1. 100%
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   Most things in life are about moderation and keeping a rational head for decision making.
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   As someone currently NVGcurious, sure they give you a huge advantage at night and would be fun for general fucking around, but they probably aren’t going to be relevant in 99%+ situations you find yourself.
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   Definitely would make for a fun twist on scaring the daughters boyfriends at night or when returning her late though….
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   Speaking of S2 underground, he had a very good video recently about preparing for situations based on risk assessment charts/matrices and what actual reasonable expectations of outcomes are for different scenarios. I think you’d actually like it because it brings sanity to prepping by emphasizing prep for the likely everyday disasters and problems, not the 1% apocalyptic ones where you are probably dead anyways of all of your other contingencies are moot.

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   1. I’d second S2Underground. I found them during the Covidiocy and they were a great resource. I hadn’t watched that recent video on preparedness, but it does sound a lot like some of the stuff I heard from Jack Spirko years ago about preparing for the most likely scenarios and building out from there.

2. First hit wins.

3. Everyone has a plan….. a shitload of outside floodlights and a generator can be had for a lot less than a pair of nods. Wanta save money “prepping “?? Do what works for you and tell nobody.. i used to belong to a “militia”, we even had an online forum. Members were listing ALL they had for the zombie wars, guns food money where it was stashed, ect. They hated me when I asked if they would list thier address too. All these tactcool guys are tryin to sell ya something. “Social media” is all about tiny dicks huge egos and MONEY. Thats it. “Heres my loadout for my vehicle”- 2 AR platform rifles with mags inserted(ILLEGAL in my state), buncha mags a pistol, all on one of those molle racks on the back of the seat.(link down below to get yours!).. right out in plain site.. in my state its illegal to have a loaded long gun in a vehicle, pistol is ok. Why?? You ask, beats me. Be aware, having a hundred grand worth of kit doesn’t make you a badass “operator”… attitude is 99% of it and a little brains. And knowing yer area. I know guys that can go in the woods with a .45 and a stick and wreak havoc on the world…

4. Yeah… how many rounds do you need to check out a bump in the night?
   Most likely: zero.
   Being on the safe side: the mag in whatever weapon you’re carrying, plus maybe a spare.
   According to the influencers: absolute minimum of 240 rounds for your rifle, 90 for your pistol, and 30 for your backup pistol. Be sure to have caches pre-positioned everywhere in case you run low. Your grandpa’s WWII infantry loadout won’t cut it anymore!

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5. That poster is in South Africa so he has a bit different situation that he’s dealing with.

6. And the people selling gold are in it for the charity…

7. Best follow up I can give to that is: Amen. I’ll also add that S2Underground is worth a listen. They’ve done some good stuff and put out some decent information. I’ve fallen off from following them since I lost my phone that had Keybase on it to follow them.
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   Been surrounded by “gun culture” for years professionally and personally. I’ve done the character arc development from “new guy with an XD and some M1S/RRA mutt AR” to “I want all the high speed gear” to “I’m okay with what I’ve got, I really don’t need anymore guns, and I might throw my J-frame in my pocket to go to Publix or I might not”. So I try to see it from as many viewpoints as possible. Even with that background, I can’t understand where this “goonbro” subculture became so pervasive in the last few years that I wonder where it came from. Gun Culture went from guys like Paul Harrel and Hickok45 to Mat Best/BRCC and Leviathan Group/Bunker Branding owned influencers having people chasing 5-6 figure loadouts seemingly overnight.
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   All of this idiocy has me going back to listening to Jack Spirko/The Survival Podcast and, in doing so, I am reminded about his thoughts on preparedness. For those starting down the road of preparedness, I’d highly suggest checking TSPC out. One of those lessons was that the most likely disaster to happen is one that affects you/your family only (losing a job, illness in the family, death in the family, house fire, etc.). From there the disaster scales move up in impact area/number of people affected. Working up from neighborhood/local area incident (riots, tornado, power/water outage) to county/regional area (hurricane, large tornado outback), to state, to whole country. Each step up, the impact gets greater but the likelihood gets lower. That’s where I’m looking at to reframe, rebuild, and readjust going forward from being away from it too long and need to get back to that.
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   I look at guys I knew who lived in hurricane country that had thousands and thousands of dollars wrapped up in “clone correct” rifles and were all about that “goon life”. Beyond that, they didn’t have much going for them in preparedness skillsets. Maybe some hunting. That was my first exposure to “goon life” and my first opinions were that it was inhabited by grifters and idiots. They think they’re 1st SFOD-D with a pair of BNVDs, a plate carrier, a KAC rifle, and a tan Toyota Tacoma. They don’t even begin to think about that looooonnnnnnnngggggg logistical and operational tail that follows the pipehitters. Intelligence, logistics, operations, transport, interagency operations, liaising with partner forces/locals, etc. all have to work together in order for those guys to put on the cool guy kit and go “do a hit.” It’s the same in the real world. If you can’t keep yourself warm and fed, you’re a casualty and a liability. You can’t get yourself out of a ditch with a Mk18. You can’t pay the light bill with NODS.
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   Since I stopped messing around in the gun world so much, I’ve refocused. I’m focusing more on health & wellness, getting/keeping finances in order, building skillsets up beyond “I’m good with a gun”, and getting back into some of the stuff I did as a kid. Seems to be a much better way to go about it than chasing clout and kit.

