The Ultimate Survival Challenge: RATION OR RUIN/MAY 2025

[00:00:18] PBM family, are you ready for a true test of how prepared you really are? Are you ready for really fundamentally the ultimate test? The ultimate test probably that you've ever submitted yourself to, to really gauge how prepared you are. I'm talking about RATION OR RUIN. RATION OR RUIN is an event in May sponsored by the Prepper.

[00:00:48] The Prepper Broadcasting Network, created fundamentally by the Patriot Power Hour guys. And it really truly is a test. I mean, it will be a test of your might and your will. It will be a very real struggle. I'd say that it's likely not for everybody. But I'd love for you guys to participate. And even if you don't participate exactly within the rules, I think you,

[00:01:18] I think you could learn a lot. Fundamentally what RATION OR RUIN is, and we're going to get the rules hammered out further, we're going to get you a full breakdown of exactly what you need to do to participate. But I want to get your mind rolling. I want to get your cogs whirring, if you will, now. Because you have a month to think things over. And I think it's only fair because we've been thinking about this, I've been thinking about this for a couple months.

[00:01:48] You know, so I think the lead up to this challenge requires a bit of thought. Fundamentally what we're looking at is three days out of a week, you're eating survival food.

[00:02:07] Three days out of the week, okay? So in other words, let's just say Monday, Wednesday, Friday. You're eating 2,000 calories survival food out of your pantry for the month, right? That's how your week plays out. Three days a week for the whole month. You know what I'm saying. Three days the first week, three days the second week, three days the third, three days the fourth.

[00:02:30] The other four days, you are on your own. You're on your own. So in other words, you're going to eat whatever it is you have stored in survival food. This is where the rules, we got to hammer out the rules, what equals survival food and what doesn't.

[00:02:53] Preserve foods. Right now we're talking about legitimate survival food from survival food companies, freeze-dried meals, so on and so forth. And then the other four days you have to forage, fish, hunt your way to freedom and sustenance. And that's a lot. There's no doubt about it. That's a lot. Now, in digging all this, so in other words, here's your week, right?

[00:03:23] Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you're eating 2,000 calories of survival food. Break it up the way you see fit. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And then the other four days of the week, you are, uh, you're basically out there. Roots, tubers, leaves, berries, whatever it is you can find. Meet, birds, fish, reptilians, whatever it is you can forage and kill. And, uh, yeah.

[00:03:52] That's your call. Or, you don't have to eat at all. Just fast. That won't be easy. That won't be easy and that'll get a lot harder. So in discussing this, I thought to myself, Okay, I love this, first of all. I absolutely love, and if you're listening to me and you're saying, there's no way in hell I'm doing that for 30 days, just do me a favor, if you've never done any kind of challenge like this, do me a favor,

[00:04:22] ration or ruin for one week. Okay? Ration or ruin for just one week. And that's it. That's all. So don't do it any more than just one week if you think it's crazy. And see how you feel. Because, look, this is a very real thing. This is particularly beneficial if you're an urban prepper, right? Like, if you've got a seed bank, and you're sitting there looking at that seed bank, and you're thinking to yourself, you know what? Well,

[00:04:52] when all hell breaks loose, I'm going to plant these seeds and have a garden, and we're going to eat on that garden. Like, know that there's a time window. When you're doing your ration or ruin challenge for the first week, you can pretend that your seeds are in the ground. And they ain't going to do anything for you while they're in the ground. You know? They just won't do you any good. So, that's when you've got to start to wrap your head around, what are you going to do? Because, again, the whole ration aspect is,

[00:05:19] you may not have enough survival food to go eating 2,000 calories per day, every day of the week. Right? So, that's where the rationing comes in. Now, thinking about this, I said, you know, I kind of can figure out how this is going to go. Like, I can see how this is going to go. I kind of got a pretty good feel for how this is going to go. So, and it's going to be extreme calorie deficit for four days, and then, you know,

[00:05:48] eating survival food for the other three days. Because the likelihood that I'm going to forage 2,000 calories of squirrel nuts and zippers is just not, it's probably not, it's probably not going to work out in my favor all the time. So, I talked to Future Dan about this and Ben, and what we decided to do was to come up with a couple divisions. We decided to do two divisions.

