know, how to start the generator,

[00:19:25] how to fuel the generator.

[00:19:26] Maybe if they're mechanically inclined, how to do an oil change on your generator, because

[00:19:31] after a week of running it, you're going to need that done too.

[00:19:33] Yeah.

[00:19:34] And if it, like in your case, Eddie, your back's blown out, you're not going to be laying

[00:19:39] on the ground, dumping oil out of a generator.

[00:19:41] Yeah.

[00:19:41] And the fun thing about that was that my generator, the, cause you know, they all have, they all

[00:19:46] have fuses in them and like they automatically trip in case something goes bad.

[00:19:51] They, it, it had tripped and because I can't see it in person, I can't tell her why it's

[00:19:56] not working.

[00:19:57] And so I eventually had to like work my way over there and like re-trip the, you know,

[00:20:04] the, the RFIC outlet.

[00:20:07] Oh yeah.

[00:20:07] The one that you can put beside like the water's waters.

[00:20:10] Yeah.

[00:20:11] GFI.

[00:20:11] Thank you.

[00:20:11] Yeah.

[00:20:12] So I had to trip that and it, and she was actually pushing the button and it wasn't

[00:20:16] working.

[00:20:17] And reason why is I forgot that one is extremely, it's extremely hard to do.

[00:20:22] Like I actually have to usually take like a metal pole and stick it in and push it because

[00:20:27] it just, it's a really hard button to re-trip.

[00:20:30] Yeah.

[00:20:31] I mean, and so the generator we have will run the whole house, but like that was another

[00:20:36] thing.

[00:20:36] Like I had been, it was on my to-do list of go ahead and like, you know, so that I

[00:20:41] could plug the line in that I don't have, I can just flip switches and plug the line

[00:20:44] in.

[00:20:45] Well, I hadn't gotten to it yet.

[00:20:45] But so we realized, then I realized that the, um, my power cords I had, um, I only had one

[00:20:52] heavy duty power cord.

[00:20:53] Um, excuse me, uh, the heavy duty power cords, like the two 20 volt cords I have weren't the,

[00:20:58] it wasn't the right, wasn't the correct, um, uh, plug for the generator.

[00:21:02] It didn't fit the thing.

[00:21:04] So I was using regular 120 volts to run my, um, my freezers and fridges and stuff like

[00:21:09] that.

[00:21:10] And I could do it, but I had to cycle them because I couldn't have them all in the

[00:21:13] same lines.

[00:21:14] That makes sense.

[00:21:15] So, so like it was just a cascade of failure stuff that like it, no grant, like things

[00:21:21] worked.

[00:21:22] We didn't lose any food, but like it was just all these cascade things piled up on top

[00:21:26] of each other.

[00:21:27] Not to mention then like only thing we had is a little bit of food.

[00:21:30] Sorry.

[00:21:31] No, you're good.

[00:21:32] Now it's time for a moment of honesty.

[00:21:33] The last hurricane near miss we had here at the house a few months ago, uh, I actually

[00:21:39] had got an interlock kit installed on the house so I could hook up a two 20 line

[00:21:43] from my five K straight to the house.

[00:21:45] And then I discovered that evening, the power hadn't gone out.

[00:21:48] It did not go out, but we were getting ready cause we kind of saw it coming.

[00:21:52] I discovered that my generator had a NEMA 20, 20 amp outlet on it.

[00:21:59] And the entire interlock kit, the cord and everything was a NEMA 30.

[00:22:03] That is a very different plug.

[00:22:05] Yeah.

[00:22:06] It's different enough that they ain't going to go together without hacking that I

[00:22:09] probably shouldn't do.

[00:22:10] So needless to say, my wife and I pivoted very quickly to, um, get every extension cord

[00:22:16] in the house.

[00:22:17] And fortunately we have enough cause that's how we had dude after hurricane Ida.

[00:22:21] But yeah, Eddie totally feeling your fricking first time I had to use my generator under

[00:22:26] pressure.

[00:22:26] The battery was dead.

[00:22:28] So never fricking fails.

[00:22:30] Yeah.

[00:22:31] The thing that like got me was that I was just, I, I had never checked to see if that

[00:22:35] plug worked because the generator was a gift.

[00:22:37] It was a gift from my father-in-law because he upgraded his generator to a propane.

[00:22:42] Well, um, uh, a multifuel, but he's propane up in Pennsylvania.

[00:22:45] So he could run it all to house propane.

[00:22:48] And he asked me, do you guys want this generator?

[00:22:50] Cause all I had was like a little tailgater.

[00:22:51] I'm like, absolutely.

[00:22:52] I'll take this generator.

[00:22:54] And so, um, I had this power cord and you know what, call me stupid, whatever.

[00:22:58] But I didn't know that the, um, two 20 plugs were different.

[00:23:02] I thought they were all the same.

[00:23:03] So like, I felt, cause, um, I grabbed this, I grabbed the plug that I keep out of in my

[00:23:08] camper.

[00:23:09] I grabbed the line that I have that, and I brought it back home and I was like, oh, look,

[00:23:13] this doesn't fit.

[00:23:13] Cause it was one of those heavy duty lines that ends in like five different receptacles.

[00:23:17] So I could plug in everything off that.

[00:23:19] No, I have just a good word.

[00:23:21] Cause like, um, we put the generator outside our kitchen window, open up the screen a little

[00:23:25] bit and run it through.

[00:23:26] It was like, oh, cool.

[00:23:27] We'll be good.

[00:23:27] Yeah.

[00:23:27] It didn't work that way.

[00:23:28] Yeah.

[00:23:29] You know, unfortunately that's the way it is.

[00:23:30] I mean, this is, this is why I like to tell people that the best time to try out your generator

[00:23:36] is when it's 65 and sunny.

[00:23:40] That way you're not having to try to do it, you know, in the pitch black, you're not having

[00:23:44] to try to do it when it's freezing cold.

[00:23:45] You got gloves on, you've got time.

[00:23:48] And then you can assess these problems in advance and try to compensate for them.

[00:23:52] But Hey man, it's a perfect example for people, man.

[00:23:56] And fortunately for you guys, it sounds like it worked out pretty okay.

[00:24:00] I mean, you were able to make use of the tool.

[00:24:03] It wasn't down entirely.

[00:24:04] You had a fallback plan.

[00:24:06] That's fantastic.

[00:24:07] But you know, that's, these things are complicated.

[00:24:10] Like when I bought my generator, I had no idea how to hook this thing up to my house.

[00:24:13] So I brought an electrician out and I had him show me how to use the entire panel system

[00:24:19] that's on the wall over to my left.

[00:24:22] I mean, fortunately I knew a guy that was very good at these things that could walk me

[00:24:28] through it.

[00:24:29] Cause I am not an electrician, but you know.

[00:24:34] Yeah.

[00:24:34] Yeah.

[00:24:35] I mean, there was, there was definitely some lessons to be learned.

[00:24:37] One of the things that we were really happy about, um, granted, um, so we had friends

[00:24:42] that lost, um, stuff.

[00:24:44] We had, uh, they didn't lose their entire house, but they lost, uh, basically their bottom half

[00:24:48] of their house.

[00:24:49] Uh, water just came flooding through their house.

[00:24:51] Um, and that, and they just finished like making it a, um, um, I forget the name of

[00:24:56] the word, but, uh, you know, if you take a basement and you make it livable, um, they

[00:25:02] basically finished it.

[00:25:04] There we go.

[00:25:04] They had just done that and finished it like a month prior and then all the stuff came

[00:25:09] through.

[00:25:09] Um, but so we were over there helping them with stuff, but, um, we, I, this again, this isn't

[00:25:16] the crap on any of my friends or anything, but like, I guess, cause coming from the hurricane

[00:25:20] stuff, I was used to these things.

[00:25:22] Um, I would just, I felt thankful that like, you know, we could give people generators.

[00:25:27] We could give stuff like this.

[00:25:29] Um, my wife learned a painful lesson that, um, I happened to be out of town doing some

[00:25:33] stuff.

[00:25:33] And when she found I got the generator back cause power came back on, don't try to take a generator

[00:25:37] out of your car by yourself.

[00:25:38] Cause she threw, she, she wrenched her shower.

[00:25:41] So she, we, we both learned lessons.

[00:25:44] Yeah.

