On this episode of Ready Radio, Bill Anderson fills in and shifts the focus from gear to something far more important: skills.
In the wake of a divisive State of the Union and ongoing political tension, Bill examines the cultural temperature of America and what it means to stay alert without becoming reactive. The message is simple: preparedness isn’t panic — it’s wisdom.
The core of the program outlines what he believes are the five most essential skills every person should develop — not just for extreme scenarios, but for everyday life.
1️⃣ Medical Skills
From CPR and cardiac arrest response to tourniquet
SPEAKER 06 :
This is Ready Radio, preparing you to be ready for anything, now. Here’s your survival guide for Ready Radio, John Rush.
SPEAKER 03 :
And good afternoon, Denver. This is Bill Anderson filling in for John Rush. Today is February 27th. We are in a live program. So we welcome your calls, 303-477-5600. If you want to add to the discussion or ask questions, that’s a great number to call, 303-477-5600. So, you know, this week we’re on the… the heels of the state of the union. And, you know, I mean, depending on what side of the political parties, you know, you, you align yourself with, it was either a great speech or it was a horrible speech. And actually I did a video on the temperature, taking the temperature of that, not necessarily the speech specifically, but the temperature of, you know, the speech and then the response and then the rebuttal. to really take a look at where America is at. And so we can talk a little bit about that, but I also want to talk about what I think the most five critical skills that you should have. And this can blend into everyday life and then obviously flow into the readiness of the things we talk about here on the radio, being ready for the what-ifs of life, whether you’re traveling or whether, you know, the doomsday does come or, you know, you lose your job or you run into an accident on the side of the road or whatever. I mean, there’s lots of things that can happen. And, you know, as you go about your life, you realize, oh, hey, I didn’t think enough about that or I didn’t prepare here. And I think one of the biggest things that we do is we don’t learn from our own mistakes. One thing that we do in our self-defense training and in our gun training is you know, we start to embrace failure. And that’s really hard to do because you have egos and nobody likes to lose and everybody wants to win. And, you know, whether you’re part of a BJJ gym or any type of a self-defense, you know, we get this idea that we have to win instead of just going through the process and learning and going, oh, hey, I failed there. I’ll give you an example. I was you know, doing that this morning and rolling and practicing with my, my training weapon. And, you know, Hey, I lost it a couple of times. It was actually taken from me. And it’s like, okay, you know, I don’t want to get mad at myself by going that, you know, that’s not good. I can’t believe I lost it. I just identify the weak points of what I was doing there. And then I can fix it. I can work on that. And that’s kind of the idea across the board with, with our, our readiness to, It’s like, my gosh, you know, how many times did I leave the house without my flashlight or without my water bottle or without my, you know, this time of year allergy pills or whatever it may be. You know, we could talk specifics for sure, but, you know, you’ve got to think principles. Everybody’s life is a little bit different. Everybody’s situation is a little bit different. Everybody works in a different place. There is no cookie cutter, if you will. So we have to take these principles and apply them. But, you know, looking at the temperature of things, you know, it’s definitely becoming… The first thing I saw was definitely more divisive. And the problem with that is the sowing of the seed of divisiveness. And you’ve got to be careful with that. You know, it’s… When you start to… to separate, let’s just say, one race or one religion or one gender, and you overemphasize, you know, maybe they’re not getting treated fairly. Well, that can easily shift from they’re not getting treated fairly to, oh, now we have to dominate and we have to overrule the other class. That’s kind of how it started, you know, back in Germany, if you want. The story was, was the You know, the Jews were the reason of the economic collapse in Germany. And that’s the story that they were telling. And it was their fault, you know, that they were struggling. And that seed that was planted, you know, sprouted and grew the hatred that began. And then that led to, you know, the Holocaust, if you will. So we’ve got to be careful with that. And we’re at the early stages of that for sure. So, you know, keeping your head up, keeping your ears up, you know, not participating in certain things just to stay safe. Again, we’re not talking about, you know, sticking your head in the sand or putting a muzzle on because, you know, we do live in America. We do have the freedom of speech and we do have the freedom of, you know, the Second Amendment. And John and I have talked about that. numerous times where just because you can doesn’t necessarily mean you should, you know, there’s wisdom in that as well. And so, you know, off of the speech there, the division that I saw, the seed, the sowing of the seed, and I’m not saying from one side or the other, because, you know, I’m talking about there was a rebuttal, there was people that were responding, and I’m not pointing fingers at anyone. And I want you guys to understand that I’m just saying, looking at it, it’s very much, very apparent, very