From Bug-Out Trucks to Off-Grid Homes: Lessons from EJ Snyder, Rick Austin, and Survivor Jane

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A bug-out truck that actually gets you out, a homestead that runs like a quiet machine, and the honest truth about the daily grind—this one brings the best of Prepper Camp back home. We break down EJ “Skull Crusher” Snyder’s hard-won rules for building a bug-out vehicle you can trust under stress: four-wheel drive when roads vanish, 20–30 gallons of secure reserve fuel, a layered loadout for recovery and navigation, and power redundancy that laughs at dead batteries. Seeing his system on wheels turns “gear” into a plan you can copy in a weekend.

Then we shift to Rick Austin’s off-grid playbook. Think permaculture food forests that look wild but feed you for years, livestock matched to land, rain catchment measured in hundreds of gallons, and waste turned into value. Rick’s energy strategy is a masterclass in design: passive solar, thermal mass, and a wood stove nested in brick to hold and release heat without burning cords of wood or chasing kilowatts. Start small with solar—one panel, one battery—and scale with skill to avoid expensive mistakes.

Survivor Jane closes the loop with clarity and grit. Homesteading isn’t a postcard; it’s two hours of chores before coffee and a dozen micro-decisions that keep animals fed, food preserved, and systems humming. The trade is worth it: more control, more security, and a community that swaps hard-won hacks. We also talk shifting mindsets as supply chains wobble and prices surge (yes, even silver), and why small steps—fuel cans, paper maps, rain barrels, canning jars—compound into calm when the world gets loud.

If this resonated, follow along for more common-sense prepping, share it with a friend who needs a nudge, and leave a quick review so others can find it. Subscribe for future breakdowns and practical gear checks that keep you ready without going broke.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Prepper Camp Setup
• 0:47 EJ Snyder on Bug-Out Vehicles
• 3:20 Must-Have Gear and Redundancy
• 4:46 Rick Austin’s Off-Grid Homestead
• 7:12 Passive Solar, Thermal Mass, Heat
• 8:44 Survivor Jane: Realities of Homesteading
• 11:40 Schedule, Resources, and Discounts
• 12:38 Prepping Mindset Amid Unrest & Silver

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:17

To the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, where prepping doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Coming to you from a well-defended off-grid compound high in the mountains. Coming to you from his Florida room in Richmond, Virginia. Neither off-grid nor well-defended, unless you count as chickens and cats, here is your host, Keith.