[00:25:45] I mean, good honor for trying, but dad, go.

[00:25:48] Those things are heavy.

[00:25:49] Those things are deceptively heavy.

[00:25:52] No, I mean, I think some of the biggest things that like the biggest lessons on the ground

[00:25:56] here is that like we, you can't prepare for, um, you can't prepare for this sheer amount

[00:26:01] of water.

[00:26:02] Um, the other thing that, um, I'm not going to share some of the stories I've heard directly,

[00:26:06] but like the mud here is different than mud that you can think of like where you're

[00:26:10] at, unless you live in Georgia in this area.

[00:26:12] Um, it's that red clay Georgia mud.

[00:26:14] So yeah.

[00:26:15] So it turns like the mud here is like, it's caustic.

[00:26:18] It'll actually burn.

[00:26:19] Um, if you get it on you long enough, uh, just because the minerals that are in it, um,

[00:26:24] it'll start to create heat on the body and it will also, it acts like quicksand.

[00:26:30] So the mud was actually like sucking people under.

[00:26:35] Yeah.

[00:26:36] Um, I, I, I've definitely heard stories that like, um, I'll tell you guys afterwards cause

[00:26:42] I don't want to traumatize the whole show, but it is things that like, I, I, I don't

[00:26:46] know if I could go on living if that happened.

[00:26:48] Some of the stuff that I've heard what involving the mud.

[00:26:50] I've heard stories come in that are, that are heartbreaking.

[00:26:54] Yeah.

[00:26:54] That's not good.

[00:26:55] Yeah.

[00:26:56] The, the mud aspect I think was the biggest thing, but some of the, what is kind of like,

[00:27:01] um, it was a little bit, um, I guess enlightening, heartening, um, whatever word you want to use

[00:27:07] is.

[00:27:08] So with all the stuff going on, we had a flood of people come in, um, females on the ground

[00:27:13] day one.

[00:27:14] They didn't, they weren't in like the official capacity because you know, we didn't have

[00:27:17] roads.

[00:27:18] They, they can't bring in the big semis because you can't, there's no, there's no road.

[00:27:22] So they were on the ground day one, um, air dropping and supplies.

[00:27:25] And then the, the Cajun Navy showed up that afternoon.

[00:27:28] Um, the Redneck air force showed up.

[00:27:30] Um, we had, um, the coolest thing was we had, um, uh, um, mule teams like old timey

[00:27:35] mule trains actually were showing up and delivering supplies, but all these people are showing

[00:27:39] up day one.

[00:27:40] Um, and one of all the, the host of, you know, first responders and everything, the local

[00:27:45] therapists stepped up.

[00:27:46] They were doing pro bono cases, um, working with the first responders, trying to help them

[00:27:51] just digest the trauma they're seeing.

[00:27:53] Um, but in that, um, they've actually started, I sent, I actually, I think I put it in the

[00:27:59] Patreon chat, the screenshots of people just talking about, Hey, how to be, these are things

[00:28:04] that you should probably have on hand for a storm because people just didn't even have

[00:28:07] the basics, like, you know, cans of food.

[00:28:10] Um, the, actually I can use one of my friends cause she doesn't listen to this one.

[00:28:14] She'll never hear this.

[00:28:16] She, um, we found out that during the storm, she doesn't keep food in the house.

[00:28:19] She buys her meals daily.

[00:28:22] If she's going to cook, she buys, she buys everything.

[00:28:24] She's going to cook that day.

[00:28:26] Um, and it's wild to me to think that, but like when everything went out, no storm, she

[00:28:32] had no food.

[00:28:33] Like none.

[00:28:33] One, the other thing that was a little interesting cause everything was cash, everything was

[00:28:37] cash only around here.

[00:28:38] Most people don't keep cash on them.

[00:28:40] I mean, the only reason that I was even good at it is, um, I granted the sad part is it

[00:28:45] was in my business and my business was cut off from the house because of the, the, you

[00:28:49] know, the sheer flood of water going through downtown that was still actively running for

[00:28:53] three days past the storm.

[00:28:54] Uh, I had, um, I had like a $500 cash deposit sitting at my desk at work.

[00:28:59] So we had to find a way to get to work so that I could get the cash.

[00:29:03] Then we could actually use it on various things.

[00:29:05] But, uh, most people don't have cash and it's, we were actually went to one store and

[00:29:11] we bought, um, some more, um, canned goods.

[00:29:14] Not so much that we didn't because we didn't have food, but I was tired of eating expired

[00:29:18] MRE.

[00:29:19] And she, if she basically had to eat one more thing of spaghetti, she was going to murder

[00:29:22] me.

[00:29:24] Um, but while we're there, something that, you know, um, if, you know, if say, um, that

[00:29:30] you're addicted to like alcohol or something like that, and you know, are your caffeine,

[00:29:33] like, no, like, but you, these are things that you have to have in your system.

[00:29:36] Think about having more of it before the storm hits because like there is guys, you know,

[00:29:41] basically tweaking because they haven't had their beer and they're going through withdrawals

[00:29:46] and all the stores are shut down.

[00:29:48] Now, if I under, now I've never been addicted to something, so I don't know you're being

[00:29:54] a therapist.

[00:29:55] Maybe you do.

[00:29:56] Isn't alcohol withdrawals potentially fatal?

[00:29:59] Yeah.

[00:30:00] Uh, the, the bins from alcohol withdrawal can kill you and it is, it is physically painful.

[00:30:05] No, I believe that.

[00:30:06] That's why like, if anyone tries to like, um, like it's anyone tries to like go off alcohol,

[00:30:11] they generally recommend that you check yourself into a hospital because they're going to

[00:30:15] titrate you off and give you pain.

[00:30:16] Wow.

[00:30:18] Jesus, man.

[00:30:19] That's, uh, that's a heck of a time to be laid up, you know, in a disaster scenario like

[00:30:25] that, especially over something like your alcoholism or your caffeine addiction or whatever.

[00:30:31] Like I, Hey, I'm the first one to admit I function well in the morning because of coffee anymore,

[00:30:37] which is why I have 10 pounds of it.

[00:30:41] It's sitting over there.

[00:30:42] It was wild.

[00:30:43] Yeah.

[00:30:44] It was wild.

[00:30:45] Just thinking about these things, you know, and just seeing the different stuff, but like

[00:30:48] a lot of people, you know, they just didn't have the basic supplies.

[00:30:51] Um, you know what?

[00:30:52] It kind of even told us like, wait a second, we don't have a radio because who has a radio

[00:30:56] these days?

[00:30:57] You know, I get it.

[00:30:58] Like if you're listening to this, look, I have a radio.

[00:30:59] Well, you know what?

[00:31:00] I don't have a radio.

[00:31:01] And the closest thing I had to it was something in my garage that you had, like, it was like

[00:31:05] an old, um, but it had to like be plugged in.

[00:31:08] It had no battery capacity.

[00:31:09] And like, I also think, man, I have a battery powered radio with weather bands, but it stays

[00:31:14] in my camper.

[00:31:15] That's up in Winchester.

[00:31:44] That right.

[00:31:47] And I think that's usually when the thinking starts.

[00:31:49] I mean, I've been very, I've been very frank on this show and in person for years about

[00:31:54] the fact that I'm not a rocket scientist.

[00:31:56] I'm not the smartest guy alive.

[00:31:58] And I'm certainly not God's gift to, you know, preparedness or storm readiness.

[00:32:02] Most of the stuff my family does, we do because I learned this the hard way by eating the suck

[00:32:08] sandwich and realizing it didn't taste very good.

[00:32:11] And then be like, you know, I should do some of these things so it doesn't suck as bad next

[00:32:15] time.

[00:32:16] So like there is no shame whatsoever in hindsight.

[00:32:20] What I have been doing is that I basically just opened up a word document on my laptop

[00:32:24] in the middle of the, like one, cause we had power.

[00:32:27] So I, you know, I could use my laptop for no internet, even though no internet, but I

[00:32:32] was just basically just typing out ideas of things that to fix.

[00:32:36] Like why have I like in the moment?

[00:32:38] Okay.

[00:32:38] This is something that needs to be fixed now.

[00:32:40] So that way I don't forget it in hindsight.

[00:32:43] Perfect.