obvious that there is strong division there. So where that goes, who knows? You know, hopefully things will come around and those that are causing that, you know, will be voted out. And that’s one of the best things you can do is, you know, hey, you should be able to stand up and support America. And that was shown in the fact that you know, when there should have been the times of unison, right, where there wasn’t any political agendas or political talk, you know, just standing up and clapping and supporting, you know, the hockey team, standing up and supporting, you know, somebody who was, you know, helpful in a military conquest. It really had nothing to do with any of the hot topics at hand. You know, that’s, that’s a unifying moment where everybody should have come together, but they didn’t. And that is a read on where we are. And so what that leads to, uh, who knows, you know, and you gotta be, gotta be ready for it. You know, in, in Colorado here, we also getting the red flag warnings of the fire. They’re talking about the potential of a very heavy fire season because it’s so dry. so dry. So, you know, part of being ready, and I know John talks about this on the Saturday show, the Fix It Radio, but, you know, part of preparedness, guys, is all-encompassing in all areas of your life. So you want to make sure, hey, am I mitigating the fire? Am I going out there and watering my trees? You know, one thing that we forget that the trees are already stressed because of the lack of water, and we really didn’t have the deep, deep freeze to kill the larva of the beetle and stuff. And so if those were able to survive the winter, you’re going to have the combination of an excessive beetle, you know, population. And then you’re also going to have the stress of the trees from the drought and it’s going to kill a lot of trees. And so, you know, get out there and water if you can. I know last week when we talked to Pam there, she was talking about watering. In the winter, I went out and got some sprinklers and started that process of watering the trees because, hey, I just want to be ready. But what if that fire happens? With that fire in your neighborhood, are you prepared for that? Do you have the means to grab stuff and go? Because if you have a fire, you’re probably not going to shelter in place. That’s not a good idea if there’s a fire around you. you’re going to need to go somewhere. So do you have your important documents? You know, a lot of people have, you know, metal, precious metals. They have things that, you know, they wouldn’t want to ride out. Maybe they’ve got, you know, firearms, things like that. You know, have you thought about, Hey, if I got to go, if I’m at a risk of a fire area, you know, in my house, you know, have I thought about, do I have the access to get this stuff out in a hurry if I need to? Because with the winds, the wind is really what gets you. The wind blows the fire and it starts jumping at that point. So, you know, those are things that we got to start reading the situation and the climate and the environment and the political environment, the economical environment, and start making those precautions because now is the time to get prepared versus when the storm hits. You know, we’re teaching in Genesis at church on Wednesdays, and we’re in Genesis. We just wrapped up Genesis 9. Well, if you know the story of Genesis, you know, Genesis chapter 9 is is the rainbow, the covenant. And then that’s where also Noah plants the vineyard, you know, and has a little too much to drink. And if you’re a Bible student, you, you may recall the story. The lesson there is after the storms, Noah got complacent, you know, during the storm, everybody’s eyes are perked up. Everybody’s on the ready. Let’s, let’s do this. You know, they’re, they’re attuned to the situation. And then after the storm, the rain stops, after the doors are open, after the ground is dry, the promises have been made, we tend to let our guard down. And it’s easy for us to do, especially politically, that, hey, you know, things seem to be going okay. We’re on the up and up. It’s going the way we want it to go. So let’s let our guard down. And that’s when we get in trouble, when we get complacent. So we got to be careful with that. All right. So the five essential skills we can talk gear all day long and gear is like cars or it’s like guns and everybody has their, their preference. And then we can talk about, you know, Ford versus Chevy or Toyota versus Nissan or whatever. And gear is, is okay. But you know, it doesn’t really matter at the end of the day, uh, in our gun classes, And you can sign up for those because we’re going to get those going up here again, get people geared up for their concealed carry and or renewals. So if you don’t know that if you want to renew your concealed carry, you do have to take a class now. It is a renewal class that has to be done by a certified state of Colorado instructor, which is certified by your local sheriff, wherever the training is taking place. If you have questions about that, you can always contact me. I can help you understand that a little bit better. But we have those coming up. Prep2ProtectCO. Prep2ProtectCO.com. And we can check those out. It’s a little hard in the wind, you know, because of the dust and stuff like that. But we do train outdoors. And so those are coming up. We usually postpone those for the winter just because of weather. And who knew, right? I mean, I could have ran all winter long with classes. You know, 60-degree days in January, February is just who would have thought it. But anyway, back to what I was talking about with the gun