[00:06:18] Okay? Because my thing, my, what I said to them was, look, I like it, but what personally, like to make this as beneficial as I can personally, I want to eat what's available in my sphere of influence in totality in spring. And what I mean by that is, I want to eat eggs in the morning. Because, that's a part of my ration of ruin. Right?

[00:06:46] A part of my very real survival situation is, I wake up the day after collapse, the day after disaster, whatever it is, the stark reality for me is not, oh, I'm not going to eat anything but survival food and weeds. No. I'm going to go out to that chicken coop. That's why I have it. You know what I mean? Well, I wouldn't even need to go out to chicken coop, I have them on the counter, but you know what I'm saying. So, I started, I started saying, like, we're not going to have a garden, like, I don't have a garden yet.

[00:07:16] Nobody's really got a garden yet. Right? We've got things growing outside. So, my garden, even by April, well, I may have some, I may have some tasty treats, but my garden is not going to be, it's not going to provide me with 2,000 calories either. The eggs are going to help. I'm going to be in a way better boat than anybody who's in an urban survival situation with no backyard goodies.

[00:07:45] And this is kind of part of the deal, right? This is kind of like proof in the pudding. Like, I know I can starve. I do it by choice sometimes, right? But what I really want to do is see, on those days, on those four days out of the week, if I'm eating eggs, and foraged foods, and maybe something that's been hunted, and then something that's been grown, how do I feel? How does that feel? So, so we broke it down into two divisions,

[00:08:15] because initially we were saying, let's all do the same thing, right? But we got Dave Jones in the challenge also, so then we find ourselves in this situation where it's like, we've got a two-in-two audience. Like, we got Ben and Dan, who are fundamentally banking on food storage, right? As part of their big long-term plan. And then we've got Dave and James, who are banking on food storage, but are also, you know, meal makers, and homesteaders, you know? So, I like that.

[00:08:45] So your first, your first job, PBN family, if you're going to join us for the fun, that will be rationed or ruined, and it will be fun, it will be challenging, it's going to be tough, okay? But we're going to share in this struggle together. And if, if enough of you join, if enough of you take part, right? Then we will do a, complete and total, ration or ruin recap, at the end of each week. I don't know who will commit to be there. I don't know if Ben and Dan,

[00:09:14] and Dave can all be there. But I, 100% will create a digital bonfire, by which we can sit around, and talk about how the week is gone, in ration or ruin, okay? And by, when I say enough, like, just give me like five of you. Five. Because I think it would be a great time to convene. And it'd be, it'd be, you know, there's something about this camaraderie, suffering within the camaraderie, that is really, I enjoy it a lot. You know,

[00:09:44] I enjoy the struggle, and the camaraderie within the struggle. And I think a lot of people need it in their life. So, you want to participate in ration room, you got a decision to make. You've got to decide, are you going to be, in one of the two divisions? We have cash bound division. Cash bound division, is fundamentally, your foraging, and your food storage only, division.

[00:10:13] You're going to eat 2,000 calories, three days a week, from food storage meals, and then the other four days, you're basically out there. Okay? Figuring it out. Probably doing a lot of fishing, if I had to recommend. Aside from that, you have, cultivator bound division. Okay? The cultivator division, is all about, three days survival food, four days,

[00:10:43] foraging, hunting, homesteading. Okay? Now, what I'm not going to do, is I'm not going to take anything off my shelves. Okay? So it's not going to be a homesteading operation, where I can pull from, things that have been, you know, packed away for a long time. Instead, it's going to be, whatever's growing, and whatever's fresh, that day. Okay? So I'll basically be foraging my own homestead. So,

[00:11:12] are you cash bound, or are you cultivator bound? Which division are you in? The cash bound division, is going to have a much tougher go of it, than the cultivator bound. Assuming that, if you join cultivator bound division, you are, you know, actually growing food. I mean, whatever division you join, really doesn't matter, if you don't have anything to eat. You're not getting any kind of benefit, from the cultivator side. Like I said, we still have a lot, to hammer out. This is not a members only thing.