[00:32:44] I mean, anytime you have a scenario like this, if you think of something while it's top of

[00:32:48] mind, you got to write that stuff down because you're by the time you get through everything,

[00:32:52] you're going to be exhausted and there's no way in hell you're going to remember the first

[00:32:55] thing you thought of, you know, day one of the storm.

[00:32:59] So how about, you know, after the flooding went down, after the initial damage was all

[00:33:06] done, what did, what kind of major effects did you see?

[00:33:09] I mean, obviously intermittent cell towers, I'm sure intermittent power, water.

[00:33:14] What did you, what did you, what did you notice?

[00:33:17] So it took, it honestly took about four to five days for us to get out of our mountain

[00:33:23] just because of the, the, the town, the town came in and they, they, there was power

[00:33:30] poles down everywhere.

[00:33:32] So they, they basically contracted the big wrecker company in town to just park their

[00:33:37] wrecker trucks blocking roads.

[00:33:39] Um, and, and just, you know, to stop people from going downtown because there was a lot

[00:33:44] of looting going on.

[00:33:45] Um, so just trying to like, um, shut down on the, uh, the sheer amount of looting going

[00:33:49] on and, you know, to try to keep people out of the immediate danger zones.

[00:33:53] Uh, so once I found was able to get out, um, we started helping friends and a lot of, again,

[00:33:59] that's one of what I noticed was just, um, I don't know, just the sheer amount of

[00:34:03] devastation.

[00:34:04] Um, there is still like people's entire houses are just gutted and just, you know, stack 20

[00:34:09] feet on the curve in front of them.

[00:34:12] And I don't know the, uh, I know this isn't part of the actual question, but like, uh, like

[00:34:17] the survivor guilt aspect was really, it was real.

[00:34:20] Um, when, when I remember when we got, um, I got self, we got cell phone coverage back.

[00:34:25] Um, and not even like, um, not even internet, like cell phone coverage back.

[00:34:30] I'm sitting there.

[00:34:31] I was laying in bed watching YouTube and just, you know, trying to think of something else.

[00:34:35] And all of a sudden it hit me like I'm laying in my bed watching YouTube.

[00:34:38] And there are people that don't have a house tonight cause they watched it float around

[00:34:40] the river.

[00:34:41] And man, that struck me so hard.

[00:34:43] I just couldn't sleep that night because of that.

[00:34:44] I can't imagine.

[00:34:46] No, but I mean, survivor guilt is a very, that's a very real, very palpable thing for people

[00:34:51] that go through any kind of traumatic, shared traumatic experience because you and Eddie,

[00:34:57] you're the therapist.

[00:34:58] I'm just the guy that, you know, got treated for survivor guilt decades ago.

[00:35:01] But like you do get in your own head about like, why did that storm take them, take them

[00:35:07] out and not me?

[00:35:08] Why did it destroy their home and not mine?

[00:35:10] You start to feel guilty because you didn't get screwed as bad as everybody else did.

[00:35:15] And for anybody that's never lived through it, I mean, you can rationalize it, but there's

[00:35:20] my experience has been that there's nothing rational about the after effects of trauma.

[00:35:25] It is purely emotional.

[00:35:27] And even for like the most, the most rational, hyper-organized type A neurodivergent person

[00:35:33] you probably have ever met.

[00:35:35] I can't control my emotions when it comes to traumatic events.

[00:35:38] It just, it gets into you and you can't, it's gotta, it's going to go where it goes.

[00:35:42] The thing that I've really seen that I've been appreciative of is that we'll probably,

[00:35:48] I'll probably rabbit trail on this thought.

[00:35:50] So pull me back if I go too off course, is the sheer amount of like the on the ground

[00:35:55] grassroots people helping the government.

[00:36:02] The government is the government.

[00:36:03] They have red tape.

[00:36:04] Like, you know, if you want to try to bring down your track hoe and your backhoe to help

[00:36:08] and you go through the FEMA camp, well, they have to make sure that, you know, you're licensed

[00:36:11] and insured and stuff like this, because, you know, it's just, you do something, you mess

[00:36:14] up.

[00:36:15] They it's, and you were, you say you were helping out of FEMA, then you could make the

[00:36:19] situation.

[00:36:20] And so, and so there were a hundred percent people coming down that weren't saying anything.

[00:36:24] And trust me, we, I was part of the, some of the people that was helping get people down

[00:36:28] here that was like, all right, Hey, this person just needs help.

[00:36:31] We, I'll just say what is the, so the masons, the masons across the country really stepped up

[00:36:36] and they already have the court, all the lodges are thing.

[00:36:39] And so about probably about 80% of the supplies you see that came to this area were donated

[00:36:44] by masons are, were handled through masons.

[00:36:46] And the, the, the national guard actually was worked, has been working directly with them,

[00:36:51] the masons on the ground because of all the, most of the warehouses here are owned by masons.

[00:36:57] So it's been kind of an interesting aspect in that saying, but it's been really cool seeing

[00:37:02] all the people step up and help and all the donations come through.

[00:37:05] And I mean, it's, I think I shared, I shared this with Nick, but the coolest thing I think

[00:37:11] is going on right now, like I'm in my office in downtown Canton right behind me.

[00:37:15] They're doing those trunk or treat stuff.

[00:37:17] Well, you know, if you've lost your entire house, you don't really have the bandwidth

[00:37:20] to buy your kid a Halloween costume.

[00:37:22] So a group of people came down and had Halloween costumes for kids and artists showed up and

[00:37:27] are doing face painting for the kids and they can, so they can go pick out a costume, get

[00:37:31] their face paint and then go trick or treating.

[00:37:32] It's fantastic.

[00:37:34] I mean, I'm, I'm sure, I mean, little things like that, that we just haven't thought about.

[00:37:38] Right.

[00:37:38] I mean, I don't have to tell you, Eddie, you know, better than probably either me or Phil

[00:37:42] that the kid, the kids are going to be hit really hard by this.

[00:37:46] Cause I, I can't imagine they're back in school for most of them.

[00:37:51] Actually.

[00:37:53] So Nashville started back this week.

[00:37:56] They lost 27 days.

[00:37:58] Wow.

[00:37:58] Um, they, um, a lot, so a lot of, um, I forget the name of the organization and if someone,

[00:38:05] if I'm going to describe it, if someone knows it, by all means, please say something.

[00:38:09] Um, but it is, it was, it's a Christian church nonprofit that their whole mission is they,

[00:38:15] they give, um, they give water to, um, like peep areas that don't have it.

[00:38:19] Like they, they supplied water to Flint, Michigan.

[00:38:21] Again, they, most of the, they go to third world countries, like they can set up like

[00:38:25] filtration systems and rivers.

[00:38:27] That's basically pure mud and give fresh water.

[00:38:29] Well, they went around and hooked up these water filtration systems to every single school

[00:38:34] because Asheville currently has water, but when you turn it on, it's Brown and they tell

[00:38:39] you it's a hundred percent, not potable.

[00:38:40] Okay.

[00:38:41] And to shower with it probably still feels bad, but these filtration systems can like

[00:38:46] make fresh water.

[00:38:47] So soon as the schools had fresh water, they immediately started, um, getting kids back

[00:38:52] in school just for the normalcy of it.

[00:38:54] Um, I mean, my wife's a teacher and I'd heard, um, and her school actually surprisingly did not

[00:39:01] lose internet.

[00:39:02] I don't know if they're a satellite internet or not, but as soon as they had power, they

[00:39:05] had internet.

[00:39:05] So like they were opened up as a community hub day, almost like day four or five, they opened

[00:39:10] up.

[00:39:11] Um, and they may have had a Starlink system.

[00:39:14] I don't know.

[00:39:15] Cause Elon Musk donated a lot of Starlink.

[00:39:17] That's, that's his big thing.

[00:39:18] He always donates the satellite, um, internet, but regardless, they had it.

[00:39:22] But, um, I remember hearing one of the seniors say is like, I lost my freshman year to COVID.

[00:39:27] I can't lose my senior year to this.

[00:39:29] I need, we need to be back in school.

[00:39:30] Very fair.

[00:39:32] And I mean, that's pretty big.

[00:39:33] That is huge.

[00:39:34] And like the thing that I always think about is that like, this is football season.

[00:39:38] Football is pretty big to these kids around here.

[00:39:40] It's big to the town.