class. Hey, do I carry a Glock? Do I carry a SIG? Do I carry a Smith & Wesson? And I say, you know what the best gun to carry is? The one that goes bang, right? The most reliable one for you. And that can have an effect on your grip mechanics. You know, if you don’t have a good grip, it doesn’t really matter what gun because the gun won’t be able to be solid as it goes through the action and the rebattering of the slide. And if you have a sloppy grip, you know, it’s going to jam up on you. But the point is, is like, I really don’t care. Yeah, there’s some guns out there that tend to jam, you know, a little bit. easier they’re a little bit more touchy if you will and you know we have those conversations but when we’re when we’re out at the gun course and people are bringing their guns and they don’t shoot them and then we’re out there and they’re like gosh i don’t understand why this thing isn’t working why it’s jamming up all the time it’s like I’ve told a lot of people, hey, maybe you should consider a different firearm. Maybe you should consider a different holster because what you got isn’t working. But you don’t know. Like I talked about at the very beginning of this program, you don’t know until you go test it, especially when you are rolling around on the ground and you’re fighting for that gun. It’s easy. I’ve seen so many guns fly out of holsters just by bending down and jumping up. you know, let alone somebody, you know, wrestling with you or trying to actually take it in an altercation. So you can talk about gear all day long. The answer is, is the one that works for you. And that’s the most important thing, the one that works for you. So outside of that, outside of gear, we have skills. I personally believe skills is your number one asset. And remember, you can chime in at 303-477-5600 in this conversation. But I think skills are the greatest thing that you can acquire. Because if I have the skill, maybe I come across the gear later on, or maybe I run across somebody who has that gear, and I’m able to apply the skill set to their gear or to my gear or to found gear or to whatever. But if I don’t have the skills and I find a radio and I don’t know how to work the radio, I don’t know how to tune the radio, what good is the radio? It’s pretty much a paperweight at that point. If I find a med kit and I don’t know how to apply the tourniquet or I don’t know how to stitch up a wound or do a chest seal or anything like that, great, you got a med kit But if you don’t know how to use it, it’s pretty much just, you know, waste. It’s a waste. So what skills do you think are the most important for you to have, not only for everyday life, basic survival, basic, you know, living, you know, and I think that’s important because these are the things that you need. You know, we get back to that mindset of, how did they used to live in the past? I think Jeff talked about that with the whole, on Friday, last Friday, I had, I had Pam on Saturday for, for, for the home radio, the fix it radio. And Jeff talked about, I can’t remember what he called it. He’s probably listening and shouting to it in the radio right now, but I don’t remember what he called it, but I really liked it. I liked it so much that I forgot it, but it’s like the ancestral, you know, how did our ancestors live? And we, and we both had the conversation that, you know, our grandparents, uh, you know, they, they canned, you know, my grandparents, you know, had a, they’d get a hog and they would actually have it in a locker. They didn’t have refrigeration, uh, and they had a locker on the front porch and it was, you know, stacked in the layers of, of lard and salt and, and that’s how they kept it fresh. And it’s like, you know, we don’t know those skills. One generation removed because it’s I think my dad knew how to do it, but he didn’t do it. And so therefore, he didn’t teach me to do it. And so, you know, we don’t have those skills. So now we got to go back. We got to go back and learn those skills. And the good news is, is we do have lots of resources, right? We’ve got the internet. We’ve got AI. I know that’s the enemy, but you got AI. It’s a great research tool. And if you just see it as that, there you go, right? Will it take over the world? Will it take your job? I definitely believe there will be an impact. That’s a whole other conversation. But right now, your best thing is it’s there whether you like it or not. So you might as well learn how to use it. Use it as a great research tool and learn these things, right? I mean, I can’t remember what I punched into it the other day, but I was like, hey, what about this? And what about that? And it just helped me brainstorm and explore the conversation, that topic that I knew, but it researched it even deeper. And you think about this, you have a bookshelf full of books. Do you have time to sit down and research every single book on that particular topic? And that’s only a handful of books. That would take forever, right? So this thing can research not only just a handful of books, but thousands and thousands of them in a second or two and bring in all that information. So it is a great, great, great research tool. So we’ll take a break here in just a minute, but when we get back, we’ll introduce what I think the most five skills, the top five skills that you should know or learn or acquire or have. And again, welcome to the conversation, 303-477- If you want to chime in and tell me what you think they are or have any other questions about the State of the Union or guns or gardening or any of the stuff that we talk about here today. But when we come back, we will talk about those five things.