[00:11:41] This is an everybody thing. This is just, you know, just get it, and get into it thing. But, that's, ration and ruin, is fundamentally going to be defined, by those core elements, and, 30 days, to figure out, really, what you got, as a prepper, and survivalist. You know, what do you really got? Like, you can think about it, you can brainstorm it, you can war game it, you can pretend that you know, how it's going to go,

[00:12:11] you can look at your food storage, and say, I got X, Y, and Z calories, you can, right, all of these things. Oh, I know how to forge, and identify these things, and all that. But, fundamentally, until it's rested at your feet, until the situation arrives, at your front door, until you commit to these rules, and go off, go forth into it, you really don't know. One of the things, that I think is going to be, my biggest struggle, in ration and ruin, is going to be,

[00:12:40] my digestive system. I think my digestive system, is probably going to go, absolutely bananas, because, I don't eat survival food. I'm not really, very much for a pre-packaged, survival food, storage as is. Like, the mass, the massive amount of calories, or the mass of calories, that I have, are, food storage staples, that I've packaged myself.

[00:13:10] So, high sodium, pre-packaged, preservative, full, freeze dried meals, from 4 Patriots, ready hour, you name it, right? Valley food storage, whatever. I have them, but they are not, where all my calories lie. So, eating that kind of food, a full day's worth, and nothing else, my body's going to be like, dude, what, what are you doing? And then on top of that, imbibing in more, more foraged foods, than I eat normally.

[00:13:43] My, I mean, I'm also, again, all of this infrastructure, that you've built over the years, and all of this, the skill sets, that you've built over the years, you're going to get, real hard data, on what you got. One of the things, that's really got me, feeling confident, about Ration of Ruin, is, that I look at, my backyard, and I look at the woods, immediately out back, my home, and I look at, a variety of things,

[00:14:12] on my runs, and already I know, a multitude of places, to go to get calories, just straight foraged calories, you know what I mean? And that's not because, I'm cramming. In other words, I don't see all that stuff, and know all that stuff, because, oh, we're doing Ration of Ruin, so let me hurry up, and identify all this stuff. It's because I've been, looking and foraging, and running that park, near my home,

[00:14:42] and foraging out of that park, for years. So I already kind of have, the framework, for the Ration, or the Ruin, right? So yeah, what do you got? You know, like when, when you wrap your head around, four days of foraged food only, what's, what's your first step? What's your plan? What are you gonna do? So,

[00:15:12] PBN family, like, if you've got, health problems, or struggles, or, you know, considerable concerns, about not eating, for days at a time, you know, just, you know, wrap your head around that, and understand, uh, this is not the thing for me to do, or maybe I should talk to my doctor first, you know what I mean? Like, I don't want you to get in any health trouble, or health problems, by struggling alongside of us. But if you're healthy, and you feel good, and you want a real challenge,

[00:15:41] and you want to really see, like, I, we tell ourselves lies, you know what I mean? Particularly in the prepping and survival communities, we tell ourselves these, these tales about how well we're gonna do, and how we're gonna survive, and how we're gonna keep four people alive, or six people alive, or even two people alive. Um, and we, you know, a lot of it is horse shit, until it's put to the test, um, this is a moment. This is, this is one of those opportunities. And like I said, if you say to yourself,

[00:16:11] you guys are absolute idiots, like, there's no way I'm doing that for 30 days, fine. Then just give it a week. Because you're gonna learn things about yourself, in a week, of ration of ruin, that you won't even believe. I mean, you simply won't believe it. You'll be faced with so much reality, within a week, of just eating your survival food only, and then, being left to your own devices the other days.

[00:16:41] Take a peek around the world, take a peek around your world, and, uh, start thinking about ration of ruin. Okay? I want you guys to try. I really do. Even if it's just for a week. But if you go the month, if you go the month, and you attend all four of our little ration of ruin recaps, um, we're gonna give you something. It's probably gonna be, like a challenge coin. Something like that. I might make them all myself.

[00:17:09] I may 3D print you guys, custom designed challenge coins, for, uh, ration of ruin. That's what I'm thinking. Because it's not gonna be easy. You deserve it. Alright folks. Yeah. Wrap your head around it. You got time to think, you got time to plan, you got time to sit, sit around and consider. Is this something I wanna do? I wanna give a big thanks to Ben and Dan, once again, for laying something out on the table,

[00:17:36] to really test the might of myself, and Dave Jones, and themselves, and now, everybody else here at Prepper Broadcasting Network gets to play along. And I think it's gonna be one hell of a time. Okay? Alright folks. I appreciate you. More to come. That's hardly all the details and all the rules. But wrap your head around what you know, and think about if ration of ruin is something you wanna get yourself into in the month of May. Talk soon. Thank you. Bye.