[00:39:41] And so like, um, the, the day, the game, they, they were able to finally play a game

[00:39:47] back last week was the first game they played.

[00:39:50] And a little, little pride moment.

[00:39:52] The, the town that I live in, they, they beat their rival, um, 49 to zero.

[00:39:56] Nice.

[00:39:57] I think those boys had some aggression to get out.

[00:40:01] Little energy.

[00:40:02] But there's a lot, I mean, there's a lot to be said for return to return to normalcy.

[00:40:06] And I don't know out in the audience, like how many people have lived through an event this,

[00:40:10] this serious, or they had, they had this long, this far reaching set of after effects, but

[00:40:16] like, there's a lot to be said for just wanting to get back to your normal routine.

[00:40:20] And it is, it is the littlest stuff that makes things more bearable.

[00:40:27] Like you brought up, you know, people being addicted to substances.

[00:40:31] Like there's a reason why there's 25 pounds of coffee on that back shelf and like two

[00:40:35] pounds of pipe tobacco over there.

[00:40:36] Because if I have to go through a disaster, I want to have my, you know, my smoking pipe

[00:40:42] and my coffee.

[00:40:42] That's just my comfort.

[00:40:44] But for these kids, it's, it's their routine.

[00:40:47] It's school.

[00:40:48] It's sports.

[00:40:49] It's talking to their friends.

[00:40:50] It's all those things that kind of adults don't think about because we're thinking

[00:40:54] about big problems.

[00:40:56] And we, I think sometimes like we totally overlook the fact that like for these kids, they're,

[00:41:02] they're dealing with the same thing we are.

[00:41:04] They just see the world differently.

[00:41:05] I mean, the day after Hurricane Adam, my kid was flying a kite in the front yard because

[00:41:09] the wind was really good for it.

[00:41:12] Perfect way for her to decompress after spending a night sitting in the hallway with us, listening

[00:41:17] to a cat three hurricane blow the roof off.

[00:41:19] Absolutely.

[00:41:20] Yeah.

[00:41:21] It's the, the, the return to normalcy is definitely something.

[00:41:24] I mean, I, I used to remember.

[00:41:26] So the, when my wife hurt her shoulder, the reason I was out of town was because I have

[00:41:31] access to some honey land about five hours away and I just went hunting.

[00:41:35] I decided like our personal house was good.

[00:41:37] We had power, we had water, we had food and I needed, and I had already, I've been at

[00:41:42] that point a week working with the first responders and then just clients coming, filtering

[00:41:47] back into my business.

[00:41:48] I was like, I need to go sit in the woods.

[00:41:50] And so it was good.

[00:41:51] It was perfect for me to go sit in the, in the campground.

[00:41:55] Well, we call it a campground.

[00:41:56] Cause I, we've built a small campground in these woods, but go sit around a fire, you

[00:42:00] know, shoot the shit with my friend and then sit under a tree the next morning watching

[00:42:04] deer.

[00:42:04] It just, it was the return to normalcy for me.

[00:42:07] And now speaking of that, which is kind of interesting, um, something I haven't really

[00:42:11] thought about till actually probably a couple of days ago.

[00:42:13] Most of the meat that I eat honestly is cause I harvest it myself.

[00:42:17] And at this point, generally in like the hunting season, I have already put two to three deer

[00:42:23] in the freezer.

[00:42:23] I haven't gotten one yet because of the storm and most of the places I hunt don't exist

[00:42:27] anymore.

[00:42:27] Cause I always hunt at the riverbeds.

[00:42:29] Uh, so like, uh, so like, I think I'm going to have to actually buy hamburger for the first

[00:42:35] time in years, which is not going to be fun.

[00:42:38] It's going to be a change for sure.

[00:42:40] You know?

[00:42:41] Yeah.

[00:42:43] It's, this is a little bit of a backtrack, but you were talking about how nobody can be

[00:42:48] ready for a 35 foot wall of water.

[00:42:51] And we were talking with the guys from terminal element and a few of the other shows that

[00:42:56] we had on a couple of weeks back.

[00:42:57] They were saying one of them brought up, are there events that you just can't prepare

[00:43:02] for?

[00:43:02] And, and I think this is one of them, but what you can do and what I think you were able to

[00:43:08] do and some other people down there were able to do is they were at least able to care for

[00:43:12] themselves and lighten the burden on the other emergency response communities.

[00:43:18] You know?

[00:43:20] Yeah.

[00:43:20] If you have the ability to feed yourself and water yourself, then not have to go pick up

[00:43:26] supplies, then you leave the supplies to someone who absolutely needs them.

[00:43:29] And, you know, maybe it was less prepared or maybe just, they could have been all the prepared

[00:43:33] in the world, but their, their house got floated down the river.

[00:43:35] I mean, if, if, if my house got taken out by a river, it doesn't matter how prepared you

[00:43:41] are.

[00:43:41] All that stuff is now 50 miles, a hundred miles down river.

[00:43:45] You're not getting it back.

[00:43:47] Yeah.

[00:43:48] But that is kind of a key point though, is that if, if you are the person that, if you

[00:43:53] are the person that takes what we talk about in the show seriously, and you have dealt with

[00:43:57] your own family's preparedness, you're right, Eddie, you don't, you don't, you aren't one

[00:44:02] of the people that's scrabbling for supplies at the last minute.

[00:44:05] But if your neighbor or your friend's house gets taken out, you're now in a position to

[00:44:09] care for yourself and potentially help them too.

[00:44:12] So like, but it's something I definitely wanted to talk about in the show because like, I, I

[00:44:16] don't ever want one of these ARs to turn into like, these people should have prepared better.

[00:44:22] They wouldn't have been screwed because there's the truth of the matter is, is that there is

[00:44:27] a certain point at which there is literally nothing you can do to avoid.

[00:44:32] When I was, when I was enlisted, we always used to say that the best you can hope for is to avoid

[00:44:37] the bullet addressed to whom it may concern.

[00:44:39] Right.

[00:44:40] But if it's got your name on it, that's it.

[00:44:41] It's your turn to go.

[00:44:42] There's no getting away from it.

[00:44:44] So it is what it is.

[00:44:45] But the goal is always the reason you keep your head down.

[00:44:48] The reason you, you know, you look for cover concealed, but the reason you do all the

[00:44:52] soldier stuff is to avoid the bullet addressed to whom it may concern.

[00:44:55] And that's kind of the way I look at these kinds of storms of these disasters.

[00:44:59] Your goal is to avoid the storm addressed to whom it may concern.

[00:45:03] But if that river picks your house to move or that tornado picks your neighborhood to flatten,

[00:45:09] you're out of luck.

[00:45:10] That's, that's it.

[00:45:11] But the goal is that if you're not, now you're in a position to care for yourself.

[00:45:15] You're in a position to care for yourself and your family.

[00:45:17] You're in a position to help your neighbors.

[00:45:19] You're in position because you have the things.

[00:45:22] And that's also like one of the reasons why I've, I've been shifting focus in the

[00:45:27] last several months towards trying to educate communities.

[00:45:30] Because if you have a whole community of people that think the way we do now, if any one person's

[00:45:36] home gets wrecked, everybody else can help.

[00:45:39] But like you said, Eddie, you know, like day one, y'all had all this help screaming in

[00:45:44] that area, but there's, there will, there will almost never be a situation where there's

[00:45:49] enough help for the number of people that need help.

[00:45:53] So if you could take yourself out of the realm of, I need help, then you lessen the load

[00:45:57] for everybody else.

[00:45:58] Yeah.

[00:45:58] There's a couple of thoughts there.

[00:46:00] I mean, like some of the houses that got flooded, I mean, there was definitely areas

[00:46:02] that got flooded that like flooded last time.

[00:46:04] So they knew, we knew they were going to get wiped out.

[00:46:06] Unfortunately, they're usually the poor areas.

[00:46:07] Like the trailer park got wiped out again.

[00:46:09] We knew it was going to help.

[00:46:10] And most of the people that live in the trailer park are the migrant workers.

[00:46:12] You know, they're good, hardworking people that they're here to provide for their family.

[00:46:16] Their kids go to these schools.

[00:46:17] They're, you know, they're, they're hardworking people.

[00:46:19] They just live by the river because that's the cheap, that's a cheap area.