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SPEAKER 03 :
Ready Radio 303-477-5600. So before the break, we talked about, I think the most important thing that you can acquire is the skills, the skill set. And I’ve narrowed it down to five, what I think are the top five skills. Again, this is all subjective. Somebody may have a different top five or they may have something within the five that they think is more important. But not only for basic living, but these are great skills to have. And they would also, I would go to say that in the event that your world does go crazy, and people are starting to, you know, kind of collect up, if you will, or to, you know, form little groups and things, and you’re going to get that mindset of, you know, everybody’s going to get along great at the beginning, and then when resources start to, you know, run thin, now you’re going to have issues with who’s going to be in charge, and, you know, the government takes over, and puts everybody in FEMA camps. You know, are you going to be able to be outside? And if you are, are you an asset or a liability to the group? I mean, all these things, whatever. It can just be an asset or a liability to the family or to the neighborhood. You can think of that scale as well. So here’s number one. What I think is the most important skill to have regardless medical. Medical, I think, is the most important skill that you can acquire. Now, I’m not saying, You need to go out and become a doctor or a nurse, but basic medical skills, life-saving skills, I think are very, very important. Every 90 seconds, think about that for a quick second here, every 90 seconds, somebody suffers from cardiac arrest. So the potential of you being in the vicinity of of somebody then having that happen is it’s pretty good 90 seconds not only cardiac arrest but we’ve got basic choke airway you’ve got shock you’ve got you know control of breathe bleeding all of these things are very very important and i don’t care if you took a basic cpr class 10 years ago two years ago, one year ago, you’re out of practice, right? So you can do a BLS, which is through the American Heart Association, which a lot of people will have to have that on a yearly renewal for their jobs, or you can go get CPR from the Red Cross. These are all really good skills to have. Maybe you’re not going to be able to bring somebody out of it, but you could buy them time until more advanced medical help can get there. Again, we don’t want to necessarily go to the extreme, but in everyday life, if you’re at a restaurant, you’re at home, and somebody starts to indicate that they’re having cardiac arrest or something like that, are you able to do the chest compressions? Are you able to do the breathing and maintain the pumping of the blood which distributes the oxygen throughout the body? Are you able to keep that manually going for them until help arrives or until somebody else comes? That right there is a big difference of whether somebody… you know stays alive or not so i can’t encourage that enough there’s a lot of places that you can do that for free there’s a lot of places that charge very little for it our church trains up all of our people in our church if you go to our church you know hey we will do that at no cost because we want everybody to be equipped not only within the church gathering but everybody everybody at home i have In the past, just, you know, again, just for the sake of example, I have given chest compressions to somebody. I have done, you know, I guess you can’t call it the Heimlich anymore, but I’m going to call it the Heimlich. I have done that twice. I have saved family members from choking. I have saved my granddaughter. I have saved my daughter from drowning. Very essential skills that if I didn’t have, you know, Any of this training, and again, I’m not a doctor. You know, I’ve just done all of the stuff when I was in the Army. You know, they would teach that to us, and we’d have to renew it every year. And when I was going through the apprenticeship as an electrician, we had to do CPR every year as part of the schooling. And those are great skills because they stick with you, and you can definitely do that. The basics, the basics. So get CPR, get a BLS class, get something like that. And then beyond that, stop the bleed. Stop the bleed is another very, very important thing. And if you carry a weapon, a personal protection weapon, firearm, knife, some people get really mad when I call it a weapon. They’re like, you know, the NRA doesn’t call it a weapon. Actually, the NRA does because I’m an NRA instructor. And I have my concealed carry weapon instructor certification. So they do call it that. But, you know, anyway, got off on a rabbit trail there. But if you are carrying, you absolutely should have a tourniquet, right? And a good stop to bleed class is going to teach you how to properly apply the tourniquet. Most people won’t apply the