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   1. I think most of it is culture influence from video games, movies, youtube/social media, memes, and other media. Some of that good, some of that bad. Social media just feeds back in on the traditional media and feeds back in on itself as well. Millennials, gen z, and gen alpha all grew up/are growing up with lots of media from video games and movies to social media where every cool guy was a high speed operator with tactical equipment wearing the tightest pants for the tightest groups. The big swing back to supporting our troops with an almost religious reverence compared to what Vietnam vets got also feeds this. GWOT has all the contemporary equipment, operators, and tactical stuff and is what we have all been immersed in for the last 20+ years; near reverential support for those that fought it will of course make people interested in the tools of the trade and being like those fighters. It is also fun for a lot of people and gives them something to do and participate in, there is a community even though I detest the use of that word for these sorts of things. Social media has no small influence on many aspects of this as well; many things are done simply for the gram, for the lulz, or simply because it would be “worth” sharing. I think why it seems so strong/accelerated/in your face is because of social media and influencers. As I already mentioned, social media creates an environment that rewards you for doing things publicly and everything done for social media feeds back into social media making that environment stronger and rewarding you to perpetuate social media. There is also a much more public military and veteran culture because of social media, and again, those are the cool guys, so of course people will emulate them. There is also wayyyyyy more information now too about what is best/worst/ok, what the military uses and why, and user reviews from first hand “I smoked 20 insurgents with this rifle/ammo combo” to “I have shot 10k round through this thing on a flat range and in classes”. Education is also promoted in a way that I don’t think was the case even 20 years ago and wanting to do things like tactical classes or advanced gun fighting classes are no longer as fringe as they used to be.

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8. I don’t know. I was raised on a ranch in Oklahoma. I’m 68, but I remember being a kid and not having indoor plumbing, heating the house with a pot belly stove, slaughtering my own beef, and hanging hams in a smokehouse. We were not “off the grid,” but were pretty independent. It wasn’t that complicated, just an awful lot of work and a fair amount of inconvenience. Try farming 20 acres with hoe.

   When I read these articles about all the high tech stuff and gadgets and gewgaws, I never really seem to read a lot about the backbreaking labor involved with living a Depression/Dust Bowl era life. The problem is not zombies with firebombs. The problem is starving to death or freezing or getting an injury or disease that puts you on your back when you should be planting or harvesting. You don’t need a tactical combat unit. You need a community. Rather than spending time planting land mines in my garden, I think it would be more practical to spend that time in your church or local Lodge (Masonic, Elks, Moose, whatever) or making sure your extended family spends a lot of time together. It’s *those* connections that will save your life when things get skinny.