[00:46:22] It's funny that living by the river is the cheap area, but it's because it's, it's the

[00:46:25] trailer park, you know, but regardless of that, but a lot of people that lost stuff,

[00:46:30] like my friends that had their basement flooded and a lot of other people, they lived, you

[00:46:35] know, a quarter mile from the river.

[00:46:36] You're not expecting water to hit you when you're this far from the river.

[00:46:39] So like a lot of people who lost stuff, just like what, how do you do that?

[00:46:42] How do you prepare for something going through your basement when you're that far from the

[00:46:45] river?

[00:46:47] But going to, you know, trying to help for people, this was kind of like the enlightening

[00:46:50] eyes open moment for my wife.

[00:46:52] Cause like she, we have lived through hurricanes before where she has, you know, students who

[00:46:57] had to tell her like, Hey, they had to get carried out by boats from, you know, the, the,

[00:47:02] the, you know, the project housing, because that's where they were in like the town didn't

[00:47:05] care, but like it was so impartial to her.

[00:47:08] Cause it was, it was a student and yeah, she, well, she, my wife is incredible and empathetic

[00:47:13] and she cares for all her kids.

[00:47:14] It was her student.

[00:47:15] She, she didn't really know them outside of just, it's a student, if that makes sense.

[00:47:19] But when it happened to friends and when she's actually, when she, I think helped her, it's

[00:47:24] no longer a professional barrier.

[00:47:26] When she helped our friend basically grab her wedding dress and go, huh, I guess we'll throw

[00:47:31] this away.

[00:47:31] Cause it's ruined that I think it kind of hit her.

[00:47:34] So right afterwards, I remember that night after we, the first night of helping our friends,

[00:47:38] you know, clean up their, just throw their whole wife away.

[00:47:41] Cause we're just stripping everything out.

[00:47:43] Um, she comes to me, she goes like, Hey, I want to, um, start keeping cash on hand in

[00:47:48] the, um, the, the, the safe.

[00:47:50] I want to start a one.

[00:47:52] She basically like equated preparedness, not to the crazy gun guy.

[00:47:55] And we're just, we're stockpiling guns because, um, because you know, for the third world war

[00:48:00] and actually going like, Hey, if we would have had these things, we could have be in position

[00:48:05] to help our friends more because we're already, we've already taken care of herself.

[00:48:09] That's when she started.

[00:48:10] That's when I think she started getting on board with everything.

[00:48:13] And I can't again, fault her because she's the better person with money.

[00:48:17] So in order to do all this, we have to be better with money.

[00:48:19] And that AKA means Eddie has to be better with money.

[00:48:21] So like her by her wanting to jump on board gives me a reason to be better with money.

[00:48:26] I think you just kind of made my point though, man, because like she's, she's look, it sounds

[00:48:31] to me like your wife is looking at us from the perspective of like something that is very

[00:48:34] obviously very important to the two of y'all, which is helping your friends taking care

[00:48:38] of, you know, the people that are in your lives.

[00:48:40] If preparedness is a route in that direction, she's on board.

[00:48:45] And that's why, that's why I know you would express this to me like some weeks ago.

[00:48:49] So, and I had said, you know, I hate that this experience has been so frightening for

[00:48:54] her because it is.

[00:48:56] Oh my gosh.

[00:48:57] But my hope is that something good comes out of it.

[00:48:59] You know, like this is, this is, this is as awful as a, of an experience as it was that

[00:49:06] the downstream effect is that it's a change in lifestyle towards something that might benefit

[00:49:10] the two of y'all.

[00:49:12] So, you know, can I like the mental health aspect of this for a minute, please?

[00:49:16] Absolutely.

[00:49:17] So like, um, she won't be, she won't be mad that I share this, but she had, she started

[00:49:21] experiencing panic attacks when trying to lay down like, like last week.

[00:49:26] So we're what three, four weeks removed from the storm.

[00:49:29] She started experiencing panic attacks while sleeping and like, she couldn't understand

[00:49:32] why.

[00:49:33] And so like the, the, and then I've been hearing these from other people and clients, you know,

[00:49:37] just like the, the, now that they're starting to wind down, that's now when the panic

[00:49:40] is hitting.

[00:49:41] And that's pretty common.

[00:49:43] Actually, the, the human body is really good at trying to keep it together when, you know,

[00:49:49] the shit's hitting the fan.

[00:49:50] Um, not everyone can do it, but the, the, the human body essentially wants to live.

[00:49:55] It wants to survive.

[00:49:56] That's why we think of suicide as such a taboo because it's so hard for a rational brain

[00:50:02] to go, I'm going to end myself.

[00:50:03] And so that's why the rational brain go, I'm going to survive the storm no matter what.

[00:50:06] And if that means I need to block off certain emotions and that's what it's going to do.

[00:50:09] It's not healthy when the brain does that for the record, but it's how the brain views it

[00:50:14] as I'm going to protect, protect the host, which is you.

[00:50:17] And so when things start sliding down, that's when your brain starts trying to decompress

[00:50:22] and work on everything that's going on.

[00:50:25] And if, um, and that's, and that's when like a lot of people start experiencing these panic

[00:50:30] attacks and I'm going to, can I share a technique that I've shared out that'll save you guys,

[00:50:34] you know, a hundred dollars from going to a therapy session.

[00:50:36] It takes honestly, guys, 30 seconds.

[00:50:38] Anything you're willing to share.

[00:50:40] It takes 30 seconds.

[00:50:41] And what it is.

[00:50:41] So I got to do a slight buildup.

[00:50:43] So we understand what the human brain, we have the left hemisphere, right hemisphere.

[00:50:46] We have the prefrontal cortex and you have like the central nervous system, basically the

[00:50:50] part of the brain that is the sleepy kill fuck part.

[00:50:53] It's, it's the animal part.

[00:50:54] And yes, I understand.

[00:50:56] I say the F word a lot for a therapist.

[00:50:57] I'm not on duty right now.

[00:50:58] Get off my butt.

[00:51:00] He's a better therapist.

[00:51:01] I did 10 years of fire EMS.

[00:51:03] I did 10 years of fire EMS.

[00:51:05] So I, my first, my first boss was a Navy chief.

[00:51:08] So I know all the words.

[00:51:09] Anyways, the, um, so we understand that the left hemisphere, right hemisphere, the brain

[00:51:15] doesn't like to communicate across the hemispheres.

[00:51:17] And we, we know that for a fact because it's just, um, because we can shut down one half

[00:51:23] of the hemisphere and the brain, the body can, you know, act somewhat, um, abnormal because

[00:51:28] now the, cause it's not trying to communicate and try to make up for it.

[00:51:32] So what we do though, is to get the body to, um, communicate.

[00:51:36] It involves two techniques.

[00:51:38] It's called a thing called box breathing.

[00:51:40] And essentially imagine, um, it's when you breathe in through your nose and you're out

[00:51:43] through pursed lips, right?

[00:51:45] And you do it for four seconds.

[00:51:46] So you count, but you breathe in, that's one side.

[00:51:48] You hold for four seconds, you breathe out and you breathe back, um, and you hold and

[00:51:53] you just keep going.

[00:51:54] So imagine you're basically building a box and just in your head, cause it's the four steps.

[00:51:58] Well, you incorporate that.

[00:51:59] Well, also if you're right-handed, um, you put right over left, there's your left hand

[00:52:04] you put left over right, but you cross your feet, your arms, you bend over like you, like

[00:52:09] you're sitting down, like you hunch over, you put your eyes on the ground, bend your head

[00:52:13] down and then close your eyes.

[00:52:14] Essentially you do a lot of different things that you don't normally do.

[00:52:17] We call it pretzel breathing, but what it's essentially doing is cause you're crossing

[00:52:20] all these different aspects.

[00:52:22] Your body recognizes you don't usually do this.

[00:52:24] And so it starts sending signals all across the brain and up and down the central nervous

[00:52:28] system, AKA that like core survival part of the brain.

[00:52:31] And you count for, you count to 120 while doing this breathing.

[00:52:35] And what it does is that we know for a fact, two minutes resets the central nervous system.

[00:52:40] And so I, so while resetting the central nervous system and being crossed and making your body

[00:52:44] send signals back and forth, it, it will essentially make your body figure out what's going on and

[00:52:51] release the, um, the quote unquote negative, even though emotions are neither positive nor negative.