tourniquet properly, meaning they won’t tighten it properly. to the point where it needs to be tightened. Why? Because it hurts, and I’m cranking away at that tourniquet, and the person I’m cranking away is screaming their head off because the tourniquet is hurting them more than the wound is, and you feel bad, and you’re like, oh, I’m so sorry. Let me loosen this up. You do that, they will bleed out, and so it’s a very, very Very important thing that you tighten that really, really tight and it’s going to be super uncomfortable. Can you put it on yourself? You know, they make training tourniquets. They’re blue. And are you able to mock up a scenario? where you can put that tourniquet on your arm or your leg. So tourniquets are used for the limbs, the arms and the legs. Obviously, we’re not going to tourniquet the neck, even though every class jokes about it, or I can’t tourniquet the body. So if I get a puncture wound in the body, well, I better know how to pack that wound. Better know how to pack it to stop the bleeding, okay? Then if I get a puncture in my chest, I need to know how to make the chest seal and or have the proper chest seal with me. And by the way, we’re not always talking about gunshot wounds. This is a fallacy. People are like, well, I’m not worried about a gunshot wound, so why would I carry this stuff? How many car accidents? How many times do people slip and fall? and fall onto something or something fall and blow into them or whatever it may be you know you’re in a car wreck and and something penetrates your body or touch your on your limbs and now you’re bleeding out listen gang it is really really important that you have the bleed control skills tourniquets chest seals wound punctures get it practice it this is another thing You got to practice it. You can buy mock-up training devices on Amazon where you’re stuffing it. You can get a pool noodle. There’s plenty of things online where you can go and say, hey, how can I practice this stuff? Show me some videos. And people have done it. They have made even fancy ones that you know, have little pumps in them and things like that. But listen, even if you just take like a pool noodle or a foam roller or a yoga block kind of thing into it, you’re able to practice shoving that in there. Or in one of our classes that we did, it’s kind of hard to do that now with the price of meat, but we actually practiced it on a chunk of roast, you know, and it’s a totally different feel to pack an actual piece of roast. And you know what? If you wear gloves and you’ve got sterile stuff, whatever, just cook the roast afterwards. No big deal. There’s dinner, okay? Airway. Airway. Do you know how to deal with a choke? You know, when I was in the Army, they were like, okay, well, scoop the mouth. You know, they don’t necessarily want you to do that anymore, especially if you’re going in there blind because what you can do is you can actually shove that object deeper into the throat by sticking your fingers in there. So you got to tilt, you got to do all that stuff and make sure that you’re able to get air in there. Air and oxygen is so important because that is what then is absorbed by the blood and distributed in through the body via the heart. Okay, so that’s how those two things go together. What about shock? You know, there’s a lot of people that go into shock. Are you able to deal with that? Do you know how to do that? And then also, the aftermath of all of these things would be infections. Do I know how to clean this stuff? Do I know, you know, basic things to help prevent infection? So I think medical is the most important thing. And you know what? You could spend a whole segment, a whole show, I should say on, on this health medical topic, because also part of that medical thing is The preventative, preventative, you know, what’s the number one thing that I’m dealing with a heart attack? Hey, maybe it’s the blockage, right? A heart attack is blockage. Cardiac arrest is not necessarily blockage. It’s where the circadian, the rhythm is all goofed up and gets off. So that’s where those two are different. But if you have blockage, you know, that’s the problem. So do I set up the lifestyle? to prevent that? Have I started eating better? Have I started watching my exercise limit, getting some exercise? See, a lot of this stuff can be done beforehand. Are you able to run away? Are you able to carry somebody? What if we go back to that fire scenario and now I’ve got somebody in my house who is not able to get out for whatever reason. Am I able to carry them out? Am I able to? So I think this is very much, you know, applicable to the medical side is the health side and making sure that I’m taking care of myself. Do I have the appropriate vitamins? You know, there’s this bug going around and there’s a lot of people getting sick. Well, guess what I do? I start taking extra zinc. I start taking extra You know, vitamin C, vitamin D. I start, you