SPEAKER_01: 0:40

Hey everybody, this is Keith, and welcome back to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, October 4th, 2025. And tonight I want to talk to you about three of the classes that I took at Prepper Camp. So the first one is Bug Out Vehicles, presented by the one and only E.J. Snyder, aka Skull Crusher. And if that name rings a bell, it's because he's the number one ranked extreme survivalist in the world, 25-year decorated army combat veteran, just think ranger qualified, infantry drill sergeant, the whole nine yards. So he's written numerous books all over TV Naked and Afraid, Dual Survival, 72 Hours, Mountain Masters, and tons of others. So EJ doesn't just talk survival, he lives it. He embodies the survival mindset or the prepping mindset. His motto is Train as you fight. Very energetic, very knowledgeable, very personable, was willing to answer questions during class, after class, at his merch booth. Just an all-around good guy. This year, at the end of 2025, he would have been on the road for 300 of the 365 days. I think he said that's the most that he's ever spent on the road away from home, and I'm not sure where his home base is. He still teaches survival classes for the U.S. military, and he's a very busy man. So when it comes out to bug out vehicles, what did we learn? Very simple. Any vehicle, if prepared correctly, can be your bug out vehicle. Now, maybe not a Prius, but you get the picture. His big takeaway, it has to have four-wheel drive because when the poop hits the fan, you may not be on a highway, you're in the forest, going up steep hills, going across creeks, punching through snow, mud. Your bug out vehicle is not a luxury item. It's your lifeline, and you need to treat it as such. So, what are some of the extra things that EJ said never to skimp on? So one is extra fuel, non-negotiable. 20 to 30 gallons in secure jerry cans. There's these other, they kind of look like Lego blocks and they stack. Those can be used to store fuel as well. And they're a little more, maybe how would I say spatial efficient? They lock together, they stack, and they can be placed in areas of your vehicle, of his truck, his truck bed that wouldn't really lend itself to the jerry cans. A siphon kit, supply supply-wise, just think a layered approach. Your everyday trunk kit, water, MREs, first aid, and then things specific to your vehicle, toe straps, high lift jacks, axe, chains for extra traction, and then the basics, jumper cables, flares, and a full tool set. Back up everything. If you have a GPS, have a paper map, have a compass, battery dies, have a way of charging that. A trickle charger, run by solar, not very expensive. So at the end of the class, we could go over and check out his truck. I think it's a it's a big old Dodge Ram. I think it's gosh, six foot or eight-foot bed, got the dual cab, a really nice looking truck, stuff hanging all over it. You can tell going down the road, this guy knows what he's talking about. So you can go to his website, ejsnyder.com. He has all of his books, all sorts of merchandise. So go ahead and check him out if you get a chance. Very, very knowledgeable. I actually bought one of his books and he went ahead and signed it for me, which was kind of cool. So switching gears just a little bit, let's talk about Rick Austin, godfather of prepping. He's been doing this for at least 30 years. He's a legend in the prepping community. Several books: The Secret Garden of Survival, The Secret Livestock of Survival. Basically, his garden grows all around him. And I'll get into that maybe later on a different podcast. We talk about permaculture, no pesticides, no watering. It looks like a forest. And he showed us some photos during that particular class. And he's like, Can you spot the watermelon? And I'm like, it just looks like a jungle with a bunch of vines to me. And sure enough, he went ahead and circled it. And there was a watermelon in his forest slash garden. And it's really, really cool. I'll talk about that later. Like I said, there's an entire book on that The Secret Garden of Survival. You can check that out. It's a really, really good read. So he walked us through his setup. Let's talk about animals: chickens, goats, rabbits, pigs, all sorts of animals. No cows. And I didn't realize this, and I forget the numbers, and I'm I'll probably mess this up, but for every cow, you have to have so many acres for them to graze. So if you have two or three cows, that is a lot of land just for the grazing, whereas maybe you could use that a little more efficiently in different ways. As far as drinking water, they have a rain catchment system at several hundred gallons. Nothing goes to waste. Composting toilet, and Jane has a very, very funny story about that. I won't even I won't even attempt it. I won't do it justice, but it was very, very funny. Completely off-grid, not tied to the city or county at all for water, electricity, his own well. And he stresses starting out small when it when it comes to the solar setup, one battery, one panel, and then just scale up as you learn. Talked a lot about, and I think it's called thermal mass and passive solar. So his home is built, uh has the concrete siding, the hardy board. And he has a section of the house that faces the sun quite a bit, not a lot of vegetation for shade, and basically just heats up the house. He has a whole side of the house, windows that also face the sun at some point during the day, and it's passive solar. So the sun is coming through the windows and it's keeping the house warm. The hardy board insulates the house in the winter, as well as the spray foam insulation that he used. I believe he used it in the upstairs. Very efficient, seals the house very, very well. So he talked all about which way the house faces, where you put your shade trees, the benefit of orienting your house correctly towards the sun to get the most out of it. So you don't have to worry about central AC. You don't have to worry about a furnace. He has a wood burning stove that is surrounded by brick. It just kind of inserted into this hole and this large brick structure in his