[00:52:56] They're just emotions, but it releases the negatives that are having hold on you, resetting the system

[00:53:01] and allowing you to almost take a breath.

[00:53:04] Interesting.

[00:53:05] I've actually heard that before.

[00:53:07] I've never had to do it, but I've heard it.

[00:53:10] Hmm.

[00:53:11] It's essentially EMDR.

[00:53:12] Um, cause the EMDR involves rapid eye sensation and movement, basically making the brain communicate.

[00:53:17] But this is, it's a light version of EMDR.

[00:53:20] Interesting.

[00:53:21] And if like, and the other thing that you can do, um, is that, um, I think I forgot to mention

[00:53:27] this part.

[00:53:27] Cause when I said cross, um, it, you basically, you take your right hand over left hand.

[00:53:32] If you're right-handed, cause I am, you grab them like you're, I can really, really show

[00:53:36] it holding a video.

[00:53:37] So if you guys can think of a better way of showing this, you can, but you put over,

[00:53:41] grab your hands, put it to your belly, flip it up.

[00:53:43] So you're kind of crossing all these different things in a weird way.

[00:53:47] And then you do the bending over.

[00:53:48] If that hurts because your wrist just cross over your arms and tap your shoulders.

[00:53:53] Like the idea is that the more movements that you can do, the more things that you can

[00:53:56] incorporate into it that you don't normally do, your body will start trying to figure out

[00:54:01] what's going on.

[00:54:02] You can also, if you're having a distressing memory nightmare, do this with your kids for the

[00:54:07] record, if your kids are like having distressing thoughts and stuff, have them think about that

[00:54:11] distressing thing while they're doing, they're counting to 120.

[00:54:15] And if counting to 120 is hard, set a timer.

[00:54:17] And what it does, your brain will essentially try to figure out what's going on.

[00:54:21] It's the same thing.

[00:54:22] Like if you've ever fallen asleep and woken up with like an eureka moment, it's because

[00:54:25] your, um, your, um, subconscious has taken over the brain and figured it out.

[00:54:30] Interesting.

[00:54:31] Interesting.

[00:54:32] And yes, this is basically stimming you.

[00:54:34] What stimming is, is it's, um, it's making the brain, um, use more signals firing back

[00:54:39] and forth.

[00:54:40] But the idea is that we're resetting the system and getting yourself out of that fight or

[00:54:44] flight mode.

[00:54:44] Okay.

[00:54:45] That makes a lot of sense.

[00:54:46] So you're hard rebooting your brain.

[00:54:48] Yeah.

[00:54:48] It's a hard reset.

[00:54:50] And it's really good if you work like jobs or, you know, like it's really good for first

[00:54:54] responders, but it's really good for jobs where like it's go, go, go, go.

[00:54:57] Because when you're done going, you can't just stop.

[00:55:00] Like if you take a long road trip when you get home, even though you're exhausted, you

[00:55:03] can't just fall asleep because your brain is go, go, go still.

[00:55:05] Cause you've just been awake.

[00:55:06] So it resets the brain, allows it to calm down and go to sleep or, you know, get out of

[00:55:12] the panic mode.

[00:55:13] You would have been really handy to have around about 20 years ago when I got back from Iraq.

[00:55:18] Thanks, Eddie.

[00:55:19] Eddie.

[00:55:20] You found it different.

[00:55:21] You're welcome.

[00:55:21] 20 years ago, I was graduating high school.

[00:55:23] Well, thanks.

[00:55:27] I was, I was, I was demobing and going to college.

[00:55:30] So I wasn't that far ahead of you.

[00:55:32] I was in, I think eighth grade.

[00:55:36] Oh, thanks for that, Nick.

[00:55:40] Yeah.

[00:55:41] I mean, so that's, that's the, that's essentially, I just saved you 150 bucks from going to a

[00:55:45] therapist.

[00:55:46] I mean, don't get me wrong.

[00:55:47] I'm a therapist.

[00:55:47] I love our profession, but like a lot of the stuff that we try to gatekeep, you don't

[00:55:51] need to gatekeep these, this information's out there to better your community.

[00:55:54] That's fantastic.

[00:55:55] But if you do need a therapist or you just want to talk to a therapist, Eddie is available

[00:55:59] if you live in his area.

[00:56:02] Yeah.

[00:56:02] And North Carolina.

[00:56:03] And I'll, can I do, I'll do this plug because I know you'll be okay.

[00:56:06] Absolutely.

[00:56:06] If you're looking for like a pro gun therapist, look up Walk the Talk America.

[00:56:11] It's an organization I sit on the board with.

[00:56:13] We are the intersection between guns and mental health.

[00:56:16] We work with the firearm companies to basically be pro mental health.

[00:56:19] And we train therapists to understand what basically is gun culture.

[00:56:22] But what we have there is we have two things.

[00:56:25] We have a free and anonymous mental health test that you can take that doesn't get reported

[00:56:29] to anyone, but you can take it and go, Hey, these answers are indicating that you may be suffering

[00:56:34] from anxiety, maybe suffering depression.

[00:56:35] There's a whole host of other things, but for record, but I just use those two off the top

[00:56:39] of my head.

[00:56:40] If, and if you would like to learn more, we have a, basically a list of therapists, like

[00:56:46] you can filter by state that have taken our, taken our trainings and based in like the

[00:56:52] trainings of all, all the way, you know, learning all the things about gun culture.

[00:56:55] It's all in all.

[00:56:55] So I think it's like a five hour training, but you can take the, you can go through our

[00:57:00] training that are not, not essentially pro gun.

[00:57:02] Some of them are, but they're, they're, you know, they're not anti-gun.

[00:57:06] Essentially.

[00:57:07] So you can go to, I was like, Hey, what do I do to relax?

[00:57:09] I like going shooting because you know, a lot of people are taboo to say that I'm not

[00:57:13] going to go into the reasons why you guys can probably figure it out.

[00:57:15] But again, it's walk the talk America.

[00:57:18] It's and the, the, the test it's WTTA.org slash love.

[00:57:22] You know, we talk about physical health on this podcast, a fair amount.

[00:57:27] We talk about financial health in this podcast, a fair amount.

[00:57:31] Mental health is no different.

[00:57:34] If your body and your mind and your finances aren't in order, it's going to make everything

[00:57:38] in life harder.

[00:57:40] So if you're having trouble, you should address it in any of those aspects.

[00:57:46] And I, to that note, the person that I went off on earlier about FEMA, I do apologize for

[00:57:51] the shortness of it, but you hit it.

[00:57:53] You struck a nerve there because I I'm, I'm, I'm personal friends with some of the people

[00:57:58] on the ground in those camps.

[00:57:58] So it struck a nerve.

[00:58:00] I understand they're not perfect, but it did struck a nerve.

[00:58:02] Well, you know, unfortunately, like you said earlier, Eddie, the government has red tape.

[00:58:07] We all know that.

[00:58:08] And in this case, unlike in the Gulf Coast, on the East Coast, you guys aren't used to

[00:58:17] that many hurricanes or that severe of a hurricane.

[00:58:20] So the infrastructure can't handle it.

[00:58:22] And if the road doesn't exist, the truck can't drive down it.

[00:58:26] And then you're stuck with hurricanes or with helicopters.

[00:58:29] And there's not a whole lot of places.

[00:58:31] Yeah.

[00:58:32] Yeah.

[00:58:32] You're not a whole lot of, not a whole lot of places where you can land a helicopter

[00:58:36] in a mountain community, especially if the roads are all screwed.

[00:58:40] The Harley Davidson, Harley Davidson unit over in Hendersonville became impromptu airport

[00:58:48] because they had a big field.

[00:58:49] So they would, they would land, throw them, drop all their supplies and take back off.

[00:58:54] And it was a constant rotation of helicopters just landing there.

[00:58:56] That's fantastic.

[00:58:58] Yeah.

[00:58:59] That sounds very familiar.

[00:59:00] Yeah.

[00:59:01] Disturbingly familiar, I'd imagine.

[00:59:03] Yeah.

[00:59:03] Well, I mean, having lived through Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Ida, that sounds familiar.

[00:59:09] Yeah.