know, kind of preloading that stuff, making sure extra water. One of the greatest things you can do in the preventative area is those nasal flushes, right? Get that stuff out of your nose and that salt water, you know, will help kill it. Gargle with salt water. The Japanese do that quite a bit. A great way to get rid of those things. Wash your hands. Right there. Wash your hands. You know, it’s amazing to me when I go into the public restrooms at different restaurants or, or the movie theater or whatever. And, you know, people come in and they walk right out and I’m like, you can wash your hands, you know, and who knows what they go out and do. And it’s like, man, they touch the door handle and it’s like, yeah, I need to wash my hands. And so whether I carry around saying a Perel or whatever, You know, there’s a whole conversation on whether that stuff really works. You know, my wife thinks that it just absorbs the germs into your body instead of washing away. Yeah, but it still killed them. So because of all the alcohol in there, you know, what about herbs? What about herbs? You know, I started getting this little cough the other day, so I started hitting my Mullen tincture. And again, guys, listen, you can look all this stuff up online. It’s not mystery anymore. This information is all readily available. You’ve got to be careful that you don’t get information overload, but it’s all right there. As soon as I started hitting the mullein, the herbs, the thing with herbs, remember this one rule, early and often. That’s what I want you to remember, early and often. So I start to feel a little bit weird. Okay, I start hitting the herbs. before I get deep into it. And I just do it every time I think about it. Oh, hey, I just thought about it. So let’s take another shot of those herbs early and often with the herbs. All right. The number two thing, number two, water. I think that’s an important skill. Not only how do I find it, how do I get it, how do I purify it? How do I purify it? You know, especially in a in a doomsday scenario, the water could very well be contaminated. Things aren’t working, sanitation departments aren’t working, You know, there’s rubbish, there’s stuff everywhere, it’s getting into the water. You know, you go up to the mountains now and it’s like, I don’t know if I’d drink that water out of that creek, right? There’s always that little sense of hesitancy. You come across the prairie here and you’ve got a pond and then that water is stagnant. You don’t know what the heck’s in there. And you want to be careful that you just don’t, you know, especially when you get to the point of extreme thirst, you just don’t stick your head down there and start drinking. Water, how to purify it, how to find it, how to resource it. These are critical, critical skills. You can drink bad water and then guess what? Now you’ve set yourself back into the medical side of things because you’re sicker than a dog. And now, you know, you’ve got diarrhea, you’re throwing up, you now become dehydrated. and you drink more of the nasty water, you see the downward spiral there. Now you’re in trouble. So how do I purify water? I mean, eight drops of bleach to one gallon of water, you should be good. Okay, well, great. Where’s the bleach coming from? Do I have the ability to make Bleach. Yes, I have all these devices. That’s part of my plan, right? Because you sort through these things, you think about these things, and then you gain the necessary equipment to apply to your skill. But what if I don’t have it? Remember what I said? Okay, so I don’t have the gear. Well, then the worst case scenario, I guess you figure out how to boil it. Boil it for one minute at least to purify the water, okay? So that’s going to lead to the next skill, by the way, the fire making. But I need to be able to purify water. Yes, I can use devices. Yes, I can use tablets. But if those things fail me, do I have just the basic skill of setting up, you know, a little steam thing or boiling it or whatever it may be to purify it, add that bleach, whatever. All of these things come into the equation. Do I know how to… How to find water? Do I know how to collect it, you know, from a possible rain? You know, setting up my tarps in such a way to where I’ll collect them, collect the rainwater. And I don’t know. I guess, you know, some people feel okay drinking rainwater. I guess it depends on what it was collected from. You know, it’d probably be okay. But heck, why don’t we just boil it anyway and be for sure? That’s the better way to go about it. You know, let’s make sure we got everything out of it. So first, medical. Number two, water, purification, and being able to find the water. All right, we’re up against our next break here. So when we come back, we’ll finish out the final three. If you’ve got any comments or anything you’d like to add, To add to the conversation again, the number is 303-477-5600. This is 560 KLZ Radio.