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9. “if the power goes out, it will be out for days or a week or two, not forever.”

   If we receive a direct blow from the sun via Coronal Mass Ejection, then yes, the power will be out FOREVER. Carrington Event of 1859, if it were to happen today, our entire modern way of life would be coming to an end. It’s going to happen again and I’m relative certain it will happen in my lifetime. Honestly, we take our modern way of life as a given when at any moment, God, Mother Nature, Fate or whatever you’d like to call it, can instantly take all of that away. No electricity, no internet, no satellites, no computers, no modern vehicles and we are back to 1700 in an instant. That is the apocalypse that I plan for. But that’s just me. Plan accordingly.

   1. Pretty much, though you can recover from that better than you stated. For example, diesel engines and gasoline engines with old-style points and distributors will be fine. If you have a tube-based radio, it should be ok too (if it’s all tube, that is, no semiconductor diodes). I have one (51J receiver) and can build a transmitter from parts on hand. Electricity? An old-style car generator hooked up to a water wheel, windmill, or draft animal will work.
      Non-CNC machine tools will work, too. So yes, you’d be set back a bunch, but 1940s is more accurate than 1700. More precisely, 1940s in the boonies (like Oklahoma as hh described it). That’s because infrastructure will be affected; wireline telephone wires won’t care much, but the central office will. And there aren’t likely to be any Strowther switch COs handy.

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10. If you bought a Baofeng you bought the worst possible radio you can buy, but hey, you can at least brag it only cost $25 when bits are falling off, and you’re suffering from poor audio and desense.

    1. You are correct. OTOH, when TDW obtained her ham license, THAT is what she selected for her first HT. A year and some change later, we are shopping for her second radio: NOW she has an experiential baseline to draw from, so that he has an idea of what she did not know, when first shopping. And, for $30, it is not a particularly expensive lesson. For bonus points, I did NOT go all “Now, sweetie, this here is what you *really* want!”, on her.

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       1. The other issue with Baofeng is that they often don’t meet FCC requirements, so using one can be a violation of the rules and get you in trouble.

11. On the one hand, I agree that most of the “tacticool” people peddling gear (and making bank off over-priced “Amazon affiliate” referrals) are worthless if the ‘S’ does ever ‘HTF’. Good training beats fancy gear almost every time, and situational awareness, creative tactics, and detailed local knowledge (“home-field advantage”, to use a sportsball analogy) will usually beat both.
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    OTOH, the original Twitter/X post does have a point: you can invest in all the gear, training, and practice you want, you can network with like-minded people and pool resources, etc., but all that can quickly come undone if you overlook an easily-exploitable weakness. (In his example, if you have the walls and gates, but your house is right up against them and someone throws a firebomb over, those walls and gates were no help, and all the fancy gear stored in your house is gone.)
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    Many times, the biggest dangers are the little things we don’t think about. Your expensive 4WD, off-road bug-out vehicle becomes a very-expensive paperweight if you don’t have fuel for it*. Those stored MREs become literal rat food if (when) one moves in and you don’t have a way to detect and deal with it. All the guns in the world won’t protect you if a cut on your foot becomes a raging Staphylococcus infection, but proper application of antiseptic and bandages — the kind in any modest first-aid kit — will help prevent that.
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    But getting back to the original Twitter/X post, with all that gear and training, clearly the layout of that hypothetical property created a unique vulnerability that the “emergency plan” should have addressed. Maybe instead of the fourth seminar on small-unit tactics, including a simple fire extinguisher — and a quick refresher from the local fire department on how to use it — would have been a better investment.
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    * – I’ve met real-life “preppers” who have off-grid locations stocked with food and supplies far up in the woods or mountains, but don’t habitually store enough fuel to get their vehicles up there. And they don’t see the small problem that could arise if SHTF and bug-out time comes, there’s a panic-run on gas stations (there always is), and they haven’t filled up since last week. An unreachable asset is no asset at all.

    1. The obvious question: can you get there on foot (or other non-techno vehicle like horseback)?

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