[00:59:09] The one thing that I saw the other day is that we do have special forces on the ground,

[00:59:13] including the, the, including the other, like, you know, the National Guard, but they're

[00:59:17] there, um, honestly providing security for the workers because of the, the, this, we had

[00:59:24] militia units show up in the area that like the, some of them was

[00:59:27] overblown, but we've, we heard more about that actually coming up.

[00:59:30] People are actually looting, looting and attacking the camps, trying to steal supplies.

[00:59:34] So the special forces unit showed up to provide security for the, basically the people living

[00:59:38] in these camps because the cops are overworked.

[00:59:41] So these guys, they can blend in the camp and not be seen.

[00:59:44] Right.

[00:59:44] But I, I noticed some of the stuff and I texted a buddy of mine and he's like, Hey, are some

[00:59:48] of your friends here?

[00:59:49] He goes, yeah.

[00:59:50] Where are you at?

[00:59:50] I was like, told him, he's like, yeah, they're there.

[00:59:52] I was like, cool.

[00:59:53] Fantastic.

[00:59:53] Love to have them.

[00:59:55] If, if anybody's going to be providing security and it's special forces, that's a win.

[01:00:01] I noticed a guy with a pistol.

[01:00:03] I noticed a guy with a pistol and a beer that looked way too military.

[01:00:05] And I was texting a buddy of mine that used to be in a green brain.

[01:00:08] I'm like, Hey, I got some friends.

[01:00:11] You know, you mentioned the looting and, and this comes up after every major natural, natural

[01:00:19] disaster.

[01:00:20] There's always terrible people taking advantage of a terrible situation, but it sounds to

[01:00:26] me like the vast majority in this case, like with most cases are people trying to help other

[01:00:32] people or at the very least trying to not get in the way.

[01:00:37] Yeah.

[01:00:37] I mean, we have the people that are taking advantage of all the free stuff going through

[01:00:40] there and getting everything they can to resell.

[01:00:43] We've already seen that.

[01:00:44] And I will say this, we actually had, when the gas to start, the gas station started

[01:00:48] getting turned back on one of the, two of the stations in the town started trying to

[01:00:51] price gouge.

[01:00:53] All the politicians immediately called him out and like put them on full blast.

[01:00:57] And everything and, and shut them down.

[01:01:00] Governor Cooper, you know, whether you like a Democrat or not hate a Democrat, he's our

[01:01:05] democratic current governor.

[01:01:06] He's kind of a lame duck guy because he's heading out.

[01:01:08] So because he's lame duck, he decided to use emergency powers on this one and he suspended

[01:01:13] the gas tax and Western North Carolina.

[01:01:15] So all of our gas is super cheap right now because you don't have money.

[01:01:19] Hey, you know what?

[01:01:20] If that makes the difference for people, I'm glad that he was willing to help.

[01:01:25] Well, and I mean, if you think about it, you know, rationally, that money is supposed to

[01:01:29] go towards fixing the roads, which are all currently destroyed.

[01:01:32] So why, you know, yeah.

[01:01:34] What, what good is that money going to do now?

[01:01:37] I've definitely heard some bad stories, stuff like that.

[01:01:39] I mean, one of my clients there, um, I'm not going to go into too far specifics on this,

[01:01:43] but their boss essentially lied to him and not paying, even though he's salary and said,

[01:01:48] oh, we can't pay you because you're not at work, even though their salary and pulling

[01:01:51] a bunch of other shady stuff.

[01:01:52] I've heard more people, more stuff like this happening.

[01:01:54] But to that end, there is a, um, if you happen to be in this area, um, in the Western North

[01:02:00] Carolina area, look up Pisgah legal services.

[01:02:03] They provide free and pro bono work right now to anyone that's affected by the storm.

[01:02:07] A lot of what they're doing actually is helping people navigate the FEMA stuff because

[01:02:11] it's confusing.

[01:02:12] It's especially because like sometimes you can get turned down because, um, because it

[01:02:16] was a government, like, you know, it was a computer error or something.

[01:02:19] So they're helping people just navigate that stuff and providing the lawsuits and other

[01:02:23] stuff, the companies that are, you know, gouging people.

[01:02:27] So, I mean, it's just, it's cool to the amount of the people that are stepping up in their own

[01:02:30] professions.

[01:02:31] It's fantastic.

[01:02:32] I mean, we all have skill sets and mine is definitely not handling government paperwork.

[01:02:36] So I would, I would be lost.

[01:02:40] It's not a skill set to be proud.

[01:02:41] No, I pay a biller to handle my insurance stuff.

[01:02:45] Yeah.

[01:02:46] No, I pay people to be experts in those fields.

[01:02:48] Exactly.

[01:02:48] I mean, it's unfortunately right now, I'm sure you guys are still probably having network

[01:02:56] connectivity issues and stuff like that.

[01:02:57] So it's probably difficult to even research this stuff.

[01:03:00] Yeah.

[01:03:01] Okay.

[01:03:02] Oh, and for the record, cause I know I said, I'd mentioned I am on a hotspot right now.

[01:03:06] And so we have essentially used in this hour of streaming 1.5 gigabytes of data.

[01:03:11] So use that for information.

[01:03:13] If you ever need a backup hotspot.

[01:03:14] Nice.

[01:03:15] That's good to know.

[01:03:15] One point.

[01:03:16] It's about what I expected.

[01:03:17] It's a little more than I expected.

[01:03:19] Interesting.

[01:03:20] Huh.

[01:03:20] I mean, for like 1080p video streaming, that's about on target.

[01:03:28] That's good.

[01:03:30] Fantastic.

[01:03:31] All right, Eddie.

[01:03:32] All right.

[01:03:32] One more quick thing, Phil.

[01:03:35] Sure.

[01:03:35] What's the biggest thing you think you need to assess for yourself to change before next

[01:03:41] time?

[01:03:42] What's the biggest thing you want to, you need to assess?

[01:03:46] I have an escape plan in case something goes wrong.

[01:03:48] Okay.

[01:03:49] Well, we knew a plan.

[01:03:51] My plan, essentially that I need to, my plan involved the main highways and the main highways

[01:03:57] didn't exist.

[01:03:58] Fair.

[01:03:59] And then, so that's, that's, that's plan number one is to have, have multiple routes in and

[01:04:03] out of this area in case something we had to leave.

[01:04:05] Cause like we have a camper.

[01:04:07] We could have gone, we could have like packed up the dogs and the wife.

[01:04:10] And you know, if like, if we didn't have power and water and we, and stuff like that, we would

[01:04:14] have hightened and didn't have a generator.

[01:04:15] We would have hightailed it to Pennsylvania to her parents' house.

[01:04:19] I'm not, nothing against my parents, even though in North Carolina, but her parents have

[01:04:21] a fenced in yard.

[01:04:22] We have dogs.

[01:04:22] It's kind of makes it easier with dogs.

[01:04:24] Um, the, but I don't know.

[01:04:28] I would have had to, um, I don't even think I have a paper map of the area.

[01:04:33] I think I would have had to like load up a Google map of just a static image and just

[01:04:37] try to use that to get out of the area just cause I don't like, cause all the roads that

[01:04:42] I know, the secondary roads I know don't exist either.

[01:04:45] So like, I don't know how I would have gotten out of the area.

[01:04:47] Um, and then I know you only asked one, but like priority number one, I've already told

[01:04:52] the wife is I'm going to hire an electrician to put in things that I can disconnect my

[01:04:57] generator to.

[01:04:57] Um, I know that I can probably do it myself and there's enough knowledge in our Patreon

[01:05:02] to go through it.

[01:05:02] But when something that's going to connect straight to my house and if it goes wrong,

[01:05:06] my house burns down, I think it's just worth the couple hundred bucks to pay.

[01:05:09] I paid for it.

[01:05:10] I mean, I had them do it for it, but I had them do a full panel swap and a generator hook

[01:05:15] up and it was like 1200 bucks for the peace of mind.

[01:05:19] That's worth it.

[01:05:20] And that was with a full panel.

[01:05:21] Yeah.

[01:05:21] I mean, for me, what I, for me, what I'm going to do is I'm going to have it hooked up

[01:05:25] to my barn.

[01:05:26] Cause I have power.

[01:05:27] I have a sub panel in my bar that runs back to the house.

[01:05:29] So I'm just going to have it hooked up by the barn so that way the generator is far

[01:05:32] away from the house.