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SPEAKER 03 :
And we are back. All right. So we left off on water one and two. We talked about, we’re talking about the five skills that I think are essential. Skills, knowledge base, not necessarily gear. Once you have the skill, then you can go and acquire the gear. Once you know something, then maybe you can find the gear. Somebody else has the gear, but if you lack the know-how, you’re really in trouble. So I like to start there. And by the way, a lot of this stuff that we’re talking about, you can practice it, you can learn it literally in no time at all. The time that we waste in our lives, watching TV, doing things that really don’t pertain to anything, could really be filled with learning these skills, these life skills. And once you learn them, I would encourage you to practice them. You got to practice. Again, that’s something that is a really big Kind of pet peeve of mine when I talk about people or I talk with people and they say, oh, yeah, I took a class 10 years ago or I did this training five years ago or I shot my gun three years ago. It’s like those are all perishable skills, guys. You might remember a little bit of the basics, but if you’re not continually working these skills, you’re going to forget them. I mean, there’s things that I’ve learned in my past that I just I don’t remember. I have to go back and relearn that learning process. curve, if you will, is much shorter because, you know, it’s just re-familiarizing myself. But, you know, you can find the time to do this. There’s plenty of books. There’s plenty of videos online. There’s plenty of resources online, plenty of classes going on. You just got to find them. And if you want to, you’ll make it happen. I heard somebody talk on this. It was Merle Hager. He was doing this interview, and they had asked him, do you think Johnny Cash would have made it today with YouTube and, you know, with Instagram and TikTok and, you know, all the things that are, it’s very different. The music industry is very different. He said, absolutely. He’s like, well, why do you say that? It says, because he wanted to. And that right there was huge for me to hear. It’s not a matter of what time period you’re in or what technology you do or you don’t have or what way the industry is going. The truth is, if you really want to do it, you’re going to figure it out. And that was his point. He’s like, he absolutely would have made it because he would have wanted to do it. And if you want to do something, you’re going to figure out how to do it. All right. So the most important thing with water, in my opinion, is to know how to purify it and And the basic purification is boiling it. Well, if you’re going to boil it, that means number three skill, you need to know how to make fire. Making fire is so important. Why? Because it heats us. We cook with it. We purify that water we were talking about. We can use it as a signaling device. And the one thing we forget about, the morale booster. Think about that. In summertime, camping, what do you want to do? Sit around the fire. In the wintertime, you crank up that fireplace. Why? Because it’s just something about sitting around a cozy fire that, I don’t know, it’s magical, right? You’re watching the flame. It’s mesmerizing. So it can really bring a little bit of morale to your situation. Now, there are thoughts of, well, if you’re signaling, then You’re giving away your location. Okay, well, great. Learn how to make a Dakota fire hole so that the smoke is limited, you know, and you can, again, take this wherever you want to go. But the number thing with number one thing with fire is the first question. Well, how are you going to do it? How are you going to do it? And there’s differences in the conditions. that determine how you’re going to build your fire. Is it windy out? Well, you know, trying to, you know, flick your bick in the wind is hard. That’s why a lot of people put their hand over it to cover the flame. You know, if I’m trying to do, you know, start a fire and it’s really, really cold out, hey, maybe my hands don’t, my fingers don’t work as good as they, you know, should. So those different methods of striking fire that I need really good dexterity, maybe that’s not going to work so well. Is it wet out? Well, I don’t care if you have a lighter or not. You hold that lighter onto a piece of wet wood, it ain’t going to light. It ain’t going to do it. So do I carry a lighter? Do I carry matches? Do I carry char? And what I mean by char is the pre-charred charcoal that you can use to light, which ignites pretty easy. Do I use a bow drill? Do I learn the skill of the old stick and doing the spindle thing? Do I use the ferro rod? And that just depends on the situation and the time. I would say You know, two skills, three skills is absolutely what you want to do. I’m first going to go always to the easy thing, right? Going to use the lighter, use the lighter or the matches. That’s the easy thing. But the lighter gets wet and matches get wet. Yes, I know they do have lighters out there that will still work. create a spark if they’re wet, and there’s waterproof mattresses. I get that. But remember, if I don’t have those, then what am I going to do? The ferro rod, creating that 3,000-some degree spark is a pretty go-to. That’s pretty hard to mess that up, right? That’s pretty fail-proof. So ferro rods are always good to have as a backup. I’m going to use that lighter, and then I’m going to have that ferro rod. as well then obviously the learning that skill about bow drill you know it’s good skill to have but it’s a lot of work if you’ve ever done that it’s a lot of work once you get going with it and start to build up that those tools and and stuff you can make those little those little embers pretty pretty easily but it does take some time to do that so speaking of you know fuel if you will what am i going to use what do i have what’s there do i do i know how to pick the right kind of tender do i have the stuff around me that I can use that’s going to light. If you’ve ever lit pine needles or pine cones, you know that they start pretty easy, but