basement. The wood stove heats up, the brick around it then absorbs that heat. He's able to turn the wood burning stove down, and the heat that is radiated from the wood burning stove into the brick, it just holds it and it slowly cools down, radiating that heat back into the room. Heat rises, and there you go. Rick has a YouTube channel, lots of videos, several books, The Secret Greenhouse of Survival. And go ahead and Google him, and you'll get a lot of great information, an absolute treasure of information. So, talking about Rick, the story would not be complete unless we talk about his wife, Jane Austen, otherwise known as Survivor Jane. And she is a firecracker. She, at the beginning of her class, which was, I think, the realities of homesteading, if you've never met her, she'll tell you straight up no nonsense. She tells it like it is. And that came in really handy in her class, The Realities of Homesteading, because I think it's kind of easy to kind of daydream, oh, homesteading, little house on the prairie meets the Waltons or something like that. But dusk to dawn, I believe they said it takes between the two of them, it takes two hours in the morning just to feed all the animals. So again, they're completely off grid, and their job is their homestead. So whereas you and I and most other people in the rat race jump in their car and race off to work, or folks in the EU jump on the train, race off to work, peck around on the keyboard for six or eight hours, take a long lunch, take your break, back in the car, back in the train, and that's your workday. Well, take your 10-hour workday, sometimes your 12-hour workday. I'm sure they've had plenty of 14-hour work days, and you're literally working from home at home. Your work is your home. Can't take a day off because who's gonna feed the animals? Who's gonna help Rick go into the forest of plenty, bring in everything under the sun? He told a story where he would, I think on one of his slides, he showed two or three, two or three buckets of pears, some good-looking pears. And he's like, Oh, these are just the pears that I picked up in the first 30, 45 minutes. And he brings them back to the house, and Jane would preserve and can them as a long-term food source. And he said he brought so much back that she finally had to call timeout, and he broke down and bought some freezers. So all the extras that she's not able to can and preserve goes in the freezers. And I believe he said the pears, the the ripe most round pears go to Jane. The seconds go to the chickens and the pigs and the goats and everybody else. They get the seconds, they get the pears with the little blemishes. I imagine they're just over the moon. I mean, now I want a pear. Jeez, I got a craving for a pear all of a sudden. But anyway, a very interesting class. Both of them had an had a very interesting class. When it comes to Jane's class, she was very much a city girl, very much a shopper. She shoots straight, and it's not all lollipops and rainbows. It's a grind. Very rewarding, but it's a grind. Again, sunup to sundown. So she went into a little bit of detail about she had kind of a life-changing experience where once it was done, she realized that she was no longer safe in her safe space and that there's some bad things going on out there. And given that occurrence, it kind of sped up the timeline for Rick and Jane to leave Florida to move to North Carolina to start their homestead. So her message is plain and simple homesteading builds resilience. Start small, small garden, and lean on your community, lean on your friends for all sorts of hacks, knowledge, tips. That's what prepper camp is all about. So her class was a gut check that we all need. Prep for the joy and the slog. And that's why I love this stuff. Common sense over fantasy. These were three fantastic classes. And I'm not even, I haven't even scratched the surface of the other classes. We'll talk about them another time. So when it comes to prepper camp, there are classes all three days Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. They start at 9:15 or 9. There's a lunch break, I believe from 12:30 to 1, and then 1.15 the next round of classes. And I think they go to 5:15 to 6, and then that's dinner time. So remember, look up Rick and Jane on YouTube, EJ's Books and Merch at EJSnyder.com. And remember, shameless commercial plug. I'm part of the Augustins Farms affiliate link. I will put the affiliate link in the show notes. When checking out, using the affiliate link, podcast prep for an additional 10% off your order. Again, folks, if you need to reach out, practical prep podcast at gmail.com. I'm on the interwebs, the twitters. You can search Common Sense Practical Prepper or Prep underscore Podcast. And I'm sure there's a lot of craziness going on in the world. I have stayed off of social media the last few days. It is just, it's just too depressing. And I've always spoken about prepping as a hedge against inflation, prepping for a peace of mind. But I think if the chaos continues, I think I'm going to find myself pivoting from doing it as a hedge on inflation and a peace of mind. I very well could come to the point where I'm actually prepping for a civil unrest. I'm actually prepping for a terrorist attack that potentially could cause a grid-down situation or an extended interruption of the supply chain. But anyway, maybe we'll talk about that another time about what I see going on in the world and are we really getting all the right information? Anyway, don't get me don't get me going on a tangent. Last thing, have you seen the price of silver? Holy crap. The last time I bought silver, it was like$36 an ounce, and that was not very long ago. I believe it just hit$49 or$50 an ounce. It has no signs of slowing down. So I'm kind of kicking myself in the butt for not purchasing more or at least looking into it. But again, you never know what the price of silver is gonna do. All right, folks, with all the craziness in the world, don't forget, please be safe out there. Take care of one another, and until next time.

SPEAKER_00: 13:58

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