[01:05:33] That way you're not, you're not even here.

[01:05:34] The day never, never have to move.

[01:05:36] The chickens are going to hate me, but whatever.

[01:05:37] They're annoying.

[01:05:38] The chickens can bitch.

[01:05:42] Yeah.

[01:05:42] And you can't hear that anymore.

[01:05:43] Exactly.

[01:05:44] Cause of the generator.

[01:05:45] Yeah.

[01:05:46] All right.

[01:05:47] Yeah.

[01:05:48] And I know that, that was the thing.

[01:05:49] Um, it was, and it was, it was kind of surreal to kind of, um, think about the

[01:05:55] difference between this hurricane, the hurricanes I experienced when I was living at the

[01:05:58] coast.

[01:05:59] Um, and not like the word group, like the hurricanes near Pembroke, right.

[01:06:02] Then we were there is that I, even though there's looting stuff like that, I didn't

[01:06:07] ever feel in danger from my wife or I did like my previous place because the previous

[01:06:11] place they've locked down everything because, um, uh, I've only had to pull a gun a few times

[01:06:16] in my life.

[01:06:17] And that was one of them after a hurricane.

[01:06:18] We had a group of like six guys trying to come into our yard to rob.

[01:06:22] Um, and if it wasn't for a fact, I had like an AR strapped to my chest.

[01:06:25] My wife said I was overkill, but those guys showed up.

[01:06:28] They saw, they saw the gun to my chest and I specifically heard them say, not this house.

[01:06:32] They have a gun.

[01:06:33] They went three houses down.

[01:06:35] And unfortunately I robbed and raped a woman and took all her stuff.

[01:06:39] So like thinking back on it, man, like, I wonder if like shooting first would have been

[01:06:42] a problem issue there, but probably in the time.

[01:06:44] But you know, unfortunately that's like here.

[01:06:46] I didn't, I didn't feel in danger.

[01:06:48] So like it was, it was, it was a weird dichotomy of, you know, like, Hey, we don't have stuff,

[01:06:52] but like my neighbor is all my neighbors.

[01:06:55] I trust.

[01:06:55] It's so weird.

[01:06:56] Just like being in this area versus somewhere else, you know?

[01:06:59] You know, that's, that's a lot to be said for having a quality community around you.

[01:07:03] And if you do have the luxury to relocate to a place with a better community around you,

[01:07:11] money can't really, I mean, money can buy that, I guess, but it, there's not a

[01:07:16] value you can put to that to me.

[01:07:19] Yeah.

[01:07:20] I mean, like I have left the house before and forgotten to lock the back door just

[01:07:24] because I went out and through the trash the night before.

[01:07:25] And my first instinct when I got home, wasn't a panic.

[01:07:28] Oh my God.

[01:07:28] What stone of like, Oh, you idiot.

[01:07:30] Why didn't you lock the door?

[01:07:32] Now, like that wouldn't have been a thing at my previous place.

[01:07:34] I mean, I left my car unlocked one night, came out and like, they stole CDs.

[01:07:38] Like who still see these these days?

[01:07:40] They're like $9.

[01:07:41] What are you doing?

[01:07:43] Things you can get away with when you live in the country.

[01:07:46] Yeah.

[01:07:47] Yeah.

[01:07:47] There's a benefit to it a little bit.

[01:07:50] Yeah, no, it was, the storm was enlightening.

[01:07:53] It definitely, it definitely was more devastating than we thought.

[01:07:57] And a lot of the stuff is just the build back from this is going to be rough.

[01:08:01] Cause I mean, I read a report the other day that because, you know, the lack of power and

[01:08:05] the lack of water, a lot of restaurants just can't be open right now in Asheville because

[01:08:09] you can't cook with dirty water.

[01:08:10] Um, and so a lot of the, a lot of the people in Asheville are service workers.

[01:08:15] So if there's no service, they're leaving the area.

[01:08:18] So there's mass droves of people leaving and which then the housing, this area is already

[01:08:22] insane.

[01:08:23] And instead of all these people leaving and making it better, I've already seen the

[01:08:26] reports that what housing does exist.

[01:08:28] The landlords are like tripling the rent to try to get money from people.

[01:08:32] That's unfortunate.

[01:08:33] Which I get it is your prerogative to do so, but like it, it does suck.

[01:08:36] There's at a certain point, there is a moral obligation there to not be a complete shit

[01:08:41] bird.

[01:08:42] Yeah.

[01:08:43] Well, I mean, in the heart, the hard part, the hard part to me, as we start to wrap this

[01:08:48] up, cause I hear giggling little girls in my house, which means the, the pre Halloween

[01:08:51] festivities have begun.

[01:08:53] Oh no.

[01:08:54] So Phil's going to become a giggling little girl in a second.

[01:08:57] Got it.

[01:08:57] No.

[01:08:57] Yep.

[01:08:59] So I think we lost Phil.

[01:09:03] All right.

[01:09:03] So the girls, so if you're listening to this, the, um, in your own schools, what I see

[01:09:08] is a little hand coming into the screen.

[01:09:10] The girls are taking over right now.

[01:09:14] All right.

[01:09:15] So I think we have lost Phil.

[01:09:17] I do believe the girls have pulled his internet in order to send him probably trick or treating

[01:09:22] early.

[01:09:23] We'll find out.

[01:09:24] Uh, we'll see if he comes back here.

[01:09:26] Uh, Eddie, do you, did you want to plug your practice?

[01:09:31] Um, sure.

[01:09:32] If you're located.

[01:09:34] Yeah.

[01:09:35] I mean, if you're located in North Carolina, um, my practice is called a mountain mind counseling.

[01:09:40] Um, my only ask is that you, I can't be direct friends with you.

[01:09:43] Um, there has to be some clear, um, separation.

[01:09:46] Um, but feel free to look it up.

[01:09:49] It's mountain mind counseling.

[01:09:51] Um, it's my website's mountainmindnc.com.

[01:09:55] Awesome.

[01:09:55] So that's mountainmindnc.com.

[01:09:57] Yeah.

[01:09:57] Feel free to do that.

[01:09:58] Oh, God, the terrace is back.

[01:10:00] So did they rip your internet out of the wall?

[01:10:03] No, no, the power blinked because we have a, a storm front that's getting ready to pass

[01:10:07] through and Stuart is going to absolutely filet me for this, but, um, I still do not have

[01:10:13] a, uh, a full battery backup on the podcasting desktop.

[01:10:17] So when the power goes out, this is the backup plan.

[01:10:22] But I didn't, I didn't want to just, I didn't want to just say goodbye without thanking Eddie

[01:10:27] for coming on the show and giving us his perspective.

[01:10:29] Cause like, you know, you, you and your community have lived through something pretty serious.

[01:10:35] And I think for a lot of people around the country that aren't there and don't really have a good signpost for like what that is, it's hard to put into, it's hard.

[01:10:45] It's hard to envision.

[01:10:46] You know what I mean?

[01:10:48] Absolutely.

[01:10:48] It is.

[01:10:50] Really appreciate you coming on, Eddie.

[01:10:52] Yeah.

[01:10:52] Appreciate you guys having me and let me kind of share their perspective.

[01:10:56] Um, and, um, again, like I know I shared the practice, but if you guys have questions and stuff, like more, the techniques, feel free to reach out through the email link.

[01:11:05] And, um, I can at least try to help you direct, find someone that like, okay, Hey, maybe you live in a different state and you want to seek help.

[01:11:11] I can, I'm generally really basically what I'm offering is I'm really good at like reading psychology today profiles and like reading through the BS and saying, yeah, this is a person you can trust.

[01:11:20] This is a person that's blowing smoke up your butt.

[01:11:22] Fantastic.

[01:11:23] Glad to hear it, man.

[01:11:25] I think Phil, you can't control all the buttons.

[01:11:28] Can you?

[01:11:29] If I hit end of stream, will that play the ending video?

[01:11:32] Yes, it, it, it certainly should.

[01:11:35] Thank you for joining matter of facts podcast.

[01:11:39] Fantastic.

[01:11:40] We'll see if I screw this up.

[01:11:41] Uh, it's been good having you on Eddie.

[01:11:43] We'll see you guys next time.

[01:11:44] Thanks.

[01:11:45] Bye guys.

[01:11:46] See you guys.