they burn fast. And how many handfuls of pine needles do I need to actually get that log going? Do I go and try to find some sap from the pine tree? Do I carry some Carmex with me with Q-tips to, you know, use that? And the answer is, yeah, these are all the things that you build into your arsenal, build into your skill set, and then that’s what you carry with you. You know, everybody pretty much carries some kind of a chapstick or something with them, Anyway, you know, and if not, maybe that’s part of your new ADC. I like to actually carry not the little round things of Carmex, but the tubes of Carmex and the classic, you know, lip balm or whatever in the little tubes. And the reason I don’t like the jars is because the jars will melt, you know, in the summertime. If you’ve ever opened them up, left them in your car, it’s actually liquefied in there and they can spill. But these are the little squeeze ones are pretty easy. You know, they don’t melt all over the place. And guess what? If you put this little bit of Clarmex on a Q-tip or on a piece of something, that is petroleum oil and that stuff will burn for you. And then that’ll help you sustain that flame as you get something else going. Another thing you can do, and I’ve done this as well, is I’ve bought a little round tin, a little I don’t know what it is, half ounce tin, and I’ve melted beeswax in it. Did that on the stove, melted the beeswax into the little tin, put a little piece of jute inside there, made a little candle, and I carry that with me. The problem with that is that beeswax gets pretty hard. So if you’re trying to use that as a lip balm, it is really hard. You got to shave it and then kind of melt it down. But you know, hey, there you go. That’s an easy source of a flame right there that doesn’t take up much pocket space. So, you know, these are things that you look at as far as fire. So we got medical, we got water, we got fire. Number four, I think this is important. I kind of like the knot tying, but knot tying and shelter building, in my opinion, can go hand in hand. I think that’s something that you can clump together there because you use the knot tying in the activity of building the shelter, if you will. If you have some kind of a poncho or if you have some kind of a tarp or a bivy or something, you can make a little lean-to if you know how to create the ridge lines and the right kind of knots and things. I kind of clump those together and that’s something you can learn real simply in an afternoon. What knots do you learn? Well, my favorite knots, you don’t need to learn a lot of them. My number one knot is a bowline. I’ve used that knot forever. It’s a great knot that doesn’t give up until you want it to. Then you just reverse the fold there and it comes undone. In the electrical world, we use the bowline knot so much for pulling wire and things like that. That is probably my favorite knot to tie is the bowline because I use it so much. The trucker’s hitch? I think is a really good knot to know because if you’ve got to cinch down a line or you can even use the trucker hitch to cinch down your tarp. The trucker hitch, I think, is a really, really good knot to learn. The clove hitch, I think, is another one. Another favorite one is the persic knot, and that’s one that will slide up a rope. You can push up a rope. You take two different size ropes. And you wrap one around the other one, and you can slide up it, but then when you pull down on it, it locks in. And you can literally, if you have two Persic knots, you could literally climb a rope if you need to just by sliding one up and the other up. Really great knot. I love the Persic knot. And then the sheepspin. is where you can take two pieces of rope and learning how to join them together. So I think these right here are your number one, if you will, five knots to have. All right, number five, the last one. The last one, again, is up for debate. Navigation. Navigation can tie into signaling, but I think you need to know You should be able to tell where you are basic northeast, south, and west. Easy here in Colorado because we’ve got the mountains, but you would be surprised at how many people out there don’t know northeast, south, and west. They don’t understand that. When you understand northeast, south, and west, you can understand weather patterns. You can understand travel distances. You can so much with that. So I think navigation is, basic, you know, compass reading, basic navigation with map, excuse me, is vital. But just learning northeast, south, and west, learning maybe how to look at the stars if you can. It’s not always a for sure thing because if you have a cloudy night or whatever, But learning how to look at trees and from a tree you can tell northeast, south, and west. You can put a stick in the ground and watch, if you’ve got time, watch the shadow pattern. And that can determine northeast, south, and west. I think this is vital. Being able to take that, take a paper map and being able to read it is huge. It’s up for conversation because I think another important thing is, you know, the acquisition of food. What plants can I eat? How do I fish? How do I set traps? It’s definitely in competition for number five. So, you know, all up for debate. Skills that you should have. What are your favorite skills? What are your top five skills? You know, something to think about. And no matter what, with any of these skills, listen, guys, you got to practice it. You got to practice it. You got to go out in your backyard. and throw up a tent, throw up a shelter, throw up a lean-to, go out in your backyard, use that ferro rod, right? Because it’s great, but if you don’t know how to use it when the storm comes, you may be in for a great surprise that it doesn’t work when you need it to. So these things are readily available, information all over the place. If you are interested in Stop the bleed. Check out our website, prep2protectceo.com, and we will be back with you guys next Friday as John will be back. In the meantime, keep your eyes up, your ears open, and stay alert, stay alive.
SPEAKER 01 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
